WordCamp Dallas is later this month — March 29-30. Netconcepts’ own Chris Smith will be speaking on SEO for blogs. There’s a great lineup of speakers, including WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg. Registration is only $20. There’s no reason not to attend! Even if you blog on a different blog platform, you should still attend. The networking with fellow bloggers alone is worth the travel costs. I speak from experience, having attended WordCamp in San Francisco last summer and I loved it.

Blog World Expo is another fabulous conference to attend. Their inaugural year was last year. It took place in Las Vegas and will be back in Vegas this year — September 20-21. At last year’s conference I spoke on an SEO panel with SEO gurus Aaron Wall, Andy Beal and Vanessa Fox. I stayed to the very end of the conference, and I was glad I did. I got to hear billionaire blogger Mark Cuban speak during the closing keynote of the conference.

Then there’s BlogHer 2008 — a conference for and about women bloggers, taking place July 18-20 in San Francisco. All the speakers are women. My 16-year-old daughter Chloe Spencer (the Neopets blogger) was privileged to speak on their Professional Blogging panel at BlogHer 2007. I attended last summer and really enjoyed it, even though I wasn’t the main intended audience (i.e. women bloggers).

One guy I spoke to during a cocktail reception at BlogHer last year told me that BlogHer was a great conference for single men like him to attend. He said it was “like shooting fish in a barrel.” Haha, I laughed when I heard him say that. Contrast that with WordCamp Dallas, which is projected to be 75% male.

Any other conferences for bloggers out there that I’ve missed?

So first let me dispense with the obligatory acknowledgment that I’m sorry I haven’t blogged here in ages. I have wanted to often, but one thing and another…

On thing I’ve wanted to write about is Twitter. I’m hooked.  So far, I’ve seen precious few Tweets (as I gather its adherents call themselves) use it especially well for business communication. Mostly people complaining about being stuck in airports. Like the rest of us might find that interesting. One who does a good job keeping the posts interesting and on topic is Steve Rubel, not surprisingly.

Another shout out I’ve meant to give is the IAB’s new blog, the IABlog, under the stewardship of the IAB’s new, compelling leader, Randall Rothenberg, who also has his own blog. I’ve gotten to know Randall a bit in the past several months, and he’s a fun guy, a great intellect (excellent panel moderator), a strong leader for the IAB and really interested demonstrating the new directions of online media with initiatives like the IABlog.

When you click through to the blog, you’ll notice a photo of yours truly serenading the original IAB chairman Rich LeFurgy.  The uke is my new hobby for the past year-plus. Soon I’ll have to do a round-up of the many photos like this that already exist of me playing the uke at industry cocktail parties on blogs around the web.

The real point of this post, though, is that I’m currently at the IAB’s Annual Meeting, Ecosystem 2.0, in Phoenix, AZ. So far, it’s one of the most exciting conferences I’ve ever attended, really. Attendee list is who’s who of the industry. As I type this (blazing fast free wifi in the conference hall; see, they get it!), Randall is interviewing Susan Decker, president of Yahoo! and Jerry Yang, CEO/founder of Yahoo! You can see the other speakers yourself here, but they are consistent with these two.

Steve Rubel is here and we’re both giving running commentary on Twitter, plus the IABlog is providing updates, too. Keep your fingers crossed that they’ll post videos of the content. Wenda Millard’s speech last night, accepting the mantel as new chairperson of the IAB, was really great. I’ll post the link of the transcript or video if it’s made available.

A just published Fortune article makes the point (quoting IBM CEO Sam Palmisano) that the 3-D virtual world of Second Life is not just “eye candy” and may represent the “next phase of the Internet’s evolution.”

But as Alex Manchester puts it on the Melcrum blog: “… the waters are definitely still very, very muddy and I still think few senior execs that aren’t in the tech industry would go for it [Second Life].” Alex, I agree.

