This morning I had the privilege of co-hosting a workshop with Amanda Miller Littlejohn (@amandamogul and @mopwaterpr). The subject? What else–Twitter!

Amanda let off the workshop with a quick overview of the power of Twitter and building a brand on the social network. I then concluded with a presentation of nine tips (and a bonus!) for being more efficient and effective when using Twitter and various Twitter tools. The presentation is embedded below, check below the cut for links to the tools I mention and an archive of the tweets from the workshop this morning (hashtag #dcpowertwitter). Thanks so much to Amanda for inviting me to present, @chinatowncoffee and @sprint for sponsoring coffee and Wi-Fi, and to everyone else who attended!

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Around this time last year, I was a fairly timid yet ambitious rising college junior, finally venturing out to my first real networking event. It was a Mashable-hosted tweetup on Capitol Hill, and I wandered in feeling totally overwhelmed. I’d just begun to get into social media and finally feeling like a real adult, but I’d never been to a networking event outside of American University.

Oh my how times have changed.

Tonight is Mashable’s DC “Summermash” event. That means this is also the one-year anniversary of my becoming a networker. Networking has changed my life–I’ve realized opportunities I could’ve never before imagined, and I’ve made some of my best friends in the world through online social networks. In honor of the occasion, I figured I’d offer a few tips on how I’ve managed to get where I am and how you can be well on your way, too.

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At 10 a.m. on Friday, July 30, five prominent DMV Twitter users embarked on the adventure of a lifetime. Twamping.

You read that right. Twitter + Camping.

Now, “what stays in the woods stays in the woods” (inside joke) but I did want to give a quick overview of the trip and some of the lessons learned.

The explorers included myself (@alexpriest), @sisarina, @charswann, @swannrmonavie, @aishajcreative, and @baileycuddles. We boarded two tightly packed vehicles with enough food to feed an army, chairs for everyone including the pup, and tents to sleep 14 people (no kidding). The journey began.

After a super-fun, totally rockin’ car-ride, completely with the noxious scents of darling @baileycuddles (he was definitely feeling whatever he ate the night before–we all suffered), we arrived at our campsite, selected by @sisarina. It was perfect. We managed to be the only ones in our entire neck of the woods–literally–and it was, to say the least, a picturesque spot.

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Woke up feeling like crap today.

I’m doing my best to avoid whining on Twitter quite as much, so I figured I might try writing a quick post to complain about it instead–it’s my blog anyway, right?

My roommate (@ptklein) and I basically decided that the month of July just hates us. Not only has this entire month been unbearably hot (culminating with the record heat on Saturday and, ya know, that massive, random storm that killed people–along with everyone’s power and cable–yesterday), but we’ve discovered that we have yet to have one full week where we haven’t had at least one pretty crappy day.

There have been some redeeming days this month: I’ve had a lot of fun at most of the events I’ve been at, I’ve enjoyed the company of a lot of really great new friends lately, and I’ve managed to relax just a tad from time to time. That said, I wake up this morning and here I am coughing, wheezing, phlegmy, and my back hurts. God only knows what I did to deserve all this, but it started on Friday and doesn’t appear to be letting up soon.

Blargh. Ah well, consider this the entirety of my whining for the day–might as well make the best of everything else I can. Have a great day, folks.

This past Thursday I had the privilege of attending Gibraltar Associates first annual “Social Media Resolutions” event, held here in Washington, D.C. Although I could only stay for the first half of the event, what I witnessed was probably one of the best panels I’ve seen. Not only did I learn far more than I realized I would, but I gained some incredible insight into how our government is (surprisingly) acting very progressively to get a hold on social media.

Panelists were:

• Brent Colburn, Director of External Affairs for the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
• Roxie Merritt, Director of New Media at the U.S. Department of Defense
• Richard Boly, Director of eDipomacy at the U.S. Department of State

It’s difficult to sum up over an hour of panel conversation. Throughout the course of the presentation, much of the discussion focused on challenges the government is facing to get into social media and take advantage of it in order to perform better in their respective functions as government agencies. So I’ll focus on that here, as well. Here’s, from what I heard, the three biggest challenges for government right now and how their working to overcome them.

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