January 2005

After catching up on sleep and other projects, I spent much of the afternoon clicking through and scanning Google, Technorati (term 1, 2, 3), and Blogpulse results on the Blog Business Summit. The response has been amazing and almost all positive. At one point I just sat back and said, “wow.” I’ve also read the grumblings about no audio feed, the IRC channel that got borked, and have been warned to not blog. We hear you and will respond at the next event. We’re planning that now. As a 1.0, or beta event, we had to learn what attendees expected, wanted, dug, and didn’t like so much (I don’t like losing connectivity during my presentations). Maybe we should’ve put an ever-in-Beta badge in the banner or said over and over again “be sure to go up to the rooftop observation lounge and see the gigantic cargo ship.”

Besides all the great presentations, the hallway and break chatter was the liveliest I’ve seen it in years. It reminded me of dotcom land, but just the good parts, and sitting in an Aeron chair was a big flashback (from the point/counterpoint department, we do have an Aeron chair diss).

After reading all the posts from the bloggers that blogged it, there’s no need for me to wrap it up here (Canter as a Sumo Wrestling Opera Man hasn’t left my memories yet). Steve will post his thoughts a bit later and I wanted to thank you all again for attending, being a part of it, and responding positively.

If there’s something else we missed, something you’d like to tell us (like why no Pepsi?), please comment or contact us. I look forward to blogging the event live with you all again soon. That was rocking. As I noted on my blog, I could barely keep up with it all.

The Seattle conference is winding down, and we have been receiving many inquiries regarding when and where the next event will be held. After the success of the current summit, we are ready, willing and able to schedule our next conference. Let us know what city works best for you. We have put up a survey here.

Nick got a shot of the instant message that popped up during Pete Blackshaw’s session. You can see what it said, if you missed it.

Posts on the sessions are going up before the sessions are over! I can hear and see furious typing. Nick noted to me that thinks he’s the quickest, but Common Craft just got one up before him.

Blogging it? Post your site or send us a link and we’ll add you to the sidebar.

There’s 108 attendee-contributed photos and counting on Flickr. Thanks Nick for taking most of those.

Coming up on stage DL Byron and Keith Robinson.

Update

Ok, that totally bummed us out, losing connectivity and not being able to show the rest of the slides. We had much more to talk about. If you want to see the rest, check the slides.

Heading over for the reception, back online later.

Hello, I’m on stage. Thanks to Molly and for the discussion during our session. I hope the session was useful. There’s much more to show.

Glenn and Steve are on.

On a break, be sure to check the roof top observation deck. The view is amazing and there’s a cargo ship right there

The IRC chat is not working for us, not sure what’s up, but we’ll check it. Scoble is on now.

Update

Check the comment thread for how to get IRC working.

Looks like about 4 of our attendees can’t make the show because of the storm back east. One of them is Tom Peters. Looks like I spoke too soon with my post the other day! We hope everyone stays safe. We hope to see those snowbound few at the next Blog Business Summit!

You can still sign up for BBS 05 and we hope you do! It’s going to be a great event. Contact us if you have questions about signing up late, during the event, or for one day.

Beercasting Show Tonight, Sunday, January 23rd.

Belltown Pub
2322 1st Ave.
Seattle, WA
(206) 728-4311

The Beercast will get started most likely at 7:30PM or something and will be in the small room to the side (with the pool table).

The Beercasters are on a national tour and stopping in Seattle, just in time for the Blog Business Summit. What is a Beercast (it involves beer, so that’s good)? Check the Beercast site for all the details.

If you have never been to Seattle, it’s as beautiful as you’ve heard. The Summit is on the waterfront, and a block from Belltown, a once-seedy section of Seattle that’s now hip and chic and full of condos. Things to do

• Ride the Waterfront Streetcar down to Pioneer Square and our Stadia.
• Visit Myrtle Edwards Park, which has a 1.25-mile winding bike and pedestrian paths along Elliott Bay with fantastic views of the Olympics Mountains, Mount Rainier, and Puget Sound.
• Ride the passenger ferry to Bainbridge Island and back. The best tourist deal in town is to ride the ferry. You see the Sound, the City, and the ferries have WiFi. You can board the ferry, just a few blocks down from the Summit.
• East of the Summit, up a few blocks, is the Seattle Center, Space Needle, Monorail, and Experience Music Project.
• Check the Rem Koolhaus designed Seattle Public Library.

And of course, you can walk the stairs up to the Pike Place Market, the heart of the City.

There’s plenty more to do, this list is just a start. If you want to visit the less touristy side of the city, try Capital Hill, Seattle’s gay district, or Alki Beach, the birthplace of Seattle.

Remember to dress in layers, the weather changes every 10 minutes, and drink the local coffee and beer.

Peters graciously mentioned his trip to the Blog Summit already on his own site, and after reading his excellent book Re-imagine! I can see why he has embraced the blogosphere with such enthusiasm.

