Viva Las Vegas (and Print)

This week I attended the PODi AppForum conference in Las Vegas. In addition to attending for my own edification, I was fortunate to be invited to present a 3 hour session on my experiences as a business owner involved in Social Media. Since speaking for 3 hours about anything seemed quite daunting, I was excited to have Amy Bradley-Hole (@amybhole) and Bryan Jones (@bryanjones) join me for this presentation. More on this later.

This conference was focused on the future of our industry. And much of what we heard is nothing new for our, or any industry.  But it did reinforce the concepts and goals where we need to continue to focus:

The economy is coming back, but not to where it was before the Great Recession.

Customers want speed, convenience and ease of use when purchasing products or services.

In order to be effective in marketing and sales, you must know your audience.

We are a mobile society, and this will continue to dictate our product offerings.

Super efficiency in business operations is a requirement.

The challenges continue, but so do the opportunities.

Now back to the presentation with Bryan, Amy and myself. Titled “Social Media for Business,” we took the attendees on a journey of how to use social media to tell your story, create and market your brand, and measure the results. All good stuff, no doubt.

But the highlight (lowlight, maybe), or most talked about part of the presentation, came during my portion. While advancing my slides, an annoying virus alert continued to display on the laptop provided. During one point in my efforts to clear it, a porn site immediately popped up for all attendees to see. I’ve never received such an ovation! Here’s a sampling of some of the Twitter commentary on that:

Oh well, what happens in Vegas, never really stays in Vegas.