Wednesday night downtown, Social Media Club Nashville hosted "The Puck Drops Here", an opportunity for members of the Predators fan base to talk about the ways in which the community connects online, and what lessons that might hold for broader users of social media. It featured a panel discussion including myself, Paul Nicholson (of @Predfans), Codey Holland (of Section303.com) and Derek Perez, the new Chief Marketing Officer of the Nashville Predators.

From left: panel moderator Rob Robinson, Derek Perez, Codey Holland, Paul Nicholson, and me.
Photo courtesy: NashvilleDebbi

It was a great time to talk about social media (and a bit about hockey), and I look forward to the next big tech event around town, BarCamp Nashville on Saturday, October 17th.

Due to a massive logjam on I-65 some attendees were either late or couldn't make it, but fortunately enough there was  video live-stream available for remote viewers.

Buddy Oakes from Preds on the Glass provided a nice summary of the event, as did Codey Holland, and See Puck City.

For me, the main takeaways were:

1. Derek Perez is prepared to take a creative and entrepreneurial approach to marketing the Preds in Nashville. Expect a number of different approaches to be tried, with a special emphasis on building their Facebook presence and NashvillePredators.com.
2. When engaging different aspects of social media (Facebook, Twitter, blogging, podcasting, etc.), all parties agreed that if you're going to step into a given area, do it with genuine intent and participate actively. Don't set up a footprint within a given realm just to say you're there, and ignore it. For more on this topic, check out a recent post from Tom Callahan's blog.
3. One of the goals of just about any site is to engage readers actively in content creation, whether through comments, user posts, or other avenues. One must always strike a fine balance between occasionally reminding users of the ways in which they can participate, without doing doing that too much and nagging folks who are content just to read.
4. The growth of the Predators blogging community over the last 1-2 years seems to be really gaining steam, with several new blogs starting up just in the last few weeks (including See Puck City, noted above). Each brings a new voice to the conversation about the team, and to the extent that fans feel the mainstream media doesn't meet their needs regarding Preds and NHL coverage, that provides an opportunity for blogs to fill that gap.

Special thanks go out to Rob Robinson for moderating the panel, Jessica Murray and Georgia Cross for organizing the event, and I'd encourage anyone interested in what's going on with Social Media around town to check out Social Media Club Nashville on Facebook, keep an eye out for the #SMCNash hashtag on Twitter (where you can follow me as @Forechecker) and look into attending BarCamp Nashville next weekend.