1. Event schedule :

• Research - Note what you want to see and get a sense of what you might ask and/or decide what the business value of your interaction at the session might be.

2. Google Blogsearch and Technorati :

• Research - Look for event references to the event, company announcements, signs of business opportunity.

3. Google News and Google searches (in addition to 2. above) :

• Research – Look for industry news around the event, to understand what might be impacting the people you’re mingling with.  

4. Web pages & Site Links :

• Research – of the exhibitors and sponsors for the event. Are they a prospective vendor/client for you? Any business value in meeting any of them?

5. Flickr :

• Research - Look for recent pictures of attendees or other people you hope to meet at the event.

6. Blogs :

• Research - of the prospective attendees or business people for ideas of how things are going in their lives or in their businesses…. It’s free intelligence before a meeting.
• Content Prep - Put up a few post-dated posts and have a great post launch on the day of the event.

Consider writing posts that might help you form conversations at the event. For instance, if you’re looking to work with restaurants, write a blog post about how you’d help restaurants improve sales. Another example: blog about people you know who might be at the event that you hope to connect with and write about what you might want to talk with them about. For other examples, see Brogan’s 100 blog topics. This way, people who might investigate your blog ahead of time can know what you’re thinking about.

Consider making a video about something and posting it to your blog. Videos will give people an even better opportunity to observe you and see what you’re about. It might also help with the people recognition factor, as seeing you in motion might improve their chance of seeing you at an event.

Sometimes an event has a blog. It might be neat to see if you can guest post on it. That might up your chance of meeting folks at the event.

7. Facebook/Twitter Searches & Streams :

• Research – See if anyone’s talking about the event you’re attending, to determine if you want to follow them and start conversations ahead of the event. Look for the personal news top of mind of the people you’ll say hi at the conference.
• Content Prep –  If you’re looking to connect at the event, some of your content should be outreach related, via services like Twitter or Facebook. Message the world using the event’s hash tag (if it has one), and/or the city/state (or province, etc) where the event is held. Thus, people using Twitter Search or poking around via Facebook might catch you in a search and engage you.
• Promo - Send message saying that you’ll be visiting ____ conference in ____ (city) and let people know you’re coming. See if you can strike up friendships ahead of time. Maybe mention some of the stuff you’re looking to do, business-wise.

8. LinkedIn :

• Research – Look for the city where you’ll be attending, and/or for any of the speakers’ or exhibitors’ names to see their professional profile.
• Promo – Send some personal emails to people that you might want to meet in the target city. They don’t necessarily have to meet you at the conference, but you might be able to schedule coffee.

Other Prep

1. Business cards - Order fresh ones. Go to somewhere like Overnight Prints and pick up some new cards. Here’s the thing: make the NAME part very large. Make your primary mode of requested contact come first. Make it VERY clear what you do for business. Make sure you add the kind of offering you’re putting out there for the event (or for the next several events, if that makes sense).
2. Laptop – Backup  before you travel. Consider any extra batteries or power supplies you might need to bring with you.
3. If you’re thinking of liveblogging the event, prepare ahead of time (here’s a great article at Web Worker Daily about that).
4. If you’re going to take lots of photos or videos at the event, check your gear to make sure you’ve got everything (charger, media transfer tools, spare whatevers).
5. If you’ve got a business offer to promote at an event, practice and practice and practice how you’re going to talk about it. Make it crisp, clear and easy to say. Practice believing in yourself.
6. Remember that not meeting someone at an event isn’t always the end of the world. There are other chances, other times. Just the same, if it’s the kind of event where people have traveled to be there, take every opportunity to reach out. It’s harder to recreate an opportunity once everyone’s gone home.
7. Remember to give your family a bit of extra love before leaving for the event. Take them out to dinner, and/or give the little ones some extra fun. Make a game of showing where you’ll be via Google Maps, and switch to Satellite or Street View to show them the visuals instead of just the map. Give everyone a chance to connect while you’re on the trip via Skype video, so they can stay in touch. Easily.

First, I read Chillycraps’ Pinging Party post and found the official recording of the live Ping.sg webcast on Ustream:
.

