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media 2.0
Announcing #140conf Los Angeles and #140conf London 2010
- Posted: 3:13 pm Wednesday, February 24, 2010
The 140 Characters Conference (#140conf) will be taking place in Los Angeles on October 5-6 2010 and in London on October 26-27 2010.
In support the upcoming #140conf LA conference, the next #140conf Los Angeles meetup will be taking place on May 10th at the Comedy Store in Hollywood, CA. For more information and to RSVP, click here. Special thanks to Make It Work for once again helping to produce this meetup.
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Tags: 140conf, social media, 140 Characters Conference, twitter, Los Angeles, Make It Work, London,
Jeff Keni Pulvermedia 2.0
A look at some of the Panels at #140conf NYC - April 20/21
- Posted: 8:42 am Tuesday, February 23, 2010
The schedule for the upcoming #140conf NYC continues to take shape. During the past month I have worked with a number of amazing people who have taken the time to help me invite some great people who will be speaking at April's 140 Characters Conference in New York City.
Some of the panel discussions I am looking forward to seeing include:
Fixing America's Voting System, One Tweet At A Time
Participants:
Debra Bowen (@DBowen) - Secretary of State, California
Jacob Soboroff (@jacobsoboroff) - @AMCnews Correspondent and Executive Director of @WhyTuesday, a nonpartisan election reform group
Joe Trippi (@JoeTrippi) - @WhyTuesday advisory board member
Nancy Scola (@nancyscola) - associate editor at @techPresident and inspired the Twitter Vote Report with a blog post
Steve Grove (@grove) - Head of News and Politics at YouTube- - -
Interacting with the television audience in Real Time
Participants:
Gavin Purcell (@gavinpurcell) - Producer, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon
Rick Borutta (@CBSborutta) - Producer, CBS Backstage LIVE
Steve Garfield (@stevegarfield) - Author, Get Seen: Online Video Secrets to Building Your Business (Moderator)- - -
Finding Common Ground: Discussion of issues of race and politics in 140 Characters
Participants:
Blair Kelley (@profblmkelley) - Professor at North Carolina State University
Elon James White (@elonjames) - Comedian and Social Critic
Joan Walsh (@joanwalsh) - Editor in Chief, Salon
Liza Sabater (@blogdiva) - Publisher of Culturekitchen & DailyGotham- - -
twitter and the Fashion Indusry
Participants:
Alexis Maybank (@giltfounder) - Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Gilt Groupe
Bronwyn Barnes (@InStyle) - Associate Entertainment Editor for InStyle.com:
Deirdre Sullivan (@GrittyPrettyPR) - Principal / Social Media
Kimberly Miller (@StyleWatchMag) - VP of Consumer Marketing, People StyleWatch
Meredith Fisher (@InsideDVF) - Editorial Brand Director, Diane von Furstenberg Studio L.P.- - -
twitter and Education
Participants:
Aparna Vashisht (@Parentella) - Founder, Parentella (moderator)
Kevin Jarrett (@kjarrett) - K-4 Technology Teacher
Lisa Nielsen (@InnovativeEdu) - Educational Technologist - NYC Dept of Ed
Mary Beth Hertz (@mbteach) - K-6 Computer Teacher and Technology Teacher Leader in Philadelphia- - -
Where Am I? How location changes everything
Participants:
C.C. Chapman (@cc_chapman) - moderator
Dennis Crowley (@dens) - co-founder, FourSquare
Josh Williams (@jw) - Founder, CEO, Gowalla- - -
twitter and Music
Exploring the use of twitter in the Music IndustryParticipants:
Jim Jones (@jimjonescapo) - Artist
Leslie Hall (@dollyhall) - President, ICED Media (moderator)
Ryan Leslie (@ryanleslie) - Artist
Xavier Jernigan (@XavierJernigan) - Senior Director, Digital Marketing, Universal Motown- - -
twitter: Sports
A look at how twitter is used in Pro SportsParticipants:
Ian Poulter (@Ianjamespoulter) - Pro Golfer
Kathleen Hessert (@kathleenhessert) - President, Sports Media Challenge
Natalie Gulbis (@natalie_gulbis) - Pro Golfer- - -
Experiencing: Love, Dating and Romance in the Real-Time web
Participants:
Julie Spira (@JulieSpira) - Author, dating coach
Scot McKay (@ScotMcKay) - Dating Coach
Thomas Miller (@TomfooleryTM) - General Manager, Your Tango- - -
Campaign to Governing: Twitter by the Issues
Participants:
David All (@DavidAll) - Health Care/Capitol Hill Tweets Founder
Leslie Sanchez (@LeslieSanchez) - Author and a former Bush presidential advisor
Maegan Carberry (@maegancarberry)
Paul Rieckhoff (@PaulRieckhoff) - Founder of Iraq & Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA)
Whit Jones (@whitjones) - Energy Action Coalition - Climate- - -
Augmented Twitter: A Conversation with Three Futurists
Participants:
FakeJerry Paffendorf (@WELLO) - Artist, futurist, entrepreneur.
