A New Kind of Tweetup: Blood Drive

We love hearing about the various ways folks are using Social Media tools, and this special ‘Tweetup’ happening tomorrow (Thursday, July 3rd) is one we just had to share.

The Austin (Texas) Tweetup Blood Drive.

This event is the brainchild of Michelle Greer and David Neff, who are using Twitter, various blogs and other media outlets to bring attention to the blood shortages at their local blood bank and getting the local community to come together for social good.

Here’s how you can help:

1. Register or log into the Blood Center of Central Texas’s website.
2. Choose the location at 4300 North Lamar.
3. Be sure to pick a time slot from 10 am-4 pm on Thursday, July 3rd.
4. Show up at the appropriate time. Give a shoutout to David J. Neff.
5. Give blood. Eat a piece of the sammichometer. Give thanks that you are healthy and can offer health to someone else who needs it.

Sponsored by groups such as Austin Social Media Club, the 501Tech Club, and Austin Jelly - it is an event we encourage locals in Austin to get behind and other cities to replicate. Blog, Tweet, take photos, shoot video. Get the word out to help those in need.

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Social Media Club No Longer Welcomed at MyRagan

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

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

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

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

Your moderator will be Ragan editor Bill Sweetland.

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

Mark Ragan
CEO
MyRagan.com

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

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Quick Update from San Francisco

Been a tough and busy few days, but today is going to rock (though losing the earlier version of this post was not the highlight I hoped for). Tonight in San Francisco Karen O’Brien and I are leading a discussion on connecting with our communities - how to find them, how to determine where to get involved and how much social engineering is required to make the networks of people work. Many thanks to Crimson Consulting for sponsoring this month and next month’s refreshments. There are still a few open spots if you are interested, expecting a few to show up out of the 80+ registered.

In a few moments, I am going to start a little Ustream experiment, with a call in consulting show called Chris’ Insytes - if you have some questions about social media strategy, or you have a specific challenge your are now facing, join me in the chat room (or direct Twitter me, username is chrisheuer) and let’s see if we can come up with something innovative and insightful together.  As I always say, “there is no box”…

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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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Courage, Conflict and Compromise

Another set of 3 C’s - I am beginning to think that C is the most powerful letter in the alphabet… This should be a long post, but there is not enough time to do so, and I promised Nate Ritter from Eventful that I would try to be short with my posts (also means that they are a bit messier, so please forgive me).

Courage

I think this is the most important element that Champions need to make a difference. The courage to face the potential risks for doing the right thing is an incredibly important ingredient towards success. The ‘ask forgiveness instead of permission’ model has been cited more than once privately by a few very senior executives when talking about why what they did worked. Even this morning, during the breakfast I blogged about on Future of Communities, it was the courage to support the lone person who was willing to speak his displeasure that helped to turn the tide of the conversation. Many people felt the same way, but only one person was willing to support the person who risked himself to stand up for what he felt was right.

Conflict

We are really not ever taught how to fight/debate well. I know of some organizations who have specific training in ‘having difficult conversations’, but even they don’t do a good job of addressing the tension that arises from different opinions during a discussion or meeting. We must get better at managing conflict in a respectful way. This starts with the formation of the team and continuously improves through ongoing interactions between the people involved. The more trust that is built amongst the people involved, the better chance the organization has of using conflict as an opportunity to succeed rather than getting derailed.

Compromise

This occurred to me yesterday, and was validated in conversations I had this morning. Why aren’t potentially great products better? The ability of champions to courageously stand up for what they think is right, to navigate through the conflict, to collaborate well with the other stakeholders and ultimately to NOT make bad compromises. The political systems of organizations which employees need to navigate often force them to make compromises in the short term in the hope that it will get corrected in the long term. These are often bad compromises which will neglect the real needs of the consumers for want of not dealing with a very serious challenge or obstacle that can not be overcome easily. Don’t make bad compromises!

What do you think about these three issues? How are you dealing with it in your day to day work? Am I on to something here or just overly obsessive with the letter C lately?

