Membership Questions

What are the benefits of joining Social Media Club?

We see the greatest benefit of membership as being able to associate with other people from around the world who really ‘get it’ - to learn from them, to share with them, to do business with them and to collaborate with them on both commercial and social projects. We want to help you create more opportunities for discovering the key insights that will advance your personal and professional passions, while contributing to the collective benefit for the broader community. We also think you will have a great opportunity to build a reputation that will lead to both speaking and consulting opportunities aplenty.

Ultimately, we will be offering a unique blend of association benefits such as discounts, free access to many of our events and discounted educational opportunities from other groups. We combine these benefits with support for the many ad-hoc groups that are forming as a result of the DIY and Unconference ethic.

In contrast to the typical associations though, we will also offer an array of online services such as our social network (aka: member directory) and some other interesting peer to peer support services which will be announced Fall 2008. Additionally, small business, media and corporate members have the opportunity to offer their products or services to other members though our ‘member directory’ which includes an opportunity to offer special promotions and other discounts to other members.

By investing now in the formation of Social Media Club, we will reward your faith in our efforts with many other unique opportunities in the future.

Why is there an “Open Membership” offered for free? Won’t that prevent you from accomplishing your goals?

We want to be different than other associations or clubs by creating our organization based upon the values that have brought us to this point in the evolution of the Web - being open, free and inclusive rather than closed, expensive and exclusive. While Open members won’t get all the same benefits as other membership levels, they will be an important part of the community learning and sharing along with the rest of us - together. We don’t believe that the ability of someone to pay a large sum of money is an indicator of the potential value they can contribute, but we do need to have the other paid levels of membership so we can cultivate and support the broader efforts of the community. Rather than believing it will prevent us from achieving our goals we feel it is the only way to accomplish them. While not everything in the world can be free, the Web has certainly proved that some things, particularly those that benefit from scale and network effects, can be. At this point in time, we are happy to welcome Open members, but would ask that you seriously consider becoming a paid member if you share our beliefs about the need for something like Social Media Club and have the financial ability to do so.

What does it mean to be a “Co-Founder” and why should I pay that premium?

Co-Founders who sign up before June 30, 2008 will receive the special designation of Co-Founder within the membership directory for as long as their membership is in good standing, signaling to other members that they are pioneers in Social Media and have made a serious contribution to the community. The other benefit for Co-Founders who join now is the opportunity to participate in conversations about where this organization is headed. Co-Founders will also have access to view, edit and contribute to the actual business plan of the organization via a password protected wiki. Rather than making this available to only the highest bidder as with other industry organizations, this opportunity is available to all Co-Founders at a ‘double year’ rate that also provides additional opportunities and discounts throughout the life of the club.

We hope that you will agree with us in regards to how important it is at this crucial point in time to have an organization that stands for real values around ethics, transparency and honesty that also supports the widening acceptance of Social Media across society to encourage broader participation in the global conversation while working together for our mutual benefit as an emerging industry. Chris Heuer was an early pioneer of the first wave of social computing in the mid-90’s, and spent a lot of time teaching people the basics of hyperlinks Web browsers. Now that the technology is more mature and the network is well connected around the globe, we can more effectively use his lessons learned and our ability to share with one another to help spread this knowledge more efficiently - while ensuring that the principles of being a good ‘Etienne’ are not lost as part of the growing pains.

We have a lot of rational exuberance - which is both good and healthy!

Is there some joke with the $2,499 corporate membership?Actually no. Chris Heuer has always been a fan of ‘plain pricing’ for the purpose of simplicity, but in working with corporations you begin to realize that many people in organizations have a spending authority limit of $2,500. So this price point is intended to make it easier for people inside organizations to join by making the decision for themselves instead of needing to seek out the approval of many layers of management.

General Questions

How big will Social Media Club grow, and how important will it be in our industry?

No one can say for sure, but all indications are that we are on a high growth path with the right mind set to bridge the divide between those who get it and those who really want to understand the right way to leverage Social Media and participate in the conversation. We can tell you that not a week goes by without another person contacting us to set up a Social Media Club in a new city. We’ve had initial meeting sizes from a few people to greater than 150 – and that’s without any marketing expenses other than posting the meetings to various online calendars, blogging about it, and sending out a few emails through friends. In short, the growth we have seen so far is all the result of word of mouth and participation in the conversation through Social Media tools.

Why are you becoming a for profit group instead of being a non profit? What about your promise to build a not for loss organization?

We are now seeking revenues from membership dues and other sources so that we can organize for the collective benefit of the community. In our years of experience working with user groups and associations, it is clear that the ones that have some part-time or full-time management are the ones that last and grow. This costs money, and time.

In a very real sense, the founders have always been social entrepreneurs. This is merely the first venture to fully embody what that means. The reason for not being a pure non-profit is that we don’t want to be beholden to a few foundations to write new grants each year for non-profit efforts; we want to seek wider participation from the community we serve and provide other valuable services for which members would be willing to pay for a reasonable fee (or receive those services for free as part of their membership). Additionally, Not-For-Profits have significant overhead in legal fees and legal restrictions – things that don’t make it easy to keep up with the fast paced world of Social Media.

We are seeking reasonable profits and expect to produce more measured social good within the world than a traditional for profit organizations. We also will seek to support other ad-hoc efforts as they emerge (and the ones that are already going strong such as the San Francisco Podcaster Meetup and the New Tech Meetups in NYC and Silicon Valley.

