CT Biz Blogs

Short notice alert: this conference is tomorrow!

One of the best times I had last year was at the 2006 Business Smart tools conference. I work with Valorie on a number of blogs, and helped her out a little bit at last year’s conference, by attempting some live blogging:

• Business Smart Tools Conference is on!
• David Pogue at Business Smart Tools Conference
• Mike Dunn on Podcasting
• Matt Kain on Search Engine Marketing
• David Parmet on Blogging
• Stamford CT will never be the same

This year, Valorie Luther of Creative Concepts, has taken the 2007 Business Smart Tools conference to a new level, and yet managed to reduced the registration fee. Unfortunately, I can’t make it this year, which is killing me. This is a great conference at a very affordable admission, and not to be missed, in my not-so-humble opinion. And what’s not to like in this agenda?

11:30-12:00	Doors Open, Light Lunch Served
12:00-12:15	Welcome
	Valorie Luther, Creative Concepts
12:15-12:45	Trends, Past and Future
	Patrick Quinn, PQ Media
12:45-1:30	New Media Business Basics
	Scott McRae, Creative Change Web Business StrategiesAlbert Maurggi, Provident Partners Blogging/PodcastingAndrew DiFiore, answerYES Interactive Advergaming and Viral Marketing Marshall Kirkpatrick, Splashcast Web Syndication David Vinjamuri, Thirdway/NYU Moderator
1:30-2:00	Corporate Video for a YouTube Era
	Rahul Sonnad, thePlatform Video LiquidityMatt DeLoca, the Feedroom Corporate VideoDavid Vinjamuri, Thirdway/NYU Moderator
2:00-2:15	Break
2:15-2:30	Business Smart Tools Angel Award
2:30-3:15	Second Life, a Virtual Existence for Business
	Greg Verdino, Digitas
3:15-5:00	The Real Story, Does New Media Work for Business
3:15-3:35 3:35-3:55 3:55-4:15 4:15-4:35 4:35-5:00	Ron Stevenson, General Electric Duane Schulz, Xerox Ben Edwards, Economist.com Chris Barger, General Motors Panel (Chris, Duane, Ben, Ron)
5:00	Closing Words
	Valorie Luther, Creative Concepts
5:00-6:00	Networking Cocktail Party

So check it out!

I went down to Podcamp NYC 2007 yesterday, April 7, and had a great time.

Valorie Luther, from Creative Concepts, gave a talk on Corporate Blogging, and I helped out by creating the presentation slides, and offering some tech support. Follow the link to the post on her blog, if you want to see the slides.

The audience was great, and Valorie is a fantastic public speaker. Anil Dash, from Six Apart, was in the audience. We had a brief conversation with him afterward, and hope to talk more in the future. He’s one of the bloggers I was reading early on, when I first started investigating the whole blogging world.

We didn’t have time to stay at the conference, but did manage to catch Adam Varga’s presentation on Building Dialog With Your Audience (using voicemail, message boards, and wikis). He is one sharp guy and really understands about building community! I came away with some good ideas and a better understanding of the technologies and issues in community building.

I was particularly struck by his points on the cons of using Wikis as a way to build community. Wikis don’t allow for a conversation, for responding to points, and it’s hard to see where the action is. You don’t see right away what’s new, what’s busy, where the latest info is. Wikis, I believe, are more of a way for an already established community to build something together. I think Etienne Wenger (who’s written a lot about communities of practice) calls that “reification.” In my understanding, for communities, reification means a documentation of already established actions, for reference and further action.

Adam did a great job and I hope he puts his notes up on his site. I’d put up mine from his talk, but I’m trying to be less delusional about how much time I actually have for things like that.

While attendng a women’s lecture luncheon yesterday, I mentioned “weblogs” to a few people in the pre-lecture chatting time. At functions where I think there are less internet-savvy folks, I use “blogs” and “weblogs” interchangeably. I usually get “What are weblogs/blogs?” and I go into my elevator speech about blogs. It’s scary how much I can blather about them if given half a chance, although I try to start with just a quick sentence or two.

Well yesterday I got the usual “What are weblogs?” But in both cases, the person went on to ask, “Is that like a blog?”

Woo-hoo!

