… is also being joined by the 43rd and 44th. I am very proud to report that Aaron Strout, Coach Deb (Deb Micek) and Chris Hambly were the top vote getters with 383 for Aaron, 340 for Deb and 179 for Chris (who barely edged out Maddie Grant who had 166).

Why did we decide to expand to 44 from 42? It is simple. No one wanted to do a run off and have to go shill for votes all weekend - and that certainly wasn’t what I intended it to be. So, this morning I asked the interim board what we should do. By a narrow margin, we determined we should simply ask the top three vote getters if they were ok with bringing them all into the interim board and they agreed. In fact, seeing Deb and Aaron joke about it in the comments is what persuaded me this morning.

Unfortunately, there were some technology troubles: the corporate proxy servers prevented some of the candidate’s supporters from voting at work (so sorry); there were intermittment failures to accept votes in the last hours and probably four or five more problems with using Democracy Poll for an attempt at democracy. More importantly, we learned an important requirement of our member community software, which we will be designing collaboratively. We really need a good community system with one member, one vote software and special discussion pages for discussing the merits of the candidates of our formal organization and for the local groups.

Still, I think the overall effort was a success in demonstrating we really are going to be an open organization that will remain unwavering in our commitment to fairness and serving the greater needs of the Social Media community / industry. There was some good discussion about whether we should sustain the process we originally outlined so as to show that we keep our word. I think it is more important to respect the people inside the process and to admit mistakes, make corrections and move on to whats important.

To that end, it was never our intention to use this election process as a link building exercise. The original 41 were selected upon three critiera - merit, willingness to contribute a few hours each month and trust. I chose people I know who really understand what is happening in social media, would commit to contributing (more then just attention) and share some of the key values we hold (despite disagreeing with some of them on other topics). Some were members, others woud have been if I asked (or could have gone through the formality of signing up for a free Open Membership).

To be clear, my intention here is to get Social Media Club organized and heading in the right direction for the benefit of the community. It is to ensure the values of openness, honesty and willingness to engage in the conversation remain at the core of what we do and what we promote. It is to get other people than myself engaged, activated and working on behalf of our common cause. It is to get Social Media Club running as a self-sustaining community organization, being lead by other self-directed people who want to do good and are willing to work with others in the community to do more good together.

So the bottom line here is that we really want this to be an organization, of, by and for the people who share an interest in social media and its “greater significance.” The election was an attempt at an open democratic process. By agreeing to expand the size and skip the run off is just one other such example of listen, consider, converse and act, then repeat.

I for one, am very glad we did this process as I got to meet a bunch of new people who are doing good work in Social Media. We also accomplished some goals, we learned a lot, we picked up some momentum and we are getting a chance to grow. We also ended up with what seems to be three really great social media professionals, which is ultimately a wealth of riches more then we could have hoped for.

We have a lot of work to do from here, which we will begin blogging about on Monday. Though several interim board members are already underway on projects.

In the mean time join me in welcoming Aaron Strout, Coach Deb and Chris Hambly. I am looking forward to working with each of you.

PS - We will be doing something more with the other 35 folks nominated as well as those who paid for CoFounder memberships. One of the first tasks of the interim board is to consider how it is being structured, the language we are using and dividing up the work on the things we want to get done.

Update: corrected spelling of Chris Hambly’s last name

Wow! The response to our mistake has been overwhelming.  While we have much work to do, our first task is to figure out how to best harness this outpouring of energy.  We have enough work to do and projects that need help to get everyone involved who wants to be involved - particularly when it comes to educational initiatives and organizing collaborative projects.

Due to the size of the response, (38 34 potential candidates to choose from) we are altering the previously stated procedures slightly, but the integrity of the process I outlined the other day is intact, and the rules we laid out there are incorporated herein by reference (yay, a little legalese!).  Several people emailed me directly to throw their hat in the ring, but did not submit their names to the comments of the blog post as I requested and are therefore not on the list - sorry folks, gotta follow the rules intentions. We will be following up with everyone on this list shortly.

Procedure Notes:

We will be holding this vote open until Thursday July 17, 2008 at 11am PST - essentially 72 hours. At that time, the top 3 will be put to a runoff vote that will stay open from Thursday afternoon until Monday July 21 at noon PST.

The Candidates:

The group is diverse, smart and very active in the broader community.  It includes those that are well known and relatively unknown.  There are international candidates, people we know well and people we have just met.  I won’t say anything here about any of them individually, but I will say that we are quite pleased and grateful that so many people are willing to help us build Social Media Club into the pre-eminent force for good in the area of social media.

So without further ado, please vote for the person you think is most qualified to contribute and make a meaningful difference in our efforts.

Update:  Ann Handley, Gavin Heaton, Gennefer Snowfield and Siobhan O’Neil have withdrawn from the election process (they are not suprisingly going to be spending more time with their family just kidding, each has their own reasons and we are going to find other ways to work together in the near future for our common community goals

Looks like we (I) made a mistake.  I think I was looking for the number of interim board members to be 42 subconsciously, even though we only had 41 as Lloyd Davis pointed out in the comments of our interim board announcement today.  If you aren’t into sci-fi, you probably don’t know that 42 is the answer to the ultimate question about life, the universe and everything, but I digress…

The bottom line is that we accidentally listed Doug Pollei twice and I didn’t catch it when writing the final post and list of links.  So this brings up the question of how to deal with it and how to live our values transparently (which is another way of saying honestly IMHO).  As I have been explaining for some time, its usually the response that is more important then the mistake or the message.  So rather than adding in someone else to make it look like a typographical error instead of a stoopid human one, we would like to make some lemonade from these lemons.  I would also like to point out that the conversation here in the comments works - Lloyd cared enough to actually count through the number of members, pointed out the mistake and we corrected it… That is one of the ways that social media can be more powerful then broadcast media.

