Julius Solaris (www.linkedin.com/in/juliussolaris) gives us the in and outs of LinkedIn and how it can help to get us a better job.

What is LinkedIn? It is the professional online network which comes with a wide range of functions and benefits.

1. If you have a profile COMPLETE IT while considering what makes an effective profile and whether your existing profile requires a makeover.

2. Recommendations: Increase your number of recommendations as this is going to add to your status in the LinkedIn community. This can be from anyone you have worked with or for. And offer others your recommendation. These should be quality specific, relevant and related to the work that has been done.

3. Use a good picture, make a good headline and join a group (relevant to your area).

4. Use the toplinked/Lion tag – (means the person will network with everyone) You want to connect with people who are open to connect. Most recruiters are on Toplinked.

5. The more contacts the better. Get LinkedIn or be left out.

6. Ask for introductions. think about how to create and respond to Introductions.

7. Use the Questions and Answers facility– to up your reputation and expertise for yourself. Become an expert.

8. Bring your network live – Attend Linkedin Meetups to nurture your relationships.

Q & A

Q: Does recommending each other make the recommendation loose value?

A: It’s possible to choose whether show recommendations or not, but no it doesn’t.

Further information from Julius:

Put Twitter network onto Linkedin and use it to nurture relationships….be proactive..

Ask questions that you want to get answers for or that you think others might want the answer for and you can even use that for your job… it can save money for not using Consultants..

The buzzwords: Social Media, Web 2.0, Measuring, Engagement

Where as engagement is the top buzzword – does it matter? How are people being involved with websites? The level of visitors satisfaction will translate in terms of loyalty and spreading it by word of mouth/internet to other people andengagement is an approximation of success or the likelihood to succeed.

Different ways of website interaction are: view pages; return visitors; making a purchase, submitting a form; downloaded a file; viewed a video; duration on site; viewed specific pages; registered.

There is not one size which fits all. We have to look at different metrics to analyze the success of a website and these will depend on the objectives of the website.

Which interactions are important?

-Ones which gets the visitor to spend more.

Ways of doing this can be by making the website more inspiring; offering a newsletter; tips, offering downloadable tools.

-Providing an online experience which can generate revenue through sponsorhip/product placement.

The popularity of the site/show vs ROI for sponsorship. Important to find the right balance as too much product placement or fakeness will push viewers away.

How to measure engagement?

Curent discussions in the Web Analytics world talk about whether to use one metrics or multiple ones? Which ones do you look at? How to capture the data? How does on use the metrics as a basis for decisions?

What are the steps to follow?

-Define your business objectives.

-Define which actions on site can lead to achieving these objectives.

-Ensure these actions are tagged.

-Track performance of actions over time.

-Track correlation between product features/traffic sources and engagement.

This becomes more complicated with social media websites as they have more ways in which to interact.

At the end of the presentation, Peter finishes off by predicting that measurement of engagement is to become more important in justifying expenditure (ROI/accountability).

Next up, Damien Austin-Walker with the his nascent thoughts on how to use what is essentially a global technology in a local way – in this case, Apple Scrumping, although as a metaphor for community involvement in any project. Mere minutes in to the presentation the questions, ideas and suggestions come flooding – this sounding board seemed to strike a chord with most.

The primary questions were what to faciliate, how to facilitate it and also, importantly, why. On the one hand, people could be incentivised to do community work of all kinds by turning it in to some kind of actual-reality game with rewards; but as it was pointed out, people already want to do things and facilitating that would bring immediate benefits.

Discussed topics skimmed upon everything from social reputation systems to QR codes, RFID and GPS. In many ways discussion overlapped the previous presentation I was in.

Clearly this is an area full of questions without any tried and tested answers. Many good ideas flowed around the room but nobody is really doing any of this stuff yet – at least not to a degree that could be considered household – and nobody can really say what works and what won’t, although everyone is very interested. The major hurdles seem to be the dual barriers of technology uptake and public understanding and acceptance; right now it seems like this sort of facilitated community work would require a lot of geeks in a small space – a bit like this conference. But I have faith in time.

