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Beer Is Lijit – Beer Bloggers Conference 2010
Nov 12th
by Grace Boyle in Community, Company, events, speaking
This past weekend Perry and I headed to the inaugural Beer Bloggers Conference here in Boulder at The Marriott to present about Lijit during their Boulder Tech Session.
Three other local, online/tech companies presented alongside us – our friends, Pete Sheinbaum, Jason Cormier of Room 214 and Holly Hamann of The Blog Frog.
Perry and Grace at the helm, early Saturday morning
When you tell people you’re attending a Beer Blogging conference they might think “Oh yeah, bloggers and beer,” or “Wait, there is a group of people big enough to have a conference about beer blogging?” The latter is true. It’s a strong, niche community filled with passionate bloggers and writers.
The Beer Blogging Conference sold out and 108 beer bloggers from around the United States showed up in Boulder for the conference.
The Chief Beer Blogger for the conference (like: evangelist attendee) was Ashley Routson of Drink With the Wench. Great name, right? Ashley also uses Lijit and part of our presentation in learning more about your readers through our search and stats, was using her blog as a demo.
We didn’t attend the entire conference, but we loved what we saw during the Saturday morning sessions. We followed their #BBC10 Tweets and know they’re a fun group, who thoroughly enjoyed the local Boulder beers and breweries that we have to offer. The conference was a first of its kind and I think it was a great mixture of learning, connecting, enjoying (and of course, drinking).
Some of the enjoying included visiting Oskar Blues Brewery in Longmont, Boulder Beer Company and even ended the event with a Boulder Beer Crawl. To check out the pictures here is a great Flickr Group Set from the conference and if you’re interested in next year, they’re already planning 2011 (it will be in Portland, OR)!
Special thanks to Allan of Zephyr Adventures, the brains behind the conference (they also do wine and food blog conferences!) His team was great and they put together a great event!
I spent the last week at SXSW. Commonly referred to as Geek Spring Break (I couldnt find the wet laptop contests though…), SXSW is a great event for Lijit every year.
This year I spoke on a panel entitled Beyond Aggregation: Finding the Web’s Best Content. I was lucky enough to join a panel with old and new friends: Marshall Kirkpatrick (ReadWriteWeb), Louis Gray (LouisGray.com), Melanie Backer (AideRSS/PostRank) and Gabe Rivera (TechMeme) and speak in front of a standing room only crowd (it must have been the ICanHasCheezBurger Happy Cat Plushy I was giving away).
The panel went exceedingly well, with some great questions from the audience.
At SXSW, I did more that just speak on that panel. I also was interviewed by several different bloggers and websites. Here is my interview with Grant Robertson of DownloadSquad. You might notice that I am whispering (we were in the press room) and smiling (there was a really funny massage therapist next to me).
The full post is here:
SXSW 2009 : Finding relevancy in the blog haystack with Lijit from Download Squad on Vimeo.
I got to meet with brands and other bloggers and continue to learn about ways that we can continue to provide real value to our publishers…
(MICAH! You said it was Geek Spring Break! I want the juicy stuff!)
…fine.
SXSW is also about the parties, of which there were about a million. I enjoyed the iMeem party (probably because of the Salt Like BBQ that was served, saving me a 20 minute drive) and we helped sponsor the Colorado Interactive Party at the Pure Volume House, which is always a highlight every year (about 5,000 people came through it).
SXSW is the largest conference in our space. It allows all us geeks to get together, eat a little BBQ and talk about all kinds of things. My favorite picture of SXSW (that I took) is this one:
Which was taken at J. Kelly’s (An amazing BBQ place near my hotel), and includes Richard Moross (CEO of Moo/UK), Harper Reed and Dylan Richard (CTO Threadless/Chicago), Scott Belsky (CEO Behance/NYC), Jared Goralnick (CEO of AwayFind/DC). At this meal, Blaine Cook (who built Twitter’s framework/Ireland), Sarah Townsend (Social Vibe/LA), Mark Dillon (Founder & CTO, Phonetag), and, of course me.
Where else would we ever have met and talked over a meal?
