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Forward Festival Continues to Grow

Posted on by Taylor Kennedy

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Aug. 11, 2016

Contact:
Molly Walsh
608-616-0840
molly@forwardfest.org

Forward Festival Continues to Grow


(MADISON, Wis.)—Thousands of entrepreneurs, investors and like-minded professionals are expected to attend the seventh-annual Forward Festival, which has more than 40 events taking place Aug. 18-25 throughout the city, organizers announced today.

“Forward Festival, now with the most events to date, could not thrive without our community’s support of entrepreneurs,” Laura Strong, festival committee member and president of Quintessence Biosciences, said. “That’s why we’ve made the festival as accessible as possible, as all events are open to the public and many are free.”

The festival’s main event is the Forward Technology Conference (Aug. 23), which again is paired with the Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce’s neXXpo and Pressure Chamber events. Amy Africa, e-commerce expert, and Jordan Eisenberg, entrepreneur and venture partner, will be the keynote speakers.

Other highlights of the festival include the Black Entrepreneur’s Summit (Aug. 20), the Badger Startup Summit (Aug. 22 featuring Keith Witek from Tesla) and the inaugural Mini-preneurs event (Aug. 20), which aims to inspire children to start thinking of their dream business.

On Wednesday, Aug. 24 UBER is running an event at this year’s Festival as attendees can request a 15-min. ride with an investor to pitch a startup or business idea.

The Forward Festival is sponsored by local companies including American Family Insurance, MG&E, Neider & Boucher, WEDC, The QTI Group, Urban Land Interests, Associated Bank, M3 Insurance, AlphaTech, Isthmus and Ideas that Evoke.

For a detailed listing of events taking place during the Forward Festival, please visit www.forwardfest.org.

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Resulting Media Coverage:

There are no rules to using Facebook

Posted on by Brian Lee

FacebookIn the social media class I teach, I often have students who are learning how to use Facebook Pages for business but don’t use Facebook at all on a personal level. I always recommend that they experience Facebook as a regular user to gain a better understanding of how and why their audiences use it.

That got me thinking. How do you use Facebook on a personal level? If you’ve been on Facebook long enough, you’ll know that there are no rules. You probably have friends who use Facebook for:

  • Announcing engagements, marriages, anniversaries and/or babies;
  • Asking for sympathy or encouragement (“please send positive thoughts my way!”);
  • Complaining, ranting or offering commentary (especially prevalent during political campaigns);
  • Posting selfies, selfies and more selfies;
  • Showing off their projects, cars or body (see previous bullet point);
  • Posting photos of their feet (and their feet are ugly);
  • Publishing endless photos of their kids and pets;
  • Sharing stories and memes from around the web (“hey, look what I found”);
  • Using Facebook as Twitter (e.g. 20 posts in five min.);
  • Using Facebook as LinkedIn (e.g. adding your non-friend clients as a friend)
  • Friend-ing people they just met or met only one time (see previous bullet point);
  • Sharing their workouts;
  • Posting something with the sole purpose of acquiring likes and comments;
  • Sharing the results of some random quiz (“which actor are you?”) they took;
  • Keeping tabs on exes, friends, frenemies or crushes;
  • Posting articles from their food blogs; and
  • Selling products (e.g. makeup, health, green) from their new home-based business.

Keep doing what you’re doing! That’s what makes Facebook so unique, fun and popular (and also annoying, sad and addicting).