Bloggers Wanted Here - Important Survey

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.

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Upcoming Social Media Events

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…

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Social Media Workshop on UStream.tv

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.

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The Future of Social Media Club

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

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

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

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

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Dell Gets It

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!

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Social Media Club Forming Leadership Council

Brief update on our members and co-founders call this morning.  We have created a page on the Wiki for the Leadership Council which will be the public place to stay up to date on what is happening with the organization as we move forward and evolve the organization.  It seems our work over the past year now has garnered enough interest that there are some great people interested in contributing to our success and volunteering to lead the Club into its next phase of growth.

Thank you everyone who joined the call.  Unfortunately, my Skype recording plan did not work so we do not have an audio record of the call, but we can rectify this for future calls.

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Why did Ragan Really Delete the SMC Group?

This morning someone forwarded me the latest press release from Ragan Communications promoting the MyRagan site and yesterday someone forwarded me an email from Ragan promoting their next social media conference. In both cases, Ragan is claiming to be the first. The first social network for PR Professionals, and the first social media conference for PR Professionals. Why isn’t anyone else calling him out for these plain and simple untruths that are clearly indicative of his bravado and boastfulness. Why isn’t anyone pointing out to them that being a MySpace clone is really not all that great a claim? Why are they touting Strumpette’s effuse praise…. in a press release?

Could the real reason that they deleted the Social Media Club group on My Ragan be because they were about to start heavily promoting the site and selling their educational events and did not want to have the largest group on the site be from someone they view as a competitor? Funny thing Mark, you said, and your own Blogger Dave Murray quoted you on this, that you would help me promote the club and our workshop through your site. Mark Ragan said at that time, referring to me and Social Media Club, “I don’t fear you”. How should people interpret your words and actions Mark?

For others who think this is a ‘dustup’ between myself and Mark, you are very mistaken - this is a matter of someone using their power to control the conversation, now employing spin meisters to pull the wool over people’s eyes. This is a matter of transparency, truthiness and trust that is much more important than me or you or even him. This is a question of how we want the world to be, and how we want corporations to communicate with the world - is it going to really be about conversation, or is it going to be about the rouse of conversation as a front for the same old, same old BS.

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The Evolution of Social Media Club

It is with great sorrow that I write this post today. I have been searching for a business partner to help me realize some of my visions for many, many years, and in Howard Greenstein I thought I had found “the one”. He is a bright guy that has been through this before and has many of the skills that are really well suited for this type of work, but he wasn’t happy, so I must respect that.

As Howard so eloquently expressed in his post, the reality of running a community organization from day to day is much different than the idealism that inspired it. The vision of improving the world around us by bringing people together to share their understanding of the emerging Social Media market is vastly different than trying to manage a global network of local groups and online activities without sufficient resources.

The main reason for not announcing this sooner is that I needed time to reflect on the situation and on how my path might change as a result of this news - on what this really means for me, personally and professionally. When I met Howard, I was looking for a CEO to take the reigns and build the organization - to operationalize the vision and allow me to be the visionary, evangelist and thinker - to let me focus on my strengths and mitigate my weaknesses. As anyone who has personally met me will tell you, I am a fairly self-aware sort of guy, and I am very clearly aware that managing an organization and all the little details is not one of my natural strengths. Though I have done it before and could do it again, I just don’t want to –I want to be happy doing what makes my heart sing, and I know what that is and what it doesn’t.

While Howard’s observations are indeed true, there is of course more to this - a sort of more which Howard politely avoids bringing to light, but which radical transparency compels me to note. One of the ideas I have been evangelizing around the knowledge economy for the past several years is that “the number one factor of creating value in the knowledge economy is the ability of smart people to collaborate effectively.” We just never hit our stride, with different work styles, different ideas of success and the geographic challenges Howard mentioned contributing to the difficulties we faced.

Personally, I have gone from the high’s of the dream and all its possibilities to the reality of not enough resources, mounting personal debt and the struggles of being overwhelmed each day with too much to do. In short, I am tired and ready to find another way forward, to take this in stride and make a course correction that will let us accomplish the goals of improving media literacy and hosting conversations amongst social media professionals and those seeking to learn.

Unfortunately, I too must step down, or more aptly, I need to step back so that I might be able to make a living, pay for some of my wedding and pay for my monthly living expenses. I have focused too much on trying to do things for the community and not taken care of myself properly. I did this with my first startup, only I gave employees salaries when I could not afford to take one, learning the hard way how wrong this was. The thing is, that if we had money to pay people, I probably would have made that same mistake again (especially to get you involved Dave).

