Charlie Davidson, CEO of Attensa who i have known for years via other industry events, sent me the invitation. Attensa is trying to solve the problem of Information Overload for businesses because "Overload not only hurts productivity, but also prevents people from using the information and knowledge that is critical to revenue generation, innovation and overall business results."

I have been going to Salesforce.com's Dreamforce conference for about 7 years in one form or another- from a full conference attendee, to a expo vendor, a virtual attendee and a keynote/expo attendee which i did again this year. Moscone center is nearby the office and I find it extremely valuable to attend conferences- great for networking and for seeing and hearing first hand what the big vendors or technologies are coming up with.

Last night after putting the baby to sleep, I was catching up on my work after spending the majority of the day at dreamforce and was watching the tweet stream from #df11. It was late and the conference attendees where at the Metallica gala concert. Pretty entertaining tweets- from 'they handed out earplugs as we walked in' to the always entertaining @jowyang 's tweet:

But these funny observations was something I had noticed myself- a lot of suits and slick back hair. Now I am not against this (maybe the slick back hair I don't particularly like but whatever it's better then a mullet)- and I myself wear 'proper' business dress to all conferences since I am always running into clients. But I thought the conference looked like more business types then before (I refuse to believe that developers are wearing suits now a days- but they seem to have upgraded to the standard valley dress of khaki's and button downs).

My friend Kevin Marks, who is now at Salesforce and was wearing a snazy jacket, pointed out that Dreamforce11 had all the developer sessions in Moscone West while the business sessions where in Moscone North - we were chatting in the north area and I agreed - and there were a lot of suits there.

With 47,000 attendees, there was a different feeling- Dreamforce seems to me to be a growing must attend for top execs- from the hallway and expo floor conversations I observed . I am sure the developers sessions are still important but the "visionary" stuff that Marc Benioff (CEO) is pushing seems to be working on these guys (yes mostly guy- and yes it was nice to see Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts on stage and loved her talk on the Social Enterprise). All the keynotes are now available on YouTube.

Anyway- on the way from Moscone West to Moscone North through the massive crowds- a street grate got the best of my most beloved shoes- the ones I wear to every conference because they are the most comfortable- I would say that over the years (do I dare admit that these shoes at around 10yrs old?!!)- these shoes have seen hundreds of keynotes and strolled through miles and miles of expo halls- from the small intimate conferences like the beloved defrag to the biggie 'close out Disney World' Gartner conferences.

I will miss you dear shoes.

PS: for those lady friends of mine who we have discussed that the Shoe Mender is a girl's best friend and good shoes are worth fixing and over again. This pair has spent its share of time at the shoe repair shop- this morning as I walked past Jack's shoe repair on market street on the way to the office I suddenly almost had a change of heart- but no their time has come. (Sounds like a trip to DSW is called for!)

This week the Enterprise 2.0 Conference made it's debut in San Francisco (it has been an annual event in Boston). I was only able to attend one of the days but got my fill of colleagues who work in the space that i have not seen for a while, vendors (expo hall had many new and 'old-timers') and got to attend some interesting sessions.

One of the things i love about Twitter is the value that it brings at conferences- both when you are physically there as well as when you are 'listening' in remotely. Commonly called the 'Back-Channel' attendees tweet their thoughts, location, what speakers are saying etc. The Enterprise 2.0 site has a handy 'Back Channel' page or a quick Twitter search on the #e2conf hashtag will let you read through some of the conversations occurring in the back-channel as well the 'reporting' that was done during sessions and post event. The days i was not there, i was tracking the conversation that way. Today i also spent some time reviewing various 'wrap-up' posts including:

• Oliver Marks - The Enterprise 2.0 Value Propositions Agenda -
• Andrew McAfee's Top Enterprise 2.0 No-No's - CMS Wire
• Tony Bryne- Enterprise 2.0 Conference wrap up
• Nenshad Bardoliwalla - Is Enterprise 2.0 a Savior or a Charlatan? How Strategy-Driven Execution can pave the path to proving legitimate business value (great post need to digest a bit more myself)
  

