We continue our relentless drive to bring Groundswell ideas to you, whatever event you're attending. In May you can meet us at:

Thursday, May 1, 12:00 pm (eastern)
Young Presidents Organization Teleseminar

Half Moon Bay, California
Wednesday, May 7, 10:45 am (pacific) Ziff Davis CIO Summit
Charlene is on a panel "Web 2.0 and the CIO - Raising the Collaborative Intellect of Your Enterprise"

Beverly Hills, California
Thursday, May 8, 10:00 am (pacific) INMA World Congress
Charlene is giving a speech "Social Networking and Digital Migration: How Newspapers Can Position Themselves for Growth"

Las Vegas
Tuesday, May 13, 8:45 am (pacific) Community 2.0 
Charlene is giving a speech "Tapping Into the Groundswell: How To Create Your Community Strategy"

New York
Wednesday, May 14, 9:40 am (eastern) Avenue A/Razorfish Client Event
Charlene is giving a speech.

New York
Thursday, May 15, 5:15 pm (eastern) MIT Enterprise Forum
Josh is giving a speech about Groundswell.

New York
Friday, May 16, 8:30 am (eastern) Corporate Communication and Technology Conference
Josh is on a panel, "Using Web 2.0 to Deliver Business Results."

San Francisco Bay Area
Friday, May 16, 6:30 pm (pacific) Society For New Communications Research "Third Thursday"
Charlene Li will give a speech about Groundswell.

Boston
Tuesday, May 20, 8:00 am (eastern) MITX and Avenue A | Razorfish event
Josh is on a panel presenting ideas about the digital outlook for 2008.

Boston
Thursday, May 22, 8:00 am (pacific) Mass Technology Leadership Council Breakfast
Josh will give a speech on ideas from Groundswell.

Austin
Thursday, May 29, 12:00 pm (central) Internet Strategy Forum 
Josh will give a speech on ideas from Groundswell.

Austin
Friday, May 30, 12:00 pm (central) Bazaarvoice Social Commerce Summit 
Josh will give a speech on "Turning the Social    Technology Groundswell to Your Advantage."

(Looking at this schedule, I sure am glad there are two of us!)

By Charlene Li

Josh and I will be at the Web 2.0 Expo this week, with the hope of meeting as many of you as possible! Below is our general schedule, and in between sessions we'll be roaming the halls and show floor. You can track our whereabouts via our Twitter feeds (Charlene and Josh's feeds, respectively).

And if you have a copy of the book, we'll be happy to sign it (it will be on sale on the Expo floor).

Wednesday, April 23rd

9:40am-10:20am, Conference Session, "Creating A Coherent Social Strategy For Business", Room 2022.

Both of us will be presenting key frameworks from the "Groundswell" book, as well as how technology and business people can and need to work together to create a strategy. You technically need a Conference Pass to see the session, but O'Reilly is including our session as part of Web2Open, meaning that if you have that pass (which is FREE) you can attend our session. When you register on site, use the code Websf08opw to get the Web2Open pass.

10:40am-12:00pm, Web2Open Discussion

This is an open discussion forum following our conference session. We'll facilitate discussions around strategies, tactics, and metrics used by companies -- and turn to the people who are active practitioners to join the conversation. Note that you'll need the Web2Open pass to attend this session as well.

4:30pm-5:00pm: Keynote: "A Conversation With Max Levchin"

Charlene will be running the kickoff Q&A session with Max Levchin, CEO of Slide. If you have any burning questions you'd like to see her ask Max, please add them to the comments or email them to cli at forrester dot com.

9pm onwards: Meet up at Restaurant Lulu, 816 Folsom @ 4th Street

Come meet us for no-host drinks at the bar of this great restaurant.

Thursday, April 24th and Friday, April 25th

Josh will be around Thursday morning before heading back to Boston.

I will be doing some real-time research on two topics: widget marketing and the future of social networks. If you have anything to add to these two research areas, please let me know. Two sessions I'm looking forward to are "Open Platforms" with David Recordan from Six Apart, and "Widgets Grow Up" with Alex Bard (Goowy Media), Tariq Krim (NetVibes), and Hooman Radfar (Clearspring).

Hope to see and meet many of you later this week!

by Josh Bernoff

The community folks at Mzinga/Prospero have hired me to do a Webinar. It's free to attendees, and will cover community best practices.

