Delivering the Keynote for Rochester Business Journal Event

On February 13th I'll be giving the keynote lecture for the Rochester Business Journal's 2009 Best of the Web awards banquet in Rochester, NY.

The opportunity came through Chris Katterjohn, publisher of the Indianapolis Business Journal, who graciously gave the opening remarks at MediaSauce's December 2008 Web. 2.0 event, "How Obama Won Using Digital and Social Media." Thanks Chris!

The February 6th edition of RBJ included a cover story on the event and was actually a pretty solid interview. Here's a couple excerpts from the article:

The hurdle for companies, large and small, is not the expense of communicat­ing with customers through these chan­nels, Burnes said. It is the fear of engaging with people and reconnecting with people from the past. Being able to take a critical look at one­self is likewise paramount. People have to determine if what they have to say is interesting, Burnes said. Social media, he underscores, are not the place for the tra­ditional hard sell.

He compares companies’ use of social media to going to a party. The goal for an organization is being the most memorable guest there—not the most annoying.

“When we go to a par­ty, we can find someone at the center of the room talking, and people are around him listening and nodding their heads. Then there’s another guy at the party who’s talking a lot, and everyone wants to avoid being around him because he’s say­ing too much,” Burnes said...

...In online social networking, organiza­tions have the opportunity to present what is interesting from different people and different specialties within the company. Relying on one person to do all the online networking is a mistake, he said...

...“The reality is that there are different audiences who need different information, so you need to be able to diversify your talent,” Burnes said. “At MediaSauce, we try to look at how do we identify and show­case talent within the organization to speak on these things, and then help them carry those stories to the world.”

You can read the entire text of the article here. (Note: The article is not available online at RBJ.net or I would have linked there rather than posting it here.)

The presentation that I'm putting together will discuss the need for connecting, not marketing and focus on case studies of businesses that have embraced and succeeded with Social Media. I'll be writing up a summary of the keynote on the MediaSauce blog following the event.