I’m often given the opportunity to share with people the known Face-to-Face (F2F) networking events in Memphis (or at least where to find them).  Every time I develop the list from scratch, and I’m sure that I’m forgetting something. I thought it’d make a worthy post (and save me some time in the future).

Here we go:

Chambers:
Memphis Regional Chamber
http://events.memphischamber.com/sbaweb/events/events.asp

Small Business Chamber
http://www.chamberorganizer.com/smallbusinesschamber/V_Calendar.php

Southaven MS Chamber
http://southavenchamber.com/calendar/calendar.php

Professional Organizations:

PRSA Memphis Chapter
http://www.prsamemphis.org/en/calendarevents/monthly.asp

Sales & Marketing Society Mid-South
http://www.sms-midsouth.org/eventList/

Society of Entreprenuers (Business Owners & Independents)
http://www.soememphis.com/events/

Miscellaneous:

(nice list from MemphisTech of a variety)
http://www.memphistech.com/resources/

Business Networking International
http://www.memphisbni.com/directory/homepages/index.html
Any others? Feel free to reply with link please.

I’ve been “passing through” Memphis now for 22 years now. I’m still amazed at the racial tension that continues as a product of ignorance. Particularly when it is seemingly intentional ignorance. I don’t have it all figured out; wish I did. However, I do tend to believe that understanding wards off stereotyping of all kinds (beyond racial).

This post is merely a few notables around the racial theme that I want to share.

History is no Rug Sweep

In the last year, I’ve had opportunity and means to consider the rich history of Civil Rights here in the south. I’ve visited a few historical locations (Money Mississippi, Birmingham and Montgomery Alabama). Some marked and some intentionally being swept under the rug of time. I do not advocate covering-up, forgetting, or fading-out historical landmarks. Even if they represent the most horrific acts of humanity. These things cannot be forgotten and denied. The two notables that

come to mind are Bryant’s Grocery in Money, MS where Emmett Till purportedly “whistled at a white woman”, and slave trading landmarks in Memphis.

National Civil Rights Museum

Most Caucasian people I know have never been there, but have a desire to. I don’t understand this (when I ask why, the answer is never really clear). I found this so frustrating, that I took the entire company (there’s only about 10 of us) there a few years ago.

Noose as a Racial Symbol of Hatred
I never made the association of a noose to lynchings. I grew up (not in the South, my Dad was in the Navy) knowing about lynchings, but I never associated a noose with racial anything. A noose to me was for hanging: horse thieves, cowboy gunslinger outlaws, capital punishment in some countries, and even a (wheeloffortune-like) spelling game. I was “ignorant” of this. In these days of our transient society, I’d expect there to be more content on the Web spelling out some of these racial icons/symbols and other cultural differences to help with that understanding.

Martin Luther King Day
Running a business, I had previously left “MLK Day” to be an option for people to use their floating holiday. After learning more about Dr. King in the last year, I am ashamed that observing the holiday was ever an option. The fact that it continues to be an optional holiday is an embarrassment to our country and our economy. I am glad to see that year-by-year more business are closed.

I was surprised last fall that there was not a Dr Martin Luther King Jr group on Flickr. So, I created it at http://www.flickr.com/groups/martinlutherking .

Peace.

In strategy development for LunaWeb, I spend a lot of time discovering the client and their goals. Today, we had a 3 hour (actually 3:10) discovery meeting that some would categorize as a “sales call”. I thoroughly enjoy most of these types of meetings as there’s so much to learn about a client, their goals, corporate culture, and challenges - it is very intriguing. There were a couple of significant points in today’s discussion.

Investor Perceived Value of Engaging your Market in Conversation
Definitely within the next 5 years, a major audience of an organization’s conversation with it’s market will be potential investors. Investors will come to know the value of this conversation and it’s relation to the potential return on their investment. It will simply be known - a fact. These investors probably will not be participating in the conversation, but will want to know that it is happening, that the organization is listening to the voice of the customer, and that the organization is engaged with their market. (Take a look at what Connie Bensen is doing at ACDSee and you’ll immediately recognize the “competitive edge” she’s bringing to her organization.)

Dichotomy of Rich/Personal Media -vs- Less Engaged Real Life
Of it all being about the “relationship”, one person in the meeting pointed out that in numerous situations, people are more involved in the virtual realm of relationships than they are with the real life humans around them. I see this frequently. I see the different side of the coin also in that (depending on the people), they may relate and extend online experiences and conversations over into offline face-to-face conversations. There’s so much coming at us these days, that I sometimes forget if I heard something online or off.
Jeremiah Owyang posts tonight about the unmanageable amount of email coming at us. To which, Wayne Sutton replies that he’s hearing this more from the A-List bloggers and a solution is on the way. All of this and no doubt many of us overwhelmed with communications are labeled as poor communicators.
Occassionally, there are situations where online is robbing our experiences from the offline, but I’m seeing this increasingly evolve into an augmentation of both into one unified life experience. Maybe it’s a function of personality, or perhaps experience in the medium.