Although… I’m increasingly convinced that something is very real about this place (I’ve explored Second Life briefly). For example, the equivalent of US $1 million exchanged hands inside 2L in the past 24 hours. And the World Economic Forum, in Davos this week IRL (in real life), is doing interviews at Reuters’ Second Life bureau. Go figure…

Useful Link

Second Life: It’s Not a Game by Fortune senior writer David Kirkpatrick (Jan. 23, 2007)

On the surface, it may not appear that our friends at BlogBusinessSummit.com are our competitors. After all, their site is devoted to promoting the Blog Business Summit, a major event which they host 2-3 times a year.

But in a very real sense, they are our competitors: they compete with us for the mindshare of corporate business bloggers who are seeking to find a way to use blogging as a more effective tool for reaching out to their customers and keeping them informed and happy. So our biggest competitor is a conference company.

Why is that and how could you benefit through knowing about it?

Because unlike most conference sites, they don’t just spring up a few months prior to their event and start banging their drums with the conference message. Instead, they use their conference site as a blog to become thought leaders in this space.

You may not have had the slightest inclination in the middle of June to attend a Blog Business Summit, but when you did a search on Google for “business blogging”, they were listed right up there in the coveted Top Ten listings.

[Do note however, who has the Number One slot in that listing… ]

So chances are good that they are one of the resources you would have turned to, along with Business Blog Consulting, for information and guidance on business blogging. You might have bookmarked us both in your list of RSS feeds you check regularly, and if you haven’t already, you should.

But something may have happened around mid-August or September when you were reading all those great articles that Teresa, Steve, DL and our very own Dave Taylor regularly write: you might have noticed they had a conference coming up.

And then as time progressed, you might have thought you ought to go… and then, if you were one of the smart and fortunate ones who wisely reserved a seat at their conference this past week (I’m jealous: you got to rub shoulders with Jason Calacanis and schmooze with Robert Scoble and John Batelle), you actually forked out the money and went!

Well folks, that was their objective all year long. That’s why they kept blogging away in Seattle through all those miserable rainy days and nights: they wanted you to come to their conference!

So where do you come in?

You may have limited your thinking about business blogging to blogging from your CEO or key executives or just blogging about your company. That’s a good thing, but BlogBusinessSummit.com shows you how you can use effective, high quality blogging to keep your company’s products, services and even events in the forefront of people’s minds all year long… even if you aren’t talking about your company’s products, services or events.

Do it the BBS way and keep strong visual reminders about those products, services and events adjacent to, above and/or below your content. They don’t talk about their conference all year long. They talk about the issues it addresses.

And thus they become a thought leader.

And they sell a whole bunch of seats to their conferences.

And unless I’m unaware of it (always a possibility), that blog is their sole means of marketing that conference.

Amazing, huh?

Oh, one more thing…

Next time you are there, look at the right hand side of the page. They’re plugging their book.

So in your product/service/event blog which addresses the issues surrounding that product/service/event, you can plug not only the focus of the site, but related product/service/events as well!

So add that thinking to your mix. If you’re business isn’t blogging yet, maybe emulating their style would be a great way for you to start. If it is, you aren’t limited to “a” company blog. You can have a bunch of them.

You’ll find business blogging can be a beautiful thing…

Tucows is sending me to BBS (that’s Blog Business Summit, BTW .. where I am also speaking) to report live on the sessions.  Watch the Tucows blog for posts and updates.  I’ll be doing podcast interviews with folks during the whole Wednesday – Friday sessions.  I might also sneak in some posts on Saturday from our special speaker/VIP event.  Since there is a geek dinner tomorrow night with a lot of the speakers and other blogerati in attendance, I’ll make sure the old Cannon digicam has fresh batteries and my recorder is handy.  No, it isn’t really a part of the conference proper, but I might get some hints and tastes of the sessions to come.  Like Dave Taylor and character blogs (maybe?).

Oh, yeah I’m going to cross-post this in a few places so if you think you’ve read it on another blog, you probably have.

