Social Media Club SFSV: Sonoma Bound on July 11, 2009!

June 10, 2009

Come join the Social Media Club for their FIRST ever wine adventure!

We know you’ve been slaving away all year, so isn’t it time to kick back and relax a little? We thought so too, so we got together with Barbara Drady (@WineEvangelist) from Affairs of the Vine to put together a Social Media Club road trip to Sonoma wine country!

Here are the details:

  • July 11 - we’ll meet up at the Presido Bowl Parking lot in the Presidio, San Francisco, board the bus and leave at 9:30 AM sharp.
  • First stop is Keller Estate Winery. We’ll have a tour of the winery, a guided tasting and a light lunch provided by the winery.
  • Next is Baletto Vineyards for a guided tasting and also enjoy some cheese and snacks with Dutton-Goldfield’s wines in their shared tasting room.
  • We’ll wind up the tour at Owl Ridge, where we will taste more wonderful wines, learn about wine blending and blend our own bottle to take home.

After the blending party, it’s back on the bus to San Francisco.  We are expecting to be back in the city by approximately 5:30 PM.

The cost of this event is $65.00, and there are only 40 spots available.  Tickets will be on sale until July 10 at 5 PM - assuming they don’t sell out.  Book your tickets today to avoid being left out!  http://sfsvjul09.eventbrite.com

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Social Media Camp #IWNY Wrap-Up

June 9, 2009

Social Media Camp KickoffSocial Media Club’s Social Media Camp was a great success thanks to the over 120 people who participated! Social media Camp was held in the Roger Smith hotel last Thursday, June 4 2009 during Internet Week New York. The camp had over two dozen sessions throughout an eight hour day, with well known social media professionals, small business folks, professionals and corporate communications teams learning from and teaching each other. There has been some great feedback from those who attended and a good amount of sharing from the people at the camp too.

Some of the comments on Twitter

Differing slightly from a typical BarCamp, Social Media Camp not only offered open space for participants to create their day together, but also a “Social Media 101″ series planned out in advance to allow for those who are new to Social Media to learn some of the basics. These sessions were all streamed live and are available as an on demand episode from Livestream, a partner for Social Media Camp. This 5 session series was lead by Howard Greenstein and myself, Chris Heuer.  The links below take you to the blog post about each session, along with the SlideShare presentations used during each session.

  1. What is Social Media Session
  2. Creating a Digital Identity
  3. Social Media Tools, Services and Networks Session 
  4. Using Social Media for Job Searches Session
  5. Marketing Through Social Media Session

social-media-camp-2009-1
Image by deanmeyersnet via Flickr

Dean Meyers did some great visual notes, capturing the concepts and resources from the Social Media 101 Sessions. It was a lot of fun. More importantly, it seems we help many and created more questions in a few, so overall a success, but definitely just the beginning of the conversation and the process of learning how to use social media. The complete schedule for the day from the Open Space sessions is available on the blog.

 

Some of the other topics that were discussed were power of suggestion on Twitter, basics of strategy in social media marketing for businesses, social media tools, measurability, and marketing through social media. One session in particular struck a lot of conversation. Social Media Marketing triggered thoughts upon building relationships with the market, the importance of trust in marketing/branding and how companies are using social media to market their businesses products and services. 

“Companies in general don’t value social media marketing as much as they should. They’re afraid of it; they don’t understand it; and therefore, they just don’t do it. Yet it’s the most cost-efficient way of marketing there is.” - Ayelet Noff, Blonde 2.0.

Many different tools and tactics were taught, then they were put into play. One of the most compelling part of the sessions was the group involvement and peer to peer knowledge exchange. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves, and were not scared to interact with one another. Among the ideas and information exchanged, relationships were built.

“I just love social media and Web 2.0…. I really want to thank the Social Media Club folks for having such a great event: Howard Greenstein, Chris Heuer and Kristie Wells…. The last session was really interesting. The topic was retweets on Twitter. Dan Zarrella from Hubspot crunched some numbers that gave a bit of insight on how people are behaving on Twitter.” - Regina, Volunteer at SMCamp

Well, we love doing it too, and Howard and Kristie and I are blessed to be able to do this sort of work and so happy to help people.

