There are a lot of reasons panels get rejected by SxSW. Some don’t even make it into the panel picker, while others just aren’t ‘pimped out’ hard enough to garner sufficient votes.  Some are really, really fantastic ideas, but miss the mark regarding timing.  Some are just bad (note: if it’s bad, you have no second chance unless you rework it).

Whatever the reason your panel was rejected, here is your second chance to present your talk with your panel on the afternoon of Tuesday March 16, 2010. So submit your panel to us in the comments below (make sure everyone can be there still) and we will, at our sole discretion and judgment, select two (2) or three (3) panels which will receive 30 minutes each to live stream to our global audience from the Social Media Clubhouse beginning around 3pm.

We have this fantastic venue 20 minutes from the convention center, a shuttle bus and a live musical performance we are putting on from Kole Christensen starting at 5pm as part of our KUT Live series.  We also have a daily recap show to produce on Tuesday at 6pm with TechZulu. But we don’t yet have a Summit booked, or a sponsor for it other then Social Media Club, which has a pretty awesome announcement to make this week </teaser>.

So let’s go for it and share some knowledge together. If you get it, we will stream it!

Suggestions

• If it’s a commercial pitch, forget about it, you should have signed up as a sponsor
• If you want more immediate attention, tweet it @socialmediaclub with a link to the panel submission elsewhere online and make sure to use the #SMCH3 hashtag
• We are looking for topics that are interesting to our Social Media Club members from around the world, so if you have a strong case why it would be, present it in the comments (or on your own blog post)
• Don’t contact me personally, please. Especially if you know me personally. I just dont have time to deal with all those extra communications while we are in the midst of producing #SMCH3
• The ‘application’ we choose will be notified by Sunday night so there is time to prepare on MON
• Ummm, well, if you have something to talk about regarding media literacy and how to create more of it, or anything to do with our core missions, that, well, that might get some preferential treatment.

Using your brain. Meeting new people. Hearing great music. Eating yummy food.

These statements all reflect the programming we have put together for the Social Media Clubhouse during SxSW and we have tucked it all neatly into a nifty little calendar widget for you to keep track of it all. Hope to see you in person at one of the events, or catch you on the internet via the livestream.

I’m excited to be part of Social Media Club’s Social Media Clubhouse #3, in Austin this week and next, for SouthBy Southwest Interactive and Music. Chris Heuer, Kristie Wells, and the SMC team have been working really hard to get the house sponsored, set up, and ready for the rest of us to arrive, and I give them a huge amount of credit for planning it.

As a board member of Social Media Club, and of the original team behind the group, we always envisioned being able to bring together professionals form important discussions. This is part of what we are chartered to do – “2. Share lessons among practitioners.” At the Social Media Clubhouse, we’ll have summits on Co-Working, Engagement, and the Synaptic Web.

I hope you’ll follow us via our #smch3 hashtag, our Twitter list (forthcoming) and our site. And, if you’ll be Austin, please get in touch – I’d love to meet or catch up with you.

This article has been republished from the original source which can be found here Howard Greenstein’s Website

Some things are just plain obvious. In 1994 when I first started an interactive agency in Miami, I saw zero risk in becoming a web guy. Even if I failed, I would have failed at investing my time in the development of a most certain future. But despite the ostensibly obvious nature of so many things, recognizing them at the right time and developing the right perspective is often the difference between winning and losing, between success, survival and failure.

Having the right insights at the wrong time many times over the last 16 years of my web career, but managing to persevere in the face of each adversity, I have become good at recognizing when an idea is ready for prime time. The Synaptic Web is now poised to become that next ‘oh so obvious’ meme which places Echo CEO Khris Loux and many of the other participants of the Synaptic Web Summit in the perfect position to leverage their understanding, insights and vision for ‘how the web works’.

Synaptic Web Summit Details

At the Synaptic Web Summit sponsored by Intel on Saturday March 13, 2010 at 3:00PM live from the Social Media Clubhouse, you too will be able to benefit from this key insight that I believe will define the next generation of social apps even more then ‘web as a platform’ ever did. The Summit will be hosted in a round-table format, livestreamed by TechZulu and Justin.tv in front of a small group of invited press and guests. After the Summit, we will feature a live performance from Hilary York as part of the KUT Live from the Social Media Clubhouse series.

