Nice to see you again. Follow me, @SydneyOwen. Thanks for being here!
My journey in Austin, navigating everything that is SXSW Interactive started off with a good dose of reality. While Mentor #2 made some great points and definitely opened my eyes to how everyone should be approaching PR, his stand-offish attitude about my enthusiasm for social media wiped my usually-amazing smile right off my face. And then he wonders why I’m not smiling. Well I decided to change it up.
Since I spent much of Saturday wasting away possible networking opportunities with some awesome dramatics (the sarcasm is actually dripping from “awesome” if you look closely), I woke up Sunday, plastered a smile on my face and hit the streets. It was time to make up for a botched “interview” and time wasted.
The goal of the day was to go to as many panels as possible and network with as many people as I could. I went to three amazing panels including “HealthCare and Social Networking”, “Old Media, New Tricks” and “Are PR Agencies a Dying Breed?”. For a recap of those panels, if you aren’t already following me on Twitter, you should, and search for these tags: #snhealth, #sxswOMNT, and #pr2. You can see some of the amazing discussions that took place during the different sessions.
Lesson #6: It’s okay to Twitter during sessions (and in bars!), in fact, it’s encouraged. During my first session, Ben created a tag for the conversation so we could all follow along. It made the experience that much better, because what wasn’t being said in the discussion was being said on Twitter. It was incredible to see the dynamics of the conversation change. At my second panel, Dan and Rob had already established the tag they wanted us to use.
The fact that being on your computer, playing around with Twitter and texting was all encouraged was an awesome thing. The fact that all of the people here are early adopters if not innovators makes me feel right at home. The lightbulb went off when I walked into the first party – I am a nerd. And it’s confirmed. And I like it. I’ve found my happy place.
Lesson #7: Don’t mold yourself to the company you’re thinking about. Be yourself and if it fits, it fits. My live-tweeting drew attention to my site and in turn, I made a lot of new contacts. I met Adam Keats of Weber-Shandwick in Chicago and he introduced me to anyone and everyone that I needed to know. My conversations with Adam were the extreme opposite of those with Bryan. The conversation had a good flow, both of us asking questions and talking about how social media is revolutionizing the way we do PR. Adam is clearly an awesome guy to know, as his networking skills are amazing, and he passed my communication test (he finished one conversation before he started another, in short). With Adam, I walked away with that “I nailed it” feeling.
Lesson #8: Being energetic and passionate is going to get me places. I know I already touched on this several posts ago – but my energy is what is going to get me the job. Why? Because the people I want to work with are the people that feed off of a good energy, people that see my passion and can feel it. Experience is still necessary, yes, but I don’t need to be stressed out about how much I have an if it’s enough. Because it is. Nobody expects me to have all the answers, I’m too young to have all the answers. But I do have an incredible hold on what I do, and am eager to learn and grow and show people what I’m all about.
Talking to the people I talked to, both last night and today, made me realize that I am doing everything I can and that I’m on the right track. This conference has been the most powerful thing for my career so far, as I have had four interviews, all different in their own right and all something that I can definitely learn from.
And, I won a flip camera today! I guess I’ll have to start looking into doing some vlogging.
More to come. Dinner at Rio Grande, then Mashable Bash.