joshua fouts (@josholalia) - Cultural relations futurist at the crossroads of emergent media, digital diplomacy, games, virtual worlds and storytelling.
Rita J. King (@RitaJKing) - Innovator-in-Residence, IBM Analytics Virtual Center, #SmarterWork project.
Tish Shute (@TishShute) - "enthusiast for our networked potential to make a better world"- - -
The effects of twitter on the Real Estate Industry
Participants:
Amanda Wernick (@funomenalrealtr) - REALTOR Associate, Licensed: CA
Bob Watson (@TopBrokerOC) - moderator
Diane Guercio (@HeyAmaretto) - REALTOR, Boston, MA
Eric Stegemann (@EricStegemann) - Broker, Licensed: MO
Maya Paveza (@mayaREguru) - Realtor, DE/PA- - -
These are just a sampling of some of the approximate 70 sessions that will be taking place during the two days of #140conf NYC.
If you are thinking about attending #140conf NYC, now would be a great time to secure your seat. With the "early bird" ticket costing only US$ 100 for this two day event, seats will sell out so register NOW to guarantee youself access to the event over at: http://nyc.140conf.com/register.
Note: Speakers and sessions are subject to change without notice. These "characters" are accurate as of: February 22, 2010.
For more information about upcoming worldwide #140conf events, please visit: http://140conf.com.
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Tags: 140conf, social media, 140 Characters Conference, twitter, Jeff Keni Pulver
media 2.0
Guest Blog: Facebook, Twitter, Google et al. – You suck at Customer Service! - Amit Shafir
- Posted: 5:05 pm Monday, February 22, 2010
When Gmail, Facebook, Twitter and others don’t have customers, only users – does it mean that we the users, lose the right to adequate customer service?
Services like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Y!Mail and many others have amassed hundreds of millions of users. We all use these services, and many of us use them for many hours every day. Some of these services have become indispensible to us. HOWEVER, as these are free services and we do not pay for them, in the eyes of the providers we have lost any right to customer service. What do we do when something is not working for us? Who you gonna call?
Remember when we used to complain that we were put on hold for a long time when calling the phone company? Or that the rep that answered the phone had a foreign accent that was difficult to understand?
Well these were the good old days because with the above online services – there is no one to call. When you have a problem it is YOUR problem. And because these services all have a similar approach to us, the users (not customers), we are left with no alternative. If we are locked out from facebook, what are we going to do? Go to Myspace? If we are kicked out of gmail and cannot access our email, what are we to do? Switch email provider? And what about all our gigabytes of emails archived with Google? How do we get access to it?
A few months ago, my son created a gmail account dedicated to his college application processes. All correspondence with the various colleges is done via the email account. He is now in the phase where he is waiting to hear decisions (quite stressful). A few weeks ago, we learned that Google has disabled the account. Btw – it was pure coincidence that we found out – no message from Google to inform us… Not sure what caused it, as it is only used for this sole purpose. For two weeks we have tried to convince Google via its online reporting mechanism (there is no 1-800-GOOGLE…) to no avail.
These services would tell you that it is not possible to provide customer services when they have hundreds of millions of users. I happen to disagree with that assertion, and believe that is mostly a matter of priorities and corporate values. Having had run some businesses that had many millions of users, I know that it IS possible to serve each and every user interaction in a fair and timely manner, if only you decide that this is something important enough for you to do.
It is also possible to provide customer service for a fee. How many of you would be willing to pay to have your issue addressed (not to mention resolved)?I fear however, that the situation will not change, as these online services have lowered our expectations to the point where we simply accept that as a given that we are mere users, and not customers and thus deserve no customer service.
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Amit Shafrir is currently COO of OurParents. He previously was President of AOL Premium Services, GM of ICQ and other online services.
Tags: Google, Facebook, Customer Service, twitter, Amit Shafrir