Other blog posts and photos from the event are below, please share yours in the comments:

Social Media Camp Photos:

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Toby Moores on the Perfect Storm for Change

June 4, 2009

This is a can’t miss interview with some of the best insights on what is happening in the world right now and why this is perhaps one of the most important times to be alive. I met Toby Moores (aka sleepydog ) at Amplified 09 Cambridge in May and knew right away we were kindred spirits. In this interview he shows why, teaching me a thing or two, and you too! Hear more about how the economic crisis, the shift in management focus from efficiency to innovation and the rise of social media as an amplifier are colliding to create a perfect storm of change… This is 7 minutes well spent!

Toby Moores on the Perfect Storm for Change from Social Media Club on Vimeo.

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It takes all of us…

June 3, 2009

 

According to Ghandi, In order to bring about the change we all desire in the world, “we must be the change we want to see.”  Each individual, acting on their own accord can create change, and we can do so one person, one moment at a time, but to create the change we really need, it takes all of us, working together.

Should we wait till everyone is ready? of course not, we need to start now and be persistent in order to create a real crescendo of change that will rise up over time.  But we also need to better understand the conditions necessary and our responsibilities in the greater scheme of things.

As the infamous airline safety line goes, “put on your oxygen mask first before assisting others.”  This is so true and so deep it is hard to really comprehend the nuanced subtlety that lies beneath the surface.  I learned this the hard way, and indeed am still learning it through our work withSocial Media Club.  Far too often I ignore this important advice, sacrificing myself and my time for others and it leaves me without the all important oxygen (and dollars) needed to stay energized, positive and secure.

But what it is really saying is that we are all responsible for taking care of ourselves so that we may then assist others.  IMHO it implies that we are not only responsible for ourselves, but also for one another.  Sometimes by taking care of ourselves, we are taking care of others.  Sometimes we need help ourselves and can’t help others, but this doesnt abdicate the need for being responsible for taking actions that will help ourselves and hopefully others too.

This is perhaps the biggest ideological schism between the Republican and Democratic parties.  Though I think the modern Democratic party is more aware of the fact that this is not an either/or proposition but an AND proposition.  We are responsible for ourselves, and being supportive of others is actually to our own benefit as well.  It is one of the reasons I switched from the Republican party to being an independent some time ago. 

My mother, who had Cerebral Palsy, taught me this when I was young in a positive lift yourself up sort of way and when I was older in the negative, helpless go through life as an alcholoic sort of way.  She was an incredible woman and its hard to write these words without crying, thinking about what a beautiful soul she was and how tragic the end of her life was.  Its really hard to lift yourself up when you FEEL depressed, hurt, ignored, worthless, helpless and/or disadvantaged.  Changing your state of mind is not as easy as changing clothes, or perhaps it is, but it takes a lot of practice and a lot more awareness then most people have in their lives. But it is what is required of us, of all of us.

Striking the right balance between serving people by helping them and not teaching them a learned helplessness is really tough.  There are many wonderful people with great intentions out there helping those who need real help, and I am grateful for it - and indeed as a child, we benefitted from their generosity.  I am writing this from my direct experience as much as my ideological view of the world.  The help provided should be accompanied by a helping hand to lead people in the direction of finding their personal responsibility within the broader community.

In my mind, BarCamp is the pinnacle of the Do It Yourself (DIY) culture (and for us geekier folks, Maker Faire too).  It’s a space where everyone is responsible for creating their own good experience (the law of two feet) and where everyone is responsible for contributing to the good experience of others (all participants are encouraged to contribute as much if not more then they take).  A while back, I had been proposing we create a DIO culture (do it ourselves) which was more of a community focused variant on the theme, which better encapsultates my thinking on this subject.  

Now more then ever I am convinced that it takes all of us, responsible for ourselves, considering the welfare of the community, seeking out long term prosperity over short term profits and moving beyond the grasp of our own egoic minds and our current conditions.  The human spirit is infinite in its potential regardless of its physical constraints and conditions.  Not just on the spiritual level, but on an emotional level, a physical level and even a financial level.

We just need to be willing to give up our dreams of our life path being an easy one and embrace the fact that we will have to overcome obstacles, most especially our own internal demons.  For if we all make a commitment to doing the work necessary on ourselves first and then our communities, we can certainly create the change we seek in the world. But, it takes all of us to change the world, we have to do this together.

