Austin, Texas is the blogging capital of the United States. With approximately one out of seven, or fifteen percent of its citizens actively blogging, it’s easy to find someone who is really active on the social web in our community. That’s not too surprising considering that the population of the Austin area is relatively young and internet usage is high. We’re also a tech savvy community with a half-dozen Universities and Colleges, including UT Austin, a world-class research University.

Add the number of Austinites using social websites like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and Plaxo you would probably get a much higher percentage of online networkers and consumers who live and work here. Then if you add the number of people, especially teens, who text message one another on their cell phones throughout the day and add them to those of us who are actively Twittering, Plurking, and using new microblogging technologies to communicate and share information, the numbers likely grow even more.

Austin is a very creative community. In fact, it’s the creative capital of the country. So the number of creative people – professionals and amateurs – who generate content is tremendous. This is particularly true of the burgeoning gaming industry in Austin. Further, the Live Music Capital of the World is also the home of artists, actors, film makers, and really excellent advertising and marketing agencies.

Podcasting, online collaboration, video, audio, and all other forms of user generated content are not only common, they’re rampant in Central Texas.

In the context of this very creative, socially networked, and tech savvy situation in the Austin community, Steve Golab, CEO and President of FG SQUARED, has initiated a new working group to focus on the potential for businesses and other organizations to effectively communicate going forward in the new environment.

Social Web Advisory Panel (SWAP)

The formation of the Social Web Advisory Panel, called the SWAP for short, is a natural extension of the successful Interactive Austin 2008 conference sponsored by FG SQUARED this past summer and is the result of Steve’s ongoing conversations with social media enthusiasts from around the world.

Since Austin is such a hot bed of activity and because, in typical Austin fashion, old ways of doing things are always being challenged here, we believe that we have the perfect opportunity to utilize the enthusiasm and expertise we have in the academic, business, communications and creative communities to stretch our thinking and understanding of the social media space.

Also, being based in Austin gives us that unique view of the world that is ideal to understand the disruptive nature of the social web and how it is affecting the status quo. As I already mentioned, it’s a creative place.

Initially, we will focus on the experiences of online activity and how they create social capital between the users who meet there. We’ll dig deep into how we measure their impact by remembering that online and offline activities blend seamlessly in the lives of our creatives in Austin.

We will share what we discover with the rest of the world and organically expand our circle to include other interested individuals and groups.

Most importantly, we don’t start with a presumption of knowing exactly what we’ll find. In fact critical thinking is encouraged. We have no preconceived notion that we have all the answers. We’re looking for them through you, by making use of the social computing that naturally occurs in social networks and from any other method of discovery that comes with our efforts to learn from our respective communities.

SWAP members include Cynthia Baker – President, Accolades PR, Jon Lebkowsky – Principal, Social Web Strategies, Dave Evans – Digital Voodoo, Ynema Mangum, John Curtis- President and CEO, Quotient Solutions, Inc., Wade Allen, Jason Fellman – Consultant and FG SQUARED Co-founder, Clay Spinuzzi – Associate Professor, UT Austin, Barry Rumac of FG SQUARED, Steve Golab and myself.

Please tell me what you think. Would you like to weigh in with your thoughts on the social web? I’ll be updating regularly on our activities and always welcome input. Email me at mike.chapman@fg2.com or find me on Twitter @MikeChapman if you want to know more. Of course, comments below are always encouraged.