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Social Media Breakfast Burlington, Vermont

posted on June 2, 2009

I grew up in West Lebanon, New Hampshire. It is a small, quiet town that of course I couldn’t wait to get out of when I was growing up, but now love going back to visit. So when I got asked if I’d be willing to speak at the first event of it’s type in Burlington, VT I jumped at the chance.

I drove up on Sunday and had dinner with my parents and sisters and then crashed at their house for the night. In the morning I hooked up with an old childhood friend that I hadn’t seen in years and we drove up to Burlington together. It made the trip fly by as we caught up on everything going on in our lives and I learned a ton about raising chickens. Who knew there was so much to know?

I gave a presentation called “Social Media is Like a Small Town” because I do think there is a mentality that comes from growing up in a small town that companies need to embrace to really work and play in this space. I’m not sure if this presentation would work in a big city or not. I knew it would work in Burlington though and I was right. I was even grabbed by the local news for a quick report for their evening news.

Unlike other events of this sort, what I loved about this one was after the speeches were done all the attendees were broken out into small groups to brainstorm around Grounds For Health. This is an amazing non-profit organization helping women in coffee growing communities to get cancer scans. Remembering that I now had the ability to live stream, I fired up Qik and captured some of the ideas that were shared.

I hope more events have brainstorm sessions like this where real world advice and tactics can be developed for organizations who really need it.

Leaving the event I was energized about the community that is forming in Burlington around this space. I felt the same energy when I was in Memphis lately. I love that this is happening more and more outside of the big cities and I think we are going to continue to see it happen more and more. It is a trend I like a lot.

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Categories: Presentations

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  • http://www.BryanPerson.com Bryan Person

    C.C.:

    Sounds like the event went very well. I’m thrilled to see that the SMB series has expanded to Vermont and that it’s off to such a good start!

    Early this year in Austin, we also had a breakfast event around helping a local nonprofit. In our case, it was Mobile Loaves & Fishes, an organization that works with homeless and indigent working poor. We broke out into small groups as part of building a social media strategy.

    And in San Diego, the SMB group there will be doing something similar for the rest of 2009 with a nonprofit called THINK Together.

    It’s very inspiring to see smart and talented people put their social media interests and skills to work for such good causes.

    Bryan | @BryanPerson
    Social Media Breakfast founder

  • http://www.tweetworks.com/ Mike Langford

    I didn’t know you grew up in West Lebanon. My wife and I used to spend a lot of time at Eastman in Grantham. And of course that meant we spent a lot of time up in Lebanon and Hanover because there’s nothing in Grantham except the Mobile Mart and the Gro-Bev-Deli-Gas.

    Anyway…let’s chat soon about SMB Metro-West.

  • http://digitalstrategy.typepad.com Rich Nadworny

    C.C. Great presentation, thanks for coming up and making that event so successful. I’ve been thinking about whether the presentation would work in the city and I think it can, with a minor change.

    Small Town is like how city neighborhoods used to be. You stayed in your neighborhood, you bought from your neighbors, most of life was self contained (and usually ethnic). This started breaking up after WWII while Small Town took a while longer.

    Both of my parents grew up in the Bronx. While my dad’s family was more adventurous, my Mom stayed put until she started part time work in Manhattan during college. It was a shock to her!

    Parts of Brooklyn or South Boston may still feel like this, but I think if you put that twist on the presentation, it would fly in most cities.

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