So in case you don’t remember, last month’s Social Media Breakfast DC was awesome. This month’s was just as good.

The theme this time around was “Blogging the City,” with the city obviously being DC (which I love, love, love–I honestly cannot tell you how much I love living in this city). Hosted at the awesome Busboys and Poets (they’re on Twitter too: @busboysandpoets) in the U Street neighborhood, today proved that I’m definitely not the only one who loves this city. In fact, as almost all our speakers this morning put it, they love this city so much they’re willing to put in more than their fair share of the “labor of love” in order to spread the word about the fantastic events, news and opportunities our city has to offer.

The line-up of speakers was fantastic. We had the founders of WeLoveDC, FreeinDC and Borderstan presenting and they had some thought-provoking and inspiring things to say. Check below the cut for the highlights, lots of links and even a video of the speakers if you’d like to watch the event yourself!

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Sounds like the beginning of a bad geek joke, doesn’t it?

Well actually, it was the setting of tonight’s Social Media Club DC event, titled “Leveraging Online Relationships,” and hosted at Microsoft’s Friendship Heights office here in Washington, D.C. Organized and hosted by the awesome Sarah Wurrey, the event blew our geeky little minds, as usual. The panel consisted of:

• Alan Rosenblatt – A digital strategist, liberal organizer, professor and blogger, Alan is also the Associate Director of Online Advocacy for the Center for American Progress. Lucky me, this has been my second time to meet him in the past five days (he can’t escape me, haha!) and I swear he teaches me so much every time, not to mention every day via Twitter/Facebook/etc.
• Rebecca Wales – Rebecca is the Director of Communications for Smart Girl Politics, a conservative action network. Now obviously I have my qualms with her cause, but she’s got some real talent and she’s an incredibly nice person. She’s a ton of fun to talk to and I learned a lot from her tonight. Plus, know thy enemy, right? (Just kidding, Rebecca!)
• Brian Dresher – He is the Marketing Manager for USA Today, and boy is he smart. Not only did he provide some excellent insight into social media, but he provided the unique viewpoint of someone who’s industry is changing rapidly and dramatically–journalism. He told us a little about what USA Today is doing to continue to connect with its audience, and even told us where you can get a little bit of a behind-the-scenes glimpse.

So, clearly, you missed out. Anyway, be sure to check the hashtag stream for more learnings from the evening. Also, see my photos from the event embedded below or here on my flickr.

Well, maybe not entirely shameless self-promotion, but I did write it so I suppose it deserves a little disclaimer. This weekend will hopefully be a great one for productivity. With the incoming D.C. #snomgasm / #snowpocalypse2 / #snom (my personal favorite) / any number of other crazy hashtags, I’m hoping maybe it’ll give me a good excuse to lock myself indoors with a blanket, food, notes, a laptop and maybe a good book, if I manage to get a lot of work, writing and studying done.

Anyway, this is a quickie. Just wanted to point out that from now on I will be writing for not only this blog, but also two other blogs! First, I’ll be contributing to the brand spanking new Shamable.com, written as a guide for public relations and communications professionals, with a more serious, realistic take to the industry than some other blogs that may or may not have been spoofed for the title. The people contributing to this blog are top-notch, triple-A professionals with fantastic ideas and brilliant track-records.

I’m honored to be a part of their site and I hope I can provide some valuable input from my student perspective! Be sure to check out my first entry on the blog (more to come this week), about teaching social media (professors, pay attention to that one).

Secondly, I will now be writing for the AU Intern Blog for the American University Career Center. There I’ll be reflecting on my internship experience this semester at MS&L Worldwide as well as some other random internship-related thoughts that might be bumping around in my head. I’ve actually written two posts for it just tonight, you can see my introduction here and my comments on the TechCrunch intern “scandal” here.

I’ll do my best to note on here when I’ve made some significant contributions to the other two blogs, but please add them to your RSS reader (and me, for that matter!) and keep your eyes peeled for new updates from me and my fellow contributors. Thanks, as always, for reading. Tomorrow evening I’ll have a recap of the fantastic panel event I attended this morning as well as some thoughts on what may be in store, in the near term, for my future (might be a bit vague!).

[Shamable]
[AU Intern Blog]