Archive for the ‘News & Events’ Category

  • 06 Feb

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    My Day with Jim

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    Got a shot at tickets to this year’s Extreme Beer Fest in Boston and who could pass that up!? Headed to good ‘ole Mass last Thursday and started my weekend with a throughly enjoyable away-team victory as the Canes finished their season sweep of the Boston Bruins (defending Stanley Cup champs!) with a shutout. Go Cam! I also got to hang out with my brother Bab from Bahston (that’s phonetic spelling, for your enjoyment) before he headed out to a bachelor party in Chicago.

    But let’s face it, the real draw was the beer (sorry, Bab). And did we ever enjoy some beer! Started out the tastings with a trip to Sam Adams (I’ll come back to this) then hit up Harpoon Brewery before going to EBF’s “Night of the Barrels” tasting. Saturday we rented a car and headed to beautiful, frozen New Hampshire. Once there we got a brew tour from Smuttynose, enjoyed lunch at the Portsmith Brewery and discovered a very young brewery, opened a mere 6 months ago (and owned and operated by two ladies – represent!) called Throwback. Then we headed back to Boston for EBF take two, and another 100+ beers to sample. Yes, if you’re wondering, my liver was pissed off with me.

    photo shoot

    The photo shoot out front

    I don’t want to undermine the sheer joy that was the sampling of dozens of beers and a variety of breweries but I do have to recount the coolest event of the trip. I overslept on Friday morning (long story) and we wandered out to Jamaica Plains a bit late for our planned Boston Beer Company tour. As we came around the corner of the brewery we stumbled on a photo shoot with none other than Jim Koch, founder of Sam Adams, and a number of his cohorts and brewers (you may have seen these folks on various Sam Adams commercials). I, being a total fangirl, was gushing at the mere sight of all these famous beer-y people and immediately started snapping photos. And just when I thought it could get any better, it turned out Jim was going to be leading our tour of the brewery!

    Now, this isn’t a production locations for Sam Adams beer- they’ve moved on to much larger locations but they keep the site of their original brewery available for tour and for brewing small batches of their Utopia (limited-edition, high alcohol content) beers. So the tour is normally relatively short as I understand it – about 30 to 45 minutes. Jim talked to us for almost two hours. He talked about how Sam Adams got started, his family history, how beer is made, how they made some of their brewing and bottling decisions, what he thinks about beer in general (and some larger breweries specifically!) and he told some truly crazy and hilarious stories from his 25+ years in the beer industry. He’s met some weird people and made some strange brews! Best line of the day by far — when asked why he’d never sold Sam Adams he said, “I think there’s enough rich ass holes in the world. There’s not enough brewers.”

    Can't remember what he was talking about here but he was a really happy, animated guy. Hard to get him to hold still in a shot!

    Whether it was because it was on-location and super fresh, or having Jim Koch serve me, my Sam Adams never tasted better than it did that day. Really a wonderful beer. And I was so excited and inspired at the end of the event that I volunteered for an interview for the cameras (the who tour Jim did was filmed). Had to sign a waiver and they seemed happy with me so I guess I should keep an eye out for my face on some Sam Adams promotional materials!

    So that’s my visit with Sam Adams and Jim Koch. I really did enjoy the beer festival – I know I mostly skipped all mention of it here but check out my post on the GirlsPintOut blog to learn more about the best of the extreme beers. Oh! And I have to throw a huge helping of gratitude to Jason and Mike for being awesome beer fest buddies (I’ll go to a beer fest with you guys anytime!), wonderful New Hampshire tour guides (FANS DRINK DRIVE) and all-around nice guys.

  • 07 Nov

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    BarSpeedCAUSE: A Conference(s) Recap

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    Whew! October was a busy month. In six weeks (last week of September and through the first week of November) I participated in four conferences; specifically I presented at all four and helped plan two. Yeah. Crazy. And stupid. That being said, I love being busy and I love conference planning and have no problem with public speaking so as far as I’m concerned it was totally worthwhile.