Tags: BBS, BBS06, conference blogging, Blog Business Summit, Tucows, Tucows blog

 

Well Dave already spilled the beans (here and here), yep I’m speaking at BBS at the end of the month.  The question is, then, just what the heck am I speaking about.  RSS Metrics.  Oh boy, yeah.  I wrote a bit about it on my blog already, but essentially what I’m going to help people work out is how to measure their audience on their blog.  This, btw, is no mean feat.  The reason Feedburner has been so successful is that they do give those metrics.  But, my talk isn’t going to just be “Use Feedburner.  Thank you.  Any questions?”.  That’s more than a little lame.  Don’t ask me how I’m going to simplify the discussion, because I’m still noodling that around in my head (ouch).

The reason, besides I was stupid enough to agree, that I’m talking about RSS metrics (and maybe blog metrics in general), is that as businesses get into blogs, bosses want to know what impact the blog is having.  Who is reading it, how often, when, what …  And while it might seem easy to dismiss these things, it really isn’t.  It is important.

If you are interested in biz blogging, BBS (as Dave said) is a great time to learn and network.  Pick the brains of folks already doing it.  Hang out with fun folks and just bask in the general blogginess.  I know that after BBS you will have a ton of new ideas and ways to start blogging or improve your blogging.   Now let me sweeten the pot a bit.  If you want to go I have a discount code for you worth $100 off any package.  When you register use code LCAS06 and the discount is yours.  There are deals to be had for hotel rooms (I use Hotwire myself) and I’ll be there Tuesday night and for the workshops and conferences.  Stop by and say hi.  I’m sure Dave and I will be hanging out somewhere chatting (look for the tall guy with the beard and the shorter geeky guy with glasses).

Tags: BBS, BBS06, Blog Business Summit

 

Conferences and workshops tend to blur together when you travel and speak as frequently as I do, so I appreciate getting involved in an event that’s focused more on education and discourse than on selling stuff, either from the podium or the exhibit hall. Don’t get me wrong, those sort of conferences can be valuable and I’ve definitely learned quite a bit attending those sort of events, but as a former research scientist, there’s much I prefer about getting together with a few hundred of the best people in the industry and exploring best practices together.

That’s why I am delighted to share with the Business Blog Consulting audience that I am not only going to be enthusiastically attending the upcoming Blog Business Summit in Seattle, but that I’m also going to be speaking a number of times, including a keynote talk on what I call “findability” and why blogs are such an important part of that equation.

The line up of speakers for the Summit reads like a who’s who of thought and influence leaders in the blogging world, including fellow BBC contributor Tris Hussey. It’s the last week of October on the waterfront in Seattle, and if you’re interested in business blogging or blog consulting, you’ll definitely want to learn more about the Blog Business Summit.

(If you’re interested in my comments and thoughts on the speaker lineup, and what I’m planning on talking about when I stand at the podium no less than four different times, please pop over to my thoughts on the Blog Business Summit)

SixApart is hosting a series of Business Blogging Seminars in cities across the US. According to their informational page, participants will:

• Learn how to create effective blogging strategies and policies
• Hear dynamic use cases from specific industries
• See the latest blogging technologies demonstrated, including RSS and podcasting
• Have your specific business blogging questions addressed in our Q&A sessions

Now, of course this will undoubtably feature how to use a TypePad or Movable Type blogging platform to create a presence in the blogosphere. However, there will probably be good information even if your a dyed-in-the-wool WordPresser.

Current cities include:

• Washington, DC (9/28) (10/19)
• Detroit, MI (10/30)
• Boston, MA (11/2)
• San Francisco, CA (11/13)
• Chicago, IL (11/16)
• NYC, NY (12/11)
• Miami, FL (12/14)

Hey, Six Apart! How about Portland, ME? I’ll even put you up.

If you’d like to get more information or register, go for it. (BTW, in the interest of transparency, that’s an affiliate link.)

For those of you looking for rules (I hate that word–how about “guidelines?”), case studies and advice on how to market with blogs, you may want to clear your calendar for this Thursday, July 27th at 12pm EST.

