Scoble on BlogTalkRadio

The Social Media Club is netcasting Friday, August 31 at 10am pst on BlogTalkRadio. Chris Heuer, Robert Scoble any myself will be talking about a topic that vexes even the best bloggers… how to balance authenticity, credibility, and authority in the blogosphere. It’s a call-in show, so dial 1 646 716 9346 and join the conversation.

The backstory
The topic was prompted by a recent bit of hair ruffling between bloggers. I don’t want to recap the posts and comments. You can find the post that kicked things off here. After being taken to task for “heavy breathing” about companies and products (among other things) Robert’s reflective response raises the conversation above the noise and suggests ways to avoid flaps like this in the future.

The Show
This is the first in a regular series of Social Media Club talk shows. We want you to call in, so join us on Friday, August 31 at 10am pst. Dial 1 646 716 9346 and join the conversation.

Social News Smarts

The Silicon Valley chapter of the Social Media Club met at Yahoo last night. The topic was Social News Smarts, Community and User Expectations on Social News Sites. I had the pleasure of introducing Stacy Bond of Audioluxe. She moderated a panel that included:

• Jay Adelson, Digg.com
• Anonymgrl, Top Ten User on Reddit.com
• Karen Brophy, Yahoo News
• Drew Curtis, Fark.com
• Amy Dalton, Topix.com
• Dan Gillmor, Center For Citizen Media
• Steve Huffman, Reddit.com

I would have paid more attention to the panel, but I was assisting Steve Sargeant of Effible Communications set up the audio system shown below. It was designed to bring remote callers into the event via Skype. It sorta, kinda worked.

 

 

 

 

The system worked as long as the person on the mixing board had fast enough fingers to mute the microphones while the remote callers were speaking. Without muting the mics, the reverb and other audio artifacts were unavoidable. The delays introduced by Skype are not so much about Internet traffic loads as they are about several cycles of audio compression as the cell phones and Skype do it their way.

I don’t like setting up systems before testing them. We were skating on thin ice in that regard last night. Thanks to Steve, we got much of it right.

Next month we’ll be using Ustream and BlogTalkRadio to cover the meeting. Our topic will be the changing face of corporate video. Even if you can’t join us at PodTech on September 12, I hope you’ll be able to catch our stream or archive files.

 

Blogging 101

I’ve put together a great program and panel called Blogging 101 for the next Silicon Valley Social Media Club meeting. It’s an ambitious overview that covers everything from consuming blogs to the future of blogs. The event is FREE and will be in North San Jose at the NBC11 studios.

Date

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Time
6:00 pm PT – 8:00 pm PT
Location
NBC11/KNTV
2450 N. First Street
San Jose, 95131

The evening’s panelists to blogging from a variety of perspectives but enterprise experience is one thing they have in common. The panelists are:

• Tony Bove – author, journalist, publisher, blogger, musician, consultant, technophile, WordPress Guru, blogger
• Elisa Camahort – Blogher co-founder, author, marketing executive, consultant, vegan, blogger
• Jeremiah Owyang – PodTech web strategist, innovator, consultant, Ustreamer, blogger
• Lisa Padilla – BlogTalkRadio VP Marketing, podcaster, technophile, narrowcaster, blogger

Here’s the outline:

Where’s the value in the blogosphere?

• Another marcomm channel…
• What about PR…
• Touching customers and partners…
• Workgroups…
• Market intelligence…

Thinking about your Blog

• Audience
• Messaging
• Engaging the conversation

Consuming blogs

• Finding relevant blogs and bloggers
• Feeds and aggregation
• Alerts and updates

Starting a blog is easy

• Tony will create something in WordPress
• widgets
• customization.

You have a blog, so what?

• The role of strategy
• Where are the relevant conversations happening?
• How to engage
• The communication channel mix

The future of enterprise blogs

• Blog as website paradigm
• Is it really a CMS?
• The multimedia blog (and new applications)

Hope you can make it. Be sure to RSVP at eventbright…we need to know how much pizza to order!

One Man Mobile Uplink

One Man Mobile Uplink

Originally uploaded by Ross Mayfield.
Yesterday Ross posted this prescient pic of Al Franken. Clearly a parody of Justin and his ilk. Little did I suspect that Franken’s rig would be easily dispatched by MobleScoble. I planned to go to the Web 2.0 Expo today, but given Robert and Jeremiah’s coverage, I decided to stay at my desk.

“Coverage” is the issue here. It’s one thing to absorb CSPAN’s unblinking eye, but it’s another thing to endure the endless stream of ScobleFans. If nothing else, this experiment has shown us what it’s like to be Robert Scoble. I just hope there’s a pause button so he can take a leak in private.

Bloghaus @ CES

You’ll find John Furrier of Podtech camped out at Bloghaus in the Bellagio at the Consumer Electronics Show. Bloghaus is sponsored by Seagate, Microsoft and AMD. The amenities seem to go far beyond the free sodas in the press center.

Most notable is the recognition that events like CES are giving bloggers. When Dave Winer wondered how to get press credentials, many schemes came to my mind. The one thing that I didn’t think about was going to the registration desk and filling out a press registration form. That’s exactly what he did, accompanied by several pages printed from his blog. That was enough for the powers that be to grant a press pass. I can only look forward to more and more conferences taking this approach.