I first wrote this post for the SAS blog Conversations and Connections. SAS has been awesome enough to let me repost it here.

Week of August 16, 2010

(Monday, 8/16) Day 45:

I spent today at the Social Fresh conference in Charlotte. It was awesome. I met some really great people and learned a LOT. I worked my tail off live blogging and shooting videos. Total count? Six posts and three videos.

(Tuesday, 8/17) Day 46:

Wayne Sutton is coming to SAS today to talk about Social Media. I’m going so that I can learn, write a post, and hang out with Wayne.

(Wednesday, 8/18) Day 47:
Shout out to Margaret at the Noodles & Co. in Cary, who found me the biggest Rice Krispie treat in the store! What? You act like this post is supposed to be about my job.

(Thursday, 8/19) Day 48:
Today I completed the first draft of another white paper to turn into an article. This sounds boring, but I kind of like it. And it helps me to learn about other things in the company.

(Friday, 8/20) Day 49:

Today is all about posts. I have tons of posts on my to-do list. Today is a good day to start writing them. Don’t worry; you’ll get to read them before I leave.

Weekly Recap:

This has been a week of learning. Monday was Social Fresh, Tuesday was Wayne’s talk on social media at SAS, and Wednesday was a training session on social media with the SAMS (SAS Americas Marketing & Support) team—where Dave pointed employees to the resources I’ve created this summer. I feel super smart in my field now.

I’ve discovered that I love conferences. You get to meet tons of great people (I’m honing my networking skills). You get to learn a lot. And if you document the sessions well, you get a lot of promotion. Thanks to everyone who shared my posts on Social Fresh this week! As a new professional looking for a job, this was a great experience.

In other news, I told Dave at lunch on Tuesday that I’m a ninja. That led to a whole other series of tweets and even a video. Also, Chris Penn invited me to his dojo if I’m ever in Boston. How cool is that?

A week and a half left to go. See you next Friday!

Photo by Christopher S. Penn