Social Media Club - London Meeting #2

Our good friends over at Fleishman Hillard have opened up their offices again and are hosting the second meeting in London. Come one, come all.

Suggestions have been to discuss the latest in tools, technologies and success stories. However, if there is something specific you would like to throw out onto the table, please place it in the comments below.

Our hope is for each local group to set goals, meet regularly and share opinions on the role of Social Media in the present and future of PR, marketing and journalism. Help us reach that goal in London.

Where: Fleishman Hillard London, 40 Long Acre, Covent Garden, London WC2E 9LG
When: November 15th, from 6pm to 8:30pm
Costs: FREE (we do need you to pre-register so we may prepare for your arrival)

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Social Media Club DC Round Table Tonight

One of the intersting things about being involved in the broader social media community within the different cities we visit is being able to compare and contrast regional attitudes and concerns. For me personally, I am always amazed at how much we share in common more so than the differences - the differences tend to be more like the nuanced approach to spices that good chefs use in creating a similar dish - the ingredients are generally the same, but the flavor is a bit different.

So tonight here in DC, rather than heading deeply into the impact of social media on the elections as the focal point, I want to follow on the Round Table in New York last Thursday and our Round Table in San Francisco last Wednesday. So after a short round of introductions around the table and an under five minute pitch on what we hope to accomplish with Social Media Club, I would love to dive into a discussion on “What is Social Media?” While we could talk about that all night, after a while, we will switch into a discussion on the hot topic of Disclosure and the situational awareness of why, when, where and how to properly disclose interests and conflicts of interest. Finally, we can wrap up the last 30 or so minutes and get into the matter of social media in the elections.  There is a very fluid dynamic here, so we will go with the flow and talk about other matters that look interesting as well, but it would be great if we could delve into those three questions.

Afterwards, we are going out for a ‘blogger dinner’ where everyone is responsible for their own food/drink. The last two we have held in DC were at the Daily Grill, but tonight we had planned on going to Buffalo Billiards.  Turns out they won’t let us do the side room without a deposit and guarantee food minimum, so some other venues were suggested like Eli’s.  We will make a decision at the round table and post it here in the comments later this evening if you want to join us, or use your Internet sleuthing skills to find my cell # and give me a call after 8pm.

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Small sacrifices, big rewards

A couple of days ago I received an email from a lad in Boston asking about the gathering next Thursday, and whether or not there was room ‘to squeeze him in‘.

Thinking back to past events, I know there is always a handful of folks who sign up, but end up not attending. Nothing you can do about it really, it is simply the nature of a free event. So I told him the law of averages is on his side, and to plan on joining us. At which time he said ‘thank you’ as he was giving up Death Cab for Cutie tickets to come, so he was happy there was room. Now that is big. That shows a level of commitment to deeper learning. Wow. I won’t name names, I will simply say ‘thank you’ right back to him for wanting to share his night with us, in lieu of the band. Oh, but if those tickets are still available…no,no. Just kidding. I would much rather be in a hotel room discussing New Media than to be hanging out with Ben and the boys. Really.

So, I now find us with 94 people registered. How we got another 11 after closing down registrations I don’t know. Oh wait - I do know…I have a hard time saying no. But we really need to cap it. I am sorry, but if we don’t, I am going to be on the fire marshall’s naughty list.

I promise your Boston organizers will host another event quickly. We just need a venue (speaking of, can someone out there help with that?). If so, shoot an email to kristie@brainjams.org. And remember there is always Friday, November 3rd as Chris and several others in town hit a pub or two in support of ‘Blogs and Beers‘. So if you can’t make it Thursday night, come play with us on Friday.

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Talking About Disclosure: A Social Media Club Podcast

This is the audio from the Talking About Disclosure Round Table that we held at CNet’s Headquarters in San Francisco on Wednesday October 25, 2006. In attendance were about 19 leading thinkers on social media including Rafe Needleman, Mike Arrington, Tantek Celik, Martin Mckeay and Social Media Club’s SF Trio of Chris Heuer, Brian Sollis and Kristie Wells. Some excellent points were made and some good proposals for moving forward. Please tag everything related with ‘blogger+ethics’ and contribute to the Wiki at http://wiki.socialmediaclub.org/

You can subscribe to the podcast here or just download the 28MB audio file of the 1 hour and 49 minute conversation.

