Convergence 2008 Day Blog

I’m going to call this a day blog as I won’t be live blogging per se, moreso collecting thoughts, sharing links, and posting information throughout the day.

Right now on the Convergence 2008 main stage Grant McCracken is talking about Digital Cultures:

McCracken looks at the places where culture and commerce, anthropology and economics meet most often: marketing in general, branding in particular, popular culture, Hollywood, advertising, television, magazines, and new media. Through his highly-customized ethnographic and anthropological research, he provides clients with a comprehensive but incisive review of contemporary culture, its foundations, current state and future trends and strategies for managing it. [Convergence]

VIDFEST’s International Partnering Forum (IPF) is taking place down the road at the Granville Island Hotel from 9:30am until 5:00pm, running in tandem with Convergence here at the Arts Club Theatre. Also under the VIDFEST umbrella is VIGS, the Vancouver International Games Summit taking place downtown at the Hyatt.

Tonight will wrap up with the “Schmooze Lounge” at the GI Hotel, and this will all resume tomorrow with the Creative Exchange Conference, another Schmooze Lounge, then the POP VOX Awards gala.

With all of the formal stuff out of the way, I’m going to follow Phillip’s Twitters to see what I’m missing on the main stage right now.

Update: The conversation during Grant McCracken’s keynote involved a lot of Twitter talk.

For her question about Twitterers in Vancouver Heather (who is currently my side-by-side MacBook blogging buddy at the Arts Club) got a copy of Grant’s book.

Update: I’m sitting in on the “Giving Your Brand Away: Brand Communities” panel on the main stage at the Arts Club Theatre. “How do you harness the evangelical impulse of these customers and manage the politics of others?” The panelists are from McDonald’s (speaking to engaging employees with online surveys, blogs and discussions instead of paper newsletters), Future Shop, Vancity (talking about ChangeEverything.ca) and Tourism BC (presenting the HelloBC website using Flickr, YouTube etc).

Update: Raul live blogged my panel with Kate and Darren. Due to the great conversation flow and discussion there were some questions that were missed but I wanted to address the one about negative comments. We all said to embrace them from a corporate perspective and use them as feedback, having an open discussion for the better of your brand and its credibility with your consumers. However the second part of that question was about negative comments on a personal blog, to which I just have to say it’s your blog – you have veto power – sure being open, honest and transparent has its advantages but at the end of the day I have the ability to click “delete” on anything that is posted, commented or submitted here.

Another note is that my fellow panelists receive more pitches than I do. I probably get about 5 a week so I know what to look for, what is out there, but as far as the “firehose” of PR campaigns knocking down my door, it’s pretty minuscule in the grand scheme of things.

With that, I really enjoyed being on the panel although I was really nervous as usual. I hope folks got something out of our Blogger Relations insights.

Photo credit: Raul on Flickr

Photo credit: Raul on Flickr

I’m currently debating whether to head to the Happy Hour or to hop a False Creek ferry over to John’s office, pick him up, hit up the grocery store, then head home for some Bollwitt time. I just polled Twitter and so far it’s split down the middle, with 50% of people saying I should go chill and the other half encouraging me to come out to the Schmooze event… just waiting for that tie breaker right now.