A talk with Intel’s ‘blog­fa­ther’ from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

Here’s a 6-minute con­ver­sa­tion I had with Bryan Rhoads, dig­i­tal strate­gist with Intel’s Social Media Cen­ter of Excel­lence, about how Intel approaches social media. Bryan’s influ­ence extends up and down the hall­ways of the 80,000-employee com­pany, so much so that one of his col­leagues calls him “the blogfather.”

Watch, down­load or embed the video on Vimeo

Intel is widely seen as a leader in tech inno­va­tion, but in recent years that cul­ture of inno­va­tion has per­me­ated social media as well, and it was on full dis­play at the recent Con­sumer Elec­tron­ics Show, where Intel’s social media team set up an Upload Lounge where blog­gers inter­viewed thought lead­ers like Chris Kelly, can­di­date for Cal­i­for­nia Attor­ney Gen­eral. (Dis­clo­sure: I’m a mem­ber of the Intel Insid­ers social media advi­sory group, and Intel paid for my trip to CES.)

Intel’s social media man­agers achieved buy-in across the enter­prise three to four years ago because of the rela­tion­ships forged with Legal, PR and Mar­ket­ing and management’s embrace of “the idea of get­ting as many voices as pos­si­ble involved in the company’s social media efforts,” Bryan says.

The com­pany formed a Social Media Cen­ter of Excel­lence, charged with being the cen­tral hub where employ­ees could learn and become fam­liar with social media. The team devel­oped a widely admired set of social media guide­lines, and the com­pany took the dar­ing step of actu­ally trust­ing its employees.

If some­one wants to blog on behalf of Intel, they can do so sim­ply by watch­ing a 30-minute train­ing video devel­oped by the social media team. More than 1,000 Intel employ­ees have taken the train­ing class. Employ­ees can start a pres­ence on Twit­ter, Face­book, YouTube Flickr and other social media sites. “They can do it and know that they won’t get canned,” Bryan says.

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Follow­ing is a roundup of con­fer­ences and events sched­uled in the social media, tech­nol­ogy and mar­ket­ing sec­tors for the month of Feb­ru­ary. For the full year, see: 2010 con­fer­ences: Social media, tech, mar­ket­ing. I’ll start break­ing out the monthly list­ings on the first of the month.

Who knew Feb­ru­ary, of all months, would be so crazy-busy? I’ll be attend­ing a few Social Media Week events start­ing today in San Fran­cisco. (See you there?)

If you know of other must-attend events, please add them by post­ing in the com­ments at the bot­tom and I’ll add them as I can.

Also please check out our Cal­en­dar of 2010 social change, non­profit and media reform con­fer­ences on our sis­ter site, Socialbrite.org.

Con­tinue reading »

Con­fer­ence	Date	Place
* indi­cates con­fer­ences I’ll be attend­ing or speak­ing at.
Feb­ru­ary
AlwaysOn: OnMedia NYC	Feb. 1–3	New York City
Tech CEOs from Sil­i­con Val­ley meet the global adver­tis­ing and media estab­lish­ment. This exec­u­tive event fea­tures CEO pre­sen­ta­tions and dis­cus­sions about which forces are dis­rupt­ing user behav­ior and cre­at­ing new oppor­tu­ni­ties in the mar­ket­ing, brand­ing, adver­tis­ing and PR industries.
Social Media Week*	Feb. 1–5	Var­i­ous
Learn about the poten­tial of social media in a series of events in your city: New York, San Fran­cisco, Lon­don, Berlin, Toronto and Sao Paulo.
Vator Splash	Feb. 4	San Fran­cisco
Vator.tv is host­ing an event for seed– to early-stage star­tups that want to learn about build­ing their busi­ness and launch and/or show­case their com­pa­nies before their indus­try peers, investors and media.
Teens in Tech 2.0	Feb. 6	San Fran­cisco
Learn from teenagers what they think about the cur­rent trends of teenage tech­nol­ogy. Cre­ate tech­nol­ogy and hear directly from devel­op­ers, entre­pre­neurs and video bloggers.

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Lucia Gia­co­man­to­nio, Adri­ana Gas­coigne and Robyn Cohen at Web 2.0 Expo, April 2009.

The Ulti­mate Guide to con­fer­ences & events, month by month

For the past three years I’ve painstak­ingly put together a cal­en­dar of the best social media, tech­nol­ogy, media and mar­ket­ing con­fer­ences for the upcom­ing year. Here’s the list for 2010.

This is not intended to be an all-encompassing list, and many of the con­fer­ences out­side of the United States aren’t listed here. I’ve also left out some tra­di­tional news­pa­per con­fer­ences and some of the wor­thy but fast-changing Bar­Camps, Pod­Camps, Mobile­Camps and Social Media Club gath­er­ings around the coun­try. If you know of other must-attend events, please add them by post­ing in the com­ments at the bot­tom and I’ll add them as I can.

Also please check out our Cal­en­dar of 2010 social change, non­profit and media reform con­fer­ences on our sis­ter site, Socialbrite.org. It’s the first cal­en­dar of its kind that I’ve spotted!

You prob­a­bly arrived here from a retweet on Twit­ter (or a Google search), so fol­low me here if you’d like: @jdlasica. Con­fer­ences marked with an * indi­cate that I’ll be speak­ing or attending.

