This guest post is by Ron Ploof, [a member of the Linked OC community.] Ron also wrote a book on social media that you can find here. Find him on Twitter here.
Did you know that the roots of social media run deep in Orange County? Orange County has been a hotbed of social media activity since before the term became popular—actually fuelling the worldwide indie media-creation movement.
For example, some of the very first podcasts, originally called “audio blogs” came from Orange County. Michael Geoghegan began producing Reel Reviews—Films Worth Watching in 2004 and Grape Radio which has been running since 2005. Michael also co-wrote the first podcasting book, called Podcasting Solutions, in 2005.
Orange County’s Tim and Emile Bourquin became known as the Podcast Brothers as they created the first conference dedicated to podcasting back in 2005. The Podcast Expo brought independent content producers from around the world to southern California, where many of today’s biggest names in new media (Adam Curry, Chris Brogan, Doug Kaye, Leo Laporte, C.C. Chapman, Cali Lewis) met face to face for the first time. The Bourquins hosted the Expo in SoCal for thee years (2005, 2006, and 2007) before moving it to Las Vegas in 2008, then finally selling it to Blogworld in 2009.
Meanwhile, the Orange County Podcasters became one of the largest podcasting MeetUp groups, drawing some of the most talented podcasters in the world from LA to San Diego. People such as Bob Wright (Baseball History Podcast), Megan Enloe (Podcast Junky/MeanMommiesclub), Jason Tucker (TuckerTales & GeekFit Podcast), Adam Christianson (The MacCast), Lance Anderson (Verge of the Fringe), Dan Klass (The Bitterest Pill – and co-author of Podcast Solutions) Jeff Roney (RoneyZone Productions), Craig Patchett (Godcast Network…and co-founder of OCPodcasters) Victor Cajiao (Typical PC User / Typical Mac User), Jason Watts (History Podcast), Russell Turley (Fit2Fat Radio), Steve Webb (LifeSpring), Greg Lemon (The Myth Show Podcast), and David Jacobs (Rock and Roll Jew Show / Connected World Radio).
The members of the Orange County Podcasters went on to be some of the earliest adopters of what are now known as social networking sites such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. (Twitter was actually a side project of the developers of Odeo, an online podcast directory!)
You may not have heard of some of these new media pioneers, but the point is that they all have ties to Orange County. Some of them are still around. Some of them are members of this group. All of them are very approachable and willing to help whenever they can. But the point to remember is that Orange County played a significant role in the formation of social media as it stands today.
Social Media is in our blood. And it’s groups like Linked OC that will keep us in the forefront of the movement.
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