This afternoon in thinking about what we might do, we came up with what I think is a better idea for how to resolve this mistake - instead of just appointing someone from the vast array of people I had to leave out, we are now searching for the missing 42nd interim board member (I do love the Doug Adams reference as you may have guessed from our win a free professional SMC membership contest announced on Twitter).  If you or someone you know would like to volunteer and join the interim board with us, please reply in the comments after reading and agreeing to the general terms below.

1. All submissions must be for/from real people, no trolls allowed
2. You can submit yourself or suggest someone else
3. You have to want to do it and be willing to volunteer several hours per month to communications and other activities to further the objectives announced in the post
4. All people who are listed for consideration will be vetted via brief phone call (dont leave your #, we will contact you for it via email)
5. Everyone will be considered who submits their name before midnight PST on Saturday July 12 2008 but not anyone after that time
6. From Monday July 14th at 12:01am PST to Wednesday July 16th at midnight PST, all valid submissions for consideration will be presented for voting on this Web site.  The choice of the missing 42nd board member will be decided upon by open vote here
7. All submissions and the final winner will be subject to approval by existing interim board

So, despite it taking some more energy to coordinate, we want to do this openly and we want to involve more of our members. I think this is the best route and look forward to seeing who else is interested in helping us move this organization forward.

Also today several people have raised some questions and concerns about the interim board which I will be answering later tonight with a more in depth post…

The Social Media Club (SMC), a new media and advocacy organization focused on social media, today announced that 42 well-regarded industry leaders have volunteered to form an interim Board of Directors.

The new interim board has been charted to address several key organizational and strategic deliverables, including development of membership goals, acceleration of local chapter development, increase in adoption of industry standards and implementation of a new legal structure to enhance future growth.

New interim Board Member and Adjunct Professor of Social Media at University of Miami Alex de Carvalho said “Social Media Club is an important industry organization that has been working to establish social media standards and ethics. The voluntary participation of such noted industry leaders to further its mission is a clear indication of the Social Media Club’s value and contributions. I look forward to collaborating with the new interim board to progress the Social Media Club from being a ‘big idea’ to serving the community as a prominent agent of change.”

According to Chris Heuer, founder of Social Media Club and Partner at The Conversation Group, “The Social Media Club is honored to have so many accomplished and well-regarded industry evangelists come forward to lead the organization. While the interim board will focus on charting the organization’s future direction, our core mission will remain the same: promotion of media literacy; support of industry standards efforts such as Creative Commons licensing, Microformats, Data Portability and OpenID; discussion and promotion of ethical behavior; and sharing our knowledge among our members and the industry community at large.”

Co-Founder and Social Media Club President Kristie Wells added, “We are grateful to have received so much support from around the world over the past two years. With nearly 200 paying members and over 500 open members - we are deeply appreciative of the volunteer efforts to make the Social Media Club a success. With leading corporate members, such as Business Wire and SHIFT Communications, as well as dedicated individual professionals, the Social Media Club will continue to gain momentum and serve the greater needs of the industry while sharing our lessons learned along the way.”

The board will also focus on increasing its research efforts and strengthening relationships with other organizations such as the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR) and the International Association for Business Communicators (IABC). The interim board’s work will be completed once the club reorganizes as a new entity, and holds an election amongst its members for a formal Board of Directors.

The newly named/appointed members of the interim board are leading social media analysts, bloggers and business leaders, and are as follows:

• Lee Aase - Social Media University, Global
• Rohit Bhargava - Influential Marketing Blog and Personality Not Included
• Richard Binhammer - RichardatDell
• Michael Brito - Britopian and Conversations Matter
• Chris Brogan - ChrisBrogan.com
• Mike Chapman - Austin Social Media Club and Every Dot Connects
• Megan Cole - MeganCole.org
• Alex de Carvalho - alexdc.org and Social Object
• Todd Defren - SHIFT Communications and www.pr-squared.com
• Serena Ehrlich - Business Wire
• Jason Falls - Social Media Explorer
• Maggie Fox - Social Media Group
• Jon Gatrell - spatiallyrelevant.org
• Howard Greenstein - HowardGreenstein.com
• Francine Hardaway - Stealthmode
• Josh Hallett - Hyku
• Annie Heckenberger - pikpr.blogspot.com and redspurs.com
• Chuck Hester - iContact
• Chris Heuer - ChrisHeuer.com
• Sherry Heyl - Mind Blogging
• Tara Hunt - HorsePigCow
• Bill Johnston - Forum One Networks Forum and Online Community Report
• Jennifer McClure - Society for New Communications Research
• Mike McGrath - Dogpatch Dispatch
• Jake McKee - CommunityGuy.com and Ant’s Eye View
• Gregory Narain - SocialTwister
• Lee Odden - Online Marketing Blog and TopRank
• Erica OGrady - ReinventingErica.com and Peanut Butter Media
• Jeremiah Owyang - Web Strategist
• David Parmet - Marketing Begins At Home, LLC and PerkettPR
• Jackie Peters - heavyBlog
• Doug Pollei - pollei.com (whoops - duplicate)
• Pierre-Yves Platini - Yoono
• Douglas Pollei - Pollei.com
• Connie Reece - Every Dot Connects and Austin Social Media Club
• Chris Saad - ChrisSaad.com
• Andy Sernovitz - Word of Mouth Marketing and GasPedal
• Brian Solis - PR2.0
• J.J. Toothman - jjtoothman.net and Red Pill
• Todd Van Hoosear - Tech PR Gems
• Des Walsh - Des Walsh dot Com
• Kristie Wells - KristieWells.com

About the Social Media Club

The Social Media Club centers on the sharing of best practices, establishing ethics and standards, and promoting media literacy with a focus on the emerging discipline of Social Media. The Social Media Club brings together journalists, publishers, communication professionals, artists, amateur media creators, citizen journalists, teachers, students, tool makers, and other interested collaborators who create and consume media and have an interest in seeing the industry improve and evolve. The Social Media Club provides a forum for diverse groups and individuals to discover, connect, share and learn about social media and to play a role in its future evolution.