If you're interested, sign up here. I'm looking forward to speaking with you.

It's Wednesday, 16 April, at 2:00 PM eastern time (11am pacific).

by Josh Bernoff

Join me for a talk about Groundswell and how to build and run a successful community, sponsored by Lithium. Sign up here. The Webinar is at 1:00 eastern, 10:00 pacific.

Many companies use Lithium communities for Supporting their customers, one of the five key objectives we cite for groundswell strategy.

Lithium is featured in our book including the incredible story of the support forum that saved Christmas when an earthquake in Asia cut many of the support phone lines for router-maker Linksys. We also quote Lithium CEO Lyle Fong on how recognition systems are crucial in making communities successful.

Should be an interesting online event.

As you might imagine, we're ramping up our speaking schedule in March and April in support of Groundswell's April release. Here's where you can see us coming up. Please stop by, share stories, interview us -- we want to connect! All times are local -- any of these may require membership in the organizations running them or an admission fee. All times are local.

Sunday, March 09 SXSW Interactive Conference, Austin, 11:30am, central
Charlene will be speaking on "Social Strategies For Revolutionaries", followed up a reading from her upcoming book, "Groundswell".

Wednesday, March 12 Digital Hollywood, New York, 10:45 am, eastern
Josh will be speaking on panel moderated by Ron Grover: Social Media & User Generated Media Economy: The Content, Personalization, Lifestyle and Advertising

Tuesday, March 18, 2008 ETC CxO Roundtable, Burbank, 8:30am, pacific
Charlene is participating in a roundtable on social networking, how consumers are using it, and how it is changing the entertainment experience.

Tuesday, March 18 Public Relations Society of America Teleseminar, 3:00 pm eastern
Josh will be speaking along with technology journalists. Title: Meet the Media: Technology Journalists

Tuesday, April 8 and Wednesday, April 9, Forrester Marketing Forum 2008 Los Angeles
A great marketing event. We'll both be doing a presentation there. More details to follow.

Thursday, April 10, TravelCom, Chicago, 9:00 am central
Charlene will be giving the keynote. "Welcome to 2013: The Changes in Technology and Consumers that will Affect Your Business".

Thursday, April 10, Customer Experience (CX) Innovation Summit, Miami, 9:30am eastern
Josh will be giving the keynote at this Blast Radius event.

Monday, April 14, National Association of Broadcasters, Las Vegas, 3:30pm pacific
Josh will be on a general session keynoted by by John Gage, Chief Researcher and Director of the Science Office, Sun Microsystems, Inc. It’s an age where everyone can broadcast their thoughts, ideas and digital creations worldwide over a variety of platforms. Is this just a passing fad or the start of a new era in broadcasting? 

Thursday, April 17, Business Without Borders: Leveraging International Networks, Toronto, 1:30pm eastern
Josh will discuss the impact of social technologies on business relationships and how these types of technologies can be leveraged to create business opportunities. The event is hosted by the Canadian Venture Capital Association.

Wednesday, April 23, Web 2.0 Expo, San Francisco, 9:40am pacific
We will both be speaking on Creating a Coherent Social Strategy for Business. We'll be presenting the major ideas in the book, and are planning other events around the same time -- the Web 2.0 Expo is our coming out party!

Tuesday, April 29, 19th Annual Professional BusinessWomen of California, San Francisco, 2:15pm pacific
Charlene Li will be speaking with Clay Shirky, and Tina Sharkey on "What's the Big Deal About Social Networking?"

If you'll be attending any of these conferences or events and are planning to see us, leave us a comment here and let us know if there are any topics you'd really like to hear about.

by Josh Bernoff

ZDNet is holding a live Webcast Wednesday about how your company can use the social world to improve product innovation. It's free with registration.

Here are the details:

Date: 2/27/2008
Time: 2 eastern, 11 pacific
Participants: yours truly along with Colby Dyess, Product Manager from Endeca

For my portion, I'll be talking about how companies are engaging with their customers to improve product development, with examples from Del Monte Pet Products, salesforce.com, the Swiss mobile operator Swisscom, the French bank Credit Mutuel, and the Canadian retailer Loblaw.

The event is sponsored by Optaros, which was a finalist for a Forrester Groundswell award with its Swisscom Mobile Labs application.

by Josh Bernoff

I am delighted to be part of a series of events looking at the Cluetrain Manifesto ten years later.

