Update: Embedded the saved stream below. Warning: it’s rough!

Today, March 14, at 1:30 PM ET, I will be speaking at South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) 2009. I will be giving a presentation called “The Art of Responding to Feedback from Your Community.”

For those that were unable to make it to Austin for the conference, I wanted to try to stream the presentation on Ustream. The video stream is embedded below. If you’re free, please check back at or a little before 1:30 PM ET today. The presentation will last for no longer than 20 minutes.

It may not work because we are at the mercy of wifi and bandwidth, but I will try my best. The camera angle may also be awkward. Even if it doesn’t work or isn’t ideal, a friend will be taking video for me of the entire presentation that I will post online at some point, as well.

During the presentation, or after, please feel free to provide feedback on Twitter @patrickokeefe. Thank you for watching!

Broadcasting Live with Ustream.TV

I’ll be attending the South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) 2009 conference in Austin, Texas, from March 13 through March 17. So, things will be a little quiet around here at this time. I appreciate your patience.

On Saturday, March 14 at 12:30 PM, I’ll be speaking, giving a presentation called, “The Art of Responding to Feedback From Your Community.” After the presentation, at 12:55 PM, I’ll be doing a book signing for 20 minutes at the SXSW Bookstore. I’ll probably sign whatever stock they have, so if you miss the signing and still would like a signed copy, please stop by the bookstore!

But, even if you can’t make it to my session and would like to meet up, just let me know. Probably the best way, after March 11,  is to send me an @ reply on Twitter. My Twitter name is patrickokeefe. I look forward to seeing you there!

A few weeks ago, I asked for feedback on my upcoming book reading/presentation at South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive 2009. In so many words, I wanted some thoughts on what I should talk about. Thanks so much to everyone who offered their thoughts, including Dave Taylor, Krist, Gwen, Wendy and others.

After much consideration, I have decided to go with a proposal I will call “The Art of Responding to Feedback From Your Community.” Based on a blog post I wrote in January, this talk will focus on my 3 simple steps for responding to feedback that you receive from… well… your community. I have a fun twist in mind that I think people will enjoy and I will not be telling you what it is. I will give you one hint, though. We’ll be doing it live.

The bottom line here will be that it’s ALL ABOUT FEEDBACK. And I plan to showcase this. This post can’t do it justice. You’ll have to come!

After the talk, I’ll be doing a signing at the SXSW bookstore and I am really looking forward to meeting people. The presentation will be on Saturday, March 14 at 12:30 PM ET on the Day Stage. The presentation will go about 20 minutes and then I’ll head to the signing. It should be a ton of fun. If you can come, please do! Please RSVP on Facebook.

Good news! For the second consecutive year, I will be giving a book reading at South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive in Austin, Texas. The reading will be followed by a signing at the conference’s bookstore. Better news: you don’t have to listen to me read the book. (Thank goodness). They allow us to give a presentation around the book’s theme and that is what I will be doing, just as I did last year, when I spoke about “Creating a Positive Environment on Your Forums” (video).

The conference itself runs from March 13 through 17 and my presentation will be on March 14 at 12:30 PM. It’ll be on the Day Stage on the top floor of the Austin Convention Center. If you can come, please do! I’d love to meet you. Please RSVP on Facebook, if you can.

We’re about six weeks or so away, so I want to start thinking about what I will be talking about. That’s where you come in! I would love your feedback on what you’d like me to talk about. I have a pair of ideas myself, but I could go in a totally different direction, as well. Please keep in mind that I have 20 minutes, no more, and that I would like to fit in a little time for Q&A, if I could, in that 20 minute span. Though, I can always answer questions when I am off stage and that might be for the best. Anyway, here are the options.

1. “The Art of Responding to Feedback From Your Community”

This talk would be based on a post I wrote recently, that I felt was really well received. Basically, it’s a simple, 3 step system to handling feedback from members. I could go through the 3 steps, in brief and (maybe?) show some example messages in my slides.

2. “Taking Your Community Back From the Trolls”

There seems to be this prevailing notion with some people that eventually, all communities will be infested with trolling. And that you have to allow people to say some nasty things because you can’t hold your members to high standards. Because, if you do, you’ll scare them off, lose your traffic, lose your ad revenue and be unable to justify your community to the boss.

I don’t believe this is true. I believe that community administrators and managers can take a stand, can have a vision for their community, one that is free of trolls and can shut those people down through solid guidelines, consistent enforcement and a willingness to ban.

