London, spring 2011

A series of photos from my trip to London:

South Kensington

Camden

Museum of Natural History

Camden Town

Borough Market

On-site or online events? What about both?

There has been plenty of debate over the past few years about the comparative value of online and face-to-face events. We’ve seen some companies abandon trade shows, while others cling to them and insist that online events are just a fleeting trend. There is another group that has adopted a balanced mix of online and on-site events.

Although BrightTALK™ focuses on online events, it’s clear to me that there is value in both. Our San Francisco office is just blocks from one of the largest convention centers in the United States and we see hordes of professionals roaming the streets during events like the RSA Conference, Dreamforce, and the Web 2.0 Expo. I often attend in-person events and always try to make it to our local B2B Marketing Breakfasts. I also tune into a few webcasts each month, most of which have presenters speaking from other states, or even other countries.

At a recent Think Influence meet-up, I was talking about the group’s content plan with its founder, Barbara French, and we discussed the fact that group members in other cities wouldn’t be able to participate in the upcoming presentations without flying in for the day.

We decided to host the first event of the year at the BrightTALK San Francisco office, and to stream the presentation on turning influencers into brand advocates as a live video in the BrightTALK™ Social Media Marketing Summit. This would allow us to extend the reach of the presentation to include marketers in other regions as well as those who live locally, but couldn’t make it to the meet-up that morning. Having it recorded will enable anyone to enjoy the content at anytime from anywhere.

We now have about 50 top local marketers coming into the office to participate as a live audience, and another 250 signed up to watch online from 31 states and 16 countries (Update: there have now been over 1,000 views including on-demand viewers).

For everyone in the office, it will be a great chance to spend the morning with their peers, and for everyone online, a convenient way to learn from the speakers without worrying about travel, cost, or their busy work schedules. I see it as the best of both worlds, and evidence that both event formats can live in harmony. Here's the proof:

A BrightTALK Channel

Grooveshark

This is by no means a self-serving promotion, but I would like to say that I've been using Grooveshark for my streaming music needs lately, and it's a fantastic site. It is similar to Pandora, but allows you to create a music library, which is basically an iTunes in the cloud. That means you can save songs in your library, create playlists, and best of all, access this on any computer or device that's connected to the Internet. I like Pandora because they create mixes that expose me to songs I otherwise wouldn't notice, but now Grooveshark is also implementing a social networking capability, which allows you to connect with friends and see what they're listening to.

I found out about this in a creepy way, when my friend caught me listening to Mariah Carey, but I think it has interesting potential, and I'd suggest checking it out. They now charge for their Android app, which makes business sense, but made me uninstall the app, but the website remains free to use. Here's a widget with my jam of the week:

Fall & Winter 2010

Here are a few photos from recent months:

Kauai Phlog

A quick collection of photos from my relaxing trip to the island of Kauai........

aloha

Celebrate Earth Day with the BrightTALK Green Week Summit Series

In honor of the 40th anniversary of Earth Day we are hosting a Green Week Summit Series which includes over 50 webcast presentations by some of the world's leading experts. The presentations all target business professionals, and topics include Green IT, Corporate Responsibility, Water Management, Green Building, Data Center Efficiency, Marketing, and Environmental Regulation & Compliance.

You can watch any or all of them for free. The presentations are interactive if you're able to tune in live, and will also be recorded if it's more convenient for you to watch them afterward on-demand.

I have embedded one of my favorites below and you can peruse the full program here: BrightTALK Green Week

You can watch the presentation below from this page via the embedded BrightTALK player.The webcast has already been summarized on Contagious.com and features:
Rich Lechner, VP, Energy & Environment, IBM
Will Swope, VP & Managing Director, Intel
Amy Skoczlas-Cole, Director, eBay Green Team
Andy Bateman, CEO, Interbrand

Life Lessons

My 96 year old great-grandma has seen a few things in her life.

Growing up on a farm in Arkansas, she and her husband sold their property for a Chevy and drove west to California to settle in the land of opportunity. She has picked cotton, cooked in restaurants, seen the US through both world wars, and lived long enough to spend holidays with her great great grandchildren.

She has an infectious and magnetic personality that exudes love through every movement and action it commands of her, and I plan to put her story on paper in the next year. She's already looking forward to her 100th birthday party, and creates a queen sized quilt each month with her arthritic fingers.

I often call her on Sundays and wanted to quickly share a few bits of wisdom she shared today:

- There is no use feeling sad and sorry for yourself - be happy and enjoy your life

- Everything you do will be better if you do it with love

Just after hanging up the phone with her, I headed for an ice cream shop down the street. Walking down the street toward me was an elderly man with a cane, slowly making his way down the San Francisco hill. Every five or six shuffled steps, he stopped walking, switched his heaping ice cream cone from his left to right hand, and took a big bite.

I stopped in a doorway and became one of four or five faces on the block staring at the happy old stranger as he enjoyed his cone. Another example of someone who has come to realize what's important: being happy and having fun.