Guy Kawasaki giving the keynote at San Francisco's Swagapalooza

Last night I was one of 85 “influential bloggers” at a San Francisco event playfully called Swagapalooza. First of all, it was a great time that says a lot about where media and brands are going.

In his opening remarks, co-founder @AlexKrupp said that Swagapalooza is about the democratization of PR. To the bloggers they wrote: “You deserve to be begged for your attention and your following. Your taste and discernment make you the perfect judge of these marketers who will come to cajole, beg and bribe you… (with more free stuff than you can imagine.)” Which is a pretty good way to get people to come to your event.

On their website, Allan Young and Alex Krupp, co-founders of both Swagapalooza and LaunchHear (a weekly email list offering qualifying bloggers free stuff) describe what they are doing like this:

“Swagapalooza is an experiment in viral media. On March 23rd, the world’s most-followed bloggers, twitters, and digital influencers will gather in San Francisco to judge five-minute ‘auditions’ from the creators of the latest, greatest, and most unexpected new products… And to connect with each other.”

It worked. These guys know what they are doing and how to get it done. And they did it.

There was an open bar the whole time. There was free food the whole time. That makes for 75 happy and rowdy people listening to product pitches and stories- and that’s what happened.

When I arrived I knew I was in the right place because all 12 people in line were tapping away on their iPhones. The twitter backchannel display (showing real-time tweets onstage) was great- at times it was more entertaining than the product presenters!

They had Guy Kawasaki give a great 15 minute keynote. He’s funny, smart and everybody’s heard of him. Good call and a funny speech.

The thing that made the whole event successful (aside from the open bar) was that the products were legitimately interesting and the presentations were authentic.  The presentations were short and real- and you could enjoy it knowing that no one is obligated to write about anything. And it was actually the most interactive networking event I’ve been at in a long time- everybody was new and we were all bloggers. Everyone was actually talking to each other, not typing on their laptops.

In short, Swagapalooza used a little exclusivity, lots of free stuff, and targeted people who are social media influencers to try an experiment in democratized, viral PR. And they gave me a bag full of free stuff. Here’s a rundown on my favorites…

[Full Disclosure: They gave me one of everything in the bag full of swag.]

Imagine a paper-thin whiteboard that sticks to the wall, or an Equmen undershirt for men that has strategic elastic to pull your shoulders back and make you look thinner. Or if you’re someone who thinks everything tastes better with bacon, there’s Bacon Hot Sauce, born of a hangover argument about which was more critical to eggs!

My favorite is TheHelmetLock.com, a simple, small device that lets you lock your helmet up to your bike- ideal for urban bikers who want to stop being “that guy” with the helmet all the time.

3 Big IDEAS:

1. Location. Twitter uses it, Foursquare is based on it, Facebook is releasing it soon. As smartphones become standard and ubiquitous, people will start checking in at venues and events. In a few years it will be normal to electronically “check in” when you arrive somewhere. There are too many opportunities for Event promoters with this to even start.
2. Opinion as Media. Take the rise of the reality show and blend it with the rise of Twitter/Facebook etc. and what do you get? A new era where messages like Facebook status messages and Twitter @anywhere will make the opinion of an influential individual carry the weight of a journalist, celebrity or TV commentator. Every single person at your event might be that person. That’s a big VIP room.
3. Personalized Popularity. On the receiving side, the concept behind the New Digg means is similar to the way Facebook or Google does ads- you see information related to your activity history. As that kind of information delivery grows, this will become a critical way to reach an engaged audience through online media. Event promotion itself will change.

A Deeper Look at the Highlights:

Twitter: Location and @anywhere.

• Last week they announced the ability to attach your location to your tweet. It was a quiet but timely update- they keep step with Foursquare and beat out Facebook.
• At SXSW @Ev said that twitter is more of an information network than a social network. That may or may not be true, but they are certainly pushing for information integration all over the Internet. Today they announced @anywhere. With an introductory tweet like “Incredibly simple. @anywhere http://blog.twitter.com/2010/03/anywhere.html,” it better be more than that: incredibly simple AND incredibly good. The social media information game is starting to resemble the advice you see business bloggers give: You must become indispensible. Google Buzz was simple.

@anywhere is a bid to make Twitter indispensible as information sharing and commenting on big media websites. As they say, “Rather than implementing APIs, site owners need only drop in a few lines of javascript.” Their initial launch (TBD) will include Amazon, AdAge, Bing, Citysearch, Digg, eBay, The Huffington Post, Meebo, MSNBC.com, The New York Times, Salesforce.com, Yahoo!, and YouTube. I can’t see how that will be anything but epic.

Facebook Integrations. Facebook is important because it’s the biggest. 400+ million users. They just beat out Google as most-visited site for the whole week. Facebook: 7.07%, Google 7.03%. In the past week they’ve also talked about opening up to integration with Foursquare and other location-based services, in addition to announcing plans to create Location-functionality for Facebook itself.

