This photo was taken at the 2010 Nonprofit 2.0 Unconference and was snapped by Geoff Livingston, friend and social media and PR rock star who is devoted to social change, via Flickr — and, then there’s my trusty Director of Client Services at Abraham Harrison, Dan Krueger, via Flickr and again by Geoff:

Beth Kanter and I met online back in 1993 as members of NYFA’s ArtsWire — artswire.org — that was part of The Meta Network — tmn.com. We were very close online and then lost touch — until the last couple years when Beth shot to the very top of the Social Media food chain, right there with Shel Israel, Guy Kawasaki, Shel Holtz, Robert Scoble, Steve Rubel, Joi Ito, Dave Winer, and Jeff Pulver. So, here’s proof, taken by schmoozing AKA Nahum Gershon, another top-drawer social media rocker, at the Final Blog Potomac in Northern Virginia, hosted by Geoff Livingston yet another A-lister rockstar. Here I am checking off another item on my bucket list.

I have been a geek since I was 13 and have been a fan of Chris Anderson since just before he became a big deal.

I have never had the honor of meeting him or listening to him ever.

Well, I have been quite lucky because Geoff Livingston @geoffliving brought me on board as Media / Bloggers at the GrowSmartBiz conference here in DC today so I am here, having received a free copy of Chris’ new book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price as well as a Keynote speech and also a fancy personalized autograph.

My next step is to share a beer with him — but it doesn’t look like it’ll happen today. Too many competing fanboys. Thanks to the folks from Network Solutions, especially to Shashi Bellamkonda @shashib, for manifesting such a smashing conference in humble and charming Washington, DC.

It might sound odd but one of the biggest perks of having my own company is that I get to attend all sorts of cool conference and meet all sorts of cool people.  Every since someone mistook me for Chris Anderson at a Mashable NY mixer, I have been interested in Meeting Chris Anderson. Well, that and WIRED and The Long Tail, of course.  Well, Geoff Livingston turned me on to an upcoming conference in DC on September 29th, GrowSmartBiz Conference.  Of course, Chris isn’t the only luminary attending the event. Of the list of speakers, I know Anita Campbell (@smallbiztrends) and DC’s own Jill Foster (@jillfoster), but the rest look very fine and I hope to meet and enjoy them, too. (Via SocialMedia.biz & Marketing Conversation)

I sit here blogging from my G1 Android phone, allowing me to live blog from my chair. I just finished listening to Shel Holtz and he made a lot of sense here as he spoke to us at Blog Potomac, a yearly unconference, founded by Geoff Livingston, social media rockstar and local boy.

Shel’s talk brought me back to basics: “in PR, we are considered counsellors, not merely strategists: we are responsible for guiding our clients to do not the most comfortable thing nor the safest thing, but the best thing for their brand, their reputation, their message, their communication, and their message.”

OK, that isn’t a real quote but that’s what I heard from Shel at #blogpotomac — and I heard this: don’t follow the shiny tools, follow the conversations; don’t assume that the best place to reach people is online, find out where people are actually having their conversations.

I also heard something so brilliant that I have been saying and I know that Sally Falkow reminds people about this: before tweeting and before blogging and before engaging and before messaging there is planning.

Planning, flow-charting, framing, researching, and testing are very important things to do before even starting a social media — or any PR — campaign.

Shel Holtz said, “beware, you might very well have the most amazing campaign that ran flawlessly and without hitch — going to all the wrong people, all the wrong communities, and be completely misplaced,” also not a real quote but in his spirit.

One other thing thet Shel Holtz said — amen, amen — is that being the most advanced user of social media, social networks, Facebook, Twitter, etc, does not even remotely make you the right person to run a social media campaign.

More life blogging from the Blog Potomac in Falls Church soon! Later.

Geoff Livingston

Congrats to Geoff Livingston upon the big news that Livingston Communications acquired by CRT/tanaka. Good news via Beth Harte, Livingston Communications is off to the races with CRT/tanaka:

I wanted to be able to share his good news about being acquired by CRT/tanaka with the marketing/social media community. Second, this is a trend that isn’t going away. I believe we will start to see smart agencies starting to acquire social media agencies and consultants that have solid expertise.