Our goal is to submit a thorough response to the FTC before December 1, 2009. If someone wants to step up from the club and take point on this, we would all benefit from someone shepherding this forward.

In addition to leaving comments below, I would ask that you tag any posts, tweets, articles or other media with #smc2ftc.

The FTC announcement.

The revised “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising“

SMC Post Circa 2006, “Talking About Disclosure, an SMC Round Table“

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.

For the first time, Ragan Communications is bringing its world-class training operation to Salt Lake City to presents two seminars:

Advanced Writing & Editing
Social Media Boot Camp for Corporate Communicators

Both seminars are presented by the Social Media Club of Salt Lake City.

Participants who register using the SMC of SLC promotional code (SMCSL9) automatically receive $150 off the cost of registration AND support the Social Media Club of Salt Lake City because Ragan provides a co-branding fee for each registrant that uses our promotional code.

Details about both seminars are on SMCSLC.org.

We welcome your participation!

The goal is to raise $10,000 for breast cancer research.

First off, the site is pure genius, and a great example of utilizing social media for fundraising. The integration with Twitter, Facebook, etc. is well done and I love how easy it is to pledge.

All you have to do is include #tweetsforboobs in a tweet through the month of October and with every tweet you are making a $1 pledge for donation.

Follow @tweetsforboobs and at the end of the month, we’ll give you your pledge total so you can make a donation to Susan G. Komen Foundation for your total pledge amount.

They have raised just over $1,000 over the last two weeks. We’d like to lend our support for this cause, and would love to see everyone in the Social Media Club community tweet just once using the #tweetsforboobs hashtag. Commit to $1. Let’s rally together and help make a difference. Do it for the boobs people.

What struck me most was the diversity of both the panel and the audience. The range of questions and answers demonstrated the breadth of social media — it touches many fields and serves many uses.

VCU journalism professor Marcus Messner served as the mediator for a panel that included 21-year-old journalistic wunderkind Trevor Dickerson, ReadWriteWeb blogger Jolie O’Dell, Ironworks Consulting recruiter Candace Nicolls, and University of Richmond graduate
Generra Peck. The four fielded questions from both students and teachers, young and older, and helped many form a better understanding of what social media is and what it’s being used for.

Many questions centered around how social media affects potential employment. The consensus among the experts was to be genunine, but to use common sense. Although it seems straight-forward, there remains some ambiguity when it comes to guidelines; much of how you choose to express yourself depends on what industry you’re entering, the company culture of the potential employer, and the personal taste of each individual.

Although there are plenty of students that are concerned with the keg party photos that are consistently brought up as evidence against Facebooking, it seems that many employers and teachers are understanding of a few “events.” What undermines an applicant’s chances for being hired is evidence of irresponsibility, false representation, or other character weaknesses.

All the panelists shared great insight:

• Trevor Dickerson advised the audience to learn the dos and don’ts of communicating, and to reach out to several online communities
• Candace Nicolls spoke on the need for applicants to distinguish writing skills for both Web and print mediums
• Generra Peck expressed the need for students to learn what tools exist, and how to use each
• Jolie O’Dell shared, and later wrote about the need to be an early adopter, to focus your learning efforts, and to expand your digital toolbelt by keeping up with the constant evolution of technologies

I was happy to speak to a few teachers that are enthusiastically embracing technology in their classrooms, and their presence and interest at the event was a welcome complement to the many students in attendence. Teachers, especially those in the marketing, public relations, journalism, and communications disciplines are already aware of the impact technology is having. Events such as VCU’s Tweet That discussion will hopefully create a bridge for those that are curious, but haven’t had the opportunity to seek answers from people that are utilizing these practices every day.

And that’s exactly what we’re trying to create with SMCEDU — an opportunity to learn.

–

Ok, first of all, tell me about your background (I’ve been scouring your LinkedIn page-I’m very interested in the evolution of audiocourses.com and Audana, as well as your educational work!), and how you got involved with SAE.

My career has been amazing to date I have an entrepreneurial heart and I’m always looking for the next development, looking forward is one of my strengths, I wouldn’t say I was a visionary but I am very much an early adopter.

In the early 90s, having served in the Royal Navy as a radio/communications aircraft technician (which incidentally gave me the physics background), I began working as a studio engineer and live PA engineer, festivals and what not, and around that time a musician teacher friend of mine asked me if I wanted to teach some sound engineering to a local college. At first I raised an eyebrow, pretty odd concept to me at the time, but agreed anyway, and to cut a very long story short I was soon loving the space, really relishing teaching and in fact over time went on to develop the sound engineering department from a mere part time course offering to a full suite of music technology courses at various levels up to Jazz Degrees, and a total student number of about 500, there was no going back! I then got academically serious, and learnt how to teach, and in fact took a Masters in Open and Distance Education through the Institute of Educational Technology in association with the Open University, this was cutting edge stuff, we were doing social media media back in 99. This Masters was the spring board for me to launch Audiocourses.com the first ever dedicated portal for online sound engineering qualifications, it grew quickly and we modestly qualified people from all over the world. I met so many great people through that period, most of which I have never met physically. I was also lecturing and developing university courses throughout this time, and really did earn my edu colours, through all sorts of committees and projects. In 2007 I was approached by Rudi Grieme, Managing Director of SAE and entered into negotiations, and as they say the rest is history.

I started Audana.com as a Digital Agency in order to service clients such as SAE Institute. We are specialists in elearning, and of course most things digital such as Search Optimisation, Social Media, Newsletters, and also events. Basically a place which offers the experience I have gained through working as a digital specialist since the mid 90s.

What were your main goals in designing the SAEOnLine program?

Essentially SAEOnLine has many programmes with two primary goals in the first instance.

The first being to target the hobby market where we can offer a dynamic flexible learning system for people that are not in a position to be able to attend a college, for a variety of reasons ranging from busy work schedules or geographical constraints. With this market we are gradually building up a very large prospectus of very tightly focused courses, where students are able to “mix and match” the exact techniques they wish to focus on in the fields of audio, games, film, animation, creative media and business. The courses range in level from beginner through to advanced and expert, the key being small tightly packed bite-sized courses.

The second goal is to offer post-graduate solutions in our core products, we already offer a Master of Arts in Creative Media Practice (MACMP) which is a research based Masters which affords students to obtain this high-level qualification whilst staying in their job, we activity encourage students to tailor their programme to their professional practice. Obtaining a Masters is without a doubt a valuable investment as across the board it is a fact that salaries are increased significantly through being qualified with one. I love the concept of our MACMP as for the most part students study independently, though they can also be attached to an SAE Study Centre, like SAE Oxford which is the recent flagship campus boasting 40,000 square foot of space, situated in academia heaven, Oxford is of course renown for its academic excellence!

How do the considerations differ when creating an online curriculum differ vs. designing a more traditional program?

