Kudos to my new friends at Stanford

[#1]

As I mentioned in my previous post, last week I had the privilege of speaking to a class at Stanford Continuing Studies titled "Web 2.0 and its Business Applications."

Despite being right before the July Fourth holiday, the class was full -- but thankfully, I somehow subdued my usual bout of stage fright and was able to deliver my presentation titled: "Challenges, pitfalls & possibilities of implementing and building an online community."

My conversation focused on things I learned at Intuit, Symantec and Cadence.

The class is lead by Robin Stavisky, founder and managing partner of New Venture Marketing, a high-technology marketing and communications company -- with some help from her teaching assistant, Carla Ivette Yashiro. They summed up my presentation (along with a link to download it) here.  

The class meets every Tuesday from 7-9 p.m. The students range from (suspected) undergraduates to (probable) seasoned professionals -- folks who are either finding themselves responsible for social media initiatives or who are interested in gaining insight into how social media tools can be effectively used in a wide range of scenarios.  

Robin is a fantastic lecturer. I was scheduled to speak at 8 p.m., so I sat in the back for the first hour. What I love about her teaching style is that she uses real-world examples to drive home the topic at hand. You can get a taste for some of the lectures by following her blog.

Forrester's Jeremiah Owyang and Intel social media strategist  Michael Brito (his "Twitter Manifesto" is a must-read) are scheduled to speak next Tuesday evening -- and I think I'll accept Robin's invitation to sit in on that lecture. 

[#2]

Good for you, Tom, sharing what you know. Wish I could have sat in on your talk.

[#3]

I looked through the slides - you have an interesting background!