My own thoughts align with some of the criticism and frustration that can be heard about E2.0 that it is early, how do you define, what are the business values, etc. Do you have to give it a special name- or it is just for marketing purposes. Spending some time with the vendors in the expo hall- the business proposition is primarily productivity benefits, increasing sales, capturing knowledge- nothing new in the Enterprise software space but the key is that the user (enterprise user in the role of the consumer) is driving. Adoption is still a huge issue and although the 'wikification' method of enterprise penetration (Mary puts a wiki server under her desk, at 10 dollars for 10 users that grows to enterprise) has proven to be successful for some of these smaller vendors and it is still early on but the big platform vendors are quickly catching up.

From the start, the labeling of Enterprise 2.0 has been debated and for instance the panel titled "Is Enterprise 2.0 A Crock?" that featured internal evangelists from EMC, Eli Lilly, CSC Booz Allen, MetLife and Alcatel-Lucent was supposed to prove that it isn't- although it was good to hear these big name companies on a stage advocating and proving some benefits- i didn't manage to hear anything new and specific. That is why i enjoyed sessions like the one that Susan Bouchard from Cisco did on Enterprise Mashups Deliver Business Value: Cisco's Story (disclaimer Cisco has been a client of mine for a while).

Susan recently co-authored a book titled Enterprise Web 2.0 Fundamentals and the years that i have know her as been an advocate of adopting new technologies for Cisco- primarily sales teams. Susan's presentation had specific use cases on leveraging mashups (a technology that is included in the E2.0 'stack'). She also mentioned some of the work that my team has been doing around executive dashboards to deliver contextual data that incorporates mashup principles (Cisco is currently not a client of that solution).

Susan also made note of a recent publication by Cisco titled the Economics of the Cisco Collaboration Story: Case Studies of Web 2.0 Collaboration Initiatives where over $650 million in savings is sited based on their use of Web2.0 collaboration capabilities (this number includes things like reducing travel and the use of some of their own product lines (e.g. Webex)). Susan posted her slide deck on Slideshare (E2.0 presentations are locked down for attendees only-boooo) so here it is :
Always good to be surrounded by like minded individuals and although i am sure i missed meeting many many many more because i was only on site for a day- i certainly enjoyed it and all the while making the brain juices flow which sometimes is hard to do when you are in front of a computer and talking to Enterprise clients about existing solutions (cause that is what they are ready for)- when the mind wants to explore and build the next thing!


Image|Flickr| Alex Dunne

I looked at the calendar yesterday and the realization that November is upon us hit me pretty hard. With November comes a lot of pumpkin (here is my new pumpkin addiction recipe for this year) and a few speaking spots before i go out on maternity leave (yeah yeah i can't believe it's already time either!).

Just like last year and the year before i will be attending and presenting at Enterprise Search Summit and Taxonomy Bootcamp which i am really looking forward to.

At Enterprise Search Summit West i have been asked to participate on a panel titled "Is Semantic Technology Real?" moderated by Rob Gonzalez from Endeca.

Is Semantic Technology Real?

10:45 am – 11:45 am Moderator: Rob Gonzalez, Platform Product Manager, Endeca Technologies Michael J. Cataldo, CEO, Cambridge Semantics Daniela Barbosa, Business Development Manager, Dow Jones Client Solutions, Dow Jones & Company Lorenzo Thione, Founder / Principal Program Manager, Powerset / Bing Microsoft, Inc. Semantic technology is all the rage, sometimes even dubbed “Web 3.0.” However, many people—especially those making technology decisions for enterprises—wonder whether semantic technology has meaningful applications in the enterprise. Based on hands-on experience working with semantic tools, this panel of experts will establish the boundaries between reality and hype and help you understand what enterprises can gain from semantic technology in the here and now.

At Taxonomy Bootcamp, i have been asked to be part of a panel that Wendi Pohs is running titled "From the Lighthouse: Visioneering Taxonomies’ Future which promises to be an engaging panel on the future of taxonomies. I have been in forward looking mode for the last few months so i have been thinking about this subject quite a bit.