In terms of standards, quality control, academic rigour and student experience, absolutely nothing. All of these things are vital for an online student, there should be just as much forethought to the implementation of these vital aspects. In addition, the curriculum itself should be identical, I mean to say, if the course outcome is to up-skill a student in preparation for a job in film scoring there should be no discernible difference in the outcome be it available on or offline. The difference comes in the applied use of technology, how the student experiences their learning, and how they communicate with their Learning Advisors. Any reputable instructional establishment, be it off or online will create a curriculum which is based on learning outcomes. This means that a student by the end of his/her course will have achieved a certain number of outcomes, how those outcomes are achieved is not of too much significance, and in fact this affords a high-degree of student autonomy and flexibility, student X and Y may navigate the learning material differently but still arrive at the same outcome.

SAE has years of academic partnerships and associated credibility so we put in place a dedicated SAEOnLine Academic Consultative Committee, drawn from high-level academic professionals from various world regions. This ensures we operate with the best possible practices along with attention to academic standards, it’s a personal passion of mine too, delivering high-value educational experiences, I want the students to remember the experience as being life-changing.

Audio engineering has long been evolving over the years from an apprentice-based craft to one requiring formal studies. How does distance learning complement the “hands-on” approach, and what types of courses make the most sense online?

True, which is typical of many young subject disciplines, for example audio engineering is a very young field when we compare it to say languages, the art or mathematics, so it is constantly evolving as an educational subject within faculties around the world. In addition, as audio engineering is predominantly technology based the skill-set simply does not stand still due to the ever advancing nature of technology. Ten years ago colleges were still teaching students how to splice analogue tape, now we see that skill is a pretty rare commodity, who would have known we would now be working with digital equipment looking to emulate analogue colouration and making music on our phones collaboratively?

The old method of “school of hard knocks” is dead, as many engineers come to us late or mid career looking to fill the holes they have in their theoretical knowledge. Let’s be blunt about this, “audio engineering” is, well, an engineering subject, which is maths, physics, acoustics. When we broaden the definition into areas such as musical performance capture there are elements that come into play which involve such disciplines as psychology. If we broaden further and look at the business aspects nobody would seriously try to run a business these days without having a studious approach to it. Therefore, the notion that engineers simply grow up making tea and advance from there is simply not true, that reputation damages and in facts limits career possibilities. It’s all very well being able to balance the faders and tweak the compressor but you also need to know how a DAC works, what over-samping is, and understand the Sabine formula for reverb time, if you are running a team you need to know how to manage, control budgets, organise projects. It is through understanding the fundamental theories that more creativity is exposed, deeper understanding of possibilities, not just sonic ones but also career opportunities too. I’ve known many a wannabe record producer get into maths and acoustics to go on to running flourishing acoustics businesses.

But it’s not just the engineering subjects that can be taught online, as we all know a considerable amount of producers use their own DAW these days rammed full of plug-ins, in fact it is the normal. These types of concepts and work-flows are very much suited to online learning, it’s all about the workstation and software. I wouldn’t want the reader to think that music is just software, as it clearly is not, but much of it is created with a mouse. I know producers who take their own DAW rigs with them from venue to venue, talk about the mobility of the recording industry, where as it was once a portable mic box now it is a full blown DAW rig in the back of the car, or sometimes a laptop!

What has not changed is the need for a great sounding room, and whilst we can’t offer that directly online, we can of course provide samples of good sounding rooms and impulse responses of them, and understanding the theory of it is half the battle. Of course SAE Institute can also offer 50 campuses in 21 countries around the world should a student want to come and experience the “bells and whistles” in the flesh so to speak. By the way SAE Oxford (http://oxford.sae.edu), which is SAEOnLine’s H.Q. and also where the Tonmeister Masters course is run, has some sublime sounding rooms. They have this Steinway grand in one of the rooms and I melt every time I play some tunes on that one I tell you, It’s a proper royal grand scale sonic experience!

What can students gain from online classes that they can’t get in regular classes? Obviously, access and convenience are key, especially when it comes to busy working adults or students outside recording centers. What are some other key benefits? For example, teachers have told me that students are on a more level playing field, as far as participation goes. On the other hand, which benefits inherent in traditional face-to-face learning environments are difficult to replicate in online courses?

This question is a good question to ask, and I’ll tell you a story to help reinforce the argument. Back in the 90s I used to teach a particular sound engineering course, one day a week part time, to adult students from various disparate backgrounds. These students had access to a Fostex G24 track analogue tape machine, an Allen & Heath desk, three live rooms of considerable size, huge rack of outboard equipment and enough microphones to fill a chest, they had all the resources they could have imagined. The course was all about preparing for an exam at the end of the year, so we would set up practical situations with complex monitor mixes, various odd instruments to record, badly tuned drums, singers that needed multiple takes, proper real-world difficulties to overcome. Whilst the practical sessions were always reasonably lively there was always the problem that students didn’t fully understand why something was happening, the theory was missing, they couldn’t explain what they we doing, they didn’t understand comb filtering for example. This particular course used to achieve around a 60% pass rate only at best! I took this course syllabus and ported it to be an online course, and created an environment that connected multiple students around the world into the same collaborative space. We balanced theoretical activities with practical activities and you know what, I ran that course for 4 years with a 100% pass rate!

So what is different with online then? I think a few things come in to play here:

1. Generally students who opt for online are usually more determined and decided on studying, it is not something they simply fall into. This has big implications for motivation.
2. Studying online by its nature means students are and must be proactive and actively seek out their study path. Offline students can be very guilty of simply expecting to sit in a lecture hall and be lectured to, which let’s be honest is a pretty uninspiring way to learn, and proven to be not so effective.
3. In terms of participation the online Learning Advisors are much like guides, guiding the student through their material, there is actually far more communication between student and learner than offline, not less. This dialogue is also often open with the group, so yes, there is more of a level playing field, students are at the center of their learning NOT the teachers. Because you have the group work, tasks, activities, forums quizzes, lessons etc, all in one learning portal it is efficient and easy for a student to compare and explore all activity, this is virtually impossible with an offline model.
4. With offline courses a lot of the learning can take place in the corridors near the water cooler, in the bar, it is the social interaction with peers that really can help cement new knowledge and concepts into the student. This is where face-to-face courses pay big dividends (if social spaces are encouraged), but it is also what MUST be considered with online learning, these aspects must be replicated in some way to avoid feelings of student isolation. At SAEOnLine this is a fundamental part of the system, SAEOnLine wants students to chill-out and relax virtually together as well as engage with their studies.

How have advances in technology contributed to the evolution of distance learning?

Technology has changed distance learning significantly, if we think of different generations of distance learning technology, from print through to TV, telephone and then in more recent years networked computers we can see that the model has shifted from one of broadcasting, or rather one-way to two-way, or multi-directional, especially if we consider that all participants in a group can interact on various levels both synchronously and asynchronously. This is a monumental shift from the original models of distance learning where books were sent to people living in the most remote places.

What would you say are the biggest challenges teachers face in an online learning environment?

