Posts Tagged ‘Speaking’

Posted on November 15, 2011 - by Wayne Sutton

Video: Watch Innovation Nation: Startup Success Panel with Mario Armstrong #bialive

Sunday after CNN’s Black In America 4, Silicon Valley Mario Armstrong hosted an Innovation Nation: Startup Success Panel in Baltimore, MD. I had the opportunity to participate along with my NewME Accelerator house mate Hank Willams. It was a great event but if you missed it, watch the video below.

A big thanks to Mario Armstrong for inviting and hosting the event.

Posted on September 20, 2011 - by Wayne Sutton

Amazing opportunities: I’m Speaking at the Congressional Black Caucus Conference & Web 2.0 NY – Thank You

Last year I hinted around in a few blog post that I was done speaking at tech conferences for a few reasons. One being my first child was being born in January. Two, felling a little burnt out having speaking over 60 times in the last 4 years. Three, I wanted to focus more on doing what I love pre-twitter (2006) and before the web went social media crazy and that was entrepreneurship and launching my own startup. Four, being a little tired of the lack of diversity in web/tech/social, etc. Fast forward to today I’ve done most of that by only participating at SXSW 2011 and being on a panel at the Black Enterprise Entrepreneurs Conference & Expo, along with co-launching the NewMe Accelerator in Silicon Valley.

Currently I’m planning a few projects and also working on my next trick. Then two amazing opportunities just opened up for me last week. One was being asked to be on a panel at the Congressional Black Caucus Conference about Social Media & Entrepreneurship. The panel takes place Friday, September 23, 2011, 1:30-3:30pm. You can follow the conference hashtag at 41stALC for updates. We’ll announce a panel hashtag soon too. Other panelist will include the following:
Chris Genteel, Google
Susan Gonzales, Facebook
Patricia Cesaire, Black Enterprise
BMaynard Scaborough, One Economy Corporation
Hajj Flemings, Gokit, BrandCamp University

If you’re attending the panel feel free to add yourself to the plancast event here: http://plancast.com/p/7loh/panel-social-media-entrepreneurship-using-technology-build-successful-business

The second opportunity is O’Reilly Web 2.0 conference in New York. My session topic is “Prepare for the 2012 Social Media Landscape and will be on Thursday, October 13, 3:15. Yep, social media. Web 2.0 is one of the conferences you want to say you have spoken at that’s on your bucket list. I’m excited, nervous and focused to delver value in this session. So if the world doesn’t end in 2012 you’ll at least know how to use social media. If you’re planning to attend Web 2.0 NY register today with discount code webny11alx107 to save an extra 20%. The code expires September 22.

I just want to say thank you to my readers, followers, friends, supporters, heck everyone who really cares. Without your support and encouragement a lot of the opportunites that I’ve had would never happened. Keep being awesome and although my inbox(email & voice) stays full and it’s hard to get back with everyone, feel free to call or email or leave a comment if you need anything.

Have a successful future.

Posted on October 3, 2010 - by Wayne Sutton

This is it: 7 days, 3 cities, 2 panels, 2 presentations, 1 live video show and the end of the road!

Today I start one of the most interesting trips in my life and career as a speaker. I’m currently in Boston, MA for FutureM week where I’ll be speaking on a location panel at GeoM and Inbound Marketing Summit. Tuesday, I’m hosting a live #GEOchat show from SCVNGR HQ. Thursday I’m leaving Boston for Michigan to present at Brandcamp and closing out the week I’ll present in Miami, Fl for Blogalicious 2010. If you count it, that’s 7 days, 3 cities, 2 panels, 2 presentations & 1 live video show.

Earlier this year while planning my schedule I new this week was going to be crazy but now that it’s here I’m shaking my head and asking myself what was I thinking! Everything starts tomorrow and I’m stressed out like Vampire trying to get home before the sunrise. Before agreeing to the events I wasn’t managing the new coworking/incubator office at Designbox. Also I didn’t know how I would feelbleaving LaToya aka “thewife” home expecting as she’s now four months away from #babysutton being born. Regardless, no time for stress, as it’s time to deliver to conference attendees information about why everyone should care about location based services and the upcoming TriOut world edition.

flickr photo By: Stuck in Customs

The end of the road:
Today also starts the end of a two year journey for me. After speaking/presenting and taking part of various panels at meetups, conferences and workshops, the last 10 commitments I have from now to the end of November will be the end of the road for me. Since 2008 I have spoken over 60 times and although at love it, a few things have changed along the way. Somewhere it stopped being fun and more stressful for me. Along with the fact I never thought I was good at speaking anyway and if you would tell some of my elementary classmates that I was speaking at conferences they would laugh knowing that as child I was in speech class from 3rd grade to middle school. Taking some advice from Dennis Crowley, Co-founder at Foursquare, who once told me if he spoke at all the events he was asked to speak at you’ll never get anything done. Plus most of the time before speaking I’m always supper nervous. Add that to the now competitive industry of web/tech speaking, everyone is a speaker now. Also I feel like now is a good time to slow down with LaToya and I expecting our first child, working at Designbox and trying to take TriOut to the next level. Maybe I’ll work on that book I wanted to have done by middle of the year.

