Social Media RoundUp

I put a request out on Twitter earlier today asking for recommendations of the ‘must read’ articles that have been penned over the last week that focused on the use of Social Media tools.

You fine folks answered with the following:

• 5 ways to use Social Media to reach people who don’t use Social Media: by Marshall Kirkpatrick at Read/Write Web 
• 50 ways to take your blog to the next level: by Chris Brogan
• Are you conversationally tone deaf: by Connie Reece
• Disruption of cascading conversation: by Jay Deragon
• Growing use of Social Media Technologies in Businesses: by peopleperhour.com
• How Barack Obama Is Using Web 2.0 to Run for President, by Daniel Nations at About.com
• How to Use Yahoo Answers for your Social Media Campaign, by Vine at primaryeffect.com
  
• IBM’s Beehive social networking community: by Toby at Communitelligence
• Limiting, and watching, what children watch: by Lisa Guernsey at New York Times
• Twits on Twitter: by Rob Sellen
• Using Twitter for business: by John Jantsch
  
• You can do your job without Twitter: by Chris Brogan
  

Interesting tool found: flibfarb

Other: Collection of live streams by loremcast

Thank you to everyone who submitted an article to share with the community. We greatly appreciate your input and will start collecting these regularly to help spread the word about interesting conversations happening around the world.

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How Des, Michael and Aaron Spent Labor Day Weekend: Brainstorming SMC Membership

A few weeks ago prior to Labor Day Weekend; Des Walsh , Aaron Strout and I (Michael Brito) were asked to brainstorm ideas about SMC membership and answer the following questions:

1. How do we increase new membership of Social Media Club
2. How do we increase engagement and generate excitement for existing members?
3. How do we localize SMC chapters on areas with few members and a lot of miles in between?

So, went off to our little corners of the globe, literally, and this is what we came up with; while of course, enjoying our three-day weekend.

Increasing Membership:

Drive awareness of the organization:

• Continue to drive awareness of SMC at traditional marketing/consulting events through sponsorships (my guess is that Barter will work)
• Advertising on Facebook as well as on prominent board member blogs (barter where possible)
• Consider submitting speakers at traditional marketing/consulting/technology events) under the “Social Media Club” name
• Make sure that all board members and active SMC members include a badge on their blogs touting the fact that they belong to the SMC (e.g. “Ask me about the SMC – I’m a member”)

Clearly articulate value proposition

• Consider adding free consultation sessions as part of membership (maybe monthly “member only” Skype or Conference calls with select board members) – if we each took a turn at this, we could get away with doing this 1-2/year/board member)
• Create a clear list of discounts to things like:
  • Analyst memberships (Forrester/Gartner)
  • Select conferences
  • Subscriptions
• If we thought about bolting SMC events onto things like SXSW, Web 2.0, Defrag, etc. (we may already do this), we could proactively invite potential members/companies

Co-marketing

• Continue partnering with a number of organizations like BlogHer; and consider partnering with more organizations (especially traditional ones)
• Agree to co-market events of more traditional groups to our base

Promoting Membership Engagement & Excitement

Engagement

• Create a rotating welcoming committee
• The goal would be to welcome (through email/phone/twitter) new members to SMC by reaching out to them and connecting
  • Twitter and blog “shot outs” for new members
  • Serves two purposes: engages existing members/welcomes new members
  • Connects local chapters w/new members
• Facilitate monthly (or bi-weekly) conference calls / webinars (similar to Twebinars); facilitated by random SMC members
• Provide coordinated speaking opportunities for all interested SMC members
• Offer free 1:1 (30 minutes) blog training sessions for new members who are thinking about launching a blog
• Provide sub domain blog hosting or existing members that do not have a blog (i.e. http://newblog.socialmediaclub.org

Recognition

• Create a recognition program that recognizes existing members who go “above and beyond” for the SMC community
  • Badge
  • Monetary: gift certificates for Amazon, Starbucks, iTunes

Communication

• Create a monthly newsletter with rotating levels of responsibility
• SMC members will rotate managing editorial process, writing articles, etc.

Localizing Membership (making it more convenient to attend local events)

The model of SMC presented on the wiki is of a city-based group that has face-to-face meetings (language of the wiki is all about clubs based on cities).