Traditional teachers, and when I say traditional I mean face-to-face teachers with little online course development or moderation experience, can find the transition to a full online mode pretty tough. You have to remember that online instruction is very much about creating compelling virtual experiences which afford high degrees of student engagement, you have to be tech savvy and a skilled communication moderator, you have to get the students engaging with each other. In the virtual world there is generally very little opportunity to use body language, gesticulation or even facial expression, sure you can have a talking head or a video of a lecture, but it’s not always a strong emotive connection. Body language can be a significant part of a traditional teachers tool-box therefore online instructors have to develop alternative skills which facilitate student participation.

What should potential students look for when choosing a distance learning program?

Top tip: Do not get fooled by the glossy marketing.

You know this is a very good question because just the term “distance learning” can be misused and applied to very poor products wrapped up in pretty packaging. One of the problems I have witnessed is that some second rate providers simply upload materials and make them available online, such as text and the odd video, essentially just a collection of resources, and this does NOT constitute distance learning, in the true sense of the term. In fact it is an utter myth that online or distance learning is simply a bunch of resources made available online, it is not. What is essential is carefully crafted pedagogical systems where a relationship forms between the student and her peers and Learning Advisor. If potential students find that the courses are without appropriate advisor moderation and guidance my advice is to stay well clear of them, as you will not be getting an valuable educational “experience”. It is in the interaction or “social learning” where the real learning takes place, come and try SAEOnLine and you’ll experience that.

Is there anything I haven’t mentioned that you’d like to add?

No, thanks for the interview, that was enjoyable.

It was great speaking with an educator and someone who’s got his finger on the pulse of the tech/information movement. He shared some surprising stories that involved the reluctance of many teachers to recognize the usefulness of social media tools in the classroom.

I thought about these points after our conversation:

1. There are teachers, many of whom are have been teaching for decades, that are dragging their heels when it comes to either implementing social media/digital collaboration into their teaching methods, or even addressing the topic in their curriculum.
2. Students should be more vocal about their interest in using these technologies in the classroom. This will, of course, mean that they have to see the value of these technologies beyond Facebook.
3. Social media will affect a number of degree programs. A bigger point of interest for educators may be how they use it to teach, rather than teaching the subject itself. Social media as a degree program may or may not work yet. What is certain is that it can be used by teachers to reach out to students in a more engaging way.

Social media has been in classrooms for a number of years: I remember using Blackboard as a student, and more importantly, that we as students didn’t really use it to our full advantage.

There are numerous reasons for this, but I recognized that a number of teachers probably didn’t understand how to use it themselves. Tools such as Classroom 2.0 and Social Media Classroom are available, but how many “old-school” teachers would be interested in learning a now-school way of doing things?

Brett used the term “education reformat” — instead of teaching by the book (i.e, teaching at the students), why not embrace new ways of communicating?

This isn’t an attack on teachers that haven’t adopted, but it is a recognition that things are changing.

I know it’s a perspective that’s held by other educators that are familiar with newer ways of sharing information. Just ask Bill Handy, and take a look at what his journalism students at Oklahoma State have done in just one session.

But WHAT is being taught? I saw an interesting article this week about a class being taught at Parsons New School for Design in NYC called “Internet Famous.” It focuses on the how to use social media tools to gain fame on the Internet. It sounds like a fun class, and teaches useful metrics on measuring your impact in the online world.

I think the class highlights the possibility of delivering whatever message you want, whether it’s for personal acclaim or corporate visibility. The tools for saying what you want and finding out who’s listening exist, and are being taught. But I think there exists another component to social media education that doesn’t receive enough attention, and that’s the social part of the equation.

A big part of this project, in my mind, is not only to collect and share a curriculum, but also to advocate a set of principles that can help people relate to each other in a text-driven, somewhat-faceless world. Chris Heuer’s Social Media Principles provide a great summary:

Be Human

Dont Just Be Human, Be Yourself

Be Aware

Don’t Just Be Aware, Be Smart

Be Honest

Don’t Just Be Honest, Have Integrity

Be Respectful

Don’t Just Be Respectful, Live By the Golden Rule

Be a Participant

Don’t Just Be a Participant, Contribute Value

Be Open

Don’t Just Be Open, Be an Agent of Change

Be Courageous

Don’t Just Be Courageous, Be Willing to Fail

What we’re witnessing and participating in isn’t just another way to launch a marketing campaign, but a change in how marketing works. We’ve all heard that it’s about listening to your customers/audience, but it’s also been said (and often lost) that it shouldn’t be an act — it should be how you do things in life, how you interact with everyone.

I had a great conversation with Susan Beebe, founder of SMC-Rochester and the newly-formed SMCEDU-Roc this week. One of the important points that we discussed was the establishment of standards in social media education. As of today,I don’t know of an institution that currently accredits social media classes.

Since so much of social media is collaboration, perhaps that should fall, for now, to the teachers of social media. Although there isn’t a large number of teachers that head a Social Media class, there are many that use it, and in some way teach it.

We want to hear from those teachers. I’d like to propose another conference call on the week of October 12. As I’d like to get as many teachers participating as possible, I’ll contact as many of you as I can to see what days/times will work best. The purpose of the call will be to re-connect, and also discuss topics which will include the establishment of standards.

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).

• Social TV Forum: September 28 – 29, 2009 in London (UK). SMC community members receive 20% discount by using code SMClovesU.
• Social Media for Government: September 29 – October 2, 2009 in Ottawa, Ontario. How To Engage Your Employees And Citizens By Using The Latest Web 2.0 Technologies To Drive Communication Results. Mention “SMC” to receive a special $200 member discount!
• Social Media for Healthcare: October 5-8, 2009 in Washington, DC. How To Use The Latest Web 2.0 Technologies To Engage Your Community, Improve Quality Of Service, And Build Your Reputation. Mention “Social Media Club” to receive a special $200 subscriber discount!
• The Social Media Business Forum: October 23, 2009 in Durham, NC. This conference will feature national and local speakers from marketing companies, technology companies, and social networks discussing ways in which business communications have changed due to social media.Use code SMC to get 15% off.
• TribeCon: October 28-29, 2009 in New Orleans, LA. Join us as we assemble national community leaders to discuss ways of leveraging online tools to grow communities and empower action. For brands, activists, entrepreneurs, artists and anyone who values the power of communities to create share resources and create change both online and offline. Use code SMC to receive 25% off tickets!
• Social Networking World Forum North America: November 9 – 10, 2009 in Santa Clara, CA (USA). SMC community members receive 20% discount by using code SMClovesU.
• Social Media for Crisis Communications in Government: November 2-5, 2009 in Washington, DC. How To Integrate The Latest Web 2.0 Technologies To Maximize Effectiveness Before, During, And After A Crisis. Mention “SMC” to receive a special $200 member discount!
• The Social Consumer – B2C Case Studies and Roundtable:  November 12, 2009 in New York, NY (USA). Social communications is now part of an integrated marketing and communications platform for most leading organizations. This conference will showcase the best case studies that demonstrate how leading brands use social communications to achieve tangible business goals. SMC members receive a discounted rate of $155. Please tell them you are with SMC.
• Social PR Forum: December 4, 2009 in London (UK). SMC community members receive 20% discount by using code SMClovesU.
• Social Media for Government: December 7-10, 2009 in Washington, DC. How To Engage Your Employees And Citizens By Using The Latest Web 2.0 Technologies To Drive Communication Results. Mention “SMC” to receive a special $200 discount!
• Social Media for Gov Conference: Feb. 8-11 in Washington, DC. Mention this post & receive a $200 registration discount!