Foursquare. They opened their API recently and have dozens of apps, and I imagine many more on the way after SXSW. They are integrating with Facebook, which means they’ll exponentially grow their user-base. Pete Cashmore brought them up again- this time on the Bloomberg report.

New Digg = Personalized, Integrated. Mashable’s Adam Ostrow wrote: “The site is shifting toward a personalization model, where the homepage will be based on characters like a user’s interests, location, who they follow not only on Digg but services like Twitter and Facebook, and other “signals” from around the web like retweets, Facebook shares and more.” Without getting into details, this is a site making a bid to shift from an exclusive-ish, clique-y community of power-users (20,000 submissions daily) to an Internet content ratings and feed powerhouse.  Digg wants to bring you the top articles around your interests in the way that Google brings you ads based on your search/ text history- and they want to integrate all of your social media channels.

Put it all together and at next year’s SXSW you may be able to tweet your comment on a blog post you found in your Digg feed while checking in on Foursquare at lunch about Facebook breaking the 1 Billion user barrier.

Here are 3 Ideas I have about how Green branding can be authentic:

1. Foursquare

Foursquare is set up to reflect what you do and where you do it. I haven’t seen a “Green” badge yet (does it exist?) but it would be an ideal way to reward and acknowledge someone for consistently going to green restaurants and stores. (Note: If anyone from foursquare is reading this, I’d love to help create this!)

2. This Summer of Social Good

Last year’s Summer for Social Good with Mashable was amazing and impactful- I would love to see “Green” play a big role in that in 2010!

3. Better Means

Better Means is a web platform my friend Shereef Bishay is part of creating. It provides a place where people can start and run organizations in a decentralized way and a structure that awards compensation and influence based on involvement. I would love to see new green ventures “spring” up there.

What do you think? What other ideas do you have?

In the comment section there was some back and forth about how some of
the suggestions could be used after the event as well, or about how
people were looking for more in-depth suggestions. It was a great list
of 7 social media resources that can extend the influence of an event.

Here are 7 ways to AMPLIFY those resources.

1.       Blog About It. Yes, blog about it before and after and
live-blog during it.

AMPLIFY: Inbound Links. The more inbound links you have, the better
you’ll rank. If you are going to be blogging before, during and after an
event that isn’t yours, talk to your friends and friendly bloggers about
getting them to highlight your coverage with a link to your blog under
the name of the event.

2.       Post Photos on Flickr. Yes, post all of yours to Flickr and
encourage anyone who attends the event to do so as well.

AMPLIFY: Animoto. Take all of the photos everyone posts, plug them into
Animoto (http://animoto.com) and you can have a branded slideshow on
steroids to send out to everyone as a thank you.

3.       Put it on Facebook. Yes, you should talk about your event on
your Fan Page. Yes, you should go an comment on the pages of those who
attend, keynote, or are other wise associated with your event.

AMPLIFY: If you have an event, you are a hub. Promote the folks who are
contributing to your event. Link to your keynote speakers’ blog, or post
photos of your field manager’s band. Offer a slice of your event to
people who are making it happen behind the scenes and you will get
slices back for the rest of the season.

4.       Post Photos to TwitPic. Yes, use twitpic because it’s popular,
easy and keeps your photos in one place.

AMPLIFY: 1) Curate these photos- everybody puts theirs on Flickr and you
pick the best 5, turn them into twitpics and tweet them.  2) Upload a
qualit picture or two of another event or recent project- visitors will
catch a glimpse of what else you’re up to.  3) Make sure to @message
everyone in those photos on twitter.

5.       Tweet the Event. Yes. We call it the Twitter Blitz. Do it.

AMPLIFY: Don’t just tweet, tweet in a targeted way. Research 10-25
twitter profiles that are related to your event (the local blog, the
account of the venue, sponsors, etc.) and start tweeting with them for a
few weeks before the event- that way the first time you talk to them
isn’t about that event, and when the event arrives, they’ll want to talk
to and about you.

6.       Use Hashtags. Yes. Absolutely.

AMPLIFY: Make sure this #hashtag is in pre-event literature, on signs at
the event, and mentioned in any speeches or messaging. Planning the
#hashtag is half the battle- the other half is making sure people know
what it is so they can use it.

7.       Livestream Your Event. I love this- it won’t work for every
event, but it’s a great option. You can livestream for free with an
iPhone and a Ustream app- that’s amazing.

AMPLIFY: If you are livestreaming, there is a lot of downtime. Figure
out a way to create something interesting to splice in. If you are doing
a conference, I’m talking about the part when everyone at the actual
conference is filing out to get coffee.

Let me know some other ways you could amplify these resources in the
comments.