From the Lighthouse: Visioneering Taxonomies’ Future

4:00 pm – 5:00 pm Moderator: Wendi Pohs, Chief Technology Officer, InfoClear Consulting Daniela Barbosa, Business Development Manager, Dow Jones Client Solutions, Dow Jones & Company Jenny Benevento, Information Architect/Taxonomist, Sears Holding Company Gia Lyons, Social Business Software Consultant, Strategic Consulting, Jive Software Steve Ardire, VP Strategy & Business Development, Early Stage Semantic Technology Startups Join Wendi Pohs and this panel of experts as they peer into the future of taxonomies. Each panelist concentrates on a specific area, including semantic management tools, consumer-driven taxonomies, social networking software, and emerging semantic technologies. We’ve asked these speakers to both enlighten and challenge you, so bring your thinking caps and questions.

It is not too late to register and you can use these codes for some discounts- Enterprise Search Registration with SPK5 code and Taxonomy Bootcamp registration with SPK5 code.

My sessions last year featured a Synaptica Case Study at Taxonomy Bootcamp titled "Proquest: Finding a Common Language: Bringing Complex and Disparate Vocabularies" (video available here) and at Enterprise Search Summit a presentation on Centralized Taxonomy Management for Enterprise Information Systems (video available here)

Looking forward to seeing everyone there including the Dow Jones Taxonomy Team (Dow Jones is a KMWorld sponsor- note: my speaking spots are not sponsored spots but by invitation of the moderators) and the Synaptica team who are exhibiting and sponsoring Taxonomy Bootcamp!


Image|Flickr| minipixel

Note this post is cross-posted on the SynapticaCentral Blog.

The list of attendees at The ReadWrite-Real-Time-Web Summit is certainly looking impressive and the event wiki already has a good list of topics that people want to discuss. The purpose of the event is to bring together some industry leaders to discuss the following:

• The state of the art, science and business of the Real-Time Web;
• Efforts to create standards and interoperability;
• Challenges in user experience, technology and monetization.

I am really looking forward to attending and participating on Thursday. In my attempt to get smarter quickly :-), i have no doubt this event will meet my expectations- the combination of the RWW team, the participants listed and Kaliya Hamlin who is known for coordinating un-conference events it is sure to be worthwhile.

It is not too late to register and there is a discount code"RWWDiscount" that is good until end of day today, Tuesday Oct 13th.

If you are not located in the Bay Area you can also check out selected sessions throughout the day via a live video broadcast on ReadWriteWeb.

This Thursday at 11:20EST, i will be conducting a session with Jonathan Kranz on day two of eComXpo which is virtual show for "e-commerce and affiliate marketers that addresses the latest trends and issues in marketing for retailers, affiliates and networks". [registration is free so join us!]

The title of our session is "Now You’re Cooking: How A Dow Jones eBook Boosted Brand And Tripled Lead-Gen Expectations" which is a case study of the ebook i published last June with Dow Jones titled "The Taxonomy Folksonomy Cookbook: Finding the Right Recipe for Organizing Enterprise Metadata".

Jonathan was instrumental in the copy writing and concept design of that ebook as well as the most recent one "The Conversational Corporation: How Social Media is Changing the Enterprise" that i cowrote with Robert Scoble, Shel Israel and Greg Merkle. Jonathan is spectacular to work with and in this session he will share with the audience some of the tips that he shared with us as we were putting together and publishing our own successful ebooks.