In any case, there were several thought provoking divergences in the conversation today. These were two I felt compelled to share. Cheers to us all in these wonderful times with such powerful tools. I feel that neural society coming on like a storm.

(This is a response to a conversion on Jeremiah Owyang’s blog at web-strategist.com about Remembering the Many Opportunities of Social Media –not just the Impacts of Advertising . I spent enough time on the response that I wanted to post here as well).

We’re most recently spoiled by the opportunity to measure our CTR’s and ultimately conversions. Consciously or not, we all make a Value|Risk assessment before we choose to convert from prospect to customer.
An enterprise’ initial experience in Social Networking should be to establish a presence and engage its existing client-base. In my presentations and conversations, I drive that point hard and also drive the point that an enterprise should NOT initially use SN to gain market share. What I don’t drive as hard and maybe should is:

By virtue of visibly and actively facilitating a conversation with its existing market, a brand will passively expand its market.

Perhaps we should remember that consumers still get to choose (even when lead to water) to convert. In the Value|Risk assessment, we recognize value in the existence of the conversation. We feel a reduced risk because we derive a sense of security knowing that we will be heard if a problem arises.

Because a consumer can derive this additional Value and reduced Risk WITHOUT participating (just lurking), it becomes almost impractical to measure.

I hate to think that we’ll have to get to numerous market surveys to convince the masses. However, this leaves the playing field less impeded for those wanting to adopt now. 

Cheers to them!

We’ve updated our data a few times since the last post on Facebook growth rate and are finding a decline in the cities (Regions) we follow:

• Memphis
• San Diego
• Sacramento
• Austin
• Louisville

The analysis simply involves periodically reviewing the number of members in each Region and then calculating the daily growth rate* and comparing the difference in the rates.

Average Daily Growth Rate (%)

The above chart shows the average of the Daily Growth Rate (in %) from November 25 to December 31. Coincidentally, the average value goes from 0.50% to 0.25% or exactly half.

Daily Growth Rate (%) by City

The above chart shows the Daily Growth Rate (in %) by City from November 25 to December 31.

This decline in growth rate may very well be attributed to the holidays and 0f course whatever other factors are associated with the cities (a flawed sampling). In the miriad of 2008 predictions I’ve read in the last two days are a variety of posts with the prediction that “Facebook will dip in popularity in 2008, just like MySpace did in 2007″. Is this a function of privacy issue of Beacon? Possibly the beginning of the Chasm put forth in Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm.

No doubt there’s a multitude of reasons. I feel strongly that the a major component are the Facebook applications. In a quick poll today on Twitter, I asked why the hesitation to install Facebook Applications and I received comments back from Mari Smith, Shel Israel, yndygo, Daniel Johnson Jr., and Steve Loopipe with:

Overwhelmed with existing applications already installed
Overwhelmed with invites
Privacy concerns.
Spam
Identity abuse
Privacy issues
Potential data mining
When no value addition to self,
When doesn’t improve productivity
When doesn’t increase networking

Tossing mine in there of not having utility, and potentially having errors and wasting my time to deal with it.

I’ll pursue additional reasons, the quality of applications, and of course additional data where available. Any and all thoughts on this are very welcome.

Cheers!
Dave

I’m inspired to write this particular post after reading Connie Bensen’s post Teens Using Social Media and the link she included to PEW’s recent study on the subject.

Our 18 Year Old Employee
Our newest employee is an 18yearold gent that’s taking a year off from high school before attending college. He ultimately wants to be an Oral Surgeon. His dad has been at the same company for over 30 years (my eyes still pop-out on that tid bit). Being a Digital Native, he’s been a real source of direct information on how his generation uses the Web & Social Media. He thinks he started using the Web in the 4th grade (but claims it may have been the 3rd, or maybe the 5th). He’s getting paid to research things on Facebook using his “corporate” profile. Of his “personal” profile, I’ve only seen his profile photo holding a bottle of Jack Daniels. He’s smart enough to keep the rest of it private to friends only (for that, I give him credit for not being a knucklehead). I asked him what his personal draw to Facebook was and his immediate reply was:

• “Tagging”
• Seeing what friends are up to

I inquired about “Tagging” and he’s referring to the FB feature where you see where you’ve been “tagged” on a photo or where you can “tag” your friends. He claims must of his buds, especially the girls, have digital cameras or phonecams and they shoot photos of each other doing pretty near everything, post it, and tag it. “Tag me” is a very popular phrase.

At first I thought this odd, then I recalled going to restaurants as a kid, and some dude walking by, snapping a photo, and showing up before the meal was over with a 8×10 Black & White glossy asking $5 for the print. People love to look at pictures (I’m the worst and spend hours clicking through Flickr).

I asked him to give more thought to why he uses Facebook and maybe even ask a few buddies for their thoughts. List at the bottom of this post.