Worthy cause for you to check out:

• TweetsGiving09: November 24-26, 2009. Social Media Club is proud to partner with Epic Thanks, a global celebration that seeks to change the world through the power of gratitude. This event is scheduled for the 48-hour event and will encourage participants to express their thanks using online tools and at live events to be held globally, and to give to a common cause in honor of that for which they’re most grateful. More details to follow.

• SMB Members: Alexander Guiragossian (Edinburgh Fine Gardens, Inc.)
• Professional Members: Piia Aarma, Ann McDermott, Michael Lamattina, Chris Abraham, Chad Latz, Jill Howell, Jennifer Windrum, Marie Kare, David Shantz, Angela Darcy, Joseph Donlan, Zac Bowling, Jim Caruso, Vernon Brown and Linh DePledge.

We would be honored if you were able to join as a paid member so that we can continue sharing our knowledge and bringing people together to expand our collective abilities.

If you are able to support Social Media Club so that we can afford to continue to advance Social Media around the world, please sign up here today. We look forward to welcoming you officially to the SMC family!

Also, hear about our plans for social media for the rest of the year. The SeaWorld social media team will be on hand to answer any questions.

Come join us for a night of enlightened and scare-worthy fun.

RSVP HERE (RSVP by September 25th)

Host: Kami Huyse
Location:
SeaWorld San Antonio
10500 Sea World Dr
San Antonio, TX 78251
When: Thursday, October 1, 6:00PM to 10:00PM
Phone: 210-683-6776

DOWNLOAD PDF

It will be groups like these, started informally (this one was publicized using our Ning group site and Twitter) and publicized viraly, that will help spark interest in various locations that lead to organized collaboration.

The more groups we have from locations all over the map, the greater the collection of educators and students, and the result will be a higher quality effort. If you have any thoughts on getting a group started in your area, please share!

We’re trying to teach social media by USING social media: by gathering, communicating, sharing, and collaborating, we have the opportunity to make this project into something sustainable and valuable to many academic institutions, businesses, and most importantly, PEOPLE.

To an extent, we’re learning as we grow. We have talented people, both educators and students, who want this effort to develop into something that can be adopted nationally and globally.

The goals of #SMCEDU haven’t been attempted before, but that’s part of what’s so exciting. The scope of this effort is something that’s in our hands — it’s up to anyone who makes the time to attend a meeting or tell someone else about what we’re trying to do. THAT’S what will turn a small gathering in a coffee shop into a contributor to an ambitious, groundbreaking project.

The SMC-Sydney Education group will meet again on October 12; if you’re in Sydney, come join the group and see what’s going on. If you can’t make it, maybe you can help by telling a teacher about it. Teachers involved in marketing, communications, journalism, and any discipline that incorporates aspects of social media have a stake in this. Let them know!

On the other side of the world in Richmond, VA, SMCEDU-RVA plans to have their launch event on October 12 at Virginia Commonwealth University.

The event’s featured panel discussion includes perspectives from a student, recent graduate, professor, recruiter, and tech blogger — key perspectives for any in the academic world interested in how social media affects them now and will affect them in the future. VCU Journalism and Communications professor Marcus Messner will be moderating.

I’ll write more about this event as details develop — tickets become available on Tuesday, September 22 and are limited, so be sure to reserve your seat!

While some might see it as an event sponsorship, others might see it as a mini-site, others might see it as an online advertising buy, still others might see it as a video blog and hopefully more of you will see this as the forest and not the trees since all those things are true.

From my perspective, it is a foundational element of the future of marketing, which is a focused ‘market conversation’ around a topic of mutual interest between a given community/market and a sponsor/advertiser. Broadly, it falls under a practice area I am calling Market Engagement Optimization (MEO) which I will be writing about more later this week [teaser]. While some may call this a ’sponsored conversation’, I call it a market conversation because it is about the market more so then the sponsor.

The simple idea behind a market conversation is that there is a question of interest to market participants that is ‘underwritten’ by a sponsor, which we have framed under the guise of doing a reality check on our industry, something we feel is sorely needed. In this case, we are working with Real Player SP to do a reality check on portable video. How are people really using portable video, how would they like to be using portable video both personally and professionally?

In addition to sponsoring several local Social Media Club events around the world, their sponsorship has underwritten a videographer in each city, allowed us to hire Roxanne Darling (from Barefeet Studios and also Beachwalks with Rox) as the Executive Producer and enabled us to launch a new site focused on the Reality Check. We are providing Real Player SP with broad sponsorship of our digital media from our newsletter, to our member badge/widget, to the local events, to inclusion in all promotion for Reality Check and of course, on the site and videos we produce.

This sort of holistic integration of online-offline efforts is what I personally see as one of the best ways to get a corporate entity engaged in issues that matter to the community while respecting the community and its members.  Rather then focusing on pushing their products, they are a part of the conversation and in this case enabling it to happen in a more organized, professional manner.  They are actively participating by enabling this discussion to happen, but also by listening and contributing. In fact, RealTweeter and Real Networks Blogger Lacy Kemp is heading to many of the events herself and even CEO Rob Glaser is engaged after attending the Seattle Social Media Club meeting recently.

While Social Media Club gets funds it needs to enable the local and the international conversations at the core of our community, Real Player SP gets increased awareness, consideration for their new product (which I personally think is really cool and useful), research on a core issue that matters to them, a chance to humanize the brand (key to MEO) and a chance to show that they are not only engaged and listening, but taking different actions because of it.

How it works: we take 15 minutes out of the meetings in selected cities to discuss the same questions, reaching beyond our own world view to see how people from all around the country and all around the world think about a given topic. This is recorded on video and distributed on Reality Check, where participants from different cities can discover the similar and different perspective of others. We then use the Reality Check blog to gather new insights and discuss the topic together.

We previously did a network sponsorship of local Social Media Club events with H&R Block that was focused on them delivering tax advice in the month leading up to April 15 (our tax due date in the US). Reality Check takes this network event sponsorship idea to the next level.

Ultimately, I feel this is one of the best ways we have so far to connect our members and explore a topic together. So I invite you to join this month’s Reality Check, and let us know how you use portable video and how you would like to use portable video both personally and professionally.

BTW – Future Reality Check’s are planned for blogging, social networking, podcasting and even Twitter. If you are interested in participating in a Reality Check around your market, please contact us.

Tyson has graciously offered to donate truck loads of food based on our ability to use Social Media tools to  spread the word in support of our local food banks. 

