2005 San Francisco Conference

The blogosphere is humming with talk of this weekend’s Business Blogging 101 seminar. Here are some of the hilights.

Discover Eugene writes:

We just got back from the amazing seminar in Seattle Business Blogging 101. These guys truly run a professional and informative seminar that I recommend it for anyone interested in doing a professional weblog.

Joe Kennedy of Eastside Business Blog says:

Today’s 2005 Blog Business Summit in Seattle was great! Each of the speakers and presenters had a lot of great knowledge and experience to share and I took a lot of info away from it. The entire day was well-planned and professionally organized.

It was the first time I had visited Bell Harbor International Conference Center and it was first class all the way. Did I mention how great the food was???

I feel bad for anyone who thinks they have a web presence who was not in attendance at today’s Blogging 101 Seminar. I’m sure they will want to get to the next one, wherever it is …

We at Eastside Business certainly learned a lot of great information that we will put to use immediately. Our readers and businesses on the Eastside can look for some substantial changes in our web strategies in the very near future.

Thanks again to Steve, Kim and all the other great people at Blog Business Summit, as well as the great speakers who shared their knowledge today.

And as a very special bonus, we even got a comment about Steve’s satirical post on Forbes’ inane article “Attack of the Blogs” from Mauro Lupi’s blog in Italy. My Italian is terrible at best - but the gyst of it is that he was highly amused by Steve’s “realization” that blogs are too powerful. It’s just more proof that blogs bring the world that much closer together.

Comments are coming in asking when the next events will take place and we’re finalizing the schedules and will announce it as soon as we’re confirmed.

Thanks for the interest. We can’t wait to get on the road in 2006.

I hope our hosting problems are behind us. I joked to the team that it was like the “100-year flood” of hosting problems. I’ve been working on the web for nearly 12 years and never experienced any catastrophic problems like the ones we’ve had. After the Seminars this weekend, we’ll move to a new server and reboot. Until then, and while the site was in domain name server limbo, we reorganized to focus on

* [Blog Book](/book/)
* [Seminars](/seminars/)
* [Conferences](/conferences/)

That should make the site more navigable and to better explain what we do and who we are, we added an [About](/about/) sub blog.

We apologize again for any confusion with our blog and what’s going on. Our host went down and so did our domain name. The domain name is our address on the internet.

The site is slowly coming back. You may see a temporary site, but don’t worry. We’re here, working on it, and the Seminar is on for this weekend.

Our blog will be back online shortly. Registration and details about the Business Blogging 101 Seminar this weekend are available at regOnline.

Please call with any questions you may have: 425-556-1941

Thanks to MT Notifier from Everitz Consulting our subscription/notification service is back online. You will receive a subscription confirmation email from us. To confirm just opt-in and you’re ready to go. Don’t do anything and you’re opted out. Also note our privacy policy. We don’t sell spam or anything else with your email.

I’ve just started to evaluate the sessions and speaker ratings from the SF Blog Business Summit, and am pleased to see that the Microsoft Keynote has rated as one of the top sessions. Keynoter Dean Hachamovitch rated higher more than three quarters of the professional business bloggers who came to present.

Based on my history hosting technology conferences, this is a somewhat unusual situation. Usually vendor-related keynotes do not rate so highly. The few exceptions to this rule occur when the presenter focuses on creating a session that delivers for the attendees, and not one that delivers a “message”. This was one of those exceptional cases.

The night before the keynote, Hachamovitch probed me for insights as to what specific topics the audience would find beneficial, and then spent several hours working to align his lecture to the attendees needs. At one point I offered some suggestions as to how Internet Explorer 7 (and particularly the interesting new syndication features) might fit into his presentation. I was pleasantly surprised when he said that he wasn’t there to promote product, and instead focused exclusively on how the world of blogs and RSS can benefit business.

All I can say is, Dean can keynote at one of my conferences anytime…

KGO-TV, the San Francisco local ABC affiliate covers blogging and the Blog Business Summit, including video they shot and ran on the news during the event.

To demonstrate a meme in my lectures, I show Virtual Stan. A meme is an idea (joke, video, etc) that’s passed from one person to another and in context to business blogging, it’s a great way to drive traffic to a site (also part of the “blog with a soul” thing I talk about). Coudal’s making air and Abba videos are also great examples.

