I have to admit, I was a little nervous about September’s SMC event on how politicians use social media. I mean, was I going to get “campaigned” to?

But since it was my one-year anniversary as an SMC attendee, I didn’t want to miss this one. And I’m glad I didn’t.

What impressed me the most about this panel was how on-topic they were at explaining exactly how they used social media in various campaigns, their best practices, and how social media will impact future campaigns. Check out the livestream, courtesy of the great Greg Young (@CoolGuyGreg) to see what you missed. I’ve also pulled out some nuggets from the event below:

What was your “Ah-ha!” moment when you realized that social media was here to stay in terms of having a meaningful impact in politics?

For Zach Silk, it came when working on Darcy Burner’s campaign in 2006. The campaign was seen to be on the cutting edge of using social media with netroots. Granted, they weren’t using tools and engaging their constituents at the level that is expected today, but they were paving the way for what was ahead by showing how blogs can break down “old media” and connect with supporters in a new way. As Silk put it, social media offers the ability for candidates to communicate directly with their constituents and catapult an unknown candidate into a known candidate.

Scott Stanzel has a different “Ah-ha!” moment with each social media type. During the 2004 Presidential race, he realized that blogs had tremendous power when CBS ran a piece on “60 Minutes” reporting that President Bush didn’t fulfill his national service requirement. From there, Power Line posted a blog called “The 61^st Minute”, which called into question some of the documents that drove that story and, ultimately, brought on the firing of Dan Rather. That’s when Scott said he realized, “Man, this has a lot of power.”

For Allison Byrne Fields, the moment came down to this: ”What got social media to be such a core part of politics” was that the “cost per vote went down, [and] suddenly it became cost-efficient to reach out to young people.” It’s a cost-efficient way to utilize volunteers and tap into the enthusiasm that exists. ”That’s all it is,” she said. “It’s not beautiful, it’s just cheaper.” When applied to politics, social media is just ”door-knocking online,” she added.

How can you be authentic in social media, especially with high-ranking candidates?

 If you want an authentic voice, “ask supporters to speak on your behalf.” – Allison Byrne Fields

“As a candidate, if you want real engagement, you have to let go of the reins a little bit. As a staff, you can’t control them that much. You’re going to make mistakes. But the more you do it, the more you have that real engagement, the more people are going to cut you some slack if you say a dumb thing once in a while.” – Scott Stanzel

Authenticity is the most important currency in social media and politics. You have to be real to connect with people and get candidates to let down their guard and break down the “handled” experience.  – Zach Silk

From the audience Q&A:

How do you make social media interactive? When do you engage with comments and fans?

• If you’re out there and you stand for something, stand up!
• Provide education and foster communication, but you won’t have time to comment on everything. Do moderate comments on occasion, but make those judgments based on the type of community you’ve built, in addition to your staffing, time, and resources.

U.S. politics are very divisive. Do you think social media makes people more or less divisive, or is it an echo chamber?

• Social media allows for more people to engage in the conversation and be more comfortable in doing so. They may not show up to a rally or a debate, but if they can sit at home and dip their toe in the water, that’s great.
• Social media has broken down institutional walls but it’s still the “wild west” — very new and fresh.
• We haven’t figured out all the best values — how to behave and the best mechanisms yet — but they’re working on how to build the tools in a way to create the best level of engagement. For example, allowing anonymous comments at the bottom of a news article isn’t really the best place for dialogue.

What’s the “next big thing” in social media that will impact future elections?

• Geo-location and mobile will vastly impact how to organize volunteers and reach out to people in ways where they can act. It will give campaign organizers a cheaper way that will require less management and engage more people.
• Social media will also provide more authentic, direct communication with candidates and elected officials when it comes to Q&A, in ways that go beyond Facebook and Twitter.

To find out more about social media and the political realm, check out these recaps:

• “Social media is the ‘wild wild west’ of political campaigns” – from Kyle Moore on King 5 News
• More about Allison Byrne’s “Ah ha!” moment from Nicole Parilee’s blog post, “What Got Barack Obama Elected.”

Thanks again to our wonderful sponsor, Woodmark Hotel! It couldn’t have been a better evening – the view overlooking the lake, the warm hospitality you showed us, and the opportunity to meet Woody, the celebrity pup!

