Super Panel on Influence August 24, 2010

Influence, online influence - popular phrases these days. With this super panel we'll discuss all the major aspects of this topic: what is online influence, does it makes sense for marketers to reach out to those "influencers"? Are there any tools that can determine real influence, etc..

R “Ray” Wang is a Partner with Altimeter Group and the author of the popular enterprise software blog “A Software Insider’s Point of View”. The blog focuses on enterprise apps strategy, vendor selection, software contract negotiations, and emerging business and technology trends.

Michael Brito is currently the Vice President of Social Media at Edelman Digital. His principal areas of expertise include digital marketing, social media and integrated brand marketing communications through the social web. He currently provides strategic counsel, guidance and best practices to one of Edelman’s top global accounts.

Michael joined Edelman in November 2009 after two years of working for Intel Corporation where he served as a global social media strategist focusing on the consumer segment. He was instrumental in driving social media programs, campaigns and initiatives emphasizing authenticity and long-term relationship building with influencers and consumers. He is currently on the Interim Board of Directors for the Social Media Club, a business advisor for Izea, Inc. and is the founder of Silicon Valley Tweetup. He is a frequent speaker at BlogWorld Expo, MarketingProfs Digital Mixer as well as a guest lecturer at local universities in the Bay Area to include Cal Berkeley, Stanford and Saint Mary’s College.

Barbara French is a marketing consultant and online publisher based near San Francisco. Her areas of expertise include influencer programs, industry analysts and analyst relations, strategic alliances, channel and partner programs, corporate marketing, and product marketing.
Barbara is co-founder and managing editor of Tekrati, the world’s most popular source for directories and news on the high tech industry analysts. Tekrati websites serve more than 150,000 unique visitors each year.

Ali McCourt is a product manager for TurboTax, and manages the TurboTax Inner Circle - a
group of 25,000 customer volunteers who work alongside product and marketing teams to help
build better products and services. Ali has been with Intuit for three years, and in that time has
won a Forrester Groundswell award for Company Transformation, and was also a team member
that won Intuit’s Speed in Action award in 2009 for applying rapid prototyping process to quickly
test concepts with customers.

Tony Welch is a Community Manager who loves talking to customers. He's also a contributing blogger for the Hewlett-Packard community site, The Next Bench (www.TheNextBench.com) Prior to joining HP, Tony was at Sun Microsystems. He was an integral part of the team that created the first blogging platform and strategy. He also had a major role in building and revamping several of the major corporate Web sites including java.sun.com, Sun.com, and Java.com. He also managed several Technology Showcases at Sun's JavaOne conference.

Official Website: http://www.meetup.com/BayAreaExecutives/calendar/14281183/