He and Shashi sat down and talked about Internet marketing and the future of the web using tools like Twitter.

Here is the webcast (it is about 30 min)

Wordcamp Logo (credit:Technosailor)

This past Saturday I had the opportunity to visit where I went for my undergraduate degree at the University of Baltimore to attend Wordcamp Mid-Atlantic. It was put on by Aaron Brazell AKA Technosailor who is well known in the wordpress community and in on his previous lives was Director of Technology for B5 Media which was at the time the largest blog network running on Wordpress. He has some serious street cred in the Wordpress community and currently has a consulting practice working with some great firms implementing Wordpress as part of their strategy.

Aaron Brazell (photo by Shashi Bellamkonda)

Opening Remarks

He kicked the morning off with a thank you to sponsors and an introduction to the event as well as integrating in some great Ignite Baltimore presentations to keep things lively and not just Wordpress lectures. Mario Armstrong gave his personal branding presentation to start and we jumped into the first keynote of the day from Anil Dash of Six Apart.  Read on…

Keynote from Anil Dash

Anil Dash (photo by Shashi Bellamkonda)

After Aaron completed his opening remarks Anil Dash, co-founder of Six Apart (yes, that Six Apart) gave the first keynote of the day. He released some earth shattering news – Moveable Type solutions for Wordpress. WOW. That was some serious breaking news and an exclusive for attendees. Our very own Social Media Swami broke the news with a video interview. From Shashi’s previous post:

“The audience at Word Camp Mid-Atlantic drew a deep breath as Anil Dash, one of the co-founders of Six Apart a rival blogging platform delivered the keynote address. During the keynote he made a very sensational announcement. The screen lit up with a URL http://www.sixapart.com/wordpress which is like Microsoft having a place for Apple software on their website.

What Anil announced was that Six Apart is introducing plug-ins that word press and other blogging platform users can use TypePad AntiSpam, Six Apart Media, TypePad Connect, Blogs.com.

They are open source and FREE.

The other unconventional part of this announcement is that Six Apart decided to use a very grassroots Word Press event to make this sensational announcement instead of calling the New York Times, Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal. I took the opportunity to catch up with Anil Dash and interviewed him for this blog.”

You can see the video interview HERE.

Sessions Geeky and Not So Geeky

Wordcamp Audience (photo: Jimmy Gardner)

The rest of the day was composed of sessions that went from the design side to the programming side of Wordpress. One of my favorites was the advanced session on the “Thesis” theme that has become so popular. It really opened up the hood for people wondering how this theme is different and more powerful that simple skins.

Jared Goralnick, TechnoTheory, (not to be confused with Technosailor) gave a left of center presentation called “Being a Balanced Blogger”

All of the sessions were great in their own way wrapping up with Dan Zarrella expanding Wordpress functionality with “Twitter, Friendfeed and Social Tools”.

Jimmy Gardner captured some of the presentations which are already on Slideshare:

• Brad Williams – Advanced Thesis Techniques and Tricks
• Brandon Savage – Wordpress Caching

Closing Keynote from Mark Jaquith on “State of Wordpress”

Mark Jaquith (photo by Dawn Casey)

Mark Jaquith, who I first met at Gnomedex 2007 when I was writing for B5 Media, is a great guy and a sharp developer. I think he gets annoyed when I tell him that he looks like Corin Nemec (Stargate SG-1, Parker Lewis Can’t Lose) but wouldn’t you want to be told you look like TV/Movie star? I digress, but his presentation was a nice wrap up of the day and he talked about the improvements to Wordpress 2.7, the epic FAIL of Wordpress 1.5 and what is coming up in Wordpress 2.8.

All I can say is that I am excited about detailed theme and widget control.

You can see the whole thing in Slideshare:

Mark Jaquith – State of the Word

It was a great event and Aaron along with support from Jimmy Gardner was a huge success. I see this to be even bigger next year.

Other coverage of the announcement and Word Camp Mid-Atlantic:
Leena Rao, Tech Crunch
Doug Coleman on ReadWriteWeb.com
Jimmy Gardner EastCoastBlogging.com
Joe Corbett Isteconnects.com
Mike Paetzold wptutorial.com
Ted Mann on TurkeyMonkey.com

The Online Media Boot Camp

Here is their message to attendee:

“With customers and prospects searching the Internet for products, services―and conversation―the world of marketing has changed forever. Customers and prospects now own your brand and they are controlling what’s being said about you in the market both online and offline. Are you prepared?

