#SCRM (the hash our group uses to communicate on Twitter) group embodies the very essence of what social media is about: genuine authentic, direct and real conversations. Being a participant and a practitioner, I thought I would share my observations and thoughts… not just at this conference, but what I have seen in the actions and behaviors of this group over the past year or more… And these foreshadow a world that is being created right now as you are reading this…

#SCRMSUMMIT and #SCRM. This past week in DC, Paul Greenberg brought together some of the most amazing minds in social business together — to learn, to share and to grow the body of knowledge. One of the interesting things is that the storm created an extended discussion. Literally, planes were grounded, and not even taxi cabs would take us to downtown for a meal. So the 80 or so of us just parked it in the lobby/bar area. We drank, we ate, and we got to know each other even better. Many of us have become friends over the last several years. Some of us have known each other for over 10 years… And some are brand new to many of us.

Often times what happens at a conference is that you barely have time to talk to anyone, much less have real conversations. And we did. We talked about the philosophy of social business, where it is going, what's changing in our worlds as a result and what we see for the future.

There's Networking and Then There's Relationship Building. What was interesting was that, clearly we are all in business and we all have something to "sell" –yet the conversations weren't about that. It was about how do we as a group evolve the thought leadership about social CRM and social business; how do we help educate other business professionals who haven't had the privilege to be part of this group and evolve the knowing around how social CRM is literally changing how business is done and will be done in the future; how are we going to collectively create the future– for ourselves, for our businesses and for the world. (I'm not saying that we didn't close business or work on projects– we did — but the difference was the tone, the vibe, the collective collaborative spirit…)

Up-Leveling The Business Conversation.That type of conversation is a much "higher" conversation than what is usually at a conference or even in business. It felt to me like, instead of being worried about closing deals or getting leads, it was about the collective consciousness about how the world is changing and how we are at the affect of the change and at the same, time –creating the changes we want to see in the world, i.e., affectively being the change agents. And not as just individuals, but as a collective spirit — a group that has been in CRM and Customer Service, Sales and Marketing a long time… and truly learned from the sales/implementations mistakes of the past and exploring how we will do it differently by incorporating lessons learned.

Making the "R" Real in SCRM.The best part of the conference for me was the ability to interact with all of the thought leaders in the Social CRM, Social Customer Service, Or Social Business…  What I noticed was that over the past year or so, this group has stuck together and in doing so has shown some unique things about Twitter and the value of social media to business. You could almost say that we use Twitter in an Enterprise 2.0 way. By this I am referring to the internal collaboration between employees, resellers, partners, developers… (the way Intel uses their community platform…) that enterprise 2.0 applications provide.

To Tweet or Not To Tweet. There is a lot of conversion around whether Twitter has any business value, whether its just narcissistic self-promotion or not. My impression is that while there is some non-sense on twitter, there is also true business value. Over the last year or so this group (that uses the hash tags of #SCRM and/or #customerservice and sometimes, #socialmedia) have formed a real bond in Twitter. 

Debates are had, questions are answered, blog posts are written, shared and commented on —and in doing so…. the field of Social CRM, Social Customer Service, Social Marketing, Social Sales and Social Business has evolved. For me, Twitter is a necessary and essential link to a community of brilliant people who deeply care about evolving the world. I don't know how much more important an app or tool can be than that!

If you are wondering what is discussed– all you have to do is follow the hash tag #SCRM – And don't feel left out…. you can start by checking out the pdf of the tweets from the conferencethat was created by Esteban Kolsky for the group.

Do we have all the answers yet about social media, Web 2.0, enterprise 2.0 or the apps that allow us to interact — Facebook, Twitter, etc…?  No, we don't. But what I learned from participating in this group for over a year is that they only way to learn, the only way to advance the knowledge and capabilities is to do it. So here's to just doin' it!

Cheers! @drnatalie.

 Here's an example of the twitter and tweeps stats during the conference:

What the hash tag for scrmsummit results

Josh Weinberger (CRM Magazine) created a twiangulate map of the tweets and tweeps — showing the interactiveness and inter-relatedness of the #SCRMSummit group- here's a link to that twiangulation for our hash tag group: Relationship of tweet streams for SCRMsummit conference