I’m happy to announce a great list of speakers for the upcoming Social Ad Summit. We will be announcing more speakers in the coming week but I wanted to provide an update. We just recently began sending out invitations to the event so if you haven’t received one, do not worry, we will be sending them out over the coming week. Also, if you are not sure whether or not you have received one, fill out your information on the Social Ad Summit homepage. Here is an updated list of speakers that will be in attendance:

• Brian Morrissey, Digital Editor, AdWeek, Moderator
• Allen Stern, Center Networks, Moderator
• Martin Green, COO, Meebo
• Jeremy Helfand, Executive Vice President, Classmates.com
• David Berkowitz, Director of Emerging Media, 360i
• David Bear, Executive Director of Mobile & Social Media, Atmosphere BBDO
• Sam Wick, Head of Business Development, Userplane
• Seth Goldstein, Co-Founder and CEO, SocialMedia Networks
• Scott Rafer, CEO, Lookery
• Anu Shukla, Founder and CEO, Offerpal Media
• Chris Cunningham, Founder and CEO, Appssavvy
• Michael Lazerow, Founder and CEO, Buddy Media
• Gordon Peters, General Manager, SocialCash.com
• Sean Ammirati, Contributor at Read/Write/Web, Founder of mSpoke, Moderator
• Albert Lai, CEO, kontagent
• Ian Swanson, Co-Founder and CEO, Sometrics
• Cam Balzer, VP of Emerging Media, DoubleClick
• Hooman Radfar, CEO and Co-Founder, Clearspring
• Carnet Williams, CEO and Co-Founder, Sprout
• Ben Pashman, Vice President of Sales and Business Development, Gigya
• Alex Blum, CEO, KickApps
• Clara Shih, Salesforce

Also, thanks to the following sponsors who are making this event possible:

• Offerpal Media
• Social Cash
• Buddy Media
• SocialMedia
• AppsSavvy
• Sometrics
• KickApps
• Doubleclick

We are in the process of finalizing speakers and sponsors over the coming week. We will be sure to update this site with more information regarding the conference as it gets closer!

There are a number of events taking place over the next couple months, so I thought I would outline some of the ones to pay attention to.  If there are any missing on here please feel free to leave them in the comments!

Twin Tech Party

I’ve already covered the Twin Tech Event which is being held at Local 16 tomorrow. The event has officially sold out with over 600 attendees and there is now a waiting list. There is an overflow space at Chi Cha lounge next door. Anybody on the waiting list can network there and if Local 16 gets too crowded this will definitely be a good place to head over to. A lot of sponsors have hopped on board to make this event possible and it is sure to be a big event. Feel free to sign up for the wait list if you didn’t register already.

SWAT Summit

SWAT summit is a conference looking at how agencies and brands can harness the power of social networks. I know a number of people that will be in attendance at the event tomorrow in San Francisco. If you are going to be in San Francisco on Thursday, there is still a chance to grab tickets to this event. I’ve participated in other events put on by Christian Perry (Room Full of People Inc.) and they consistently draw an excellent crowd. Check out the SWAT Summit website for more details.

Facebook F8

This is the must attend event in social technology. Facebook F8 will be held in San Francisco next week. I will be making the hike out to the west coast for this event as it is sure to be an amazing one. Tickets have been on sale for the past few weeks but just yesterday the event officially sold out. Facebook is expected to make a number of announcements at this event. Potential announcements include: launch of Facebook Connect and possibly an extension of Facebook’s mobile offering.

At this point all potential announcements are completely speculation but if last year’s f8 event is any sign of what’s to come, this could be a monumental event. If you are going to be out in San Francisco for the event next week, please get in touch!

Social Dev Camp Chicago

The first ever Social Dev Camp was hosted in Baltimore a few months back. David Troy (Twittervision.com), Ann Bernard and Keith Casey, all participants in the local tech community, were all involved in the planning of the event. It went off without a hitch and attracted close to 200 people. The second SocialDevCamp is being held in Chicago on August 9th from 8:30 am – 6:00 pm at the Illinois Institute of Technology McCormick Tribune Center. For details about the event visit the SocialDevCamp Chicago wiki page. You can also reach out to Tim Courtney or Andy Angelos, both of whom are helping to organize this event.

Social Ad Summit

Social Ad Summit is the first conference being held by the Social Times. It will be held September 15th and is an invite-only event for social technology executives, media buyers and advertising execs as well as media executives. Next week we will begin announcing the speakers and sponsors for the event on the Social Ad Summit website. We have an exciting line-up planned. If you are looking to sponsor or speak at the event you can email socialadsummit@gmail.com.

