Project Genesis: Communication and Inspiration

Loki and Michelle Beckham at Melt in Cincinnati's Northside Neighborhood

I’m often asked how I find the projects and clients that I work with and I’m forced to reply that it is pure serendipity. Here is a recent example, my first face to face meeting with Michelle Beckham.

Michelle also works in social media and is one of the people I’ve met online in the local area since we moved up here. From Twitter to Facebook to Skype our conversation bounced for the past six months until we finally met for lunch a few days ago. (She actually chronicled the interesting digital course of our interactions in a post of her own so I’ll point you at that rather than repeat the process.)

Since we had already had plenty of opportunity to get to know each other via social media conversation kicked in from the moment we met on the sidewalk outside of Melt. The fact that she has roots in SE Louisiana, my home, meant there was immediate common ground and we spent hours talking about the culture and the food.

Then we freed up our table and headed down the block to a favorite coffee shop of mine, The Sidewinder. That was where things got interesting. You see we both have a common interest in community building. As I shared some of the stories about how we had used new media to organize and build community in New Orleans we both realized that these were templates we could bring to our efforts here in Cincinnati. [EDIT: In a true social media moment I was just dipping into Facebook to find something and saw that Michelle has just thrown up a post of her own about our luncheon. You can check it out here. -Loki]

One thing that will certainly be coming out of this is going to be a Geek Dinner. There are no details we can share as yet, but we will be posting more about that in the fairly near future. Here is a link a great post my fellow blogger Maitri did about the first Geek Dinner in New Orleans a mere six months after Hurricane Katrina and the levee failure.  Hopefully it will whet some appetites!

There are other things afoot, but that will all be shared in good time. Now you know how my projects come to me, organically. It does not matter what platform you’re using. What matters is the conversations you are having. From conversations grow ideas and opportunities.

I have the distinct feeling that there will some interesting collaborations coming from C3 and SocialGumbo, stay tuned!

Tagged as: C3, C3: Creating Connections Consulting, Feed Your Mind, Geek Dinner, gigs, LLC, Melt, Michelle Beckham, SocialGumbo