So what does this mean for Social Media Club? In the short term, nothing - monthly meetings will continue, we will continue to blog to the sites, we will complete development of our new social network through drupal and I am still responsible for shepherding the vision forward. All this really means is that I can not spend all my waking moments thinking about how to build the club and can no longer afford to hold out hope that I will soon be getting a salary from Social Media Club. Instead, I need to invest my attention in promoting myself as a Social Media consultant, customer advocate and social software architect/analyst – as a big thinker, new media marketing maven. I need more consulting gigs or I need to find the right job for my unique talents - both of which I am immediately moving towards and will write more about shortly. Sucess here will let me continue to cultivate the club as a part time endeavour.

We will continue pressing onward with the Social Media Workshop Series - this is a great event we have designed, and we will be working on doing several more cities in the fall such as Austin, Boston and New York.

I will soon be announcing more details (and seeking more input) on our new community site, to be run on Drupal, which will provide real value to the membership and value for the membership dollars already received.

I am now investigating how Social Media Club might be reorganized as a 501(c)6, a non-profit designation for trade associations which will make Social Media Club a member owned organization, or put another way, a sort of co-op. This was a large part of my original vision for the club, which I confided in private with many who can verify this idea. I think members of the club should benefit from the value we co-create with one another. I alluded to this in part in my comment on the Social Media Now “when users attack” post.

In closing, while this is very difficult in the short term, Social Media Club is not going away, we just need to find a new path forward together - and I will need your help to do so. I still have very high hopes that Social Media Club will accomplish its mission and fully serve the community in the way I had intended, but to continue to try to do things in the same manner as I have, would surely be proof that doing the same thing and expecting different results is the epitome of ‘being crazy’.

If you are a co-founder, I really need your help more than your dollars. If you are a local leader and not yet a paying member, please consider doing so in order to help move the organization forward – it will be a requirement of the new organizational structure as it takes shape, so we should all have some ’skin in the game’. Stay tuned for more to come later this week, but more importantly, join the conversation about what we can do together as a community on the Social Media Club mailing list…

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Chris Heuer on RSS Ray Today (May 23)

I am really excited about being on RSS Ray’s show tomorrow, and glad to focus my attention on the fun parts of my work - helping more people learn and understand how communications is changing as a profession to be effective in a world where the company is no longer in control (or holding onto the illusion of control). Of course, we will talk a little bit about Social Media Club as well, but I hope to focus the talk on those trends and transformations that are of ‘greater significance’ here more so than myself and the club. Lee Hopkins wrote about a portion of my perspective on this the other day, but the original post was removed - and there is a bit more you can read about on my old consulting company site (not updated for a long, long time). I have been thinking about “The Communications Strategy” for a long time, and many of the things I only envisioned when forming these ideas are actually now a part of the toolbox. Wiki’s, blogs, tools for measring influence, better distribution and so much more are a part of our everyday lives now…

From my few conversations with Ray and listening to a few of the archived shows you can download, Ray is a really sharp guy and has a great team working with him on his show. (I wish I could get a producer like Stacey!)

So tune in tomorrow, or if you can’t be there live, go back and download the podcast - I love this stuff and can’t wait to do more of it…

PS - this is my first real radio interview in about 10 years…

PPS - no, I won’t be talking about that other story, we are going to focus on marketing and how it is changing and more importantly, how communicators need to change with it. [blatant_plug] I will be revealing a bit about “Listen. Join. Start.” The Social Media Playbook for Professional Communicators which is at the heart of our Social Media Workshop on June 11 [/blatant_plug]

Update: My Interview with RSS Ray Segment 3 — My Interview with RSS Ray Segment 4

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Social Media Club No Longer Welcomed at MyRagan

Since I have received a few emails from some members already, let me just say I am disappointed that Mark Ragan has decided to take this action.  I have setup Social Media Club groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Ning and many other social networking sites, so that members who use those services can come together to further the goals of the club.  Mark invited me to create a group on his “myspace” clone a few weeks ago, and even invited me to promote our Workshop through it.

Since becoming the largest group on MyRagan, Mark has apparently changed his mind, because the group (and my profile) was represented by the Social Media Club logo.  His post to the group (which he deleted after my response to this message) read:

We are recreating the Social Media Club tomorrow and re-naming it to read simply: Social Media Tools and Strategies.

The current logo for the club is giving the impression that we are somehow selling this space to an advertiser.  We are not. These groups are designed as non-commercial places where free discussion can flow without fear of being pitched. 

Your moderator will be Ragan editor Bill Sweetland.

