I had a chance at Gnomedex to ask Robert Scoble about his approach to the ecology of social media. How does he decide which social media to spend time with and what’s his current view about which tools are best for what functions.

Robert looks for the “doubling pennies,” the applications and sites that are growing rapidly and at an accelerating rate. His intent is to alert us to those hot spots. Right now, he sees Facebook as the most important of the new applications.

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By the way, I apologize for the lighting. I’m still learning how to take decent videos. But I hope that you agree that the quality of Robert’s content compensates for the crude production values.

Related items:

• Robert Scoble delivers keynote at Ragan Conference
• Podcasting and Videoblogging best practices
• Ten Ways to a Killer Blog

The inaugural Third Tuesday Vancouver is happening tonight. I wish I could be there, but I’m stuck out east today.

If you’re in Vancouver and you want to join the discussion, register to attend at the Third Tuesday Vancouver Facebook event or at Third Tuesday Vancouver on Meetup.com.

One of the highlights of this year’s Gnomedex was Darren Barefoot‘s presentation on using your online presence to do good.

Darren pointed to several sites that enable individuals to sign up to make a personal contribution.

For example, naburr links you to causes that could use your skill set, icouldbe matches mentors to teens, and geekcorps draws on the skills of internet technologists to help expand Internet use in emerging nations.

Other sites, however, leverage people`s desire to make a contribution by providing them with the infrastructure and support necessary to extend the campaign directly into their community. For example:

• Nothingbutnets is an online appeal for to help control the spread of malaria in Africa by sponsoring the purchase and distribution of mosquito nets. The site provides not only a means to make a personal contribution, but it also encourages donors to recruit teams of their friends and family to join them in extending the fundraising appeal. It features not only an onsite registration to create a team or sign up as a team member, but also offers a toolkits, posters and other paraphernalia that can be used by local organizers.
• Givemeaning is building a community of contributors who identify causes and needs from anywhere around the world and then organizes appeals to support tangible projects related to these projects.

Darren`s message: Your impact can scale tremendously if you build “pyramid schemes for good.” Build infrastructure that helps others to do good. Don’t stop at making a personal contribution. Build something that encourages and assists others to contribute.

I recorded a brief interview with Darren after the session. I think his message is inspiring. I hope you do too.

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If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you’re probably wondering why I’m not live blogging Gnomedex the same way I’ve liveblogged previous conferences.

Well, I’m trying something new. I’ve been carrying my video camera with me and grabbing interviews with some of the more interesting speakers and participants. So far, I’ve got video clips with Robert Scoble, Josh Hallett, Jeremy Wright, Darren Barefoot, and Chris Heuer. But if you’ve seem some of the videos I’ve already done, you know that I’m not yet very adept at production. And video production does take more time than writing.

I will post about Gnomedex over the next several days as I edit and produce the clips.

Just before I left Vancouver, I grabbed a quick interview with Tod Maffin. Tod spoke about the Vancouver social media scene and how Third Tuesday could fit in.

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It looks like the Third Tuesday Vancouver social media series of monthly events is a go. A dozen social media folks came out Monday evening to discuss bringing the events to Vancouver. At the end of the evening, new friendships had been made and the group agreed to launch the series.

Just before leaving Vancouver, I grabbed a quick video interview with Tod Maffin talking about Third Tuesday in Vancouver. I’ll post that as soon as I’m able to upload the video.

In the meantime, you can find out more by joining the Third Tuesday Facebook group or by joining the Third Tuesday Vancouver group on Meetup.com. Tod has also created a Google Group.

Thanks to Tod Maffin, Tanya Davis, Jacqueline Voci, Kate Trgovac, John Biehler, Christine Rondeau, Steve Palmer, Michelle Sullivan (on loan from Montreal for the summer), Allyson McGrane, and Shane Birley for coming out for the session. It was great meeting you. The discussion showed again just how vigorous Vancouver’s social media community is.

I’m looking forward to coming out for Third Tuesday Vancouver sessions whenever I can make it to the west coast.

For the past year, Third Tuesday/Third Monday have provided the social media community in Toronto and Ottawa with a monthly opportunity to gather, hear from great speakers and talk about new developments in social media and social software.

As we look forward to this autumn’s season, we’re hoping to start up a Third Tuesday in Vancouver. Vancouver has a great community of social media thought leaders and innovators. So, it’s a natural for us to try to extend the events to Vancouver.

Several people, including Tod Maffin, Kate Trgovac, Tanya Davis, and Darren Barefoot (when he returns from his global jaunt) have said that they are willing to pitch in to make this happen.

I’ll be in Vancouver next week on my way to Gnomedex. So, we’re organizing a get-together to kick off the planning for the fall season. If you’d be willing to help with the organization of Third Tuesday Vancouver, we’d love to have you join us. Just leave a comment on this post or send an email to me and I’ll send you the coordinates of our get together as soon as we’ve finalized it.

We’d also welcome your suggestions for topics and speakers. Please feel free to leave a comment or send an email with your ideas about what we should cover and who might speak to it.