Learning

Over the last couple months I have been introduced to Social Media Club of Seattle (http://www.smcseattle.com/). At a national level, Social Media Club helps create regional chapters focused on education, sharing, standards and general "literacy" around social media. For someone new to the space, I was immediately interested in how this local chapter could help me learn more and get a better understanding of what works, what doesn't, etc. As I have got into it more, and learned about the people behind the Seattle chapter, I quickly learned about how the drive of one person, Kevin Urie, to "learn" helped 'Make It Happen.'

I'm not going to go into a lot of detail because the folks from @anotherpassion did a great job of that in a recent interview that went live on February 15th. You can click on it below for the entire story.
http://www.anotherpassion.com/2010/interview/kevin-urie-taking-social-media-offline/

What inspired me about the story was that Kevin took on this challenge as a learning oppportunity. Social Media was something that interested him, and this was a way for him to dive in..OK, maybe "cannonball" in. There are a lot of times where we evaluate what we will do, and where we spend our time based on the "return" it provides, typically financially. However, when I read this, and through my first few visits to SMCSeattle events, I can see how this is about learning and growing. It is about not only learning more for ourselves, but about sharing with others to help them be more successful.

So, I thank Kevin for having the drive to get the Seattle Chapter of SMC off the ground. Based on just my few interactions with Kevin I know he will give a lot of credit to the entire SMCSeattle crew, and rightfully so, but it was his initiative to "Make It Happen" that got it all going.

Here are a handful of links to connect with Kevin, AnotherPassion and SMCSeattle:
Kevin on twitter at http://twitter.com/kevinurie
Another Passion on twitter at http://twitter.com/anotherpassion
SMCSeattle on twitter at http://twitter.com/smcseattle