Social Media Club Brisbane is Growing

November 4, 2008 By

Back in March this year, I asked the question “Is Brisbane ready for a Social Media Club?”.

The answer proved to be in the affirmative. We had a preliminary gathering of interested people and then launched Social Media Club Brisbane on July 11th.

I take responsibility for the fact that in the enthusiasm of the moment we did not have an agreed plan for next steps. So until a couple of weeks ago nothing much happened.

Then we were able at short notice to put together an informal meetup at the State Library to get some indication of where we were at and where we were going.

At the same time, so as to facilitate communication, I set up a Social Media Club Brisbane group on Facebook , which has already proved to be very helpful. Without any fanfare, the group there has now grown to 74 and I believe it will at least double once the word gets out and we are having more regular gatherings.

Membership of the group is currently by invitation or with the approval of one of the administrators. We are not being restrictive but, until the details of how we are going to operate are articulated, we need to have it so that people apply or are invited.

Social Media Club Brisbane Facebook group

There is a lot of background on Social Media Clubs at the main blog site and on the Social Media Club wiki.

For SMC Brisbane we now have a TWitter hashtag #smcb (go to http://search.twitter.com and enter smcb in the search box).

A computer crash some time ago meant that I lost some of the addresses of people who wanted to be kept informed about the development of SMC Brisbane, so if you or anyone you know is wondering why I haven’t been in touch, that is probably the explanation. Please hook up with us again, either by leaving a message on the Contact page on this site, or applying to join the group on Facebook.

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Barcamp a First for the Gold Coast and for Me

July 7, 2008 By

barcamp logo The weather here on the Gold Coast last Saturday was stormy, but not stormy enough to keep me from attending my first Barcamp, which was also the first Barcamp to be held on the Gold Coast, at Griffith University’s leafy campus at Southport.

It was a thoroughly absorbing event for me. I learned new things, met – or re-met – some very interesting people, enjoyed several varieties of pizza and an uncharacteristically late but excellent first coffee of the day from the coffee van man.

“Unorganiser” Steve Dalton has posted about the day at Bar Camp Gold Coast 1 – Mission Complete (Update 2011: link does not work now).

Congratulations to Steve and his fellow unorganisers and to the day’s sponsors Linux Australia, inQbator, Apress Books, Griffith University and Dalton Technology (update: also Brisbane-based Custom Tees).

DJ Paine has some great pics at the BarCamp Gold Coast Flickr site

barcamp Gold Coast group photo

Photo by dj paine posted here under a Creative Commons licence

Bond University’s Michael Rees has a succinct writeup of the day’s events.

As promised in my post on Friday last, about going to Barcamp, I took my camera and eee PC. Without a full size keyboard, even Twittering was a challenge, so one of those foldable keyboards is on my list of future acquisitions for the travel kit. And while the eee has a card reader I was not able to edit the size of the pictures I took, so I was not able to upload pictures to my blog site as I normally do: there is evidently some software I can download to eee that will enable me to do that – next time!

Matt Hooper has a Barcamp Gold Coast 1 wrap up, which includes some notes on my unscheduled session on Social Media Clubs.

As Matt reports, that session gave me the opportunity to put people in the picture about Social Media Club Brisbane (being launched Friday, 11th July) and to sound out the people present – a mixture of Brisbane and Gold Coast residents – on whether there would be sufficient interest in establishing a separate Social Media Club at the Gold Coast. The upshot was that Michael Rees and I will work on convening a coffee session some time soon to discuss the possibilities, just as a bunch of us had done for Brisbane.

If there is enough interest we could have two Social Media Clubs in South East Queensland before the end of the year. Given that there are no “live” Social Media Clubs outside the USA plus one in Paris, France, that would be a neat achievement for Queensland. Maybe not on a par with providing the first Mandarin-speaking Prime Minister, first woman Governor-General, etc., but an achievement nevertheless.

Anyone interested in knowing more about the new Social Media Club Brisbane or the possibilities for a Gold Coast one, please get in touch with me, either via the Contact form on this site, or by emailing me at deswalsh(at)gmail(dot)com.

Filed Under: Social Media, Web 2.0 Tagged With: , , , , ,