Stuart Students Attend Social Media Week Chicago 2015
In November, two Stuart students attended Social Media Week, a week-long series of events that takes place in cities around the world. The events feature experts, iconic brands, and leading thinkers sharing their ideas and inspiration. Egzon Berisha and Yange Liang attended the conference in Chicago and spent the week in various sessions on social intelligence, infographics, and artificial intelligence in marketing.
"My favorite session was one of the first that I attended - Top Tech Trends for 2016 by the CEO of the famous 1871, Howard Tullman," said Berisha, M.B.A candidate. "He showed the Top Tech Trends and followed them with real examples he has been exposed to. He presented in a manner that we could truly understand and somehow apply or comply with them in our future endeavors."
Berisha liked that the sessions were presented by field experts and discussed topics they had already applied in their own businesses or companies.
"My long-term goal is to own my own business, and after attending all these sessions, I am more aware of how important it is for a business not just to be present on social media but also to use them strategically for its benefit," he said.
Liang, a student in the Marketing Analytics master's program, ranked a session titled "Infographics -- How to Turn Content into Visuals People Easily Will Want to Like and Share" at the top of his list of favorite sessions.
"I loved this lecture not only because they had a very informative lecture, trends and data, but also they listed many tools they are using, which is quite useful," he said. "As a marketing student and a future marketing specialist, we always need to do presentations. Infographics [are] really useful for improving our skills in this part."
Liang was surprised to learn about Snapchat's popularity in the U.S. in many of the conference sessions.
"As you know, because of the Chinese Great Firewall, we cannot sign in to Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram in China. As a substitute for Facebook, we have Renren. For Twitter, we have Weibo. For Instagram, we have Moment. However, for Snapchat, we still don't have an app with a similar function. After hearing about the popularity of Snapchat, I'm very curious about why. Now, I already downloaded Snapchat and [will] try to figure out why it is so attractive."
Both students agreed the conference would be useful to other students at Stuart.
"I would recommend the conference to other students. It is a great chance to experience a global conference and workshop and a great networking opportunity," said Berisha.
"Actually, a week is not enough for me," Liang added. "With so much useful information, I may go again next year."
