Some of my fellow followers on Twitter a few days back were requesting people contribute with any tips or helpful hints to get the most out of BarCampMiami and FOWA next week. I managed to get a few tips together (mostly reminders). If you want to add any, please leave a comment. Thanks!

1. Social Events - Get the most out of the experience by attending these (some require tickets to be purchased ASAP):

UPDATE: Unofficial FOWA Beer Lovers Meetup

Geek Dinner - Sunday, February 22, 2009 from 7:00 PM - 9:30 PM (ET)

Social Media Club South Florida Meetup - Feb. 23rd 6:30pm to 9pm

FOWA After Party - Feb. 24th at Nikki Beach Club

2. Bring lots of business cards. Exchange of cards seems to be still a time honored part of a meet/greet.

3. At FOWA, there are going to be FREE uni sessions - mini conferences in “break out rooms”. 50 spaces per session, first come first served. Facebook, Sun, etc.

4. Obvious, but if you don’t have extra iphone, laptop, or batteries start ordering them (or actually buying them locally) now. Don’t count on outlets although FOWA says there will be placed to “plug in your laptop”.

5. At FOWA, according to sources, wireless internet will be in the lobby ONLY. Should be able to get a 3G signal inside though. At BarCamp, there is Wifi in the restaurant but when I spoke to @alexdc, he was thinking it might be limited to due demand.

6. UPDATE: Follow the FriendFeed Room FOWA Miami & WordCamp/BarCamp/NewsInnovation. It monitors tweets and flickr feeds in one easy place. There’s also a RSS feed of the room in case you can’t follow FriendFeed directly.

How to Develop a Social Media Plan for Your Business in 5 Steps

I thought this was a worthy post on twhirl’s blog about why sometimes you can get a “limit exeeded” message on twhirl. Twitter’s limit is 70 request per hour, but you may have OTHER services using that outside of your client twitter app. This just happened to me last night.

Groundswell has a new tool that allows you to see free worldwide consumer data on social activity. Interesting, and useful for a bullet point in a PowerPoint slide. [ via jbernoff ]

Jeremiah Owyang, probably one of my favorite new guys on social media, talks about the new feature “My Starbucks Ideas” where customers can submit, discuss, and vote on ideas (that’s not the best description, but it’s something you’ll get once you see it). If you have interest in Web 2.0 or Social Networking trends, this is a good quick read. This functionality screams for someone to make it into a WordPress plugin.

17 Ways to Visualize the Twitter Universe

Developing a clear social media marketing strategy is lacking these days. Although at Dimension Media I design sites while most people have a marketing plan, I’ve had enough experience already to really appreciate this article at Collective Thoughts.