Some wonder if that hurts my business, offering ways for folks to learn on their own. Perhaps a bit, but it’s worth it to me to see my community become stronger from a collective effort to make everyone a bit better at being a business. Plus, I have the help of some fabulous people on each team for each event (check out the team pages on the event sites – I couldn’t do these big ideas without these folks – they are awesome). That makes it a bit easier to make everyone we reach a bit more awesome.

Why would a non-social media marketing wonk want to attend a PodCamp NH or a SMBNH? That’s easy – in addition to the connections and the atmosphere of learning at each, you are guaranteed to learn something new each time. With SMBNH I’m militant about not marketing to the attendees, and encourage people to let me know if they feel any of our presenters or organizers have sold to them during their speaking time instead of educated them via a clear link on the site sidebar and on the Facebook group sidebar. With PodCamp NH that problem takes care of itself thanks to the Law of Two Feet, one of my favorite things about PodCamps everywhere.

For the truly non technical, I’m offering a class at PodCamp NH in social media applications for the trades (construction, etc). I’m also talking social media and music and possibly film. That’s three classes right there that aren’t geared toward the social media marketer, but to YOU, and looking at the sessions proposed I see many, many more. Don’t see one you need but have experience in your profession to bring to the table? Sign up for PodCamp NH then go propose your own session over at the website. We’ll be getting a first draft of the schedule posted soon (though you should note, as a user driven conference, all drafts of the session are just that drafts – it is subject to great sweeping change even during the event as the users evolve what they want to learn in real time).

If you can’t spend a weekend learning (though it is highly recommended) you can try the two hour long SMBNH once a month. The next one is this Friday. And if you don’t live in New Hampshire, you can find a PodCamp in most states and several countries on the PodCamp wiki, or find your closest Social Media Breakfast by heading over to the national web site.

See you in class – let’s teach each other something new!

There are a few admins of the calendar who can edit the events you post (Myself, John Herman, Justin Herman, Christine Major, Nick Plante, Kelley Muir, Ted Roche, Kevin Micalizzi). We can also help you post an event if you find yourself “calendar challenged” by the Google Calendar event posting interface. Other people can post events but not edit (Don’t forget to set your event to “public” so we all can see it before saving, and to include an URL for more info in your description! Make it easy for people to come to your thing!).

Here is the plain html NH Calendar link for sharing in emails and tweets and such

Here is the iCal NH Calendar link

Here is what it looks like embedded and reduced to fit a blog post window (you can grab the iframe embed code from the share calendar button, or one of us can email it to you – standard embed width is 800px, this is shrunk to 400px):

We’re adding some of the existing events this evening, check back tomorrow night and if you don’t see yours yet – ADD IT. All of NH will thank you. Have fun!

Note: If you can’t add your event for whatever reason, any of the people listed here can add it for you – get us the details

Also, We’re getting a lot of emails about scheduling around school. We know parents will make it to these events if they can, and if not – there is always next month as many are recurring. We have a quite a few single and child free people who go to these various meetups as well, so there is a nice, diverse mix of people every month as schedules change and people’s availability rotates.

This month’s Social Media Breakfast is brought to you by Uptown Uncorked (your SMBNH organizer and monthly host), DimDim (live casting) and Southern New Hampshire University (venue).

Thank you to Jason Allgire who helped facilitate the SNHU venue for us.

Location: SNHU Campus, Manchester, NH – Building TBD

Social Media Breakfast History

On seeing growing demand in this area, I decided to fill the need with a new branch of the nationwide Social Media Breakfast in NH. It isn’t that we don’t love Boston, because we do, but our neighbor to the north is rich in technology and social media, and often overlooked when events are planned. I saw a need for networking opportunities that were easier to get to for the northern tech and social media crowd, and decided to step up and fill it. Because NH itself is a diverse and scattered state, the Social Media Breakfast there will be just a little bit different than the one in Cambridge/Boston. Our first meeting was in January 2009, and was a roaring success.

What is a Social Media Breakfast?

From the official description: The Social Media Breakfast was founded by Bryan Person in August 2007 as an event where social media experts and newbies alike come together to eat, meet, share, and learn. Marketers, PR pros, entrepreneurs, bloggers, podcasters, new-media fanatics, and online social networkers are all welcome to attend.

The breakfast series began in Boston and has now spread to more than a dozen cities throughout the United States and around the world.

How will the Social Media Breakfast in NH be different?