As for the idea of being a “not for loss” organization, we believe we are holding true to this principle, even though our financial structure requires us to raise some capital to expand rapidly enough in the face of ever changing market forces. As social entrepreneurs we will continue to facilitate donations and fundraising for other worthy non-profit causes like Creative Commons, the Internet Archive, Electronic Frontier Foundation and other worthy projects that our membership brings to our attention. We’ve already done so with our Web 2.2 event, where excess cash went to the Creative Commons and the Internet Archive.

Local Group Questions

Will members have to pay separate membership dues to the local group as well as to the central organization?

We hope that we can find a different model to fund some local events through our national organizations, but believe that each local group will be somewhat different. We don’t want to impose a lot of unnecessary structure on each local group, but we do want to encourage the use of best practices and ensure some consistency of events. As a work in progress, this is expected to change, perhaps drastically, but will only happen as a result of a conversation with the community.

We do expect that the local groups may require small fees or donations to cover costs of convening the group (room rental and refreshments typically). Local organizers will use their best efforts to limit that and will seek donated space and refreshment sponsors wherever possible.

What are some of the things we’ll do together?

We’ve seen the power of the self-organizing, DIY movement to bring together ad-hoc groups and organize Unconferences quickly, with low budgets and high quality interactions. We’ve organized several of these ourselves and helped numerous others do their own from around the world. In this process, we’ve discovered that there are tremendous benefits to the fully participant-driven organizational model, but there is still some value in a more structured, planned and professionally managed event. Social Media Club will leverage the best lessons from both of these worlds and apply the right sort of facilitation for the particular purpose of the gathering. We will take the best of the loosely structured, just in time agenda’s of the Unconference and combine it with an organization that can accept money, pay for venues, take out insurance, and have some fairly-paid staff to ensure that things run right, without becoming a formal organization and event management firm. This means if you’re running a meeting and you need our help, if you’re running an Unconference and you need a little structure - we’re here to help you with whatever resources we can reasonably bring to bear.

What benefit will having a central administrative structure provide to the local clubs?

• Provide communication and collaboration tools for organizing and facilitating the groups online and offline.
• Connect the local groups to one another for discussing the bigger questions and organizing for collective action
• Facilitating informal and formal learning for local group leaders
• Help members around the work capture the value from the network effect of our collective ‘buying power’
• Harnessing the collective efforts of local groups to create a greater social impact
• Provide a place to collect money for events, pay for event spaces or catering, and facilitate insurance for events, should local chapters need it - something that is the most difficult aspect of ad-hoc organizing.

I want to organize a local group in my area to discuss Social Media. What do I need to do?

Well, if you want, you don’t need us to do a thing for you in order to get a group going - this is one of the most remarkable things we have learned ourselves. This was the biggest lessen we learned in our early days as a result of the Web 2point1 Unconference. You can just do it on your own by making an announcement on a calendar, or setting up a Meetup, or writing a blog post or just sending some emails around to friends. In fact you may not even need more of a venue than your own living room or local coffee shop. That is the real innovation of the past year - you don’t need to be overly formal or spend a lot of money to organize using the Web and email tools that are are available today.

The one thing we have found from organizing events and regular conversations over the past year is that it may be simple enough to start, but it can be really hard to sustain the momentum to keep the organization alive. In discussing these matters with association experts and other ad-hoc group organizers of Meetups, we have found that there are many more pitfalls preventing you from being successful on your own than we could ever have imagined. Occasionally, the original organizers of a group may lose interest, become too busy or perhaps even end up in an ego driven dispute that tears the group apart.

As an organization, we face some of these same challenges, in addition to the other bigger one which even open source projects face when they get to a certain point in their growth - the need for more infrastructure than can be afforded by personal passion and contribution alone. However, with a intimate understanding of leveraging the Internet and our collective Social Media network, we can create a central hub that can serve all of the spokes of the network - and even the smaller ad-hoc groups that emerge along the way.

If like us, you want to be a part of a bigger network of people who share the same values embodied by the promise of Social Media and the Cluetrain Manifesto, then you might consider joining Social Media Club and participating in our growth. If you want to start a local chapter, all you need to do is join as a member and add your interest to the Social Media Club Wiki. The Wiki is a tool we will be using in the short term until we are ready with our new Web site’s Beta launch, hopefully in the Fall of 2008.

Everyone, including Co-Founders Kristie Wells and Chris Heuer, Howard Greenstein, Brian Solis, Mitch Ratcliffe and the other initial co-conspirators are paying membership dues to join to help fund the organizations formation and growth. We would encourage you to join us in leading by example.

Is there anything required of me as a local organizer and group leader?

Other than being a member of the group, the requirements are performance based and subject to the wishes of your other local members. We are all in it together and will all have a voice in the general leadership structure - just as we all will have a voice in identifying those who really get it from those who really don’t. Some other more specific considerations that you would contribute in an ideal world:

• Having at least several hours each month to devote to the group
• Having some form of regularly updated Social Media to communicate
• Have access to some sort of meeting venue you can offer up to get things started
• Being able to edit a wiki
• Participating in the discussions with other local group leaders on FriendFeed (using this as a quasi mailing list) and occasionally over Skype or Phone

Again these are not really requirements, but guidelines we believe will be necessary for our mutual success. We expect to refine this list (and perhaps completely replace it) during the course of our discussions with other co-founding members.