After our usual announcements (which, by the way, included SocialCamp), we were treated to a special welcome from Shelby County Commissioner / founder and CEO of Flinn Broadcasting / radiologist Dr. George Flinn who had some kind, generous, and flattering words to everyone who takes part in the Social Media Expedition – and that includes attendees.

It’s easy to get so deep into what you’re passionate about that you lose perspective on how what you do affects the community around you. To be reminded that the relationships and communities we build bring noticeable good into Memphis was a powerful and empowering way to start the morning.

To have Dr. Flinn come and remind us of the good that we are all building is nice. But what would be nicer would be to pass on the good will – and to pass on his closing sentence, “Thank you for making Memphis and Shelby County great.” Seriously. Thank you.

What really made the September breakfast something special was the structure. Rather than have a single speaker, as usual, we embraced a show-and-tell format.

Each presenter shared a single topic, service, program, or idea for about seven minutes. One of the greatest things about gathering people together for is the wide range of experience, knowledge and curiosity that everyone brings to the breakfasts.

Our presenters were, in order, Blake Palmer, Beth Sanders, Matthew Crawford-Trisler, Jonathan Lyons, Dave Barger, and Robert Staub.

Palmer and Crawford-Trisler are both social media specialists at LunaWeb, though Blake will leave at the end of this week for CommercialAppeal.com. Sanders is a freelance design and social consultant. Lyons manages social media in the marketing and PR department for the Peabody Hotel. Barger is President and CEO of LunaWeb. Robert Staub is a small business success coach and host of the weekly Small Biz Show.

Blake Palmer Presenting the Yelp iPhone app

Between Blake Palmer’s talk about the emerging trend of augmented reality applications for smartphones and Beth Sanders’ run through of Evernote, the online/real world service that works as an augmented memory application, we were handed a very interesting view of the future in which technology will aid and combine human tasks and knowledge in ever more helpful, present, and intuitive ways.

Matthew Crawford-Trisler delivered an in-depth presentation about the need for and use of the Free Music Archive, a curated cache of Creative Commons-licensed music which, because it is free – as in both beer and speech – is a great resource for music to use in videos, podcasts, presentations, or to load up your iPod.

Jonathan Lyons talked about how he uses Social Media on behalf of the Peabody to build and expand upon existing relationships in the community, and to positively impact the image of the hotel among Memphians. He had to figure out how to promote the hotel without being spammy, create personal content, and navigate photography rights when covering events. He shared his experience with the blurring line between Returns on Investment and Returns on Engagement.

Dave Barger spoke about the trouble in looking at social media as a way to expand your business’ audience. While it’s possible, he notes that it is a big time commitment. If you’re just stepping foot in for the first time, it’s likely going to be best to focus on existing relationships. Facebook and Twitter are important, but are not the only answer.

Barger recommended the simplified blogging service, Posterous, to communicate with employees and clients alike, along with internal tools, such as Yammer or Socialcast. When it’s time to turn outwards, there’s always services like Ning, which are quite useful, but, Barger warned, only if you’re going to put the time and effort into making it a good resource before the doors are ever even opened.

Robert Staub has put a tremendous amount of effort into his latest venture, Small Biz Memphis, which launches Sept. 18th. The site, built on Ning, promises to be a valuable resource for small business information and for online business networking in a city where most networking is done face-to-face. By gathering as much information as possible about small businesses and events in one place, it promises to be a one-stop shop for small businesses in Memphis.

Each presentation went off without a hitch, and we felt honored to host such a stellar series of presentations. Dr. Flinn had it right when he thanked everyone who came this morning for making Memphis and Shelby County a great place. And once again, we’ll pass that thanks along. Thank you.

A shot from April's Twilight Camp

This month’s Twilight Camp will be switched up a little from the usual pattern. Rather than holding the event at an area restaurant, we’ll be gathering at ArtsMemphis.

The same habits remain, however – we get together for food, networking, and informal conversations about how we use social media in our day-to-day lives. (ArtsMemphis itself has a solid social presence, as we learned from Lindsay Coates at our last Breakfast; check them out on Twitter and Facebook.)

ArtsMemphis is located at 575 South Mendenhall. The event is free, and the mingling starts at 5:30 p.m. Parking is available at Holt Tire on Mendenhall or on Black Street (same street as Brown Dog Lodge). As usual, RSVP is preferred.

"The long line to get in" by Brian Caldwell on Flickr.

June’s Social Media Expedition Breakfast is coming up Wednesday, June 3. It’ll be at familiar stomping grounds – the University of Memphis Holiday Inn. As always, it’ll be a great opportunity for good food, good conversation, and some pre-lunch networking.

As usual, admission will be $20 ($15 if you bring along someone new), and you can RSVP at Meetup.

There’s a catch, though: This time, seating is limited to the first 30 people. So act fast, and don’t get left out.