Cluetrain was ahead of its time. It changed everything. A lot of what they said was prescient, given how little evidence there was to back it up at the time. Now that we are living in the cluetrain world, what's the right way to think about it? That's what I'll be talking about.

The first event, called "There's a New Conversation," is in New York on next Wednesday afternoon, February 13. You can still sign up.

Speakers include:

• Doc Searls, co-author of "The Cluetrain Manifesto" and fellow at Harvard's Berkman Institute
• Peter Hirshberg, Chairman of the Executive Committee of Technorati and Chairman and Partner at The Conversation Group
• Ted Shelton, partner at The Conversation Group
• Thor Muller, CEO of Get Satisfaction
• Jake McKee, Principal at Ant's Eye View, and past Global Community Relations Specialist for the LEGO Company
• And me, of course . . .

Location: SAP Customer Center, 95 Morton Street, New York, NY. Price: $76.50. Sign up: Here.

I hope to see you there. Should be an interesting conversation.

by Josh Bernoff

I'll be at the Personal Democracy Forum on Friday

Let me know if you want to get together. Comments here or by email.

By Charlene Li

Josh and I are going to be at the Web 2.0 Expo conference, and we’ll be joined by our colleague, Oliver Young. If you’ll be there, we hope to meet up with you – here are a couple of ways:

Panels. I’m running two panels, “Media 2.0” on Monday, and “Social Networking” on Tuesday. Oliver is running “Web 2.0 Monetizing and Enabling Customer Centric Product Platforms” on Wednesday.

Meetings. We’re eager to talk with you, either to hear about a new product or service, or to hear about how you’re using Web 2.0 technologies to improve your bottom line. If you won’t be at the Expo, please still get in touch – you can email us directly, although vendors should submit a briefing request at www.forrester.com/briefings (you’ll get more analysts potentially involved in the briefings this way).

Josh would like to find case studies where companies are seeing a return on their use of Web 2.0 technologies – this is for our upcoming book, which will focus on the effectiveness and ROI of social computing. Send him an email directly at jbernoff at forrester dot com.

Oliver is interested in speaking with anyone involved in the enterprise Web 2.0 market – pure plays, incumbent enterprise players, and of course, users. You can email him directly as well at oyoung at forrester dot com.

And I’m interested in seeing examples of how technology is impacting marketing – the conversations that companies have with their customers. I’m especially interested in social networking and community platforms that companies can use, primarily to set up their own social networks, but also to extend their relationships into existing networks like MySpace and Facebook. As always, I’m also eager to try out new technologies and ideas, especially in the consumer space. You can reach me at cli@forrester.com. 

Forrester Web 2.0 Briefing Day.Forrester will be holding its first Web 2.0 Briefing Day on Thursday, April 19 in Foster City, California. This complimentary event is an opportunity for companies to brief several analysts who focus on Web 2.0 trends and technologies – all at the same time and place. Companies can meet with up to three analysts, and can also learn how Forrester is working with companies in the Web 2.0 space. I’m also going to be giving a short talk on the state of Web 2.0. Space is limited, so if you’re interested, send an email to briefingcentral@forrester.com, and request the top 5 analysts you’d like to brief from the list below. An RSVP email will be sent once the request is processed.

Here are the participating analysts and their coverage areas (full profiles are available via the links)

Merv Adrian  - Technology marketing and sales, vendor strategies, application architecture
Josh Bernoff – Web 2.0 and social computing
Jeffrey Hammond - Application design and development tools and techniques
Henry Harteveldt - Travel
Rob Koplowitz – Enterprise content management, blogs, wikis, and collaboration tools
Charlene Li - Web 2.0 and social computing for marketers and consumers
Brad Strothkamp – Financial services
G. Oliver Young – Web 2.0 applications and adoption, especially in the enterprise

Tags: Web20, charleneli, Forrester Research, Groundswell

Add to del.icio.us

by Charlene Li

You may have noticed that the tag line for this blog has changed – a key goal is to help people do their jobs better, to “win” so to speak with social technologies.

To that end, I thought you’d like to know about a few upcoming boot camps Forrester is running. These events are different from large scale conferences – they are typically 1-2 Forrester analysts with a small group of participants, usually around 20 people. We spend an entire day discussing the strategy and tactics needed to win with new technologies. And I personally love the format because it’s a great way for me to immerse myself in the day to day issues that people are facing.