Twice people said that they’d heard about blogs, although both weren’t 100% sure of what they were. One woman had looked at a few, and read the blog of a sales coach who had recently added a blog to her site.

The other, a woman maybe in her late 20’s, early 30’s started telling me about this band she was following, and how a blog sounded sort of like what the band had.

I asked if the site was on MySpace.

She said she knew about MySpace, but the band’s site wasn’t there, and that the conversation on the site was called a “vine.”

I’ve never heard of that term before. I’m going to email her and ask her for more information. The lecture was starting so I didn’t have a change to continue the conversation.

I’m encouraged that the term is slowly filtering through to more people (Realtors and mortgage lenders, in this case). And it reminds me that people care less about what things are called and more about what they can do for them — help them communicate with a band and fellow fans, or read articles by a sales coach.

Another sign that blogging is continuing to gather steam — the increasing number of conferences about it.(Such as Business Smart Tools, which is actually about more than blogging, and which is gonna be even bigger next year!)

I’m going to two in the near future — one on Podcasting, and one on Blog Biz.

Podcamp Boston looks like fun. It’s free, which is a big plus. Although I have absolutely no plans to podcast myself, several clients are interested. One thing I want to learn about is podcast metrics — ways to get some stats on downloads and feeds. Podcamp seems like it will have a whole range of topics to pick from — check out their Podcamp Wiki for more info.

Blog Business Summit is going on October 25-27. (Yet another West Coast conference — oh well.) This one looks more business-centric than BlogHer06. Not to dis BlogHer — it was fantastic, and some day I’ll actually organize my notes and thoughts and post them here.

Last year’s conference was held in San Francisco, and looks to have been very well-regarded.

And as a bonus link, here’s a great post from Dave Taylor on The Critical Business Value of Attending Conferences.

‘Nuf said.

Technorati : BlogHer06

When I flew in to San Jose, California for the BlogHer convention, I got a chance to meet Molly Lavik.

By some amazing coincidence, Molly Lavik, founder and CEO of Mentorography was in town at another conference, which was just ending — something about Entrepreneurial stuff.

I met Molly online earlier this year, and she hired me to help in the initial setting up of her blog. We had some great conversations and it was fascinating to me to hear her plans and ideas. She used a web designer to create a WordPress site that does not look like a blog at all.

Molly is a professor at Pepperdine and has co-written a book about start-ups and entrepreneurship,Entrepreneurial Marketing: Real Stories and Survival Strategies. She’s also written a new one, not yet published, called Startup Time. (Unfortunately, to see the preview, you need to register at the online bookstore where it’s featured).

At Mentorography she’s set up a site where she’s been posting audio interviews with various entrepreneurs. The tag line of the blog reads ” Listen to and comment on digital diaries of lessons learned from socially-responsible entrepreneurs.” Once you register (free) you can hear the audios, and leave comments. I listened to a few and plan on hearing more.

Molly and I got a chance to actually meet at San Jose airport, after I landed and before she flew out. It turned out that our airlines, Southwest and American, were both at the same terminal. (Not that I knew that until I walked out of the terminal and down the block to find transportation to the American terminal. I was directed to a building across the street. This turned out to be connected via a section that crossed over the street, to the building I had just left!)

We had a great chat, and she recorded me for Mentorography. I do get to hear it first and can veto it, so don’t get your hopes up, o my many fans.

If you’re interested in entrepreneurship, check out Molly’s site.

As I mentioned yesterday, I’m at BlogHer 06, and I’ll be glad to ask your questions, if you put them in the comments. I tried to post this last night, but the site was apparently down for a bit. Seems ok now.

Here are the sessions for Day Two that I plan on attending today (except for early morning yoga)– what would you like to know about them? Ask questions in the comments, if you’re curious.

• Get Deeply Geeky.
  BlogHers want to talk technology and gender. Is the web itself a feminine construct? How about open source? Join Laura Scott, mir verburg, Nancy White & futurist Melanie Swan to discuss.

  To tell you the truth, I don’t care about the gender part — I just want to talk tech!

• Business Blog Case Studies
  Yvonne DiVita, Susan Getgood & Toby Bloomberg lead a rap session with you, the BlogHers, about what worked (and what didn’t) when implementing blogs for business.

