Belize

Jaguar

Cricket & waterlillies

Tobacco Caye cabana

Fan palm

Spot the croc

Green Week

This marks the third year we've hosted a Green Week around Earth Day. We've had over 6,000 professionals sign up for the events over the last two years and have facilitated the sharing of some incredible knowledge. This year is no different with speakers from organizations including Autodesk, Forrester, NASA, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the Pacific Institute, and many more. Since it's an online event you can save the costs and environmental impact of your travel and simply tune in from your desk or couch.

In company news, we're rolling out our first BrightTALK™ Summit widgets this week, so I've put one on display below. You can also find a nice full page ad in the May issue of Scientific American if you happen to pick up a copy.

A BrightTALK Summit

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