As many of my dedicated readers know, I am a fiend for social media. I love the way that social media connects people and builds communities where communities did not previously exist.
I also appreciate the way that social media can help small start-up businesses promote their products and services. As I often tell my clients, you can pay to put an ad in your local paper and you can be assured that the paper will be in the cat litter or blue box by the end of the week. You send out a tweet or post information on Twitter, Facebook or your organization’s blog and it is has the potential to “go viral”. The only time a newspaper ad has gone viral is when the cat did her business on it. You choose which kind of viral you want to go.
In order to help small and large businesses grow their social media and business development skills, the second annual Vancouver Freelance Camp is taking place from 9 to 5 on September 10th, 2011.
The UNconference is happening on Saturday, September 10, 2011 at The Network Hub New Westminster. Experienced business personnel and successful local freelancers will be sharing their stories as well as insight on how to grow a freelancer’s business.
Because I am such a fiend for social media and I believe in the work that the people from The Network Hub (the hosts for this year’s Freelance Camp UNconference) I have decided to add the support of Stacey Robinsmith dot com to this event. I will be sponsoring five (5) people who want to attend this year’s Freelance Camp.
To get a ticket from Stacey Robinsmith dot com all you need to do is add a comment to this post. In that comment say why you want to go to the Freelance Camp and what you hope to gain from attending the UNconference at The Network Hub River Market. Also, and this is the MOST important part, add your Twitter name, blog or website address to your comment. If you do not add at least one of these social media connections you will not be eligible for one of my free tickets.
The first five (5) people to comment on this post with the necessary links in their comment will be the winners of the Stacey Robinsmith dot com tickets to the Freelance Camp.
I will arrange so that the winning entries have a ticket waiting for them at The Network Hub, River Market, New Westminster.
Now here is some more information about the Freelance Camp UNconference from the organizers:
This is a true UNconference, the schedule is created the morning of when the attendees arrive. The day starts with guests pitching to be presenters for the day and the freelancers voting on who they want to hear speak.
Topics from landing a freelancer’s dream project to dealing with the nitty gritty details of doing business will be discussed. The Freelance Camp is the opportunity to make connections with like-minded people across many fields. Over 130 people attended last year’s event, including freelancers from Victoria, Kelowna and Seattle.
The UNconference hosted 22 presentations where 196 cups of Waves Coffee were consumed. You won’t leave empty handed either because $5400 worth of goodies and $448 worth of door prizes were given to attendees last year to make being a freelancer even better. Attendees were also part of a wave of social broadcasting with 1478 tweets mentioning the event and were also a top trending topic in Canada on twitter for three hours.
The success of Freelance Camp raised $1100 last year and donated all its proceeds to Mental Health Camp – a conference on examining the possibilities of using social media to achieve and maintain mental health. It is important to Freelance Camp to give back to local initiatives and was excited to have Mental Health Camp as the benefactor.
The satisfaction of last year’s event has propelled Vancouver Freelance Camp to make this year’s event even bigger and accessible to more freelancers. We’ll be the first local event to use Google+ Hangouts to engage a maximum of 25 attendees per session off-site. Through live streaming video, participants can view and ask questions in Google+ Hangout allowing for 725 online viewings.
Registration to Freelance Camp is just $10 with the proceeds going to charity. For more information, or to register for the event, visit the website at http://www.thenetworkhub.ca/freelancecamp/
You can also follow Vancouver Freelance Camp on twitter at @604freelancers.
Freelance Camp
September 10, 2011, from 9am – 5pm
Comments
5 responses to “Freelance Camp at The Network Hub – River Market, New Westminster”
As a freelance writer, I actually pitched my editor at a Vancouver paper about doing a story on this. Haven’t heard back yet but I’d be down with attending even if he passes. I also used to write for a New Westminster paper and am a supporter of River Market. This sounds like just the sort of thing they would be the perfect hosts for and I’d like to be there for it.
Plus, of course, the possibility of maybe, you know, scoring a gig out of it…
Andrew, welcome to Freelance Camp!
I’ve been looking to break into freelance work for a while, but I don’t know of anywhere aside from Craigslist to search for jobs. Is this Freelance Camp for already established writers, or web for people with no real resume in the field get started?
Thanks for the post Stacey!
-Shane
@ShaneBurns
As recommended by the great Stacey Robinsmith, I was advised to go! I need to connect with the right people and learn learn learn. Also like the idea that they raise funds for charity!
My twitter account: http://twitter.com/#!/VanDogRunner and my web-site: http://www.vancouverdogrunner.com
Thanks for this post, Stacey! I am totally thinking of going and pitching a talk on project management 🙂 (I can’t enter the giveaway but I’m totally promoting it!)