Whatever the reason your panel was rejected, here is your second chance to present your talk with your panel on the afternoon of Tuesday March 16, 2010. So submit your panel to us in the comments below (make sure everyone can be there still) and we will, at our sole discretion and judgment, select two (2) or three (3) panels which will receive 30 minutes each to live stream to our global audience from the Social Media Clubhouse beginning around 3pm.

We have this fantastic venue 20 minutes from the convention center, a shuttle bus and a live musical performance we are putting on from Kole Christensen starting at 5pm as part of our KUT Live series.  We also have a daily recap show to produce on Tuesday at 6pm with TechZulu. But we don’t yet have a Summit booked, or a sponsor for it other then Social Media Club, which has a pretty awesome announcement to make this week </teaser>.

So let’s go for it and share some knowledge together. If you get it, we will stream it!

Suggestions

• If it’s a commercial pitch, forget about it, you should have signed up as a sponsor
• If you want more immediate attention, tweet it @socialmediaclub with a link to the panel submission elsewhere online and make sure to use the #SMCH3 hashtag
• We are looking for topics that are interesting to our Social Media Club members from around the world, so if you have a strong case why it would be, present it in the comments (or on your own blog post)
• Don’t contact me personally, please. Especially if you know me personally. I just dont have time to deal with all those extra communications while we are in the midst of producing #SMCH3
• The ‘application’ we choose will be notified by Sunday night so there is time to prepare on MON
• Ummm, well, if you have something to talk about regarding media literacy and how to create more of it, or anything to do with our core missions, that, well, that might get some preferential treatment.

In short, for being an idea, staffed by a hard working but part time intern (big thanks to Yong C Lee for making this possible), SMCEDU is an early success. But there is much harder work to be done and there is a real need in the overall academic community for the type of support we are seeking to provide.

So today I am writing to seek your help in finding a volunteer grant writer and some foundations to get funding that will take this SMCEDU initiative to another level and help us hire Yong C Lee as a full time program manager. We need $250,000 so we can hire Yong, a “curriculum curator” and another part time program manager to work on developing specific initiatives with our teachers and administrators from around the world. We can start with something as small as $50,000 so we can at least hire Yong full time but we need to go for more so we can expand our efforts and do it right.

So that the vision is a bit more clear, here is a current draft of what I have set out for the program goals

• Develop a set of resources and links to resources that reside elsewhere which professors can use to help them get social media related classes approved in their schools and offer the best social media focused education possible – ie, case studies, syllabus, courses, suggestions for getting past no, etc…
• Build the most comprehensive directory of teachers offering social media globally and become the source for schools looking to see what people are offering. This requires building out additional resources on top of the Ning network, ie coding/programming
• Develop and encourage the development of Open Courseware programs that are Creative Commons licensed and available to other teachers to use and improve upon (using non-comercial share and share alike licenses)
• Create relationships between local Social Media Club chapters around the world and their local universities so that we can create a path to professionalism for those seeking to be a social media professional, or merely those seeking a chance to use social media as a part of their chosen career
• To encourage the on-campus development of Social Media Club chapters, empowering students to create their own local communities that can be connected and supported by our global network
• Offer internship and mentorship programs so as to develop real world professional experiences to supplement the classroom education
• Develop and offer training for those teachers seeking to offer Social Media classes at their school and/or using social media as part of teaching other subjects
• To identify and review other social media education offerings outside of our domain
• Support and increase awareness for other important initiatives of interest to social media professors including but not limited to Classroom 2.0 and Social Media Classroom. To expand this global web of support and partnerships so as to form a network of similarly oriented initiatives for mutual benefit and support.

My recollection from my very early youth is that an education is supposed to prepare you to enter the world and be a valuable contributing member to society. Is that still true? If it is, then the goal of SMCEDU is straight and true. My purpose for SMCEDU has never been more clear – it is to prepare students to be better critical thinkers when it comes to interacting with the world around them, especially focused on a broad set of skills I reference as media literacy. It is also focused on preparing them to enter the real world of work, to provide current workforce literacy which means an understanding of how to interact, create value and leverage social/web technology for the purpose of the organization as opposed to the individual. More broadly, I hope to imbue a sense of community in students so that they see the interconnectedness of the world around them and can take that education to make their world, and ours by extension, a better place.

We could really use your help in securing a grant (or grants) in order to fulfill this mission. Please let us know your thoughts and help us if you can.

