Christopher Burgess’s presentation at SMC Seattle’s June event wasn’t just a wake-up call. It was a grab-and-shake-you-silly, ring-all-the-alarm-bells, freak-you-out-in-a-good-way kind of wake-up call.

The Senior Security Officer at Cisco Systems shared his cautionary tales and pointed advice about social media and internet security to a sold-out crowd at 415Westlake as they listened, tweeted, and raised their hands in response to his engaging questions throughout the night.

Among his questions:

After he highlighted the tremendous growth of social media via some striking statistics (e.g., “91% of all consumer internet traffic will be video in 2013″), Burgess stressed that our increasingly interconnected world demands a smart, common sense approach from each of us.

We own our words, which means we must also be aware of the permanent imprint they make.

“Once it is on the net, it is there forever,” Burgess cautioned. “There are no do-overs.”

As individuals and company representatives, we need to implement strategies and structures around our social media efforts, or be open to the troubling consequences that could follow, which include: identity theft, intellectual property violations, stalking, and physical harm.

Proving that he that he is walking the talk, Burgess provided the crowd with a link to Cisco’s social media handbook. These dangers are not just urban legends, said Burgess, as he recalled the story of a man who, after tweeting about his upcoming 10-day cruise, came back to an empty house.

Whenever you broadcast anything online, you should “talk about where you’ve been, not where you’re going.”

As for other “tweetable moments”, Burgess offered the following nuggets, ranging from fascinating to frightening to funny:

From my back row view, Burgess’s presentation felt like an impassioned and animated plea to think more seriously about our own online privacy and safety, and then act on it. Today.

Which reminds me… I’d better go do some password-smithing.

p.s. Let’s keep the conversation rolling! What questions did Christopher Burgess leave you with? Add a comment below or on Twitter: @burgessct & @SMCSeattle

p.p.s. Congratulations to Shauna Causey, SMC Seattle’s new VP!

Thank you to our sponsors: CBS Radio and Tungle.me!

CBS Radio, Seattle (comprised by KZOK.FM, KMPS.FM, JACK.FM, and AM1090) recognizes and embraces the digital evolution of our media.  Locally and nationally, their network employs a progressive perspective on multi-media stratagems and 360 solutions.  Social media rests at the epicenter of our digital focus.  Listeners are encouraged to blog, tweet, and facebook with his/her favorite on-air personalities, upload audio/visual content, share music, and much more. Follow them on Twitter: @1025KZOK and @941KMPS

Tungle.me makes scheduling meetings easy–across organizations, calendar systems, and time zones.  Tungle.me is a free personal scheduling application that eliminates costly double bookings, time zone mishaps, and the endless back and forth of finding a time to meet.  Tungle.me synchronizes with leading online calendar systems and does not require registration. Follow them on Twitter: @TungleRocks

SMC Seattle May Event: How to Call BS on a Social Media Guru

In the world of Web 2.0, anyone can claim to be a social media guru. How do you differentiate between a scam artist and a sage? How do you separate the snake oil from the substance?

Please join us at Hale’s Palladium and Brewery on May 25 as writer, speaker and former Microsoft manager Scott Berkun leads us through this fun, witty, fast-paced and interactive look at the new world of social media. With Scott at the helm, we’ll take a critical look at gurus, both generally and within the social media space. We’ll ask the tough questions that need some clarification—what’s real, what’s not, and how you can tell the difference.

The main event will be held at Hale’s Palladium, a festival-themed warehouse in the back of the Hale’s Brewery. From the front door of the Brewery, just follow the yellow brick road around the building to the Palladium. After the main event we’ll make our way to the Brewery for an after-party.

Only 200 are tickets available. If you’d like to attend, we suggest you reserve a ticket soon since we expect to sell out quickly.

