Peter Shankman “social customer” boot camp – A quick recap

Attendees settling in for their day with Peter Shankman. Peter Shankman recently joined Social: IRL in Lawrence, KS, for a boot camp focused on relationships with customers in the social media age.

Attendees ranged from national brands to locally owned businesses and included marketing, PR and communications pros, banks and credit unions, retail and entertainment, higher education, non profits, media organizations, financial services, real estate, trade organizations, health care, automotive, agriculture, and more. A truly diverse group with all 120 available seats being filled by people anxious to learn from one of the most respected names in social marketing and customer service.

In addition to Peter Shankman, attendees also heard from a panel made of up Jason Gertzen from Sprint, Justin Meyer from Kansas City International Airport, and Matt Hyde from 715 Restaurant.

Jason, Justin and Matt provided valuable insights from national, regional and local perspectives on how social media had impacted relationships with their customers.

Over 2,000 tweets were generated by attendees during the day – a truly engaged audience.

After the event, a number of attendees posted recaps of what they learned:

• Brainzooming – Peter Shankman, Customer Service and Social Media at Social :IRL – 11 Key Takeaways
• Joe Cox – What Stuck from Peter Shankman at Social: IRL
• Dave Greenbaum – Lessons in Real Life
• Jennifer Keller – Little Things MatterJoe Davis – In 2.6 Seconds or 140 Characters or Less
• Spiral16 – Social Media Customer Service Tips from Peter Shankman
• Spiral16 – Social Media Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
• Katya Lyukina – Social: IRL with Peter Shankman

We appreciated the support from attendees and from our sponsors of the event: Miller Meiers, mBLAST, ManageFlitter, Klout, The Lawrence Chamber of Commerce, Small Town #140conf, and Kansas Credit Union Association.

We were also extremely grateful for the on-site tech support provided by Dave Greenbaum of DoctorDave™ Computer Repair. Wifi has always been a real concern to us and can easily become an issue when a large group connect to a venue’s network. It’s something we always talk to venues about very specifically to ensure they are prepared, and sometimes despite the very best preparation the network still proves unable to cope once everyone connects. We’re very grateful to Dave for all his on-site support and for keeping us up and running. We’re also grateful to Knology of Kansas for the extra bandwidth and to Lawrence Freenet for going out of their way to step up and provide an entire backup network.

An unexpected lesson was also learned – at future events we’ll be asking attendees not to create Mifi hotspots. We found that Mifi signals competed with the onsite wifi and actually blocked the signal to the laptop Peter was presenting from. First time we’ve experienced that issue, though apparently it’s becoming more of an issue, even affecting Steve Jobs during his presentation at the Worldwide Developers Conference.

Thanks again to everyone who attended and supported the event.  Next for Social: IRL:

Jason Falls, “No BS Social Media”, Kansas City, October 4, 2011

Peter Shankman, “Redefining Relationships in the Social Media Age”, Denver, October 11, 2011

The Jason Falls event in Kansas City is a very special opportunity – an evening event with a presentation, Q&A and networking all for just $35 if you act quickly. Attendees will even get a copy of Jason’s brand new book.

And for the Peter Shankman event in Denver, the first 50 to register get a special early bird $100 discount.