You may be wondering when Web 3.0 will come around. You’re not alone. We’ve been wondering, too. Which is why we’re hosting a panel about the Semantic Web, what many see to be the foundation upon which Web 3.0 will be built.

"I don’t know what you mean.." by Dullhunk on Flickr

The concepts are a little fuzzy around the edges, but the basic idea is that the Semantic Web makes it easier for users to interact with information. Instead of using a search engine to find places to look for the lowest price on a DVD, the new standards will make it possible – even easy – for a search engine to do that comparison shopping for you.

There’s more to it than that, and even Wikipedia’s best explanation is in the first half of the first sentence, where they say "The Semantic Web is an evolving extension of the World Wide Web."

The goal is, essentially, to make Web 2.0 more machine-readable, to make searching, updating, and even creating information easier. This is similar to the goals behind the new "computational knowledge engine," Wolfram|Alpha – but interesting as it is to see the way Wolfram|Alpha interacts with raw data, it’s not quite ready for primetime use. It, along with most of the rest of the semantic web, is mostly conceptual and nebulous at this point.

The Semantic Web is still in the proof-of-concept stage, and it seems that the concepts being proven could still use some explanation.

The difficulty behind defining the Semantic Web is why we’ve assembled a team of people knowledgable about the ideas behind it to present a panel discussion at a future Social Media Expedition Breakfast.

In the meantime, we’ll be keeping an eye on developments, and we’ll keep you updated on how the coming of Web 3.0 is going to affect you.

"I know what you mean.." by Dullhunk on Flickr

May Twilight Camp by LunaWeb on Flickr. View the full May Twilight Camp photoset.

Social Media Expedition’s latest Twilight Camp descended upon Davis-Kidd bookstore’s Bronte Bistro on Thursday. The food was delicious, the company was dear.

It was great fun to chat about new ways to distribute information in a place where printed media still thrives.

It’s funny, but most of the conversation around our dinner that evening centered around feeds. We gathered our minds together trying to sort out how best to use RSS feeds and the social aggregator Friendfeed.

The ease and convenience of using RSS feeds – through readers like Google Reader, Newsgator, and even mail applications like Outlook or Apple’s Mail.app – leads pretty much every regular user of the technology to the same problem: overload.

And while talking about how to trim the content to what’s useful, we also swapped our favorite feeds.

Discussion around Friendfeed centered around how to find real usefulness from a service that essentially aggregates content from other services. Some people were very much in favor of it, and everybody seemed curious.

It was great to see everyone out at the latest Twilight Camp, and we hope to see you again next time. Stay tuned for more information about our next Twilight Camp, as well as the Social Media Expedition Breakfast.

It’s been interesting to watch as it becomes something on its own – being that it’s much less formal, and happens after work, when people are more relaxed, it’s beginning to become apparent that the social media community in Memphis is just that – a community.

"April Twilight Camp" by LunaWeb on Flickr.

Thursday Evening’s Twilight Camp at Sekisui Pacific Rim was a great example of that. While the group consisted of people largely interested in networking and learning more about the tools they use in their online lives, it truly felt that we were just a large group of friends, hanging out over a sushi dinner.

While we did break off into two core conversations, one about photo sharing and another about video editing and sharing, both conversations naturally grew in scope and discussed a wide range of social media questions.

And while we talked quite a bit about how Oprah’s endorsement would affect Twitter, the general consensus is that it wouldn’t change a thing about how the attendees use the service.

Overall, it’s become clear that Twilight Camp is a great, low-pressure way to enter the meatspace conversation about social media.

Stay tuned for more information about upcoming Twilight Camps and Social Media Expedition Breakfasts.

To see more of the photos taken at last night’s event, check out our Flickr set.

.

The post "Social Sushi" by lunaweb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

It’s always great to see who all will gather together, early on a Wednesday morning, and make their way to the Social Media Expedition Breakfast.

Wednesday morning, April 1st, found the breakfast at the Holiday Inn at the University of Memphis. After some opening remarks from Social Media Expedition’s Dave Barger, The mic was handed over to Kris Markman, Ph.D., from the University of Memphis, for her presentation, "A Species Driven to Connect."

Dr. Markman’s presentation focused on how society functions with technology. She kicked off her discussion with the idea that social technologies are nothing new. Though they use new tools to cover greater distances faster, essentially, it all sums up to basic communication – Facebook, even as it nears ubiquity, is just a fancy version of cave painting.

Humans, she continued, simply need other humans for survival.

So we communicate as we always have, and we find brand new ways to do it. One pattern Dr. Markman has noticed is that society is beginning to stratify based on those who can more readily adapt to new modes of communication.

This doesn’t say anything about skills or age, necessarily – Markman noted some Pew Internet and American Life numbers that show that economic and social conditions also affect how quickly people adopt new technologies.

Interestingly, these new divisions don’t necessarily fall along the same (age-based) lines we might expect.

For example, podcasting is more common among the Generation X set, even though they aren’t as involved with things like Facebook or Massively Multiplayer Games, that you might find to be common in younger demographics.

