In a tag team interview session, I interviewed Carlos Rodela, CEO of AllofUsAreFamous and co-host of “Rad on the Web.” Rodela hosts many shows on the Mevio network. Mevio streams its shows live through the Justin.tv network which has a live chat built into the page.

I talked with Rodela about the importance of engaging with your audience live during your show. It increases viewer loyalty but viewers can also provide content for your show. Watch Rodela’s interview with me about where my media career all started, “The Baywatch Report.“David Spark helps businesses grow by developing thought leadership through storytelling and covering live events at Spark Media Solutions. He blogs at The Spark Minute and can be heard and seen regularly on ABC Radio, Cranky Geeks with John C. Dvorak, and KQED in San Francisco. See his business profile, contact David, or leave a comment below.

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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.

Intel understands that, as central as Intel’s corporate blogs, like the Inside Scoop blog, are to the company’s social media efforts, its customers are talking about the company and its efforts elsewhere, too. “So it’s not just about the formal Intel blogs but also ‘off-domain’ as well, he says. For example, Intel employees and managers now tweet on more than 250 Twitter accounts.

“The data is coming in that all buyers in all markets are using social media in their purchase process,” Bryan says, suggesting that companies that haven’t begun incorporating social media into their business processes will be missing an enormous opportunity. “Our customers are there, our future customers are there, and their customers are there as well.” Twitter, he says, is the perfect conversation platform for companies. “When the brand is not there, it’s a blemish.”

Kodak’s Zi8

I conducted the interview with a Zi8 palm-size camcorder that Kodak loaned me. It records in high definition (up to 1080px) and outputs videos as .mov files. Oddly, I wasn’t able to import the file into Final Cut Express, which I typically use to edit my videos, so I fell back to using iMovie for this edit.

I’m still experimenting with the Zi8 — here, Bryan is a tad out of focus (the hall in the background is sharper), even though I had facial recognition on and it locked onto his face. (I messed up my earliest interviews with the Zi8 because it was in macro mode for shooting close-ups of flowers and the like.) Despite such small hiccups, I’m very impressed with the Zi8, especially for shooting outdoors, and now prefer it over the Flip cam. I often slip the Zi8 into my pocket in case I want to do a spur-of-the-moment interview, something I can’t do with my larger Canon HV20 camcorder.

Related

• How Ford does social media

• Inter­view with Ford CEO Alan Mulally

• At CES: Privacy, openness & broadband’s future

• Photos of CES 2010

• Intel social media guidelines

JD Lasica works with major companies and nonprofits on social media strategies. See his business profile, contact JD or leave a comment.

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We’ve all had this moment. You want to talk to a friend about some great TV program you just saw. Instead of engaging or heeding your recommendation they simply announce, “I don’t have a TV.”

We all know where that conversation leads. Either they’re considerate and just let it go. But more often they tell you with a wave of their hand, “All television sucks” and/or that will be followed up with the declarative statement, “I read.” It’s impossible for this whole episode to go down without the non-TV owner coming off as incredibly pompous and you being resentful and condescended to.

There are tons of things I don’t have. I never feel compelled to publicly announce to people what I don’t have. Why do people who don’t have a television feel compelled to publicly announce that they don’t have one?

Why can we proudly announce we don’t watch TV, yet nothing else?

Next time someone recommends a good book, go ahead and say, “I don’t read books…Everything written sucks.”

Next time someone recommends an exhibit at a museum, go ahead and say, “I don’t go to museums…All art and history suck.”

Next time someone recommends a new album, go ahead and say, “I don’t own a stereo…All music sucks.”

Why can’t we say that? Just like there’s plenty of bad TV, there’s plenty of bad music and poorly written books and bad art.

The reason is TV’s branding has been poor for decades. We happily call it “the idiot box” and “the boob tube.” While we may deride certain categories of music, books, and art, we haven’t collectively denigrated all the output of a single media.

With the Internet it’s now possible to announce “I don’t have a TV” and not be arrogant

Today, if someone announces, “I don’t have a computer…Everything on the Internet sucks,” you feel sorry for them. Good luck trying to belittle someone with that statement. With that admission you set yourself up for exclusion. “Yeah, we’d like to invite you, but you’re not online.”

The Internet has become such a massive distribution platform of all media that the need for a traditional TV may no longer be necessary. Yes, TV-Internet convergence has been going on for more than a dozen years, but that viewing experience is becoming more personalized. Instead of being a self-important Luddite by announcing, “I don’t have a TV,” you can appear as a forward thinking consumer by announcing, “I don’t need a TV.”

Just as mobile phones can supplant landline phones, where many people don’t need a landline phone, it’s possible the iPad could be a substitution for many media devices. As soon as the Adobe-Apple Flash debate resolves itself, you may hear people saying, “I don’t have a TV, stereo, or books, I have an iPad.”

So you never owned a TV?

I’m sure there are people reading this who for years have not had a television and they don’t believe that they’re being pompous when they tell people they don’t have a TV. I know you don’t believe you were sounding self-righteous, but you were. And I feel I can say that with some level of assurance, never having met you. Because unless you were poor or homeless, it’s been very difficult to say, “I don’t have a TV” and not come off as a pompous ass.

Today with ubiquitous video on the Internet, you can probably get away with it, and often be admired. Still, it’s best not to be confrontational.