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Consequences for abusing the public trust?

For me the biggest challenge I see in our efforts for dealing with the ethics of disclosure coming out of our Social Media Club Round Table on Wednesday was the matter of consequences for those individuals and organizations who betray our trust so egregiously. Edelman and Wal-Mart both abused the public’s trust in the Web’s ability to be a source for honesty with the Walmarting Across America episode, and we all suffered as a result (we being Bloggers and producers of media - journalists and communications pros alike). I was speaking with Cathy Brooks last night at the VOX Launch Party about this, and she felt that there are indeed consequences in the system of law that governs us that may offer a recourse - but I truly dislike the litigation culture we live in and don’t see that as being the fair route. She had many other important things to say on this, and I for one, am sorry she was not able to make it to our discussion.

In the Edelman matter, we know that Edelman is a leader in the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA), and this episode was a clear violation of their own ethics, but Shel Holtz pointed out what does that really mean? In reviewing it closely after reading Shel’s and Stowe Boyd’s post on this WOMMA’s creation of the 20 Questions, I really like a lot of what they have to say on this subject. There are clearly some smart people there that get it. In doing the research, I think that WOMMA’s original Code of Ethics were pretty good to start, and the clarity that these questions bring takes them even further. But “marketer restrain thyself” needs to have consequences when the marketer breaks the rules. So given that that a member of WOMMA has failed to answer so many of those questions in the way we would hope, now what? I suppose it is not retroactive as a community standard though it should be, but seriously, what happens when people show questionable ethical judgment? What are the consequences for abusing the public trust? Obviously the reputation of the individual and the organization is tarnished and there is conceivably a real financial loss of some form, but what consequences are faced by those who break the rules?

I am not out for blood here, far from it, I am ready to move forward. Clearly Edelman has apologized and wants to make good to ensure it never happens again (as much if not more for their own interests of course), but what compensation is due the public? In looking at this the other night in our Round Table on disclosure, that is the point at which I think we are in real need of good solutions. We are trying to figure out the right course of action for Social Media Club members around such ethics violations, but we are not the Senate, so censure seems a bit odd as a consequence. I know from my friend Todd Tweedy’s experience that WOMMA does expel/suspend members for violations of its code of ethics - in that case the entire story was false and was the subject of a correction/retraction of the charge by the reporter. Todd adds an excellent perspective with his blog post today entitled Prediction: Edelman Will Make Us Stronger in Terms of Blogging and Corporate Ethics. It would seem that WOMMA’s course of action should be clear, but there are seemingly some gray areas we don’t know about but, deserve to know clearly.

Mike Arrington suggested the other night that we simply do not link to those who have a verified ethics violation. Indeed all of this attention on the issue is actually driving up the perceived popularity and awareness of those who made the mistake. There is a great discussion going on over on the WOMMA site about disclosure, and I am curiously watching for the outcome. In that one of the big issues coming out of our discussion was a need for a well educated public in regards to media literacy (that is one of the core elements of Social Media Club), perhaps they could fund some 3rd party programs to promote media literacy and use the Walmarting Across America case as an example of things that people should not do (after all, it was not the entire Edelman organization who did this, but rather some actual people inside the company). I am not to say that the company is not ultimately to blame, but seriously - it was some human beings bad judgment that is the point of fault.

Maybe even some public service work and some genuine apologies from the people who screwed this up. As Rafe Needleman said at the Round Table the other night, (paraphrasing) “if you have a car accident, most people are unable to apologize because of the fear of litigation that may result, but if more people did apologize and show remorse, there would be a lot less litigation around accidents.” Not surprisingly, I agree with Todd Defren and am reminded of the book “All I Really Need to Know, I Learned in Kindergarten“. Or the more advanced version that I believe is the core of The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz which starts off with the most important principle of all:

“Be Impeccable with your Word: Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.”

Technorati Chairman Peter Hirshberg assured me that this was his philosophy on this matter last night and everyone else I spoke with seems to feel the same thing, so should be near universal consensus here, but what do we do when people aren’t impeccable with their word? What about those gray areas that we talked about the other night?

[The audio from the Round Table will be up shortly]

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Social Media Club NY Meeting Summary

It’s pretty late, so I’ll post more about the meeting tomorrow.

