The first hands-on Social Media Workshop Meetup to take place in the county took place last Sunday at the Hidden Valley Food Mart, off Highway 29, near the Putah Creek Bridge. While the turnout was small, that was actually desirable. The smaller the crowd, the more personal attention each attendee could receive.

This workshop focused first upon cleaning up your computer operation with special software to make it run more efficiently. Every registered participant was given a flash drive with special software on it to make both their laptop (which they were encouraged to bring to the workshop) and their desktop computer at home run more efficiently. Mark Rudiger of LakeCountyWebsites conducted that portion of the workshop.

Once the flash drives had been distributed and the tutorial on how to use several of the programs included on the device had been completed, it was time to focus on Social Media. How could an individual or a small business take advantage of the exploding popularity of the Social Media Space? This portion of the workshop was conducted by Lamar Morgan of CDMM - Synergistic Business Marketing. Here such online resources as Skype (VOIP), Yugma (desktop sharing), Twitter (micro-blogging), Squidoo (now-blogging), budURL (website link shrinkage) and Aardvark (cyberspace Q&A minus SPAM) were discussed.

What makes so much of what social media has to offer work is mutual collaboration between individuals. It's wikinomics meets Web 2.0 innovation. Squidoo, for example, has more than one million one-page websites - all built by volunteers in just a few short years. How many employees does Squidoo have? Six. How is it possible that just six people could set up a system online that generates enough revenue to not only pay its employees, but many of its volunteer lensmasters, and also raise money for needy charities - especially in today's difficult economic environment? The key is in cleverly encouraging mutually beneficial business relationships with an audience of followers. Squidoo has accomplished this extremely well. And, Squidoo is not alone.

Twitter is perhaps one of the fastest-growing Social Media sites in the world. It got that way by asking a simply question – "What are you doing now?" and hoping people would be willing to answer it in just 140 characters or less. Not only did the world want to answer that question, many software developers saw ways they could help once Twitter's API was available to them. Check out Twitter.com at http://twitter.com .

Then, along comes Aardvark. A group of former Google employees decided that when people need answers to questions in a hurry and do not know who to ask, they should come to them. Aardvark believes people deserve answers to questions from real people – not databases. They believe those answers should come in about five minutes from the time they are asked by text message. They believe those answers should be to able to be followed-up. But, they do not believe the sharing of contact information is needed. Therefore, the interaction between the person asking the question and the person answering is done through Aardvark as an intermediary. This arrangement is SPAM-free by design. Need a question answered in a hurry? Ask Aardvark at http://vark.com .

For nearly five years, the Ryze Business Network has been reaching out to Lake County. This actually goes back to a 2005 Middletown Merchants Mixer at the Calpine Visitor Center, where the network was first introduced to the county. At last Sunday's workshop, each participant was given a magnetic to-do-list board for use on the most popular location in the home – the refrigerator door. This board was created by members of the Ryze Business Network across the United States and Canada. A small quantity of those boards were actually shipped from Canada to Lake County to demonstrate to local residents the power of "mutual collaboration" between people. Ryzers also want to encourage Lake County folks to freely join Ryze.com.

The Ryze network, Clusters, is especially appropriate for Lake County folks as it is moderated by someone living in Hidden Valley Lake. Clusters advocates the formation of small business networking groups - about four people - who desire to mutually collaborate to help each other out. Several Lake County businesses – the Hidden Valley Food Mart, Spirit Lake Bed and Breakfast, Ting's Thai Kitchen and the Ocean Spirit Vacation Rental – are already engaged in this process. While they last, to-do-list boards may still be available at the Hidden Valley Food Mart and the Doug Reams Dental Clinic in Lucerne, off Highway 20. More information about membership in the Ryze Clusters Network is available at http://clusters-network.ryze.com .

Although the workshop was a tremendous success, it was decided that future workshops would not be conducted until January of next year. The public needs a break for the holidays. In the meantime, folks all over Lake County are encouraged to join the Lake County Social Media Workshop Meetup to ask questions about cleaning up their computer and benefiting from Social Media. The process for joining the Meetup is simple and free. Just visit http://budurl.com/LakeCountySMW and join up.

This workshop would not have been possible to conduct had the Hidden Valley Food Mart not built a nice dining area, placed a 42-inch HDTV screen up on the wall with a 16-foot VGA cable attached and become a FREE Wi-Fi hot spot. Other Lake County groups may be able to take advantage of this wonderful resource for showing slide show presentations and videos. All they really need is to show up with a laptop computer and connect to the VGA cable. For more information on what the Hidden Valley Food Mart has to offer, just call the owners of the Hidden Valley Food Mart, Jack and Karen Lair at 707-987-9794.

Lamar Morgan lives in Hidden Valley Lake.