Next time someone recommends you watch a certain show, instead of responding, “I don’t have a TV,” just say, “OK,” and then ignore their advice. It’s exactly what I do when people tell me, “You HAVE to read this book.” It’s far more polite than saying, “Reading is stupid.”

Creative Commons photo credit Robert Scoble / CC BY 2.0

David Spark helps businesses grow by developing thought leadership through storytelling and covering live events at Spark Media Solutions. He blogs at The Spark Minute and can be heard and seen regularly on ABC Radio, Cranky Geeks with John C. Dvorak, and KQED in San Francisco. See his business profile, contact David, or leave a comment below.

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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.

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.
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.

JD Lasica works with major companies and nonprofits on social media strategies. See his business profile, contact JD or leave a comment.

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How a social media campaign helped HP Israel’s PSG Group gain momentum

When Blonde 2.0 began to assist HP Israel’s Personal Systems Group with their social media marketing efforts, we found they had no representation in the social media world. A community had not yet been built for the group and their customer base did not have a proper network to turn to for questions and answers.

Let me tell you what we did. Over the course of a few months’ time, Blonde 2.0 and HP quickly exposed HP Israel’s PSG group to the social media world and began engaging with customers and potential customers to increase the group’s brand awareness in the community.

When you build a community from scratch, the target audience you primarily want to attract are community leaders, early adapters and other movers & shakers in your industry in order to gain some momentum. Blonde 2.0 launched HP Israel’s Facebook Fan Page in September and started from a zero fan base. Since close to a third of Israel’s population has a Facebook profile – 2.5 million Israelis and the demographic groups we wanted to target were found on Facebook — this social network was a great place to start building a community around HP. We also turned to Twitter to reach out to HP’s community, as no other network allows for real-time message updates nor engagement with Israeli industry leaders from the high-tech and digital marketing worlds as Twitter does.

By the end of first month, HP’s fan base on Facebook grew to 150 fans and we noticed an exponential growth each week. By the end of October, HP had 619 fans and by November we reached 810 fans. This quick growth was based on the interesting content we uploaded and our engagement with the fans on the page. We discussed computers, laptops and provided assistance with HP products. We also created all types of interesting activities and contests for the fans to take part in.

Providing incentives for fans and followers to take part in the community is a must when brands take a part in the social media world. A brand should be ready to compensate fans who promote its name both by social incentives as discussed in this post and also by giving fans prizes.

At the end of November, early December, we unleashed HP Israel’s first giveaway campaign, asking our fan base to participate in a creative contest that would offer them a chance to win a new HP Mini laptop (the Mini 110c). We wanted to emphasize the product’s easiness of mobility and asked our fans to tell us where they would take their laptop if they won it. We encouraged fans to be as creative as possible, giving them the option to upload videos, sound clips, photos and graphic materials to the fan wall as their contest submission. The response rate was overwhelming and we were amazed at how much fans invested in their creations in order to win. We received over 630 entries within 3 weeks’ time.

The winner of our competition was a creative song writer named Nadav Harel who wrote an enthusiastic song about HP: HP song: Cute Little Computer. Nadav received recognition and praise from the community (social incentive) and a new laptop. The HP laptop contest did wonders for our activity and growth of the HP Facebook Fan Page. Our community grew to over 2,580 fans.

Campaigns held on Twitter also encouraged HP fans to become more involved in our community. We asked our followers to tweet us a personal experience they had with an HP product. The creators of the three most creative tweets of personal experiences they had with HP products were awarded a Bluetooth mouse known as The Dragon. During the two weeks of our Twitter campaign, HP Israel’s twitter community grew by more than 140 followers. With Twitter, we continually monitor what people say about HP PSG’s products and provide assistance in real time. Below, a user complained that he had not received his computer from the service lab on time. HP Israel quickly intervened to fix the problem and everyone came out of this story happy.

It is always exciting to build a brand’s community from the ground up and watch our marketing efforts and activity grow within the social sphere. We’ve learned a few lessons along the way and continue to learn daily from our valued community members.

Tips on holding social media campaigns

A few tips for newcomers who haven’t yet led any social media campaigns:

1) Listen to what people have to say about your brand and be responsive to their needs. Don’t be defensive. Be attentive.

2) Always remember to be transparent and honest with the members of your community. Make sure that if you promise something, you make it happen. Don’t be afraid to admit when you’re wrong – people appreciate that from a brand.

3) When creating contests, make sure the rules are loud and clear. There’s nothing worse than bitter fans angry after a contest’s rules weren’t made clear in advance.

4) Remember that building a community takes time. Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither is an online community. Enjoy each one of the phases you go through when building your community and learn from them.

We live in a wonderful age today where brands can interact and have an open communication channel with customers and potential customers. I am happy to share our experiences with the building of one such community. An online community just like an offline community needs to be nurtured with delicate care and fed with content, activity and live discussion at all times in order to keep it buzzing and this is what we aim to achieve above all.Ayelet Noff is founder and CEO of Blonde 2.0, a consultancy specializing in helping brands use social media tools such as social networks, the blogosphere and social software to create brand awareness, recruit employees or achieve any other goal. See her business profile, contact Ayelet, follow her on Twitter or leave a comment below.

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I was thinking about how my media consumption has changed recently. Much has been written about the subject, and I’ve definitely changed my media consumption over the years. Here’s what has drastically changed:

Podcasts, not radio: I am a heavy podcast consumer (see my podcast listening lineup for 2010). I rarely listen to the radio, even though I appear on it sometimes.

