Less than two weeks from today, some of the brightest and most successful business bloggers will be meeting in San Francisco to both share what they’ve learned — good and bad — about business blogging, and to explore future directions for weblogs and how blogging can benefit companies large and small.

Speakers at the Blog Business Summit include DL Byron, Molly Holzschlag, Robert Scoble, Jeffrey Zeldman, Darren Barefoot, Rebecca Blood and Anil Dash. Oh yeah, I (Dave Taylor) will be speaking there too, and debating best practices with Robert Scoble.

If you’re just coming up to speed on business blogging then you already know that reading Blog Business Consulting is a superb way to get involved, but for many people, a more focused workshop is a better strategy. If that describes you, then you’ll be quite interested to learn about the dynamite Business Blogging 101 workshop I’ll be leading on the 16th of August too.

There’s no better way to spend three days learning about weblogs, business blogging, and how to keep track of the blogosphere buzz than to make plans now to attend the Blog Business Summit at the historic Palace Hotel in San Francisco, August 16-19. Register now while there’s still space.

We hope to see you there!

  Our very own contributor Steve Rubel is on the advisory board of this conference taking place in New York City, October 17-18, 2005.

BlogOn 2005 Social Media Summit is the premier executive conference for
forward-thinking marketing, communications and media executives who are
considering strategic initiatives that leverage social media — blogs,
social networking sites, collaboration tools and syndication feeds.

I’m looking forward to seeing the lineup and the speakers for this event.  This should prove to be a great forum for getting the message of Business Blogging into the hands of those that matter.

I realized that I should probably note that fellow site poster Todd S. and I are both speaking on a blog panel at the Word of Mouth Marketing Association‘s debut conference next week (Tues. & Wed.) in Chicago, in case any of you faithful readers were planning on attending. Should be fun. We just had a productive call about it. Deborah Schultz, marketing director for Six Apart, will also be on the panel. We’re actually planning to blog a bunch of resources here just before our panel on Wednesday morning, so stay tuned.

Here’s a clue that WOMMA "gets it": the site has a Press Pass Policy page that reads, in part:

This event is being held in a small venue with limited seating. We have
reserved 20 seats for press and bloggers. Priority will be given to
reporters with media credentials and full-time bloggers who are coming
as journalists primarily to learn and cover the event.

I suspect they’ve long ago since given out those few passes, but don’t you like that the policy applies equally to bloggers? Except, "full-time bloggers" pretty much narrows the field. I mean, Jeff Jarvis and Steve Rubel and Glenn Reynolds and Markos Moulitsas Zúniga and most of the rest of us aside from Jason Kottke have full-time jobs. I presume it’s more a polite way of saying, "Sorry, you don’t get enough traffic" to all the wannabees. Fair enough.

A new seminar on business blogging: "Blogging Goes Mainstream: New Media For Corporate Growth." Cost: $125.

Attendee Profile:

• Corporate Communications and Marketing
  Executives
• Product Development Executives
• Brand Managers and Directors
• Technology Executives
• Research Analysts
• Advertising and PR Professionals
• Journalists and Bloggers

Where: Microsoft Customer Briefing Center

1290 Avenue of the Americas, Between 51st and 52nd Street, 6th Floor

New York, NY

When: April 28th, 2005

4:00PM – 8:30PM

Business Development Institute: Blogging Goes Mainstream

There was a day when I had to talk AdTech into a panel on blogs (November 2003). For their next show in San Francisco, April 25-28, I’m interested to see they have three sessions on blogs and kindred topics: "The New Personal Web," "Feeding the Beast: RSS, Data Feeds, PodCasts and More," and "Micropersuasion and Blogvertising."  Most amusing, Steve Rubel, an AdTech panelist and would-be contributor to this site, managed to get his session named after his blog!

The American Marketing Association has just launched this blog to support its seminar series Blogs: Marketing Beyond the Website. (BTW, the NY event on January 21st, in which I will be participating, is filling up nicely, I’m pleased to say.) Dana VanDen Heuvel, who set up the blog, describes its mission this way in an email to the group of authors:

The AMA blog can be characterized as a vehicle for promoting the event, a clearinghouse for marketing weblog related topics, an overall ‘drive-to’ engine for the seminars, and a repository for "blogging from the seminar’ type content.  All while being geared toward MARKETERS.  What this blog is not is another blog about blogging for the sake of blogging. I know, that’s pretty narrow in focus, but that’s why we originally created the weblog.  Further, it stands to reason that a seminar, on the topic of weblogs, by the de facto organization of record for marketing, should have its own blog.

UPDATE:
For anyone in the NY area interested, a group of us will be getting together for dinner after the event. Details on Church of the Customer.

Link

For those of you who have enjoyed my sparring in recent weeks with direct marketing copywriter Bob Bly, a big name in his field, over the utility of blogs in the marketing mix (e.g., here and here and here), now you have a chance to see the sparks fly in person, courtesy of the American Marketing Association.

I’ve wormed my way into the AMA’s all-day seminar Blogs: Marketing Beyond the Website, moderating the panel at the end of the day for the NY event, January 21. Originally scheduled panelists will include blogger and marketing experts Toby Bloomberg, Steve Rubel, Bill Flitter, Ben McConnell, Dana VanDen Heuvel and Dave Williams. And just to keep things interesting, I recommended we include blog skeptic Bob Bly, to which he graciously agreed. Promises to be lots of fun.