Essentially, what Markman seems to be saying is that what makes online communications so interesting is that it’s so difficult to pin down the demographics of it in a general sense, because the information skews from example to example.

After the presentation, we broke into smaller group discussions, including topics such as blogging, Facebook for business, and Twitter. There was even some demand for information about Yahoo! Pipes – if you’ve got an interest in or knowledge of Yahoo! Pipes, please, by all means, join us for the next Social Media Expedition Breakfast, the first Wednesday of May.

.

The post "A Species, Connecting" by lunaweb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

The day was filled with home run presentations, great food, and a big crowd of extremely fun people.  By the end of the day, we had registered well over 100 SocialCamp attendees and even trended as the #1 topic on Twitter.

There was something for everyone to learn, with topics ranging from introductory 101 presentations, to meaty, uber-advanced discussions.  We saw several traditional presentations, as well as panels, core conversation groups, and quite a few spontaneous discussions.

Thanks to everyone who attended, and helped make this all happen.  The planners and volunteers put a lot of time into putting SocialCamp together, and we couldn’t have asked for a better crowd to attend.  We also had a bunch of wonderful sponsors aside from the Social Media Expedition.  Please go and check them out on the SocialCamp Memphis site.

If you were able to attend, leave a comment to let us know what you thought of the conference.  We plan on bringing more things like this to Memphis, and keeping our city on the Social Media map.  Next on the horizon, we have our monthly Social Media Expedition breakfast on April 1st at the University of Memphis Holiday Inn.  There will be more details posted on the Meetup site.

Here’s an ongoing list of blog write-ups from the event:

Skinny White Boy

The Displaced Texan

Team140.com

SocialCamp Memphis

The post "Geeks and Newbies Unite at SocialCamp Memphis" by lunaweb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

The University of Memphis Holiday Inn was buzzing extra early this morning, with another record breaking crowd joining us for this month’s Social Media Expedition breakfast.  Over 50 people braved cold weather and early morning to be a part of the growing community of Memphis social media users. Thanks to Matt Ceniceros, a member of FedEx’s media relations team, we received an insightful glimpse into what large businesses are doing to take advantage of the growing Social Media space.  Matt had some great anecdotal support of his company’s use of corporate blogs and the success that it has brought them, so far, in multiple branches of their industry. Core Conversation time is always a favorite, and this meeting was no exception.  Topics covered included Business Blogging, Community ROI, Social Media 101, Beyond Facebook, and Best  Practices.  These smaller groups are designed to allow a mindshare discussion on specific topics, wherein Expeditionaries can engage in focused conversations, drawing on the mutual expertise of the group. As always, we want to thank everyone who attended and helped make this another outstanding breakfast.  We appreciate you all being a part of the conversation with us, and can’t wait to see you next month for the 1 year anniversary of these morning gatherings.  You can already RSVP.  Be sure to find us on Facebook as well! Mark Your Calendars: Upcoming Events Thursday, February 5th – SocialCamp Planners (5:00) ** Saturday, February 7th – Business Boot Camp (all day) ** Thursday, February 12th – Twestival to raise money for water (5:00 until) Thursday, February 19th – TechFuel Mixer ** Thursday, February 26th – eMarketing Group * Wednesday, March 4th – Social Media Expedition Breakfast *** Friday, March 6th – SocialCamp Memphis – Mixer ** Saturday, March 7th – SocialCamp Memphis – Main Event ** March 13th- 17th – SXSW South by Southwest Interactive (Austin, TX) * Organized by Melanee Hannock ** Organized by LaunchMemphis *** Organized by LunaWeb, Inc.

.

The post "Social Media Expedition Breakfast – February Edition" by lunaweb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Caritas Village, which is centered around the idea of racial reconciliation, proved to be the ideal setting to hear the stories that arose out of this unifying ceremony. Expedition members and community residents gathered round the pair in an upstairs room to share an intimate conversation about hope, unity, and the role both of these play in creating a more positive future.

"Mother King," who played a significant role in the American Civil Rights movement from a young age, was able to share inspiring anecdotes about her early efforts to help register black voters, and her part in the march on Washington. Her experience and commitment to Civil Rights earned her a place near the front of the inauguration audience, and a chance to watch history happen from up close.

Harry Brown spoke strongly of the unity of the crowd. His spot near the Washington Monument was not as close to the ceremony as Mother King’s, but the sense of excitement, unity, and connection with his fellow onlookers was not diminished by distance. The cheering and enthusiasm of the crowd impacted him strongly, and he was kind enough to share his coverage of the event that helped illustrate the emotions that were running through the group of onlookers.

Those of us who were able to meet with these two and hear their stories personally, left feeling inspired, and a little more hopeful for our nation’s future. Below we have posted videos of our conversations for all to see. Thank you for letting us sharing with you.

.

The post "Inauguration Expedition" by lunaweb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.