The Synaptic Web Summit will be moderated by Chris Heuer (that’s me) and features leading voices on the Future of the Web. In addition to Khris Loux (who will present a brief keynote), we will be joined by Kevin Marks from BT, Web Strategist Jeremiah Owyang, Chris Saad from Echo and several other special guests to be named in the coming days.

We welcome you to request an invite to participate, but please note that space is extremely limited and we unfortunately are not able to accommodate everyone.

So What is the Synaptic Web

In its most base form, I see it as the idea of looking at the web as an electronic brain that contains an increasingly larger portion of human knowledge. Like the human brain, the more that we have strong synaptic connections created between the different neurons (or content objects/nodes) the smarter the brain becomes.  It’s a close kin to the Semantic web, the idea first presented by Tim Berners Lee that adds some basic linguistic structure to the web along with a common set of design principles for enabling the servers/machines to become smarter in how they communicate with each other. In my view, what’s really important now is more then just the structure and our choice of language, it’s the contextual elements like Twitter’s driving question, “What are you doing?”. It’s the color commentary added to the reporting of simple observations. It’s the richness of understanding how its all interconnected, helping us not only access reviews, but also knowing which reviews to trust. Most importantly, it does much of its technological wizardry invisibly to users, in a true sense, making evident the magic of technology.

As I wrote in this post back in 2005, its when we move past the information economy and embrace the knowledge economy (information applied with purpose or from experience) that things get really interesting. It’s also the stepping-stone for society to move past the knowledge economy and beginning to experience more of the wisdom economy that is just now appearing in the form of social entrepreneurship and open government.

But that’s just my perspective on the really big picture and why I think its so important for us to explore with the smartest minds we know. To really understand the synaptic web, you need to listen to Khris Loux tell the story himself and read more about the bigger picture in the slide presentation that accompanies that talk.

According to Chris Saad, the origins are pretty simple:

The Synaptic Web: Real-time is just the beginning

The Synaptic Web is not an open standard, advocacy group or business. It is not something anyone invented. It is not even something anyone is advocating for or developing. It is simply something we observed and wrote down.

We wrote it down because we needed a conceptual framework from which to design, develop and refine our own product. We then shared it at SynapticWeb.org because others seemed interested in learning more about it. Since then we have continued to refine it and collect examples of other people taking our observations and expanding upon them. By understanding the patterns better, we hope to shed some lights on possible areas of innovation for the community.

Join The Conversation

So on Saturday March 13 at 3pm CST, we hope you can tune into our livestream from the Social Media Clubhouse in Austin, TX (unless you are attending SxSW, in which case you can download the podcast when you get home). Together, we will be exploring more deeply the question of what is the Synaptic Web, what are contemporary examples of it in action today, what the future holds and how you can understand to leverage it in your business.

In closing, I want to express my deep personal thanks to Intel for their sponsorship of the clubhouse and this event in particular. If not for their support and friendship over the years, this would simply not be possible.

So what is the CoWorking Summit?

Well, the big idea is that we have a complete livestream studio setup with TechZulu running video production so that we can host a round table discussion (without the round table among the many CoWorking leaders in Austin for SxSW on Monday March 15 from 1pm till about 230pm.  Thanks to Moonfruit’s sponsorship, participants will be able to get on our shuttle bus by the Austin Convention Center to come to the Social Media Clubhouse between 11am and 1pm in advance of the show start for a hosted lunch. From 1pm to 230 we will dive into a discussion about what we can do to make each of our respective CoWorking spaces sustainable and more succesfull. I really hope to explore ways we can collaborate better together beyond the mailing list, to discuss common needs, to share alternative revenue ideas and perhaps even, determine how we can support better curation/sharing of our local insights and lessons learned.

After the livestream of the CoWorking Summit is over, we will have some time for drinks, and then a special musical performance from The Ashes as part of our KUT Live from the Social Media Clubhouse series. Of course, if you have to get back to the convention center right away after the big CoWorking discussion ends to see the TechKaraoke panel, you can board the shuttle bus and head back there, or you can hang out a little while, have some beers from Molson (who is an in-kind sponsor for the Clubhouse) or drink some Coke’s (who is also an in-kind sponsor for the Clubhouse) and just have a good time with your peers from around the world.

Who’s Coming? How can I join in?