To find out more about the opportunities in social media and connect with other practitioners, visit: http://www.socialmediaclub.org

* Photo by Fabrizio Sciami, Creative Commons  Attribution-Share Alike License

Radian6 and CrossTech Media have partnered on an incredible journey
into how businesses can benefit from social media, and you’re invited
along for the ride. Join us for the launch of their Twebinar series.

Title: Game Changing Moves - Doing Business with Social Media
Date: Thursday, June 26, 2008
Time: 2:00 PM EST

How do companies like Boeing, Comcast, Sony, Yamaha, The American
Red Cross, Sea World, General Motors, and Nike use social media to
change the way they’re doing business? What can they teach you about
building community, marketing, product development, and customer
service?

Join host Chris Brogan and a list of the industry’s top voices in
learning how your business can benefit from using social media
technologies to listen to your customers, develop products they want,
and build stronger business practices that drive revenue and improve
customer retention. But wait. There’s more.

We’re going to go even further with this series and invite you
directly INTO the experience of social media. Registered participants
to this FREE webinar will be invited to sign up and use a free
communications service called Twitter. We will show you how to connect
to and engage directly with the 30+ professionals interviewed for this
series (including several of our own Social Media Club members). Imagine that. Instead of simply watching the interviews, you’re
invited into the conversation right from the start!

Register for FREE today by clicking here.

OK, I finally succumbed to the hype and got past the shiny object syndrome to see the real potential of Friend Feed when they added the new rooms feature.  I have been telling everyone I know for the past 2 years that groups done simply and done right are the real killer app - and now this addition just might kill Twitter (though they are doing a pretty good job themselves).

Since I started using it for real as part of my continuous parallel attention,  which has been limited by deadlines and travel this week, I finally got it.  Not only are the comments and thumbs up (like) features cool, but ‘get a room’ has taken on a whole new meaning.

If blogs replace email as a way for communications and collaboration, Friend Feed Rooms replace the mailing list.  In that Mike McGrath, Janet Fouts and I were talking about building up the SMC mailing list finally, I realized we would just make a Friend Feed Room instead.  So come join me there and lets start really sharing with one another…

Our good friend Debbie Landa from Dealmaker Media is offering Social Media Club members $100 off their upcoming Social Media and Entertainment event in Moutain View, CA on June 3 at the Microsoft Campus. I am hoping to be there myself as this looks like a great event. You can read more about it on their blog or simply go register following this link for the $100 discount.

The Fireside Chat… Breaking Down the Door to Madison Avenue - Hear from R/GA, JWT, AKQA and GLAM MEDIA

PRESENTING COMPANIES:
33Across - Identifies influential online users
Animoto - Create personalized, professional-quality videos from images and music, offering a new alternative to traditional online photo slideshows
AudioMicro - Stock music and sound effects licensing platform
Aviary -Suite of web-based applications for people who create and a marketplace to sell that content
BigStage - Animate yourself with cutting-edge virtualization technology
Comedy.com - aggregated comedy entertainment site
CrowdSPRING - crowdsourcing of creative talent.
Curse - MMO gamer community.
Dizzywood - A virtual world that allows kids to dress up 3D avatars, play games, explore worlds and meet new friends in a safe environment
ffwd - Organized, multi-platform, video content delivered via a browser, with social network awareness, and predictive recommendations.
GumGum - A licensing and distribution platform for online content
Hollywood Interactive Group - A mass casual mmo based on reality TV concepts and Hollywood stardom.
Jacked - Browser-based “second screen” for TV viewers, which provides synchronized content and a real-time interactive experience that complements what they’re watching on TV
Jygy - Mobile social networking with SMS
Keibi - Moderation and classification of user generated content (UGC)
Kontagent - Next gen social analytics
Kosmix - Categorization engine that crawls billions of Web pages in a unique manner to create algo-generated home pages
Lil’Grams - Tracking your babies memories in real time.
Loomia - Social recommendations bridging established social networking sites with media websites
Loud3r - Aggregating and publishing semantically searched content
MediaForge - We’ve got widgets comin’ out our ads
Mochi Media - Provides independent game developers with analytics, distribution, tools and monetization while providing advertisers with turnkey opportunities to reach the one in three Internet users who play online games.
MovieSet - Platform that brings behind-the-scenes filmmaking online, giving fans authentic access through its proprietary toolkit for Producers.
Mytopia -Social gaming community for Web, Mobile, Smartphone and TV
Nesting - Organizing family activities; scheduling, networking and more
Overlay.tv - video commerce platform that overlays contextual information directly onto online video content
Pikum - A new kind of betting game
PluggedIn - Enjoy stunning, broadcast-quality music videos from your browser
PutPlace - Media storage all the way from Ireland
SocialMedia Networks - enables developers of social media applications to monetize their traffic
Sometrics - Social Analytics and Social Ad Platform
Verismo Networks – High quality video over broadband without a pc.
Vivaty - Brings together your friends, photos and videos into a personal virtual scene, in your browser
Vusion - HD Quality Video over the internet
Wetpaint - Wiki powered websites
Xumii - Take all your contacts from your social networks with you — on your phone!

JUDGES:
Jack Kennedy, EVP Strategy & Corporate Development, Fox Interactive
Bradley Horowitz, VP Product Management, Google
Dan Schiappa, GM - Strategy & Business Development - Entertainment & Devices, Microsoft Marty O’Keefe, Director - Business Strategy & Development - Entertainment & Devices, Microsoft Joshua Newman, Director - Digital Media, Twentieth Century Fox
Kara Swisher, Co-Executive Editor, Wall Street Journal/All things D
Charlene Li, Senior Analyst, Forrester Research
Dave McClure, Startup Advisor & Angel Investor, 500 Hats
Lewis Henderson, SVP, William Morris Agency
Peter Chane, Group Business Product Manager - Open Social, Google
Scott Sangster, Director of Strategic Planning and Development, Walt Disney Internet Group
Jason Oberfest, VP of Business Development, MySpace
Rob Hayes, Partner, First Round Capital
Robert Scoble, Editor, Scobleizer
Chad Kinzelberg, Partner, Scale Venture Partners
Rick Bolander, Partner, Gabriel Venture Partners
Vineet Buch, Partner, BlueRun Venures

Search Marketing Expo – SMX Advanced, June 3-4, Seattle

Social Media Club Member discount – receive 10% off registration with this code: smx10smc

Seattle in June – with leaders in search and interactive marketing – and no box lunches –that’s SMX Advanced.

