Last night (Sept. 20, 2007), the Social Media Club Boston re-convened its monthly meetings, with its biggest yet. The topic? Lessons learned by big business from social media.

On hand was a star-studded panel. Moderated by BusinessWire’s Monica Maeckle, who came all the way from San Antonio to preside, the panel included:

• Steve Restivo, director of corporate affairs for Walmart in the Northeast.
• Dan Lyons, senior editor at Forbes Magazine, aka “Fake Steve Jobs.” (pictured above, center, between me and Greg PC)
• Josh Bernoff, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester. (pictured below, left)

Nearly 200 people attended the event (my unscientific counting methods resulted in the number “180″).

The panel and the audience questions were quite lively. Questions and topics from the audience included:

• Repercussions and lessons from Wal-Mart’s “Wal-Marting Across America” fake blog scandal
• Content vs. relationships (Bernoff champions relationships first, but there was a lively debate from th audience)
• Considering objectives before using social media tools, rather than building goals around the technology
• From Wal-Mart, a topic I also discuss frequently, that social media PR is teaching us a lot about how we should be doing all our PR
• A great quip from Dan Lyons about how Valleywag and Gawker’s journalistic standards are lacking (he phrased it more directly than that, but he’s the professional writer)
• Many examples, especially the Digg-like system through which Dell designed its new Ubuntu Linux PC.
• And how can I forget: Dan Lyons, rather than hide behind his editors or defend his article “Attack of the Blogs,” he simply said he was wrong

Thanks to the evening’s sponsor, BusinessWire, who provided the venue, materials and support.
the next Social Media Boston event will be October 11, venue and topic to be announced.

Please go to www.socialmediaboston.org for more information, and to join and support the Social Media Club.

Photo Credit: Laura Athavale Fitton

Welcome to the PRobecast, Episode 32 of Topaz Partners’ weekly PR podcast.

Doug Haslam, Rob Capra and Adam Zand discuss:

1. A recap of the latest Social Media Cub event in Boston, with Forrester’s Josh Bernoff, Dan “Fake Steve Jobs” Lyons of Forbes, and Steve Restivo of Wal-Mart
2. Paper press kits: dead or alive? Discuss. Hat tip to Paul Gillin and David Strom of Tech PR War Stories.
3. New VC Report puts Boston ahead of Silicon Valley in Web 2.0 investments. So there.
4. Dan Rather sues CBS. That takes courage.

Comment below or email bmoc@topazpartners.com
Audio: Leave a comment at +1-781-404-2419, or Skype doug.haslam

*If the current episode is not yet in the Splashcast player, please use the download link below.

Download MP3 File

You can subscribe to the podcast via Podcast Ready —
or iTunes.

Or simply use the RSS link here:

Technorati Tags: Media, Public+Relations, PR, PRobecast,smcboston, socialmediaclub, Forrester+Research, Josh+Bernoff, Dan+Lyons, Fake+Steve+Jobs, Forbes, WalMart, Press+kits, Paul+Gillin, David+Strom, Venture+Capital, Dan+Rather, CBSWeb+2.0