Lee and Sachi Lefever of Common Craft are it again. This time on the broad topic of Social Media:

Social Media in Plain English from leelefever on Vimeo.

Speaking of social media, my fellow association professional, blogger and good friend Jeff DeCagna of Principled Innovation LLC has launched the first-ever survey designed to capture information on the state of social technology adoption in the association community. He is are conducting this survey with the financial support of Omnipress, one of the association community’s leading producers of meeting materials in print and digital media. You can learn more about Omnipress at www.omnipress.com. The purpose of the survey is to gain a better understanding of how associations are using social technologies today, and how they plan to use them going forward. The survey will be open for responses until 11:59 pm PDT on June 30, 2008 and they are seeking only one response per association. It is worth noting that the survey is quite comprehensive (read long) however in return for your time and participating each participating association will receive a copy of the survey report which will be available in the September/October time frame. Additionally, All completed surveys will be entered in a drawing for five $100 Amazon.com gift certificates. The drawing will take place in early July.

While the incentives are really generous, do it more for the betterment of the association community. This is something that you can do to give something back and in return help provide a better understanding of the state of social media in associations today. If you are interested in participating, please check it out here at http://www.socialtechsurvey.org.

As many of us know explaining exactly what social media, community and online collaboration is and how/why it’s different from what existed previously is sometimes challenging and more often than not frustrating. I just learned about this video, of Clay Shirky at this years Web 2.0 expo where he really breaks it down and makes sense of it all. One of the key takeaways is that media (both current and future) is not uni-directional but rather bi-directional. It’s no longer about simply consuming it, it’s really about consuming, creating and sharing. Another is: “Where is the mouse”. If you don’t know what that means, take a look at the video or at the very least read the transcript of Clay’s speech, I think you will get it.

My thanks to Jack McKee for posting about this video on his blog which brought it to my attention.

I am sitting in my hotel room in Malta trying to catch-up with email that I have gotten over the past few days. I get many invites a week, some of which I attend others that I don’t. Normally I keep them to myself because I don’t like to promote vendor specific events, webinars, etc., but this one looks like it could be cool, fun and informative. Watch as 3 industry experts compete in a live game of Jeopardy to see who will be known as the Business Social Software Champion. If nothing else you may walk away knowing a bit more about social software than you initially did, even if you do know it all you can see how much the experts actually know. It’s a very intriguing format and something that I am looking forward to attending. The details are below:

Business Social Software Jeopardy!
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
10:00am PDT / 1:00pm EDT
Register Online: Click Here

Does your company leverage social software to engage customers, partners, and employees? More and more industry-leading companies are building online communities as a means of attracting and retaining customers, growing sales from existing customers, supporting users more effectively, gathering feedback to develop better products and services, and building a stronger brand.

But, what is hype and what is real, when web 2.0 technologies get implemented in the enterprise? We’re putting industry experts to the test, in a live game of Jeopardy, to see if they can properly solve the clues about how companies are successfully — or not — scaling up user communities. You’ll get to hear from some of the field’s leading thinkers, and have the chance to ask them questions during a Q&A session after the game.

The Contestants

• Bill Johnston: Chief Community Officer at | Bill’s Blog
• Laura Ramos: Vice President and Pricipal Analyst at Forrester Research, focusing on B2B marketing
• Jeremiah Owyang: Senior Analyst at Forrester Research, focusing on Social Computing | Jeremiah’s Blog

The Categories

• Industry Stats: What does aggregate market data tell us?
• Best Practices: Which strategies actually work in real life? Which don’t?
• ROI: What are some approaches to measuring the effectiveness of your investments?

Webcast Details

• Your Host: Sam Lawrence, Chief Marketing Officer at Jive Software
• Date/Time: Wednesday, May 28th at 10:00am PDT / 1:00pm EDT
• Registration: RSVP online to secure your spot — space is limited

In the meantime you can RSVP on the Jive Software website. I am not sure what the capacity for the event is, but considering the players and the topic I suspect it may fill-up fast.