• Monday, August 4th, 7:30am – 9:30am, at Lowndes Associates‘ Business Intelligence Workshop, at the Stamford Plaza in Albert Street, Auckland. Subject is “Online Strategies for Non-Online Businesses” Bookings here.
• Thursday, August 7th, 12pm-2pm, at the Marketing Association‘s Southern Luncheon at the Hotel Grand Chancellor, 161 Cashel Street, Christchurch. Subject: Making Sense of Social Media. Bookings here.
• Wednesday, August 13th, 2:30-3pm as part of the day-long Digital Future Now summit, at the SkyCity Convention Centre in Auckland. I’ll be on a panel with Paul Reynolds and Nicholas O’Flaherty discussing how social media can help business. Bookings here.
• Monday, September 15th, 4:15-5pm as part of the day-long 6th Annual Media Relations Conference at the Wellington Town Hall. I’m chairing a “champagne roundtable” (hic!) on exploring the potential of social media. Bookings here.
• Tuesday, September 16th, 1:30pm-5pm in a workshop entitled Blogs: Friend or Foe? Also at the Wellington Town Hall. Bookings here.

And if you can’t make it to any of these, we’ll still be producing the weekly Jump In video podcast, and appearing from time to time on Radio NZ National’s Virtual World segment with Jim Mora.

On Thursday, July 3rd I’ll be speaking on social media at Search Engine Boot Camp in Auckland.

On Thursday, August 7th, both Marie and I address social media at the Marketing Association‘s Southern Luncheon in Christchurch, and a week later I’m back in Auckland, telling APSMA all about social media at a breakfast meeting.

And on September 15th (a Monday, not a Thursday), I’ll be at the 6th Annual Media Relations Conference in Wellington, facilitating a roundtable discussion on “Exploring the current potential of online media relations”. Two days later, on the 17th, I’m facilitating a half-day workshop on online communications. Should be fun!

There’s room for more, so if you need a speaker on the subject of social media anywhere in the world (and you’re willing to fly me there) … just get in touch.

Not only am I creative instigator at SimonYoungWriters, catalyst and cofounder and iJump, co-conspirator at Looksy.org, and freelance journalist. I’m also “senior writer at Marketing Magazine“.

It was a title of convenience, dreamed up because Graham Medcalf, our editor, found himself double booked to give a 5 minute spiel as sponsor of the Hitwise Online Performance Awards.

Having never given such a speech before, and suffering from a massive lack of sleep this week, I took the unprecedented step of actually writing a speech.

Of course I didn’t say it like I wrote it. But if I had, here’s what I would’ve said:

I’m here on behalf of Graham Medcalf, editor of Marketing Magazine.

He couldn’t be here because he’s been urgently called back to his homeland of Zimbabwe. Apparently they’re looking for someone to run things!

I love awards nights.  Because everyone deserves recognition.

The big campaigns and sites you’ll read about in the pages of Marketing Magazine, as well as the genius ideas that build customer engagement, raise brand value and drive up profits … without fitting into a traditional case study template.

In 2008, winning ideas are small and perfectly formed.

No – scratch that, they’re not perfect, which is why they’re great.

They’re light, nimble ideas that evolve and change in response to feedback. They’re the small ideas that will move our professional forward.

In the  current issue of Marketing Magazine, my cover story looks at the painfully slow adoption of search marketing – both organic and paid – among New Zealand companies.

Why would these businesses miss out on the most accountable advertising medium ever invented?

They fail to think small. Search began as the affordable way for the little guys to level the playing field.

It just doesn’t fit the corporate model.

The same thing’s happening now with YouTube videos and employee blogs.  While 15-year-olds now have unfettered access to the tools once reserved for media moguls, big companies find themselves all thumbs when face with these powerful, small new tools.

Tonight we acknowledge organisations large and small who have overcome the barriers, thought small, and made a big difference.

Here’s to the little guys.

Have a great night!

Show up on the day, co-create the agenda with everyone else. A very exciting idea!

I’d already kind of promised I’d give a presentation, but I sort of forgot the part about actually preparing anything.

I wasn’t even sure what subject to speak on – how’s that for spontaneous – when Nigel Parker from Microsoft recommended I address the future of marketing. Good call Nigel.

The room was mostly people I’ve met before in some form or other – I’ve interviewed them, followed them on Twitter, or bumped into them on Facebook. Some, like Mauricio Freitas, I’d known for years but never met in person.

Then there was Netconcepts‘ Charles Coxhead (aka Surfarama), Throng‘s Regan Cunliffe, Glen Barnes from Nielsen Netratings, and some new folks I hadn’t met yet, like Anthony Umann all the way from Palo Alto, Robbie from Genesis Interactive, Tim (didn’t get your last name) and (guy who’s name I didn’t catch) from Mukuna.

What I said

I’m used to presenting to audiences who are strong on marketing, but don’t know much about tech. Here I was faced with an audience who knew tech more than I, and had probably done more real online marketing than I have.