All news online and via mobile: My main news channels are RSS feeds via Google Reader. Ads rarely get through and when I go to a blog, I mentally block out all ads. I can’t recall a single banner ad I’ve ever seen. I’ve never consciously clicked on an online ad. I can’t remember the last time I purchased a print newspaper.

TiVo is my friend: I never watch TV live. I always watch pre-recorded shows and zip through commercials. The only live TV I watch is sports, but that’s starting to time shift as I’m watching the Colts and Jets play right now but I’m about 20 minutes behind so I can zip through most of the commercials.

I’m sure most of you reading this blog have similar stories of shifts in media consumption. And it got me to start thinking, if a company does want to reach me and people like me through traditional media, where can they go? What is the one area of traditional advertising that hasn’t been affected by the Internet and social media? The only answer I could come up with is outdoor.

Unlike other forms of interstitial advertising, there’s no way to avoid outdoor ads

As I’m waiting for the bus, driving my car, or sitting on public transit, I can’t not look at the advertising. It’s actually something to do. I can’t look at the people. You know what happens if you make direct eye contact with anyone on the bus? They’ll think you’re coming on to them or you’re a psychotic killer. Isn’t that everyone who rides the bus?

Cryptic Zynga billboard from RyanSpoon.com

Zynga, the online and mobile app developers, has purchased a whole series of billboards up and down 101 from San Francisco to San Jose. Initially to promote their applications, but now they’re being used billboards as a hiring tool, promoting the web address zynga.com/jobs on the giant billboards.

There is a seemingly endless inventory with all other forms of advertising: print, radio, TV, and online. Conversely, there are a limited number of roads. And more to that point, we have the Highway Beautification Act which prevents highways from being overloaded with billboards. It’s an important law that prevents our roads looking like a NASCAR event or the end of the movie “Brazil.” There’s a reason there’s only one Times Square and only one Las Vegas. We don’t want to be swimming in ads.

What traditional advertising options are left for brands?

Effective easy to buy traditional advertising options are starting to get slimmer and slimmer. What’s left?

• Beyond outdoor, are there any other avenues?
• How can advertisers make the most of outdoor? Is it implementing web addresses, social networking addresses, or QR codes (2D barcodes) into outdoor ads?
• What are effective means to initiate a relationship through outdoor and then continue it online? Outdoor and online both have their pluses and minuses. How can their strengths and weaknesses play together?

Ultimately, I see outdoor’s place as being the only unaffected traditional media outlet that can effectively launch social media conversations.

Photo by stuckincustoms published under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 2.0 licenseDavid Spark helps businesses grow by developing thought leadership through storytelling and covering live events at Spark Media Solutions. He blogs at The Spark Minute and can be heard and seen regularly on ABC Radio, Cranky Geeks with John C. Dvorak, and KQED in San Francisco. See his business profile, contact David, or leave a comment below.

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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.

JD Lasica works with major companies and nonprofits on social media strategies. See his business profile, contact JD or leave a comment.

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ICQ7 introduces a way to manage social messaging across networks

If we look back in history , we will find that much before Facebook, MySpace and YouTube, there was ICQ. For anyone who doesn’t know, ICQ was created in 1996 and is now wholly owned by AOL. Back in the day, ICQ was the pioneer of social media and real time updates. It introduced us to instant messaging and a revolutionary new way to communicate with people instantly in real time.

ICQ could have been a sort of Facebook or Twitter a long time ago. It’s taken ICQ quite a long time to get back to its status as a social pioneer, but now with its new client software, ICQ is getting back to what it was about all the way from the beginning: a place to interact with your friends everywhere. “Everybody Everywhere” is, after all, ICQ’s slogan, and being an ICQ veteran myself, I am very excited to announce the launch of the new ICQ 7.

ICQ 7 is software that brings together all your social interactions from across the Web. Instead of having to open a few different pages and applications to get my friends’ status updates on Facebook, to read tweets of my favorite people and to follow what’s happening on other sites as well such as Youtube, Flickr, Digg and Delicious, ICQ 7 allows me to use one personal communication tool to integrate all my online social activities. I am able to syndicate my updates to all of my social networks with a single click and get status updates and tweets from all my friends in my networks in one single platform. (Disclosure: Blonde 2.0 is ICQ’s social media firm)

ICQ 7 enables real-time updates from content sharing sites and top social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Digg and Delicious and will soon announce the integration of local social networks. Alonside the ICQ Contact List, users can find a separate tab of real time feeds and updates from their friends from their various social networks. Users will no longer need to open up a new browser and log in to separate networks that they’re members of each time they want to comment on their friends’ updates. From now on, consider ICQ to be your social networks’ one-stop shop. No longer will you need to search for content on different platforms — the content finds you. ICQ 7’s interface is also improved with software that is fully compatible with all versions of Microsoft Windows, including Windows 7.

A few cool features to note in ICQ 7

My Status: Status updates I make on ICQ can be automatically posted in my other supported networks as well. I can also easily share pictures and links.

Feeds from friends: Updates made by your friends on leading social networks and content sharing sites appear in real time in the “Feeds from Friends” tab on the contact list. You can comment on these updates directly from your ICQ and the comment will appear also in the relevant social network/site. You can see updates from all your friends in your various social networks — not just from friends that have ICQ.