The session summary from the conference agenda reads as follows:

If content is king on the Web, then what’s the royal road to online success? For Dow Jones, the secret was an ebook strategy that positioned them for leadership--and resulted in three times the number of downloads and leads than they had expected. Co-hosts Jonathan Kranz, author of Writing Copy for Dummies, and Daniela Barbosa, Business Development Manager for Dow Jones’ Synaptica, share their insights on:

• How a traditional company is reinventing its content/copy through ebooks
• Uncovering opportunities for competitive distinction through thought-leadership
• How to leverage expertise to build brand, generate leads and lubricate the sales process pipeline
• The crucial power of killer graphics — why ebooks are more than mere whitepapers
• Promotional power — leveraging Web ads, social media, webinars, personal appearances and more to accelerate success

I am really looking forward to conducting this session with Jonathan, he certainly has a lot to share with everyone based on what he has learned over the years in producing projects for various types of clients and we will be sharing some real stories that came out of the two ebooks i have written over the last year. 'See' you there!

Just like last year, I am very excited about the upcoming Semantic Technology Conference in San Jose on June 14th-18th. The program looks great and aside from attending many sessions and i am also going to be very busy!

Starting on Sunday, June 14, 2009 from 02:00 PM - 04:00 PM we kick-off with the Semantic Code Camp, an event that is free for non-conference attendees as well (register here).

On Monday, June 15th from 6:00-8:00pm, The DataPortability Project is hosting a DataPortability get-together. As an added bonus, when you register to attend this meetup, you will get access to Chris Saad’s conference session "It's Time for Social Media to Become Personal Media" which takes place prior to the meet-up (5:00pm-6:00pm). You will have access to the full conference and you will be able to also network with all the other attendees. You need to register to get access into the conference center for the session and get-together. (contact me with questions)

On Tuesday, June 16, 2009 from 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM , i am super excited about being on a panel moderated by Paul Miller titled "Semantifying Social Networks" with Nova Spivack, Stephen A. Leicht and Amit Sheth. (for this session you need to be a conference attendee, please see below)

Interested in attending the full conference? Use the DataPortability Discount code: ST9DP . It will give the user $200 off a “full event” or “conference only” registration fee and $100 off a “tutorial day only” fee.

For example: If you are also interested in attending a full Semantic Search Day on Wednesday. Use the code to get you $100 off the day price of $195- costing only $95!

Here is what i look like, come find me if you want to chat~ See you in San Jose!

I guess i am a lucky girl, because the upcoming months are just going to be great (well that is if all goes well and i don't blow it of course!). I have a bunch of speaking engagements coming up that are all going to be at conferences that i am very excited about attending as well. So here is the run down in order of appearance:

Enterprise Search Summit West- September 23th-24th in San Jose, CA. I will be co-presenting with a client about centralized taxonomy management best practices into enterprise information systems (search, CMS/DMS, portals etc.) This is a two day conference that covers how to develop, implement and enhance search capabilities in the Enterprise.

Taxonomy Bootcamp- September 25th-26th in San Jose, CA. I will be introducing a client case study highlighting their use of the Synaptica tool that i am Business Development Manager of at Dow Jones.

Finding a Common Language: Bringing Complex and Disparate Vocabularies Together

2:15 pm – 3:00 pm Paula R McCoy, Manager, Taxonomy Development, ProQuest Daniela Barbosa, Dow Jones & Company This case study addresses the challenges ProQuest faced in managing multilingual controlled vocabularies using multiple Word documents and authority files maintained in an Oracle database. Speakers describe how implementing a thesaurus management tool helped ProQuest simplify and standardize its business semantic management to create a common language and connect disparate information assets as well as handling large and varied vocabularies and authority files, linking new and existing editorial systems and enabling hierarchical views, and automating thesaurus management tasks.

Web2.0 Expo New York- September 16-19th. I will be presenting as part of the Landscape & Strategy track with Chris Saad on Understanding the Basics of Personal Data: Vendors, Users, and You. This track covers the fundamentals of Web 2.0 and explores how they drive strategy, business models, and revenue. The panels will look at how Web 2.0 is affecting finance, advertising, media, fashion, and real estate, and explain how the building blocks of Web 2.0—user-generated content, rich internet applications, collective intelligence, the wisdom of crowds, software as a service, lightweight development models, and mashups—are changing the landscape of media, software, and the economy. I still crack up when i see my picture on the speaker list among some of the big Web2.0 heavy hitters. My mom would be so proud if she knew what Web 2.0 was! {Use Code webny08mc23 to register for Web 2.0 Expo New York and Save $100 or Get a Free Expo Pass}

and last but not least....

