Amy Vernon

amyABSTRACT:The Internet gets blamed for a lot of things, chief among them for the rise in rudeness, cyber-bullying and harassment. Thing is, it hasn’t caused any of this. The people who act poorly on the Internet generally act poorly in real life, too. We just didn’t have to see, talk or ever interact with most of them before. Now we can’t avoid them. Or can we? Social Media Etiquette (#SMEtiquette, if you will) is vitally important now. Figuring out how (or when) to respond to the knuckle-draggers is as important as treating other people properly. How can you live your life publicly while not getting overwhelmed by trolls, yellers, braggarts and the like? This talk will give you the tools to keep your blood pressure down next time you go on Facebook.

BIO: Amy Vernon is an independent consultant and a pioneer of social content strategy. She spent 20 years working for daily newspapers around the country and was a member of the 1992 Pulitzer Prize-winning staff of the Miami Herald. An inaugural inductee of the New Jersey Social Media Hall of Fame, Amy was named the 15th-most influential woman in tech on Twitter by Business Insider and Peer Index.

She has consulted on social media and content for a variety of companies and organizations, including the American Museum of Natural History, Verizon and VentureBeat, and has driven millions of pageviews through her work. Amy has been a mentor for Women 2.0, Women Innovate Mobile and Bella Minds, among other organizations, and has spoken at dozens of conferences, including SXSWi, SMX and Mediabistro. A graduate of Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., she lives with her family in New Jersey and owns a very photogenic Siberian husky named Lumi.