Co-blogger Jeremy Wright is hosting Truths of Blog Marketing: Reaching Customers, Building Your Brand, a Web seminar for MarketingProfs.

The seminar goes for $99, or is free for Marketing Profs’ Premium Plus members. Another argument for becoming a member is Kelly Goto’s Tuesday, July 25th seminar: Demystifying Website Usability: Rapid Research for Marketers.

The “UnConference” is all the rage right now… an agenda-free gathering of like minded souls who seek to learn from each other’s wisdom… an “expert free zone”… no sponsors… no official speakers or panels. Since Dave Winer began to promote this idea earlier this year, it seems that every new conference wants to be an “UnConference”, therefore freed from the sins of conferences past.

No doubt the standard approach to conferences has abused the trust and credibility attendees place in the promoters of these events: vendor speakers giving the same talk they gave at the last 5 conferences they spoke at, sales pitches from the podium, vendor stacked panels, outdated and irrelevent content. Believe me, I used to review conferences and even put on a few back in my ClickZ days (at which fyi, we didn’t allow pitches from the podium, did not invite vendors to speak or participate on panels, but depended upon industry experts instead), but is the UnConference the best solution we can come up with to the current model?

I remember well the first “UnConference” I ever attended. It was way back in 1972 when I was in high school. I was a part of this radical coalition called “Student Alliance” which sought to give high school students more freedom and choice than they were given at that time. One day, I received a mailing from a group of similar “Student Alliances” from all over Wisconsin (I was living in Green Bay at the time) who sought to hold a conference among the various Student Alliances from all over the state. And guess what? The pitch sounded remarkably like the UnConferences that are being popularized today: no agenda, no speakers, just a collective sharing of our common wisdom and experiences. All of us were experts. And by god, it was FREE! Made sense to me. So I set aside a weekend in February, bought a bus ticket, packed up my goodies for a great weekend and headed to Madison.

To make a long story short, the weekend was a total disaster.

In a vacuum, strong voices can and will emerge, and despite rhetoric to the contrary, they will quash the voices of those who don’t share their views. Friday evening, which we set aside for “agenda setting” rapidly deteriorated into chaos when a coalition of feminists (it was still in its early days at that time) took over the meeting and issued a series of demands which included banning anyone from the conference who uttered any of the sexist words or phrases from the list which they so kindly provided.[Today, none of us would utter any of those words or phrases in a public setting under any circumstances, but at the time, it was a radical notion, for example, to ban the use of the word “girl” or “bitch”.] They took up an enormous amount of time and bandwidth with their rhetoric and demands, so after about three or four hours, we called it a night and decided to reconvene the next morning to see what we could do about setting an agenda for the weekend.

Next morning, the Marxist coalition decided it was their turn to take over the agenda setting session, and before you knew it, all hell broke loose and no agenda ever got set.

So you had about 150 teenagers from all over the state who came there to learn from their peers what they could do to more effectively impact change in our schools and we ended up doing absolutely nothing. Actually, we ended up doing the kinds of things that teenagers did at that time with nothing to do, no adult supervision and no agenda.

Beyond the profound sense of disappointment I felt, I was pissed that I had wasted an entire weekend, the bus fare, the cost of meals. I didn’t look forward to reporting back to my fellow members of Student Alliance of Green Bay East High School that nothing got done, I learned nothing and had nothing to give.

I’m not saying here that all UnConferences or even BlogOrlando in particular will end up in chaos with all attendees going home empty handed. But I am saying that without some sort of preset agenda and without a seeding of real experts who can address the relevant issues, you risk losing more than the price of admission (free). You risk the value of however many days of time you invest. You risk airfare (steadily climbing as we speak), hotel and food expenses. And you risk coming home with a profound sense of disappointment having wasted your time.

