French Toast and food for thought at Social Media Club DC 's first breakfast #smcdc

About 40 social media practioners met at the Teaism in Penn Quarter for the first Social Media Club DC 's breakfast meeting. Social Media Breakfast is the brainchild of Bryan Person. The event invites members of the social media community, regardless of profession or level of proficiency, to eat, meet, share, and learn.

The first speaker was Geoff Livingston who co-founded Zoetica, a company that helps non-profits and Fortune 500 companies achieve their social responsibiity goals. Geoff Livingston's talk was laser focused on the increasing usage of mobile technology in millions by consumers and the prolification of advanced mobile phones. Geoff Livingston himself has both an iphone and a android phone to make sure he can stay abreast with Technology.
He advised the audience to subscribe to Mashable, GigaOm, and TechCrunch for social media reading and other tech blogs to continually learn and lead. It has become easier to create apps and folks should make use of this.
In typical Social media style Shana Glickfield @dcconcierge tweeted immediately "Plugging @appmakr bigtime to go with the GO MOBILE theme here at #smbdc #smcdc. (@drodio)"

The author Shashi Bellamkonda of Network Solutions spoke on Small Business use of social media and the importance of considering a web presence to stay competitive. Reputation management, customer reviews and community connections is very important in today's world. Integrate social media tools into your website and keep engaging your customers was th message. Shashi Bellamkonda also announced that the next survey of the Small Business Success index to be released soon has some interesting statistics on the Small Business use of Social Media.
Alex Howard (@digiphile) associate editor of SearchCompliance.com at TechTarget gave a very impressive presentation on his view of 2010 trends. His presentation is below:

Attendee Alex Priest wrote a recap of the event on is blog. The Social Media Clubs also had - Heads of Table - who facilitated conversations at their respective tables .

 Andy Carvin, Daria Steigman, Shonali Burke, and Mike Schaffer. The event organizers were Andi Narvaez and Rachel Rule  of the Social Media Club.

Here is a slideshow of some of the photos from the Social Media Club DC . What are the events that you attend and get great value? Please comment here and let me know.

About the Author

Shashi Bellamkonda is Director – Social Media & Social Media Swami of   Network Solutions a company that works together to help small business succeed online with web hosting, do-it-yourself website builder software, online marketing tools and domain names. Visit Shashi Bellamkonda's blog. Shashi is a regular contributor to the DC Examiner and Tech Cocktail. This article contains the opinions and observations of the author and may not necessarily reflect those of Network Solutions or its clients or partners.