mesh news

The conference wars have fired up again – though I have to say that this time, it’s kind of refreshing to see a little pushback to the whole unconference "thing". This is not to say that unconferences are wrong, or bad, or whatever, but that I don’t think that they are the Only Way any more than anything is the Only Way.

We are trying to find the Third Way with mesh. Not your Father’s Oldsmobile of a conference, but not a fully unstructured thing either. We are trying to find a way to be respectful of the varying degrees of subject matter expertise among the participants, while being engaging and participative.

Mark publishes his conference wishlist here (not like that’s news for the rest of us :-)) and Mathew talks about our approach here. And hey, I’m even into it on my own blog here.

What do you think?

Lots of talk today about whether money can be made from blogging, with the WSJ publishing a story on it (just the type of story to get the often-inward-looking blogosphere fired into a navel gazing frenzy. But I digress :-)).

I guess it sort of depends on who and how you ask, right? I mean, if you were to ask many of the folks coming to speak at mesh, who happen to blog, whether "blogging makes money," many of them would likely say "Not directly, but indirectly? You better believe it."

I mean, think of the untold millions spent on traditional advertising and PR to create just the type of profile and voice that some people have built for themselves and their businesses via blogging and social media. How can you tally the value of creating your own soapbox? In traditional media, I guess overall marketing efficiency metrics are viewed as the most important gauge of the effectveness of spend, but can one really say, categorically, that traditional PR "makes money"? It’s tough. But when put in that context? Wow, blogging "makes money" in spades.

Does it do so directly? Not often. Just like only PR practicitioners, by a tight definition, are the only ones who directly "make money" from PR. But indirectly? Bloggers, their organizations and PR firms Clients, without question.

That’s the way to look at it, I think.

Dave Winer comments here, mesh speaker Paul Kedrosky here, and mesh speaker Scott Karp here. Mark thinks aloud here. Mathew goes deep here.

Certainly food for discussion in the marketing and PR streams at mesh.