Web 2.0 Expo NYC

Web 2.0 Expo “was launched to connect the builders of the web with the brightest minds, hottest ideas, and most valuable tools – and with each other.” The event is hosted by O’Reilly and looks like it will be a pretty big event. Speakers include Clay Shirky, Fred Wilson, Arianna Huffington, Mmarc Benioff, Gary Vaynerchuk, Tim O’Reilly and Jay Adelson. If you live on the East Coast this is definitely a great conference to attend. You can read more about the event on the Web 2.0 Expo New York website.

Advertising Week DC

Today I learned about an upcoming event which doesn’t appear to have been officially announced yet. Advertising Week DC “celebrates the best of the marketing, media and advertising community with a week of networking, professional development and education.” Current speakers include Chris Matthews (MSNBC), David Gregory (NBC) and Steve Forbes (Forbes). The website doesn’t even appear to be complete yet but if you are in D.C. and don’t want to make the drive up to NYC for Web 2.0 Expo, check out Advertising Week DC.

Interact 08

INTERACT 08 looks like it will be the biggest D.C. conference in a while. It is being held at the Ronal Reagan building and hopes to attract 1,000 attendees, 65 exhibitors and more than 35 speakers. There is a pretty amazing set of speakers including the Presidents of Digitas and Publicis, Marissa Mayer (Google) and our own Jesse Thomas who is the Creative Director of Social Times. If you are looking to attend the event you can get $100 off by visiting http://www.interact2008.com/SocialTimes.

Last week there was an article in the Post which highlighted the division of technology networking groups in the D.C. area. There was “a more formal event, with many silver-haired executives running their second or third technology company.” Then there was the D.C. bash that we helped put together.

The result was two divergent crowds. The reason for all of this? I would suggest that one of the reasons is that some have adopted the “social technology” and others haven’t. Many that read this blog read their RSS Feeds daily, find out about events on Facebook and are happy to jump on the latest micro-blogging platform.

The other group is still stuck in the ways they have learned over more than a decade and are perfectly fine reading the latest edition of their favorite email newsletter. Try telling somebody that receives 100 emails a day and has their Google Reader packed with over 1,000 unread items that they have another email newsletter to read. It just won’t happen.

So aside from what may appear to be technology snobbery, there is an opportunity to further what hasn’t been done already: connect these two technology groups. Currently, the attendees that have registered are largely part of the social media crowd but there are some unfamiliar names popping up and sure hope that continues.

So next week, Thursday July 17th, the first mixer of the NVTC crowd and the D.C. social media community will take place at Local 16 on U Street. I will be blasting out an email to the attendees of the past event in hopes that they attend and hopefully NVTC does the same. It will hopefully be an event to remember and maybe, we will finally see the barriers between the two groups disappear. I’ve definitely been hoping this would take place for a long time.

So next week, come show your support at the Twin Tech Party. Oh and if you needed another reason to show up, as usual there will be free drinks. I look forward to seeing you there!

If you’ve been paying attention over the past few months, there has been a lot of conversation about the monetization of social networks and a discussion about lack of revenue. I figured that this would provide a great opportunity to put together a conference strictly on this topic. We will seek answers to important questions that media buyers and social technology executives face on a daily basis.

We will also work to help define how these parties can work together to develop more mutually beneficial relationships which will help drive the industry forward. We have already begun planning and have lined up some excellent speakers which we will begin announcing in the next week or so. The event is currently planned for September 15th in New York City.

We picked New York City since it is the center of global advertising and following discussions with some of our sponsors we determined that this would be the best place. This event is invite only so if you are looking to attend but have not received an invite, please let us know of your interest by filling out the invite request form.

Also, to keep up to date on what is taking place related to the summit visit the Social Ad Summit website. Over the coming weeks we will begin making some exciting announcements about speakers and sponsors. If there is a speaker that you’d like to see please send an email to socialadsummit@gmail.com.

Peter Corbett of iStrategyLabs was live on the scene at last week’s event with Robert Scoble and Gary Vaynerchuk. He was doing interviews with a number of attendees to get their take on the event as well as technology’s role in politics. Over the weekend he posted a video on his blog and I’ve included it below. Big thanks to Peter for helping out!

Last night’s D.C. bash with Gary Vaynerchuk and Robert Scoble went off successfully. Unfortunately I was not able to stay through the entire event because I had another event to attend as well. By the time I left though, the venue was packed and people were busy networking. iStrategyLabs was doing interviews and just about everybody involved in D.C. technology and new media was at the event.

I put together the following compilation of the event and have also posted the photos on the Social Times Facebook Page. I will be tagging photos and Frank Gruber will be uploading and tagging photos on Flickr. Thank you to everyone that made it out last night and thank you to the event sponsors for making it possible to capture the moment and provide the free wine.

We will be hosting more events in the near future so stay tuned and we’ll be sure to update you on the happenings in D.C.