Looking at the wiki and observing the current “State of the Club”, there seems to be little or no incentive for someone to join who does not live in a city, preferably one of the cities where there is:

• something already happening regularly, or
• a critical mass of people likely to be interested in forming a local SMC

In fact, the way SMC is presented on the wiki makes it look as if people not in a city with an active chapter and unable or unwilling to set up a city chapter need not apply.

If there is an openness to other models, here are some suggestions.

In working on member benefits (and responsibilities) consider benefits people could have who are not in a city with an active SMC:

• for people who travel, this could be a regularly updated online guide as to what’s on and where
• person nominated in each chapter to promote the chapter’s events to the broader membership and be “welcomer” for out of town visitors
• for all, especially people more remote from the cities where there are active chapters, provide online resources, forums etc of value
• various benefits listed in “How do we get existing members involved?”, especially self-identifying badges for blogs/websites

Re-write all the membership information to make it clear that there is an encouragement to join no matter where someone lives.

Have nation-wide and international online events to enable members to connect with one another beyond chapter boundaries.

If you have any other ideas that would help address the challenges we have or simply to share some other ideas; we encourage you to post a comment and/or connect with us directly. Thank you for continued support.

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Using Social Media to track Hurricane Gustav

I love hearing interesting ways people are using Social Media, and the Ning site put up today to help report news on Hurricane Gustav is a brilliant use of the tools available. The site will aggregate content from a variety of sources, including; Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, Utterz, Technorati, etc.- all you have to do is tag the item gustav.

Kudos to Andy Carvin for starting it and for everyone participating/contributing to help educate folks in the affected areas as well as keeping us connected so we can mobilize when needed.

We are all praying Gustav dies before hitting land again, but if it should continue on - here’s hoping we are better prepared to take action and respond quickly.

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Vote for your favorite SXSW panel!

The SXSW panel selection process opened this morning, and several of the Social Media Club Advisory Group members have pitched presentation ideas in the hopes of sharing their experiences with you. If any of these topics move you, feel free to cast your vote for one, two or all of them (listed in alphabetical order):