    My recap of the conferences and presentations is overdue. I did a brief post on the Social Media Strategies Summit in September, but here are my thoughts on the other three…

    BarCampRDU

    BarCampRDU was one of the events I helped plan and I was pleased with how it went. Despite some strong marketing the turnout was disappointing, but the space (which was a last-minute change due to problems with our usual location) worked beautifully and the sponsorships, shirts, and most of the presentations all worked out great.
    I pitched two talks for BarCamp: Social Media Strategies and Women In BarCamp. Women in BarCamp is a hot-button issue for me. BarCamp is traditionally very technical and the nature of it (and possibly the way the conference is planned and marketed) doesn’t lend itself to strong female participation. But let’s be honest here: women weren’t really flocking to technology jobs in general anyway. In past years there have been only a handful of women who have attended BarCamp and even fewer actually speak at the event. This year was typical – less that 10% of the attendees were female and I was the only one to pitch a topic. It was frustrating: despite a great session with really wonderful feedback and support from the participants it was daunting that there was less female participation than ever. Even more discouraging was the planning session for next year’s BarCampRDU, which seemed to want to move back to a more limited-scope and in consequence a style that offers even less support for women participants.
    On the bright side this did introduce me to some new organizations for females who are interested in technology in the Triangle area. Hopefully I’ll have follow-up on these groups in the future if I can find some time to investigate them further. On the downside I don’t think I’ll be helping out with BarCampRDU again, at least not for a couple years.

    SpeedCon

    My graduate degree is mere weeks away from official completion. This semester I’m president of the NC State student chapter of SIGDOC (Special Interest Group on the Design of Communication) and one of our goals was to put on a conference on communication. We had an offer from the Carolina STC (Society for Technical Communication) chapter to offer a joint conference, which they would help to finance if we would help to host. The offer was too good to pass up so on October 29th we had out first SpeedCon.
    Like BarCampRDU, SpeedCon is an unconference, This means it’s very free-flowing with topics “pitched” in the morning and the schedule set based on the  participants and their expertise. Unlike BarCamp, SpeedCon is not well-known and the concept of an unconference was new to most of the participants. Despite the hurdle of having to find volunteers to talk and the need to educate the participants on the nature of the conference, things went very well. Participation was excellent and there were some really fantastic topics. I think everyone learned something and there was a lot of opportunity for networking between students, faculty, and professionals. I’m excited about the success and I’m hoping SpeedCon becomes an annual event!

    UNC CAUSE

    Every year those of us working in IT at the various 17 UNC System campuses make our way to some “big” North Carolina city (Wilmington, Winston-Salem, Boone) and spend three days sharing problems, discussing strategies and fighting for drink tickets at our annual conference. As it happens, last year UNC CAUSE was put on by NC State, and I and my colleagues put an exhausting amount of time and energy into making it a professional event. That memory, while faded, is far from gone so I was very happy to simply have to present this year.
    I presented with my colleague Dr. (Leslie) Dare and our presentation, included below, was on social media strategy and policy for campuses. I feel like the presentation went well despite a really unfortunately horrendous hangover (Yes, I mixed beer and liquor. Yes, I should know better by now). I was a little disappointed that we didn’t get to have more discussion on the topic as we sort of ran out of time. I was also disappointed that my boss’s boss’s boss who attended the presentation focused on some of the more short-sighted elements of the personal responsibility (I’m already a fan, thanks) and failed to charge us with taking more of a leadership role in our campus social media strategy.

    Laying Down the Law: Social Media Policy and Strategy

    View more presentations from Jen Riehle

    So that’s it for me. November is positively boring after the chaos of October so one might even look forward to more posts on here! No promises, of course.

  • 26 Sep

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    Social Media Strategies Summit

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    Boston SMSSLast week I attended the Social Media Strategies Summit in Boston, MA. This was a conference for businesses and non-profits to discuss the use of social media in marketing, communication strategies, fundraising, community-building and much more. It was all about making use of the right tools at the right time and it was great.

    I met several experts in the business and non-profit arenas and got lots of good ideas. Because I work for a university I was not really the target audience for some of the content but it was still worthwhile and I picked up several social media policy ideas and samples which will certainly come in handy. I also presented at the conference – I did a session on community-building, which seemed to be well-received. You can view it on Slideshare if you’re interested.

