Over the weekend, I had the chance to attend one day of a social media conference in Chicago called SOBCON. It is a conference put on my Liz Strauss for business bloggers and social media folk.

Now I have attended alot of conferences in 27 years in business, but nothing prepared me for SOBCON. I arrived for Day 2. I walked into a room of 150 people, all with their laptops open, most displaying TweetDeck so they could follow “the conversation”. As the speakers started, everyone was simultaneously listening to the presentation and tweeting to their followers what they were learning. People at the conference were also commenting on what the speaker was saying and exchanging ideas in real time. The speaker was also being video streamed on Ustream so if you were not able to make the conference you could watch it.

I took a deep breath. I had come home. This was the kind of  social media conference I had been looking for. This was going to be a blast.

The people I met were amazingly generous with their help and ideas. This included the big and visible experts like Chris Brogan who has helped me on many occasions. I had talked to many of them before on Twitter, and it was fun to try to match their little picture/ avatar with what they looked like in real life (I learned the abbreviation for this is IRL).

In upcoming posts I will talk about what I learned. But Liz and Terry, thanks for puttig this conference together. I was so worth my time. Did you go to SOBCON? What are your thoughts? Are there other conferences you recommend?