This post is going to be a variation of the review I wrote on Lunch.com’s SXSW community (client) of a panel called Community Management: Future Skills You’ll Need to Know, and the panelists were @saulcolt @glusman @thorpus @seamuscondron @ambercadabra @sarahprevette. The review I wrote was titled “You already have a community”.

My favorite points from that session were:

• You can teach anybody social media, but for community management to succeed, it needs to be a senior role.
• We are in danger of slinging around “community” as this big buzzword, but you ALREADY HAVE COMMUNITY, it’s called your CUSTOMERS!
• Your community tells you when you have a community
• If no one is saying your brand sucks on twitter, you’re doing it wrong. You want that opportunity to start that conversation.
• You can’t tell your community what to do, you can only advise them. You don’t own your community, it’s their community.

Please read my review for more specific notes on that panel. But my big take away from that session was, You already have a community, it doesn’t matter what kind of business you are, or whatever kind of brand you are! This made me realize that even I have a community around my personal brand, and I need to actively manage my community.

I have been thinking about community a lot this last week, and I realized that I often find myself only talking about community as it refers to tech, or tech companies. But EVERYTHING is a community. Both in the physical location sense, and in the sense that you are probably a part of more communities then you realize. I realized that I am a part of the social media community, but I am also a part of the cancer community, the online video community, the vegan community, the health community and the New York City community.

I am interacting with all of these people, across all of these different communities, without even trying! Just my being myself, and that is awesome!

So I wanted everyone to reply in the comments with what communities they feel they interact with every day?

But I know I have to write it.

Over the past 4 months I have been living in Philadelphia, and working for Comcast Interactive Media. I worked on a project producing a series of tutorial videos. It was a very different job for me. There was a lot of managing. Managing people, managing expectations, managing outside agencies… it was a very big project. But my contract is ending on Jan. 15th so it’s on to hopefully better things.

So I had to make a decision, stay in Philly and look for another job, or move back to NYC? After talking with my family and close friends I have decided to do something that I didn’t want to do, but I know I have to do. Go back to school.

When I first started blogging there were 2 things that I worked very hard to keep under wraps.

#1 – that I was still in school

#2 – how young I was

I don’t really remember why I decided to do that, but from my point of view at the time, they were both negative things. I had a number of friends my age who were still in school and also in the social media/ blogging podcasting space, but for some reason whenever they were mentioned, they were always “student bloggers” and in my head that sounded like it was something less than everyone else. I didn’t think that they deserved less credit because they were young, or still in school. I also feel like the “student blogger” was being put in a box. It became a specific category that I didn’t want to be a part of. The age thing I always wanted to keep under wraps because I wanted my work to speak for itself.

I have very strong opinions about higher education. I don’t like it, I didn’t think I needed it, and I think the whole system in general is broken. I’ve written a little about education before. Once I had finished 4 years of school, I was done. I didn’t graduate, I just couldn’t take it anymore, I didn’t see the point. But while I still feel this way somewhat, I have decided to go back to school and finish my degree in Media Studies.

I can only hope that this doesn’t set me back career wise.

So…now that I got that off my chest, I’m moving back to NYC and I’m looking for a job. Not an internship people, I might be going back to school, but I don’t think that takes away from my level of experience. Ideally I would like to find some work in community management, social media consulting (I know I hate that term, but there is not other way to put it) Something that doesn’t require me to be in an office all of the time (since I will have classes, etc)

If you hear of anything, please let me know.

I wanted to thank all of my friends and mentors for being so great and supportive to me with this decision.

Twitter lists opened up to a somewhat wider release yesterday. I’m still not sure if everyone has it. But once twitter lists launched I couldn’t help but notice one thing.

There are all the times people have put me on their list, right next to my followers. I couldn’t help but think, will being “listed” become the new benchmark people measure twitter success/popularity against?

Suddenly I wanted to see how many times other people had been “listed” and what lists they were on. It wasn’t about what lists they made anymore.

Then I saw this tweet from Alex Hillman,

Twitter lists illustrate the most important shift in the internet: your bio is now written by others, and what they say about you.

Take a look at some of the lists I’m on:

It’s true, I’m a blogger, I live in Philly, I’m noisy, I’m in “techmedia”

When you look at it that way, lists say a lot about you!

How do you think lists will change twitter?

What has it changed for you already?

As many of you know, I am moving to Philadelphia this weekend for a new job. When most people move they have to empty out where they are moving from, organize all their things, pack clothes, ship larger items, but that’s basically it.

Yesterday I started to think about what moving means for all of my profiles all over the web. Most of the sites and communities that I am active on have a location, or a city in the profile. I will have to go through and change my current city on all of these sites. I know this doesn’t seem like that hard of a thing to do, but it can become very time consuming.

Even harder then physically changing your current city, is keeping everyone up to date with your location. People perceive you to be living somewhere, but that might not be where you actually are.

Sites like foursquare help with this. Letting you know where your friends are in your city, or when your out of town friends are in town. But one of the big problems with foursquare is that you can’t see where your friends in other cities are. You are only shown who is in your current city.

I have found that checking in on foursquare had helped my friends to be more aware when I am traveling, or in a new city.

Yesterday I tweeted “Are there any social media sites for moving to a new city”

One person responded and said “Does craigslist count?” Craigslist is great when you are moving and need to sell large pieces or when you need to find and apartment.

But sites like Yelp! can also be very helpful when you are living in a new city. Yelp can help you find everything from good places to eat, to a great place to get a haircut. Yelp has been great for me in NYC, but I am hoping that the Yelp Community in Philadelphia is as active.

Do you know of any other sites that have been helpful for you during a move? Or sites that have helped you settle into a new city? I would love to check them out, so please let me know in the comments.