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What is Community 2.0 Podcast #2

Over the past 24 hours I have continued to ask people this important question around What is Community 2.0, and some clear trends are appearing which are touched upon here. This podcast includes answers from Mike Flood, VP of Community Relations for the Seattle Seahawks, Jake McKee from Big in Japan and David Churbuck from Lenovo. Listen in for some tasty bites of insight…

Subscribe to the Social MediaCast or go to iTunes and search for Social Media Cast in the Podcast Directory.

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Social Media Clubhouse Podcast #6

On this fine Tuesday morning from Las Vegas, Giovanni Rodriguez and I drove to the Red Rock Casino for Community 2.0 and had a very focused conversation on the use of the word Community. More importantly, we talked about the real meaning of community and the interest in serving that community as opposed to selling to it as the primary intention of the interaction. Please listen and comment on this, I would really love to hear your thoughts on this important topic.

For further reading, check out Giovanni’s Post on Community with a Capital “C”: Who will Follow Craig Newmark

Subscribe to the Social MedaCast or go to iTunes and search for Social Media Cast in the Podcast Directory.

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Social Media Clubhouse Podcast #5

On Monday morning we drove to the Community 2.0 conference and dug deeply into a conversation about What is Community? How it can be done by corporations and whether or not Community is even the right word. I was joined by Kristie Wells and Giovanni Rodriguez for a very insightful chat, which was unfortunately interrupted by some technical challenges which lost a bit of the conversation. Still a good 12 minutes….

Subscribe to the Social MediaCast or go to iTunes and search for Social Media Cast in the Podcast Directory.

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What is Community 2.0 Podcast #1

During the opening night of the Community 2.0 Conference I had a chance to ask a few people the question what is community 2.0? There were a few good answers. On this podcast, we hear from Lois Kelly from Foghound, Sylvia Marino from Edmunds, and Social Media Strategist extraordinaire Deb Schultz. Listen in for some great insights…

Subscribe to the Social MediaCast or go to iTunes and search for Social Media Cast in the Podcast Directory.

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Social Media Clubhouse Podcast #4

On Sunday night, our friend Giovanni Rodriguez of HubBubPR, my fiancee Kristie Wells and I headed over to the Community 2.0 reception. In the car on the way over, we discovered that Kristie is a great back seat driver (so am I) and the Red Rock is about 15-20 mins from the house. We also talked more deeply about what we are doing with Social Media Club (Giovanni as interviewer), the challenges that corporate champions face when trying to engage with community models and whether or not this whole thing can be as simple as ‘conversation’. At the end of a long day, there is some good stuff here, but I am really looking forward to the morning and some good community engagement with old friends and new peers…

Subscribe to the Social MediaCast or go to iTunes and search for Social Media Cast in the Podcast Directory.

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Social Media Clubhouse Take 2 - Community 2.0 That Is

Well, this past week showed us that despite having a great place to hang out (actually an incredible clubhouse with pool table, 180″ projection home theatre and a killer backyard), that it is hard to compete with the Las Vegas strip and the lure of neon, beautiful people and the possibility of winning the big jackpot. But yes, we are having a BBQ tomorrow afternoon at the Social Media Clubhouse from 1-5pm for those people coming in for Community 2.0 - if it is 5 of us, or 50 of us does not matter, because I am going to have a great time regardless, will be beercasting and creating some videos and playing some pool (or chilling by the pool).

So if you are coming into town and want to hang out in the afternoon with some members of the Community 2.0 Community who are not at the terrific Bootcamp being lead by our good friend Deborah Schultz along with Tara Hunt and Kathleen Gilroy, stop on by!

Since we did not have time to find a sponsor, everyone can either bring some food, or you can chip in a few dollars. If you don’t have a place to stay, and are either a member or a friend, we also have a few rooms available this week that are much less expensive than most hotels and resorts in the area at only $125 per night.

We are still talking with the good folks at CMMC about whether or not we are going to hold the “Leaving Las Vegas” party on Tuesday night, so stay tuned!  UPDATE: looks like this won’t be happening - too much other stuff to do and need to be awake for WED morning session.

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