Blog's eye view: Jaffe, Armano, CK, Kalehoff and me

The blogosphere is abuzz with talk about David Armano's "blog's eye view' presentation here at Digitas NY yesterday.  Putting a handful of heavy-weight marketing bloggers in a room together really underscores what I've always understood intuitively but had never seen in action.  In addition to David and myself, Joseph Jaffe, CK and Nielsen/BuzzMetrics' Max Kalehoff were in attendance.

I'm the new kid on the block, but these other folks have been blogging for a while now and have established loyal followings and marketplace influence.  Having said this, few (if any) of them had ever met in person - sure, they know each other through their posts and comments, but most had never actually stood together in the same room.  Until yesterday...

Here we are - Max, CK, Jaffe, David and me.  Incidentally, reporter Emily Steel from the Wall Street Journal took this picture - take that mainstream media!  ;-)

Despite the fact that these people were for the most part meeting for the first time, it was as if the group were old friends.  Blogging (or broadly, all of social media) is a conversation among people, and it although takes place in the ether and may be widely distributed (unfettered by geography and timezone) this conversation is every bit as real as one that takes place between two people standing around a watercooler.  Social media is all about relationships - real, virtual or somewhere in between.  And that's something that every marketer that is thinking about establishing a stake in social media needs to think about.

If you haven't already done so (ya know, because you were to rapt with attention as you read this post) follow the links throughout the post to see what the other bloggers are saying about the event - and to download a copy of David's presentation (from his site.)