We had a great crowd show up. A bit of discussion on “What is Social Media,” which morphed into discussion about Disclosure and what one discloses when one creates Social Media. I’ll have more coherent thoughts tomorrow, and will also link to anyone who blogs about the meeting.
Here are a few pictures from when the meeting was breaking up.

David Berkowitz attended and wrote up some thoughts here.

Eric Nerlich has more notes on the meeting here. One thing Eric notes:

It’s still in the formative stages, and it’s unclear what it’s for and what it’s meant to achieve, and the founders Chris Heuer and Howard Greenstein are looking for input. Yes, that’s right, Social Media Club is itself an experiment in social media.

I’m not going to say that we don’t know what the club is for or meant to achieve. The about page has some pretty solid ideas. I think Chris and I, along with Kristie, Brian, Tim, Mitch and others are just willing to listen to others who want to co-create the club to which they want to belong. That is what this whole Web 2.x thing is about, right?

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NMRCast #9

Chris Heuer, Brian Solis and Shel Holtz* discuss Edelman’s woes and the notion of disclosure; they also catch up on the working group progress and chat a bit more about tags (can you ever get enough?).

Shel Holtz provides a list of links supporting this podcast on his website, For Immediate Release.

You can download the file here (MP3, 12.7MB), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it and future shows automatically. (For automatic synchronization with your iPod or other digital player, you’ll also need a podcatcher such as Juice, DopplerRadio, iTunes or Yahoo! Podcasts, or an RSS aggregator that supports podcasts such as FeedDemon). Also, the Apple iTunes subscription is now available here or by searching for NMRCast at the Apple iTunes store under “podcasts.” If you subscribe to the FIR “everything” feed, however, this podcast will not be included.

* Tom Foremski is currently in India and was not able to attend.

UPDATE: I had orignally titled this post ‘NMRCast #9: Disclose. Disclose. Disclose.’.  I realized this did not truly cover the content of this podcast, so I have changed the title to simply NMRCast #9.

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From Social Media to Corporate Media - SM2CM

It’s easy to get caught up in the rapidly evolving world of social media and sometimes I have to stop and remember that there’s a whole other world out there that thinks social media is a group of friendly journalists.

Over the last several months I have had the opportunity to help start and participate in the Social Media Club along with Chris Heuer. In the last six months, I have learned more than I have in practicing traditional PR for years. It’s one thing to practice it in your own bubble, but it’s another to learn and share with each other; and that’s the point of Social Media Club, “If you get it, share it.”

On 10/23, we held our first event, From Social Media to Corporate Media at the SAP offices in Palo Alto.

Social Media Club was formed to help share all things social media and how it applies and benefits the world of marketing communications.

The goals are simple:

Promote media literacy – production and consumption

Promote ethics and standards

Share best practices around the emerging area of Social Media

Chris Heuer kicked things off with a profound assessment, “There is more wisdom in the room than what stands in front of you. And it’s this collection of shared wisdom that will help us collectively learn.”

He quickly reviewed the differences between strategy and tactics, as keynote Robert Scoble was focusing on SM Strategy and co-keynote, Lisa Stone of BlogHer discussed SM tactics.

So to recap, strategy is about goals and the plans to reach those goals and tactics are the activities and attitudes to execute.

So what does from SM2CM mean? The cost of production has dramatically reduced the price of admission, which is opening the door for the masses to produce and share content on their own.

If you look at the Cluetrain mantra that says “markets are conversations,” then it has definitely been manifested in the form of social media. Social media represents the opportunity to engage with customers, potential, stakeholders, employees and anyone else that shares relevant content. In the corporate world, businesses can apply social media in the form of blogs, podcasts and video blogs.

Why? Because it opens up the corporate kimono and allows customers and company executives to enter a forum of productive dialogue. Transparency is the new honesty - instead of its old meaning, hollow or fake - and at the root of social media, we’re quickly learning that we don’t market “to” anymore, we “talk” with those who make up the market.

It’s about being human and being connected.

According to Heuer, “you can’t manage micro segments in the long tail.” He’s right. The segment manages itself, although you can do your part to reach them using SM tools that interact with them directly or with those around them.

In today’s social media world, it’s all about people and listening. Participation is marketing nowadays, and the goal is not to focus all efforts on controlling the message, but simply trying to be part of the conversations that are taking place with or without you.Again, listening is more important than talking.

