Announcements Rock

You know what’s awesome? The opportunity to work with great people. I love that I spend my days with guys like Justin Levy and Colin Browning figuring out how to educate and equip business communicators with the latest and best stuff we’re learning. Further more, I’m so thrilled that I get to work with the pirates on events, as well as with David Meerman Scott and Paul Gillin. So what’s more awesome than that?

Taking on More

We’re thrilled to report that New Marketing Labs has acquired the Inbound Marketing Summit event from our friends at Hubspot. Going forward, we will rename our events to be the Inbound Marketing Summit. The name New Marketing Summit will be sunk, and a burial at sea will be had. (Apologies to those who commissioned tattoos after last year’s event, because you felt it was so awesome. I have a carnation design that hides it well!)

What’s In It for You?

So, who goes to these types of events, anyway? Marketing and PR and advertising types are the typical attendee, though we seem to get more and more C-level and president types, too. People come to learn how to get more business using the online tools like social media, email marketing, video, social networks, and things like that. We get both agency types as well as people from companies like Kodak, Dow Jones, Wiley Publishers, and all kinds of companies you know, who also need to know about the tools and strategies, just like you.

If you’re going to come, it’s a pretty damned good show. Ask someone like Richard Reeve or Susan Kang Nam or I’m not sure… some more folks, if you want to ask around.

Our mission, should you want to know it, in 2009 is: strategy into action. That means we’re going to bring you into the event with your questions, your marketing challenges, your interests, and give you the entire spectrum of information. Instead of just talking about how cool blogs and things are, we’ll go right deep to the “actionable steps” level. We’ve got great speakers, great authors, great practitioners, and we want to share everything they know with you.

Hold off on registering for a few days. I’ve got a special announcement there, too. Seriously. Don’t do it for like… another day or two.

Speakers for the April 27th-29th Inbound Marketing Summit (so far)

The first Inbound Marketing Summit event last year in Boston featured speakers like David Meerman Scott, me, my PodCamp co-founder, Christopher S. Penn, and mister Seth Godin, to name just a few. It was a kickass event. (That’s a technical term). Want to see who’s confirmed so far for San Francisco in April?

Here’s who’s up (so far) in April 2009:

• Tim O’Reilly
• Loic LeMeur (Seesmic and LeWeb)
• Tim Street (French Maid TV)
• Tim Marklein (Weber Shandwick)
• Jessica Berlin (Cirque Du Soleil)
• Microsoft (name to be announced)
• Harley Davidson (name to be announced)
• Bryan Elliott (SoCal Action Network)
• Patrick Chanezon (Google)
• Jason Falls
• Brian Solis
• David Meerman Scott
• Paul Gillin
• Me
• and plenty more.

And that’s just so far…

I’ve begged some other great people to come and speak as well. We’re closing in on that soon-ish.

Cool Sponsors

There’s no party without the sponsors, so I’m always excited that we get to work with friends who also happen to run businesses we care about and support. You should know something about this: I am very picky about who collaborates with us on the event. All of these sponsors offer some product or service that I personally feel is useful to this space. They’ll be coming to our events and you can ask them every hard question you want. Kick the tires. Bug them. Challenge them to serve your needs. That’s why they head out to the events.

Sponsors for our San Francisco event in April (so far) are:

• HubSpot
• Blue Sky Factory
• BrickFish
• Cision
• Powered
• PR Newswire
• Sitecore
• HiveLive
• R2integrated
• Radian6
• Socialcast
• SocialText
• Visible Technologies
• And you? (Ping Colin Browning)

(If I missed you, please just tell me, and I’ll fix it.)

Just One More Thing

In case that’s not enough of an event for you (because hey, we’ve merged two together), let’s add this bit of news: Jen McClure from The Society for New Communications Research (SNCR) is hosting her 5th Annual New Comm Forum as part of a larger offering with us. I went to this show last year up in the Sonoma Valley, and it was a blast! Jen’s audience really matches with what we’re doing, and so we think we’ve got a nice mix with bringing everyone together in the same place.