This recording, however is almost three hours long! :-p So, here’s a quick guide to this video:

• 0:00 NTT and Rinaz warming up the camera, people streaming in, testing on stage…
• 39:00 Award Presentation begins with MCs Brendan and Rinaz.
• 45:00 Most Entertaining Blog: Chillycraps
• 51:15 Most Interactive Blog: EastCoastLife
• 58:00 Most Insightful Blog: Cobalt Paladin (entertaining video around 62:00)
• 71:00 Best Photoblog: Keropok Man
• 81:00 Best Blog Design: Veron
• 88:30 Most Controversial Post: EastCoastLife
• 97:35 Most Entertaining Post: EastCoastLife
• 103:42 Most Insightful Post: dk99
• 115: Best Citizen Journalist Post: dk99
• 120:30 Post of The Year: EastCoastLife
• 125:30 Blog Of The Year: Veron (Suddenly, there was no sound!)
• 131:00 How Ping.sg Got Started (Haha! Uzyn used the word “Web 2.0″ to describe Ping.sg!)

Next, read Chillycraps’ What the Fish post and found two amusing video recordings by Rinaz:

.

1. Fishes! (Technology: Reactrix)

“Visitors to the Ping.sg website will be able to see what is going on at the fair and chat online with the stall holders and visitors to the fair… At scheduled intervals, the emcee for the BuyButtonz event will also be delivering reports live from the fair. Interviews with BuyButtonz CEO, Ping.sg and the various stall holders at the fair will also be webcasted.”

This integration is believed to be the first to connect the traditional fair format with the online world via video streaming. Usually, live events are covered by local radio and TV stations.

So far, confirmed stall holders at the BuyButtonz Fair include ladies intimate wear ClosetLingerie.com, homegrown designer-wear Caramel.com.sg and T-Shirts vendor WantonDoodles.com . Each vendor will be bringing a selection of uniquely designed products that is normally available only online. Other online vendors include Good Image Tea BioLifeMarketing.com.sg, Animation Production and Training Intense-Animation.com, discount magazines outlet YourMamaShop.com, adventure travel company OhanaAdventure.com and many more.

BuyButtonz is an online payment solution that makes it easy for online payments to be collected securely. Ping.sg, a metablog popular amongst Singaporeans, is the official online media for the fair. Registered users of Ping.sg will stand to receive up to 5 free BuyButtonz on-top of the One free BuyButtonz that is given out to all Singaporeans.

Among them, I like Rinaz’s writeup the most: What a great summary and such a cute video, especially the last part where the scenes and voices were fast forwarded! And thanks for the kind words. At closeup, Rinaz looked really pretty. And she was so witty and pleasant to be with.

I’ve also enjoyed the company of the others, especially those sitting right next to me: Tstar, Ridzuan and Uzyn. It was a great meetup, and I truly look forward to the next one.

First, Benjamin Koe, in Almost social media (Nexus 2007), had been most flattering:

“Although the speaker line up included Nathan Torkington (O’Reilly) and Cory Ondrejka (Linden Labs), I learned the most from a fellow Singaporean: the blogger known as ClappingTrees…

“This happened in a panel discussion hosted by Kevin which included Kathy Teo (CNET Asia), Jennifer Lewis (STOMP), James Seng (Tomorrow.SG). As the discussions went on about crowdsourcing the media, I began to wonder why the distributed nature of free content creation was embraced, but gatekeeping was left to a bunch of editors… Then came ClappingTrees to the mic and spoke the words that were on my mind.

“The question (paraphrased) was basically: In a world of social gatekeeping (think digg), why do the above crowdsourcing media qualify as gatekeepers of content that’s not even theirs?“

NEXT, THREE BLOGGERS who mentioned me (that I know of) had been quite factual in their reporting. For example,

Vanessa wrote:

“Question time. Josephine reminds us of Sim Wong Hoo’s old article on Singapore’s no U-turn policy, while in the US everyone can do a U-turn unless they’re told otherwise (it’s an allusion to our over-reliance on rules to limit what people can do). James responds that attempts in Singapore to form a Digg-like community has yet to really take off.

This is the point where Uzyn from Ping.sg shows himself and we give him a round of applause.”

DK wrote:

“Uzyn stole the stage for 5 minutes halfway thru the panel. It started with Clappingtree talking about tomorrow.sg’s way of selecting article and how difficult it was for bloggers to gain readership. She mentioned about ping.sg which suddenly drew lots of attention among the audience.”

