By Sarah Townsend

On the fence about attending Twiistup 6 this year? Allow me to make up your mind for you. Twiistup is shaping up to be one of the biggest social media and tech conferences of the year! Not only is the schedule jam-packed with valuable sessions and panels, but the social scene is going to be one you won’t want to miss (hello, 80s Tech Prom? That alone is reason to buy your ticket now.)

Let’s get to the meat and potatoes, though. Perhaps the most enticing reason to attend is the opportunity to rub elbows and chat with some of the most influential people in the game. And so, here is a list of the 101 People You’ll Meet at Twiistup:

1. Saeed Amidi, CEO of Plug n Play, Investor, Co-founder of Amidzad Partners

2. Wil Schroter, CEO of Go BIG Network, serial entrepreneur

3. Rick Calvert, Founder of Blogworld

4. Dinesh Ravishanker, CEO of CallFire

5. Isaac Garcia, CEO of CentralDesktop

6. Sanjay Sabnani, Chairman and CEO of CrowdGather

7. Dimitry Ioffe, Co-founder and CEO of The Visionaire Group

8. Mike Walsh, Founder and CEO Leverage Software

9. Cyan Banister, CEO of Zivity, investor Facebook, Slide etc.

10. Merav Knafo, Founder of iJoomla

11. Adam Zbar, CEO of Zannel

12. Marc Mertes, CEO of Seso.net

13. Jeff Haas, Co-founder of Ringorang

14. Jason Calacanis, CEO of Mahalo

15. Tom Dare, COO of Tsavo

16. Brian Solis, Author, Founder of Future Works

17. J.R. Johnson, CEO of Lunch.com

18. Adam Bernhard, CEO of Hautelook

19. Andy Sack, General Partner/Angel Investor Founders Co-op

20. Scott Sangster, Investor/President of Organic Startup

21. James Montgomery, CEO of Montgomery & co. CEO of Digital Coast Ventures

22. Vince Thompson, Managing Partner at MiddleShift

23. Afsoun Yazdian, CEO of Gogolingo

24. Brooke Burke, Television Personality, co-CEO of ModernMom

25. Brian Deagon, Investor’s Business Daily (Media)

26. Umair Mufti, Founder and CEO of Sparcq

27. Christian Gammill, co-Founder of The Graph

28. Brad Feld, Founder of Mobius Venture Capital

29. Scott Seward, President of Tuesday Creative

30. Alec Shankman, Head of Reality at Abrams Artists

31. Chamillionaire, Grammy Award winning Musician

32. Ian Rogers, CEO of Topspin Media

33. Ben Huh, CEO of ICanHasCheezburger

34. Michelle Robbins, Director of Technology, Third Door Media

35. James Andelman, General Partner, Rincon Venture Capital

36. Dave McClure, Investor The Founders Fund

37. Chris Redlitz, Partner Transmedia Capital (VC)

38. Lee Fox, Founder of KooDooz.com

39. Steve Beauregard, Managing Partner at Regard Ventures

40. Eric Sikola, CEO of Expensebay

41. Charles Proctor, Los Angeles Business Journal (Media)

42. Robby Berthume, President Epsilon Concepts/ LA Digital Directory

43. Stuart Halperin, CEO of Ultimate Movie Site

44. Quincy Jones III (QD3), Music Producer, Entrepreneur

45. Chris Tolles, CEO of Topix

46. Jason Nazar, CEO of DocStoc

47. Adam Weinroth, VP of Strategic Marketing at Demand Media

48. Firas Bushnaq, CEO of Boxador

49. Sheila Marmon, CEO of UrbanAdserve

50. Don Mosites, CEO of Streamy

51. Justin Kan, Founder of Justin.tv

52. Chris Brogan, President of New Marketing Labs

53. Eric Hung, CEO of Educator

54. Michael Schneider, CEO of MobileRoadie

55. Paige Craig, Angel Investor, Founder of the Lincoln Group

56. John Morris, Partner GKM Ventures

57. Krisztina Holly, Vice Provost for Innovation at USC

58. Nick Braun, Partner NCT Ventures

59. Brett Butterfield, CEO of PixelPipe

60. Mark Suster, Partner GRP Partners (VC)

61. Jennifer Van Grove, writer for Mashable (media)

62. Jolie O’Dell, writer for ReadWriteWeb (media)

63. Dmitry Shapiro, Founder and CEO of VEOH

64. Lisa Rosenblatt, Co-founder of iMall, co-CEO of ModernMom

65. Beau Laskey, Managing Director of Steamboat Ventures

66. Babette Pepaj, Founder and CEO of BakeSpace

67. Jeff Yasuda, Founder and CEO of Blip.FM

68. Andy Liu, co-Founder of Buddy.TV

69. Trey Shelton, CEO of Music Interactive

70. Mohamed Alkady, CEO of After 10 Studios

71. Mike Prasad, CEO of GirlGamer

72. John Trickett, President of Immergent

73. Taryn Southern, Producer, TV host

74. Andrew Lee, CEO of JamLegend

75. Ben Kuo, Founder and Editor of SoCalTECH