Speakers at Jen’s event so far include Shashi Bellamkonda, me, Adrian Chan, Vanessa DiMauro, Laura Fitton, Susan Getgood, Paul Gillin, Shel Holtz, Shel Israel, Alan Kelly, JD Lasica, Geoff Livingston, Jen McClure, Gaurav Mishra, Katie Paine, Brian Solis, Todd Van Hoosear, Dr. Mihaela Vorvoreanu, and many others.

Okay, Another One More Thing

Do you think that open source software relates to this space? I do. How can companies innovate fast enough to be competitive? Where will tomorrow’s great services come from?

Bill Washburn has an extensive experience with open source software, and with the OPenID Foundation. We’re pleased to present a new event, OpenBox, that will take place on Tuesday the 28th of April at the same venue, alongside our other events. I’ll talk about that more later, but I wanted to give you the heads up that we’ve got something for your CEOs and CTOs to do while the CMOs hang out with us at the Inbound Marketing Summit.

So there.

We’re growing. We acquired the Inbound Marketing Summit because we want to get all you bright people in the same room at the same time. We are likely going to find other events that match our interests and build relationships with them, as well. We’ll have another announcement about that exact thing coming up very shortly.

Any questions? Thoughts? Am I going to see you in San Francisco, or will you be coming to Dallas or Boston, or our soon-to-be-named next event?

Photo credit, Hubspot

Effective today, I announce the start of my privateer effort. My pirate ship is officially in the water. There’s no flag (official website). There’s no fleet (yet). And I do have the backing of my government (company).

New Marketing Labs

I’ve taken over a piece of CrossTech Media after a conversation with Nick Saber and Stephen Saber. I don’t really know what I should make my title, because really, who give’s a rat’s ass? I’m driving the vision I laid out, backed by Stephen and Nick. That’s what matters.

I have two direct people on my team right now: Mike Lewis, President of the Business Marketing Association of Boston will be my General Manager and delivery partner. Rich Erb will be my sales executive for the events. (I still also have all of CrossTech working with me, and am partnered with CrossTech Partners for solution delivery on platforms and more complex projects.)

The business has two main pieces: education and service.

Education: New Marketing Summit

Flagship of the events I run is the New Marketing Summit. We’re doing four of these in 2009, including Milan, Italy. That’s the plan.

On top of these, we’re doing something to help parents understand the Net so they can better educate their kids. They’ll be one day events all over the place. We’re doing some one day boot camp education events that will be step-by-step and hands-on stuff. If you want that in your city, we’ll find ways to bring it. That’s just the beginning.

Service: Project Dogfood for You

Here’s where it gets crazy. I have worked with marketers, PR types, and social media folks tons over the last few years. Starting now (and based on some advice from Seth Godin and Todd Defren), I’m using New Marketing Labs as a new media agency arm for what I’m doing. What does that mean?

I’m offering my best social media efforts to midsized and larger businesses in a formal and professional manner, complete with execution teams and development support. What kinds of offerings? Out of the gate:

• Reputation Management including listening technology (heavy on the listening)
• New Media Relationships including blogger relations (with some GREAT partners and me)
• Community Projects including platforms and community management
• Email marketing and web design (primarily through my partner network).

You know me, or you know what I’ve shared with you to date. You know how I operate. I work collaboratively, and I build teams, and I deliver everything with the goal of being helpful. So, I’ve decided to get into the game directly and deliberately.

I’m invigorated. I’m excited. I’m nervous, because this is my first pure play effort, so I’m going to have to jump into the world of YOU wondering if I’m praising clients and stuff. Here’s the deal: I will disclose clients every single damned time. I will also list them on my About page.

So that’s the news. I’m starting a new business tied to my existing partners. I’m going to run even more interesting events in 2009. I’m available to work on your social media execution for internal and external projects. If you’re a business in need of such, come get me. If you’re a social media practitioner, you and I can talk about working together, and we’ll talk about how I vet or that.

I’ve got a great team around me, and I’ve got a pirate ship!

Questions? Problems? Ideas? Business opportunities? (A guy can ask, right?)

Photo credit, Mike Baird

But it’s her birthday, so for that, I want to just take some time and talk about Katrina.