As Chevy Chase said long ago, “be the ball“…

 

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Noded! The Way We Work

May 28, 2009

This is an interview with Jaan Orvet from Noded about his book and the model behind their Noded business network. Rather than working in hierarchically driven organizations or in a distributed team, Jaan and his colleagues each work as nodes within a trusted network. Each are free to bring work in, turn work down or do what they want. In looking at preparing students for the modern workforce this week with our Social Media Club Question of the Week, I thought it important to take a look at this modern way of working. #SMCQ11

This model is very similar to what I have been doing with AdHocnium, except they have no central entity at the heart of the organization. This is small pieces, barely joined (except by trust) as opposed to our approach of pieces loosely joined. (small semantical difference, but important).

Please check them out, and check out the book if you are interested in working the Noded lifestyle too! Social Media Club members can buy the e-book for only $15.

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First Social Media Strategy Workshop in Birmingham Alabama

April 14, 2009

We are very excited to unveil some details of our upcoming Social Media Workshop which will be held on Tuesday April 27 in Birmingham Alabama. After taking the pulse of the market, reviewing the result of the Social Media Buyers Guide and discussing anecdotal evidence, we came to realize pretty quickly that almost everyone is in need of a clear strategy for integrating social media into their marketing and communications mix so companies can start to engage. It was also clear, that the biggest challenge social media champions face is selling it internally and educating coworkers, so our plan for this latest series of workshops pretty much wrote itself.

For only $295, you will benefit from the experience and creative insights from some of the leading practitioners in social media for business. Join Mack Collier, Scott Schablow, Ike Pigott and Chris Heuer for a full day workshop where you get to leave with the framework for your social media strategy and insights on how to sell the plan to management so you can begin to make it real.

So roll up your sleeves, this isn’t a bunch of pseudo-celebrities trying to show you how great they are while talking about how many followers they have on Twitter, this is about you making social media an integrated part of your business strategy. We are doing a WORKSHOP so that you can put social media to work for you. In fact, when you register, you can tell us what you are specifically trying to accomplish and we will work to tailor the final agenda and related discussions to your specific needs.

So what will the Social Media Strategy Workshop look like?

We will start the day discussing the impact Social Media has on your business and why so many people are turning to social media for an up turn in their business during the economic downturn. How does social media change things? What exactly is it? What is possible and what is not? How can it help your business? Why is everyone talking about it? What are the most important principles you need to understand? What’s the different between a status update, a Tweet, a poke, a nudge and all those other silly sounding terms?

After a brief introductory presentation addressing these key questions, each of our workshop leaders will host smaller conversations in breakout groups so we can more directly support your specific needs.  Each workshop leader will then host a conversation that includes some presentation materials as well as demonstrations of important services, software and web sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, YouTube and more.  We will also highlight important areas of focus which may be a part of your final strategy inlcuding:

  • Review of current marketing plan (do you have your’s? bring it.)
  • Building and maintaining relationships
  • Looking, Listening and Responding
  • Producing Media
  • Engaging with the Market
  • Managing Community
  • Social Media Campaigns
  • Metrics and ROI
  • Becoming a Social Organization
  • Social Media Campaigns
  • Measuring Influence and Maximizing It

After lunch we will review case studies from leading companies such as Dell, H&R Block, GM and Zappos as well as from smaller everyday folks applying the same insights in distinct ways. While the cases are all unique to the specific situation at hand, they do offer incredible insight into the perspective required to be successful. Participants are encouraged to share their own case studies as part of this discussion too so that we may learn from each other throughout the day.

The remainder of the afternoon will focus on developing a social media strategy for you to take back to your business. In addition to discussing in-depth details behind key strategic decisions you need to make, we will also discuss how you can get support for these activities within your organization. So you will leave at the end of the day with a strategic plan and a plan for how to begin putting it to work within your organization.

Participation is limited, so if you live in or near Birmingham, we hope you will consider spending the day with us figuring out how to apply social media to your business.  It’s a transformational step for you and your career as well as your business. So, please register today and join us in Birmingham on Monday April 27.

We are also currently still seeking sponsors for the workshop. If you are interested in sponsoring the event, $5,000 will make you the title sponsor for the workshop.  If you are interested in supporting your local community and you are looking at buying 2 tickets, you might be interested in becoming a participating sponsor for $1,500 which includes 2 tickets for you and your company in addition to 2 tickets for a non-profit organization and traditional workshop sponsorship coverage.  Contact us for more details.

