Highlight Midwest

Everyone: Thanks for talking and rocking at Highlight Midwest this year. The tweets and blog posts tell the best story of what just happened and someone, somewhere will get the word out about when and where it’s happening again. In the meantime, keep it up Midwest.

Your mission now, should you choose to accept it, is to continue to publish, publish, publish what you captured — pictures, videos, thoughts — lay it all out on the web.

Special thanks to these folks in particular: everyone who showed up and participated.

Oh, and if you missed Carl J Schramm’s surprise visit, I’m betting the Omaha crew captured it on video so look for it soon.

An algorithm must be seen to be believed. — Donald Knuth

During last night’s panel, the overarching question was “Where do we go from here?”  Our discussion was broad sweeping from city plans/ideas, the next Highlight Midwest to very micro-personal goals.

In the post-conference mingling, a few of us talked over some quick tactics that we’re going to be doing to keep the #hm1 momentum going, build up awareness of Midwest expertise and keep the community vibe flowing in a SEO-friendly way.  Pete asked me to share a few ideas (which a lot of you are already doing as I watch my twitterstream on twhirl):

• We’re following each other on twitter now, let’s take that a step further and start reading each other’s blogs.  Do a little exploring on people’s twitter profiles and find blogs/sites that interest you.  Add at least a few of the people from each city to your RSS reader.

1. Don’t just subscribe, but commit to reading their blogs.
2. Don’t just read, take it up a notch by commenting on their blogs.
3. Don’t just comment, share their blogs with your network by tweeting about their posts.
4. Don’t just talk up their blogs, ask them to do a guest post on your blog.
5. Shake it well, repeat. :)

Ok, I’m off to join the post-#hm1 chatter now.

Would love your suggestions and comments.  Let’s keep this share going!

At the Flying Saucer, of course.

An unconference has a lot to offer people and thanks to the web is relatively easy to “organize”, but it also holds the potential to throw people for a loop if they are expecting more of the same relative to traditional conferences in which they’ve participated.

So at the risk of driving this point past the point of usefulness, here’s a generic version of an email we’ve sent to a few people that emphasizes the approach:

So-and-so,

The tentative schedule has you on at blah blah but honestly due to the “dynamic” (read: “somewhat chaotic”) nature of th daytime portion of this event, time slots may very well need to be adjusted and thus change their start times on the day of. A lot of presentations, the awkward space limitations of what is of course primarily a music venue, and limited time in the day makes for an event that will likely have to change with the wind. Anyone who can only attend for a portion of the day, as a presenter, has to take the risk their slot might no longer be available when they arrive. Check out some earlier blogposts on the HM1 site for an even more long-winded explanation:

http://highlightmidwest.org/?p=231
http://highlightmidwest.org/?p=337

On the up side, if you do show up later in the day and your spot is no longer there, you can still hang out and attend the currently running presentations…We realize this isn’t the way a normal conference works but then of course that’s why it’s called an unconference.

Thanks,

Are you old enough to remember this commercial? reeeeelllllaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhx….

See you all next week!

If you like generous people, follow Dan. He’s a very giving guy.

Why-yes.

New presenters lining up, new people still registering, still trying to raise some last-minute cash.

The daytime event is gearing up to be noisy; we might have more presenters than time to present them…might wanna get to the record bar early…

So dig deep and donate to the musicians, already. Any cash you provide to the cause will go straight to them and the sound technician the day of the event.

Hey it’s not all Flash widgets, blog posts, RSS feeds, tweet streams, and Brightkites out there. Our local economies are making news right now and as you might guess none of that news is particularly upbeat.

Complain that I’m off topic, call me a downer, but the gloomy gus in me is compelled to remind you via the cold hard facts that while you’re busy editing that web page, tweeting that tweet, or measuring that brand to non-brand mix, your local business climate …has some issues:

Unwelcome news of layoffs at Sprint.

CNN’s, Hard Times in the Heartland discusses recent layoffs at Amana:

The economy in the Amana area depends on three sectors: manufacturing, which is dominated by Whirlpool; tourism, centered on the historic homes and farms constructed in the 1800s by the agricultural commune; and farming, specifically for feed corn and soy beans.

Farm subsidies given no mercy on John Stossel’s show tonight, with much of the piece devoted to Nebraska.:

“When there’s progress, certain jobs are destroyed and certain jobs are created,” he said. “The guy who used to deliver ice to my house no longer has that job. If we had tried to save his job, America would have been held back.”