We Met Online

First, I should point out that Katrina and I met online. I was in a weird place in my life, where I felt I was crazy and wrong (yes, I’m still crazy, but now I know I’m not wrong for being crazy). She was up in Canada, and I was down here in Massachusetts, trying to figure out where my life was going next. After some general friendship, we realized that we had a lot in common (well, music and a few things), and we started falling for each other.

Punks Together

We had lots of fun times in our dating, including messing around with music, and doing art projects together, and supporting each other’s various initiatives. Katrina does fabric and textile art, and she noodles with music as well. It’s cool when we have time to do art.

Mother

Though neither of us really had planned for a family life, we both fought our way into learning how to be parents. Kat’s so much better at it than me. She’s much more patient, has all of the tricks and skills of being a mom, and knows how to talk me and the kids off the ledge.

Kat and the kids play incredible games all the time. She keeps them entertained, fed, clothed (when they’re willing to wear clothes), and all around energized. With my Violette, who is a ball of fire and requires more than the average kid in the way of attention, handling, and coverage, I’d say that Katrina owns the space of “top shelf mom” without any heavy lifting. Harold? He’s easy cheesy, but he’s another human to chase around, so that counts for something too, dammit.

My Shield Bearer

I guess we all think of things from our own lens, and with regards to how Katrina fits into my world, I’ve said this a million times: Katrina does two things very well. She lifts me up when I’m feeling low, and she pops my bubble when I’m too egotistical. Kat GETS me. She understands every facet of my weirdness. She knows that I tell the worst jokes. She appreciates that I am a little greedy and selfish. She knows that I’m a handful and crazy and that I am not always the easiest guy to get along with.

Great Friend

People who are Katrina’s real friends are blessed. They know her to be caring, loving, fiercely loyal, protective, and very generous with her attention and friendship. They know her to be creative, funny, bright, and someone with a strong emotional intelligence.

Kat’s the opposite of me in friend making. She has a small, tight-knit group of friends, and that’s it. She doesn’t mind meeting new people, but rarely sees the need to be friends with them, as much as she’d rather be civil (at least from my perspective, that’s how it all plays out).

So I’m blessed that she’s my friend, too.

December Birthdays

Kat’s birthday is a week before Christmas. What a bummer that can be. Her family has always done a great job of celebrating that birthday as a very separate event. We try to do the same. (And here’s where I delete all the stuff I want to say about how December is for me, but that I try).

So Happy Birthday

I love you. For everything I do that makes you happy, I wish it could be a thousand fold. For everything I’ve ever done that’s made you sad, I’m sorry. For everything we can do together in the years to come, I look forward to it and am glad you’re with me.

Thank you. And happy birthday, Katrina.

Husband, father, blogger, and all-around super nice guy, Marc Orchant, has passed away. I wish Sue and family peace after sorrow, and hope after grief. It’s a difficult time to know what would be the right thing to say. Everyone says that. So, my version of the right thing to say was that I spent a little time in Marc’s presence, and thought he was super swell. I was a faithful subscriber to his various projects and blogs, and I’m happy to have shared two meals with Marc. My memories of him are all good things. Safe journey, Marc, and my warmest wishes to the Orchant family at this time.

You can see the thread of updates leading up to this moment here.

One of the recurring questions I get at PodCamps is “what’s your show?” It’s hard to answer, because I don’t regularly make my Small Boxes show, and that’s basically for me, anyhow. I started an audio project a few weeks ago, but I just wasn’t digging how it was coming out, so instead, I’ve asked Sim at Utterz to bake in an audio podcasting option for Utterz that will cook up rich media enclosures and the like. That’s probably coming out soon (provided Sim and the team dig the idea and go with it).

So, in the interim, I’ve got a new video show built on a brand new application roll-out:

Attention Upgrade is my new show (under 2 minutes an episode) where I talk about what has my attention, and this hopefully will help you upgrade YOUR experience with the world around you. The site was designed by Steve Rosenbaum and team of Magnify.net, and it’s one of the first shows to demonstrate Magnify’s new videoblog-in-a-box functionality.

I’m pretty jazzed about it. Steve and the team cooked up the underlying site in pretty much no time. MY version doesn’t take advantage of Magnify’s search-and-post functionality, which scours all kinds of video sites to find things that match your criteria, but you can do that, if you want too. I just chose to make all new stuff for Attention Upgrade.