Defrag- November 3rd -4th in Denver. This one i am even more excited about because i heard just great feedback about this conference last year. My presentation is titled 'Pulling the threads on user data'. Just like all the other conferences i am super delighted to be on the speakers list with some amazing folks like Stowe Boyd, Esther Dyson, fellow ReadWriteWeb named 'Seven Leading Corporate Social Media Evangelists' Aaron Fulkerson and Sam Lawrence, Paul Kedrosky, Richard Hoeg, Charlene Li, Paul Miller, Clay Shirky and my old friend Lou Paglia among many others. Just the list of speakers would have been enough for me to go, so i am super privileged to also have the opportunity to speak!
NOTE: You should seriously think about going to Defrag and then you should use code 'db1'- that will get you an additional $100 off of current early bird prices. I am also excited to say that Dow Jones Client Solutions is going to be exhibiting at Defrag-more to follow on why we are there and why Defrag attendees should care in another post!

Good stuff- now i have some thinking and presentations to finish!

So i have been up since 7am on a beautiful Saturday morning trying to organize my calendar for the next three months and i am totally frustrated. Trying to organize my calendar for events and four conferences that have four online activity calendars/schedulers with four separate logins, plus i need to make hotel and flight reservations as well as appointments so i can maximize my time at these events. Urgh---Who is going to fix this???

Things are certainly getting better and below i highlight one way i am maximizing some of interoperability of web based calendaring using features like iCalendar but i am still having to do a lot of manual work that requires multiple logins and at minimum first time setup on all these services. So of course this activity i am doing this morning is silly because i am reviewing/updating my Outlook calendar (where my work colleagues go to when they need to book appointments so by default my base) , my Google Calendar, my Upcoming.org , my Dopplr plus the calendar on the fridge for the hubby (not for a long while will that one be fixed!). DataPortability anyone?

I invest time and money in all the conferences and events i go to, so i certainly want to maximize the ones i am attending so i can network and meet with as many people as possible. So after spending some time this morning trying to figure out the best way to not only manage my own life but make myself available, as a first step i have created a Google public calendar and using the Calendar embeddable feature i added it to my blog (see on the right side menu).

On my Google public calendar i put the following description:

I am the Business Development Manager for Synaptica and Taxonomy Services at Dow Jones. Part of the Dow Jones Client Solutions team, i am responsible for business development for Synaptica our taxonomy and metadata management tool and work very closely with our Taxonomy Services team.

I am as one of the original co-founders of the DataPortability Project : www.dataportability.org

Please contact me directly at daniela.barbosa@dowjones.com if you would like to schedule a meeting with me at anytime or come find me at the event- this is what i look like in case you are looking for me!

Then i added all my events. Because most of them are on upcoming.org a service i already use often, it was very easy to do because i clicked on "I'm Attending" then clicked to add to my Google Calendar. Then I added personal notes as needed about my attendance at that event so hopefully i can schedule some meetings etc.

It would be awesome if ALL the conference program calendars that i need to fill out for each conference session i want to attend could be portable and then easily included in the details of each calendar entry for people to see which sessions i am attending to get a better idea of my interests. The Semantic Technology Conference Scheduler (what else would you expect from this conference) gets me one step closer.

Hope to see you at one of these events and conferences!

Last year i really wanted to go to the annual Semantic Technology Conference (SemTech) but i was too late to the game from a budget perspective and at over $1500 it wasn't something that i could pay for myself like many of the local conferences (and unconferences) i go to where it is 50-100 bucks. It also ended up conflicting with something else on my work agenda so instead of being a brat i let it go. This year I am there and i am already prepping for it so i can get the most out of it.

The schedule with speakers has been posted on the conference site and in addition to attending the sessions and meeting some of the vendors in the space, i am also super excited about meeting a lot of the key members of the Semantic Web Community, some who have also recently been participating in the DataPortability Group that i am a founding member of.