About Our Speaker:
Scott was a manager at Microsoft from 1994-2003, on projects including v1-5 (not 6) of Internet Explorer. He is the author of three bestselling books, Making Things Happen, The Myths of Innovation and Confessions of a Public Speaker. He works full time as a writer and speaker, and his work has appeared in The New York Times, Forbes magazine, The Economist, The Washington Post, Wired magazine, National Public Radio and other media. He regularly contributes to Harvard Business and BusinessWeek, has taught creative thinking at the University of Washington, and has appeared as an innovation and management expert on MSNBC and on CNBC. He writes frequently on innovation and creative thinking at his blog: scottberkun.com and tweets at @berkun.

A Big Thank You to Subway, This Month’s Sponsor!
Subway has a long history throughout Western Washington, and is excited to be sponsoring this month’s SMC Seattle event.  There are more than 360 Subway stores throughout the area– more than almost any other area in the country— which is a reflection of the healthy, active lifestyle of many Seattle residents. If you’re looking for a healthy on-the-go alternative to fast food, Subway offers eight different sandwiches; each with just six grams of fat or less. Subway’s Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki sandwich (Jared’s favorite) makes a great tasting, low-fat meal.

To stay up to date with Subway and it’s delicious offerings:
Twitter: http://twitter.com/subwayfreshbuzz
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/subway
http://www.subway.com/

May event details:
Date – May 25, 2010
Time – 6-9 p.m.
Tickets – $15 includes a drink and appetizers (cash bar will available)
Register – http://smcseamay.eventbrite.com/
Location – Hale’s Palladium (http://halesbrewery.com/Palladium.htm) – 4301 Leary Way NW, Seattle, WA 98107
Hale’s Brewery and Palladium is just north of downtown Seattle on Leary Way between the Fremont and Ballard neighborhoods.

If someone were to ask you what social media, CRM and online relationships would be like in ten years, how would you respond? How about five years? Well, at SMC Seattle’s February 2010 event, Adam Sarner, research director at Gartner, offered up a few predictions:

2011: More than 2 billion people will have gone online (some estimate more).

2015: 2% of people in the U.S. will be married to people they will never meet in person.

2020: A city will elect an anonymous persona for mayor.

It’s not Personal, it’s Persona

The future of social media and customer relationship management (CRM) is built around anonymous virtual personas, says Sarner. So much so, that by 2020, that marketing and sales of products for virtual personas will outweigh traditional B2C spending. What will that future look like? Think fragmented. Whereas we currently see many social media professionals currently try to aggregate their profiles and keep a common persona, Sarner argues that the general population will have increasingly fragmented personas (ex: one for Second Life, one for parenting, one for Amazon, etc). He believes that companies will move more towards selling to the persona, rather than the person.

During his talk, Gartner’s director of research pointed out that the meritocratic atmosphere of the internet helps fuel an optimal environment to satisfy Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs. As we continue to utilize the internet, Sarner believes it will be more and more important to seek self-actualization, and the beauty of the internet is that it can fulfill any human need from physiological (food, water, breathing) to self-actualization (creativity, problem solving, personal growth).

Sarner claims that we have gone from an era (Web 1.0) of fulfilling the most basic human needs (eCommerce) to an era (Web 2.0) of fulfilling our needs for esteem and belonging (personal/social voice – e.g. social media). He stated that we will not be able to complete the top of the Maslow pyramid (self-actualization) until we move to a more virtual world based entirely on personas.

The Personabot

As we move forward to fill these needs in the future, Sarner raised his most controversial prediction: the idea of “Personabots”, calling them “the killer application for Generation V[irtual]“. Personabots would work to fulfill some of the most basic physiological necessities, and human needs at the bottom of Maslow’s pyramid, while managing the most mundane social media tasks and the ever-increasing amounts of data that we’ll consume.

So what exactly is the Personabot?

“The Personabot is an automated, personality infused, self-learning, self-replicating, virtual representative that will be used as a tool for facilitating life events, from tactical to the strategic.”

-Adam Sarner

Got it? Well, imagine a world where you could set up a Personabot to set up bids for you on eBay based on your personal preferences and ideas. Imagine a world where your Personabot shops for what you need at the store automatically depending on a budget and your needs at home. Imagine a world where a Personabot goes to a hundred job interviews for you, and comes back to tell you which ones are the best fit for you.