Thats the real magic of SXSW. 10,000 geeks in one area do more than bring down AT&T network or party into the night. We talk about great ideas and interesting partnerships. New ideas are birthed at SXSW (see FourSquare and Contxts) and great ideas are given a further push to become even better (cant wait for the new stuff Lijit is bringing out in April).
So thats the juicy stuff. We geeks came to Austin, ate some BBQ and found some more interesting ways to work together. Some of us left with our laptops adorned with new laptop stickers, but we all left with new friends and business relationships.
See you in 2010!
Tags: austin, beyond aggregation, geek spring break, speaking, sxsw | View Comments
Thats right. I am headed to SXSW.
I will be there from March 12 – March 18, and would love to meet up with everyone!
Want my contact info? Text micah to 50500. Not bringing cards. Follow me on twitter: @micah.
Want to see me speak? I mean on a specific topic? I am on a panel discussion entitled: Beyond Aggregation — Finding The Webs Best Content. I am joined by moderator Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb, Gabe Rivera of TechMeme, Louis Gray of the famous LouisGray.com and Melanie Baker of AideRSS.
It should be super interesting as we discuss how is good content found these days. After all, with 70 million blogs out there, how do you find the good stuff?
Im attending several parties, having several meetings (want to have one? Send me a tweet), and generally “doing SXSW right.”
SXSW, for me, is going to be an interesting time. A year ago, I was just getting into blogging and social media and working at Lijit, and learning about who was who and what was what. This year, I know a bit more, and know a *lot* more people.
I expect SXSW to be highly successful for Lijit and extremely fun for me.
Here are some articles I wrote after last year’s SXSW. I wonder what I will write after this one?
Wanna Know How to do SXSW? – I wrote about how a veteran transversed the halls of SXSW.
There Were Three Types of People at SXSW – My observations of SXSW 2008.
Here is a link to a lijit search of everything in my trusted network about SXSW. What a great way to discover new content, huh? 
[I also posted this to my blog LearnToDuck.com. Mostly, because I am lazy. Have you seen Walter's rules? But what LTD readers wont see is that I will be bringing Lijit tshirts. Find me. I bet I have one for you.]
Tags: content discovery, micah, speaking, sxsw | View Comments
Blissdom, here we come!
Jan 28th
by Tara Anderson in Company, Lijit publishers, employees, events, fun, speaking
Next weekend, I’m heading to Nashville for the Blissdom Conference and am most excited to be going. In addition to speaking on a panel about blogger outreach, I’ll also have the chance to meet lots of bloggers getting their bliss on. The conference has sold out and the list of activities is impressive. I took a quick look at the attendees and can’t wait to meet the following Lijit users in person…
Her Bad Mother
Complete Organizing Solutions
The Bean
Velveteen Mind
The Inspired Room
Successful Blog
Blissfully Domestic
DesignHER Momma
Alex Year Two
…not to mention having the opportunity to evangelize Lijit to many other bloggers. If you’re going to be at the conference, be sure to send me a note and let me know your t-shirt size. You know I’ll be packing some serious swag with me.
Tags: conferences, Lijit sponsorship | View Comments
One of the aspects of my position at Lijit is that I get the opportunity to not only attend, but speak at various conferences. I have had the pleasure over the years to present Lijit and things we are working on or believe in at many various conferences.
Luckily, it is not just me. Todd Vernon our CEO, Walter Knapp our COO, as well as Tara Anderson, our Marketing Manager have all had the pleasure to speak at various conferences over the past year or so.
What I have learned is that one thing I really enjoy doing is speaking at conferences. I just spoke at WordCamp Las Vegas, and plan to speak at SXSW (in both cases about Filtering and Discovering Content and Online Influence). Here is a link to my WordCamp presentation.
I have also learned that its not easy to get speaking gigs. Not because people dont want me to speak, but mostly because I am unaware of the opportunities out there.
What I am hoping to do is ask our Lijit community for help:
1) What conferences do you think it would be interesting to have someone from Lijit speak? Recent topics include: Trusted Search, Social Search, Online Filtering and Content Discovery, Personal Branding, and my personal favorite Measuring Online Influence.
