Blogworld 09 - Creating Great Visuals

David Armano gave a talk on adding cool stuff to your blog post. The description can be found here. Here are my notes:

• "The eyes are not reponsible when the mind does the seeing" - Publilius Syrus.


• Dave went through a lot of good examples of how important visuals are to conveying information.


• It's important to present information in a very simple way so that people can grasp the concept immediately. It's a messy process to get to a simple diagram, but don't worry about that. The process to get to simplicity is complex. Simple visuals have the ability to grab your attention.


• Mindmap got a plug. I've always enjoyed mind manager, but I think it's got some serious limitations when it comes to posting information on the web.


• 6 steps to getting visual.


1. Empathize: See the world as a child.


2. Memorize: Commit thoughts to memory. Draw out your ideas.


3. Analyze: Take a step back.


4. Synthesize: Filter signal from noise. This is crucial and it's where most people fail.


5. Visualize: See it, then do it. David uses Adobe Illustrator to do his visuals.


6. Materialize: Make it tangible, make it stick. Make it something that grabs people and they take note of what you created.
• Dave went through a concrete example of a visual he made for HiveMind that went through these steps. It was excellent, but difficult to replicate here.


• The wrong question is what software he uses - Adobe Illustrator, the right question is how he goes through the process of developing the visuals. He admitted that Adobe Illustrator has a steep learning curve. He claimed he could have done the HiveMind graphic in Gliffy or PowerPoint as well.


• He recommended Tufte's Envisioning Information, Gray's Selling to the VP of No and Krug's Don't Make Me Think.

Here, David is preparing to take a photo of the audience, probably to use it as a great visual later on!

Blogworld 09 - Real Time Web

Louis Gray gave a talk on real-time web applications and their growth. The information about the talk can be found here. My notes:

• Why real time now? There are lots and lots of free tools out there available to us. We have shorter attention spans and these tools cater to that.


• The real time tools can be better than Google because you can see real-time feedback. Consider the difference between using Google to search for a movie review and searching Twitter for the same movie and seeing tiny reviewlets.


• FriendFeed is another example of the real-time web.


• Louis is going through a series of online tools that allow you to do this. The benefit to this is that it becomes closer and closer to a normal, face-to-face conversation instead of the equivalent of the postal service.


• Pingie allows you to get mobile phone alerts from your feeds instantly so that you can react instantly if that's important to you. It sounds like something that would be important to Public Affairs folks for companies that could get attacked out in the blogosphere / twittersphere.


• The real-time web is eliminating the need for hitting the refresh button.


• Google Wave is at the early stages of this. I think this is Google's effort to stake out a big part in the real-time web. It was generally agreed in the room that Google Wave's implementation wasn't great, but that it's potential is enormous.


• The other great thing about this is that you get tons of information fed to you without killing your email inbox. If your company limits the size of your inbox, real-time web sharing tools like Google Wave completely circumvents these problems.

Louis Gray

Blogworld 09 - Friday Keynote - The State of the Blogosphere

Richard Jalichandra of Technorati gave the opening keynote on Friday. You can see the details about the presentation here. What follows are my own notes from the talk.

• The state of the Blogosphere is STRONG! (The crowd goes wild!) Whoohoo!


• There's the rise of a class of professional bloggers. Mainstream media folks are starting to emulate the writing styles of bloggers. Citizen-journalism is growing as is blog readership.


• Technorati is rolling out a new look in the very near future.


• Richard recapitulated his talk from last year by way of introduction to the rest of his talk.


• This talk will focus on the rise of the class of professional bloggers.


• There's been a big growth in bloggers getting paid at least partially for their work. Richard showed a pie chart of his data that indicated that 72% of his respondents are just hobbyists. He doesn't have a truly gigantic sample size, so I would bet that the percentage of bloggers getting paid is probably smaller than he says. In any case, the number of people getting paid for their blogging is growing. Within the set of those getting paid are those that find business opportunities because of their blogging. That would then include the realtors we heard from yesterday who blog to make connections, but don't get directly paid for their blogging.


• Microblogging does not seem to be a threat to normal blogs. Of those who said they blogged less, only 1/3 of them said it was because they could microblog.


• A lot of unsurprising stats followed - people are taking blogs more seriously, more people are getting their news from blogs, lots of journalists and former journalists now blog and so forth.

I'm going to quit at this point. The theme here is that there is a flow of revenue and impact into the Blogosphere. Because of the negligible barrier to entry for publishing on a blog, there doesn't seem to be much of a reason to expect this to slow down.

I've got a nice photo of Richard, but I'll have to wait until I've got a table to hook up my camera. I'm going to shut down now to save my laptop battery.

Blogworld 09 - The Opening Night Party

... it rocked. See for yourself.

Blogworld 09 Thursday Afternoon Keynote - Sponsored Blogging

As an occasional user of Pay Per Post, this talk was of particular interest to me. Jeremiah Owyang was the moderator and the panelists were Ted Murphy from Izea, Jennifer Lezio (sp?), Lisa Baradokin (lawyer, spelling?) and Wendy Piersall a blogging network owner that uses sponsored conversations. You can find detail about this session here.

