My mind is filled with questions as I ponder the history, culture, and current events of the region. I’ve heard so many positives and negatives, and it is with a great sense of curiosity and excitement that I travel to Israel and Jordan next week. In particular, I am anxious to meet some people from the tech community, although the timing is not great since most will be busy for year-end holidays and festivities. Still, I’ve been able to contact some thanks to the serendipity of Twitter, and hopefully this will reinforce bridges across the Atlantic. After all, looking at this picture of Tel Aviv, you’d think you were in Miami!

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!

This has been a turbulent year by most accounts, so I spent Thanksgiving remembering those who stuck by me through thick and thin:

Brian Breslin has been a constant friend as well as a partner in organizing RefreshMiami, BarCampMiami and building StartPR. When I struck out on my own earlier this year, Brian lent me office space: thank you. Whether it’s to bounce around an idea, startup something new, evangelize the South Florida new media community, or just chew the fat, he has been a welcome and much appreciated source of support. Yvette Ferry is another friend who also always present with good advice and great cheer through the best and the worst of this year, and I could not have made it without her either.

BarCampMiami was held in February 2008 just prior to FOWA, the Future of Web Apps Conference. About 16 sponsors and partners chipped in to make our BarCamp possible, where 300 people attended. People who had travelled from across the US, Latin America, and even Europe for FOWA, took time out to attend BarCamp. We could not have held the event without the help of Mel Kirk, who was with FOWA at the time, and from Nick Dominguez, Michael Montgomery, Yvette Ferry, Brian Breslin, Chris Saylor, and our local community (RefreshMiami) who helped spread the word about both BarCampMiami and FOWA.

We hope to three-peat BarCamp next February, now with a WordCamp organized by Alex Harris. A number of people are heping this year, including the already mentioned and Agustina Prigoshin, Christine Adolf, Ulisses Orozco, Michael Castilla, George Drage, and Christian “Fanless” Calzadillas.

The RefreshMiami community is a regular source of inspiration, motivation, and friendship for me, and I appreciate all that this passionate community of technologists and new media practitioners does throughout the year. They have enriched my life in ways untold. Thank you also to our great sponsors, including Ali and Eduardo at Brikolodge coworking, and the Yahoo! Latin America team.

Paul Kruger: thanks for your support and your advice.

Chris Heuer and Kristie Wells championed the Social Media Club and it is an honor to work with them at the national level as well as in organizing the new chapter of Social Media Club South Florida with Yvette Ferry, Christine Adolf, Agustina Prigoshin, Ulisses Orozco.

The Knight Center for International Media and the University of Miami School of Communication (UM SoC), where I teach social media and work on new media projects: in particular, I appreciate the help, encouragement, and friendship of Kim Grinfeder, Lelen Roberts (retired), Sanjeev Chatterjee, Christiane Delboni, Lauren Janetos, and Trevor Green. In addition to their support, they also push my limits and I’ve learned alot from them.

UM SoC students involved in the Knight Center, including Greg Linch, Walyce Almeida, Andrea Balloch, Matthew Byrnes, and Shell Jun Zhu. Among other things, they recently successfully petitioned to have a class on social media taught at the university, based on my syllabus. I am deeply honored by their collective action on my behalf and I look forward to great things from them. They are absolutely brilliant!

Mark Krupinski of Rasmussen College and Doterati in Orlando. He’s organizing a quickly growing and very active web/tech community in Central Florida and it’s been a real pleasure to work on some joint projects with him this year.

Mobile Monday Miami is a budding community of mobile phone professionals in South Florida, and my gratitude goes to Michael Tangemann and Jeffrey Sass as we get this started. We appreciate Nokia’s support with their sponsorship and hosting.

Alfredo Sanchez of QoS Labs, Victoria Edwards of The Collins Center for Public Policy, and Melissa Raulston of Florida State University, who included me on discussions about statewide digital divide issues with the objective of setting up a Florida 2.0 social network. It’s an ambitious task and a work in progress, but the interaction has opened new possibilities for all of us. I also appreciate Alfredo’s collegiality and the new doors he has opened for me.

Pat M., Laura V., Susan K., and Bill R.: thank you for looping me into your projects whenever you get the chance.

Shel Israel, Tara Hunt, Leah Jones, Fred Pullen: thank you. You know why.

It’s been amazing to work with such talented and motivated people throughout the year on such diverse projects. More than just colleagues, they have motivated me to see things in new ways and to learn new skills.

A huge word of thanks goes to the those who interact with me on Twitter, Flickr, and Facebook. Individually and collectively, they have propelled me forward and have propped me up. I can only hope that I am adding to my connections’ lives as much as they are adding to mine.

I am also thankful for my family and friends that I have not named here; I would have been toast without them! They know it, and they know who they are

Note: I apologize for any omissions, they are not intentional.

Quote attribution from the post title: “La reconnaissance est la mémoire du cœur.” -Jean-Baptiste Massieu, French ecclesiastic (1742 – 1818).

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.

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

We held our second MobileMonday Miami event last week!

Thanks to those who participated and thanks to Myk Willis, CEO and Founder of Myxer, who gave an awesome presentation of this fast-growing  mobile startup. Mobile Monday Miami co-organizer and co-founder Jeffrey Sass (pictured) graciously hosted the event at Myxer’s offices in Deerfield Beach.