Laura Kimball directs social media for Jolkona and blogs at Lamiki.com

SMC Seattle August Event: Social Media & Entertainment

Networking and a Q&A Discussion with Matt Inman (The Oatmeal)

Please note: This month’s SMC Seattle event has moved to Bell Harbor International Conference Center’s rooftop. See below for updated venue information. Also, thanks to our new sponsors FILTER and Ascentium.

The event is currently sold out but if you’d like a refund due to the venue change, please email SMCinSeattle@gmail.com. Otherwise, all tickets previously purchased are good for admission. See you on Aug. 17th!

SMC Seattle is proud to be a sponsor of Gnomedex! If you’re not yet attending Gnomedex, there are still tickets left for one of the top tech and social media conferences in the country and it’s right here in Seattle, August 19th-21st.  For more info and to purchase tickets, visit http://Gnomedex.com

Join us this month for a Q&A with Matt Inman, creator of The Oatmeal. Using a combo of keen business sense and real-world comic familiarity, the man behind The Oatmeal— 27 year old Matt Inman— draws, sketches and codes his way to a successful business making people laugh.

His site, receiving more than four million unique hits per month, was recently named in Time Magazine’s Top Blogs of 2010. If you haven’t yet met Matt or seen his site, The Oatmeal, click here see an overview of his work from his appearance on Last Call with Carson Daly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVvSqBIn7zQ

Behind his wit and unassuming presence, Matt has a powerful story about his journey and how social media played a role in his success. His experience includes co-founder of SEOmoz,and founder and creator of an online dating website which he later sold, Mingle2(the entire site from concept to launch was built in only 66.5 hours). He now focuses his energies full time on The Oatmeal.

August event details:

Date –August 17, 2010
Time– 6-9 p.m.
UPDATED! Address—Rooftop of Bell Harbor, 2211 Alaskan Way, Pier 66, Seattle, WA
(Street and nearby garage parking available. To get to the rooftop, enter the building and follow the signs to the elevator.)
This event is currently sold out. If you would like a refund due to the venue change, please email SMCinSeattle@gmail.com.

Thank you to our sponsors, FILTER and Ascentium!

FILTER is a company dedicated to partnering with clients to solve creative and marketing challenges. In a single, unique agency, FILTER combines unparalleled access to creative resources with creative leadership and project management. FILTER has offices in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Check them out at http://FilterTalent.com and http://twitter.com/FILTERTalent

Ascentium is a tight-knit band of writers, designers, user experience architects, solution architects, developers, testers, analysts, strategists, planners, creative directors, and project managers. The group is dedicated to creating and delivering exceptional experiences—multichannel, interactive, transactional, and social. Check them out at http://www.ascentium.com and http://twitter.com/ascentium.

About The Oatmeal:

Everything on The Oatmeal was written, drawn, and coded by Matthew Inman. He subsists on a steady diet of crickets and whiskey. He enjoys long walk on the beach, gravity, and breathing heavily through his mouth. His dislikes include scurvy, typhoons, and tapeworm medication

You can learn more about Matthew here: http://0at.org

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.

Location:  Desert Fire /  7211 166th Avenue Northeast / Redmond, WA 98052-7815 / 425-895-1500

Time: 8:30pm–11pm  (21+ please)

What: Network with SMC Seattle board members and event attendees. Food and drinks are hosted by Sprint.

Sprint 4G: There will also be live 4G demos and giveaways from Sprint. The Sprint team will be on-hand to discuss Sprint’s new-to-Seattle 4G network including live demos of all of the cool wireless, device, gaming, laptop and video applications 4G enables!

Everyone who attends SMC Seattle’s after-party will be entered to win one of numerous Sprint 3G/4G combo data cards. For those who attended the SMC Seattle event earlier in the evening, we’ll be drawing for a Sprint mystery prize. (It’s not a phone, and you will not receive it until it’s launched in 2010. The winner will not be disappointed!)

Those without a ticket to attend SMC Seattle’s 12/8 event are encouraged to attend the after-party, come early and bring your laptop to watch SMC Seattle’s livestream.