New York travels to Chicago this weekend with the arrival of SweetHack, the partnership between the founders of ENTRPRNR and Chicago’s #MsTech.  Sponsored by GIRL 2.0 and in partnership with GIRLS IN TECH CHINA, this event will be connecting over 250 business and professional women online and offline from Chicago’s #MsTech community and the thousands represented by the Girls in Tech chapters worldwide.  SweetHack has set eyes on Chicago’s bustling tech scene and the women who are leading it to launch this very sweet partnership.  The weekend’s goal is to build a bridge of support, communication, and of course host a hackathon to create a digital tool that will sustain the mission of the event.

The goal:

- Move the conversation past the numbers and the ratios of women entrepreneurs

- Utilize the group’s talents to build a tool via the hackathon that will be a database of resources for women entrepreneurs, a social platform for engagement and a library of exclusive content from SweetHack events and partnerships

The event:

Friday, October 14, 2011 (7:00pm – 9:00pm) TouchPoints Panel and Cocktail reception featuring Guest Speakers Jeremy Thum, Director of Marketing at the Chicago Bulls and Klayton Korver, Co-Founder of SEER Outfitters

Friday, October 14, 2011 (9:30pm – 11:30pm) SweetHack ‘n Lime Cocktail Reception featuring the influential women of #MSTech Chicago

Saturday, October 15, 2011 (9:00am – late evening) Hackathon Day 1

Sunday, October 16, 2011 (9:00am – 6:00pm) Hackathon Day 2 and Soft Launch

Why you should get involved: The women in SweetHack are motivated, driven and passionate about Chicago’s emerging tech community.  Let’s support their efforts and welcome the team from New York and show them that Chicago knows tech.

How can you get involved: This is a bootstrapped event so there are many opportunities to get involved.  Reach out to Nicole Yeary (Nicole@nicoleyeary.com / 773-809-4681)

For more information, see http://www.entrprnr.com/sweethack.html

To understand how the everyday person uses social media is one thing, pushing the limits of privacy, personal reflection and awareness visibly through these transparent channels is something else entirely.  This is my livelihood, my career, the way I met my significant other (but that is for another post) – how I use social media and the boundaries that I continue to test within myself – that is my case study of my understanding of this space.

This goal to continue exploring social media and my personal journey through it, has lead me to move forward with an opportunity to blog about my training for the Dirty Girl Mud Run in August.  Writing about my training, preparing and thoughts via social media will be a great exercise in writing while also sharing information about the run.

The run takes place on Saturday, August 20^th, so I have about six weeks to go from admittedly completely out of shape to competitive shape.  The training pace will be rigorous and painful but I need to write about this journey, I have been challenged to share it.  Starting today and each Sunday through August 21^st, I will be writing a weekly post about my training and the professional and personal journey that brought me here on my personal blog: http://intersectionofall.com.  I hope you follow my journey!

Barbara

While published through other blogs, I wanted to include the work within this blog as a testament of my continued commitment to professional learning.  I am feel very lucky to have seen so many professional opportunities come to life and will continue to each and every day push myself to work harder, learn more and contribute more meaningfully into the projects I work on and within all of my professional pursuits.

Below I have included links to my recent work, looking forward to more publishing opportunities in the future!  I thank my colleagues at Legacy, Hope Bertram of Windy City Social, Frank Gruber, Jen Consalvo and Monika Jansen of Tech Cocktail and Dan Trigub of Blue Bite for the opportunity to work with all of you.

Tech Cocktail Article:  Study Blue: Study Tools Adjust to a Technology-Driven Student

Tech Cocktail Article:  Going My Way? Carpooling for Taxi Riders Arrives in Chicago

Tech Cocktail Article: Blue Bite: Digital Out-of-Home on Your Mobile Device

Mobile Marketing Watch: Media Agency Reorganization is Critical

**contributed to post authored by Dan Trigub of Blue Bite

Tech Cocktail Article: iMeet: Your Virtual Meeting Room

I look forward to exploring more topics within this blog in the coming weeks and months!

Thanks for reading my blog,

Barbara

I love writing and blogging so much I need to take the time to fulfill this important professional and creative pursuit. Today is the day I hit reset my blogging commitment. With that, I am establishing an editorial calendar that fits with my work schedule and my research. I will focus on shorter posts with a mix on longer posts grounded in industry analysis and trends. I am compelled to share what I am seeing professionally in social media and the ways I am continuing to learn and grow, following my professional pursuits. Because if you don’t already know this about me already, you will soon find out…I am very intense about my goals. If I am recommitting to blogging, I also must extend that to my personal blog (Intersection of All). My personal blog has become a very important project in my life. It is a writing pursuit I began five months ago to share the story of a woman in her 30s who spent an entire career focusing only on her career who finally began to truly know herself through falling in love.