SMX Advanced is a two-day conference for search marketers who want to stay ahead in the fast changing world of search. The conference is organized into several tracks: Organic SEO, Paid Search Advertising, SEM Business, and SMX Developer Day (June 4.) See the complete SMX Advanced agenda here.

There will be two keynote sessions: Kevin Johnson, President of Microsoft’s Platform and Services Division will discuss the company’s aspirations in search and online advertising; and Matt Cutts, head of Google’s web spam team, will take questions from the audience in the ever-popular “You +A” session at the end of the day.

At SMX Advanced you’ll find that speakers from one session will be your peers in another. We’ve designed the conference to encourage as much interaction as possible, including carefully planned networking events. At SMX conferences, we know why you’re there, and we’ll take care of you — right down to lunch on plates, with real silverware.

Register now - Last year’s show was a sell-out, so don’t wait! “SMX Advanced was a resourceful and engaging conference consisting of intelligent speakers and an intelligent crowd.” — Julie Sun, Senior Manager of SEO, MTV

SMC members take 10% off the prevailing rate when you use this code: smx10smc

Seems conference season is in full swing, so we wanted to let you know about some of the ones that got our attention and several have graciously offered discounts to our Members and friends.

We also want to make sure you are aware of the Social Media Club local events that are happening near you, so scroll down to the end if you are interested in getting together in your neighborhood.

CONFERENCES:

NewComm Forum 2008: April 22-25, 2008 in Sonoma, CA ( USA)

New Communications Forum is the premier conference that brings together thought leaders and decision makers from around the globe to discuss the impact of social media and new communications on media, marketing, journalism, PR and advertising, business, culture and society.

Use the discount code NCF8SP and save $250!
More information at: http://newcommforum.com/2008/

——

SMX Social Media Marketing: April 22-23, 2008 in Long Beach, CA ( USA)

SMX is where internet marketers will learn to harness the power of user engagement. You’ll be a master of social media marketing after attending SMX Social Media!

This show is for internet marketers who want to engage the unique and difficult-to-reach audiences at social media sites like Digg, del.icio.us, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Reddit and Wikipedia. These and other social media sites are serving new and fast growing audiences that want to discover information based on community interests, voting and sharing.

Use the discount code smx10smc and save 10%!
More information at: http://searchmarketingexpo.com/social/

——

Web 2.0 Expo Blogtropolus Bloggers Lounge : April 23-25, 2008 in San Francisco, CA ( USA)
Presented by The Conversation Group

Blogtropol.us is the dedicated media and networking lounge for bloggers, content producers, and journalists during Web 2.0 Expo 2008. In a private suite, in the middle of the conference action, Blogtropol.us is designed for you to host and share conversations among digital influencers – both online and offline.

Open to all digital media-makers attending Web 2.0 Expo, Blogtropol.us is the social hub for creating media and discussing conference happenings. Daily live streamed and on-demand video shows will be broadcast to cover the most important conversations of the conference for online discussion and sharing.

In order to participate you must have a Web 2.0 Expo Pass or conference pass AND you must register for access into the lounge at - http://blogtropolus.eventbrite.com. Space is limited!

Free Expo Pass: Use Discount Code websf08fr

More information on Web 2.0 Expo: http://en.oreilly.com/webexsf2008/public/content/home

——

SOBCon08: May 2-4, 2008 in Chicago, IL ( USA)

The SOBCon08 program guarantees to send each attendee home with a Business Action Plan that can be immediately executed for measurable success. The “mastermind” teams in which attendees will be interacting will provide uniquely deep working relationships that are more meaningful than the business card trading found at other conference/networking events.

More information at: http://www.sobevent.com/register/

——

Communitelligence Executing Social Media: May 21-22, 2008 in Los Angeles, CA ( USA)

The preeminent event for PR, marketing and corporate communications executives to network, learn best practices and make decisions about deploying social media for their organizations. An interactive conference balanced between strategy and tactics, between corporate communications, marketing, PR & HR, between panels, roundtables, unconference discussions, and good ole presentations with PowerPoint.

More information at: http://www.communitelligence.com/content/index.cfm?spgid=274

SMC members can also get a $300 discount by using promo code la08ch

——

Social Media Summit: June 9-12, 2008 in Chicago, IL ( USA)

This conference is a must-attend event for all those who are committed to using social media to engage their employees, reach their customers and build their brand to achieve real business results. Learn how to use blogging, podcasting & the latest Web 2.0 technologies to engage your employees, reach your customers & build your brand.

Let them know Social Media Club sent you and save $200!
More information at: http://www.aliconferences.com/conf/socialmedia_summit0608/index.htm

——

BLOG POTOMAC: June 13, 2008 in Falls Church, VA ( USA)

BlogPotomac is this year’s premiere social media marketing event for greater Washington DC. Attendees can expect a one-day event with nationally renowned speakers and advanced discussion of best social media marketing practices.

More information at: http://www.blogpotomac.com/

——

UPCOMING SOCIAL MEDIA CLUB GATHERINGS:

• Louisville, KY ( USA) - April 15th
• San Francisco, CA ( USA) - April 21st
• Dallas, TX ( USA) - April 24th
• Seattle, WA ( USA) - May 1st
• Cincinnati, OH ( USA) - May 3rd
• Boston, MA ( USA) - May 8th
• Phoenix, AZ ( USA) - May 8th
• Minneapolis, MN ( USA) - May 14th

To keep track of the upcoming events, please visit the SMC events page.