    Above all it was nice – and quite validating – to hear much of the stuff I knew mirrored back to me from the “experts”. Something that is so new and cutting edge, that changes every day, is hard to stay on top of and I had some concerns about offering legitimately helpful and insightful information. Happily I was able to share my knowledge with confidence that came from experience with campus projects, research for grad school and opportunities to work with groups outside of campus. And it was neat to be able to hang out with people as dorky about social media as I am!

    In other social media news, I posted another article for Examiner, this one on Google+. Check it out:

    Google is fabulous at providing us with the things we need, often before we need them. It’s possible we really need an alternative to Facebook, we just don’t know it yet. Facebook has done a good job of pushing its constituents away by limiting privacy options and occasionally publishing our phone numbers without warning; there’s every possibility that someday there will be a mass exodus when Facebook goes a step too far and starts choosing our friends for us. Until then, however, the only people who seem to be inhabiting Google+ are the lonely few who truly hate Facebook and Mark Zuckerburg, or who honestly love Google and its own intensive stalking tendencies.

    Continue reading on Examiner.com Google+: Three Months Later – Raleigh Social Media | Examiner.com

  • 15 Sep

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    BarCamp

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    I look forward to several annual Triangle events: IgniteRaleigh, BeerFest, the Sanderson Band Competition (yeah, what? I’m a band geek, ok!), and I’m very pleased to be able to help out with one of those events types of events this year– BarCamp RDU.

     BarCamp is an unconference. In case you’re not familiar with that term, it’s when lots of people show up with a variety of ideas for talks based around a topic – in this case that topic is “technology”. Vague, yes? But an unconference is uniquely perfect for a topic like technology which is so dynamic and fast-paced that a traditional conference format often can’t keep up. Rather than submitting a talk, getting it approved and then waiting two months (or more) to present, folks arrive with the tools and knowledge on the day of the event, ready to chat about what’s relevant, recently released and in the news.

    BarCamp has one thing missing and that’s girls. Not surprisingly, tech conferences sometime fall a little short in female representation and part of my goal in helping out this years it to see what we can do about getting more of the fairer sex to show up and perhaps even <gasp /> present! So if you’re reading this blog and you’re a chick who’s interested in technology you should at least see about snagging a ticket and checking things out. Ladies, let’s represent, yo!

    This years BarCamp will be October 15th – tickets are available tomorrow, 10AM on EventBrite. They go fast, so get them now! Hope to see you there!

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BarCamp

  • 20 Apr

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    Social Media and Technical Communication

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    I’m very happy to report that I’ve completed and submitted my capstone project for my Masters degree. Huzzah! The project, to create a university, graduate-level course on social media and technical communication, was a big task and represents a lot of hours of work over the course of this semester. I’m very pleased to have it in the bag.

    I’m not quite done, however. Next Tuesday, April 26th I’ll be doing my defense presentation for my department faculty, my peers and other interested parties. As you might imagine I’m pretty nervous but also confident in my knowledge of the subject matter. And I’m looking forward to really being done.

    I’m including a copy of the defense presentation below. The project work can be seen on my website: http://www.jenreally.com/675project.
    Please feel free to look it over and add comments or provide feedback if you have some. I really want this to be a conversation piece and jumping off point for future improvements and the doubtless revisions that will need to be made to a project on something as dynamic as social media. Any interest is appreciated!

    Social Media and Technical Communication: A Course in Progress

    View more presentations from Jen Riehle
  • 22 Mar

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    TED Comes to Campus

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    I don’t get a lot (== understatement) of opportunities for training or development in my current job but every now and then the NC State campus will host an interesting speaker or worthwhile seminar. The prize of working in an intellectual environment is that sometimes we get the opportunity to expand our horizons. Today I went to TEDxNCSU.

    TED Talks are “ideas worth spreading” – think “viral” in the good sense. Celebrities, comedians, professors, scientists and everyday people come to these TED events and share inspiring ideas. TEDx events are meant to be TED Talks on a smaller local scale and today’s event had students, professors and professionals from NC State and the surrounding area.

    The complete program can be found online and video of all the presenters is available on YouTube. In the meantime, here are a few thoughts I had about several of today’s sessions, and links to a couple from TED that I found particularly inspiring.

