Tis' the season to get social

Join SMCNO and Whole Foods to celebrate the holidays with wine and appetizer tastings!

This is our holiday social event, and we welcome you, your friends, coworkers and family to join us for delicious wines and winter foods supplied by Whole Foods!

When: Thursday, December 17, 2009 from 6-8:30pm
Where: Whole Foods Uptown, 560 Magazine Street
RSVP on Facebook

See you there!

Social Media Club SuperJam

Join Social Media Club New Orleans as we shift into music mode next Thursday, October 22nd for a Social Media Super Jam featuring:

New Orleans Indie Rock Collective, DJ Soul Sister, Mark Samuels of Basin Street Records and Kevin Conway Music Industry Business Development Officer for Louisiana Office of Economic Development.

These movers, shakers and music makers will discuss how social media is reshaping the music industry and what’s in store for the future of New Orleans music scene.

Social Media Club
Thursday, October 22nd
6 p.m. @ Ampersand 1100 Tulane Avenue

Ampersand is sponsoring this meeting and will be offering exclusive drink specials to social media club kids! Enter on Tulane Avenue near Common, parking lots and street parking surround the venue.

Social Media Club Social

Maybe you are wondering what this Social Media Club is all about. Maybe you have friends you want to introduce slowly. Maybe you just love great conversation and good drink specials.

Join us Thursday, September 17th for some SMCNO mingling. We'd like to meet local media, advertising and PR professionals who want to learn more about social media and how Web 2.0 tools are shifting communications paradigms. Whoa. Promise we won't say paradigms. We just want to get to know you.

So bring a friend and let's get social!

Where: Bacco Restaurant
310 Chartres St
New Orleans, LA 70130

When: Thursday, September 17th from 6-8

What: Social Media Club NO Meet & Greet

How: RSVP on our Facebook page. Click here now.

Why: To learn more about SMCNO, meet interesting people and enjoy delicious food & drink specials

Who: The cool kids

Setting the Table for Social Media: Panelists

In advance of our meeting tonight, I wanted to be sure to give everyone a little amuse bouche, and some advance information about our panelists, an illustrious bunch of foodies and hospitality experts.

Following a welcome from our generous hosts, the Ralph Brennan Restaurant Group, we'll launch into a great presentation from Chef Scott Boswell, and then our panel discussion about food, restaurants and social media. We're looking forward to eating, drinking and learning with you all!

With no further ado, your panelists:

Scott Boswell: Chef and owner of Stella! and Stanley in New Orleans, Chef Scott will be discussing his role as a blogging and tweeting chef, both in New Orleans and during his travels and work in other cities. Stella! was recently awarded 5 beans from The New Orleans Times-Picayune's Brett Anderson, and I can attest to the deliciousness of the menu--well deserved beans, imho! Follow him on Twitter, he's @chefscottb

Brooke Boudreaux: From her hidden Where Magazine offices in New Orleans, Brooke is responsible for promoting and building community for the magazine through social media technology. She's a connector and a provider of news, and we're excited to have her join the panel! Follow her on Twitter, she's @whereneworleans

Lizzy Caston: New New Orleanian and marketing and urban planning guru, Lizzy is going to share her experiences of working with businesses (notably, food carts!) in Portland, Oregon and her thoughts and feelings on working with social media as a marketing tool. Follow her on Twitter, she's @misslizzyc.

Lorin Gaudin: New Orleans Food Diva, and WGNO star, is a food and restaurant journalist and insider, having hosted many different radio and television programs on the subject. She is an active user of social media for spreading great tips on where to eat next, and for gathering information about new food trends in New Orleans. Follow her on Twitter, she's @loringaudin.

Setting the Table for Social Media: Restaurant and Hospitality Roundtable

Please join us for the next Social Media Club of New Orleans Meeting on August 20 at 6:00 pm at Ralph's on the Park (900 City Park Avenue.)

The topic will be: Setting the Table for Social Media: Restaurant and Hospitality Roundtable, featuring some of New Orleans' best known chefs, food journalists and restaurants.

Ralph's on the Park is sponsoring this meeting in their upstairs private dining space, and are offering $5 glasses of wine and $2 Abita Amber, as well as hand-passed hors d’oeuvres, crafted by new Executive Chef Chip Flanagan. All are also welcome to stay for the summer special, featuring 3 appetizers and a glass of wine for $28.

In preparation for this meeting, we'd love to hear what questions you have for our panelists. What do you want to know about the ways restaurants, chefs and food/hospitality journalists use Social Media? Please post your questions in the comment section, and one randomly selected comment will receive a fantastic gift bag with Bliss products courtesy of W Hotels of New Orleans, as well as drink tickets for their Dirty Linen Party at the W French Quarter.

Cease and Desist | Social Media Legal Roundtable

Join the Social Media Club of New Orleans that as we open the floor to discuss copyrights, creative licensing, libel, slander, and how brick and mortar legal definitions are being interpreted online.
The wonderful Cochon will be providing appetizers to nosh on, and as always, there will be giveaways and prizes. We hope to see you there!

