Back in the Other Than That studios, this week Social Media Hour goes freestyle - mostly because after a crazy week in Paris for LeWeb and trying to catch up on many a loose end, Cathy ran out of planning time. (On that, she's looking for a part-time producer to support the program, so if you know anyone, please email her!).
This week's show has an extra dash of uncertainty because when you're joined by the likes of feisty Ewan Spence - blogger and entrepreneur as well as one of the Traveling Geeks who just returned from Paris; Kevin Marks of BT (with whom there was plenty of frolic in Paris) and Chris Heuer, you never know what will happen.
I do know the topics include: recap of LeWeb (especially BT's ROCKING Internet, the Social Media Club House and Kevin's talk), discussion about Ewan's new toy and holidays.
The Show: Ah the joys of technology - started out great, then my phone rang, which for some reason killed the Internet connection ... so brave a few minutes of dead air (just a few, really, not nearly as bad as the 10 minutes of dead air thanks to Scoble's kicking the mic cable out last week in Paris!) and enjoy a fun freestyle show!
The Guests:
Ewan Spence is a blogger, author and writer based out of Edinburgh, Scotland. In addition to his own blog, he has contributed and contributes to BBC News, BBC Magazine (online), The Stage (UK Arts and Entertainment Newspaper), Computing (VNU), iProng Magazine, IT Pro, O’Reilly’s Make Magazine, Palmtop Magazine, Podcast User Magazine, UK Tech and UK Mobile Blognation, PDA Essentials, Mobile Messaging 2.0 and All About Symbian. He wrote the book Rapid Mobile Enterprise Development for Symbian OS and has audio program commissions for BBC Radio 5 Live – Through the Night and Pods and Blogs, Computer Outlook Talk Radio Show and Talk 107. He also regularly speaks at and moderates panels at high profile technology conferences around the world.
Kevin Marks works at BT as VP of Web Services. From 2007 to 2009, he worked at Google on OpenSocial. From 2003 to 2007 he was Principal Engineer at Technorati responsible for the spiders that make sense of the web and track millions of blogs daily. He has been inventing and innovating for over 17 years in emerging technologies where people, media and computers meet. Before joining Technorati, Kevin spent 5 years in the Quicktime Engineering team at Apple, building video capture and live streaming into OS X. He was a founder of The Multimedia Corporation in the UK, where he served as Production Manager and Executive Producer, shipping million-selling products and winning International awards. He has a Masters degree in Physics from Cambridge University and is a BBC-qualified Video Engineer.One of the driving forces behind microformats.org he regularly speaks at Conferences and Symposia on emergent net technologies and their cultural impact.
Chris Heuer has over 15 years experience as a digital visionary, creative media technologist and holistic marketing strategist, allowing him to provide an invaluable perspective that frames the modern day challenges of organizations grappling with technology driven change in an approachable way. Over the last 3 years his leadership has built Social Media Club into the world's leading organization for Social Media Professionals. In the process, Chris has become a world-class speaker and facilitator, hosting round tables and speaking to Social Media Professionals around the world. Chris can speak to any issue or challenge related to Social Media, and also is able to speak to a variety of issues concerning social change, modern management, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, organizational transformation, innovation, co-creation, holistic business strategy, web site development, user experience, and the knowledge economy.
From City by the Bay to the City of Lights: Social Media Hour in Paris!
In addition to most of my housemates, I'll be joined by several of LeWeb's speakers including: PayPal's Osama Bedier; British Telecom's JP Rangaswami and Gary Shainberg; former Googler turned investor Chris Sacca and possibly some other surprises! (To check out the bios of my guests, you can visit the Social Media Hour blog.)
