Well its not an official event like InternetWeek NY was, but for me it is a great Social Media Week in London.  While I still have a few open appointment slots on Monday morning, the week is pretty booked up.  I hope you will be able to join me at some point and say hello and we get a chance to talk about all the ways in which social media is creating growth opportunities and changing the way we work.

• TWEETUP!
  Thursday 25 June – 1700-1930pm
  Open to everyone
  The International Bar (near Charing Cross and Leicester Sq) 
• Gov2Gov UK
  Friday 26 June 1600-1900
  Registration Required (sold out, but contact me if you really need to be there)
  Canadian High Commission Office
• Tweetcamp
  Saturday 27 June 1000-1800
  Waiting list only now
  Richmond, Surrey
• Geek Field Trip – Tate Modern
  Sunday 28 June 1100-1400
  Open to Anyone – Show Up at Main Entrance, Look For Me
  Bankside (on the Thames) 

So it is pretty much a Social London Week for me and I hope it will be for some of you who join me as well.

The reason I am coming over is for the Gov2GovUK event and all the other opportunities to get together and talk present themselves when you think differently about how to connect with a community.  We are really hoping to see Social Media Club take off again in London (Lloyd Davis was organizing Social Media Club events before starting Tuttle).

We are really excited about Gov2Gov as I think it will be the start of something very big, where we are bringing together an array of events to facilitate international knowledge exchange on social media between governments and amongst their citizens.  This is one stone that kills about 20 birds, as the outcomes from these sorts of meetings are filled with amazing potential.  Not only does it improve international relations and facilitate cross border knowledge exchanges, it creates opportunities for entrepreneurship, business development, new ways towards civic engagement and so much more.  Pay attention to the conversation around this as the next announcements coming later in the month are going to be very big… in fact, we will start talking about it on Friday evening, at the Gov2Gov UK event.

I would be remiss if I didn’t give out a lot of credit for this event to Lovisa Williams from the U.S. State Department who helped in so many ways from introductions to organizational support and Dominic Campbell of FutureGov Consultancy who (very humbly) has contributed his expertise, his network and so much more.  These are the sort of people that get me excited and make the work we do so much more fun. Am so glad I can call them both friends.

Of course, huge thanks to the High Commission of Canada’s office for hosting the event.  Of course, we have always known how great our friends to the north are (particularly Our Vancouver Crew) – I have now found that their representatives in Ottawa and in London are just as wonderful.

So I hope to see you in London sometime this week, if not at our Tweetup on THUR at The International Bar, or The Gov2Gov UK Event on Friday at the High Commission in London, or at Tweetcamp on Saturday, then you better come out on Sunday for our Geek Field Trip to The Tate Modern.

Or, if you want to meet with me independently, I have some time for business meetings on MON morning 29 June and would be happy to book appointments with you while I am in the UK.

Cheers!

The Camp is part of Internet Week New York, “a week-long festival of events celebrating New York’s thriving Internet industry and community.” Social Media Camp NYC is an Open Space Camp directed toward small business owners and job seekers looking to use social media in their business, start-up or job search. Chris and SMC Co-Founder Howard Greenstein will both lead sessions at the Camp. The Social Media Club wrap-up blog post includes session information and responses.

Chris Heuer presented on Social Media basics, which you can read about here. Slides from the presentation are included following the video below:

Chris Heuer participated in the May 2009 Disruptive Media Conference in Stockholm, Sweden. Chris discussed social media management with Pia de Gysser, formerly of Agria, and Andreas Aspegren, community manager at www.aftonbladet.se.

Chris Heuer will be in Hamburg, Germany to participate in the panel, “What’s a Brand to do? Meeting the Needs of 21st Century Customers in the Age of the Social Web.” The presentation is part of Next09, a major networking and trend conference in Europe; this year’s theme is the Share Economy.

The “What’s a Brand to do?” panel will focus on answering questions on Vendor Relationship Management, or VRM. The discussion will focus on how vendors can “provide customers with tools for engaging with vendors in ways that work for both parties.” See the video below.

Chris also discussed the nature of the unagency AdHocnium with Erno Hannik:

Chris Heuer teamed up with Ike Pigott, Scott Schablow and Mack Collier for a Social Media Workshop in Birmingham, AL on April 27, 2009. The workshop, tailored to the needs of attendees, focused on creating a social media plan for one’s organization, including review of case studies. Chris presented “Principles of Social Media” as an overview of effective social media practices and theories. You can read Scott’s post on the workshop here. You can view the list of event goals and presentations below, following Chris’ slides from the presentation.

