Take social media from complexity to clarity through these interactive workshops guaranteed to jumpstart your conference experience. These workshops are a great opportunity to advance your learning and network with fellow attendees while taking a hands-on, common sense approach to mastering social media that will enhance your understanding of the informative, case study presentations throughout the entire conference.

Choose A or B or BOTH for maximum value and learning

Social Media 101: How To Connect With Your Citizens And Colleagues Using The Latest Technologies

The world is all a buzz with social media, however there are significant hurdles that many leaders today still face with getting online and creating a buzz. How can you connect with your citizens and colleagues using social media? The Internet is all about connecting both technically and socially. How are you overcoming this challenge of connecting with your citizens and colleagues? Many of us look at the Internet and see a confusing mess of computers, laptops, and mobile phones while some of us look at the Internet and see a mesh of connected people, resources, companies and individuals. How are you seeing your place in social media?

Social media and networking has primarily been used as a tool to keep in touch with those external to our organizations, however many leading corporations also incorporate these techniques internally across departments and throughout the enterprise. In this workshop, you will hear how you can start using these tools internally with your teams, across your organization and also as a mechanism to share important information in an expedient manner.

• Integrate social media into your organization
• Leverage social media to keep in touch with employees, team members and clients
• Design a blog – with tips and tricks to share your thoughts with those around you
• Write your message clearly and concisely
• Apply delivery mechanisms and alerts to notify you when new items are posted
• Use social networking to connect with your organization and audience

You will also leave with a solid foundation of understanding what the basic social media tools are and how to use them.

WORKSHOP LEADERS: Stuart R. Crawford is Vice President Business Development at Bulletproof InfoTech. Stuart has shared this information across the globe with IT Professionals, Small Business Owners and Entrepreneurs who crave to understand how they can leverage these tools to increase the awareness of their work, educate those around them and share information with their communities.

David West is the founding partner of Ulistic Inc., a progressive internet consultancy. His teams have developed hundreds of websites over the past dozen years. David began working with Internet technologies initially as a freelance website programmer. He later formed a full service website design and development company in Calgary, Alberta.

12:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.
Afternoon break/lunch on your own.

1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.
AFTERNOON PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOP B

In this workshop, we will discover why it is so critical for your organization to have a strong social media strategy. Key insights that will accelerate your learning curve and help you avoid the mistakes others have made will be addressed. This live-fire exercise is best experienced when you come prepared with your mobile phones and laptops, ready to go online.

• Gathering social media intelligence
• Leveraging and building a social media strategy
• Implementing a social media strategy effectively

This fast-paced and entertaining session will give you some of the practical tools and ideas necessary to bring your organization up to speed in the world of social media.

WORKSHOP LEADER: Walter Schwabe is a seasoned presenter and speaker. He is proudly Métis and has been helping entrepreneurs generate and implement rare ideas for over 9 years now as the Chief Evolution Officer of his social media strategy firm, fusedlogic inc. In addition to working with numerous small and medium sized organizations, Walter has worked with such organizations as Apple, Dell, AMD, Capital Health, Government of Alberta, MacEwan School of Business, Nortel, North American Construction Group and the Business Development Bank of Canada.