Yes Virginia – There is Social Media for Social Change - #SMB11 Recap by Bob Collins
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed individuals can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” - Margaret Mead
In case you hadn’t heard, this week’s Social Media Breakfast in Boston (SMB11) was pretty special. In keeping with the season, the theme was “Social Media for Social Change,” with three outstanding presentations by some of Boston’s most active Social Media Community leaders’ involved with educating, training and supporting fund raising efforts for non-profits and charitable organizations.
Beth Kanter, World Recognized Trainer, Blogger and Consultant to Non-Profits in Effective Use of Social Media
As part of the Social Good themed breakfast – we wanted to showcase in real-time the power of rallying and engaging a networked community.The amazing Beth Kanter introduced Ed Nicholson, director of community & PR at Tyson Foods, into the mix and presented a challenge to Boston’s Social Media Breakfast community.
The Challenge: Tyson Foods will donate 100 lbs. of food (up to a truckload full with 35,000 pounds) toThe Greater Boston Food Bank for every single comment left on their Hunger Relief website. We needed 350 community driven comments to fill the full truck donation. Tyson has been involved in similar such campaign drive in the Austin and Bay Area SMBs. We just wanted to see if Boston could do a li’l better!
Within 3 hours of launching the social media experiment during the breakfast our local community had rallied their online pals to generate over 550 comments on Tyson’s Hunger Relief website.
Due to the dramatic first wave of comments, which did indeed outpaced the Austin and Bay Area drives, Tyson decided to double-down on their support. In the end, Tyson Foods has pledged to provide 70,000 lbs. of food — the equivalent of approximately 54,000 meals — to the food bank.
All this Re-Tweeting and blog posting was happening behind the scenes at the breakfast as people mixed, mingled, networked and Gradon Tripp, Frank Days and Beth Kanter delivered some great insights and experienced in building communities, igniting passions and support through social media for social change.
Here are some of the videos, slide decks and blog post recaps coming out of
SMB11.
Social Media Breakfast Ottawa 5’s recap post is authored by Melany Gallant (who is graciously helping me out given that I did not take proper notes). The item is cross-posted to Melany’s blog.
Well the weather sure can put in a wrench in things (so can transit strikes but that’s a whole other story.) Bryan Person, planned guest speaker for today’s Social Media Breakfast (SMB) Ottawa event got stranded in Boston. After three flight cancellations he had to admit defeat. He wasn’t going to make it.
Disappointing as that is, today’s event was still great. Organizers rallied and brought together Joe Thornely of Thornley Fallis and ProPR.ca and moderator James Lewis (Executive Director of the Canadian Interactive Alliance) to lead a discussion on social media happenings in 2008.
Since starting the first Social Media Breakfast in August 2007, Bryan Person has seen the Breakfast idea turn into a franchise, spreading from Boston to over a dozen cities in the US, Singapore and Canada.
What’s a brand without a logo? To that end, the various Breakfast organizers have come up with several options. We’ve been debating the choices among ourselves and we’ve narrowed down the options to the following four. We’d like your help to pick one.
Note: The inclusion of specific cities in the logo are for example purposes only. Each city will have the option to add its own name to the final logo.
To see the logos at full size, please click the thumbnails below:
Logo 1 Logo 2 Logo 3 Logo 4
As well, we welcome your comments below. We’ll spend the next week or so gathering your votes and feedback, and then be back in touch to announce the winner. Thanks!
Social Media is booming in Memphis, and we proved it at the December Social Media Breakfast! 50 guests, ranging from social experts to brand-new beginners, came to this month’s breakfast at Owen Brennan’s on Poplar. Many of them were drawn by the breakfast’s recent mention in Memphis’ largest newspaper, the Commercial Appeal. This was the last breakfast of the year and it proved to be an incredible turnout. The Memphis Social Media Breakfast is hosted by Dave Barger of LunaWeb.
