Announcing Social Media Marketing Confab 2012

Happy Friday the 13th!  Today was supposed to be the day for the spreecast of the Social Networking for Business and Social Media 101 Reunion, but I just could not get it together in time.  Despite support shown by great people like Shauna Causey, Kathy Gill and Eric Weaver, I've been a little preoccupied and failed to make it happen.

The good news is that while working on a 'Professional Profile' and following the new book by Don Burrow and Deborah Drake called "Burn Your Resume - You Need a Professional Profile', I've remembered a couple of the early social media conferences I was involved in organizing - and want to do a more current version, with a lot more practical knowledge.  Disclosure:  It might also help me get some work.

Previous conferences have all had some awesome speakers and valuable content, but they were at an even earlier time in social media, a time when many businesses had not yet seen the impact of social media and had still not bought into it.

Today, most reasonable businesses have seen that they NEED to be using social media marketing in their business just to keep up with the competition, and the savvy businesses know they need to be using social media well to stay ahead of their competition.

At any rate, I have begun to plan Social Media Marketing Confab 2012.  The location and date have yet to be determined, but I am hoping for a nice venue, that will hold around 200 conference attendees, that is looking for some awesome visibility with the social media marketing crowd, either in Bellevue or Seattle, but will consider all possibilities.  It would be great to have it at Google or Adobe, especially considering that we've had the last two conferences at the Microsoft Conference Center and the local Microsoft Local Engagement Team doesn't seem to want to engage locally any longer ...

(I'm thinking there will be additional Confabs in other cities as well, so if you are in Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Orange County or San Diego are interested in discussing, please contact me).  At this point, the target date is somewhere in the first week of June for the Seattle version.

So at this point, I'm looking for a venue, sponsors and speakers.  I've got a number of speakers lined up and will post a rough Program for the Confab in the next day or so.  Hoping to have a nice rousing session on live broadcasting - including people from spreecast, LiveStream, U-Stream, Social Cam and more, as well as a session on Using Video in Social Marketing - and really hope to get someone from YouTube to talk and let us know what maybe up in the future.

If you can help, or want to get involved - please let me know!