  I’m very much looking forward to this one.

• Group Blogging
  Mandy Moore from the KnittingBloggers community, Iris Rodriguez & Veronica Hernandez from Smashcast and Sarah Gilbert & Asha Dornfest from Portland Urban Mamas are among those who have dealt with the practical & inspirational realities of building online blog communities.

I love that this conference is so wired — people have laptops open at every table, wi-fi connections (sometimes flaky when lots of people are logged on), plenty of plugs for laptops. It’s great.

But, just like at work, it’s tempting to check email while people are talking, instead of listening and taking notes!

Technorati : BlogHer

For the final two BlogHer 06 sessions I plan on attending tomorrow(I’m exhausted just thinking about all the stuff I’m going to learn):

• Video:

For the beginning or new user. We’re bringing back Video Goddess Ryanne Hodson, along with Zadi Diaz, to help you walk away ready to add video posts to your blog.

• Design/Style/Customization:

Want to make your blog your own? DIY or pay? And what’s reasonable in time & money? Miriam Verburg and Tiffany Brown walk you thru it, plus stylesheets (CSS) and how they work.

So don’t be shy — if there’s anything you want me to ask, leave a comment.

Technorati : BlogHer

Continuing with my idea of posting about the sessions I plan on attending on Day One of BlogHer ‘06, here are two more:

• Audio/Podcasting

Instructors will be on hand to serve all user levels. Beginners will create & post an audio entry with Susan Kitchens. Advanced users will get hands-on instruction and interactive Q&A about advanced techniques, plus best practices in promotion and distribution from Nicole Simon and Anita Campbell.

• Audience Building

Elise Bauer talks traffic: how to build it, how to understand your site statistics, how to optimize your site to build search engine traffic, how to use syndication and subscriptions to build recurring traffic…the works!

We’ll see what I learn. Don’t hesitate to give me your questions to ask at the sessions.

Technorati : BlogHer

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’m at BlogHer ‘06, and I want to write about the sessions I plan on attending at BlogHer. That way, anyone who reads this before the session can give me a question they’d like me to ask for them.

The first workshop session I plan on attending on Friday July 28 is called So, You Have This Crazy Idea. As it says in the session description:

You want to start a community-based blog site, but aren’t sure where to start. Melanie Morgan, Nancy White, Susannah Gardner & Lauren Gelman are among those who will help you examine what’s out there, define what you can do differently, and create a plan to develop content, promote your efforts and watch your back….

This session is a how-to from a bigger-picture and more holistic perspective. How to tame a crazy idea, find out if it’s worth pursuing, figure out how-to pursue it, and pursue it with confidence. We have lined up four women who are uniquely qualified to help you do just that.

I plan on picking up some tips on blogs that center around a community of practice or interest. That can be an actual physical community, such as New York City, or it can be a community of practice such as lawyers, programmers, even bloggers.

Aside from learning more about community-based blogs, I expect that I’ll pick up some good tips on fostering community that would apply to any blog.

So if anyone has any questions they’d like me to ask, leave a comment here and I’ll try to get them answered.

Technorati : BlogHer

It’s been a busy week at CTBizBlog, mostly because I’ve been off-line. It’s been a strain, but I think I’ll survive.

But now I’m in San Jose, and I’ll be attending BlogHer 2006. This conference was started last year, partially in reaction to the scarcity of women bloggers at other blogging and geek get-togethers. Men are welcome, too.

I’ve been looking forward to this conference for months. I have a roommate, too, who I am looking forward to meeting — Liz Strauss of Successful Blog.

I’m not sure if I’ll “live blog,” actually typing my notes into a blog post and publishing while at sessions. For me, that takes concentration away from the speaker, as I try to compose in whole sentences so that my notes make some sort of sense to non-attendees. At some conferences bloggers just post their rough notes, scattering sentence fragments and obscure references with abandon, but as a reader, I find that less than helpful. I’m always skimming through those posts, and the parts that interest me usually happen to be the sections where the notes are the most cryptic and frustrating, so I never get much out of it.

Instead I’ll try short posts throughout Friday and Saturday, sharing things I think might be interesting to my readers.