The morning kicked off “officially” with a home-run presentation. We were lucky to have Jason Orendorff from Mozilla as our guest speaker this month. He showed us some great Firefox features and some very useful social tools built into the browser. Jason also gave us insight into the intricacies of running a company like Mozilla using thousands of volunteers and a mere 150 paid employees.
After Jason’s presentation, we broke out into core groups to discuss topics that were chosen by the audience in traditional BarCamp style. Discussions included: - Video
- Community ROI
- Social Media 101
- Best Practices
- The Broken Web
- Mobile
Several of the attendees left their groups with plans to meet again later in the month to continue their conversations.
We’re truly excited to watch our next project, the Social Media Expedition, evolve, and we foresee it bringing lot of positive growth to the Memphis business community and beyond. If you were unable to attend, you can look for information on the next breakfast at our meetup page. Make sure you’re there next month to join the Expedition!
Hi everyone! I thought I’d let you know about the upcoming Social Media Breakfast – Twin Cities on December 19th. It’s a Holiday version of the event, meant to be fun and unstructured.
We will be meeting at the Lake Elmo Inn Event Center, where we’ll have a full breakfast buffet with all your breakfast favorites (including bacon!), served during the entire event. The Lake Elmo Inn has great food, and is a consistent reader’s choice winner in Mpls./St. Paul Magazine, with great facilities and excellent food.
This is a pay event and costs $20 per person. Registration will be open through Dec. 16th and there are only 60 seats available, so don’t wait! Click Here to Register
We’ll be having a great morning with the story of Ratchet, related by Katie Konrath. If you didn’t hear the story, it’s one of community, social media, and compassion coming together to make something happen. One of the great examples of our interest and commitment to social media on a personal level.
Also, we will have an “open mic” for you to share your stories from past events, or to talk about things that Social Media Breakfast has enabled for you. Tell folks what exciting new ideas you’re working on or what you do.
Along with that, we’ll have much more time to talk and trade stories on a more intimate setting, with smaller groups and less pressure to adhere to an agenda. Bring your ideas or stories and share with the folks at your table or the one next to you.
So come enjoy our most exciting event, our 10th event in Minneapolis & St. Paul, our first full breakfast, and probably the best chance to simply connect with more of the SMBMSP crowd than you’ve had a chance to previously.
I look forward to seeing everyone who can make it! If you want to make it, but don’t have a ride lined up, direct message or “@” smbmsp on Twitter and we’ll do our best to connect a some folks together
When:
Friday, December 19th, 2008 from 8am to 10am
Boston’s next Social media Breakfast is set for Wednesday, December 10, from 8:00-10:30am, at Ryles Jazz Club in Inman Square, Cambridge.
The theme for SMB 11 is social media for social change and features three of Boston’s most active social-media community leaders. From presentations on aiding women’s shelters in downtown Boston to raising money to support Cambodian orphans, SMB 11 will focus on the new ways social media can be used to make a difference in people’s lives.
The Presenters
Gradon Tripp - social media and design aficionado, and founder of SM4SC
Beth Kanter - world-recognized trainer, blogger and consultant to non-profits in effective uses of social media
Frank Days - soccer dad, social media gadfly, and COO of Firstgiving.
Attendees are encouraged to bring canned goods and non-perishable foods to the Wednesday morning breakfast. Here are the Greater Boston Food Bank’s donation guidelines and donation recommendations (PDF)
FirstGiving is a leading social platform for fundraising for nonprofit causes, giving everyday people tools and resources to raise money for causes that matter to them. Since 2003, Firstgiving has helped 17,000 nonprofit organizations and 1.4 million donors and fundraisers raise over $77 million for their causes.
Marketwire is a leading newswire service offering press release distribution, media-contact management, multimedia, media monitoring services and other workflow solutions for public relations, investor relations, journalists and other communications professionals.