MobileMonday is a global community fostering cooperation and business development through networking events to share ideas, best practices and trends in the mobile industry. We’re excited to create a mobile community in Miami and look forward to its continued growth. If you’re into mobile, you’re invited to attend and participate in our free events.

The next one will be on June 9th, 2008 at Nokia’s offices by the Miami Airport. If you’re interested in attending, please RSVP on the Facebook event page, or just get in touch with me.

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!

• 08:34 May 10 is Pangea Day – Cairo, Kigali, London, Los Angeles, Mumbai, Rio will be linked to produce powerful films: tinyurl.com/6bhp9c #
• 09:28 @shashib thanks for this picture of me, I’ll start using it as my new avatar flickr.com/photos/adc/2448343265/ #
• 09:33 Finally updated my ClaimID page, looking more like it should now: claimid.com/alexdc #
• 13:07 Listening to “Social networking and social marketing in the digital age” on NPR live.friendsofwlrn.org/ #
• 13:38 So the next Mobile Monday Miami is May 12th, hosted by @sass / Myxer. Please tell your non-Twitter mobile friends tinyurl.com/4zx7or #
• 14:10 It’s misguided put the word communityin quotes and in the same sentence w/ “consumer marketing arena” tinyurl.com/3qn4xo #borg #
• 14:12 <rant>Your “consumers” in their “communities” certainly don’t think of such spaces as”consumer marketing arenas”; neither should y … #
• 14:21 @bendtheweb I’d follow you here after hearing you on NPR but you’re not engaging in conversations, just sending out links to your own site. #
• 15:02 @lindasherman I haven’t given PD much thought … maybe I can do something for it with @1h2o www.flickr.com/groups/onewater/ #
• 15:34 This is verbatim: “Now, for the most *IMPORTANT* part of the community: buying that outfit” tinyurl.com/6hnlzr #
• 15:37 @cgranier @montgomery In same vein as revolutiontheme.com/ there’s also premiumnewstheme.com/ and quommunication.com/ #
• 15:44 @robertmurray LOL! You’re right – don’t ask @JamesatBabySpot I wonder whether Wet Seal did some market research before building this #
• 16:29 @aureliusmaximus @JamesatBabySpot Good post, we’re addressing a part of that with StartPR.com tinyurl.com/3f5rka #
• 16:30 @FreeRangeMom Precisely why I don’t spend much time at the mall #
• 16:54 @briansolis Congrats for this tinyurl.com/6xftuw #
• 18:21 Puzzled to see that over half of the ASUS eee PC’s home page is links to other sites? What’s the point? eeepc.asus.com/us/index.htm #
• 19:17 Looking forward to Refresh Miami two-year anniversary on Wednesday tinyurl.com/6ocf6h #
• 20:08 “I suspect that there’s a whole lot of clicking without a lot of thinking,” -Mary Madden, Pew Research Re: FB apps tinyurl.com/3lktqd #
• 21:43 Counting down about nine and a half hours to download “Violet Hill,” the new free Coldplay song www.coldplay.com/song.html #
• 21:45 The Coldplay site is all about a free song, show and site … and a nice bit of artwork, “Viva la Vida!” www.coldplay.com/index.html #
• 22:04 @loiclemeur Glad you and yours are fine #

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• 10:58 @GeoffLiving Agreed. Also, more fine-grained privacy control, app-request blocking and the new chat have breathed a lot of new life into FB. #
• 10:59 @montgomery @brbreslin You can figure out reciprocal follows by using “Twitter Karma”; Google it to find it. #
• 11:08 @BarbarKB No one disputes RL is more vital On the other hand, there’s arguably greater chance of serendipity online. A balance b/w both? #
• 11:13 @brbreslin Understood, I was responding more to @montgomery. Twubble partly does what you’re looking for, though not exactly. #
• 17:50 Nice, brief summary of the evolution of the Miami web-tech community, by @brbreslin tinyurl.com/3vw635 It’s been fun! @refreshmiami #
• 19:55 Will the Brazilian Real be on a par with the US Dollar in a year or two? (click on 5-yr graph) tinyurl.com/5oftpe #
• 20:28 @RichardAult If I think far back enough, I think I could have done this too www.flickr.com/photos/ault/1278303843 (great shot!) #

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• 07:39 Signed up for Twine, I’ve got a couple of invites left. If interested, DM me your email (thanks @bduperrin ) #
• 09:27 @benbinary I just signed up and didn’t have time to look through it. Not sure where the value add is. #
• 10:01 @cschick++ Retweet: Email- like pushing sand up a dune against the wind in the blaring sun with Tuaregs on camels bearing down on you. Fail. #
• 10:06 “Does the community gener8 enough content to sustain itself?” This is huge hurdle for social webservices. Quote from “Groundswell” @jbernoff #
• 10:25 @ebrage FriendFeed not really = Twitter b/c you can comment on individual tweets but can’t receive DMs or @ replies #
• 11:08 There should be a Flickr- or Vox- like Twitter service with both public tweets for all and private ones for selected friends & family. #
• 19:01 @ShariMcConahay I hear a new one’s already being planned, hope to see you then #
• 19:15 Excellent! A handy way to group your friends on FriendFeed ffapps.com/filters/ #
• 21:37 OMG It’s nighttime and the moon is orange-red and low on the horizon! I’ve never seen that! Rushing to park and take a picture … #
• 21:48 Wishing I had a tripod right now … #

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