I did reach some personal goals in terms of speaking such as being a keynote speaker and speaking at SXSW and BlogWorld but I never did make it to Web 2.0 Expo. Since 2008 I’ve traveled more in my life than I have the previous 32 years. I won’t say that I’ll never, ever speak at a conference or meetup again because of two things. One, money talks and two we still have TriOut to run. Meaning if a conference is beneficial to TriOut, like Where 2.0 we would consider it. I do have a talk submitted for SXSW 2011 that I’m waiting to see if approved and that may be the last time but for now I have 10 events left to close out the year. So, tomorrow starts the beginning of the end at GeoM and it ends at the Internet Summit on November 18 in Raleigh, NC. Seems like a good way to go out being Raleigh is my home.

To everyone who gave me an opportunity speak and/or participate at your event thank you.

Posted on September 23, 2010 - by Wayne Sutton

Attend GeoM and learn why Geo Location Matters and what is the future of location-based services

Originally posed by and on SchneiderMike.com

October 4-8, MITX presents Future M week in Boston. On October 4th, brands, marketers, technologists, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, students and business people and will gather in Cambridge at the Microsoft NERD to talk about the future of geo location and the future of geo marketing. Yes. This is a promotional post for an event that my company, Allen & Gerritsen is planning, but since you have read this far, I think you will find the content helpful in making a decision as to whether or not you should attend. For the record, I think you should, particularly if you are a B2C brand or working in the B2C space.

Making Money with Location

Everyone needs to be able to make money to be able to be a going-concern. In this panel, Jason Keath of Social Fresh leads a discussion that will look at revenue streams and service models that make sense. We’ll talk to two platforms that started with revenue models. David Chang will represent Where.com and Wayne Sutton will talk about Triout’s model. We also have Josh Karpf of mega-brand PepsiCo who can tell us about how applications like Pepsi Loot are important to their marketing and revenue stream. Jason Keath is not known for shyness, so I expect he will pose the tough questions and drive panelists toward talking about useful models and cases that drive business results.

Data and Loyalty

Why does it matter? Location is an important component in doing what every brand would like to do – provide a relevant message to its audience at a time when the receiver is ready to hear and act on the message. Everyone would like a reduction of noise and an increase in overall signal. The future of marketing is not casting a wide net, rather brands conitinue to hone their communications and become trusted companions that better the lives of those who need them. In order for this to happen the way we all would like it to happen, brands need access to data and they need to be willing to give something in return to receive.

In the panel entitled “Data and Loyalty”, Melissa Parrish of Forrester leads a discussion with 2 of the industry’s top thought leaders on LBS, Aaron Strout of Powered Inc and Simon Salt of Incslingers. They have not only been vocal about the space, but built solutions that incorporate their thinking. With the focus of this panel being data, we are elated to have the founder of SimpleGeo, Matt Galligan coming out to talk about how their database / backbone aligns the ecosystem by eliminating the disparity across platforms thereby making near limitless applications possibilities – possible.

The Future of Geo

The day culminates in a visit from 3 of the top LBS platforms on the market. In the last panel we will talk to three heads of LBS technology shops and give them the opportunity not only to talk about their current plans for word domination, but about how they see the industry evolving. Jeff Holden of Whrrl, Seth Priebatsch of SCVNGR and Dennis Crowley of Foursquare, three very different location based platforms, will be asked to talk about why location is important today and what it means in the grand scheme and how it becomes increasingly useful for everyone. The end game needs to be a win for brands, consumers and for platforms and currently the fog-of-new is still very prevalent. Each company has a story to tell about engagement with the consumer, rewards, loyalty and relevant content.

This conversation will be 90 minutes so there will be plenty of time to get deep on the topic and to get the crowd involved. I’ll be moderating and as I prepare, would love to get your thoughts on some of the things you would like to hear about from these 3 gurus. Just leave a comment.

How Much?

