On Saturday, 24 May, Daryl, Sheylara, Brad and I hosted the second Social Media Breakfast. I want to thank all who came, and my apologies for not being able to talk to all of you. If you were there but we didn’t manage to talk, feel free to connect with me online – all my contact details are on my blog sidebar.

Daryl posted about the successes and the failures of the event, and it got me thinking. When we first started this, it was more of a “make it up as we go along” kind of thing. We never really firmed up what we wanted from it.

So here’s my opinion on the topic. Disclaimer: this is just my personal opinion of why I wanted to start this. It doesn’t represent the whole group or community. So feel free to disagree.

To me, the Social Media Breakfast is a way to build real, deeper relationships. It’s about making friends (Friends with a capital F), not just about business contacts or networking per se. That’s why I like it with the informal format. I think there are lots of networking sessions out there where you can meet really intelligent people and have good discussions. They are all well and good, and there’s a place for all that.

But I want this to be more than that. I want it to be about building deeper, more personal friendships. I want it to be a place where you can meet and catch up with friends, and build personal relationships and just have fun together.

It’s very easy for us to get caught up with work and with the online social world – our blogs, Twitter, etc. But no matter how personal our blogs or tools like Twitter are, they can’t replicate or replace the personal connections made through real life interactions.

And that’s what I want the Social Media Breakfast to provide. A platform to bring the social back, as CC Chapman put it.

Yes, when you gather intelligent, passionate people (like all who were at the event) together, there are bound to be interesting discussions that get you thinking. But that isn’t what I want the main focus of it to be. I would like the main focus of the Social Media Breakfast to be the relationships built, not the discussions that took place.

Once again, though. That’s just my opinion, and I’m just one person. So from you guys, especially those who have been to one of the first two breakfasts, what do you want from Social Media Breakfast: Singapore?