Just wanted to post quickly and congratulate Newsday on a great event and to thank them for inviting me to speak. The group of people there (many old friends and quite a few new ones) were friendly, smart people doing great work; I hope to see many of them again soon.

I’m looking forward to the next one, hint, hint.

The Speakers

• Carl Corry, Online Editor for Local News at Newsday – @CarlCorry
• Herman Wong, Social Media Coordinator at Newsday – @Hermanywong
• Patricia Kitchen, Online Reporter at Newsday – @patriciakitchen
• Patrick Whittle, Brookhaven Town Reporter at Newsday – @pxwhittle
• Constance Korol, Founder of Food For Long Island – @ConstanceK @FoodForLI
• Jeff Namnum, LITweetup Organizer, General Rabble Rouser – @namnum @LITweetup
• Tom Whitby, Adjunct Professor of Education at St. Jospeh’s College, Founder of #edchat – @TomWhitby
• Richard Murdocco, Policy Wonk, land-use & planning – @thefoggiestidea
• Sam Kille, Regional Communications Director at American Red Cross in Greater NY – @SamKille @LIRedCross

I highly recommend following these folks.

Blurry (sorry) Pictures

Enter wa.ag, a startup run by my buddy Dave Gise (@davegise). wa.ag does a few things well; they provide exposure and real value for an restaurant or event space, they create a great pop-up gathering. The one that captured my attention is the way they turn networking on it’s head.

I was lucky enough to attend the first wa.ag at the Irish Exit (great fries!). Instead of just sticking people together and encouraging ‘networking’, Dave features a startup or small business and all the attendees are given information about the business as they walk in. They are then asked to examine that information and offer them tips and assistance according to their expertise. If you’ve ever been to one of our LITweetUps, it creates a very similar atmosphere of smart people working together (wa.ag stands for ‘work as a group’) towards a common goal. In my opinion, there is no better way to get to know someone professionally than to watch them think and work and apply their knowledge and talent, selflessly, to help someone else.

Keep your elevator pitches. Grab a beer, connect your mind and your creativity to your mouth and help somebody else’s business out a little bit while we shoot the breeze. Now I’ve had a chance to see and hear your capabilities (the real ones, not the ones you tell everybody about) and I’ve seen you as a human being helping someone else. That tells me way more about what you’re really capable of and if I want to do business with you.

The next wa.ag will be in Long Island tonite, Tuesday 9/13 and here’s a VERY generous discount code: discountatrookies.

If you’re free (I’ve got PTA, sorry) you should check it out or at least register to get informed about the next one.

I’d love to hear what you think.

That said the response has been really great so far, so we will be meeting Monday to get to work on releasing the preliminary speaker list.

BTW in case you haven’t met them yet, the organizers are: Andrea Cannavina – @legaltypist, Mo Krochmal – @krochmal, Jonathan Ezor – @profjonathan and me on behalf of @socialisle

usXsw is a great guided online conference with input from dynamic people all over the world, lots of fun and prizes!. It was created by the great folks over at the #UsGuys group on twitter.

My partners and I at Socialisle are honored to be hosting the official party usXsw Live on Saturday night at 7pm EST. More details to come

More details on usXsw here: http://bit.ly/emu9EO

Live video #LITweetUP right here during the #SnowDay!! Talk to all your friends without traveling.

At 10:30 hit the Join Chat button in the lower right hand corner of the screen. If you have a webcam, cue it up so we can see you.

We’ll mostly be just hanging out and comparing Hot Cocoa recipes and making fun of peoples bed-head, but for those of you who like agendas, here are some possible topics:

• 140confLI
• my new facial hair, an origin story
• Social Media Camp LI 2
• wierdest gift you got for Christmas / Hanukkah
• TEDxLI
• feety pjs, appropriate for adults or just creepy
• the new social business agency we’re launching
• who’s back hurts worst from shoveling
• SocialSchoolLI

See you there!!

American Express and FaceBook are promoting Small Business Saturday on November 27th in an effort to get consumers out to our local stores and strengthen the backbone of our economy. LITweetUP is doing what we can to help our Long Island Small Businesses. More details after the video.

What is it?

According to the Facebook page:
“First there was Black Friday, then Cyber Monday. This year, November 27th is the first ever Small Business Saturday, a day to support the local businesses that create jobs, boost the economy and preserve neighborhoods around the country. Small Business Saturday is a national movement to drive shoppers to local merchants across the U.S.”

 

What is LITweetUP Doing?

Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to have been well promoted on Long Island (the capital of Small Business in my opinion!) so this only came to our attention late last week. We’ve put together a small team of a few of Long Island best (professionals in the fields of Writing, Social Media and Advertising) and came up with a quickie plan.

• On Thursday November 18th at 6pm we will be getting together with as many business owners as we can get to (and handle based on our numbers) in 2 locations, one in Suffolk and one in Nassau. The locations are TBD. See the Free Help or Small Business tab for more.
• A few of us have friends in local media and we’re reaching out to them to let them know about #SmallBizSat and that we’re trying to do something to help out.
• We’re reaching out to any Chambers of Commerce we can to let them know about the potential benefits this could have for our small businesses.
• We will be tapping our own networks to promote this day and encouraging people to Shop Small on 11/27.

 

Free Help for Small Business

Facebook is giving small business owners $100 in free advertising with a deadline of Thursday November 18th at midnight. Our goal is to spend some time with business owners on Thursday night and help them take advantage of this in preparation for #SmallBizSat. We will all be donating our time.

• We’ll be limiting it to 3 business owners per team member and doing a shortened Social School session. Would you like to come, let me know in the comments.
• Each business owner should bring along a laptop.
• We will walk you thru setting up your FB ad and / or FB Deal
• For those that can’t make it, one or more of our team members will post a free walk thru online. I’ll link to it from here.

 

The Team

Here are the members of this awesome team. Please check them out, they are some of Long Island’s finest!

Angelina Simms @angelinasimms
Constance Korol @constancek
George Torres @urbanjibaro
Louise DiCarlo @lovelylu
Manny Velasquez-Paredes LinkedIn
Meg Heckman @ruleyourday
Nathan King @nathanrking
Pete Shelly @peteshelly
Sueanne Shirzay @sueanneshirzay
Jeff Namnum @namnum @socialschoolli