Here’s my life in cube for the past week…

Things are slowly getting better and more organized. Looking forward to our bright future ahead!

My thoughts and reflection on SMB6, this time round, from a participant point of view instead.

Total of about 60-70 close to 100 people turned up at SMB6 held at Tangs Island Cafe. There were the usual social media breakfast participants, bloggers, practitioners, and also a handful of first timers. Having talked to a few of them who were there for the first time, they were quite puzzled at what was happening and everyone behind couldn’t hear nor see what the panel was discussing. Even if everyone were to remain quiet, those standing behind the pillar will not be able to see nor hear anything. That’s perhaps why everyone choose to talk among themselves instead. I’m guilty for this too. But really, this cannot be blamed. What do you expect those behind to do? Also saw a handful of people who came and walked away soon after as the place was overcrowded. If you were one of them, apologize for the lack of space. Hope to meet you at future social media gatherings.

After five successful SMBs and good feedback, this one came as quite a punch to the team (including myself). So what really went wrong?

The Venue
Tangs being located at Orchard seems like an ideal place to hold such gathering. Everyone knows exactly where Tangs is and getting there isn’t much of a hassle. But when there’s a space constrain for an expected crowd of 50 (at least), the venue might not be the most suitable. Add on a panel and launching of the Tangs Secondlife store, the venue is surely not appropriate.

The Agenda
To be very honest, I have no idea what happened on the other side of the room. I tried hard to listen and see what was going on, but I couldn’t hear nor see a thing. By the time I went in after helping at the registration, all the seats were taken and the limited standing space (to see the panel) was already cluttered with people. This means SMB is growing and many people are really interested in the discussions and knowledge sharing, but this also means we’ll need a much bigger venue for future SMBs! Its hard to find a suitable location and with our zero budget, the challenge is surely there.

Would really love to hear from those who were seated in front to share about your thoughts about the discussions. Looks like it was a chatter about consumers on facebook and loyalty card program.

Earth Hour
When the lights went off, half the crowd was gone! Wasn’t it supposed to be a networking and catch up time instead? But seriously, not easy walking around in the dark and introducing yourself. There were people tripping on other’s feet! Good thing no one got hurt.

SMB6 sure is a good learning point for the team. And really thankful to those who stuck by us after so long and for your understanding and feedback. The team is always learning and growing. So we need your feedback! Please spend 2 minutes with SMB6 feedback form. Or drop your comments below…

Responding to the tag by Yinqi, here’s my answers…

Assuming that vampires did exist would I date a vampire?

Why not? As long as he keeps his fangs off my body, keeps his tools clean, let me suck his blood and is as charming and sexy as Bill Compton (his pic on right. he looks much better in the show! he’s just not as photogenic!), who wouldn’t? And there’s always the saying that if man aren’t bad, woman wouldn’t like! I love excitement, thrill and some darkness in life. Dating a vampire will surely add those and more in my life!

If you were a vampire (in True Blood times), would you choose real or fake blood?

Give me True Blood! You know, the one with 30ml bacardi, 10ml the-red-liquid-that-i-cant-remember-what, 15ml cranberry juice and 15ml sprite, with glass full of ice and squeeze of lemon with it on the side? Ya! I want that True Blood! (You can try this yourself too only at Balaclava on April 3 from 7.30pm to 9.30pm for free! Details under Promotions at True Blood website.)

Which of these 3 abilities would you choose? Super speed, telepathy and shape-shifting.

I’ll take the shape-shifting! Firstly because I don’t want to be bothered by so many noises around me with telepathy power and secondly, if I can shape myself into anything I want (not just into dog!) I am sure I can go at super speed too! Perhaps even telepathy power wor!

And now that I’m done with this, I shall pass on the biting to others too! Claudia the vampire shall leave a fang mark on Mole Mole, Audrey, Nadnut and Jasmine!!! Bite away!!

Will share more about True Blood next week! Can’t wait for the weekend!! While I enjoy the 10 hours marathon on Sat-Sun, you can listen to this song…

Often I’ll receive emails or calls from friends from agencies asking if I know of anyone (bloggers) who would be interested in their client’s product or service. Perhaps they ask everyone they know for referrals, like how financial planner does the referral system where you give 3 to 5 new leads for them. And often, those names you give them are people whom you have on your blacklist. YES?

But for social media blogger engagement, I can’t do that. As a community member and one whom has a reputation to uphold, I cannot just pop a few names out and refer them. When I do ever make referrers, I give quality ones with certain standards and who are interested in the subject matter. If you have a relationship with me, often I would be more than willing to help. But if we hardly communicate and the only time I see your name is in my inbox with a BCC press release or media invitation, sorry, can’t help you.

Reason is simple. You’re not listening and participating enough.

There have been many talks and posts on how important relationship and contacts is in the game of social media. Well, at least in context of an event invitation or a possible test drive of products. And there are plenty of ways you can start building that relationship. Or at least, be seen elsewhere other than just their inbox.