The main difference between Social Media Breakfast NH and other SMBs will be all-inclusiveness. I do not want only social media people and companies to attend, I also want technology types, programmers, coders, tech writers, tech companies and more to attend. As a state that is rich in technology but scattered in distance, I think the best networking and connection making effect will be achieved by combined our different cultures. You never know, as a social media type you might just meet the coder you’ve been looking for to create your dream project if we all come together to connect and to learn from each other!

Theme for the fourth Social Media Breakfast: Using Social Media In Education

The fifth Social Media Breakfast NH (hashtag #smbnh) will be all about topics related to using social media in education. In this struggling economy and shifting paradigm we need to be working together to be more successful and better weather the storm. We should be pulling in all aspects of technology, new media, old media and social media to succeed and more importantly to help the next generation succeed. This meeting will help us lay the foundation for a richer, better education, tech and new media community in NH.

In addition to myself, who will be your host and MC for the morning, you will have three speakers giving three brief presentations on topics relating to the theme for the morning.

Speakers:

• Opening Remarks by Leslie Poston, Uptown Uncorked and co-author, Twitter for Dummies

• Welcome Remarks by SNHU

• Wayne Kurtzman (Beyond the Biz, Destination Imagination, More) will be speaking about his work with Destination Imagination and more

• John Herman (OddNoggin.com, GravityLand.com, Improv, More) will be speaking about his use of social media and multi media in his class at Epping High School

• Kelley-Sue LeBlanc (Aleuromedia) will discuss her work this past semester with social media in a classroom at Daniel Webster College

This is going to be a great breakfast!

TO SPONSOR THIS OR A FUTURE SMBNH CONTACT LESLIE POSTON via Twitter, Email or Phone or purchase a sponsor ticket above.

Let’s make the new SMBNH crackle with energy and success! See you there!

I go to conferences for many reasons. This particular one I am here because I want to know what my potential customers need to know. I’m listening. I’m wandering in and out of sessions and paying close attention to the questions people have. I am here to find out how I can better help YOU.

I’m also here to network. Part of what I do puts me in constant online contact with some of the most brilliant minds in the business. I am anxious to meet as many as possible. I’ve already met quite a few of the industry’s current thought leaders and up and comers over the years – it’s one of the perks of living in the Boston area. I’m hoping to meet some of the people who traveled in from afar, especially.

In trying to practice what I preach, I am always looking for ways to bring my online connections offline. One thing that makes social media so valuable for business is how easy is makes it to translate both worlds and extend your reach.

The value of this kind of conference for me is the eavesdropping to better serve my client base, and the networking. What is the value for you?

Because we want as many people in the education space to attend as possible, we switched the off months to June and will be having this SMBNH on July 17th at SNHU. I’m still finalizing arrangements with the speakers and seeking a food sponsor, so stay tuned for more information.

We have some excellent speakers lined up for you, including the possibility of a remote speaker – using the tools they use in the class to speak to us from the class itself. I’ll keep you posted on if that works out. Meanwhile, I have confirmed Wayne Kurtzman, who will be speaking to us about Social Media for 10,000 Creative Kids (and their parents and educators), and another speaker (whom I will announce here once they confirm their topic).

I’ll post the EventBrite page once the venue is finalized. If you would like to host, please contact me ASAP. Remember, the hashtag is always #smbnh

Without further ado, the audio and slides from the last meeting:
THANK YOU to GSIL (Granite State Independent Living) for hosting the last meeting and to Susan Ware Flower for being our liaison for that! The patio was lovely for breakfast, and the panel set up worked out well.

All of these ideas may be my brainstorms, but they won’t happen alone! We introduced the new team for SMBNH the other day in this post. Now let me introduce the core team who will be helping bring you PodCamp NH this fall:

I am spearheading the movement, and acting as the main point of contact and maestro of this varied group. The full roster of people rallying ’round in support of my insanity, er, I mean, big idea, is:

Leslie Poston (me): Founder of Uptown Uncorked (Business Development and Social Media Consultancy), Writer (including co-author of the upcoming Twitter for Dummies with Laura Fitton and Michael Gruen), Founder of Social Media Breakfast NH, Thinker, Doer, Facilitator, Fixer)

Nick Plante is a programmer, author, community organizer and (most of all) a nice guy. As an independent consultant and a partner in Ubikorp Internet Services, Nick specializes in helping web startups accelerate their development with Ruby and Rails. Nick is founder and chief organizer of the Rails Rumble innovation competition, an annual event promoting entrepreneurship and developer productivity in the Rails community. He also heads up the NH Ruby Users Group, has spoken at industry events, and contributes to numerous open source projects. Nick’s book, Practical Rails Plugins, was published by Apress in June, 2008. (read more about Nick here)