If you would like to volunteer to help manage the local events in your neighborhood, or you would like to get one started (or re-started), please send us an email to socialmediaclub at gmail dot com and we would be happy to get you connected with the right folks.

Be well. Keep learning. Keep sharing.

It looks like we are going to have a good turn out on Thursday morning for the Social Media Breakfast, but we would love to see you there too. Jeff Pulver will be in town as our host / guest / leader which makes this quite a special event.  If you didn’t see it, there was this great article on the event and Jeff’s Social Networking Toolkit in Fortune a few weeks ago called “Geography, social media and breakfast.”  Of course, Jeff has done a great job further expanding on an idea Bryan Person started last August in Boston.

Please do register for the Social Media Breakfast on Eventbrite if you are planning on coming so we can have a decent head count.  Breakfast is at the “world famous” Sears Diner by Union Square in San Francisco, where we will be meeting downstairs…  A big thanks to Cathryn Hrudicka of Creative Sage for helping to put this together with Jeff, and for being such a strong supporter in our community.

This is exactly the sort of thing we want to promote more of through Social Media Club, and was one of the community events we spoke about bringing into what we called the “Coalition of the Willing” at SxSW last week (more on that soon).

I was very fortunate to be hanging out in the lobby of The Palace Hotel checking in with a few friends from Web 2.0 Summit on Friday Afternoon - check out our chat with Joseph Smarr, Salim Ismail, Richard MacManus and Jason Hoffman - very insightful stuff… The victory of open source platforms, the open social graph/bill of rights, the latest from Yahoo! Brickhouse, the importance of the iPhone SDK and other observations from Web 2.0…

Join us this Thursday September 20, 2007 in San Francisco at Adobe’s offices beginning at 630pm for a fascinating look at how we are preserving our memories and sharing them with our loved ones (please register here). Social Media, emerging technologies and storytelling are changing the way we connect and stay connected with our families and friends - but what about those folks who don’t know Web 2.0, or those that are not digital natives. How can they preserve their memories and share their favorite stories? This is more than just another look at Flickr and YouTube.

We are going to take a look at a great service I first heard about from Social Media Club Phoenix called iMemories, when I met Linda VandeVrede, their PR Director. Joining us for this discussion will be Mark Rukavina, their CEO wo will talk about some of his insights from helping the boomer generation leverage Social Media technologies. He will also address some of the difficulties of dealing with non-digital media and the solutions they have developed for digitizing them and storing them in higher quality.

Additionally, I am very excited to have our long time friend and very early supporter Jen Myronuk joining us to talk about the importance of digital storytelling and her experience interviewing important senior community leaders before the pass away. Jen is the founder of Storyfield and brings a unique perspective to this subject that is very complementary to Mark’s.

We will kick off the evening with a short introduction on the topic and share some personal experiences about how we are each preserving our memories today. Mark and Jen will each then give separate presentations, discussing the social and technical issues involved. We will then dive into a round table discussion of the challenges we each face in preserving our own memories - from conversion, to storage, to sharing and even educating our families about how to use the tools.

Many thanks to Adobe for hosting us and sponsoring this great event with food and drinks. We will have informal networking from 630-7pm, kicking off the discussion and presentations promptly at 7pm and going through 830pm. Please register here so we have an accurate head count for food!

After speaking with Lisa Padilla from Blog Talk Radio and Mike McGrath from Tacit Partners (also one of of the Silicon Valley chapter leaders) at last week’s Silicon Valley gathering, we decided to move forward with a new show for Social Media Club on Blog Talk Radio. In a short while, at 10am PST today on Friday August 31, we will be doing the first episode, with Robert Scoble as our special guest.

This show’s focus is Authenticity, Credibility and Authority in Social Media. From my personal perspective, I was thinking that the blessings of our tool’s capabilities for instant publishing have the potential to be a curse. Of course, I experienced a somewhat funnier (and slightly different) version of this double edged sword last week, showing up on Valleywag for a short video interview I did which was dubbed “Geeks Gone Wild“. In agreeing to do an on camera interview for a topic I was not prepared to really discuss, I ended up looking a bit silly, requiring me to do several hours of research and writing to clearly illuminate what I was trying to say. Of course video is completely different from writing, but it is an interesting parallel in some ways, especially in light of the need to do so much research in forming a coherent explanation of my point.

In the early days of the Web, when email was just going mainstream, we used to talk about the need to walk away for a bit after writing something important to consider what was written and come back to it with fresh eyes. I don’t hear that discussion all that often around Blogging - whether it is reporting, opinion or deeper thought pieces. While everyone is different, there are clearly many who think that the key to success in Blogging is publishing first and fast to “just get it out there”. I have had several discussions with Robert Scoble about this over the last couple years and I think this is going to be a great talk today, delving into the deeper issues surrounding the importance of “how we approach our use of social media tools”.

While we still need to figure things out with regards to the show’s format, I think this is going to be a great experiment and ongoing effort of the club. It begins to move forward one of my original visions for the club - finding ways for those of us who care about Social Media to collaborate globally in an effort to share best practices and learn from one another. We are approaching this show differently than others you may have seen out there - each episode will be hosted by a different person from one of our many Social Media Club chapters around the world… So in essence, the members of the club will be creating this show together!

So join us today for the Social Media Club Hour on Blog Talk Radio, and call in even to share your thoughts, we would love to hear from you!

I registered for BarCampBlock the other day on Facebook, forgetting that this was probably an event promotional venue rather than an event registration activity. Fortunately for me I follow Tara on Twitter where I learned that a) BarCampBlock was TechCrunch’d today and b) they ran out of spots and c) that she added more openings to the real Eventbrite registration page. Thankfully I just registered Kristie and myself for next weekend’s festival-like knowledge sharing event, so I will be there and so should you.

