This is my afternoon live blogging at Web 2.0  expo in SF. Check out my morning web 2.0 session post too.

Here are the sessions I’m going and my notes:

Session: It’s the People, Stupid (Deborah Schultz and Brian Oberkirch)

I have to introduce Deborah a little more (I found her bio interesting)

An Internet-industry veteran and innovator, Deborah passionately believes in the power of technology to connect people, communities and business. She currently advises both start-ups and the Fortune 50 on the impact of social software on business strategy & customer relationships. She is also currently Procter & Gamble’s Strategic Adviser for Social Media and is developing a P&G Social Media Innovation Lab designed to actively explore and gain insights on the impact of the social web on business.

Previously, Deborah was Marketing Director at Six Apart, ran her own marketing consultancy firm, was a management consultant at AnswerThink and spent five years at Citibank where she developed many of the global bank’s first Internet initiatives. One of her proudest accomplishments was launching the Downtown Info Center, a lower Manhattan community center & online hub to revitalize lower Manhattan after the attacks of September 11th. Deborah is a graduate of Barnard College, Columbia University.

The former Manhattanite is now a tireless road warrior and can be found in SF, NYC, or Tel Aviv. But wherever she is, she’s always ‘connected’.

Interesting things from her passionate and very social/human speech:

• Break down the human factors in the social world: handshake, greeting, response, handoff, feedback, make me smarter about me

• How to bring these human factors to your web experience? Some examples are:

date stamp is a social contact (I’ll come back);

sign-in is a greeting (acknowledge me, e.g, Flickr greets people when they sign up);

give to get (make me smarter about me & you). e.g. http://www.dopplr.com/ tells where you traveled by presenting your foot prints in a nice way without you do much;

Handoff (did you know…)

Entertain me (in unusual way) e.g. etsy.com makes shopping human

meet others like you (wee this is fun) e.g. threadless

• Use “face” (image) when possible - to build human relations
• Use word differently - let people “heart” things, in stead of “favorite” (Etsy)

Tags: event, live blogging, Web 2.0, Web 2.0 Expo

During the weekend, I went to one event as part of the Stanford Entrepreneur Week. Most of the events are free. If you are interested in anything related to startups or entrepreneur, do check it out. It is a good event to learn, share and network with people in the entrepreneur fields of business and research.

The event I went is “Pitching and Presenting Workshop: How to Make Your Story Compelling”. The material from the workshop and presentation was nothing new, but very practical. What amzaed me is the fact that there are so many people are interested in “pitching”, yet there are few people who really knows how.

Here are my key learning that I would like to share from my own experience:

• Pitching happens every day on almost everything we do.

Pitching is not only a business activity. It happens at work, at home, at movie theatre, among colleagues, between wife and husband, among friends, online and offline…You and your friend were discussing if they would all go to the movie you want, it’s a pitch. Your husband or wife wants to buy a Graco car seat versus a Chicoo brand, it’s a pitch. You have an innovative idea on how to improve one project and you need to get your boss’ buy in, it’s a pitch. You run into a person at a bar, who could be your potential client, and you want him/her have more interests in your offering, it’s a pitch…

• Practice your pitch skills when ever you can.

With your wife, your boss, your colleagues, or someone you run into at a bar…

• Develop your pitch on your own brand - who you are - and always keep it in your back pocket

Have a short 2-3 sentence long pitch around your self: who you are, what you do, what might be interesting to your audience at the time. I found this tactic really helpful. It’s like the real and juicy inside-content of your “business card”, that helps others to know about you and what you do as a real person.

• Other common successful pitch elements:

The workshop summarized 3 main tips on how to create a compelling pitch from business perspective:

1. what’s the problem you are trying to solve
2. why it matters /why it is a problem
3. how you are going to solve the problem and why it’s different

I broadened these tactics to the general use for our day-to-day activities, not only business activities. The methods is actually quite simple: make it interesting to your audience at the time and keep it short.

Tags: entrepreneur, event, pitch, stanford, story telling