Big thanks to all the early participants who signed up on blind faith and to all the sponsors who are subsidizing our participation costs (especially for the lucky few who got one of the $5 tickets). We have been working hard to build a great single-track Social Media conference that will be the backbone of a strong ‘camp’. Each of the sessions below are designed to be 45 minutes with 15 minute breaks in between. Due to the layout of the building and proximity of the rooms to one another, we will be sticking to this schedule as best as possible.

In under a week, with the support of our Social Media Camp Gold Sponsors (Biz360, IDEA, SAP), social media leaders, community organizers, and many friends, I think we have something that  will be highly valuable – in fact, I would say its the equivalent of a much higher price conference, or better in some instances, but hey, I will let you decide for yourself. (there are only about 30 tickets left!)

8am – Registration, Breakfast, Networking

9am – Opening – Three 10 Minute Keynotes
Chris Heuer, Camp Director, will open the day and introduce what he believes are the most important things necessary for Social Media to continue to be relevant and to continue to grow.

• Keynote 1:  The Synaptic Web, Khris Loux, Echo
• Keynote 2: The Art of Tummeling, Kevin Marks, BT/Ribbit
• Keynote 3: Personal Voice, Personal Storytelling, Cathy Brooks

945am – Planning the Camp Sessions
F0r 30 minutes, participants will be able to offer up suggestions for an additional session that they will lead in one of the two other rooms we have set up. In total, we will have to collaboratively plan 10 sessions the day of the event.

1030am – Measuring What Matters: Social Media AND Metrics (Moraga/Main Room)

This discussion will be lead by Maria Ogneva from Biz360 and is geared towards social media professionals / marketers within their organizations, but is suitable for everyone working to prove the ROI of their investment in Social Media. The central premise is that we all need to better understand what matters most (and what doesn’t matter at all).

• Maria Ogneva, Biz360
• Rick Klau, Google
• Jaime Schiller
• Sudha Jamthe, PayPal (just added!)

1130am – Rethinking Communications: Social Media AND Marketing (Moraga/Main Room)

Tap into cutting edge thinking and insights from this group of experienced professionals. After their presentations, ample time will be provided for group discussions and a rigorous Q&A before heading to lunch.

• Kevin Barenblat, Context Optional
• Chris Heuer, AdHocnium

1215-130PM – LUNCH BREAK

Box lunches, with vegetarian options, will be served

130pm – Customer Service As Marketing

It’s been said that customer retention is the best form of customer acquisition. In this panel, we bring together people who know this first hand to discuss how and why customer support has transcended its traditional position as a cost to be minimized to become a valuable marketing investment.

• Chris Pitre, Idea
• Thor Muller, Get Satisfaction
• Kristie Wells, Ribbit/Social Media Club
• Bliss Dake, Mighty Leaf Tea

230pm – Rethinking Collaboration (a ‘fireside chat’)

I once heard an employee of a really big company say “you can have my email when you pry it from my cold dead fingers” referencing an initiative to bring Enterprise 2.0 tools into their company.  The fear of change often prevents people from adapting to new ways of working, making collaboration more of a human issue then a technical one.  As technologies, and our concepts of how we use them have changed in the face of ’streams’, what’s it going to take to not only rethink collaboration, but to make the new workflow a simple to use reality. As we move from static depositories of documents into work ’streams’ collaboration wont only be within one tool, but across many. What does that world look like and how will it come into being. [this is a deep, rich topic for us to explore, expect the conversation to move around a bit from this description]

• David Meyer, SAP
• Chris Heuer, AdHocnium

330pm – Facing the Reality of Real Time

Real Time is the new black. Its mentioned everywhere, and it seems straightforward enough, but what does it really mean. How are you supposed to manage a brand in the face of real time onslaught of customer complaints, market developments, events, news and everything else that is going on. In diving into the reality of real time, we will explore the topic from a technical, humanistic and organizational marketing perspective, with a lot of time devoted to group discussion with all participants.

• Jeremy Toeman, Stage Two Consulting
• Brian Zisk, Collecta
• Jolie O’Dell, Read/Write Web

430pm – Closing Remarks (15 minutes)

Chris Heuer will wrap up the day with a synthesis of the key themes and ideas presented across all of Social Media Camp and discuss his vision for future Social Media Camp’s that will be held across the country in 2010.  This is also a chance for all participants to share their big a-ha moments from the day and to discuss all the other great events happening during the rest of Social Media Week.

