CopyDiva

Last week, I attended the WOMM-U Conference in Miami, put on by WOMMA. There were some interesting case studies presented, and for me, it was an excellent opportunity to network with some of my cohorts in the social media and word-of-mouth marketing space.

The format for parts of both days was different than most conferences, and had the potential to be great learning experiences. There were interactive sessions with a group leader, where a particular focus was the starting point for people to share their own experiences and ask questions of the group. For example, Lynn Eastep from Fleishman Hillard headed up a session on KPI’s of social media marketing efforts. She did an excellent job of framing the discussion for people, but with a 30-minute format and 12 people, it made it very difficult to learn too much. An hour would have been a better chunk of time. Another interesting session was put together by Jason Anello of Yahoo and Rohit Bhargava of Oglivy PR, on learning from social media successes — and failures. They asked the group for examples of social media tools that people have used to engage an audience or create buzz. A few people — including me — shared, but I felt pressured to be quick with the 30 minute time limit. Both Rohit and Jason shared small failures from experiments they tried on Facebook.

The last session I went to, on community-building tools, was brought together by Leslie Forde of Communispace and Bonin Bough of Weber Shandwick. They pulled together a nice packet of info for people to take with them, and showed a few example communities — both private (from Communispace customers) and public (like the Alli community).

My feedback on these sessions is this: as someone who has an understanding of the space and is immersed in it, it was hard for me to gain value from the setting. It might have worked better if there were an newbie and non-newbie tracks, or even if the time had been extended.

I commend WOMMA for trying out this format, and I think it has good possibilities with some more thought behind it.

My favorite moments of WOMM-U are all personal:

• Finally meeting Erik Rabasca from PHD in person, and getting to share his birthday dinner at Joe’s Stone Crab
• Dinner with Sonya Schweitzer from AOL and Kevin Burke from Lucid Marketing
• Harassing Bonin Bough from Weber Shandwick about the drink he still owes me (or, maybe I owe him?)
• Playing Guitar Hero with J.C. Hutchins
• Connecting with Kate and Jerry from Nielsen
• Chatting, if only briefly, with Lynn Eastep