3. “Your Idea”

I’d love to hear your idea, too. What would you like me to talk about? Maybe you read the book and a specific part resonated, a part you would like to see me talk about in person. Or, maybe you just have a random thought. Whatever it is, please detail it in the comments and I promise to consider it.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this and offer me your feedback. I really appreciate it. And I look forward to seeing you at the conference.

It’s been a few months since I posted a book related press recap, so I wanted to highlight all of the great mentions that the book has received in that time.

There were new reviews from Martin Reed of Community Spark, Des Walsh, Jessica Smith of Jessica Knows, Kare Anderson of Moving From Me to We.com (also posted on Gaia), Martin Kloos of TheNextWeb.com and Rob Diana of Regular Geek. Mrs. Smith was kind enough to include me in her 15 Days of Marketing series, as well.

I was interviewed by BloggerTalks and for Urban Lifestyle Report: New Media’s October issue. I appeared for live video interviews on SuccessfoolTV and The Tech Buzz and participated in a live podcast interview on PerfCast, the podcast of Performancing. For The Tech Buzz interview, the show did a book giveaway, which was mentioned by Geek Talk Radio.

My friend Jason Falls invited me to speak via live stream at a Social Media Club Louisville meet up. This was mentioned in Business First of Louisville. Esther Schindler of CIO highlighted the book in her “6 Stupid Mistakes Companies Make with Their Online Communities” article. I wrote a guest post on the subject of “Blogging for Dollars” for The Graduate Student Survival Blog, part of the Albany Times-Union.

Kelby Carr highlighted the book when talking about my sessions at the Independent Blogging Conference at Greensboro, which she co-organized. On a related note, popular Twitterer Brian Carter, who I met while in Greensboro, mentioned the book in his stream.

Using the book has a basis, Lois Kelly of Bloghound wrote an article titled “10 ideas for Creating Community Guidelines.” Lois also highlighted the book at two conference sessions that she led. One, at the Extending Your Brand to Employees Conference on November 17 in Chicago, was called “The Power of Social Media: Putting It to Work for Your Employer Brand” session. The slides are posted online and the book is mentioned in number 57. The other was at the Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education, also in Chicago, on November 16, during the “Online Communities that Thrive: Realizing the Possibilities; Burning Down the Obstacles” session.

Steve Magruder of WebCommons shared that he would be rewriting his own forum guidelines using ideas from the book.

As part of a book meme, where the person that you tag must tell you the book that is closest to you and tell you what it is, Mike Mueller had “Managing Online Forums” closest.

vBulletin Setup mentioned the book in reference to a recent contest where they gave away a copy. In the 19th edition of “Jeff Herman’s Guide To Book Publishers, Editors, & Literary Agents 2009: Who They Are! What They Want! How To Win Them Over!”, Mr. Herman mentioned the book in an AMACOM company profile.

As part of her “Internet Marketing Christmas” post, Lynn Terry of ClickNewz! receorded a video where she opened presents that she had received in the mail. She included a greeting card that I had sent her and was kind enough to mention the book, as I had included a business card for it, as well.

In a year end post, phpBB Weekly’s Douglas Bell highlighted the book centric interview episode we did as a runner up in his list of their best episodes of the year.

At the “Solutions Are Power” by Network Solutions blog, Steve Fisher mentioned the book in relation to my attendance at the Blog World & New Media Expo.

Finally, I provided advance praise for the book “Designing the Digital Experience: How To Use EXPERIENCE DESIGN Tools & Techniques to Build Websites Customers Love” and”Managing Online Forums” is mentioned alongside the praise.

A huge thanks to everyone who has expressed an interest in the book. It means a lot to me and I really appreciate it! I’m looking forward to what lies ahead in 2009.

In September, I went to the Blog World & New Media Expo in Las Vegas, Nevada and spoke on a pair of panels (Blog World Expo 2008 recap). The final panel that I spoke on was called “Avoiding Disaster: How Not to Use Social Media.” Here’s the panel description:

This panel will discuss how not to approach social media for people looking to promote themselves and/or their companies through blogs, forums, social networking sites and other types of communities online. We’ll highlight and discuss strategies and tactics that can damage you and your brand, such as introtisements and adverquestions (veiled advertisements), lying about your affiliations, never giving anything of value, being ignorant of your surroundings and much more. The end result will be a better understanding of how to utilize the social web to get the word out about yourself and/or your organization. We learn not only from best practices, but from poor practices. Who you want to be, directly relates to who you don’t want to be.

