Saturday, June 28, 2014

Social Media IRL (online too) This Week

We kicked the weekend off early with a fantastic Maine Tweetup (#METweetup!) on Thursday at Little Tap House in Portland. 

I had never been to the location before, even thought it's about a block from my office! It's a great spot with a lot of local beers, great apps, and great company.  

It was fantastic to see the Flyte New Media crew of Rich Brooks and Shawna Cohen who organize the event, meet new friends like Malorie Pastor of The Social Olive and Matt aka @MaineBeard, and do a lot of Glass demos! Gotta love Glass for allowing me the props of "I think you're the coolest person in the room right now [because of Glass]" compliments!


@TheSocialOlive and @InsightsGal
Want to know what our favorite hashtags are? Here is full coverage of the event from MaineToday.com. 

The Tweetup crowd is a fun, very social (of course!) and welcoming group so if you've been thinking of hitting up a Tweetup event - don't be shy and join us at the next one.

Next up...

If you're bloggy like I am, then I suggest you attend some sessions of the Second Annual Virtual Bloggers Conference which is happening this weekend on the interwebs. The overall schedule is below, and you can sign up for the individual sessions here.  



The 2nd Annual Virtual Bloggers Conference Schedule
Courtesy of TheSocialMediaHat.com


If you've never seen Sue B. Zimmerman speak about Instagram, or Ryan Hanley dish about Podcasts, here's your chance and it's totally free! All sessions are by HOA (Google Hangouts On Air = super easy) so tune in and feed your brain! 

Finally, Social Media Day (as deemed by Mashable) is Monday, June 30th. We're celebrating here in Maine with Social Media Day Maine (#SMDayME) hosted by the awesome folks at TideSmart Global in Falmouth. 


The event is SOLD OUT so you'll have to live vicariously through me and other attendees through the #SMDayME hashtag.

The event is going to be fantastic with guest speakers including Nathan O’Leary of Mainely SEO, Rob Gould of MaineToday.com and social media blogger extraordinaire and Rich Brooks of Flyte New Media, libations from Shipyard Brewing Company, and yummy food truck goodies from Urban Sugar Mobile Cafe (I will be FIRST IN LINE), Mainely Burgers, and Locally Sauced

All proceeds go to United Way of Greater Portland so it will be a fun event for a great cause. 

Watch my social stream on Twitter, Google+, and Instagram for photos and tweets from the event!

Pin this for later: 

Monday, June 9, 2014

#GlassFamily and New Branding!

As I've mentioned in previous posts, one of the biggest benefits of being a Google Glass Explorer is the wonderful, active, fun, and adventurous group of Explorers on Google+. 

So when it came time to enlist design help for branding for my freelance business (speaking engagements, market research projects, social media onboarding), I reached out to the graphic designer in the #GlassFamily community - Virginia Poltrack

I was lucky enough that Virginia had time in her schedule to work with me, and what a great, easy and fun process it was!

With so many great design ideas from Virginia, it was really tough to pick just one! 

Check out the new logo (in two color variations) and web icons below! 



I'll be changing over the look and feel of the blog and social media profiles over the next few weeks with the new branding. I'm so excited to share this, and was so very lucky to be able to work with Virginia! 

I highly recommend her as a designer and partner in the ideation process-she's a dream to collaborate wit. Thanks to Google and the #GlassFamily for bringing us together.