As I have said too many times to count, my experience at Gnomedex and BarCamp in the summer of 2005 were milestone moments in my life. It inspired me to launch BrainJams(woefully out of date), to learn the Art of Hosting and to ultimately start Social Media Club to help bring the spirit or open knowledge sharing and peer to peer/ informal learning to a wider audience outside of the technology community. To the degree that I know we have made a difference in many people’s lives through personal conversations with them, we have been a success. It seems that we are just beginning to realize a more sizable impact in terms of the numbers of people we empower with this thinking, essentially in the midst of the multi-year overnight success process.

To further my personal crusade to teach businesses why they should cultivate sharing cultures and host market conversations for creating successful market engagement, I am going to be leading a session at BarCampBlock entitled “Why Intention Matters to your Business“. The short summary of my thesis is: while the value a company provides customers with their product/service is paramount, selling it to exploit the market and separate people from their money will never create the most successful result or maximize long term profitability.

So I hope to see you at BarCampBlock, and hopefully to get a chance to talk to you about a new form of BI, Business Intention…

Sent July 19, 2007

• State of the Club
• Roles and Responsibilities to be Filled
• Social Media Clubhouse in Second Life
• Upcoming Events

I am writing you today feeling amazingly refreshed and enthused. Married life is pretty good, and things here in San Francisco are just amazing this time of year. It doesn’t hurt that I am also working on a new company I will be announcing later this month. I mention the new gig here because it will allow me some time to invest with SMC, without having to worry too much about paying the rent. So this email newsletter is perhaps one of the most important in Social Media Club’s short history.

I see a way through and beyond the community building obstacles we have faced lately, but it won’t happen without the membership making a sincere commitment to the community by donating time as a volunteer to complete key tasks for the club. So please read on, blog your thoughts about the potential future of Social Media Club and contribute where you can…

The State of the Club

The State of the Club is strong, though the summer has indeed been a time for many to take some time off - some local clubs have decided to skip a month or two, but there are still great conversations happening all around the world. Here in San Francisco and Silicon Valley we have a great new group of volunteers, with big plans for the fall and some great events planned for the coming weeks at KQED and Yahoo! respectively. Austin, Boston, DC, New York, London, Portland, and Phoenix continue to have strong showings with Seattle starting to take off along with Denver and Atlanta.

After announcing our need to take a step back to re-evaluate our direction and operations in May, we actually had a pickup in member registrations. As a result, we still have just over $10,000 in the bank and over 130 professional/business members. As for the use of those funds, the majority is going towards 2 projects, fulfilling our promise of member kits (mid August, really) and a new platform for the Social Media Club community based on Drupal (mid August preview for members).

After our very successful Social Media Workshop in June, Giovanni Rodriguez, Brian Solis and Jermiah Owyang donated their portion of the proceeds to a special fund to begin the process of making Social Media Club a 501(c)6 non profit business association. At present we are still operating Social Media Club under the auspices of Social Media LLC, but with the changes discussed below, we are looking to re-organize in earnest. If you, or someone you know might be able to donate some time to further the legal or accounting aspects of this process, please contact Chris Heuer.

So while things are still a little disorganized, we have a clear sense of what needs to be done – now the focus needs to be on getting everyone aligned and completing the work at hand.

Roles and Responsibilities to be Filled

In order to make the Club really work as we would like to see it, there are some ongoing activities that need to be performed. We have had a lot of interest in volunteering, but no place or process through which we can focus that interest yet. Personally, I am still in the same position I was in when I recruited Howard Greenstein to be the CEO, I am not well suited to manage the operations of the Club and manage all the systems that needs to be looked after. I really would like to find someone to take on the leadership position of Executive Director. As we grow, there should be enough cash flow to pay this position a salary, but today there is none. Perhaps we can have 2-3 people sharing this position with me in the interim? There are also some general ‘officer positions’ we need filled including Vice President, Secretary, and Treasurer. I think we should also create a formal Board structure to oversee the interests of the club from a completely strategic perspective, separate of the day to day operations.

Additionally, I would like to find people to immediately take on responsibility for:

• Member Recruitment
• New Member Welcoming Committee
• Blog Editor(s) – especially Social Media Now
• Conversation Captains (meeting content and online followup)
• Local Chapter Liaision
• Local Chapter Leadership

The formal officer positions will be determined through a nomination and voting procedure by official Club members. The other roles to be filled merely require an application to be submitted via email with some information on qualifications to fulfill the tasks that it entails and an idea of what you would do in the position. This discussion will be the focus of our next Conference Call which is open to all interested members. During the call we will also review the Club’s reason for being and our vision for fulfilling that purpose.

** Thursday July 26, 2007
** 830am-930am PST
** Dial In 001-605-990-0550
** Access Code 641643

Social Media Clubhouse in Second Life

Later that day, on Thursday July 26 at noon PST, we will be meeting on the site of the Social Media Clubhouse in Second Life to discuss how we might be able to use our virtual Clubhouse to further the goals of the club. Thanks to our good friends at Millions of Us, we are going to have a great location in Second Life near Wired, CNet and other industry leaders. To join the meeting you need to have an account on Second Life and just click on this link http://slurl.com/secondlife/Present/186/138/40/ .

Our goal for this meeting on the land is to co-create a vision for the Clubhouse and to discuss other ways in which we can use the space besides hosting virtual seminars, meetings and social networking. This is your chance to get creative and be a part of what will hopefully be a high profile Second Life project with one of the best development houses around. We will also be making a special announcement about a unique program we will be launching as a part of this project…

Upcoming Events

Green Communications – Case Studies

The green movement is more than just the latest trend. Companies and organizations are asking themselves how they participate in the movement. Business Development Institute and PR Newswire have partnered to produce a half day conference that specifically addresses the questions, issues, and opportunities facing the corporate communicator and marketer.

For inquiries, please call 800.830.6687.