Con­fer­ence	Date	Place
* indi­cates con­fer­ences I’ll be attend­ing or speak­ing at.
Jan­u­ary
Con­sumer Elec­tron­ics Show*	Jan. 7–10	Las Vegas
Still the largest elec­tron­ics show on the planet. I’ll be cov­er­ing it as part of the Intel Insid­ers. Cov­er­age here and pho­tos here.
Agency of the Year	Jan. 12	New York City
At this awards cer­e­mony, MEDIA’s Agency of the Year Awards pays trib­ute to the agen­cies that set the gold stan­dard in the busi­ness of media plan­ning and buy­ing in 2009.
Girls in Tech: Cat­a­lyst Conference	Jan. 26	San Fran­cisco
Cat­a­lyst Con­fer­ence brings more than 250 pas­sion­ate, cre­ative women together to fuel new rela­tion­ships and ideas. Come pre­pared to share con­crete tech­nol­ogy and busi­ness tools and tac­tics, meet ener­getic lead­ers and entre­pre­neurs, and develop your own busi­ness ventures.
OMMA Social	Jan. 26	San Fran­cisco
OMMA Social San Fran­cisco looks to help atten­dees pre­pare for the next raft of social media change – change that may impact all online media as plat­forms such as Face­book Con­nect become embed­ded in sites through­out the Web.
Web 3.0	Jan. 26–27	Santa Clara, Calif.
This con­fer­ence will explore how com­pa­nies are, and should be, using the new seman­tic Web tech­nolo­gies for bot­tom line impact in areas like mar­ket­ing, cor­po­rate infor­ma­tion man­age­ment, pub­lish­ing, cus­tomer ser­vice and per­sonal productivity.
Enter­prise Social 2.0	Jan. 27–28	Ams­ter­dam
This senior exec­u­tive event will bring together deci­sion mak­ers from the Top For­tune com­pa­nies to dis­cuss inno­v­a­tive strate­gies on how to max­imise busi­ness per­for­mance through social media engagement.
Social Media Conference	Jan. 27–29	Miami
This is expected to be the largest gath­er­ing of senior exec­u­tives from the enter­prise social net­work­ing indus­try. The event will dis­cuss social net­work­ing busi­ness mod­els, global busi­ness strate­gies, part­ner­ships, legal issues, pay­ment sys­tems and more.
Twi­istup	Jan. 28	Los Ange­les
More than just a con­fer­ence, Twi­istup is LA’s biggest tech­nol­ogy event. Twi­istup com­bines a show­case for inno­va­tion, a plat­form for thought lead­ers and an audi­ence of entre­pre­neurs, media and investors all wrapped in a unique, styl­ized envi­ron­ment that rivals a Hol­ly­wood production.
Search Con­gress	Jan. 28–29	Bil­bao, Spain
The biggest Search Engines: Search Mar­ket­ing and Online Mar­ket­ing event starts the year in the north of Spain. SC Bil­bao will offer 9 pro­fes­sion­als work­shops, 8 con­fer­ences and 2 days of learn­ing and net­work­ing. Socialmedia.biz read­ers get a 30% dis­count — use the pro­mo­tional code: ILOVESEARCH.
She’s Geeky	Jan. 29	Moun­tain View, Calif.
The third Bay Area event takes place at the Com­puter His­tory Museum. She’s Geeky hosts uncon­fer­ences across the U.S. to give women in STEM tech­nolo­gies an oppor­tu­nity to get together to learn from each other and dis­cuss the issues they face in their respec­tive fields.
Feb­ru­ary
AlwaysOn: OnMedia NYC	Feb. 1–3	New York City
Tech CEOs from Sil­i­con Val­ley meet the global adver­tis­ing and media estab­lish­ment. This exec­u­tive event fea­tures CEO pre­sen­ta­tions and dis­cus­sions about which forces are dis­rupt­ing user behav­ior and cre­at­ing new oppor­tu­ni­ties in the mar­ket­ing, brand­ing, adver­tis­ing and PR industries.
Social Media Week*	Feb. 1–5	Var­i­ous
Learn about the poten­tial of social media in a series of events in your city: New York, San Fran­cisco, Lon­don, Berlin, Toronto and Sao Paulo.
Vator Splash	Feb. 4	San Fran­cisco
Vator.tv is host­ing an event for seed– to early-stage star­tups that want to learn about build­ing their busi­ness and launch and/or show­case their com­pa­nies before their indus­try peers, investors and media.
Teens in Tech 2.0	Feb. 6	San Fran­cisco
Learn from teenagers what they think about the cur­rent trends of teenage tech­nol­ogy. Cre­ate tech­nol­ogy and hear directly from devel­op­ers, entre­pre­neurs and video bloggers.
Social Fresh	Feb. 8	Tampa, Fla.
Social Fresh is a one-day, case study rich con­fer­ence chiefly for mar­keters, with more than 30 speakers.
Train­ing: Social Media for Government	Feb. 8–11	Wash­ing­ton, D.C.
Attend this con­fer­ence to learn how to cap­ture the power of social media in your orga­ni­za­tion, along with help­ful tools, tips and tech­niques to get started, includ­ing how to develop a social media strategy.
Mac­world Expo*	Feb. 9–13	San Fran­cisco
Guy Kawasaki, cutting-edge tech, prod­uct roll-outs, soft­ware classes and more. This is the first year Apple is not par­tic­i­pat­ing, but the Mac prod­uct and soft­ware ecosys­tem remains vibrant.
TED	Feb. 9–13	Long Beach, Calif.
TED (Tech­nol­ogy, Enter­tain­ment, Design) is where the world’s lead­ing thinkers and doers gather to share ideas worth spread­ing. TEDAc­tive, a simul­cast expe­ri­ence, takes place in Palm Springs. TEDx brings the TED expe­ri­ence to local communities.
Online Com­mu­nity Uncon­fer­ence East	Feb. 10	New York City
This is an open space gath­er­ing of online com­mu­nity man­agers, devel­op­ers, busi­ness peo­ple, tool providers and investors to dis­cuss best prac­tices in devel­op­ing and grow­ing online com­mu­ni­ties. The West Coast ver­sion takes place June 9.
140 Char­ac­ters Con­fer­ence — Barcelona	Feb. 15	Barcelona
#140conf explores the effects of Twit­ter on such top­ics as celebrity, media, adver­tis­ing, pol­i­tics, music, edu­ca­tion, pub­lic safety and pub­lic diplomacy.
Blog­Well	Feb. 16	San Diego
You’ll hear eight case stud­ies on the best social media pro­grams at large cor­po­ra­tions directly from the social media execs them­selves in this ongo­ing series of events put on by GasPedal and the Blog Council.
edSo­cial­Me­dia Bootcamp	Feb. 16	Boston
Are you try­ing to under­stand social media and how it can be used at your school? Do you need a bet­ter grasp of the ben­e­fits and chal­lenges of social media before jump­ing in? The gath­er­ing will tackle how social media can be used in education.
paid­Con­tent	Feb. 19	New York City
paidContent2010 gath­ers senior busi­ness lead­ers rep­re­sent­ing pub­lish­ers, con­tent tech­nol­ogy com­pa­nies, investors, ana­lysts, blog­gers and jour­nal­ists to dis­cuss busi­ness strate­gies and mod­els that are work­ing across news, infor­ma­tion and enter­tain­ment, and to explore cross-platform approaches to devel­op­ing diverse rev­enue streams.
Grav­ity Summit	Feb. 22	Los Ange­les
Grav­ity Sum­mit events help bridge the gap between the new social media mar­ket­ing tools and the busi­ness com­mu­nity. The event seeks to help inform mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sion­als, small busi­ness own­ers, adver­tis­ers, exec­u­tives and oth­ers about the new mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions landscape.
O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing	Feb. 22–24	New York City
A con­fer­ence on emerg­ing trends around dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing, includ­ing the mobile Web, ebooks, dig­i­tal print­ing, new author­ing tools, evolv­ing busi­ness mod­els for paid con­tent, etc.
Future of Web Apps	Feb. 22–24	Miami
Speak­ers on the 10 Golden Prin­ci­ples for Suc­cess­ful Web Apps, mar­ket­ing met­rics, open source libraries and more.
Online Mar­ket­ing Summit	Feb. 22–25	San Diego
Join your mar­ket­ing peers as they share ideas, hear from expert prac­ti­tion­ers and learn best prac­tices in the areas of social media, search, email, ana­lyt­ics and more -– in a com­pletely vendor-free environment.