Panelists will include:
Ray Areaux, Chair of IP Practice at Carver Darden:
Raymond G. Areaux is a founding member in the law firm of Carver, Darden, Koretzky, Tessier, Finn, Blossman & Areaux, LLC where he chairs the firms intellectual property practice group. His practice is devoted to obtaining, licensing and enforcing all manner of intellectual property rights. His primary practice areas are computers and software, patents, trademarks, trade secrets, media law, copyright, unfair competition and franchises. He is a registered patent attorney with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, and is a frequent lecturer on intellectual property topics.

Mr. Areaux's experience includes:

* prosecuting patents in the electronic arts, software arts, web-based delivery arts, biotech arts, and mechanical arts;
* negotiating many and varied types of licensing agreements and franchising agreements:
* prosecuting and maintaining hundreds of trademarks, service marks and brands;
* litigating patent, trade secret, trademark, copyright and licensing disputes, including patent claims against the Federal Government; and,
* arbitrating computer software and other commercial transaction disputes.

Mr. Areaux obtained his J.D. from Loyola University where he was a member of the Law Review and published his commentary "Computer Software Protection: >From Infancy to Adolescence."

Mr. Areaux holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering as well as a B.S. in Computer and Information Systems, both from Tulane University.

Prior to starting his law practice in 1985, Mr. Areaux was a product development engineer with IBM at its lab in Austin, Texas and then later a systems engineer with Conoco in New Orleans


Ernest Svenson
http://www.ernietheattorney.net
Darwin observed that "it is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change." The legal system, long bound by tradition, now struggles to adapt to increasing societal change. Today, lawyers can use technology in novel ways to improve communication and increase efficiency in gathering information. We need to be more adept at handling digital information to fully represent our clients.

Clients increasingly need lawyers who look at things in fresh ways, who seek hidden advantages, and who properly assess risk instead of reflexively avoiding it. "Zealous representation," to me, is less about swash-buckling and more about thoughtfulness and strategic planning.

Specialties: Business disputes, Franchise litigation. Speaking on E-Discovery, and legal technology issues.

Brian Oberkirch
Veteran online media planner, http://www.brianoberkirch.com/
I’m a marketing consultant focused on social media and product/service development. Like It Matters is my personal blog where I write about social media, community-based marketing and technologies that revolve around relevance.

I do social media consulting and projects for companies and marketing agencies of all sizes, helping them use these new tools to have better conversations with those who matter to their business. I also do quite a bit of speaking and training on social media and other topics.

In my past lives, I was a marketing consultant and writer for hire, managed national brand accounts at large and small advertising and PR shops, started a social media consultancy called Weblogs Work and helped build a suite of applications for those clients, taught literature and creative writing, wrote newspaper articles, did the morning news at a radio station, and many other things.

Live Stream of Hurricane Panel & Giveaway

Here's the video form the SMCNO Crisis/Hurricane Preparedness Panel.

Comment on what you learned to win a $25 Border's Gift Card. Or add your best tips.

SMCNO Streams Live on LaunchPadTV, and Our Giveaways are Revealed

In the spirit of being truly social, and thanks to the generosity of the whole crew over at LaunchPad, we will stream this month's meeting live, LIVE on LaunchPad's internet channel: http://www.livestream.com/launchpadlive this Thursday evening. We will meet at 6pm, and our panel discussion will start at about 7pm. If you can't make the meeting this month, you still have a great opportunity to participate in our panel discussion, joining the chat room is as simple as choosing your username, and we will be taking your questions as well.
We have a great panel lined up to discuss their implementaion of Social Media and Web 2.0 tools into their disaster and crisis practices.

We've also got two $25 gift certificates to Borders to give away at this meeting!
We are all very excited about this month's meeting and we hope to see you in person or in the chatroom on livestream.com!

RSVP now on Facebook, Linked In or Twitvite!

Thursday, June 18th, 6pm at Launchpad
643 Magazine St.
Suite 102, New Orleans, LA 70130
[map]

Hurricane and Crisis Discussion: How Web 2.0 Tools Can be Used in Crisis Situations

June marks the official start of hurricane season here in New Orleans and in the Gulf Coast Region. Has your business updated their Crisis Situation Guide and Procedures this year? What makes this year so different? There are now many Web 2.0 tools to incorporate into your Hurricane and Disaster Protocols.

Social Media can be a powerful tool to help keep in touch with people during a crisis situation, and we at Social Media Club NO would like to take this opportunity to share and discuss how you and your workplace can integrate Web 2.0 tools into your Crisis/Disaster Protocol.

We will be featuring 3 panelists that have embraced Web 2.0 tools as it relates to hurricane preparedness:

Stanford Rosenthal of www.levees.org will discuss how they realized that there was a conversation going on outside of their site and how they integrated tools to embrace and engage in the community dialogue and comment. Not to mention, the "reputation management" that comes into play if and when you have to go up against a Goliath like the Corps of Engineers.

Robert X. Fogarty of www.evacuteer.org, a volunteer recruitment and management organization will discuss how they are utilizing new tools to manage volunteers and to help organize the evacuation process.

Kayla Castille, of www.WDSU.com will discuss how the media is changing and embracing new web tools to track real time events and developments, particularly in crisis situations.