So far, I have only been able to speak to a few folks, but we have confirmed several of our good friends as participants who are listed below. Since it is a private residence we have rented 15 minutes from the convention center, we only have so much room and can’t fit everyone who would like to attend.  I am really trying to focus on people who are running or helped to launch a CoWorking space first, but I do expect we will have a little room to invite in a few others, which is why I created this form where you can request an invite to participate in the CoWorking Summit (or any of our other Summits if appropriate). We don’t want to miss anyone who should be there, but we can’t open it up to the public either, so this should work.  Of course, you can also join in the livestream remotely and participate in the chat room remotely thanks to Justin.tv.

At present, we have the following participants joining us (please forgive lack of links and time at moment).

• Tara Hunt, Citizen Space Founder
• Clement Alteresco, PariSoma
• Julian Nachtigal, PariSoma
• Nathanael Sorin-Richez, La Cantine
• Louis Montagne, La Cantine
• Tony Bacigalupo, New Work City
• Michael Cummings, formerly of The Creative Space
• Evonne Heyning, Sugarshack
• Kirtus Dixon, CoSpace

We have created a private Eventbrite page for the summit, which is how we will manage communications with everyone, letting you know where to go to get the shuttle etc… You can get the password by requesting an invite or leaving a comment below if you are a leader of a CoWorking space.

The CoWorking Summit is not only going to be an important conversation, it’s going to be a fun time. I am really looking forward to welcoming everyone into the Clubhouse (and really bummed I can’t make the CoWorking meetup on SAT March 13th).

Some Background

During Social Media Week San Francisco, I invited my friends from La Cantine in Paris to participate in a special conversation via Skype video chat with Citizen Space (where I hang my hat in SF). We also had invited representatives from PariSoma, The Hub and NextSpace(all local Bay Area CoWorking spaces). The purpose? To discuss the question, What is the State of CoWorking? As I explained in my invite to the event:

What started out as a DIY movement of people sharing their living rooms, squatting in underutilized office spaces and gathering in coffee shops has evolved – in a sense, the concept has reached adolescence. The idea of CoWorking at its heart is the same today as it ever was, independents and small companies can share resources, be more efficient, be more productive and find support from their community of peers. At the same time, it has had to become a serious business in order to sustain itself. Meanwhile, CoWorking has become a global phenomenon, a new way to look at executive office suites and a way for global digital nomads to find a friendly place to work as they travel and do business.

As someone familiar with the Writers Grotto here in San Francisco before CoWorking rose to fame thanks in part to Chris Messina andTara Hunt starting Citizen Space, I have been watching the movement evolve for some time.  Oddly enough, it turns out that the founder ofJelly, Amit Gupta, actually moved down the street from my house, not more then 100 yards away from where I sit right now.  While proximity doesn’t guarantee familiarity, I have been an active evangelist for the movement, despite not being an active commenter withinthe community. So while some might consider me an outside voice right now who are part of the core community, my heart and my mind has been an active participant for quite some time.

During that State of CoWorking conversation, which we recorded and posted to the Social Media Week San Francisco web site, I suggested that we work to put together a Summit of sorts to bring together the core of the community and leaders of CoWorking spaces around the world during SxSW, when many were likely to be in the same city at the same time. Which is what I have been working on quietly for the past several weeks since.  Thanks to the support and patronage of Moonfruit, I am happy to now invite all the CoWorking Leaders who will be in Austin to join me on so that we can discuss ways in which we can better support one another and work together to ensure the sustainability of what I think is a vital movement and a powerful community resource.

On Sunday March 14, 2010 Awareness Inc is bringing together a group of leading thinkers, executives and communications professionals to grapple with the topic of Engagement in a way that few have yet considered fully. The executive round table being held at the Social Media Clubhouse in Austin, TX will be streamed live, right here so you can join us and participate remotely.

Together we will listen to insightful communications professionals such as authors Paul Gillin, Brian Solis and David Meerman Scott. They will be joined by a handful of experienced executive such as Mike Lewis from Awareness Inc, Jennifer Milano of Kayak.com, and James Hart of ASOS.com Other participants in this round table conversations include Jason Falls, Peter Fasano, Wendy Tan White and a dozen other experts who can really answer this question and get at what matters most.

This unique conversation will be facilitated by Chris Heuer who seems to think that engagement is the third generation of marketing philosophies, following on the broadcast and interactive eras. As moderator, he promises to be fair and balanced, but he clearly sees engagement as a way for great companies to differentiate themselves and find a new path to success.

