I got the headsup from my former LinkedIn colleague Wen Wen Lam about what looks like a very cool event next Tuesday that I’d encourage people to check out. This looks like a great panel! :

Event: Converting Your Passion into a Real Business
Date: Tuesday, December 5, 2006 from 6:00PM to 8:00PM
Location: Stanford University, Room 420-040 in the Quad

“From the vlogging/blogging community to seasoned entrepreneurs, our panelists have done everything from covering internet celebrity smut to running an adult luxury goods business!”

Nick Douglas, Valleywag immediate-past Editor
Shannon McClenaghan, JimmyJane CEO
Amy Andersen, LinxDating Founder and CEO
Christopher Surdi, Global Educational Program (GEP) Co-Founder & President
Michael Cerda, Jangl CEO
Moderator: Ariel Poler, TextMarks CEO

Free with a valid student ID and $10 without (some exceptions apply).

This is the registration link at http://dreamjob.eventbrite.com/.

More details here including links.

This year’s ad:tech has over 10,800 pre-registered attendees, the largest ever and I must say, the Hilton NYC is just barely accomodating these masses. The lines to pick up badges yesterday were the types of long, winding-in-on-themselves affairs of the type I’d only seen at the likewise-cramped Johannesburg International Airport during December rush — in fact I heard many people who’d preregistered (for free) for Exhibit hall passes (like myself, el cheapo style of course) getting into the shorter on-site registration line and paying the $125 or whatever to avoid the lines. I’d heard that the ad:tech guys signed a 6 or 7 year deal with Hilton to keep the show there, but it may be over soon and we could actually move to a sufficiently-sized venue next year (?). Haven’t bothered to confirm that; but the parties last night while not fully reminiscent of bubble ‘99 certainly had a whiff of the good times being back in the online ad world, and the money being spent not just being VC money this time around but re-invested profits as well.

Starbucks across the street was also very crowded, though the lines were behaving more normally there.

It also seems as it often does, that there are far more sellers at ad:tech than there are buyers, but the prospects coming by some of the boothes and having conversations are “very qualified” this year according to one exhibitor I spoke with. It does continue to seem like much more of a networking-bus-dev-deals-among-the-enlightened event than proselytizing to the masses still spending 85% of their budget not-online. The latter is far more needed, but the former is certainly fun (in a “we’re missing the big opportunity” kind of way).

Now, not that Plaxo is public (hehe) but if they were and I saw this kind of press release, I would immediately short the stock. Putting out a press release to say you are speaking at a conference (let alone a still-fairly-somewhat-niche one at that) seems crazy. Nothing else going on over there?

I presented last night at the Stanford/MIT Venture Lab event at the Stanford Business School, and really enjoyed the event. Details on the participants here, Mark Kvamme gave his prediction of a 2008 online ad market in the $30-35 billion range (along the lines of his AdTech presentation) and then after Jason from Accomplice took us through their interesting desktop app, I presented on behalf of Root Markets (here’s the Vaults link for people who attended last night and were curious). The panel was great, though not very controversial since we all agree that the online ad market can, must and will get a lot bigger, with Pud from Adbrite and Gokul from Google being the closest thing to a scuffle (not really). A fun event - thanks to Carmen Hughes for hooking us up therewith.

[hate it when I write a post then something screws up and I lose it all! but here we go again:]

At last night’s i20 Events event at the Mark Hopkins hotel here in San Francisco, I had a good time networking with some old, some new faces and really enjoyed Tim Smith’s keynote. Very engaging and entertaining as usual, the theme was broadly around creating “story systems” - where the best brands are the ones that help their consumers tell the best stories. Sounds a bit like Seth Godin’s All Marketers Are Liars though I think Tim has had this one kicking around for a few years.

Another interesting bit was Scott Eagle from Claria (event sponsor) talking about Personalweb, their entree into the getting-hot “active portal/startpage” space where they leverage their consumer behavioral profile data to automatically populate the page with things they know users like that are typically interested in, then refining it over time as the user’s interests change etc. They announced this back in May 2005, but with others like Google with products like these the time seems to be now. Draws to mind Negroponte’s discussion about “The Daily Me” [wikipedia] and the dangers thereof, but certainly it could be a pretty valuable, more automated way to kick start personalization when we know most people aren’t going to lift a finger…