I wanted to thank all of those who helped to make this year's smAlbany small business day such a great event!
I have to start off by thanking our sponsors, without whom we would not have been able to stage the event. Also to all our panelists, and our VIP Guest Bloggers who reported on the event and each of the different workshops they attended. They did this in blogs, photos, video. Twitter was heavily used by many of the the participants. All in all it provided an execellent overview of the day's activities.
Lisbeth Caladrinio was a powerful keynote speaker, who effectively articulated the changing demographic makeup of the American consumer population. Lis' prescient message is that as the Boomer Generation makes way for Generations X & Y, significant changes will result in buyers' spending. Lisbeth is correct to assert that all business must be sensitive and responsive to these generational changes.
In regard to generational changes, I was pleased to find a veritable phalanx of young bloggers and twitterers who are on the cutting edge of social media, and participated so capably at smAlbany, including Trish, Annemarie, Rose, John, Lisa, Rhea, Ryan, Alexis.
The Times Union hosted three excellent workshops, and a timesunion.com blog panel and we hope to work with them in the future. The University of Albany was a wonderful host and cosponsor, thank you Melissa, and we hope to continue to work with them as well.
Our other panels, for example Meet the Media, the Impact of Health Reform of Small Business, Going Mobile with Mobile Aps, Job Search through Social Media were all outstanding, as were our web site workshops with Melissa Ward, Darcy Knapp and Miriam at Intellisites. I could go on, but I'll close her by saying that we want to take the information we collected, and learned, and make our smAlbany efforts and on-going venture.
What I would like to see is that we continue to share information with each other, trade ideas, perhaps partner on projects. I'm convinced that addition workshops and seminars could be provided for our smAlbany small business.
Above all, I'd like to thank Darcy, Dan and Tim for their outstanding efforts.
What's your opinion? Perhaps you have a workshop topic to share. I'd like to hear your ideas.
