Smiley’s ‘Black Union’ Boosts Online Presence

February 25, 2009

Tavis Smiley’s annual State of the Black Union, set for this Saturday the 28 i n Los Angeles, will use social media to carry the conversation on “Making America as Good as its Promise” far beyond the halls of the Los Angeles Convention Center where its being held.

Facebook, MySpace, BlackPlanet.com, and theloop21.com are some of the sites spreading the word about the 10th anniversary edition of the event. The event is free and open to the public, but for folks across the country or around the world it will be webcast at TavisTalks.com via BroadcastURBAN.net. Of course the event will still be aired on C-SPAN, so check local listings for station information.

Bloggers have been invited to cover the event as members of the media, and five will be on stage live blogging during the event, including Dr. Michael Fauntroy, Huffington Post founding editor Roy Sekoff, Carmen Dixon Rosenzweig of AllAboutRace.com, conservative commentator Lenny McAllister, and Kevin Ross of 3Baas Media Group. Each blogger will be posting about the event on their own site, so there will be a diverse range of coverage. Event sponsor Nationwide Insurance will also be live blogging on a site created just for this event.@TavisSmiley will have official event coverage on Twitter.
For long time fans and history buffs, a DVD collection with highlights of SOBUs from 2000 until 2009 is available for presale, and the site also has video archives of select spots from previous SOBUs going back to 2000.

Category: Conferences, Digital Media, web 2.0 | Tags: SOBU, Tavis Smiley

maurice jefferson

i wish that i could get a copy of the 10th annual state of the black union to show at my church i think this is something that all need to bare witness to. Tavis you are amazing and i hope you keep up the good work.we are a little church in Minden,Louisiana and the news about alot of events sometimes get to us kind of late,so if there are copies we would love to have one for our youth department.

Facebook User

I just read this quote on American Exception, Jelani Cobb's blog, and I think it fits well here. It's from Carter G. Woodson's Mis-Education of the Negro:

"The race needs workers, not leaders. Such workers will solve the problems which race leaders talk about and raise money to enable them to talk more and more about. When you hear a man talking, then, always inquire as to what he is doing or what he has done for humanity. Talk and resolutions do not avail much. If they did, the Negro race would be in a paradise on Earth."

Tiredofthese first overcomers

really, who cares about Tavis Smiley's State of the Union? What actually gets accomplished besides Tavis hawking his book, dvds, and other well-known thinkers pontificating about the problems in Black America? We have yet to hear about them DO ANYTHING!!

markusrobinson

You know I have debated the purpose/use of the SOTBU internally for quite some time. I agree that Tavis could lighten up on the commercials about the book, DVD, and his museum tour, but coordinating this stuff doesn't come cheap, and someone's got to pay for it. I also believe that Tavis has way too many people on his panel to have a true conversation about race, but I must admit, if you filter out all the chatter there are little nuggets of inspirations. I don't expect these people to do anything other than to inspire us to mobilize. True change wont happen with the SOTBU, but someone on that panel may be the voice that helps spark a change in us.

kim_at_theloop21

At The Loop, we're going to be tweeting and liveblogging, as well. In fact, we're tweeting the young scholars forum at this moment.

Facebook User

I agreed with a lot of the concerns about the contest. It feels now like they did well on finding an interesting cross-section of bloggers to include, so now we just have to wait and see on Saturday if the experiment works.

markusrobinson

We debated Tavis's blog contest in November, and its interesting to finally see the bloggers chosen to cover the event. It looks to me like a very good representation of the blogging medium.