Think Tank Live	Feb. 23	Mil­wau­kee, WI, area
Think Tank is a col­lec­tive group of inte­grated mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sion­als from Chicago and Mil­wau­kee. Each of the pre­sen­ters rep­re­sents a dif­fer­ent area in the world of Inter­net mar­ket­ing: SEO, SEM, brand­ing, web devel­op­ment, ana­lyt­ics, blog­ging and social media.
Sex::Tech 2010	Feb. 26–27	San Fran­cisco
The Inter­net and mobile tech have strength­ened youth net­works and increased youth access to tools and infor­ma­tion for improv­ing their sex­ual health. Sex::Tech explores tools and meth­ods for reach­ing youth with STD/HIV pre­ven­tion and sex edu­ca­tion interventions.
March
Global Ignite Week	March 1–4	World­wide
Ignite, started in 2006, brings together geeks to do 5-minute talks in front of small audi­ences — with slides that rotate every 15 sec­onds. Global Ignite Week fea­tures 500 talks in 40 cities, includ­ing New York, LA, the Bay Area, Boston, Madrid, Manila, Paris and Sydney.
SMX West	March 2–4	Santa Clara, Calif.
SMX West fea­tures three days of ses­sions, keynotes and access to the lead­ing ven­dors in search mar­ket­ing. Ses­sions will focus on SEO, PPC, social media, local & mobile search and more. Other SMX events: Toronto (April 8–9), Syd­ney (April 22–23), Lon­don (May 17–18), Seat­tle (June 8–9), New York (Oct. 4–6).
The Co-Alignment of the Cor­po­rate and Per­sonal Brand	March 4–5	Chicago
You’ll develop your copy of “The Draft,” SOHO’s 16-page social com­mu­ni­ca­tions pol­icy work­book for busi­nesses and cor­po­ra­tions. The focus in 2010 is co-aligning the cor­po­rate brand with inter­nal and exter­nal communications.
We Media Miami	March 9–11	Miami
Here you can meet the Game Chang­ers, watch the PitchIt! finals, be a part of a live global broad­cast by The BBC and exchange ideas with a group of inno­va­tors, thinkers, vision­ar­ies, investors and entrepreneurs.
Media Sum­mit	March 10–11	New York City
Hun­dreds of the country’s top media, enter­tain­ment and tech­nol­ogy exec­u­tives are expected to attend this gath­er­ing to dis­cuss broad­band, wire­less, adver­tis­ing, TV, film, cable, satel­lite, pub­lish­ing, news and other media.
South by South­west*	March 12–21	Austin
This year’s SXSW sched­ule: Inter­ac­tive March 12–16, Film March 12–20, Music March 17–21. Coun­ter­cul­ture meets geek techies, indie film­mak­ers and alt bands.
Social Net­work­ing World Forum — Europe	March 15–16	Lon­don
The con­fer­ence bills itself as Europe’s lead­ing social media event. The event fea­tures con­fer­ence streams and work­shops on enter­prise social media, mobile, social TV and more. A date for the World Forum — North Amer­ica in the fall has not been announced
MIX10	March 15–17	Las Vegas
Now in its fifth year, Microsoft’s MIX con­fer­ence is a gath­er­ing of design­ers and devel­op­ers who are build­ing the world’s most inno­v­a­tive websites.
ad:tech	March 16–17	Syd­ney
ad:tech is the event for dig­i­tal mar­keters, with lots of hands-on ses­sions with prac­ti­cal tips and case stud­ies. Other ad:tech events are in San Fran­cisco (April 19–21), Sin­ga­pore (June 3–4), Lon­don (Sept. 21–22), Shang­hai (Oct.), Tokyo (Oct. 28–29), Bei­jing (Nov. 17–18) and New York (Nov. 3–5).
OMMA Global	March 17–18	San Fran­cisco
This bian­nual con­fer­ence and trade show for the busi­ness of Online Media, Mar­ket­ing and Adver­tis­ing attracts about 4,000 peo­ple. This year’s theme is Cut­ting The Cord: The End Of Online.
DEMO spring	March 21–23	Palm Desert, Calif.
More than 20,000 inno­v­a­tive tech­nolo­gies have been reviewed and 1,500 com­pa­nies selected to launch on the DEMO stage over the past 19 years. How­ever, the start-ups pay a steep fee to do so.
Opti­miza­tion Summits	March 23–24	Dal­las
At the Dal­las 2010 Opti­miza­tion Sum­mits, you’ll expe­ri­ence learn­ing by doing. You’ll build your own two-day cur­ricu­lum on top­ics rang­ing from social media to rev­enue management.
Social Media Strate­gies for Travel	March 24–25	San Fran­cisco
Social media is chang­ing the way we com­mu­ni­cate with our cus­tomers. Get the low-down on how travel com­pa­nies are cap­i­tal­iz­ing on social media and take home prac­ti­cal advice on how to drive real return from your social media initiatives.
Social­Tech	March 25	San Jose, Calif.
Social­Tech 2010 brings together the vision­ar­ies and experts who are using the power of social media to trans­form the way that B2B tech­nol­ogy com­pa­nies mar­ket their prod­ucts and services.
The Freemium Sum­mit — The Busi­ness of Free	March 26	San Fran­cisco
The first Freemium Sum­mit is a one-day event focused on explor­ing what it takes to suc­ceed under the freemium busi­ness model.
Where 2.0	March 30-April 1	San Jose, Calif.
Sit­u­a­tional aware­ness has become one of the essen­tial ana­lyt­ics for our lives and our busi­ness. Where 2.0 looks at mon­e­ti­za­tion strate­gies, emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies and how new com­pa­nies are jump­ing in to change the rules.
April
Social Web Busi­ness Forum	April 8–9	Los Ange­les
The Social Web Busi­ness Forum is where top online exec­u­tives gather to dis­cuss the inter­sec­tion of online com­mu­ni­ties, social media and Enter­prise 2.0.
medi­aX­change	April 11–14	Orlando, FL
For the 2nd year, medi­aX­change replaces the News­pa­per Asso­ci­a­tion of America’s Mar­ket­ing and NEXPO. It’s a cost-efficient way to learn about new rev­enue oppor­tu­ni­ties and net­work with your news­pa­per media peers.
Pub­Con South	April 13–15	Dal­las
Pub­Con Dal­las is a multi-track tech­nol­ogy con­fer­ence with an exten­sive pro­gram of edu­ca­tional ses­sions where cutting-edge Inter­net mar­ket­ing knowl­edge hot top­ics and trends are dissected.
Inbound Mar­ket­ing Sum­mit — SF	April 14–15	San Fran­cisco
Chris Bro­gan presents the sec­ond year of this con­fer­ence series geared to social influ­ence mar­keters. Other Inbound Mar­ket­ing Sum­mits are com­ing to Chicago (June 23–24), Boston (Oct. 6–7) and Austin (Nov. 9–10).
Com­mer­cial­iz­ing the Cloud	April 16	Moun­tain View, Calif.
Under the Radar’s “Com­mer­cial­iz­ing the Cloud” brings together CIOs and heads of IT from large enter­prises, small busi­nesses, car­ri­ers and media com­pa­nies that are inno­vat­ing to stay ahead in the fast-evolving IT ecosystem.
Future Mid­west	April 16–17	Royal Oak, Mich.
This is the region’s largest two-day tech­nol­ogy and knowl­edge con­fer­ence. The gath­er­ing looks at how tech­nol­ogy and dig­i­tal tools have dra­mat­i­cally changed the way we do busi­ness and the effect this tran­si­tion has had on companies.
Emerg­ing Com­mu­ni­ca­tions (eComm)	April 19–21	San Fran­cisco
The third annual eComm Con­fer­ence & Awards is designed to show­case tech and busi­ness model inno­va­tion — espe­cially around tele­com, mobile and Inter­net com­mu­ni­ca­tions — and to explore the lat­est opportunities.
ad:tech	April 19–21	San Fran­cisco
Ad:tech is the event for dig­i­tal mar­keters, with lots of hands-on ses­sions with prac­ti­cal tips and case stud­ies. Other upcom­ing ad:tech events are in Sin­ga­pore (June 3–4), Lon­don (Sept. 21–22), Shang­hai (Oct.), Tokyo (Oct. 28–29), Bei­jing (Nov. 17–18) and New York (Nov. 3–5).
140 Char­ac­ters Con­fer­ence — New York	April 20–21	New York
