Final Thoughts on Social South

There’s a lot being said about Social South in the blogosphere and the Twitterverse. In fact, there are so many good things being said that it’s tough for me to come up with original thoughts. That, though, says a lot about how effective Social South was.

So instead of an overall recap from me in addition to my two posts while I was there, I’d like to link to other blog entries that reflect my thoughts and capture many of the highlights.

* Why Social South Worked, from Direct Marketing Observations
* Five Favorite Things …, from Spaight Talk
* What Rock Stars Can Teach You… , from Mack Collier
* What to Look for When Hiring a Social Media Manager, from Tom Martin
* Social South Wrapup, from Raven Internet Marketing Tools
* How Social Media is Changing the World, from Jason Falls

Jason’s entry on social media changing the world was truly the highlight of the weekend as it focused on Saturday’s keynote speaker, Esra’a Al Sahfei. His blog captures the presentation very well.

For more on Social South and links to other great blogs, visit socialsouth.org and check out the #soso stream on Twitter that remains active three days later.

Social South now, Mardi Gras later

Tom Martin convinced me this morning that I HAVE to Mardi Gras. But not necessarily for the reasons you think. And, in a few years, I want to take my family. Yes, I said take my family to Mardi Gras.

Earlier this year Tom went to Mardi Gras to tweet about the experience there. You can click here to read the background on his Mardi Gras experiment, which was, simply, to change people’s perceptions of Mardi Gras. Since I’m a bit short on time, I’ll just let you know this — the experiment worked. You can read more about his experience here on adage.com

For more about Tom, visit his Facebook and Twitter pages. You also can find out more by sorting through the #soso stream on Twitter.

Social South: We’re not at the corner store

For more than three years now I’ve been involved with social media through my job, but I’ve never had the chance to attend a social media conference. I’ve “attended” Webinars and gone to a few discussions about social media, but most things were just a couple of hours or so.

So today I find myself several hundred miles from home in Birmingham, Ala. at Social South, a two-day conference about social media. I’m probably in competition for being the farthest away from home, but that doesn’t really matter. In fact I’m surprised more out-of-towners aren’t here. This is some good stuff. I could probably have a different blog entry and analysis from each discussion I’ve attended, but I don’t quite have time for that, at least not right now.

The day kicked off with an address from author Andrew Keen, who really challenged the group of about 150 or so on what social media is. Someone next to me said Andrew was like the Simon Cowell of social media — it was a good comparison, especially since I appreciate Simon Cowell’s honesty. Andrew posed some excellent questions we all need to think about — is social media getting rid of the concept of time and geography? Does social media make the world flat? In short, social media is replacing conversations people used to have at the corner store. Well, being 31 and part of Generation X, I don’t really remember having conversations at the corner store and my parents and grandparents don’t really talk about how much they used to hang out at the corner store.

Andrew says social media is creating personalized universes. Is that necessarily a bad thing? Through social media I can chat quickly with others about running or the Dave Matthews Band or … social media. Andrew says social media is creating radical individualism and is leading to inequality, such as people having a million or more followers. He’s right to a point, but don’t more than a million people watch Oprah every day? A million people is a relatively small number in a country with more than 300 million people and a world with billions of people.

I’ll have more to discuss later … for now I should pay attention to the current discussion going on! If you’re interested in what others are saying, follow the #soso discussion on Twitter over the next couple of days.

Six degrees of Helen Thomas

I met Helen Thomas at an event at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Helen was the first female officer of the National Press Club.

In my short nine-year career span, I’ve been lucky to meet some interesting people or at least get very close to them to take some good photos. As a journalist, I’ve met local congressmen, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine and now U.S. Sen. Mark Warner among others. I’ve covered one NASCAR race where I snapped some great photos of drivers such as Carl Edwards and Jeff Burton and literally sat about 15 feet away from the media table. As a fan, that experience put a totally different perspective on racing.

Last year I took photos at an event where now President Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton both spoke. When you put it all together, that whole six degrees of seperation thing really makes the rest of the world seem so small. But have you ever thought of how closely connected you are to the past? How many people have you shook hands with that connects you to people no longer here, who then connect you to a deeper past.

In my current position in the public relations world has led me to meet some interesting people, such as wrestler Mick Foley, but yesterday I met THE DEAN of the White House Press Corps … the one and only Helen Thomas. THE Helen Thomas who, just a few days ago, turned 89 and received cupcakes from Obama (who now pretty much ignores her in press conferences). It was a privilege to hear her speak for a few minutes. And it was amazing to see the respect that many in the small gathering had for her. As a former journalist, I’ve always been indifferent toward her, but since meeting her yesterday I’ve thought a lot about those six degrees of separation to the past.

Helen has covered every president since John F. Kennedy. Assuming that every president shook hands at some point with the previous president in office, the six degrees to past presidents for me now goes like this: me-Helen-JFK-Eisenhower-Truman-Roosevelt. I’m sure if I spent a day of research I could figure out a link to go back to another president or two. A lot of people may take that for granted, but I certainly appreciate being that close to so many U.S. presidents.