The Online Media Boot Camp is a full-day, intense, online marketing training conference that will give you the background and tools you will need to learn how to market in this new environment.”

The event looks to be a solid day of best practices and lessons learned by some of the top Digitial Media practicioners that include:

• Liana (Li) Evans, Key Relevance
• Shashi Bellamkonda (The Social Media “Swami”), Network Solutions
• Valeria Maltoni, Conversation Agent
• Beth Harte, Harte Marketing & Communications and Adjunct Professor (Immaculata University)
• Mack Collier, The Viral Garden

You read that right. Our very own Shashi Bellamkonda will be presenting the following session:

Selling On-Line Media Internally with Shashi Bellamkonda

Are you frustrated that your company is not engaged in social media? As a marketer you know that social media is beneficial in engaging customers, prospects and partners? But with social media comes the lack of control and an inherent transparency–and your management team is risk averse. How then can you convince the management team that social media will benefit the company? This session will cover creative ways to get management, including lawyers, on board with social media.

Key Take Aways

• How to become a social media champion
• Actionable steps to convince your boss of the value of social media
• Creative ways to recruit internal proponents
• How to gather & present compelling reasons to implement social media

The Online Media Boot Camp offers the following online marketing training sessions:

• Social Media Fundamentals
• Selling On-Line Media Internally
• Corporate Blogging
• Public Relations 2.0
• Social Networking & Community Building
• On-Line Marketing Workshop

You can register here and I would hurry because I am sure that this one is gonna sell out soon. See you all there on April 9.

Here is who is scheduled to speak (including Shashi):

Mike Subelsky, www.otherinbox.com: Mike will present a case study on how he personally used social media to promote the successful Baltimore event, Ignite Baltimore and his company, OtherInbox.

Jared Goralnick, www.awayfind.com: Jared’s case study will discuss – when was the last time you emailed a blogger? And ten other lessons learned in online relationship-building.

Dave Troy, www.beehivebaltimore.com: Dave will provide a case study on how he launched socialdevcamp east, a successful barcamp/unconference that drew crowds of developers and techies from Boston to DC.

Shashi Bellamkonda, blog.networksolutions.com: Shashi will present a case study on how he has changed the face of information sharing at one of the largest organizations – Network Solutions.  And how he utilizes social media on a daily basis to help provide real time feedback to Network Solutions.

Greg Cangialosi, www.blueskyfactory.com: Greg will present a case study on lead generation using social media and ways that he has used content for marketing, and social media participation to increase branding and lead generation with his company, Blue Sky Factory.

Peter Corbett, www.istrategylabs.com: Peter will present a case study on how he has utilized video for companies like Geico to help virally spread the word and brand of their organization.

Page Sands / Matt Goddard, www.r2integrated.com: So you know that Twitter, Facebook, Del.icio.us, and all of these other social networking tools exist. But what next? Marketing professionals are struggling to understand which tools are best for them, and how to utilize them in a way that makes the most sense. We have put together a strategic framework for building your social marketing plan. The framework allows you to go through a step by step process to figuring out which tools are appropriate for your goals, the best ways to use them, and tips for measuring their success.

Catherine Pancake, www.webadvantage.net: Social Media is all the rage, but some companies end up alienating customers, wasting money, and end up giving us a pretty good chuckle .  Catherine will present the Top Five Worst Social Media Campaigns and other examples of how companies or individuals got it wrong.

Marci DeVries, www.imrecommunications.com: Social media is one of the hottest topics today.  If you¹re like many, you¹ve got looming questions: What should I be doing now? How do I maintain it? Can I draw a straight line from social media to sales?  From grassroots to nationwide outreach, learn how to tap Web channels to lead,  join or further the conversation on issues most important to your organization and its constituents. Engage and connect using tools best targeted to your audiences.

Here are the specific time and location details:

January 27, 2009
Time: 8:30 am – 11:30 am
Location: Emerging Technology Center, 2400 Boston St. 3rd Floor
Baltimore, MD 21224
Format: Small Breakout sessions that are chosen by registered attendees
Costs: GBTC Members – $45, Non-Members – $55
Sponsors: Contact Steve Kozak for information

We would love to see you out there

Last we heard there are about 100 people registered so it should be a great event. So get registered and come on out. We will be blogging the event and would love to meet you.

Affiliate Summit West 2009 is taking place January 11-13, 2009 at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas.

When you take a look at this amazing agenda, you can see that this is the premier event to attend if you are involved in affiliate marketing and want to connect with the experts.

Shashi’s session is today at 11:30am PST.