Fact is, I’d be far more interested in attending BlogOrlando if I knew that there was going to be an agenda in place, some sort of schedule, coverage of topics that I wanted to learn more about, experts on hand that are qualified to address them and yes, I would like to have a few sponsors and vendors there demoing their latest (or even better, upcoming) new products and services. Properly handled, sponsors and vendors can make a tremendous contribution the quality of a conference. It’s great to go home with a few good tchotchkes and some stories about the cool new products you saw demoed. Better yet, it’s great to blog about them!

It seems to me that, bottom line, the UnConference movement is at it’s core anti-commercial.

While I agree with them that I don’t want the conference agenda spoiled by sales pitches given by VPs of Marketing who paid for their time at the podium, it doesn’t mean that a quality conference can’t be properly planned, informative and useful… AND produce a nice profit for the promoter (who takes on enormous risk, believe me) through charging for admission and providing a venue for sponsors and vendors. It also doesn’t mean that a conference can’t provide a venue for the experts within the audience to be heard and to exchange ideas.

Conventional conference organizers have abused the trust and good will of their attendees, that much is clear. But the UnConference is not the answer.

BlogOrlando is an unconference that will be held in Orlando, FL from September 22-24, 2006.

This FREE event is open to bloggers and non-bloggers alike from Florida and anywhere else (so far we have one international attendee). We hope to bring together a good cross-section of folks to discuss blogging, podcasting, public relations, social media, citizen’s journalism and other related topics. In addition to the Friday event we are planning some outings at the local theme parks over the weekend. This event is as much a social/family gathering as it is a ‘work’ gathering, so bring the family (kids included).

Shown below is a tentative schedule for the weekend:

Thursday (9/21): Travel day for most, perhaps an informal dinner that night
Friday – day (9/22): BlogOrlando unconference at Rollins College
Friday – evening (9/22): Full-on geek dinner somewhere in Orlando
Saturday (9/23): Blogger day at one of the Disney parks
Sunday (9/24): Travel day, or stay an extra day at the Disney parks

For more information or to register, visit BlogOrlando.com.

One of the great things about this blog is that Rick gets pitched by lots of people and we tend to get some good scoops. Dave Frankland zapped this nice tidbit over to Rick today about Richard Edelman’s keynote at Syndicate 2006. Here’s the really interesting thing … the link to the PRWeek story yielded this:

Edelman keynote at Syndicate touches upon industry changes
NEW YORK: Edelman CEO Richard Edelman, facing an audience at the 2006 Syndicate Conference in New York City that has traditionally been hostile to PR professionals, launched into a discussion of how blogs and other new media are changing the business.
From the PRWeek website … that’s all folks.

Oh man. Man oh man. Edelman, I think, gets the blogosphere, but PRWeek doesn’t. Check out his own blog post on his keynote. He also links to David Weinberger’s live blogging of the keynote (I love live conference blogging … it’s fun, it’s exciting, and it helps get the great messages and quotable quotes out there as soon as the speaker has said them), which I have yet to pour over … but I am looking forward to reading asap.

In Richard Edelman’s post and the snippets I read in the PRWeek article (because Dave forwarded it to Rick), it’s clear the PR folks have to change tactics to adapt to the new communications and media realities. I’m not saying that bloggers are all powerful, what I’m saying is that bloggers can get a message out fast. That message can be good or bad. Things like PRWeek (and other publications) blocking off content behind the walled garden of subscribers only, yeah that doesn’t fly. It especially doesn’t fly when the article blocked is about a luminary of PR talking about how PR professionals have to adapt to the new blogosphere reality. Sheesh. I hope they open this article up to the world, because Edelman really says great stuff.

Let’s take how he described, and apologized for, Robert Scoble’s recent experience with PR people:

Microsoft employee and blogger Robert Scoble, who was scheduled to interview Edelman for the keynote, has experienced a family emergency, which he wrote about on his blog. Despite broadcasting his tragedy, he noted in a follow-up post that he was still receiving PR pitches since he wrote about his family’s situation.

Scoble could not attend, but, sent a question asking why PR people, who presumably value his opinion enough to have read his blog, were still sending him product pitches while he was facing tragedy.