Marina (a.k.a. Rinaz) wrote:

“In the middle of the session, a lady from the floor, Clappingtree, asked the panelists on why there should be a censorship. She reasonsed that everyone, as long as they are within social values, should have a voice and a chance to be heard. She mentioned that ping.sg, a blog aggregator was a site where every blog had an equal chance of being read.

“After the session, Uzyn, creator of ping.sg got hounded by fans.”

Then surprise of surprises… reading the writeup of Kevin Lim (the moderator of the session) gave me a shock and an aftershock. Initially, he wrote (the same thing) in three separate blogs on his site:

“James took the opportunity to explain how news gets published on Tomorrow.sg. He considers Tomorrow.sg as a form of human news filter, where they depend on a diverse set of editors to create balanced gatekeeping. From geeks to celebrities, conservatives to liberals, tomorrow.sg has them all. Still, this has never been enough for some bloggers (JK> Here is a link to my blog. And wow! I’ve become “some bloggers”), and tomorrow.sg has constantly come under fire for being biased given their set of editors. This issue has been beaten to death years ago, and there are always ways to get around this.”

Later, he revised this writeup in one of the blogs as follows:

“James took the opportunity to explain how news gets published on Tomorrow.sg. He considers Tomorrow.sg as a form of human news filter, where they depend on a diverse set of editors to create balanced gatekeeping. From geeks to celebrities, conservatives to liberals, tomorrow.sg has them all. Still, this has never been enough for some bloggers. Some time ago, I witnessed that the power law was developing in the Singapore blogosphere, and it was Clappingtrees (aka JK) who revitalized this idea at the panel’s Q&A, by *arguing* that popular blog aggregators such as Tomorrow.sg had *biased editors*. I do feel that this issue has been beaten to death years ago and that the more productive route would be to try new ways of getting around this.” (Note: Asterisks added by me.)

Come, come, all of you who were there and listening to me. Tell me what did I say?

Afternote 30-03-2007: Just found CoolInsights’ comments on what I said.

Here’s a humorous video made in support of Shutdown Day 2007, to show that “You don’t have to turn your computer on to have fun with it”:

The rationale is great, but the day is a problem! So unfortunately, for all attendees and organizers of Nexus 2007 in Singapore, the answer would have to be a resounding “No!”

Nexus promises to be “a highly interactive conference where we discuss fundamental changes happening in business and technology, and how you can take a lead in them!” AND to make the event better, Nexus organizer is now using a WYSIWYG wiki to elicit and compile ideas (for example, on Session Discussions and Community Gatherings) from everyone.

What sets this event apart from prior local events seems to be the strong government, stat board and industry backing that this one managed to harness — sponsorship by StarHub and Accenture, partners from NTUC Youth and TiE Singapore, advisors from IDA, NUS, ISS, SMU, etc. and speakers from Microsoft, Salesforce.com APAC, Yahoo! SEA, Google, CNET Networks Asia Pacific, Intel China, IDC Asia/Pacific, Insead, etc. Local Web 2.0 representatives include Tomorrow.sg and Stomp.com.sg.

HOW DID The Digital Movement manage to gartner so much sponsorship and support from so many industry players? What’s their secret weapon? When asked, one of the organizers laughingly wrote: “Haha, we got no secret. Just hardwork, a lot of leveraging on windows of opportunity, and a garang just do it spirit. ”

Anyway, the topics to be covered include:

• Asia Pacific 2.0: Regional Technology Leaders on Emerging Opportunities
• Crowdsourcing The Media: Mainstream Media and Bloggers
• Future of the Web: Web Giants Google, Amazon, Yahoo, Salesforce.com
• The Mobile Web Explosion: Opportunities ahead in the convergence
• Open Source Communities: Innovation Unlimited
• Global Startups: Share Their War Stories

Really geeky Web 2.0 speakers include:

• Nathan Torkington, OReily Radar, Perl Foundation Board Member
• Andreas Weigend, Former Chief Scientist, Amazon.com

In fact, there will be a Geek-Out session on 22 March evening where local technologists can show their products/services to Nathan and Andreas if it is:

• A technological innovation
• Related to the web, mobile or the latest technologies out there
• Or just damn cool.

Will you be there? I know I will. Will Nexus 2007 become an effective catalyst and leader for Web 2.0 in Singapore? What do you think?