FAQ
Membership Questions
What are the benefits of joining Social Media Club?
We see the greatest benefit of membership as being able to associate with other people from around the world who really ‘get it’ – to learn from them, to share with them, to do business with them and to collaborate with them on both commercial and social projects. We want to help you create more opportunities for discovering the key insights that will advance your personal and professional passions, while contributing to the collective benefit for the broader community. We also think you will have a great opportunity to build a reputation that will lead to both speaking and consulting opportunities aplenty.
Ultimately, we will be offering a unique blend of association benefits such as discounts, free access to many of our events and discounted educational opportunities from other groups. We combine these benefits with support for the many ad-hoc groups that are forming as a result of the DIY and Unconference ethic.
In contrast to the typical associations though, we will also offer an array of online services such as our social network (aka: member directory) and other interesting peer to peer support services. Additionally, small business, media and corporate members have the opportunity to offer their products or services to other members though our ‘member directory’ which includes an opportunity to offer special promotions and other discounts to other members.
By investing now in the formation of Social Media Club, we will reward your faith in our efforts with many other unique opportunities in the future.
Why is there an “Open Membership” offered for free? Won’t that prevent you from accomplishing your goals?
We want to be different than other associations or clubs by creating our organization based upon the values that have brought us to this point in the evolution of the Web – being open, free and inclusive rather than closed, expensive and exclusive. While Open members won’t get all the same benefits as other membership levels, they will be an important part of the community learning and sharing along with the rest of us – together. We don’t believe that the ability of someone to pay a large sum of money is an indicator of the potential value they can contribute, but we do need to have the other paid levels of membership so we can cultivate and support the broader efforts of the community. Rather than believing it will prevent us from achieving our goals we feel it is the only way to accomplish them. While not everything in the world can be free, the Web has certainly proved that some things, particularly those that benefit from scale and network effects, can be. At this point in time, we are happy to welcome Open members, but would ask that you seriously consider becoming a paid member if you share our beliefs about the need for something like Social Media Club and have the financial ability to do so.
What does it mean to be a “Co-Founder”?
Folks who paid the ‘premium’ membership fee before June 30, 2008 will receive the special designation of Co-Founder within the membership directory for as long as their membership is in good standing, signaling to other members that they are pioneers in Social Media and have made a serious contribution to the community. The other benefit for Co-Founders who joined is the opportunity to participate in conversations about where this organization is headed. Rather than making this available to only the highest bidder as with other industry organizations, this opportunity is available to all Co-Founders at a ‘double year’ rate that also provides additional opportunities and discounts throughout the life of the club.
We hope that you will agree with us in regards to how important it is at this crucial point in time to have an organization that stands for real values around ethics, transparency and honesty that also supports the widening acceptance of Social Media across society to encourage broader participation in the global conversation while working together for our mutual benefit as an emerging industry. Chris Heuer was an early pioneer of the first wave of social computing in the mid-90’s, and spent a lot of time teaching people the basics of hyperlinks Web browsers. Now that the technology is more mature and the network is well connected around the globe, we can more effectively use his lessons learned and our ability to share with one another to help spread this knowledge more efficiently – while ensuring that the principles of being a good ‘Etienne’ are not lost as part of the growing pains.
We have a lot of rational exuberance – which is both good and healthy!
Is there some joke with the $2,499 corporate membership?
Actually no. Chris Heuer has always been a fan of ‘plain pricing’ for the purpose of simplicity, but in working with corporations you begin to realize that many people in organizations have a spending authority limit of $2,500. So this price point is intended to make it easier for people inside organizations to join by making the decision for themselves instead of needing to seek out the approval of many layers of management.
Local Group Questions
Will members have to pay separate membership dues to the local group as well as to the central organization?
We hope that we can find a different model to fund some local events through our national organizations, but believe that each local group will be somewhat different. We don’t want to impose a lot of unnecessary structure on each local group, but we do want to encourage the use of best practices and ensure some consistency of events. As a work in progress, this is expected to change, perhaps drastically, but will only happen as a result of a conversation with the community.
We do expect that the local groups may require small fees or donations to cover costs of convening the group (room rental and refreshments typically). Local organizers will use their best efforts to limit that and will seek donated space and refreshment sponsors wherever possible.
What are some of the things we’ll do together?
We’ve seen the power of the self-organizing, DIY movement to bring together ad-hoc groups and organize Unconferences quickly, with low budgets and high quality interactions. We’ve organized several of these ourselves and helped numerous others do their own from around the world. In this process, we’ve discovered that there are tremendous benefits to the fully participant-driven organizational model, but there is still some value in a more structured, planned and professionally managed event. Social Media Club will leverage the best lessons from both of these worlds and apply the right sort of facilitation for the particular purpose of the gathering. We will take the best of the loosely structured, just in time agenda’s of the Unconference and combine it with an organization that can accept money, pay for venues, take out insurance, and have some fairly-paid staff to ensure that things run right, without becoming a formal organization and event management firm. This means if you’re running a meeting and you need our help, if you’re running an Unconference and you need a little structure – we’re here to help you with whatever resources we can reasonably bring to bear.
What benefit will having a central administrative structure provide to the local clubs?
- Provide communication and collaboration tools for organizing and facilitating the groups online and offline.
- Connect the local groups to one another for discussing the bigger questions and organizing for collective action
- Facilitating informal and formal learning for local group leaders
- Help members around the work capture the value from the network effect of our collective ‘buying power’
- Harnessing the collective efforts of local groups to create a greater social impact
- Provide a place to collect money for events, pay for event spaces or catering, and facilitate insurance for events, should local chapters need it – something that is the most difficult aspect of ad-hoc organizing.
Is there anything required of me as a local organizer and group leader?
Other than being a member of the group, the requirements are performance based and subject to the wishes of your other local members. We are all in it together and will all have a voice in the general leadership structure – just as we all will have a voice in identifying those who really get it from those who really don’t. Some other more specific considerations that you would contribute in an ideal world:
- Having at least several hours each month to devote to the group
- Having some form of regularly updated Social Media to communicate
- Have access to some sort of meeting venue you can offer up to get things started
- Being able to edit a wiki
- Participating in the discussions with other local group leaders on FriendFeed (using this as a quasi mailing list) and occasionally over Skype or Phone
Again these are not really requirements, but guidelines we believe will be necessary for our mutual success. We expect to refine this list (and perhaps completely replace it) during the course of our discussions with other co-founding members.
