A day after the Techrunch Meetup at BED in NYC, I wanted to post some of my photos…they aren’t great but take a look at these photos from Partystrands who were one of the sponsors of the party.

Just returned from the Techcrunch Meetup. Jeanne, the event organizer, and Jennifer, the Techcrunch business manager, were awesome to work with! The event was a hit, the sponsors happy (especially HitTail), and the party smooth. Mike Arrington wasn’t used to a loud New York crowd and didn’t want to take the elevator but he made his way just fine anyway.

In case people don’t know who Creative Concepts is, we are an East Coast based PR and Marketing firm working with the  social media tools (check out the Bigelow Tea blog in its infancy), so if you are a tech startup anywhere and you want to reach out to our coast, we can help you. If you want to reach out to the corporate sector, we can help you do it with the Business Smart Tools Conference.

Sorry Mike Dunn that you missed it, but Greg Verdino, John Boehmer and Elizabeth Tarbell, it was great to see you and thanks Erin and Michelle for a job well done!

Pictures tomorrow.

This is a day that is truly exciting in the PR and Marketing arena!

Heading down to Greenwich shortly to the Greenwich Chamber’s Redman Hall to hear Jim Zebora speak. He is the Business Editor for The Advocate/Greenwich Time newspapers. I have pitched everything from blogging to a new business featuring a Greenwich resident who provides a community calendar for the area, Vivapop.com, and he seemed interested but the stories never took off. I was grateful though when he sent a reporter to our Business Smart Tools Conference in Stamford. In person “meetups” are always good and so I am heading in his direction to shake his hand.

Speaking of “meetups”…after Greenwich I am then heading into NYC to BEDNY for the Techcrunch Meetup where we are one of the sponsors and event managers. This party is the first of its kind in New York! It is a wild scene with people scratching and clawing to get in any which way they can…one AOL employee had to complain on Vallyewag in order to get attention from the infamous Mike Arrington.

For those who will make it up the elevator and past the check in desk, they will encounter very cool sponsors, live demos, food and drink, videos and music, a speech or two, and lots of networking…see you all there and look for the scoop tomorrow!

Well, I have done it again…I have had a gap with the entries but I don’t want to write unless I have some news or some interesting thoughts so today I am writing about news and I am writing about Creative Concepts.

Constantin Basturea’s blog reports a list called PR meets WWW.  This is a fully detailed list of pr agencies and consultants worldwide and their blogs along with some interesting entries.  Creative Concepts was mentioned so thank you for that!

Also take note, Techcrunch is coming to town (NYC) for a Meetup and Creative Concepts is their communications sponsor.  While the event is already sold out, I am looking forward to meeting all of those who are ready to party in bed in nyc with techcrunch!!

And for those of you out at the blog business summit in Seattle, look for Sabine Kirsten, Emerging Tech Director for Creative Concepts.  She is enjoying the conference and will be attending the Blogher meetup tonight.  Ask her about all of our corporate blogging projects…we have lots to share!

Went to OMMA today and was pleasantly surprised.  Heard from Rishad Tobaccowala, CEO, Denuo (what a smart and funny guy with lots of common sense), Ross Levinsohn, President, Fox Interactive Media who I had read about…was impressed then and impressed now by his gut instincts and his ability to move quickly and smartly into the digital age.  We all broke out into mini sessions where my favorite moment of the day came during the “Creative that makes friends with Social networks” where Henry Copeland, CEO, Blogads moderated…smart comments came from Sandy Marks on political campaigns online (she made statements like “you can create a sexy ad with click throughs but once the viewer has clicked are they finding what they are truly looking for or was the image/copy a ruse to get some fleeting attention from the viewer that in the long run doesn’t make sense (or get business or votes) for the client”) and Frank Radice, SVP The NBC Agency (the inhouse agency for NBC) said that less copy, more images and video makes for a strong presense on the web and can drive online users to TV which is a new equation for many to think about.

So the cool thing that I have concluded on my own especially after today is that this social media new digital age has leveled the playing field which is something to take advantage of.  All ages have entered the race and all backgrounds, men and women….it takes passion, thinking out of the box and flexibility to make something happen.  The truly creative, the truly hard working and the great listeners of the world will be able to make something of this new media.  It is very cool to be a part of this change in media and communications!!

Yes, it’s still Sabine, live blogging from the conference.
David Parmet is speaking on blogging at the Business Smart Tools conference.

He’s been busy live blogging, too, and uploading pictures as well.

What is the internet now? The internet is a physical space, a read/write web, social media. Tools are cheap and easy. It’s all about the aggregators (where you’re watching your media — computer, ipod, mobile devices).

Hugh Macleod came up with the phrase the Global Microbrand. A blog is a communications channel, not a sales channel.

With blogs, small companies can become global brands.

Big compies can talk with a human voice. Microsoft, Boing, GM, Sun.

He showed us the example of English Cut, the blog by Saville Row tailor Thomas Mahon. This blog has enormously increased his business.

People like to talk, and the internet gives them a venue — blogs, podcasts.

Also places like Amazon, where you can put in user reviews. Social media is not about the content as much as about connection.

The long tail: is a demand curve. In the traditional retail model, can only afford to stock the hits, the most popular stuff. But, Amazon has infinite shelf space, and found that they were selling as much of the non-popular stuff, in the aggregate, as the popular stuff.

