Damn, we did it again! Although about five people who had signed up called in sick, about fifty people who hadn’t registered in advance showed up, and we blew the doors off the room for the third month in a row. When I asked people to raise their hands and tell me if they were producers or consumers of social media (by which I meant “do you already participate, or are you hear to learn?”), the room was divided almost equally in half.

Because of the enormous amount of interest in social media, we are holding a mini-conference the morning of March 1 at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix. Chris Heuer will come down to give us some good definitions of social media, followed by three case studies of Arizona organizations who are heavily involved, and keynoted by the grand old man of the space,  Robert Scoble and his better half. You will be able to sign up next week, but in the mean time you can save a spot by emailing me at francine@stealthmode.com.

Because we were talking about the Social Media Press release tonight, we had many PR people in the room, and one former BusinessWire employee who defended the traditional wire service method of distribution. We also had a radio talk show host who said she had never received anything but the traditional press release, and she reminded us that the revolution may not have really begun. I think some of us needed to hear that.  We live in our own little word of podcasts and BlogHauses.
We talked a bit about the elements of the press release–which of them were new and which were just additive to traditional releases. It then became clear that while most PR practitioners now felt comfortable with links in a press release, most still weren’t familiar with services like Digg, Technorati, or Deli.cio.us (sic), nor would it occur to them to, say, embed a video in a press release. Moreover, many people felt uncomfortable with giving the media “too much” information, which could mean losing control of the corporate messages.
Unfortunately, I’m a horrible moderator because I like to hear myself talk and I lectured on far too long about why everyone needed to know about what’s “out there” in the social media space and how it could be used to communicate with more than just media — with customers, constituents, shareholders, etc. But finally I shut up and let everyone network, and when I left, the room was still full.

We are begging everyone from Phoenix to sign up in advance for Feb. 8. We may have to cut off reservations.