It is with great sorrow that I write this post today. I have been searching for a business partner to help me realize some of my visions for many, many years, and in Howard Greenstein I thought I had found "the one". He is a bright guy that has been through this before and has many of the skills that are really well suited for this type of work, but he wasn't happy, so I must respect that.
As Howard so eloquently expressed in his post, the reality of running a community organization from day to day is much different than the idealism that inspired it. The vision of improving the world around us by bringing people together to share their understanding of the emerging Social Media market is vastly different than trying to manage a global network of local groups and online activities without sufficient resources.
The main reason for not announcing this sooner is that I needed time to reflect on the situation and on how my path might change as a result of this news - on what this really means for me, personally and professionally. When I met Howard, I was looking for a CEO to take the reigns and build the organization - to operationalize the vision and allow me to be the visionary, evangelist and thinker - to let me focus on my strengths and mitigate my weaknesses. As anyone who has personally met me will tell you, I am a fairly self-aware sort of guy, and I am very clearly aware that managing an organization and all the little details is not one of my natural strengths. Though I have done it before and could do it again, I just don't want to -I want to be happy doing what makes my heart sing, and I know what that is and what it doesn't.
While Howard's observations are indeed true, there is of course more to this - a sort of more which Howard politely avoids bringing to light, but which radical transparency compels me to note. One of the ideas I have been evangelizing around the knowledge economy for the past several years is that "the number one factor of creating value in the knowledge economy is the ability of smart people to collaborate effectively." We just never hit our stride, with different work styles, different ideas of success and the geographic challenges Howard mentioned contributing to the difficulties we faced.
Personally, I have gone from the high's of the dream and all its possibilities to the reality of not enough resources, mounting personal debt and the struggles of being overwhelmed each day with too much to do. In short, I am tired and ready to find another way forward, to take this in stride and make a course correction that will let us accomplish the goals of improving media literacy and hosting conversations amongst social media professionals and those seeking to learn.
Unfortunately, I too must step down, or more aptly, I need to step back so that I might be able to make a living, pay for some of my wedding and pay for my monthly living expenses. I have focused too much on trying to do things for the community and not taken care of myself properly. I did this with my first startup, only I gave employees salaries when I could not afford to take one, learning the hard way how wrong this was. The thing is, that if we had money to pay people, I probably would have made that same mistake again (especially to get you involved Dave).
So what does this mean for Social Media Club? In the short term, nothing - monthly meetings will continue, we will continue to blog to the sites, we will complete development of our new social network through drupal and I am still responsible for shepherding the vision forward. All this really means is that I can not spend all my waking moments thinking about how to build the club and can no longer afford to hold out hope that I will soon be getting a salary from Social Media Club. Instead, I need to invest my attention in promoting myself as a Social Media consultant, customer advocate and social software architect/analyst - as a big thinker, new media marketing maven. I need more consulting gigs or I need to find the right job for my unique talents - both of which I am immediately moving towards and will write more about shortly. Sucess here will let me continue to cultivate the club as a part time endeavour.
We will continue pressing onward with the Social Media Workshop Series - this is a great event we have designed, and we will be working on doing several more cities in the fall such as Austin, Boston and New York.
I will soon be announcing more details (and seeking more input) on our new community site, to be run on Drupal, which will provide real value to the membership and value for the membership dollars already received.
I am now investigating how Social Media Club might be reorganized as a 501(c)6, a non-profit designation for trade associations which will make Social Media Club a member owned organization, or put another way, a sort of co-op. This was a large part of my original vision for the club, which I confided in private with many who can verify this idea. I think members of the club should benefit from the value we co-create with one another. I alluded to this in part in my comment on the Social Media Now "when users attack" post.
In closing, while this is very difficult in the short term, Social Media Club is not going away, we just need to find a new path forward together - and I will need your help to do so. I still have very high hopes that Social Media Club will accomplish its mission and fully serve the community in the way I had intended, but to continue to try to do things in the same manner as I have, would surely be proof that doing the same thing and expecting different results is the epitome of 'being crazy'.
If you are a co-founder, I really need your help more than your dollars. If you are a local leader and not yet a paying member, please consider doing so in order to help move the organization forward - it will be a requirement of the new organizational structure as it takes shape, so we should all have some 'skin in the game'. Stay tuned for more to come later this week, but more importantly, join the conversation about what we can do together as a community on the Social Media Club mailing list...
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