I’m blogging live from BlogOn over at Bruner Blog. So far I’ve been underwhelmed by the content, but then I go to a lot of conferences and usually spend more time in the hallways than in the actual seminars. Specific criticism is that there has been much too much sales pitching by the presenters.

Networking, however, is good. I’ve already chatted with Steve Rubel, Jeff Jarvis, Steve Hall, Jason Calacanis (yes, we still love each other) and other blogger bigshots (no sign of Denton yet) as well as business people from DaimlerChrysler, Auntie Anne’s and other large and smaller marketers.

More later…

I don’t mean God actually blogs, but that there is a bloggercon going on right now called Godblog. It’s happening at Biola University even as I speak. In fact, one of our very own bloggers, LaShawn Barber (See her blogs here and here) is a featured speaker. (So, why isn’t she talking about it instead of me? Hmmm.)

In case you’re not familiar with the religious end of the blogosphere, it’s big, especially among evangelicals. Hugh Hewitt is a name many people would recognize. He’s one of the Godblog superstars.

I have to give a shout out to one of my best friends, Stacy Harp, of Mind & Media. She’s a speaker on a session called Making Money with Blogs, and is keeping up with the convention on her blog.

Just heard from one of the PR people working on the upcoming Web 2.0 conference that there will be an official blog, due to go live next week, and that bloggers will be represented among the number of press covering the event. Are any of you planning to attend? Do you plan to blog it?

An old industry acquaintance Jason Throckmorton, who reminds me he once did PR for Flycast (there’s a blast from the past!), writes me to ask help promoting a client’s survey about corporate blogging. I get a fair number of requests to link to surveys on this topic, not all of which I bother with, but this one looks interesting, particularly given that the producers of BlogOn are behind it. Jason writes:

I’m writing to give you a heads up about a survey focused on corporate blogging that Guidewire Group (producers of BlogOn) is doing with one of our clients called iUpload. We’re asking folks like yourself with strong ties to the blogging/marketing/PR communities to help spread the word.

We¹re going to be announcing highlights of the survey at next month’s BlogOn conference. The goal is to shed light on market demand for corporate blogging solutions, emerging best practices and the role of blogs in key enterprise functions, as well as to identify barriers inhibiting adoption in the marketplace. Obviously, lots of overlap with what you’re covering.

In addition to directly receiving the highlights of the survey, participants can also register for a chance to win an iPod nano or a complimentary pass to the event.

I just noticed this panel at NY AdTech, Nov. 7th:

Creating and Distributing A Corporate Blog

Many
companies are creating blogs to connect with their customers. Should
you have one? And if you do, are you doing it “right?� Should you
provide an RSS feed for your blog and how does that work? While you may
own and run your blog, you need to think of this as your contribution
to a much larger ‘discussion’, i.e. it’s about the blogosphere not the
blog. It’s about participation vs. publishing with links. Corporate
blogs can effectively promote organizational messages, information and
ideals. They are great for feedback and for keeping fresh information
in front of your most influential customers. Find out the magic do’s
and don’t and how to get started.

MODERATOR:
Michael McGuire, Research Director, Gartner Group

SPEAKERS:
Michael Terpin, Chairman & CEO, Terpin Communications Group
Pauline Ores, Web Marketing Strategist, IBM.com
Stowe Boyd, President, Corante
Michael Wiley, Director, New Media, GM Communications

A new conference is being held in Austin, TX, on November 2nd, called The Blogging Enterprise. A blurb from the site says…

"The Blogging Enterprise is a one-day conference that will explore blogging, podcasting and video podcasting and their potential benefits and value in building brands, educating prospects, making sales and cultivating customer loyalty. Attendees will depart with new ideas and a better sense for how to implement this new technology successfully."

They are looking for speakers for the event and had asked me to consider it. But, I declined saying I new at least a half dozen people per topic much better qualified than me, most of whom are contributors to this site. If you’re interested in speaking, contact Steve Farrar. They’re looking for sponsors too, btw.

One of the great things about participating in a three-day conference like Blog Business Summit is meeting in the flesh people you’ve been interacting with online. (I ran a session featuring dueling corporate blogs: GM’s Fastlane blog vs. Intuit’s QuickBooks Online blog.)

