10 More Reasons You Should Come To Blog World

Finding a conference that focuses on new media, social media, Web 2.0 and the like isn’t hard. They’re everywhere. Finding a good one, though, can be challenging, especially if you haven’t been to any for comparison. Having been to a bunch of them in the last three years or so, I have my own opinions about what makes a conference good, bad or indifferent. This year, I got to put those opinions to good use.

Rick Calvert, the CEO of Blog World & New Media Expo, and Jim Turner, the conference’s social media director, asked me to officially bring my preferences, ideas and opinions to Blog World this year by leading the programming for the Social Media Business Summit, the premium level track at the conference formerly known as the Executives and Entrepreneur’s track. We announced the session line up a couple weeks ago. What I hoped to bring to the table was programming that was more conversation driven, which I’m appealing to my panelists and speakers to activate, and more of the agency and brand perspective of social media than had been apparent at previous BWEs. I think we pulled it off.

This year’s lineup offers more than just social media and blogger types sitting in front of a room talking about their own stuff. We’ve brought in more tactical expertise on certain tools, brand and agency case studies to foster discussions and have expanded the industry footprint to include programming around mommy blogging, real estate, travel and tourism and medical/health care blogging. So the agency, brand and consultant side folks have a lot of great content to choose from. The bloggers will benefit as well with the content creation, monetization, podcasting, video and community building tracks.

The conference is Thursday, Oct. 15 through Saturday, Oct. 17 in Las Vegas, Nev., at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Thursday is the premium, Social Media Business Summit, though more of that programming continues on Friday and Saturday.

Do I think you should go? Hell yes. Do I benefit if you do? Certainly. But I got involved with Blog World because I’ve attended for two straight years, spoke last year and truly believe that, perhaps along side South by Southwest, Blog World & New Media Expo is the best value you can get out of a conference focusing on blogging and social media.

To register, click on the logo embedded in this post or visit the registration portal. Enter the code “SMEVIP” to get 20% off registration. That discount expires on Monday, so get it done now.

And with that, here are 10 more reasons I think you should come to Blog World & New Media Expo this year: (See the first 10 here.)

1. Amber Naslund (Radian6), Connie Bensen (Techrigy) and Margaret Francis (Scout Labs), all competitors, will be on the same panel talking about social media monitoring. Arm wrestling may ensue.
2. There are panels discussing both B2B social media and social media in regulated industries, so there’s good stuff there for the suits.
3. Mark’s brother Brian Cuban will talk about digital terrorism and hate … and it won’t have anything to do with Lakers vs. Mavs chat rooms.
4. Ted Murphy will discuss and debate sponsored conversations with people who don’t believe in them. Appropriately, Shel Holtz, Maggie Fox and Dallas Lawrence will then conduct a panel on Crisis Communications.
5. The I Can Has Cheez Burger dude is speaking!
6. If the military or sports bloggers get out of hand with hallway flag football, health and medical bloggers will be there.
7. Robert Scoble, Todd Defren, John Chow, David Armano, Liz Strauss, Chris Brogan, Brian Clark, Darren Rowse, Greg Verdino, Jeremiah Owyang, Gabe Rivera, Muhammad Saleem … all speaking. And all will be hanging around to chat, I’m sure.
8. You’ve never had a bar experience like hanging out at my college buddy Biff‘s mall bar, which has eight seats, with 200 of your closest Twitter friends. This year’s Fat Tuesday’s Tweet-up will be social media rock star studded.
9. Steve Rubel himself will explain his lifestreaming fixation and how it can help your business.
10. Two words: Sigfried … Roy

See you in Vegas.

Note: No. 10 was originally, “Two words: Sparkling Pasties.” Apparently a few people either don’t have a sense of humor or didn’t realize I look great in sparkling pasties. So I changed it to some thing less funny … Er potentially offensive.