A great message from the National Social Media Club Founders:
It is an exciting time for Social Media Club (SMC) as we prepare for our 1st Annual Conference and professional member meeting. As you have hopefully seen, Social Media University (SMU2010) is being held on November 10-12, 2010 in Orlando, FL.
We have designed a unique program for the conference, intended to enrich your understanding of broad social media concepts, so that you may apply some very deep insights from industry leaders such as John Hagel III, David Meerman Scott, KD Paine, Jason Falls, Tom Foremski, Tara Hunt and several others.
Participants will be joining us from Social Media Club chapters around the world, and we hope that you will be there too! Not only is this going to be an important conversation to discuss the future of the organization, but we will also be taking nominations for the 2011 global SMC board of directors and other executive leadership positions. In essence, we will also seek to ratify our key missions, finalize the bylaws and establish a code for professional conduct.
As if that wasn’t enough of a reason, Wednesday November 10th is not only the meeting day, but also our SMC Local Leadership Training Day. During the pre-conference workshop for local leaders within our official chapter program, we will enable you all to learn from each other’s experiences, with an emphasis on:
- Sharing best practices in event promotion and management;
- Honing your presentation skills;
- Discussing possible ways to align the local chapter with the global missions of Social Media Club;
- Sharing your local experiences and leading sessions to help other chapters ensure the health of their community;
- And so much more…
The leadership training sessions will be over by about 4pm, at which time we will move to have a general assembly with all the professional members in attendance. While co-founder Chris Heuer and I both hope to continue to serve on the board into 2011, and perhaps beyond, we are looking to step back somewhat from the day to day operations and engage a new set of leaders to help take Social Media Club to the next level. Now, more then ever, it is important that we work together to raise the professional standards of Social Media as an industry.
So…
Please put forth your best effort to join us in Orlando. We realize you may not be able to travel to many conferences each year, but this one is particularly important – especially if you are a professional with Social Media in your title, or in your scope of responsibilities.
- Professional members naturally receive reduced pricing. If you are not yet a Professional or business member, please do consider joining today;
- Early bird tickets are being offered until August 30th (for professional members with the leader discount it is just under $245). The conference pass is normally $595;
- We also have a room block on hold for the discounted price of $125/night and encourage you to book early to ensure you have a place to lay your head.
We are planning several social activities throughout the conference that will be great for individuals as well as families, so make a weekend of it and stay with us through Sunday! We will be providing information on the packages available within the next couple of weeks, just keep this in the back of your mind when making plans. For those of you who are foodies like us, you will be happy to know that these dates are also the last weekend for the annual Epcot Food & Wine Festival. If you haven’t heard about this great event, Google it. It’s an awesome coincidence, and its likely where Heuer and I will be on Saturday.
And an added bit of good news….
This past Monday we finally received the official 501c6 (member owned trade association) designation from the IRS and can now provide you with documentation needed to secure reduced (or waived) fees for venue rentals and other needs. This also opens the doors to additional sponsorships opportunities for us all. It took almost two years of red tape and the dyeing of quite a few extra gray hairs to get this done, but we are finally legally recognized as a non-profit organization.
With all this happening, and the fall tour that Chris Heuer is embarking upon to discuss Social Media + Family thanks to the sponsorship of Chevy Cruze, Social Media Club is positioned to do so amazing programs. We hope you are planning to join us for this next phase of our journey together.
Cheers,
Kristie Wells
President and Founder
Social Media Club, Inc.
PS – We could really use your support in getting the word out about the conference and all this great news. In particular, we would ask that you let your local community know about the conference via any appropriate social channels :
Twitter
Facebook
Blog
Carrier pigeon, whatever
As you may know, we have never really done any marketing for SMC beyond the stickers, our events and word of mouth. This has made it possible to get to this point. We hope, with your support to keep our social advertising spends to a minimum (perhaps you saw our first ad for Social Media University on Facebook? If you do, please don’t click so we can save the money – ha), we can put more money back into Social Media Club so we may hire the much needed staff to support the organization (and you) from this day on.
We are also looking for sponsors of this conference, Social Media University. We kept the prices low to ensure more people could attend, which makes the reliance of sponsors – critical. If you work within a company who would like to support or efforts or have a client who might be interested, or have a money tree in your backyard that produces year round (lucky you!) – please contact me at
kristie@socialmediaclub.org and I would be happy to discuss the sponsorship options.