The Great Kat (Katherine Thomas) is the only Violin Virtuoso turned Guitar Shredder in the world, bringing Classical Music to the masses with Shred Guitar and Speed Metal. After listening to Beethoven since birth, The Great Kat realized that her mission was to become a composer and musical revolutionary. At the age of 15, The Great Kat won a Full Scholarship to attend the prestigious Juilliard School in New York City as a Violin Student. The Great Kat became the Concertmaster of the Juilliard Pre-College Orchestra and won the "Robert Hufstader Scholarship" in Composition and Theory at Juilliard. The Great Kat graduated with Honors from The Juilliard School and began performing, first as a Classical violin soloist at Carnegie Recital Hall as winner of the exclusive "Artists International Competition" and then soloing extensively in Mexico, the U.S. and Europe. After touring the world, The Great Kat realized that Classical music was dead, so she began updating Classical Music with Speed Metal and transcribed intricate violin solos to the guitar. Kat developed a new genre of music: “SHRED/CLASSICAL” Music -- Fast, Furious, and Virtuosic. The Great Kat is the only musician taking note-for-note authentic Classical Music scores (from Vivaldi, Beethoven, Bach, Wagner, Liszt, Paganini, Sarasate, Bazzini, Rossini and more) and entering the original Classical Music scores into music-notation software, editing, arranging and mixing with vicious, raw Speed Metal and Shred Guitar.
Eliane Fiolet is the co-founder and editor of Ubergizmo.com, one of the top high technology and consumer electronics blogs in the U.S. and the world, distributed in 6 languages and read in 212 countries. She largely writes about technology, usability, design, and web applications. Among other things, the site is a Webby Award Honoree, has been ranked as a Top100 Blog by PC Magazine, ranks very high in Nielsen’s Blogpulse and was nominated in “Best Technology Blog” at the Bloggie Awards. Ubergizmo is also a media partner with DEMO and Web 2.0. In her parallel life, she owns a Corporate ID design business that helps companies create great brands. Prior to opening her own agency, Eliane worked for a top design firm, Minale Tattersfield Design Strategy, where she created identities for Fortune 500 companies. She also worked in the video game industry as a designer for an award-winning adventure game. Eliane holds a master degree in visual communication from the "Art Decoratifs" college.
Renee Blodgett is co-founder of Traveling Geeks. She is also the CEO and founder of Magic Sauce Media, a new media consultancy dedicated to communications, social media, viral marketing and branding strategies and campaigns, where she coaches and consults to organizations, individuals and companies worldwide. She has launched companies and products from 11 countries, lived in 10 and explored more than 65. She is also the founder and editor of We Blog the World, a blog dedicated to global storytelling and the latest developments in social, cultural and technology trends and blogs at Down the Avenue, a blog that focuses on technology, social media trends, marketing, PR and culture. She has been blogging for more than ten years and is passionate about where emerging technologies and social media can bridge the gap across the continent. Renee has held advisory board positions on b5 Media, a global new media network, Cozmo Media, which taps into community to put video content in front of the right audience, Toktumi, a virtual home office VoIP phone solution, Radus, a dynamic media rich social network and content aggregator, BlogHer, the first conference and group blog dedicated to women bloggers, which now has nearly 20,000 blogs in its global network and PopTech, an innovation conference whose goal is to accelerate the positive impact of world changing people and ideas.
Chris Heuer has over 15 years experience as a digital visionary, creative media technologist and holistic marketing strategist, allowing him to provide an invaluable perspective that frames the modern day challenges of organizations grappling with technology driven change in an approachable way. Over the last 3 years his leadership has built Social Media Club into the world's leading organization for Social Media Professionals. In the process, Chris has become a world-class speaker and facilitator, hosting round tables and speaking to Social Media Professionals around the world. Chris can speak to any issue or challenge related to Social Media, and also is able to speak to a variety of issues concerning social change, modern management, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, organizational transformation, innovation, co-creation, holistic business strategy, web site development, user experience, and the knowledge economy.
Dana Oshiro is a Canadian-born writer, PR pro and web strategist with a soft spot for technologists, artists and determined underdogs. She is the startup writer for one of the world's top 20 most popular blogs ReadWriteWeb, and sends frequent musings to Villagers With Pitchforks and her @suzyperplexus Twitter account. ReadWriteWeb is a popular weblog that provides web technology news, reviews and analysis. Currently one of the world's top 20 most popular blogs, ReadWriteWeb speaks to an intelligent audience of web enthusiasts, early adopters and innovators. http://www.readwriteweb.com