In our attempt to definitively answer whether engagement is just another buzzword or if there is something bigger brewing, we are fortunate to be joined by Brian Solis, author of the new book Engage! who has quite a bit to say about this subject. While many believe he engagement meme is on the edge of the cliff he believes we are on the cusp of a big breakthrough in the marketing profession, a day when marketers will realize the true power of engagement. But first they need to understand what’s different and what’s the benefit.

So we will build upon Paul Gillin’s research to explore what is being called the Social Media Multiplier and how that not only creates maximum engagement for a brand, but also maximizes the impact of the brand’s marketing efforts. His published findings that will be discussed include the belief that the next big challenge is to get procedures and organizations in place to integrate social media into other communication programs.

But that has always been the challenge.

In the 90’s it became clear that the most effective way to market products and services was through the use of multiple channels. Email, banner ads or direct mail used on their own were never as effective as integrated programs running within and across multiple channels. Any channel used on its own were as good as the proverbial one legged chair. The importance of an integrated muilti-channel approach has proven to be true yet again in social media.

With the rise and widespread adoption of social media, the technical barriers to participation have been removed enabling consumers and businesses of all sizes to embrace the power of their voice online. Not only can they speak to their jubilation or frustration with any company, but they can potentially be heard by all. As a result, companies are adapting to the shifting balance of power and responding to the market’s demands for respect, transparency and even, dare we say, love.

Just as some individuals like vanilla and others chocolate ice cream, different people have different channel preferences for interaction. Some will come to you, some want you to come to them.. Some prefer Twitter, others Facebook, and others still Bebo. With new social destinations appearing daily across the web, organizations are facing an increasingly complex world of multi-channel conversations making it even more difficult to deliver satisfaction to a more demanding market.

Internally, organizations are facing the challenge of which group “owns” social media. As marketers determine how to tie social media into their broader business objectives, they are receiving conflicting messages about whether social media needs to be centralized and most are still determining how to measure success.

For those that crack this connundrum, there is the promise of a tremendous payoff. But is it real? Is the idea of genuine cross-platform engagement more buzzwordy goodness or is it really the harbinger of a new era in business, marketing and society as the engagement evangelists proclaim?

If you are a marketing professional this is a not to be missed livestream. If you are going to be in Austin for SxSW you can request an invitation to join us in the clubhouse studio, but please understand there just isn’t enough room for us to accommodate everyone as it being hosted in a private house as opposed to a big venue like a convention center.

We really wish we could accommodate more people at the club house, but honestly, it’s not intended to be another big event like SxSW.  There is enough happening downtown and at the convention center, and trust me when I say that all the residents will be spending a lot of time in convention center, attending panels, at other parties and having a great time.  The club house concept is all about 3 things:

1. Having a group house where a bunch of us can stay together and enjoy the SxSW experience;
2. Covering events like SxSW 2010 for our Social Media Club members and media partners around the world who are unable to attend;
3. And finally, about producing something more meaningful then another party with market leading brands who are very much the new patrons in the knowledge economy (IMHO)

So the bottom line is that we want to take advantage of having all these smart people in one place at the same time, bring them together, and talk about the things that are most important right now as the world of media evolves.  For instance, how many places will you be able to hear from Brian Solis, Paul Gillin and David Merman Scott debating the meaning, opportunity and challenges of ENGAGEMENT? At the moment, you will only see them together at the Engagement Summit being hosted by Awareness Networks on SUnday 3/14, and those aren’t the only uber smart folks joining us to talk about Engagement.  Stay tuned for a full list and more details on what we will be discussing in the next day or so.

In addition to the Engagement Summit, we will also be hosting the Synaptic Web Summit with support from Intel on Saturday 3/13… the sponsors of tomorrow is certainly the most appropriate way to look at this important discussion with Khris Loux, Chris Saad, Kevin Marks and many other leading open web advocates. Then on Monday 3/15, we will be inviting in leaders from CoWorking centers around the world for the CoWorking Summit hosted by Moonfruit with folks from Citizen Space, La Cantine and many other leading spaces around the world.

Our main intention is to be streaming this live, together with media partners Justin.tv and TechZulu, so you can participate remotely via live chat or listen to the conversation later on as a podcast. You wil find details on the streaming media URL here as we finalize technical details.

That said, if you are going to be in Austin for any of these dates, consider yourself a thought leader on any of these subjects, or better still other people say that of you, then please take a moment and fill out this form to request an invite.  There is a lot to do still, and while all the invites have not been sent yet (finalizing our internal lists and reaching out to a few key folks personally), we wanted to take this opportunity to make sure we don’t miss someone simply due to an email invite list management challenge.