Reasons Why Our 18 Year Old Employee Uses Facebook (verbatim)

• You can have open discussions with friends, and other people can see what you are up to.
• You can have as many pictures as you want on your page.
• To have pictures of yourself you do not have to upload them, other people can and then tag you.
• If you don’t like the pictures you can un-tag them.
• You can create events and invite only the people you want to come.
• You can create groups and try to build them up.
• You have the option of joining networks; you can have more than one.
• You can look at everyone else’s pictures and make comments on them.
• You also have private messaging so if you need to say something secret you can send a message.
• You can search for a friend by typing their name and automatically they start to show before you finish the name.
• There are a lot of applications that you can play around with.
• Find old friends and new friends on their.
• You can actually almost build a relationship with someone online.
• You can keep in touch with friends that you do not see or hang out with often. Also keep up with friends who live elsewhere.
• You can use the marketplace to buy things you want, or to sell the things you don’t want; also locals can buy it.
• You can keep your friends updated on what you are doing with the status update.
• To put a face to a name, you might hear someone’s name and can’t remember who they are, so search for them.

Being very taxed for time, I rarely install any Facebook apps other than something that may serve as a utility.  When I do and then find it buggy, I became tainted and my decision to install a future application is affected.

Now, I look to see if there’s a group about the application, that it’s active and that users bug reports are being addressed by the developer.  Anymore, if I don’t see that then I don’t install it.

We need Facebook Application Quality Standards (dare it be FAQS), perhaps Support Standards is better - FASS. By anyname, the Facebook community needs it immediately!  I’d propose a ‘Seal of Approval’ certification indicating that:

• there is a Group established for support that is actively maintained every x days with public responses
• there is a “known issues” thread with expected new release date

I’m certain the apps are tested initally. Over the longer term, I believe failures surface because either the user attempts to configure/utilize the app in a manner that wasn’t tested, or that the Facebook platform has changed. When the platform changes, that apps may need modification as well.  This may be the root of the problem, and here’s why.

Let’s say FB modifies the platform

App-X
Application Development Company X owns an App-X and has developers on staff to go modify application X within the day, or even hours. All is good.

App-Y
Owned by Marketer-Y that hired a developer to create App-Y. App-Y worked great from launch all the way up until FB modified the platform. Thereafter, it throws errors. Now Marketer-Y must get a quote from the developer to modify App-Y to work within the new FB framework modifications, get approval, etc…  Maybe it’s cost prohibitive based on acceptance. Who knows. All that ultimately matters is that the consumer’s reality is that either “a good app went bad” or that “a new app is a lemon right out of the box”.

Someone slap me if I’m missing something fundamental here.  In the classic Web application world, we went through this when Microsoft released IE 7.  We (the developer) were faced with coming to some middle ground of retooling some sites to conform to Microsoft’s new browser. Our perspective was that it was completely unjust to perform this update for free, while at the same time most of our clients perceived it to be no brainer that we’d just handle it.

Symptom:
Users have failures in their Facebook Apps.

Causes:
1. Poor Use Case testing and the 5 other people that loaded it are my friends and know the bugs.
2. Use Case evolved after launch (i.e. Facebook modified platform)

Conclusion: Bugs happen - always.
1. Support your app. Proclaim your support on the frontend, and then do it. “Walk the Talk”. Have 3rd party “certification” (for as close to free as possible) to certain simple standards.

2. Facebook App.Devs should communicate to their clients what the long term support arrangement will be and how it will be priced. Communicate the potential modes of failure and how they might be dealt with. Set the expectation ahead of time.

I peruse data on Facebook growth out of my own curiosity and also to help clients understand that the enormity of the medium. I’ve heard many times that Facebook is doubling in size every 6 months. I’ve just proved to myself that this is not an exaggerated claim.

We’ve been watching the following cities and recorded their Facebook network population on November 17th and December 17th, 2007.

City                        Nov17/Dec17       %Increase
Memphis               60000/64801           8%
Austin                    88000/97418          11%
Louisville               52000/57616          11%
SanDiego             110000/125472        14%
Sacramento           52000/60618         17%
LasVegas               38000/45305         19%

The overall average is a 13% per month growth rate of Facebook users!
They were right: it is doubling every 6 months.

This will obviously prove to be non-linear and taper-off at some point.

11% of the population in these metros are on Facebook, and there’s no indication that this is even close to decreasing in rate.  One prediction is that the rate will take a jump up as a result of the upcoming holidays with family/friend mingling.

I do quick graphical analysis in Excel to look for a correlation in the above growth rates to % of population already on Facebook (looking for saturation), but find none.

In trying to evangelize Social Networking to our clients, we want to start with the bare basics of the communication modes:

Video explanation with diagrams.

Essentially, it’s broken down first by:

One-to-many and then many-to-one: positive, negative, and questions.

There are a multitude of modes beyond this tier, but we’re considering using this to help enlighten those who have no idea what online Socal Networking is about.

Thoughts?