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…

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…

After a successful SMB4, everyone was excited to attend the next SMB. And its heartwarming to know that after every session and after meeting more new friends, everyone is always looking forward to the next one. This surely keeps the team going and motivated to bring better and more meaningful SMBs.

When Derrick sent out the news of SMB5 taking place in ten days time, I’ve received many messages and email asking what’s the agenda or programme line-up for SMB5. I was speechless. This really shows the positive progress of social media here in Singapore. There are many out there who wants to learn and understand more about social media. And they do see that SMB can be such a platform for quality sharing and learning to take place.

At SMB5, it was planned to be a casual gathering and a time for everyone to catch up. The team had hoped that conversation and discussion will take place among the many of you who were there. I did manage to catch up with some friends and met a few new ones too. As for quality discussion, personally, I felt that the setting wasn’t as suitable as the previous SMB. But still, a great event with great company!

As part of the team, I hope to contribute as much as I can and help drive SMB to greater heights after every session. And this cannot be done alone. Its part of the team effort, your participation and kind contributions.

If you were at SMB5, we would really love to get your feedback.

At SMB5, we also managed to somehow put a little social back to social media. This I will share more about in another post, just because I’ve got a personal story to tell.

In the meantime, if you’ve another 3 minutes to spare, why not help the children in need? Samsung Hope is not asking for your money, all they hope for is your support by a simple pledge.

Take a pledge for Hope this Christmas



More photos of SMB can be found here and my flickr album

Photos first. Talk later.

Couple of micro-group shots

Check out the food line-up! I think I’ve some close-up in my innov8. Will post later.

The sweetest couple… click and you’ll know why!

Someone has a google phone.
But he has got a google ipod!

Not so smiley faces…

Than Daniel decided to sing a song for all of us!

Than everyone started laughing…

No lah! He didn’t! But I like what I heard thou. More on this later.

There were Wii games to play!

The 60+% remaining at the end of the session…

I need a power nap! More updates coming later after my nap…

In the meantime, if you were at SMB5 today, can you please help with a simple survey? This will help us improve and bring you better SMB sessions in 2009.

Click here for survey

Thanks!

Click here to view photos taken with Nikon D40

Photo taken at SMB4

Date: Saturday, December 13, 2008
Time: 11:00am – 2:00pm
Location: Samsung Store @ VivoCity (next to GV)
Attire: Bring something that’ll keep you warm! It can get very cold at Vivo!

Sidenote: IMO, air con in shopping malls are purposely adjusted to the lowest so that shoppers will buy winter collection from their tenants! Hee!

Besides the great company and great conversations, there will be Wii and Xbox360 set-up for play too!

If you’ve not RSVP, you can do so in our facebook event. No facebook account? Don’t worry! You’re still welcome! Just drop a message here or just come on Saturday! Remember to bring your namecards!

Psss! I just had a sneak preview of the wonderful spread for that day! The sound of it already making me hungry for all of them!! Can’t wait to party with you on Saturday!

The remaining 60% at the end of SMB4

First a brief background of the planning for SMB4…
Some of you might be wondering why SMB4 happened so soon after SMB3. It all happened one night at a blogger outreach event. Most of us were chatting and suddenly I was called to talk about SMB4! Willy volunteered to share his experience on the use of Social Media tools for his work and than the panel discussion idea came up. As there was a schedule clash, Oct 4 was the only Saturday for SMB4. So over the past 1 month, I’d been trying to gather and connect the panelists. Amazingly, all these were done through facebook and with help of google doc.

Due to the short period for planning, I was frantically trying to look for a suitable location for the setting and the kind of crowd we’re expecting. With just 2 weeks to go, I was still trying to confirm the venue! Some of the places which have been shortlisted for SMB4 includes Sinema Old School, Tangs, Going OM and a few others. I was sweating already when nothing seem to be confirmed even at 1 week before the planned date! Thanks to the help from friends at NHB, I finally managed to get in touch with Sabrina from URA who has very kindly agreed to host SMB4. The huge rock in my chest had finally cracked and I could breathe again!