My Box: The “My Box” tab on the ICQ Contact List is the place where ICQ users get all notifications of their personal online activity – who commented on my status and in which site, who liked the photos I uploaded, etc.

New User Profile: ICQ 7 presents a more enhanced user profile — both within the client and on the website. The user profile is the place where users can display who they are by sharing pictures and personal updates on their page. The new user profile is now offered in color schemes that are fully customizable to suit the user’s mood. Additionally, the new user profile allows ICQ users to view their friends’ contact lists and add new people to their own contact list, thereby increasing their circle of friends.

Picture-Sharing Tool: A new, quick and fun application for sharing pictures with friends — see above.

Faster, lighter: ICQ 7 performance has been vastly improved with installation time reduced by nearly 50% and requested space for installation reduced approximately by 30%.

ICQ 7 offers a social messaging client that enables quick and easy communication friends from across networks, ability to view real-time updates from: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Digg and Delicious.

Israel-based ICQ’s managing director, Eliav Moshe, says: “ICQ 7 brings social messaging into play, integrating users’ online social world with their personal communication tool. The new version answers users’ needs for a quick and easy communication tool that also helps you be up to date with everything that’s going on in multiple social networks and content sharing sites. With a loyal community of over 42 million users worldwide, we are working on the upcoming integration of local social networks into ICQ 7 as well.”

It is only fitting that the company that was the pioneer of the Web 2.0 era has now integrated this Web 2.0 world into one manageable space. Try it out for yourself and let me know what you think. In my opinion, it offers the best solution we have today for one platform that integrates all our social interactions into one convenient platform.

Become an ICQ fan on Facebook

Check out their Twitter

Additional images

• ICQ notifications
• ICQ feeds

Ayelet Noff is founder and CEO of Blonde 2.0, a consultancy specializing in helping brands use social media tools such as social networks, the blogosphere and social software to create brand awareness, recruit employees or achieve any other goal. See her business profile, contact Ayelet, follow her on Twitter or leave a comment below.

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How mass collaboration is transforming company and culture

As chronicled in the just-published Decade in Review 2000–2009, the 21st century is proving to be volatile and disruptive in every way, and 2010 will continue the trend. Three disruptive forces are converging: the relative value of the Industrial Economy continues to fall as overproduction reigns. Globalization is replete with extras that people at the head table didn’t order. Most imperceptibly yet poignantly, the emerging Knowledge Economy is digitizing communications and changing the economics of knowledge and relationships.

Web 2.0 and social networks drive down the cost of communication, which accelerates volatility because when people talk, ideas change and lead to action, and digital conversations happens faster and less expensively. Social networks are rapidly making the Web human, thereby attracting an ever-larger portion of all human communications online. In 2009, adoption reached critical mass, ramping strongly among consumers, so many enterprises are following. The Web 1.0 adoption rhythm is very instructive.

Pervasive Web 2.0 also means reexamination or disruption of most areas of life, culture, society, government and business because social networks alter how many and what kind of relationships people have. The impact is similar to Ford’s production line, except it is more powerful: it scales relationships. Large organizations will remain in a profound state of turmoil because they were not built with withstand the volatility these forces are unleashing. Many Fortune 500 companies will be confronted with their survival, and some will not make it. Entire industries will consolidate over the next several years (automotive, airlines, banking, hotels, food, consumer goods…). Web communications mean we consume novelty far more quickly, which curtails product life cycles and leads to ultra-fast commoditization. Companies will require unprecedented innovation to even stay in place. New entrants around the world compete for customers and leverage their lower costs and better innovation processes. And Web 2.0 is still in the early stages of adoption.

This dynamism elevates opportunity and threat for executives and their organizations, so our focus here is to lay out probable milestones for 2010 to assist executives in business strategy and career planning for 2010 and beyond. First, I will lay out predictions, on which I’ll build for my 2010 recommendations. By the way, this follows Year in Review—2009/Social Networking Gains Legs on Heavy Seas and Decade in Review 2000–2009/The Rise of Web 2.0, the New Pervasive Human Space.