I dig Virtual Stan and he’s always a crowd favorite. Zorton, his sidekick robot, brings the house down and usually sets the roof on fire. Adding to the memeness in San Francisco, was the presence of Greg Hoy, who was representin’ Pixelworthy, a site where Virtual Stan’s creator, Rob Weychert, contributes. Greg videotaped Virtual Stan in action and used Stan as a conversation starter at the reception that night. As the comments on Greg’s post note

You know you’re living in the future when your creation has spoken at more conferences than you have

And

There really is nothing like a big giant head to really entertain an audience

There is some debate as to who’s more real and who’s the avatar. Is it Virtual Stan or Jason Santa Maria?

Highlights from the Blog Business Summit (in no particular order)

• InflightHQ announced
• MT 3.2 demo
• Wordpress.com demo
• Scoble meets Jobs
• Seminar Series announced

More of
BBS 05 in the news, on Technorati, and Flickr.

Media Co-Option

The Washington Post thinks bloggers are selling bottled air. Webpronews responds, as does Matt Mullenweg and there’s a lively debate started by Adrian Trenholm. The author of the post article obviously wasn’t at the summit, read the Silicon Valley article about Matt and quoted it out of context.

We’ll add that to the any press is good press (I guess) department and note how media is now telling bloggers how they should blog or what’s good or bad about blogging — without blogging themselves. I was talking with Jeremy Wagstaff about this topic a few weeks ago because I’d noticed that magazines were publishing top-ten blog lists. He said

Big media, like big corporations, are slow to get blogging. Not because blogging itself is complicated, or expensive, but because it involves embracing an expensive premise: that the gap between “consumer” and producer has suddenly got narrower. This is leading both groups to see blogging through a hostile lens — as snake-oil or something to be conquered and co-opted. I prefer to see it as the natural flattening that the Web promised us but failed to deliver a decade ago.

In other words, “All Your Blogs Are Belong To Us.”

And, finally (for now) Pam noted how she’d rather have a nifty notepad than a beta browser.

And with that I’m out for a few days. The Bog Business Summit was a success, a great event, with some tweaking to do. We need to find the right mix of sessions and we’re working on that. It’s a diverse audience we’re attracting and that means more demands on what they want to learn. Tell us what you want, fill out those eval forms, and comment directly on the session posts. Later we’ll podcast some audio and video.

We’ll be back at it October 29 in Seattle for the Blog Business Summit Seminar Series. If you want to learn more about building your business with blogs, we’ll cover it for $195.00.

Thanks again for attending. I met many of you and appreciate you being there.

Steve Broback, Lynann Bradbury, Laurie Mayers, Rick Murray

Lynann Bradbury

• What happens when the PR and blogging worlds collide?
• Think strategic before tactical
• Think about different ways you can reach out to the blogging community and what you can offer them.
• Use the Weblogging Index to find out where you fit and what you should consider.
• Prioritize bloggers and make connections with and for them
• Ask for referrals to other bloggers

Rick Murray

• PR is about messaging, control of the messaging has been lost
• 35,000 PR people worldwide, 5 billion dollar industry
• Old PR is stunts, attention getting
• Maybe 100 people inside Endleman that understand and are working with bloggers in a positive way
• Wants to get colleagues and clients into the pro-blog camp as soon as possible
• Blogger posted password for beta site of Microsoft Student 2006, torpedoed traditional PR plan
• Endleman CEO is a blogger,
• Get to know the new people,
• Don’t pitch, participate. He is trying to kill the word “pitch”.
• Lose the messaging, gain the tone and language of the blogger you want to get to know
• Add value to the conversation, don’t just talk about your own stuff

Laurie Mayers

• Careful corporate messaging not dead: SEC regulations on “material disclosures” needing to be announced simultaneously
• Press release isn’t dead because it meets SEC requirements, traditional media still used to them, can be localized for local markets
• That being said, corporate messaging is involving. GM announced management changes on their blog.
• Businesses will make their own rules about comments, post length, ghost writers, etc
• PR needs to learn better, faster writing

• You cannot control the message on the web, but you can choose to participate and vector it
• You cannot appear authentic, you either are or you’re not

Technorati Tags: bbs05, blogbusinesssummit, blogging, blogs, pr, publicrelations

After the success of our San Francisco pre-conference seminar, several of our Summit speakers will be hosting a one-day seminar on how to get your business up and running in the blogosphere.

Get the details here.

