PR Communications

Social Media & Online Community Conferences In 2012

Social media, social media, social media....the drone has been relentless for the last few years, certainly since 2008 when the Election season brought even more resources to social media, and I think the penny dropped for many marketers.

For the last four years I've been writing my post on next year's social media & on-line community conferences. This year took more work than last, there are more conference, double the number from the previous year. Though I'm sure I missed a number of conferences from later in the year in 2011, I do think the numbers are a good gauge of the industry. There was a big drop in conferences last year, here are the # of conferences for the last four years from my blog posts:

2012 64
2011 24
2010 43
2009 23

While social media has gone mainstream, I think a sign of the integration of social media into marketing in general are the growing number of specialist conferences about social media. My favorite specialist conferences included Social Media in the Pharmaceutical Industry, Inside SocialApps 2012, Social Media for the public sector, and Fitness and Health Bloggers Conference.

And my personal favorite, I think it has something to do with the kittens.... BlogPaws 2012 - Pet Blogging and Social Media Conference.

Please use this post to plan your itinerary or 2012 speaker submissions.

Below is my list of social media and community events for 2012, if you see a conference I've missed let me know, also if you noticed a twitter account that partners with a conference ping me at @johncass and I'll add the account to the post.

List of Online Community & Social Media related conferences for 2012

1. Jan Using Social Media to Communicate (UCISA), January 18, 2012, Birmingham, UK.
2. Qualitative Online 360: 2nd Annual conference, 18-19 January 2012, Milan, Italy.
3. Altitude Design Summit, January, 18-21, 2012, Salt Lake City.  @altsummit
4. Inbound Marketing Summit, January 22-23, 2012, New York City. @ IMS_Conference Emerging Media Conference, January 23-26, 2012, San Francisco, CA. @wappow
5. Beyond Enterprise 2.0, January, 24-25, 2012, Amsterdam. @kgsglobal
6. Social Media in the Pharmaceutical Industry, January, 24-25, 2012, Copthorne Tara Hotel, London, UK.
7. iStrategy, January 31 - Feburary 1, 2012, San Francisco, CA.  @iStratBuzz
8. Advanced Social Media Strategies, January 31 - February 01, 2012, Marriott Bloor Yorkville, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
9. DomainFest Global 2012, January 31 - February 2, 2012, Santa Monica, CA.  @domainfest
10.  Feb  SoCon12: So Connected, February 2-3, 2012, Atlanta, GA. #socon12 @
11. Online Marketing Summit 2012, February 6-10, 2012. Hilton San Diego Bayfront, San Diego, CA. #OMS12 @omsummit 
12. Enterprise 2.0 Summit, February 7-8, 2012. Cercle National des Armees, Paris. #e20s  @enterprise20
13. Social Media Strategies Summit, February 7-9, 2012, Las Vegas, Nevada. @GSMIonline
14. Inside SocialApps 2012, February 8-9, 2012, San Francisco, CA.
15. Socal Media Week, February 13-17, 2012.  London, Hong Kong, Miami, New York, Paris, Rome, San Francisco, Sao Paulo, Singapore, Tokyo, Toronto, Washington DC. @socialmediaweek
16. 5th Annual Social Media for PR and Corporate Communications Conference, February 14-16, 2012. MGM Grand Hotel, Las Vegas, NV. #ragansocmed
17. 4th Annual Gravity Summit Social Media Marketing Conference at UCLA, February 22, 2012.  @gravitysummit
18. CROWDSOURCE 2012: The Mass Collaboration & Distributed Work Executive Summit, February, 22-23, 2012, Miami, FL.
19. BlissDom 2012, February 23-25, 2012, Nashvile, TN.
20. DesignBloggers Conference, February 26-28, 2012, Los Angeles, CA.  @designblogconf
21. 2012 Summit on Customer Engagement, February 28-29, 2012, San Mateo, CA.
22. March Social Learning Conference, March 1, 2012, London, Uk. @slconf
23. ThinkVisibility, March 3, 2012, Leeds, UK.
24. 9th Annual 2012 Media Summit, March 7-8, 2012, New York City, NY.
25. FT Digital Media Conference 2012, March 7-8, 2012, London, UK.
26. SXSW Interactive, March 9-13, 2012, Austin, TX.  @sxsw
27. The Corporate Social Commerce Summit, March 13-14, 2012. Boston, MA. #scomm12
28. #smtulsa Conference 2012, March 15-16 2012. Tulsa, OK. @socmediatulsa
    DrupalCon, March 19-23, 2012, Denver, CO.
29. Social Media for the public sector, March 21-22, 2012. Melbourne Park Function Centre, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia 
30. DGI-CONFERENCE 2012 - EUROPEAN AFTERNOON - Social Media and Web Science:The Web as a Living Space , March 22-23, 2012, Dusseldorf, Germany.
31. M2C: What's Next in Marketing, Media & Advertising? March 26-27, 2012, Grand Elysee, France
32. Socialmedia WorldForum, March 27-28, 2012, Olympia, London, United Kingdom. @SocialNetworkWF
33. Socialize: Monetizing Social Media, March 29-30, 2012, New York, City. 
34. April Where Conference, April 2-4, 2012, San Francisco, CA.  @where20
35. Hispanicize, April 11-13, 2012, Miami, FL. @hispanicize 
36. YouToo Social Media Conference, April 13, 2012. Ohio.
37. 9th International Conference on Information Technology : New Generations, April 16-18, 2012, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA 
38. eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit, Toronto Ontario, April 23-26, 2012  @emetrics
39. Social Slam: The Evolution of digital Meida for Business, April 27, 2012, Knoxvile, Tn.  @smcknox
40. May 
41. NorthernVoice, Vancouver, BC
42. Mom 2.0 Summit, May 3-5, 2012, Key Biscayne, FL.  #mom2summit @mom2summit
43. European Beer Bloggers Conference: May 18-20 Leeds, UK.
44. Social Media Summit, May 23, 2012, Harrisburg, PA. 
45. Doctors 2.0 & You, May 23-24, 2012, Paris.  @doctors20
46. June The 6th International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media, June, 4-8, 2012, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. @icwsm
47. NXNE Interactive, June 11-17, 2012, Toronto, Canada.
48. TBEX '12 - Keystone, CO, June 15-17, 2012  @tbexevents 
49. Travel Blog Exchange: TBEX '11, June 11-12, New York City, New York.@tbex11
50. Enterprise 2.0 Conference, June 18-21, 2012, Hynes Convention Center, Boston. @e2conf
51. BlogPaws 2012 - Pet Blogging and Social Media Conference, June 21-23, 2012, Salt Lake City, UT.  @BlogPaws
52. Type-A Parent Conference '12, June 22-24, 2012. Charlotte, NC. 
53. Fitness and Health Bloggers Conference, June 22 - 24, 2012, Denver, Colorado.  #fhbc12
54. Luxury Interative, June 26-27, 2012. Bridgewaters, New York, NY.  @luxinteractive
55. July Evo 12: Evolution of women in social media, July 12-14, 2012. Park City UT. @evoconf
56. Beer Bloggers Conference: July 13-15, Indianapolis.
57. August BlogHer 12, BlogHer '12, August 2-4, 2012, New York City.
58. Wine Bloggers Conference: August 17-19 in Portland, OR.
59. International Food Bloggers Conference: August 24-26 Portland, OR.
60. The 2012 International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining, 26-29 August, 2012, Kadir Has University, Istanbul, Turkey.  
61. September Medicine 2.0’12: 5th World Congress on Social Media, Mobile Apps, and Internet/Web 2.0 in Medicine, Health & Biomedical Research, 15-16 September, 2012, The Joseph B. Martin Conference Center at Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA.
62. October BlogWorld & New Media Expo, October, 2012 Las Vegas, Nevada. @blogworld #bwe12
63. BarkWorld Expo, October 25-27, 2012 in Atlanta, GA.
64. December Search Marketing Expo conference "SMX Social Media Marketing," 5-6 December, 2012. Las Vegas, NV. 

