Converge

South returned to A&T on Oct. 6-7. The annual technology

conference was held in classrooms and auditoriums in Crosby Hall

and the General Classroom Building.

Converge South returned to A&T on Oct. 6-7. The annual technology conference was held in classrooms and auditoriums in Crosby Hall and the General Classroom Building.

The conference, all volunteer-organized,  consisted of workshops discussing new and current technology with strategies and techniques on developing, promoting and branding a business with the web.

“ Greensboro is a small business town and mostly technology businesses so that one reason why we bring Converge South here,” said Dr. Sue Polinksy, co-chair and treasurer for Converge South. She said that City Council talks about helping the small businesses and nothing is ever done for them but Converge South is here to help.

One of the workshops focused on customer engagement and using the internet along with social media to produce revenue for businesses.

The keynote speaker for this workshop was award winning business writer, Mark Schaefer. Schaefer is a well-renowned blogger, author and educator. He has been affiliated with global sales, public relations, and marketing positions for nearly 30 years and provides consulting services as the executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions.

Schaefer’s presentation on “Internet Layer Six: The future of customer engagement” was an interactive session with the audience laughing and enjoying commentary. He went through a business promoting session and touched base on how social media is very helpful with advertising one’s business but also has its challenges.

“More and more people are using social media to get their information such as news,” said Schaefer. Because people spend so much time online, it makes sense for businesses to advertise on the web to attract more customers.

A key point in Schaefer’s presentation was the development of technology. “Some of the pros is that it is a great equalizer…where small businesses can compete with big businesses and you do not need a lot of money but you need to be a good networker and you need good content that people want to see,” Schaefer said.

On the other side of things, he expressed that with the new technology, many people do not understand social media. Many people take their tradition of advertisement and shove it in new media and people are sick of being advertised to. “Social media is a person to person connection, not necessarily a person to business connection,” he added.

Schaefer closed the session with motivational words to the students in the crowd. “You need to learn about business and marketing…many want to get into social media marketing, but technology is changing and there will be new ways to connect with people,” he said. Students need to immerse themselves in social media technology and take the initiative to evolve themselves instead of waiting and trying to learn how to tweet and blog. 

Following Schaefer’s session was another titled, “What Makes an Entrepreneur?” This live Skype interview  was moderated by Kevin Briody, of Strategic Innovation at Ignite Social Media, with Vivek Wadhwa, located in California.

Wadhwa is a director of research for the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization, columnist for the Washington Post and Bloomberg BusinessWeek, founder of two software companies, and a visiting scholar of the School of Information at UC-Berkley. Last year’s Skype interview was with Craigslist founder Craig Newmark.

Wadhwa spoke on the issues with entrepreneurship and the correlation with technology. “It’s not the ideas that you come up with, but the execution of your ideas that makes a difference,” said Wadhwa.

He also touched base on the trials and challenges of networking with fellow entrepreneurs especially when coming from the east to the west coast as he did. He told the story of when he had a party and invited individuals from surrounding areas and it was a successful networking experience for him.

Similar to Schaefer, Wadhwa had encouraging words for students who aspire to become entrepreneurs. “Connect to people and ask them questions…you can learn a lot by going online and watching motivational speakers and listening to their messages,” Wadhwa said.

He left the interview with motivational words of his own for the audience and encouraged them to ask questions, make mistakes, and to take an idea and run with it. “The American dream is entrepreneurship,” he said.

Later in the day, everyone learned the ins and outs of HTML codes and development for their business website from Erik Fadiman, an expert in web design, branding and identity, HTML coding, and WordPress and Dreamweaver. Fadiman was one of many volunteers who showed small business owners how to setup a website and donated some of his own files and coding to the audience.

He went into an in-depth presentation describing the difference between using WordPress and Dreamwaever with blogs and websites. He also performed a demonstration of a developing website.

One of the students that attended the session was very eager and pleased by the presentation. “It was a very informative session…I actually learned something that I did not even know and it gave me a chance to network as well,” said Alexis White, a junior public relations major from Prince Georges, MD. White was one of Dr. Teresa’s many students who attended the afternoon session.

To close the evening, a dinner was hosted at local restaurants in the Friendly Center with presenters and volunteers from the conference and Microsoft executives, such as Scott Davidson at local restaurants in the Friendly Center.

“This dinner is a virtual job interview with the pressure for the students,” said Microsoft executive, Scott Davidson.

Davidson and his team discussed how Converge South is a great opportunity for everyone in the business and individuals who want to get into the business.

“This is Microsoft’s fourth year participating in Converge South…we are able to meet so many people from students, bloggers and small business owners and show them what is possible today,” said Davidson.

They spoke on the search engine market of Bing and Google. “Bing continues to be focused on creating a great consumer experience, solid execution and steady market share growth…we plan to deliver a search experience that goes beyond the traditional ten blue links and help people from searching to doing,” they added.

 “It was a bunch of geeks, geeking at each other,” said Polinksy. She expressed that the entire night was filled with presenters and a technology funfest with Microsoft executives displaying their new Microsoft phones and technology to everyone. “We were talking about esoteric topics that only people in this industry would talk about,” said Polinsky.

The second day of events focused on search engines. The keynote speaker was Duane Forrester, who discussed search engine optimization (SEO). Forrester is the senior product manager at Bing.

For yet another successful year of Converge South, Polinksy feels that the opportunity small business owners got to network and build relationships with people was great.

“We presented them with a lot of presenters and fellow owners and motivators to network with for a low price,” said Polinksy.

But concern for the students was on her mind as well. Polinsky feels that A&T students are not motivated to come to a conference that can assist them in their careers.

 “We need to bring in more students, we seem to not generate any understanding to them…you can come to any session for free, just come,” said Polinksy.

She continued that the conference was promoted on Twitter, Facebook and other places around Greensboro. She feels that more A&T students need to come out because companies’ executives could help those who want to develop a business.

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• Erik Veal, Online Editor