Blog World Expo Archive

Nate Westhimer, founder of NYC-based startup BricaBox, has a review of his time in Las Vegas from the exhibitor perspective. You can also read my recap of the event from an attendee/speaker perspective.

An excerpt, "In a nutshell, it’s my take that the exhibitors were a bit shortchanged and nickel-and-dimed, but that going to the conference was overall a good decision for us, and that I will go back next year… hopefully as a speaker, since we do offer a unique perspective on the future of personal web publishing. Anyway, it’s my suggestion that if conference staff wants to see any of the same exhibitors again, they should offer deep discounts in recognition of us propping up this first try. And also let me be clear: this first try was a success, even considering some headliners backed out. I just think that the people who propped it up should be recognized next year. I would also suggest that Las Vegas is a bad place for this. A better populated city would draw the ‘real users’ exhibitors are really looking for."

I like Vegas for this event as it seems to be a more social event and so coming to a "fun" city like Vegas makes sense. Though I absolutely understand Nate’s point in that if it was in NYC, tons more would have come for free expo passes. If we look at SXSW, which is also a social event, there is no expo hall.

It will be interesting to speak to some of the other exhibitors to see if they are in agreement with Nate’s comments.

Update: Tris at BlogNation has some great event coverage as well.

This post will serve as the final recap for BlogWorldExpo 2007. Let’s first deal with the formalities: I didn’t win the millions so CN shall continue. I learned how to play roulette and won a few dollars but the slot machines killed me. Though Wheel of Fortune made me $50 from $10 which was cool. Craps – I stood there 30 minutes and still had no idea how this is played. Played two hands of blackjack, lost both and that was enough. And I won’t even start on the b5media poker table – lost all 10 hands I played. :)

A big thank you to Jeremy @ b5media for offering me the opportunity to speak at BWE. I look forward to more speaking engagements in 2008. His group of bloggers have such a family feel to them, it was great meeting so many. It’s nice to sit with bloggers who are outside tech and learn about the ways they monetize and build their traffic to what drives them to continue. 

Overall I enjoyed the conference and thought it was similar to SXSW. I was disappointed by Richard Jalichandra from Technorati. I think Justine did a good job as a replacement and I enjoyed meeting so many of the CN readers. The networking was top-notch!

Touching on the Arrington situation briefly. I posted so that anyone who was planning on attending the session would know that Om/Mike wouldn’t be there. The room was at the end and it might give someone a chance to stop and go to another room. As for the details, Andy Beard did some huge investigation and Mike has updated his post about what happened. I am not going to touch on what happened at this point but I absolutely disagree with Mike’s comments about speaking. Mike sees it as a "net negative" and will only speak at his friend’s conferences going forward. This is a mistake. So many want to meet Mike and it’s similar to coming to meet an author you like/have an interest in.

I also believe that his public appearances is a part of why Techcrunch became #1. To turn his back on this, I think is a mistake. Getting out to events for Mike might be a negative, but for his fans and for the conference organizers, I would suggest it’s a positive.

All BlogWorldExpo posts

• Day 1 Recap – b5media/speaking
• New Media Moguls Roundtable
• Exhibit Hall Photos
• Keynote Matt Mullenweg
• Schwag Giveaway Part II
• Schwag Giveaway

Conference concluded.

This is part II of the schwag giveaway from BlogWorldExpo. Below are photos of each piece plus a link to the respective company. If you are interested in any item, leave a comment and I will follow-up with you. I will ship anywhere in the world so first come, first served.

Update: Idiot Allen forgot to note the sizes before shipping the schwag box home. So once I get the shirts, i will let you know – I believe they are Large and smaller

FYI, for anyone planning to attend the BlogWorldExpo session called "Cult of Blogging" with Mike Arrington and Om Malik – neither are here. It’s been replaced by a chat with iJustine.

Leo Laporte said that Om is sick and Mike "forgot". I was really looking forward to meeting Om. Hope you get better Om!

Update 10:00PM – Mike has responded – he says, "I never agreed to attend the conference."

For you, the awesome CN readers, I went around and picked up everyone’s schwag at BlogWorldExpo. Below are photos of each piece plus a link to the respective company. If you are interested in any item, leave a comment and I will follow-up with you. I will ship anywhere in the world so first come, first served.

CrispAds – Mints – 2 available

Kontera – Flying Disc

SnagIt – Stickers – 2 available

YieldBuild – Tshirt XL

Pens – CrispAds 2 available – Blogsvertise 1 available

Snap – Tin of Mints plus sticker

Southwest Airlines Peanuts – 2 available

Lijit Stickers – 2 available

Technorati Stickers – 2 available

Blogsmith – Cord Holders – 3 available

Yovia – SodaHead – Squishy Balls – 2 available

Izea (formerly Payperpost) Coozie

Right Media People

The last session today was a panel discussion about new media (basically blogging). Overall I thought it was ok, not great but relatively good. The Technorati CEO barely spoke and most of what he said I didn’t agree with and thought it was different than what Technorati was created to do.  There was only time for one audience question. Here are my notes: 

The panel included:

• Brad Hill – Weblogs
• Richard Jalichandra – Technorati
• Jeremy Wright – b5media
• Roger Simon – Pajamas Media
• Jason Shellen – The Secret Agency – moderator

What challenges do we face for blogging in the next couple of years?
Roger – Going forward with our advertising network – we believe the audience for blogs is very special – we have corresp. in 47 countries
Jeremy – we aren’t about the a-list, Web 2 bloggers – it’s more about moms.
Roger – we have 100 blogs and 50 corresp. that aren’t bloggers but that will report the news for us.
Brad – we got up to 90 and we began streamlining and now we have 35 most in english but a few in other languages.

What does the makeup of technorati look like now?
Richard – we are tracking 110 million blogs – it’s basically input the authority rank – and track the ones that have recency – most of the people in the room would probably be listed.

Where is Technorati going in the next 2 years?
We are becoming more of a discovery place – they want to find out other relevant blogs on a topic – really moving into search and discovery. And helping the exploration process with discovery.

Allen’s note – now all of a sudden Richard changes his tone from his blog post about only caring about the top100, now he cares about everyone.

Roger – what’s making blogging work is the passion of the bloggers.

What can new media learn from new media?
Richard – I was just doing a blogtalkradio interview and realizing that we haven’t indexed yet – referring to Twitter. For us,we have looked at bits of social media – about 300 of them out there – what we are really trying to do is stick with relevancy and recency. We have to focus on what are the most important things to the audience.

Jeremy – we are trying to extend past text in anyway we can.

Brad – we get a lot of our traffic through Digg.

session concluded.

Check out photos of every single exhibitor at BlogWorldExpo. I plan to do some video interviews later today and tomorrow but for now enjoy the photos. I have pasted a few of them below. Before anyone asks, there were about 5 booths with booth babes. And iJustine is here – she seems to be the only "celeb" at a booth from what I can tell so far.

ALL PHOTOS HERE