Thank you to everyone who came to the town hall and offered to help out in the future.  For those of you who couldn't make it, here is a brief summary of our town hall meeting:

The meeting was held at First Edge Solutions (@F1rst_Edge) from 5:30 and wrapped up around 8:00.  There was some general networking from 5:30 to about 5:45 and then we kicked things off.  Phil (@philgerb), Mary Jane (@chiqitamj) and Brew (@houseofbrew) introduced each other and described why they wanted to help start an official chapter of Social Media Club.

Brew: "Milwaukee has an enormous social and digital talent community and it's time we all come together to learn from each other, help our city by educating businesses and have fun in the process.  I hope that smc Milwaukee can be a common ground for all walks of digital life to gather."

Mary Jane: "I'm excited about social media club Milwaukee because we are at a beautiful time where mobile technology meets social networking. I enjoy helping others to experiment and use these tools to promote their products and services."

Phil: "I'm excited about social media club Milwaukee because I love connecting people to ideas and there’s no better way to do that in Milwaukee than by melding social media and live events."

Jessica Murray (@jessicarmurray) gave everyone an overview of Social Media Club Global, and talked about the benefits that Milwaukee will have by becoming an offical chapter.  There is a one time cost of $1,000 and it comes directly from memberships of Social Media Club.  Once $1,000 of membership fees are collected (and those members choose Milwaukee as their base chapter), we will gain official chapter status.  Afterwards, there is a revenue sharing model of 10% of fees collected.  With official chapter status, the group will get a bank account, have accounting done by global, be covered by an umbrella insurance policy, and be able to run under the non-profit number for building up the treasurery of the chapter from sponsorships and other forms of income.  A few attendees said they'd be signing up this week and paying their dues right away to help out.  A professional membership is as little as $100 a year.  As a side note: event fees will be reduced for paying members of Social Media Club.

Our next event was announced by Phil. It will be at Loft 117 on March 28th.  We do not have a time yet, but the group thought about an afternoon event - as to not make things too late for people with families.  The topic of the event will be "Video and Photos in Social Media".

SMCMKE will use email as a primary means of communicating twice a month about our events.  If you aren't on our list yet, please email smcmilwaukee@gmail.com and just ask to be put on the list.  We'll still post the event to facebook and twitter, but everyone felt that email was the sure-fire way not to miss out on announcements.  We promise not to sell your email or spam you :)

The final part of the evening was a brainstorming session where we wrote down topics and speakers that the group would like to see in the next few years of event planning.  Above, you'll see a picture of the notes that we took.  Also, feel free to tweet us (@smcmilwaukee) or email us any time with suggestions.

Finally, the message that was repeated several times during the meeting was that this is about you.  We are looking for more help on the board of directors (leadership council) and also for volunteers.  This could be help with sponsorships, outreach, photos, videos, community management - you name it.  If you have a skill and have some time to help, please let us know.  We need your help to continue the positive momentum.

Ideas/Notes from the picture above:

• New to Social Media?  Top 5 platforms to consider for your business.
• Mobile - what's that all about?
• News/RSS readers and Apps
• Monetization and ROI
• SEO
• Effective Incentivising
• Web Design
• Video
• Unifying Social Management Technologies (hootsuite, etc)
• B2B/B2C
• Web 414 Parternship?
• Blogging
• Fight the resistance in your corporate culture
• Social Media Monitoring
• Best Hubs
• Wordpress/Joomla Social Plugins
• Building the Right Audience
• Wayne - LinkedIn
• Me 2.0 (personal branding)
• Hubspot
  Paid vs. Free Services
• Who's Who in the industry - who should we read and follow?
• Eric Qualman
• Harley
• WRA
• Seth Godin
• Brew
• 101
• Sara Evans
• Fuel Milwaukee
• Phil
• Brian Solis
• Joe Sorge
• Scott Baitenger
• Big Brands
• tom Trevera
• Non Profits
• Success Story Panel
• John Hayden
• Art Milwaukee
• Dark Side of Social Media
• Social Media Awareness/PR
• Milwaukee Community events
• Newaukee
• College Outreach