I hope you continue reading my blog and find value in what I am sharing.

Humbly yours,
Barbara

Adding to this fantastic professional opportunity at Legacy, I am fully supported in continuing as the Interactive Marketing Chair of the Chicago Association of Direct Marketing which has given me the opportunity to write a column about Interactive Marketing in their monthly newsletter AdMarks, as well as be able to serve as Chair for the Heartland Mobile Council Mobile University. The Mobile University event will take place in late Spring 2011 and serves the purpose of education marketers and brands on practical applications and best practices in the mobile space. These two professional association roles support and build on my role at Legacy and the information I can provide for my clients and colleagues so I am honored by the recognition. I look forward to sharing updates and insights about what I am learning and working on via my re-energized blogging efforts.

In my new blogging commitment, I also plan to dedicate a few posts to personal updates. I have struggled with sharing a bit of myself outside of work online but I have learned that showing a little of what is behind the curtain helps with understanding who a person is, where they are going, and who they are becoming. As a career woman, who has spent every waking minute of the last eleven years focusing on my job, I have been swept off my feet by someone who has brought great light and balance to my life. His support has strengthened me professionally and personally in immeasurable ways. I want to share some of that experience because balance is something that I am learning and a shared experience for all of us.

I am not done yet, not even close – that goes for you too. So to close this post with the sunshine I drove into this morning, my new path it is bright one but I can’t be blinded. I must continue the hard work that helped me overcome so much professionally and personally over the last few years. As I embark on my new professional journey and a wonderfully personal one, I hope you continue reading and sharing your thoughts.

I re-engage with my blogging efforts with a reminder of my audience – my family, friends, colleagues, peers, teachers, confidantes, clients past and present and those whom I haven’t had the opportunity to meet. With the enormous amount of blog content available I appreciate your follow and support. I look forward to many blog posts in the coming months as I explore the application of social media to small business and brand building, emerging technology from a marketer’s point of view, social media as a direct marketing tactic, and the different events/organizations that I am involved with. I will try to keep my posts topics organized, but I will have to admit that sometimes I will be so excited to share a new insight or piece of information and I might sneak in a random blog post fair warning it is going to happen.

I am very grateful that the last few months have given me the opportunity to reconnect with my family and friends; learn an enormous amount professionally; solidified my contacts and presence within the Chicago interactive and mobile community via the Heartland Mobile Council, the American Marketing Association and the Chicago Association of Direct Marketing; and learned to expand my social media voice.

I have reengaged with my business development background for my emerging consulting businesses and have not had one minute of downtime – exciting and very invigorating all at the same time.  I thank the small business communities in Milwaukee and Chicago and the warm welcome extended to me which have resulted in FIVE new integrated marketing consulting agreements launching in June and July.  I also thank my network for the phenomenal support they have provided as well.

Moving forward, I look to blogging about the different professional organizations I am involved with, my professional pursuits and insights on maximizing different marketing channels to build and drive business whether a large brand or a small business.

I look forward to my next blog post,

Barbara

_______________________________________________________________

Being More Intentional

Definition of intentional: “characterized by conscious design or purpose “I’ve had a growing conviction that life, mine specifically, should be filled with more purpose and a sense of intentionality. Everything we say and do should carry weight to it and should be thoughtfully considered before we act. As I write this blog entry, am I giving it the full attention it deserves or am I simply writing fast to post it and fill up blog space? Or am I only trying to sound witty and insightful for its own sake? For whoever reads this, it will make an impression, for however short or long a time. Did I put my best foot forward and give a memorable and beneficial presentation of myself and ideas? How intentional was I in this process?

Part of being intentional is giving everything we do 100%. Every moment matters. Everything we do makes an impact, minimally to our own lives and almost certainly will influence the lives of others in some manner. And that also means I need to do better about giving my undivided attention to the task or person at hand. It’s not fair to myself or others to not be fully engaged.

I think another aspect of being intentional is being proactive. More and more of what I’m seeing is a reactionary response to everything around us. we complain about the problems instead of formulating potential solutions. We find ways to place responsibility and blame on anyone who isn’t the person we see in the mirror. You will have nobody to point a finger at but yourself when you look around wondering why who you are isn’t you wanted to be if you didn’t do anything to change the situation. It’s time to take action and work to make your world more of what you want it to be. That can mean taking steps of faith in directions you’re unsure of, but that’s why they’re steps of faith, right?

I reread the definition above and want my life to be “characterized by conscious design or purpose.” As I write this, I’m challenging myself to live in such a way that is impactful and meaningful. That means being deliberate and intentional about my blog posts, choosing my words carefully before writing that tweet, considering my audience when updating my Facebook status, reviewing that email to the client and making sure I’ve covered all my bases and mean everything I say before it comes out of my mouth.

Would you join me in being more intentional?

