If you haven’t heard there are about 432 million events/parties/conferences going on this month. If we’ve missed anything leave us details in the comments.

Wednesday 3.3 Ignite Dallas: Mike Merrill is speaking “For the Love of Bacon — America’s Cult Meme”

Thursday 3.4 Come see Cynthia speak on Personal Branding at Social Business Bootcamp. Social Media Club members can get a discount by registering here.

Tuesday 3.9 DFW American Marketing Association Mike Merrill is speaking on The Age of Brandividual: How Leveraging Social Media can have a Profound impact on your Personal and Company Brand

Tuesday 3.9 7pm: The Official Unofficial SXSW Sendoff Pre-party Presented by Team CJ.

Wednesday 3.10: Our Tweetup of course at La Duni Northpark

Saturday 3.13 @11am (in Austin for SXSW): Colin & Alyssa’s panel Citizen Journalism Brigade — Making Your Voice Matter

Monday 3.15 @ 3:30pm (in Austin for SXSW): Elysa’s panel at SXSW Why Gen Y Wants to Work ‘With’ You, Not ‘For’ You

Tuesday 3.23 @ 6pm: Jason Falls is our featured speaker for the Social Media Club. Register on Eventbrite before we sell out.

Tuesday 3.23 & Wednesday 3.24: Optimization Summits

PubCon South will roll into Dallas on April 13 — 15, 2010, and according to them,  “whether this is your first or your tenth PubCon, we will have the speakers, tracks, sessions, networking events and parties that are bound to make this one of the top search and social media events of 2010.”

PubCon Dallas will have top keynote speakers and a full slate of sessions focused on the hottest technology trends to bring all our attendees business knowledge and solutions that go far beyond what other conferences offer, making PubCon’s reputation as the conference that starts where others finish more fitting than ever before. PubCon Dallas will feature sessions dedicated to pure search engine optimization and organic search, search engine marketing, social media marketing and more.

PubCon South at Dallas will be held at the Richardson Conference and Civic Center, 411 West Arapaho Road, Suite 102, Richardson, Texas 75080.

SMC has partnered with PubCon to offer our members a special discount. When you register, enter the code sm-20915.  A few things you need to be aware of regarding the code:

o               It offers 15% off whatever the current price is when a person registers.  (Currently $599 but the price will increase as they get closer to the event.)

o               The discount can be applied to the Full Access Conference Pass (Gold Pass) but cannot be used for the Professional Search Training event which takes place the day before the conference.

o               The code is valid until April 1.

To register, visit https://secure.pubcon.com/register.htm

With tonight’s event only hours away, I thought I’d pass on a little insight on how to make the best of tonight (and future) SMCDallas events. First, if you’re wondering Rawk* was directly stolen from a panel I attended at SXSW ’09. *I accept no responsibility for steal fun spellings of the word rock.

10. Stalkerific: I am an advocate of social media stalking, but only in the non-creepy way. Follow the conversations throughout the days (and weeks) prior to the event to see what’s being said.

9. Dress to Impress: If you don’t have a SMC Dallas shirt yet, bring $20 … end of discussion. There’s a cool kids club, price of admission one very awesome shirt designed by Alyssa Gardina.

8. Get your handshake on: Figure out before the event who you must meet at the event. If you’ve sharpened your stalking skills you will have already twitter stalked at least the leadership team. I’m just sayin’.

7. Do what yo mama taught you and say Thanks: Be sure to give a shout out to our fabulous sponsors. They also like Yelp reviews and for people *ehm YOU* to buy their products.

6. Bring bacon for Mike: or let us know your “how to rawk SMC” tip … you decide

5. Spread the love: Tweet, Facebook, Blog, scribble on your moleskin your favorites from the event and be sure to pass the word.

4. Geekup Tweetup: The afterparty, be there

3. Buy Aaron (insert all future speaker’s names) a drink: If I have to spell this one out for you …

2. Business Cards — we all haz them: Please for the love of Chris Brogan don’t go shoving business cards in people’s face.

1. Come back next time. Register early!

Disclaimer: My advice is 87% joking — there may have been caffeine, lack of sleep and inside jokes used in the making of this blog post. Hey if you can’t laugh with your social media nerd friends who can you laugh with?

PS: Mike added on Twitter: Don’t forget to check in on Foursquare at Moroch!

We want to hear from you … how do you rawk SMC Dallas?

Check out this great interview with Chris Brogan, taken at out January event by SMC Dallas regular Chris Yates of Huddle Productions.

