Internet Marketing Conference Vancouver

Last year I spoke at the Internet Marketing Conference Vancouver on a fantastic, spirited social media panel. The reviews must have been good because I will be back for this year's conference, September 16-18. :) Not only will I be participating on the social media panel with Patrick Schwerdtfeger of Tactical Execution and William Azaroff of Vancity again, but we will also be joined by JP Holecka of Powershifter Media and Christopher Berry of Critical Mass. This panel should be even better than last year's as so much has changed in social media and we are joined by JP and Christopher.
I will also have a second session where I will be demonstrating the Radian6 social media monitoring platform.

The conference organizers have been kind enough to provide a 20% discount to readers of this blog for the main conference (the first day, training day is already sold out). Please use discount code: imc-speaker when you register.

Vancouver is a gorgeous city and this is a fantastic conference. I hope to see you there.

The most wonderful time of the year

Staples is bringing back The Most Wonderful Time of the Year, perhaps the most well-known and loved back-to-school television commercial ever created. I can’t believe that the commercial series first ran 15 years ago! As a parent, it is kind of exciting to send the kids back to school. But that’s not what is making the summer doldrums fun in the social media world. Today was panelpicker day for the South by Southwest Interactive Festival. It’s the chance for the social media fishbowl to get its e-ticket to their version of Disney World, SXSWi in March. You’ve heard the stories about the panels, the parties, the technology and the fun! Well, this is a way for social media peeps to get their e-tickets. SXSW is a community driven event, where your voting accounts for about 30% of the decision-making process for any given programming slot. Personally, I find it exciting to read all (well, maybe not all) of the interesting and creative panel proposals from so many talented people.

I am especially intrigued by:

• Tim Walker’s: Hitting Bombs: Better Social Business through Sports Metaphors
• Peter Kim’s: Sponsored Conversations: Good Strategy or Spam?
• Geno Church’s: Engaging Musician’s at Best Buy
• Alan Wolk’s: Don’t Suck: Sound Strategies for the Social Web
• Jim Storer’s: Building Social Strategies at Fortune 100 Companies

There are over 2000 proposals, so it is pretty competitive. With the opening of the voting, SXSW was a hot topic on Twitter with many people asking for votes and promoting their panels. And several people didn’t appreciate it.

Sonny Gill wrote a great post today about the process, SXSW – Panelpicking or panelpimping. It seems that the community was a little overzealous in the pursuit of votes. I appreciate Sonny’s point of view and hope that I can be less intrusive in my solicitation of your vote.

I have been invited to speak with Saul Colt, Zoocasa’s Head of Magic on a topic near and dear to my heart:

Tweet Your Way to Your Next Job

Obviously, we all know that Twitter is more than having a sandwich. Learn from two savvy marketers who used Twitter to further their careers. Saul Colt and Warren Sukernek have each used Twitter effectively to find new positions.

As faithful readers (my wife and kids) know, this is a subject that I have some experience in. Therefore, I’d certainly appreciate your vote. Please vote early and vote often!

Thanks for your help and support! I really appreciate it.

ESPN WTF???

Yesterday I read how the NFL was fining players who tweeted from training camp. I guess that is not surprising since the NFL is the most buttoned-up sports league and I doubt that they really get social media. As we've seen countless times, all command and control messaging. So I guess Mark Sanchez won't be tweeting during halftime a la Shaq or CV31 here.
But to see this tweet from ESPN's Ric Bucher, now that's a shock. Pretty bizarre and not very fan friendly, if you ask me.

And I agree with Twitter newbie :) Robert Scoble. This is very lame!

What do you think? Is this the new trend in uptight sports and the media who covers them?






8/4 Evening Update
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A more detailed Follow-up from the NY Times,

"The guidelines are more detailed than Bucher described them. But they restrict the freedom that ESPN employees might previously have enjoyed.

“We’ve been in the social networking space for a long time, and will continue to be there,” said Chris LaPlaca, an ESPN spokesman. “But we want to be smarter about how we do it.” He said that Bucher’s “interpretation of the policy is mistaken.”

The guidelines say that on-air talent, reporters and writers are prohibited from having sports-related blogs or Web sites and that they will need a supervisor’s approval to discuss sports on any social networking sites. They will also be restricted from discussing internal policies or detailing how stories are “reported, written, edited or produced.”

And from Mashable, a detailed report on ESPN's social media guidelines and Nate Smeltz, ESPN Publicist twitter response.