Registration waiting list
Please visit the SMB 11 registration page. At the time of this posting, SMB 11 is already sold out. To add your name to the waiting list, please e-mail Bob Collins at Bob - AT - SHIFTComm - DOT - com
Online resources
Directions to the Ryles Jazz Club Free and metered parking is available. Nearest T stops: Central Square and Harvard Square on the Red Line.
3. Tim reminded us that a medium is just a “means of human communication.” Media include everything from printed newspapers and blogs to smoke signals and church sermons.
4. Messages easily jump from one medium to the next “because people want to communicate;” they also “tend to use the media available to them for much the same human purposes over time.”
5. Was Martin Luther that different from today’s blogging superstars? He knew how to take advantage of a new technology of his day, the printing press (not to mention word of mouth), to spread ideas and build community.
6. How did Bob Hope stay so popular throughout his life? He knew how to port what was essentially the same act across multiple media (vaudeville, radio, television, etc.) through the years.
7. Corporate bloggers who only talk about their products and services would be wise to take a cue from Tim’s neighborhood hardware merchant, who will refer Tim to another store when he doesn’t have the product Tim needs on a particular day. In so doing, the merchant gains Tim trust and becomes a resource Tim will willingly come back to again and again.
8. Tim echoed Chris Brogan’s sentiment that newspapers are not in the newspaper business. Rather, they’re in the newsmaking business and need to deliver that news through whatever media/device their customers demand (newspaper, website, RSS, mobile phone, etc.). Understanding that distinction, Tim said, is crucial to papers’ survival and evolution.
9. Tim suggests that we’re only in the very early stages of development of social media, and that associated unpredictable social, economic, and personal changes are still very much to come.
10. Once again, Austin’s social media community showed its enthusiasm and willingness to come together, share, and learn.
Listen to Tim
Thanks to Karen Kreps, we have an audio recording from Tim’s presentation. Click below to stream or download.
Come to the fourth Cincinnati Social Media Breakfast to listen, share, network and learn along with other area marketing and new media professionals.
Content marketing is the theme of this free, morning event as ShareThis CEO Tim Schigel leads a discussion on how web users want instant access to their favorite content and are using technology to keep up with what’s important to them in their increasingly self-defined, online worlds.
It’s a free event, complete with breakfast, thanks to Game Day Communication’s sponsorship. Join us on Tuesday, December 16th from 7:30 am until 9:30 am at the Reds Hall of Fame.
Event Tag: Please tag all event content with #cincysmb4
Registration:Click here to register. **Registration is required and limited to 40 attendees. If the event is sold out, please leave a comment below to be added to our waiting list. **
Date:Tuesday, December 16th from 7:30 am until 9:30 am
Questions? Contact Carla Franke via Carla DOT Franke AT gmail DOT com or Kevin Dugan via prblog AT gmail DOT com
About ShareThis:ShareThis lets millions of people easily share the things they find online, in the most convenient way possible. ShareThis consolidates address books and friend lists, so that anything can be shared immediately, without even leaving a webpage. It is becoming increasingly difficult to keep up with the growing number of web sites and social web communities. ShareThis lets you instantly access all of your profiles, blogs, friends, and contacts for easy sharing and updating.
About Game Day Communications:Game Day Communications was founded in 2002 by former ESPN anchor Betsy Ross as a public relations firm specializing in sports and entertainment. The firm serves clients around the country cultivating existing and new relationships with media and consumer influencers with a personalized approach using the latest in technology.
About The Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame: Bring your cameras as we experience this one of a kind, historic space. The Reds Hall of Fame and Museum is located downtown on the west side of Great American Ball Park along Main Street. Directions are located here.
About Social Media Breakfast: Social Media Breakfast was founded by Bryan Person in August 2007 as an event where social media experts and newbies alike come together to eat, meet, share, and learn. Marketers, PR pros, entrepreneurs, bloggers, podcasters, new-media fanatics, and online social networkers are all welcome to attend. The breakfast series began in Boston and has now spread to cities throughout the U.S. and around the world.
We will be meeting at the 