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Insights from B5Media: Social Media Buyers Guide

March 9, 2009

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In this 25 minute podcast, we discuss some of the insights Jeremy Wright has found while working with different clients engaged in social media campaigns. Most important piece of advice, “know your goals and have a clearly defined strategy”. Second most important piece of advice, “ask lots of questions”. What sort of questions? Listen in and find out for yourself… More info on the Social Media Buyers Guide project can be found at http://socialmediaclub.org/

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Social Media Buyers Guide Survey - Please Contribute

March 6, 2009

Last month we began work in earnest on the Social Media Buyers Guide project by starting to collect information, ideas and questions on the Social Media Club wiki.  Last week we hosted our first podcasts. Today we are beginning to seek contributions to our formal Social Media Buyers Guide Survey that will be the basis for our presentation at Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco on Friday April 3 at 2:40pm. Next week we will be hosting another series of podcasts with technology vendors on Monday at 10am PST and Thursday with service providers at 11am PST (to make up for tech troubles we had this week).

Our mission is, as I have been ranting incessantly, to help companies stop selling and shift the focus/intention to helping their customers buy.  Never before have we been able to leverage the tools with such broad, global access to each others’ insights and lessons learned.  Never before has the business climate been so open as to encourage this type of sharing.  Its interesting that so many people have asked “what do you mean, help people buy?” - we are so indoctrinated into being sold, its hard for some people to make the mental shift to examine what advice we can share to help others make the right vendor and service provider decisions.  But that is our goal, and we have some great insights already captured.

Now we need your help: please share this with your colleagues.  Please retweet the link.  Please contribute to the Social Media Buyers Guide Survey yourself, sharing as much or as little information as you can (the survey could take between 5-30 minutes based on how much, or how little you want to write.  This is also an opportunity for you and your company to be featured as a case study, or you can submit the information anonymously. If you are an agency, you should also reach out to your favorite clients and encourage them to complete the survey. If you are an organizational buyer who contributes to the survey and are in town for Web 2.0 Expo, you may be selected for helping present the findings, and your case study, during our panel.

So what are you waiting for, go ahead and complete the survey now. Then please share and invite others to contribute too… [ RT @socialmediaclub help us help you! Take the Social Media Buyers Guide Survey so others can learn from your experience http://bit.ly/InWra ]

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Buyer Be Heard! Social Media Buyers Guide on Blog Talk Radio March 4, 2009

February 26, 2009

**Updated: The Service Providers and Technology Vendors podcasts are rescheduled for the week of March 9. See below for details.**

Social Media Club is hosting three podcasts next Wednesday, March 4, 2009 for the purpose of gathering supporting research for the Social Media Buyers Guide Project.

Join SMC Founder Chris Heuer and E-Storm CEO William Gaultier as we interview several leading social media technology vendors, services providers and organizational buyers. We will be talking about their lessons learned and the most important advice they have for other organizations evaluating and purchasing social media. Guests will also be asked to share the three most important questions they recommend asking any social media consultant, agency, vendor or solutions provider before signing a contract.

Visit the show pages linked below to listen in on the web. If you have relevant experiences you would like to share or questions you would like answered, please feel free to join the call via the phone numbers below. We would also ask that you take some time to help us with the project, by completing the Social Media Buyers Guide Survey. Of course, we would be remiss if we didn’t ask for your help in spreading the word, by pointing your colleagues to this post.

The podcasts are on Wednesday, March 4 at the following times (PST):

  • Social Media Buyers Guide: Insights from Technology Vendors, UPDATED: Due to technical difficulties, the show is rescheduled to Monday, March 9, 10:00 AM - 10:45 AM (PST). [was 9:00 - 9:45AM March 4]. You can listen on the web or call: (347) 308-8038
    • Special guests to be announced
  • Social Media Buyers Guide: Insights from Service Providers, UPDATED: Due to technical difficulties, the show is rescheduled to Thursday, March 12, 11:00 AM - 11:45 AM (PST). [was 10:00 - 10:45AM March 4]. You can listen on the web or call: (347) 308-8038
    • Special guests to be announced
  • Social Media Buyers Guide: Insights from Organizational Buyers, 11:00 - 11:45AM You can listen on the web or call: (347) 308-8038
    • Special guests include Christopher Barger from GM and others to be announced

Other guests are being confirmed as we write this, so this page and the show pages will be updated as they confirm.