Predictions for 2010

1. The economy will continue to be unpredictable, and demand will be spotty in 2010. Numerous structures of the global Industrial Economy are in doubt, which delays business decisions everywhere. The U.S. juggernaut has serious economic problems related to healthcare and the lack of fiscal discipline that will not be resolved soon, and no one really knows what the impact will be, except it will be significant. Japan and European economies have similar issues for similar reasons (except healthcare). Related to this, there is more uncertainty around the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency than there has been in decades. Major economies’ central banks are aiming to ease back on the assistance they have been using to support their economies, and this entails significant risk. Unemployment will continue to be high due to the uncertainty, and this dampens consumer demand. Overproduction is rampant, which keeps deflation on the table as a potential risk. These are all structural issues that call for leadership and discipline in facing the unknown. I wish I could see “quick fix” scenarios to any of these, but I cannot. These conditions will persist for some time, so I advise clients to embrace them as a reality.
2. Company failures will continue to make headlines. Automakers, airlines and consumer goods firms will fail or be sold on the cheap. Industries will continue to consolidate to take production capacity out. Mainstream media titles will disappear: newspapers especially will continue to see readership and ad revenue plummet. However, online advertising will continue to increase, and ad agencies that cannot transition to digital fast will fail. This will force governments with unpalatable choices: support enterprises that are “too big to fail” or let them go under, disrupting the economy either way. These decisions are affecting most of the world’s largest economies. Worse, 20th century leaders still cling to the idea that BRIC will drive up demand for their products, but this will largely prove to be a mirage: emerging economies will rapidly innovate and grow their own industries to cater to their growing demand.
3. Employment for executives will be stagnant, which will require them to commit to consulting, not only as an interim arrangement between jobs but as a more permanent career. Industrial Economy organizations are transforming, so this will permanently change the structure of work, but demand for services will persist. Organizations in turmoil will avoid hiring as much as possible, but they will urgently need expertise and will contract extensively. Smart executives will chunk their expertise smaller (consulting), but this will require them to use social networks to reduce business development costs. In a related development, executive blogging (more below) will see case studies in which executives are hired or contracted due to their blogs. Within 3 years, executives in several industries will be expected to have their thoughts online. Consulting is the new employment. ‚^(
4. Marketing 2.0 will conquer numerous big brands because Industrial Economy push marketing is a deflating dirigible, and customers are experts at tuning out mass media. Marketing 2.0 combines digital and word of mouth in a new philosophy, to treat customers as collaborative partners. Marketing executives have been intensively interested in Web 2.0 during the past two years, and they are increasing their investments slowly. Marketers still have to confront their assumptions about how to engage customers: too many marketing organizations still talk about “content” that they push to consumers. The customer wants to hear other customers, and too few marketers understand that. According to Forrester, digital agencies are displacing traditional agencies in agency of record roles at big brands, and look for this trend to continue. In tough times especially, CMOs love digital’s ability to offer ROI. What they lack is relationship-focused investment models for social networks. Their agencies’ DNA is creative, not roll-up-your-sleeves customer contact and relationship building (it’s not sexy), which will lead to disappointments.
5. Social business will see mixed results—on one hand, marketing spend will increase 2x or 3x this year. Given #4, social media, which connotes pushing content through “social” channels, will grow the most rapidly because it is closest to legacy marketing thinking. Social networks will grow more slowly because they require new thinking and skills, but they will increase engagement much more. 2010 will be a parade of case studies. However, this upsurge will be accompanied by a palpable backlash against “social media” in which mainstream media (MSM) will criticize social’s lack of effectiveness, but usually for the wrong reasons. Too often, MSM doesn’t get Web 2.0, and they have have negative attitudes because Web 2.0 is raising the bar for transparency, speed and analysis while it takes attention away from them.
6. Companies will build “social media” teams in earnest. Beginning in Q3 2009, CMOs and CEOs began asking for social networking strategy to weave together their initiatives and synchronize them with business strategy. Consequently, the Social Network Roadmap features prominently in my practice, and this trend will continue into 2011. Large commercial and government organizations have been experimenting, and marketing leaders no longer seriously think of social as a fad, so they will hire “directors of social media” in 2010, and early adopters will create spots for vice presidents of social media and social networking later in the year. These social execs will manage teams of internal and external bloggers, Twitter jockeys, video production people and community organizers. “Community organizer” will become a piping hot position, too.
7. Social network platform review—2009 was sizzling hot as social network platforms vied for attention. This market couldn’t get more dynamic or competitive as key players broke boundaries, invaded each other’s turf all year, with no end in sight. Here is my back-of-the-envelope on some of the major platforms:
   • Twitter—served as 2009’s dark horse and disrupted the Web 2.0 ecosystem, jangling market leaders Facebook and Google. Twitter created another category of social space that very few people understand yet, especially those who comment from the sidelines. Twitter’s competitiveness is largely driven by the social context it created—ubiquitous real-time status—and that remains its key competitive advantage. People are sharingevery aspect of their experiences, even very private things, on Twitter because each tweet is only a glimpse. Twitter is lowering privacy barriers and changing the game. Because people tweet from everywhere all the time, followers are becoming a substitute for Google’s search for some use cases. Meanwhile, Twitter will be seen as the tipping point for the end of walled garden model. I don’t expect Twitter to go through any ownership changes in 2010; they’ve already turned everyone down, their paper value is at parity with Facebook’s and their numbers are strong. Most people don’t know how to use Twitter yet. They are fielding enterprise services in 2010.
   • Facebook—Facebook is the “portal of life” in which an increasing portion of executives and their stakeholders engage and share across all spectra. Until 2009, Facebook had a walled garden strategy: “Attract everyone to Facebook, where they would transact and we would learn more about them.” They wanted to take over the world by attracting the world to them. Facebook is one of the stickiest sites in the world, measured by length of time people spend on it. They reversed that strategy in December 2009 with the change in privacy, and they are opening the wall to push private content to the Web, where Google can access it and get Facebook more exposure (and advertising revenue). In typical form, Facebook didn’t give members much choice as some content was reclassified (i.e. friends are now public). Facebook is still struggling with converting its tremendous stickiness to revenue. It is much more likely to acquire others. Its recent deal with Yahoo was hailed as a coup de grace due to the opportunity to create synergy with the two huge audiences. Facebook is acting like a large company now.
   • Google—is the nervous system of the Web, and its overall strategy is to encourage people to forsake the machine for the cloud (hence the battle with Microsoft). Twitter has been a godsend for Google because it has turned the tide away from the walled gardens. Facebook was a thorn in Google’s side because its growth and high-value transactions were invisible. Google is not a social company per se, but I include them here because they are such an influence in the market, and they are experimenting with becoming more social. They are challenging Microsoft, they launched real-time search to neutralize Twitter’s erstwhile real-time advantage. Moreover, Facebook sees itself as competing with Google, with the differentiation that it measures socialtransactions among friends. Google is likely to acquire.
