It’s not too late to sign up for the First Annual Lowell Social Media Conference which is this Saturday, December 7, 2013 from 10 am until 1 pm at Lowell Telecommunications Corp (LTC) at 246 Market Street in Lowell, right next to the National Park visitor center. To register, go to our event Facebook Page or email me at DickHoweJr@gmail.com. (And if you don’t get a chance to do either of those, just show up – you won’t be turned away).

There are two primary goals of this event. The first is to promote the use of social media as a tool of community engagement For All of Lowell (to steal a slogan from Derek Mitchell). The second goal is to bring together a bunch of people interested in social media and let them talk to each other – I’m convinced that something good has to come out of that.

Here’s the schedule:

10:00 am – Arrive, grab coffee and a muffin (from Brewed Awakening), then grab a seat;

10:10 am – Panel One – Twitter – Strategies for using Twitter locally to promote causes, events, products, etc; to share news and community information; to interact with others. These are the starting points of a discussion that will be led by Liz Smith (MadeinLowell), Yovani Baez, and Emil Kuruvilla (Merrimack Valley Sandbox);

10:40 am – Panel Two – Short Form Video – Video is a powerful tool and the costs are basically zero, but few people use it. Why not? Here are some ideas for short videos you might do and some suggestions for sharing them across different platforms. Jessica Wilson (LTC), Danielle McFadden (Chamber of Commerce), and Phil Lupsievicz (National Park) will lead this discussion;

11:10 am – Break

11:25 am – Social Media in the 2013 City Election – What impact did social media have in the recent city election? How was it used by candidates? What might be done differently? Dan Rourke, Derek Mitchell, and Stacie Hargis will lead this discussion;

12:00 pm – Using Social Media to Promote Community Engagement in Lowell – What are the strengths of social media as used in Lowell to promote community engagement? What are its weaknesses? What could be done better? What are some quantitative indicators of community engagement? What topics should be covered at the Second Annual Social Media Conference? What should be done until then? Is there anything else to be discussed? The panel for this topic is the entire group. I’ll be the moderator. We’ll keep track of the responses and continue the discussion online.

1:00 pm – End of conference – Lunch on your own .