SMB3 broke huge new grounds yesterday at the Asian Civilisations Museum (ACM) thanks to great partnership with the National Heritage Board (NHB). I was getting messages all Friday long about people being excited to attend SMB at the ACM and I heard about the River Room from the NHB folks and saw the pictures at the website, but I was completely blown away when I stepped into the venue. It’s a HUGE space that looks like a swanky ballroom rather than a location for an informal event like ours. In fact when I met Claudia to set up, I said “Wow, maybe we should’ve gotten a smaller room so it won’t look so empty if less people turn up.”
The reception table
NHB!
Enter… the River Room
Huge, classy and stylish.
I needn’t have worried because this was the most amount of people we’ve ever had at an SMB for sure. When people were sitting the chairs were full, if not there were throngs of people standing around. It was really quite something.
I felt the vibe this time round was a little more “intense” than previous SMBs. Maybe it was the more official looking venue compared to the previous cosy cafes, but I definitely sensed a lot more interest and enthusiasm and mingling this time round compared to the previous two. It was as if everyone knew they were in a room with bright, like-minded people and wanted to make the most out of every minute and maximising their time there.
One thing that didn’t go too well, was the discussion topic. We wanted to have a panel but that didn’t work out so we thought going ahead with “table discussions” would work. But I guess they didn’t. We’re still experimenting with the format, but SMB is the community’s not ours. We just organise it. So if you felt the topic was too serious, too trivial, too boring, needed facilitators, needed moderators, let us know! We’re going to figure out a way to make this work for SMB4.
Walter from NHB sharing with us NHB’s social media efforts.
For me, the biggest thing at any SMB is the people. And I was incredibly excited that I didn’t know about half the people there! It’s amazing that almost six months after the first SMB, it’s still generating interest among people who are willing to come for the first time. I particularly enjoyed meeting Pat Law in person after so much communication on our blogs, Twitter and Plurk, Todd Murray from Active Channel who I only met online the day before on LinkedIn, Willy Foo from Live! Studios who provided great fun with his photography, and many many others who are too many to list here.
I really love how SMB is becoming this melting pot of people literally from everywhere in the social media space. Bloggers, podcasters, videocasters, in-house people, agency people, casual enthusiasts, academics, entrepreneurs, tech people and everyone else. It’s great to have Miccheng from Podfire filming Geek Goddess TV at SMB2, and the Tech 65 crew recording live at SMB3. It’s truly bringing together the best of both “social” and “media”.
Tech 65 recording live!
Admittedly right now SMB does not have a firm “mission” to drive here in Singapore, but we started off wanting to provide a platform to get everyone together to mix, share experiences and learn from each other, and I think it’s doing just that. Not necessarily at the three hours during brunch, but all the connections and conversations that happen after that. As much as I was delighted to see so many new faces, I was equally ecstatic to see so many returning faces who have been consistent supporters of social media in Singapore in general, and SMB in particular.
At this point I’d love to hear from everyone how you felt about the event. Be frank, be critical. After all if you’re waking up on a precious Saturday morning to come to SMB, it should be worth your time. Let us know what worked, what didn’t work, what you’d like to see more of in the future, etc etc.
Finally, I’d like to thank Walter, Wei Chong, David and Kenny from NHB for agreeing to partner up with us. I cannot state enough what a great help they were with the venue. It was really good knowing that we secured a great venue and not having to worry about it for the last few months. I completely forgot about signage but they had all bases covered with great signboards everywhere ensuring that no one got lost. Thank you so much. Of course, it wouldn’t be possible without my co-conspirators as well: Sheylara, Claudia and Derrick.
Willy has great photos up on Facebook. I’m going to insert two of the group pictures here. Memories of a good Saturday morning well spent meeting great people.
As always I’ll be posting a full rundown of all the blog coverage sometime next week, do let me know if you blogged about it so I can include you! Tagging your posts as “social media breakfast singapore” and “smb singapore” would be greatly appreciated!
Last week I was looking through my feeds on Google Reader (an act that is becoming less and less frequent with work piling up), and saw one of del.icio.us’s “hotlist” saying “200 Nipples“. How could I resist clicking?
Turns out it is a t-shirt selling website that runs batches of t-shirts in exactly 100. Hence they aim to cover 200 nipples every month if they sell 100 t-shirts. The interesting thing about them is that each t-shirt is uniquely numbered, and corresponds to the amount you pay. So you’d pay $70 for t-shirt #70, and $1 for t-shirt #1. Pretty interesting concept and a novel business idea. Sounds to me like they would’ve had to have done some pretty intensive forecasting and cost modeling to come up with this, so credit given there.
What I really like about the company is their blog and product is geared towards conversation or discussion pieces, as you can read about in their writeup for their t-shirt for the month of July and their not-too-serious FAQ page and of course the story behind their company name, gives them a sense of “character” that most brands don’t possess.