These are all ideas in the realm of possibility for the Personabot, says Gartner’s director of research. In fact, during the Q&A afterwards, Chris Pirillo referenced a website that is already doing something similar to the idea of a Personabot called Alice; a service that manages the stock of products in your home so that you “never run out of toilet paper again”. Even still, a life ruled by sentient robots created by our preferences handling a multitude of our tasks seems far away.

Sarner answered a handful of thoughtful questions at the end of the talk, ranging from how the Personabot would truly work, to how people will be able to manage multiple virtual personas. Few topics are better at sparking provocative debate than bold predictions and prognostications of the future. This was no exception.

Only time will tell what the future will be like. At last night’s SMC Seattle event, Gartner’s Adam Sarner raised a number of bold possibilities and ideas. Though the social media world may never be like what Sarner describes, there are many aspects that we can analyze and embrace, and some probing questions we can ask ourselves about what lies ten years away. Just think: just ten years ago, the term “social media” didn’t even exist, and neither did Youtube, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. What do you think the future of social media and CRM holds ten years from now?

Jaremy Rich is the curator of Seattle [Startup Digest] and the creator of heart it hate it.

Sometimes people come through for you in a big way. This is one of those times. As a celebration of 12 consecutive oversold events, SMC Seattle wanted to do something meaningful for our anniversary event. So, we decided to help out a local non profit, the Jolkona Foundation. 100% of the ticket sales will go to fund one year of specialized science, technology, engineering, and math training for kids (through a Jolkona project with Technology Access Foundation).

But that wasn’t enough. Local businesses began approaching us wanting to help out. They wanted to give some prizes out to the folks helping out Jolkona. This is why we’re adding on a raffle to the event. We’re hoping that those coming out to the event will be as generous as these sponsors:

• Seattle hotel Hotel Max stepped up to the plate and contributed a free night at its downtown boutique hotel.
• Kodak donated an HD video camera, the Kodak Zi8
• The Ultimate Ears Social Media Team wants you to rock out with two pairs of Ultimate Ears 700 headphones
• Cat’s Eye Design donated a three-hour WordPress consultation, including theme customization and implementation.
• If you’re marketing your business, a social media press release is a must. PRWeb is donating a free release.
• True Fabrications is contributing a Wine Lovers Party Pack, including wine glasses, corkscrews, aerators, wine charms, cheese knives and cocktail napkins.
• A one-hour massage from Seattle masseuse Clear Awakening.
• And of course, SMC Seattle is contributing three Golden Tickets, which entitles the winners free admission into SMC Seattle’s monthly events for a year.

Raffle tickets will be sold at the event for $5.00 each, so bring your cash! Again, thank you to all of the sponsors, and especially thank you to the Seattle community for supporting them and Jolkona.

Every one of you has played a big part in making 2009 a great year for SMC Seattle, and we want to see all of you at our anniversary event! So, we are happy to announce that, with the approval of Spitfire Grill to fill the entire place, we will now be selling tickets at the door for our January event. (150 of them!)

This also gives us a great opportunity to raise even more money for the Jolkona project with Technology Access Foundation.

Here are the details -

What: SMC’s One-Year Anniversary Celebration

Where: Spitfire Grill, downtown Seattle 2219 4th Avenue  Seattle, WA 98121

Date: Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Time: 6-9 p.m.

Cost:
$10 tickets includes 2 drinks and apps http://smcseattlejan.eventbrite.com/ – SOLD OUT!
$5 minimum donation tickets to be sold at the door (cash/check only – drinks and food not included)

100% of the ticket sales will go to fund one year of specialized science, technology, engineering, and math training for kids (through a Jolkona project with Technology Access Foundation).

For more information on the event, please see the original announcement here – http://smcseattle.com/jan2010/

Thanks to our sponsors, Seattle.SocialCentral.Net, Spitfire and Gist!

About Jolkona’s TAF Project and Technology Access Foundation:

Jolkona Foundation believes that small amounts of money can change the world. As a 501(c)3 organization, Jolkona addresses problems across the world by connecting people to innovative non-profits and showing one-to-one proof of where the donation money goes. SMC Seattle is supporting them through funding their TAF project.

