Yesterday, a few others converged with me to attend the first Laid Off Camp Miami, held at the Miami Beach Convention Center. LaidOffCamp and FreelanceCamp, held at the same event, are similar in style to BarCamp in that anyone can sign up to do a presentation. Rick Tuttle and his crew of pirates have refined the formula: gone is the impromptu scheduling with Post-it notes, those who want to present now schedule themselves on the website, and the time slots are known well ahead of time.
Rick and his techies also created a mobile version of the schedule site, so everyone can view the schedule on any webkit-enabled web browser (think Android and iPhone). This new way of handling scheduling fixed the biggest and most glaring issues of BarCamp, namely last-minute room changes and attendee confusion. I hope next year’s BarCamp can take advantage of Rick’s excellent implementation and refinement of their formula.

As for the presentations, they were pretty good! The first one I attended was Working in Your Pajamas? How to Make Living as a Freelance Writer by Teresa Mears. Teresa is a publisher, editor, writer and owner of the South Florida On the Cheap blogs and a former Miami Herald employee. Actually, Teresa has done so many things, I can’t even list them all. Check her LinkedIn for her vast life experience. She spoke about her transition from working at a traditional newspaper institution to full-time freelancing and all her life lessons from there. She even did a really nice handout for those who want to move in that direction. Apologies about the sound level; it was recorded off my iPhone. Hopefully at WWDC on Monday I can finally see what Apple will do with the new iPhone and video recording.

[qik url="http://qik.com/video/1820982"]

The next presentation I went to was Shannon Bowman (@clover) and her presentation was Sexing Up Your Small Business Image (video to come later). Shannon covered things such as what to do for a business card, how to look professional, having a hook, being memorable to clients via your website, business cards, swag, etc. Another important topic she covered was your image as a small business. Overall, it was a really good presentation and I hope to have the video up soon.

The second-to-last event I went to was Do what you love (or your work life will totally suck) by Denise Jacobs. She had a small snafu with her PowerPoint presentation- I was able to fix it for her, but the video is cut into two parts. After that, she took off! Denise’s presentation was similar to a motivational speech a coach would give in a locker room after a nasty first half of [sportname]. I know she doesn’t call herself a motivational speaker, but she can certainly be one. If you need someone to pump you up or your company, definitely track her down.

[qik url="http://qik.com/video/1821356"] [qik url="http://qik.com/video/1821385"] [slideshare id=1543546&doc=presentationdowhatyoulove-090606192248-phpapp02]

Last, we have the Best Practices for Using Social Media for PR panel, moderated by Rick Tuttle and featuring Maria de los Angeles, Yvette Ferry, and Craig. This was only a thirty-minute panel, but it really should have been an hour. While it was supposed to be about Best Practices in Social Media, it ended up being more of a beginner’s guide to social media- everything from what is RSS to which tools to use for Twitter. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but definitely not a walkthrough of Twitter, Facebook, or FriendFeed. However, it was still fun even though I would have loved more time for the panel to get into meatier topics of discussion.

[qik url="http://qik.com/video/1821903"]
A big thanks to Rick, his entire tech crew for running a tight shift, and the caterers for the free food! I look forward to the next LaidOffCamp and Freelance Camp.

You can search for more LaidOffCamp info on Twitter using the hashtag #locmia.

[edited for style]