Greg Verdino

PSFK Conference NY: are you attending? You should be.

PSFK and me -- we go way back, yo. I attended the trend site's first NY Conference a couple of years ago and walked out with more good ideas than I usually come across in a month. The following year, I got to give people some good ideas when I moderated a panel about collaboration and coworking.

This year marks Piers Fawkes' third time around. The PSFK 2010 Conference happens at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in downtown Manhattan on Friday, April 9th.

I'm happy to offer you a 10% discount off the ticket price - just follow any of this post's links to the Eventbrite order form and you're golden.

I won't be able to attend this year but wanted to encourage those of you in New York to check it out. What's in it for me? Nada - although I am sending my man Amadeo Plaza in my place (disclosure: Piers provided a discounted ticket).

What's in it for you? Plenty of great ideas, brilliance and inspiration from all walks of business and life. This year's speakers include:

• Colin Beavan - Green pioneer and journalist aka No Impact Man
• John Dimatos - Resident Researcher concepting tech solutions for UNICEF at NYU
  
• Nick Felton - Designer and creator of the annual infographic Felton Report
  
• Zach Lieberman - Creative technologist whose work bridges the real world with the digital
  
• Steve Grasse - Revolutionary behind Art In The Age Of Mechanical Reproduction
• Andrew Hoppin - CIO who leverages digital media to create political and social impact
  
• Grant McCracken - Anthropologist and author of the book Chief Culture Officer
• Shantell Martin - Illustrator & VJ who creates vivid video-projection 'Oras'
  
• Steve Powers - Contemporary artist who recently created the city-wide A Love Letter For You
  
• Erik Proulx - Creative catalyst who inspires peers about their future; filmmaker behind Lemonade
  
• Avner Ronen - Television and entertainment market change maker and founder of boxee
  
• Tina Roth Eisenberg - Graphic designer; and global tastemaker through her blog SwissMiss
  
• Naveen Selvaduri - Social agitator and founder of mobile application foursquare
  
• Andy Spade & Anthony Sperduti - Creative experience builders behind Partners & Spade
• Ouigi Theodore - Visionary community-led brand builder behind BK Circus
  
• Rob Walker - National columnist and instigator of Significant Objects storytelling project
• Adam Wells - Design Director incubating new ventures & experiences for Virgin Group USA
  
• Peter Weijmarshausen - Realigning the product delivery with his 3D printing at Shapeways

As you can see, this isn't the usual roster of the same ol' marketing and social media faces. I hope you'll have an opportunity to attend.

I'm also going to ask (ok, tell) Amadeo that he needs to drop me a couple of guest posts about the best ideas he hears so even if you can't attend, you'll get to drink in a bit o' the PSFK Conference goodness.

What is content?

 

No seriously, what is it? I'm not even being snarky (for a change.) If you're a custom publisher who still butters your bread with print magazines, this whole social media thing should give you pause. You really do need to think about what the word content means today -- it might still be an 80-page book on glossy stock, churned out of a printing plant in suburban New Jersey. But it for certain is also an 80-character Tweet or 80-second video from your most ardent fan or vitriolic detractor. 

I know I'm probably preaching to the converted here, but this morning I was preaching to a whole new crowd...

So... I'm coming atcha from Nashville, where I spoke this morning at the 2010 Custom Content Conference. My presentation -- dubbed What Is Content? -- debuted some of the ideas and even a couple of the stories included in microMARKETING. This was probably one of my more nerve-wracking presentations -- it was mostly new material, the slides didn't really come together and start to flow until about midnight last night and, even then, it's all a bit stream of conscious and I never got around to summing up the key takeaways (oops.) But I think it turned out aiiight.

As usual, now that the talk is done I want to share my slides here. And as usual, they sure are purty but might not make a whole lot of sense without the words that accompany the pictures (especially if you aren't familiar with the examples I included - all the more reason to pre-order the book... wink... wink...)

That said, thanks to a handful of Twitterers in the room you can get a decent sense of the points that resonated with the audience by searching Twitter for #ccc @gregverdino (or just click the search term and I'll send you straight to the results.)

What Is Content?

View more presentations from Greg Verdino.

Feedback welcome, as always.

It's like birthing an elephant... only wordier.

OK. It hasn't quite been 22 months but it sure feels like it. Last week I finally submitted the complete microMARKETING manuscript to McGraw-Hill -- all 56,000 or so words of it. Somehow -- despite a consistently crushing workload, an acquisition, lots of travel, more than a few missed deadlines, a few bouts of writer's block and at least one conversation in which I attempted to convince my agent to return my advance -- the hardest part of writing the book is done.

What started out as a bunch of colored stickies posted to an apartment wall, as I mapped out the outline for my original proposal (note: the outline and the final book don't particularly resemble one another)...