So here are a few highlights of upcoming boot camps – there is also a complete list of all boot camps being offered. I hope you can join us, and please contact me if you have any questions.

Emerging Interactive Marketing Channels Boot Camp
Wednesday, March 21, 2007 in Cambridge, MA 
Analysts: Brian Haven & Christine Overby

This Boot Camp will introduce new marketing channels and provide techniques for successfully exploring and leveraging the marketing opportunities that each offers. Marketers will learn how to determine if each channel is right for their brand and develop a plan for how to get started.

This Boot Camp will include:
•    Interactive sessions covering how consumers have adopted each channel, how marketers use each channel today, and how to best leverage each to target consumers.
•    Sessions covering rich media (video, podcasting, gaming), user-generated content, social media (social networks, wikis, widgets, tagging, etc.), word-of-mouth marketing, mobile marketing, and others.
•    Examples of how marketers, agencies, and public      relations firms have used these emerging marketing channels.

Social Computing Boot Camp: Tapping Into The Power Of Connect Consumers
Tuesday, April 10, 2007 in Miami, Florida
Analysts: Charlene Li & Brian Haven

New technologies like blogs, social networking, and RSS are changing the media and marketing landscape. This Boot Camp will not only introduce these new tools, it will also move you quickly into being an active participant in social media and marketing. You'll go home with a better understanding of how to use social marketing — and more importantly, a workable plan for what to do today. Marketers will learn when it is appropriate to use these tools, how to overcome internal resistance to deployment, and how to measure the results.

This Boot Camp will include:
•    Interactive sessions on consumer adoption and behaviors toward blogs, RSS, social networking,      word-of-mouth marketing, and podcasting.
•    Examples of how marketers, agencies, and public relations firms have used social marketing — and how to avoid the pitfalls.
•    Hands-on training on how to create blogs and RSS feeds, as well as podcasts. In addition to a      technical overview, the training will include best practices on how to manage the internal process of setting up these social marketing tools.
•    A best practices panel of marketers, agencies, and technology providers.

Blogging Fundamentals: Building A Business Strategy
Friday, April 13, 2007 in Miami, Florida
Analysts: Charlene Li & Brian Haven

Blogs are evolving quickly as a communication medium and influencing the development of communications and marketing strategy. With more than 27 million blogs being written today, it is impossible not to find a niche community that can influence customer perceptions of a brand.

As customers increasingly tune out traditional advertising and turn to new communication channels to fill the void, companies must learn how to join in the conversation. Moreover, besides connecting companies and their customers, blogs are also becoming an invaluable collaboration tool within companies to facilitate knowledge management and cross-functional communications.

This Boot Camp will focus on the fundamentals of blogging from a corporate perspective, helping companies develop a blog strategy and implementation plan, including discussion of policy, technology, and process. It will have a heavy focus on hands-on exercises that will complement in-depth presentations on these issues.

<Shameless plug> I’ll be at two Forrester events later this month that you (or your colleagues) maybe interested in attending.

Social Computing Boot Camp: Tapping Into The Power Of Empowered Consumers. This is a small format (between 20-40 people) where participants learn how to implement social technologies like blogs, RSS, social networking, and podcasting within the marketing organization. This day-long boot camp involves a mix of presentations by Forrester analysts, hands-on exercises, and a closing panel from some top technology providers. A full agenda is available on the event description.

Date: Monday, October 23, 2006
Location: Chicago, IL

Forrester’s Consumer Forum 2006: Humanizing The Digital Experience. This two-day conference features a mix of executives from companies like McDonald’s and Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Forrester analysts, and break-out panels that will look at how brands are humanizing the digital experience. I like to think of it as shifting our perspective from creating sites and technologies for “users” to building experiences and relationships with “people” and “communities”. I’ll be leading a break-out track on social computing, as well as a main-tent panel session on “Social Computing And The Consumer-Generated Experience”. 