Lesson learnt #1: Set an event date at least 2 months in advance and confirm a venue waaaaay before the dateline! Especially if you’ve got limited budget or in our case, ZERO budget for venue and catering. So now, I’m going to get the team started with the planning for 2009 SMB sessions! This is NOT being kiasu ok! This is call planning!

Spreading SMB4 through word of mouth…

When I knew SMB4 was happening on Oct 4, I started spreading the words out to people I met. Thanks to the opportunities given by few friends I met, I got to meet quite a number of new friends from the industry and corporate side of the fence. And while chatting, I mentioned about SMB to them and they were interested to find out more. Very happy that SMB is attracting the business people’s attention too. So with a friendly note to them when SMB4 was confirmed, these new found friends came! Words can’t describe the happiness I felt inside when I saw them on Saturday. I hope they’ve gained some new ideas and insights towards approaching Social Media. And there’s so much more to learn and share! This 3 hour was just the beginning.

In fact, SMB has always been spreading the words out through word of mouth too! And mostly online using the many channels of Social Media. With the growing numbers in SMB’s facebook group and the number of people coming for SMB sessions, who can say Social Media isn’t powerful and useful?

And now the problem is to find out how we can reach out to those people who’s not in facebook, not reading blogs and those who’re not online yet! Hmm…

It’s happening!
On October 4th, it was amazing how I managed to get through first half of the day without any sleep the night before! (I’ll blog about this next) I was like high on drugs the moment I stepped out of the house at 9am. Tried to catch some sleep in the train, changed to a wrong train at Outram station and finally floated my way to URA center at 10am.

Can you see the “drug addict” face on me?

I feel so guilty having to only see the whole picture of the discussion this morning when I reviewed the videos and read the post by Dorothy. And then I realised my points shared during the discussion on bloggers outreach wasn’t the points that I should have said! My apology to those who got confused by my incoherent sharing. As I was hovering everywhere, in and out of the Theatrette, throughout the 3 hour, I only managed to listen to bits and pieces of the sharing and discussion. :(

I’m also guilty that I only had chance to meet a couple of new friends yesterday. I’ve been smiling to many new faces but didn’t have chance to meet. And I didn’t manage to talk and catch up with a whole lot of people whom I’d planned to! So sorry if we didn’t get to catch up. But let’s do coffee/lunch one day ok? I’ll be in touch with you soon!

Panel discussion at SMB4

There may be mixed feelings and thoughts about the discussion that took place at SMB4, and the way it was conducted, but overall, I felt that SMB4 is a good start to the many things that SMB|SG can provide and contribute to the social media scene in Singapore. Although there’s still much to learn, change and improve on, from the feedback I’ve gotten so far, the future for SMB|SG is encouraging. We are also gathering feedback and suggestions for SMB4! Hope you can help us shape the ideal future SMB sessions.

I would like to personally thank all the following people for contributing to SMB4 one way or another!

The SMB|SG team…
Shermeen for coordinating the catering and coming down on Saturday even when you’re still recovering.
Dorothy for stepping up to taking on the role of doing your very first live blogging. Great work!
Sheylara for helping with the many proof-reading and getting our internal discussions going. And thanks for helping out at the reception! It’s great to have 2 pretty ladies (Shermeen and Sheylara) welcoming our guests. :)
Derrick for ensuring people don’t get lost at URA and helping to get those extra cutlery for the food.
Daryl for supporting and being there through the session even thou its late at night over at Canada.

Friends on the panel…
Willy for volunteering to share and bringing down your wonderful crew from Live!Studio!
Derrick for sharing and the pretty notebooks for the early birds.
Pat for contributing to the pre-panel discussions in facebook and sharing your insights.
Supriya for helping with the pre-planning of SMB4 and contributing to the discussion.
Benjamin and Daniel for agreeing to be part of the panel despite the very last minute notice and sharing your experiences with us all.

