Columbus + WOSU + COSI = Social Media Cafe

Public broadcaster WOSU and COSI, an area science museum, in Columbus are now hosting the Columbus Social Media Cafe group in their WOSU@COSI center.

According to the Columbus Social Media Cafe blog, the mission of this group centers around the following question that WOSU and COSI asked themselves :

What if we — your local public broadcaster and science museum — and those of you who are the local blogging experts got together and learned how to use Social Media to bring back that great American tradition of the community taking charge of its own problems?

What I find interesting about this group is how much they're using social media. They have a blog, a mini social network (ning based), and use Twitter. However, they rely [on] these tools to complement interaction in the real world. We'll see if this collaboration between a traditional news organization, museum, and area residents will indeed usher in a better community through the help of social media.

WOSU and COSI hosted its first blogger meet-up this evening at WOSU@COSI. It truly was a fascinating evening.

Using the Open Space meeting format, this community of very passionate people discussed a wide range of topics addressing the Question: What can we do together that we cannot do alone to change this community using social media tools?

For a headline summary of the topics, you can visit our Twitter page. See some additional photos in our Flickr group.

We also took video that we’ll have posted on You Tube and Facebook as well as this blog.