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Recently I had a little get together at my place for a small group of women from the book club I attend. Two of the women had attended BlogHer last summer and were hungry to either get started blogging or ramp up the efforts they had begun. Also they were hearing about and trying out other social media tools like twitter, facebook, flickr and del.icio.us.
Learning about and keeping up with all these tools is daunting for most of us. While it's do-able to self teach all this stuff, it goes a lot faster when someone is showing you the ropes. And how much more fun is it to learn social media while socializing? Plus, it gave me an opportunity to work on my teaching and consulting skills so it was a day full of win.
I threw open my doors on a Saturday afternoon, stocked up on food and beverages and sent a few emails. Three eager learners arrived along with one teacher's helper. In a few hours the three newbies were up an running on twitter, all had blogs, widgets were installed, domains re-directed, flickr accounts established and more.
It was a great way to spend an afternoon. I'd encourage you to throw your own social media 101 party for a group of friends and family and suck them into your online world. Then you won't have to spend another Thanksgiving like I did trying to explain Lolcats and Rickrolls to your family ;)
Lessons learned:
1. Keep it small. It was hard for me to really help three people all with a zillion questions and doing different things. If everyone was using the same blog platform it would be easier but it turned out that we had one person already on Wordpress while Blogger was right for another and Typepad for the third. Thank goodness for my co-teacher, Deb Roby who saved me from having to decode wordpress.com on the spot.
2. Have (or have people bring) Ethernet cables and free up space on your router if necessary. Several people had troubles connecting their laptops to my wi-fi so the fact that I happen to have 2 50' cables on hand came in handy so I could hard wire them in my living room while my router is in my office.
3. Give people homework assignments before coming. We spent a lot of time figuring out what to do and setting up stuff that some of the newbies will never use. Why? Because they had heard or seen things and thought they had to have it. Thinking about what you want to actually do in social media makes it much easier and faster to get pointed to appropriate services. But just force people to use twitter. No amount of explaining will make them understand why they want it.
Have you ever had a social media party? A mini-BlogHer conference in your living room? Or have you ever had any kind of learning party? I'd love to hear all about it or ideas that are coming to you in the comments!
Related Reading:
Sue Murphy at SuzeMuse will be teaching a college course in social media:
In the new year I am going to be teaching what is one of the first courses on social media to be taught at the community college level (at least at the college where I’m working). I am going to have the undivided attention of 2nd year web designers and developers for 11 weeks. It’s a tremendous opportunity. These young people (most of them are under the age of 25) going to be working in the Web industry in the very near future. They need to be armed with a knowledge and understanding not only of the tools that exist, but of how to use this medium to build relationships, share information, collaborate, help others, and build communities.
Ann Marie Nichols at A Mama's Rant is thankful for the opportunities that have come from learning and using social media:
Most of all this year, I am thankful for blogging. Not only has it given me a way to express myself, it’s also given me a inspiring community of friends and work colleagues. It’s given me opportunities to earn an income from home in my pajamas, yet have a schedule flexible enough to attend a school party. I’ve met some wonderful people through my blogs and in real life at conferences and blogger meet ups.
Krista Bliss at bitchbuzz writes about the Cyber-Quilting Experiment:
The project examines