What I might do is post about what sessions I plan on attending, and ask folks to leave comments if they have any questions they’d like me to ask at the session. That could be fun!

I’ll do that tonight when I get to the hotel — let’s give that a try and see how it goes.

Technorati : BlogHer

Well, it was quite a good conference. As I mentioned in Tuesday’s post, I did some “live blogging,” which means I typed furiously as speakers talked, and hit “publish” when they were done.

I did those on the Creative Concepts blog, instead of here, however.

But here are the links for those posts, for your perusing convenience. Remember, these are my notes of the talks, so take that into account. These are summaries, not transcripts.

• David Pogue at Business Smart Tools Conference
• Mike Dunn on Podcasting
• Matt Kain on Search Engine Marketing
• David Parmet on Blogging

I must say I was a bit disappointed in David Pogue’s keynote speech. Not in the presentation, because he’s a great speaker, but in the content. It seemed to me that he spent too much time on the perceived negatives of blogs. I say perceived, because I don’t think he gave the full picture, just his understanding of the blogosphere. His examples were all news or political blogs, such as Gawker, Wonkette, and the like. I don’t know if he’s looked much at business blogs, or even topical blogs, such as Lifehacker, a blog about technology and productivity.

David Parmet asked him about other blogs, such as TechCrunch. Pogue hadn’t heard of it. Now, if you’re just a regular person, that’s understandable. But if you’re a techie, or a technology writer, that’s not a good sign.

You can read a summary of what he said in the on-line article written by Richard Lee, of the Stamford Advocate: Blogs, podcasts: Are they friends or foes?

“If it bleeds, it leads,” I guess.

Update 6/17/07 : Check out the comments for David Pogue’s reply and Ann Marie Brucia’s view of what she got out of the conference. Did I over-react to the negatives? I was concerned that his talk might scare people off, but Ann Marie wasn’t, so maybe I’m wrong?

Well, I made it to Stamford, CT, for the Business Smart Tools conference. It’s about to start. I made the rounds of the exhibitors, before the rush. There’s some cool technology out there. I talked to folks at:

• Vivapop (interactive web and voice accessible calendar)
• Conversagent (automated customer service agents)
• MarketWire (search engine optimization through press releases)
• Dial-a-Note powered by CiviCom (hands-free notepad)
• 24/7Real Media USA

I’m sure I’ll find out more as the conference progresses. I’m looking forward to the speaking part of the program, which will start at 2 PM.

I saw part of David Parmet’s presentation on blogging as he tested the projector, and it looks great.

He’s also started a Business Smart Tools Flickr photo set.

Today’s the day! I’ll be at the Business Smart Tools New Media Conference in Stamford, CT. I’ll be helping Valorie, and doing a demo or two of WordPress and whatever else people want to ask me about.

I heard a great segment on WNPR, the local public radio station, in their business section. It featured the conference, and an audio quote from Valorie. I wish the station would have audio archives up on the site, the way NPR.org does. Then I’d link to it. But still, it was exciting to hear.

Since there’s wireless at the conference, I’m going to try to do some live blogging, if I can. No promises, though. But I’ll definitely be taking notes, though, so expect to see at least one post about what went on.

Hope to see some of you there.

I was checking out cartoonist Mark Anderson’s blog this morning (that’s his stuff on the left sidebar), and I loved his entry on the type of email he gets. One person’s email consisted entirely of:

Do you have an affiliate program? How many orders do you fill each month? What is the most popular subject area? What trends or cycles present themselves through the year? How large is your in-house staff?

That’s right, no greeting, no introduction, nothing. Check out his blog for his answer and more email humor.

This type of email is so typical and so pathetic.

I’ve been paying attention to networking lately, on-line and off. I went to a function where several people apparently thought networking meant pushing their business cards on as many people as possible, saying as little as possible, and “hitting” as many people as possible.

On the other hand, the Greater Meriden Chamber of Commerce and the Central CT Women’s Forum have great networking events. The people there tend to be interested in meeting people and actually talking with them. They have actual conversations that aren’t all “me, me, me.”

Blog comments are a good way to network, too. But they have to be used correctly, in much the same way as offline networking events.

