Converge South was probably one of the most exciting events of my professional career(…er, graduate career?). Converge South is an annual tech users conference that was held in downtown Greensboro at the Elon School of Law.
To start off events, Tracy Myers of Myers auto was the keynote speaker. Myers is a best-selling author with his branding and automotive books. I learned so much from this successful entrepreneur. The main concept being to repurpose current blog posts to create my own book. Publishing a book is the epitome of being considered an expert in your field. I consider myself an expert therefor I should publish a book. Having a book is a lot like having a 200 page business card. Even if no one reads it, it still gives credibility. Besides, it’ll make a great coffee table book.
The concept of having a book brings about the perception that old media isn’t dead. Sometimes we get so swept into the digital world of blogs and emails that we forget about the age old ideas of books and hand written cards.
After the keynote, I couldn’t decide which track I wanted to take for the various simultaneous presentations. All of them seemed relevant to me and I wanted to go to them all. However, due to the law of physics, I can not be in two places at once. The iMedia gang decided to split up and later compare notes. Of course, in true iMedia style, my classmates live tweeted each session which allowed for all of us to still learn important tidbits without physically being there.
With that being said, I first went to the non-profit session on using online tools for fundraising and awareness. I felt that this session would be relevant for team Costa Frican Awesome’s upcoming trip to Costa Rica to raise awareness of an indigenous tribe. During this session, Sue Polinsky taught us that while raising awareness for your non-profit it is important to remain personable, keep supporters engaged, and to be compelling. I also learned many tips on raising money online that I am sure to use with future philanthropic endeavors.
Excited for all of the excellent and useful information I received, I decided to stay on the non-profit track and attend Jennifer James’ session on using social media to engage users. I consider myself a social media expert so I was curious to see if there was any new information that I needed. Sure enough, there was. I learned from James different strategies to use picture sharing sites like Instagram and Pinterest to tell stories. These social media tools came up again during the lunch hour Five and Dine (five speakers that are given ten minutes each to talk about this topic). Again, this concept can be applied to our Costa Rica trip. While in Costa Rica we can use these photo sharing sites to display our photos of our time there. We can tell stories of the different people we meet. We can also use these sites as teasers as to what our final product will be. I like to call this the “showroom effect” (Thanks Tracy!), to make an event of something that we will soon display.
After the yummy lunch, I decided to break away from the non-profit track and tackle the 301 level responsive design session. I knew what responsive design was and we will be learning more about it more in-depth later this semester. I didn’t think I would get any good take aways for the Costa Rica project but I knew I would get good information for classes in general. I was wrong about the Costa Rica part. I learned from Erik Fadiman that it is important to design progressively from cell phones to desktops. In Costa Rica there are more primitive phones among this tribe, if any, than smart phones. We should first design for these primitive phones and then expand to designing for the desktop. This will be useful when it is time for us to design and organize content for the Terraba people. I also learned a lot more about style sheets and jqueries that I am sure to use in the next few weeks.
Attending Converge South has sparked so many ideas that I can not wait to incorporate into my graduate studies. I met so many new contacts and gained new ways of thinking. I can say with confidence, that this conference will make things easier for me in the next few months until graduation and beyond.