Social Media Club Archive

Tonight, hosted by Cooper Union in NYC, was the latest edition of the Social Media Club. After the previous Social Media Club event I covered in June, I was very much looking forward to tonight’s event. Last time there were over 50 people from a diverse set of backgrounds and careers which gave me an opportunity to network with folks I might not otherwise meet. Tonight’s attendance was 18 with a couple of late-comers added to the counter later during the event. Last night was the SMC event in San Francisco which judging by the Twitter messages appeared to be very well received.

The topic was listed as "Join NYC chapter leader Howard Greenstein in a conversation with SMC Co-Founder Chris Heuer about how Social Media is making business personal again." The evening began with each attendee sharing sites that they found interesting or exceptional. I won’t list them because I am certain you know all of them.

Overall I found the discussion dull and lackluster compared to other SMC nationwide events. Chris had a batch of slides (embedded below) but didn’t really go through them other than the first few, other slides he just seemed to slide through. Howard sat in the front but I couldn’t really tell to what position he was taking (moderator, leader, etc.).

An alternative would have been to start with the slide presentation, and then open it to discussion topics with Howard and Chris (both bright guys) discussing their opinion on the topic and then group chat. It just seemed like the chat was moving in too many directions with no central focus. I think concrete examples of good and poor executions of Chris’ topic would have worked well too. Personally I think Chris should have stood as it would give him additional focus as the topic leader.

Anyway check out the presentation slides below and I look forward to reporting on the next event.

| View | Upload your own

Last evening I attended my first Social Media Club meeting in NYC. Pretty large group of about 60 professionals. My only complaint would be lack of air conditioning.

Craig Newmark from Craigslist was the featured speaker. He spoke for about 15 minutes mainly about politics and micro-finance with a sprinkling of Craigslist info. The balance of the hour were questions from the audience.

Download my audio file on RapidShare. It's one hour and 20 mb in size.

Other misc notes from Craig's discussion:

• Believes most people are trustworthy and good and that has helped the site grow.
• Craig is getting involved with small ventures that "get something done". Big into micro-finance and likes Kiva.
• "What works on the net is what works for people in general"
• Discusses that down in the sohoplex (formerly silicon alley) the great blogs are being made
• Does full-time customer service for Craigslist and works with police detectives a good bit
• "If you can't articulate what you are about in 45 seconds, people will forget you" — hrm, I guess my Video Startup Opportunity might make sense.
• His exit strategy for his customer service is… death
• How do you see mobile and SMS fitting into craigslist? I think mobile is important and people can do it on our site now. We have to think about our homepages to fit onto a smaller screen.
• Most important thing is that it's fast. We have at least 150 cheap servers.
• Is there a point that you would sell Craigslist? We are doing comfortable and to provide for our futures.

If you are interested in attending a Social Media Club event, visit their web site. I am not affiliated with the Club other than as a non-member attendee.