Blog World Expo Part Three: The players

One of the best things about conferences is the chance to learn about other companies doing cool things and the people behind the companies. Blog World did not disappoint. There were people there that we had met at Defrag earlier in the week and lots of companies that I had never heard of. When there was time, I tried to walk around the exhibitor space (all 14,000 square feet of it) and check out what was being offered (from the 87 different companies present). I avoided the booths that promised to turn my blog into a cash machine, but there were a few companies that did catch my eye...

A service that lets you post to your blog from your mobile device. Everyone was talking about Utterz and using it at the conference. These guys were our neighbors on the exhibitor floor and good ones at that, loading us down with Utterz swag. I haven't muttered an Utterz yet but how could you not like a company where the booth dudes dress up like cows to go party in Vegas after the conference?

MindTouch has an open source wiki and an awesome evangelist in their co-founder Aaron Fulkerson. I saw this guy speak on a panel at Defrag about social networking the enterprise and was impressed. Then, at Blog World, Aaron shared the time that MindTouch was getting on the exhibitor stage, giving us a chance to pitch Lijit. MindTouch is doing cool things with wikis but in terms of building community, Aaron is a fantastic guy to know.

Intense Debate is trying to make sense of the wide world of commenting that goes on the depths of a blog. A useful blog tool from a start-up in Boulder? Sounds like someone else we know. Josh has helped me out on occasion and was sport enough at Blog World to allow us to turn him into a Lijit wijit. I'll be implementing ID on my blog soon and can't wait to have Josh at the upcoming Evangicamp.

madKast is yet another useful blogging tool from a Boulder start-up. (Is it something in the water?) I use madKast on my blog; it's the little green icon on the right of my post titles. Besides being cool guys, their service allows my readers to share my blog content in a variety of ways. I had met some of these guys before around town, but had the chance to talk to them more at Blog World. Josh, the madKast evangelist, is organizing the upcoming Evangicamp and I couldn't be more excited.

I just met the CI people for the first time at Blog World. It was one of those weird situations where I was following their director of marketing on twitter, not knowing she was their director of marketing. Imagine my surprise, when we figure this out over sake in Vegas and I freak out about meeting a twitter friend in real life. (It happened two times last week!) Collective Intellect monitors blogs to figure out what people are saying about your brand. They, too, are in Boulder. Leave it to Las Vegas to bring us all together.

Before Fraser worked for Adaptive Blue, he signed up for a Lijit wijit, had some problems and contacted me about them. We pushed a fix for his bug and he has loved us since. (He might have to fight Eric Olson for ultimate Lijit fanboy status!) I met Fraser in person at Defrag and heard the Adaptive Blue CEO, Alex Iskold, give a talk about structured attention. Then at Blog World, I got to share the stage with Fraser and learn even more about what Adaptive Blue is doing. With their SmartLinks, they allow blog readers to have a more meaningful experience by receiving more information from the content on your blog. Cool stuff from cool guys. Here are the Adaptive Blue boys talking about their time in Vegas at Blog World...

The boys of Adaptive Blue from Tara Anderson on Vimeo.

That is just a small sampling of the goodness that was present at Blog World. I'd like to conclude with one of the most interesting things in terms of film that I saw at the conference. Blogging: the movie is in production now and will be coming to a movie theater near you soon! Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the theater...

Comments

[Alex Iskold]

Rocking!

Seems so long ago... I feel like I need another conference reload ;)

Alex

[Robin]

Hey Tara,

It was so great to finally meet you too -- took me a few to figure out which of my twitter mates you were!

Thanks for the "girl" time, in start up land it is always so hard to get!!

[Josh]

Thx Tara! I can't believe it has been a week since Vegas!