Molly Holzschlag and Darren Barefoot

• Edit your materials before you post, but don’t let your own editing censor your voice
• Blogs lend themselves to quick writing and shorter posts
• Resisting the temptation to push “Publish” too soon can be helpful
• Corrections are best handled with strikethrough text on the error. “Update:” at the end of the post works well too
• Editing too many times can irritate people because subscribers to your web feed see it as a new post each time you update
• Don’t name people on your blog unless they are already in the public space
• Don’t excerpt email discussions unless you have the person’s approval
• Understand the blogging environment by reading for a while before you write
• Companies don’t blog - people blog. Passionate ones make the best bloggers.
• Blogging is about telling a story, and extending that story into a conversation
• Having a voice and a personality is critical. Boring or bored people aren’t engaging.
• The last people in the organization you want to run the blog is the PR or marketing department. They have been trained to think and speak in a certain way that doesn’t work in a blogging environment.
• PR and marketing people can be great bloggers if the get on the Cluetrain
• The amount of time spent blogging is dependent on how fast of a writer you are and the size of the posts
• Controversial posts bring traffic, inbound links
• If you’re not a controversial person or in such an environment, this may not be the right approach for you
• Blogging is an act of courage, because you are putting things out in the public that never were before
• Blogs are changing the corporate culture of Microsoft, Adobe
• Define the audience, offer public feedback mechanisms and listen to them
• If you don’t give customers a place to talk about your products, they will make their own
• Discuss your competition frankly and honestly. You become a source for information on them.
• Cite other blogs, you can’t do this enough
• Bottom line: be transparent, be authentic, tell your story

Technorati Tags: bbs05, blogbusinesssummit, blogging, blogs

One of readers sent this in earlier . . .

comments: There was an explosion in an electrical vault at the intersection of Post and Kearny that may affect attendees’ ability to travel around the local area. The cause of the explosion has not yet been determined. PG&E, the FBI, and ATF are on the scene. The Ralph Lauren store at 90 Post Street was on fire, and portions of Sutter, Montgomery, Kearny, and Post streets have been closed while investigators proceed through the area.

Reports

• SFGate
• SFist

Hey, hey! I didn’t even know wordpress.com was being announced. Matt dropped it during his demo. It’s a hosted service powered by Wordpress.

Mena Trott, a Founder and President of Six Apart, posts about the Blog Business Summit and the Movable Type 3.2 demo this afternoon at 1:15. “Anil and Jay will be onstage demoing some of the new features of 3.2 and we will then be at hand to answer your questions about Movable Type or Six Apart.” As a bonus, they’ll have copies of Hacking Movable Type and some of their Viewmaster Reels.

More live posting at the Blog Business Summit from Business Blog Consulting and Qumana.

KGO television’s, Local ABC 7, cameras were here today and interviewed Steve Broback and Paul Rosenfeld. The story will run tonight between 6 and 7:00 pm.

Janet Johnson and Robert Scoble

• Marqui paid bloggers to talk about the company
• Received a lot of bad press, was called lots of nasty names
• Positive or negative feedback aside, it did raise the level of brand awareness
• Develop a thick skin, be absolutely honest, have a point of view, do your research, engage detractors, drive to closure on topics
• Pitching bloggers: build a relationship by sending information that’s not about your company, then pitch the blogger
• Some bloggers don’t want anything from PR people
• Never act like you’re entitled to a link
• Marqui now focuses more on blogging themselves instead of paying bloggers
• Steve Rubel gets his companies stories into the blog world by being a resource for information first, and inserting messages from the companies every 10 or 20 posts
• Microsoft product teams are changing the way they develop products based on the feedback they get from customers on the blogs they run
• Simply Hired used the blog as a way to make fun of the error messages they were sure to give users as they went into a beta product launch
• Silence at a problem causes people to think that the company has something to hide
• Scoble had a journalist libel him, he responded and made himself available to bloggers that linked to the story, ended up turning the tide against the journalist
• People are not fanatics, they are smart about what they read
• Bloggers are the kind of people who help shift public opinion
• Podcasting is powerful because the human voice feels more real
• The legitimacy gained by linking to someone that gets your story wrong is short term, credibility is long term
• Linking to people that disagree with you also shows credibility
• Businesses can also use their blogs to give the people that use their products advice on best use cases or tutorials the product and other parts of their jobs
• Great amplification effect for little time and money invested
• Blog search traffic is growing at about the same rate as blog writing - doubling every 5 months
• When you’re in a crisis - overcommunicate

Technorati Tags: bbs05, blogbusinesssummit, blogging, blogs, pr, publicrelations