Here are some of the key questions we’ll be addressing:

• How are mobile devices and social computing — such as blogs, RSS, and social networking — changing consumers' expectations of the digital experience?
• How does the convergence of digital and personal environments — as in the cases of networked homes and socially connected, device-loving teens — change consumers' expectations of brand marketing?
• How should companies use technologies to create emotional connections with consumers?
• Which emerging technologies — interactive TV, video, mobile devices, behavioral targeting — hold the most promise for creating a more "human" digital experience?
• How does technology help retailers and consumer products manufacturers humanize the      brick-and-mortar shopping experience?
• What are examples of digital content, function, tone, and imagery that appeal to consumers' emotions?
• How do brands stimulate word-of-mouth marketing through entertaining, intuitive, or otherwise "human" experiences?
• How do companies monetize the value of a good experience?

Dates: Tuesday and Wednesday, October 24-25^th
Location: Chicago, IL

</Shameless plug>

I'm safely in Japan (Osaka to be precise) and am heading off to my first round of meetings today. I've been Skyping and connecting with no problems, which is a joy -- although I have to admit that I am having Blackberry withdrawl.

Some of you inquired if I will be going to South Korea and the good news is, yes!

I've arranged so that we can have a small gathering for lunch in Seoul on Friday, September 15th at 12pm, near the Grand Intercontinental Hotel. If you are interested in attending, please RSVP to me at cli@forrester.com and I'll send you the details.

Similar to the get-together in Tokyo, I'll have some short comments about my current research, but I'd also like to learn as much as possible from you about how social computing and search is used in South Korea.

So hope to see you there!

I’ll be traveling to Tokyo in early September and I’d like to meet a few of my blog readers at a Forrester-hosted cocktail gatering in Tokyo. It will take place on Tuesday, September 12^th from 6-8pm near Forrester’s Tokyo office, which is near the Marunouchi Hotel.

This is my first time in Tokyo and I’m eager to learn more about how companies and consumers are using search, blogs, and social networking, and general media sites. I’ll be giving a short introduction of my current research on the different adoption rates of social computing by consumers, but most of the time will be spent in informal networking.

Also, Forrester is hiring analysts in Japan – there’s a current opening for a Telecom & Networks Analyst and more openings will be coming. So if you have ever been curious about what it would be like to work for Forrester, please let me know, or even better, come next Tuesday!

If you are interested in attending, please send an email to RSVP to Mako Kosuge at mkosuge@forrester.com as soon as possible as we have limited space available for attendees. Mako will send you specifics on the location in a confirmation email.

I was at the AlwaysOn conference today and had a chance to meet with several old acquaintances, sit on a panel, record a few podcasts, and especially fun, hear about some new start-ups. Something I get asked quite frequently is how a company goes about getting a briefing with Forrester and I promised I'd put up a post on how to do this.

So at the risk of opening up the briefing request floodgates, here are a few details.

Requesting a briefing
By far the best way to request a briefing is to fill out the request form at www.forrester.com/briefings. The more specifics you can provide, the better -- this way, our Briefing Central team can figure out who the best analysts are for you to brief.

Some of you may think, hey, I'll just email the analyst directly. There are a couple of reasons why this isn't always a good idea. First, you're relying on the analyst to have their act together and be able to respond to your request. On average, I get between 20-30 requests a week for briefings and if they don't come from our Briefing Central team, a few are bound to slip between the inbox cracks. Second, you run the risk that you're not briefing the right analysts. For example, my colleague Brian Haven covers online video so he'll want to hear about developments in that space.

Actually getting a briefing
Now, just because you request a briefing doesn't mean you get one! And please note, you don't have to be a Forrester client to get a briefing - I accept briefings based on the merits of the request. The best way to get a briefing is be right square in the middle of an analyst's current research stream. In general, I won't take a briefing unless I plan to use the information within the next three months. And there are times when I would like to get a briefing, but my calendar is full (in which case, I usually ask for information via email). So look at my current research at Forrester, read this blog (which you're already doing), and do a search for topics I've commented on.

How to have a good briefing
One suggestion on making the most of a briefing -- I have little time and little patience for what I call "background". You can assume that I'm pretty up to speed on the space! To this end, I tend to schedule 30 minute briefings and it's worked well. It forces the company to cut to the chase and give me the most important things that I want to know, which boil down to:

- What problem are you solving?
- How do you create value for the user?
- How do you make money?
- How do you differentiate yourself from the competition?
- How will you market your product/service?
- What is your vision of how the market will develop, and how will you fit into it?

And my pet peeve: companies that show up at briefings and start by saying, "So, what do you want to know?" My hope is that with the short list of questions above, you'll be well prepared to make the best use of your 30 minutes!

