It took me a while to clean up the slides, not so much in terms of the actual content, but more on the visuals, numbers, and attributions. Here’s a list of the major changes from the original presentation:

• Edited images that were blur and/or would not display on PC
• Replaced images that were NOT covered by a Creative Commons license
• Removed embedded videos
• Added some details to MS Academy Mobile case in place of video
• Added resource links and contact details at end of presentation

As you can see, none of the changes significantly affected the main content that was presented, so it’s pretty much the same deck with a few minor adjustments for “public release”. The sections/topics I cover in this presentation are still the following:

1. What is Social Media?
2. What are the main hurdles?
3. Why is it important?
4. Where does it fit in?
5. How do I get started?
6. What strategies can we use?
7. How about regulatory concerns?
8. What about ROI?
9. Final Thoughts

Over the next few weeks, I hope to cover each of the sections in more detail via this blog, so do keep a look out. In the mean time, feel free to send an email or tweet (@shwen) with any questions or leave me a comment about them. Would love to hear your feedback!

Also, if you attended the Digital Pharma conference and/or are thinking about attending Digital Pharma 2009, please send me your thoughts, ideas, feedback on what value and opportunities you would like to experience at this conference. Since I am chairing it next year, I hope to really bring the voice of the participants into the development of the conference program!

NOTE: I have decided to cover the presentaiton under a Creative Commons Attribution and Share Alike license.

Last Thursday (OCT 30th) marked the last of my three speaking commitments over the last 3 consecutive weeks. Here’s where I spoke at and what it was about…

1. Digital Pharma 2008:
- Panel on “How the Latest Digital Tech are Helping to Bridge the Gap Between Pharma and Physicians”
- “Can Pharma Make a Business Case for Social Media”

2. EyeForPharma’s eComm & Online Marketing Summit (including SEM’08):
- Panel on “The Future of Search in the Pharma Industry”
- Panel on “Lessons from YouTube.com and the Viral Marketing Phenomenon of Using New Media”

3. Northeastern University – Graduate course in Digital Marketing
- “The Business of Going Social”

While I spent quite a lot of time prepping and participating in all those events, I am extremely thrilled to have had the opportunity to spread the good word of Social Media, both within and without the pharma industry. Furthermore, I am also honored and humbled to have been asked to chair Digital Pharma 2009.

In case you missed either of the first two events, you can find my live tweets/twupdates (i.e. live updates via Twitter during the event) using Twitter Search and the following hashtags (just click on the conference name if you don’t know what hashtags are)…

1. Digital Pharma 2008: #DigPharma08 OR #DigitalPharma OR #PharmaDigital
2. Search Engine Marketing 2008: #sem08
3. 2008 eComm & Online Marketing Summit: #eComm08

So, now that life is returning back to normal (if it can ever be called that), here’s my plan for catching up over the next few weeks leading towards the end of the year…

1. Blog more… Including writing up conference highlights
   
2. (Re)connect with folks I met at the conferences
3. Post my Digital Pharma talk on Slideshare
4. Blog about each section of my Digital Pharma talk over next few weeks
5. Clean up and upload my conference recordings
6. Produce my back-logged pile of podcast interviews and post them
7. Add more podcast interviews to the backlog
8. Work with my old friend and mentor, Jim, on my new soon-to-be-launched blog
   

OK, I’m sure I’ve got a ton more to do, but if I keep listing them, it just means less time to work on it. Hope you enjoy them…

For those of you familiar with Mark Senak, you’ll know he’s a lawyer with Fleishman-Hillard who authors the EyeOnFDA blog (also on Twitter: @eyeonfda) — a very informative and insightful blog that I subscribe to and really enjoy reading.

Check out his interview with Doug Simon (from DSSimonVlogViews) where he talks about the “state of social media in pharma” and gives some good examples of how and what pharma can do with social media, including a healthy discussion around Pharma’s use of YouTube.