I’ll be submitting the show to iTunes to be used on Video iPods and the like, and maybe also the Zune Marketplace, as they’re really looking for podcast content right now.

Lots more stuff coming soon on this front.

I am moving on from pulvermedia and my job producing the Video on the Net conference.

As of today, I’m officially a free agent.

There are some things being discussed, and I hope to report more interesting news within a matter of days (weeks?), but I thought I’d announce it here, so that you knew I was no longer working with the pulvermedia organization.

Still a Friend

Now, please don’t confuse this with my relationship with Jeff Pulver. Jeff and I are still friends, and still have plans to keep each other’s lives interesting. For instance, we’re in Boston together Tuesday night. So, don’t get that idea, okay?

I’m just no longer an employee of the organization.

Quick Housekeeping Note

I’m turning in my cellphone and laptop in a day or two. I’ve used my work phone number on every business card and contact you have. As such, it’s not worth much to you now. Just hold your horses. I’ll send you a new number soon. I’m still debating whether or not I want to use my GrandCentral number as my primary contact #, but I haven’t figured out how I can change a few features to make it do what I want. Stay tuned.

What Comes Next

My focus over the last year has been on community, and particularly how social media and networks build and enhance relationships, either business or personal.

Beyond that, my talent seems to lie in a few places:

• Connecting
• Explaining Things
• Sharing and Being Helpful

While I’m working out my next role, you can rest assured it will take my technical knowledge, my business understanding, and my human-centric view of both those worlds and use my abilities to their full advantage.

I have a meeting tomorrow with a prospective employer, but in the spirit of doing what’s best for my future, if you have any thoughts or suggestions, I’m always open for a conversation. My email remains blog at chrisbrogan dot com.

This blog and my passions remain the same. Fear not. More posting will ensue. I’ve just been tired from travel.

Photo Credit, Steve Garfield

• Because you care about things.
• Because you’re very smart.
• Because you use your voice.
• Because you have your eyes open, and are thinking about this all.
• Because your comments and conversations and twitters and connections with me make for a relationship.
• Because you answer my calls for help all the time.
• Because you will show me how to grow and explore and develop, and re-imagine.
• Because you are finding me business.
• Because you care about the people *I* care about, and will reach out to help them.
• Because your attention and feedback and participation spurs me on to write even better posts, make better media, etc.
• Because you advise me often.
• Because you’re the best, and you keep getting better, and that inspires me even more!

So thank you. Thanks for those of you who comment here, who bring the conversation to their blogs and podcast, but track back so we can find you and keep the dialog coming, and for those of you who are still lurking and haven’t found their comfort level to comment here, maybe just drop a quick “hi” into the comments to say howdy do, or “you’re welcome.”

You’re truly what keeps this all moving forward.

And if you’re enjoying this blog, please consider subscribing for free.

If you want to be listed as a rockstar, and you ARE my rockstars, please drop me a line with your URL and your RSS feed. It can be your podcast or your blog, whatever media you’re making. I want the conversation to span, not just stay around here.

Where are you? Share it, baby!

Observant readers of [chrisbrogan.com] know a few weird things about my site. You know that my site redirects to http://grasshopperfactory.com/cbc . There’s a reason for this, and it’s mostly user error on my part. But now, with several years of blogging on top of those links, I’ve got a two-fold problem. I’ve got a lot of self-referential links. So, I never wanted to “fix” my blog so that it actually lined up right from a search perspective.

Thankfully, I have friends who are smarter than me. (Most of you are smarter than me, truth be told, but I never let that stop me).

Over the coming weeks, my site will be re-built to line up properly. And then everything will be at the baseline domain of http://chrisbrogan.com. For most of you, this won’t make a difference. If any of you are referring to http://grasshopperfactory.com/cbc , I’d suggest you come to chrisbrogan.com. Most of you do, but just in case, you’re going to be SOL shortly.

Also, if something breaks. Bear with me. We’ll be back online soon enough.

That’s all, except to say thank you to those people who’ve helped me bring myself forward a bit.

photo credit, Paul Keleher