Impressions from Webstock 2009

Yesterday I’ve been to Webstock. In a brief, I’ll give you a 360 degrees tour of the presentations and people I’ve talked to (met again or recently met).

I’ve entered the first session when Michael Köster from Microsoft was finishing his speech on the user experience story. Ştefan Tănase from Kaspersky LAB (by the way, I won a Kaspersky LAB Licence for 1 computer 1 year, at the Kaspersky contest for the Webstock participants) made a very useful and insightful presentation on the doomsday that might just fall on you if you use social media, especially Twitter and Facebook. Now seriously, it was useful to know how to be aware of some of the dangers specific to web 2.0 affect your social networking activity.

Coming in tone with the precedent presentation, Bogdana Butnar’s “Room raiders 24/7 – How your social persona lets everyone peek into your personal life” was, in her own unmistakable style, a combination of good-sense advice on promoting your personal brand (by the way, Călin Fusu said at the gala he unfollowed Raluxa, although he later forgave her, for tweeting thing un-related to professional life) and careful sightseeing into the future of social networking for real privacy. This is also related to how you can get rather rejected more than to get accepted on a job from what you post on your social media networking accounts.

Sharifah Amirah, from Frost & Sullivan, having an extended experience with the Asia and Europe markets, has shown us some interesting demographics, completing the ideas started by Ştefan Tănase and Bogdana Butnar. Interesting presentation. And also great timekeeping.

Stephanie Jackson presented some tendencies in Mobile marketing and mobile internet services that Vodafone is studying and applying to the Romanian market. I was surprised to find out that 17 % of internet users from Romania are connected using mobile solutions. It made me really think of getting a phone on which I could really use the internet. I talked later with Alexandru Damian, who recommended me some HTC phones. I was wondering, knowing that the Koreans have been working especially for other big brands, how reliable are they really, but he assured me that since a year ago, they have been developing the brand and the proper technology to offer usability. I know that Mihai Mafteianu would probably get mad considering, for example, HTC over iPhone, but I’m seriously considering the advantages… I’ll read some more about it, and maybe I’ll decide.

Mihai Pricope from Adobe had a brilliant product presentation for a new product for collaboration. I considered it a sort of platform for video conferencing, with the focus on offering for up to 5 people for free the possibility to work on a document together.

Radu Ionescu had a great presentation on the LG contest in the spring, renewing the quarrel between Bobby Voicu and Manafu. I think that maybe Cristi put Bobby to present the “others section” last night at the gala to get back on him for not winning the contest organized by Radu. Anyway, brilliant concept, great structure for presenting. And now, a social campaign. Great work. Radu and Kinecto really ruled yesterday.

During the break, I talked to Diana Petrescu, who told me about a great idea of a content website for which she’s looking for authors, I really thought it would be great to see it accomplished. In a small talk, we made Social Geek leave by talking to Diana about inspiration. Val joined us while we were talking about the political messages concerning the women’s status in Star Trek: The Next Generation, then we turned back to business. Val is setting up the affiliate marketing for Viorel at Taskwriter.

Val recommended I talk to Radu Spîneanu from 2 parale about a product I want to market. It was no surprise for me that after his presentation everybody wanted to talk to him. But he was really very nice and very available. He gave me a very generous business idea for a project. I just have to get a programmer to develop it. But for the moment I don’t have the time for it. The idea stands, I’ll think about it.

After the break, I’ve been to 2 design presentations – very technical and very boring, even for the people there in the room. It was basically Tudor Muscalu from Adobe vs. Michael Koster from Microsoft. I was kind of wondering how were their presentations different from a video tutorial… There were enough specialists at the presentation to generate a… user experience.

Anyway, leaving the designers’ presentations and coming to the blogging section, I admired Costin Cocioabă’s presentation based on the experience with refresh.ro. Beyond the really impressive figures, he underlined the importance of properly launching your niche blog. And what is specific for a niche blog.

Then, Cătălin Zorzini had just a terrible presentation on a great topic, basing his demonstration on a website from the US. The content was interesting… skipping the fact that he was reading the slides and translating them into Romanian… But he is an Inspired Mag. He made some people fall into trance. At a certain point, out of boredom, the whole line of chairs where I was staying left.

Then I went to the microblogging section, where Adrian Ciubotariu had a very thorough presentation, then Viorel Spînu proved how you can get customers by Twitter applications, by taking photos of the participants and putting them on Twitter. It was quite a show. Then, Adi Soare succeeded to get things thrown at him (don’t worry, it was planned & directed) by making a concept proof of how not to do marketing on Twitter. I considered his 10 principles coming to continue Bogdana’s ideas presented in the morning.

Ciprian Stavăr from Spixii made a presentation about how to make money from Twitter. The first, the longest, and the most uninteresting part was the first half, the “what I’m going to tell you about” part. But in the end, it paid off. I asked Călin if he considers microblogging jobs will be posted on BestJobs. He was rather interested in a method to aggregate all these, that Adi Soare suggested he could do by following the hashtags from Twitter and integrating them into a stream on BestJobs. Călin thinks rather that microblogging jobs will be posted on Twitter, and not on classic channels – which I think makes sense, but also Adi Soare’s suggestion I think wouldn’t hurt.

I met Cristina Mitu and I was surprised to find out how dedicated she is to put energy into PR. I also appreciated her balance between openness and skepticism. I have to talk to her some more about some niched business networking ideas I want to develop in collaboration.

Also, I met Mălina who writes about anything using different styles, which I found challenging. I read some of her tweets and her blog, but at Webstock, I actually met her and had a very good impression. I would have liked to talk more, but the frame wasn’t set for it.

I met Florin Grozea, who was a little bit in a hurry.

Also, I met Sorin Rusi, and we’ve talked about different visions about what “personal branding” means. I was talking about personal branding, which by the way, involves online reputation management, not about identity exposure. I think unfortunately Sorin is used to using terms he does not understand. I recommend Wikipedia for this – check out the links from this paragraph – and also the post I have updated, postponed for Sunday (for reviewing) – a conclusion from the discussions I had at Offline 2.0 with Adrian Ciubotaru, Anca Baniţă, and with Sorin Rusi at Webstock.

I congratulated Viorel Spînu and Gabriel Nedelea at the gala, then I was glad to meet again Vladimir.

Before leaving, I socialized with Dragoş Grijincu, who is about to launch online sales after already having great success with search engine marketing and online advertising, with Anca Baniţă and with Octavian Rizea from Metromind.

Marcus Victor Grant

Text Copyright © Marcus Victor Grant, 2009-present