Social Media Club St. Louis holds Legal/Ethics Panel; Networking Happy Hour event.

RSVP here.

The event, held on July 16th, has some great local panelists. It’s also taking place at a fun St. Louis location.  Here’s some specifics.

Social Media has raised these and other legal questions that need answers. Come see a panel of lawyers and online personalities answer these questions Thursday, July 16th at Moulin. Whether you consider yourself a Twitter pro or work at a company exploring social media for business, be sure to stop by and pick the brains of those who know.

The Social Media Club of St. Louis‘ Monthly Meetup will offer networking, socializing and a panel discussion about Social Media and Law. The evening begins on the 1st floor with a cash bar(no credit cards) and drink specials at 5:30pm, followed by a panel discussion at 6:00pm.

What: SMCSTL Monthly Meetup – Legal & Ethical Social Media Issues
When: Thursday, July 16th at 5:30pm
Where: Moulin Events – Chouteau Room(1st floor)

Moderator: Matt Homann – @matthomann, lawyer, entrepreneur & blogger

Panelists:

Dana Loesch – @dloesch, blogger, host of The Dana Show on 97.1FM Talk

Eric Kayira – intellectual property, entertainment, new media attorney

Dennis Kennedy - @denniskennedy, attorney for MasterCard, blogger

Rex Gradeless – @rex7, published law student, blogger

Hey, it was 4th of July weekend, it was a Friday night, and there was no parking. Still had a turn out of 19 folks that signed in and several more that didn’t.  Some of the non tweeting folks opted not to sign in along with some that were new.

The event, hosted by @Rex7 and @Prebynski, was billed as the Largest Tweetup in St. Louis.  They were shooting for the Guinness Book of World Records. Let’s just say this event probably didn’t make it.  Was it waste? I don’t think so.

When first asked by Punching Kitty I was a little shy about panning this event as a big plus for St. Louis. After a couple of days to process, my take is definitely improved. This event will definitely lead to social networking growth for the local scene.

Any tweetup that doesn’t end with bad vibes adds to the momentum and the interactions.

People are talking about it.  Good or bad, it’s conversation that wasn’t happening before.  Some folks are even taking sides for or against Rex and Brandon.

Newbies were given a chance to meet and great with some of the more seasoned folks in social networking, at least in St. Louis.  People doubled their connections with individuals they’d actually gotten to meet in person.  A couple of folks are going to start blogging and now have some new friends to ask for help.

Another venue has been introduced to a tweetup.  This is big.  Once social networking meetups become part of the everyday conversation, it spreads like wildfire.

Did I come away doting over Rex and Brandon? Heck no; they’re just guys.  They bet big and didn’t totally go broke. That’s a win in social networking circles.

Should we be calling them out as hosting a flop? Yeah, sure for a few minutes. They deserve a bit of rib jabbing this go round.  Maybe next time they’ll talk less and do more.  If we beat them down now though, we don’t add any value.

Rex took time out to share follow up comments with the St. Louis Social Media Report.

Rex and Brandon, guys, let’s agree that in between now and the next event that you two will make some serious inroads into the local social networking groups. Also, I challenge you guys to drop some followers and follows between now and the next time we meet. Go ahead. I promise it won’t hurt.

For the record, I’m tojosan on Twitter.

Social Media is the buzzword that has defined the last couple of years in media and internet trends. The St. Louis area has a growing contingent of social media professionals and casual users, and the Social Media Club’s St. Louis chapter brings these hobbyists and professionals together to network, learn and chat about the technologies, practices and fun that is to be had in this virtual field.

Following on the heels of last month’s relaunch event, which gathered almost 150 Social Media types, the next Social Media Club of St. Louis’ Third Thursday Tangents Meetup is scheduled for 5:30pm June 18 at The Pepper Lounge in Downtown St. Louis. This month’s event will offer networking and socializing in one room and a panel discussion about Small Business and Social Media in the other. Come for the 1/2 price drink and appetizer specials – stay for the socializing or the panel; whatever is your pleasure.

What: SMCSTL Third Thursday Tangents Meetup

When: Thursday, June 18 at 5:30pm

Where:The Pepper Lounge(2005 Locust St.)

The entrepreneurs on this month’s panel have experience effectively engaging in social media for a variety of reasons – from knowledge sharing to growing their customer base. We will also be taking questions via twitter that are appended with the tag #smcstl, and we will be streaming the discussion as well – more details and a link to that coming soon!

Bring a friend or two, or three, and join us for the SMCSTL’s Third Thursday Tangents Meetup and enjoy some good friends, networking, conversation and drinks. You don’t have to be a member to attend, and the event is free for everyone.

For more details on this month’s event, and to RSVP please go to smcstl1.eventbrite.com.

