Anyone Coming to SOBCon08?

I am entirely tickled to announce that I’m going to Chicago to attend SOBCon at the beginning of May. (As a marketer, I have to say the name of this event causes me physical pain, but never mind.) I can’t wait to meet some virtual pals and make a whole lot of new friends.

The conference is being billed as "Biz School for Bloggers," and there are some heavy hitters coming. Brian Clark’s going to talk about online business models that work, Chris Garrett will be riffing on editorial ROI, and I’m especially excited to hear what Chris Brogan has to say about new media communities.

I’m even more excited to be meeting my blogging cohorts F2F. When I started out with all this social media stuff (we used to have modems that attached to our computers and made funny squawking sounds, my children. And we walked twelve miles in the snow, uphill in both directions, just to be able to log in . . .), there was a significant F2F component–the rowdy and invigorating WOPs (another bad acronym–WELL Office Parties) thrown by The WELL. Virtual community has never been just about pixels to me–I’ve always associated userids with quirky, difficult, lovable, annoying, messy and unpredictable human beings.

Plus, maybe I can convince Liz Strauss I should be on her "SOB list" (that’s successful and outstanding bloggers).

If you’ll be there, leave a comment and let us know! And if you’re a blogger and you’d like to become a better businessperson (or a businessperson who wants a stealth tactic to deeply, quickly "get it" about social media . . . ), think about registering. The conference fee is very fair as these things go (half what the Ragan PR organization will charge you for their social media conference), and the group promises to be first-rate.