Finally, the sun has come out!!! Today was a beautiful day over in Austin.
The day started early where Stowe Boyd, Megan Murray and others were OMNI PRESENTing on how companies have become more and more connected. One thing that was interesting was a topic around community managers within the firewall. As more and more companies deploy social software internally one of the gaps that's often present is the lack of an internal community manager. Often, companies deploy social software internally and let employees "at it". Check out the notable tweets from this session:
Speaking of community managers, my next session was a panel of community managers of successful startups like Foursquare and Airbnb. It was very interesting to hear they talk about how they work as community managers. I found that many things were somewhat common sense (be transparent, be honest, empathize, be a great storyteller, etc). However, hearing it from these people who are working with very successful companies, really validates the behavior. One recommendation that really resonated with me is that as community manager, don't try to solve the problem for customers. Instead, let the developers figure out the solution and don't take the creativity away from them. I really liked this because I often have to remind myself as product manager, that developers should really be the ones that design and codify the final solution. Check out the notable tweets from this session below:
After lunch, I headed over to the Marriott for a panel on hiring the best employees. I wasn't sure what I was quite expecting. I felt the session was a bit all over the place, though they were definitely trying to engage the audience. For some reason, the Twitter stream for this particular panel was very quiet, so I've captured a few tidbits that I thought were the most interesting.
Finally, I headed over to the convention center to listen to the CEO of Dropbox. The session was titled Building a Business Around Sharing and I was hoping to hear more about how Dropbox was built and where it's going. However, the session was just a Q&A with the CEO. For the first 30 minutes, he talked about how he got the idea, where it all started (at Boston's South Station) and how he got funded. The story is definitely interesting. I was just looking for a little more forward looking statements. You can see some of the notable tweets I captured here:
Enjoy!