Connecting the Dots – Twitter style

Jason Alba being characteristicly silly.

My trip to New Orleans for the CMA Strong Connections, Strong Careers (Career Management Alliance) conference was filled with multiple social media presentations.

Our conference was heavily attended by civilian personnel from the various branches of the military whose skepticism of social media in general and Twitter in particular was clearly evident in the sessions that I attended.

Their concerns were not that different than some of my clients or other friends who don’t understand social media or Twitter and think that they will be entering into a vortex that they cannot return from ever again.

The military questions were specific to things like security issues and confidentiality issues. Those concerns were rapidly answered by my colleagues. For example, when one of the military talked about the risks of having military with presence on LinkedIn, Donna Sweidan, rapidly answered that she had multiple people in her LI network from high levels of the military.

The conference tweets can be found under hashtag, #CMA2010. As I was tweeting the conference, I was grateful for wifi for my laptop because I can tweet so much faster from my laptop than the phone.

The social media panel consisting of Jason Alba, Miriam Salpeter, Joel Cheesman, Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter, Greg Taylor, and Chandlee Bryan with the topic “Everything you need to know about social media (so you won’t be leave behind)” was peppered with questions from the highly interactive audience.

This panel was just one small part of the conference. Richard Bolles and Yves Lermusi opened the conference with their keynote: “Checkster Meets What Color is Your Parachute.”

I had a tough time choosing between the concurrent sessions, most taught by people I knew from the career industry. I didn’t want to miss the chance to hear Don Orlando showcase “Powerful, Confident New Ways to Showcase your Clients Values… and Yours!” and watched him interview a volunteer he had never met, revising a resume on the spot with value-added information.

Susan Joyce, Job-Hunt.org & Andrea Perkins, Tinker AFB

I met so many great new friends like Andrea and renewed relationships with Twitter friends like Miriam, Jacqui, Deb Dib, Donna, and Susan. Jason Alba and I finally met in person after “knowing” each other online for several years.

I had great food and great times. Dawn Bugni was my roommate and we took the relationship we developed through e-lists, Twitter, Facebook, and phone to a new level by sharing a room for three days.

Dawn and I even had our own “Breakfast Summit” to stay competitive with Dave AvRutick and Joe Jacobi after learning of their famous first meeting in Madison.

I am sure that there were skeptics out there even after the many social media sessions and examples. I know  for me social media connects the dots, taking relationships from online to real life and builds bonds quicker because you already have a starting point for the conversation.

If you have been trying to decide about social media or if you should take a social media relationship to a new level, I say do it!

Relationships are what drive connections and lead to new opportunities.

As I have said in the past, Talk to me… I talk back!