Kimberly and Walter from NHB for hooking us up with URA.
Sabrina from URA for allowing us to use the venue and coming back on Saturday to attend and bring us round Singapore City Gallery.

New friends who came to support and participate…
Kimberly, Kenny and David from NHB, Cheryl from Tangs, Karen from HBO, Raymond and team from H&K, Sin Yee and Carrie from Canon, Olivia from Sinema, Terrence from Harro and the many many others who were present.

I have a dream…

I’ve always been called a dreamer. I dream of doing big things that some has encouraged and some has not. But I always believe that everyone should have a dream or a goal to work towards. With my little experience with the buzz word ‘Social Media’, and my zero education background of anything PR or media or communication, I have a dream.

I have a dream of creating a space for the growth and forming of the Social Media scene here in Singapore. When I first learned about SMB through Daryl’s blog, I see this dream taking shape. When I finally got the chance to spend more time to participate and contribute, I’m hoping that this dream of mine can grow and take shape together with the team at SMB|SG.

I dream that SMB|SG will one day be able to function on a more structured environment.
I dream that we will grow and be a name that people wants to talk about.
I dream that we will be able to host the first Social Media Conference here in Singapore! (Very big dream huh?)

What about your dream? Do you have a dream similar to mine too? Perhaps dreamers with the same dream can gather and create our dreams together!

Some other places you might want to check out on SMB4…

For all links and updates on SMB4, please check out SMB4 blog post here.

For discussions on ‘Corporate Adoption of Social Media‘ and many other Social Media related discussions and topics, please participate in SMB|SG forum.

And finally, for those who’re not on facebook, here are some of the photos taken at SMB4 by Willy’s team from Live!Studios.

Panelists – Derrick, Pat, Supriya, Daniel and Benjamin

Audience and Panelists at SMB4

Live Blogging by Dorothy

Live updates on Twitter by @NTT and @litford…

Participation from the floor…

Melvin and Coleman

Some of the nice people at SMB4…

That’s the end of my long post… thanks for reading. Hope I’d not bore you with more of my incoherent writing! So… any thoughts to share? Of if you’re too shy to post, you can always drop me a message here.

My first impression? “WOW! What a place!”

It brought my excitement to the next level! Having missed the SMB1 and being in the cosy cafe for SMB2, the River Room at ACM indeed brought SMB3 to a next level! Thanks NHB for the great opportunity and hosting SMB3 at ACM. I’m sure everyone just can’t wait for SMB4 now! (Planning already in progress! Look out for it!)

Since I was early, and really don’t know what I should do yet, I went outside to take a look and was greeted by the beautiful morning sun by the Singapore River. What a way to start the day!

Beautiful view from River Terrace at ACM

River Room and River Terrace is the ideal place to host a wedding or any corporate events! Will surely recommend it to anyone who’s looking for a place to host their event. Imagine having it in the historical building with view of the beautiful river and Singapore skyline of the financial hub. Lovely place! I’m sure the night view will blow anyone away too.

Back to SMB3… as the clock ticks towards 10am, we got the place set-up. With help from Wei Chong and Kenny, Daryl and I arranged the chairs and get the reception desk ready…

Waiting for the arrival of all guests

Do you know, these chairs were arranged and moved around couple of time before we settled them in the final position? Looks like our plan didn’t quite work out at SMB3. But we hope things will improve for SMB4. (1) We would love to get any feedback and suggestions from you. Do keep them coming.

NHB press kits with the usual stuff for everyone

This time round, we wanted to try something different. There isn’t the “tagging kit” like those we had in SMB1 and 2. Instead, we wanted to help identify the guests better hence the color tags.

Blue = “I’m a blogger.”
Orange = “I’m in PR, from companies, or advertisers.”
Yellow = “I’m a listener and here to participate. (aka none of the above)”
Green = “I’m here for the first time.”
Blue, Orange, Yellow and/or Green = “I’m all/ some of the above!”