• Against All Odds-A Media Literate World: The new “Media Literacy” means understanding the facts, context and perspective of content. When you share, modify, or comment, this shows who you are online and in society. The public record of your search and attention stream will define how you’re perceived. How do we increase media literacy?  Presenters: Chris Heuer, Howard Greenstein, Alex De Carvalho, Brian Solis (with possibly Howard Reingold too)
• Beyond Social Media: Introducing Social Communications: Who really “owns” social media? Is it PR, Marketing, Branding? This panel will demonstrate that it’s all of the above and more. Thus the new category “Social Communications,” which we can think of as a hybrid of PR, marketing, branding, WOM, customer service, product development and more.  Presenters: Jackie Peters, Kristie Wells, Connie Reece, Chuck Hester, Todd Van Hoosear
• Breaking Through the Digital Ceiling: Are you a woman (or a man) who loves to tech out but is tired of sexism, ageism, and the lack of diversity? Women in tech and social media experts identify strategies for breaking through the digital ceiling. The panel will discuss topics such as getting heard by upper management, how to effectively advocate for your work and expertise, what men can do to help promote women in technology as well as how to break through the barriers of being too young or too old in the tech sector.  Presenters: Allyson Kapin, Charlene Li, Connie Reece, Susan Mernit, Lynne Johnson
• Climbing the Corporate Ladder in a Mini Skirt (or pant suit?): Powerful tech women share their secrets regarding kicking ass, moving up the ladder, dealing with jerks, and helping other girls reach the top. Presenters: Mel Kirk, Sally Strebel, Kristie Wells, Bronwyn Jones, Aubrey Sabalas
• Corporate Reputation Management in the 2.0 World: For too long reputation management has involved cheap Google tricks and seat-of-the-pants tactics. Lee Odden and Rob Key, two prominent experts in search and corporate reputation management, will outline a strategic approach to reputation, based on a sophisticated understanding of conversation mining data and new media engagement. Presenters: Rob Key, Lee Odden
• Discussion on the Pervasiveness of Streams: The emergence of streams in our digital lives is, in many ways, aligning our thinking in a way that we are only subtly appreciating. Streams represent the end of top-down broadcast and the beginning of a confluence of information and communication exchange patterns that function multi dimensionally. Presenters: Greg Narain, Jackie Peters, Brian Solis
• Everything you know about Social Media is Wrong!: Everyone knows that social media has created a revolution in marketing. But aren’t most marketers missing the point about what social media can or cannot do for them? This panel will expose the horrible lies and deceptions surrounding social media marketing. You will know what social media is and isn’t. Presenters: Hugh MacLeod, Tara Hunt, Deb Schultz, Jeremiah Owyang, Chris Heuer and Brian Oberkirch (possibly).
• Fire Your PR Firm and Brand it Yourself: Social Media Club interim board members will give advice and anecdotes about how PR and branding have changed because of social media and how, as an entrepreneur, you sre empowered. You can now market your own product or company better than any PR firm. And you should. This is for technical people, to teach them the DIY of social media as a branding tool. You would be surprised how many engineers don’t know this.  Presenters: Francine Hardaway and a cast to be announced shortly
• 5 Common Misperceptions of Technological Creativity: Drinking the creation koolaid can sometimes be deceiving. It’s like trying to acclimate your taste buds to dog crap.  5 successful panelists share with you the ways to tell the difference between koolaid (the purple stuff) and Sunny D. to get results rather than reaching into a risky over populated grab bag. Presenters: Sally Strebel, Mel Kirk, iJustine, Kristie Wells, Laura Fitton
• Let’s Get Social! Moving from me to we: The Web 2.0 evolution has enabled companies to connect with their constituents in transparent and impactful ways, achieving a greater competitive edge. In order to take full advantage of this movement, companies must embrace open dialogue through community and fully understand the implications of becoming a more “social” organization. Presenters: Aaron Strout and a cast to be announced shortly
• Love Your Customers, They Love You Back: Relationships are the new currency in social media. They need cultivation and value from both sides in order to grow into something of value and longevity. Explore engagement as the only way to earn customer respect, business, loyalty, and referrals as we do what matters to earn their friendship. Presenters: Becky Carroll, Brian Solis, 2 Special Guests
• SEO for startups: Does your startup have a plan for SEO? Millions of searches are performed daily on the internet and there is an enormous amount of ROI that comes from ranking for targeted keywords and phrases. This panel will give you an understanding, dispel any myths, and provide tips on how to approach SEO for a Startup, just like yours! Presenters: Tony Adam, Todd Friesen, Lee Odden 
• Walking the tech runway in stilettos: Being a girl in a boys world. And succeeding. Similar to the panel above. But different. It’s a fun and lighthearted discussion that prepares females for greater success by helping them get comfortable in their own shoes. 5 panelists share the lessons learned on their journey toward success. Presenters: Mel Kirk, Sally Strebel, Kristie Wells, Bronwyn Jones, Aubrey Sabalas or Tara Hunt (I think)
• What does a community manager do: We will discuss and answer just what an online community manager is and what they do. How do you measure what a CM does? How do I know if I need one? How does a company evangelist differ from this? What skill set does my CM need? Where do I find a CM? What personality traits does a CM need? These and many other questions will be answered about this up and coming position. Presenters: David Peck, Jake McKee, Bill Johnston, Connie Benson.

Cast your vote and we hope to see you in Austin at SXSW!

UPDATED: Added SEO for Startups, Corporate Reputation Management and Everything you know about Social Media is Wrong!, What does a community manager do

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Social Communications?

Fellow Board Member Jackie Peters makes the case for a new term, and I like it.

heavyBlog » Making the Case for Social Communications

I would like to posit the idea that rather than trying to fit a round peg into a square hole, we need to carve out a new hole. The term I am proposing we use for this is Social Communications. Social Communications as a category touches branding, PR, marketing, WOM, customer service, product development, mobile marketing, SEO and many other aspects of a brand’s communications strategy. It is the art of “socializing” these processes.

What do you think? Discuss.

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And the 42nd Interim SMC Board Member…

… 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

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Trending towards more social organizations?

Chris wrote an interesting piece today that stems from some of his work being done on ‘The Social Media Playbook’ (out in 2008 or 2009 or 2010…have no idea…don’t ask…I know nothing) called Towards a More Social Organization.  It is a topic close to my heart. It is focusing the point of Web 2.0/Social Media back on the people, not the processes or the technology.

In the article, Chris suggests the need for a Chief Social Officer - someone who would work closely with a CMO/CEO. Someone who believes:

…embracing social media is embracing change management; changing the way teams collaborate; improving our relationships with customers; affecting our interaction with partners; overseeing customer support; empowering sales people to be purchase support; altering our product innovation and creation processes; and ultimately, bringing us out of the industrial age, beyond the information age and into a new age of enlightenment. It requires us to break down, once and for all, the silo walls that separate groups, the moats that have created fiefdoms of power and the interpersonal bullshit that prevents us from seeing that we all want what’s best, even if we have different ideas of how to do it.

