Celebrity Spotting in San Antonio! Hanging out with Kami, Geoff, Bruce and Rob

OK, maybe the headline is a bit dramatic, but here in the quiet little town of San Antonio (we're only the 9th largest city by population in the U.S.) it's not often that the A-list of Social Media experts come to town.

Yesterday, my pal, Kami Watson Huyse organized a pow-wow get together in San Antonio where i had a chance to meet Facebook pal, Geoff Livingston. 

It's amazing when you are "friends" with someone virtually and you meet them in real live person.  Geoff is also the author of Now is Gone - A Primer on New Media for Executives and Entrepreneurs.

Others at the pow-wow included Bruce Hughes and Robert La Gesse and some other members of his team from Rackspace.

General Consensus: America's economic crisis could be a great window of opportunity for those of us in the Social Media / PR space.

Instead of cutting back on marketing budgets, I see budgets being re-aligned with innovation, customer engagement, conversation, measurement and accountability.  While the economy may slow down a bit, marketers still need to.....market.

Re-think, re-align and re-focus your messages and your budgets for 2009.  This could be a good time to disrupt your competition, gain market share, and expand- rather than contract your business.

What are you doing to re-align your marketing and PR initiatives for 2009?