(Also published at Attack!’s Social Media Event Strategy Fan Page)

OneDrop.org is an organization dedicated to raising awareness of people around the world who do not have access to clean water.

The organization will be hosting a 14 city, worldwide performance awareness-raising event with readings and musical performances from the likes of Shakira and U2. It will also be introduced and concluded by Cirque de Soleil and One Drop founder Guy Laliberté- from SPACE!

He’s the seventh private person to go to space on a private mission, and it’s sure to get notice to the pressing world water crisis.

Check out One Drop for the show- If you’re in California like me, it starts at 5:00pm.

The first two speakers were Razorfish and Mattel about their 50th Anniversary celebration for Barbie and MC Hammer (Yes, it was awesome. Yes, lots of jokes about Hammer time) talking about the disintegration of the classic music industry business model and what that means for artists.

I was struck that the entire Barbie campaign was about imagination: they had Barbie write her own blog, tweet, and have her own Facebook fan page. They targeted women 18-34 and focused on nostalgia- basically, an emotionally-centered campaign.

Then, MC Hammer got up there and talked about how the classic marketing and communication models don’t work anymore and how bands can (and now have the need to) make the connections on their own- transparency as marketing.

It got me thinking about the green world, especially the blog and social media space within the green world. For a lot of people I meet, many of the topics near and dear to the hearts of green people (polar ice melting, greenhouse gases, rainforest destruction, rising sea levels, even water shortages or issues) are largely imaginary- as in, they are not part of everyday life and do not have immediate effects. There is an emotional connection there, but the emotion tends to be fear, confusion and misunderstanding. There is no nostalgia to work with like Barbie.

Transparency, though, is strong. There is plenty of green writing out there, from triple-bottom line advocates to environmental alarmists- the people who I see influencing other people, though, are the ones who understand that it isn’t the issue they need to connect with other people around, it’s the people they need to connect with. Somebody like Jerry James Stone has a huge effect in the online space because he is prolific with social media- and that gets his message to a huge audience. Someone like Rob Reed with Max Gladwell talks about and uses social media as one tool for the green movement- neither social media or green information will change the world, but meeting and knowing the people behind the information does.

My take? Green businesses and green issues need strong social advocates and good communicators, especially when we spend time talking about somewhat imaginary issues that make emotional connections. Connection with people means a better chance that hear your message.

Dramatic day driving across the Golden Gate Bridge to Fort Baker and Cavallo Point- the fog hung low around the bridge crossing the water- it was like waking up in the bustle of the city and traveling through the dense, all encompasing fog of deep thought crossing the bay, and then arriving across the water at the place where the future is born. At least that’s how it felt.

Some hightlights, for me:

I had the privelege to sit down and talk with Ford Tamer, one of the partners at Khosla Ventures. I’ll have my interview with him coming up soon.

I got to ride a moutnain bike- electric scooter hybrid. The dealer told me the goal is to have batteries available for rent everywhere- just pull into your 7-11 and pick up a new battery and slide it in.

I learned that a good low-flow showerhead will cut water usage by a third to 25 liters. But if I skip a steak or a hamburger I’m saving the 6,000 liters it took to raise the animal.

I saw a waste management panel where three grown men smiled as they talked excitedly about how sewage would become energy in the near future.

I love the confidence and hope that makes the swagger of entrepreneurs, and I love the awkward assurance of inventors. Conferences are strange beasts- I found myself sipping a can of Coca-Cola while listening to people talk about how renewable energy and water management. I also found myself driving home and sitting on the Bridge in commuter traffic. But, I also found myself more excited and confident that the money and the smart people will find each other, that I can be part of that, and that it won’t happen overnight-

We may be in the fog of the bridge across the water, but if I keep driving (hopefully in my metaphorical prius), I will come to the other side, to the future, to the place where what was a dream is now reality.

Cheers to innovation.

You would think people would be falling all over themselves to fund businesses that want to help and profit at the same time. And other than ego, what reason does a government have to interfere with a private business doing something for the public good?

That said, I was able to sit in on a great panel called “Towards Triple Impact: Sustainable Ventures in Developing Countries.” The panel was put together and moderated by Sahba Sobhani of the United Nations Development Programme. The panelists were Harish Hande of Selco Solar Light, Carlos Wills of DW Tech, and Crispin Pemberton-Pigott of New Dawn Engineering.

The core message I took away is that these are extremely dedicated and capable entrepreneurs who need just a little venture capital and the governments in their countries (India, Colombia and Swaziland, respectively) to get out of the way.

Their passion and issues on the ground got me excited about the possibilities of social entrepreneurism. And cheers to Sahba Sohani for putting together a great panel.

Follow this link to hear some interviews with the panelists from Towards Triple Impact.

As a green writer and social media strategist living in San Francisco, I meet the most interesting and innovative people I can imagine.

This blog is dedicated to shining a spotlight on business owners, innovators and risk-takers.