Of course I have my own personal tour guide to Philadelphia, Drew Olanoff (@drew) <3

But if you know me, you know I am always looking for new sites and communities to check out.

About a year ago I posted a presentation by Marta Kagan called What the F**k is Social Media?. This morning I came across this slideshare presentation that is her follow up, one year later. It explains “social media”, which is a term that I am trying to use less and less, in a very simple and straight forward way.

I would encourage you to read through the whole thing and then send it to whomever you think needs to see it. (Which in my opinion is everyone)

OK, I admit it. Tumblr has killed my blog. Well, not really killed it, but it certainly has decreased the time I spend blogging on Random Sarah and looking for new content to blog about.

Last week was Internet Week here in NYC, and in the few days since I have had a lot of time to reflect on this past year of me being a part of this amazing community. I have been spending the majority of my time lately looking for a full time job, and that has put a lot of my passion projects on hold.

I got into this “new media” space because I was passionate about online video and I stumbled upon Social Media by accident. I was perfectly happy going on facebook and reading apple rumor sites. I had almost no desire to be on twitter, to be a blogger or a podcast creator. Then I started watching video podcasts and I realized that I wanted to create content as well.

As much as it seams like I’m busy, I know that it is not an excuse for letting my passion for online video fall off. What’s it All About has hit a few bumps in the road, and I feel as if I am back to square one with the project. However, instead of being discouraged I have decided to modify what I was doing.

Very often people will ask me questions, either on twitter, or via email. For example, the other day someone asked my about #followfriday best practices. I get asked questions about social media all the time. So, I am just going to start answering them on video, here in my room. For right now I am thinking that I will just put these videos up here on Random Sarah because I am not really sure that they are part of the What’s it All About brand, and I’m not really sure what that brand is anymore.

You can ask me questions on twitter or shoot me and email

I would love your feedback since you have all been an amazing part of this journey.

p.s. I am still working on the user generated “I am a geek” video, but so far I only have 5 submissions so keep them coming!

Just thought I would share this video with you all. It was put together by a group of people calling themselves THE SOCIETY FOR GEEK ADVANCEMENT

THE SOCIETY FOR GEEK ADVANCEMENT was founded upon the principles that we should all embrace our inner and outer geek and have fun while doing it. As individuals who love learning, innovating and believe in possibility as well as change, the second step of responsibility is to “be the geek that keeps on giving”. As a member of SGA, we work together as a global community to provide the tools and help others realize their true potential too!

“I AM A GEEK!” is a collaborative video project bringing together some of the biggest creators, personalities and web celebs taking on the online world.

“I AM A GEEK”, like all geeky side projects, started out as a tongue and cheek video we spent way too much time on and were going to simply throw out to the wild wild interwebs. But as more people came on board, the question of using “social media for social good” seemed to become more relevant. With Twitter and other social networking sites like Facebook blowing up by the second, it’s not only possible to get noticed and create “social capital”, but to use that for a greater good. Individuals now have the opportunity to be heard and bring awareness and attention to causes like they never had before.

After watching, “I AM A GEEK!”, we hope you are entertained, laugh a little or a lot.

We also encourage everyone to “be the geek that keeps on giving”. We’ve connected with a Room to Read, a great charity started by former Microsoft exec, John Wood, which builds libraries and schools for children in developing countries. You can give in many ways- by RT, blogging and passing on this Geek Advancement message to others, buying an “I AM A GEEK” t-shirt with proceeds going to Room to Read and/or by donating what you can now.

And if you would like to be a part of a user generated edition of this video there are instructions here

I have talked a little about my feelings on education. I decided that I wanted to do something about it instead of just talking about it.

So, I am starting a meetup group to figure out how much interest there is for teachers to learn more about how social media tools can be used in education.

I plan on this group holding educational sessions for teachers about social media and how these tools work.

Now the one thing I am stuck on is a name for the group. This is where you come in.

Should I name the group:
a) social media for education
b) social media for educators
c) teaching our teachers
d) other (please leave your suggestions)

UPDATE:

I am worried that “social media” is not the right term to use. I don’t want people to assume that this is about teaching teachers how to use facebook and twitter. If that is something that they are interested in than I am willing to explore that.

However, I wanted this to be more about creating communities and social space for your classroom, or group projects etc, that will engage kids outside of the classroom and help them to learn in a social way.

It revolves around the idea that learning is really just sharing information. And isn’t sharing what the internet is all about? I want to show teachers how these tools work and foster their imaginations about how they can work these tools into their curriculum.

I worry that using buzz words like “social media” and terms like”2.0″ aren’t really going to attract teachers.

Thoughts?

Here is the video from my talk at Social Media Jungle, a huge thanks to Bill Cammack for recording the video. The first few mins of the talk are missing but basically I was talking about do we have to draw a line between personal and brand? And if so, what does that line look like?

Speaker: Sarah Cooley (randomsarah.com / @sarahcooley)
Title: “Drawing The Line Between Personal And Brand”
Date: March 19, 2009
Conference: “Social Media Jungle: New York City” #smjnyc
Recorded By: Bill Cammack

So yesterday when I decided to start selling Avon as a part of a Social Media experiment my first thought was to create new accounts. I made a new twitter account, and I started this blog to document my online social life as an Avon representative.

But today I was thinking about creating new accounts, are you alienating your community who might want to know what you are doing, but might not know to follow that new account, or might not want to?

I have a personal twitter account @sarahcooley, and I use it for everything. My show has a separate twitter account, @whatsitallabout, but I think that makes sense. Should I just use @sarahcooley to talk about selling Avon, since I already have a community there? or would that upset my followers? After all, it is something that I am doing, and by following me, they are saying that they want to know about that.

Just some thoughts…I would love to hear yours.