The Appomattox Social Media Seminar, held on Saturday, 7 March, presented an opportunity for individuals to learn how to use social media. But, this seminar also represented a time to generate ideas, to learn about other like-minded individuals and to build social networks. It also was a time to learn how to speak again, perhaps with a different voice and in a different context.
Jennifer Mills from Expressions Laboratories in Lynchburg started off the seminar as she treated everyone to a morning filled with information about WordPress, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Mills provided step-by-step learning processes that helped beginners and experienced users alike learn how to use these tools effectively.
Jennifer Mills explains applications contained within social media tools.
Mills’ expertise is to help individuals use social media tools with an eye toward time constraints created by a busy lifestyle. Each tool has a specific purpose, although each one links to the other to help individuals promote their expertise, their business, their personal agendas or their causes. Once each person learns the basics of each tool, he or she is destined to make those tools their own through personal use.
Mills’ teaching laid the groundwork for the keynote speaker, Joe Gerstandt, who spoke about how social media tools also can bring social responsibility.
Gerstandt began his talk with three questions that focused on how attendees saw the world, what they could do to build that world, and the unique gifts that each person had to make that world a reality. The reason for these questions, Joe said, was that “questions are important…the answers often are overrated.” The answers, Gerstandt suggested, often come from the questions asked, or from the people who ask the questions – not from those who seem to “know all the answers.”
Joe Gerstand talks about social responsibility
Gerstandt stated that many citizens today depend far too much on the unquestioned expertise that leadership often implies. “At the end of the day,” Gerstandt stated, “The media, the schools, the political system…all belong to us.” This ‘ownership’ implies responsibility, and when citizens realize they are responsible, they begin to take action to change environments, issues and ongoing problems.
“We have forgotten that we belong to one another,” Gerstandt said. “Social media can help us to connect, and social media also helps to level the playing field. You don’t need to live in a nerve center like New York or Atlanta to take action and to develop your voice.”
Jason Fowler, a co-sponsor for the event and owner of Wisely Woven {Creative Media}, noted that Gerstandt’s message reminded him of Wendell Berry, an author who promoted healthy rural communities through a connection to place and an interconnectedness to life. Although Gerstandt never touched on sustainable agriculture, appropriate technologies or local economics, he did offer a message that appealed to a handful of regional sustainable farmers in the audience.
Some of the attendees at the Appomattox Social Media Seminar
Chris Ault from Ault’s Family Farm & Apiary, Lisa Moussalli from Frog Bottom Farm and Fowler all are active sustainable farmers located in Pamplin, Farmville and Bedford County respectively. Copeland Casati, like Fowler, runs a professional business, but she also is building a green home in Appomattox County and sells Green Modern Kits to others who want to build environmentally-friendly dwellings.
Copeland, along with Fowler, Jennifer Mills, Nannette Saunders, Chris Abraham (a social media public relations, blogging expert, and president of Abraham Harrison, LLC) and Gerstandt met with attendees in the afternoon to discuss various aspects of social media. Perhaps more importantly, the attendees met with other attendees to become better acquainted, and many left the seminar feeling “energized” and “excited.”
Nannette Saunders talks about “meet-ups” and “Tweet-ups”
Nannette Saunders, a real estate broker who facilitates many meetings among social media users in Lynchburg, wrapped up the seminar with information on how to meet with other social media users in what are known as “meet-ups” or “Tweet-ups.” These meetings either are informational/educational or social events that social media users can facilitate to learn more about how to use online tools and to learn more about each other.
Attendees to the seminar came from Appomattox, Bedford, Richmond, Farmville, Pamplin and Lynchburg. You can meet many of the attendees at Social Media River (http://www.socialmediariver.ning.com/), a site that Jason Fowler is creating to help social media users along the James River connect with each other and to learn how to use social media tools.
Social Media River may also serve as a place where users can being to remember that “we belong to one another.”
WATCH Social Media Seminar on ABC13 News (Lynchburg). Thanks to Manuel Quinones for reporting the event!
Sounds like I missed some very important themes in the second part of the day. Glad I could at least be there for the first part. There are a lot of great people in this area, and I’m proud to be able to call it my lifelong home.
One quote from Joe Gerstandt, in the article above, stands out to me:
Gerstandt stated that many citizens today depend far too much on the unquestioned expertise that leadership often implies. “At the end of the day,” Gerstandt stated, “The media, the schools, the political system…all belong to us.” This ‘ownership’ implies responsibility, and when citizens realize they are responsible, they begin to take action to change environments, issues and ongoing problems.
So very true! This is exactly the theme I’m trying to bring home in my Congressional campaign. Citizen involvement, from average folks, does not have to end with pulling a lever in a booth. Get out there and organize, or even RUN for office. Change starts with each individual.
Thank you so much for your efforts to bring these seminars and, more importantly, PEOPLE, together, Linda. These ideas are already powerful on their own, but with dissemination and action, the energy generated can change the world.
Hello Bradley – I’m happy you joined us for the morning, but I am sad you missed Joe’s part in the seminar. You can catch some of his talk here: http://socialmediariver.ning.com/ (scroll down). This also is where you’ll find many ofthe folks who attended the seminar and more…it’s a new social “experiment” to help pull together social media users along the James River. It is growing daily…you might keep an eye on the progress, join in, even! =)
I appreciate your kind words, Bradley – but I can’t take full credit for this. If people weren’t willing to show up and learn from one another, this event wouldn’t have happened. Power to the people, eh?
Good summary! Thanks for sharing.
It ties in with a great book I am reading by Jeremy Rifkin, The European Dream.
Rifkin talks how we are shifting to a network based society.
“One enters a network with the idea that optimizing the welfare the the whole is essential to optimizing one’s own individual interest. In other words, unlike markets, which are adversarial and competitive, networks are interdependent and cooperative. One surrenders some authority to the group, not necessarily out of a sense of benevolence but rather out of a shared frailty and vulnerability. In a complex, multilayered, densely interactive world, no one can go it alone. Like it or not, everyone is vulnerable and at risk. The threats are global, and no one can be truly isolated from the consequences. In a world of risk, cooperation ceases to be a luxury and becomes a necessity for survival.”
Hi John – that’s a great quote…and you are correct, as that quote defines, in a nutshell and from a different perspective, what we learned on Saturday. I’ll have to get that book. Thanks for dropping in to share your insights!