BlogWorldExpo: Day 1 Sessions

Posted on November 8, 2007 
Filed Under Blogging, Podcasting

When I first sat down to write a post about my day at BlogWorld I had planned to write about the sessions and all the great vendors I met up with in the expo hall. I realize that’s going to be far too much for one post. So instead, this post is going to just cover the Day 1 sessions I attended. A post about the expo hall will follow later.

The day started with the BlogWold Opening Keynote Presentation. The keynote was a bit of a Q&A between Ed Sussman from FastCompany.com (also Inc.com) and Matt Mullenweg who is the founding developer of WordPress. Ed asked the questions and Matt provided the answers which he deftly weaved in to a “state of the union” of where the blogging industry (both content & software) are at now and where things are heading.

While he had a lot of interesting things two say, the two points that brought me the most joy were:
- WordPress will ALWAYS be an open source project.
- WordPress is working towards an “auto-update” feature (ala Firefox) that will let you update your blog through a single button click when you log in to your admin section.

After the keynote, the first session I went to was titled: Blogworld Workshop - Smart Ways to Monetize Your Blog. The first speaker was Jeremy Schoemaker (shoemoney.com). My only complaint about Jeremy’s session was that it wasn’t long enough. He’s a “Been-There-Done-That” guy who doesn’t pull punches. He comes right out and says “Adsense sucks for blogs” (which isn’t Earth shattering news, but you sorta expect people to not throw stones at Goliath). He went on to talk about leveraging ad networks and direct ad sales in order to boost your income. Since he only had 15-20 minutes, the information wasn’t overly in-depth, but would definitely provide a springboard to get you headed in the right direction. Hey Jeremy, next year I want a full hour from ya!

Another unfortunate part of this first session was that Brian Clark (copyblogger.com) came down with the flu and was unable to make it.

There were two other speakers during this first session - Asaaf Henkin (kontera.com) and Rebecca Weeks (DevineCaroline.com). While both individuals were certainly good speakers, their content didn’t thrill me. Asaaf spoke for 20 minutes about his company and their product (which is a revenue generator for bloggers, I’ll agree) and Rebecca spoke for 20 minutes about her company’s website and it’s growth this year. To me, both presentations felt like a long-form commercial for a product/site rather than giving me information about how I, as a part-time blogger, can earn money with my blog. I would have rather ran in to both of these people on the exhibit room floor.

After lunch I went to the Good to Great: Blogging & Profit Potential session hosted by Jim Kukral (jimkukral.com). Jim’s session is lean and mean. I can sum it for you with the content of one of his slides called “The Super Secret Sauce”. It says: Targeted Niche + High Quality Content That Solves Problems + Good Ad Placement = Profit.

Yeah, I over-simplified it just a touch, but I’m sure Jim would agree, master that and the rest will fall in place.

Jim also talked about how to use YouTube video content as the springboard for great profits. He had some fascinating info about how Tim Carter over at AskTheBuilder.com is blowing away the competition (or lack of) by creating video “How-Tos” for his site.

Then, in taking a break from the marketing track, I sat in on the Yamaha Motor Corporate Blogging Case Study hosted by Maggie Smith (SocialMediaGroup.ca). One of my key reasons for attending the BlogWorldExpo was to come up with ideas on how to help my company (the one I work for during the day) leverage the power of a blog and/or social media outlets to strengthen our relationships with people and companies we do business with. When I saw the case study was on a company the size of Yamaha, I quickly realized that they would have many of the same problems I expect we are going to face. Legal departments and marketing departments who both want to control the messages being put out are just two of the key hurdles I see in front of me.

Maggie provided a ton of information in under 45 minutes and had me taking notes like a madman. We were left with enough time for a decent amount of Q&A. The audience, though smaller than the “Make Money” sessions, pumped out some in-depth questions. Maggie was equal to the task with more great information.

I’m looking forward to writing up a proposal for my company in the next couple weeks. I’ll definitely be bringing a bunch of information from this session.