$130 per person. Beam Interactive thinker and disruptor, Graham Nelson tweeted about the charge and I think this is the proper forum to address the question. We want to be able to provide snacks and libation to our audience and record the event while covering some of our costs. As you well know, it takes a lot of time and effort to plan an event of this size (and it’s nothing compared to the entire Future M event, kudos to MITX!). The point of this session is to provide an atmosphere to push the conversation to the next level. As one of the missions of Future M, the parent conference, is to promote innovation in Boston, we are currently talking to MIT about donating any profits to an innovation scholarship.

Where’s Gowalla?

Because some of you have asked: Where’s Gowalla? Brightkite and Gowalla both expressed regret for being unable to attend. Facebook is still a non-responder.

See You There!

Come out for a day of discussion filled with a balance of best practices, ideas, innovation and though leadership.

To register, go to the official Geo M site and click register.



Posted on August 10, 2010 - by Wayne Sutton

16 trends I’ve noticed from marketers attending recent geo / location-based events

Flickr Photo By ashley.adcox

Over the last few weeks team @TriOut (@LawPower, @GreggVM and myself) have been on what seems like a location-based check-in speaking tour. All three of us delivered talks at the NCTech4Good conference on non-profits and location-based applications and yesterday we spoke at the inaugural Marketing Mondays at the RTP headquarters. Two weeks ago TriOut Founder, Lawrence Ingraham spoke at a NC New Tech meetup to a group of VCs. My list of recent speaking opportunities have been focused on location/geo/TriOut as well.  From giving an overview of  what is location-based marketing at the Triangle AMA Social Media Boot Camp, moderating the Triangle Interactive Marketing Associations panel called “Doing business the hyper-local Social Media Way” and participating in a  Social Fresh Panel called The Evolution of Foursquare Marketing. Next for team TriOut we’re speaking at the Triangle AMA’s August Luncheon (8/19), the topic is Location-based marketing, it’s more than simply checking in. You can rsvp here. In October I’m traveling to Miami to speak at Blogalicious a women’s social media diversity conference to cover location-based applications and privacy. We have a few more upcoming speaking events that have yet to be announced as well.

While speaking at the various events on location-based applications/services I’ve noticed a few trends such as majority of the attendees are marketers and some are not using Foursquare or any location-based app themselves. Other trends I’ve noticed from attendees have been that everyone doesn’t have a smart phone and many are looking for use cases/case studies to see why everyone is talking/blogging about location-based applications. Basically they want to know why all of the hype! Majority of the attendees have been women and surprisingly the privacy conversation has come up less than I have expected. I’ve been thinking about some of the questions from the events and created a list of 15 trends I’ve noticed from marketers attending recent geo / location-based events.

1. For many marketers their first location-based application is Foursquare which is 1 1/2 year old
2. Quite a few marketers have never heard of Loopt and/or aware of the fact that it was launched in 2005 and has 4 millions users
3. Most marketers are familiar with the following location-based applications: Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite, MyTown and Whrrl.
4. Agencies/Marketers are learning about TriOut via social media channels and/or speaking opportunities the TriOut team have been participating in.
5. Marketers really don’t want another application to have to manage outside of Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and WordPress/blogs
6. Marketers are not familiar how location-based tech jargon is used such as geo-fence, check-ins, badges.
7. Marketers are unaware of the fact there are over 67 different location-based applications.
8. Few marketers are thinking about what is the value for the customers and are trying to sell products vs provide a valuable  social experience using location-based applications.
9. Marketers are not taking advantage of location-based applications that provide check-in analytics via dashboards or they’re having a difficult time gaining access to it.
10. Everyone wants an easy way to check-in to multiple location-based applications or have customers to automatically check-in but are not thinking about the user adoption.
11. Agencies/Marketers are trying to understand where does location-based applications fit in with their clients social media strategy.
12. Everyone is excited about the opportunity to use QR codes
13. Most marketers are unaware of Google’s location-based applications and how they work with businesses (Google Places, latitude, tags)
14. Some marketers don’t see the value of location-based apps using game mechanics to gain users
15. Marketers are not thinking long-term relationships with location-based applications and want instant periciatpion from consumers.
16. Everyone is looking for case studies and are trying to duplicate the success stories they read via blogs.

While speaking on location-based apps I try to drive home the message to think about the customer and what can a business/brand provide to a customer to make them want to check-in. Also when it comes to location-based marketing its sometimes about what you can do offline more than online to increase your results of a location-based promotion.

Have you attended a recent meetup/conference/panel on location-based applications? If so what were some of your takeaways?