Some of the titles and speakers above may change slightly, but the focus is in place and we are confirming additional speakers each hour…

For those of you attending, who may see a topic that is just not interesting to you, remember, its not just a conference, its also a camp… soyou have a chance to help program 10 additional sessions that will be hosted throughout the day.  I will be writing a separate post on how we will run the camp shortly.

We have a great day planned out, with a ton of great people, in a nice venue.  While the Presidio Officer’s Club is not the Ritz Carlton or a Class A Conference Center, it suits our purposes of getting together, learning from each other and making valuable new connections. We have a great caterer bringing in a continental breakfast, an array of boxed lunch choices and sodas, waters, and coffee throughout the day.  We also have very limited WiFi it would seem in this building, so I have to ask you in advance to expect we will have some wifi problems – in fact, if anyone has some Mifi hotspots or something they could bring, that would probably help a little bit.  As a camp goes, this will be a great, high energy event with a ton of great speakers, ideas and insights.

So bring an open mind, tough questions and big challenges to Social Media Camp next Monday and help us kick off our first Social Media Week in San Francisco with this great unconference hybrid. If you haven’t registered yet, you can still do so now, but get it soon, there are only a few tickets left.

See you on Monday!

#SMCQ19 What are the best qualities of social media you want to insure never get lost as both the media form and media user evolves?

How to join the Social Media Clubs Question of the Week discussion: Our goal with the Question of the Week initiative is to create a truly collaborative conversation within and around the most up-to-the-minute issues affecting Social Media. Each week, the Social Media Club editorial board looks at trends, topics and news affecting social media during a Blogtalk Radio broadcast. During the call, the editorial board forms the question. This is where YOU come in: we’d love for you to post your thoughts on your blog, via Twitter or by commenting on the Social Media Club site. Please tag your blogs and posts with a hash tag, ‘#’, so we can track the conversation. For example, if you wrote a response to Social Media Club Question of the Week 13, please tag your post ‘#SMCQ13’ and we’ll be able to find it, track back, and link the post to the original post. Your answers will all be included in the weekly Conversation post & Blogtalk Radio broadcast review of the answers we received. We also invite you to call in to the shows to share your viewpoint. Instructions about how to call in will be given on this site by the end of each week. Thanks for joining the club!

For over three years, Social Media Club has worked to promote media literacy and connect people to share what they are learning about Social Media. Today, we are launching a new project to bring together the education and professional communities to further the development of social media curriculum in our schools. The #SMCEDU project seeks to ensure that graduates from every college/university are media literate and are able to competently understand and apply the emerging lessons from social media in organizations. It has always been the goal of Social Media Club to create what I think of as a “path to professionalism” for citizen journalists, story tellers, video producers, communications professionals and engineers.

We will support existing social media education efforts such as PR Open Mic, Classroom 2.0, Social Media Classroom and others while also seeking to coordinate efforts with school administrators and local professionals. Initially we expect a lot of participation coming from the US and will focus our efforts here (though I hope UBC in Vancouver also gets involved early), but we are most assuredly thinking globally in our long term scope.

Key to our success will be connecting the local Social Media Club groups more closely with their local universities to co-create a combination of mentoring programs, internships, professional development opportunities and a repository of Creative Commons licensed Social Media curriculum. As such, we are seeking local Social Media Club chapters with existing professors and ties to local schools to join our efforts to create some pilot programs. If that is you, please join our working group or at least join the SMCEDU Ning site we created for the project.

We are initially focusing on foundational research on what exists and identifying who is already teaching social media in colleges and universities. You can find a list of Social Media Teachers on our project Wiki which we have built from twitter replies so far (please do add to the list if you are or you know someone teaching social media).

We are now moving quickly to form a working group of interested Social Media teachers and local Social Media Club leaders to refine the parameters of the project. Join us for the kickoff conference call next Tuesday July 28, 2009 at 8am PST (more details under events on Ning). Our second conversation is seemingly to assess the state of Social Media education in universities in order to understand where we can provide the most value together. I think a weekly community podcast lead by the working group is in order…

Social Media Club has always promoted the importance of community, and in so doing has created relationships with other community organizers that are invaluable in manifesting this effort. It is going to be us, together, that will make this a success, not any individual company, group or organization. In fact, the impetus behind the current effort towards improving social media education in schools was inspired in large part by Steve Radick, the Social Media lead at Booz Allen Hamilton. Mr. Radick reached out to us in June about what we might be able to do to improve workforce literacy in social media and the SMCEDU initiative is the outcome. In talking with many people over the years, and even more recently, the time to undertake this effort really is NOW.