“On behalf the PR field, I apologize to Robert for the misbehavior and tell you that there is a better way,” Edelman said.

[snip]

“A lot of PR people regard blogs as another form of the mainstream media to be pitched,” Edelman said. “Our methodology has traditionally been to throw out 1,000 flowers and one might bloom. That’s not the way to interact with the blogosphere.”

That’s good, that’s smart. Robert, though, really hits the nail on the head:

But, in today’s world of search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, Technorati, Feedster, and others, it just isn’t good to be clued out. —Scoble

Edelman also “gets” how blogger love to get sneak peaks at stuff … oh do we love it.

“Our great triumphs are persuading clients to show beta versions of products to bloggers months in advance of actual product launch,” Edelman said. “By the time we started talking to the MSM [mainstream media], we had some momentum.”

That’s totally it. I’ve been apart of a few beta tests recently (Ether for example) where after the beta period (and bloggers are among the testers), we were asked for our feedback and if we wished to be included in press materials. Smart, very smart. Hey, we’re interested in your opinion and would you like to be included in stuff to get you some attention. Hmm, umm, yes!

Richard Edelman knows that the PR world is changing. PR folks can’t just spin and massage the message any more. They have to deal with citizen journalists, bloggers, and just plain everyone. It’s going to take a while before blogger stop getting e-mail pitches out of the blue, but here’s to hoping.

Tags: Richard Edelman, Syndicate Conference, Robert Scoble, PR

Two of the best sessions at this week’s Mesh Conference in Toronto were the ones related to Web 2.0 and VC money. Don’t know which inspired me more, Paul Kedrosky’s or Rick Segal’s. Mark Evans of the National Post condensed his thoughts in his article published today (which he lobbied to get pulled out from behind the “walled garden” of subscription only). Here are some excerpts from his article:

There is, however, some evidence the environment is changing. For one, Web 2.0 entrepreneurs don’t need large amounts of money because they can use free open-source software, and low-cost hardware and network bandwidth to develop and distribute a new Web-based service.

This means entrepreneurs can take an idea and create a business without worrying about whether they can get financed. This is a healthier approach because the start-ups that are successful in attracting customers and generating revenue have better leverage when they decide to pursue venture capital to jump-start growth.

At the same time, some VCs have started to realize they need to behave differently if they want to play in the Web 2.0 world. They need to be more aggressive, they need to take more risk and they need to accept the reality that financial success could come from a variety of small investments rather than a few large opportunities.

[snip]

It appears VCs could have an easier time discovering new Web 2.0 start-ups if the enthusiasm and energy of the entrepreneurs who gathered at the mesh conference is any indication. Some of the companies to watch are DabbleDB, iUpload.com, Freshbooks.com, B5Media, Bubbleshare.com, EndlessEurope.com and Octopz.com.

This is an new and exciting time for Canadian Tech. More sharp people are getting their ideas out and some forward-thinking VCs are getting in on the game.

Tags: Canadian tech, VC funding, Paul Kedrosky, Rick Segal

RSS ad specialist Pheedo together with SilverPop, iUpload and PRWeb, are hosting a dinner roundtable on the topic of RSS advertising. Details here. This follows on a similar event they hosted earlier this month in San Francisco.

This just in… we’ve learned about a free teleconference tomorrow, hosted by WOMMA (Word of Mouth Marketing Association). Here are the details:

Wednesday April 19, 2006 at noon ET
Dial into a free teleconference on WOM Ethics (“A Practical Guide to Doing it Right”). Call 512-225-3050 and enter passcode 772541#.

WOMMA’s teleconferences are usually paid events so this sounds kinda interesting. It coincides with WOMMA’s announcement that DuPont has adopted WOMMA’s code of ethics for word-of-mouth marketing.

And the significance is that there’s been a good bit of discussion on the ethics of word-of-mouth marketing campaigns where the sneezers (to use Seth Godin’s expression) are offered some kind of incentive for spreading the word. It’s an interesting debate — there’s often a gray area — and I’ll be interested to hear how the WOMMA folks frame it up.

