THIS PAGE IS AN ARCHIVE. GO TO THE HOMEPAGE TO FIND OUT WHAT TO DO NEXT.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. arch emisou panton
	Phil's Blogservations Saturday, August 20, 2005 Posted by philgomes 3:42 PM Blog Business Summit: Final Thoughts Blog Business Summit: Final Thoughts I'm starting this post in SFO at 6:30pm as I'm waiting for my plane back to El Lay. My irrational WiFi Entitlement Syndrome(TM) prevents me from paying for the pay-as-you-go service here, so I'll be posting this once my thirst for free connectivity has been sated. In any case, I felt I got a lot out of the summit. Maybe a lot of the presentations and discussions were a little too "one-oh-one" for many members of the audience but, generally, presenters did a good job of ensuring that everyone was brought into parallel frames of reference. A long time ago, I had a really hardline opinion against turning on the comments in a corporate blog. As regular readers know, my stance here has softened somewhat. (I now encourage it quite strongly if resources permit, but I don't necessarily damn a blogger for choosing not to have them.) But this was actually the first conference I really bothered to blog from, though. The act of chronicling the conference in (sort-of) real-time, reading other people's posts, getting comments on my initial post, and so on demonstrated to me how wrong that early stance was. It's kind of like that scene in Hellraiser II when the doctor, transformed into a superpowered Cenobite, gushed "And to think I hesitated. *crickets chirping* (Yeah, whatever... If you're reading this blog or have looked at other parts of the site, you'll know that the pop-culture references are as frequent as they are nearly impenetrable.) And don't even bring up how I would have otherwise written my April 2003 article on RSS. I met a lot of interesting folks for the first time, too. Steve Gillmor, Chris Pirillo, Robert Scoble, Dean Hachamovich, Evelyn Rodriguez, Steve Gershik, Rebecca Blood, and a host more. In many cases, I've corresponded with these people and/or have read their work for some time. Even met Sam Perry, formerly of Reuters. If memory serves, he was one of the first journalists I met face-to-face in my PR career, lo those years ago when I was the account coordinator on Simply Interactive. One thing that was surreal was that some speakers in the marketing/PR trades or executive ranks were discussing the importance of corporate-blog-enabled transparency, openness, participation, and so forth... using the language, intonation, metaphor-set, and style that was learned in the boardroom! Is blogging growing up? Or is it another indication of the need for even the most Cluetrained practitioners to continually adapt? (At times, it was almost like saying "I'm going to be spontaneous. At 2:54pm tomorrow, I will be spontaneous.") That said, I will say that — even after the PR and marketing industries' respective early missteps in the blogosphere — people generally starting to think the right way and are doing great work. That much is clear. Finally, check out Tom Foremski's wrap-up over at Silicon Valley Watcher. Regularly scheduled programming follows. HOME | OBSESSIONS | FAQ | HEROES | CAREER | BLOG | CONTACT Note that the views expressed on this site do not necessarily reflect those of Phil's employer, its business partners, its clients, or anyone or anything that doesn't come from Phil.	ABOUT THIS BLOG This blog not only discusses PR and media matters, but Phil's everyday observations about a variety of topics. EMAIL phil[at] philgomes[[dot}]com SYNDICATE Feedburner ARCHIVE YAHOO! IM SKYPE WISH LIST PITCH POLICY MY PHOTOS www.flickr.com Photostream RSS Enter your Email Powered by FeedBlitz COMMENT AND TRACKBACK POLICY Comments and trackbacks are unmoderated, though I will delete the patently offensive ones. Any comments and trackbacks are the opinions of the individual writer of those comments and trackbacks, and not those of Phil Gomes, his employer, its clients, or its business partners. If you have a bone to pick, bug the people who wrote the comment or trackback.