Author Archive
Free WiFi in New York, San Francisco, London, Rome, Paris, Toronto, Sao Paulo, Hong Kong and Istanbul for Social Media Week
To celebrate Social Media Week, our global technology partner Skype is giving away free WiFi through Skype Access, the single-click Internet access feature, in New York, San Francisco, London, Rome, Paris, Toronto, Sao Paulo, Hong Kong and Istanbul for the duration of the festival.
With Skype Access you can pay for WiFi access per minute using Skype Credit. All you need is a connection to a Skype Access compatible hotspot and the latest version of Skype for Mac or Windows.
From 0001 GMT on the 7th February 2011 to to 2359 GMT on the 12th February 2011, Skype Access will be free to use for up to 60 minutes, so you can surf the web, send email and make free Skype-to-Skype voice and video calls at Skype Access-enabled WiFi hotspots in cafés, hotels and airports in New York, San Francisco, London, Rome, Paris, Toronto, São Paulo, Hong Kong and Istanbul.
Skype Access is made available through WiFi operators around the world. For a complete list of compatible networks, visit our Support site.
JWT: 100 Things to Watch in 2011
Event Coverage: Social Innovation with Alec Ross from the US State Department
Last week we had the honor and privilege of hosting a unique event with the US State Department that explored US social innovation and entrepreneurship.
The conversation was led by moderator Alec Ross, Senior Adviser for Innovation in the office of the Secretary Hillary Clinton and also included speakers Paull Young from Charity Water, Rachel Schechtman, Tom’s Shoes and Oren Michels from Mashery.
The session was webcast in both English and Spanish and drew in an audience from 21 countries, including Argentina, Benin, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Georgia, Guatemala, Marshall Islands, India, Indonesia, Italy, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Sweden, Turkey, the US and Uruguay. Notable participants included IRC San Jose, US Embassy Buenos Aires and the Young Beninese Leaders Association hosted at US Embassy Cotonou.
WATCH THE RECORDING HERE:
The audience was not only able to watch the live webcast, but could also contribute questions, comments and provide feedback to each of the panelists via the chat module. Some examples included:
“Thank you for coming together in such an awesome way that people like me can chime in and get educated. I’m astounded and consistently amazed by how social people are becoming and I think that mindset can help my issue.”—online participant.
“muy buena idea, por favor repintanla en el futuro…gracias” [translation: this is a great idea, please do it again...thanks]—arwin, online participant.
“thank you Mr. Alec Ross and distinguish panel!”—tg23, online participant.
“very informative”—Laurence, online participant.
Establishing a working relationship with the US State Department has been a very important step for the global Social Media Week effort. In the future we hope to do more of these types of events, which are designed to connect across geographical and cultural boundaries, a goal which is very much at the heart of the Social Media Week platform.
The 10 Step Guide to Social Media Week
We’re about to launch our third Social Media Week conference, and after hosting nearly 450 events in 11 cities, we’ve begun to build up an understanding of what makes for a compelling experience. Here’s a quick, 10-step guide to getting the most out of Social Media Week:
1. Register A La Carte
Social Media Week is a conference with a difference. Rather than having to purchase a pass for the whole week, attendees are instead able to select to attend events free, on an individual basis; a la carte style! To view the full city schedule, select the city you wish to attend, click on the schedule button from the local navigation, and peruse the cornucopia of programming at your leisure!
2. Create a Personal Schedule
Once you’ve had an opportunity to review your Social Media Week local city schedule, you should then consider creating a personal schedule with the help of Sched.org, an interactive calendar with social media integration. Once you’ve done this you can then easily share with your friends and followers what you are doing over the course of the week. To select your events, simple click on the city you’re interested in viewing, and then click on the schedule or agenda page to view the calendar of the week’s events. You can then click through directly to each event’s registration page, and RSVP for each individual event.
