Having spent the weekend at Blogger Social in New York with 80 of the top marketing bloggers from around the world, it would be hard for me not to write about it here. Yet, for some reason, I strongly considered not doing so. Yes, I had a wonderful time networking and socializing with some of the most brilliant people in my business. Yes, there are fun stories to tell and new connections to explore. Yes, I would do it all over again next week, next month AND next year.

What tempts me to steer clear of writing about Blogger Social, however, is that doing so only contributes to what I see as a growing echo chamber of marketing, social media, public relations blogs that rotate posts about how most people don’t get it, traditional marketing sucks/is dead and look at all the cool bloggers I know/can link to/are brilliant, etc. Granted, I’m part of the problem. As Shawn Morton jokingly (sort of) put it in a recent email to some Social Media Club Louisville folks, “Jason Falls, who will hump the leg of any A-List blogger within 10 feet.” Offline, it’s networking. Here, though, it’s just gratuitous ass-kissing.

Not that each of the 80 folks don’t bring something wonderful to the conversation about marketing, public relations, social media and more. It would do all of my readers well to browse each of the folks listed in Friday’s post to find out what expertise they bring to the table. Several are thought leaders in the marketing world, authors of books and top blogs. Others are innovators, designers and entrepreneurs. All of them are leaders in our field.

But this, Social Media Explorer, is for you, not just them. Yes, many of them read my blog. But nothing much I say here is going to be new to them. Certainly, there’s validation and conversation among those readers of SME who know a thing or two about social media, but I would think this blog is more of a service to people trying to understand it a bit more. And noshing on about whose elbows I rubbed Friday and Saturday isn’t going to help you produce any better social media outcomes for your business or clients.

So, feel free to browse the Flickr galleries below to see how much fun we had. Jump over to the Blogger-Social photo group to see others. Do a Tweetscan for bs08 or blogger social if you want to see all the fun and frolic. In the meantime, I’m still tinkering with a stronger editorial purpose for Social Media Explorer. Thank you for your patience whilst I ponder.

Saturday’s Fun:

And From Friday:

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