It’s hard to contain my excitement that I finally get to come to Dallas and spend time with folks involved with the Social Media Club chapter there. Mike Merrill and I have been talking back and forth about what is happening there for a while now and I enjoy nothing more than hanging with like-minded folks and learning about what you’re doing with social media. Safe to say March 23 has a big circle on my calendar.

My travels bring me to Dallas to speak at the Optimization Summits Dallas Workshop, which is a pretty heady group of Internet marketing and communications minds providing an intensive, two-day workshop for folks in the area. The speakers include myself, John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing, Geno Church from Brains on Fire, long-time industry thought leader Mack Collier, Jay Ehret, your very own Giovanni Gallucci … and that’s just the ones I could think of off the top of my head. It’s going to be a fun event with a lot of practical, real-world learning.

Being that I’m a Social Media Club guy, I figured I’d ask Tammy Siewruk, who is putting on the event, if there wassomething she could do to let me get some of you in to the conference. Much to my surprise (I was thinking of giving away a couple passes), she said, “How about I give SMC Dallas members $125 off registration?”

I almost fell out of my chair! To my knowledge, no one else is getting this type of discount (though I’m sure someone will hear about it now and ask Tammy to extend the offer to them). So it’s an SMC Dallas Exclusive for the time being.

Thanks to her generosity, YOU get $125 off the cost of a two-day workshop that only costs $429. (Cheap compared to similar conferences and boot camps with the same types of speakers.) All you have to do is register and use the code “FallsVIP” when prompted for such.

The event is being held at the Sheraton Dallas and includes some networking events that will give you some good time with speakers and attendees. Please consider coming. It would rock for you to be there.

Okay — Enough of the sales pitch. Oh, and for full disclosure’s sake, Tammy keeps track of that FallsVIP code which serves as an affiliate thing for me, so yeah, if you come I think I get a cheeseburger or something out of it. If you want to pay $125 more and I get nothing, that’s totally cool by me. Just don’t use the VIP code.

Now back to you! Mike asked me to come prepared to talk to you folks about case studies and proof points for social media. I’m not planning on anything different, but I want to know what you’d like me to talk about when I’m there. Please hit me via email at jason — at — socialmediaexplorer.com or send me a Twitter message and tell me what you want to hear. For that matter, drop a comment here and I’ll use all that feedback to bring you what you want to hear in the 20 minutes or so I officially have the floor on March 23. It’s important for me to feel like you got out of the event what you wanted or needed, but I can’t read your mind. What can I provide that will make SMC Dallas valuable for you in March? I’m all ears. Please register here.

Beyond that, please plan on coming March 23. I’m super-excited to come to Dallas. Mike called me when the organization there was first getting organized and I offered up my experiences with SMC Louisville as some pointers. I feel like I’m a (very small) part of SMC Dallas and can’t wait to meet everyone. See you soon!

We are pleased to announce the introduction of our student discount program. Current students of local colleges or universities are eligible to receive a discount to attend Social Media Club of Dallas (SMC Dallas) events. Part of the mission of SMC Dallas is to promote media literacy to those involved in the industry and that includes college students.

Students are the forefront of the next generation. They are the emerging leaders that are here to forge new ground in the social media realm. Attending SMC Dallas events offers great benefits such as networking with local social media practitioners, corporate marketers, and agency professionals. More importantly, our group offers opportunities to learn from experts in the ever-changing social media and digital profession while keeping up to date with industry standards and ethics.

Students interested in attending a future SMC Dallas event can contact Kat Farmer (kathleen[at]smcdallas[dot]org) and she will verify your enrollment in a university. Once enrollment is verified we will produce a discount code and send it to you for registration. Kat will maintain a list of all those verified to speed up the process for repeat attendees. We’ll continue university outreach by contacting local universities and strengthening awareness of the organization at the university level.

We look forward to seeing you at an upcoming event.

Dallas showed its Southern hospitality last Thursday night when it welcomed social media godfather and NYT best-selling author, Chris Brogan, to town.  Chris lived up to his reputation, providing insights into the art of translating human-interaction into sales transactions.

Here are a few photographic highlights from the event.  More photos can be found on the SMC Dallas Flickr page.

For those of you who didn’t make it to the event, Cynthia Smoot, made a video recap of highlights from the night. The lighting inside the theater was dimmed for the screen, so it’s not the best quality — but it’s Chris’ talk, not his looks, that should make you want to watch this!

We enjoyed seeing new faces at this event and hope to see you all back for February’s event with Aaron Strout!

Fortunately, the Social Media Club of Dallas continues to grow in size as we drive more awareness and people understand the power of social media and content marketing to have an impact on how they do business and engage customers. A big part of that credit goes to our members who share the event with co-workers and other marketing and business professionals.

Our event this past Thursday with Chris Brogan definitely expanded our reach regionally. However, our last several events have been sold out due to space constraints so it’s time to look for a new venue. We have been very thankful to Moroch | Partners for hosting us. Therefore, we have decided to crowdsource suggestions from our members.  I have already been talking with numerous friends and members of the team about the ideal location and requirements.

Our Wishlist

As you know we depend on sponsors to fund much of the activity of the club. We also focus on an evening so we can host a post tweetup to drive the most effective networking environment. Besides, we are social animals anyways.

Below is a list of the ideal attributes of a new location.

1. Location: Anywhere from Downtown Dallas to Addison between 75 and Dallas North tollway or very close to one of those highways. No further north than Beltline.
2. Capacity: Minimum of 150 people to 250
3. WiFi: Free access to WiFi that can support at least 75–100 concurrent users
4. No charge for venue or significant discount
5. Ability to bring in our own catered food — Since we depend on in-kind food sponsors this is critical
6. High-end AV: Ideally you can support up to 2 wireless microphones and two projectors at the same time. We would also like the ability to capture sound as well. A huge thanks to Derek Schaefer of @orangecast for capturing sound at our Chris Brogan event and to Cynthia Smoot @OhSoCynthia for capturing video.
7. Minimum of 6 month commitment to agreed upon dates
8. Free parking or comped valet

What does our new potential venue receive?

1. Enhanced image and reputation through access and association with the marketing influencers of the DFW area. Not only are many of these folks in PR and corporate marketing, but they also are engaged in planning events in the Dallas area. What a great opportunity to get your venue in front of a very influential crowd.
2. Online publicity and media coverage. Your venue will be promoted frequently online via Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Eventbrite, Plancast, and blogs of many of our members.
3. Photos and video of your venue shared throughout the web. With many of our members posting photos and videos on YouTube, Flickr and their social media streams, this is free publicity and exposure.
4. Location-Based application mentions. Many of our members regularly leverage applications such as Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite, and Yelp to share with their social networks where they are.
5. Promotion at the event and the opportunity to share promotional offers with our guests at the event.
6. The ability to personally network with many of the most influential marketers in the DFW area.

If you know of a potential venue that fits these requirements or very close please contact me via twitter @mikedmerrill or provide suggestions and potential contacts in the comments section below. We are willing to work with a potential in-kind venue to make this work.

As a former road warrior at Dell, I know the challenges of managing multiple flights, hotels and rental cars. Often I was in 5 different cities in 5 days. The biggest challenge was having to add all of the travel details into my outlook calendar. While traveling can have it’s perks like good food and loyalty programs, missing a flight due to arriving at the wrong gate or not having a confirmation number to check-in can be a total suck failure, as my daughter would call it.

Fortunately, TripCase is a mobile app, with a web interface that allows you to manage all your travel details in the palm of your hand. The screenshot to the left is what we used yesterday to pick up Chris Brogan at the airport.

Push Notifications

One of the most helpful features of TripCase is the integration of push notifications. I can’t tell you how many times I showed up to one terminal at DFW only to find they switched terminals or gates on different ends of the same terminal. TripCase will not only ping you if the gate changes but also if the flight gets delayed. While traveling to #ABQ over the holidays, both of these events happened and I wasn’t even aware of the feature. TripCase is available for iPhone, Blackberry and Windows Mobile devices.

TripLog

Another great feature is their TripLog function which allows you to post photos and details about places on your trip and share with others. I also add my spouse to the notifications so she has all my information as well, which is great should she want to know where I’m at on a given day.

The Social Media Club of Dallas is delighted to have TripCase as a sponsor for our event with Chris Brogan tonight.

Download the App here for iPhone

The Social Media Club of Dallas is looking forward to an outstanding 2010 with a great line up of speakers and of course our big event on January 21st, with the one and only Chris Brogan. As we start to plan the growth of the organization, we also wanted to brand the logo to Dallas. If you have been on twitter for a while you may have seen some of the Social Media Clubs that have branded their logo to their respective city.

With this in mind we have been evaluating options and thanks to Alyssa Gardina, we have our new logo. You should see this at our event January 21st and we’ll start to update all of our online outposts as well.

We look forward to seeing you all very soon.