The SMILE Conference logoLAwS Communications is thrilled to announce The SMILE Conference™ is coming in April. SMILE=Social Media In Law Enforcment. It is now exclusively a LAwS Communications Event and promises to be the must-attend conference of the year. Current keynote speakers include Jack Holt and Nick Keane, with two more to be announced shortly. The agenda includes addresses from speakers coming from the UK, Canada and all over the U.S.

Jack Holt is the morning keynote on Thursday. He is the Senior New Media Director at the Department of Defense. He has recently lead the department through the process of creating a social media policy to guide other branches of the military. He is considering several topics, all of which would be outstanding addresses. Nick Keane is the afternoon keynote on Thursday. Besides being an all-around fun guy, Nick is Director of Knowledge at the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) in London, England. He will be delivering a comprehensive report on the state of social media in law enforcement in the UK’s 43 police forces.

Wednesday is an optional training day at the LAwS Academy. It’s eight hours of training delivered by Lauri Stevens with 5 slots available in the evening for one-on-one sessions to review and evaluate your current social media plan, or discuss how to develop one, at no additional cost. These appointments are first-come, first-served. You may book as soon as you’re registered.

Thursday’s presentations include community engagement topics while Friday will be all about investigations and crime prevention, and hopefully, depending on the confirmation of a yet-to-be-announced speaker, the legal issues involved. Check the SMILE website often and keep an eye on that Friday afternoon for announcements of some international-level crime prevention “bigshots”.

Other speaker slots are almost entirely booked. A few have not confirmed so their names on not on the site quite yet. If you’re interested in speaking, and you have a sizzling topic idea, feel free to get in touch and I’ll keep you posted if a speaker slot becomes available.

Some speakers include Chief Dan Alexander and his Public Information/Social Media Manager Mark Economou from Boca Raton Police. They will give separate presentations back to back. It promises to be an excellent opportunity for attendees to hear directly from the two key figures at one of the most successful agencies to use social media in the U.S.

Scott Mills, widely known as “he who rocks hardest at social media in policing” will give us a riveting presentation on investigations and crime prevention. Scott is a Toronto Police Officer and President of “NoToGangs.org” . Civilian gang investigator (at Albany PD) Ron “Cook” Barrett will show attendees some unique investigative techniques, and Chris Duque (aka Dah Big Kahuna) a retired Detective at Honolulu PD will also address online investigations with social media.

Mike Bostic, former Deputy Chief at LAPD, Assistant Chief Bill LePere at Lakeland Florida PD, Sgt Tim Burrows from Toronto Police, Mike Vallez a former LEO and podcaster/blogger, Todd Shipley from Vere Software are among the outstanding speakers.

We have sponsor and vendor slots available. Space is quite limited for vendors, sign-up soon if you’re interested in grabbing one of those.

Keep SMILE-ing. I am. 🙂