Spring Creek Group made it down to Twtrcon and the 140smiles launch party in San Francisco this weekend, had a great time, and participated in a ton of great discussions and presentations. For those of you who missed it, here's a quick rundown of what went on.
Saturday: The 140smiles launch party was kicked off by Operation Smile, hoping to raise enough for 140 cleft palate and facial deformity surgeries. The party was packed, and due to a poor AT&T signal (therefore no iPhones) and only intermittent Wi-Fi, the attendees spent a lot of time networking and getting to know each other, which was a good thing. Without having that 140 character limit to fall back on, the crowd got even more actively real-world social. By the end of the night, we'd spent hours talking with @davemcclure, @jacobm, @ericoverman (from Operation Smile), and @ginasmith888 (who ran a lot of the conference).
Sunday: At Twtrcon itself, Guy Kawasaki answered our question regarding how he feels about farming out his personal brand to assistants by saying that his ultimate goal is to promote his business, and since his Twitter presence is larger than Alltop's, he's satisfied to leverage it.
At two periods during the day, Twtrcon attendees had the chance to pitch their companies or whatever they preferred, so long as they submitted a 140-character application and this application then received the most votes from the other attendees. Spring Creek Group received the second highest amount of votes and so we were able to talk about how charities and not-for-profits are innovating and blazing the way for brand and corporate success on Twitter. That 140-second pitch generated a lot of one-on-one questions from people in the field.
Right after the pitch, we were selected to moderate the "Twitter Analytics 1,2,3" lunch discussion table. There was a lot to learn from the participants, as they came from agencies, company brands, applications, and personal brands, meaning they all had very different needs from, and views on, Twitter data. Two of the most fascinating tools mentioned at the table were Tweetriver and Twittfilter.
After lunch, there was a bit of a lull as you could tell everyone was getting a little sleepy, but Shel Israel's talk about building neighborhoods that are no longer constrained by geography and Steve Rubel's vision for the future of Twitter really woke everyone up. As a result, the Twitter pro panel that finished off the day was really energized, and turned out to be a great way to cap off the conference.
All in all, we met a lot of great people, had some excellent discussions, and formed some relationships and connections that'll hopefully continue long into the future. We found that some of the most interesting things about the conference were not necessarily what people said, but the nature of the communication itself. We connected face-to-face with so many people that we'd before only interacted with online. This might just be part of the power and relevance of Twitter-its ability to bring people together who might otherwise might never have met.