Because we are changing the name of the club, you will all have to join it again. But, as you know, this only takes a few seconds. Look forward to seeing you back here soon.

Mark Ragan
CEO
MyRagan.com

There is more to say about this of course, but for now, just wanted to let you know that if you want to talk more about this, please join the main Social Media Club mailing list or of course, comment here.  I wish I could still have the message I sent in reply to him, but since it was deleted before the conversation could even begin, it is lost. I am sure I was not overly polite in it, but I was definitely speaking to the truth of the situation.  This is apparently not a MySpace clone at all - it now just seems like a social network established for the purpose of selling Ragan rather than serving the interests of the community as he originally told me.
Truth is though, it is his site and his rules so he can do what he wants with it and there is nothing to do about it except leave.  We will simply take our conversation elsewhere and I will move on so we don’t waste anymore energy on such things…

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Second Life: How Virtual Worlds Create Real World Value (mtg in SF)

At last month’s Podcast Hotel, I finally had a chance to catch up with good friends Ted Tagami and Kathleen Craig, who have been moving at warp speed working for Millions of Us producing some amazing work inside Second Life for some very, very big brands. After delving into the practical business value and the utopian ideals of virtual worlds which many of us have been discussing for over a decade, I invited him to speak at this month’s San Francisco Social Media Club meeting to share what they have learned so far from their real world experiences.

This is going to be the sort of meeting you don’t want to miss. So please join us On Thursday May 24 from 6-830pm at Adobe’s SOMA HQ for a presentation and discussion on Second Life and the potential for virtual worlds to deliver real world business value. Ted Tagami will lead the presentation which will be followed by a round table discussion and a live Exploration of Second Life. Ted will be joined by his Millions of Us colleagues - Mat Small, Director of PR, and Kathleen Craig, Producer. During Ted’s presentation, we will hear different case studies of how brands have been able to successfully enter Second Life.

As always, the round table format is meant to be interactive, where everyone has a chance to ask questions, share their personal experiences and add their perspective to the conversation.  If the group is fairly large, we will break into smaller groups for more intimate discussions, but since we will be “in world” for most of the presentation, are striving to keep the group together.
Special Thanks to Adobe and Crimson Consulting for sponsoring the San Francisco meeting. We are looking forward to seeing you on Thursday. Please do register here so we can let Adobe know who is coming and prepare the room accordingly.

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Co-Founder Membership Opportunity Ending on June 30

Just a quick note for anyone who was considering becoming a co-founder of Social Media Club as an individual or a business.  We are going to be making many announcements next week about the next phase of this experiment in organizational formation via Social Media, some very exciting and some a bit disappointing. But that is reality, to smell the beauty of the rose, it often has to grow through a lot of stinky manure…

Anyhoo, some people have been asking, and some people have been joining as Professional Co-Founders, including Conrad Hametner, Brenda Thompson, Randy Stewart and Stewart Pratt.  Also, both Bryght and One by One Media have recently joined as Small Business Co-Founders.

While we have not brought in enough membership dues or sponsorships yet to afford a salary for myself or our fantastic editor of Social Media Now, Jason Chervokas, it has been enough to start development on the new community site for the club, cover some of the expenses of formation and some travel expenses to keep the club growing.  The thing is, when we launch the new site, I think the membership will begin to swell - it really is that compelling and the value proposition of membership will be made very clear and very real.

So I really want to reward all of the people who took a real leap of faith, in a new and unproven organizatiion, based on the strength of a few key ideas, a strong sense of shared values and the vision of one person that has become a shared understanding of many.

Also please note that ALL paid memberships registered before June 30, will have their membership extended through the end of 2008.  It is not about getting more money from those of you have really been the co-founders, it is about the gratitude I feel for all of my friends and colleagues who have been kind enough to support this idea with more than words and links - those who have opened their hearts and their wallets (or paypal accounts) to contribute to the modicum of success we have enjoyed so far.  You have given a chance for life to this thing we call Social Media Club and have given me reasons to smile - and eventhough we have not been able to get as much done as I had hoped over the past few months, you have continued to support us rather than berate us.

So to you, and the many others who have promised me they were registering or getting their company to join, I say a profound and hearty THANK YOU.
If you have considered becoming a co-founder of Social Media Club but not pulled the trigger, pay attention to what happens over the next couple of weeks and be sure to join as a member before June 30 - after that time, the co-founder’s will be who the co-founders are…

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What’s this Knowledge Market Thing?

