So on May 18, I was honored with the opportunity to be a speaker at the Top Shelf Social Media Conference aka PRVille 2010. I spoke about my involvement with Touchdown Jacksonville, and our social media strategy and tactics (with a sprinkling of video game industry talk of course ).

I was humbled to be in the presence of Social Media industry speakers Mary Henige (Social Media & Digital Communications at General Motors) and Shonali Burke (Social Media Consultant Extraordinaire). Which, needless to say, didn’t do much to ease my nerves in doing something that I’ve NEVER done before. PRESENT without a PRESENTATION TOOL.

This was my first time speaking WITHOUT using a “formal” presentation behind me. We’ve all grown used to using powerpoint or some other presentation tool to assist our presentations, but I’m finding it very liberating to speak without it. Without having to worry about timing myself with the actual slides, everything seemed to flow much more naturally, and I felt like I was able to connect with the audience much more easily (at least I hope!).

Does this mean that I’ll never use a presentation tool at a speaking engagement again? No. There’s definitely times where it’s necessary. But I will continue to try to use those tools less and less, and concentrate on giving the audience more of what they want, actual speaking and interaction. Also, I feel that it keeps with the whole spirit of “social media” a little bit more.

Plus I can probably just post everything online and get them to visit my site if they really want the good stuff. jk

Check out Shonali’s flickrstream of the conference