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!

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Christopher Burgess, Senior Security Advisor

Christopher Burgess has been studying security and its role in social media as part of his job as Senior Security Advisor to Cisco.  He says he became interested in the topic when he saw how criminals were using the online environment to their advantage.

“If businesses and individuals understand how their information may be used by an individual with malevolent intent, they can appropriately adjust,“ says Burgess.  ”I help with the understanding. It is one of the reasons I volunteered for, and am a member of the Washington State Attorney General’s Internet Safety Taskforce.

Burgess will be speaking on how businesses and teams can create policies that minimize risk to their company while making sure they are asking the right questions of their IT team. He will offer tips, best practices and case studies.  If you are a business owner, marketer, PR consultant, or brand manager, you won’t want to miss this presentation. We are anticipating another sold-out event, so be sure to register soon!

Before his talk we caught up with Burgess to ask him a few questions.

What are the biggest security threats posed by social media to businesses?

I’ll share two which are top of my mind for me at this time, but do understand, as we move forward on the timeline and new methodologies evolve so do new threats.

1. Not having a social media handbook or guide which educates your employees on how social media is to be used in support of the business internally and externally
2. Data migration to uncontrolled environments

You mention that writing a company social media handbook is a good thing to do but many company handbooks regarding social media seem to crack down on employee use and completely ignore the possible benefits of having your employees talk about your company. How do you strike a balance?

Hopefully there are far fewer iterations of a policy or handbook which lockdown their employees, and more which are created to guide their employees in the use of social media tools both internal and external to the company. Without such the business leaves to interpretation as to how to triage situations and define what and how the company prefers the tools to be used. I think most of us prefer to remove ambiguity and provide our employees with direction and resources to make good decisions.

When did you first realize that company security was at risk because of employee use of social media?

A great question. Risk is a broadly defined word which can be quantified and defined in a variety of ways.

So let me give you two examples and I’ll hit on these and a few more during the presentation.

The first I’ll take right out chapter one of my book “Secrets Stolen, Fortunes Lost.” The “The Tale of the Targeted Trojan” discusses a case which demonstrated how the confluence of physical and technical surveillance conducted by those with criminal intent allowed for the creation of a one-off piece of malware which was specifically designed to extract competitive data from an unsuspecting business and did so across a number of international borders. The surveillance included the mining and observation of the information the unsuspecting business and their employees had placed online and thus was available for harvest. A number of companies were successfully targeted and lost a host of information. The different types of information included intellectual property, go to market plans, customer data, personnel data, etc.

The second has to do with taking internal data and exposing it externally. Specifically, I witnessed, from afar, a company in the healthcare industry take their internal coordination of their patient records and services and organically migrate the coordination to a convenient external environment which gave them connectivity in such a way that their internal infrastructure did not. Unfortunately, the external environment wasn’t designed with the level of security required by regulatory directive.

What different security issues do small companies face compared to large ones?

Small companies by definition have more limited resources than larger ones and thus don’t readily have the infrastructure or head-count to throw at the issue, but other than the resource difference, the issues are identical. They still have their data, their customer data, their intellectual property and trade secrets and their brand to protect, the differences is scale.

Are there technical security issues business owners and managers should be discussing with their IT team?

Absolutely. Both large and small companies should be discussing how a given technological implementation meets the business needs, while also conforming with the company’s information security policies and regulatory guidelines. Lets return to my prior example of the company which had an organic migration to a third-party environment for the purposes of doing their job in a more collaborative and coordinated manner. It would appear the intent was noble, but it also appears that the security and privacy regime surrounding that environment were not fully understood. It is this understanding that I believe are amongst the most important to be discussing with those providing IT.

Why should people come see you speak? — Why is your talk so important?

Those who are able to attend should take away a perspective and context which they may not have given much thought too previously. There is no turning back time nor the tide, the evolution of social media is continuing, and we are all participants, keeping our businesses, ourselves and our families safe and secure is what this talk is about – that’s important.

Any last thoughts?

I do enjoy sharing information and am very much looking forward to the event on the 29th of June when I will be amongst my friends, family, and colleagues within the Social Media Club of Seattle, a club which I am a member. I hope this is just the beginning of this conversation.

See Christopher Burgess at our June Event:

Date – June 29, 2010
Time – 6-9 p.m.
Tickets – $15 includes two drinks and appetizers
Location – 415 Westlake – 415 Westlake Ave. N. Seattle, Washington  98109
Register Now - http://smcseajune.eventbrite.com/

(Complimentary on-site parking available)

Thank you to sponsors CBS Radio Seattle and Tungle.me

More About Christopher Burgess:

Christopher Burgess is a senior security advisor to the chief security officer of Cisco, where he focuses on intellectual property strategies. Additionally, Christopher leads the Global Investigative Support team, the Government Security Office, and the Global Threat Analysis team. Burgess co-authored the book “Secrets Stolen, Fortunes Lost, Preventing Intellectual Property Theft and Economic Espionage in the 21st Century” (Syngress, March 2008). In December 2009, The Huffington Post published his piece “A Common Sense Approach to Social Media.” Follow Christopher Burgess on Twitter: @burgessct and Cisco: http://twitter.com/CiscoSystems

Many of you have asked for access to Veronica’s slides and she has graciously allowed us to post them here.

A big thanks to Windows Phone for being the premier sponsor of this month’s event!
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Thanks also to Alaska Air for being our travel sponsor!
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Next month will be SMC Seattle’s one year anniversary! Although a date has not yet been set, it’s sure to be a good time and another sold-out event.

We’ll post the details here, but to get notified first sign-up for our email alerts.

Have a question about building community for Veronica? Please post it in the comments. We will try to ask as many of your questions as possible at the event!

You Can Find Veronica . .
veronicabelmont.com
twitter.com/veronica
www.facebook.com/Veronica-Belmont

December Meetup Event Details:

Date – Tuesday, December 8th
Time – 6:00-9:00pm
Location – Microsoft Conference Center: 16070 N.E. 36th Way, Redmond, WA 98052
Tickets – Sold out!

For all of you that requested the video of Sean’s popular presentation here it is!
If you just want the slides you can find them here.

Thank you to everyone who came out to SMC Seattle’s September event at Hotel 1000 featuring word-of-mouth marketing expert Sean Moffitt.

Sean had an in-depth presentation on social media with case studies from some very big brands, along with some helpful statistics on the value companies are receiving from using social media.

Many of you asked us to post Sean’s presentation so you could look at it again, so if you can’t see it above here it is.

We’d love to hear your comments. What did you learn from the presentation? What questions do you still have? What did you think of the event as a whole? What would you like to see more of? We look forward to seeing you at our next event!

Coming up on September 29th, SMC Seattle will be hosting word-of-mouth marketing expert Sean Moffitt of Agent Wildfire.
To learn more about Sean you can check out his company Agent Wildfire, his blog on word-of-mouth and social media marketing or follow him on twitter.

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