#140conf explores the effects of Twit­ter on such top­ics as celebrity, media, adver­tis­ing, pol­i­tics, music, edu­ca­tion, pub­lic safety and pub­lic diplo­macy. Other 140 Char­ac­ters Con­fer­ences will take place this year in Lon­don and Los Angeles.
New­Comm Forum *	April 20–23	San Mateo, Calif.
I’ll be speak­ing at the Soci­ety for New Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Research’s New­Comm Forum, one of the best gath­er­ings of new media pro­fes­sion­als and social marketers.
The Power of eMarketing	April 21–22	San Fran­cisco
The eMar­ket­ing con­fer­ence brings together mar­keters from around the world in a sophis­ti­cated forum of pre­sen­ta­tions, net­work­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties and sessions.
Free State Social	April 29–30	Lawrence, Kansas
The Free State Social will high­light the best in social media from the Kansas region, edu­cate atten­dees about the cur­rent state of social media, present oppor­tu­ni­ties for its use and talk about where the indus­try is headed.
Latino2*	Apr 30-May 2	Los Ange­les
The first Latino2 con­fer­ence aims to cre­ate the largest gath­er­ing of busi­ness pro­fes­sion­als inter­ested in engag­ing Lati­nos in the dig­i­tal age. Brought to you by Lati­nos in Social Media (LatISM), the event will have a strong focus on tech­nol­ogy, enter­tain­ment, media and pub­lic policy.
SOB­Con	Apr 30-May 2	Chicago
SOB­Con is “Biz School for Blog­ging,” focus­ing on the ROI of rela­tion­ships in the enter­prise. It’s where the best minds in social mar­ket­ing gather to present mod­els, dis­cuss insights and deter­mine best practices.
May
CMS Expo	May 3–5	Evanston, Ill.
At CMS Expo, you’ll get 3 full days of CMS skills train­ing for Joomla, Dru­pal and Word­Press, plus a CMS Foun­da­tions Track and CMS Pow­er­Track, built to help you power up your CMS to its max­i­mum efficiency.
Web 2.0 Expo *	May 3–6	San Fran­cisco
Web 2.0 Expo pro­vides insight into the new gen­er­a­tion of ser­vices and oppor­tu­ni­ties offered by Web 2.0. Heavy on ven­dors and prod­ucts, it’s a larger gath­er­ing than Web 2.0 Summit.
Dig­i­tal Hol­ly­wood Spring	May 3–6	Santa Mon­ica
I’ve spo­ken at sev­eral ses­sions at Dig­i­tal Hol­ly­wood but likely won’t return this year. It’s one of the nation’s pre­mier enter­tain­ment and tech­nol­ogy conferences.
Lift10	May 5–7	Geneva, Switzer­land
Lift10 will wel­come 1,000 par­tic­i­pants from 40 coun­tries to explore the most over­looked aspect of inno­va­tion: people.
Max­i­mum­Fun­Con	May 7–9	Lake Arrow­head, Calif.
The sec­ond annual Max­i­mum­Fun­Con is a gath­er­ing of cre­ative peo­ple who wish to be more awe­some, hosted by MaximumFun.org.
next10	May 11–12	Berlin
Orga­nized by Sin­ner­Schrader, the next con­fer­ence is one of the top net­work­ing and trend con­fer­ences within the Euro­pean Web industry.
Stream­ing Media East	May 11–12	New York City
Con­tent own­ers, viral video cre­ators, online mar­keters, enter­prise cor­po­ra­tions, broad­cast pro­fes­sion­als, ad agen­cies, edu­ca­tors and oth­ers gather to hear the lat­est on online video tech­nol­ogy. Stream­ing Media West will take place Nov. 2–3 in Los Angeles.
Win­ning Media Strategies	May 20–22	Wash­ing­ton, D.C.
BIA/Kelsey’s annual con­fer­ence focused on the lat­est devel­op­ments and trends for enhanc­ing the tra­di­tional media busi­ness and cre­at­ing the pro­gres­sive change tele­vi­sion, radio, cable and news­pa­per com­pa­nies must make to ensure long-term success.
Search Exchange Inter­net Mar­ket­ing Conference	May 17–19	Char­lotte, NC
Join hun­dreds of busi­ness pro­fes­sion­als and entre­pre­neurs, hear keynotes and panel dis­cus­sions on search engine opti­miza­tion, social media mar­ket­ing, pay per click adver­tis­ing and web analytics.
Gilbane Con­fer­ence	May 18–20	San Fran­cisco
Intranets, blogs, wikis, por­tals and social soft­ware tools pro­vide knowl­edge work­ers increas­ingly effi­cient ways to col­lab­o­rate and share knowl­edge. This con­fer­ence is orga­nized into four tracks so whether you are in mar­ket­ing, IT, a busi­ness unit or an inter­nal func­tion, you will be able to plan a cus­tomized agenda to get the infor­ma­tion you need for suc­cess. A cor­re­spond­ing Gilbrane Boston con­fer­ence will likely be held in the fall.
Web­Vi­sions	May 19–21	Port­land. Ore.
Web­Vi­sions explores the future of web design, tech­nol­ogy, user expe­ri­ence and busi­ness strat­egy to uncover the trends for web and mobile appli­ca­tions, blogs, social media, ani­ma­tion, motion graph­ics and more.
Ypulse Youth Mar­ket­ing Mashup	May 24–25	San Fran­cisco
YPulse, which tracks how youths use emerg­ing media, again show­cases entre­pre­neurs between the ages of 13 and 24. Guy Kawasaki has ten­ta­tively agreed to return and mod­er­ate the Totally Wired Youth Entre­pre­neur panel.
Con­fer­ence on Weblogs and Social Media	May 23–26	Wash­ing­ton, DC
The 4th Inter­na­tional Con­fer­ence on Weblogs and Social Media brings together researchers from dis­parate dis­ci­plines to increase our under­stand­ing of social media in all its incar­na­tions. This event will be held in Wash­ing­ton DC, where gov­ern­ment inno­va­tors are exper­i­ment­ing with the use of social media to increase trans­parency and bet­ter engage with the citizenry.
School of WOM	May 24–26	Chicago
The Word of Mouth Mar­ket­ing Asso­ci­a­tion puts on this train­ing work­shop for marketers.
Gov 2.0 Expo	May 25–27	Wash­ing­ton, D.C.
Gov­ern­ment 2.0 is about empow­er­ing gov­ern­ment employ­ees to serve cit­i­zens bet­ter and open­ing up the gov­ern­ment into a plat­form that enables cit­i­zens to bet­ter help their communities.
June
D Con­fer­ence *	June 1–3	Palos Verdes, Calif.
The Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Dig­i­tal con­fer­ence has been break­ing news, high­light­ing inno­va­tion and bring­ing you straight-up, unvar­nished con­ver­sa­tions with the most influ­en­tial fig­ures in tech­nol­ogy since 2003. D is dif­fer­ent from other con­fer­ences: no canned speeches, no mar­ket­ing pitches — just content.
Per­sonal Democ­racy Forum	June 3–4	New York City
The annual gath­er­ing of polit­i­cal activists, gov­ern­ment reform advo­cates and techies, with an “uncon­fer­ence” for the Sat­ur­day after the for­mal con­fer­ence ends.
IABC World Conference	June 6–9	Toronto, Ontario, Canada
The World Con­fer­ence of the Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion of Busi­ness Com­mu­ni­ca­tors brings together 1,400 com­mu­ni­ca­tion prac­ti­tion­ers from 40 coun­tries for four days of learn­ing, cama­raderie and inspiration..
Inter­net Week NYC	June 7–14	New York City
Inter­net Week New York is a week­long fes­ti­val of events salut­ing NYC’s thriv­ing Inter­net indus­try and the com­pa­nies, orga­ni­za­tions and inno­va­tors cre­at­ing the future of online media.
SMX Advanced	June 8–9	Seat­tle
Search Mar­ket­ing Expo Advanced is the only search mar­ket­ing con­fer­ence designed exclu­sively for expe­ri­enced inter­net mar­keters. Ses­sions are fast-paced, Q&A-packed, fre­quently con­tro­ver­sial and quite informative.
Con­nec­tions	June 8–10	Santa Clara, Calif.
Con­nec­tions: The Dig­i­tal Liv­ing Con­fer­ence and Show­case, hosted by research firm Parks Asso­ciates with sup­port from the Con­sumer Elec­tron­ics Asso­ci­a­tion, is the exec­u­tive event focused on mar­ket devel­op­ments for advanced dig­i­tal lifestyle solutions.
Online Com­mu­nity Unconference	June 9	Moun­tain View, Calif.
The Online Com­mu­nity Uncon­fer­ence is a gath­er­ing of online com­mu­nity man­agers, devel­op­ers, busi­ness peo­ple, tool providers and investors to dis­cuss how to develop and grow online communities.
