We’ve just announced several new members / catalysts of AdHocnium. Joining us today are Doc Searls, Cathy Brooks, Thomas Vander Wal, Steve Lubetkin and Mitch Ratcliffe.

From the announcement:

AdHocnium provides services to communications agencies, venture capital firms and big brands with a diverse product portfolio.  We work with startups as well as mulinational corporations in mature markets. It is unfortunate that most traditional PR and ad agencies haven’t been able to make inroads into the emerging practice areas that Web 2.0 and Social Media have created.  They are not organized in a way that allows them to stay on top of emerging trends, despite having to compete with an entirely new class of agencies vying for the same client’s business.  They have an even more difficult time of recruiting the best and brightest talent, who like many other professionals in this emerging space, generally prefer to be independent without having to clock in with a corporate overlord at 9am each weekday.

We’re inventing a completely new wheel here and it’s very exciting to be a part of it.

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Furthering my self-improvement by learning PHP experiment, I’ve tinkered a bit more with SimplePie. It took me about an hour to  whip together Metro-North Bloggers, a collection of feeds from bloggers in Westchester, Rockland, Putnam, Duchess and Fairfield Counties – AKA, the northern New York suburbs.

In digging around for feeds, I’ve found there are a whole lot more bloggers in the area than I initially suspected. Hopefully some of my newly found blogging friends will add their feeds.

Next steps are offering the ability to subscribe to individual feeds, or the the whole shebang. I’d also like to color the headlines in the color of each Metro-North line, i.e., blue for someone who lives on the Harlem line, red for the New Haven line, etc.

A more ambitious goal is a means of auto-submission of feeds so I don’t have to manually add each new feed to the script that generates the page.

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Ad-Hocnium is bringing together some of the smartest and most experienced people in the blogopshere and social media universe.  As Chris puts it in the announcement:

Together we are a sort of talent co-op, strengthening our reputations by association and learning from each other too.  We are making formal our informal and largely invisible trust network, differentiating ourselves from the wave of social media consultants who have become micro-celebrities and promise to help your brand do the same, but have no real business backgrounds or long term experience. By focusing on the end goal of innovation and transformation, we are not limited to social media solutions – we can think differently about business processes, branding, marketing campaigns, customer support, hiring, training, partnerships, sales and other aspects of operations even.

PRWeek also has the news.

Update: Fellow catalyst Neville Hobson adds:

What I find especially thrilling is when an alliance of such people, in different places around the world, starts to coalesce where everyone involved doesn’t yet know exactly how the thing will work out but is willing to throw some hats into the ring to find out.

Link

Of course this does not change my status as a freelancer – Ad-Hocnium is just that – ad-hoc. I’ll still be here doing my existing client work and blogging away as always.

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David Parmet, a New York PR agent, said the feed helps those involved in the public relations industry.

“For PR flacks, it’s always a good idea to make sure you know when journalists are moving around,” Parmet said. “If you’re pitching a story, you’ve got to know where people are.”

Link

Actually, what I said (and believe) is that “The Media” is a misnomer. It’s not media, old or new, that is dying. It’s the business model that’s giving up the ghost.

Peter Himler (as always) puts it more succinctly than I:

In my opinion, the name was simply inaccurate. Themediaisexpanding, changing, convulsing are probably more apt descriptions of what’s happening in the media ecosystem.

Link

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After all, it’s amazing how much of your stuff is out there in the cloud.

So now I’m more or less back and intact. A few stray files and emails still to find and for some reason, iTunes doesn’t like talking to the external drive, but we’ll work all of that out soon.

And now back to our regularly scheduled blogging.

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The new interim board has been charted to address several key organizational and strategic deliverables, including development of membership goals, acceleration of local chapter development, increase in adoption of industry standards and implementation of a new legal structure to enhance future growth.

Here’s the formal announcement.

I’m honored to be joining some of the best and brightest in this field to drive the growth of the Social Media Club. On a personal note, Chris and Kristie are two of the best people I’ve met in my journey through the world of social media. And the group they’ve assembled is top notch.

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Yes, the rumors are true.

I first heard of PerkettPR when my former Rowland colleague Becki Parkhurst joined them in December. Becki has always been one of the smartest and hardest working people I’ve worked with in the business and she immediately raved about Perkett – and invited me to get ‘recruited’ out of my freelance existence.

The more I learned about Perkett, the more intrigued I was. Perkett is virtual in that there are no offices. Given the nature of the organizations, the staff has a vested interest in learning and using every social media tool available to them. So it’s no surprise to find pretty much everyone at Perkett on Twitter and Facebook and anywhere else they need to be to stay in touch and on top of their clients. To put it bluntly, unlike agencies that talk the talk, Perkett walks the social media walk.

So last week I joined up as a consultant and senior account strategist. I’m still handling a few other commitments, hence my status as a freelancer will continue for at least the next few months.

What does this mean for me? For one thing, there will be a big fat disclaimer going up on this blog pretty soon. But apart from that – I get to partner with some very smart people who understand that traditional PR and social media can co-exist. I get to work on some great clients. I still get to be as active as I always have been in the blogosphere. And I don’t have to be the bookkeeper anymore.

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Sales Spider, the leading small business social network, announced today that Canadian office solutions company Grand & Toy will leverage the Sales Spider platform to build its own social network for small and medium sized businesses (SMBs). Members will gain access to the many features that Sales Spider offers with additional information built specifically for SMBs.

Release.

Hopefully they won’t have the same problem Dunder Mifflin had with their site.

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It’s about sports, and life and the intersections thereof.

Before working for IBM, Rick was a sportswriter, and it shows.

Here’s the feed.

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