Media Mandible

Although all the speakers from the FM CM summit are listed here, their names are not really linked to their own sites. Inspired by what Creative Times did for the attendees of the Brooklyn Blogfest, I thought it would be nice to actually assemble links to the blogs (or just sites) of everyone involved, where applicable. If you find a mistake, tell me, and I’ll fix it.

Speakers who have their own blogs, in alphabetical order by last name:

John Battelle (Federated) writes Searchblog

Gina Gianchini (Ning) writes Network Creators.

Henry M. Blodget (Silicon Alley) writes Internet Outsider.

Chas Edwards (Federated) writes ChasNote.

Darren Herman (Media Kitchen) writes DarrenHerman.com.

James Lamberti (Comscore) blogs at ComsCore.

Andy Lark (Dell) writes Andy Lark’s Blog.

Steve Rubel (Edelman Digital) has a “lifestream” in a FriendFeed.

Ian Schafer (Deep Focus) writes IanSchafer.com.

Debra Aho Williamson (eMarketer) writes Next Steps In Marketing.

Or, just use the Grazr widget below, with which you can read any feed, subscribe to any feed, or subscribe to all the feeds together as one. (You could also just bookmark this post, and check it once in a while.)

One of today’s panelists was CondeNet President Sarah Chubb, whom I used to work for (indirectly), when I was in sales, and ad operations, and web analytics, back in the day. She actually gave me a nifty ’star of the month’ award once, involving an email from her to all of CondeNet about stuff I’d done, and a $1,000 prize. I remember sitting in her office as she told me about the award, and being touched by how she was sincerely giving me all her attention, even though she was my boss’ boss’ boss’ boss. It was one of the few times that I spent really talking to her directly, but I valued it, and would think back on it later when she sent out company-wide emails, or gave a speech to all 200 (or so) of us at CondeNet, talking at one crucial point about the history of the larger (mainly print-based) corporation, and how we, the online division, fit into it.

She told a similar story today, but a more complete one, with a happy ending that I didn’t get to witness myself, but heard about from old colleagues, as the sister print publications that had so long contended with their strange online sibling, gradually learned to accept its worth and to make it part of their world…or to become part of its world. And neither is my world anymore, but…why not admit this?…I still care. It thrills me to find a new feature on Epicurious, and to think about the people and the departments and the processes that must have been involved to make it happen. I care about the fate of Flip, and I wait to see what they do with Reddit. And when, after years of CondeNast controlling Wired, the print magazine, while Wired was still owned by another company….when the online publication was brought back into the fold, I couldn’t help but think, Fuck yeah. We finally got it back. Even though I hadn’t been at Conde for almost two years, and even though I never worked on either version of Wired myself.

Anyway. Other memorable moments from today’s panels included Media Kitchen’s Darren Herman noting that “A lot of people need to either step down or die,” Wendy Harris Millard (President of Media at Martha Stewart) doing an extended (loving) impression of Stewart making fun of Millard, and Edelman Digital SVP Steve Rubel comparing social media to soylent green (the substance, not the movie).

This was a good conference. Not just smart people talking about smart things, though there was plenty of that. But, unlike most trade conferences, the panelists (to a one, I think) were sincerely interested in engaging the topic at hand, instead of shamelessly using it as a jumping-off point to shill for their own commoditized business. Maybe that’s partly because the businesses in question each bring their own special value, but it’s also just about the whole spirit of the thing. It was really nice to be at an event involving hundreds of people in the same industry that was not mostly comprised of bullshit, and I bet that such events are fairly unusual even across industries.

photo (of the S.I. Newhouse School of Communications) by Benjamin I.

If for some reason you’re not familiar with Federated or the conference, you’ll want to start here.

Some nice moments:

Battelle breaking off in the middle of his own introductory speech to say “I’m announcing a new phone,” momentarily disorienting at least 50 people in the audience who were, on some device or other, simultaneously following Steve Jobs’ 3G iPhone speech going on at the same time on the west coast.

Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO, Interactive Advertising Bureau, starting his speech with “I’m here to scare you,” and shortly after, standing in front of yellow writing on blue background: “Activists Hate Digital Media And Marketing.” (After a polarizing, us-vs-them speech, Rothernberg was the only speaker to leave the stage without taking questions.)

Jason Kilar, CEO of Hulu, pronouncing: “Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room,” an astute observation that he topped a few minutes later with “Most websites look like Tokyo at night,” a potentially offputting metaphor for a number of reasons, although I thought the point was well made.

Of all the speakers, Louis Giagrande, Senior Online Marketing Manager, Samsung Electronics America, really stood out in a good way: articulate, frank, and insightful.

During the networking sessions, had some great conversations with Rob Walk of NovaRising, Michael Burke of appssavvy, and Daniel Mintz of MoveOn, as well as many Federated staffers and authors.

More detail after tomorrow’s session…right now I have to get to sleep, as it starts at 8:30am.

Note to self: Get a real camera.