True engagement is genuine and value driven, and not focused on sales! To reference Heuer, it is the “because of” effect. I’m here “because of” my desire to learn about social media. I purchased your service, “because of” my trust in the company’s honest and open door communications policy. Remember, as social media marketers, we’re not here to sell, we’re here to share and we’re also here to listen to our customers.

So, coming back to social media and what it means to corporate media…

By integrating social media tools, we can reach our customers in a whole new way that also encourages them to in turn, socialize your company and its products/services. It’s all about opening up channels to listen, participate, and befriend and help markets.

More to come…

For additional coverage on the SM2CM event, please visit Jeremiah Owyang and Giovanni Rodriguez.

For more pictures, jump to one of the several SM2CM flickr streams. Additional Social Media Club event pictures, including a collective repository of pix from SM2CM, are also available here.

Tags: socialmediaclub chrisheuer briansolis futureworks robertscoble lisastone blogher pr pr2.0 publicrelations sm2cm giovannirodriguez

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Social Media Club NY - Also “Sold Out”

Hey, I hate to follow Kristie’s post with more ‘bad news’ but we’re full tonight in NY. The wonderful folks at Fleishman have given us a room for 60, I’ve taken about 65 names, assuming a few people won’t show up. We may be looking for a bigger room next time. I know, its a high quality problem, but I feel bad for those who want to but can’t participate.

If you want to participate and can’t make tonight, join the discussion at http://lists.socialmediaclubmail.com . There’s an NYC list so far, but more lists coming for other cities.
News on the next location and date will be posted here shortly. -Howard Greenstein
–Howard {at} socialmediaclub dot com

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Talking About Disclosure Round Table Recap

Wow! What a great conversation tonight over at CNet’s Headquarters here in San Francisco - thanks again to Joel Sacks and Rafe Needleman for hosting us there. Unfortunately my M-Audio died again in a new and interesting way - thankfully Martin Mckeay had his trusty iRiver and we will be posting audio of the nearly two hour conversation soon. You can subscribe to the Social Media Club podcast via iTunes by searching for Social Media Club in their podcast directory.

As for the meat of the matter, it was quickly clear that the issue of disclosure is one that impacts everyone and everyone understands its importance in the broader context. When one person makes a bad decision, everyone is impacted so it is an issue that everyone wants to work on together. The mix of people was pretty good with 19 people showing up including Rafe Needleman, Mike Arrington, Tantek Celik, Joel Sacks, Greg Narain, Brian Solis, Sean Savage, Shannon Clark, Vic Podcaster, Sanford Barr, Jeremy, Daniel Riveong, Pete Kazanjy, Glenda Bautista, Matt Levine, James Yu with nearly everyone contributing some great points. (too many links to research and create this late tonight - my apologies everyone)
There were a few key points that emerged from my perspective:

• I started off the conversation talking about this era needing to embrace the 3 T’s (as opposed to the old focus on the 3 C’s) which are Transparency, Truth and Trust
• There are a lot of grey areas so absolute rules are hard to come by here, we should strive for greater understanding of best practices (which is the purpose of Social Media Club)
• Disclosure is somewhat situational in nature and will vary by geography and culture
• The biggest issue is seemingly one of media literacy amongst media consumers as much as it is an issue for those producing media
• Everyone is biased in some way, journalists are not immune as we are all human - bloggers need more appreciation of how they can be influenced
• We all get free drinks from time to time (including everyone who attended tonight) but that usually is not enough to be bought
• We need to find a great and easy to understand metaphor/story about what is ok and what is not ok
• We have more to figure out and map than one discussion could allow

Kristie Wells took some good notes of what people had to say which are available in a MindJet MindMap format as well as a PDF and also took some good photos. Personally, I am really looking forward to listening to the audio and dissecting some of the finer points of the discussion. Perhaps someone out there will take the MindMap and re-organize it according to topics rather than speakers and that will really move it forward. (you can download a free trial from MindJet or get their free MindMap viewer if you want to play with it - yes MindJet has sponsored our events in the past, but I bought the software before we had a relationship because I loved it so much)

At the end of the conversation, Mike Arrington made a proposal that:

We begin a dialogue and process that we all agree to adhere to the outcome of in regards to what is the proper, ethical way to handle disclosure - even if it is not the one I want, I will agree to abide by the group’s decision. We also need to have a meethod of resolution for challenges to ethics where the process can begin in private first so that people can not use such challenges to create controvery and generate increased page views and notoriety through baseless accusations. (paraphrased, not quoted)

So we have opened up the Social Media Club Wiki (password is ‘media’ without the quotes) to start working on a real Social Media Code of Ethics which will be adopted as the standard for the club and all members to endorse. Rafe Needleman suggested we keep our initial efforts focused, perhaps just on Technology Bloggers so we can avoid some of those muddier grey areas and I think he is probably right about that.

The entire effort is adopting the tag “blogger+ethics” (tip of the hat to Greg Narain on the added value the plus sign has here). We would like to start by tagging all relevant codes of ethics thusly and also all opinions on these matters to be collected in Blog posts tagged similarly to help us start focusing. Also, start making use of the Wiki to begin our work on this important effort.

There is a lot more to discuss here and we came up with some more interesting ideas for the Disclosr service that Social Media Club is beginning to develop. As I suspected in my post last night, this is only the beginning of a very important and high impact conversation.

Thanks to everyone for coming out. I am looking forward to continuing this conversation in DC next Monday and Boston next Thursday at the Round Tables we are holding there. I imagine it will be a part of the conversation in New York tonight as well.

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Social Media Club - Boston: SOLD OUT

I feel weird using the word ’sold out’ here, but we have 85* people registered and have reached capacity for the room we have reserved at the Colonnade Hotel. So, unless someone can offer a venue that could house 100 folks comfortably - we need to stop accepting registrations.

There is obviously a lot of interest in Boston, which is absolutely fantastic, so we will start working on another gathering for early December and see what we can do to rent a larger venue - say, maybe a warehouse. Ok, kidding here. A warehouse might be a tad bit extreme, but I am not one who likes to say ‘no’ to anyone wishing to attend one of our events so I want to make sure the space we choose, can accomodate a larger group.

*If you have signed up for this gathering and are not able to attend, please send an email to kristie@brainjams.org so someone else may come in your place. And - if you would like to come and were not able to register in time - please send your name and email to the same address and I will let you know if a spot opens up.

Chris and I would also like to plan a ‘Blogs and Beers’ meet and greet for Friday night at a pub somewhere in downtown Boston. I am a big fan of the Salty Dog for a cold Newcastle and pile of oysters, but I don’t think they could easily accomodate a party bigger than five people (unless we sat outside), so we are looking for suggestions.

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Talking About Disclosure - A Social Media Club Roundtable

I think about disclosure or talk about it with someone almost every day. Often it is in regards to whether or not I am able to disclose something because it has to do with advice I am giving clients, which happens all the time if you write about the field in which you work. If I am able to do so, then the question becomes whether I should write about it. Rather than just thinking about it on my own, I thought it best to organize a conversation among those who care about this issue here in San Francisco and put together a last minute Social Media Club roundtable at CNet’s headquarters for Wednesday October 25, 2006 from 6:00-8:00 PM. Thanks to Joel Sacks for helping secure the space at the last minute. While it will probably be a small turnout, it looks like it will be a great bunch of people who will have a lot to say on this subject.

The issue of disclosure came to the forefront recently with the Edelman problems with the Wal-Marting Across America blog and then two other ‘flogs’ that were being written by Edelman employees. The thing is, I did not want people to think I am just calling out the utter failure of the Social Media consultants at Edelman to do the right thing because I work as an independent contractor with Fleishman Hillard, a competing PR agency who used to do Wal-Mart work (I was never involved with that account). Look how much text I had to use to disclose that one portion of my interest in it. Then consider the 20 or so minutes I have spent editing that disclosure to make sure it sounded right, addressed the important points and fit into the story. I have a lot to say on the Edelman story, but so much else has already been said. I think I will be talking about it for a long time to come, because their failure to be transparent and authentic is a huge lesson for corporations which hopefully won’t be repeated, but most likely will.