Adver­tis­ing 2.0	June 7–8	New York City
The annual gath­er­ing of adver­tis­ing, mar­ket­ing and media execs cov­er­ing global brands, mar­ket­ing, mobile and media. It’s put on by Barry Diller’s IAC and Dig­i­tal Hollywood.
VON Con­fer­ence & Expo	June 9–11	Wash­ing­ton, D.C.
VON: The Voice of Net­work Con­ver­gence show­cases the best of the global IP com­mu­ni­ca­tions world for ser­vice providers and large enterprises.
Turn­ing Ideas Into Business	June 13–16	Banff, Canada
The Banff World Tele­vi­sion Fes­ti­val (BANFF) and next­MEDIA have announced an inno­v­a­tive strate­gic part­ner­ship that will see these two pop­u­lar indus­try events run concurrently.
Enter­prise 2.0	June 14–17	Boston
E2 takes a strate­gic per­spec­tive, empha­siz­ing the big­ger pic­ture impli­ca­tions of the tech­nol­ogy and the explo­ration of what is at stake for orga­ni­za­tions try­ing to change not only tools, but also cul­ture and process.
SIME Barcelona	June 16–17	Barcelona, Spain
SIME is north­ern Europe’s largest con­fer­ence about the Inter­net and dig­i­tal oppor­tu­ni­ties with events in Helsinki, Stock­holm, Barcelona and now for the first time in San Fran­cisco. SIME brings together top exec­u­tives, mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sion­als, afi­ciona­dos and mem­bers of the press. SIME is about how dig­i­tal oppor­tu­ni­ties can con­vert to new busi­ness and a bet­ter world.
Inbound Mar­ket­ing Sum­mit — Chicago	June 23–24	Chicago
Chris Bro­gan presents the sec­ond in a series of social influ­ence mar­ket­ing con­fer­ences for 2010.
Cloud Com­put­ing World Forum	June 29–30	Lon­don
In this 2-day con­fer­ence and exhi­bi­tion, you’ll hear lead­ing case stud­ies about how busi­nesses have inte­grated cloud com­put­ing and Enter­prise 2.0 into their work­ing practices.
July
Open Source (OSCON)	July 19–23	Port­land
The pre­mier open source gath­er­ing around.
For­tune Brain­storm: Tech	July 22–24	Aspen, Colo.
For­tune Brain­storm: Tech is a mar­ket­place of ideas that assem­bles some of the smartest peo­ple in tech and media — the thinkers, oper­a­tors, entre­pre­neurs, inno­va­tors and influ­encers — for dis­cus­sions about the chang­ing landscape.
Sum­mit at Stanford	July 27–29	Palo Alto, Calif.
This exec­u­tive gath­er­ing high­lights the sig­nif­i­cant eco­nomic, polit­i­cal and com­mer­cial trends affect­ing the global tech­nol­ogy indus­tries. The sum­mit fea­tures the most inno­v­a­tive com­pa­nies, emi­nent tech­nol­o­gists, influ­en­tial investors and jour­nal­ists in keynote pre­sen­ta­tions, panel debates and pri­vate com­pany CEO showcases.
August
BlogHer	Aug. 5–7	New York
BlogHer’s sixth annual con­fer­ence (Aug. 6–7) will be held in con­junc­tion with BlogHer Busi­ness (Aug. 5). The con­fer­ence for women blog­gers attracts about 90% women, 10% men.
Gnomedex	Aug. 19–21	Seat­tle
Gnomedex is a top gath­er­ing of geeks, open source pio­neers and cool kids.
Sep­tem­ber
WITI’s Women and Tech­nol­ogy Summit	Sept. 12–14	Sil­i­con Val­ley, Calif.
WITI’s annual Women and Tech­nol­ogy Sum­mit in Sil­i­con Val­ley pro­vides oppor­tu­ni­ties to get con­nected to amaz­ing women from around the world con­ven­ing in one place.
TechCrunch50*	Sept. 13–15	San Fran­cisco
TechCrunch puts on its annual look at the top tech star­tups at the San Fran­cisco Design Cen­ter Con­course. T50 and DEMO, which it wants to kill, pro­gram their dates to go up against each other.
DEMO­fall	Sept. 13–15	Santa Clara, Calif.
The fall edi­tion of the august tech inno­va­tion con­fer­ence (which charges com­pa­nies about $20,000 to present on stage).
Web 2.0 Expo NY	Sept. 15	New York City
The NYC edi­tion of Web 2.0 Expo.
PICNIC	Sept. 22–24	Ams­ter­dam
PICNIC is a cross-discipline plat­form for cre­ative con­ver­sa­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion. It’s a unique fes­ti­val fea­tur­ing a strate­gic con­fer­ence com­ple­mented by hands-on work­shops and match­mak­ing sessions.
Octo­ber
SMX East	Oct. 4–6	New York City
SMX East fea­tures three days of ses­sions, keynotes and access to the lead­ing ven­dors in search mar­ket­ing. Ses­sions will cover a wide range of search engine mar­ket­ing top­ics: SEO, paid search adver­tis­ing, ana­lyt­ics, local, mobile and more.
Inbound Mar­ket­ing Sum­mit — Boston	Oct. 6–7	Boston
Chris Bro­gan presents the third in a series of social influ­ence mar­ket­ing con­fer­ences for 2010.
Online Com­mu­nity Summit	Oct. 7–8	Sonoma, Calif.
The Online Com­mu­nity Sum­mit is where thought lead­ers in online col­lab­o­ra­tion gather to dis­cuss best ideas for the future.
Blog­World & New Media Expo	Oct. 14–16	Las Vegas, Nev.
The first day of the show is the Social Media Busi­ness Sum­mit. The final two days will be the trade show and rich selec­tion of con­fer­ence sessions.
Dig­i­tal Hol­ly­wood Fall	Oct. 18–21	Santa Mon­ica
Dig­i­tal Hol­ly­wood remains one of the nation’s pre­mier enter­tain­ment and tech­nol­ogy conferences.
Pop!Tech	Oct. 20–23	Cam­den, Maine
Pop!Tech is a net­work of remark­able peo­ple, extra­or­di­nary ses­sions, pow­er­ful ideas and inno­v­a­tive projects that are chang­ing the world. I attended one year — it’s a great gathering.
Online News Association	Oct. 28–30	Wash­ing­ton, D.C.
The 10th annual gath­er­ing of new media movers and shak­ers, jour­nal­ists and online news managers.
Novem­ber
Inbound Mar­ket­ing Sum­mit — Austin	Nov. 9–10	Austin
Chris Bro­gan presents the fourth in a series of social influ­ence mar­ket­ing con­fer­ences for 2010.
Stream­ing Media West	Nov. 15	Miami
Con­tent own­ers, viral video cre­ators, online mar­keters, enter­prise cor­po­ra­tions, broad­cast pro­fes­sion­als, ad agen­cies, edu­ca­tors and oth­ers gather to hear the lat­est on online video technology.
Web 2.0 Sum­mit *	Nov. 15–17	San Fran­cisco, CA
One of the best tech con­fer­ences in the world, period. A gath­er­ing about how to put the power of the Web to work — its tech­nolo­gies, its busi­ness mod­els and its philoso­phies of open­ness, col­lec­tive intel­li­gence and transparency.
WOMMA Sum­mit	Nov. 17–19	Las Vegas
The Word of Mouth Mar­ket­ing Asso­ci­a­tion brings together thought lead­ers in the word-of-mouth mar­ket­ing space.
SIME Stock­holm	Nov. 17–18	Stock­holm
SIME is north­ern Europe’s largest con­fer­ence about the Inter­net and dig­i­tal oppor­tu­ni­ties with events in Helsinki, Stock­holm, Barcelona and now San Fran­cisco. SIME brings together top exec­u­tives, mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sion­als, afi­ciona­dos and mem­bers of the press. SIME is about how dig­i­tal oppor­tu­ni­ties can con­vert to new busi­ness and a bet­ter world.
Decem­ber
Super­nova*	Dec. (?)	San Fran­cisco
At Super­nova, CEOs and blog­gers, entre­pre­neurs and aca­d­e­mics, pol­icy experts and indus­try lead­ers share insights and build rela­tion­ships. No date has been announced yet for Super­nova 2010.
LeWeb	Dec.	Paris
LeWeb is the top Inter­net event in Europe, with 2,400 par­tic­i­pants from 50 coun­tries attend­ing in 2009. No date yet for the 2010 event.
Inter­ac­tive Local Media	Dec. 8–10	Santa Clara, Calif.
Inter­ac­tive Local Media 2010 is BIA/Kelsey’s annual con­fer­ence devoted to dig­i­tal media with a local focus. This event pro­vides a 360-degree view of the local mar­ket­place, cov­er­ing local search, Inter­net Yel­low Pages, ver­ti­cal direc­to­ries, Inter­net video, online clas­si­fieds and mobile search.

