Social Media Club Brisbane Launches Today

Back in March this year I asked Is Brisbane Australia Ready for a Social Media Club?

Today I have not only an affirmative answer to that (rhetorical) question, but the very pleasing prospect of participating in the official launch, at 6pm this evening, of Social Media Club Brisbane.

This is the first Social Media Club chapter to be formed in Australia.

The fact that we are able to mark the launch with more than a blog post, indeed as a suitably Queensland/Aussie manifestation of the Social Media Club concept, i.e. with a barbecue, has been made possible by the generous sponsorship of SJK Consulting. SJK describe what they do as being “about turning improbable ideas into functional prototypes and prototypes into scalable commercial software”.

As well as the support from SJK Consulting, we are developing some exciting connections in the higher education and research sector.

One of the things I like best about the preliminary discussions some of us have had about how SMC Brisbane might function is that we are agreed that we intend this to be a group which will be very welcoming for non-geeks as well as geeks. We want to attract people who are interested in ways they can use social media for practical outcomes. We want to help “de-geekify” social media.

We drew up a “thought-starter” list of things that might form part of the purpose and goals framework for this local chapter of Social Media Club:

• social networking – as in meeting with people with some common interests
• technology presentation/discussion, including evangelism for social media in government, education, business…
• imparting knowledge to the novice user
• surfacing clever ideas which could become business opportunities
• highlighting/demonstrating the potential of social media tools
• providing examples of how people can be genuinely engaged with these tools
• encouraging local developer talent and also providing some wise advice

(Should keep us going.)

If you see something there that you, or someone you know, could find interesting to learn about or talk about, visit the Social Media Club Brisbane wiki and feel free to get in touch via the email address there (or via the Contact page on this site).

Des Walsh

Business coach and digital entrepreneur. With coach training from Coachville.com and its Graduate School of Coaching, and a founding member of the International Association of Coaching, Des has been coaching business owners and entrepreneurs for the past 20 years. Over the same period he has also been actively engaged in promoting the business opportunities of the digital economy. He is a certified Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) coach, and a certified specialist in social media strategy and affiliate marketing.