The panel is being billed as a debate on this topic, but I'm not quite sure I follow why there's a debate in the first place. It's not like when you use Izea to make money on a pay-per-post you don't let eveyone know you're doing it. When they took a quick show of hands poll in the room, about 70% of the room were in favor and 5% were against it. The rest were undecided. Here are my notes from the conversation.

• Lisa the lawyer discussed the recent changes in FTC regulations. She claimed the regulations are pretty simple and I blogged about them here.


• Product placement and similar sponsored conversations has been going on for years


• Jennifer is against it because they're not for everyone. My initial reaction is who is she to decide who should do it and who shouldn't? She's playing the nanny, worrying about others' reputations. I can worry about my own branding, thank you very much.


• Wendy agrees that it isn't for everyone. Again, who is Wendy to tell me what I can or can't do?


• Wendy's view of herself is much larger than she really is. Wendy had a sponsored conversation! Great Caesar's Ghost! Now how will I ever manage to change the oil in my car?


• Ted supports sponsored conversations, but has a strong position about declaring that such things are happening.


• Jennifer is bothered by our relationships with our readers, afraid that we're making money off of our audiences by our sponsored conversations. Her issue is do you want to be a spokemodel or a thought leader? She claims you can't do both. I'm glad she's worried about me.


• Wendy wrote about some product or another and the link she had used to the product site had been sold and it now pointed to a pr0n site. Um, so what?


• I'm getting ticked off now. CNN was licking the sweat off of Saddam Hussein's balls so they could have access within Iraq, so now we've all got to be like them? 60 Minutes knowingly libeled General Westmoreland, but they're not a sponsored site? Dan Rather spreads absolute crap from forged documents about George Bush trying to get John Kerry elected and he's the one we should emulate?


• The gist of it is that Wendy and Jennifer want to look over my shoulder as I write. They dont seem to find their own lives sufficiently interesting to fill their days. Neither do I.


• If these dingbats had ruled the place in 1840, the US's western border would still be in Indiana.

Blogworld 09 - Integrating Media Into the "One Site"

The presentation has already begun, so this link to the description of this talk will have to do for an intro.

My takes:

• Richard Nicolay is the speaker. The presentation is aimed at real estate sites, but it's applicable to all.


• The website is all about creating relationships and the way the site looks is part of how you brand yourself.


• As long as you keep the key elements of your site as you change it, your visitors will be able to easily adapt to the changes.


• Richard spent a lot of time discussing Posterous. Posterous is a lightweight blogging tool that allows you to mix all kinds of media. Posterous even works with Blogger! Way cool. I may need to try this from my Blackberry. The presentation is more of a demo than a standard presentation so if I want to share this with you, I'll have to use Posterous myself and report back.


• Rich is a big WordPress user and has another cool tool - Lifestream. Lifestream is a WordPress plugin for displaying feeds on your site. Looks interesting, but not applicable to everyone.

OK, this is a pretty cool session, but he's really just getting into his favorite tools and gadgets. What it shows is that there are lots of tools out there that allow you to integrate multiple streams and feeds into your blog or website so that you retain the look and feel.

Blogworld 09 - Social Media Success Stories

I had to pop over to my work network for a second, so I'm coming back late to this one. Here are the details about this session. What follows are my notes.

• Brian Wiegand of Alice.com is using Social Media to build a base of fanatics by connecting to MommyBloggers. They sell consumer products like toilet paper and cosmetics. They started something like 16 weeks ago(?) and have already seen a lot of interactions and traffic from their efforts.


• Frank Eliason of Comcast Cares is passionate about what he does. You have to put your most passionate people out there as bloggers. Frank isn't passionate about their product line, he's passionate about customers. Companies need to teach their employees to be out in the social media world. Frank is big on one-tweet resolution. Customers tweet their problems and Comcast jumps in and tries to fix it after only a single tweet. Different tools are good for different things. Twitter is great for listening to the customers talk between themselves. Forums are used to allow customers to form communities around your products. Every space has its own community aspect. Facebook is a great place for meeting people you already know, not so good for meeting people you don't know.


• Samantha Gammell of Oscar Meyer uses social networking to help custoemrs interact with the WeinerMobile. Seriously. The WeinerMobile is a marketing vehicle. The used social media to help for communities of the nuts who love the WeinerMobile. They use their blog to keep people up to date on what the 6 WeinerMobiles are doing.


• Justin Levy Caminito Argentinean Steakhouse bought into the company a while back. The company didn't have brand recognition as a small steakhouse outside Boston. When he took over, the restaurant was losing money. Justin immediately cut their advertising budget and went to social media. His goal was to own the front page of Google on search terms related to his restaurant. He figured that his customers found him through Google searches. In the first month of trying this, they were making a profit again because of the increased customer traffic.

The theme of this session was using social media to interact with and create communities formed around your products.

The Social Media Success Stories panel.