76. Marty Poulin, CEO of ShadyLogic

77. Rob Angarita, co-Founder of Cramster

78. David O. Sacks, CEO of Geni and Yammer

79. Mike Macadaan, VP of Product at MySpace

80. Will Chow, CEO of Mobophiles

81. Jodee Rich, CEO of PeopleBrowsr

82. Richard White, Founder and CEO of Uservoice

83. Micah Baldwin, VP of Business Development, Lijit Networks

84. Neil Patel, Angel Investor, co-founder of CrazyEgg and KissMetrics

85. Brandon DiMassa, VP Digital Media Syndication, TVGuide

86. Efren Toscano, CEO of TechZulu (media)

87. Marsha Collier, Host of Computer and Technology Radio KTRB (media)

88. Erin Broadley, LA Weekly (media)

89. Dave Waldman, VP or Business Development for Twistbox

90. David Holifield, President of Interfuel

91. Ed Ludic, CEO of Diddit

92. Rich Rotzang, Founder of SocialToddler

93. Mark Gibbs, writer Network World (media)

94. Mark Yawitz, co-Founder RealityWanted

95. Hiten Shah, co-Founder CrazyEgg and KissMetrics

96. Michael Abraham, CTO Circle Limit Media

97. Ryan Born, CEO of AudioMicro

98. Ben Widhelm, CTO of Elephant Drive

99. Richard Blakely, CEO of Influxis

100. Peter Lee, Partner Baroda Ventures

101. Michael Jones, COO of MySpace CEO of Go BIG Network, serial entrepreneur

There are only a few days left to secure your spot, so don’t waste another minute. Head over to the official registration page to see the full schedule and get your tickets.

See you there!

____

Sarah Townsend
E-mail: theoneinpink[at]gmail[dot]com
Twitter: theoneinpink
Blogs: TechDarling, The Vibe

by Brian Solis

Stephen Baker and Helen Walters of BusinessWeek recently asked readers to nominate those individuals who are driving the evolution and pervasiveness of Social Media as part of its “voice of innovation” series.

Who is truly the most innovative force within social media? Who’s really making a difference? Who really gets it? Who do you think your fellowBusinessWeek readers NEED to know about?

The submissions are in and I’m honored and humbled to be included in the list of candidates.

Now, BusinessWeek needs you to help them sort through the nominees to tell them why one or another should be featured in BW.

The candidate Steve and Helen consider most worthwhile will be featured in a short profile and video we run in the Innovation channel.

Let them know by leaving a comment here.

This list (see below) features my peers and mentors whom inspire me to not only look ahead but also build a bridge back to the real world so that we can all move forward together. Truthfully, it’s impossible to select any one person to profile as the “voice of innovation.” Everyone is worthy of a profile and perhaps, in true social media fashion, BW can feature submitted videos from all of the nominees to feature as the collective voices of innovation. It is social media after all – of the people, for the people.

Over the years, I’ve worked with some truly amazing people such as Doc Searls, Stowe Boyd, Robert Scoble, Jay Rosen, Chris Heuer, Jeremiah Owyang, Shel Israel, Chris Shipley, Deb Schultz, JD Lasica, et al., among many many others to theorize, debate, define, defend, and promote Social Media – before it was Social Media. Some of those definitions are still widely sourced today. Now, Social Media is widely recognized as the latest chapter in an ongoing evolution of “New Media” and it’s completely transforming the way we share, discover, communicate, and learn.

In early 2009, JESS3 and I will release v2.0 of The Conversation Prism to help chart the rapid expansion and contraction of the Social Web so that we can visualize the complete opportunity of how and where to listen, learn, study, and ultimately participate.

At the end of the day, Social Media is about people, not technology. The tools and technology that serve as its foundation is governed by the dynamics of human behavior and interaction. The true Social Media experts will understand the ideologies of Social Sciences (sociology, anthropology, enthnography) combined with an understanding of specific services and networks to individually connect with the people who define the communities that are important to their ecosystem. It’s the difference between theory and practice.