Coinciding with Ad:Tech San Francisco April 26-28, the RSS Industry Night Roundtable II aims to assemble a group of the top thought leaders in the RSS industry to discuss key topics that challenge all of us in RSS Advertising. This group will span the disciplines of RSS advertising, RSS manufacture, RSS aggregators and readers, and RSS purveyors and luminaries.

The event is free and seating is limited to 40 people. The event is sponsored by iUpload, PRWeb and Pheedo.

The first RSS Roundtable dinner, brought together some of the pioneers in RSS marketing and services including, Yahoo!, Microsoft, eBay, NewsGator, Simplefeed, Pubsub, Feedburner, Pheedo and Forrester.

The intent of this meeting is to discuss a number of key issues facing our industry and it’s chances for continued success. This meeting will also serve as a vehicle for our key industry partners to discuss mutual challenges and viable solutions, as well as come to a mutual understanding of goals and objectives that we all have for the RSS advertising space. Lastly, we will have an opportunity to collaborate, as leaders in the industry, on how we can increase the rate of RSS adoption among information consumers. Case studies on RSS advertising success will also be presented. Attendees will also be encouraged to share their stories.

Where: San Francisco, 10-15 minute walk from Moscone (location of Ad:Tech). Event location details will be sent to interested parties.
Time: 6:30PM – 9:30PM
Date: April 27 (second day of Ad:Tech)
Cost: Free dinner sponsored by iUpload, PRWeb, Pheedo, cash bar
RSVP:: Send an email to bill AT Pheedo.com with your name, email, telephone and company name/address

Topics:
There are so many topics that we can collectively address as an industry, however, it’s critical that we focus on the important few that address issues of RSS growth and adoption.

We will focus on key industry issues that are preventing business adoption of RSS. Below are the high-level issues that we’ll cover. At the end of the document are additional topics that can be discussed if there is additional time.

–> Lack of standardized RSS metrics
–> Lack of presentable case studies and best practices
–> IRSS mass syndication
–> Actual RSS penetration
–> Rich-media advertising

Attendees:
Ideally, the event will attract around 40 high level leaders from within the RSS and Advertising industries including the following disciplines.

RSS Manufacturer
RSS Advertising
RSS Readers
RSS Services
RSS Convergence
RSS Research

If you are interested in attending, please send an email to bill AT Pheedo.com with your name, email, telephone and company name/address.

This idea has been some time in the making and is finally here. When I first met Jim Turner he mentioned the idea of “Hey wouldn’t it be a great idea to have a business blogging Caribbean cruise?” I thought … Yeah! Awesome, let’s do it! Well months later we’ve taken the wraps off the cruise website and blog …Blogonomics (website) and the Blogonomics Blog.

So, what’s the deal? Basically it’s a five-day cruise from Fort Lauderdale to Cozumel and back (of course back!) that we’re considering a blogging boot camp on the high seas (with fruity drinks!). The goal is that attendees can come learn about blogging from leading experts (with topics like design, metrics, SEO, using RSS, and writing) and leave ready to blog better or get their business blog off the ground. We’ll have on-board WiFi and hands-on workshops in the evenings like adding pictures to your blog.

All the pricing and info is on our website. We have early-bird pricing available for the first 100 bookings, so with the amount of interest we’ve been getting on the back-channel … you might think about getting in early.

We are, of course, looking for sponsors for this first-of-its-kind event. Scott has pulled together a super sponsor-info pack and other information on the website as well.

This has been a true team effort. None of this could have been done without this awesome team. Scott Goldblatt has been leading the charge for Jim and I. Shylah, true to form, always comes in just when we’re getting behind. And then there’s Jeremy Wright … the cool, cool template is his doing. Not to mention that many of the contributors here (Jim, me, Jeremy) are confirmed speakers and there are more to come!

So … let’s get cruising!