TAF is a Seattle-area non-profit that prepares underserved children of color for success by providing a rigorous and relevant K-12 curriculum. Founded in Seattle in 1996, TAF provides opportunities for urban youth of color to gain necessary skills and education to successfully compete for professional careers in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and math).

Call to Action – Tickets go fast. SMC Seattle events sell out every time. Get your tickets today!

Click here SMC October eventbrite

Eight sold out events later with more than 150 people at each, we have far exceeded our original goals. The only reason we have seen such success is because of the hard work of our talented board of directors, and the support of the great people that come to our events, and participate online.

You have made SMC Seattle more than just an organization; you have made it a community. A community where everyone is welcome and we rally around those that have questions or need help.

I am pretty sure we have some of the smartest and most caring people in the world that participate in SMC Seattle. That, and not merely the number of people that come to our events, is why I am truly honored to be a part of this community.

We understand we need to provide extraordinary people an extraordinary community. So with this in mind we will do everything we can to provide a place for you to share, connect and collaborate in person. While at the same time providing stimulating panels, speakers, blog post and tweets that help keep Seattle on the forefront when it comes to technology and social media use.

In order to do accomplish this, our dedicated all volunteer board has been working hard to facilitate the needs of this growing community. It’s a big job, but everyone on the board is passionate about making sure we do everything we can for the SMC Seattle community.

To increase the depth of the SMC Seattle experience, we have recently started to roll out some exciting programs in additional to our main monthly events. One of these is our SMC Seattle Educational Series. These are small group meetings focused on making personal connections, and giving people the information needed to develop a deep knowledge of a particular topic. We have also started SMC Seattle Partner Events. These events are put on by other groups and organizations that we believe have good content, and whom we have worked with to provide additional value to the SMC Seattle community.

In my next blog post on the SMC Seattle blog, I will explain these groups in more detail, and give more information about how we are changing to meet your needs.

SMC Seattle is nothing without you, so please reach out and let us know how we can help, or if you just have an idea for us. You can contact me at kevin@changeitmarketing.com, or you can always post on this blog, our Twitter, Linkedin, or Facebook accounts.

See you at an event soon!

Kevin Urie

SMC Seattle President

Jay Grandin and Leah Nelson have established themselves as accomplished New Media producers with web content that has seen audiences of over 35 million. The success of their short films, comedy and documentary work has led to contracts for original series with companies such as Myspace.

The two will be speaking at Gnomedex about using video to build loyalty and brand engagement. But first they answered some questions for SMC Seattle’s Jennifer Cabala.

When did you first start using social media and why?
Leah: Jay was living in Michigan, designing furniture and making silly videos on the weekend and had built up a surprising following on Myspace, which at the time, was hot like fire. So, when Jay and I joined video-making forces, there was this hungry audience there to watch our stuff and comment and pass it around. It was really used as a place to show our work, but we also worked really hard to connect with that audience, writing them back and making sure we were connecting on a human level. Note: this was before your Myspace inbox became completely laden with spam, so there were actually real people writing to us.

Jay: It was an accident. In 2006 I was designing office furniture at Steelcase in Michigan, and was mandated to join YouTube and MySpace as part of a project about technology and collaborative office work. It began as an odd phone call from my boss talking about LonelyGirl15 on YouTube. “You what? Lonely who?” I didn’t have a home computer.

Which tools do you use most and why?
Leah: Facebook has become kinda like one of those leather-bound day timers that we all used to have. It would house my phone numbers and addresses, and events in my social life, birthdays etc. This is what Facebook is for me. Youtube and Twitter, aside from being places that we post our work, have become these amazing search engines more than anything else. I find I go there multiple times a day just to show people stuff I’m talking about.

Jay: What’s funny is that since we, as a company, began using SocMed tools to build other people’s/brands’ online presence, my own use of the tools as plummeted. Isn’t there a saying about not buying a mechanics call? Don’t read a marketer’s wall? I still consider myself an analog expat in many ways and find that I oscillate between deep social media dives and pretty infrequent transmission.

