Watch Upcoming Social Media and Technology Events for the Summer

Upcoming Social Media and Technology Events for the Summer


Those of you in Social Media or Technology space, here is the list of related global events for the summer you might be interested in attending including a few of them in Washington, D.C.:
June 21-23, 2010, Denver, CO: Hosted by WebmasterRadio.FM, AffCon 2010 is a conference series designed specifically to meet the needs of affiliate marketers. As such, admission is FREE for all working affiliates to attend! Don’t miss out on this unique opportunity to meet and share ideas with the brightest business people in the affiliate marketing industry. Pulling together an amazing lineup of session panelists and speakers (including super affiliates), AffCon 2010 – Denver also features an exhibit hall, general and targeted skills sessions, networking and WebmasterRadio.FM’s epic AffiliateBash. Get registered today!
June 21-24, 2010, Ottawa, ON: Attend the Advanced Learning Institute’s Forum on Social Media for Government: How To Engage Your Employees And Citizens By Using The Latest Web 2.0 Technologies To Drive Communication Results, to learn how to capture the power of social media in your organization, along with helpful tools, tips and techniques to get started. Hear practical advice, firsthand, from leading organizations such as: City of Ottawa, ON; Public Safety Canada; U.S. Department of State; Norfolk County, ON; Canadian Internet Registration Authority; Office of the Ombudsman, ON; Alberta Environment; Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada; Public Service Commission of Canada; Ottawa Public Library; Department of National Defence; Corporation of the City of London, ON; Thornley Fallis Communications & 76design; and more.
June 22-23, 2010, Atlanta, GA: The Business Of WordPress Conference is focused on providing generally non-technical business people with a roadmap for how they can leverage WordPress to establish or advance their business’ presence on the web. This two-day event will include a Workshop Day on June 22nd for hands-on WordPress training. The second day will be an all day conference to learn what’s possible on the web today with WordPress, which now makes it easy for almost anyone to launch a world-class website. Register now and save 15% off of the June 23rd Conference.
June 22-24, 2010, Santa Clara, CA: Now in its third year, Velocity – the Web Performance and Operations Conference from O’Reilly Media – is dedicated to helping people build a better Internet that is Fast by Default. Join hundreds of web developers and experts under one roof, Velocity packs a wealth of big ideas, know-how and connections into three concentrated days. You’ll be able to apply what you’ve learned immediately for high impact results and you’ll come away prepared for what’s ahead. O’Reilly Velocity 2010 is the premier conference dedicated to building industrial strength sites, at internet speed. Register Now at http://en.oreilly.com/velocity2010.
June 23, 2010, San Francisco, CA: The B2B Search Strategy Summit is designed by B2B Search Engine Marketers for B2B Search Engine Marketers to provide strategic and tactical Marketing knowledge and bring together the best minds in B2B search engine marketing, email, PR, social media and lead generation to share leading-edge information and experience. Conference attendees will walk away with a toolbox full of new strategies and tactics to apply immediately to current B2B Marketing challenges and opportunities. Attendance is limited to 150 B2B marketing professionals.
Coppied by http://awesomedc.com/2010/06/23/upcoming-social-media-and-technology-events-during-the-summer/

Watches News orgs’ goal for 2010: Imagine tomorrow’s media world today

News orgs’ goal for 2010 Imagine tomorrow’s media world today

The legacy press — or the traditional media, or whatever we’re calling newspapers these days — has one main challenge for 2010, and it’s not finding a new business model. It has to do with vision. It has to do with being able to imagine a world that does not yet exist.

While the news media’s woes come from lagging ad rates and content that’s scooped up by aggregrators, those are symptoms of the main problem: an inability to imagine what media consumption will look like in one, five, 10 years.

It’s a problem that’s not new or unique to the news business. Two examples illustrate my point.

Personal computers

In the early ’60s, IBM, the king of computers at the time, couldn’t imagine a need for personal computers, according to Robert X. Cringley’s 1992 book, “Accidental Empires.” (The famous quote from IBM chief Thomas Watson — “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers” — appears to be apocryphal, though.) In those days, computers were mainframes that filled a room. Executive didn’t type; they had secretaries for that. Watch an episode of “Mad Men,” and you’ll get the idea.

Cringley writes in his book that top IBM executives were briefed on a plan for video-display terminals in those days, but they didn’t get it. “These were intelligent men, but they had a firmly fixed concept of what computer was supposed to be, and it didn’t include video-display terminals,” he wrote. “To invent a particular type of computer, you have to want to use it, and the leaders of America’s computer companies did not want a computer on their desks.”

Imagine that: a computer company that could not foresee that people might want to harness the power of a mainframe computer, plunk it on their desk or lap, and use it all by themeselves. Today it seems preposterous; my laptop gets turned on as early each morning as my coffee maker.

IBM and others couldn’t imagine a world that didn’t exist then. Of course, others did — including later bosses at IBM — and the personal computer was born. But the inability to imagine delayed the process and changed the computer industry forever. Ask you typical 20-something who rules the computer business, and IBM won’t be on their list.

Microwaves

The first commercial microwave hit the market in 1947, according to Microtech’s history of the microwave. But it wasn’t until the 1970s when they caught on in the home. I remember when my family got our first: We all watched as my mom boiled her first cup of water for tea in this mammoth machine. “I can’t imagine what I’ll do with this,” I remember my mother saying, noting that making tea water in a stovetop kettle seemed easier.

Then think about today. My microwave died on Christmas Day, when not a store was open to replace it. Our family barely made it to Saturday, when I rushed to Target to buy a new one. What we couldn’t imagine a use for 30 years ago, we can’t live without today.

What this means for the news business

My point is news organizations need to imagine how people will consume news in the future — even though it might not make sense to them today. Newspapers owners may want ink on their fingers, and a paper they can feel, but many of their customers don’t now — or won’t in five years. And they may think a newspaper web site should look like a newspaper, but it shouldn’t. (It’s normal to build something new based on something old. That happened in the computer world, too, with the first microcomputers modeled on a mainframe.)

The challenge for the news biz is to look ahead and imagine how people may want their news and information. It’s about format (online, by phone, through social media) and content (aggregated, local, tailored to their needs.) For local news operations, this mean “organizing a community’s information so the community can organize itself,” as Jeff Jarvis puts it.

For all media organizations, it means adding more value to what they offer readers, according to Jay Rosen. What it doesn’t mean is forsaking the journalistic mission in search of the “almighty hit,” as Lehigh University journalism professor Jeremy Littau puts it.
Coppied by http://www.niemanlab.org/2010/01/news-orgs-goal-for-2010-imagine-tomorrows-media-world-today/