Tags: Blogonomics, blogger cruise

Lots of buzz. Lots of folks.

Word-of-mouth-marketing (WOMM), Florida warmth & sun and a bunch of online experts… including our very own Toby Bloomberg, Josh Hallett and Dana VanDen Heuvel who are live blogging the Word of Mouth Marketing Association‘s conference in Orlando. (Dana is one of the lead bloggers.) What more could you ask for?

Check out the WOMBAT (Word of Mouth Basic Training) conference blog. Day 1 here. Day 2 here. They’ve got a full crowd of international attendees and speakers. 400 people according to conference organizer and WOMMA ceo Andy Sernovitz. Wish I were there…

Note: there are lots of posts on the WOMBAT blog. You’ll have to poke around. A sampling: Women and WOMM; B2B and WOMM; WOMM and ethics; WOM and blogging.

Also see Technorati.

Bottom line: WOMM has come into its own as a separate and defined marketing niche. The notion that this form of marketing can be codified and measured is fascinating. Stay tuned…

If you’re coming to the Syndicate conference this December 12-14 in San Francisco and you work in the "RSS industry", we’d like to invite you to drop in for some lively discussion on the future of our industry. 

In conjunction with the event, Pheedo is informally hosting an off-conference RSS Industry Night (full disclosure: I work for Pheedo) Roundtable, Rok Hrastnik will be moderating the evening as a neutral party. Essentially, we are aiming to focus the event on our industry and not on any company in particular.

Event Summary:
Coinciding with the RSS industry conference, Syndicate, the RSS Industry Night Roundtable aims to assemble a group of the top thought leaders in the RSS industry to discuss key topics that challenge all of us in this space. This group will span the disciplines of RSS advertising, RSS manufacture, RSS aggregators and readers, and RSS purveyors and luminaries.

The intent of this meeting is to discuss a number of key issues facing our industry and it’s chances for continued success. This meeting will also serve as a vehicle for our key industry partners to discuss mutual challenges and viable solutions, as well as come to a mutual understanding of goals and objectives that we all have for the RSS space. Lastly, we will have an opportunity to collaborate, as leaders in the industry, on how we can increase the rate of RSS adoption among information consumers.

When:

Time: 6:30PM

Date: December 12th

Timing: In conjunction with the first day of Syndicate Conference on December 12th, 2005 in San Francisco.

Moderator:
Rok Hrastnik, a noted RSS authority and author of the book Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS has agreed to moderate the event as a neutral party.

Topics:
There are so many topics that we can collectively address as an industry, however, it’s critical that we focus on the important few that address issues of RSS growth and adoption.

We will focus on key industry issues that are preventing business adoption of RSS. Below are the high-level issues that we’ll cover on the 12th. At the end of the document are additional topics that can be discussed if there is additional time.

–> Lack of standardized RSS metrics

–> Lack of presentable case studies and best practices

–> IRSS mass syndication

–> Actual RSS penetration

–> Rich-media advertising

Attendees:
Ideally, the event will attract around 20 high level leaders from within the RSS industry from the following disciplines.

RSS Manufacture
RSS Advertising
RSS Readers
RSS Services
RSS Convergence
RSS Research

Participation:
If you wish to participate, please contact Rok Hrastnik as soon as possible for additional event information. The audience will be targeted to RSS service providers.

This week the search marketing conference Pubcon X was held in Las Vegas with many great sessions, one of which, RSS Feeds and Podcasting was particularly well done.  Presenters included:  Jeremy Zawodny of Yahoo, Amanda Watlington of Searching for Profit, Daron Babin of New Gen Media and Greg Jarboe of SEO-PR.

Presentations ranged from the how-to’s of podcasting and tools, podcast optimization, using RSS to uncover and promote hidden publisher content, industry data on podcasting and of course, Jeremy focused on Yahoo’s tools involving RSS and Podcasts.

Detailed coverage of the session can be found at: "Pubcon X – RSS Feeds and Podcasting".