   • LinkedIn—is the quintessential B2B enterprise play; it is relatively outside the mainstream news, but it is executing its strategy of becoming the executive collaboration platform of choice. It has seasoned hands at the tiller, and I expect LinkedIn to drive further into the enterprise in 2010. This also represents a change: in 2007 the company had a competitive stance vis à vis enterprise software providers, now it is partnering with them. If LinkedIn maintains this strategy, it will avoid major transactions; it can play a slow game and will end up rewarding shareholders handsomely. No transactions, but I expect select strategic alliances to continue. As I’ve said for some time, LinkedIn can become the swiss bank of executive profiles, and I was excited to see the unveiling of LinkedIn API Platform go live in November.
   • MySpace—constantly surprises me during client work, although it has clearly lost its title as the leading social network to Facebook. However, depending on the demographics of stakeholders, MySpace can be an extremely relevant platform for engaging people, as I’ve repeatedly discovered through client work. Leadership of the company is wandering, and management is delivering relatively little value add, but the community is large. It is the platform most likely to be bought as leadership doesn’t seem to have a strong vision or business strategy. News Corp failed the acquisition and doesn’t seem to have the vision or skills to make it work, so I expect it to unload MySpace, which could only benefit the company.
8. Social tech will relentlessly drive rich experience into the cloud, but few people will notice. At a minimum, watch for three key trends and, even better, consider pilots with them.
   • Federated identity will gain significant traction. Examples are Facebook Connect and Google FriendConnect, which enable users to use their credentials to log in to third party websites (think “single sign-on” for the Web). This will encourage more mainstream users to interact with Web 2.0 sites, which require logins. More important, however, it will make friends portable. For example, log into CNN.com via Facebook Connect (FC), and your Facebook Friends who are also members of CNN.com will appear when you’re on the site, so you can read their comments or interact with them, and share this on your Facebook Wall. It enables you to interact with Facebook Friends on third-party sites of which you are all members (have logged in with FC). Google FriendConnect is a similar offer except it is not restricted to your “friends” because it doesn’t know who they are. Federated identity + social will rapidly become a mechanism for people to ask their friends for input on buying decisions. It will change how people buy.
   • Syndication will ramp strongly in 2010. For one example, LinkedIn’s Platform enables developers to syndicate LinkedIn data into enterprise applications. The Web 2.0 ecosystem will see significant advances in 2010 in which experience is the seamless result of content and functionality of multiple properties simultaneously. The rule is, don’t recreate, syndicate. Leverage the ecosystem.
   • Widgets have been around forever, but they are vastly neglected as engagement tools. A widget is a mini application whose code normal (i.e. non-tech ‚^) people can put on their websites, blogs or social networking profiles. Google FriendConnect is a simple example. Companies thus gain a foothold in others’ websites; however, to win this right, their widgets must do something interesting and valuable, so the person wants to have that functionality on her site. Widgets are another way to create and leverage the ecosystem by letting stakeholders create with your information or functionality.
9. Social business models and tactics will see more case studies in 2010, and here are four with which you should at least experiment in 2010:
   • Crowdsourcing—loosely means asking the crowd for input or advice on important questions, usually in a transparent venue, so the crowd itself can vet responses, driving up quality and cred. Most executives don’t understand the dynamics of transparent forums, so they overlook the potential, which has three key levers: 1) quality is high due to the crowd’s diversity and ability to evaluate responses; 2) crowdsourcing increases engagement because people feel honored that you are asking their opinion; 3) it is fast and inexpensive. You cannot afford to not crowdsource because you will be harmed by competitors who do. It is not complicated, but you need to develop expertise and approach to how to ask, manage venues and follow up to maximize value. One brilliant enterprise example is Facebook’s globalization strategy.
   • Comm-Co—is my term for “community company,” the Threadless’s model. The company serves as an enabler for its online community, which designs products and decides which products are made. I predict that Comm-Co will become widespread for consumer products in general. I’m talking ketchup, apparel, bicycles, tech gadgets, cars. By giving customers a role in designing products or services, you give them a chance to give of themselves, increasing engagement. Give your company to your customers, and your profits will climb. Specifically regarding Threadless, the company has an opportunity to syndicate its business model, as Amazon did. As you remember, Amazon pioneered numerous e-commerce technologies and business processes, and it subsequently used its model to serve as the back end for other companies (i.e. Toysrus, Borders, Target). Did you know that Zappos gives seminars on using culture as a competitive weapon?
   • Pro-Am—mashes up professionals and amateurs to collaborate. Amateurs supply passion, out-of-the-box ideas and time while professionals leverage their expertise. This creates a powerful profit-making cocktail that will become a dominant business model in the next 3–5 years. The Industrial Economy was about buyers and sellers, producers and consumers. The Knowledge Economy is about collaboration. Everyone is an amateur of several things and an expert is a couple things. Unlock the value by inviting amateurs to contribute. Quality is high and cost is low. The Pro-Am model will be prominent in continuous innovation.
   • Gaming and virtual worlds have negative connotations for many executives (“waste of time”), but when you abstract them, you realize they are just structured types of engagement, and many online games and worlds are intensely collaborative. Collaboration in social network forums and gaming are along the same continuum. Contrast World of Warcraft and Wired’s experiment with starting over.
10. Consumer empowerment will see prominent case studies in 2010. Empowerment refers to individuals using Web 2.0 technologies for citizen activism, outing companies or governments or people. Now everyone has a digital communications megaphone, and people will increasingly use it. Expect to see examples like Saint Regis, United, McDonald’s and others. This will call for Web 2.0 disaster recovery services. This threat will increase exponentially as mobile phones have video cameras, so your company is one click away from YouTube.
11. Mobility and mobile social networking have been simmering the the U.S. for years, and 2010 will see significant growth. The U.S. lags Asia and Europe for several reasons: computer penetration is high, wireless network is poor, provider environment stifles innovation. In most of the world, people access the Internet with their mobiles, and this will start coming true everywhere.
    • The iPhone has mainstreamed the market for smartphones in the U.S. due to ease of use, smart design and focus on “iLife” (music, movies and business). Meanwhile, iPhone applications have extended the “phone” to almost any area of human endeavor, so it has become a limitless tool. The U.S. carriers are, if belatedly, finally at 3G. Other significant device competitors like Android and Blackberry will only extend the trend.
    • Mobile devices are mobile computers, and they give people the ability to create text, photo, audio and video content and publish in 1 or 2 clicks. Every person is increasingly a publisher, which will disrupt many businesses. Companies need to develop a mobile strategy in 2010 with some urgency in order to take advantage of this opportunity to engage people wherever they are in time and space. This will take time because they will have to rediscover how stakeholders experience their company. Increasingly, stakeholders will share all aspects of their experiences, and companies need to engage them.
    • Mobile payments via mobile phone will continue to make inroads, increasing the importance of “the device.” These are taking two forms: P2P services like Nokia Money and POPMoney and Mastercard’s MoneySend. Nokia is also a leader in mobile contactless payments (via RFID and NFC technology). This will proceed slowly in the U.S., but it is advanced in parts of Asia and Europe.
12. Video will be increasingly mainstream, which will require companies to have strategies and processes to be present. As you’ve undoubtedly heard, YouTube is the second largest search engine in the U.S., behind Google. It means that, for many people (they skew younger), the first request for information is for video, which will eventually displace reading as the main medium for information gathering. Video requires production capability and some coordination of camera and verbal channels, so this is not trivial. The tools are getting easier to use every quarter, which will increase participation. Google is working hard on technology that “reads” video and makes video content searchable. Of course, their endgame there is attaching ads to the YouTube video vault. This is certainly an audacious undertaking, but I’ll wager that they have put significant resources against it.