My newfound emphasis on the topic of disclosure, however, came from my friend Mike Arrington’s little dustup with traditional journalists at the Online News Association conference which Jeff Jarvis writes about here and Mike writes about here. The subsequent post by Nicholas Carr called ‘A glass house‘ really struck a deep chord with me. I know Mike and I don’t believe he is purposely trying to deceive anyone, but he does have a competitive streak and many other interests across the Web 2.0 landscape which puts him in a precarious position. From my discussions with many people, there are no truly easy ways to make disclosures and there is no standard accepted practices for how to disclose and when to disclose. As I have consulted my clients over the years, it is often the perception of impropriety that is the problem not the actions themselves.

In speaking with Scott Rafer last week at the Dogster party, he reminded me of another important bit - sometimes there are interests that people can not disclose because they are not allowed to talk about the relationship they have for legal or other security reasons. To his point, it is indeed a very gray area which needs some more light shed on it for everyone of us to understand better. It is also, as my friend and colleague Stowe Boyd has pointed out previously, a problem in dire need of a solution.

This is why I immediately resolved to do something about it and began to organize a Social Media Club Roundtable for Wednesday October 25 called “Talking About Disclosure.” What I hope we get from the event is a great discussion about the best practices around disclosure of interests in pursuit of a common understanding of how to properly apply the principles of transparency and authenticity. The conversation has already begun, with great articles written by Jason Calcanis (older but relevant post), Shel Holtz, Matthew Ingram and Todd Defren. We want to bring that conversation into real time, with a focus on the solution. Also, we want to move from conversation to action, so we are hoping that we can produce a set of guidelines to recommend as best practices for people to use, which will ultimately be a part of the pledge we ask members to make when joining Social Media Club. We also will address WOMMA’s lack of action on the Edelman fiasco which is a point Shel Holtz makes in his post - though I don’t know what we can do differently.

Lisa Stone brought our attention to a post by a former Edelman employee on Blogher at our workshop yesterday in which Lisa points out some of the key requirements around disclosure that need to be addressed by a blogger.

What kind of commitment should bloggers make to their readers? I’m one of the people who thinks every blog owes its readers four answers, whether the blog is a corporate blog, a news blog or a personal diary:

1. Who are the bloggers?
2. What are the bloggers doing?
3. Why are the bloggers doing this?
4. Why do I — the reader — care?

The Wal-Mart blog flunks every question:

Finally, in the pursuit of full disclosure (which may come back to bite me in the ass for doing so too early), we have begun to work on a new service called Disclosr which will simplify the process of making disclosures for professionals who produce Social Media. The service will be available for free for all Professional members of Social Media Club and for a nominal subscription fee for non members. It will leverage the understanding we jointly develop of best practices for disclosure at the heart of the service. That still won’t cover all the gray areas that Scott Rafer pointed out last week, but it will get us further than not doing anything. There probably is not enough money in that business to be a really profitable standalone business, but as a public benefit that furthers the advancement of Social Media, it fits perfectly with our mission of supporting ethics.

In the end it comes down to the same thing I have been telling publishers and broadcasters for the past 12 years - don’t ever squander the trust you have with your audience by not being completely truthful. The public (aka audience) will revolt if you do and they will speak up and call you on it. Even though there are a number of assholes in the world with their personal axes to grind who may attack for the sake of being able to do so, most people won’t buy into that crap - particularly if you have continuously proven your trustworthiness over time while building a great relationship with your audience.

If Mike Arrington does have a conflict of interest, whether real or perceived, it is usually revealed by comment #5. The difference between Blogging and traditional journalism is that Mike then engages in real conversations to explain why the commenter may be wrong and admits when they are right, making a correction or clarifying the original statement. This is what often happens when having a conversation with real people - the story is much bigger than we are able to get across in the time we have to speak, so it sometimes takes a few rounds of back and forth to get to all the important points. I am not an apologist for Mike, he can handle that himself quite well, I am just trying to point out that Blogging and other forms of Social Media is conversational and there is more to it than just perceiving someone has evil intentions.

Wheww, I actually have left out many other important points that are worthy of discussion and will bring up when we get together tomorrow. I am sure you could probably add a few dozen more, particularly when we get to talking about real world situations. So please add to the conversation here in the comments and join us at CNet’s Headquarters in San Francisco on Wednesday October 25, 2006 from 6-8pm. Please do RSVP on Upcoming so I know how much soda and beer we need to bring to keep the conversation flowing…

PS - I had been speaking with Mike Arrington about participating, and he agreed to do so - in addition to inviting other journalists and interested parties. After waiting for over a week for him to respond to my emails, voicemails and text messages after initially saying yes and being enthusiastic, it doesn’t look like he is coming. Or then again, perhaps one of his readers or other friends will point it out and he may write a post on Crunchnotes.

