Get Radical, Get Wet, Get Involved: Day One.

This blog is part of a conversation. It is a conversation with you and those with whom you are connected. For the next 40 days, I will dive into social media. The objective is develop a sharp edged insight -- and to draw on your questions, your insights and your observations -- to see what social media offers. If you are game, I invite you to join me and to take part in at least one -- and hopefully multiple -- digital environments. We can read all we want, but some learning must be experiential. And, by definition, learning about social media requires a social network. Come learn with me; join in and teach; invite your friends to take part with us.

What I offer is honesty and frankness. I promise to let you see behind the curtain at what is clear as well as what is confounding. Obviously, there is risk involved. Who wants a consultant that doesn't know the answers? No doubt I'll write something ridiculous or be too slow to spike an inappropriate comment and the mistake will linger in digital amber to haunt me forever. But, without risk there is no reward.

For more than a month, consider this experiment as a free travelogue of sorts. I'll let you know what I see and hear. But the subtleties -- the tastes, smells and tactile experience as well as the intellectual and emotive responses -- of the trip will only be found through your interaction. I expect that we'll travel with social media novices, moderately competent users like myself and members of the social media elite.

Fifteen years ago I went online. Since 1994 -- when I was using university computer labs to learn Mosaic and archaic chat programs -- digital technologies have gone mainstream and multiplied exponentially. Those chats were far from instant and required rudimentary coding. At that time, the Web was a novelty and it was cataloged manually. Today, new media or as some of our nation's esteemed policy makers are wont to say, "the Internets," are essential to the economy.

Last year, I began work with a public affairs firm. It brought a change in perspective but not in the core of my professional outlook. In 1994, I was reading Microcosm and The Third Wave to learn about how the silicon revolution would re-shape modern society. More recently, I've dipped into Groundswell and Radical Transparency to understand how social media tools are reshaping the creation and distribution of knowledge in the economy. Then, I was attending guest lectures and reading policy journals and periodicals. Today, I still love a good lecture and read plenty of printed material but I also read blogs and wikis.

My concern is not with all knowledge, but specific and meaningful knowledge to much of what we do with our lives. How we learn, engage in commerce, manage reputational value and develop meaningful relationships are, or can be, connected through digital technology.

Next post will have additional information and links on the various tools I'm using for the Radical Immersion experiment. Find me on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Aim, Digg, FriendFeed and look for my GoogleReader shared items.