Jennifer Navarrete

Open Letter to the San Antonio Podcasting Community

To My Fellow Podcasters:

Creating and being a part of the San Antonio Podcasting Group has been an amazing experience. It started as a way for me to find local podcasters to share my excitement about, what at the time was, a groundbreaking medium.

It’s been 4 years since those humble beginnings back in September 2005. So much has happened since then. We fired up the early adopter tech/geek crowd and have done some first time events here in San Antonio. From our small group the New Media/Social Media Community was born.

From PodCamp to BarCamp to TweetCamp we have been pioneers involved in building what is now a wonderfully diverse and vibrant community. Pat yourselves on the back for being part of the group and making things happen.

As New Media evolved to Social Media we have been using the Meetup site less and less. What was once a chatty message board has become as silent as a library. It’s not that we aren’t still interacting online, however the location for our conversations have been happening on Twitter and Facebook.

There doesn’t seem to be a need for us to continue to host the group on Meetup. As we are well aware, Meetup charges organizers a fee to host a group. As the use of the Meetup platform has become anemic, it appears there is no need to continue with the group in it’s current form.

There are plenty of places for us to host our group outside of Meetup. There is Ning http://ning.com and even Facebook has a group feature. We still have the SA Podcasters blog site which Nathan Lott and Leslie Baldwin have been heading up for the last year.

I propose we allow the Meetup group to close and continue the conversation on either Ning or Facebook. I believe Ning allows us more features as well as an extremely feature rich platform. It’s my first choice, however I know that for the most part we are all already on Facebook so adding a new group to our existing profiles would be easier. I’m willing to go either way.

I won’t miss Meetup. I will miss interacting with you, my dear Podcasting Buds. Knowing you has enriched my life immensely.

Thanks for joining the fun!

Cheers,
Jennifer Navarrete

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Comments

3 responses to “Open Letter to the San Antonio Podcasting Community”

  1. Skot Avatar
    Skot

    New Media didn’t evolve into Social Media, they are two separate entities. There are still New Media Designers.

    Social media encapsulates everything from podcasting to blogging to vlogging, basically anything that requires social activity. Which could include some forum based websites.

    Just FYI.

    Reply
  2. Susan Price Avatar
    Susan Price

    You won’t miss us, unless you decide to retire from your active social media life or move away from San Antonio.

    Jennifer – thanks SO MUCH for all you have done to get the group together, organized, and inspired on a regular basis. And thanks to Nathan, Leslie, and all the other podcasters and new media folks who have dedicated precious time and resources to share information.

    I second the votes for Ning or Facebook, and would personally prefer Facebook. I like participating in groups where we’re already hanging out together anyway.

    You guys – I hope you all know we sponsor a coworking and brownbag session every First Friday at Firecat Studio. You are welcome to attend. If we had a facebook group, I could invite you there 🙂

    Reply
  3. Daniel Johnson, Jr. Avatar
    Daniel Johnson, Jr.

    Hi Jennifer,

    I stumbled across this post while going through the NaPodPoMo feed. I love learning from other community builders, and I’m glad to have read your thoughts here.

    When I founded New Media Cincinnati in 2007, I opted to bypass Meetup.com and use Facebook’s group feature. That worked for a time. Now we mostly hang out on the different social media outposts, and news happens on the official website.

    Reply

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