Presented by Business Development Institute and PR Newswire
Tuesday July 24, 1:30pm – 6:00pm
@ Microsoft Executive Customer Briefing Center
1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY
$195 Registration - $145 for SMC Members with Discount – Use Code GREENSMC

To register or read more information, please visit http://www.bdionline.com/greencommunications

Gnomedex 7.0

Gnomedex is one of the very few conferences that I am personally willing to pay for out of my own pocket, which says a lot. It is also the place where I officially launched Social Media Club last year. If you want to meet the real movers and shakers in Social Media, this is the place to be. Thought provoking presentations, great conversations and fantastic parties – it doesn’t get much better then this…

There are only a few tickets left, so head on over and register right now!

Thursday August 9 – Saturday August 11, 2007
Seattle, WA
$495 Registration SOLDOUT
http://www.gnomedex.com/
MeshWalk Palo Alto - MeshWalk Gnomedex
I participated in the first Meshwalk after last year’s Gnomedex and I must say it is a wonderful idea - a walking unconference that draws its inspiration from the world as much as the participants. There will be another MeshWalk after Gnomedex this year, which I will probably be attending, but I am most excited about the event in Palo Alto which is focused on entrepreneurism and funding. Over the course of the day about 100 selected entrepreneurs will walk through Palo Alto and Sand Hill Road, meeting with investors and fellow founders and discussing the process of starting and funding a company. What a great way to get to know the people you need to know to start a company….

Wednesday July 25 Palo Alto, CA 830am - 6pm http://meshwalk.meshforum.org/

Social Media Workshops

After our great success in Palo Alto, we are working on a series of Social Media Workshop’s around the world. Current plans include visits to Austin, Boston, New York, London, and Hawaii!!! If you are interested in having a Social Media Workshop in your town, please contact us to discsuss.

Social Media Club Local Meetings

Some of the groups are taking a month or two off for summer, and some other groups are indeed meeting but I don’t have the current information at this time. For complete details, and to register for an upcoming event in your area, please visit http://www.socialmediaclub.org/events/

• London: July 19, 2007
• San Francisco: July 31, 2007
• Silicon Valley (Bay Area): August 23, 2007
• London: August 16, 2007
• Boston: September 13, 2007 (Summer Break in August)

Web of Change Conference

Web of Change is an annual gathering connecting senior leaders working at the convergence of online strategy, technology, and social change. Held every fall at Hollyhock Centre on Cortes Island, British Columbia, Web of Change offers an exceptional environment for learning, engagement, and reflection.

If your work finds you leveraging technology as a tool for social change and transformation, then you belong at Web of Change. Come to track the emerging trends and tools changing how we connect and communicate. Come to explore how organizations are evolving their structures to leverage emerging opportunities. Come to hone your leadership skills, and connect with other leaders in the field. Most of all, come to refresh your passion for the work you do.

September 19-23, 2007
Cortes Island, British Columbia
http://webofchange.com/

Closing…

Well, there is a lot more we could be talking about, but that about wraps up what we are sending out here tonight. Thank you all for your continuing patience and support - it’s not all that easy to try to build a global community organization for an emerging industry, but we are indeed making it happen, together…

Since we are back from our wedding and have not had a party in a while, we thought we should invite all of our hungover Social Media Club members and friends over to Brunch before WordCamp on Sunday - I love Brunch, its one of my favorite meals, so I figured why not put the chef’s hat on for a simple meal.  I will be cooking up eggs, bacon, granola and maybe even some French Toast to go with the Bagels, Toast and Muffins - there might even be a ’scone’ there for someone lucky

Please do register here on Eventbrite so we know how many to expect.  There is no fee to join us, but if you want to kick in a few dollars we won’t be offended.  We will open our doors and start cooking at 8am and head out for the short 2 block wallk to Swedish American Hall a few minutes before 10, but please feel free to come and go as you need.  If you have not been to our house yet, we will be sending all registered attendees an email with the address on SAT - or see me at WordCamp on SAT for more details…

PS - I am planning on having a bloody mary or two, but you can have fun with the coffee or just juice if you would like.

Saw a Tweet the other day from Chris Pirillo that there were still a few tix left for this years Gnomedex from August 9-11 in Seattle, WA, which is shocking for me since it is the best conference out there for Bloggers, Podcasters and Social Media professionals. From the looks of this year’s speaker and attendee list, you won’t be disappointed - in fact you would be remiss in not heading over and registering right now.

Last year it sold out early, but it seems ticket sales have been a little slower this year - I think this is primarily because of the huge surge in other wannabe conferences, the rise in unconferences, the tough workload everyone is under and the later summer date. Eventhough things are tight here after paying for the wedding, this is a must attend event for me, so I bit the bullet (hope my new wife won’t mind

Warning - this is my first attempt at liveblogging in a while…

Very happy to have been able to make it to downtown San Francisco to see this great session at Supernova featuring David Weinberger talking about his book Everything is Miscellaneous and Andrew Keen talking about his book The Cult of the Amateur. According to the session description,

Disorder: Feature or Bug?
(Andrew Keen, David Weinberger)
A debate about the value of authority in a connected world. The greatest business challenge that the New Network poses for many companies is also a fundamental social challenge. The old categories, boundaries, hierarchies, and scarcities are being swept away. To what extent is that a good thing, and to what extent is it a threat to what we truly value?

Though there were a lot of great sessions I wanted to attend, most notably Jerry Michalski and Deborah Schultz’s Markets and Relationships Track on Challenge Day, this session, IMHO, was the most important.

David started with a presentation covering the central premise of his book, that the world is messy and this is good - it creates more interesting ways to get at and discover information, creating more opportunity, more democracy and more equality. Andrew was presenting his case for authority and his concerns that the digital world we live in today is reminiscent of the middle ages. That we need authority and that the views held by the digital utopians are dangerously hurting our society. While some of his arguments are sound, I believe they are fundamentally flawed because he speaks about the ‘mass society’ but doesn’t really trust it. This is very complex and I want to go deeper into this in the near future when not live blogging.

Pt 1 - David says Andrew’s remarks were similar to arguments against the digital divide, but Andrew would be more upset than happy if it came true - Andrew challenged David to define how someone is determined to be a cultural authority. David asked Andrew some very direct questions, which he did not answer, changing the subject, but Keven Werbach redirected Andrew to show relevance.