We understand this is a pretty big ball we want to get rolling, and the momentum we’re hoping to create will need the contributions of teachers, professionals, students and administrators. Connecting social media teachers to local members of Social Media Club is a top priority and something each of you can start to do today to improve the quality of education our schools are providing around social media and emerging technology.

Ultimately, we would like to formally connect our local chapters to universities, but initially we are merely seeking better informal relationships so we can determine together how to best proceed. Each situation will be a little different, but there will be enough commonality that we will all benefit immeasurably from collective action. We see Social Media Club as being able to facilitate numerous opportunities for students and teachers, but also see great benefits for local SMC leaders to coordinate with students and teachers on hosting social media training and more outside the classroom. In fact, developing a standard introduction to Social Media webinar / teleclass to be offered for free each week is a goal we are setting for October 1.

There are unique challenges in offering courses in areas of emerging practices and technologies. The rate at which technology is changing is overwhelming – what’s useful today will ultimately be overshadowed by a better method tomorrow. We hope to help school’s keep up with that change by offering an open, and ever changing, repository of social media curriculum, available through Creative Commons Non Commercial Share Alike licensing. Educational institutions often time considerable time to update their curriculum, so rather than waiting for a global change in university policies, we think we can help by offering free online webinars to students and teachers alike. If you join us in building this new community around #SMCEDU – one that allows advancement through sharing, contribution, and collective effort, I know we can be successful together.

Why do this? Besides it being core to our purpose, we see the world as having an economy largely based on knowledge, meaning ongoing education is not only a competitive advantage, but also key to our ability to thrive as a global village. We can leverage our knowledge of how the tools work, together with our relationships to teachers and professionals who know even more then we do to make a difference. We can provide students with the tools they need to get better jobs and in so doing provide organizations with a better prepared and media literate workforce.

The younger generation is tech-savvy, to be sure…but how many see the value of Twitter as more than just a way to broadcast what you had for lunch? How many utilize the learning power of iTunesU? Although today’s college students grew up in a web world, the way organization’s use social media is quite distinct from what they know. Social Media for organizational or social advocacy purposes or the development of public media and citizen journalism are all things that need to be experienced to be understood.  Ultimately, SMCEDU will provide opportunities for students to have those experiences and for everyone to be the better for it. The better prepared students are to enter the workforce, the more value they can provide and the more opportunities they will have to make a difference.

We’re excited about this project and hope that you are, too. If you’re interested in participating in this project please join our new SMCEDU Project Community on Ning. If you want to be a part of the working group that will lead the project, please just request to join the SMCEDU Working Group on the Ning site and join our conference call next Tuesday July 28 at 8am PST.

Of course, you will also want to follow the blog posts here on Social Media Club. The principle blogger leading the project is Yong C. Lee (@yongclee) who is interning with us this summer and perhaps a little beyond to help shepherd this project forward. In addition to blogging, he will be organizing the research, handling community relations on Ning and essentially running the project with a little guidance from me.

So if you want to improve the quality of social media education being offered in schools, please join us to improve social media education in our schools today.

Some of the comments on Twitter

• VegasBill @pepsico The info packed sessions @ #smcamp 4 #iwny look amazing. @ChrisHeuer is a dynamic social media role model. Have a great time:)
• stevecherches RT @MellieBe: Check out our top social media marketing tips from Social Media Camp#smcamp http://tinyurl.com/l7dqm3 (Great post)
• deanmeistr @danzarella bummed I couldn’t do graphic recording of your talk at #smcamp - I dig the concepts/content of your talk–maybe next time!
• LesBlatt Smart idea seen at #smcamp yesterday: some attendees put their Twitter names on their conf name badges. Made it easy to follow them.
• chttrbx99 please retweet – Thanks to @howardgr & @chrisheuer for a great day at #smcamp NYC yesterday some great conversations
• SocialSteve @chrisheurer and @howardgr did a great job on #smcamp (Social Media Camp) at #iwny. Check them out at socialmeadiacamp.org
• Amver @chrisheuer Not only did I find #smcamp valuable I would love to join SMC. Hopefully our paths will cross again.
• SocialSteve Last week’s participation in #smcamp (Social Media Camp) and #iwny (Internet Week NY) has spawned tons of activity.
• craige @chrisheuer et al: Thanks for a fabulous event! I feel so inspired after attending #smcamp.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• PepsiCo Blog
• expatJane’s Blog (Volunteer)
• Les Blatt’s Rambles
• SMC New Haven Blog Post
• DMDInsight
• ReadWriteWeb

Social Media Camp Photos:

• SMCamp room kickoff
• Social Voice from Livewworld
• Flickr from Courtney Crosslin
• Flickr from Howard Greenstein
• Flickr from Chris Heuer

#SMCQ12 Find examples of how organizations are empowering their workforce with [using] social media?