Granted, it’s not a freebie ($695 for non-AMA members), but if you can’t afford to attend, at least give us some linky love, so more marketers with actual conference budgets might get tipped off to the opportunithy.

The American Marketing Association is holding a three-city seminar in the coming weeks about business blogging in Seattle (Dec 17), New York (Jan 21)  and  Chicago (Feb 18). Chaired by business blogger Toby Bloomberg. From the sales copy:

Internet surfers, advertisers, journalists and even politicians do it. But are blogs a credible marketing strategy for your brand or company? Experienced bloggers answer your questions and show how to incorporate the newest internet-based strategy into your organization’s marketing plan. Leave this marketing blog workshop with innovative ideas and specific techniques to apply directly to your own marketing strategy.

Costs $695 to attend for non-AMA members (only slightly cheaper for members).

AMA: Blogs: Marketing Beyond the Website

I have been woefully remiss in not yet pointing out this event, scheduled for Seattle next January 24-25:

This event will show you how your business can leverage current real-world blogging techniques, tools and platforms to promote and enhance your ventures.

Speakers include Brian Alvey, co-founder of Weblogs, Inc., Glenn Fleishman, old buddy and tech guru (I love the photo of you with hair, Glenn!), Robert Scoble, Microsoft’s tech evangelist and biz blogger supreme, Steve Broback, co-founder of the summit and formerly co-founder of Thunder Lizard Productions, where I had been a regular speaker ‚Äî among others. I had also been invited to be a speaker, but unfortunately with the new full-time job, I couldn’t get away. Lots of great sessions. Sounds like it should be a winner.

UDPATE:
I just read an email Broback sent me several days ago explaining they have a cool sponsorship policy offering multiple levels of recognition, from a link on their site to the ability host a reception, with a clever twist: while the high-end sponsorships cost up to nearly $10,000, they can also be had for free by bloggers, so long as you drive a certain number of visits to their site. At the low end, a "Blogger" sponsorship requires no amount of clicks, you just have to link to them. For the Platinum sponsorship, where you get all the opportunities to be recognized, including the hosted party in your name — a $9,900 value — you just have to drive a mere 25,000 clicks to the site.

Only strange thing is they don’t actually lay all this out on the site, so far as I can see. Broback emailed me a PDF that explained it all. Odd. Not really in the spirit of the blogosphere to make you request a PDF via email.

UPDATE:
The PDF describing the terms of the sponsorship thingy is now online.

Link

Pete Blackshaw

A couple of weeks ago I noted that Intelliseek, which produces the blog intelligence applications BlogPulse, was hosting a seminar on the topic of business blogs. Apparently they thought it would be a good idea to put their money where their mouth is and start a blog of their own to keep up the momentum on the topic. The blog is written by Pete Blackshaw, the company’s chief marketing officer.

Meanwhile, Intelliseek just introduced an new analytics feature to BlogPulse. The press release reports:

The new blog analytics capability is designed to help marketers and brand managers track, measure and analyze information from nearly two million blogs a day – information posted and shared by influential, active online consumers and opinion shapers.

Link

BloggerCon is back, this time at Stanford University’s Law School, November 6th. Click the link in the headline of this post for details.

Link

Intelliseek, an online market intelligence firm that includes a blog analysis service, is hosting a free webinar on August 25 (times given without time zone context, so call first).

Intelliseek: Marketers Must Understand Blog Behavior

There was so much coverage of the BlogOn conference in Berkeley last week that BlogTalk, in Vienna, got short shrift. In fact, it almost snuck below my radar. I’d appreciate any links to others who covered this (in the comments).

Link

Various coverage about BlogOn conference, mostly highlighting the experiences of everyone’s favorite blogging business, Microsoft.

• CNET News: Blog’s the Word in Big Business
• Wired: The Empire Blogs Back
• Various blog posts via Daypop

Those interested in attending the BlogOn conference in Berkeley, CA, July 22-23 can recieve a $100 discount by entering the promotional code “socialtext” when registering here.

So, the AdTechBlog was a raving success in San Francisco. Hence, Ad-Tech has invited us to repeat our stellar performance for the Chicago show, just over two weeks from today (sorry for the last-minute notice; that’s just the way we do things around here).

Here’s the deal: you get paid nothing, and you pay for your own travel and accommodation. But you do get a full pass to the event, including all sessions, a $995 value. You have to blog a minimum of five posts, including sessions, exhibit hall activities, general conference activities and, last but hardly least, parties.

If you think you’re man or woman enough for the challenge, drop a line. Experienced bloggers preferred, and industry knowledge (Internet advertising/marketing) of some sort is pretty much a must.

Mark your calendars and call your travel agent: July 23 in Berkeley, CA at the Haas School of Business, BlogOn is an event about “The Business of Social Media,” focusing on blogs, social networks and syndication.

Speakers include Andrew Anker, EVP of Six Apart, Jason McCabe Calcanis, chairman of Weblogs, Inc., Dan Gillmor, columnist and celebrated blogger for San Jose Mercury News, JD Lasica, big deal blogger of New Media Musings, Craig Newmark, the Craig of Craig’s List, Tony Perkins, founder of AlwaysOn Network, Mark Pincus, CEO of Tribe Networks, Doc Searls, big deal blogger, David Sifry, CEO of Technoratic, and many others.

Registration costs $495 before July 1 and $550 thereafter.

Link