What do you think?  Is this a new role that needs to be filled?  Please leave your comments on Chris’ blog.

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Join our Friend Feed Room, kill a mailing list!

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…

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Join us Today for Social Media Club Hour - a Show on Blog Talk Radio

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!

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BarCamp’s 2nd Anniversary Block Party!

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…

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Reflections on SMC Atlanta Event

Last night’s Social Media Club meeting focused on the the changing face of media, and a phrase ending with “…the people formerly known as the audience.” The setup was a little different than usual, because we had a set topic and a slate of specific presenters (Steve Riley from WSB-TV and Marlon Manuel from the AJC) rather than the usual and flatter setup of all “participants” who might also be presenters as part of the meeting. The objective was to look at how those organizations view the current media space, and that’s why we had them set up as panelists. That did serve to change things up…

To read more of the story, please visit the Earthlink blog.

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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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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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Can’t We All Just Get Along?

Saw a Tweet from Jeremiah Owyang giving a nod to his boss John Furrier for standing up for his team, and then saw Robert Scoble’s post at the heart of it all, telling people he was going to hang out in the hallway at Microsoft’s Mix 07 Conference since he did not have a conference pass. Apparently, Alfred Thompson thinks that conferences like Mix 07 should only be attended by and reported on, by “people inside the trenches”, “whose business it is to not only understand but use this technology?” He sees little value to the media, and thinks Robert “is a writer for the popular press no real different from some reporter from Wired magazine.” (he also thinks Robert is a nice guy, so don’t go jumping on him for expressing his opinion)

You can think whatever you want about Robert, even insist that he has no real influence in the mainstream portions of society and that he is only important within the Blogosphere’s echo chamber, but that is missing the real point. You can’t marginalize anyone based on the role they are serving in society, especially when that someone has proven themselves to be a good person, worthy and deserving of the trust placed in them by others to shape their opinions of the world. Einstein was famously a patent clerk. Hundreds of important contributors to the advancement of society have held mundane, or even ‘dirty’ jobs.

This is not about Robert and Alfred though, this is about the need to respect other people and not be dismissive of the potential value they can contribute out of hand, for the title they hold or role they serve. For too long we have easily dismissed ‘the media’, ‘the marketing people’, ‘the geeks’ and, as Mary Hodder talked about on her panel at Podcast Hotel the other day, ‘the others’ because they are not like us.

Now, from reading the conversation (via the comments), it seems that Alfred is a pretty decent guy, honest and genuine - but when I read statements such as “Don’t you really want to hear from someone like you?”, it makes me cringe. This is, of course, ok because we like hanging out with people like us, they are our friends, our tribes and our families generally, but we should really find a better way to include more diverse perspectives within the context of conferences such as Mix, Web 2.0 and others. To be clear, I don’t feel the same way about conferences on the latest advances in neuroscience, or white-hat hacking or other very focused professional topics. This is not to say that programming is not a professional topic, it is, but the profession of programming includes many levels of skills and areas of expertise that are important for everyone’s success. (DBA, SYSADMIN, CODE, ARCHITECT, UI, QA and ACTIVE USER to name a few)

Over the past several years, one of the things I have been talking to people about is how much economic value (and hard cash) has been wasted as a result of the marketing people and the technical people not getting along. Trillions of dollars have probably been lost as a result of the fact that these two roles are filled by different types of people - people who are not like each other in many ways (not all the time, I know plenty of people who successfully translate between the two groups or who serve both roles). As I have constantly stated, in the knowledge economy the most important aspect of creating value is the ability of smart people to collaborate with one another. The value of cultural diversity is widely known and lauded, but many people often insist on only hearing and participating in monocultural discussions.

