I was recently confirmed as a speaker at this year’s NY Digital Basins Software Forum. This two day conference, May 22-23, is presented by Concerted Networks and will be located at the Auburn Public Theater in Auburn, New York. I will be speaking on day two of the conference on the topic of “Creating Award Winning User Interfaces for Web 2.0 Sites.”

Seattle was great. The conferance was great. The people were great, and this makes me feel great. Speaking on the panel was fun and I think I added more humor then facts since Dave McClure at the end said to me “We didn’t learn anything but it was fucking fun”. We did have some laughs but I felt that we touched on some interesting points on friending habits, news source, marketing, and professionalism on Facebook. The conference had some really great panels, and had some boring Facebook 101 presentations. I sometimes take for granted I have been growing up with these websites and some people are using them for the first time. The one thing I really enjoy about these conference unlike in many other industries is that Internet Social Network  people are there to help others. ( This will be a post in the future) Anyway back to Seattle, the city has such a positive energy and artistic vibe that you can feel. It is obvious why people want to work and live in Seattle, regardless how bad their Baseball team is.  

Jason Beckerman (Dank Apps CEO) and I will be out in Seattle this week to meet with clients and attend the Web Community Forum. We are both looking forward to speaking engagements at the Forum as well as getting to know the Seattle Tech Culture. We both feel honored to be in the land of Microsoft and Starbucks. (Although Starbucks is becoming ever more important to the Tech scene and Carrot Crew than Microsoft). If you happen to be attending the Forum, shoot me an email. By the way, does anyone know of some great places to eat in Seattle?

Today I will be part of a speaking panel at Web Community Forum. The panel will comprised of Teresa Valdez Klein and Dave McClure, and we will be discussing Facebook as a professional tool. Notes will be provided later on in the week, as it will be a collaborative effort of the entire Carrot Crew to summarize the events of this week’s forum for all of you. Web Community Forum Topic & Description.

Facebook for Professionals: A Session for the Community Building in the Age of Facebook Conference.December 5, 2007 • 11:30 amPresented by Mike Germano, Dave McClure, Teresa Valdez Klein

Now that Facebook has announced that it plans to include granular permissioning for different types of friends, the question on everyone’s minds is, “What does this mean for Linkedin?” Linkedin has long been the social network of choice for professionals. But its dominance in this space has been under attack as more professionals spend their time networking on Facebook. This growth has been limited somewhat by the fact that Facebook does not currently have a system for designating how well a “friend” is known to you, or by what means. This limitation has meant that some content — photos of a Saturday evening spent singing semi-inebriated karoke, for example — might be better suited to an e-mail among friends than a dedicated Facebook album. The restoration of the personal-professional barrier on Facebook is a boon to twenty-somethings like me —who have been on the site since college. With this type of content permissioning firmly in place, all kinds of people are free to start using Facebook as a professional network as well as a place for friends to congregate. This imbues a number of old questions with new importance:

• How do I manage my professional relationships on Facebook?
• What is the proper etiquette for a friend request?
• What are the special concerns for professional women on Facebook?
• How will these granular permissions play out?
• What features would make Facebook an even better place for professionals to network in the future?

We’ll be asking and discussing these questions and more in a session at the upcoming Web Community Forum conference in a session entitled “Facebook for Professionals.” What do you guys think? How are you using the site to network professionally? Personally? Where does the divide create conflict?

This week, I attended ad-tech in New York City. I, along with the rest of the Carrot Crew, was interested to see how the advertising and marketing industries are responding to the emergence and progression of Web 2.0 tools. And although I was unable to attend the entire week’s worth of events, my overall impression of the conference is that the advertising and marketing industries still do not “get it”when it comes to Social Media. I attended the conference with good friend Danny Epstein, the CEO of Pmbuzz.com, a nightlife social network based in New York City. While it was great to talk with Danny, the majority of my day was spent in the Expo listening to advertising companies, about fifty that I spoke with, drone on about the same diluted niche services and mass publisher marketing without properly knowing how to access the value of Social Media. I felt like I was in high school all over again, listening to my “wise beyond his years” biology teacher tell me why biology was important but never showing me how this information benefited me.

After attending similar conferences on the west coast, meeting business professionals that understand the importance of Social Media and how to effectively leverage its benefits, I assumed that the same atmosphere would transcend to New York City at one of the most revered Ad conferences. Once again, the old adage about assuming stands true. Yet, while I was overly disappointed in the Expo, I remain resilient in the notion that there are a lot of talented and savvy business professionals on the east coast that know how to leverage the power of the Social Media to promote quality products.

On a positive note, I was able to get tons of free SCHWAG…I like that word…I bet its not the last time I will be talking about it. 

Wednesday evening I had the opportunity to attended Facebook Developer Garage in NYC with Jason Beckerman and Mike Radparvar. As part of a global effort to link Facebook-minded business professionals with developers, the event was held at Daylife.com’s new headquarters. A huge thank you goes out to DayLife for providing a great venue for the event. If you would like to keep track of future Facebook Developer Garage events, and you are in the tri-state area, check out the Facebook Developer Garage Group.

Overall, we enjoyed the Garage as it did provide for some new insight into the future of the Facebook platform, some libations and plenty of my favorite food—pizza. However, it was apparent that not everyone present was as committed to creative, quality content for Facebook as the Carrot Crew is. I can always expect to get a hearty chuckle out of these events, watching business slicksters in expensive suits beg and plead with young programmers, sporting a Home Star Runner T-shirt and ripped jeans, to get rich quick in the “Facebook Craze.” Still, there was a decent amount of new information available and always opportunity to connect with like-minded Facebook professionals.

I, along with Jason and Phil from Dank Apps, presented the LOTTO to the Garage and it was well received with congratulations and constructive comments. And, yes, we did give a small plug for any designers or developers interested in working for a cutting-edge, fun company, to join the Carrot Crew or Dank Apps. After the presentation, we grabbed a few Brooklyn Brews with a great crowd or developers, designers, professionals and friends alike.

First off, I want to send out a huge hello to all the great people I had the opportunity to meet in San Jose last week at Graphing Social Patterns: The Business & Technology of Facebook, is a conference designed for both technical developers and business professionals to better understand the current landscape of Facebook and discuss best practices in utilizing and distributing Facebook applications. The LOTTO, along with ten other applications, was presented at the conference and judged accordingly. Our presentation was strong and sparked intrigue and laughter as we love keeping these conferences light-hearted. And although we did not win the highest honors at the conference, our application received the most installs, so I would like to think we were the “peoples’ champ.” Rodney Rumford for Facereviews.com liked it so much that he interviewed us for his blog. 

Director of the Conference Robert Chiarito contacted me today with the reviews of my speech on “The Perception Makers.” I received one of the highest scores of the conference with a 4.7 out of 5. I also received some interesting comments about my speech:

“Wow! Seemed like a ‘know-it-all’ teenager on speed. Clearly knows a lot about Web 2.0?  - Paula Berg, Southwest Airlines

“Great energy, more than makes up for somewhat disjointed content. Where will he be in 10 years?” - Maggie Fox, Social Media Group

“Great!” - unsigned evaluation (no my mother was not at the conference) 

“Thoroughly educational and entertaining! Great speaker to end the day with” - Eric Tatro, Cohn & Wolfe

I am pretty excited to get back a very favorable score and remarks from the people attending the conference. I would like to thank everyone who left feedback. I wanted to post video of the event but Bobby the idiot tapped over it.