One Night in July: SMC Seattle and gdgt Live

• Jul 28th, 2010
• Posted by Ron Schott
• Posted in gdgt, SMC Seattle, Social Media, Social Media Events, Spring Creek Group, Virgin America

If you’ve worked in the Northwest, or pretty much anywhere, you know that the July-August timeframe can be somewhat lazy and a bit slow-moving as far as getting things done goes. However, it seems as though this week will be the exception. Last night Spring Creek Group, along with Microsoft Office 2010, sponsored the SMC Seattle event featuring Jason Falls. Then, as if there needed to be something else to do, some of the SCG team headed down to Showbox SoDo for the first-ever gdgt Live Seattle event.

#SMCSEA

The event with Jason Falls was probably a bit hard to take for some of those in the audience – people Falls would lovingly refer to as “hippies” or “social media purists.” Falls focused on how social media can actually be used to move beyond the lovey-dovey feel good and have a true impact on sales and the bottom line.

You could actually hear the gasps from people in the audience during a couple times when Falls would say something that no one expected a “guru” to say, but that’s because he doesn’t see himself as a guru, but part of the larger marketing mix. Falls also showed some great examples of how brands are using social media for real results, even without gimmicks and fancy campaigns (in fact, one was even a drug store that simply gave their users an easier way to access their circular via their Facebook page).

For more info on moving the needle, you can check out http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/.

gdgt Live

If you’re into shiny gadgets, free drinks and swag, then you should’ve been at the gdgt Live Seattle event last night. Some of the makers of the hottest new gadgets on (and about to enter) the market were on hand to demo their products and let users get a little handsy.

The SCG team made the rounds and were delighted to see Dragon Dictation (from Nuance) there demoing their speech-to-text application for iPhone and iPad. The software makes it fairly easy to dictate and then allows you to send it to text, email, Twitter, and even Facebook.

The team also met the social media players from @virginamerica and got to talk shop with the growing team about what tools and tactics they’re using in their quest to make passengers’ travel just that much better. They recently rolled out a new version of their in-flight entertainment system, Red, and were showing video and talking about some of the new features which include: The Red Store (think SkyMall in digital form, but with a $38,000 diamond encrusted iPhone), the ability to keep a tab in the system, and Google Maps integration that brings terrain views to passengers.

Lastly, we got a chance to get hands-on with the Windows Phone 7 operating system (but sadly not an actual handset) as we stopped by the Windows booth and talked with our friend Brian Seitz (who also works with a great Seattle group called Cold Pavement). Besides the new mobile OS, the Windows area also had some Windows 7 goodness going on as well as an Xbox set up (although I’m not sure what they were doing on that thing other than playing games).

And now for photos…

Ron, Courtney, and Aaron with Microsoft’s Brian Seitz. See the Windows Phone 7 on display?

Aaron with our new friend Jill from Virgin America. She runs the @virginamerica Twitter handle! Sorry for the lack of focus.