• Learn the Principles of Effective Social Media from Chris Heuer, founder of Social Media Club
• Discover the secrets of Building the Community You Want with renowned consultant Mack Collier
• Ike Pigott takes you inside Social Media Marketing where the tools provide real solutions
• Find out how to measure your success and set even higher goals, as Scott Schablow demystifies Metrics and Return on Investment
• Together we’ll look at successful case studies to learn what works and what doesn’t
• You’ll work with our team to develop a Social Media Strategy that is crafted to meet your needs, not someone else’s
• We’ll give you the tools and the approach to effectively sell your plan internally, and earn the buy-in that will make it a success.

On April 21, 2009 Chris Heuer led the April Social Media Club San Francisco/Silicon Valley event, “The Power of Social Networks.” The evening began with a fireside chat between Chris and guest John Hagel, a network effects expert and Director at Deloitte Consulting, LLP. Following John’s remarks he joined a panel of noted social media authors to discuss the use of social networking tools to achieve business goals. The panelists were Clara Shih, author of The Facebook Era, Tara Hunt, author of The Whuffie Factor and Adam Jackson, author of 140 Characters.

John Hagel at Social Media Club from Social Media Club on Vimeo.

Power of Social Networks Panel #SMCSFSV from Social Media Club on Vimeo.

On February 20, 2009 Chris presented “The Death of Advertising” at the Northern Voice 09 conference.

Chris’ presentation got a positive review from Grace Carter and her colleague Kate of Invoke Media:

“One of Kate’s favourite speakers was Chris Heuer.� Chris is the founder of Social Media Club and although the talk may have felt rushed to him, he asked one very important question – is advertising dead?� Heuer thinks interruptive advertising is certainly headed that way, thanks to services like PVR and TIVO, which allow viewers to bypass regularly programmed advertising.� He also pointed out that search engines are killing product advertisement. Why would anyone look at advertising for product knowledge when they can Google it, see reviews, and make the choice for themselves? Chris reminded us that we have access to more rich and valuable information through our friends and networks.� So if advertising is dead (or dying at least) what happens next? Chris’ suggestion: take the lead. Be the one people go to to answer the questions. By educating people you gain their trust, which in turn adds value.”

Also check out coverage of Chris’ talk on Miss604.

Chris Heuer joined the folks at Social Media Club Seattle to present “How to Make a Case for Social Media.” Chris visited the chapter for this event at the Microsoft Redmond campus on February 24, 2009.

Chris Heuer – Social Media Club SEATTLE from Seattle20 on Vimeo.

On February 19, 2009 Chris participated in the BrightTALK Digital Media Marketing Summit with his presentation, “Digital Marketing: Then & Now.”

In the “Digital Marketing: Then & Now” presentation Chris explore the similarities between the shifts in digital marketing in the early nineties and the current marketing changes resulting from social media developments.

What do I mean by saying the wealthy are less greedy these days… To get to the point, that is one of the insights gleaned from the results of a quick survey I did on Ask 500 People, that people who have higher incomes generally think they have enough stuff and a very low percentage of people making over $100k think they don’t have enough stuff.

Before I get any further into the meaning of the results, I need to do a better job of setting the stage, from the beginning.  You see, it’s been on my mind a lot lately that I really do have enough stuff.  That the all out feeding frenzy at the buffet of consumerism is perhaps coming to an end.  Many retailers are going to be really hurt as we have seen already with Circuit City, Mervyns and Macy’s among the first to experience the hardships.  Now this is especially going to be true for those retailers who aren’t using ecommerce effectively (as you may have seen in my brick and mortar review, shopping at the mall isn’t what it used to be).

People are waking up to the wastefulness of our habits (I sure have – everything from the amount of food that spoils to the amount of packaging materials I throw away and of course, all the old obsolete technology – ugghhh). More and more people from all walks of life are, from all around the world, are realizing that this sort of behaviour is unsustainable.

With a margin of error of what I believe is +/- 2% for all respondents (424) versus known respondents with unverified profiles, I think these stats are close to speaking for the whole.

I see some other stuff here that is interesting, and I need to take some more time to write my post for “The Economy of Enough” which is what inspired me to ask this question, so I will just close by saying that if we were still in the Gordon Gecko era of cash is king 80’s, I would suspect it might look something like this:

Just for kicks, lets take a nostalgic look back at Mr. Gecko’s infamous speech…