I’m hon­ored to be counted among the peo­ple invited to give new impe­tus to the Social Media Club. Through con­ver­sa­tions with com­pa­nies, orga­ni­za­tions, local uni­ver­si­ties, and inter­ac­tive agen­cies, I’ve expe­ri­enced the grow­ing inter­est in social media and the increased demand for indus­try prac­ti­tion­ers. By bring­ing together those who have an inter­est in see­ing the indus­try improve and evolve, SMC pro­vides the much needed forum for shar­ing best prac­tices, estab­lish­ing ethics and stan­dards, and pro­mot­ing media lit­er­acy. [1. We are in the process of relaunch­ing Social Media Club in South Florida]

The interim board will estab­lish the guide­lines of this asso­ci­a­tion, to cre­ate the nec­es­sary frame­work before the SMC grows fur­ther on a national and global level. Once the frame­work is agreed on, local boards will be estab­lished with inter­ested cor­po­rate and non-corporate mem­bers. Please read the full press release if you’d like to know more.

As we col­lab­o­rate on on orga­niz­ing SMC for the future, Chris Heuer, founder of Social Media Club and Part­ner at The Con­ver­sa­tion Group, acknowl­edges that:

“Our core mis­sion will remain the same: pro­mo­tion of media lit­er­acy; sup­port of indus­try stan­dards efforts such as Cre­ative Com­mons licens­ing, Micro­for­mats, Data Porta­bil­ity and OpenID; dis­cus­sion and pro­mo­tion of eth­i­cal behav­ior; and shar­ing our knowl­edge among our mem­bers and the indus­try com­mu­nity at large.”

The newly named mem­bers of the interim board, some of whom are friends and oth­ers who I look for­ward to meet­ing, include:

• Lee Aase — Social Media Uni­ver­sity, Global
• Rohit Bhar­gava — Influ­en­tial Mar­ket­ing Blog and Per­son­al­ity Not Included
• Richard Bin­ham­mer — Richar­dat­Dell
• Michael Brito — Britopian and Con­ver­sa­tions Matter
• Chris Bro­gan — ChrisBrogan.com
• Mike Chap­man — Austin Social Media Club and Every Dot Connects
• Megan Cole — MeganCole.org
• Alex de Car­valho — alexdc.org and Social Object
• Todd Defren — SHIFT Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and www.pr-squared.com
• Ser­ena Ehrlich — Busi­ness Wire
• Jason Falls — Social Media Explorer
• Mag­gie Fox — Social Media Group
• Jon Gatrell — spatiallyrelevant.org
• Howard Green­stein — HowardGreenstein.com
• Francine Hard­away — Stealth­mode
• Josh Hal­lett — Hyku
• Annie Heck­en­berger — pikpr.blogspot.com and redspurs.com
• Chuck Hes­ter — Intel­li­con­tact
• Chris Heuer — ChrisHeuer.com
• Sherry Heyl — Mind Blog­ging
• Tara Hunt — HorsePig­Cow
• Bill John­ston — Forum One
• Jen­nifer McClure — Soci­ety for New Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Research
• Mike McGrath — Dog­patch Dispatch
• Jake McKee — CommunityGuy.com and Ant’s Eye View
• Gre­gory Narain — SocialTwister
• Lee Odden — Online Mar­ket­ing Blog and TopRank
• Erica OGrady — ReinventingErica.com and Peanut But­ter Media
• Jere­miah Owyang — Web Strate­gist
• David Parmet — Mar­ket­ing Begins At Home, LLC and Per­kettPR
• Jackie Peters — heavy­Blog
• Doug Pollei — pollei.com
• Pierre-Yves Pla­tini — Yoono
• Dou­glas Pollei — Pollei.com
• Con­nie Reece — Every Dot Con­nects and Austin Social Media Club
• Chris Saad — ChrisSaad.com
• Andy Ser­novitz — Word of Mouth Mar­ket­ing and GasPedal
• Brian Solis — PR2.0
• J.J. Tooth­man — jjtoothman.net and Red Pill
• Todd Van Hoosear — Tech PR Gems
• Des Walsh — Des Walsh dot Com
• Kristie Wells — KristieWells.com