Running around trying to keep up with everyone on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and the rest of the Social Web?

Pull over at the next stop. Take a break. Vemma is setting up a new station to fuel you and the rest of the TechSet at Affiliate Summit in New York.

It’s time for another TechSet Blogger Lounge…

Join hosts Stephanie Agresta and Brian Solis as we collaborate and celebrate how far we’ve traveled and navigate where we’re going next.  Veema has outfitted the lounge with everything we need to work and play, and along with Stephanie and Brian, there will be more than enough energy to keep bloggers and affiliates techsetting around the Web.

For those looking for a great example of Social Media in action, make sure to connect with the Vemma team. They’ll share everything they’re doing to build buzz, stay top of mind, and spark conversations without having to maintain a retail presence for their awesome energy drinks.

Vemma is a privately-owned business in Scottsdale, Arizona that manufactures and distributes Verve, Shot and the newly released Vemma NEXT.

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Now available! (click to purchase):

by Brian Solis

Internet Week NY 2009 has come and gone, but its legacy will carry us throughout the coming year until we convene again at IWNY 2010.

PepsiCo and the TechSet were charged with kicking-off Internet Week by bubbling-up innovation and spotlighting global entrepreneurship at the Bubble Lounge on a beautiful New York evening. Dare I say that it was bub.blicio.us?

PepsiCo has been among those companies that truly understand and consistently demonstrate the activity, engagement, and potential for genuine participation and community cultivation.

It’s about people. And, that’s serves as the very foundation for the TechSet.

PepsiCo, along with the TechSet (Stephanie Agresta and yours truly) and a venue filled with new creativity and passion , indeed commemorated the vivacity of imagination and the people who transform ideas into realty – embodying the true essence and spirit of InternetWeek.

We toasted to the artistry of innovation and basked in the inspiration that spilt over not from our glasses, but from the vision and personality that fills NYC during Internet Week.

I’ll let the pictures tell the rest of the story…

Your hosts – Brian Solis and Stephanie Agresta

Maria Sansone of Poptub

“THE” Rock Band

Melanie Notkin

Anthony Casalena of SquareSpace

Loren Feldman, Dan Farber, Michelle Feldman

Dan Patterson, ABC Radio

Chris Heuer

Brant Bonin Bough

Aubrey Sabala, Brian August

Joel Dreyfuss

Oz Sultan, Brett Petersel, Gregarious, Coutenay Bird

Leora Israel

Brett Petersel

Ayelet Noff

Oz Sultan, Brett Petersel, Jolie O’Dell, Jacob Mullins, Courtenay Bird, MG Siegler, Brian Solis

Nicole Jordan, Rana Sobhany, Stephanie Agresta, Brett Petersel, Anand Iyer, Jacob Mullins, MG Siegler, Michael Jacobson, Bryan Barletta, Courtenay Bird, Damien Basile

For more pictures from the Pepsico – TechSet IWNY party, please visit my album on flickr.

Video highlights from the Pepsico – TechSet party now on PopTub:

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Read more from Brian Solis:

Blog: PR 2.0
Book: Putting the Public Back in Public Relations
Social Map: The Conversation Prism

by Brian Solis

Thank you Louis Gray for the invitation to the FriendFeed event tonight. Every so often, FriendFeed hosts its TGIFF (Thank Goodness It’s FriendFeed) where they invite FF enthusiasts to the company’s HQ to eat, drink and discuss everything from the state of FriendFeed and its next iterations to Silicon Valley and the future of the Web.

Tonight, I spent time with the FriendFeed team as well as with good friends Louis Gray, Steve Gillmor, Jeremiah Owyang, and Steve Rubel.

Perhaps the event was best immortalized with this picture of the FriendFeed team:

Dan Hsiao, Casey Muller, Ana Yang, Jim Norris, Tudor Bosman, Bret Taylor, Paul Buchheit (with Camilla), Sanjeev Singh, Kevin Fox

I’ll let the pictures tell the rest of the story…

Louis Gray, Steve Rubel, Brian Solis, Jeremiah Owyang

Steve Gillmor and Jeremiah Owyang

Steve Rubel with a Kindle version my new book with Deirdre Breakenridge, “Putting the Public Back in Public Relations”

For more pictures from TGIFF, please visit my album on Flickr.

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Read more from Brian Solis:

Blog: PR 2.0
Book: Putting the Public Back in Public Relations
Social Map: The Conversation Prism

by Brian Solis

Save the date. Monday June 1st, 6-8 pm at the Bubble Lounge NY.  Stephanie Agresta and I request the honor of your presence…RSVP Here.

Internet Week NY 2009 is approaching and the TechSet kick off Internet Week by bubbling-up innovation with PepsiCo…

See, remarkable innovation is sparkling. Ideas percolate and dissipate, but with a little ingenuity and effervescence, change and revolution can bubble-up to the surface for all to enjoy.

PepsiCo and The TechSet invite you to sparkle during InternetWeek in NY with a celebration of new tech, creativity, passion and vision on June 1st. And, where else can we commemorate the vivacity of imagination and the people who transform ideas into realty than the Bubble Lounge…where brilliance always bubbles-up.

From 6 to 8 pm, we will toast to the artistry of innovation and bask in the inspiration that spills over not from our glasses, but from the vision and personality that fills NYC during Internet Week.

This is your night. Join us.

Salud…

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by Brian Solis (via PR 2.0)

Presented by The Society For Geek Advancement, “I AM A GEEK” brings together some of the biggest personalities and celebrities in the online space to proclaim their geek pride. “I AM A GEEK” also urges viewers and the community to “be the geek who keeps on giving”, and for the launch, has partnered with the non-profit Room To Read, building schools and libraries for children in developing countries around the world.

The video features:

Shaquille O’Neal (The Real Shaq), Steve Wozniak (Apple Co-founder), Kevin Pollak (Actor), Wil Wheaton (Star Trek: The Next Generation), LeVar Burton (Reading Rainbow, Star Trek: The Next Generation), Jason Calacanis (Internet Entrepreneur), Samm Levine (Actor), Felicia Day (Creator of The Guild / Actress), Kevin Rose (Co-Founder Digg, Revision3), Alex Albrecht (Co-Host Diggnation), Leo Laporte (Technology Journalist and Broadcaster), IJustine (Internet Celebrity / Lifecaster), David Karpe (Founder of Tumblr), Veronica Belmont (co-host of Revision3′s tech-centric show, Tekzilla,), Sarah Lacy (Sillicon Valley Journalist and Author), Randi Zuckerberg (Marketing Director Facebook), Pete Cashmore (Founder of Mashable), Tony Hsieh (CEO of Zappos.com), Gary Vaynerchuk (Wine Library TV), Jonathan Coulton (Famed Singer-Song Writer), Kevin Pereira (The Cable Television Darling), Tay Zonday (YouTube celebrity), Julia Allison (Internet Celebrity, Lifecaster), Julia Roy (Blogger), Marina Orlova (HotForWords, YouTube Internet Celebrity), Shira Lazar (On-air personality, blogger), and yours truly.

Get your Geek Badge.

Give.

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by Brian Solis

Following my trip to Hamburg for the Next09 conference, I flew to Stockholm Sweden to serve as one of the keynote speakers at Disruptive Media hosted by Annika Lidne and Bjorn Falkevik. It was an incredible and inspiring opportunity to meet and learn from the catalysts who are changing the media and communications industry in Sweden. Fellow new PR and social media pioneers Steve Rubel and Chris Heuer also joined me.

Extending the discussion of the Social Economy I reviewed during Next09, I explored the separation of the “Me” from Social Media and the advantages of a holistic practice of concerted listening and ongoing observation to shape our participation in the Social Web.

Collectively, we all share the need to discover who we are and why matter to those with whom we wish to connect. But, we should also share a common desire to rise above the noise and establish a formidable and valuable online presence and defined human network that transcends from the online world to the real world.

Why is anyone better off for following or friending us?

As a digital society, we are individually investing in our social capital spurred by unconscious and also deliberate acts that unknowingly convey complacence and fuel an ambition to acquire notoriety and recognition.

Self-importance versus self awareness…

While we are captivated by the ability to broadcast through the statusphere and in the process, procure friends and followers, we loose sight of the true opportunity represented by the Social Web. It’s not the ability to share what we want, when we want. It’s not the rewards of popularity and the illusion of fandom. This is a chance and a means to forge a network of influence based on the expertise and knowledge we amass and share.

Social Capital isn’t the currency of The Social Economy after all, it is merely a stature that is representative of what we share, the relationships we earn, and the perception others form based on our participation and contribution in social networks and IRL (in real life).

Attention has officially emerged as the portal to the Social Economy and in order to capture it, we must create or share content so intriguing, relevant, and thoughtful that it forces action and ideally triggers a response.

Content is still king and therefore information symbolizes the true currency of the Social Economy.

Twitter, Facebook, TweetDeck, FriendFeed, Seesmic, PeopleBrowsr, Tweetie, et al, have emerged as our attention dashboards. It’s where we share, update, consume, and learn. We click away and return based on the content that flows through our timeline.  It’s the ideas we share, the personality we portray, the stories we tell, the individuals we spotlight, and the dissemination of the things that inspire and teach us that increase our chances of capturing attention to connect and motivate.

DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION?

Sometimes we benefit from the art of practicing restraint in order to breathe in the essence of the community we wish to galvanize. The Social Web is not a right, it should be embraced as a privilege. In the end, we earn the attention and the relationships we earn and nurture.

We must transform how we participate and engage online to shift from talking “at” people to investing in the collective consciousness of those communities we wish to influence, foster, and promote.

We must believe we have something to learn.

We must have something of value to share.

None of this is Social “Me”dia, it’s about the journey we share and not the destination. This is our time to contribute to a more meaningful and mindful future of media and communications. Our culture and societal values are ours to define – for better or for worse. The question is, whether or not we take responsibility for the social physics that shape its direction and governance.

I’ll let the pictures tell the rest of the story…

Chris Heuer

Annika Lidne

Paula Marttila

Henriette Weber

Björn Falkevik

Brian Solis

Pictures of Stockholm, Sweden…

Please visit my albums on Flickr for more pictures from Disruptive Media and Stockholm Sweden.

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by Brian Solis

I’m just returning from my trip to Next09 in Hamburg Germany where I had the privilege to serve as one of the event’s keynote presenters among a cast of some of those whom I most revere. During my session, I discussed how the event’s theme, “The Share Economy,” equated to the Social Economy and the laws of diminishing attention.

We’re constantly struggling and learning how to discover and in turn, personify our place within the perpetually evolving social universe.

It is the ongoing saga of bridging the distances between who we are and who we want to be and furthermore, manifesting this presence outward.

I believe we are creating our online persona with every status update, tweet, video, picture, review, comment, and post, we share. We’re forging networks through a fusion of traditional relationships and friendships and also contextually – following and friending those whom we admire and respect based on their ideas, vision, and experience. It’s how we share, discover and learn. The nature for how we view and establish relationships is evolving before us and eventually we will change how we interact based on the contextual network we’ve built. Most of your “friends” don’t care about your profession exploits. Concurrently, your peers and professional contact are not better off for knowing anything about your personal endeavors.

There will be a collision and ensuing fallout.

What’s next?

Multiple Personality “Order.”

Don’t be surprised if eventually, if for only a short time, we maintain multiple online personas in the networks that are important to us as a consumer and also as a producer.

I’ll let the pictures tell the rest of the story:

Next09

Andrew Keen

Stowe Boyd

Chris Heuer

Andrea Vascellari

Brian Solis and Dennis Howlett

Nicole Simon, Tobias Kaufmann, Martin Recke

Stephanie Frasco

Stowe Boyd, Matthias Lufkens, Dennis Howlett

Pictures of Hamburg and other things that caught my eye:

For more pictures from Hamburg and Next09, please visit my album on Flickr.

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words and pictures by Brian Solis

I have to admit that I’m listening to Carnival Vol. II Memoirs of an Immigrant while I write this post.

Wyclef Jean is someone who moves me musically, philosophically, and personally. His story from Haiti to the Fugees to producer to global superstar to humanitarian is nothing short of amazing and inspirational. His message is humbling and humanizing.

I had the privilege this week to attend a private show hosted by Pereira & O’Dell during ad:tech (thank you Cathy Brooks) at the Barrel House in SF.

Surely someone of Wyclef’s status could have simply played a few songs and then scurried off into a limo to enjoy the remainder of the night with his entourage – it was certainly hot enough in the venue to motivate him to keep it short. Instead, he invested his time, passion, and energy into creating a memorable experience for everyone by playing almost every song he’s ever written, moving the dancefloor as DJ, and finally mingling with guests after the show. If you didn’t know any better, you would swear this was his most important and personal show ever.

Wyclef dedicated the evening to the Yele Haiti foundation, an organization that creates small-scale, manageable and replicable projects to contribute to Haiti’s long-term progress. Each initiative is imbued with Wyclef’s passion, as Yéle Haiti’s founder. Whether utilizing local hip-hop musicians to deliver awareness messages in forgotten neighborhoods or bringing his famous friends to Haiti to support the movement, what Wyclef radiates is profound wishes for the country. Each of Yéle’s projects is conceived to renew hope for Haitians to rebuild their nation. Please help if you can.

I’ll let the pictures tell the rest of the story…

Wyclef sends his first tweet with the help of Chris Sacca

Wyclef sends his first tweet with the help of Chris Sacca

Smoke break

Sharing the love

Cooling off the crowd

Picture of a picture

For more pictures from the Wyclef performance, please visit my album on flickr.

Please see the SF Weekly for additional coverage.

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