Blogworld 09 - Social Media ROI

OK, the first keynote went well, now it's time for the first panel session. This one is populated by real estate folks who are using social media to drum up business. You can find out the details of the session here. Here are my quick notes.

• Jim Marks: Define ROI - traditional financial measures can be used - how much money do you generate from social media. A more difficult measure is Return on Influence.

Mike Simonsen - He takes the attitude that Return on Influence is more important.

• Sherry Chris sees the Return on Influence as important and uses social media for branding. From Web 2.0 Expo, Aaron Kim had a better take on this. Much more concrete.


• Jim is sticking with the revenue side of this. Aaron Kim would agree.


• Mike is playing the goodwill and karma cards.


• Dan Green is hitting some good notes. Time invested in social media is time not spent doing other things.


• Sherry is seeing opportunities and connections being made because of her participation on the social media sites. It's an echo of what Laura said in the first keynote.


• Dan spends about 132 minutes a day on social media marketing. He figures his hourly wage for blogging is $245 an hour after taking into account the sales he has made because of connections he made on line. It took Dan 5 years to get to this point. It took him 18 months to get his first lead with social media.


• Jim maintains that you must have a strategy to your social media efforts and you must keep track of the time and effort you invest.


• Rob Hahn, the moderator, says if you can't measure it, you don't have a strategy. Turning the question on its head, the question is when do you decide to quit?


• Jim maintains that the question is over, blogs are worthwhile.


• What should you measure? Dan: inbound inquiries. Mike: unique visitors to your site. Sherry: sales calls that come from the social media sites. Jim: traffic and conversion are the only two to measure.


• A questioner brings up a good point - we can measure ROI on this because it's on a computer while the rest of the things we do during the day aren't measured. Social media sure beats sitting around in the office and playing solitaire.


• How do you improve your social media ROI? Jim: figure out how to get people to follow your links from Twitter to your blog which is where you'll convert visitors to business. Sherry: don't do the same thing on every site. Each site is very different. Mike: Be informative and interesting in order to make connections. Dan: Market to the people who are predisposed to buy from you. Don't market to Google, market to the people who already know you. The word of mouth from supporters will bring you business.


• Jim is a big fan of the hand-written note for cementing relationships. Rob agreed and quipped that the next big social media invention will be the pen and paper.

Jim Marks, a hard-nosed business man, made some great points.

Blogworld 09 - Thursday Keynote Crowd

It's standing room only at the opening keynote. It's much bigger this year than it was last year and last year it was big. I could see this outgrowing the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Blogworld 09 - Thursday Keynote - Laura Fitton

OK, here we go! Can a little tuxedo cat keep up with a steady stream of presentations and keynotes and blog through the day? You bet! Caffeine ingested, power cord plugged into the wall, wireless connection made, let's boogie!

After some admin notes from our Vicar of Victory, Laura's on. Here are the key points from what she had to say.

Rick Calvert, a man who rocks.

• Laura claims her life was totally changed by Twitter. She was a stay-at-home mom who decided to restart her consulting business. Or something like that. I was still setting things up, so I missed some of her intro.


• She's jazzed by Twitter's ability to connect people all across the world. In fact, if you're not tweeting and connecting, you're cheating the rest of the world of your talents.


• Mentoring is a key part of all of this. By making these connections, we now have the ability to mentor people all across the World. There are things you can do that other people need and want to learn.


• What people will do for love is what drives her.


• Umair Haque is referenced.


• If you don't connect, you cheat the rest of the world of your talents and something awesome won't happen that would have had you connected. Similarly, if you don't connect, you cut yourself off from all kinds of support and love from others.


• Laura's really energetic and fun, but you don't have to be, all you need to do is connect and make yourself available to others and others available to you.


• Laura's formed a group from these connections that is doing awesome things. Well, more wacky and fun than awesome to me, but still, it's way cool what she's done with her connections.


• What is your superpower?

What she's not saying, but what is the theme of the talk is using these new tools like blogging and Twitter and Facebook to increase the opportunities available to you. From there, it's a matter of having a positive attitude to sieze these opportunities. Twitter and blogs haven't changed what it takes to provide water supplies to the city of Des Moines, the physical acts of producing things and services still exist, but the opportunities available for you to participate and contribute in things all over the world will leap out at you and beg you to grab them if you just make the decision to connect.

Laura is a fun speaker and makes you feel good.
Update: Here are some more points.

• Twitter disrupts isolation.


• Twitter gives us a gloabl sensing the detecting system. The ability to follow the Iranian protests was a good example of this.


• My take: She talks a lot about how things change with the connections from Twitter, but the big things that are coming right down on top of us - the penalties we pay for thinking we can have things we haven't earned - might not be tractable through things like Twitter. On the other hand, the medium is a way to influence society. Hmmm ...


• Don't repress yourself! Share what you're doing so mighty forces of connections can come to your aid!


• She used the example of Iran, but that's not exactly a success story. The protestors got shot and the Obama Administration stood by with their thumbs in their mouths.


• Laura is a wonderful altruist. Her four key words are Listen, Learn, Care, Serve. Amen, Laura.