I can’t find plans for a 2010 ver­sion of:

• Reboot (last held June 25– 26, 2009, in Copen­hagen)
• Dig­i­tal ID World
• FAST­for­ward
• Web Con­tent Con­fer­ences
• Con­ver­sa­tional Mar­ket­ing Sum­mit
• Bull­dog Reporter’s Media Rela­tions Sum­mit
• Beyond Broad­cast
• New­TeeVee Pier Screenings

For an even more com­pre­hen­sive list of all things geek, check out Robert Scoble’s Upcom­ing events list.

In addi­tion, Con­fer­ence Alerts seems to have a pretty good list­ing of 2010 aca­d­e­mic con­fer­ences by sub­ject cat­e­gory, includ­ing Pol­i­tics and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Media.

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FCC chair­man Julius Genachowski

Beyond the techno eye candy, dig­ging out the sub­stance at CES

An army of tech and gad­get writ­ers descended on the just-ended Con­sumer Elec­tron­ics Show in Las Vegas. Rather than dupli­cate their cov­er­age, I’ll offer some snap­shots from my three days at the conference:

FCC chair­man on the need for ‘dig­i­tal literacy’

The Tech Pol­icy Sum­mit (for whom I’ve twice mod­er­ated pan­els in past years) held three days of ses­sions at CES, high­lighed by Con­sumer Elec­tron­ics Asso­ci­a­tion CEO Gary Shapiro’s on-stage chat with Fed­eral Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mis­sion chair­man Julius Gena­chowski, whose appoint­ment last year won rave reviews from reform groups.

In March the FCC is due to release its plan for mak­ing Inter­net broad­band con­nec­tiv­ity avail­able to all Amer­i­cans. Some nuggets from Genachowski’s talk:

• “Com­put­ers are in 75 per­cent of people’s homes, TVs are in 98 per­cent. … Can TV be part of the broad­band solution?”

