dangerouslyawesome

I’ve had a fair amount of travel in the last 2 months, but really only one public speaking event of note. Starting now, things get crazy.

First up,

IndyHall Town Hall.

From the IndyHall website:

We’ve come a really long way in just a year and a half. We’ve connected with so many new people in so many new ways, and welcomed lots of new friends to our community. The physical space, the clubhouse, for IndyHall has been at 32 Strawberry Street for 18 months and recently we’ve found ourselves running out of desks. Unlike a gym or an airline, who can oversell and bump users, we care about our members more than anything, and are going back to our roots to figure out how to deal with this issue. Next Tuesday, March 3rd, we’ll be meeting at 32 Strawberry St at 6pm to discuss what the future of the IndyHall workspace is. Geoff and I have been working really hard to distill this issue into some key points, and talking to a lot of people about it. But we didn’t get here without everyone else’s hard work and we certainly can’t see how it makes sense to continue to grow without you. This town hall meeting is open to all IndyHall members, but also the community at large. Are you on our waiting list? Don’t miss this meeting, we want you to come be a part of our next steps. Are you someone who’s been watching us all along and wants to see what our next move could be? You’ll want to be there. Please RSVP on Facebook or by leaving a comment. We hope to see you at IndyHall. Bring your A-game. This is going to be a fun night.

This event is really important to me, and to the community, and I hope to see a lot of our supporters there.

Philadelphia Facebook Garage

The Stuzo Group is hosting the second Philadelphia Facebook Developer Garage which will focus on methods to drive sales and brand interaction for companies within Facebook.  The Philadelphia Facebook Developers Garage will be held on March 9, 2009 from 6:00 to 10:00 PM at Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steakhouse, 1426 Chestnut Street in Philadelphia.   This event is open to the public and attendees are asked to RSVP at: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=62898818432

Talking to Olivia and Gunter from Stuzo, I found out that the event is meant to be useful to agencies, developers and businesses alike. They’re going to be featuring case studies and presentations around Facebook Platform projects and businesses. There will be some news surrounding Facebook Platform (and I have to imagine Facebook Connect) from some folks from Facebook. The event is free.

Where do I fit in? Olivia and Gunter asked me to come in and be the closing keynote. The entire day will be very Facebook-focused, discussing techniques and tools, and they’ve asked me to come in and help zoom out after the day and talk about the large scope of social technology in business. I’m pretty stoked for this.

P.S. The venue at Del Frisco’s is a Bank Vault converted into a Wine Cellar. I hear it’s sick. The event will be worth coming to if only to see that, and let my awesome closing keynote be a bonus.

Watch out, Austin

It is nearly March, and that means SXSW is coming. This will be my 2nd year as a speaker at SXSW. I’m currently leading one core conversation and on one Panel.

Core Conversations: Working Alone Sucks: Join the Coworking Revolution – Saturday March 14th – 11:30am-12:30pm We’ll be holding a round table conversation with some leaders and members of the coworking community. If you’re a veteran, or a newb, this is going to be a great session to meet some folks and learn from them. Also, don’t miss the coworking meetup at the Hotel San Jose being organized by Julie Gommell of Launchpad Coworking in Austin.

Panels: You may also be interested in… – Monday March 16th – 5:30-6:30pm Drew Olanoff from Strands asked me to join Mike Hudack from Blip.tv and Trevor Legwinski from Strands on stage to talk about how recommendations online are changing how we make decisions offline. I didn’t know how I’d fit into this panel, but now that I’ve seen some of the talking points, I’m pretty excited about it. Plus, I finally get to meet Mike.

Also worth checking out is my partner-in-crime Geoff DiMasi’s panel, “Building Regional Whuffie” on Sunday, March 15th from 3:30-4:30pm. The panel ALSO features some of my other partners in various other crimes, including Tony Bacigalupo (karaoke crimes), Matthew Wettergreen (Sriracha crimes), as well as Susan Evans (from Office Nomads) and Julie Duryea (from Souk).

And that’s all in the first 2 weeks of March. Holy shit. Here goes nothing.

Clearly, I’m learning! Normally I don’t do anything to plan for SXSW until a month or two before. This year, I’m turning over a new leaf!

Last year I submitted a panel about coworking with the help of Patrick Tanguay from Station-C Coworking in Montreal. The panel ended up taking the form of a core conversation, which ended up being a huge success! This year, my 3rd time to SXSW, I’ve managed to get myself involved with a BUNCH of panel submissions, rather than just one at the last minute. Here are a few I was involved with, either as a submitter, a panelist, a moderator, or a general supporter of the idea.

Before I ask you to vote (actually…after, since the title of this post kinda hinted at the call to action), I want to remind you that this support is HUGELY appreciated. There’s a number of reasons that I did not join the barrage of twitter requests, not the least of which is the fact that voting and commenting only counts as 30% of the placement of a panel. At the same time, I see the panel picker as more of an advertisement for our panel ideas, and your votes have a degree of influence over what makes it to the SXSW panel board’s field of vision.

Furthermore, I believe that the quality of SXSW does not come from the panels that are picked, it comes from how we pick the panels that we attend.

With all of THAT out of the way, PLEASE VOTE AND COMMENT ON THESE PANELS!

Do Well by Doing Good – Civic Entrepreneurship

Geoff DiMasi and myself

http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/1471

Working Alone Sucks: Join the Coworking Revolution.

Diverse representation from across the global coworking community.

http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/1292

Regional Whuffie Building: Attracting Innovation to Your City

Tony Bacigalupo, Geoff DiMasi + others

http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/1171

An Urban Plan for the .edu

Geoff DiMasi & Rick Banister

http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/1462

Social Influence: Empowering Your Customer

Panel proposal by Marcus Nelson. To include myself, Tony Hsieh from Zappos, Amy Muller from GetSatisfaction, Chris Brogan. This one’s going to be a firestorm, should NOT BE MISSED!!!

http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/1381

Other Panels worth looking at (list will grow as I find more I like. Want me to look at yours? Leave it in the comments!):

Amy Hoy & Erik Kastner – Building Micro-apps for fun and profit

Finally, a bit of exciting news:

Tony Bacigalupo from New Work City and I have set forth with some preliminary planningon how to integrate coworking even deeper into the SXSW conference. For those who are familiar with the BlogHaus, we’re looking to riff from that idea and create a space conducive to doing. You know how SXSW is great for making connections and getting inspired. How many times, though, does that get followed through on? We hope to use coworking as the vehicle to guide those ideas into being materialized.

More on that as soon as we sort out some details. Stay tuned, Coworking is going to ROCK SXSW09!

Tonight marks the 1 month anniversary of the evening before I left for Austin, Texas to attend SXSW Interactive 2008. In 6 days, it will be 1 month since I returned home to Philadelphia and began processing all I had learned and accomplished while at the conference.

I’m thinking about how much has gotten done in the last 30 days and what’s changed since leaving SXSW. While I’m making my own notes, I’d love to hear from other people how their last 30 days of reflection (and recovery) have gone.

So tell me:

What are you up to these days? Who/what is inspiring you? Who/what has changed your perspective? Who did you meet that set you on a path of achieving awesome? Who do you miss the most? Have you been following through on the things you promised yourself you’d do when you got back from Austin?