Blog Indiana Delivers Again for the 5th Consecutive Year
As I wrote about in my previous post, Blog Indiana 2012 took place last week on the campus of University of Indianapolis in the Schwitzer Student Center. Just like the previous four years, this year was another great conference where the speakers, sessions, food (with plenty of gluten free options), and the venue were all top notch.
Last week during the conference, when I could spare a free moment for thought I began composing this blog post in my head. I wanted to share just how great this conference has become and somehow incorporate all the great things about the conference. When I began reading great posts from other attendees after the conference, I decided I could not quite get the right message across all by myself, so I figured perhaps the best method would be to highlight some of the great posts I’ve read and the thoughts shared in those by other attendees.
Randy Clark (@randyclarktko) talks about Blog Indiana’s Big Problem and I couldn’t agree more with his critique. Perhaps the biggest problem with this conference is that the content available is just too good. All the speakers and session topics presented are so chock-full of valuable information it’s hard to decide which session you’re going to attend and which one you’re going to pass up.
Don Kincaid (@DonKincaid) shared in the comments on the post that one solution might be to have speakers present the same sessions multiple times through the conference. I think this is a great idea, but would require more rooms available at the venue (which I’m sure the University of Indianapolis could handle) and perhaps adding another day to the conference.
I think another option would be to have some local companies like 12 Stars Media or Cantaloupe.TV provide video recording of the content of each session. Granted that would require some more capital investment and logistics, but I think you’d have a number of people that couldn’t attend the conference purchase a “virtual conference ticket” that would give them access to all the sessions after the conference. You could also provide an add-on bonus package for attendees to have access to that content free or for a slight upgrade.
Pamela Reilly (@pamelareilly1) wrote A Naturopathic View of Blog Indiana yesterday and tied in the idea that there’s plenty of misguided or incomplete information that gets shared in this industry that we need to de-tox from our brains. The information and resources that get shared at Blog Indiana provide a great amount of nutrition and stress-free guidance that can be applied across a wide range of our goals and business efforts. One of the key benefits is that Blog Indiana always provides a balanced mix of work and play that attendees can walk-away feeling both refreshed and newly equipped and prepared for meeting their next marketing challenge. Pamela felt the analogy may be a little weak, but I think it’s just what the doctor prescribed.
One of the highlights of this year’s conference was another keynote on Friday by social media author, speaker, and writer… Jay Baer (@jaybaer). His session about being a “YOUtility” right-on-target with the overall premise that the key to successful businesses today is to be helpful to their customers. A great thing for me to hear as that’s always been my goal for clients, even though I may not have been able to have identified it as my “mission statement” until the last couple of years. What attendees may not have realized about Jay’s session this year is that his presentation is somewhat of the foundation of a new book he’s been writing that’s as yet still untitled.
Jay’s ability to present information to the audience is perhaps the most enjoyable combination of laughing and smiles while drinking through a firehose as you can get. If you’ve never heard Jay speak, you owe it to yourself to find out where he’s going to be next and go hear him.
Humor writer, Erik Deckers (@edeckers) did a resounding job of capturing many of the keynotes of Jay’s presentation in Why I Give Away the Good Stuff – What I Learned from Jay Baer at Blog Indiana. As is his style, Erik effectively meshes the key points and highlights of his topic with a sharpened wit that makes the content that much more memorable for future reference and response.
Here’s your call-to-action for this post. Blog Indiana 2013 has already been scheduled on the calendars for August 8-9th of next year. Go now and block out the dates and start planning on being there. That’s 359 days from today, so if you block it on your calendar and start saving about $0.70/day, you’ll be all set to join us next year.
If you’re still not convinced, go read Lorraine Ball’s post “What’s It Like to Attend Blog Indiana” to give you a few more reasons why you definitely don’t want to miss it. If you missed this year and would like to at least try and catch-up on what happened, just do a search for the #BIN2012 hashtag and see what you find.
We’ll see you next year!
Photo Credit: Lindsay Manfredi (@LindsayManfredi) and Hazel Walker (@Hazewalker) sitting on the panel at “Social Media and Craft Beer”. Photo taken by Bob Burchfield (@AroundIndy)
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