Recommendations for the enterprise in 2010

I hope you can see that the Knowledge Economy represents a profound shift in society and business. The good news is, the way you make your transition to it will largely determine whether you survive or thrive. As I review this list, the macrotrends I see are economic uncertainty and increased collaboration tools, skills and expectations. Your company’s place in the value chain/web and your relationships with stakeholders will determine how immediately these trends affect you. In general, customers are consulting each other on what, how and when to buy everything, so companies need to be engaged with influencers. It is no longer about having ads and “content” available, it’s about interacting and creating relationships. Your company needs to know how to show the right people how you care about them. You can’t buy this, you have to earn it.

Based on my experience with disruptive technologies and current work advising companies and executives on their Web 2.0 adoption strategies, I’ll offer this guidance for 2010. I invite your questions in comments or privately.

Enterprise

• Identify, define, understand and engage your Web 2.0 ecosystem. Web 2.0 communication and empowerment are rapidly changing stakeholders’ expectations, and most companies do not understand how. You need concrete answers for:
  • What are stakeholders (customers, investors, regulators, employees, partners, alumni…) doing in Web 2.0 venues?
  • Why are they there, what are they trying to accomplish?
  • Which venues do they use, how do they use each venue and why?
  • How are they engaging with each other, competitors and other players?
  • Based on your culture, core competencies and business goals, how can you engage efficiently and effectively?
• Develop resident skills with Web 2.0 technologies, processes and sensibilities. This is a strategic imperative because stakeholders will increasingly expect you to be available. Your presence will have a major impact on buying decisions. For many companies, 2010 will be the last year that they can move ahead of their competitors. Keep in mind, Web 2.0 is all about social behavior; it’s not a technology you can buy and put in place; your people and proxies have to learn how to act, and that’s a process you need to pursue aggressively.
  • Blogging is about what you think, not about selling. Leave the latter for your Website. No matter what your business is, you have to share your thoughts online. This also means engaging bloggers with impact on your stakeholders by commenting on their blogs.
  • Contribute to online forums frequented by stakeholders. This might be LinkedIn Answers, industry forums prominent blogs, MySpace or Yahoo forums, wherever stakeholders are asking questions and solving problems.
  • Deploy social business infrastructure internally to drive skill development and increase productivity; kick off pilots in which teams use wikis, blogs, microblogging, social bookmarking and rich media.
• Assign a top executive to manage your adoption of Web 2.0 because changing stakeholder expectations will change your business. Do you want to let this happen to you reactively, or do you want to proactively help guide stakeholders’ expectations?
  • Develop a social business strategy that includes: your overall approach considering risks, rewards and business strategy; goals, timelines and resource requirements; metrics and measurements; a risk-managed process to scale your initiatives. Your availability to interact with stakeholders will increasingly drive your brand value because they will expect you to be present, appropriate and sincere. Your company, employees and proxies need to learn how to do that. It’s not easy because people have to unlearn some key things that used to work but no longer do.
  • The strategy will enable you to create a strategic dialog among management; in 2010 and 2011, executives are going to be doing remediation because social projects are happening all over the enterprise, in some cases counteracting each other. I’m not advocating centralization and controlling message, but having goals and meeting them collaboratively will significantly increase returns.
  • Create a strategic dialog within the organization and with partners and people outside. You need an adoption approach that considers the spectrum of risks and focuses your efforts on rewards that move your business strategy.
  • Your champion should have experience leading “innovation”-type initiatives that break rules and ruffle feathers. S/He should also be open to personally embracing social practices (i.e. blogging, tweeting, interacting online).
• Create and maintain a relationship-centric mindset for your Web 2.0 initiatives. See the Social Network Life Cycle Model and the Relationship Life Cycle for more on this.
• Use risk management best practices to maintain momentum. Keep pilots small, specific and rapid to shrink ROI discussions, measure results and scale what’s working. Quickly.
• Partner with IT on your initiatives, and engage “realistic enthusiasts” to understand IT’s capabilities and willingness to syndicate social content in from outside (LinkedIn Profile information, for one).