How do you successfully combine video and social media campaigns?
Jay: Videos are inherently social; they’re social objects that can be digested and shared easily and enjoyably. Some great videos are social media campaigns unto themselves — they’re so much a part of the sharing tools already. But the bigger the space gets, and the further it fragments, we’ve really noticed the need to hold a video’s hand and guide it to its audience. So much of the equation is incredibly simple… on paper at least: 1— make something worth sharing. 2— position it in the tools so that it’s easy to share. 3— know who the influencers are in your market, and tell them about it. If you’ve done #1 correctly, it works!

Leah: What Jay said.

For those on a shoestring budget what are some easy ways to incorporate video into a social media campaign?
Jay: Our friend Boris Mann always reminds us that his phone shoots video. He’s right. And it’s cheap. We’ve been conditioned to digest content, not fidelity, online… so the barrier is very low where the tools are concerned. Even high quality video, depending on the size of your shoestring of course, is doable—the days of PAs and grips and gaffers being a necessary component of a shoot aren’t really there any more. If you look at some of the most memorable campaigns lately—the “Best Job in the World” for example by the Australian Tourism board—hours and hours of content are being created for free by crowdsourcing the contents of the campaign. That’s pretty cool; you can’t you THAT on TV!

How does a web series differ from a television series?
Leah: I get impatient watching TV. There are a few shows that I really like, but I prefer to rent the whole season at the video store and have mini marathons watching them all in a row. This how you can watch a web series so I think they appeal to people who stay attentive can voraciously digest the content one episode at a time. On the flip side, they also appeal to people who like to tune in, watch 10min on a break, and then check out a few more a couple days later. Entertainment a la Carte.

Jay: Web series have no rules. The expectations around duration, frequency, consistency of content don’t really apply. For a long time we had what we’d call a web series (JayVideo) that was only really tied together through us; it was a silly variety show devoid of theme that only gave the promise of regular content. We were the web series.

How do web video ads differ from tv ads?
Leah: I think it depends where you are watching them. The line between TV and web viewing is nearing non-existent and when we watch traditional TV programing online, we ARE watching TV ads that are interspersed throughout the program and they are often the same ads that are running in traditional broadcast. But when the ad you’re watching lives on the companies website or on a video portal or social networking site, there really aren’t very many constraints (aside from the obvious one: don’t make it too long unless its really compelling. But I think this applies to anything, books, films, articles) so you have freedom to tell your message in more creative ways with less parameters.

Jay: Sometimes they differ vastly, sometimes not at all. Like I mentioned above, the expectations around duration and content don’t apply in the same way but, the BIGGEST difference, is that the audience isn’t captive. They have to CHOOSE to watch an online ad and, for it be successful, they have to CHOOSE to send it to their friends. When’s the last time you called a friend and told them they really needed to tune into channel 10 to catch the next commercial break? I think it requires more thought into who your audience is and how to connect with them in a way that’s memorable and mentionable.

What do you think makes a video go viral?
Leah: I’d love to know. I think timing is a huge factor. If something is already “hot” and being discussed online, the chances that the video will be passed around will increase. Aside from timing, its important that it be something that people relate to. Our shower video, How to Shower: Men vs Women, was something that made people laugh because it was true. Most of the comments on the video were “My husband totally does that!” or “I totally do that!” The Man/Woman dichotomy in the video had little to do with age or nationality or era so it was accessible to a lot of people.

Jay: Oh man… I wish i knew. The potential of seeing a nipple?

Any lessons you can share as people make the leap into web video?
Leah: Just start making stuff. Then put it out there and listen to what your viewers think of it. Of course you must have thick skin because will get comments like “this sucks” and “I just wasted 2 minutes of my life I’ll never get back” because people are cruel, but you’ll also have people write what they genuinely think so its instant feedback.

Jay: Just make stuff. We started making stuff… and then people started watching it. It was a complete surprise and, frankly, embarrassing. But then we thought to ourselves, “Hey, this is fun. Maybe we could charge money for this.” Anyone can have their own channel now and the best/funniest/most interesting content always rises to the top.