Disclaimer: these are thoughts are my own and other Forrester analysts will and do handle briefings in completely different ways.

Update: My friend, former Gartner analyst, and now CEO of EZBoard Rob Labatt suggested a very worthwhile addition to my list of what makes a successful briefing: "Make the analyst smarter". One commonality to what I consider great briefings is that I come out of them thinking differently. So share your vision of how the world is changing and how your company is going to make a difference.

I’ll be in Boston next week for some Forrester boot camps (if you’re interested in attending the Search Marketing or Social Computing boot camps, there’s still room) and thought it would be nice to meet up with a few of you.

So I’d like to propose meeting on Wednesday, March 15^th at 7pm at the Cambridge Brewing Company, 1 Kendall Square, Cambridge for some good food, brew, and conversation (drinks/food will be Dutch treat). The restaurant would like to get a rough count, so either email me or add a comment below to say that you’re coming.

[And bonus points if you can complete the children’s rhyme above.]

I’ll be moderating another panel this Tuesday hosted by TiE on "How to Build a Successful Internet Business". On the panel will be two entrepreneurs and two venture capitalists providing their wisdom and advice. More details are below.

I’m particularly excited about this panel, especially since I sat on a panel two weeks ago on a SDForum Venture Finance SIG on Web 2.0 investments. One of the questions asked was, “What defines a successful Web 2.0 company?” My answer was the same attributes that defined a successful Web 1.0 company. The same fundamentals apply today, and in fact, the briefing questions I use today are unchanged from the ones I used when I started at Forrester in 1999. I thought I’d share what attributes I look for in a successful Internet business – attributes which I think are important to keep in mind given the Web 2.0 froth today.

1)      Value – How does the company create value for consumers and businesses? Is the company built around a specific end user pain point or is it driven by technology looking for a problem?

2)      Business model – How is the company going to make money? How will it scale beyond simply tapping into AdSense?

3)      Marketing – Especially for consumer-oriented companies, how will the company get the word out? The answer “viral marketing” simply isn’t enough.

4)      Competition – How will the company differentiate from the competition? And what will the company do about entry by deep-pocketed competitors?

5)      Vision – It’s inevitable that the customers and competitors will change over the next few years. Does the management have the vision and plan to anticipate these changes and the leadership skills to shift strategy quickly?

Participating on the panel will be:

Tom Cole, General Partner, Trinity Ventures

James Currier, Founder of Tickle

Tod Francis, Managing Director, Shasta Ventures

Gautam Godhwani, CEO of SimplyHired and former CEO of AtWeb

I can’t help but mention a personal observation about one of the panelists. I met James Currier in 1999 when he was in his second year at HBS. He found me through the HBS alumni network and wanted to get feedback on his idea to start a personality testing site. He was convinced that people would be passionate about taking tests and I was convinced he was doomed to be another flash-in-the-pan start-up. I liked his approach and vision, but thought it was a pretty small market. Over the past several years, I’ve watched as emode evolved into Tickle, and then was acquired by Monster – all the time admiring James’ ability to morph the company while remaining true to those passionate test takers.

The evening should be full of great ideas and if you’re serious about building an Internet business for the long term, I hope you’ll be able to join us.

"Challenges of Building A Successful Internet Business: Stories From The Frontlines"

The Internet has been the foundation for many new businesses, ranging from Google to Craigslist.org, and companies continually come up with better ways to leverage the Internet protocol. But what components really lead to the success of these businesses – was it a matter of luck and timing, or is there something much more fundamental to building a sustainable Internet business? Is the only revenue model today the dollars you can get when you sell to Yahoo!, eBay or Google?

The panel will explore this issue from the perspective of both entrepreneurs who have been deep in the battle for the Internet user, as well as the venture capitalists who placed their online bets – sometimes winning, but more often than not, losing. By attending, you’ll be gleaning the sage advice borne of adversities such as the collapse of the tech bubble, and also learning how to deal with some of the challenges facing Internet businesses in the near future.

Registration online here.

Location: TiE Conference Center, Suite 108
2903 Bunker Hill Lane, Santa Clara, CA

6pm-9pm

Onsite fees: $30 members, $60 non-members

Advance fees: $20 members, $50 non-members

Note: Online registration closes at 12pm on Tuesday. So hurry!