The other thing that I am very excited about is that our very own Christine Connors will be presenting a session which i outline below on Semantic coding in the world of fast paced publishing.

Since late 2007 when she joined Dow Jones, Christine has been in addition to Director of Semantic Technology Solutions for Dow Jones the Business Champion for Synaptica , our taxonomy and metadata management tool that i am now responsible for from a Business Development perspective. I have to say that the last few months working with Christine and the Synaptica product team has been one of the most exciting and satisfying parts of my eight year career at Dow Jones/Factiva.

The funny thing is that i had seen Christine present at other conferences while she was at Intuit and i admit i kinda hounded her when she was at Intuit because i wanted to tell her what Factiva (now we are Dow Jones) was doing in the space- the message after she joined us i got was that Factiva and especially the Synaptica and Taxonomy business was not doing a very good job of telling the marketplace what are core capabilities were (perhaps however she was just being nice and i just couldn't sell it ;-0 ...all kidding aside I am aware that we still have a lot of work to do but if anyone knows me that is reading this i am always up for cheer leading for a winning team- and i think i got one of those now.

Semantic Coding at 120mph

Christine Connors Global Director, Semantic Technology Solutions Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM How does a company with massive amounts of real-time data and high availability requirements migrate to the Semantic Web? Very thoughtfully! Join this session for a "day in the life" view of content from creation through processing and on to delivery. Along the way, learn how to efficiently cluster processes and technologies to intelligently migrate from legacy systems to the Semantic Web. Learn how taxonomies and ontologies integrate with entity extraction and rules-based processing to enable near real-time delivery of business critical multimedia content from thousands of sources. See how Dow Jones uses Synaptica, the 1.5 million+ proprietary codes of Factiva Intelligent Indexing, as the foundation of a technical stack that allows content to be processed in less than a minute in a 24x7 global coding and publishing operation. Christine Connors joined Dow Jones in 2007 as Global Director, Semantic Technology Solutions. Her primary responsibilities are for Synaptica product development and overall metadata strategy, in partnership with the Business Champions of the Factiva and Dow Jones Newswires family of offerings.

UPDATED April 30th:
Christine has been added to two additional sessions at the conference- Yeah! :
Financial Services Industry *Sidebar*-Through examples, this session will examine how, and in what process categories, semantic capabilities are being leveraged within the Financial Industry. We will then discuss where else, within the broad context of the financial space, these approaches may be applied.
Bringing SemTech Back to the Business-With a panel of leaders from the semantic technology industry, this session will give us the opportunity to reflect on the many discussions that have taken place during the week of SemTech 2008 and help us map the course as we prepare to extend those conversations back into our workplaces. We will touch on issues of ROI, making the case for semantic technologies in the enterprise, and what to expect in the coming year in the semantic tech space.

I am heading out to Denver first thing Sunday morning for the annual SLA (Special Library Association) Conference . Dow Jones/Factiva is a huge sponsor of the conference and i always enjoy attending because a lot of the clients i work with have librarians that attend. I am also looking forward to seeing some of my east coast clients that i miss!

I have a MLIS (Master of Library & Information Science) and although i do not consider myself a 'librarian' i do align my professional self with the profession especially in the corporate space since much of the work i have done in the last 8 years revolves around information delivery in the enterprise.

I monitor a good handful of librarian blogs (see list below) and have always thought that librarians make great bloggers. I posted the Hugh MacLeod**** drawing above because i thinks that librarians do have the passion and authority to be great bloggers!

For the last few years the conference has been very well covered by attending bloggers. I will do what i can to help the situation this year.

