“Birds of a feather….”

Connie and I do realize that when you spend a lot of time around the feathered tribe of tech-savvy folks (thereby miraculously becoming two of Austin’s Social Media Mavens) it can be easy to forget that not everyone’s world revolves around LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and blogging, aka “the tech-o chamber.”

As my teen would say, “Duh.”

We know that lots of people find social media to be one big confusing alphabet soup of applications, jargon and insider jokes.

That’s why we run classes and workshops; to demystify the gobbledygook, and that’s why we love speaking engagements with great organizations like Austin’s venerable Metropolitan Breakfast Club.

From the MBC Web site:

“The Metropolitan Breakfast Club is a 20-year Austin tradition that’s anything but traditional.  Every Wednesday morning our members are informed and entertained by a variety of local and internationally recognized experts in business, politics and education. Our speakers share stories of Austin’s past, our current challenges, and future opportunities in and around Central Texas.”

Since 1984, the Club has been renowned for its extraordinarily eclectic speakers – everyone from the city Police Chief to historians to company CEOs to astronauts to the person who organizes the local rodeo.

Connie and I are thrilled to be included in the distinguished lineup on this coming Wednesday morning, March 11 – you can RSVP here if you happen to be in Austin.

We will do our best to rock the house with a combination of two of our favorite presentations:

• Email is for old people – Connie gets laughs and lots of attention with this one because, just like me, she IS one of those “old people.” More mature and particularly more skeptical audiences tend to listen to someone who does not appear to be 22 or live in her Mom’s basement, especially when she cheerfully blows up preconceived notions about social media for businesses and nonprofits. 




• Follow the bouncing blog post – I use a series of tabbed Web pages to show audiences how the information in a single blog post moves through the Web on other blogs, Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, StumbleUpon and even (how retro!) email. Newcomers to social media say that it gives them a clear visual demonstration of the power of Web communications.

We’ll then open the floor for lots of questions and answers.

If you’re in town, we hope to see you bright and early Wednesday morning!

(This is cross-posted on the Perceptive Travel blog and my Family Travel blog on BootsnAll.)

I know that I’m a very fortunate freelance writer and social media/Web 2.0 trainer; I have a military pension and health insurance from my 22+ years in the US Navy. I can ride out the current economic storm (with a lot of belt-tightening) so it’s somewhat easier for me than for others to set fiscal angst aside and go to China next week….to meet a bunch of Chinese bloggers.

That’s probably what the China 2.0 Tour might seem like from a distance, and you might well ask; what is the ROI (business Return on Investment) from getting to know “a bunch of bloggers and tech types?” Is that how I should be spending my limited funds?

Here’s why — as a good friend once said about me, I’ve never been about looking back. I’ve always been about looking ahead to the future.

Unless I’m sorely mistaken, 245 million Chinese Internet users might be rather important to someone like me who mostly publishes online, and who consults and teaches entry-level workshops in all of this heavily-connected Webby stuff. Travel writing is only one activity supporting my overall life philosophy, which is to attempt to understand how things work and how people tick.

That’s why Christine Lu and Elliott Ng asked me to join China 2.0….from the Web site, here is what they’re trying to accomplish:

“Led by The China Business Network and co-organized by Web2Asia and CNReviews, the inaugural China 2.0 Tour is sponsored by Edelman Digital China and represents a unique opportunity for companies and individuals to gain a deeper understanding of China. Unlike a typical business conference or large trade delegation, we seek to go ‘one-level deeper’ by creating a series of small-scale, exclusive meetups where people can share more openly about their business successes and challenges, and provide a deeper view into the nature of building a successful venture in China.

We also are taking an interdisciplinary approach by looking at social media, clean technology, gaming, wireless, and other areas where trends in China will affect markets around the world.

We also seek to provide informal opportunities to go off-message and off-the-record, so that long-lasting relationships can be built….”

Not only will I meet all sorts of key people in China, including many directly related to my travel and social media work, but I’ll also get to know my fellow Tour attendees — people like:

• Shel Israel, co-author with Robert Scoble of one of the seminal Web 2.0 books, Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers.
• Sam Lawrence, CMO of Jive Software and enterprise 2.0 influencer behind Go Big Always.
• Mike Butcher — Editor, TechCrunch UK and Ireland.
• Ernst-Jan Pfauth — Editor-In-Chief, The Next Web and Co-Organizer, Blog 08 in the Netherlands.
• Melissa Sconyers, who won a contest sponsored by Mashable to create a new kind of online resume, called VisualCV. She’ll blog for Mashable in China.

How much I’ll be able to post here while in China will depend upon Internet connectivity and more importantly, time available. I’ll certainly do my best, although this is more of a tech visit than a travel visit.

I’m not going to be able to make the Guangzhou leg of the Tour (and will miss the Chinese Blogger Conference where Shel is a featured speaker – phooey) because finances wouldn’t allow it, but I will spend extra days in Shanghai and will have more pure-play travel goodies from there, I would think.

Thanks very much to my sponsors Every Dot Connects and UpTake – Your First Step to a Great Trip, and the support I’ve gotten from BootsnAll’s Cheap Air Tickets in order to get me there and back.