Let the madness begin.  The next three months are going to be crazy busy.  And, in full transparency, I will be speaking at each of the events below. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that there will be some pretty amazing speakers bringing their “A” game to each of these events; and some really good content as well!

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Social Crush

Sep 13 – 14, 2011 in Charlotte, North Carolina

The conference producers, Tim Moore and Ty Downing are two of the nicest, most down-to-earth guys I have ever met. The entire team at Maximum Design are are all folks I hold in very high regard! Truly awesome team! What I love about this conference is that every speaker gives actionable next steps for the attendees. It’s not fluff at all.  The events are also in locations that are often ignored by larger conference organizers. Other notable speakers include Tae Kim from Google and Skeeter Harris who I met at the last Social Crush and is a great speaker on the topic of social media marketing.

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Lithium Likes To Love

Sep 14th in Palo Alto, Sep 15th in Orange County

Lithium is going on a road trip to places like Silicon Valley, Orange County, Dallas, Chicago, New York and many others.  Lithium is an enterprise social technology firm and offers community applications, social CRM solutions and online monitoring.  Other speakers include: Becky Carroll, David Armano, Peter Kim and Sean McDonald. During theses sessions, I will be discussing the adoption of social business technologies and strategies; the evolution of social business and the transformation that organizations are going through from a social brand to a fully collaborative social business.

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Employee Communications, PR and Social Media Summit

Sep 16, 2011  in Redmond, Washington (Microsoft Campus)

This is the second Ragan conference I have attended and spoken at. From my experience, these conferences are filled with great content and dynamic speakers. These events usually take place at various companies like Cisco and Microsoft. Also presenting is my good friend Maria Ogneva from Yammer, Shel Holtz, Justina Chen, and Scott Pitasky from Microsoft.

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Foodservice Social Media Universe 2011

Sep 18 – 20, 2011 in San Francisco

This will be my first time speaking at a food related conference. Great news is that Jeremiah Owyang is kicking off the day at the keynote. I am really excited to be sitting on a panel with Janet Hoffmann, President, Hoffmann and Associates and Avery Block, Social Engagement & Brand Champion, Taco Bell Corp. The topic – Social Media Within Your Organization – Getting the C-Suite Activated. Other notable speakers include Ric Pratte and Mike Schneider. Hats off to Sarah Atkinson and Emerald Reilly for putting together a fabulous lineup!

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The Insider’s Guide to Social Media for Business

Sep 21, 2011 in Sacramento, California

This luncheon was prepared and coordinated by my good friend Alejandro Reyes in conjunction with the American Marketing Association in Sacramento Valley.  I met Alejandro a few years back on Twitter. He is the man to know in Sac Town and is the founder of the Sacramento Tweetup.  I will be doing a book signing at the luncheon so if you are from that area, please do stop by.

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From Social Brand to Social Business

Sep 27, 2011  9:00 AM (webinar)

This is MarketingProfs Webinar where I will be discussing many of the same principles as discussed in my book.  The webinar is sponsored by Vitrue – a social application that helps brands them maximize their social community engagement through a Social Relationship Management (SRM) platform.

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How to Create and Implement a Winning Social Media Strategy

Webinar Sep 6 – 30 (various times/dates)

This is a webinar put together by Brazen U, which is part of Brazen Careerist, Inc., a career-management platform for high achieving young professionals. They offer expert professional development programs including online bootcamps, courses, webinars, e-books and more. Other notable speakers include Frank Eliason, Amy Porterfield, Scott Monty, Tracy Terry, Dr. Natalie Petouhoff and many other awesome people. Biggups to Whitney Parker and Ashley Hoffman for organizing what I think will be a fabulous virtual event.

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Actionable Listening on the Social Web

Oct 6th in San Francisco & Oct 8th in New York

I have presented at two Meltwater Client Summits (Meltwater is an Edelman Client) in the past – Berlin and London. I will be presenting a similar deck to this one with some new additions. The synopsis of the presentation is that innovation and advocacy start with brands listening on the social web. I will cite several case studies and give the audience actionable next steps for attendees to take back to their organizations and begin planning.

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Book Signing with the Dallas Social Media Club

Oct 20, 2011 from 6 – 9 pm in Dallas Texas

Thank you to Mike Merrill for inviting me to speak at the Dallas SMC event. I have never been to Dallas so I am looking forward to it. I will be taking the attendees through a deck I prepared that really captures the essence of my book.

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Social Media Impact on Companies and Organizations

Oct 27 & 28 in Marrakech, Morocco

If you happen to be in the Middle East or North Africa, I would love for you to stop by. Still working out all the details. Will update this later when I have more information.

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BlogWorld & New Media Expo

Nov. 3–5, 2011 in Los Angeles

I have been to every BlogWorld since its inception almost 5 years ago and spoke at the last four.  This is — hands down — the best social media event ever. I have met so many new friends, colleagues and even new business opportunities. The keynote speakers this year will surely be awesome – Peter Shankman and Amber Naslund. Other notable speakers and friends are Jason Falls, CC Chapman and colleague David Armano among many other awesome individuals. What I love about this event is that there is an entire track dedicated to Military content, which is a testament of Rick Calvert and his support for our troops overseas.

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Digital Marketing Conference

December 11-12th in Portland Oregon

I will  be presenting a keynote. More information to come.

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Please consider supporting Not For Sale – a global organization fighting to abolish human and sex trafficking. 100% of all book royalties are being donated to their organization.

The agenda is based entirely on the feedback from previous attendees and covers all the biggest issues faced by corporate social media practitioners. I wrote about their report on corporate social media a few weeks ago that many of you enjoyed and share. Here is a link to the brochure if you are interested. Also as a friend/reader of this blog,  I have negotiated a special discount – namely 10% discount of passes – just quote my name when booking.

Hopefully I will see you then!

The conference was fantastic. Day one speakers included Michael Slaby, LaSandra Brill, David Armano, Chris Lightner, Steve Rubel and many other awesome individuals. Day two started with a keynote from Jeremiah Owyang, which I unfortunately missed (but he did an awesome job, see below video). Many industry experts were there, including Benn Parr from Mashable as well as several Edelman clients. The conference was a huge success.

Check out the highlights below:

I also had the opportunity to chair the next day and also serve as the moderator for several panels, mostly about mobile and social gaming; two topics I am not too familiar with. It was a long day, but it was definitely fun.

For me, the true value of attending conferences is meeting people, as well as seeing old friends. As usual, it was great to catch up with Brian Solis, Chris Heuer, Mike Demler, Rachel Polish (who rocked the conference), Jacob Morgan, Derrick Van Der Maden as well as some friends from Razorfish. I also had a chance to finally meet Krystyl in person who I have exchanged emails with in the past.

I also had the opportunity to meet some awesome new people starting with my boy Tim Moore, President of SayitSocial who I learned was a huge Lakers fan like myself. I also met Ty Downing who works with Tim. I met Dallas Lawrence, Angel Gambino, Ali Moiz, Matt Wise, Justin Kan and Ben Parr; all of whom were excellent speakers.

Here are some photos I captured from the conference.

I also moderated a panel titled, How Big Brands Engage in Real time Conversations with Customers. The panelists included my close friends Becky Carroll and Tom Diederich.  Yes, the panel rocked, thanks to the panelists.

Lastly, had a huge opportunity to participate as Mixologist for the event, along with Stephanie Miller from Return Path, Jay Bear and Beth Harte from MarketingProfs. Our job was to attend each session in our respective tracks, take concise notes and then summarize some key takeaways so that the attendees can leave with actionable learning.