Conclusion: much to explore, many ways to do it, and a lot of enthusiasm from the very people who will make it work.

The topic title had me curious, so let’s see what happens! Fresh from the talk on how to write good headlines (according to The Times Online), perhaps this would better have been entitled ‘Native to a Web of Britney Spears on Viagra’ – who can say.

David Thompson hails from Cambridge. A self professed geek, he draws on material from talks by Tom Coates, Ben Ward and Tantek Celik to give a presentation on microformats. The first half of his presentation seems to cover familiar ground, although I’m grateful for the list of names and terms to take notes from.

Immediately interesting to me was the informtion about Yahoo Fireeagle, which I had not previously heard of – think geo-location mashup, and if you can’t, ask… Another point of note was that microformats don’t take off until they are adopted (Kelkoo, Flickr).

‘Ambient Intimacy’ seemed to be the hot topic, prompting immediate discussion and questions from the group. DO we really care if a friend wants to tell us they are eating a burger right now somewhere in the world? I didn’t find an answer to that – indeed, there are many interesting deeper unresolved issues in this area, too many for this blog post.

XFN gives us one means to avoid David’s pet hate – that when you join a new social network (assuming you haven’t succumbed to Social Network Fatigue already), to find your friends, they often ask you for your email or messenger password so they can log in and find them… a cardinal sin and a huge security risk. Other means are available too – Facebook and Twitter’s publicly exposed friends or follower lists. Directly using these would be ‘creepy’ – what’s the One True road?

In reality, XFN – or the idea of XFN – gives us a means to follow everything we are interested in, as long as it has an RSS feed, or perhaps a VCard or HCard. David mentioned FriendFeed and a tool written by my colleague David Singleton as an implementation in the right direction – I resisted the urge to jump up with pride.

What I really took home from this presentation was that information does not always speak for itself. David Thompson’s bold uneasiness at public speaking was endearing, although I think he could have kept the attention of the non-techy person who left the room (‘I’m sorry, it’s not you, it’s IT!’) had he re-ordered some of his points for catchiness instead of putting them in dependency order like every good programmer is used to.

Overall: thought provoking and informative.

First talk of the day from a fresh-faced looking Martin of Communote, Germany, demonstrating his new microblogging service. Nervous – his first barcamp event (incidentally, my first one too) – his presentation is slick and certainly no impromptu grass-roots affair.

Martin’s primary points are very valid: Twitter is not the be all and end all of microblogging. He refers to Twitter as ‘micromessaging’ – a term I’m not 100% sure that I agree with, but the name is not as important as the distinction he is making. Twitter lacks some of the features of a blog that Martin sees as essential, specifically tagging and filtering, as well as other things that could be fixed such as the security of archival and visibility. Martin sees tag subscription in microblogging as something that could be very useful in the enterprise, although I would love to see this generally.

Communote seems very topic-centric, which is a great feature for business. But in my eyes, blogging is as much about personality as it is about subject matter – so I’ll be sticking with Twitter for now, although with a slightly more focused and informed perspective on how that fits with the rest of the world.

We’ll update this list throughout the day, but here are some of the streamed videos of today’s panels:

• Reyes in Miro discussion
• Joanne Jacobs streaming from the corner room

Tip to those who want to see what’s being said on Twitter about SocialMediaCamp London, the Twitter Search (formerly Summize) will give a good idea of what’s going on in the different sessions!

Twitter Search for #smclondon08

Since we’ve had a change of venue and are using the larger Wallacespace St Pancras venue, this is a reminder for everyone to come to the right venue!

Wallacespace St Pancras, 22 Duke’s Road, WC1H 9PN

The location is 5 minutes walk from King’s Cross Station, heading West on Euston Road, turn the corner at the purple Premier Inn. You’ll see a yellow building and a blue door

Phone number: +44 (0)20 7395 1265

Much excitement in preparation for the event, so all we have the time to post is the newsletter that was just sent to all the attendees! Hope to see everyone on Saturday.

“Hi all,

Excited yet about SocialMediaCamp London this Saturday at Wallacespace St Pancras? Here are the last few bits of information in preparation for the event. Print this and you’ll have all the details to get you there.