The D.C. bash with Robert Scoble and Gary Vaynerchuk that I mentioned last week filled up in under 24 hours. There are now 500 people registered for the event so it’s sure to be a blast. If you were not able to get in, don’t worry, we plan on putting together more events in the near future. There are a couple spots that have opened up over the past few hours so if you really want to go, go check out the registration page periodically.

Gary Vaynerchuk has sent over wine and the team at MCCXXII has been working overtime to make sure this event goes off without a hitch. Unfortunately I’ll only be able to make it for the first hour or so but the event will be from 6:00 - 9:30 PM. If you can’t make it please be sure to let us know so we can give your spot to others.

Thanks to all of the event sponsors for making it possible to make this event free. Here are all the event sponsors:

Event Sponsors

Photography Sponsor

Corking Sponsor

Videography Provided By

This morning I walked in to the OMMA Social conference at the beginning of a panel on monetization. The panel included Jim Nail of TNS Media Intelligence, Steve Jang of imeem, Seth Goldstein of SocialMedia, Brian Wieser of MAGNA Global and Jeremy Helfand of Classmates.com. There was a healthy debate over how and if it is possible to monetize social media effectively.

In discussing whether or not there is substantial money in social media, Seth Goldstein brought up a rumor of a large computer company recently spending a $10 million insertion fee to get into this space. So yes, there is money but Seth also emphasized that social media advertising is currently experimental.

In response to a question about whether or not social media monetization is sustainable, Jeremy Helfand says that this was the same discussion that took place years ago for interactive as a whole. Fortunately, we no longer need to prove the medium itself (internet advertising), but need to spend time educating the companies on social media.

Seth Goldstein focused on the early stages of interactive advertising. He said that car companies helped drive the initial online advertising industry and the entertainment industry has been doing the same in social media. Seth used a recent campaign for the Incredible Hulk movie investing heavily in social media. For now, the entertainment and media companies will provide the initial liquidity.

Brian Wieser, SVP of MAGNA Global was the naysayer on the panel. He believes that this isn’t a massive business because it doesn’t cost much to run campaigns currently. To contrast that, Steve Jang pointed to another example of a large brand investing in social media. While he couldn’t name the brand he had the opportunity to discuss advertising expenditures with that brand on the flight to NYC this morning.

One other interesting topic was brought up by an audience member who asked: how do brands protect themselves when social media is mostly made up of unfiltered user generated content for the most part? I was actually surprised to hear the responses. Steve Jang said that imeem actually filters out content manually to ensure that ads aren’t displayed next to offensive content.

While I don’t agree that this is an effective model for protecting brands I do agree with Steve when he reframed the discussion. He suggested that it is better to instead focus on advertising which is effective in a dynamic environment that has user generated content. He also emphasized that it is important that the company is able to segment the content effectively.

One of the last questions asked to the panel was how can advertisers maintain their lifestyle when when CPMs are in the toilet. Seth Goldstein responded that the industry average CPMs should hopefully bounce off of penny CPMs and hopefully move up toward $1 and $2 CPMs over the next couple years. Jeremey Helfand thinks that the industry first needs to figure out what is being measured before the CPMs are increased.

Overall the discussion was a lively one with a lot of discussion about where this is going. The overall consensus appeared to be that social media advertising is still in the early and experimental stages. While Brian Wieser doesn’t think that this will turn into a large industry, the majority of the other panelists seemed to disagree.

I’ll be spending the day in New York today to attend the OMMA Social Conference. The event has a great list of speakers and I’m guessing there will be some great attendees as well. I’ll be live blogging some of the sessions. There will be discussions about the state of social media, how to use social media as a tool and how to monetize social media effectively.

The event is only a one day event and as such I’ll be heading back to D.C. this evening. Hopefully I get some good content since I decided to wake up at 4 A.M. to head up to the city this morning! If you are at the event please come say hello. While not as big as the recent Graphing Social Patterns East event, this looks pretty great.

One of the more interesting presentations comes from Peter Hobolt Jensen who is the Vice President of online communications at Lego. He will be discussing how the company has leveraged social media to expand their reach and valuable lessons learned. I hope to see you here. If you can’t make it, check in to this site to learn more about what’s going on!

It’s summertime and it’s time to let lose with two of the biggest rockstars in social media: Robert Scoble and Gary Vaynerchuk. Capitol Valley Media has been working hard to put this together and with the help of Frank Gruber and the Social Times this is sure to be an amazing time.

Come network with the best of the best in D.C.’s social media and technology scene. It is guaranteed to be a hell of a party and a great way to connect with fellow D.C. professionals in the industry. Did I mention free wine?  Gary V has got the wine and you’ve got the time to come and connect with some of the most passionate people in the city. We hope to see you there!

To register for the event, head on over to http://dcsocialmedia.eventbrite.com. Tickets are going fast to be sure to get yours!