2) What conferences should we attend? I know we cant speak at every single one, but there are benefits to us attending various conferences and meeting Lijit users (both current and potential).
Of course, if you are interesting in having Lijit at your conference, drop me a line at micah [at] lijit [dot] com.
After all, trust me, I speak good.
Tags: conferences, lijit, speaking | View Comments
Last night I was interviewed by BloggerSchool on BlogTalkRadio.
It was great to talk all about Lijit. We covered a lot in 30 minutes, which I will summerize here:
- Lijit’s history and Stan’s early concepts about trusted search and content discovery.
- We discussed Lijit’s functionality: search, re-search, our stats and our ad network.
- There was an interesting discussion around content discovery, influence and expertise.
- Revenue was a hot topic and I outlined our ad platform, which unlike other ad platforms, allows publishers to price and sell their own inventory (rather than having no idea as to the revenue they could generate.)
- The importance of having your blog be the center of your universe was another topic of discussion.
Rather than tell you what was said, take a listen!
Tags: BloggerSchool, interview, lijit | View Comments
While Tara was at Chicks Who Click ‘09, I was out in Las Vegas speaking at WordCamp Las Vegas (which occurred during CES, which Todd Vernon, our CEO attended).
Whew!
WordCamp Las Vegas was a wonderful event, where Wordpress users and developers get together to discuss all things Wordpress.
This WordCamp was a bit different in that there was also a good discussion around the business of blogging and social media.
The speaker list was quite the who’s who of social media. Chris Brogan (Lijit User), Liz Strauss (Lijit User), Warren Whitlock (Future Lijit User), Jim Turner (Lijit User), Jim Krukal (Lijit User) and Dave Taylor (Lijit User) all gave highly interesting and informative talks.
My presentation, You Are The Center of Your Universe can be found here.
Luckily, our host, John Hawkins captured it all on Ustream here.
It was great to hang out with Matt Mullenweg (who celebrated his 25th birthday) and the couple of hundred folks the came to the conference.
I am planning on speaking/attending about 4 other WordCamps this year, including Chicago, DC, San Francisco and Denver (I might head down to Dallas as well). Let me know if you are planning on attending a WordCamp and I will bring you a Lijit T-shirt!
Tags: speaking, wordcamp las vegas | View Comments
By gets, I mean made the unbelievable choice of asking me to speak. At a conference. In front of people.
The truth is, speaking on subjects that I am passionate about is something that I love to do, and I am excited that WordCamp Las Vegas has given me the opportunity to do that.
So what is WordCamp?
Well, as the name implies it is all about the WordPress blogging platform. At a WordCamp, you get to meet lots of WordPress developers and folks that use the platform for really interesting applications.
This year’s speaker line up is fantastic. There are some really heavyweights speaking, and my hope is that some of the bloggers that are currently at CES, will take the time to come visit WordCamp as CES winds down.
What am I speaking on?
Not Lijit. The beauty of WordCamp is that unlike trade shows, the focus is not on vendors or products, but rather users. This was never more clear than when I attended WordCamp SF last year and got to hear developers, theme designers and non-developers talk about all the awesome stuff they were doing. It really helped drive my blogging to a new level.
I decided to speak on a topic that has really been sitting in my brain for awhile. Expertise, Personal Branding and Influence. The title of the presentation (which I will put online) is called: You Are The Center of Your Universe.
Here is the concept (tell me if you think I’m an idiot):
As we create content online we develop our online identity, influence and expertise. Every Flickr photo, every blog post, every link on delicious is a small piece of a complete picture that other people are collecting to determine our influence and expertise. Therefore, it’s imperative that there is some central location where potential clients, friends, colleagues can discover one’s social content in order to truly understand one’s influence/expertise. This is the act of building a personal brand.
Make sense?
Obviously, the best place to create that location is one’s blog, and I will highlight some plugins and techniques to showcase one’s expertise and/or influence.
I’m excited, and I hope others find it interesting.
What do you think?
Tags: lijit, micah, speaking, wordcamp las vegas, wordpress | View Comments