More details tomorrow.

A big thank you to everyone who entered the contest and retweeted it and invited their friends to enter! We had several good entries and a handful of people who couldn’t get their videos together in time to enter the contest. Since deadlines are an important part of publishing and streaming, it was in a sense, the first test of our potential new hire and we had two people pass with flying colors with both their personalities and their media making skills.

SxSW Interactive (from 3/12-17)

For SxSW Interactive the Social Media Club House residents will be joined by long time Social Media Club supporter Jeremy Tanner from Boulder, CO who not only entered the video below, but also created an entire page for his submission (HTML skills are a big bonus in the blogging world). In the end, the video was good (and about a minute long), but his personality and inside knowledge of getting around SxSW is what won him the spot. Extra bonus points for being on a panel about startup communities at 5pm on Saturday 3/13 which gets him a gold badge  and staying for a bit of music which creates some continuity between the two halves of the week.

SxSW Music (from 3/17-3/21)

For SxSW Music, we have a great first time crossover attendee (musician who is learning interactive), who not only put together a video that made us laugh, but also that made me say to Kristie Wells (who was the other judge) “This is the reason why I wanted to do a contest, so we could find someone new, cool and worthy. Someone who deserves a break and who obviously works hard to make the world a little better place.” Arriving just in time to say goodbye to the interactive folks on the 16th is Nicole “Kole” Christensen from Utah.

We are still busy putting our schedule together for the music portion of the week, but expect our daily video production to be a bit lighter during music then during interactive (though we may do some ’secret shows’ which, of course, I can’t tell you about right now). Regardless we will be sharing what is happening in Austin, TX throughout SxSW from March 12-21, 2010.  With the addition of Jeremy and Kole to our awesome club house media team, we can say with confidence, that the Social Media Club House will be one of the best conduits to all things ’southby’ for those of you who are unable to attend.

So who is on this great social media team we have assembled? Look to your right, or if this is in your feedreader, visit the #SMCH3 blog and check out the list of residents staying with us. We are really excited that this is the launch of our new conference reporting model for Social Media Club House, and that we have such great people working with us such as Amanda Coolong and Efren Toscano from TechZulu, Howard Greenstein who runs Social Media Club NYC, Khris Loux, CEO of Echo, Digital Royalty herself, Amy Martin and a few other awesome residents.

We are also looking forward to launching a new Social Media Club Web site on Friday March 12 at noon at the Social Media Club Local Leadership BBQ (catered by none other than the world famous Salt Lick). So if you are a Social Media Club leader, member, or supporter, be on the look out for details coming your way very soon. Our full event schedule and our live stream schedule over on Justin.tv will be published tomorrow morning,

Other Be our Resident VJ Entries

Many thanks to everyone who submitted entries including Marguerite De Bourgoing who had an excellent entry that shows she is not only a great photographer on a mission, but who also has some great video editing skills; and Jeffrey Powers (Geekazine) for his video submission (nice set Jeffrey, great video in video work too); and Jeremiah Shackleford for his video from the rooftops of San Francisco; and last but not least, Randy Barnes who is doing some good work covering events in Atlanta like this recent video from WordCamp.

I wanted to take a quick moment to thank our friends at Awareness Networks, Intel and Moonfruit for boldly sponsoring the Club House.  If it were not for them, we wouldn’t be able to do this. Because they believed in this crazy idea and understand the importance of participating in their communities in a meaningful way, we are able to co-produce a great series of events and bring our SxSW coverage to you. But we aren’t done yet… If you are interested in sponsoring the club house, or in getting involved in some other way please reach out and say hello. In addition to general sponsorships, we are also able to host very intimate VIP tweetups or other streaming media events from the Social Media Club House.

We are really looking forward to seeing everyone in Austin in just about 11 days!

Cross posted from Social Media Club

I am really thrilled to be writing this blog post. Over the past two months we have been busy organizing the logistics and finding partners for our Social Media Club House down at SxSW. Just yesterday, everything really started to fall into place – just as everything came together for Social Media Week San Francisco recently.

We won’t be publishing the calendar of livestreams from the club house or event dates just yet, but I can tell you its not a bloggers lounge, and its not a place where a lot of people will be hanging out. We will be dropping by the TechSet Bloggers Lounge for that ourselves, so we will hopefully see you there (and hopefully in my Core Conversation with John Biehler on Friday March 12 at 330 called “Do the Cool Kids Leave When the Suits Arrive?” </plug>.