Project Background

The Social Media Buyers Guide is a project of Social Media Club, a nonprofit working to improve media literacy and the sharing of lessons learned amongst social media practitioners. The project was developed to help organizational buyers of social media services and technologies make better decisions. For more details, check out the blog post announcing the project, contribute your thoughts on the project wiki, and complete the survey. It is our desire to ultimately serve the individuals in large corporations, small businesses, nonprofits and government agencies who are tasked with being social media champions inside of their organizations.

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Social Media Club Editoral Team Kickoff

February 17, 2009

We hosted a call yesterday with a few of the participants of the Social Media Club Editorial Team to discuss what we are about to embark upon together. This includes an overview of how we will manage "Question of the Week", a paramedia activity, our work on the Social Media Buyer’s Guide and also our collaborative activities around launching Social Media Journal and Social Media Observer.

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Building out the Social Media FAQ

January 27, 2009

Got Questions? Our members have answers.In talking with Chris Brogan recently (during his WordCamp Las Vegas presentation actually) I pointed out the fact that our RSS Streams don’t do much to help build our collective memory. In some ways, a tweet is like a shooting star, if you happen to be looking at the right time in the right place, you can see something brilliant on occasion. They serve as sparks for our imagination, but as with our real world conversations, it’s presence is often more ephenneral then permanent. Chris rightfully pointed out this is why he focuses so much effort on his blog, that there is deeper conversation and permanence in blogging (which is one reason why I am going to try to do more of it in 2009 like this).

In our back and forth, we discussed the fact that the online conversation that occurred in ‘the early days of social computing’ on mailing lists and forums often had significant (and generally misplaced) energy directed at people who joined the community and did not first ‘read the FAQ’ to discover the historically important conversations they had before you showed up. It included some cultural nuances, pointers to reference data as well as answers to questions from people new to the field or the industry or the community of interest or whatever the central topic was for the group.

So in thinking about our mission to further media literacy, our efforts to promote the Social Media profession and the widespread use of Social Media by different people from around the world, we are going to start a new project to build out the Social Media FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions). When launched during SxSW (good goal eh?) we hope that people will be able to send anyone interested in Social Media here as their starting point into the world of Social Media. If you have some ideas about what this site should look like or what it should do, please share them in the comments or write them up on your blog and send us a trackback.

In the meantime, please help us get started by submitting one or more of your frequently asked questions below. If you have an answer for the question, even better, but the value of powerful questions is what we are seeking here. Ultimately, the biggest questions will be explored as part of our new International Social Media Club program we are simply calling Question of the Week right now. So let’s get started and move to get all the information, knowledge and insights organized! Not only will it help people learn, it will enable practitioners and professionals to invest more time innovating and less time explaining the basics.

If you get it, share it.

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Social Media and SEO: January 2009 SMC SF/SV Meeting

January 26, 2009

SMCSFSV - SEO and SMOLast week in San Francisco we kicked off 2009 #SMCSFSV with an excellent gathering at the offices of Zannel where we discussed Social Media and SEO, with presentations from some great people who are deserving of the title ‘expert’. It was one of our biggest events in a while locally, reflecting the interest around the topic as well as the growth of Social Media Club, with about 90 people attending. As is usually the case with our events, there was a great mix of developers, pr folks, community managers, web 2.0 entrepreneurs, real estate agents, non-profits, social media consultants, media makers and others.

As promised, though a few days late, we wanted to share the knowledge and insights from our evening together here. In fact, Kristie Wells is a woman on a mission, focused on trying to find more ways that each local group can better share their conversations, insights and recommendations. She has been incessantly nagging me to get this post done since last Wednesday morning, so that we can serve as an example for others. So let’s all do our best to publish our lessons the next day after a meeting, but no more then a week later. In fact, we should have a dScribe (a digital scribe) responsible for capturing all the media from each event and getting it organized on the site.

In addition to the presentations below and the photos on Flickr (chrisheuer, ken yeung) you may also watch the raw/unedited ustream video from the SEO and Social Media presentations. This video still has about 30 minutes of pre-presentation noise in front of it (if anyone can edit the video and get us a better version, we would gladly replace this). Going forward I am thinking we might

The evening started off with an excellent overview of the interconnectedness of SEO and Social Media with a discussion of Rohit Bhargava’s 5 Rules of Social Media Optimization presented by Jose Nunez and Jacob Morgan from HiRank. The original 5 elements Rohit presented are:

  1. Increase your linkability
  2. Make tagging and bookmarking easy
  3. Reward inbound links
  4. Help your content travel
  5. Encourage mashups

Jose’s presentation was very informative.