You can download the press release for publication here - social media club st. louis june press release.

It’s madness, sheer and utter madness. What’s that you say? Social networking and media are finally getting some action and I’m complaining? Yep! It’s overloading my personal bandwidth. How about the rest of you St. Louis?

My big goal in the social networking and social media arena, for 2009, is to get St. Louis on the map. It’s not about being the biggest city, the one with the most casinos, or where rib aficionados rave about coming. It’s about St. Louis losing the ’small town’ tag and being seen as real scene for blogging, video blogging, and other social networking and media goodness.

It isn’t happening over night, but this upcoming month might have you believing otherwise. Let’s look at just a handful of items from the upcoming weeks.

June 5th – Bring a Tweep to Lunch – 11:30 AM
June 11th – Feraro’s Pizza Tweetup – 6 PM
June 11th – Girls Guide to the Galaxy Relaunch Party 5:30 PM
June 13th – St. Louis Bloggers of BlogHer meetup – TBD

And wait, there’s at least one more scheduled…
June 18th – Social Media Club St. Louis evening event – TBD

The list above doesn’t even cover a couple of other impromptu events that will occur and others that are less well publicized. WOW.

Ground work is already being laid for an Interactive Festival, another large SMC STL event, and a regular series of Friday lunch tweetups.

If St. Louis is not on the map by December 31st, then some isn’t paying attention.

What’s your event for June? Don’t have one? Find out more about one of the events above them and RSVP today.

The Go-Giver Tour is coming to St. Louis. Roxanne’s in Clayton is the place to be on April 22nd. It’s likely going to be the most productive social networking event you’ll attend this Spring.

Here’s the blurb:

“The Go-Giver” is a small book with a powerful message. In it, co-authors Bob Burg and John David Mann tell the story of one man and his quest to learn the ultimate lesson: that giving is the key to success in business… and in life. A business that gives more in value than it takes in payment follows the Go Giver model. Now four visionary young men have taken that message and are using it it to teach five entrepreneurs the transformative power of adding value to others’ lives by taking them on the road for an adventure packed with sage business advice, training and opportunity for growth. They’re also bringing the tour to us, hosting Tweetups across the country in a whirlwind of social media connection and fun! Join us April 22nd at Roxane’s in Clayton to take part in this exciting tour! Appetizer, lunch and drink specials, Tweeters and mind-blowing conversation and collaboration. What more could you want out of a networking event?

Ready to sign up? Check out the Go-Giver Tour St. Louis Event on Ning. You can still RSVP.

To learn more about the Tour visit http://www.gogivertour.com.

Jeff Pulver of Pulver.Tv and more, has been hosting social media breakfasts all over the country.  These breakfasts don’t end up just being a bunch of geeks sitting around drinking coffee and telling bad jokes though.

No one gets to sit idle and twiddle their thumbs anymore.  Nope, Jeff involves everyone in live social networking.  Social networking could be as basic as everyone saying their name and job, but Jeff has created a tool to make that interaction so much more interesting.  It’s the Jeff Pulver Personal Social Networking Toolkit.

Jeff has put together a patent pending kit to make meetups all about the networking but without the fancy web tools.  The kit isn’t anything high tech, and components could be picked up at just about any drug store, mart or office supply stop.

So what’s in the kit?  You’ll need to visit here to find out, but I can give you a hint.  It involves lunch bags and stickers.  One can just imagine the fun.

I’m planning on making some of these kits up for the next Social Media Club St. Louis or St. Louis Bloggers meetup.  They’ll make great ice breakers for sure.

And on that note, what is your local group doing to foster networking during meetups?  Name tags alone? Conversation starter cards? Presentations?  Pass the URL?

I’d love to hear your ideas.  You can share them here in the comments, drop me a tweet (@tojosan), or leave me a voice mail at 636-486-4723.

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The SOBCon08 contest is going well.  But I could still use your help.  Anywhere you see a SOBCon08 link, all you have to do is click.  The clicks count as votes.  The blogger with the most votes by March 15th wins admission and hotel cost.  This prize totals about $750. You can put me there. Thanks.

I walked in to Kaldi’s in Kirkwood and immediately found the group of clubbies. They were right inside the door and already chatting. Tables had been rounded up, chairs brought around and folks where already exchanging emails and blog links. My kind of people.

Soon a group of five turned to ten and then over a dozen were on hand. Relocating was not an option. As an aside, you could tell the regular coffee drinkers; they were quick to visit the counter and get seated back with their steaming cups.

Everyone there was involved in blogging in some way. I’ve linked there here, courtesy of Brandstorming. Note that only one blog link is provided for each person, though several of us have more than one blog.

