As some of you know, I have been working on Social Media Club, and before that BrainJams, since October 2005. Till recently, it was all pretty much funded from my consulting work and on credit cards. Now we have the framework for a sustainable business and are busy trying to write the plan while organizing events and helping people connect with the experts and expertise they need to succeed with Social Media.

It is a very exciting time as things are really starting to take off globally and we are just about to break through the first floor of real world social entrepreneurship. Perhaps most importantly in this regards, Howard Greenstein has joined to serve as Executive Director/CEO. leaving the security of his position at NYU to put it all on the line with our grassroots startup. His prior experience in building community groups such as NYNMA and WWWAC.org is invaluable, and his insightful counsel is exactly what I really need to help balance my passionate views on practical idealism.

So now we are at a point where we need to get a few part time people working on some projects along with some more volunteers and hopefully a college intern or two. While I have been here before with other startups, I could really use your advice in this regards. While thinking about this the other day, it occurred to me that everyone who is getting busy right now probably could use help with this as well.

What I would like to propose is a topic for what could be our first ever Social Tagging Project - hiring for startups.

There are some key questions I am trying to answer right now, and we are fortunate enough to know some very bright people like yourself, who may have been down this road recently and could perhaps share what you learned. The knowledge we need is out there, its just not very easy to see or find in a short amount of time.

1. What are the best sites to use to find the right people for a startup with a limited budget and a need to not invest much time with people who are not really the right fit? (last time I put a job ad on Craigslist for an Exec Asst, I had to go through 200 resumes - I don't have that time right now) (tag - hiring:findtalent)
2. How can we go about setting up Social Media Club to hire and provide the right sort of opportunities for a college level intern? What are the best things interns can get out of a work experience, so we are sure we're providing value to this person in exchange for their work? (tag - hiring:interns)
3. What are the most powerful questions you have asked or been asked in an interview? (tag - hiring:interview)

The way that I envisioned the Social Tagging Project working is that everyone who was interested could share a common set of tags, focused around specific questions (like the ones above) related to one slightly broader topic. Additional tags could be suggested and shared via the comments section of the post that starts the project. Participants would invest about 30 mins to an hour on the following sorts of tasks.

• Adding a comment to the post/project page to indicate your interest and participation, perhaps link to your social bookmark account or a specific blog post that aswers the questions
• Reviewing current bookmarks you have already saved to see if any answer the questions being considered, then adding the appropriate tag
• Researching these topics on your favorite search engine, or by going through other peoples bookmarks and identifying relevant content - then tagging these as appropriate
• Creating original content that answers the question or questions and adding the appropriate tags

The bottom line is, we can do more together then alone. As we discovered with BrainJams, a little bit of structure and intention can make a huge difference in manifesting outcomes that can benefit everyone. This is my first, informal attempt at getting this idea off the ground, and it feels like the right sort of topic for it. What I would hope we see out of this is a set of resources that can benefit everyone, and really help with what we need to do right now - find some great potential employees without having to invest a lot of cash and a lot of time. Ultimately, we will be launching a site at www.socialtaggingproject.org to facilitate the connections and support the discoverability of information across systems.

Of course, if you know someone who wants to work in digital media production, event management, informal learning and/or just wants to get involved with social media, please do send them my way. We're open to candidates in New York and San Francisco, as well as folks with specific skills that can work virtually, but only if you really think it might be a great fit as we are not formally hiring for any positions just yet&

So what do you think? Got a few minutes to look around and tag some stuff to help everyone? Or am I completely off my rocker thinking something like this could work?