Oh, sure, it’s been two months since my last post, but I’m back with all kinds of fabulous news! For starters, it’s time to welcome Tallahassee to our Flacks family!

That’s right: Tallahassee, Florida, public relations, communications and new media pros now have a no-pressure happy hour of their very own. And my Best Friend in the Whole Wide World, Rachel Davis Cone, is the hostess!

Check out the #TallyFlacks and please help Rachel spread the word. Besides, when it is too freakin cold in DC to be social around January and February–and if we have been nice to her–maybe Rachel will let us relocate DC Flacks to Tally for a couple of months.  Just a thought.

Thinking about starting a Flacks Meetup in your town? Check out our Flacks affiliations page; and don’t hesitate to email me (Margie @ flackrabbit dot com) if you need help or a pep talk! 

There’s no shortage of SXSW Interactive 2011 “reviews.” Give it a Google; you’ll find all sorts of contradictory soap boxes, from SXSW has “jumped the shark” to O M G, it was “awesomesauce.”  Other than the mediocre panels, tsunami of street-marketers and QR codes, and an on-again-off-again AT&T 3G signal, three things about this year’s conference stand out:

1. We should all talk to strangers more. Seriously. It wasn’t the panels or keynotes that rocked my world, (could have skipped most of them, honestly) it was the limitless conversations with talented people. There were talkative geeks at every turn. And this wasn’t just a “shake hands and be on your way”-type of networking, these were hour-long talks where you walked away a smarter, more motivated person. I hated leaving before the closing party because I kept wondering not what, but WHO/WHOM, I’d miss.

2. You can solve your Meetup location crisis using only an iPhone and tha Twitter. About a week before the conference started, Dave had this great idea for us to declare a Meetup for DC-area folks attending SXSW Interactive. We called it DCxSW. He made a website; I filled out a Twitter profile, started a #DCxSW hashtag and got to spreading the word. We immediately saw a positive response from DC-ers, including retweets and offers to help.

The problem came about five hours before the event was to start, when I discovered that our venue, Shakespeare’s Pub, had been bought out by Maxim. Thanks, guys. But I didn’t have my laptop with me; Dave was at the hotel with the Team Newman iPad; all I had was an iPhone and a panicky feeling. How would I tell everyone? Where would we go?! Less than 10 percent of an iPhone 4 battery later, a new location at the Driskill Hotel bar was secured, the DCxSW Twitter profile edited and DMs and @ replies sent to every RSVPing person. Except Tod. Oops. Sorry, man. It really proved to me how powerful that tiny little Swiss Army Knife of a phone actually is. Oh, and 45 folks showed up! And Tod eventually found us.

3. The New York Times, Verizon and Quora need to have a frank talk with their marketing folks. I’ll sum this up this way: Read More…

I’ve received a few emails from folks asking about my motivation for starting the DC Flacks happy hour, how I organize it, get folks to show up each month, and if they can copy the format in their town. Well, sure! And I’m happy to help! Here’s how DC Flacks came to be (feel free to plagiarize as much or as little as you want):

I like talking to strangers. Dave and I moved to DC last May. I was new to this city and needed a way to meet my fellow public relations and public affairs pros. So, I declared a happy hour and folks actually showed up. At first, there were just a handful of us. Then Twitter word-of-mouth took over; we had 40 folks in January and nearly 60 in February. Out of my purely selfish desire to meet new folks, DC Flacks was born. If you like talking to strangers, you’re gonna do great as a ___ Flacks host/hostess.

I heart Meetup.com. I had accompanied Dave on various adventures of the Nashville Photography Meetup that he founded back in 2006, so I was familiar with the concept. You don’t have to use Meetup to organize your happy hour, of course, but if you want to, here’s how: Read More…

In this town there is a Meetup, Tweetup, Festival or Twestival every night — at least it seems that way. Over the past three months, we’ve been hitting up social media happy hours like nobody’s business. In fact, Team Newman was recently included in a verbal listing of “the usual suspects” at “these kinds” of D.C. events. We weren’t sure if we should be flattered or embarrassed.

So far, we’ve: attended the NextGenWeb re-launch party, taken a free trip to New York courtesy of @SouthwestAir, partied with Social Media Club DC, eaten tasty brie at #Hyatt4Good, giggled at the DCBlogger’s Meetup, won a free dinner at the @destinationDC Tweetup, declared a winner of our very first Twitter contest and even started a Meetup group for digitally minded DC Flacks. Oh, and along the way, we’ve made some incredibly smart and talented new friends.

Yep, The Hill is alive with the sound of geek-ness — this particular social scene is just another reason why we heart The District. What’s your favorite thing about D.C.?