One of the things I have not written about much, but I talk about till blue in the face and running out of air, is this idea of a Knowledge Market, which is at the heart of my vision for Social Media Club.  It’s nothing overly odd, pretty much as you might imagine it based on common language usage – a place where people exchange knowledge – sometimes for free, sometime for money and always for reputation.  We donate it to non-profits, share it with our colleagues and occasionally sell it in the form of books or consulting.

Thanks to the wonderful vote of confidence of a couple hundred paying members, we have begun to invest in building out the Club site on Drupal to make this vision a reality.  While the vision is much larger than the first humble steps that will be visible in the coming weeks, the heart of the new site will clearly provide value to paying members.  More importantly, I believe it will become a shining example of how things should be done within intentional communities of practice such as Social Media Club.

Very very soon, I will begin to talk about more details, and invite all members to join me in forming the tools we use to communicate and collaborate with one another…  In the meantime, if you have some ideas of what we might need at the heart of the community, or you have some Drupal experience with version 5.1 or you know of some great Drupal based communities out there like http://www.gimme20.com/ which we might be able to learn from, drop me an email to chris [a-t] social media club dot com.

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Conversations take time, managing them takes energy

There are a lot of people I have met over the past few years who have asked the proverbial question, “Who has time to blog?”

For me, the answer lately has been ‘not me’ - though I continue link blogging here, photo blogging and Twittering because it takes little effort and can be fit in between other tasks and activities. In a meeting with Shel Israel this afternoon, Shel pointed out how woefully out of touch I am with what he has been writing about lately - which is embarrasing because I am working with him on our first Social Media Club Workshop series and I genuinely find his blog well written and insightful.

As some of you know, I don’t regularly use an RSS reader, though I probably should - the thing is, not being a regular RSS Feed Reader works as a blanket excuse for why I am not up to date on the happenings of the 1,000+ people I have met and would like to follow if I had the time. For the past few months, I have not had the time to do 80% of what I would like to be doing and about 60% of what I must be doing. In fact, I had a conversation yesterday with some friends about how we have had to expend so much energy in managing the Club to host conversations about Social Media, that we have little time to actually produce it or to be fully engaged in the conversations about it, eventhough it is all around me every day.

This brings me back to one of the drums I have been beating for a long time - the purpose of an organization is to organize resources (human, capital and systemic) to complete tasks that serve the needs of a group of people. The organization should be managing resources to complete activities that ensure desired outcomes. The trouble is, that most organizations are managing too few resources in support of too many activities, resulting in the inevitable opportunities slipping through the cracks, and a lower level of quality in the outcomes being produced. This requires decreasing the number of expected outcomes (focus) and gaining better utilization of the resources at your disposal, which actually takes more time to do effectively…

So this is where I come to the title of my post - the conversations take time, which there is little of while investing the majority of your energy in the management (and development) of a (fledgling) organization. This is ultimately one of the main reasons why many business people ask the question about having time to blog. Given the fact that they are already employing too few resources against too many activities, how can another communications channel, that takes real time to cultivate, be properly engaged?

From my perspective, this points to a real need to ensure that everyone understands the roles they fulfill, and that they are part of a team with adequate authority and available time to participate in the conversation, with enough energy dedicated to manage where and when and with whom conversations should be taking place. I know of a few companies out there that are starting to properly staff and realign their management responsibilities to do this right such as Lenovo and Dell, but am wondering who else is out there investing the time and energy it takes to not only do this, but to do it right.

Do you know of any good case studies in regards to staffing for conversations with customers? What about organizations that understand the value of conversations with customers and the need to invest the management energy in cultivating better conversations?

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Storytelling and the Blogospehere -Third Thursday April 2007

This is the recording from Third Thursday’s monthly meetup in Silicon Valley on April 19, 2007. This month’s discussion featured a great presentation from Elisa Camahort and Kathy Klotz-Guest called “How Storytelling is (Still) Critical to Communications in the Blogosphere”. There are really some wonderful insights here that get at the heart of branding, engagement and blogging’s role facilitating both. From the event’s description:

As companies try to figure out how to use blogs and other social media tools to engage with customers, successfully participating in the blogosphere remains a bit of mystery to many marketing and PR professionals. Social media initiatives can’t be spin, but companies must have a compelling story to tell about their brand, culture, products, and customers in their online activities. At the heart of every communications effort must be a story. Storytelling can be an organic process that comes from open dialog with customers.

More feedback on the Meetup from attendees and a full description of the event is available on the group’s Meetup page.

Many thanks to Jen McClure and the Society of New Communications Research for sponsoring this month’s Meetup.

Download MP3 File

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