It's no secret: I love Google+ Hangouts. They're effective, innovative, engaging and fun.
I actually feel the way about this technology today, as I did about Twitter back in the early days of WPS (2008) when we needed a way to share our player allocation and subsequent draft. The technology and opportunity Twitter presented seemed like the perfect way for us to share these events in real-time.
It's safe to say that the MLS off-season has included a lot of presentations. Not that I mind, in fact anybody that's ever worked with me will tell you that I love a good Power Point. But in all this prepping and presenting to our ticket sales professionals, digital leads, internal staff, and even our players, three best practices in personal social media continue to surface.
MLS hosted a Business Summit in Columbus earlier in September, which offered a great opportunity for club and league employees to discuss ideas and align goals. Not surprisingly, social media was a hot topic of conversation, and I presented a session on trends we're seeing in the space. I've reworked them a bit from that presentation to make them more general and posted a similar list here.
After the course in St. Lucia, I flew to St. Kitts and Nevis, where I had the honor of working
as a Communications and Marketing Instructor for another FIFA Women's Com-Unity Seminar.
My flight out of St. Lucia was really early in the morning, and after a short layover in
Antigua, I was on my way to the island of St.
St. Lucia, a tropical island in the Eastern Caribbean, is an absolutely breathtaking, scenic
place with incredibly friendly people. The country has a small population of about 160,000 people,
and every single person I passed by whether in the FIFA Women's Com-Unity Seminar itself, or on my
way out to dinner greeted me with a smile and a warm welcome.
As I type this, I'm sitting in Newark airport... post MLS All-Star Game and NSCAA Board of
Directors meeting, and pre-FIFA Com-Unity Course in St. Lucia...
And I'm thinking to myself, "Yeah, I'm absolutely exhausted, but I really must be the luckiest
person on the planet. I do what I love and I love what I do.
#KeepHerInTheGame That's the hashtag the Women's Sports Foundation is pushing throughout the
weekend to raise awareness of two key issues:
- The 40th Anniversary of Title IX (June 23, 1972)
- By age 14, girls are dropping out of sports at twice the rate of boys.
WSF is working to mobilize the sporting community to support girls and young women to continue
playing, because, "when they walk away from sport, they walk away from their potential.
I was invited to the Home of FIFA in Zurich, Switzerland, for the Women's Football Instructors
Seminar, from March 20-23, 2012. My work with FIFA is generally focused on Marketing and
Communications for Com-Unity Seminars, so I'm not really sure how to express my gratitude for this
incredible opportunity to come be a part of what I'd call, "coaches week," in Zurich.
I traveled to Austin, TX, last week, as NFL invited me to speak on a panel to their digital
teams about how we're using social media at MLS. I was excited and humbled to have been invited;
the NFL is one of the organizations I'm constantly looking to for ideas and inspiration (did you
see the social media command center for Superbowl?
I arrived tonight in Vancouver, B.C., for the FIFA/CONCACAF Conference on the FIFA Women's World
Cup in Germany 2011. After looking through my brochure, I'm excited to see that many coaches,
instructors and staff from FIFA projects I've worked on previously, and many of my fellow
Americans, will be here.
What would the NSCAA Convention be without the added excitement (and pressure) of speaking? For
the second year in a row, my good friend and peer Ryan Knapp and I presented together. Ryan and I
met in 2009 at Tweet Blowing the Whistle on Social Media and have bantered back and forth on all
things digital and social media since.
The 2012 NSCAA Convention could once again be called: The busiest week of my life. Here's the
play-by-play, through a few select photos from the camera on my iPhone. I've posted the photos in
chronological order, enjoy!
Tuesday, January 10
Arrived in Kansas City and made my way over to the Kansas City Convention Center to check things
out.
After Twitter's recent compilation of Twitter Stories, the good folks at MLSsoccer.com took a
moment to reflect on the tremendous impact this social medium has had on Major League Soccer and
the American soccer experience. We posted a few of our favorites to the site in December, which you
can see here.
I'm currently running for Secretary of the NSCAA. The election winner will be announced at the
annual business meeting at the NSCAA Convention in Kansas City on Friday, Jan. 13, so as we're
getting closer to the event, I thought it would be good to share my answers to the 12 questions the
NSCAA asks each candidate to file.
MLS Cup was this past Sunday, November 20, 2011. This post will describe how we used The
Grid to help organize our MLS Cup social media plan. My goal in sharing this is to paint a
picture and share a tool that I find effective, rather than delve into details about the campaign,
so this is very top-level.
