Attraction of social media

The last Friday of every month, around fifty people gather to have lunch and share their experiences in communication and the Internet. The luncheons started during the fall of 2009, each one with a different theme. During January’s meeting the theme was Trend Spotting for 2010.

It soon becomes obvious that there is great interest in participating when lunch guests  are invited to share their own observations for 2010. Many want to speak and guests are engaged in lively conversation with each other. The guests’ own experiences are important to the Social Media Club, but for every meeting the organizers also invite a guest speaker who can take the discussions about web habits and communication to the next level. 

The missing meeting place

The private initiators behind the luncheons are Jenny Eklund, a communications consultant, Anja Säker, web master and IT developer at the library site Mina Bibliotek, and Anders Carlson, web editor at the newspaper Västerbottenskuriren. The three of them felt that there was a need for a meeting place where interested people in the Umeå region would have the opportunity to learn more about what is happening in online social media, and how this affects people’s everyday lives as well as business operations.

Two of the initiators behind the luncheons are Anja Säker, web master and IT developer, and Jenny Eklund, communications consultant.

- A lot of different people show up at our meetings. Many are not very used to social media and they are far from being tech geeks, says organizer Jenny Eklund.

- We get people from a wide range of businesses. Some are technicians, and some are journalists and information specialists. There are municipal workers, students and unemployed. What they all have in common is that they share an interest in issues regarding social media, and that makes it an exciting mix, says Jenny.

The inspiration behind the luncheons is a loosely connected national network of social media people, and the aim of these meetings is to create a place for exchange between people who are interested in social media.

Social Media Club on Facebook

The physical meetings are important but Social Media Club Umeå is also on Facebook, and at the time of writing this article the group has 358 fans.

During the January luncheon, Jenny Eklund reveals that 60,000 of Umeå’s 114,000 inhabitants have a Facebook account, which means roughly every second person living in the city. That number is notably higher than the average for Sweden, where every third person has an account. But the fact that the inhabitants of Umeå can be found on Facebook to a higher degree than others is hardly surprising, since Umeå is a young city characterized as an IT city, not least through the presence of all of the university students.

The next Social Media Club Umeå luncheon will take place on February 26.

Mattias Larsson, political secretary at Centerpartiet in Umeå. 

In the middle Fredrik Olofsson, marketing coach for soccer team Umeå IK.