Will they be a big player in the world of t-shirt businesses, only time will tell. But for now, I’m subscribed to their updates so I know when their latest design is released so I can snag me a t-shirt (hopefully when I’m up in the US so I can save on shipping).
In a month, Social Media Breakfast: Singapore 3 will be happening. The tentative date is Saturday, 16th August at the Asian Civilisations Museum. I finally got to meet up with Walter at Ogilvy’s Verge event, and pitched him with the idea a week later, and it’s worked out pretty well. We’ve got verbal confirmation from ACM about the venue but the date is still tentative.
What’s going to be different this time? Well first of all, we’re going to dedicate maybe 45mins to an hour to focus on discussing about social media. The topic is up in the air right now, so feel free to throw something in. Hopefully it won’t be something covered 73529573 times before (like should we pay bloggers to review products), but something different. Just to manage expectations, don’t expect the names or turnout like you see at other “conferences” because at the end of the day we’re a four man team with no budget!
Speaking of a four man team, another key difference is that Derrick will be taking point on this one, primarily because myself and Sheylara are going to be pretty swamped with work. We’re also welcoming Claudia into the mix, who’ll help with working out what exactly that social media topic should be. Who better than the community manager of Yebber who deals with social media every day to take up this job right? Shermeen, our masterful logo designer is unofficially on board helping us with what ever design stuff/torture we can throw her way as well.
While we’re on design, Sheylara and I have been discussing about getting a full-fledged domain for SMB:Singapore, so stay tuned for that.
And finally, everyone who comes gets free access and a guided tour of the Museum, and we’re in the process of persuading them to relax their photography rules for just one day so that as always, our bloggers can go crazy with their photo-taking.
More updates as they come in! We really want your feedback on how SMB should evolve. It’s not our “baby”, it’s everyone’s. So please comment below!
ps: In case you don’t know what SMB is about, read up on the first and second ones here!
Everyone wants something “viral” these days. But the thing is you never really know when something is viral and truly will catch on.
Let me say it’s been two days after the HP TouchSmart PC Blogger’s Nite, and the song for the TouchSmart “Do You Wanna Touch?” has still been ringing in my head. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Check out this 1:29 video.
I’m going to be a little bit candid here. Of all companies, would you have expected one like HP to come up with something this catchy? Melvin blogged about it from Berlin and I hadn’t experienced it first hand and wasn’t convinced how “catchy” or “viral” it was until the blogger’s nite and how everyone is still talking about it:
I have to say, speaking as a social media blogger, that I give HP Singapore full credit for going all out with their blogger outreach programme. The first time they did it I wasn’t invited, but still gave them some praise, the second time they did it I was a part of it (full disclosure: I work with the PR firm that handles HP’s digital strategy and helped conceptualise and organise the event), and the second time I could really see first hand how the HP execs were willing to engage freely with bloggers. There was no “we are executives in the real world and you are bloggers” mentality.
My blog coverage with many many photos is up over on my personal blog if you’re interested. The one thing I wish could be better was to credit the band that did it, or make it available for download. Tying this in to my thoughts on social media in the local music scene, the right social media/digital tie up could just really make your song take off like wildfire. Do you like the song? Let me know!
Yesterday was SMB:Singapore 2, which was great because we had the unveiling of the first version of the logo (which was printed out on all the name tags), just under 60 people appearing, pretty good food and what I thought was a nice cozy venue at Cafe Domus.
For me, it was really good meeting people like Siok Siok and Krisandro, Rony Thomas in person, and finally getting to meet Preetam, as well as interesting conversations with Su Min, Jayden, Hun Boon and many more. I also had a kick ass time being interviewed for Geek Goddess TV together with Sheylara and Derrick. (Mic, please make me look good in post!)
If you came for SMB and we didn’t manage to connect, do drop me a comment or look for me on Twitter (@uniquefrequency) or on Facebook, and we can start a whole new conversation there! Just drop me a note so I know you’re not some random person looking to add me.
You might notice this post says “The Success Part”, more on “The Failure” part later today. Also, I’ll be putting up a post consolidating all the media coverage of SMB2, so if you have a blog post, pictures, video, audio, anything, drop me a comment so I can link you!.
And now, on to the pictures (mouseover for captions):
I know you guys secretly laugh at my “logo” that we’ve been using for Social Media Breakfast: Singapore so far (the picture of the airline food bun), so I approached my friend of 11 years, Shermeen, to do up a proper one. And here it is:
Now before you go “that’s just a cup”, check out the writeup from Shermeen:
The logo’s a coffee cup, with the handle and saucer forming the acronym “SMB”. It can also look like a person having a bright idea..with the face/head having 3/4 profile. I’ve opted for sketchy lines, so the logo looks professional enough, yet informal enough to be fun.