Thanks to the Mashable Intern who asked me if I had a 2012 list of social media & online community conferences available, the question reminded me I needed to put this list together!

If I missed any conferences, let me know, I will add them to the list.

Social Media With David Christopher

David Christopher is the Social Media Business Leader for EMEA at Oracle Corporation where he heads up the Social Networking and Business Collaboration (SNBC) program. His role is to develop and deploy social media strategies that will greatly enhance communication and collaboration with customers, partners and employees, thereby creating a more socially connected Oracle.

David's worked at Oracle for 14 years. I recently had the opportunity to chat with David about his work at Oracle.

David explained that with the recent mergers and acquisitions this has brought a lot of fresh ideas and opportunities to connect employees via social networking. He is developing and driving initiatives to spread adoption in an effort to break down silos and encourage communication and work between different business units across the enterprise.

A lot of David's work is to encourage more crowdsourcing, as a result of his team's efforts; a lot of behavioural changes have occurred that has seen more people engaged from different parts of the business.

One of the initiatives is to encourage more Open Collaboration through a dedicated social platform encouraging employees to contribute from across the company. People can either actively participate (request to be part of the project team), or passively participate (contribute from the sidelines). With 100’s of projects available there is a wide range for employees to engage with, based on what interests them. One of the most popular ones right now is the creation of an Email Charter.

Another initiative David is working on is an effort to identify and educate Social Adoption Champions in every business unit in Oracle. Part of the reason for this effort is to build a culture at Oracle where the various generations (X,Y,Z) can communicate and collaborate more effectively.

The result of David's work with individual business units has seen less reliance on email and more dependency on social technologies. Part of the effort is as simple as giving people new ways of working. For example, instead of sending a presentation to everyone on a team to review by email, simply depositing the presentation in an online workspace and making it accessible by the team reduces email significantly.

Social Chat – The Modern Day Water Cooler Conversation is another initiative encouraging more crowdsourcing opportunities leading to innovation. This initiative uses the OraTweet tool (an internal Twitter style tool) to encourage employees to submit ideas for discussion and to vote for their favourite. The topic with the most votes is the chosen discussion topic for that week.

You can read more about David’s work at Oracle, and with other companies, via his StopThinkSocial.com blog or follow him on Twitter @davidchris

#bib1 Or #innobeer At The Burren, Somerville

Join me for my next tweet up, Boston #InnoBeer, on Monday night, October 17th at The Burrent pub.

The Burren Pub
247 Elm Street
Somerville, MA 02144-2934

Andrea Meyer, President of Working Knowledgeis in town from Colorado, and that's more than enough of an excuse to hold a get together for #innobeer, though I'm trying out the new hashtag of #bib1 just because some other Twitter members seem to be using the hashtag so much recently, perhaps tweet both.

http://bib1.eventbrite.com/