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.

I’m surprised that Dairy Queen hasn’t taken advantage of some interactive web functions. My son turns 11 this weekend. Every year, I take a topic that my son likes, scour the net to find the right image and then take it into my local Dairy Queen for them to prepare a customized frozen birthday cake. This year, I’m busier than ever, so I called my local Dairy Queen and asked them if they had an email that I could just send the photo and instructions to. They didn’t offer that option and I had to go in to the store to place the order.

Imagine how cool convenient it would be to be able to go online to Dairy Queen and interactively;

1. choose your cake type and size

2. then choose from a variety of suggestions for items to write that are more creative than just Happy Birthday or Congratulations.

3.  a selection of styles of cake printing fonts/colours that can be used

4. pre-set images searchable by topic (sports) /age etc. if you didn’t have a particular image in mind

5. able to upload your own artwork/photo for your own theme

6. then move all these items around on a virtual cake to see how it could look.

7. When done, save, place your order and based by location, a pick up place is identified or self-chosen.

Then all I would have to do is walk in, pick it up and it’s done.

Oh and if I wanted to take this a step further, have a save a cake virtual option as well so that I can make virtual cakes for my facebook friends. Facebook app Dairy Queen?

UPDATE: This is what I took into DQ, printed from the web.

I told them to take out the girl and overlay the compass in it’s place. I just got back from picking it up and they did a pretty good job with it. They really are missing out on having customers able to just email the images to them from the web. I suspect it would spark a lot more creativity for their cake line.