I'll be moderating a panel at a SDForum Search SIG meeting this Tuesday (yes, tomorrow) on social search. This is a favorite topic of mine as it represents the intersection of two of my research areas, seach and social computing. I think it's also an important battleground in the next phase of search, especially because companies like Yahoo! and Microsoft are eons ahead of Google in terms of personalization and established relationships with consumers.

I hope you'll be able to join me and a very interesting panel as we explore how social search is transforming the user experience. Personally, I've been using all of the services from our panelists -- Del.icio.us, Digg, Kaboodle, and Wink -- and recently purchased a laptop sleeve (after weeks of online shopping) thanks to a tag on Wink. 

Aside: After his CES keynote, I asked Larry Page how Google felt about personalization -- it seems there's a love/hate relationship in the way Google uses registration and cookies -- they know it's necessary to provide a personalized experience but make it pretty cumbersome to do so. Larry gave a typical Google non-answer, but acknowledged that Yahoo! and Microsoft were significant competitors in this area (they have a bit of a head start).

SDForum Search SIG - Search Different: Tagging, Social Bookmarking and Sharing - Jan 10th @ Yahoo - Featuring Del.icio.us, Digg, Kaboodle & Wink

Happy new year, and hope that you had a fun and safe time on the 1st. After a long break, I'm ready to go and am heading out to that annual geekfest known as the Consumer Electronics Show later this week (will be there only on Thursday and Friday). The last time I was at CES was over 10 years ago and I'm long overdue for a visit.

I'll be covering the keynotes by Yahoo! and Google, but also looking at the various ways companies are pushing content, search, and social computing (blogs, RSS, podcasts, videocasts) on to devices and phones. So if you have any tips, please send them my way!

BTW, if you happen to be at CES and would like to meet up on Thursday night, please drop me an email -- would love to try to get together.

Tip: Avoid the taxi and tram lines and rent a bike. I'm renting mine from the Las Vegas Cyclery.

I’ll be at the Syndicate Conference on Wed. December 14^th and would like to host a breakfast for anyone who’s interested. Also attending will be my colleague, Chloe Stromberg, who has been leading research on the use of RSS, especially in the travel and auto industries.

We’ll have space for 10 people, on a first-come, first-serve basis. Email that you’d like to attend and I’ll send you the breakfast details.

And I’ll be on-site at Syndicate for most of the day, moderating a panel on Corporate Blogging at 2:15pm. Hope to see you there!

Update: Thanks for everyone's interest, but the breakfast is full and I've got a pretty long waiting list. Hopefully I'll be able to do something a bit more inclusive at the next confab. If you're at Syndicate, I hope we'll have a chance to catch up on Wednesday.

I'll be in Atlanta for business and would love to meet people for an informal, no-host breakfast at the InterContinental Buckhead Hotel. We'll be meeting in the hotel restaurant, Au Pied de Cochon. Please email me at to let me know that you'll be coming so that I can get the right table size. Address is 3315 Peachtree Road NE, Atlanta, GA 30326. Phone: 404-869-2942 for the hotel, restaurant is 404-946-9070.

And I couldn't resist adding a map to the location below -- as I mentioned in my previous post, the nice thing about the new Yahoo! Maps beta is that the URL is static -- long, but static. The map found the location, linked it to a business at the location, and added the phone number for good  measure.

Hope to see a few of you that morning!

Update: I had mistakenly said Wed. Nov. 15th. The CORRECT date is Tuesday, November 15th. Sorry about that!!

I’m heading over to the Search Engine Strategies conference later this afternoon, and am planning to attend Yahoo!’s Search Night Off event at Great Amercia (looking forward to the Drop Zone in particular) on the show floor and in meeting all day Tuesday, and then at the Google Dance Tuesday night). I’ll be checking out some of the new vendors and visiting with “old” ones and will hopefully run into many of you in the course of the next two days.

For those of you who will be there, let me know via email if you come across any interesting exhibiting (or non-exhibiting) companies and I’ll be sure to stop by an visit with them. My day is fairly open as well and while logistics are difficult, let me (again via email – thank goodness for Blackberrries!) and we’ll try to meet up.