Again, thank you for even including me in this list. I will continue to share all that I learn so that we can grow in tandem.

The Complete List of Nominees (Make sure to update your reading list):

Mark Cramer
Lee Odden
Peter Shankman (aka Skydiver)
Jeff Pulver
Linus Torvalds
Ward Cunningham
Tim O’Reilly
Ian Schafer, CEO of Deep Focus
Richard Edelman
Dave Winer
Chico the Dog
Simon Berry
Jay Rosen
David Chamberlain
Honey Bee network
A top-10 list
Lawrence Lessig
Tristan Harris, Apture
Steve Rubel
Robin Good
Marshall Kirkpatrick
Richard MacManus
Rachel Sterne
Gary Vaynerchuk
Liz Strauss
Craig Stoltz
Shel Holtz
Andy Carvin
Shel Israel
Laura Fitton
jeremiah oywang
Fred Wilson
Guy Kawasaki
Jason Goldberg
Chris Brogan
David Weinberger
Kevin Rose
Robert Scoble
Chris Hughes
B. L. Ochman
Beth Kanter
Biz Stone
Mohammad Yunus
Shannon Paul
Tim Jackson
Amber Naslund
Jason Falls
Beth Harte
David Armano
Mack Collier
Brian Solis
Rashmi Sinha
Bob Pearson
Frank Eliason
Seth Godin
Ev Williams
Kathy Sierra
Hugh MacLeod
Chris Bruzzo (MyStarbucksIdea)

Additional Resources on Social Media at PR 2.0:

State of Social Media 2008

The Essential Guide to Social Media

The Social Media Manifesto

Now is Gone (Available on Amazon)

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by Brian Solis

Originally published at PR 2.0.

I’ve invested a significant portion of time and energy into the support, development, and refinement of an ambitious project led by Jodee Rich. I did so, because I believe that it is one of the most compelling and promising services for uniting our distributed social presence and the relationships that make us stronger – personally and professionally.

Introducing PeopleBrowsr, an attention-centered dashboard for managing your online relationships and communication in Twitter and across multiple social networks.

It made its public debut in Alpha this past Friday, which means that it is still in an early, but a highly functional, stage of development. The only way to improve it is to let real people have access to it, without restrictions.

PeopleBrowsr offers a vast breadth of features and functionality. If you’re a Social Media power user or a brand manager, this is a wish come true.

At its foundation, PeopleBrowsr is a first of a kind meta-network for social networks that works with Mozilla FireFox 3, Safari 3.1 or Google Chrome – no download or plug-in required. It essentially turns your Web browser into a simple, visual social media dashboard. While there are many third-party tools for Twitter, PeopleBrowsr brings the best features from all of the popular add-on services into one solution – without requiring a download or a browser plug-in.

It combines your profiles and your connections across multiple social networks into one, easy to manage place, including, Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube, Upcoming, among others. You can mix views to include activity from all or selected networks simultaneously, individually, and also communicate with your contacts across networks, from one place.

Mixing your view and interaction.

As an introduction to the service, we’ll start with Twitter.

Anyone familiar with TweetDeck will enjoy an instant familiarity with the friendly interface. But that’s where the similarity stops and the unique benefits emerge.

PeopleBrowsr supercharges Twitter.

With one simple to use browser-based hub, everyone can view, group, and communicate with friends, and friends of friends, in and across all of the popular networks. You can update status, view posts, connect with contacts, make new friends, and share content within and between networks.

At first sight, PeopleBrowsr provides either a columnar view (The PostStack) or a “people” grid gallery of organizable tweets from “everyone” in the Twitter stream with additional distinct columns for “following” and replies. Additional stream options feature the ability to view direct messages and other standard views into dedicated, scrolling columns. PeopleBrowsr also provides integrated search functionality of Twitter directly within streams, displaying results in new stream columns. And, if you want to focus on key regions, you can also run hyper local searches to see who’s tweeting in a certain city. Searches can be additive for further refining of streams.

But wait, there’s more…

With PeopleBrowsr, you can monitor brands, engage with communities, and improve communications with friends through a myriad of unique features that include, the ability for power users to easily build and communicate specifically with dedicated tag-formed groups; scheduling tweet posting at a later time; and also network-wide, wiki-style tagging of people for grouping, categorization, and also searching.

Most importantly, PeopleBrowsr introduces the foundation for the very first address book for Twitter.

Take a deep breath, PeopleBrowsr is much more than a dashboard for Twitter, it’s a social network for all social networks.

