GasPedal and the Social Media Business Council: Welcome Session — live from BlogWell

1:00 — GasPedal’s Andy Sernovitz opens BlogWell: How Big Brands Use Social Media here in San Diego, hosted by the U.S. Navy.

1:01 – Andy: This is our seventh BlogWell event — and by far our safest. We’re well defended from all sides here. I have a feeling it’d be very hard to sneak up on our meeting.

1:02 — Andy explains that blogging, tweeting, and everything else are highly encouraged. Andy: Twitter hashtag is #BlogWell.

1:03 — Andy: The chocolate bar in your bag is for emergency purposes only.

1:04 — Andy suggests the crowd bump elbows instead of shaking hands if they’re worried about germs.

1:06 — Andy extends a big thanks to BlogWell’s sponsors who helped make the event possible. Andy also thanks the BlogWell partners who helped spread the word about the event.

1:07 — Andy explains that the Social Media Business Council is a different kind of group, built around three big ideas:

1. Fast answers and real-time collaboration
2. Big business, brands-only environment
3. Internal focus — focusing on the issues unique to large enterprise social media

1:09 — Andy: What we’re going to do is fly through the day. We have eight case studies in four hours.

1:10 — Andy: We are totally nuts about keeping events on time. Every speaker will be looking at a clock while on stage.

1:11 — Andy goes into the “Why We’re Here” at BlogWell. Andy: Everybody involved in this group believes in the potential and power of social media. It’s not about marketing. We use it for marketing, but it’s about these bigger objectives. It’s about how do we open up? How do we solve these problems? How do we move from a closed organization to an open one?

1:13 — Andy: When you look at how companies make turns for the better, it’s the social media folks that are the first ones in. We want this to happen — we’re all working to make this happen. It’s a worthy endeavor. Unfortunately, it’s not always as easy as it sounds.

1:13 — Andy: When you’ve got 50,000 employees and 5,000 locations, this goal becomes so much harder. You shouldn’t underestimate the bravery of folks within an organization who stand up and say they’re going to start listening to customers and opening up.

1:15 — Andy: This is not going to happen the same way at big companies that it does with independent bloggers or small companies. It’s going to be a little bit messy. The path is longer, the path is more complicated, but the payoff is so much bigger. When you succeed, you change how companies talk to people, and how they interact with the world.

1:16 — Andy: The big thing: You don’t need to do this alone.

1:17 — Andy: So, with that, let’s have fun today.