[10/25 update - Mike Arrington was sick and dealing with the financing on Edegeio which is why I did not hear back from him - he actually saw the post himself and was kind enough to write up something this afternoon on TechCrunch and will hopefully be joining us this evening.]

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New Social Media Club chapters: Seattle and Vancouver

Hello Northwest!

Chris Heuer, co-founder of Social Media Club, will be in Seattle on December 6th and Vancouver on December 7th to officially launch the local chapters in each city. If you are in the area and interested in social media and the intersection of journalism, activism, marketing and technology - we encourage you to join us and meet your peers to share best practices, while working towards the establishment of ethics and standards and promoting media literacy.

We will discuss “The Rise of Social Media” and review the latest in tools, technologies and success stories. Chris will share accomplishments from other chapters and suggest possible next steps. The goal of Social Media Club is for each chapter to set goals, meet regularly and share opinions on the role of social media in the present and future of PR, marketing and journalism.

Details on each event are below:

SEATTLE

Where: Youngstown Cultural Arts Center, 4408 Delridge Way SW, Seattle
When: December 6th, from 6pm to 8:30pm
Costs: FREE (we do need you to register so we may prepare for your arrival)

————-

VANCOUVER

Where: Bryght offices, 1 Alexander Street, Suite 401, Vancouver, BC
When: December 7th, from 6pm to 8:30pm
Costs: FREE (we do need you to register so we may prepare for your arrival)

If you have any questions on either event, please contact Kristie Wells at kristie@brainjams.org.

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Chris Heuer and Sally Falkow to speak at the Search Insider Summit

The Search Insider Summit takes place in Palm Springs at the Miramonte Resort and Spa on November 12-15, and brings the best minds in the industry together to share leading edge information and experience on search marketing in a think-tank environment, while exploring new technology, strategies and tactics for effective campaigns.

I know I am a tad bit biased, but I really feel these two* together should make for an interesting panel on Social Media and Search - so if you are a brand manager, agency decision maker or search marketing expert - buy yourself a ticket and see them in action.

For more information on the conference, please go to the Search Insider Summit website.

*Chris is a Co-Founder of Social Media Club and Executive Director of BrainJams. Sally is an active member of the Social Media Club and recently launched this initiative in the Los Angeles area.

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Social Media Workshop Almost Sold Out…

At about this time last week, I was honestly worried we were in trouble with the workshop we are hosting next Monday From Social Media to Corporate Media - I did not really hear any buzz, registrations were modest at best and I briefly considered what we might need to do if we were forced to cancel the event. After speaking with my fiancee Kristie Wells though, she lifted up my spirits and reminded me of what was really important. We did a quick gut check and realized that we could pull off a great workshop, even if it was only for 20 people instead of 40, so we fully committed ourselves to making it work and once again, things have really turned around remarkably.

As of this minute we only have 5 spots left!

Better still, the caliber of people who will be there is top notch. As is often the case with these sorts of participatory events, I think the collective wisdom of the room will probably teach us a thing or two about what’s going on with Social Media inside the corporation. I have so many people to thank for this workshop (and everything else that is happening), I don’t think I can give everyone the thanks and credit they deserve at the moment, so will need to write up something in the coming days.
I do however really need to thank our sponsors, without whom we would not be able to invest all the time we do in helping bring together this community of practice. SAP (thanks Mona!), Fleishman Hillard and PR Newswire are more than sponsors of this event - their support, financial and otherwise, has been invaluable in allowing us to continue to push forward with building the organization. I am very lucky to have them as our first corporate members of Social Media Club and very proud to know some great people from those companies I am able to call my friend.

While I am in the thankful mood, I simply must recognize the stellar contributions of Brian Sollis of Future Works PR. When we first met, I gave him shit for calling his Blog PR 2.0 - but
he took it in stride and apparently forgave me, because he puts forth a huge amount of effort towards helping us be successful. He truly has earned the title of co-founder of Social Media Club and more importantly, friend.

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