Alexandra Samuel

Exhausted from the strain of keeping up with the latest social networking trends? Daunted by the number of Facebook, Twitter and e-mail messages you have to respond to every day? Spending more and more time online, and wondering if that's throwing your whole life out of balance? Get practical inspiration on how you can cope with social media, stop keeping up with the latest (dubious) must-try technology, and put social media tools to work for your own personal and professional priorities. In this participatory session, Alexandra Samuel will share clarifying tactics for managing every aspect of your online campaigns, while helping you develop your own personal strategy for focusing your online attention on what matters most to you.

"If you build it, they will come" may work in baseball, but it's almost guaranteed to strike out online. Attracting visitors and turning them into passionate, recurring contributors--and customers--takes careful planning and a skilled hand. That means planning for engagement: understanding what users want, what motivates them to participate, and what success really looks like. But, too often, the sheer volume of choices and platforms can overwhelm. In this fantastic talk, Alexandra shows how, with literally three hours a week, any group can build a robust social media presence. She'll immerse the audience in jump-starting community engagement by simulating the best practices in online community promotions. Participants will gain the skills they need to start, grow, or maintain their ever-important online presence--so they launch not just a site, but a community alive with conversation and collaboration.

IRL: In Real Life. It's used as shorthand all over the Internet, to distinguish what happens online from what happens offline. But 21st reality is both online and offline. The sooner we embrace our online lives as part of our real lives, the sooner we can make our individual lives online -- and the Internet as a whole -- as meaningful and satisfying as they can and should be. In this session we'll debunk the false distinction between life online and IRL, and map out the ways we can stop apologizing for our lives online and start living them. We'll walk through the 10 reasons to stop apologizing for your online life, then take it down to an actionable level with practical tips on how to live your online life with intention and integrity. From making your online connections into sincere human relationships, to finding a way to be mindful and present in your online interactions, you'll discover how you can create real value in your real life online.