The idea behind the club house is still the same as when we did it in Las Vegas in 2007. There are a lot of folks in our community who go to the same conferences and we wanted a place where we many of us could stay together, make media and have a shared experience of it with each other. This creates opportunities to get to know each other, to learn, to see more of the conference through each others eyes, to be social and to create content.

After resurrecting the idea in Paris, France just a few months ago with the Social Media Club House at Le Web 2009, we are doing it even bigger and better down in Austin, TX. Inspired by Real World, Forbes and our own experiences, the Social Media Club House is a mashup of epic proportions (just enough to match the grandeur of SxSW itself I think so we are psyched to kick it off here).

Its one part group housing, one part live stream studio. It’s where Social Media Club will be reporting on SxSW and sharing our observations with our global community members. Its where we will be hosting some serious conversations like the Synaptic Web Summit and the Engagement Summit. It’s where we will host some special and intimate musical performances. It’s where Social Media Club will host its local leadership celebration for SMC organizers from around the world with a big BBQ from Salt Lick on Friday March 12 from 12-2pm. And it’s where Social Media Club and TechZulu will produce its daily recap livestream of what is happening in Austin throughout SxSW in conjunction with Justin.tv, Hootsuite and other media partners still to be announced.

And this blog post is your chance to join us in person as a resident of the Club House! It’s also a ’save the URL’ for Social Media Club members to tune into the reporting and live streaming we will be doing during SxSW from http://socialmediaclubhouse.com/, (new site and schedule coming early next week).

The Contest.

Starting today, we are looking to find one or possibly two Resident VJ’s for the Club House (yes video jockey’s, to call it a blog jockey would be NSFW). The chosen VJ will join myself and the other residents and reporters. In exchange for producing content on the Social Media Club House blog each day and contributing some video to our live stream and hopefully a bit more, we provide a sweet place to stay with a bunch of cool people and an experience to remember for a life time. It’s also a chance to break through and show you have mad skills, so be creative, this is your moment to shine. It’s not quite American Idol, but it will put you in a position to meet a lot of cool people and put your talent on display. More details on the terms of the contest are below.

When I was originally thinking of the contest, it was going to be open to paying Social Media Club members only, as a membership benefit. But after tweeting with Eric Berto I realized we should make it open to anyone over 21 who is willing to agree to our Club House terms below. I don’t want to be the guy saying pay 100 bucks so you can enter the contest and then maybe not win – that’s not the sort of membership experience anyone should have. In the future though, we will have some things open to only members (ie, this same opportunity). But that will only be after we can show you the value we will provide in our new members web site and we complete our upcoming reorganization (or initial organization as some of you may be thinking – ha).

Look, this contest is really simple, we want to have you producing great media with us each day out of the Club House. For that, you get to stay there with us and some other really cool people who will be announced very soon.

How to enter.

Shoot a video that is under 3 minutes (bonus for being awesome and doing it under 1 minute) telling us why you would be a great Resident VJ in the Social Media Club House. Send us an email to socialmediaclub at gmail dot com with your name, social url’s, phone number, the dates you are going to be in Austin, a link to your video entry online (please also tag it #SMCH) and a link to some blog posts you wrote from another conference you attended (whether live blogging it, summarizing a session, summarizing the experience, writing about the party scene, whatever it might be that you think would be relevant.)

DO THIS BEFORE 23:59 EST ON WEDNESDAY 24 FEBRUARY 2010

If you want to, you can also tweet at us with a link to your video and we will retweet it for others to see from the @socialmediaclub account.

The winner be chosen at the sole discretion of the Club House producers, a full list which will be published on this blog in the coming week but right now it includes me.

What we are offering is a chance to be our roomie for SxSW for either interactive, music, or possibly both. What we are asking for is that you serve as the resident club house VJ, reporting everyday on whats happening in Austin.

It’s gonna be fun.

Here is a simple statement of the general terms:

We provide you a bed in Austin, TX with a roof over it between March 11th-21st in this really cool house (ok, its a mansion, really) we rented on Lake Austin. There will be about a dozen or so other people staying there, maybe a couple more on some nights as a place of last resort for our friends and misplaced celebrities. Chances are several of the meals will be covered like the BBQ we are hosting for our Social Media Club chapter leaders, but you should be prepared to spend a little money here and there for food, transport and having fun. You cover your own travel (unless we get a last minute travel sponsor) to and from the Club House from wherever you are in the world. Winner must be 21 years of age or older so please don’t submit an entry if you are not. We are planning to have some transportation to and from the convention center daily as the house is 15 minutes away, but we can not guarantee it to be on call and it will not be available around the clock.

