Social Media Week Vancouver: Events, Parties, and Workshops

We are busy working with our Social Media Week advisory board and also gathering a ton of requests and suggestions from potential volunteers, speakers and venues. We will also have a number of sponsorships to announce shortly.

I thought to help guide the submission process I would publish our draft event listings. If you see a Summit, Mash-up, Soiree or other event you would like to be part of please indicate it when you submit your speaker, venue or volunteer details.

It’s important to note that preference will be given to local success stories. Our goal is to share these best practices and promote our home grown talent globally.

Firstly to give this week some structure we broke up the events into 6 major types:

Summits: A 3-hour event that appeals to a broad group of people. These will typically be the larger events. They consists of one keynote, one or two panel discussions and one or two additional speakers. Summits run consecutively and not concurrently.

Mash-ups: Are typically smaller events or are narrower in their focus than the summits. These will run concurrently throughout the city and may be organized by one company, community or interest group.

Soiree: This is a fancy word for party or even possibly what is referred to as a social media gong-show! These events will often coincide with the preceding summit and come complete with drink and food sponsorship. They may be hosted by one group or be a collaborative effort. This is where you get to connect in person with speakers, industry leaders and other social media enthusiasts (leave your expert badge and your pitches at the door).

Meetup: There are many meetup groups in Vancouver which will be doing their monthly meetup between September 19-23. Meetup organizers are encouraged to collaborate with us so that we reduce potential redundancy in topics and so that we can list your event.

Tweetups: There will be many Tweetups across the city. Like the Meetup organizers we encourage you to connect with us and collaborate. Also if your Tweetup is of significant size we may be able to offer assistance and resources to help make it a success. We will be partnering with Vancouver Tweetup and will be listing the Tweetups there. (how many times did I have to say Tweetup?) If you are still not clear on what one is you can watch this video.

Here are the Summit Topics:

1) The Social Good Summit: This summit will focus on how social media is being used in non-profit, charity, sustainability and community efforts.

2) The Enterprise 2.0 Summit: Expect to hear executives, marketing teams and their like share their success stories in using social media from a large enterprise perspective.

3) Government 2.0 / Open Government Summit: This summit will have a focus on social media use by all levels of government. It may also delve into legal, policy and community crowdsourcing aspects of social media use by government agencies, political parties and their stakeholders. (Thank-you to Dr. Raul Pacheco for suggesting this topic)

4) The Real Estate Summit: This summit will focus on best practices in social media and technology use for real estate agents, developers and other stakeholders in the sector. Online/Offline integration will also be a key topic.

5) Mobile and App Summit: This summit will focus on the development and marketing side of mobile apps, location based applications and how to use them to reach and interact with today’s highly mobile audience.

6) The Accountability Summit: This summits focus is on ethics, legal implications, transparency. It will also focus on using social media for public companies. In addition to this social media policy development, employee and community engagement may also be key topics presented.

7) Social Media 101 Summit: This summit will focus on how to get started right on Facebook, Twitter, Blogging, YouTube and other leading platforms. It will also cover social media rules of engagement and key strategies for success.

Here are the Mash-up topics so far:

The Agency Mash-up: Both traditional ad agencies, digital agencies, and social media agencies will be getting together to share best practices, and discuss trends and industry challenges. Expect to see some major sponsors from big ad networks, social media monitoring application companies, and analyst groups. We will be asking for submissions from agencies that would like to participate in a mini case-camp and profile winning case studies.

The Green Mash-up: Sustainability, the triple bottom-line, and the greening of the web will be some of the topics and sessions covered at this event. Clean energy, it’s use and promotion will also be covered.

Leading Women in Social Media Mash-up: This event focuses on how women are using social media to connect, collaborate, lead and lobby.

The Journalism 2.0 Mashup: An in-depth track focused on how social media has changed and enhanced journalism. Best practices will be shared by leading publishers, journalists and non-traditional new media publishers.

The Guerrilla Mash-up: A track specifically for boot-strap small business and entrepreneurs on how to use social media effectively and profitably with limited time and money.

The Arts Mash-up: Artists, musicians and arts based organizations will be sharing how they have been using social media to gain exposure, find opportunities and connect with other artists.

The Mental Health Mash-up: Social media has become a powerful community and support building tool for mental health professionals and those of us whose lives are impacted by mental illness. Many people who would otherwise be isolated or under-resourced have found social media to be a true life-line.

The Law Mashup: How lawyers are using social media and key issues they need to be aware of when advising clients.

And of course…. Your Mashup? Let us know if there’s a topic you would like to tackle, sponsor or contribute to.

Soirees: These events are yet to be announced and are still coming together. If you would like to host, sponsor or volunteer at one of these events please let us know (today). They will be free but limited in capacity. The majority of tickets will be distributed by lottery, and contests.

That’s it so far. We are looking forward to your feedback, topic submissions and of course since this whole event is free – we are looking for the right sponsors to become part of this massive week.

Follow this link to let us know how you want to be involved Get Involved. I did a podcast about the event as well. You can listen Here

Shane Gibson
Chief Social Officer – Socialized Ltd.