We had a community of about 40 pioneering souls pile into Open Book in downtown Minneapolis to discuss, debate and distinguish this new world of social media we find ourselves in.

Guest gurus who shared their social media success stories included:

- Tom Bartel, Founder & Publisher, The Rake magazine (also founder of City Pages)
- Matt Bartel, Web Host, MNSpeak.com
- Robert Metcalf, Founder, FlySpy
- Griff Wigley, Leadership Blog Coach

And although I had a few slides to share as a co-creator of frank, what I loved most was learning so much from so many others. There's a volatile new mix of tech & talk out there and everyone's trying to figure it out while having the time of their lives playing with it. Everyone at day of frank had a different story to tell about their social media experiences: some leveraging it to the max ... some still skinning their knee on it.

Some of the most fascinating take-aways/learnings/think-abouts for me ...

• tons of smart people still don't know a blog from a bog and I'll stop assuming they do

• in the next year, I'm more likely to end up working for that 20-year-old in the third row than he is for me

• the more closed a culture, the more closed they're likely to be to social media technology and concepts like authenticity, transparency, co-creation. (hmmm ... could be a real problem for Minnesotans!)

•  lots of lush new social media to check out:  ratemyprofessor.com, last.fm, youtube.com, affinova.com ...

• Mac Powerbooks still don't automatically work with all projectors

Powerful people putting powerful technology to use in exhilarating ways. For me, that was day of frank in a nutshell. Maybe social media, too.

TAGS: social media, weblog, frank