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November 14, 2008
Reflections from Social Media Jungle - Nov 13th in Melville NY
Yesterday I returned to the Jungle.
At pulver.com HQ in Melville, New York I enjoyed hosting the first iteration of the Social Media Jungle which brought together about 50 people from across the United States. Since 1996 I have hosted / produced quite a number of events and yesterday’s Social Media Jungle is an event that ranks amongst the best I have been a part of.
One of the things I have learned about life in 2008 is that it is a jungle outside, on many levels. And while I have have been silent about my life after VON, it took until yesterday for me to put myself on my own stage (outside of my blog) and share some of my thoughts with a friendly community.
Yesterday was an experiment. I tried to create an event which was 100% about the content and not the company/product/service the discussion leader was a part of. And I believe this worked. There was plenty of information and it all flowed freely and openly. I introduced Social Media Jungle as an unconference mashed up by a “Benevolent Dictator” who was responsible for editing the content and providing a structure. Social Media Jungle was a pitch free zone. And together there were quite a number of open discussions and I discovered quite a number of topics which could be explored for hours and not the minutes which had been allocated.
And while no one in the room yesterday was aware of the thoughts going on in my head when I welcomed everyone, I have to say that being at Social Media Jungle provided me with everything that was needed to commit to myself to hosting similar events in the future. Yesterday I announced that the next Social Media Jungle will be taking place on January 7th at CES 2009 and I am thinking about hosting future iterations in New York City, San Francisco and possible London during 2009. (Any friends interested in sponsoring these events should feel free to contact me.)
One of the amazing attributes of the community of people who joined us was that just about everyone who attended had a twitter account. And by the time the event ended, everyone attending was on twitter. And it turns out that when 50 people twitter an event, it is possible to become the number one search term on Summize. #SMJ08 made it to number one in the morning and in the afternoon yesterday.
Special thanks to: Chris Brogan, Jeremy Epstein, Leslie Poston, Howard Greenstein, Dean Landsman, Jeffrey Sass, Nelly Yusupova, Brett Petersel, Oz Sultan, Steve Lubetkin, Jonathan Yarmis, Ben Grossman, Jamie Thompson, and Justin Oberman for being our discussion leaders.
And special thanks to everyone else who attended for being engaged in the discussions.
I am still a little blurry from all of the information that was shared but if you would like to get a feel of some of the information shared, you may want to take a look at what Jeffrey Sass (@sass) posted in his “Learn Baby Learn” deck on Slideshare.
Portions of Social Media Jungle were shared on UStream. Below you can catch a part of both Ben Grossman and Jamie Thompson’s presentation:
Live Video streaming by Ustream
Howard Greenstein and Dean Landsman shared their presentation here.
Leslie Poston write about her presentation in this blog post.
Steve Lubetkin refers to his presentation here.
Special thanks again to everyone who helped Social Media Jungle happen. And it feels great to be back in the jungle. :)
If you would like to be a speaker at a future Social Media Jungle, please feel free to pitch me.
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Tags: social media, SMJ08, Social Media Jungle, Jeff Pulver
Posted by jeff on November 14, 2008 09:41 AM | Permalink
Additional resources: #140conf events | Watch the Jeff Pulver Show | Jeff's Qik Videos
Comments
That was such a wonderful experience. I loved sharing knowledge with people, but I loved learning just as much. I got one blog post up about the event so far, but I expect to write two more, one about my presentation itself and one about my impressions throughout the day.
I am still excited from the event, and as I mentioned in my email would be excited and honored to be part of the CES 2009 version.
Posted by: Leslie Poston at November 15, 2008 01:01 AM
Jeff,
So looking forward to an event in the Bay Area! Unfortunately I'm not headed to CES this year so please make SF at the top of your location hit list in 09!!
Deborah
Posted by: Deborah at November 14, 2008 04:18 PM
Jeff,
I hope you'll consider a Southern tour stop such as Charlotte or Atlanta. We have a large community down here! If it is Charlotte, I can facilitate a lot of the operational requirements.
Thanks!
Darryl
Posted by: Darryl Parker at November 14, 2008 11:08 AM
Hi Jeff-
Yesterday was amazing. The only reason I didn't tweet more was because I was furiously taking notes :) So much good info, and lots of good people.
Looking forward to CES and basically every other excuse you can think of to get a group like this back together again.
Thanks!!
Michelle
Posted by: Michelle Shildkret at November 14, 2008 10:34 AM
Thank you SO much Jeff for hosting this amazing event! I tweeted 120 times yesterday, that is how good the content of SMJ was!!
Not only did we hit #1 on Twitter trends twice, but we sustained our position there most of the day (with dips only during our lunch and snack breaks).
And thanks to everyone who attended! It was a truly incredible day :)
Posted by: Maria Thurrell at November 14, 2008 10:27 AM
Jeff,
My mind is also a blurr and the notes I took yesterday look like the ramblings of a mad scientist this morning...and that's just what everyone else was saying!
Well done, great group you brought together, can't wait for the next one!
Christian
Posted by: Christian Zdebel at November 14, 2008 10:01 AM