I’m sitting in on a great Smartcompany webcast titled “How Small and Mid-Sized Companies are using Technology to Drive Business Success”. As usual the Smartcompany efforts are excellent productions, well worth the time.

The interesting thing about this particular session is hearing non-tech related small businesses talk about their use of social media. Great example is Brasserie Bread, a Sydney based artisan bakery. These guys have captured the passion surrounding their products to fantastic effect by creating a vibrant and active community. Tools like Twitter and a blog keep their customers engaged in a two way dialogue bringing superb value to both sides of the relationship. Brasserie Bread has further expanded their activities to include baking classes and public events both driven by, and feeding back into their community and social media strategy.

I’ve often pondered the best way to grow a community around what Grassroots IT has to offer. Trouble is as soon as I get thinking about that, my next thought is “who on earth would want to engage in a tech centric community, apart from a tech?”. Having seen what Brasserie Bread has achieved though definitely gives me pause for thought. After all, if they can foster an active community around something as seemingly ordinary as bread, surely Grassroots IT has something to offer?

Big congratulations to Wayne Small over at SBSfaq.com for being nominated by Microsoft as MVP for the eighth year running. Wayne has a truly remarkable energy for his work, and puts back into the SMB community more than anyone else I know. A well deserved recognition of Wayne’s tireless efforts in clocking up frequent flyer points to spread the good word. Congratulations mate, from the Grassroots Team.

After what I’m sure was a massive amount of work behind the scenes, SBSfaq.com was relaunched last week with a fresh new look. As founder Wayne (The Wayne) Small notes on his blog…

Today marks the start of a long overdue refresh to SBSfaq.coms website and blog. I’ve bitten the bullet and gotten professionals involved in helping me with the graphic design and overall revamp of the site.

In addition to strong new branding, the new site brings together the original SBSfaq.com site with the related blog.sbsfaq.com site. All existing content, including historical blog posts will be migrated across over the coming days.