Today, many people participate in multiple online social networks. From Twitter to FriendFeed, LinkedIn to Facebook, and Youtube to Flickr, the attention of today’s online enthusiasts is thinning and distributed. While the alpha version of PeopleBrowsr focuses initially on empowering the Twitter community, the service actually unites Social Media and the Social Web.

PeopleBrowsr empowers power users and “the rest of us” alike to concentrate energy in one place instead of wrestling with a distributed presence. You no longer have to open different tools and browser tabs to log in and connect with people through disparate services. As a single social media dashboard, PeopleBrowsr allows anyone to manage all of their personal network profiles. It simplifies communication and relationship building with friends and like-minded individuals – regardless of social media network.

PeopleBrowsr also introduces PeopleBrowsr IDs (PBIDs), a new genre of intelligent social media profiles for those looking to learn more about interesting people. These rich IDs offer an instant and highly detailed overview of an individual’s presence across the social Web by automatically aggregating their other network profiles and blogs as a social graph. You can also can share what you know about each individual for others to see using PeopleProfiles.

The team is reading Tweets and implementing fixes, fine-tuning the product, and integrating new features ahead of the beta release due out at the beginning of the new year. “Live” Tweets from the community are being used to build a new product in real time. They’re listening!

At the very least, I hope PeopleBrowsr offers a refreshing and helpful alternative to centralize your online presence and the relationships that define who you are today and tomorrow.

Please spread the word…

I also wanted to send a special thank you to each and everyone who took the time to meet with Jodee and me to share their initial reaction and feedback to help us get to where we are today.

Thank you.

Ariel Waldman
Cal Hendrickson
Cathy Brooks
Chris Saad
Christopher Golda
Dave Mathews
Frank Gruber
Guy Kawasaki
Jason Kincaid
Jeremiah Owyang
Jodee Rich
Justin Kan
Laura Fitton (Pistachio)
Loic Le Meur
Louis Gray
Marissa Louie
Mike McGrath
Robert Scoble
Sarah Lacy
Tara Hunt
Tim Ferriss
Tim O’Reilly

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by Brian Solis

Credit: Barack Obama on Flickr.

My latest post is live on TechCrunch, “Is Obama Ready To Be a Two-Way President.” It examines the transformation of people from mere voters into “customers” in order to create a true two-way era of politics, cut through party lines, and increase approval ratings across all offices. The New Web creates the foundation for people to participate in a crowd-sourced governance.

Highlights

Where there’s victory, there’s also opportunity…

Over 46% of American voters and 22 states sided with John McCain. Either way you look at it, it’s still a significant portion of America who didn’t believe #change or #hope were attributes of the Obama campaign. These voters believed their future lay with another candidate.

Politics aside, whether you’re a Democrat, Republican, Independent or member of the Green Party, we can not overlook the power of real world community relations combined with the reach and engagement of online social communities and networks.

Online tools such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter contributed to the netting of record-breaking campaign funding and the staggering galvanization of a younger generation of first-time voters who truly made an impact and a difference.

My question is, what if these same social media tools where deployed to not only communicate “to” constituents, but also to listen and interact with supporters as well as those who don’t currently endorse the President-elect?

I argue that if Obama dedicates a team aside from the outbound crew that “pushed” content through social channels in order to strategically reach, listen to, and embrace the 46 % that voted against him, he might be able to run a truly democratic term and head into the next election with a record-breaking approval rating – curtailing the necessity to campaign while in office in order to focus on the issues we elected him to fix – while also cultivating the country for greater future prosperity.

Winning over, conservatively estimating, 5% of voters who were on the fence but ultimately voted for McCain, accounts for almost three million votes.

This isn’t just about broadcasting content through new channels or merely soliciting feedback, participating in popular networks or actively listening, it’s the ability to identify and internalize themes to precipitate change and earn support through action – not just words.

It’s the art and science of stripping down the politics to reveal truth. This is a political ecology rooted in sociology and conversations. People shouldn’t only have a voice during an election time; listening and responding should be an ongoing practice and process of any office.

For a deeper review of the subject, please read the unedited version at PR 2.0 (includes links to downloadable printable PDF and Word formats).

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by Brian Solis

Sometimes the best cure or treatment for stress, concern, and fear (especially in the face of a potentially dire economic recession) is the process and act of sharing *the love.*

October 29th is the first of many “I <3 Twitter because…” days (I hope), so that we can share and celebrate a community that brings us together around the publicly shared thoughts, innovation, ideas and ultimately, the people behind them, in order to collaboratively learn, grow, and excel.

Pay it forward.

Share it on Twitter!

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