Last March, I spoke at South by Southwest Interactive (see my recap), presenting a solo presentation titled “The Art of Responding to Feedback From Your Community.” The basis of this talk was a blog post that I made on ManagingCommunities.com in January of 2009.

The presentation is based around my three steps for responding to feedback. In short, they are: appreciate, acknowledge and consider. Be appreciative that someone contacted you, acknowledge their perspective and what they are saying and then consider it and how applicable it may or may not be.

If you’d like to check it out, the full video has been posted at ManagingCommunities.com, along with slides.

As part of my work on my new about and speaking pages, I wanted to create a profile on SlideShare and upload all of my past presentations, making it easier to share them and share the style of my slides.

Just in case anyone is interested, my username is iFroggy. Here is one of the presentations that I have uploaded, from the panel that I was on at Blog World & New Media Expo 2009:

Directly following Blog World & New Media Expo in October, I was able to attend and speak at Social Media Business Forum in my home state of North Carolina.

I was on two panels: “Advertising and the Social Web: Can it Work?” with Gregory Ng, the Creative Director at Brooks Bell Interactive and David Millsaps, Senior Web Architect at VisionPoint Marketing; and “Building and Managing an Online Community” with Ryan Boyles, an Advisory Software Engineer for IBM and Laurie Smithwick, Founder and Creative Director of LEAP Design and Founder of Kirtsy.

It was the inaugural edition of the conference, organized by Jeff Cohen, Kipp Bodnar, Ryan Boyles and Wayne Sutton and it was a wonderful experience.

For more on my time at the event, please check out the full recap at ManagingCommunities.com.

photo credit: BuzzShift

For what seems like forever, I’ve been working on my just launched about and speaking pages. Probably the biggest reason I did it was because I’m hoping to speak more. Since finishing “Managing Online Forums,” I’ve done 11 engagements at 7 different events.

While this doesn’t make me a veteran, it means I’m not just starting out, either. So, I’m hoping to get more serious about speaking and I would like it to become a slightly larger part of my life.

When I speak, I tend to focus on the value of social media and online community to individuals and businesses and how best to participate in these areas as a manager/owner, marketer or user/member.

I love speaking at social media, internet and technology focused conferences, but I also hope to branch out and talk about these things at events not for our industry, but for other industries who can benefit from what we know.

So, if you’re a conference or event organizer, please keep me in mind (I have a special speaking contact form). If you’re a speaker like me and you happen to have a panel or presentation you’d like me to be involved in, please don’t hesitate to contact me. Thank you for reading.

In October, I attended Blog World & New Media Expo for the second consecutive year. It was a great event and I had a lot of fun.

Besides meeting a lot of people, seeing a bunch of friends and attending some sessions, I lead a panel discussion called “Social Media: The Bad and The Ugly” with Amber Naslund; Director of Community at Radian6 and blogger at Altitude Branding, Wayne Sutton; Partner at OurHashtag and blogger at SocialWayne.com and Robert Scoble; Managing Director at Building43.com at Rackspace and blogger at Scobleizer. I also did a book signing for “Managing Online Forums” and participated in a community Q&A at the Skimlinks booth on the trade show floor.

If you’re interested in reading more, I’ve written about my experiences in great detail in my long recap over at ManagingCommunities.com, including pictures, video and panel slides.