 

...is now a pretty impressive (if I don't say so myself, although to be clear I mean the pile of pages is impressive; I'm in no position to judge the content itself) stack of white pages with a whole mess of black type on 'em...

 

Of course my work isn't done. I'm still dealing with the not-so-minor nuisance of securing permissions from the folks I interviewed for the book, deciding who I'll try to chase down for jacket blurbs, am awaiting the next iteration of the manuscript for another round of edits, and am beginning to think about how we should market (micromarket of course) this bad boy.

Oh -- and tomorrow I hop a plane for Nashville where, on Thursday morning, I'll be presenting at the Custom Content Conference. This will be my first speech based in part of some of the ideas in the book (not all of the ideas, but a handful of thoughts about microcontent and what it means for publishers, marketers and marketers who think like publishers). Attendees will leave the room with the first bit o' marketing collateral promoting the book (you can peep it here: Download LLP5510 Verdino Flyer) -- and off we go.

microMARKETING is currently slated for an August release date but if you're interested in pre-ordering a copy or two or ten, you can hop on over to Amazon, Barnes & Noble or Borders.

See and be seen on the SXSW scene... on southby.tv

I'm posting this from Austin where I'll spend the next few days working out of the Powered home office and catching as much of the SXSWi experience as I can swing. I haven't planned out a schedule of sessions and have only rsvp'd to a handful of parties. So I'll basically go wherever the wind -- or one of those scary pedicab peddlers -- takes me. But if you're in town for the festival and would like to connect you can hit me with an email or a direct message, track my whereabouts on foursquare or just look for my shining bald pate in the Convention Center hallways, in and around the blogger lounge (I spent a ton of time there last year and figure it will be my de facto home base when I'm not head-down at the office) or out and about on the party grind. 

But even if we don't connect in Austin, there are still some cool things I'd love for you to check out if you're going to be at South By - and maybe even if you're not.

Powered's newest client is VeriSign. You might know them as the company that doles out dot com or dot net domain names; sure you actually buy your domains from Go Daddy, Domain.com or wherever but it's VeriSign that handles the registries themselves.

So at SXSW this year, we'll be kicking off some interesting programs to raise awareness and registration of .tv domains. Video is hot and getting hotter, and .tv is the only logical domain choice for content creators who are serious about generating video programming, growing their viewing audience and building their video brand. Here are some of the things we're doing over the next few days to help you get started if you're new to video or get seen if you're already a video vixen.

southby.tv: First of all, you'll want to check out southby.tv. Whether or not you're at SXSW, it's a great place to get a look at some of the cool stuff happening in Austin -- shot by the real people who are in the thick of things. As we say on the site, southby.tv is a "living diary" showcasing video content from the insiders at the festival.  Which brings us to point #2 -- if you're at the event and have your video camera or phone in hand, your content can be part of the southby.tv line-up. Just hit the site, follow the submission instructions and your clips may be chosen by our curation crew.

You can be the Next .tv Star: We're not just giving you a chance to have your SXSW clips appear on our site; we're giving you a chance to hit the weblebrity big leagues (eww, yes, I ready said weblebrity.) All over the event, we'll be shooting audition videos for anyone who wants a chance to win a cool prize package and a shot at being a correspondent for an upcoming Best of .tv web show. The prize includes an all expense paid trip to San Francisco where you'll spend the day backstage at Revision3 and get a private video production coaching session from Diggnation producer Dave Prager, one of the guys behind one of the web's most widely watched video series. And of course, you could become a Best of .tv correspondent...

Read on for more details about how you can audition in Austin over the next few days. Or visit southby.tv to submit an audition directly (and to learn all the rules and legal stuff, of course.)

The .tv Street Team: We'll have a team roaming the event, shooting audition videos for anyone who wants a shot at being the next .tv star and handing out must-have swag. Be on the lookout and make sure you say howdy (or whatever it is they really say in Texas...)

The Bigg Digg Shindigg: .tv is sponsoring Saturday night's Live Diggnation event (7pm at Stubbs BBQ). We'll have a big ol' tent where we'll be shooting auditions for the next .tv star and doing some other fun stuff, so be sure to check it out. If you can't be there, you can also watch the fun when the Diggnation episode hits iTunes.

Special Offers: And finally, to coincide with .tv's SXSW presence, we will have special offers for anyone looking for an excuse to get going with video. Check out the offers page on southby.tv for your shot at freebies and more.

I hope you'll check out what we're doing with .tv and spread the word to any of your friends who might be interested in web video. And if you see me in Austin over the weekend, come on over and say hello.

Catch #socialmedia #sm49 on-demand

 

Earlier today, I moderated a lively hour-long tweetchat for #socialmedia.Nearly 400 twitterati participated as we debated the promise of and problems with marketers' focus on the next big thing.

If you missed the live event, you can catch the chatlog on the #socialmedia site.