    Self Control: The Problem and How to Get Over It
    Dr. Dan Ariely

    This was one of the best talks of the day and a great opening. Dr. Ariely was a great presenter with facinating stories. He’s an Economics professor from Duke and has written a couple book on irrational behavior that I’ve got to get on my Amazon Wishlist. His talk discussed delayed gratification and how we can mitigate poor decision-making by removing the tempting options. Could be applied to everyday life in so many ways…

    Journalism and Discourse Without Newspapers
    Chase Whiteside and Erick Stoll

    These guys came out and talked about a problem that is well-known, but often avoided: the forthcoming demise of the newspaper. More specifically, the movement of the written news word to the internet and what it means for journalism. There are no journalists like there were ten or fifteen years ago – newspapers can’t afford them. Investigative research has all but disappeared and there are a lot fewer folks out there seeking the truth and aiming to keep our politicians honest. They also pointed out the somewhat difficult truth, that our online news is what we choose: often a partisan source, for whatever side we prefer, that gives us news in short bursts. Make no mistake, the way we consume news has changed and it’s certainly not all for the better.

    Buying Happiness
    Dr. Stacy Wood

    This was the second of two talks on happiness and while the presenter is an expert in marketing, this presentation spoke very much to economics, similar to Dr. Ariely’s presentation. This talk had to do with the connection between happiness and money. We know money can’t buy happiness but we continually make decisions that refute that: we are inspired to do the things which make us more money, even to the detriment of things we know make us happy. Our free time, vacation, family priorities often get put on the backburner for our work, satisfying or not. It was a sobering look at consumerism, especially the discussion on retail therapy which, as my overstuffed shoe closet will attest, is as a very real thing. We’re hunters and gathers: we feel better, more in control, when we can go forth and get the things we want, no matter how unnecessary or irrational. Mmmmm, shoes.

    While the in-house presenters were largely very good it’s probably not surprising that many of the most inspirational talks were the ones done by The Professionals. “Real” TED Talks were shared over the course of the day and I’m including two here that I particularly enjoyed.

    The first is a very brief discussion on “How to Start a Movement”. The second, a much longer presentation, talks about the value of music and how it moves us all and brings us together. Both are very much worth your time and I hope you enjoy them.

  • 31 Jan

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    All-Star City

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    I am very proud of my city.

    Raleigh, NC hosted the NHL All-Star game (and associated a activities) this weekend and it was fantastic. I don’t know how the experience was for an outsider visiting or watching at home but from my perspective Raleigh was a wonderful host, threw some great parties, offered up some beautiful weather and just generally impressed.

    A few high points:

    The downtown convention center immediately following the Fantasy Draft

    RBC Center

    My pretty stadium

    Inside at the Skillz Competition (fastest skater).

    My nephew wants to go meet the Sedin brothers and two other All-Stars enjoying some Starbucks. Saw them Sunday morning at North Hills.

     

  • 05 Jan

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    Welcome, 2011

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    Had a really fantastic Christmas and New Year. While they haven’t lacked for stress and drama, the last two weeks have been informative – transitional – as the time around the new year often is.

    There are three relationships that got some consideration over the last couple weeks. Despite the fact that I have a blog and occasionally expound upon my feelings at length I’m generally pretty uncomfortable doing so publicly. But I feel the need to make a few comments here and now – for posterity, I suppose.

    The first relationship is with work – with my job, office, whatever you wanna call it. It’s not in great shape and I’m really going to have to take some time over the next year to figure that out. Hopefully things will look better with time and if nothing else I’ll have finished my grad degree in the next year. It is sobering, after dealing with the stress of the last few weeks of work to realize that this stuff – stressful though it may be – doesn’t mean nearly as much as the other two relationships. That helps to put this issue at least, into perspective.

    The second is with my cousin. We had somewhat of a falling out over the holiday. I understand her perspective and naturally, I understand my own. I need to talk to her but I also need to give that some time – for both of us, I think. I’m sad and a little worried about it but I’m confident that with a little time and discussion all will be resolved. Hey, we’re family. I love her and she knows it.