From Tyson’s blog:

There’s a list of hunger facts below.  All Tweetable.  Tweet  or retweet any of them with the hashtag  #HChal and Tyson Foods will make a 100 pound donation (up to a total of 100,000 pounds) to the San Francisco Food Bank. Blog about this effort and we’ll donate 500 pounds.  Or comment to this post with your own verifiable fact (not opinion)  about hunger and we’ll donate 100 pounds.   That’s all you have to do. Let’s see how far and fast we can spread these facts out there in Twittervillle. If you’d like to make reference to this post, here’s a shortened URL:  http://bit.ly/sBE9x

Tweetable Facts About Hunger

• More than 35 mil. people in the U.S. are on food stamps–up 3 million since Jan.  #HChal
• App. 40% of families now on food stamps have “earned income”–up from just 25% 2 years ago.  #HChal
• For every $1 donated @SFFoodBank can distribute $9 worth of groceries. #HChal #hungeraction
• In San Francisco, 150K people are unsure where their next meal is coming from. #HChal #hungeraction
• 1 in 4 San Francisco children lack reg.access to food they need to learn, grow, & have a healthy start in life. #HChal
• 1 in 5 San Francisco adults can’t count on daily meals they need to lead healthy, productive lives. #HChal
• 1 in 4 San Francisco seniors lack the nourishment need to control chronic health problems. #HChal
• .@SFFoodBank distributed over 33.5 million pounds of food in the past year–nearly 8% more than the year before. #HChal
• 60% of the clients @SFFoodBank served last year come from working families.  #HChal
• In CA, the average food stamp recipient gets $4 a day to spend on food.  #HChal #hungeraction
• In CA, a single person can get food stamps only if their yearly gross income is $14,079 or less. #HChal
• 5.3 mil. Californians are living below the federal poverty line ($21,834 for a family of 4) #HChal
• The number of households participating in @SFFoodbank’s grocery pantry program is up 24% over last year. #HChal

Bonus Challenge:

Social Media Club would like to up the anty and asks everyone to donate $5 this month. Forget the latte for one day, and help feed a family of four. If you do not have the $5 to donate, the food banks could always use food – their most-needed foods include rice and pasta, canned fruits and vegetables, tuna or other canned meats, soups and stews, peanut butter, and cereal. You can find a local drop off center near you.

I hope you will help us reach that goal of donating 100,000 pounds of food. Would be awesome to raise $10,000 this month too. Can we do it?

What is it that we’re trying to teach in a formalized SM curriculum? Conceptually, we discussed the importance of teaching people that they are members of a community. In keeping, there are ways to participate within that community that will reflect the responsibility and conscientiousness that allow participants to contribute in a way that adds value.

From an applied level, one of the mission statements of Social Media Club is to expand media literacy. Media literacy, as it relates to social media, has three key components:

Consumption

There is an overwhelming amount of information available, and knowing what to listen to is difficult. Earlier this week, I saw the quote: “It’s not information overload, it’s filter failure.” A media-literate consumer of information will think critically about both the content and source of that information. As a new model of news distribution takes hold, this will be more crucial than ever before.

Production

Adding to the community, supplying your own voice, is what separates social media from other forms of information distribution. There are many ways to do this, whether it’s through words, images, audio, or video. Knowing how to “produce your voice” and share it with others requires technical know-how, and an understanding of what medium would best serve a purpose.

Search

It’s not just about adding, but using what’s already there. Search is not only thoughtful consumption, but knowing where/what to use to find specific information quickly and accurately.

There will be MANY aspects to the #SMCEDU curriculum, and there are teachers out there that teach some aspect of media literacy but don’t categorize themselves as social media teachers.

This is a new initiative and an emerging discipline that touches on many subjects that already exist — we would appreciate the help of any teachers that can cover one of the above topics. If you are, or know of, any teachers that fall in this group, please let them know about what we’re doing!

I can’t stress enough the importance of teacher contribution to this effort. One program we’d like to start is a regular online lecture series that features different educators doing what they do best. A collection of knowledge that’s available to all that want to learn would be a tremendous resource, and would help shape future classes in social media.

I also had the pleasure of speaking with Jenna Langer, an expat living in Sydney, Australia, who has a passion and enthusiasm for life in general and social media technology in particular. While in the U.S., she was a member of Social Media Club-Sacramento, and has been the key to starting a #SMCEDU group in Sydney. By the way, here are SMC-Sacramento’s and SMC-Sydney’s Facebook pages if you live in either area.

The way things get going in Sydney will be the same way things get started in many locations — through people with an interest in social media education getting together and forming groups of their own. I’ll share any progress made by the #SMCEDU-Sydney group, and I look forward to hearing the ideas coming from that area!

By connecting with the national/global effort online, we can help each other stay in touch and add to/share from the formidable collective brain power of those involved.

I look forward to speaking with more teachers!

Well we’ve hit the first of what is sure to be many milestones, our first year in the city of San Antonio and we’ve had the pleasure of meeting a great many new people and we’re honored to have them and all of our regular favorites share in this experience with us.

Can you believe it’s been 1 year since San Antonio joined the Social Meda Club family? In that amount of time we’ve seen our club grow from the early-adopter geek crowd to include business, non-profit and media types.

We’ve got a great speaker planned for this event who will share with all of you the key points to social conversion. Brian Massey who is otherwise known as the “Conversion Scientist” will be joining us as our amazing guest speaker for this big event and we’re hoping that Brian can help you figure a way to turn that community of yours into something big. Brian’s topic: “Social Conversion Rate” is sure to be as informative as it is entertaining.

You can also catch Brian’s amazing wisdom over on his website The Conversion Scientist, but don’t blame us for your success!

Time: September 10, 2009 from 6pm to 8pm
Location: C4 Workspace, 108 King William, San Antonio, TX 78204

Photo Credit hfb

Renee Goldman of Georgetown University wrote and posted a charter (thanks, Renee!)  for a student SMC chapter at her school.

The charter (which can be found here) and wiki page are to be used by the newly formed SMCEDU-GU organization. The group, sponsored by Booz Allen social media lead Steve Radick, looks to lay down a blueprint for other chapters around the country (and eventually, the world) to follow. As more #SMCEDU groups are created, we’ll try to keep everyone connected so that a uniform approach to accomplishing our goals for #SMCEDU will be maintained.

The D.C. area is just one hotspot for getting #SMCEDU rolling. In Australia, Jenna Langer is working to get another group going in Sydney. I’ll try to speak with Jenna in the coming days and share their exciting plans with the rest of the community.

Also, it’s the eve of the Gov 2.0 Summit in Washington, D.C. Social media is playing a larger role in business, and will (hopefully) help transform government. This is by no means a political forum, but I believe you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone involved in politics who wouldn’t agree that improved efficiency and clearer, more accurate communication with more representation wouldn’t be welcome. Social media can help government at both the local and national levels to achieve that…just another reason why teaching social media will be more important than ever.