3. Book Your Accommodation
As Social Media Week is a five-day conference, and with such a full and diverse program of events taking place over the course of the week, we recommend that you consider staying for the entirety of the conference. If you’re coming in from out of town, and your company is putting the squeeze on travel and accommodation budgets, we would recommend booking accommodations through Airbnb.com, which has been called the “Ebay for space” by Time Magazine. Airbnb is an online marketplace allowing anyone from private residents to commercial properties to rent out their extra space. If you are thinking of booking through Airbnb.com, please use the discount code “SocialMediaWeek” and you will receive a $30 coupon.
If you’re in LA specifically, you can book through the Standard Hotel for a terrific discount on accommodations. Use the code SOCIALSTAN, which is valid for stays Sept. 19 – 27th.
4. Plan Your Journey
Social Media Week isn’t just unique because it takes place simultaneously in multiple cities, it is also distributed, meaning that events take place throughout the city. If you are considering attending multiple events in a day, make sure that you plan your journey in between each event carefully. We recommend Google Maps to plot your route and also estimate the distance and the time it will take to travel between locations.
5. Take Part in the Real Time Conversation
Throughout all five participating cities, there has already been a great deal of conversation and collaboration in the build up to the conference. During the conference itself, we anticipate the level of chatter to increase significantly. Here is a quick guide for how you can keep up with the conversation.
Using your preferred desktop or browser-based or mobile Twitter application, conduct a search using any one of the following hastags:
- Global Feed: #smw
- Los Angeles: #smwla
- Milan: #smwmln
- Bogota: #smwbog
- Mexico City: #smwmex
- Buenos Aires: #smwba
You can also follow individual events; hashtags for these events will be published at the time of the event.
Using CoTweet, Tweetdeck or HootSuite you can run multiple searches in parallel, allowing you to monitor the flow of conversation across every participating city in real time, simultaneously. CoTweet even provides a translation tool so you can follow the conversation in your preferred language.
6. Discover
If you are a regular attendee of conferences that cater to emerging media and technology, then we guess that you likely stick to topics that are familiar to you and that are directly relevant to your work. However, we recommend going “off-piste” from time to time, and choosing themes & topics that are completely unrelated to your field of expertise and area of work. We assure you that you’ll meet a plethora of diverse, interesting and new people, and we hope you learn from their unique industries & approaches.
7. Capture
With over 200 events and literally thousands of attendees swarming all over each city, our aim it to capture as much of the action as we can. And by action, we mean videos photos, and even the moon if it’s possible (if there is an app for that)! If you’re sharing in real-time, please using the hashtag protocol listed above. If you’re looking to share media following the event, please upload to our preferred platforms: YouTube & Vimeo for video and Flickr for photos. When you upload, simply tag your content with “smw”, “smwla” (if for LA) or “socialmediaweek”. You can also subscribe to our channels if you like!
Vimeo: http://www.vimeo.com/socialmediaweek
Flickr: http://flickr.com/socialmediaweek
8. Share
There are many tools available that enable you to share what you’re doing in real-time. One such tool that we feel is particularly effective for distributed conferences and festivals is Plancast. Plancast enables you to connect both your Twitter and Facebook accounts, so it’s as easy as possible for your friends to find you. You can choose to share plans on both of these social networks as well, which so you’re friends can see what you’re planning, no matter which site they choose to use. You can also subscribe to your friends so you can see what they’re planning, add widgets and buttons to your site in order to share all of your events on your personal site, connect to Eventbrite and lastly, use the calendar feed on your profile page to export your plans to your favorite calendar application. Visit http://plancast.com to sign up, learn more and begin sharing.
9. Connect
Social Media Week goal is to help you connect with people, content & conversation at the bleeding edge of emerging trends of social & mobile media. There are a multitude of ways for you to connect; through Twitter, Facebook, Plancast, through livestreaming, and of course, in person. Don’t forget that even though you will be experiencing Social Media Week in one city, there are ample ways for you to connect with the global conversation.
10. Follow
Social Media Week will host presentations and panel discussions featuring more than 600 individual speakers. To find out who they are and what they have to say, we recommend that you follow a little something that we call the Social Media Week Participant’s List, on Twitter twitter.com/socialmediaweek/participants. You can also follow Social Media Week’s Global Partners and Sponsors Twitter feed here: twitter.com/socialmediaweek/partners.
