I had to write a post about what happened at the Biz Expo! It was by far the biggest commercial stand event for SME's that I have attended. Barbara Gordon of Whatswhat.ie the event organiser excelled herself this time in easily her largest event ever! The planning and thought that went into every aspect was tremendous.
There was 150 commercial stands and over 900 attendees registered to come on the day in the beautiful and spacious Citywest Convention Centre. The previous day a dedicated team of volunteers set this up and when I arrived at 9 am on the day it was all laid out.
The Social Media Clinic area itself was a sight to see - a spacious area with tables and crisp white tablecloths set out and the hard to miss lab coats on the back of the chairs! Once I got out my flyers and roll up banner and donned the lab coat I quickly perused the stands going up and down each row. I met up with clients old and new along the way and bumped into a lot of familiar faces from other networking events too. The variety of stands was impressive, catering for people in business or at rest and whilst dodging some of the animals of Electric Circus it was mostly a safe walk around.
There was Assisted Networking run by Howard Hughes of The Path I Choose, who connected people to business without the awkward mismatches that you could normally make when getting into a networking environment, another very well thought out part of the day from Barbara.
I got back shortly after 10am and people started coming over shortly afterwards. Questions ranged from "I am a service provider and unsure what images I can use for content" to "How do I use LinkedIn as a marketing tool?". We had Denise Whitmore, Alan Hennessy, Paul Browne, myself and Greg Fry with the social media queries and Stephen McDonagh with the website queries.
Myself, Greg, Denise and Alan all had speaking parts to do and we all finished in time and no major mishaps! I can truly say I am so pleased I didn't go to Social Media Marketing World as a volunteer this year as I was scheduled too. Being given this sort of exposure and opportunity to a part of a new movement like the Social Media Clinic in the country of origin of my business has been really exciting. Barbara also believed in me enough to know I could do the speaking competently too and I won't forget that. The feedback I received from respected speakers and the crowd there was great. I'm hooked, when can I do it again!
A short Periscope of my talk by Denise Whitmore The Social Media Department
I am very much looking forward to helping others out at the next event! Make sure you don't miss it!
Working with clients Nationwide from base in Mullingar.