For my final session of the day, I was originally scheduled for Making Money with Affiliate Programs but, at the last minute saw New Media Revenue Opportunities with YouTube, Second Life, Podcasting and more!, which sounded quite interesting. The show has a kiosk that lets you change your session registration in the matter of a few seconds (literally), so I did.

After a quick technical issue, we were informed that the original speaker had to cancel and we would now be lead by Jason Van Orden (jasonvanorden.com). This was, by far, my favorite session of the day. I must have taken 3 full pages of notes. To try and give you an idea of the information Jason had to share, here are some of the notes I took that I think sum it up:

- Your audience wants: to be informed, to be entertained, and, to belong (i.e. opportunity to associate with other like-minded individuals)
- By producing good content you gain Thought Leadership
- Repurpose your content as merchandise (i.e. subscriptions, CDs, DVDs)

Again, I’ve oversimplified for the sake of creating some brevity (too late, I know), but one thing was clear, the battle will be won and lost with the quality of your content. Those who produce crappy content are going to fail in the long run.

After the show was over for the day, I headed over to the Hard Rock Casino for a WordPress Meet-up. There were roughly 20 people there including some of of the developers of WordPress and Matt Mullenweg. I got a chance to chat with Matt for a few minutes so I asked him the question that I knew was on the tips of everybody’s tounge… “What’s in the future for BBPress? As it turns out, the answer is “quite a lot”. They have hired a genius programmer to work on it full time. It will be moving more towards a simplified theme/plugin model like WordPress itself. The core of BBPress, he says, is actually better than that of WordPress. He called it a “Slow cooked meal”, referring to the fact that it’s been around almost as long as WordPress but hasn’t gained nearly the attention or cult-like following that WordPress has.

I’m glad I thought twice before deciding to skip the WordPress Meet-up. It’s not often you get to sit down and have the attention of both the founding developer and one of the current lead developers of a software program that currently has 1.7 million installs. I’d be understating it quite a bit to just say that I had an enjoyable time…

I didn’t take a lot of photos at the show today, but here are a few I snapped off:

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • BlinkList
  • Furl
  • Reddit
  • Simpy
  • Slashdot
  • Technorati

Comments

6 Responses to “BlogWorldExpo: Day 1 Sessions”

  1. maggie fox on November 9th, 2007 10:28 am

    Hey John - so glad to hear you enjoyed our session, and yes - I’m really glad we had time for lots of Q&A as well, that’s always the best part ;-)

    Happy blogging!
    M

  2. Jason on November 9th, 2007 12:26 pm

    Nice summary dude. Especially glad you got some info about bbPress. Can’t wait to talk to you more about it.

  3. Jim Kukral on November 9th, 2007 10:19 pm

    Thanks for coming to my session! Nice to meet you as well the next day. When can I expect to see those videos? :)

  4. John on November 10th, 2007 11:52 am

    Hey Maggie, thanks for stopping by! Congrats on a fantastic presentation.

    Jason, sooooo much to talk about on Monday. Let’s plan on a nice long lunch and I’ll bring in all the literature I brought home. Be prepared…

    Jim, you rock. Your introduction of Mark Cuban was classic. I won’t tell anybody that you put together the presentation during the final session before his speech. Oh, woops.

    As for the videos, my mind is currently racing. I’ll be working on it real soon. Thanks for your time yesterday, I really appreciate it!

  5. Jason Van Orden on November 11th, 2007 5:31 pm

    Hi John,

    Thanks for attending my session (and for your kind words about it). I’m glad you got so much out of it.

    I agree with your comments on the earlier monetization session. I loved Shoemoney, but when the commercial started with the presenter after him, I left.

    There were a few of these sponsor plants in the sessions. Ultimately, it alienates the attendees. I wish conference organizers would realize this.

    Let me know if you post more notes. It’s always interesting to see what people pull out of the content.

  6. John on November 17th, 2007 6:56 pm

    Jason, thanks for stopping by. I’ve already taken action on several things I’ve learned at the conference. I’m working on 2 projects where I’m partnering up with people I know who have great content to provide, but don’t necessarily have the time/expertise to turn that in to web content.

    It’s going to be an exciting year, I promise you that!

Leave a Reply