Although I have little brain capacity to think new thoughts, it occurred to me yesterday on the drive home from a planning session with a client that I've begun to see some movement on the social media front. It seemed worth it to document this moment in time, since I usually just complain about how clueless people are.

• I persuaded an association client to give up their outdated static website in favor of a blog. OK, so I'm writing the articles and we still aren't getting tons of comments, but baby steps, people. Baby steps.

• This same group is also using wikis to manage their committee work. One of the members of the Association told me in a meeting that she "loved" the wiki. Her email was down, but she was still able to share key information with people through the wiki. Excellent!

• I'm managing a couple of large projects with multiple subcommittees for two different clients. We're using wikis in both situations and it's saving us a ton of headaches. Although when I saw the 100+ documents one member of the team uploaded to our project site, my heart sank a little. There's still that whole issue of organizing the info into something that is coherent and usable.

• I'm helping a group plan for a new website and for the first time, I wasn't the first person to mention the word "blog." They are actually very interested in using social media for their site and open to exploring how it can expand their connections to their customers. 

And finally, although not technically "new media," my normally tech-phobic clients have been whole-heartedly embracing my use of GoToMeeting to replace some of the face-to-face stuff they used to insist on. Several commented that they felt like we got more accomplished because there were no side conversations (apparently they haven't figured out the "private chat" feature yet).

This is an excellent development from my perspective, as it's saving us a lot of time. Only one person (out of about 40) has said he misses face-to-face. I'm thinking he may miss the food we usually provide. Maybe I should arrange for deliveries to all the online meeting participants. . .

At any rate, what's really clear is that as people get a chance to use the tools to accomplish a specific goal or task, they are definitely buying into them more. It also helps that some of these things (especially blogs and wikis) are becoming more mainstream--the words aren't as scary. All of this is making me happy, even though otherwise I'm drowning.