E.Webscapes Design Studio

Social Media, WordPress and BuddyPress – all in ONE big day in Vancouver!

It has been a LONG LONG time since I have been to Vancouver. I visited once and climbed all the way to the top of Grouse Mountain and had a blast! When the organizers of the F5Expo event contacted me to see if I had any interest in speaking and participating in their conference, I jumped at the chance to visit Vancouver again. Despite the fact that it is an incredible distance away from Wisconsin – I couldn’t bring myself to say no.

I am doing several things at the F5Expo - it’s really exciting! The event is on April 7th 2010 and is being held at the Vancouver Convention Center.

First, I am speaking on a panel called The Metrics of Social Media – my co-panelists include:

• Alfredo Tan – Senior Director of Sales, Facebook
• Darren Barefoot – Author: Friends with Benefits
• Kris Krug – President, Bryght

What a line up! I am excited to be a part of the panel talking about how to effectively market your business using social communities like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Youtube, and Squidoo. What do I bring to the table on this panel? Why WordPress and BuddyPress, of course! This panel also explores the possibility of hosting your OWN social community on your own domain and why that may be, in some cases, a better plan and using the other networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter as a second layer of your marketing strategy. (teaser: it’s all about who owns your content, your traffic and your community)

Second – I’m running TWO workshops at F5Expo:

• WordPress For Dummies – How some of today’s leading companies are using WordPress. Attending this workshop does not infer that you are a ‘Dummy’ by any stretch of the imagination! Instead, it is meant to explore the ease in which individuals and small business are able to host a dynamic, interactive and useful web site of their own for the very low cost of free. Together, we will have a look at how some of today’s leading companies are using WordPress to runs sites that range from basic blogs to fully integrated web sites with portfolios, galleries, e-commerce and more!
• Building Your Community with BuddyPress – Helping you determine if BuddyPress is right for your site. This workshop introduces you to the features available, aimed toward helping you make the decision if BuddyPress is right for your site, and has features that you would like to add to enhance and grow a social community on your own domain.

BIG thanks to the crew over at PEER1 Hosting for sponsoring both of my workshops at F5Expo. I’m very excited to be working with Peer1 again. My good friend, Rajan Sodhi from PEER1 and ServerBeach will be there – and having just come off a fabulous trip to Austin for the SXSW Interactive festival where I had the opportunity to spend some time catching up with the whole ServerBeach San Antonio crew – I’m excited to hook up with their Vancouver crew to round out the month!

If I am lucky – I may even get the opportunity to meet Malcom Gladwell, the author of Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, & What the Dog Saw. Malcom is keynoting the event – definitely something to look forward to!

If you are in Vancouver, and/or attending F5Expo - drop me a line! I’m there from April 6-8th – and who knows, maybe I’ll even climb the mountain again while I’m there!

Cross-posted from my personal blog