BTW - This is not to say that there can be some really silly things that come from people who don’t understand what we are talking about, which is what I believe Alfred is trying to protect against - along with preventing media from misreporting the story. Indeed, we should create contexts in which experts can gather and explore their expertise, going deeper and advancing their industry/market - this is in fact, a part of our vision with Social Media Club as well. The real issue though is that we should work to create contexts for all of these types of conversations to take place and create good signals about them (via tags and syndicated distribution) so that the right sort of people, with similar expectations participate.
From my perspective, Alfred’s point about Blogs (and direct reporting from ‘experts in the trenches’) replacing the need for mainstream media, actually supports the inclusion of people like Robert and other’s who are ‘not like him’ (Alfred). By this I mean to say, that Blogging is transforming the very nature in which we interact with news and knowledge and each other. It is no longer the one way communications of a static newspaper article, but it is a conversation, with ebb and flow, moving the participants to a deeper understanding through the back and forth exchange and thereby correcting mistakes in early reporting and resolving misinterpretations for the benefit of all.
What is it going to take to open up our discussions and our perspectives, to include more divergent observations, insights and points of view?

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Social Media Now: MSM Co-opts CitJ

Coverage of yesterday’s horrific massacre at Virginia Tech was hardly a showpiece for semi-pro and citizen journalist.

Contrary to the reports of boosters, like Amy Gahran at Poynter Online who called it “Another Sad but Seminal Day for CitJ,” those who would denigrate the whole idea of citizen journalism got plenty of ammo from bloggers who raced to mistakenly identify the shooter.

 

Another blog, by a self-identified assistant physics professor in Massachusetts got closer with outlines of the story vaguely correct, but again with the wrong person named.

 

The semi-pros did a better job particularly given how prepared Blacksburg is. (Tom Watson and I first covered Blacksburg’s groundbreaking municipal Internet initiative, the Blacksburg Electronic Village, for The New York Times in 1996.) The Virginia Tech student newspaper, Collegiate Times,  posted minute by minute updates throughout the day, even though the paper’s own servers were down. But for a news operation on the scene, staffed by peers of the victims AND the shooter, the CT coverage was remarkably thin–few photos, little comment from students, and NO investigation. Hard to believe that at the very least the paper’s editors didn’t start tugging at the thread of the earlier murders, looking for witnesses and others, given that they were sitting on top of the biggest news story ever to hit Blacksburg.

 

Planet Blacksburg–a pioneering, student run Web-based newspaper–was slower and more considered in its updates, but failed to advance the story beyond what was being reported by the much maligned “MSM” and didn’t deliver any deeper, inside sense of the events or mood on campus.

 

The most successful social coverage of the event was Wikipedia’s which was updated and edited in real time much in the way traditional news coverage is called in by stringers, edited and published. But this was entirely collaborative. If this is the future of citizen journalism, then the future is bright indeed!

 

Blog attempts to record and respond to events–first and second person  accounts were interesting but not more informative than what was available on CNN or MSNBC, in part because those broadcast outlets were busy soliciting Internet contributions from amateurs with almost distasteful aggressiveness. CNN was calling for submissions the way traffic reporters ask for drivers to call in from cell phones. But they had plenty of accidental material on air, including cellphone video whose audio track captured the massacre.

 

It seems to me that citizen journalism, at least of breaking news events, works by sheer dumb luck–someone is in the right place at the right time with a camera like Virginia Tech engineering grad student Jamal Albarghouti whose cell phone video which capture the sound of gunshots became the cornerstone of CNN’s coverage. MSM is well on the way to fully co-opting citizen coverage of breaking events.

 

Facebook was flooded by members creating greif groups–the cyber equivalent of leaving flowers at the scene of a tragedy–and the social network served to connect friends across campuses where once telephone calls did the trick.

 

I don’t want to lose perspective. The important thing to remember is that 33 people lost their lives to the senseless mayhem of a psychotic killer. But despite all the blather, citizen journalism didn’t get much of a boost yesterday.

 

UPDATE: Citizen journalism, and blogging in particular, is proving to be better at investigative journalism than it is at breaking news. Students in the shooter’s playwriting class offered memories of creepy, violent plays to the Collegiate Times, and a former classmate Ian Macfarlane, now an AOL employee, acutally posted two of the plays, as well as this chilling memory:

When we read Cho’s plays, it was like something out of a nightmare. The plays had really twisted, macabre violence that used weapons I wouldn’t have even thought of. Before Cho got to class that day, we students were talking to each other with serious worry about whether he could be a school shooter. I was even thinking of scenarios of what I would do in case he did come in with a gun, I was that freaked out about him. When the students gave reviews of his play in class, we were very careful with our words in case he decided to snap. Even the professor didn’t pressure him to give closing comments.

 

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