Although it was published in 2003–and blogging is not specifcally stressed, he spends much of the book hitting stodgy old business leaders over the heads with a dose of the impending reality that has now hit in a big way. Just a small dose of the (many) highly relevant tidbits include:

page 130: “Google is a bit like God”
So true, especially for bloggers. In many ways, it is the source of the power of blogging.

page 152: “simplicity - clarity - grace - beauty”
What are the three big business stories of 2004? Google, iPod, and blogging. These tools and services embody these key attributes. There were many MP3 players, search engines, and site authoring platforms in 2000. None of them were simple, clear, graceful, or beautiful. Kludginess has its costs.

page 153: “Addition is the exercise of fools, subtraction is the exercise of genius.”
Many blog engines could be described as content management engines with a lot of stuff “missing”.

Page 217: “deep dipping”
To assist radical change, this is the notion of promoting employees who “stick their necks out” to high levels of influence. I’d look to the blogger pool first.

With the Summit just a few days away, we’re updating the site and adding various features. One of the features added today is del.icio.us bookmarks and RSS. del.icio.us is a social bookmarks manager, where you add links, categorize them with keywords, and share them with others. Our speakers have been added and we’ll add bloggers, session links, and the podcasts as they become available. If you’re planning on blogging the event, let us know in the comments or trackbacks and we’ll post your url to del.icio.us.

One of the great things about the Bell Harbor conference center is that in the Bay Auditorium (where the Blog Business Summit will be held) all attendees will be sitting in those fabulous Herman Miller Aeron chairs. We can all re-live those fabulous dot-com days, when they were (as Shuli Hallack joked) “the highlight of the Internet revolution.”

Those of you that are headed off to one of those other (more expensive) blog business events, think of us when you are sitting on one of those pain-inducing stacking chairs.

In a blogging article for the National Post, Danny Bradbury writes about how “Canadian executives are slow to follow U.S. peers in setting up Web logs” and quotes iUpload, a BBS 05 sponsor, DL Byron and Steve Broback. As Steve predicts, it isn’t going to take long for Canadian blogs to catch up.

After several critical posts related to my two entries (1, 2)  that compared blog and blogger generated exposure to traditional PR efforts, here are a few more numbers to digest that should have improved relevance. This time we try to compare tangerines to oranges, and provide numbers slightly better aligned. In this instance we prove that bloggers do NOT always win the Google battle.

A key area of claimed misalignment relates to the criticism that blogs and bloggers want and try hard to create online mentions and links, while PR companies don’t. It’s been asserted that a PR company has comparatively little interest and makes no significant attempt to get mentions/links
and instead focuses on getting that visibility mostly for their clients. Let’s concede that (tenuous IHMO) point, and try another test–this time using client campaigns only.

I did my best to find several press releases issued by the largest Northwest PR firm on or around the same date of the quiet launch of blogbusinesssummit.com by a gaggle of Northwest PR rookies. I specifically targeted new products that would have few or no mentions prior to the launch in hopes to make the comparison more relevant.

Here are my unscientific results–sorted by quantity of mentions:

Release: Audiovox Communications and AT&T Wireless Launch Smallest Windows Mobile-Based Smartphone
Link: <http://www.rednova.com/news/display/?id=93313>
Google Search: "Audiovox SMT5600" = 81,400 mentions.

Release: None
Link: <http://www.blogbusinesssummit.com>
Google Search: "Blog Business Summit" = 52,700 mentions.

Release: Microsoft Pocket Streets 2005 Availability
Link: <http://www.mobilemag.com/content/100/103/C3314/>
Google Search: "Pocket Streets 2005" = 14,800 mentions.

Release: Ephox Unveils Support for Vignette Solutions with EditLive! Technologies
Link: <http://www.ephox.com/news/pressArticle.asp?article_id=45>
Google Search: EditLive Vignette = 902 mentions.

Release: MSN Kicks Off ‘IM A Star’ Promotion to Offer an Exclusive Session With Summer’s Hottest Musical Artists
Link: <http://www.forrelease.com/D20030807/sff015.P1.08072003233202.05454.html>
Google Search: "IM A Star" =  834 mentions.

Release: Microsoft Releases Microsoft Business Solutions–Solomon 6.0
Link: <http://www.rednova.com/news/display/?id=90960>
Google Search: "Solomon 6.0" = 790 mentions.

Release: Universal Electronics Acquires SimpleDevices, Extending UEI’s Growing Strength in Digital Media Control
Link: <http://www.uei.com/press.php?page_id=19>
Google Search: "SimpleDevices" = 671 mentions.

Note that the BBS does NOT have the most mentions. The combined efforts of Audiovox (1.3 billion in revenues) and AT&T (17 billion in revenues) clearly trump. Maybe if we changed out of our sweats and put on a tie or something…

I make absolutely no claims that:

* Web presence is all-important.
* Google is an accurate representation of Web presence.
* Quantity is better than quality–that all mentions are equal.
* There is a strong correlation of Google mentions to product success. No doubt all of the above products will significantly trump the BBS in revenues and profits. (there are 20,300 mentions of the pets.com sock puppet btw)

I just present the numbers and let the readers draw their own conclusion(s).