Individual

• Start blogging. Here is my free Quick Launch Guide to get on in about an hour.
• Take your LinkedIn Profile up a level. People go to LinkedIn when they are looking for expertise. Remember, Web 2.0 is about interaction, not content. You can pay for content, but your attention is priceless. On LinkedIn, this means:
  • Participating in LinkedIn Answers: answer others’ questions and ask questions; this attracts attention
  • Putting your slides on your profile via Slideshare
  • Invoking your blog posts on your profile with the WordPress or BlogLink Apps
• Commit to tweeting. Twitter is a new mode of communication that you need to understand because it is transforming communication and creating new kinds of relationships. See Twitter: Key Disruptive Innovation of the Decade.
• Cut back on unproductive networking. Don’t fall into networking as an activity trap. If you drive an hour to/from an event and spend 3 hours there, that’s half a day. You could have written 6 blog posts and answered 4 LinkedIn questions. When you have a content strategy for your blog, it creates digital breadcrumbs that are always working for you. If you choose the LinkedIn questions you answer judiciously, people will discover them at any time. At face-to-face networking events, the value dissipates much more quickly. I’m not saying to reduce face-to-face significantly, but cutting back on two events per month will give you more than enough time to ramp up online, where the leverage is far greater.
• Relentlessly conduct yourself so that you increase trust with people who count. Make introductions, answer questions, give help, ask for help, follow through on what you promise. In Web 2.0 environments, other people are observing our interactions. We can choose to be creeped out by that, or use it to our advantage. When you are authentic and help people, other people see. Huge leverage.

Christopher S. Rollyson is managing director of CSRA, a management consultancy that advises enterprises and startups on Web 2.0 strategy. He is also editor of the Global Human Capital Journal and Founder of the Executive’s Guide to Web 2.0. See his profile, contact Chris or leave a comment below.

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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:

• Solis: “I think we’re becoming extroverted as a result of social media, and it’s leading many of us to be more confident in our online activities.”

• Kelly told us not to equate privacy with secrecy, and that we shouldn’t expect a higher degree of privacy online than we do in the offline world. (“You take a risk every time you tell somebody something private.) Instead, a new concept of privacy is emerging in which “control over and access to” your online identity is what’s fundamentally important. Kelly was a key player in Facebook’s newest round of privacy controls.

• Bell chastized the Washington Post for a story that labeled as “refuseniks” those who decline to take part in social networking.

• Kelly made the point that although he supports the open data movement, personally identifiable data should not be released and made publicly available. Agreed.

• Bell made the amusing observation that recent studies show that people are quite gleeful about the lies they tell online.

Random tidbits from CES

• Here is my Flickr photo set of the show.

• I got to play with the Canon HD camcorder, the Vixia HFM31, at the Canon booth and found it absolutely drool-worthy: amazing high-definition fidelity even when zooming in on objects and people 20 feet away. It’s coming out soon at a price of $800. I’ve found my next video camera.

• Some of the tech press wrote credulously about the wave of 3D TV and video offerings — all of which require viewers to wear 3D glasses. Let me say this plainly: It will never happen. In the movie theater, yes. As a staple of the living room? Not a chance. Color me unimpressed with the 3D hype.

• As my friend Steve Rubel observed, wireless and social are getting embedded into nearly every device. Now those are trends with some substance.

• Mind-blowing stat: Fellow at Intel booth holds up a single microprocessor chip and announces the number of transistors on it: 45 million.

• I’ll likely not be back to CES. It’s not just the madness of dealing with the crush of 110,000 people or the 90-minute waits for a taxi, but the way the conference organizers structure CES: with nearly zero participation by the audience. We’re spectators, not participants in any meaningful way. For his talk with Genachowski, Shapiro hand-picked the questions from the audience. Afterward, Genachowski was whisked away without being allowed to talk with anyone in the audience.

CES remains very much a 1990-era conference.

Disclosure: Intel flew me out for the show. I’m a member of the Intel Insiders social media advisory group.

JD Lasica works with major companies and nonprofits on social media strategies. See his business profile, contact JD or leave a comment.

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