Christine Major has more than 11 years of experience in high tech public relations, providing her clients with the very best in public relations strategies and tactics – through traditional PR and social media programs – that match the interests of key audiences and target influencers. Christine is also very active in the social networking scene in NH and Boston as one of the organizers for the Boston Twestival 2009 and is also the founder of Seacoast TweetUps and manager of the @NHTweetUp Twitter account. (read more about Christine here)

John Herman is busy bringing his Ford Fiesta for the Fiesta Movement home to NH, but he has lots of projects going on right now in addition to PodCamp, teaching, old favorite Gravityland and new favorite – OddNogginLand. His current bio will be added shortly. (read more about John here)

Kevin Micalizzi is currently blending his web leadership and know-how with his background in communications as Community Manager at web conferencing startup Dimdim (www.dimdim.com). Over the last 10 years Kevin has lead web teams at Rational, IBM and Avid Technology, managing web marketing, engineering, operations, and production. Kevin is loving his focus on making web conferencing available to everyone, leveraging the web and social media. He has also joined the Social Media Breakfast NH team recently, helping Leslie bring each month’s meeting to life, live streaming them to the public so out-of-staters can follow what NH is doing in tech. (read more about Kevin here)

Kevin Baringer After 15 years in software for mid to large size companies, Kevin is now focusing on smaller businesses and the flexibility, extensibility and just plain awesomeness of the web and social media.  His passion is in working to blend creativity with technology in order to fashion the as-of-yet unimagined fabric of tomorrow’s society.  He also likes to play make-believe.  Kevin can be contacted through his site at kevinbaringer.com, which will hopefully soon be a font of relatively useful or moderately entertaining stuff, or on Twitter (read more about Kevin here)

For PodCamp we will be seeking sponsors so that we can keep attendance free, as well as speakers/presenters for this unconference. As soon as we get the first meeting under our belt, we’ll let you know how to contact us for a spot. Meanwhile – stay tuned, and don’t be shy! Leave any ideas in the comments for now.

Also, please note there is NO Topics on Fire tonight!

Professor of Economics, Evangelos Simos, opened the meeting with remarks from UNH. One of my favorites was his paraphrasing of one of his favorite economists in saying that some of the world’s greatest inventions have come about in times of recession or strife, fueled by entrepreneurial thought and think tank groups like ours.

Opening remarks by Mr. Simos (captured by Jeff Cutler)

I then introduced Kelley Muir, Director of Float Left Labs, who discussed the new intern economy. She taught us all things we didn’t know about everything from internships that only benefit those who can afford them because they are bought, as well as other types of internships. She also discussed how new media tools were changing the face of interning completely.

After Kelley I introduced Hans Mundahl, an educator at New Hampton School. He discussed bringing Mogulus and live streaming video into his classroom. He also touched on some of the other tools he uses like his classroom wiki and FaceBook.

We then had an open Q&A learning session in the spirit of an unconference, where everyone had a chance to ask questions and share their knowledge.

It was a fantastic meeting. I hope that the open Q&A comes through in the embedded video below, as the mic did not quite reach everyone in the room. If you were a speaker or attendee, I encourage sharing. Please embed the video in your own sites. all I ask is that a) you do not modify or edit the recording and b) you link back to this post.

The next meeting will be in Concord, NH and will focus on Marketing and New Media. We are currently seeking speakers.

Live Chat Room: Transcript

As we enter our third meeting, averaging 50 – 80 people each time (and growing) no matter what the weather holds, it became time to get some behind the scenes help. Kevin Micalizzi and Matt Turner have been instrumental in helping at each breakfast without being asked (Kevin has been doing the live-casting everyone loves so much through DimDim, and Matt has been excellent on concierge duty the day of each event). It only made sense then to bring on Kevin and Matt officially.

From now on, while I will still be the main contact, you can also submit topic, speaker, sponsor and venue ideas to Kevin Micalizzi as well as to myself. He will also be another source for answers to your questions. Matt Turner is so fantastic at on-site duties and connecting people during the event that he’ll be instrumental in that area, so the day of the event you can see either myself or Matt for whatever concierge-type help you may need.

You probably already follow me on Twitter (leslie). Be sure to follow Kevin (kevinmic) and Matt (onmatt) also. Hashtag for all Social Media Breakfast events continues to be #smbnh

See everyone Friday at UNH for the third SMBNH!