Editor's Note: Join us for this year's Social Shake-Up, from June 8 - 10. Register today!
I had a chance last year to attend the famous Social Shake-Up in Atlanta. It was probably one of the most interesting events I have attended in a very long time. Let me tell you why I felt like a Mentos in a Diet Coke.
As a European social media specialist, you plug into the best of East Coast and West Coast.
Atlanta is a strategic place; if you don't have a permanent office in the US, you sometimes struggle to catch proper insights when you're stuck in NYC or SF. Atlanta is über cool in the sense that it's California-meets-New-York. It's a good shake-up to get insights on start-up scenes and the communication industry.
Content you've never heard before.
Let's be honest: in most of the conferences I attend, I'm bored very quickly as I have heard the same old Powerpoint deck ending with a cat photo, like a billion times.
Damn, and you pay for that.
At the Social Shake-Up, it's all about meaningful, thought-provoking ideas, ways of improving the world or at least our organizations. It all started with Bryan Kramer talking about Human to Human communications, and ended up with some closing punchlines by @Baratunde :
"Shut Up and Listen. Tune in to the experiences of other people".
Badass. Bold. Big.
Not to mention tremendous insights by Bank of America, or Whole Foods Market's utterly pragmatic strategy among all its shops. Or the late night conversations in the night bar of the W Hotel with amazing folks. That counts, too.
Networking that matters.
Because Social Shake-Up still has this human scale, the amazing team at Social Media Today are really like social butterflies, connecting you to the relevant people, introducing you to the right stakeholders, saving you from the "stay-in-the-dark-with-a-glass" effect.
Last year, I made several new friends, worked with one of them, caught up and got insights from 10 new people, got in touch again with 20 of them... and will grab a pint in London with few of them in June. Something you can't get at CES or SxSW, unless you pay a large amount of money or have a magic PR team.
Attend. Enjoy. Share.