This week the 2nd Syndicate conference kicks off in San Francisco. I was at the first one in New York last spring and I can only hope this show reflects an up tick in the adoption of blogs and blogging. There's a lot of promise in the medium and excitement in advance of San Fran was gathering momentum all last week. I guess tomorrow's posts will tell.
We're looking forward to some big announcements. Yahoo! commanded everyone's attention with its purchase of del.icio.us last week, which puts some serious horsepower behind the concept of social bookmarking/tagging. That's a reason to be optimistic. In the months between the first Syndicate and this one there was a lot of what Jeremy Pepper likes to call "navel gazing." Others have noted this same feeling but in slightly different terms.
I hope there comes from this show some serious ideas about how to bring blogging more into the mainstream. How do you make it even *more* intuitive and less about which technology is behind what platform and other arguments the average information consumer can't absorb in a busy day.
That's the audience PR people have to reach. Web two dot oh and everyone involved in it aren't the audience (not all of it, anyway). Their contributions are making it easier, I think. A little. I've been speaking with some companies that are really excited about blogging, and we're going to ease them into traffic the same way we here at PAN merged into it.
It'd be good to hear some stories from PR folks about their experiences bringing existing or potential clients up to speed on blogging (keeping names out of it, of course). What resonates with them the most? Which audiences do you find are the most receptive? Least receptive within the organization?