I was joined on the panel by Lee LeFever (Principal, Common Craft), Jason Falls (Social Media Explorer, Doe-Anderson and Blogger, SocialMediaExplorer.com) and Darren Rowse (Owner, ProBlogger.net; Co-Founder, Sixfigureblogging.com; Co-Founder and VP Training, b5media and Co-Author, “ProBlogger: The Book“).

The panel went really well and I was really proud of it and how it all came together, from organization to finish. The only thing that I regret is that I didn’t switch out the battery on my camcorder before going in the session, as my camera died and we lost probably 15 minutes of questions which kills me because the questions were the best part and there was a funny moment or two in there. Hopefully, the Blog World Expo folks taped the questions segment and will release it at some point.

Thank you to my friend Chrispian who did an excellent job manning the camera.

No further description needed, here is the video. After viewing, please let me know what you thought! Thank you for watching.

Avoiding Disaster: How Not to Use Social Media Panel at Blog World Expo from ManagingCommunities.com on Vimeo.

In addition to Vimeo, the video is also on YouTube (parts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5).

On last night’s episode of SuccessfoolTV, I came on to talk about online community, forums, social media, the book and more. I thought it went really well and that it was really informative, so I wanted to share it. You can check it out below.

Live TV by Ustream

Thank you to Alejandro for having me and to everyone who stopped in, helped to spread the word through Twitter and had kind words to say, during and after. I really appreciate it.

A couple of weeks ago, I traveled to a pair of conferences in Greensboro, North Carolina. I have now made some headway into my to do pile, so I wanted to take some time to write up a recap while it was still relatively fresh in my mind. What follows is my personal recap of ConvergeSouth 2008 (October 17) and the Independent Blogging Conference at Greensboro (October 18).

Thursday

I drove from my home in Harbinger, North Carolina to Greensboro and it took me about five hours and fifteen minutes, with two stops along the way. My friend Jared Smith, driving in from Charleston, South Carolina, arrived just 10 minutes after I did.

There were two big things that hooked me into coming to these conferences in the first place. The first one was that my friend Jonathan Bailey of PlagiarismTodaywas speaking at ConvergeSouth. But, the other reason was Jared. When I was thinking about the conference, knowing he was within striking range travel wise, I reached out to see if he would be interested in going. Undecided, I kind of helped push him to attend, I guess you could say.

I’ve known Jared for about eight years now. We met through phpBBHacks.com, when he came to the site and became a member of my staff, from very early on in the site’s history. He saw a lot of the … fun challenges that working in the phpBB community afforded us, helping me to tackle them. He was always by my side and we developed a close friendship from that point forward. But, we’d never met in person. It was awesome to be able to do so and a ton of fun to hang out with him for a few days.

ConvergeSouth had official dinners starting at 7 on Thursday, one of which I was scheduled to attend. With Jared headed to one and me to another, we didn’t really have much time to chat before we had to get ready and separate. I went to the one at Table 16. Anil Dash was supposed to be hosting it, but he had a flight change and ended up being unable to do so (he actually ended up coming to the dinner that Jared was at, in a strange twist).

There’s a new book out called “Designing the Digital Experience: How To Use EXPERIENCE DESIGN Tools & Techniques to Build Websites Customers Love” and it was written by David Lee King. I met David a while back for something pertaining to my book and he was working on a book himself. He asked me to read a pre-release copy in consideration of advance praise.

I read the book and I enjoyed and was happy to provide him with the praise. Here is what I said:

When your aim is to provide a valuable product or service, it’s not just the product itself that counts, but the atmosphere that you have – the experience that you create. This is true of the offline world and of brick and mortar business, but it is also true online. The websites, communities, services, companies and individuals who provide their visitors with an enjoyable, memorable experience will have a distinct, noticeable advantage over those that do not. David Lee King’s “Designing the Digital Experience” presents solid ideas and strategies that can help you to gain that advantage.

If you have an interest in the subject, I’d definitely recommend picking up David’s book.

On October 21, I presented at a Social Media Club Louisville meeting via live video. It was actually the first time that I’ve ever done anything like this (I’ve given presentations, but never without actually being at the venue), but I thought it went well. The talk didn’t really have a title… but, I’m going to give it one now. I’ll call it “The Value of Online Forums and How to Approach Them as a Marketer.”

A big thank you to my friend Jason Falls who set it all up and emceed it. He recorded the video and posted it on the Social Media Club Louisville website, so I wanted to share it here. Please let me know what you think.