My plunge into social media

Jake McKee and free food are the big draws for a meeting I'm attending tonight. As you'll see from the passage below, Jake is an expert on social media. I've made some moves in that direction: got this blog, another blog I seldom post to, a website, and a flickr account -- but there's much more out there, beginning with twitter and continuing to the ends of the earth.

Playing with mail art pushed me over the edge regarding social media. Mail art, in all its snail mail glory, is valuable in and of itself and also because it allows art to happen without the intervention of committees, funding, fellowships, and real-space galleries. The art is inventive, often using what would be another man's or woman's trash, and often humorous. The intent is process, not prizes. And the greatest boon to mail art in our time is the ease with which people can find each other on the web. An active core of long-term artists circulate new calls for art, and newbies are accepted easily. Mail art existed long before the web, but the web allows for a broader community. And so I'm a convert, and ready to go hear what Jake McKee has to say, and to check out the hors d'oeuvres.

Here's the info from the Social Media Club Louisville:

Jake McKee, one of the foremost experts on on- and off-line community and brand ambassador building will be the featured guest and speaker at the July gathering of the Social Media Club Louisville on Tuesday, July 15. McKee, who blogs at CommunityGuy.com, is the principal and chief ant wrangler at Ant’s Eye View, a Dallas-based customer collaboration strategy practice. In a past life, McKee was the Global Community Relations Specialist for the LEGO Company, where he spent five years on the front lines of customer-company interaction. A well-known and respected social media expert, McKee is a highly sought after conference speaker and consultant.Jason Falls under, Evangelizing Social Media, Jun 2008