As always, we ask that any instructors that are teaching any aspect of social media to add their name to our directory, and please share any information on your curriculum in our repository. This is one area of the project that I think could be especially beneficial to other instructors around the country and world. Even if the material you are teaching is not a “social media” class per se, please let me know what aspect you’re touching on…it will help to collect as much information as possible!

My current time commitments – president and acting COO of the global Social Media Club organization, my contract with Ribbit and helping to manage our Agency, AdHocnium, are requiring more of me these days, which leaves little time for anything else. I want to stay involved, but in a much lesser role (see below) – note, we also need a Production Director.

The local chapter has been loosely run, with a fairly large group of 15+ people volunteering as time allows. I think going forward, it would behoove the new local president/team lead to reduce the core organizational team to six people, each focused on one main task, and then have a larger group of ‘general managers’ supporting these six roles to ensure things run smoothly.

• President/Team Lead – Event project management, locks in schedule and ensures events actually happen monthly, works with Directors to complete projects assigned. Oversees all accounting records. Fills in where needed. Open position
• Programming Director – At the heart of the Social Media Club is great interactive events. The Programming Director manages all aspects of the activity calendar for the San Francisco /Silicon Valley club by determining topics to be discussed and speakers to present. Confirmed: Jennifer Lindsay with support from Chris Heuer and anyone else who wishes to submit topic ideas and/or speaker suggestions
• Production Director - Securing venue for each meeting, managing on-site signage, video, audio and lighting, working with Partnership Director to coordinate food and drink with event sponsors and/or venue, ensure supplies are provided at each event (name badges, pens, markers, etc.). Open position
• Digital Scribe(s) - Responsible for recording the discussion and producing a blog post/video/podcast that will be posted to the socialmediaclub.org website within one week of the event. Confirmed: David Libby, could use 1-2 more volunteers here.
• Promotions Director(s) - Managing the local chapter calendar postings on the socialmediaclub.org blog, wiki, Facebook group, Upcoming and other related forums. Confirmed: Janet Fouts and J.J. Toothman
• Partnership Director - manages the relationships with the national Social Media Club parent organization, other important related organizations (both national and local), as well as with local businesses and organizations interested in sponsoring or hosting upcoming activities. Confirmed: Kristie Wells (also acting Secretary/Treasurer)
  

When the work is distributed as noted in these roles, I would imagine each role would require, between 1-4 hours per month administrative plus 2-3 hours the night of the event.

If you are interested in taking on one of these positions, please let us know as soon as possible – either leave a comment below or shoot me an email to kristie [at] socialmediaclub [dot] org. Fall programming is in full swing, we need to lock this new team in and start making plans for 2010!

*P.S. We have been alternating meetings each month – one in San Francisco, the next in Silicon Valley. San Francisco events see between 75-150 people each month, Silicon Valley between 50-75. There was talk of splitting the group up and forming two chapters again, but I would love to see it continue as one…at least through the rest of 2009.

I met with Kendall Morris, a media specialist and social media consultant associated with SMCRVA, Nathan Hughes, the programming director for SMCRVA, Marcus Messner, a journalism professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, and Jennifer Greenwood, an undergraduate student at George Mason University.

I had an interesting conversation with Prof. Messner regarding his journalism classes. As most know, the print journalism industry is in a state of decline, and journalism across all mediums is facing major changes. The future press corps is being educated in classrooms that must embrace change, and it sounds like many students are entering these classrooms unprepared. Although Prof. Messner said that almost all his incoming students had Facebook accounts, the majority are unaware of how to apply social networking technology beyond this most popular application.

It’s just more evidence of why this project could benefit so many people. Kendall Morris spoke of her work with the creative firm Punch. As a social media advisor to many businesses in her area, she championed the effort to teach social media knowledge not only as an employable asset, but because so many students (especially young women) were unaware of the wide net social media profiles can cast. We’ve all heard of the cautionary tales involving visibility of one’s private life, but Prof. Messner and Kendall Morris both told stories of how students that are afflicted with a “it hasn’t happened to me” mentality when it comes to embarrassing photos can quickly change their perspecitives once the ease with which private information can be shared becomes evident.

Again, more reason to teach the principles behind social media, and how current and future tools can/will affect multiple aspects of a person’s life.

What’s really exciting about the SMCRVA group is their enthusiasm and potential to connect with a sizeable network of schools in the area.

The VA Board of Education just launched their Virginia Education Wizard, an online tool to help students create a plan to make college education a reality. The announcement of “Ginny’s” release was made using Twitter, and shows the area’s willingness to use social media tools to communicate with students.

Virginia Commonwealth University makes for a great starting point. In October, the school will host the first in a lecture series that will be hosted by VCU’s School of Mass Communication. The first event in the series will deal with social media, and attendees can expect to hear from a broad panel of social media experts/users that will range from student advocates to proven business practitioners.

There are many ideas behind the lecture series, including opening up attendance for students from other schools (although nothing has been formalized just yet). The proximity of schools and the excitement of SMCRVA could be a formula for great advancement in social media education, and would in the very least provide a way for schools to communicate with each other to collaborate and create a unified curriculum.

We’re still looking at ideas to spread awareness and get others to participate…I’m seeing questions from people in other areas that are asking about how to create a SMCEDU group in their area. As I wrote about earlier, SMCEDU in Washington, D.C., is working with members from George Washington University. Now, Georgetown University is also advancing the cause, as Renee Goldman, president of Hilltop Consultants, Inc., has posted a charter for an SMCEDU group at the home of the Hoyas.

We’re hoping this charter can serve as a model for any school interested in establishing their own SMCEDU group. If your school is interested, please stay connected to the overall effort via our SMCEDU Ning group, and don’t forget to check in on two of our current working groups, SMCEDU-GW and SMCEDU-GU. I’ll stay in contact with Steve Radick, the professional sponsor for both chapters, and post updates as both groups grow.

I’ll also try to contact those that have inquired about creating SMCEDU groups in other areas and see what we can do to help. If you have any questions, please post them to the SMCEDU Ning group forum, and we’ll provide some direct information or guidance to get SMCEDU going in your area.

One of the more exciting aspects of SMCEDU (besides the enthusiasm of all those involved) is the “newness” of this effort. It presents an interesting challenge: getting people, ideas, and goals on the same page, especially when dealing with something as diverse as social media, is no small feat. Since there isn’t a precedent for this effort, there will be different ways to approach the main goals of SMCEDU, and the SMCDC/GWU partnership looks like they’ve got some great ideas.

One of the goals of SMCEDU is to create relationships between the national chapters of Social Media Club and their respective local universities. To do that, Steve Radick proposed that students at GWU get involved early by creating a SMC group at the renown university. In doing, steps taken and lessons learned from establishing a group could be documented and shared on the SMCEDU wiki, providing a road map for future relationships between SMC chapters and local universities. Both Cathryn Sitterding and Nicole Morales touched on a critical consideration: the relevance of social media to each student’s course of study. They also brought up great points about how to get the student body at both the graduate and undergraduate levels interested and the initiative required to garner support.

