Diving In … Dallas Digital Summit 2012

This year was a year of learning for me.  I forced myself into the deep end by going head-first into the world of social media.  No baby steps for me.  One of the smartest and impulsive things I did was register for the inaugural event of The Dallas Digital Summit.  Don’t get me wrong, I was nervous to attend.  All these thoughts started to race in my mind…

“these are going to be professionals, the information is going to be wayyyyy above what I know, they’re so gonna realize I’m an idiot”

BUT I pushed myself and went anyhow…and am I glad I did!  The minute I sat down and looked around me, I felt at home.  Everyone was tweeting, checking their networks, talking social media lingo, exchanging ideas….it was at that moment, I realized I wasn’t crazy and that people with passion were all around me (and no one thought I was an idiot for being so social media happy…woohoo!).  

Attending the Summit was probably one of the BEST things I did for my career in 2012.  It gave me a chance to network within the DFW social media community and to expand my reach.  I talked with people who developed social media tools that I use, learned about new apps that I could utilize, and listened intently to the speakers that presented at the sessions I attended.  I never realized how much I would learn from just a 2-day event!  Not only that, but by tweeting like a mad woman while at the event on the sessions I was attending my Twitter follow count increased by over 40 people AND it led to 4 job interviews!  Seeing as how these were people in agencies, at companies, in start-ups all attending and tweeting…they were open to networking and recruiting talent and I was open to moving forward with my career, so it worked out perfectly!

Overall, the 2-day event definitely opened my eyes and gave me that push to want to continue on this path.  I realized that just because my circle of friends don’t really understand what I do or why I do it, there are others out there that do and have the same crazy passion for it as I do.  I learned a vast amount about the different aspects of Digital Media (which will be covered in subsequent posts) and some of the information I even used in my class projects; which, I believe helped lead me to my new role as a Social Media Marketer for ReTrak by Emerge Technologies.  By implementing what I learned, I elevated myself and I couldn’t think of a better outcome for such an impulsive decision.

Remember….