    The third, I will leave vague and say only that relationships can be a terrible, stupid, mess of complexity. And they can also be fantastic. It’s even possible for them to be both at the same time. I’m giving up on someone that is very important to me because I know it’s for the best but it doesn’t make it feel good. And I know it won’t feel good for awhile.

    Despite what sounds like a sad and pathetic blog post I’m really doing ok. Sure, I had other plans for this week- hell, for this year – but you make do with what you have in life and the people you’ve got. There’s a lot of good things on the horizon and I’m really excited to see what’s to come in 2011. I have high hopes. Bring it on.

  • 14 Nov

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    The Gospel of Social Media

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    While my current job doesn’t have a lot of social media work built into it, it is still something I find myself thinking and talking about a lot. Since I do website development for clients we’re often asked about the need for social media accounts and I frequently find myself trying to talk these folks off the proverbial ledge: you do not need 15 accounts in each of the “hawt” social networking tools. I’m also in a grad program for Technical Communication and have over my years in the program become something of an advocate for providing training on these tools in a professional environment. In fact, I’m requesting that my thesis project be to develop curriculum for a graduate course in Social Media and Technical Communication.

    So when my friend Mike asked me to present on social media for a professional conference that was coming up (he works in Parks & Recreation) I happily agreed to help. I figured I could kill two birds with one stone and also use this presentation for the UNC CAUSE conference my office was hosting (more on that conference to come). My presentation with Mike is tomorrow morning; the CAUSE presentation that I did with my co-worker John Martin, was last week. I can’t herald success from the rooftops yet but I’m plenty happy that the end is in site. While the two presentations overlapped A LOT, they were still both A LOT of work.

    So here, for your very own chewy, social enjoyment, are my slides from the presentation for the NCRPA conference. Credit to Mike (@sinkawitz) and huge props to my UNC CAUSE co-presenter John, the Blog King (@nematome) for their co-presenter awesomeness.

    Hope you enjoy!

    Integrating Social Media

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  • 01 Nov

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    Geek Girls Unite

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    I recently attended BarCampRDU for the first time. I’m not going to go into detail explaining the concept behind this event but in a few words it’s a tech-heavy un-conference that takes place annually in the Raleigh area.

    It was a great event. Circumstances being what they were I was only there for half of the day but it was well organized, the sessions I went to were great and there were some really cool people there – kudos to the planners and participants!

    As the day began to wind down I noticed some dissent in the #barcampRDU twitter stream that I thought was very interesting.

    tesmith #BarCampRDU feels like there is No Girls Allowed sign on clubhouse. For example, beer socials not comfortable for lone geek girls #justsayin

    There were several retweets of this sentiment, but I don’t want to make it sound all bad – there were comments on both sides:

    tlkativ I’ve gone four years and never felt intimidated or unwelcome. @ruby @therab @wiggitywack @varshachawla@lazyphiphi#barcamprdu

    theRab @tlkativ @wiggitywack @varshachawla @tesmith i think the diverity issue is one of awareness not intimidation.#barcamprdu

    There was plenty more Twitter conversation on the topic and I’ve heard it came up IRL conversation at the end of BarCamp; the idea of more diversity in general, and making women specifically feel more welcome. Personally, I was impressed by the number of women at the event – I would guess around 15% were women – which I hear was a better turn out than in past years. It was notable, however, that of the 40 or so sessions that were pitched, only two came from women.

    In truth, I have my own “girl going to barcamp” story. I almost didn’t go to BarCamp at all as I had a couple of people, yes they were men, make comments that it was a “really technical conference” and that the sessions wouldn’t really be something I would be interested in. It’s not important what was said, what is important is that comments were made and they stuck with me – I did get the impression that I wasn’t altogether welcome at this conference. And no, I don’t think it was personal or intentional. It is what it is and any girl who works in or cares about IT gets this from time to time. But that is a big part of why we need girls at BarCamp.

    We need girls to show up and have a presence; to own their experiences and get up and talk about the things they’re passionate about. We need girls to be out there sharing their ideas and networking so we have resources to turn to when we have questions.

    To me the takeaway here isn’t recognizing that girls need to get out there, it’s recognizing that we need to DO something about it. All of us.

    So… Huh. I guess I should do something now.

    <cricket />

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