Social Media (SMO) & SEO Interaction

Next up was Daniel Riveong, from e-Storm who was sharing more tactically focused case studies.  Daniel was also sharing some examples of missed opportunities, where great social media marketing was missing the SEO elements that would have made it even more succesful on many different levels.  It’s a very compelling case as to why SEO should have a prominent seat at the social media strategy table.

SMC Panel: Integrating Social Media Marketing & SEO

It was clear from the quality of the content being presented that we needed to take less time for discussion and more time for presentation this night.  This was especially clear when Brent Csutoras started his presentation which really capped up a great series of lessons with the special insider insight that everyone needs to take their work to the next level.  You can download his presentation (and also access the video) from his blog post recapping the night.

It was a great way to kick off what is going to be an exciting, albeit difficult, 2009.  While there was plenty of food and beverages for all, the night was not without its glitches.  While Zanel has an incredible space, its clear that SMCSFSV needs to get some portable sound amplification and a better microphone setup for each event.  I also would have liked to have had more time for discussion, but I, as emcee, let each presenattion continue longer since it was valuable information and everyone was engaged.

So for next month’s event, we can really use your help.  Please contact us at smcsfsv —at— socialmediaclub —dot— org if you are interested in volunteering or have suggestions on how to make our time together more valuable. More information about upcoming events will be posted on our Facebook group soon, so stay tuned

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Recognizing the Service Contributions of Unconferences

January 19, 2009

Session on Building Better CommunityThis past weekend when contemplating today as a national day of service, it occurred to me how much value many of you have been contributing to our society by sharing your knowledge and insights.  In particular, it struck me that the volunteers, speakers and organizers of unconferences have received great local recognition for their work, but not enough as they truly deserve.

So I wanted to take a moment to thank all the great people who have tirelessly supported the unconference cause, bringing insights, knowledge, comraderie, problem solving and so much more to the world around us.  Unforutnately, when looking through the BarCamp Wiki, as well as some of the site’s from events we have previously put on, I realized that the record keeping around these events is so inconsistent, that this was impossible to do as an undertaking of any well meaning (albeit poorly funded) organization on its own.

Impossible that is, until I realized we could tap into the DIY spirit that made these events possible and ask for your help in compiling a list of everyone who has contributed to making an unconference possible.  If you have ever been a part of an unconference in any of the leadership roles, please take a few minutes to complete this form so we can recognize your contributions properly.

Though it is going to take several minutes to complete, and probably some research on URL’s, I think it will be worth your while to promote your service to the community.  As the nation turns its focus on being of service to the community and each other, its important to recognize those of you who have been participating in bettering society in this important manner.  Please also take a minute to retweet this URL, blog about it, tell your friends/colleagues who contributed previously and thank an unconference organizer today.

If you want to retweet or share the URL to just the form, you can use http://bit.ly/unconferenceform

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Social Media Club Salt Lake City Kickoff

January 15, 2009

I (Chris Heuer) had a chance to help the good folks in Salt Lake City kickoff their local group earlier today. Some great people there - wish I was there in person. Am so lucky I get to do stuff like this and share our vision with others - thank you all for listening and helping carry it forward.

In this quick overview of the history of the club and an introduction to current endeavours, we give a good overview of what the club is about, why it started and where we are headed. I also get a chance to give some advice about what is one of the most important things to focus on in launching a new chapter/group. The answer is something I have been thinking about a lot lately - back to the origins of BrainJams, the idea of bringing peple from different backgrounds together and not letting anyone ‘clique’ or industry be the sole owners of the conversation at Social Media Club.

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Social Innovation Camp: Changing the World One Weekend at a Time

December 12, 2008

Last weekend in London, I witnessed what I would call a series of miracles that soon could be a part of our everyday waking lives, or at least the lives of my friends in the United Kingdom.  The Social Innovation Camp hosted by The Young Foundation was a barcamp/startup weekend sort of event for social entrepreneurs, people looking to do good and make enough money to be sustainable.  If what I saw was as indicative of the scene in London as I believe, this is perhaps one of the major epicenters of transforming the world into the better place that we all know it can be. There is a really great write up of the whole weekend over on the SI Camp Blog.

