Where Will Video Take You, Where Will You Take Your Video?

The primary goal of Social Media Club’s Reality Check is to get down to the brass tacks of how people are really using different technologies and to uncover unmet needs. In this, our premiere series of Reality Check, we are focused on how people are using video in both their personal and professional lives.

More specifically, we are trying to discover where you take your video beyond your desktop and your living room and thinking about what you would really like to do with video while on the go. We want to discuss your ideas, insights, case studies and deeper needs so that we can all learn from each other, fulfilling one of the most important promises of Social Media Club.

With RealPlayer SP, it is now possible to download any non-copyright protected video from the web and view it on almost any portable device. Personally for me, this means that all those videos, in all those open tabs that get lost everytime my browser crashes, are now easily accessible for me to watch in the spare moments waiting for a meeting, sitting on a plane or taking the Muni down to Citizen Space. We also know that many people use it to take their cooking videos into the kitchen, sales teams are using it to show product demonstrations, and emergency planners are using portable videos to educate field teams.

If you want to get some deeper insights into the conversation that we have had so far, click over to hear some of the conversation from New York City’s Reality Check or check out this video below from the Reality Check at Social Media Club Chicago’s meeting on September 23, 2009. (Hot topic: who should not be on video?!)

There are still several more events to come over the next 4-5 weeks. Join us for a Reality Check in San Francisco on Monday October 19, 2009 (my home chapter) for an incredible event talking about the technology and the creative process around mobile video. In addition to Justin from Justin.tv and Lacy Kemp from RealPlayer SP, we will be joined by Christopher Coppola. For more details and to RSVP, click over to the Eventbrite page or visit the event page on Facebook. Additional upcoming events will be held in Los Angeles on October 20 and Salt Lake City on October 29. In November, we will wrap up the series with Reality Checks in Boston, Philadelphia, and Sydney, Austalia.

So where will you take your video? Where will video take you? What would you just love to be able to do with video while youre on the go? Share your thoughts with us here in the comments and let’s explore stories of what else might be possible together.

To see what is now possible with portable video using RealPlayer SP, take a look at this demo from @realtweeter Lacy Kemp that was filmed in DC as part of the Reality Check series.

Orange and Viadeo sponsor the Social Media Club France

Some heartwarming news from the French SMC Chapter just arrived: Orange renews officially its annual support to the Social Media Club France, while a new sponsorship deal has been stroke with Viadeo.

By having supported the French SMC chapter since 2008, and with several SMC active members coming from its ranks, Orange is the historic and most significant partner of the French Club. By keeping on supporting the Club, Orange positions itself as a key-player in the definition and the diffusion of best practices in the social media industry.

With more than 8.5 million members, Viadeo is a worldwide leader in the professional social networking space, as well as a pioneer (founded in 2004!). After participating to a session, Nicholas (Viadeo’s PR Director) spontaneously offered his support to the Club. As Viadeo is often seen as one of the most appealing jewels of the French / European Social Media industry crown, we were of course very proud of Nicholas’offer (and accepted it right away).

Backed by major organizations, the Social Media Club will keep on extending its action in France and Europe: events will be organized on a more regular basis, intern or part-time worker will be hired, new projects will be launched,…

Again, many thanks to Orange and Viadeo, for their trust and support. We are all very pleased to be supported by such great professionals.

For any info on the Social Media Club France and its future / past events, please visit our wiki section or contact Pierre-Yves Platini (pyplatini at gmail dot com).

SPSS sponsors the Social Media Club Workshop in Paris

SMC France is proud to announce its partnership with SPSS, leading worldwide provider of predictive analytics software and solutions. SPSS and its team will be actively supporting the SMC France during the first SMC Workshop, which will be held on May 15th, in Paris. As seasoned marketing professionals, SPSS chose no to be a “sleeping sponsor” and decided to be directly involved in the workshop: its managers will attend the whole day and help attendees to design their social media projects!

By associating its name, image, expertise and energy to SMC France, SPSS actively contributes to the development of SMC, and positions itself as a thought-leader in the marketing industry.

Many thanks to SPSS for its support and its trust!

For any infos on the SMC Workshop, please visit our page or contact us.

About SPSS Inc.
SPSS Inc. (Nasdaq: SPSS) is a leading global provider of Predictive Analytics software and solutions. The company’s Predictive Analytics technology improves business processes by giving organizations forward visibility for decisions made every day. By incorporating Predictive Analytics into their daily operations, organizations become Predictive Enterprises – able to direct and automate decisions to meet business goals and achieve a measurable competitive advantage. More than 250,000 public sector, academic and commercial customers rely on SPSS technology to help increase revenue, reduce costs and detect and prevent fraud. Founded in 1968, SPSS is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. For more information, please visit www.spss.com.

A word from our ’sponsor’

Social Media Club is currently run by a small group of volunteers with understanding bosses (partners and spouses too!) who ’sponsor us’ by allowing us time to work on projects we love. We would like to take a quick moment in these newsletters to publicly thank them for being so darn nice by hopefully sending a little love back their way.

Docstoc (from Serena Ehrlich, SMC’s Secretary)
We all know that the more places your company appears on the web, the more links to your website, the better their natural search results (SERPS). We would like to introduce you to one more way you can increase your own natural search engine visibility – easily and for free.  Upload your press releases, investor presentations, media and tradeshow kits into Docstoc’s highly optimized document database and piggyback off their inherent SEO.  Docstoc even provides measurement – you can track the views and downloads of every uploaded document. Simply create an account at www.docstoc.com and start uploading.