One of the goals of this proposed student group would be to provide opportunities for students, teachers, administrators, and business leaders to network and collaborate. One of the teachers during the SMCEDU kick-off call voiced concern that there needs to be a rationale for how social media can be distinguished from other academic disciplines; there needs to be a way to explain why social media is relevant/important. Imagine now a panel discussion where social media advocates (those with real-world experience) could answer questions from people that don’t see its value. Industry-specific examples would provide proof of why tools such as Twitter are largely misunderstood and under-utilized, and also address the “What’s in it for me” question (aka the “How does this help me get a better job” concern that fuels many students). This is just one example of how these student groups could establish dialogue between interested parties (i.e., students, faculty, business recruiters), create interest for social media classes, and create a consensus on both the definition and value of social media.

That’s just one example of what this group could do; the potential value student proponents can provide is tremendous. The actual establishment of such a group would provide many lessons in itself: finding sponsorship among faculty; writing a charter, a living document that establishes the goals and purpose of the group; locating a meeting place and establishing a schedule of events that will allow stakeholders to meet and collaborate. All these tasks could be valuable for any groups interested in doing the same. Of course, any steps taken here in the DC area wouldn’t be the final say in how things are done — such is the beauty of social media. The SMCDC/GWU partnership would be just one method in how to form the SMC/University relationship. This method can be utilized as a model, or could be improved upon by a group that has found another way. The importantance of transparency and communication is obvious — without sharing, progress becomes severely limited. The spirit of collective knowledge will be evident and on display on the SMCEDU wiki for this and any future SMCEDU endeavors.

Another interesting point from our discussion that I can’t leave out: the difference between social media concepts/principles and the social media tools that so often carry the guise of definition. In other words, to answer the question of, “What is social media?” by answering, “It’s Facebook,” or “It’s Twitter,” doesn’t really help the inquirer grasp the fundamentals behind the idea. Tools change, the principle of information gathering through collective dialogue won’t. As this another important aspect of social media education, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the discussion!

On Thursday, I meet with Nathan Hughes and Kendall Morris of Social Media Club-Richmond, VA. There’s a lot going on in central VA as well, and I look forward to the continued momentum of this exciting project!

It seems that we’re still in the “create awareness” stage of things with SMCEDU, but we’re moving into action phases. Here’s one that represents that:

Tonight (Wednesday) from 6-8pm EST, SMCRVA will host a discussion with the Virginia Department of Education, the State Council of Higher Education, Virginia’s Community Colleges, and the College Savings Plan and Education Credit Management Corporation. The discussion will focus on how Virginia seeks to take the lead in creating tools to promote affordability and access in education.

Virginia’s Community Colleges seem very interested in setting an example of how social media can be applied in education and communication, and tonight’s conference will be available for everyone to participate and follow through Twitter using the #steakchat hashtag. Also, check out Virginia’s Education Wizard, an online portal for career and education planning in Virginia, for the podcast and blog posts about the event.

This is just one example of how the SMCEDU effort is happening as we speak. I know there are others — if you’re hosting/participating in one, please let us know so we can share knowledge and spread the word faster!

With social media again making headlines this week with Facebook’s acquisition of Friendfeed, I thought it a poignant opportunity to bring up this point.

Yesterday, I had a conversation with two college students and the subject of Facebook came up. Out of curiosity, I asked if either would be interested in taking a social media class if one was offered at their school. The response was mixed…it seemed both would be interested, but neither could honestly find the value of “just learning about Twitter.”

I understand two people’s opinion is not an accurate representation, but it was a sentiment that was echoed by others listening to the conversation and seemed to reflect the definition of social media for at least a percentage of college students.

That’s part of our challenge — spreading awareness of first, what social media is, and second, why it’s important. I could have bored the two students with a definition/lecture of social media, but instead filed away the opinions as a marker for future discussion. I’m curious: social media is a powerful tool now, and will only become more prevalent in the future. If a percentage of the current generation that’s in school isn’t prepared to take advantage of existing technology, what percentage is?

Are classes enough to teach students (and anyone else that’s interested) that there’s more to social media than Facebook? Or that Twitter isn’t a waste of time? The classroom is a conventional atmosphere that brings with it a level of seriousness; in other words, if students see social media classes in their course catalogs, perhaps more will see it as something that’s more than a frivolous Internet outlet. Just a thought.

The Summer of Social Good tour comes to six (6) cities; New York (NY), Chicago (IL), Denver (CO), Los Angeles (CA), Washington (DC) and Boston (MA) and ends with a Social Good Conference taking place in New York City, NY on August 28th.

Please try to join us at one of these other #Hyatt4Good Tweetup Tour Dates:

• Denver, Thursday, August 6th, 2009
• Los Angeles, Friday, August 7th, 2009
• Washington, Thursday, August 13th, 2009
  
• Boston, Friday August 21st, 2009

The tour has already taken place in New York and Chicago. If you cannot participate in person, you can still give online. Do it. Then buy yourself a cookie. You deserve it.

We want to teach people about social media technology, but let’s not forget the “social” component. Although the tools we use to communicate are varied and great, nothing beats personal interaction. To that end, I’m hoping to start small and locally by meeting members of both the Social Media Club and social media educators.

After Chris posted a question about where to start, we received a few great suggestions. As I’m based in Northern Virginia, I contacted local chapters of Social Media Club in the Washington, D.C., and Richmond, VA, areas. There is already a SMCEDU rapport established between Social Media Club DC and George Washington University (based in D.C.)…this seems like a natural place to start. As more develops, I’ll post reports and ask for feedback/suggestions on how we can establish similar relationships between SMC chapters and their local universities.

Another important focal point of our project is the cumulation of current social media curriculum.

As teachers continue to add their information to the directory, the community of social media educators becomes closer. Thanks to Alex de Carvalho, Corinne Weisgerber, Bill Handy, Gaetan Giannini, and Pierre Edelman for contributing so far. I’ve taken the liberty of adding your resources to the SMCEDU wiki under “Social Media Curriculum”. This is a temporary holding for social media resources, and for now serves as a central location to review what teachers are currently offering in their classrooms. If there’s anything you’d like to add, it will help tremendously!

As an aside, I began thinking about the difference between social media and social networking. Perhaps the term “social media” can be used interchangeably to describe either the content created and shared by users, or the medium by which they communicate. To me, the definition of “social networking” is more specific: it is the activity of creating or participating in groups that share information/resources. This can be achieved by using technology to reach anyone with access to the same technology, or it can be more immediate in that you’re working with people face-to-face.

I bring up the two terms because they are both a big part of what we’re doing: we’re of course connecting (i.e., networking), but also sharing written material, video, and audio…in other words, media.

By opening up a dialogue and collecting a consensus on ideas such as this from those actively participating in SMCEDU, I hope it will standardize what social media education means to everyone.

As always, any questions/thoughts/hints/comments/concerns/suggestions are welcome!

