A big thank you to everyone who attended Manchester’s first Social Media Day

Thank you to everyone who attended Manchester’s first Social Media Day on 30th June 2010.

This inaugural Social Media Day was celebrated across the world, across time zones and included countless pieces of media produced from more than 30,000 tweets to hundreds of photos to many live streams and videos to showcase what each different community was doing and connect it with the rest of the world.

Manchester’s very own social media day was organised by the team at Skylab in just over a week and all done through social media. Speakers, guests, and even gifts for the prize draw were gathered through Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin (and a few phone calls but don’t tell anyone ..)

We ended up with a fantastic night which we hope educated, connected and brought the social media community of Manchester together. We even managed to hook up with two other Mashable events one in Portugal http://www.smdayportugal.com and the other in Sacramento, California in the good old US of A! And we even managed to make the ABC news!

Skylab make ABC news…

Thanks to our speakers who included:

@manairport – Manchester Airport manage 20 million passengers a year. John Greenway let us in on the secrets of their strategy in getting so many followers and how the recent volcanic ash problems have shown that the immediacy of social media can really enhance customer experience.

@realfreshtv – Chi-chi Ekweozor was joined by Rick Guttridge, MD of Smoking Gun PR @smokinggunpr in a short ‘armchair chat’ to share how their client Panda Licorice decided on what social media platforms to use and also how they used blogger outreach to reach important influencers. (And thanks to Rick for the free licorice!)

@yourstylist – Martine Alexander is one of the North West’s most sought-after fashion stylists with an established client base including time-precious professionals and high-profile celebrities. Martine gave an engaging talk about her twitter use but we still want to know the answer to the question – which celebs won’t let her tweet about them?!

@thehodge – Dominic ‘The Hodge’ Hodgson is the organiser of the Think Visibility conference and works behind the scenes for the gaming and retail sectors. Dom has been tweeting, blogging and generally getting into trouble with social media for a few years and he shared his experiences in one of the funniest presentations we have ever seen.

@nigelcollier – Nigel is a BAFTA Award winning producer and Managing Director of digital studio Skylab. He talked us through the workflow of Skylab’s social media process.

Thanks to drinks from Melbourne Hosting and to all the fantastic prizes donated including a VM Cloud Server by Melbourne Hosting, Manchester Aiport for 2 free passes to their brand new escape lounge and the 2 tickets to Manchester Confidential Heroes VIP loyalty scheme as well as a great donation of a MediaTank.

And a big thank you to all our guests who attended from near and far (with a special mention to @danielkolodziej from Hark Consulants in Newcastle and @mngurl1183 who is writing an MA on the Emerging Role of Social Media and it’s Impact on Leadership)

Here’s to the next one! If you have any comments, suggestions or just want to talk about the event please get in touch with us!