Marketing Safari

Keynote Speaker on Social Media and Marketing for the Travel Industry

Talks and courses on social media and marketing are becoming a bigger and bigger part of my schedule. I am now booking 2011 and it looks like it's going to be an exciting year. This year and the last I've been running courses, live-blogging and giving talks at conferences in as different places as New York, Faroe Islands, Berlin and Latvia. My main focus has been on the travel industry though that is not always the case. Most popular are my two day courses on social media and Internet marketing for the travel industry.

I'm now booking 2011 and it looks like I'll be in Latvia, Belgium, Greenland, Denmark and Norway, as well as Iceland of course. Some other exciting events are being explored as well. Exact dates and location can be found on my "Keynote Speaker Schedule"

If you're interested in getting a talk at your event or a practical and effective course in your home town on how to use social media and the Internet, send me a line. 

Hjörtur Smárason
Keynote speaker on social media and marketing 
hjortur (at) scope.is 

Please, help me find Karen in Denmark

Do you remember Karen from Denmark? The one who was looking for the father of her son, August, and then a new home for her fish? Well, she obviously wants to become a big YouTube star.

I'm running a social media marketing workshop in Denmark next week, one in Aarhus on Thursday and one in Copenhagen on Friday. In the workshop I'll be helping people and companies to find their way through the social media jungle, so I though I might help Karen out and invite her to the workshop. But I don't anything about her except that her name is NOT Karen. So if anyone out there knows Karen, please show her this video:

Karen can contact me by sending me an email to workshops@scope.is.

Hjörtur

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Social Media Workshops and Internet Marketing Courses

It looks like it's going to be a busy year in teaching and talking. The first course of the year will be a two day Internet Marketing course in Reykjavik, Thursday and Friday next week (January 21.-22.). The week after I will be in Denmark. I've got two social media workshops planned in Denmark, one in Århus on the 28th of January and another one in Copenhagen on the 29th. I will most likely be doing several more in other European cities in the coming months, so stay tuned for updates.

I've got two other courses planned in Reykjavik, a weekend course over two saturdays, the 13th and 20th of February and then another one on March 18th-19th.

If you want any further information on the courses or want to sign up, you can send me a message to hjortur (at) scope.is - or if you want me to set up a workshop in your hometown.

Cheers
Hjörtur

If this is your first time on my blog, you might want to consider subscribing to my feed or email updates (here on the left) or become a fan on Facebook. You can also follow me on Twitter.

Next courses in Internet Marketing

For my Icelandic readers, I'd like to announce that I've got three two day courses in Internet Marketing lined up in Iceland in the comming months on the following dates:
24.-25. September
22.-23. October
26.-27 November

More info in Icelandic can found on Náðu árangri á netinu!

Cheers
Hjörtur

Highlights from the 140 Character Conference in New York

I am writing this as I'm flying back from the 140 character conference in New York where I've had two great days with Jeff Pulver (@jeffpulver) and a fantastic cast of characters. This conference was different from many other conferences. Jeff managed to gather a great variety of people who had different uses for and experiences from twitter.

Starting with two legendary people in social media, Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly media (@timoreilly) and Jack Dorsey founder of Twitter (@jack), the conference continued peaking with an interview with Wyclef Jean (@wyclef) and a panel on twitter for news gathering for traditional media that included Ann Curry of NBC (@anncurry) and Rick Sanchez of CNN (@ricksanchezcnn). Ann Curry was absolutely fantastic on that panel. Both sessions can be watched at videos on the 140conf site.

Other favorites from the conference include Laura Fitton's (@pistachio) Love Story, Israel's use of Twitter for public diplomacy (@davidsaranga), the video blogging panel and the social media for social change panel with inspirational people like @drew (#blamedrewscancer), Liane Thomson (@missilecitykids), @amanda (Twestival) and @StaceyMonk (Epic Change). For more techy or geeky stuff, you might like Kevin Slavin's talk about things that tweet and for the talk with the most f-words, check out Chris Weingarten's (@1000timesyes) brilliant talk.

Interesting topics that weren't covered but might be covered on the next 140conf were twitter for travel and more on twitter for marketing. If I were to say in two or three sentences what the outtake of the conference was, I would say it was this:
* Many people shared their rules on what was accepted and what not on Twitter - and they contradict each other. That tells us Twitter is only a tool and every man has to make his own rules on how to use Twitter most effectively. I'll write another post tomorrow on my view on the different rules.
* Twitter is changing the world, 140 characters at the time. The fundamental change is that things are now happening in real time. We can follow events and opinions developing as they happen. And we can use twitter search and hashtags to follow those events. This is influencing business, news gathering, politics, celebrities and pretty much all levels of communications.

The events in Iran and the use of twitter to organize the demonstrations in Tehran was a very fresh issue. Two discussion that were taking place in the hallways and on twitter was if people should be changing their location to Tehran to show support and make it difficult for the Iranian government to track those on location who are using twitter, or if it was obscuring the news and which news were from authentic saurces and which not.

Another discussion was about the green avatars but people are turning their avatars green to show support for fair elections in Iran. That effort has been criticised for being useless but as @anamariecox puts it:

You can watch videos from the conference at http://140conf.com/watch. And here is my own talk on "How I Became a Twitter Character", as Jonny Goldstein (@jonnygoldstein) expressed it in his visual notes:

More of Jonny Goldstein's visual notes from the conference can be seen on his in his 140conf set on his Flickr account.

Jeff is planning two other 140 character conferences, one in London Nov. 10th.-11th. and one in Los Angeles in October. There's an open call for speakers if you'd like to see someone speak, or have a story to share.

Tweet you later
Hjörtur

Who's Going to the 140 Character Conference?

Jeff Pulver has organized a very interesting conference in New York which he calls the 140 Character Conference. As you may have guessed, it's all about Twitter. There will be a lot of great speakers like Jeff him self, Tim O'Reilly, Chris Brogan, Liz Strauss, Howard Greenstein, myself and loads of other excellent tweeple. So if you'll come to the 140 conference, we'll have a chance to meet in person. If you haven't registered already, use this special "Marketing Safari's Readers Discount Code": FQSMJKVX.

I'll be on the road in the upcoming weeks (not that roads can take you far here in Iceland, they only go in circles, so I'll be doing some flying too), if you'd like to meet. I'll not only be in New York at the 140 conference on June 16th and 17th, I'll also be in the Faroe Islands this week (I'm actually somewhere over the North-Atlantic Ocean on my way to the Faroe Islands as I'm writing this) and might be doing some talking in Spain by the end June. I'll be running a two day course in Internet Marketing in Danish in Torshavn on the 6th and 7th of May. For my local readers, I'll be running a two day course in Internet Marketing in Icelandic on the 14th and 15th of May at my office location in Iceland.

If you're interested in some of those events, let me know. If I'm not coming to "a theater near you", that may be arranged.

See ya
Hjörtur