A crucial element to the scope of the SMCEDU project is the formation of relationships among different teachers who already teach or have an interest in teaching some aspect of social media. The kickoff-conference call demonstrated how Social Media Club can help facilitate that partnership.

The given input was thought-provoking, and underlined the importance of continued collaboration. Teachers, if you haven’t added your information to our directory of social media educators, we’d love and need your help in creating this increasingly important and ever-evolving course of study.

As was mentioned by Bill Handy of Oklahoma State University, the focus of any social media curriculum will be based largely on need, but we believe that a repository of core resources can be gathered and shared…that’s another important facet of our project.

Kathy Gill of the University of Washington expressed an interest in seeing standard course materials, such as syllabi, exercises, and examples as part of the resource repository. We’re compiling such resources under our SMCEDU wiki repository, to be added to and shared under Creative Commons licensing by all within the social media education community. The recent announcement of a Creative Commons education search engine echoes the growing demand for an organized collection of teaching material and information.

We also heard from the students’ side of things as Jenna Langer stressed the importance of media literacy among students. As Chris mentioned in the Community Proposal, there are many people who utilize social media tools, but not to their full potential. Bill Handy put it succinctly: there’s a difference between the tech side of social media (i.e., setting up a Twitter profile or Ning group) and the strategic use of this technology. Let’s explore the best ways to educate people in how to leverage what we all know to be a powerful mechanism for creating, connecting, and sharing.

We’ve got much to do, but today was an important first step in connecting the talented and passionate people behind this idea: namely, the people who joined us this morning and the many more that have a stake in seeing social media education become formalized and implemented.

My name is Yong, and I look forward to hearing the input, feedback, and ideas behind this exciting and quite possibly monumental undertaking. We’ve got a great visionary and leader in Chris, and a great community of educators and students that want to take part in shaping the effort to improve social media education in schools.

Thanks to all for a great start!

#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!

So here’s the deal, if you want a free pass to go to Twiistup this week, you can apply to be the TJ (that’s Twitter Jockey) for the @socialmediaclub account during the conference portions of the event.  What that means is that you will be running the live Twitter account for @socialmediaclub keeping our 54,000 followers up to date on what is happening at Twiistup. So you will get a chance to introduce yourself and if you do a good job, perhaps get some new followers – but of course we have a no-spam rule and expect basic journalistic standards to be applied.

In order to apply simply tweet @socialmediaclub with the most compelling and creative reason about why you should be chosen to be our TJ during Twiistup.

The winner will be chosen solely at my discretion based on all entries submitted to us by Wednesday July 29, 2009 at 1pm PST.  You can enter twice, but don’t go overboard with it – no one likes Twitter Spam. To be clear, this is only for the conference pass, the winner will need to be in LA area or be able to travel there at their own expense.  That said, the TJ will be hanging at some cool parties, meeting some fantastic people and learning some valuable insights about emerging technology companies.

I am looking forward to seeing everyone in LA later this week!

We think so, which is why we partnered with Ms. Green and the fine folks over at Mars to send boxes filled with M&M’S®, Snickers®, Twix®, 3 Musketeers®, Milky Way®, and Dove® to 20* of our Social Media Club chapters around the United States as part of the Mars Real Chocolate Relief campaign.

*The boxes started to ship two weeks ago and will/have been seen at Social Media Club chapters located in Austin (TX), Boston (MA), Chicago (IL), Greenville (SC), Los Angeles (CA), Louisville (KY), Miami (FL), Minneapolis (MN), New York (NY), Philadelphia (PA), Portland (OR), Raleigh (NC), Richmond (VA), Sacramento (CA), Salt Lake City (UT), San Antonio (TX), San Francisco (CA), Seattle (WA), St. Louis (MO), Washington (DC), and Wilmington (NC).

For those of you not able to get to one of these 20 cities (or even if you do), bookmark the Mars Real Chocolate Relief website as every Friday between now and September they will distribute 250,000 coupons for a free full sized chocolate bar. Sweet.

We wish to extend a big ‘thank you’ to Mars and Ms. Green for making our events a little sweeter, and hope you will savor the taste of real chocolate this Summer.

Enjoy the photos of all the revelers.

Add in a couple of ice chests full of champagne (and beer), enough snacks to feed two football teams and a bevy of smart phones charged and ready to tweet every move – and we were ready to point the bus North and head into Sonoma.

Before I dive into each stop we made, I must first give our sincere thanks to Barbara and John Drady who not only booked the entire itinerary for our group, but provided a surprise wine tasting on the bus from their winery, Sonoma Coast Vineyards, that was both informative and very tasty too! Barbara and John went above and beyond all expectations, and really made it a memorable time. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Now to the wineries:

Our first stop was Keller Estate Winery, where our tour guide Scott took us on a stroll through the wine cellar while pouring tasty bits of viognier (first release ever!), Pinot’s and a Syrah that I knew immediately had to come home with us (and they did, several bottles worth). Note: The 2005 Pinot and the 2004 Syrah were my favorites. Incredibly yummy.

Keller Estate also provided a light lunch out on their veranda, all the while Scott continued to pour and give us insight into the makings of Keller wines. So good.

We then headed over to Baletto Vineyards and Dutton-Goldfield (they share a tasting room) for a guided tasting that also included plates of cheese, crackers and fresh fruit. The tasting was led by Balletto Vineyards winemaker Anthony Beckman and Brandon Lapides from Dutton-Goldfield. I think out of the two vineyards, I leaned toward Dutton-Goldfield a wee bit more (more smokey/tannin), but made sure to pick up a bottle from each so we could do another tasting at home – you know, just to be sure.

Last stop on the trip was Owl Ridge/Willowbrook where we had 12+ wines to choose from. I ‘think’ I got to seven (7) of them before I realized my palette was toast and headed over to the cheese/cracker cart to try and soak up some of the goodness I had consumed throughout the day.

After a short break, Barbara and John treated us to a wine making class where they walked us through the flavor components of wine making: sweet, sour, salt and tannin. We then sampled a Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and a Malbec and were asked to make our own blend based on the flavor components that most resonated with us. As I noted, my palette was too far gone at this point to be any good at making a decent bottle to drink, but bottle I did make, and had a good time in the process.

Side note: Barbara teaches a wine boot camp, and I would love to sign up for this one day to really learn the essence of making a good bottle of wine.

Again, a world of thanks to the fine folks at Keller Estate Winery, Baletto Vineyards, Dutton-Goldfield and Owl Ridge for opening up your businesses to us and giving us an opportunity to taste your delicious wines. Big hugs and thank you’s also to Barbara and John Drady who really made this a stellar day of wine tasting for us all. And last, but not least, thank you to J.J. Toothman who came up with the idea for the Sonoma trip and to Janet Fouts who put us in touch with Barbara Drady. You two are the bees knees.

I have more photos from our trip, as does Chris Heuer, Francine Hardaway and Cory O’Brien.

Updated: July 26, 2009 – added link to Cory O’Brien photos.