Jim Durbin: Brandstorming.com
Franki Durbin: Life In A Venti Cup
Tanner Hobin: TannerHobin
Andrew Nagy: Andrewnagy.net
Kurt Greenbaum – stltoday.com/vstl
Kristen Munson – socialmediamom.com
Justin Schmidt – justinspeak.com
Lisa Young – jedimom.net
Melody Cissell – news-bitch.com
Reem Abeidoh – www.reemabeidoh.com
Don Krutewicz – donkrutewicz
Angeline Soon – twitter.com/s00nami
Ryan Suther
Howard McAuliffe- StlDevelops.com

A couple of these folks are becoming more than just acquaintances by now, but there rest were all new faces to me. Unfamiliar faces didn’t put a damper on the conversation though. It was nonstop talking from minute one and out to the cars. We did the typical go around the room bit, but that is not to discount it as of no value. Introducing ourselves really lead to more conversations and connections, and talks of investing in each other.

I mentioned in a post earlier today that I wasn’t sure what my take away for new contacts would be, but let me assure you, this group was all worthy of my attention. Each brought a different perspective and attitude to the table. (tables – 8 of them) It will be difficult to pass up adding all of these new faces and inputs to my daily feeds.

I don’t have my pictures up yet, but when I do, they’ll be at my Flickr account and tagged with smcstl.

Please check out the blogs above and give them some love. Also, let us know about your local social media club meetups.

Yours,

Todd

So I’m going today to the 1st meeting of Social Media Club St. Louis and I’m wondering if I should. Oh, not because it won’t be fun, or constructive, and not because I won’t make new contacts, but for just the opposite. I’m worried about making too many new contacts.

That’s right, too many. I’m quickly facing the point in my social networking and media relationships cycle where there are just too many folks to keep up with. Contacts galore, but you say, how many of them do you pay attention to. Too many and not enough.

I’m now following hundreds of contacts on Twitter, some on Utterz, and countless blogs via RSS. That’s not to mention messages and interaction on Facebook and other smaller spots. And today’s meetup is bound to bring me more cool folks to follow and interact with.

So what’s a guy to do? I’ve already talked about social networking contact issues here, here, and here. Still my conclusion is the cliche, less is more. How am I accomplishing this?

There isn’t really one answer for me, but here’s how I’m going to handle it today.

1) Give folks my almost universal ID – tojosan – good for Twitter, Utterz, and more social networking and media sites.

2) Give folks my blog information

3) Accept and note down their universal IDs and add them as contacts

4) Get their blog information – and subscribe on a trial basis

My expectations?

1) Two or three out of a dozen plus will become regular contacts

2) Two or three will have blogs of real interest to me

How do I feel about that? Just fine. Honestly, more of them would just be attention thieves from the others. Will I stop following the blogs? Maybe not, but they’ll be relegated to the weekly vs daily checks for sure. Since they are local, it might be hard to pass them up. The key criteria will be subject matter though. I’m very uninterested in political ranting, and much more interested in articles about restaurants, tech, and movies.

Will you be screening your new potential contacts? Or will you just keep adding anyone that you meet? Is it exclusionary to put off making contacts of folks that you aren’t interested in, if they are interested in following you? What’s your plan for your next meetup?

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Click here to help me win a free ride to SOBCon08. No registration or anything. Just click.

Thanks,

Todd

Chris Brogan, of ChrisBrogan.com, brings us a list of Five Things to Do at a Social Network Meetup.  The tips include both things to do and a couple of advice tips on how to do things.

One of the big ones he tackles is what to do if you need to do business.  That tip alone makes this post worth a visit.  Another one of my favorites from the post is don’t crowd surf too much.

Lots of folks feel the need to meet everyone at the meetup.  My own experience has been that this rarely results in serious or deep conversation.  Along with that, it makes it more difficult to build new or existing relationships.  One surprise of doing that at my last meetup was learning that several of my fellow St. Louis bloggers are Jewish.  This lead to a discussion of how this impacted their lives and their blogs.

Chris ends with this leading question:

“What do YOU do at meetups to make them better, more interesting, a reflection of the value of real space versus online social networking?”

My own bit to add would be come prepared to talk about what you do.  Do doesn’t mean how you earn a living, thought that might be interesting, but do, as in:

1) I blog about technology.

2) I blog about programming.

3) I use Twitter, Utterz, and Facebook.

People will ask, but even if they don’t, you can lead in by asking them what it is they do. Great ice breaker.

Another tip is get to the names.  It’s one thing to be known as the guy from The Broad Brush, but quite another to be recognized as Todd or tojosan. Much more personal.

That’s it for me, but what will you do make the most of your next social networking meetup?

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Help me get to SOBCon08 for free; click through – SOBCon08 – that’s all it takes.