I'm at the pre-event meeting for BlogHer and my head is already buzzing -- I'm looking forward to the dinner tonight and a great day networking with other women bloggers as well as learning a lot from my fellow bloggers. My first impression -- this is going to a be a really, really fun event, as it involves a lot of both personal as well as professional bloggers. Many of the people here are blogging because they love what they do -- not because they want to make a lot of money (OK, they're here too!) So I'm looking forward to meeting and bonding with the (mostly) women who will be here.

When this conference was first proposed a few months ago, I issued a challenge for readers of this blog to name at least five women bloggers -- and many rose to the task! I've added the BlogHer Blogroll (on the left -- scroll down a bit) so that you can explore for yourself all of the fantastic, diverse voices that are out there. I'll post my impressions of some of the most interesting blogs that I come across during the conference -- and would love to hear if you've discovered some interesting sites as well.

So if you're going to be at BlogHer, let's try to meet up! And if you're not, I hope you'll take some time and look at some of these great blogs.

I’ll be speaking at several upcoming events – hope to see some of you there.

Supernova 2005, Monday, June 20^th, San Francisco, CA.  I’ll be speaking on a “Business Blogging” workshop on Monday, June 20^th and will probably be attending the conference for part of Tuesday as well. If the event is even half as good as the pre-pre-event dinner, it will be absolutely fantastic.

Tuck/NewsMarket Breakfast, Wednesday, June 22^nd, Palo Alto, CA. This is a breakfast event with the title “How Technology Is Revolutionizing News Distribution And Corporate Reputation”. Most of the attendees will be marketeering/PR people also attending the Semiconductor Industry Association meeting, but it’s “open to qualified professionals”. Let me know if you have any problems getting a spot.

VerticalLeap, Tuesday, June 28^th, Santa Clara, CA. This is shaping up to be a nice day-long conference hosted by SDForum. I’ll be on a panel in the morning on local search that includes the usual suspects – Yahoo!, MSN, and Google.

blogher Conference, Saturday, July 30^th, Santa Clara, CA. This day long conference will highlight all of the great work women are doing in the blogosphere – and also provide some valuable hands-on training. I’ll be on the opening debate “Does Today’s Link-based Power Structure Hurt Women Bloggers? Should We Care?” with Halley Suitt on whether “it’s important to win by today’s rules, or to change them entirely.” I’ll let you figure out which side I’m on. One hint – if you check out the speaker lists for the above events, there’s only one other woman. Hmmm…..

Podcast & Portable Media Expo, Friday, November 11^th, Ontario, CA. What, a podcasting show already?!? I’ll be moderating a panel “Podcast & Citizen Media: How It Is Changing Traditional Media”.

And here are shameless plugs for two Forrester events:

Social Marketing: Tapping Into The Power Of Connected Consumers, Thursday, July 28^th, Cambridge, MA. This is a day-long, hands-on workshop that walks participants through the strategy and nitty-gritty of using blogs, RSS, viral marketing, and podcasts for communication purposes. I’m still finalizing the agenda and external speakers, but it should be a good intro for marketers.

Consumer Forum 2005: Innovating In A Consumer-Driven World, September 27-28, New York, NY. I’ll be giving one of the keynote speeches at Forrester’s main consumer event, which is currently entitled, “Social Blogging: Bubble Or Big Deal”.

I'll be at the Syndicate Conference all day Wednesday, May 18th, speaking on a luncheon panel on "Future Scenarios for RSS". Here's a quick summary:

"With the adaptability of RSS for a variety of businesses and the future of content, the future scenarios of RSS are limitless. Whether it is the publishing world finding new revenue models, or advertising, marketing and public relations finding a new way to reach the core audience, RSS is the delivery vehicle for the Web 2.0, at the heart of this next phase of the Internet. RSS is the push-pull technology at the heart of new forms of media.

The panel will discuss the changing world of content from various perspectives, and how the delivery of content is as important as the content."

If you're going to Syndicate and would like to meet up, drop me an email and we'll try to coordinate. Also, let's plan to meet upstairs in the Broadway Lounge after the end of the last session on Wednesday -- I suspect that we'll want to continue the conversation for just a while longer. I'll post again if this changes. Looking forward to seeing you!

Update: The best laid plans... I just found out, literally seconds after posting this, that there's going to be a Sydnicate Conference advisory board meeting right after Doc Searls' keynote. So the drinks won't be happening (at least, not at that time). But do let me know if you'd like to meet -- I really enjoyed meeting readers at AD:TECH and look forward to seeing more of you in person!