That’s what Jason Falls told approximately 30 people this past week for our first NB Third Tuesday Social Media Meetup. Visitors came from Nova Scotia and in NB from Saint John, Moncton, Woodstock and Fredericton all came to take online social networking offline. The event was generously sponsored by radian6 who arranged to have Jason Falls speak on his work in Social Media.

Attendees came from a wide variety of backgrounds from those with no experience in Social Media to those who work in it daily. But what brought everyone together was put best by Susan Nind from Insights Atlantic:

If Social Media is about transparency and honesty, then for New Brunswickers it’s something that we come by easily. I think that in NB we can create the wave and not just ride the wave. And I’m excited to be part of that.

Susan’s comment seemed to affect everyone the same way. So simple, yet so true.

There was a continuous buzz of conversation before the talks started. The same thread in nearly all the conversations was that people were interested in social media. They wanted to know more about it. How can they use it in their companies? What are the advantages to using social media? How is social media changing branding and marketing in business? Do you know what people are saying about your business? Jason Falls was able to show us some real life applications using social media with his Robbie Gordon twitter tracker campaign.

Considering it was 11 pm (with a start time of 7:30 pm) before we wrapped up completely, it was obvious that we have many topics to discuss in our upcoming meetings.

Other posts on the event from attendees:

Jason Falls
Jason Falls snowmobiling in NB
What really happened with Jason Falls snowmobiling
Chris Nadeau
Mark Dykeman
Flickr photos
justFred.ca photos and video

If you haven’t already, please join our Third Tuesday Social Media Meetup group so you can be notified of upcoming events. We have some great ideas and speakers in mind that will be entertaining and educational. We also would really like feedback from you about what you would like to see and learn.

Social media is growing. As Jason said just by learning and pushing to know more about social media, you’re all experts. NB may be small but there’s a ripple effect happening here and the end result will be a powerful social media wave.

Chris Nadeau (YourTeamOnline) did a great review on a Saint John, NB startup Facebook application Scrapbook Your Memories. Creativity, entrepreneuralism and drive runs in this family as this startup was founded by Chris’s wife Jodie and his mother Bonny. Congratulations on creating a facebook application with value that is appealing to a broad audience, particularly the 30+ range and WOMEN. 2008 will hopefully start to see a shift in applications from fighting zombies to applications like Scrapbook Your Memories  that have meaning.

Derek Hatchard founder of Moncton based ChurchRadius.com and podcaster at Devcasting, blogged today that he is giving away citizenville.com. Leave a comment on his blog saying why you want it and he may give it to you.

2008 will be the year that;

1. A barcamp/democamp/startup camp etc. will be held in Atlantic Canada. Possibly PEI at Rob’s place. Harold has made the great suggestion of it being a Kitchen Camp. Perfect maritime flavour.

2. We will have tweet ups to meet fellow twitter friends. An attempt was made over the holidays but everyone’s schedules were a little crazy, so no luck.

3. Dan Martell will hopefully organize an event for us to watch a video of the Future of Web apps. Possibly Fredericton. Date TBD.

4. If you can, you should try to attend The Power Within in Halifax, Feb. 26. We will have the opportunity to meet up with others from Atlantic Canada involved in this industry and we can all corner Mitch Joel to pick his brain;)

5. The AIM (Atlantic Canada Internet Marketing) conference is in Moncton this year, May 4-6.  Another great opportunity to engage with others.

6. We all love social media. We’re twittering, facebooking, seesmicing, blogging, Second Lifeing and so on. It’s wonderful we can connect up with like minded people. Yet you’ll notice all these above points are about meeting people in person. Making real life connections on top of the virtual connections. David Alston from Radian6 expressed it well that his number one resolution this year is to find balance - to invest in both social media and traditional family and friends relationships.

Here’s to a connected and balanced 2008 in Atlantic Canada!

Earlier this week in the news, CBC reported that Saint John was the happiest place to live in Canada. Both Chris Nadeau and Harold Jarche commented on this as well this week. As both mentioned, everyone is feeling positive about some of the great technology coming out of Atlantic Canada (visit the blog roll). PropelSJ stays on top of business technology and events happening in the SJ area. The regular news updates show that the Saint John area is becoming a business hub. And of course there’s no doubt that Atlantic Canada has some of the most beautiful vistas in the world.

This recent news is fortunate because for the past year Saint John and the Atlantic Provinces have mostly receiving failing grades in Health and Academic matters. In October of this year, Saint John was considered one of the fattest cities in Canada, likely attributed to poverty. People living in Saint John have the highest obesity rate, at 24.4 per cent of the population over 15 years old. The report card style study tracked the quality of life of Canadian communities in relation to poverty gaps, health, housing and the environment.  Saint John was not marked on track for any of these items.

NB also has some of highest caesarian rates in Canada. According to WHO (World Health Organization), 15% is the average c-section rate, yet in NB it is close to 29%. With northern NB having twice as many c-sections. Women’s groups wonder if it is about a lack of health resources or health professionals to deal with long labour. And certainly if looking at Northern NB where many hospitals were shut down, emergency rooms closing earlier, it would seem likely that is the case. This coupled with general long hospital waits compared to the rest of Canada also leads to a lack of resources.

In education, students in Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick all performed significantly below average in science and math.

Again, does this come back to poverty/lack of resources due to low funding?

So if that’s the case, how come we’re so happy in Atlantic Canada?

Maybe because money really can’t buy happiness.