On Saturday morning, please arrive around 9am to pick up your badge (and decorate it), join us downstairs to grab some breakfast & coffee (yes, we have breakfast for you!) and add your session topic to the board. We start with opening remarks at 10am. After a few sessions, we’ll be providing lunch, and finally, once we’re exhausted from a full day, we’ll be able to relax with a few drinks at 5:30pm.

You’ll have received an invitation* to Backnetwork (http://socialmediacamplondon.backnetwork.com/), where you can exchange messages with the other attendees and show off any Flickr images or blog posts tagged with “smclondon08″.

For those who want to present with slides, we’ll have a number of laptops & projectors, so bring your presentation materials, however low or high tech. If you’re a Mac user, we recommend bringing an adaptor for the projector, even though we’ll have a few around the venue. You can bring your presentation on a USB stick if you don’t fancy lugging your laptop around, or you can freestyle your presentation without media support!

The useful details:
When: Saturday 4th October, from 9am, sessions start at 10am
(Note that the event is not overnight and ends at around 7pm)
Schedule of the day: http://barcamp.org/SocialMediaCampLondonSchedule

Where: Wallacespace St Pancras, 22 Duke’s Road, WC1H 9PN
(Note: no longer the Covent Garden venue! We’re using the larger St Pancras location.)
5 minutes walk from King’s Cross Station, heading West on Euston Road, turn the corner at the purple Premier Inn. You’ll see a yellow building and a blue door (http://moourl.com/smcvenue)
Here’s the map: http://moourl.com/smclondon08
Phone number: +44 (0)20 7395 1265

Ready? See you Saturday!

Cheers,
Vero
vero@socialmediacamp.co.uk

[* Backnetwork invitation: If you've not received one, let us know and we'll send you one!]

Thanks to our sponsors:
The Times Online, The London Paper, The Sun
Sky Broadcasting
Freshview/Campaign Monitor
Moo.com
Newspepper
Porter Novelli”

When the tickets were made available, the rush was comparable to the great Spanish bull runs; within 3 hours, all hundred tickets had gone and it’s with great regret that the waiting list started growing quickly. We would have loved to be able to let everyone in, and we promise we’ll try to find a larger venue next time.

Since there are so many new faces attended SMC, here is a short intro to BarCamps (cross-posted from that canadian girl).

What is a BarCamp?

Wikipedia’s description is “BarCamp is an international network of user generated conferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — often focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies, social protocols, and open data formats.”

Got your head around that one? Yeah, it’s a bit dry. This post should demystify a little what happens at a BarCamp event, and what you can get out of spending your weekend with geeks rather than chilling out at home.

Totally different to regular conferences, BarCamps are more open and less structured. This means, when you arrive, you’re likely to see this kind of grid, where you can jot down what you’d like to talk about. It’s an opportunity for people from all backgrounds and all skill levels to have a go at sharing some knowledge.

Sounds scary? It’s not essential that you present in front of a group using a Powerpoint presentation and a laser pointer while wearing a suit. In fact, suits are definitely not recommended.

Where do I find out about events like this?

Check out the BarCamp homepage for events in your area, look out on Upcoming.org or ask fellow Twitter users for suggestions.

Keep a close eye on registrations since tickets tend to go quickly, with gatherings ranging from twenty to hundreds, depending on how brave the organisers are and how large the venue is.

How can I prepare?

• Have a think about the general theme of the event & associated topics that interest you: Could you talk about any experiences you’ve had, questions you’ve answered by either successfully completing a project or, if you’re brave, through a failure you’ve gone through.
• Look at the list of attendees, which should be public… Anyone you’re burning to meet and get to know? The day will fly by so be sure to go say hi at the first opportunity!
• Have an open mind: Join a session on a topic you know nothing about, play a game of Werewolf with new friends or start a conversation with the next stranger you meet.
• Arrive on time: Come early if you want/can help with registration and setup, but don’t show up too late or you might miss on some of the social activity and goodies.