The bottom line is we think it would be cool to make some content together and we wanted to do a talent search to find someone to do it with us. Perhaps that is you…

Please Note: We would love to be more open with the Summits and other things we are doing in the Club House, but there are just some physical constraints that don’t allow for us to open it up to a big group. It’s intended to be more like a private studio then an event venue. The other thing is, the house is in a residential neighborhood, so out of respect for the house’s owner we just can’t do any public events here. So instead, the summits are essentially invited guests in an executive round table format to discuss the topic and stream it to the world. We are still seeking sponsors to offset the huge costs though, which is another way to participate.ur own experiences, the Social Media Club House is a mashup of epic proportions (just enough to match the grandeur of SxSW itself I think so we are psyched to kick it off here).

Paris is known as the City of Lights, and that is perhaps never more true than during the holiday season. Every street, every storefront, even every tree along the Champs de Elysees is glittery and alight with sparkle and shine. For Parisians who are truly in the know, however, as well as visitors who like the inside track, there is a shiny option year round. The site is called Briller en Ville, or “Shiny in the City”.

At this point, unless you speak French (or have a really good translator) unfortunately you’re out of luck as this year-old site and newsletter still only shares its secrets in French. If you can, however, it’s worth dipping into the site’s content because you’ll discover the hottest boutiques, restaurants and places to go.

What’s that you say? This sounds like Daily Candy? It may well be, but where Daily Candy always has felt to me targeted towards a distinctly younger crowd, Briller en Ville feels like it’s for grown-ups.

While at LeWeb 2008 I had the pleasure of meeting Briller en Ville’s founder, Juliette Dumas. She had only just started the site (focused mostly on the email newsletter), and had great aspirations for its growth. As the Social Media Club House posse began ruminating on plans for our days in Paris before LeWeb 2009, I immediately thought of Juliette and reached out to see if she’d be willing to give us a little carbon-based world experience of her digital domain.

She graciously agreed. The details of our walking tour come after the video … but first take a listen to Juliette’s overview of her business and how social media helps make places like Paris more accessible.

Meeting us at the Social Media Club House, Juliette had arranged a walking tour of our neighborhood, which was the 6th arrondissement.

Our first stop was Frederic Malle, a high end parfumerie where the top “noses” create custom scents for French society. Floor-to-ceiling glass cylinders stood in each corner of the room. These “smelling chambers” gave patrons an opportunity to experience various scents. We tried to take photos, but apparently the diffusing mechanism in the column is proprietary so they asked that we refrain. A pity because the sight of curious geeks peering into these tubes was quite amusing.

Next it was off to an aromatic experience of an entirely different ilk … or perhaps I should say milk. Barthelemy ranks consistently among the top cheese shops in all of Paris … and it was merely 3 blocks from our apartment. If sweet is your taste rather than savory, our next stop would appeal. La Patisserie des Reves takes the idea of a Parisian patisserie to an art form; and it’s no wonder. The pastry chef behind these truly beautiful creations is Philippe Conticini.

From there we wandered along rue de Bac, passing myriad design stores and an array of children’s stores. The one Juliette pointed out in particular, Bonton, is among the places to go for the well-dressed tykes in Paris. (If you’ve not already clicked the link for the store’s site, you’ll be glad to know that you can shop there online … and in English!)

We drooled on many a store window and proffered a cascading chorus of oohs & ahhs at amazing architecture and stunningly fashionable Parisians.

Then we got hungry.

So off to Cuisine de Bar - a tasty eatery attached to the famed Poilane Bakery.

Of course the first thing you want to see after eating lunch is clothing, especially bathing suits, and so we wandered by Eres Swimwear and Lingerie.

Very sexy stuff … if not a bit depressing … and what’s better for that, than chocolate. Thankfully we were around the corner from Maison du Chocolat where we saw this remarkable confection in the window:

At that point I had to scoot back to the Club House to get ready for Social Media Hour, and left my compatriots in Juliette’s capable hands for a quick wander through La Bon Marche.

My only complaint of the day … not enough time.

This article has been republished from the original source which can be found here Commentary