• “The con­cept of lit­er­acy and teach­ing kids to read needs to be expanded to include dig­i­tal lit­er­acy so all of our kids, as they grow up, are pre­pared for the new econ­omy.” Absolutely.

• “If you don’t have access to the Inter­net, more and more you can’t find a job.” Many job list­ings can only be found online.

• New web­site launched on Thurs­day: reboot.fcc.gov, with an aim of fos­ter­ing dis­cus­sion of how the FCC can be rein­vented to serve the public.

• “The idea that open plat­forms are good busi­ness is becom­ing con­ven­tional wis­dom, and I think that’s a healthy thing.”

• He said he wants to cre­ate a “base­ball cul­ture,” where bat­ting .300 for a life­time gets you into the Hall of Fame — it also means you failed seven out of 10 times, and inno­va­tion flour­ishes only when your employ­ees aren’t afraid to fail.

• “The fair­ness doc­trine is dead.”

• The FCC will defend the pre­cept of net neu­tral­ity “rigorously.”

Pri­vacy in the age of openness

On Thurs­day after­noon, at the Intel Upload Lounge for blog­gers, Cathy Brooks mod­er­ated a fas­ci­nat­ing hour­long dis­cus­sion about pri­vacy, iden­tity and the cul­ture of open­ness. Chris Kelly (at right), who’s on leave as Chief Pri­vacy Office of Face­book to run for Cal­i­for­nia Attor­ney Gen­eral, was the cen­ter of atten­tion in a con­ver­sa­tion that also included Brian Solis, Frank Gru­ber and Genevieve Bell of Intel.

The pan­elists agreed that there’s a grow­ing cul­ture of priz­ing the authen­tic and the trans­par­ent — up to a point. Some highlights:

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Just back from my third visit to the annual Con­sumer Elec­tron­ics Show in Las Vegas. (I spoke there in 2006 as part of my Dark­net book tour and attended last year.)

Here’s my Flickr photo set of 79 pho­tos taken at the con­fer­ence, which just about dou­bled in atten­dance this year to 110,000 attendees.

Photo at top: Soc­cer super­star Mia Hamm, whom I met at the Intel press con­fer­ence. As always, the pho­tos are released under a Cre­ative Com­mons non­com­mer­cial license.

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David Math­i­son on ‘the emerg­ing media model of abundance’

Since last spring, David Math­i­son has been barn­storm­ing the coun­try, bring­ing the mes­sage of grass­roots, acces­si­ble, citizen-based media to would-be jour­nal­ists, film­mak­ers, musi­cians, pod­cast­ers, inde­pen­dent busi­ness peo­ple — any­one with an inter­est in cre­at­ing media.

David’s book Be the Media: How to Cre­ate and Accel­er­ate Your Mes­sage … Your Way is the most author­i­ta­tive guide to the per­sonal media rev­o­lu­tion, which was just tak­ing off in a big way when my book Dark­net came out in 2005. Here, David offers a detailed guide for those with some­thing to share and a look at the bur­geon­ing com­mu­nity media land­scape, from local online pub­li­ca­tions and social net­works to per­sonal broad­cast­ing net­works. Down­load sam­ple chap­ters from the Be the Media web­site, then go out and buy the soft-cover edition.

I met David Math­i­son last sum­mer at the Open Video con­fer­ence in New York and fol­lowed up by attend­ing a webi­nar he gave on effec­tive use of cit­i­zen media. He took time out from his trav­els for this Q&A:

1 Tell us in gen­eral about Be the Media. Why did you write the book and what kind of recep­tion are you getting?

Be The Media taps into people’s desires to com­mu­ni­cate, con­nect, and col­lab­o­rate. The book has been suc­cess­ful because it shows how any­one can cre­ate a global prod­uct launch that can poten­tially change the world. The book teaches peo­ple how to build a global or local base and widely spread their mes­sages. It can also be seen as a detailed busi­ness plan for cre­at­ing one’s own diver­si­fied media com­pany. The book has been adopted at some of the country’s most respected schools, such as the Uni­ver­sity of Mis­souri School of Jour­nal­ism, which is using it for a course called “Eco­nom­ics and Finance of the Media.”

2 Your book smartly takes a broad view of what it means to “be the media.” Tell us how reg­u­lar peo­ple are now cre­at­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing their own music, radio shows, dig­i­tal films or peri­od­i­cals. Which of these is res­onat­ing with people?

Con­text is key. When we exhibit at a book con­fer­ence, writ­ers are ini­tially attracted to the chap­ters on

Self-publishing and Blog­ging. At a music con­fer­ence, musi­cians like the chap­ters on Radio, Pod­cast­ing, and Music. But they all quickly see the ben­e­fits of the other chap­ters — every­one needs to know about lever­ag­ing web sites, social media, licens­ing, syn­di­ca­tion, print, audio, and video, and so on. Artists need to match their fans’ media con­sump­tion habits and pock­et­books. This means get­ting the mes­sage out via print, audio, video, inter­ac­tive, and expe­ri­en­tial events.

Inclu­sive­ness was one of the main goals of the book — our audi­ence includes not only writ­ers, musi­cians, film­mak­ers, and jour­nal­ists, but also entre­pre­neurs, politi­cians, activists, and the gen­eral pub­lic. After all, democ­racy depends on engaged, active, and knowl­edge­able cit­i­zens, and media lit­er­acy is an impor­tant com­po­nent of that.

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Videoblog­ging as ‘a life-altering expe­ri­ence’ from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

I used to be heav­ily involved in the videoblog­ging move­ment back when video on the Web was just start­ing out in late 2004. I was one of the first 50 mem­bers of the Yahoo Videoblog­ging Group (now about 3,000 mem­bers) and launched Our­me­dia, the first free video host­ing and shar­ing site, in March 2005.

Video cre­ation and shar­ing went main­stream in 2006, so much so that Mash­able reports YouTube Is the Top Social Media Inno­va­tion of the Decade.

So I love to high­light peo­ple who have suc­cess­fully incor­po­rated video into their online lives and can evan­ge­lize its import with­out get­ting preachy.

I shot this video inter­view with Sukhjit Ghag back dur­ing the 140 Char­ac­ter con­fer­ence in New York. Since then Sukhjit (pro­nounced sook-jeet) has become the social media rep for Sony Elec­tron­ics (@SonyElectronics on Twitter).

Sukhjit talks about how videoblog­ging has gone main­stream and how lib­er­at­ing it is com­pared with her past career as a tele­vi­sion producer-writer. She calls it “a life-altering expe­ri­ence.” Her most impor­tant piece of advice? “Just for­give your­self — just do it!” Don’t get caught up in the tech­nol­ogy — it’s sim­ple to use a Flip cam, Kodak Zi8 or Nokia video-enabled video cam­era to cap­ture slices of every­day life.

Watch, down­load or embed video on Vimeo

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Tran­si­tion­ing from a print to a dig­i­tal news world from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

If I were start­ing out in jour­nal­ism today, I’d prob­a­bly opt to work for a Web-based pub­li­ca­tion — or start my own — rather than learn the ropes at a news­pa­per. Because those ropes are becom­ing increas­ingly frayed.