Did you see the “SMB” being formed from the handle and saucer? I certainly didn’t! I love that it’s a simple, elegant logo, yet with these intricacies behind it! Awesome.
If you’re interested, Shermeen will be posting her full thought process and inspiration behind the logo on her blog at http://inthespace.wordpress.com, it’s not up yet so the easiest way is to subscribe! Alternatively, you can contact her directly via email at shermeen.t[AT]gmail[DOT]com.
See you guys on Saturday!
Edit: Claudia suggested printing these on the nametags as well, it probably will be tight for this weekend, but you can definitely look forward to seeing that happen for SMB3!
Jasmine from my social media class tagged me for a meme for “7 Useless Facts About Myself” and I thought this would be pretty cool to do, but I’d tweak it to fit the theme of the blog. So here we go:
I had my first “blog” (well it was called a website then) in 1997 (when I was 13). Links and archives weren’t the norm back then, so basically each time I added in new info the page grew longer and longer and longer.
Before blogging “seriously” at this blog, I’ve covered everything from comic books, music, movies, books, food, you name it.
I used to be a guest writer for Fanboy planet (one article here) back in 2002
The first friend I made online is also my closest. We met in a chat room.
I was always very proud of my ICQ number having only 7 digits (early adopters rule!)
Until I moved here, I blogged by manually tweaking html codes. ie manually inserting dates, links, pictures, etc by typing out the html codes.
Despite being a very heavy web user from 1997, I’ve never made any money from it.
There you have it. I won’t tag anyone, but feel free to replicate this on your blog and share something fun about you and your passion!
Yesterday was Read and Comment day, where you have to make an active effort to comment on blogs and join the conversation. It was suggested by Chris Brogan, and true to form, he even left a comment here as well. Read and Comment day also inspired me to encourage people to strengthen their links to people on Twitter, especially the weaker links.
My Report
I put aside an hour last night to really go through my Google Reader (learnt how to use it yet?) and properly digest blog posts and comment. In a lot of ways, it reminded me of when I first started blogging in January when Prof. Netley advised us that we should comment twice as much as we post to establish a presence and drive traffic. I’m a little embarrassed to say that I forgot that along the way, but Read and Comment day really reminded me how important it is not just to create my own content by blogging, but to add value to others’ content as well.
How About You?
Have you found yourself commenting less than usual? Something holding you back from joining the conversation? Go post a couple of comments today. You’ll feel great!
The Open Room was held today at Ogilvy with the tagline “where brands and bloggers connect”. I was one of the privileged bloggers to be invited, and I have to say I had a blast.
The Open Room was a great event for me as a blogger. I got to meet people I met previously from Social Media Breakfast: Singapore like Sheylara, Supriya, Jean, Ridz, Rinaz, Nicholas, Michael Netzley and Aaron, as well as some bloggers I know of online but never really met in person like the Tech 65 crew, Ian on the red dot, Sabrina, Plaktoz and Nadia, as well as a ton of people from Ogilvy. (I’m sure I’ve missed people out, let me know so I can add your link!)
The one thing that I felt was replicated from the IDC Conference was that the companies involved seemed a little unsure about what to do when meeting bloggers. We were identified clearly by our magenta tags (they had green), but yet the two groups never really mingled. I don’t think this is the “fault” of anyone in particular, just that this new social media space and community marketing concept are something corporations are just figuring out right now. I definitely hope this changes soon. I don’t want to be pitched by companies at events like these, but it would be nice to talk to them and find out more about them.
Y’know, start a conversation, have a relationship. Like real people.
For example, I was checking out the new Canon models (because my sister took my camera), but there wasn’t really anyone there I could talk to about it. In fact, most of the “green tags” were gone by 6:30pm. (Probably considered as overtime for them).
I think the issue here is simple: Bloggers have taken a step forward. Companies like Ogilvy have taken a very important step forward by organising something like The Open Room. Now the companies, the very people who the bloggers and agencies are trying to help and engage, need to take that step forward and be a part of the conversation, part of the community too.
After all, at the end of the day, for the bloggers it’s a blogger social event, but the companies should at least go back with something to show for it, be it a new blogger relation or a referral. Because otherwise, the time was wasted wasn’t it?
Edit: Forgot to insert the picture, but we got some swag from the event! Nice touch I must say. Anyone needs the PSP case? I don’t have one so feel free to ask for it. Don’t even think about the Nokia N-gage thumbdrive though!
Big thanks to Brian and Tania for inviting me, looking to future events!
I'm experimenting with different themes right now! If you have any to recommend (preferably 3 columns), please leave a comment! In the meantime, please bear with the frequent facelifts =)
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In a month, Social Media Breakfast: Singapore 3 will be happening. The tentative date is Saturday, 16th August at the Asian Civilisations Museum. I finally got to meet up with 
