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!
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
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 are in the process of relaunching Social Media Club in South Florida ↩
