• by Kelly Samardak , June 24, 2008

OMMA Social, The Yale Club of New York City
June 23, 2008

Every time I hear "OMMA," I want to write a song to the tune of "Lola." I do. O-M M-A OOOMMa. You hear it, right? Maybe next OMMA event we should have a talent show competition where people perform their original compositions of an OMMA theme song. I'm going to get started on that right now. After I tell you about OMMA Social!

In the spirit of all things social, I'm going to pull chunks of the day from various resources on that thing people used to call the "information superhighway," chunks like Twitter, blogs, and Flickr! As a completely unimportant aside, how come nobody says "information superhighway" anymore? I always thought it was a dorky phrase. Anyway, what were we talking about? OMMA Social.

This was our first foray into dedicating a full-day event around the way social media is affecting the media industry from sales, buying, tracking, tracing, measuring, integrating, interacting, impact... do you want me to go on? I could. But I won't because you already know how powerful and enigmatic this animal is all at once.

What's great is that on June 23, 2008, online media, marketing, and advertising types hot-footed it to The Yale Club of New York City to eat miniature grilled cheese -- and learn what is and isn't an appropriate level of company participation in social networks and all those little pieces that touch or come near the social media/networking world.

You bet we used Twitter. And it wasn't just us. Of the 250 registered attendees, over 60 were using Twitter and following the OMMA Social Twitter page. Some of these wacky short blurbers used hashtags. Hashtags are little appendages you slap onto your tweet ("#ommasocial" at der, OMMA Social) after selecting to follow the Hashtgs bot on Twitter, that then cull yours and everyone elses's tweets with that hashtags into one convenient location, which you can find here. The willingness to participate was impressive and speaks volumes about peoples' desires to contribute, influence, and be a part of something, rather than just be watchers (not that watching is bad either, gotta have both!)

Some twitterific highlights I chewed on were a small power outage, that the biggest killers of GOOD ideas are corporate lawyers (I could have told you that - I wonder how much THAT guy got paid), and that everyone who's anyone celebrates miniature grilled cheese.

The fun doesn't stop there. Our talented writers live-blogged their reactions on the MediaPost Raw! Blog, where Joe Mandese and Gavin O'Malley went to town, calling out the possible end of Twitter and beginning of Plurk (I don't see that happening any time soon), the Oprah effect, and why online ads aren't working with kids.

So what's in the pipe for the Minute this week? Put up your dukes because I'm heading to see my dreams realized. It's the simple yet rewarding dream of seeing some Wall Street types get into a regulation boxing ring in the middle of B.B. King's to beat the stock market out of each other. I'm beyond stoked. And the day before that (tomorrow night) I'll be completely out of place at the former Playboy Penthouse celebrating Russia! Magazine's sexy summer issue. I'll be wearing my sweatpants.

Did you document OMMA Social? Want to share it with the MediaPost world and beyond? Hey, neat -- you can add to the OMMA Social Flickr pool. Feel free to share your vids, too.

Surviving the heat of the summer in style, and want it covered in Just An Online Minute? Send invitations to kelly@mediapost.com