The lowdown with the Hoedown, and more on the way!

It’s been over a week since the 2010 WYCD Downtown Hoedown, and in my last post I hashed out a little of what I would be doing there. My life has been nothing short of a whirlwind since then, but unfortunately, no, I wasn’t able to sneak away to Nashville with Dierks Bentley (or even get his phone number, for that matter). Regardless, I had a blast and thought I’d post here a few quick links for those interested in my coverage/activity at the Hoedown.

First off, I want to send a great big THANK YOU to 99.5 WYCD for organizing such an awesome event, and special shout-outs are in order for Terry Phillips and CKC Public Relations . Without you my experience would not have been half as amazing.

The other day I published a reflection on the 2010 WYCD Downtown Hoedown, and what it (and music in general) means for Detroit. It’s a bit lengthy but a quick read, and I’d love to know your thoughts on it in the comments of the post.  To make it easier, I’ll just put the other stuff up so far in bullets:

• Preview post: Detroit Rock City goes country for 2010 WYCD Downtown Hoedown
• These girls are a riot, look for them to be the next big chick group: Aussie superstar trio The McClymonts talk to Detroit Unspun
• Homegrown, 17, and on her way to the big time: Meet Ashley Allyson – Metro Detroit native, Nashville recording artist, and rising star!
• This guy is my newest favorite, you gotta check him out: Genre-blending Hoedown headliner Colt Ford talks to Unspun
• Singer-songwriter, Hoedown headliner Steve Azar finds Michigan “a special place”
• Flickr photo set of shots I took on my BlackBerry (there are more pix but I was limited on space and time. I left out pictures of me and will upload them in my Facebook pictures eventually)
• There’s more on the Detroit Unspun YouTube channel I haven’t written about yet, including an interview with everybody’s favorite singing newsman, Stephen Clark from WXYZ, and a great spot from radio personalities Edwards & Lee of WYCD)

I’ve been contacted by a few people (readers old and new) about certain content that has yet to be polished and published, and believe me, I’ll let you know as soon as it’s up. We’ve got a great montage on the way of footage I took with our FlipCam, including interviews with attendees and a couple special guest apearances, so stay tuned!

In the meantime, take a look at this kickass montage that WYCD put together, which is a very healthy nutshell of the awesomeness that ensued Hoedown weekend:

And of course, DEFINITELY head on over to WYCD’s special Hoedown section on their site to check out all kinds of great content, including interviews with ALL the performers (all audio, most video, too), lots of great event photography, and some exclusive backstage footage.  They’re still adding more stuff, so country fans — bookmark it and check back regularly!

Social Media Club – Detroit/Ann Arbor kicks off!

This past Tuesday, June 23, marks the inaugural meeting of Social Media Club – Detroit/Ann Arbor*. A bunch of us social media enthusiasts from all over southeast Michigan gathered at the Claddagh Irish Pub in Livonia to discuss our goals and the direction we’d like to see the club go.

What exactly is Social Media Club, you ask? Well, according to the national site,

Social Media Club brings together journalists, publishers, communications professionals, artists, amateur media creators, citizen journalists, teachers, students, tool makers, and other interested collaboraters. Essentially the people who create and consume media who have an interest in seeing the ‘media industry’ evolve for everyone’s benefit. We are more than just USERS, we are the reason the tools exist – we are the people who communicate our thoughts and ideas near and far. . .

SMC is now a handful of people managing the global organization on a part time basis, and actively working towards hiring full time staff as SMC files the 501c3 and push the organization further into the global space. Thanks to the efforts of our local leaders, we have grown to over 55 active chapters (40+ in the works) with 10’s of 1000’s of people gathering around the world.

Social Media Club has four missions, which are:

1. Expand Media Literacy
2. Share Lessons Learned Among Practitionerss
3. Encourage Adoption of Industry Standards
4. Promote Ethical Practices through Discussion and Actions

Chuck Smith of BlogTalkRadio fame did a great job of capturing snippets of the meeting on video over at his blog, and of course, Charlie of multiple-arena fame was there capturing snippets of everybody and everything for one of his many awesome videos.

Here are some of us talking about our biggest online pet peeve, and I’m (ironically) ranting on how I’ve come to loathe the term “social media”:

What’s your online pet peeve? from Charlie Wollborg on Vimeo.

Also featured in this video are @jesssoul, @chuckSmithMI, @julielyn, @ChrisCCL, @balanon, @sazbean, @rmercader, @davemurr and @bchesnutt. (Follow them, they’re cool.)

I honestly hate seeing myself on video but it’s unavoidable for me these days so I just suck it up and take one for the team. (Besides, I said “people are doing it online,” uh huh huh huh huh . . . )

You can learn more about Social Media Club – Detroit/Ann Arbor at the club’s wiki, including notes from the inaugural meeting, and follow @SMCDA2 on Twitter. There will be a Facebook page soon which will be linked here There is now an official SMCDA2 Facebook page, in addition to the original Facebook group.

Special props go to Dave Murray and Jessica Soulliere for stepping up and putting the club together, and to Tonja Deegan for scribing.

So what would you like to see the SMC – Detroit/Ann Arbor do? Any particular topics you’d like us to cover? And while we’re at it, what’s YOUR online pet peeve?

[Edit - 4:30 PM 6/26/09] Nikki Stephan (who couldn’t make it) commented that she’d like to see the club focus on where social media is going in the future, and that’s actually what I brought up at the meeting. I wasn’t going to embed another video of myself here but Chuck did get it on video so here ya go.  I guess great minds do think alike!

*Technically, I am not really “local” to Detroit, nor Ann Arbor, but all my friends live around there and I hope to be relocating back to Metro Detroit soon.