Please tag your posts, Tweets & comments #SMCQ12. On Friday, the board will reconvene to review your responses.

It begs the question – what else we can do with the technology of today to capture those conversations and help inform others asking the same questions?

Join California Secretary of State, Debra Bowen, on Wednesday, May 27th at 7pm in San Francisco, CA for a brainstorming session where we dig into this topic in an effort to find new ways of engaging and informing voters using Social Media.

Contribute your thoughts ahead of time on socialvoter.org (use the form on the right sidebar to contribute), or you can tweet/blog your thoughts using the #socialvoter tag.

There is no fee to attend but they would like you to register so they know you are coming. Simply click ‘Attending‘ on the Facebook event. We plan to live stream the event for those who cannot participate in person. We will also be capturing some of the conversation on our SMC San Francisco Twitter account if you would like to follow along that way.

I am happy Social Media Club can play an active role in government 2.0 discussions. Earlier this month, our San Antonio chapter was asked to participate in covering the mayoral race using the Social Media tools at hand. There are several programs in the works, locally and nationally, where we will be extending this dialogue – so stay tuned!

As a result of our continuing growth and the respect being garnered by our members all around the globe, we are beginning a renewed push to provide more educational resources, news, information and insights through our new site.

Today we have begun to take applications for our new editorial team which consists of a handful of folks on an Editorial Board working through the big issues and charting a course for our ongoing editorial strategy.  Working with them, with a bit more hands on responsibility for getting content published on the site are the Editors themselves who will be collaborating with the contributing Editors who will be pitching ideas in, and also taking assignments.  If you are interested, or would just like to get updates from the team occasionally, please fill out this form and let us know a little more about yourself and your interests.

In addition to a global editorial initiative that will be kicking off just before SxSW (details to come shortly), we have also begun two very important projects that need your support, contributions and retweets.

Social Media Buyers Guide

SMC founder Chris Heuer along with e-Storm’s William Gaultier and key members of the Social Media Club Advisory Group are kicking off a project today to develop a Social Media Buyer’s Guide to help organizations make informed purchase decisions.  The scope is pretty wide on this right now, as you can see from the initial work outlined on the [Social Media Club Wiki] Social Media Buyers Guide page. Please jump in on this and contribute your additional questions, ideas, concerns, insights and opinions.  Also, please help by writing your own original blog posts that answer the question, “What are the questions we should ask when purchasing Social Media solutions?” or perhaps even “What are the solutions that work best in different situations?” 

The tag for this project is #SMCbuyersguide

Social Media Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

A related, but distinct project due to its broader scope was kicked off last week with a blog post entitled “Building out the Social Media FAQ“.  This project is also on the Social Media Club Wiki, on the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page.  While we are starting this on a wiki, we hope to move it to a more user friendly, searchable database platform, perhaps even integrated into our new member’s site down the line.  In the short term, we have created a simple form we put on the blog post that you may fill out to submit your questions and even your answers if you have some you would like to share. Same goes for this effort as mentioned above – please help get others engaged, and help us find and tag great blog posts that might be useful and ask some great questions yourself.

The tag for this project is #SMCfaq

Yes indeedy, it’s time to get to work…

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

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

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

If you get it, share it.

When reviewing our media literacy program with Michael Brito the other day, we hit upon another potentially big idea for this important spot on the home page, a weekly course focused on a different strategy or tactic.  By this I mean that one week we could feature a new presentation/video each day on the same topic , such as Blogger Relations.  In this case, we would look for someone (hello members!) to put together an online ‘course’ on these topics that has five lessons in it.

What do you think? How might we do something like this best? Are there any pieces of free or SaaS software out there we could use in conjunction with this program? Please let us know!

PS – we are also starting to develop our webinar program and need help in selecting a vendor.  We will be posting separately on this program, but since it is related, thought I should mention that here as well.