Sabine again, bringing you Matt’s talk.

Matt is VP Sales, 24/7 Real Media USA.

The challenge for marketers is addressing audiences when media is getting increasingly fragmented. Look at kids — watching tv, on the internet, IMing, sending text messages, all simultaneously.
Idea is to put advertisers brands in the path of user’s behavior.
Yahoo has paid inclusion in the organic search results.

There are 2 basic ways for getting found in search engines:

1. have website rank naturally and optimize your site

2. search engine advertising and paid inclusion
24/7 Media has a set of tools to help advertisers and publishers connect to their audiences.

Looking at search results:

How to improve results in organic results.

Example: Vivapop.com

What phrases might a potential customer search on: scheduling calendar. There’s already a lot of results.

Search engines don’t look at the user interface of a page, they look at the source code. When Matt searches for the phrase in the source code — it’s not there. So this page will never be found for the phrase scheduling calendar.

For good SEO, avoid flash and other elements that don’t add content for search engines.

You also have to be careful not to use “black hat” techniques.

Looking at 24/7 site source code, can see metadata, such as title and keywords, which will help in search engine optimization.

How to use paid-for keywords.

Example: phrase “trout fishing.” In the month of april, over16,000 searches for that phrase.

For the word “fishing” 260,000 searches.

Next: look at how much it might cost. For Trout fishing, the top bidder is willing to pay $2.01. All of this data is available — Mike Kain can see every bidder on Yahoo for trout fishing.

He gave a quick demo on Google adwords.

SEM is the business of connecting to people who are already searching for you.

Sabine again: LiveBlogging from Business Smart Tools conference.

Next up is Mike Dunn. He’s a VP of Hears Interactive Media. They are a venture and enterprise technology group.

He’s been blogging for 5 years. His blog now is nomadic audio, which he started when podcasting first started.

Why podcasting appealed to him:

He manages projcts and resources globally, he needs to evaluate emerging technology and media trends, he’s drawn to change agent roles. he has a strong belief in social media tools, and he saw potential in the new media distribution model.

He commutes daily from Stamford to NYC, and in a crowded train, listening to audio is a lot easier to do standing up.

He asked the audience how many read via RSS (5 out of about 60). How many have heard about podcasting? 20 out of 50. About the same number know about iTunes.

He gave the history of podcasting and showed iTunes.

He also showed us his iRiver which he used to record part of David Pogue’s speech. Maybe he’ll put it up.

The San Fransciso Chronicle (owned by Hearst Interactive Media) invested in high-end technology for creating podcasts.

You can view the slides of his presentation on his blog.

He entered the term “Podcasting” in wikipedia on October 2, 2004, when he noticed that the term wasn’t there.

Yahoo has gotten into podcasting, also.

Podcasting really taps into the dynamic community aspects of the web.

Podcasting is easy. Corporations can do it with very little initial outlay of funds.

Why podcast? Podcasting allows for time and location shifting. It’s available 24 hours of the day.

SFGate.com does podcasts giving the behind the scenes look at a story.

I’ll have to look at his slides — he’s got some interesting ideas on ways to use podcasting.

David’s on and giving us a sneak peek at Thursday’s column. Should I tell?

In his speech, he’s telling us how he went to Times Square to interview folks to see if they’ve heard about blogs. Over half of them knew what a blog was, but very few actually read them.

A blog is a web page, frequently updated.

Blogosphere is a giant bell curve. On the left, amateurs who found out how easy it is. Many amateur blogs are created every minute.
He’s giving an example on how to create a blog on Blogger, which is what people do who have personal blogs.

Take home on blogging: Had the blog for a year and a half, with no comments, no images. No one noticed it. Finally the Times got a good blogging package. “Suddenly, people are reading this thing!”

On the other end of the blogosphere are the commercial blogs.

Meanness of the blogosphere:

He gets free items and services for review purposes. After he’s done the article, he has to return the item. Once, he wrote about someone fixing his hard drive for free. Bloggers took what one person wrote and turned it into “David Pogue accepting bribes for good reviews.”

This spun out of control — he was a victim of a blog attack.

People who read blogs, tend to be media people, influencers, “movers and shakers.” They amplify what they hear in the mainstream media.

He feels that there are two worlds of blogs –”innocent and gentle amateurs” and “mean, commercial” blogs.

He talked about podcasting and showed us his funny video about podcasting.

He ended by attaching a keyboard, and doing a song spoof: “Hello, voice mail, my old friend.” (Take off on Sound of Silence).

Update: I love David Parmet’s comments about David Pogue’s talk.

Sabine speaking here: Well, I made it to Stamford, CT, for the Business Smart Tools conference. It’s about to start. I made the rounds of the exhibitors, before the rush. There’s some cool technology out there. Some of the folks I talked to are:

• Vivapop (interactive web and voice accessible calendar)
• Conversagent (automated customer service agents)
• MarketWire (search engine optimization through press releases)
• Dial-a-Note powered by CiviCom (hands-free notepad)
• 24/7Real Media USA

I’m sure I’ll find out more as the conference progresses. I’m looking forward to the speaking part of the program, which will start at 2 PM.

I saw part of David Parmet’s presentation on blogging as he tested the projector, and it looks great.

He’s also started a Business Smart Tools Flickr photo set.