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Social Media: Implications for the University was York University’s first attempt at a conference of this nature. They are following up next year with Social Media: Implications for Politics, Religion, Gender. A trailer for this year’s conference is available: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTcn-GeglRM&list=PLB9D30B1B5E99C66E&index=1 Also available is a googledoc where live note taking occurred. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZRUTuYzp3GKB4dO4ecwb2GKgSPEoihj9-2gVV8rHSpI/edit?pli=1 The conference had over 20 sessions that were meant to explore the implications of social media to the university. Personally I found this to be a stretch for many of the sessions. This is perhaps a result of my participation in Social Media and my wanting to know more than what the presenters had experienced. For example one of the sessions I felt would be most helpful was about building community on twitter. When I asked the presenters which kinds of tweets they found had the best responses and how many times someone on twitter interacted with a given stream before following it they replied that they did not have that data available to them. Their presentation really hinged around the difficulty in knowing who is behind a twitter account and the value of a well branded logo. Neither of which I found to be helpful in building community. There was a session on how social media offers tools for engagement in which the presenter stressed the fact that one should pick a platform get good at it and then start developing a complementary platform. Pretty basic but good advice A third session of particular interest stressed the challenge of authorship and identity creation which gave some food for thought. All in all this was likely a very interesting conference for those beginning their social media journey but for those of us who have already embarked on the journey it didn’t appear tight enough. I am certain that the conference planners will be able to learn from this experience and make their 2nd conference next year a great success.Conference description The purpose of this conference is to bring together researchers whose interests in the digital economy are positioned at the intersection of social media and the engaged university. Social media enable social interaction through connectivity on the Internet, and therefore lend themselves to any and all aspects of social communication, including those at the university. Given that social media (Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.) are very popular and ubiquitous, it is advantageous to submit their use in universities to a close scrutiny. The main aim of the conference, therefore, is to analyze, discuss, and answer the following four questions: 1. Can universities substantially change the manner in which they achieve their mission by using social media? 2. What are the opportunities, impacts, and challenges of social media on the workings of the university? 3. How innovative and effective is the use of social media for the purposes of research, teaching, and administration in a university setting? 4. Do social media have a critical function in the mobilization and dissemination of knowledge