Learning curves as steep as a wall. The impact of technology, especially the social tools, are changing the landscape of our lives, communities and commerce.  There is no doubt that the digital era is significantly shifting the marketplace across multiple functions forcing change to happen before success and sustainability can be experienced for any profession. As digital marketers who have an early adoption mindset to new technologies, we are not only faced with our own learning curve, but we are tasked to help usher others to climb.

Climbing steep learning curves while helping others tread uphill vertically is a challenge. Doing this in today’s world where the rate of information darts at us faster than our Twitter feed scroll can be overwhelming.

Although, with all of the data – from blog posts, slide decks, ebooks, webinars and podcasts available online, one would assume learning would be easy-peasy. However, as Jason Falls would say, “That’s bullshit.”  

And, from a recent post on today’s online content from Tom Webster, there is a dark side to the information highway. In other words, the enormous mass of online content has its limits. As connected as we are in today’s social world, the terabytes of free content, readily available and conveniently accessible – as far as our smartphone is close – can leave us more disconnected and overwhelmed, leading us to more confusion and anxiety than ever.

Best tool to help us as digital marketers and professional social experts? Face-to-face, social media events, like Explore.

I had the privilege to be an event correspondent, or corporate brand journalist for the past four conferences on Jason’s nationwide Explore tour. The purpose of my role was to capture the rich content and report it live through social tools. The final event wrapped up in Portland and as I reflect on the expert sessions and conversations that followed from the networking opportunities, I have discovered 8 top takeaways I’d like to share.

The quality of content from the Explore speakers and their presentations throughout the two day conference could certainly exceed eight takeaways worthy of sharing, however, these are the takeaways that left an impression on me.  With that, I’ll kick off the first takeaway: