As I drove home last night from Craig Agranoff’s “Pizza Tweetup”, I took a stroll down memory lane and thought of how far we’d come along as a community in three and a half years.

When I moved back to Miami, there were no new media meetups to speak of. I missed the Stormhoek geek dinner in May 2006, which was a one-off, and judging from the pictures, it looks like more jet-setters made it to the party than geeks.

Miami’s bloggers, web developers, designers and startup community in general mostly kept to themselves. Soon after I moved back, I lamented (April 2006):

“The South Florida blogging scene seems very laid back, as you might expect with the mix of great weather, beaching and boating … and perhaps a more conservative, “Southern” lifestyle. Relative to Paris, there seem to be fewer local blogs and no events to speak of”

As I look back now, that single blog post set off a chain of events in my life which led to the creation of four main meetup groups and the development of our vibrant community of new media professionals  (see Craig’s post: “South Florida has no tech community?”). These include RefreshMiami, BarCamp Miami, Mobile Monday Miami, and Social Media Club South Florida.

An hour or so after I lamented on my blog back then, Lori Leach Forster — a web designer I have not met and who has subsequently moved to Georgia — commented on my post and introduced me online to Brian Breslin, with whom I co-organize RefreshMiami. I wanted to set up a regular event and Brian spoke of creating a local chapter of Refreshing Cities. Although I hadn’t heard of Refresh, having lived in Paris and London for the past decade, it sounded like a good fit.

After a few months and many long threads on Google Groups, five of us showed up for our first meetup at a Starbuck’s on South Beach; we should have known better than to schedule a meetup in Miami  at noon on a sunny Spring Saturday! From that inauspicious beginning, Brian and I grew the organization to its current membership of over 1,500 South Florida web professionals and startups. Our monthly events gather 130 participants, on average, and have become a hub to meet new people, create friendships, and find job opportunities. RefreshMiami is held on the last Wednesday of the month. If you’re in town, you’re welcome to attend.

Five months later, I set the wheels in motion to develop Miami’s first  BarCamp. I had met Chris Messina at the first BarCamp in Paris and loved the experience and the concept of a “user-generated conference,” where participants create their own learning experience. Professor Kim Grinfeder of the University of Miami School of Communication helped secure space and sponsorship, and we held the event in February 2007. About 60 people attended, 5 companies sponsored, 15 participants presented, and The Miami Herald wrote up a nice article about it (archived). I have since organized two more BarCamps, one in February 2008, with  300 people, 15 sponsors and 35 presentations, and this year’s event, which counted 600 participants, 38 sponsors and 70 presentations. The community has embraced the BarCampMiami concept and similar events have recently been held or are in the works, including LaidOffCamp Miami and REBarCamp Miami (Real Estate).

After last year’s BarCamp, I started up a local chapter of  Mobile Monday Miami and invited Jeff Sass and Florian Seroussi to the board. Why Mobile Monday? I had worked for a number of years in mobile content distribution and had enjoyed attending MoMo meetups in Paris. Although our first meetup in Miami was about as well attended as the first RefreshMiami meetup, we held three more club meetings that year, including an excellent evening at Nokia Latin America’s Headquarters organized by Michael Tangeman. Michael and I fired up the club again this year and legitimized it by formally signing with the international organization. We’ve had some great events this year and club membership is growing. MoMoMiami meetups attendance averages about 45 people. Starting in August, MoMo Miami will be held on the first Monday of the month, unless we schedule a meetup adjacent to a local mobile conference. We are still  discovering our mobile ecosystem and are eager to meet you at one of our events.

Over the last few years, I had been talking to and exchanging emails with Chris Heuer, Founder of  the national organization of Social Media Club, about founding a local chapter in South Florida. There had been two previous attempts to set up a Social Media Club locally, but they had not panned out. I was working at Scrapblog at the time and would run into Chris at various web conferences, including Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco and BlogOrlando. We shared an obvious passion for social media technologies and implications for business.

In the Fall of 2008, I founded the local chapter of the Social Media Club of South Florida and we started holding our monthly meetups, which have grown from an average of 30 people per event in the beginning to over 100 people recently.

Nearly a year later, the Social Media Club of South Florida is a dynamic community of professionals from all types of businesses who meet monthly to learn about social media best practices and case studies. Club meetups are scheduled for the second Tuesdays of the month and we’d love to see you there.

All of my work was social media related and I could see working professionals trying to understand the subject. For example, Scrapblog shared office space with one of the top 5 global public relations firms; I could see the PR professionals’ long-term progression in understanding social media, from initial dismissal to grudging acceptance to implementing social media initiatives for clients. I saw the same thing at the university, where I taught one of the first full-semester courses on the subject in the nation, to University of Miami School of Communication students majoring in journalism and in public relations (and workshops for professors). I had also co-founded a startup with Brian Breslin, StartPR, which provides an online hosted service for social media tracking and blogger relations.

As I stroll down memory lane, my thoughts are on:

Serendipity — How a single blog post changed the course of my life and opened up a whole universe of possibility and opportunity.

Community — The unique sense of belonging that only comes from creating opportunities for others.

Transformation — Not only in terms of personal growth, but in particular I’m thinking about the transformation of the community into a more welcoming region for technologists and startups. We’re not there yet, but it’s a far cry from three years ago.

Gratitutde –For the innumerable people and resources that came into place at the right time to make these initiatives possible.

The future — We’ve only just started building a viable technology future for the region; there are many more challenges on the way as we vie for the attention of our local media, of the city, and of investors.

One step at a time.

I enjoy SXSW because I get a chance to meet most of the people I read, follow, and interact with throughout the year. They are all here this week.

I’ve been to this conference twice before, and this third time’s the charm: I’m honored to share the stage with co-panelists Peter Imbres, Scott Monty, and Andy Carvin for a talk about “Digital Tsunami: Breaking News at Breakneck Speeds”:

The news about the earthquakes in China broke on Twitter. A fake email from Apple posted on a blog sent the stock tumbling 5% in twenty minutes. How is the modern media landscape affecting crisis, both humanitarian and for major brands? Discuss with those enabling it and victimized by it.

While here, I plan to live blog to the extent possible, although there aren’t enough power outlets …

If you’re at SXSW, I hope well meet up!

Last night we celebrated another great year of RefreshMiami meetups (slideshow here).

During the year, our membership doubled as we accomodated about 35 presentations by South Florida new media startups, entrepreneurs, and freelance professionals. Our meetups were attended on average by 50 people, with some events drawing about 100. We’re particularly grateful to Yahoo! Hispanic Americas and to Brikolodge for hosting most of our meetups, as well as to our sponsors for providing the catering.

What’s in store for next year?

As the new media community continues to grow, we plan on providing more services throughout the year. This means we’ll look into incorporating as a non-profit early in the year, building a team, and setting objectives. It has been a rewarding adventure so far, and we look forward to our next stage of growth.

Thanks for taking part!

BlogOrlando gets better each year, I’m very glad I went. I of course enjoyed reconnecting with friends who flew in from across the country, seeing the Orlando tech community again, and meeting new people.

One of the highlights was getting firsthand case studies from the teams that manage(d) social media at major corporations: Jeff Rubenstein and Josh Hallett presented the Sony Playstation strategy; Paula Berg spoke about successes and learnings at SouthWest Airlines; and Jake McKee recapped his experiences at Lego.

The schedule was full of good topics, making it hard to choose which track to follow:

Leah Jones of Edelman Digital presented advanced search techniques, including the search engines and Boolean searches she makes. Here’s her presentation on Slideshare: “Going beyond Google”.
Nik Wilets, aka @tiburon, explained the difference between a photographer and a photojournalist, and had great examples of his own and other’s work. He was later followed by Etan Horowitz from the Orlando Sentinel, who spoke about the use of Twitter in Journalism.

Phil Gomes, also of Edelman, shared his experiences, tips, and techniques on giving internal education on social media within the large PR firm.
Spike Jones and Geno Church gave excellent presentations on “WOM and social media” and “Movements, activism, and social media”, respectively. Most interestingly, Geno spoke about creating and building the Fiskateers community, for one of the oldest companies in the world, Finnish scissor maker Fiskars. Community is not about the scissors, it’s about the higher purpose.

I’ve been going up to Orlando tech events, and each time it’s reassuring to see the tech community grow and organize itself. They’ve made great progress in the last few months since BarCampOrlando, which was the catalyst for many of the groups and initiatives. Pictured are Alex Rudloff, Ryan Price, and Gregg Pollack, who summarized the history and the many things going on. Here’s a video of their 30-minute preso.

I also saw David Alston from Radian6 speak about brand monitoring (disclaimer: I co-founded StartPR), but unfortunately missed David Parmet’s session on education and Jake’s session on identity.

Overall, it was great to meet up with such brilliant and engaged people, and best of all, it happened in Florida

Update: Some of the sessions are archived here on ustream.

miami blogger dinner at los ranchos, originally uploaded by alexdecarvalho.

Continuing what has been a stellar year in Miami in terms of online conferences, the The Word of Mouth Marketing University came to town. To welcome some our friends from out of town who came to speak at the event, including Rohit Bhargava, Joseph Jaffe, JC Hutchins and Jason Anello, we organized a blogger dinner last night:

Brian Breslin of infinimedia

Joseph Jaffe of Crayon

Jay Berkowitz of Ten Goden Rules

By the way, Josh Hallett snapped some great photos at WOMMU, some of which appear on WOMMU’s good live blog. Have a look!

  RefreshMiami Anniversary 
  Pictured: Kristen Taylor and Dan Rubin.

On Wednesday, May 2nd, we celebrated the two-year anniversary of RefreshMiami! When a few of us first met at a Starbuck’s in South Beach on May 5th, 2006 (Brian Breslin, Chris and Rebecca Saylor, Robert Murray and I), little did we know how significantly the RefreshMiami community would impact our lives. As Brian writes on the RefreshMiami blog:

“So its been 2 years. Wow. In the last 2 years I have either met or interacted with hundreds of great people in the south florida tech community. Lots of people have gotten jobs, made friends, and had a great time. So with that in mind, I think its time we celebrate.“

Celebrate we did! Here are some photos. Michael Tangeman compares RefreshMiami to the First Tuesdays and such of the early dot.com days (see also comments on his post):

“It is so refreshingly unlike the dot.com days here in Miami. No suits, no VCs just flown in from the Valley, no investment bankers looking to take somebody public, no lawyers handing out cards and wanting to get in on the deals. The talk is about technology and apps and projects and what people are up to, not about shares and options and exit strategies.”

If you’re new to Miami and looking to meet and connect with other web entrepreneurs, developers and designers in South Florida, here’s how to participate:

1) join the 220 member strong RefreshMiami Google Group for discussion on local tech issues, job postings and more;

2) join our group on Facebook;

3) if you’re on LinkedIn, we just started a group there. Here’s the link to join;

4) Subscribe to the RefreshMiami blog;

5) Come to our next meetup! Our next event is on May 28th in Coconut Grove … see you there!

BarCampMiami came and left us some great memories. David Parmet and Michael Tangeman wrote up summaries; here are my Flickr photos tagged BarCampMiami08 and unbeknownst to me, Michael recorded a video of the introduction to BarCamp:

Thanks in no small part to the Future of Web Apps conference and to the RefreshMiami group, close to 300 people participated in BarCampMiami. Over 35 presentations were given, including a sneak preview of Kevin Marks’ Open Social presentation the next day at FOWA.

We have Nick Dominguez, Michael Montgomery, Chris Saylor, Brian Breslin and dearYvette to thank for helping organize our event. The folks at the Adrienne Arsht Center of the Performing Arts were most helpful by allowing us to stay past closing hours and by lending us extra rooms. A special shout out goes to Mel Kirk and Ryan Carson at Carsonified, who graciously invited BarCampMiami in their venue for FOWA.

Most of all, we have all the participants to thank, who made this such a rich experience. The participants run BarCamp and they made this one great.

Uploaded with Skitch!

After a succesful road trip in Europe, The Future of Web Apps is holding its next conference in Miami, in February ’08. In preparation, Mel Kirk from Carsonified will be in town this weekend to scope out venues and organize the event. Dan Rubin and I have set up a dinner this Sunday October 28th at 7:00pm on Lincoln Road to meet Mel and discuss the event. Please RSVP on the Facebook event page or leave a comment here so we can get an idea of the numbers to reserve the location.

Also see this blog post, where Brian Oberkirch’s looking for suggestion’s for speakers, and don’t forget to join the FOWA Crowdvine socnet (my profile is here).

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