What I mean is, you need to contribute to the conversation. If you don’t, you’re only one step above spam.

I get a lot of comments that aren’t technically spam, but instead are links — just bare links to a site, or with some text indicating what the links are. But no conversation.

That’s not a comment, that’s an ad. I don’t have ads on this site. Comments like that don’t last too long.

I don’t mind links in comments at all; what I don’t want is just a link. If you’ve got a blog that might be of interest to my readers, explain why. Say something about the post that prompted your comment, to indicate that you read more than the title, if nothing else.

There’s a lot of information on the Internet, and a lot of good information. But if you want people to pay attention to your link, you need to show them why it’s worth their time.

Notice I said show them, not tell them. Telling them would be just a longer ad. Showing them means demonstrating, through your comments on topics, that you’re someone who has something to say that’s worth their attention.

It doesn’t mean every comment needs to be a dazzlingly brilliant display of deep insight. Amusing chit-chat is fine, as is just a sentence or two about your feelings on the subject of the post.

That’s OK; that’s conversation. And that’s what I’m talking about.

If you’re in the central Connecticut area, here are two upcoming events you might be interested in.

Public speaking is something that we all need to be able to do, especially if you’ve got your own business. Well, Monday, May 15th, Eagle Toastmasters of Wallingford is going to have an open house, from 7:15 - 8:45 PM, at the Park & Recreation building, 6 Fairfield Boulevard, Wallingford. If you’ve ever wondered what happens at a Toastmasters meeting, this is a good time to find out. I’ve been in this club for a few years and it has a great bunch of folks. Guests are welcome, the event is free, and there’ll be refreshments (ok, we don’t usually have food at a meeting, thank goodness). A few months ago, Jeff Katz, of the Meriden Record-Journal, came to a meeting. Here’s what he wrote about us.

For women, there’s the next meeting of the Central CT Women’s Forum, on the 16th. (Going to be a busy week for me next week — out two nights in a row!) That’ll be at Aqua Terra Restaurant, 253 East St., (Rt. 10), Plainville, CT. Networking begins at 5:30 p.m. followed by dinner and a program: Abby Marks Beale-Beyond Overload: 10 Secrets to Get Back Control. The price for guests is $25. If you’re interested, you’ll need to register by this Friday, May 12th.

As much as I love to spend my days and evenings hunched over a computer, there are times when I just have to go out and have fun. I always have a blast with these two groups.

Valorie Luther, of Creative Concepts, is off and running with her latest adventure. She’s been busy organizing a blogging/new media conference!

I’m going to be there to help out, and it sounds like a lot of interesting people, such as David Pogue, of the New York Times, and David Parment, among others, will be speaking.

She told me she’ll have a press release ready in a few weeks, but you can read a bit of what she’s been doing with the New Media Conference, in her latest blog post.

Ok, now that you’ve realized that RSS is something you need to know about, it’s time to pick an RSS reader (also called RSS aggregator, or feed reader).

There are pros and cons for every feed reader, so I’ll just give you my opinion about feed readers I’ve tried and point you to some readers to try out.

Web-based

My main issue is that I can be working on different computers throughout the day. I like to be able to read my feeds from any of those. That’s why I use Bloglines, which is a web-based reader.

I also like the fact that I don’t have to hunt through a blog site for the actual link to the RSS, which is sometimes hard to find. I only need to enter the URL of the site and voila! Bloglines also has a button you can add to your browser. When you find a blog you want to subscribe to, all you need to do is click on the button to add it.
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Just a quick note to say that I’ll be at Jitter’s in Southington tonight for the Central Ct. Women’s Forum open networking meeting.

CCWF Networking meeting - February 1, 2006 - 5:30 - 7PM. CCWF hosts an Open House Women’s Networking meeting at Jitter’s Coffeehouse, 1273 Queen Street in Southington, CT, RT. 10. For direction http://www.mapquest.com. The cost is $5.00 and includes coffee or tea and desserts. No reservation required. This is an informal meeting, meet and greet members and potential members. We will meet twice a month on Wednesday. Dates will be posted 2 weeks in advance so you can invite others who might be interested in CCWF. For monthly meetings and upcoming events click on Upcoming Programs.

The post about ways to add fun will be up later this evening.