You can see Leah and Jay at Gnomedex on August 22th. Online, you can find them at their company giantantmedia.com. You can also find Leah on twitter or working on www.bongothefilm.com.  Jay is also on twitter, or on his website.

In advance of his talk at Gnomedex, he talked to Jennifer Cabala about influencing people online, networking for the non-people person and how he created #followfriday.

When did you first start using social media and why?
I’ve been involved with social media (BBSes and other forms of “interaction” media since the mid-80s (yes, I am old). I dove deep into blogging, twitter, etc in mid-2007. I had just sold my interactive agency, and was interested in exploring what was available online, and where social media had grown. It started with a blog (http://learntoduck.com) and quickly expanded into Facebook (I was on facebook from 2003ish, but never really did anything), Twitter, etc.

Which tools do you use most and why?
My comedic answer is always the same: my fingers. I have a strong belief that the tool is always secondary to the connection and relationships, and any reliance on tools just muddies that reality.
I spend most of my time with Twitter and Facebook. Trying to learn how to do video, so I am beginning to spend more time on Youtube.

How did you come up with the idea for #followfriday?
I had two friends, @jeffrey and @dannynewman, who decided to have a bet as to who could get to 1,000 followers the fastest. They kept asking me to tweet out that my followers should follow them, but when I finally did, they lost followers. I jokingly called myself the “anti-christ” of twitter.

During that time, I began to think about what it was like when I started using twitter. I followed a ton of people on the public timeline, and then began to follow a ton of people that they followed. Over time, I realized that the recommendations of people I trusted went a long way towards whether I followed someone or not. (I’ve always kept my following number low. I don’t want a lot of noise and I wanted it to be people that I liked to, and would communicate with often.)
So, I figured why not have a day, where people could recommend a couple of people to their followers that were worthy of a follow.
Who knew it would become what it is: more than 250,000 #followfriday tweets are sent every Friday.

What are some ways you can increase your influence online?
Well, you are just going to have to come to Gnomedex to find out!
I have always expressed influence as a combination of audience, trust and expertise. In essence, if you are trusted and considered an expert, you can exert influence. Audience or reach allows you to extend that influence in terms of audience size, and dissemination of message.

We have a lot of non-profit members, are their some techniques you could share about online fundraising?
Wow, that brings me back to the beginning of my career. Online fundraising really is not much different than offline. Its all about the right offer to the right person at the right time. I think most non-profits view online fundraising as a question of numbers (If I send more email, I will get back a better response). A better course of action is finding better ways to target messaging and the ask so it gets in front of the right people.
I am a big fan of DonorsChoose.org, and I think they do a great job of allowing the potential funders to self-select the right offer and the right time.

You’ve said that you aren’t much of a people person, but isn’t social networking about people?  How do you manage that?  Is there something different about the online experience?
Well, not sure I have the answers. My therapist and I have been trying to work that one out for the last 3 years! Social networking is about the people, but its in a safe environment. You can walk away at any time. Its relatively easy to manage.

Any tips for people who don’t like networking in person?
In terms of events, the only advice I have is come armed with a couple of stories. Ask people more questions. People love to talk about themselves or their projects. Keep moving. There is really something about spending a few moments with many people vs. a lot of time with a single person. Less likelihood of saying something dumb!

Anything else you want to share?
I’m excited to speak at Gnomedex. Its one of my favorite conferences, and Chris is one of my favorite people.

You can see Micah at Gnomedex starting August 20th.  Online, you can find him on his blog “Learn To Duck”, on twitter, or at work at Lijit.

SMC is excited to be a Gnomedex 9.0 partner and SMC members get a 10% discount!!

Here’s where you register: http://gnomedex.eventbrite.com/?discount=smcseattle10

An interview with Social Media Club (national) founder Chris Heuer, by SMC Seattle Board Member @jennifercabala. Chris talks about how he came up with the idea for Social Media Club and what his goals are for the next year. He also talks about resources for those just getting started and some of the tactics he uses.