Friday, December 19, 2008

New Blog Post: Social Media Coffee at Single Origin Roasters, Surry Hills #fb

G'day folks, I feel compelled to blog about this morning's incredible experience: Social Media Coffee, held at Single Origin Roasters cafe at 64 Reservoir St, Surry Hills.

This event, which had the atmosphere of the "unconferences" like BarCamp and WordCamp - is a good excuse for a get together for some very bright minds operating in all things online communities, digital and social media.  I thank my Twitter pal Neerav Bhatt for introducing me to this event. A quick Twitter Search later, and I was locked in.

Two hours later, and after pretty much constant chatting meant I managed to meet some inspirational people, such as:
- Beth Etling, ad:Tech's Marketing and Content Director;
- Sarah Peacock, dmg World Media's Marketing manager
Matt Moore,  Knowledge Management specialist at Innotecture;
- Neerav Bhatt , professional blogger.
- Neil Phillips, Principal Consultant at Uniqueworld;
- Scott Drummond - Communuity Manager at Sports Hydrant.

Another key takeaway was Matt Moore kindly referring to me several interesting resources:
- the interesting IBM blogger Jasmin Tragus - who writes the wonderwebby blog.
- James Robertson from Step Two designs - a vendor-neutral intranet and content management consultancy.

What I love about unstructured events such as this one is the directions conversations can take and topics covered.  The above group was just a small snapshot of the people there today - in fact there were more than 100 people there, plus a fantastic band playing.  The cafe itself and in particular Gav and Nick (the cafe's friendly proprietors), was a sublime experience, and will be posted about in The Food Zeitgeist soon.

Update: 15th January 2009, via Ben Cooper on Twitter I stumbled upon this great video, by Scott Drummond, which captures well the experience that is Single Origin Roasters:
 

Single Origin Gypsy Friday from Scott Drummond on Vimeo.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Online Communities - presentation to primary school community

I recently presented to my local school on online communities and the implications for our children.  This was prompted by my desire to share some of my own experiences with social networks with other parents who may be curious yet somewhat inexperienced in this area.  Particularly with our children having greater access and in many cases greater abilities than our own in navigating through and communicating with others on these networks.


I've embedded the presentation below: