Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

On Sunday, March 14th the Austin-American Statesman held the 2nd annual Texas Social Media Awards during SXSW. Celebrating folks who in one way or another have made an impact in their communities or industries with Social Media. I am honored to have been recognized. In the judges words,

“Jennifer is driving the social media space in San Antonio. It’s rare that you find an event in the city that hasn’t been organized or touched by her in some way.”

My thanks to everyone for being part of this incredible journey. Who knew back in 2005 when the community building around the new media space began that it would evolve to this level? Not me. Folk ask me how I got involved in community building and I always go back to my start in podcasting in 2005. My need to talk face-to-face with other folks who were just as excited and passionate about podcasting as I was led me to create the San Antonio Podcasting Meetup. I have my wonderful husband, John aka @designminded to thank for the idea to start that first group. From there it led to the first Podcamp in the State of Texas and so on. There have been many people who motivated and inspired me to “do a camp”: Michael De Leon spurred on PodCamp San Antonio. Erica O’Grady inspired me to have a Startup Weekend . Whurley, Giovanni and Cody Marks Bailey encourage me to have a Barcamp. It was the persistent Connie Reece who guided me through the process of launching a local Social Media Club Chapter and Bryan Person who thought it might be a good idea if San Antonio had a Social Media Breakfast chapter. These folks inspired, encouraged and mentored me through the process of community building. I hope to have done so to others in turn.

They say no man or woman is an island and that has never been more true than when it comes to social media and community building. I am extremely proud of the robust, thriving and giving community we have in San Antonio. It is certainly indicative of what I have found in other parts of the state and country. The commandments of camp is: “Learn, Share, Grow” and the motto of Social Media Club is “If you get it, share it”. The key word in this is  SHARE. I truly believe that as long as we as a community keep this in mind in all of our endeavors we will continue to see success that is beneficial for all.

At heart of it all. I am thankful. So, I will end this post as I started it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Photo by Rodolfo Gonzalez/AMERICAN-STATESMAN

If you’ve ever taken the time to look on the right side of my blog, you’ll see the section titled, “The Things I’m Doing, The Places I’ll Be”.  I started using this a few years ago in response to folks asking me, “What do you have coming up?” Since not everyone can keep track of my tweets, it made sense to have a place that folks could easily discover the various events I may be organizing, attending or presenting. It is a mixed bag of all three.

Today, tomorrow and next week are going to be a hot bed of activity for me:

Thursday, March 4th 9:30–10:30am Speaking at Innote6ch San Antonio about Social Media for Business

Friday, March 5th 10:00–11:30am Hands on session at RISE Austin

Tuesday, March 9th Houston-bound with the MoveforFREE team for their “On the Move” tour to celebrate their 10 year anniversary.

Thursday, March 11th 6:30–9:30pm Social Media Club at SeaWorld San Antonio’s new “AZUL: Lure of the Sea” show.

Friday, March 12th — Tuesday March 16th I’ll be attending South by Southwest Interactive aka SXSW (Look for some Tech in Twenty videos)

Wednesday, March 17th 7:30-900am Social Media Breakfast San Antonio

Friday, March 19th-Sunday March 21st South Texas Bike Show

In between all of that look for weekly Tech in Twenty SV shows which are released every Friday morning.

Still not sure you can keep up with this highly caffeinated social gal? Well you could always follow me on Twitter @epodcaster or catch some of my presentation session videos on Ustream

I am including the embed video of today’s sessions inside the Social Media Lounge sponsored by my company, Brewing Media

Streaming video by Brewing Media on Ustream.tv

Running image by Petr Kratochvil

The wonderful and very talented Stephanie King  aka @szking  used her film and production expertise to create this amazing video profile.

Jennifer interviews Gordan Hartman after the tour of Morgan’s Wonderland Park.

Social Media Club San Antonio was invited for a sneak peek tour of the under construction facility. This one of a kind park is designed for children and adults with special needs to enjoy outdoor recreation with family and friends.

Picture of Shelley Cook @shelleyrae, Gordan Hartman @ghff and Jennifer Navarrete @epodcaster

Mobile post sent by jennifer using Utterli.  Replies.  mp3

As San Antonio continues to develop it’s Social Media Community, it’s been interesting to see how things continue to evolve.

Back in 2005 when I was first interested in podcasting and created the San Antonio Podcasting Group, it was difficult to find the podcasting community. Over the last few years, it’s been a pleasure to see the questionable looks I used to get when I talked about podcasting turn into knowing looks.

The same thing has happened with Social Media. A couple of years ago no one knew what I was talking about when I talked about Twitter. Now even CNN uses their tweet stream as part of their daily news.

Social Media Breakfast and Social Media Club host monthly events to discuss how Social Media is transitioning our life, work and communities. Social Media Breakfast held a “Transition of Journalism by Social Media” topic in February. Look for upcoming “Transition Series” topics related to politics, education, non-profits, business and government.

Feel free to drop us a line if you have a topic suggestion you would like covered in the Transition Series.

Web Connected World Image from Techy Talk