There was only one thing to do. Ask questions. Make it a group interview.

After a stumbling start, we started to cover some valuable ground. I was hoping the session would be captured by Barnacle Barnes’ cool-looking MP3 recorder, but unfortunately it was set on “pause” – something I’ve done in my time.

From memory, here’s what we discussed:

• New Zealand marketers are somewhat behind the rest of the world when it comes to online advertising
• We discussed a few examples where online activity eventually led to mainstream media coverage
• Regan questioned why mainstream media coverage is still the measuring line of success? After all, you could probably reach more people through a well-done Facebook campaign than you would with TV.
• A lot of it is perception and inertia. Marketing managers and CEOs are used to advertising because it’s familiar, even if it’s not very measurable.
• We then talked about TV. I recalled our interview with Roger Beaumont, TV3′s marketing manager last week for Jump In! (to be podcasted in February – we’re that far ahead). Roger’s a great guy, but his personal media habits are where mine were 10 years ago – and perhaps as a result he misses the importance of these emerging media channels.
• TVNZ, on the other hand, is dying a slow death in the ratings wars – I remember a marketer from a large corporate telling me TVNZ had offered make-goods when ratings got better, but they haven’t got better. It’s dying when measured traditionally, but visionaries like Jason Paris are doing a great job carving out new territory and experimenting.
• Then the print media came in for a beating. Mauricio cited Juha Saarinen as perhaps the only tech journalist in the country who really “gets it”. But now he’s in an uncomfortable position as a blogger for Stuff.co.nz, not really completely blogging, nor being a journalist in this role.
• I can’t remember the exact words, but the sense I was getting from the room was that mainstream media feels a bit threatened, which leads to an “us and them” mentality instead of journos actually experiencing social media.

It was a familiar discussion, but not one I’ve had many times about the media in this country. I’ve heard it plenty on overseas podcasts about the media in – especially – the US, but I don’t know if all the people in that room on Saturday have had a chance to really thrash it out.

So… we’ve set up a Facebook Group to carry on – and widen – the discussion. I’d love to see you there, or on the comments on this post … or both!

(Photo by Zak Henry. See other BarCamp Auckland photos)

I’m a bit behind in blogging about BarCamp Auckland, the unConference happening in East Auckland this Saturday.

I’ve written about unConferences before, but this is the first time I’ll actually be attending one. As far as what time I’ll be presenting, or even my subject, it’s hard to say. At an unConference it’s all organised (or disorganised) on the day. It’s spontaneous and in the spirit of conversation. I love it!

Find out more at the BarCamp Auckland website. See you there?

Technorati – one of the web’s biggest directories of blogs. Use it to search blogs, or visit Technorati’s own blog for top-level stats.

Debbie Weil is a copywriter from the USA who went from traditional copywriting to specialising in email and now blogs. She’s writing a book about corporate blogging.

Adrants is about advertising and marketing generally, but being a blog itself, it often looks at the role of blogs in the marketing mix. Quite funny sometimes too.

Creating Customer Evangelists is about what it sounds like it’s about: creating customers who love your brand and do the work of salespeople solely because they want to. Blogging often comes up as a subject because it’s one of the new  outlets for the voice of the empowered customer. I interviewed these guys for my blogging article in Marketing Magazine last year; they had some really great stuff to say.

There’s heaps more on my blogroll at the Leadership Issues blog.

I also promised some NZ business blogs. Here they are:

Chris Price is NZ’s answer to Seth Godin. His blog looks at all forms of online marketing.

Beyond Branding isn’t technically New Zealand, as its contributors come from all over the world. However, Wellington-based magazine publisher and branding consultant Jack Yan definitely is based in NZ, and often comments on NZ branding issues.

Inside Out – a NZ business growth consultant.

The NZ Business Blog, run for graduates of Natcoll’s Media Design course. But helpful for anyone!

NZ Creative Circle – as quoted in AdMedia. At it’s best, a source of information about NZ’s creative and ad industries. At it’s worst, an exclusive circle of anonymous people making in-jokes.

Mediacom’s Marketing Digest – the bloggified version of their email newsletter.

TOUCH/CAST’s blog – an experiential marketing agency from Wellington. Not updated very often!

And of course there are my other blogs:

Oh God, I think I’m a fundamentalist, which I guess is my cat blog.

DIY Film School, where I’m teaching myself about story crafting and creative writing. And get in touch with the outdoors.

Books

The books I quoted from yesterday:

Who’s There by Seth Godin (free download)

The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors And Closing Deals Online by David Teten and Scott Allen

Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel (free while it’s being written, I guess!)

The Cluetrain Manifesto by Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls and David Weinberger. (Available online for free!)

I think that’s everything. Happy publishing, and please get in touch if you’d like to ask any questions about how your organisation – or you personally – could begin blogging.