Pt 2 - Andrew says there is an “anonymous oligarchy” with a “small group of activists who are driving this new democracy” - that his is his fundamental problem. David points out that his book acknowledges the very fact that there is a new democratization as an opposite to the existing authority. Andrew says his concern is that no one is reading it, and that the “people need experts to inform and educate and this media is not doing it.” David says the Web is “more of everything” - including more of the experts like Mortimer - “more Mortimer, expertise, crap, racism, love and Clay Shirky”. Andrews says “this is a media not providing authority, people need expertise, guides, sign posts and a way to determine authority.”

David agrees, “we do need to address it, largely because our education systems have failed it from being too stuffy.” David say “I can find the copy of Cicero, but I cant find the great work that is being worked on today - the one’s that the library’s can’t hold because the works are too big, the one’s I can’t find in a scarce world.”
“We are richer than that today.”

Andrew disagrees, acknowledging that his book over-glamorizes mass media more than it should - but that it has “done a good job discovering, packaging and selling content.” Continuing on to say that there was nothing wrong with the media business as it existed, but “now we have suddenly realized we have to revive it” - “that we have to reinvent the wheel.”

Mitch Ratcliffe asked, “what are the things you can agree upon that will help us measure how well are we doing?” Andrew said they both share the same “social and political justice and ideals, but I am less optimstic about the flattened world bringing us to more democratization.” Andrew believes in hierarchies and taxonomies - Wikipedia is more or less right, but the problem is “that no single person is in charge of determining what is right.”

Tom Mandel “Authority is not derived from any real form of expertise, the Rolling Stones get their authority from charisma and the Queen of England gets hers from Tradition.”

Liz “cultural authority does not go away because there are more voices”.

Addressing the issue of scarcity of talent, a gentleman said “talent tends to appear when it has opportunities to grow” - “have you considered how talent is really developed?”

Andrew does not believe that “the current media system is rooted in privilege” - “the current media system is meritocratic” - does not think “people are being born into positions of privilege”. He apparently has not seen the movies that Stephen Baldwin has done…

Closing:

David pointed to “the canadian guy and the wikipedia guy” contentions that the real impact arises from talent within network effects…

Keen says “it is the job of mainstream media to find raw talent and polish it up” - that “raw talent is not real”

Tags: supernova supernova2007 andrewkeen davidweinberger kevinwerbach sanfrancisco 22june2007

Good morning! Back from Las Vegas in one piece, without a hangover and ready to get to work.

The Social Media Workshop and the FAST Track Future of Media events I helped facilitate last week were filled with excellent conversations that touched upon trust as crucial to the success of Social Media and the need for social media and traditional media to work together.  From my perspective, it is very important to understand these essential aspects of our new world better.  Which is why I was excited to learn from my friend Sally Falkow about a new survey from our organization partner (and good friends) at the Society for New Communications Research.  Its’ goal is to better understand “How Bloggers Source and Use News Content.”

If you blog, I strongly encourage you to complete this survey, to help us all gain more respect and understand where we can improve in our educational efforts.

As we get into summer a few of the Social Media Club local groups will be taking some time off as people travel and regroup with some more formalized structures. So pay close attention to the Social Media Club Events page and sign up for your local mailing lists to keep in touch. Of course, the current site should be going away before the end of summer, to be replaced with our new community site - stay tuned for more updates on this and ways you can contribute once we get the site to alpha test stage in the coming weeks. Yes it is a bit behind schedule in light of the recent changes here, but it is still on track to get done.
So on to the events.

Tomorrow, June 14, I will be in Los Angeles for the post Digital Hollywood discussion on The Future of Media, hosted by FAST Search at the Mondrian Hotel from 3-530 with drinks afterwards. If you can’t get to the Mondrian in West Hollywood for the start of the event, do come later in the afternoon for the great discussion with our really smart panelists, or even join us at 530 for drinks. The FAST folks are doing some really great things, and I am personally fortunate to have the opportunity to work with them on a great project such as this. If you plan on coming at all though, please do at least register so we can plan appropriately…

Next week here in San Francisco is SuperNova 2007, and because we have become great friends with many of the very insightful organizers, we are very glad to offer Social Media Club members a special discount of $300 off the registration price. The event is being held at Wharton West from June 20-22.

“Supernova 2007 is the place to challenge your insights and predictions for the connected future. Join top technology and business influencers, leading investors, visionary entrepreneurs, and provocative thinkers debating the major emerging trends in computing, communications, and media.”

Use the discount code GEN3 to receive $300 off your registration which includes the Wharton West Challenge Day, or use code GEN2 for $300 off the 2 day conference pass. I will be leading a session on The Economics of Free at the unconference prior to the event on Tuesday June 19, and will hopefully find some time to be around during the conference, learning from and connecting with, some of the brightest people in the business world of technology.

I am trying to work on a wrap up post about the great Social Media Workshop we had on Monday down in Palo Alto still - will hopefully get this completed tomorrow before the Future of Media panel…

I am very happy to report that a good portion of the Social Media Workshop we are doing on Monday at SAP will be broadcast live on UStream. While we will be able to take some questions during the course of the day from the chat room, our attention will be mostly focused on paying participants in the actual room.  To tune in on Monday from wherever you are in the world, go to our Social Media Workshop Channel on UStream at 9am PST on Monday June 11, 2007.

We could really use some help running the camera and monitoring the chat room for questions, so if you have experience with managing some light Web A/V and would be willing to volunteer, please leave a comment here and I will contact you about arranging a free pass.

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…

Rather than reposting the original here, I want to direct your attention to the Social Media Workshop blog for a podcast interview I did with Lionel Mechaca, Digital Media Manager for Dell.  It is a great insight into what it takes to make lemons from lemonade, or should I say to move from Hell to Heaven…

PS - yes I posted it on the workshop blog to get more awareness for the event, which will now also be available in part on UStream!