Dave Tayor, who ran the BBS’s popular Blogging 101 pre-conference session, has penned a thoughtful article on this topic: The Critical Business Value of Attending Conferences. BTW, it’s been hugely fun for me to meet Dave in person for the first time after several years of email correspondence.

In addition, I’ve had the chance to meet a handful of whip-smart A-list women bloggers. In no order, a tip of the hat to Mary Hodder, Sally Falkow, Laurie Mayers, Rebecca Blood, Molly Holzschlag and Evelyn Rodriguez – all of whom presented at BBS. It’s been a thrill…

Caught Debbie while talking with Scoble.  Hmm  What’s on her mind do you think?

• WYSIWYG editor
• Side-panel features like categories can be moved around to better suit the order you prefer.

WP is also launching a hosted service called WordPress.com for hosted blogging.  Continues …

Clever article by Susan Kuchinskas for InternetNews.com, Entering the Corposphere, gives a good overview of today’s sessions at the Blog Business Summit. Some excerpts:

“… corporate communications pros and public relations account execs gathered to grok the rules of engagement with the blogosphere.”

and

“Blogger relations can be more critical than public relations, according to Robert Scoble, Microsoft’s chief blogger.”

and

“(DL Byron) turns off comments on his (Clip-n-Seal) blog and advises clients to do likewise,
to avoid having yucky stuff like porn spam showing up under the brand.”

End of the afternoon and, surprisingly, the audience at the Blog Business Summit is beginning to perk up and ask more questions.Someone asks Robert Scoble: “So how much time does blogging take?” He laughs. His one-word answer: “Starbucks.” Expanded: “I spend almost every waking hour doing something related to blogging.”

The “time” question is key and of huge concern to prospective corporate bloggers.

Great tidbit just now from Boeing Web designer Chris Brownrigg on why Boeing’s much talked about blog is called Randy’s Journal: “Because they (management) were uncomfortable with the term blog.” Chris wisely got around that decision by giving the blog the following page title: “Boeing Blog: Randy’s Journal.” Better for search results when you type in “Boeing blog.” Take a look when you click through.

The (dreaded… or anticipated) blogging phone call

Chris was given 48 hours to design and launch the blog for Boeing VP Randy Baseler after getting “the blogging phone call.” Audience members nodded at this. Seems both managers and techies are getting “the call” from top management to “get into this blog thing.” Uninitiated into the ways of the blogosphere, he dove into the project by looking at the code behind lots of other blogs. He settled on Movable Type as the software platform. Posted a mock-up of the proposed blog here. Comments and other blog features were subsequently added after readers protested.

I love this inside glimpse of how a corporate blog gets launched… shows how it’s very much a joint effort between management and the Web techies.

Bob Wyman, CTO of PubSub, is trying to explain to the audience what the point is of blog search tools like PubSub, BlogPulse and Technorati. I like the way he puts it: “For the first time you have an open, trackable conversation.” In other words the babble of the blogosphere can be analyzed. If you (a company) listen carefully, you will learn what people are talking about, what they’re interested in and what they want to hear about. And then YOU will know what to write about, rather than issuing a press release once a month because you think you should.

Interesting… but I fear there’s too much inside baseball talk this morning. If I were an attendee just getting on the blogging boat, I’d be a bit lost already. Hope the panels coming up are more mindful of those who don’t consume Jeff Jarvis with their morning coffee.

There appears to be a packed house here at the Business Blogging 101 Seminar presented at the Blog Business Summit by Dave Taylor.  This is promising to see with the number of people wanting to know about how to use a blog as a business tool.

Dave wanted me to mention his Madonna look with the michrophone on his head, what he does not realize, is he needs to  change the wardrobe somehow to complete the look.  If my electricity holds out, I’ll be blogging some of the more finer points.

"The future of business is findability."

Many businesses attending all have websites, but few update their content often.

"The tool that people are using are blogs to update their content".

"The difference between a website and a blog is managing a site versus managing the content".

Dave emphasizes content management to increase your search results through blogs.