The Official Conference Blog:
http://slablogger.typepad.com/sla_blog/

Information Today is covering the conference on their blog: http://www.infotodayblog.com/2007/05/21/information-today-bloggers-head-for-sla/

There is a blogger get together (unfortunately i won't be able to attend- urgh):
http://sla-divisions.typepad.com/itbloggingsection/2007/05/reminder_blogge.html

Some of the conference sessions that look interesting (aside from the Al Gore keynote-yeah!):

• Giving Meaning to the Term “Customer Engagement


• New Tools for Handling Reputation and Risk


• Turning the Pages: Bringing our "Treasures" to Life Through Technology


• SLA Tech Zone: Blogs, Wikis, RSS, and other Cool Stuff within Share Point 2007


• New Tools Help Organizations Build Effective Competitive Intelligence and Knowledge Management Teams


• The Mobility of Business Information


• Best Practices: How to Implement Audience-centric Taxonomies for the Semantic Web


• Learning to Unleash the Full Power of RSS Information Feeds


• Science of Beer (not making this on up!)


• 20 Tips For Searching the New Web, Web 2.0


• XBRL: Extensible Business Reporting Language


• Finding the Concept: Using Ontologies and Semantics

****If you a Hugh MacLeod fan and a blogging librarian and you happen to read this post, i have an extra signed calendar from when i recently met Hugh at a Blogging Dinner. Be the first to find me in the booth and it is yours to frame. Here is when i am scheduled to be at the Dow Jones Booth: Sunday 11am-1pm, Monday 3-5pm, Tuesday 10-12:30pm and this is what i look like.

Some other 'library' blogs i monitor include (feel free to add more in the comments):

• http://carlnit.blogspot.com/
• http://www.blogginglibrarian.com/
• http://www.theshiftedlibrarian.com/
• http://jdupuis.blogspot.com/
• http://www.ia-blog.com/
• Librarians' Internet Index: New This Week
• http://dbl.lishost.org/blog/feed/
• http://librarianinblack.typepad.com/
• http://librariancentral.blogspot.com/ (Google's librarian blog)

The Web2.0 Expo started up today in San Francisco. I did not get a full conference pass but will be taking advantage of the Expo Pass which provides access to a lot of sessions, the expo hall itself and a whole bunch of other activities going on at the conference. This morning i also participated through Jeremiah's Live Video and Chat Streaming session.

• Greg Merkle, AVP of Product Design & UX and true rock star and sometimes blogger. Greg will be on a panel with Rod Smith from IBM on Mashing Up Business Value with Web 2.0. I will try to get it on video for all the remote folks because i KNOW it is going to be a good session!


• Lou Paglia, Director for the Factiva Core Business. Lou has been featured on my Blip.tv channel and just recently started a blog of his own (hurray!)


• Simon Bradstock Director, Product Management (also going to the Content Forum and Codie awards happening this week)


• Ryan Zacker, Senior Manager, Client Technology Services


• Chad Winter, Product Manager Dow Jones Licensing


• And the entire Dow Jones San Francisco office staff
  

I am very excited to announce that i will be speaking at the BlogHer Business '07 Conference in New York on March 22-23th. I will be on the panel on "How To Measure Social Media ROI" on the second day with Katie Paine and Lena West.

Last year i attended the BlogHer conference in San Jose, CA and really enjoyed not only the sessions but meeting a great bunch of women bloggers and learning some pratical blogging tips from them. I can honestly say that prior to attending i had been a bit concerned about the 'mommy' effect (only mommy bloggers) but was pleased to find that many kinds of bloggers participated and even the mommy ones had great things to share. I was glad that those wrong pre-conceived notions didn't stop me from going. Since then i have monitored many blogs from bloggers i met at that conference.

This year's annual Blogher conference is in Chicago in July, so this upcoming conference in New York is focused on Business blogging. The two day conference agenda certainly seems well planned and interesting and i wouldn't expect anything less from the conference organizers. I am also excited to meet bloggers that i have been reading recently like for example Marianne Richmond one of the fellow Media2.0 group members.

As a speaker i have been given the opportunity to share with my readers this discount code. Anyone who signs up between now and March 15 with this code: BHBSK-DSC will receive $100 off the cost of the event. Registration is here: www.acteva.com/go/blogher

See YA at BlogHer!