The Future of Social Media Club

Posted by Chris Heuer
June 6, 2007

While we continue to get a few new members registering, there has not been much movement on the mailing list, on blogs or on the wiki for establishing the leadership council in earnest. The call last week was promising, but once again, the amount of activity in regards to followup has been lower then hoped. I have been trying to shepherd through my last projects (particularly the new Web site) and hoping some new leadership would emerge to do something interesting with what he have developed so far, but it seems everyone is still waiting for me to do something, rather than doing it.

If this is going to be the case, I am wondering if it might be better to sell the site and the related assets to another organization or to merge with another group. Maybe we just make Social Media Club a community mark and let go of it for people to do with as they please locally ala BarCamp, PodCamp and others. I am just at wits end right now about this whole situation, feeling responsible to all the paying members and others who have put their faith and trust in this idea and me personally. As I have told many of you privately, though I said I was stepping back from day to day responsibilities, my to-do list did not change hardly at all.

Clearly conversations are still happening and in the cities where we are really strong (Boston, New York, Austin, DC, Portland, Phoenix and here in San Francisco) there is something really happening - something that really does not need a central leadership structure, but surely could benefit from it. The thing is, if I can’t do more with it and there is not enough of a group of people who have time to do something more with it, what do we do? What should we do? What do you want to do?

If you have thoughts and answers to these questions, please add your voice here so we might figure this out together…

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Information: June 6th, 2007; 6 Responses

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Categories: The SMC Organization

Other Posts: Social Media Workshop on UStream.tv; Dell Gets It

Reader Comments

Comment Number:: 1
Written by:: Simon Koldyk
Posted on:: June 6, 2007 at 6:56 pm

While I am new to Social Media and SMC, I’ve noticed that their are so many organizations around WikiWendesdays (http://www.socialtext.net/wikiwed/), Barcamp, RecentChangesCamp in Portland, RoCoCo in Montreal, Northern Voice in Vancouver and I’m sure a bunch of others that I haven’t even found out about yet. I think leadershimp needs to be gathered with these, all the SMC events don’t need to be done by SMC; but, they could partner and advertise with them getting together.

I’d also like to see what exactly what you are looking for in terms of leadership.

Comment Number:: 2
Written by:: Ronna Porter
Posted on:: June 7, 2007 at 1:07 am

Hi Chris, I’m just waiting on my .jot login from you to contribute further. Ronna

Comment Number:: 3
Written by:: Chris Heuer
Posted on:: June 7, 2007 at 7:53 am

Hi Simon.

This is very true - there are so many things happening around different special interests no one has time to be a part of all these different things. That is one reason why the once a year gatherings of the community is so powerful.

There are 2 core ideas (ok dozens, but these 2 for the focus now) that I think differentiates the idea of Social Media Club. 1, that it is intended to be an ongoing touchstone for people interested in social media to further the good work around the core mission stated on the home page and 2, that it brings together people from across their specific disciplines to talk about issues affecting them all - the diversity and inter-disciplinary component.

We never sought to be THE event or THE place to hangout, we hoped to be THE HUB, where all these different groups might intersect - where we can promote Lunch 2.0, WikiWednesdays, BarCamps and all the others. That still holds true, but it still requires leadership to hold the core together and help connect the dots.

I can do the dot connecting, I just can’t afford to run the operations any longer since it requires so much time and effort. Maybe I should have paid myself out of the membership dollars that came in, but I wanted to get things up and running before doing anything other than paying for some expenses and delivering on the promise I made for membership kits etc…

Comment Number:: 4
Written by:: Simon Koldyk
Posted on:: June 7, 2007 at 1:17 pm

Hey Chris,
I wasn’t saying so much that their are so many events that it’s to much (I love all the events) and have been looking for a hub mainly just I can find out about them all and get a little bit more connected.

What I’m mainly saying, is if SMC is suppose to be the hub for all this stuff, then the people organizing all these thing have to be part of the leadership at SMC in some shape or form.

Comment Number:: 5
Written by:: francine hardaway
Posted on:: June 8, 2007 at 1:01 am

I think you have done a great job getting it up and running. I never thought the central membership thing would work, and it doesn’t have to. All we need to do is finish the website so that we can all post our local events to it, and it will be doing everything it should. In Phoenix, our meetings are great and well attended. I don’t have time to lead the Phoenix group and be a central contributor, or I would be. I value the suggestions you make about topics to discuss, and I like to see what everyone else is discussing. I see a lot of SMC people on Twitter, and I learn more from that site. I think you should stop worrying, marry that cool woman you live with, and be happy

Comment Number:: 6
Written by:: Social Surveillance » Blog Archive » Social Media Club - Starting The Conversation Workshop
Posted on:: June 17, 2007 at 3:04 pm

[…] I’t seems there may be the potential for the group to splinter. I read this and was not surprised. It takes a lot of work to organize events and get people together. My hope is they find someone or someway to keep things centralized. I think by having the common hub the remote chapters can have a greater effectiveness. […]