RSVP now on Facebook, Linked In or Twitvite!

Thursday, June 18th, 6pm at Launchpad
643 Magazine St.
Suite 102, New Orleans, LA 70130
[map]

Are you ready for a crisis?

Next week we will be chatting with some local people who are using Web 2.0 tools in creative ways to address the hurricane season. I'd like to hear what your business or organizations are doing to prepare for a storm? What tools have you found helpful- from Twitter to blogs to Instant Message? Share some of your best practices and ideas!

Join us Thursday June 18th from 6-9, as we discuss best practices with three panelists. For more details on the event and to RSVP, click here: http://budurl.com/sksd

Upcoming Topics

We have come up with a handful of topics we would like to discuss over the next few months. But, we want your input. Tell us which you'd like to see, or make a recommendation on something completely different! Our goal is to provide relevant, informative and entertaining content that reflects the changing Web 2.0 landscape each month. So please review the below options and add your comments.

1. Hospitality & Tourism Panel
New Orleans is the ultimate tourism destination, and we are finally getting the Post-K message out that we are OPEN for business! We will invite several representative from the hospitality and tourism fields to discuss how they are interacting with and attracting tourists using social media. We will ask how hotels, restaurants and travel entities are leveraging Web 2.0 tools during the recession to boost sales and visits.

2. Shifting Media and PR Landscape
As traditional news outlets continue to suffer, blogs and micro-blogs are gaining more credibility as reliable news sources. We will assemble local media that have moved online and discuss how this effects their industry and how it changes the PR pitch. We will discuss the resources and tools available to better assess and focus PR efforts.

3. Crisis Management
Hurricane season is around the corner. All New Orleans marketers understand the need for a strong message during evacuation or impending storms. We will discuss how social media can help facilitate crisis management and what protocols and strategies local business entities currently have in place.

Please offer your thoughts and first choice for June's topic. Thanks!

Mix & Mingle

We will be having our very first Social Media Club Meeting this Thursday, May 21st. Stay tuned for topics to be announced for upcoming meetings. Every third Thursday.

Looking for Leaders

The Social Media Club New Orleans is looking for help shaping the future of social media in the city. Social Media Club will bring together journalists, publishers, communications professionals, artists, amateur media creators, citizen journalists, teachers, students, tool makers, and other interested collaborators. Essentially the people who create and consume media who have an interest in seeing the ‘media industry’ evolve for everyone’s benefit.

We have identified four roles that we needed support filling. These four people form the leadership team of the New Orleans group. If you are interested, drop me a line at tiffany@fabresmithcoco.com.

Promotions Director
Promotion is key to the ultimate success of our organization–and the earlier the better! This person is responsible for:

• Managing the Social Media Club New Orleans web pages, including the blog, wiki, forums and email list
• Coordinating with Programming Director to secure program agenda for each event
• Promoting future events through all the above-named channels
• Publicizing future events through online and traditional channels
• Writing and sending around recaps of each public meeting
• Recording, publishing and sharing audio and video from events

Partnership Director

Our activities wouldn’t be possible without partners. We partner with other businesses and organizations to find topics, speakers and venues for future activities. The Partnership Director manages the relationships with the national Social Media Club parent organization, other important social media organizations (both national and local), as well as with local businesses and organizations interested in sponsoring or hosting upcoming activities. This person is responsible for:

• Managing relationships with SNCR and other national and local social media-related organizations
• Build and maintain relationships with, and identify co-sponsorship opportunities with, local marketing and technology organizations
• Identifying and managing the relationships with past and future event sponsors, co-sponsors and venues
• Coordinating with the Programming Director to find appropriate time slots, topics and venues for partner-sponsored events
• Coordinating with the Production Director to identify speaker and sponsor needs for each event

Production Director
This person is responsible for all aspects of event execution, including:

• Assuming responsibility for event program from Programming Director
• Scheduling and managing planning meetings with event sponsors and speakers
• Managing on-site signage, video, audio and lighting
• Coordinating food and drink with event sponsors and/or venue
• Staffing and managing event registration
• Maintaining the master member list
• Managing development and collection of feedback forms
• Managing giveaways and all-other on-site activities

Membership Director
The membership director is responsible for three important roles:

• Managing the master membership list of the New Orleans Social Media Club
• Promoting local membership in the national Social Media Club organization
• Managing the relationship with the national Social Media Club organization

Digital Scribe
This person is responsible for recording and blogging events including:

• Writing and sending around recaps of each public meeting
• Recording, publishing and sharing audio and video from events

Roles filled:

Programming Director - Tiffany Fennell Starnes

At the heart of the Social Media Club is great interactive events. The Programming Director manages all aspects of the activity calendar for the New Orleans club. This person is responsible for:

• Developing and managing the schedule of events, including regular (monthly) public meetings and planning meetings
• Identifying topics for upcoming events
• Coordinating with the Partnership Director to secure speakers and identify venues for each event
• Securing speaker bios
• Preparing the event program for each public event, including agenda, directions and other special instructions
• Hand off event program to Promotions Director for publicity and Production Director for planning and coordination of event