Some of the things you can do to start the relationship (and build it):

• Add them in facebook
  And keep in touch regularly or comment on their posts/updates.
• Follow them in twitter or plurk
  And participate in discussion or drop a hello once awhile. These are great listening tools too!
• Read their blogs and start commenting
  Hello! You’re engaging bloggers right? They blog right? They blog because they want people to read and participate in discussions/ commenting right? So… are you giving them what they want before you asking them to give you what you want?
• Be part of the communities
  There are so many social events and gatherings! Join in! Introduce yourself and be seen. If you are not willing to commit some extra hours outside of the official hours, than perhaps you’re not ready. And did I mention that some potential clients are there to observe too? So where are you???

If all the above is beyond what your time and energy permits, than perhaps a system can be put in place to help you. Would you like one which can help you filter out the quality content providers that fits your target audience and list of criteria? How about one that will display very nice profile view of where the person is active in, his highlighted (or best) entries, his authority and influence level? Wouldn’t that be nice? But still, its only a system. The relationship building part still has to be injected somewhere in the process. Are you prepared to do that?

If you’re ready or think that you’ll be in months to come, perhaps you can be looking forward to a system like this, let me help keep you posted. You can sign-up for updates and news here. I believe this system will come in very helpful.

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

Happening THIS Saturday at 7PM. YES! 7PM! Not am ok! We’re having super late breakfast this time round. Perhaps it should be Social Media Beer instead! I’m sure Tangs serve Beer, please bring cash as its BYOB night! This is happening at Tangs Island Cafe on the upper most level (can’t remember its 3rd or 4th or 5th??) but ya! Just take the lift from inside the mall and head up to the highest level accessible to public and you’ll find us there!

Beside the usual discussion on social media and networking and good company, we’re putting you into a dark challenge! Between 8.30pm to 9.30pm, Tangs will be participating in Earth Hour! Yes! 60 mins of darkness. Can you keep your cool and enjoy the session in candlelight with the rest of us? Come try it out! It’s going to be quite an experience!

If you’re not going to be there, don’t forget to switch off your lights and if possible all electricity around you too during Earth Hour ok! Help save our planet!

For more details about SMB6, please check out our official blog and facebook event page. Oh! And if you’re twittering, blogging, flickr-ing or watever-online-ing about SMB6, don’t forget to tag it with #smbsg6!

See you on Saturday!!

Psss… we’re also going clubbing and dancing after that! Join us too! Time to let our hair down down down down down…

Claudia live blogs! She blogs on the go and her posts get to twitter almost instantly. How did she post those photos at events up online so quickly? Does she has some magic power?? Or did she has inbuilt computer and chips within her brain, eyes and fingers that auto processes whatever she sees, hears and touched into digital format and post it online automatically? How the hell did she do it?!

No! I’ve got no magic power nor potion and I’m 101% human. What I’m doing can easily be implemented into your blogging routine too. It just take a little effort of finding the right tools and ways to link them all up. And with RSS feeds, linking up isn’t that tough.

Let’s use BlogOut! 2009 as an example…

What I used?

1. My Samsung Innov 8 mobile phone
2. My Singtel SIM card with mobile broadband service
3. My email account
4. My posterous account
5. My other blog
6. Twitterfeed
8. My twitter account

Throughout the two days at Blogout!, I posted photos live from the event to my other blog. I took photos with my mobile phone, attached the photo and sent an email to my posterous account where it auto post my update to my blogspot blog. With twitterfeed and the power of #tags, followers online during those two days were able to read updates on their tweets with photos accompanying what was happening during that time. This also resulted in an increase in the views over at my unknown and totally random blog (as seen on the graph on the right).

Example: I wanted to share the prizes we were giving away on Day 1 of blogout, so I took photos of the prizes and sent an email to posterous. It got posted to my other blog and got feed to my other twitter. And because I included the #tags in my email subject (aka the post title), followers of Blogout! on day 1 were able to see the post too if they’re following #blogout09 on the various #tag-following websites.

Its simple isn’t it? For me, I find Posterous useful and fits my needs. Till I discover another tool more powerful and easier than Posterous, I will stick to it. If you want to learn more about Posterous, I did share about it before in this post.

If you’re still unsure of the process of my method of live blogging and broadcasting, let me illustrate the process for you. This is what I always do…

Sometimes, instead of posting to my blogspot blog through posterous, I post direct to my flickr account too. If you’re asking why I choose to post at different places, well, I also don’t know the answer wor. When I feel that its necessary or good to share with my twitter followers, I’ll post on my blogspot (which I’d linked to my twitterfeed), and when I want to use different sizes of a photo I took, I’ll post it to flickr.

Now that you know how it can be done, are you going to try it out yourself? If you are keen to be part of a live blogging/ tweeting/ broadcasting team too, you can sign up at http://tr.im/hpnB or follow @sgtweet for updates.