Long Time No Post

Yep, I fell victim to time starvation and consciously narrowed down my online activities over the last eight weeks. My Empire Avenue stock is down, my klout score too, I'm connected on Google+ but not really engaged...I'm not tweeting or posting on Facebook as much. The biggest victims have been this blog and posterous accounts.

I've been traveling a lot for me (8 of the last 10 weeks) some personal, most for work and I haven't gotten into my new schedule groove. I always write my posts at home at night when I can't sleep. Well, when I am at home these days, I'm sleeping like a baby and when I'm not, I'm not making time for posting.

With my new job, I am taking in a lot of industry content specific to our agency, our clients and also broader trends. There's so much amazing stuff being produced that I have gotten caught up in consuming and I'm still figuring out how to share, what can be shared...you know all that IP stuff that comes with agency work, and what really do I want to share. And I'm not producing. Yep, I'm making this way too complicated.

All that said, I got knocked off my "figuring out" mode and long list of excuses this morning. Well, it actually started yesterday...I caught this PSA with Jennifer Connelly for charity: water on TV. My thoughts went to all the great work the SMCKC team did a few years back on the charity: water international twestival kick-off and I was thinking how mainstream the initiative is now. I also thought about how we had a boiling water advisory a few weeks ago and how terrible it would be to not have clean water. The ad reminded me to check up on what CharityWater was doing online.

Just a few minutes ago, my "get back into posting" moment happened and I'll share it with you over my next post (coming at lunch).

Upcoming Events

Over the next couple of months, I'm fortunate enough to be attending several amazing social media events (some local to Kansas City, some not.) I hope I'm lucky enough to see you at a few of these shindigs, please let me (@zenaweist) know if you are going so we can definitely meet up.

The Quick-n-Dirty
This is the only virtual event slated. Aaron Strout asked me to talk about my day job as interactive brand strategy and marketing manager at Embarq on his (@aaronstrout) and Jennifer Leggio's (@mediaphyter) social media Quick-N-Dirty podcast (@quickndirty).
These two online marketing mavens discuss new social networks, social media case studies, new execs that are twittering/blogging and the hot topic of the week. Bryan Person (@bryanperson), one of my favorite social media practitioners, will be co-hosting with Jennifer.

Join the chat and listen in on Thursday, September 3 at 5pm CT. Every once in awhile, Jennifer will ask one of the listens to chime in, it would be great if it were you! If you miss it, you can listen to it shorty after it's live via Quick-n-Dirty's nifty On Demand Episodes.

Really "Way Too Early in The Morning" SMCKC Breakfast
On Friday, September 11 at 7:30am (I kid you not) if you dare, you will see mine and 60 of my closest cohorts yawning faces at our monthly Social Media Club of Kansas City's (@smckc) breakfast at the oh-so-yummy The Kansas City Cafe (@KansasCityCafe). Details on the "you will really want to wake up for this one" agenda will be posted on SMCKC's ning soon.

Kansas City Twestival 2009
In the evening of Friday, September 11, I'm definitely going to the KC Twestival (@kctwestival) at The Brooksider Bar & Grill. A plethora of my Kansas City friends are helping plan this incredible one night, one cause social web/IRL event for an amazing local, non-profit Wayside Waifs.

KC #Twestival 2009 from Judy-Anne Goldman on Vimeo.

Solis hashtag KC-style #solisinkc
woot! Thanks to The Greater Kansas City Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) (@kcprsa), Brian Solis (@briansolis) will be presenting The State of Social Media, an inside look at trends and ethics within the industry featuring current topics and statistics on Thursday, September 17 at AMC Mainstreet Theatre. Brian exhales the social web. If you haven't seen The Conversation Prism that he and Jesse Thomas (@jess3) developed, please take a look-see.

First Day of Autumn in NYC
Next up is OMMA Global New York on Tuesday, September 22. I just found out, I'm pinch hitting for my Embarq interactive brand partner in crime, Kevin Cobb (@kevinjcobb), on an online marketing panel with our strategic partners, Dax Hamman (@daxhamman), Vice President Display Media, iCrossing and Media6's CEO, Joe Doran (@doran_joe). When I can, I'll update this post with our OMMA topic details.

UPDATED OMMA Global NYC Panel details:
Our panel is on Tuesday, 9/22 at noon and the title is Leveraging the Power of Search Retargeting for Marketing Plans with Andrew Pancer, Founder and COO, Media6 Degrees; Dax Hamman, VP, Display Media, iCrossing;Ben Seslija, Senior Director, Acquisition and Analytics, Clickable; and Mitch Spolan, Yahoo! Inc.


IZEAFest 2009
Next stop is sunny Orlando at the beginning of October where I'll be experiencing my first IZEAFest (@izeafest). Here's my history on the how. I'll be speaking on the What Advertisers Want panel and I'm beyond excited about being part of this timely conversation. I can't wait to recap blog about the lively discussion around this topic.


And last but definitely not least, Kansas City's own IMS
On October 8, I will have the pleasure of walking through the Embarq social media case study with two of the company's key social web SMEs Kevin Cobb and Linda O'Neill (@lindaoneill) at The Kansas City Integrated Marketing Summit (@IMSummit. Unfortunately, Bryan Person is slated on an IMS panel at the same time as I'll be talking so we each are going to tape the other and we promise to share highlights. The great news is we both will be front and center live tweeting one of our favorite online savvy, witty Bostonians Doug Haslam's (@DougH) Effective PR in a Social World presentation later that afternoon. Do you have any fun ideas on a hashtag for Doug's preso?

Twestival - Kansas City

Twestival is a worldwide fund raising effort that is occurring this Thursday, February 12 organized 100% by volunteers around the world via social media - mainly twitter. 100% of the money raised from these local events will go directly to support charity. Specifically - water projects.

Why water?
One in six people on earth don't have access to safe, clean drinking water.



Why Twestival?




The Kansas City Twestival volunteer team (@KCTwestival) has done an amazing job putting together and getting the word out about our local tweetup with a cause including this fantastic video from Ramsey Mohsen:

Twestival, Tweet. Meet. Give.



All the details on the February 12th Kansas City evening event are at KansasCity.Twestival.com. I'm looking forward to taking part in this worldwide charity event with my KC friends. Hope to see you there!