Social Media Risks and Rewards
Session 7d
Location: Classroom D – Miranda 7-8
Time: 11:30am-12:30pm

This session will explore the potential risks in using social networking and user-generated content for marketing campaigns, and will give practical suggestions to help marketer’s campaigns succeed.

• Gary Kibel, Partner, Davis & Gilbert LLP (Moderator)
• Shashi Bellamkonda, Social Media Swami, Network Solutions
• Will Haselden, Section Chief, Cyberfraud Section, Office of the Attorney General, State of Florida
• Mike Kowal, Managing Director, Advertiser Services, LinkShare
• Jivan Manhas, President, Advaliant, a Division of MediaTrust

As of this posting, the event is sold out, but they have set up a twitter feed to follow along.

You can go to the event home page. Or you can go to Twitter Search with the tag #asw09

I got to meet some new people and reconnect with old friends. One of the new friends I made was Giovanni Galluci of Viewzi, a Dallas-based startup. They are doing some cool stuff with search and have a killer interface. They are a “ridiculously visual search engine” according to Giovanni and function on a meta level. This means they work with numerous search engines and interpret the search and present in the most relevant way. You should check out Viewzi yourself to get the full picture and see how awesome this search tool is for everyone. Check out my inteview with him below:

This past August, Shashi Bellamkonda (AKA Social Media Swami) and I had the opportunity to attend Gnomedex 2008. Gnomedex is like the TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) in that it has innovative speakers, a cutting edge variety of topics and is focused in one track. It is different in that anyone can come, costs $500 vs $8000 (for TED) to come and everyone is accessible. It is put on by Chris and Ponzi Pirillo who are wonderful people and put on one of the best events of the year.

I was able to spend some time with Greg and he shared some important advice on creating great email campaigns:

- Sponsoring Events is important for branding and being an influencer

- The basis of all successful email campaigns start with a great database

- There must be frequency (but not too much) with relevant content along with functional opt-in/opt-out capabilities.

They also launched a few months ago their blog for customers and practitioners in the email marketing space. It is called “The Thinking Inbox“. Check it out but before you do, check out the full interview below:

Join them on Tuesday November 18, 2008 in San Mateo for “Five for Sharing” a night of five 10 minute presentations of social media case studies. To kick the night off, we are very pleased to announce that our very own Shashi Bellamkonda from Network Solutions will be sharing his experiences with social media and what he has learned thus far.

The event will cost $5 in advance or $10 at the door and is free for Professional or Business members of Social Media Club. It will take place at the offices of Re/MAX in San Mateo, located at 1700 El Camino. Complete details are available on EventBrite, where you can register right now. Due to the venue this event is limited to 70 people this month, so please do register early if you are planning to join them.

Many people enjoyed the event on Trademarks 101 this week.

We do have a mailing list if you’d like to sign up to be notified in advance. Sign up here

Steve blogs about them after the fact, too in case you can’t attend.

Above are Chris Pirillo, his wife Ponzi and Kat who works for Chris. They are the three that held the center tight so everything around did not fall apart. Here are some highlights of people there that evening:

Robert Scoble, meet the Robert Scoble of Network Solutions

In a funny exchange, Shashi met Robert Scoble and talked about our work on Solutions Are Power, I interjected that everyone calls him the “Robert Scoble” of Network Solutions. He jokingly said, “be careful you don’t fired” but was really glad to see a company like Network Solutions using social media to reach out to customers and evangelize what we do here. Below is a picture of the two Robert Scobles. I will leave it to you to figure out which one is the real Robert Scoble.

The two funniest guys in the room discuss social media

Dave Delaney and Chris Brogan are funny dudes. Both are passionate about social media and are very successful evangelists for the companies they work for. They are also really funny.

I met Dave for the first time here at Gnomedex 2008 and he has traveled all over the world and even to Ireland where he met his wife – who is from Tennessee. I mean, he goes all the way across the world to find and marry another American. There is a joke in there somewhere. It is the reason that he lives in Nashville and just got a job as the social media guy for Griffin, the iPod accessory people.

Chris Brogan is Social Media. As the originator of Podcamp Boston he is someone who has been at the center of the social media tornado these last few years. His personal blog ChrisBrogan.com has 8000 subscribers and his work on events for his company, CrossTech Media, allows him to put together events with serious social media angles.

Both guys were talking about the future of social media and how this year’s Gnomedex compared to last year’s. For a great perspective on this year to last year’s event, check out Chris’ post.

I am turning in early while most are still going until close. Looking forward to a fantastic second day at Gnomedex 2008. See you in the morning.