Ladies and Gentlemen, the Social Media Train is moving!

REALLY NEW UPDATE: The good people at Talk Fusion and Network Delaware have loaded some great videos - click here for Congressman Castle's talk and click here to see the first human bar graph video

NEW UPDATE: Check out this cool 70 second video from the event by clicking here

UPDATE: There's 7 videos from this event available by clicking here

Friday, February 19, 2010 - More than 200 people gathered at Bella Vita at Cavaliers Country Club to learn, share, and discuss Social Media for more than three hours - if you were there, you know how incredible the event was - if you couldn't make it, you were missed and we hope to see you in the near future at some more events.

So, here's a quick recap:

First, I need to clarify something - many people are giving me credit for doing a lot of this stuff - the fact is I just run around talking about what other people are actually doing. In this case, the people doing all of the heavy lifting are Rodney Jordan and Laurie Bick. They laid the tracks for this train, set up the station, purchased the tickets (along with some much appreciated sponsors!), and invited all of us to jump on board - I'm grateful to be a passenger. If anyone walks away with tools and insights that help them grow their business, non-profit, arts organization, or even personal life, know that Rodney Jordan and Laurie Bick are the people you should be thanking!

Opening Speaker: Ken Anderson, Director, Entrepreneurial & Small Business Support with the Delaware Economic Development Office. Ken did a phenomenal job in helping us better understand Delaware's place in the national economy, our challenges, and our opportunities. Ken blew the crowd away!

Next, we heard some great success stories from Chris Marchak who is organizing the Red Robin Rocks event for the Ronald McDonald House, Kim Kostes from the Food Bank of Delaware, Wes Garnett, Jr., and Steve Roettger of COin Loft and Verge - then I got to create my first human bar graph to demonstrate how social media helped my company grow!

That's when we got a surprise visit from U.S. Congressman Mike Castle who was reading about the event on Twitter and decided to stop in and share his experiences with this new media.

Oh, did I mention that a whole bunch of people were twittering about the event - posting photos (some you see here) - and engaging in conversations with Governor Markell, State Representative Tom Kovach, and several others the whole time - this really was a cool event.

So, after Congressman Castle spoke, we heard from Whitney Hoffman about legal issues surrounding social media. Then we heard from Maya Paveza with TQI Consulting, Phil Woods with 2 Fish Group, and Carl Immediato about Talk Fusion.

By the way, the food was delicious!

Again, huge thanks to Rodney, Laurie, all of the sponsors, speakers, participants, and all who followed on twitter.