You can find Greg on Twitter @gmacek or on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/gregmacek

Rex Lowman

http://www.linkedin.com/in/lowmanr

Rex reached out to me as a result of someone forwarding him a blog post I had published.

He has been in transition for a few months and is looking for a high-level IT enterprise-wide project management/consulting opportunity.  His career spans critical systems integration projects at Northern Trust Company and BlueCross BlueShield to migrating AON’s regional technical systems in the weeks after 9/11.

What is important to note about Rex beyond his impressive professional accomplishments is that instead of meeting me to talk about his search, he wanted to learn about me and how he could help me professionally.  He brought a list of contacts he thought might help me in my current role as Business Development Manager and it was after thirty minutes of conversation where he was asking about me…I was able to jump in to ask HIM about his background and search.  I can’t ever remember a time when I have met someone who I wanted to help and who ended up helping me.  What an incredible and giving person to look out for the best interest of someone else above his own especially given his own job search.  As we talked about his past experiences and the team members he mentored, I knew that I had to pass his story and his search forward.   I walked away from our coffee meeting feeling that my life has been enriched because I found someone like Rex in the world.

It is with great respect that I pass along Rex’s search.  I hope that this introduction may in some small way acknowledge all his accomplishments and all the help and mentorship he has provided to others in his career.  Rex, you are deeply admired and respected.

Wishing you great success in your job search,

Barbara Maldonado

@bmaldonado / @pipelineb2b

I went into Business Development in early 2008.  Things were a little shaky in the marketing world, but the bottom had not fallen out yet.  I set about to figure out my business development strategy.  I lined up my prospects, seeded articles, sent emails and followed up with calls.  The part where I seeded clients was great; the toughest part, and I will critically evaluate myself on this one, is the cold calling especially when the bottom fell out of the market in late Spring/early summer.  New business opportunities were scarce, getting people to call back or respond was even more difficult which meant that every RFP response meant so much.  And then I learned a tough lesson,  oftentimes RFPs are exercises in futility.  It was tough to close a deal in 2008 and combining that together with working at a boutique agency, in mid-December 2008, I was laid off.

Although I didn’t feel it at the time especially when I was trying to figure out how to pay my rent – being laid-off was one of the best things that has happened in my career because I learned how to sell…myself – Barbara Maldonado.

I mention this in earlier posts, I called, emailed, sent letters, articles, offered my services for free when I was looking for a new job – I needed to stay top of mind with everyone in my network and meet new people.  As luck would have it, I was pretty good at selling the integrated marketing experiences I could offer and by mid-January, I was working on freelance social media projects.  The projects couldn’t fully pay the bills, but it was definitely a start which I am incredibly indebted to my client who believed in me.  I was able to hone my social media marketing skills, continue networking and along with this great learning and implementation experience I was getting in a small business environment, I was earning my self-confidence back.  The work I did for my client served as the launching point for two other social media projects that I landed with a few conversations, writing a plan and careful follow-up.  In answer to “The Money” question – I increased my take-home pay by 30% via freelance projects in 2009 by learning how to sell myself.  All three of those projects have been renewed for 2010 and I have two other deals currently in the works.

I was fortunate enough to be able to land at Marketing Resources in March 2009 in a Business Development role.  I was happy to be able to work within an agency that was technology-driven and gave me the answer to the question I was often asked by my experiential marketing clients – how do we measure this?  Selling our contest, games and sweepstakes capabilities I was able to support my client’s needs in delivering traffic to their websites, tracking, online surveys and social media applications.  It was tough getting into the role when the economy was so bad, but it allowed me to once again learn and experiment with a few different tactics in business development and client outreach.  It has been hard to figure out a path in either one of my Business Development roles without a clear mentor that has a successful methodology and track record in sales that I can learn from – but I am figuring out my path with mistakes and a non-stop determination.  And in answer to “The Money” question – in Quarter 4 of 2009, Marketing Resources held four different sales contest for new business (new clients that have never worked with the agency before) – I won three out of the four.  Highest Sales Volume, Highest Grossing Project and I sold the first agency’s Facebook Application.  Not withstanding that success, in my first month at Marketing Resources, I sold the agency’s first in-stadium text promotion for a sports team.

I want to be very clear and I say this because I am very critical and tough on myself.  I have much improvement and several goals to embark on this year to build on the success of the last year.  Evaluating 2009, I could have done so much more.  I could have worked harder, brought in more sales for my agency, brought more of everything to my social media campaigns, could have had more one-to-one mentoring sessions with friends and contacts out of work and most importantly, could have spent more time with my family.  In 2010, I WILL do all of that and more because I owe it to what I have been through to keep move forward with momentum and drive.

Here is to 2010 – I hope you are ready for me…

Barbara Maldonado

@bmaldonado / @pipelineb2b