These color tags was quite a last minute decision, so the grouping was kinda off I think. (2) What do you think? Well, at least it did help me identify the first timers whom I managed to help some of them get started in the mini-discussions. I know how daunting it is to enter a room and not know who or what to do next. It’s great for the experience ones or those from previous sessions to help with the introduction part. (More on this in another post.)

From 10am, guests start strolling in and crowded the entrance area of the huge room. It’s interesting to know why is it that there were so much room inside the room but everyone choose to settle near the entrance? Or was it because the food was there? Maybe we should move the buffet table into the center of the room for future SMBs.

It was good to see new faces chatting away almost immediately with everyone. Once everyone was warmed up, mini groups were formed naturally and discussions took place. As there were still many guests who RSVP but hasn’t arrived, Daryl and I thought we should give a little more time before we ermm… do a little “welcome speech”. But even after almost an hour later, we still didn’t see some of them. Perhaps we’re too used to the fact that there’ll sure be late comers or has RSVP but couldn’t make it in the last minute for any events/gatherings hence it feels alright. Quite a bad habit but well… (3) Anyone has any suggestions how to improve this situation? We were wondering if things will be better if it was a paid event? Perhaps a small amount to cover the catering? Feedback?

Food for that day

There was quite a lot of left over! Maybe some of you are too shy to grab more food, but really, nothing to be shy one! Eat as much as you can ok? It’s better to help finish the food than to have them throw away in the end.

Presenters for the “welcome speech”…

Daryl welcomed everyone to SMB3, Walter shared a little about ACM and the free admission for all those present that day and Jerrick asked anyone who’s free to join in their Podcast recording for Tech65.

The plan for a open discussion on a suggested topic didn’t quite take-off this time round. We wanted to try something different and hope to get some thoughts on bloggers outreach program from the various point of views. There was lots of post-it and pencils for everyone to write down their thoughts, ideas or comments and there were three huge papers along the sides of the room for everyone to post their thoughts to. But in the end, there were only two post-its collected. Some feedback that the topic was too serious and some said that it’s not suitable. (4) Any suggestions on how we can improve this and hopefully build some focus discussions for future sessions? (Or would you rather just have a free-and-easy session and meet to network and eat and be merry?)

Shots of small groups having their conversations…

Tech65 gang in action…

In short, this is quite a successful session in terms of the turn out and the good mix of people who came. I’m sure there were many meaningful and great discussions that took place that day, and I should make a note to snap less photos and do more talking the next time. It was great having to meet the old friends and meeting new ones! And finally I managed to put faces to those whom I’ve been reading their blogs, plurking and camwhoring in google lively with! *winks* SMB started by Daryl and Derrick hoping to build up the community and getting like-minded to meet up. This session reflected well on their objectives and I’m sure if Derrick was with us that day, he would have been happy to see the interactions and happy faces.

Personally I have many little thoughts that I would like to share, but if I should continue, this post is going to be too long for the causal readers. I will share more in individual posts soon. But if you’d noticed, there are 4 points which I highlights and hope to get feedback and suggestions and thoughts from all of you. (more brains work better than 4!) To recap the 4 points…

(1) Are chairs necessary at such event? (3 hour session) What to you think is the ideal setting/arrangement for SMB sessions?
(2) Thoughts on color tagging to help identify individuals? How do we group the guests since the group is so diverse?
(3) How to encourage guests to arrive on time? And how to encourage those who RSVP to eventually turn up for the event?
(4) How can we improve future SMB sessions? (This is actually the most important question out of the four!)

For those who prefer visuals or had missed SMB3, here are some other shots taken that day…

Jerrick jumped out from nowhere when I gathered the girls for this shot

Beautiful people

Photo by Willy
This was how the above shot was taken!

And this was how I got this photo of me below!

Group photo of most of the guests at SMB3!

And this is how it came about!

Thanks Willy for the shot!

And here’s how one duplicate digital photo in the modern time…

Me taking photo of DK taking photo of Willy’s group photo!

GO SMB!!

For all links and posts on SMB3, please check the SMB Facebook group!