Over the past few years, I’ve been experimenting and executing new projects rather quickly. In fact, between March 14 and August 1st of 2007, I created this blog, as well as Personal Branding TV, Personal Branding Magazine, the Personal Brand Awards, DanSchawbel.com and I wrote articles for magazines and websites. Since then, I’ve obviously slowed down in some respect, especially with a full-time job, speaking and consulting. For example, I’ve turned down speaking opportunities in Lithuania and England because I felt like I wasn’t ready yet. Part of my own personal branding voyage is getting out of my comfort zone and to try new things. That being said, today I’m officially announcing my latest project called the Personal Branding Live Event series!
Note: One hundred tickets were available during pre-sale and were sold out in less than forty eight hours. Fifteen more tickets became available and they were gone in seven minutes! Today, the final fifteen tickets are up for grabs and only ten are left.
Reserve your spot today before it’s too late!
Personal Branding Summit 2009
The first Personal Branding Summit live event will be held in Boston, MA. It will be a free event mainly for people who live nearby or in the northeast. You can bet that the majority of attendees will either be job seekers or entrepreneurs, but I would expect some employed workers who are looking to advance their careers as well. The event will be two and a half hours, with a thirty minute networking piece, as well as three forty minute speaking sessions. I will be doing the introduction and thought leadership session, where I will paint a portrait for the new world of work and how to be take advantage of your brand in this economy. Then, we have Gil Yehuda, who will discuss how to leverage a blog for your career and finally, Sheryl Victor Levy will explain how you can benefit from social networking.
Event details
Date: Thursday, August 27, 2009 from 10:00 AM – 12:30 PM (ET)
Location: Borders Bookstore, 10-24 School St., Boston, MA 02108
Schedule:
- 10:00 AM – 10:30 AM – Networking
- 10:30 AM – 11:10 AM – Introduction by Dan Schawbel
- 11:10 AM – 11:50 AM – Blogging session with Gil Yehuda
- 11:50 AM – 12:30 PM – Social networking session with Sheryl Victor Levy
Speakers
Gil Yehuda is an independent industry analyst covering the Enterprise 2.0, Knowledge Management, and Collaboration markets. He is a leading expert in how social technologies and social networking behaviors help individuals and organizations achieve business success. Gil was most recently a senior analyst at Forrester Research, where he provided consulting to companies around the world on topics related to social computing. Prior to that he was an enterprise architect at Fidelity Investments. Gil started his professional career as a knowledge engineer at Xerox.
Sheryl Victor Levy is the owner of Savvy Strategy, a consultancy for a new world — combining business development,
licensing, marketing and social media. Sheryl has spent the past 15 years on the client and agency sides and prior to Savvy, launched the recruiting firm, Mirren Talent. Prior to Mirren, Sheryl led world-wide brand development of products and services at Hearst Magazines for : Cosmopolitan, Cosmogirl!, Country Living, Esquire, and others. Prior to Hearst, Sheryl was a VP, Marketing Director for BaseSix, a boutique interactive firm based in Boston where she was responsible for spearheading the entertainment-side of the business, managing such clients as HBO and Showtime. Sheryl was also a Sr. Account Manager at The Sloan Group for clients such as Ticketmaster and Nickelodeon and spent the first 8 years of her career in marketing and brand development at MTV, VH1 and USA Networks.
Why I’m doing it
Aside from my obvious passion and expertise in this area, I’ve been spending way too much time contributing content online, instead of networking in real life. I feel like I can connect much better in person, than online and that the information I have to share with the world right now is extremely valuable. With the help of Gil and Sheryl, I think we can really make a difference for people who are at career crossroads right now and have no where else to turn. I’ve never hosted a live event before and would like to start doing more of these types of events in the future, but I’ll be charging for those events. This one is free for everyone and will be a great introduction into the world of personal branding and how to use your brand to make a name for yourself, even in this cluttered world. Borders will also have copies of Me 2.0 for attendees who are interested in purchasing it after the event.
5 tips for networking at events
1. Come prepared. If you don’t do your research on me, Gil or Sheryl, then you won’t know what you’re in for. Why sign-up for an event if you don’t know what to expect? You should also review the list of attendees who are set to come to the event, so that you know who to network with when you arrive. This is important because only a portion of attendees will have similar backgrounds and motives for coming, so you’ll want to connect with them over everyone else.
2. Bring business cards. It doesn’t matter if you’re unemployed or you’re a student, you need to leave someone for other people to remember you by. Also, if you have your picture on your business card, people won’t forget that they spoke to you. On your business card, you should have a positioning or personal brand statement, that tells people what you do and who you do it for (your audience). It should have one to two methods of contact (phone and email) and one or two websites (such as your blog).
3. Less is more. Don’t try and meet thirty people at the event. Instead, focus on building relationships and getting to know just a handful. People don’t like other people who just pass out business cards. The more time you spend getting to know a single individual, the better the chances that something positive will actually come out of it.
4. Take notes. You may receive the PowerPoint slides and a few videos after the event is complete, but why not take notes, so you can capture the talking points and the Q & A session? It’s important to take notes at an event, so that you come out with some action items or ideas to bring back to your organization or for your job search. Otherwise, you may forget a lot of what you just learned.
5. Ask questions. When you go to an event, you should have some questions in mind that you want to ask. Q & A sessions are great for asking about your specific situation, so you can go back home or to the office and start taking the advice. You also, in effect, become more well known at the event by asking a question, which can help you when you connect with other people once the event is over, who might have had the same question.