Tackling your first presentation

Presentation slots are generally 30-40 minutes, so you don’t need to do a doctorate thesis. It’s definitely not all about monologuing in front of the group for the full half-hour, it’s about sharing your experiences, asking others to pitch in with ideas or just leading a useful conversation.

• Present something simple that people with less experience, who are new to the industry might be interested in.
• Not sure what level of knowledge others will have? Present something completely wild and silly (“how to make the perfect margarita” was a hit at a past BarCamp I hear)
• Nervous about being in front of people? Do a shared presentation with someone who complements your skills well. You’ll have someone to lean on when you’re not sure what to say next, and it’s more fun together.

But I’m not a spotlight kind of guy/gal…

Still getting cold feet? You can still help in a number of ways. The organisers are volunteers and (generally) have only two hands each. So if you’re not too keen on doing a presentation, why not lend a hand with registration, coffee breaks, cleaning up or setting up the A/V system?

One of the best bits of a BarCamp is the memories you take home with you. But if you’re like me and you have the memory of a goldfish, the key is to capture the event in some way. So why not offer to blog or record the event on video or in photos? If you’re a podcaster, create a VoxPop clip with the participants.

What do I need to pack?

Wherever possible, you’ll be able to stay on-site overnight for the BarCamp. You’ll find yourself staying up late chatting, coding or playing games. If that’s the case, you’ll need some of the following:

• Laptop if you want to blog or take notes during the event. Don’t forget your charger (and adaptor if the event is abroad!) and your screen adaptor if you need to plug into a projector.
• Business cards: Moo cards come highly recommended. Make sure you have somewhere safe to store the cards you’re given.
• Scribble notebook & pen: You might not want to have your laptop out at all times, so pen and paper is essential.
• Power strip: If you can, bring a power bar to plug into the much-coveted few outlets. It’ll allow more people to benefit from power during the day.
• Video/photo camera: Immortalise the day in video and photos. Be sure to upload your content and tag it with the event’s hashtags (eg. #smclondon08 for SocialMediaCamp London 2008) and put a Creative Commons friendly copyright.
• Money: Some events provide food, thanks to the sponsors, but others don’t, so come prepared to go buy lunch somewhere nearby.
• Materials: Bring your presentation or demo (if you have one) on a USB stick or CD.
• If the BarCamp is an overnight one, you’ll probably want to pack a sleeping bag and pillow.

What some BarCamp veterans say…

Tara ‘missrogue’ Hunt, Citizen Agency co-founder, public speaker & blogger, says:

“Personally? BarCamp was an exciting idea for me, but at first I was afraid to stand up and talk… just wanted to observe and have one on one conversations… maybe ask a few questions from the audience. After a while, though, I decided to take the leap and put myself on the speaking schedule.

I’m glad I did, because it started my career! I went from speaking at BarCamps… Really getting my chops wet and practicing my skills. I got stronger and stronger as a speaker. One day I was approached by a conference organizer who asked me to give a workshop on my ideas. Next thing I know, I’m speaking all over the world and have WAY more professional confidence than I’ve ever had. That all started with BarCamp. It gave me the opportunity to really push myself into the next level.

Mel Kirk, social media gal extraordinaire says:

My first experience of a barcamp was during SXSW and was BarCamp Austin… Totally awesome! We heard some people chatting about it and decided to drop in… I still have my pass and lanyard as it was one of my highlights. They had this awesome T-shirt station where you could buy a t-shirt and then have a number of different designs printed onto it. I didn’t have enough cash to buy one but I really wish that I had, they were gorgeous.

There was a whole buzz about the place – it was in a really cool bar – totally laid back and relaxed and I met some amazing people that I would never have otherwise have met. Because it was a lot more laid back than a normal conference-type set up, people feel more relaxed to ask the presenters questions which leads to much more of a conversation type feel rather than content being pushed to the audience.

I’d recommend a BarCamp to anyone – it’s filled with amazing talented people willing to share and discuss their knowledge… where else can you get something like that?

Nik Butler aka Loudmouthman says

“don’t let anyone convince you they are not the werewolf”

Got BarCamp stories to share? Suggestions for new attendees? Leave a comment below!