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Social Media Breakfast 9

Posted by lunaweb on December 4, 2008 3 Responses »

Dec 042008

Social Media is booming in Memphis, and we proved it at the December Social Media Breakfast! 50 guests, ranging from social experts to brand-new beginners, came to this month’s breakfast at Owen Brennan’s on Poplar. Many of them were drawn by the breakfast’s recent mention in the Commercial Appeal. This was the last breakfast of the year and it proved to be an incredible turnout. The Memphis Social Media Breakfast is hosted by Dave Barger of LunaWeb.

The morning kicked off “officially” with a home-run presentation. We were lucky to have Jason Orendorff from Mozilla as our guest speaker this month. He showed us some great Firefox features and some very useful social tools built into the browser. Jason also gave us insight into the intricacies of running a company like Mozilla using thousands of volunteers and a mere 150 paid employees.

After Jason’s presentation, we broke out into groups to discuss topics that were chosen by the audience in traditional BarCamp style. Discussions included everything from “Social Media 101″ to “What’s Broken on the Web.” Several of the attendees left their groups with plans to meet again later in the month to continue their conversations.

We’re truly excited to watch our next project, the Social Media Expedition, evolve, and we foresee it bringing lot of positive growth to the Memphis business community and beyond. If you were unable to attend, you can look for information on the next breakfast at our meetup page. Make sure you’re there next month to join the Expedition!

BarCamp Memphis is a HUGE success

Posted by lunaweb on November 11, 2008 No Responses »

Nov 112008

First of all, a HUGE thanks to everyone who had anything to with making BarCamp Memphis the success it was. Attendees, presenters, volunteers, sponsors, and planners all came together to make BarCamp Memphis a truly great weekend.

The weekend began, staying true to our Memphis roots, at Ground Zero Blues Club in downtown Memphis. We met a lot of wonderful new faces, and found some pleasantly familiar ones there for some great mixing and meeting. The crowd was fun, the food was great, and it really set the mood for our Memphis-style tech conference.

Early the next morning, we were greeted at the Emerge Memphis building by a mountain of Red Bull and a slew of great presentations. Topics varied from Ruby on Rails programming, to RSS feeds. All of our speakers gave home-run presentations including LunaWeb’s Dave Barger demystifying LinkedIn and Mitch Canter teaching attendees to “Make WordPress Dance.” There were also some very passionate words exchanged during a great open conversation about Social Media privacy/etiquette.

Between all of that, and some great Memphis BBQ from Rendezvous, BarCamp Memphis was one of our best events yet with the Memphis community. Thanks again to absolutely everyone who made it possible!

blogpost by lunaweb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Making BarCamp Work for You

Posted by lunaweb on October 29, 2008 No Responses »

Oct 292008

It’s usually not hard to walk into a conference unprepared and find something useful along the way that you can take back with you. However, since BarCamp Memphis is so much more than a conference, here are some ways you can go about getting the most out of your BarCamp experience.

Come Ready to Present
This is first on the list because it is simultaneously one of the most beneficial and least used BarCamp options. Speaking gets you noticed, helps you network, and lets other people know what your expertise is. Not to mention, sharing helpful info is great for the Karma. In keeping with promoting the sharing spirit of BarCamp, if you come prepared with a topic to present to your fellow Campers, BarCamp Memphis is free for you. Otherwise a small fee will go to help defray the cost of the conference.

What not to do

Don’t turn your presentation into a live infomercial for your company. BarCamp is about learning, networking, and sharing, and people will notice if you’re shamelessly plugging your brand.
Give your presentation a catchy title, but don’t get so focused on it that people can’t figure out what you’re speaking on. Topic clarity helps everyone.

Join the Conversation

BarCamp Memphis is about networking, making connections, and fostering a forward-thinking tech community in Memphis. The presentations will be a great learning experience for everyone, but your biggest benefit for the day will be from the people that you meet. BarCamp will be a focal point for movers and shakers in the tech community and will be a great place where people with ideas can meet people with talent. Don’t let that opportunity go! Bring your business card, shake hands, speak up, share your ideas, and brainstorm for new ones. Whatever you do, you’ll get more out of your BarCamp experience if you avoid being a wallflower.

Vote

BarCamp Memphis is happening right after election day, so the importance of voting should not be lost on anyone. Be sure you arrive early enough to vote on the topics for the day. Voting makes sure that topics of the day are relevant to you, which is, after all, what makes BarCamp different from everything else.

BarCamp Memphis is on November 8! In the meantime, here are some other great blogs about BarCamp to check out!

What is BarCamp?
LunaWeb

Launch Memphis Rocks Social Media in September
LunaWeb

BarCamp Tips
LaLunaBlanca

Attn Entrepreneurs and Would-Be Entrepreneurs: BarCamp Memphis is Coming
Paul Ryburn

BarCamp Memphis Planning Underway
LunaWeb

BarCamp Evolution
LaLunaBlanca

BarCamp Fee Discussion on Twitter
LaLunaBlanca

BarCamp Memphis – Calling All Thought Leaders
One Half Amazing

BarCamp Memphis: November 2008
Conmergence

BarCamp Memphis 2008 – Be There, Share, Learn
LaunchMemphis

Memphis Entrepreneurs Draw National Attention

Posted by lunaweb on September 29, 2008 No Responses »

Sep 292008

The Memphis entrepreneurial community has been drawing some high-profile attention recently, fueled by several recent events put on by everyone with the LaunchMemphis group.

The first event to give Memphis some much-deserved national attention was the LaunchMemphis TechFuel night featuring Business Week writer, Yahoo! TechTicker host, and blogger, Sarah Lacy. Sarah, being a Memphis native, was already familiar with the local business climate. After interacting with a full host of entrepreneurs during the stop on her User Generated Book Tour, Sarah wrote an epic blog post about what Memphis is doing right.

The Geoff Livingston tweetup on the 22nd was the second event to spawn great press from a better source. Geoff, author of Now is Gone and top ranked PR blog The Buzz Bin, met with a group of Memphis entrepreneurs and Social Media proponents at Quetzal cafe, where he got to know several members of the business community, and shared some great conversations everyone there. Afterwards, The Buzz Bin interviewed LunaWeb President and LaunchMemphis co-founder, Dave Barger, about the future of entrepreneurial Memphis and Social Media. You can see the post here.

If you missed Sarah and Geoff, there’s still more on the horizon in Social Media. Upcoming on the calendar is the Social Media Breakfast on October 1. As well as Barcamp Memphis on November 7-8

It’s an exciting time to be a Memphian! Let’s keep up the good work and continue to make Memphis great.

@LunaWeb

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