We’ve been check­ing in peri­od­i­cally with young peo­ple in the jour­nal­ism field to get their take on how they’re deal­ing with the enor­mous changes tak­ing place in the mediasphere.

One such per­son who imme­di­ately impressed me is Sharon Vaknin, a stu­dent at San Fran­cisco State Uni­ver­sity and a producer/gadget guru at CBS Interactive’s CNET.com. She dis­cusses her entry into jour­nal­ism, broad­cast­ing and the news busi­ness in this 6-minute video inter­view shot at a busy inter­sec­tion in San Francisco.

Sharon says she’s “not really wor­ried about” the future of the news busi­ness. “Web 2.0 has given us the oppor­tu­nity to be more col­lab­o­ra­tive,” she says. “Because online is so col­lab­o­ra­tive right now, news will never disappear.”

She points to inno­v­a­tive pro­grams like the New Media Lab and Vision­ing Sum­mit as help­ing in the tran­si­tion between tra­di­tional print jour­nal­ism and its dig­i­tal future.

Watch, down­load or embed the video on Vimeo

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Rachel Sklar, Rachelle Hruska and Anas­ta­sia Liapis at last February’s Social Media Week.

SF, Lon­don, Berlin to be part of wide-ranging global teach-in

Spent an hour on a con­fer­ence call this morn­ing where it was announced that Social Media Week, inau­gu­rated last Feb­ru­ary in New York, will expand to include San Fran­cisco, Lon­don, Berlin, Toronto and São Paulo, Brazil.

The week­long event will take place Feb. 1–5, 2010. The goal is to “explore the pro­found impact that social media has on cul­ture, busi­ness com­mu­ni­ca­tions and soci­ety at large … and to cre­ate a global plat­form for con­ver­sa­tion, con­nec­tiv­ity and learn­ing,” said event orga­nizer Toby Daniels, who was on the call.

While the Socialmediaweekny.com site talks about a five-day con­fer­ence, it’s less a con­fer­ence than a sprawl­ing series of loosely con­nected events all related to the theme of social media. (I like to think of it as a “teach-in,” though per­haps that’s too retro a term.) Events will span a vari­ety of for­mats, rang­ing from talks, pre­sen­ta­tions and panel dis­cus­sions, to inter­ac­tive work­shops, sem­i­nars, net­work­ing events and drinks recep­tions. Some will be free, oth­ers will have an admis­sion charge. Some will be put on by mar­ket­ing groups, oth­ers by non­prof­its and social change orga­ni­za­tions. They’ll all be listed in a pub­lic calendar.

In San Fran­cisco, Chris Heuer of the Social Media Club will be the local orga­nizer, natch, and there will be a day­long jobs retrain­ing sum­mit as part of the event. Chris is set­ting up a Base­camp site for vol­un­teers to help orga­nize the events.

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Is your BS detec­tor opti­mized to deal with the new real­i­ties of demo­c­ra­tic media?

It’s become a tru­ism that we’re all media cre­ators now, from blog­gers and pod­cast­ers to the most wet-behind-the-feathers Twitterer.

Along with the new free­dom to cre­ate comes more respon­si­bil­ity: The new media ecosys­tem places an increased bur­den on all of us to become more per­cep­tive con­sumers and dis­sec­tors of media. In the age of We Media, it’s impor­tant that we be able to dis­cern fact from fic­tion, to sep­a­rate reportage from spec­u­la­tion and to not become unwit­ting par­tic­i­pants in the lat­est spam scam.

In short, we need to sharpen our online media smarts.

A cou­ple of years ago I was tempted to write a book called “But I Heard It on the Inter­net!,” but Farhad Manjoo’s book, “True Enough, Liv­ing in a Post-Fact Soci­ety” beat me to the punch. Like many of us, Man­joo bemoans a soci­ety where any­thing can be accepted as true if it’s said loudly enough, repeated often enough and cir­cu­lated widely on the Inter­net. We’ve become so lack­ing in basic media lit­er­acy skills that an entire seg­ment of our pop­u­la­tion believes what­ever its cul­tural lead­ers tell them to, facts be damned.

Every day, when we take a ride on our favorite search engines or tune in to our favorite news sites, we seem con­fi­dent that we know how to spot the good stuff and weed out the non­sense. But do we?

Here’s a guide to help you opti­mize your BS detec­tor to deal with the new real­i­ties of demo­c­ra­tic media.

1. Give your trust to sources that earn it

Just as print news­pa­pers run the gamut from tabloid sleaze to the New York Times, so too you can find any fla­vor of news, from celebrity sleaze to pub­lic ser­vice jour­nal­ism, in the online arena.

What’s changed in recent years is that we no longer rely just on tra­di­tional media brands for our news diet. Indi­vid­ual blog­gers, hyper­local news sites and alter­na­tive media pub­li­ca­tions now com­mand a good deal of our mind­share. Before you give your atten­tion and retweets to the new­com­ers, ask:

• Do I know who’s behind this site, or are they hid­ing behind a cloak of anonymity? Use easywhois.com to find out who owns the domain if there’s no author listed.

• Has the site been around for a while? Alexa will tell you.

• Is there a way for users to leave com­ments on the site or com­mu­ni­cate with the producer?

• Does the news source link to mate­ri­als that authen­ti­cate his report?

• Does the source have a pres­ence on Twitter?

• Are other users link­ing to the site? Check on Tech­no­rati for the site’s “link authority.”

Even gen­er­ally reli­able infor­ma­tion sources on the Web aren’t wholly reli­able. For instance, just because it’s on Wikipedia doesn’t make it true, as I learned first-hand from peo­ple like For­rest Sawyer, who told me his Wikipedia entry is rid­dled with errors. Don’t take entries at face value — fol­low the source mate­r­ial to see if it adds up.

What’s impor­tant is not whether news or infor­ma­tion out­lets occa­sion­ally slip up –- we all do –- but whether they have mech­a­nisms in place to pre­vent and cor­rect mis­takes. In other words, minor blips notwith­stand­ing, are they earn­ing our trust?

2. Get out of your bubble

A gen­er­a­tion ago, Wal­ter Cronkite said that an informed cit­i­zen needs to check mul­ti­ple sto­ries from mul­ti­ple loca­tions rather than rely on a sin­gle news source, whether it’s the New York Times or CBS News. His advice res­onates even more strongly today with the rise of hyper-partisan media from the right and the left.

Avoid the media echo cham­ber, which exposes you to only a nar­row prism of views and dis­course. A good way to burst your iso­la­tion bub­ble: Broaden your online diet by book­mark­ing over­seas news sites.

Good choices include BBC.co.uk, the Guardian, Finland’s Helsin­gin Sanomat, Israel’s Haaretz, Australia’s News.com or the Aus­tralian Broad­cast­ing Com­pany. Read oppos­ing points of view. Use a news reader to sub­scribe to a search term like “health care reform” or “Afghanistan war” to fun­nel in an even more diverse range of coverage.

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