Social Media Day in Buffalo #smdayBUF

Back in early June, the web site Mashable, known for reporting on all sorts of things related to social media among its other topics, posted an idea for creating a worldwide social media day (Join Mashable in Celebrating Social Media Day). They quickly mobilized some major cities for an event, and for smaller markets supported them with a Mashable-sponsored Meetup site (Meetup is the platform used to organize all sorts of real-life meetings based around random ideas).

Over here in Buffalo, a group of people mobilized about halfway through the month to start planning an event here in town. In record time, they got a Meetup page built, created a Twitter hashtag for the event, secured a venue, hired a DJ, and managed to trick social-media-savvy businesses into donating goods for an auction. All of this was managed using Twitter and the Meetup Buffalo page. @veganjesus (Norm Boyer) even set up a Foursquare venue just for the event (sadly, not everyone knew, so no swarm badge unlock). While my plan was to just enjoy the evening, I got pressed into service trying to make a Twitter wall, and simply cheated and used a Brighkite wall instead (yes, that was my sole contribution).

With only 50 RSVPs, one media outlet reported 140+ guests, and it seemed like far more than that cycling through the night. Scheduled for only two hours, the event went past midnight and turned out to be a huge success as people, many of whom had never met face to face but knew each other online, ended up getting along quite well, sometimes with surprising results.

You can surf the tweets that kept popping up all night with the local hashtag #smdayBUF.

In case you haven’t figured it out by now, this post is really just a quick recap of the night and a great way to link to all the people who contributed something to the event. Catch all those links below, after you watch this Skunkpost video with some interesting interviews:

I suggest you jump to 2:26 and look for the burning question I posted a couple times over the course of the night. If the embed didn’t work for you, watch the video on the Skunkpost site.

The event organizers: @skunkworks716 (Keith Stephen), @KatieKraw (Katie Krawczyk), @BlockClub (Patrick Finan), @Wingalls (Will Ingalls), @Djlopro (DJ LoPro), @TonyCityLove (Tony Maggiotto, Jr.), and @arampino (Amber Rampino). There were many others who helped out, lent support, provided gear, took photos, ate the food, stole some prizes, made the AV work, danced, and so on. In all, it truly was a community effort.

If you were there and you left early (say, before midnight), then you missed a good breakdance battle.

Related links:

• Photos from Clark Dever
• Social Media Day in Buffalo, NY Photos – #smdayBUF #smday (Clark Dever’s blog)
• Photos from Block Club
• Happy Social Media Day! (Day-of announcements at Mashable for the worldwide activities)
• Buffalo Gets Social on June 30 (Announcement at Buffalo Rising)
• Facebook, Twitter, Myspace Celebration in Buffalo (Written story by local CBS affiliate, WGRZ)

Update: Read all about #smdayBUF 2.0, held on Tuesday, July 27 at Templeton Landing, as covered in the post Event Profile: #smdayBUF & #smdayBUF 2.0 by @TonyCityLove (Tony Maggiotto, Jr.). It even has a couple of my photos from the event.