Besides meeting tons of brilliant people like, I learned a lot about how to facilitate these sorts of events, how to empower better team collaboration and the deep seated desire that so many people the world over have to engage in what I call The Noble Pursuit.  I also confirmed that London is still one of the best cities in the world, and perhaps the only other city I would actually live in other than San Francisco.

I hope to work with a foundation or two in the Bay Area, along with my AdHocnium colleague JD Lasica to bring this sort of event to my home soon.  We are working on several great ideas I hope to tell you all about very soon that is related to our work with AdHocnium and JD’s work on Media Innovation Camp.

As I sat there last Sunday afternoon, I was impressed by the final presentations of the seven social startups created oer the weekend.  Each one progressed in dramatic ways from where they were at the prior Friday night when things got underway.  I personally had a chance to sit in on parts of the discussions on almost all of them and contribute little bits here and there, in an advisory sort of role.  As an outsider, I didn’t want to get too deep, but I did want to be a ‘useful visitor’, which is actually the team I spent the most time with and hopefully the one I contributed the most real value to.  I hope to continue to advise them over the years ahead to ensure it is successful.  It is something that I would surely use, as I suspect you would too.

A full write up on the process and the judging talks further about the prizes. Our Useful Visitor team came in 2nd place behind GoodGym. Their concept is interesting and has potential, but there are some security concerns.  The idea is that this service can enable people to do good while running, walking or biking by pairing them up with people who need help, companionship or support.  Recruit people staying healthy to run errands for people and just stop by for a visit.  Kind of like Big Brothers, but perhaps its more like BigRunners :) Will share some more thoughts on them in the coming days.

The other teams were We-Need, OwnGrown, AccessCity, Carbon Co-Op and PostPost. I will write up something on each of them next week along with some recommendations / advice but you can read more about them, see their presentations and check out the web sites they built by clicking on their names above.  In the meantime, I thought I would hand out some of my own awards.  This isn’t an attempt to make sure ‘everyone feels like a winner’, especially since I didn’t get to see everyone closely.  Rather this is just my appreciation of what I saw as some really great accomplishments that should be recognized.

Awards

  • Most Prepared: We-Need
    Craig came in with a ton of planning diagrams and ideas - he really understands the problems faced by the people he is trying to help at a deep level and it showed.
  • Best Research: GoodGym
    The team went out during the weekend and interviewed runners as to whether they would use the service… they actually signed up 10+ volunteers!
  • Best Name Change: OwnGrown
    Prior to the weekend, this startup was called Vegsy - clearly, OwnGrown is a multi million dollar brand.
  • Best Web Site: PostPost
    The UI is simple simple, the site looks fantastic.
  • Best Team: Useful Visitor
    Well, this is a bit self-serving, but I really do mean it - with such a big team, to execute as well as we did and work so well together, I am really proud of everyone.
  • Best Presentation: GoodGym
    Ivo Gormley was the epitome of dry British comedy and his presentation was superbly crafted.  Bravo.
  • Best Post Presentation Q&A: Useful Visitor
    OK, again a bit of self interest here, but I didn’t see many other people get an applause line for their responses in Q&A so I was impressed…
  • Most Easily Sustainable: OwnGrown
    I agree with the remark of one of the judges, this should be a real business.  I think it is perhaps a co-op as well, but it is surely a market.  If people don’t pay on the transaction level, they should at least be paid members.  Who doesn’t want locally grown produce at a reasonable price?
  • Best Presentation Stunt: OwnGrown
    Towards the end of the presentation, they brought in a huge tray of vegetables because ’someone in the room ordered them’
  • Most Needed: We-Need
    I can’t overstate this point - we need, We-Need.  There are too many people who need help from the system which is unable to connect with them properly.  Please support this effort in any way you can.
  • Most Important / Biggest Impact: Carbon Co-Op
    One person can make a difference, but a village of people, working together to change the local energy consumption rates can make a huge difference.
  • Most Valuable Player(s):The Young Foundation
    There are some really great people here doing important work.  This would have not happened without them opening their minds, their hearts and their offices - thank you so very much.

All in all, this was one of the most gratifying things in which I have participated in a long time.  Big thanks to The Young Foundation, Dan, Kati, Anna and all my new friends for welcoming me into your space this past weekend.  Hopefully we can find ways to work together again in the future.

PS - more of my photos from the weekend are available on Flickr.Technorati Tags: , , , ,

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