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

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

It was a beautiful day in Northern California. We all had more than enough work to lock us indoors for the remainder of the day, but we had a different idea.

Robert Scoble, Jeremiah Owyang and I opted instead, to host a last-minute Tweetup in at the Miramar in Halfmoon Bay. The Pacific Ocean served as the backdrop and great friends provided the ambiance. Overall, it was a wonderful way to spend the day.

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

Shirley and Jeremiah Owyang

Maria Ogneva and Gregarious

Gregarious

Krystel Ariel

Karen Hartline

Brian Solis by Robert Scoble

Christopher Peri

Krystel Ariel and Francine Hardaway

For more pictures, please visit my album on Flickr.

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by Brian Solis

Michael Dolan reached out to let me know about an interesting game that he’s introducing at SXSW.

SXSW Bingo is a clever play on some of the more popular and emerging trends on Twitter, the statusphere, and other social networks. For example, the team picked up on the Hashtag sign for marking a noteworthy topic in the real world.

Halcyon throws up the Hashtag sign.

Other moments to capture include:

- Gary Vaynerchuk with a glass of wine

- People playing RockBand (come to the TechSet Windows Mobile blog lounge for an easy shot)

- Guy Kawasaki Twittering

- Robert Scoble sighting

- A Geek Girl

I asked Dolan to share he vision for SXSW Bingo, “We wanted to make a game that was fun, easy to play and drew on our shared geeky obsessions. Most of us sit in front of computers all day, so we wanted to create another way for people to connect with each other in person. It isn’t often enough that the Twitterverse and the universe cross paths.

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by Brian Solis

Robert Scoble and Louis Gray

Last night during a small, but memorable dinner, we all wondered who would leak the news, Robert Scoble was leaving FastCompany. The story is live on TechCrunch right now and according to the story, Scoble confirmed with Mike sometime before the evening was over.

Indeed Robert Scoble is leaving his full time job at FastCompany.tv to introduce, well, we’ll let him tell you at SXSW. He’ll continue to write a column for FastCompany in the future.

Scoble continues the story in his post, “Why I haven’t posted for two weeks.”

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

(L to R) Brian Solis, Jeremiah Owyang, Louis Gray, Robert Scoble, Loic Le Meur, Barak Hachamov of My6Sense, Harry McCracken, Deb Schultz, Eliane Fiolet

JD Lasica

Harry McCracken

Deb Schultz

Hashtag

Yoav Shoham and Eliane Fiolet

To see the rest of the pictures from the My6Sense Blogger Dinner, please visit my album on Flickr.

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by Brian Solis

Dave Morin, Sarah Lacy, and I co-hosted the West Coast leg of Julia & Randi’s Bi-Coastal Birthday Bash last night at Rosewood in San Francisco.

Julia & Randi are celebrating their birthdays with us on both coasts this weekend, San Francisco (Fri, Feb 27) and New York City (Sat, Feb 28) in an effort to raise awareness and donations for Charity: Water and Women for Women International. The theme honored the charities by promoting the colors that uniquely represented them, blue and pink. It created a wonderful ambiance of continuously shifting fashionable decor, which complemented the intimate mood set by the Rosewood’s stylish motif.

Julia and Randi, you are amazing and wonderful. I can’t express that enough. Thank you for always being there…And, thank you for sharing your special day with us and also for raising awareness of two very important causes. Happy Birthday!

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

Randi’s Birthday Cake

Randi Zuckerberg and Chris Kelly

Meghan Asha and Sarah Lacy

Tim Ferriss

Aubs and Daisy

Cupcakes

Oren Michels and Lane Becker

Birthday Cocktail

Tim Ferriss

More about Charity: Water

Charity: Water is a non-profit bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. Right now, over 1 billion people on the planet don’t have access to safe, clean drinking water. Charity: water funds sustainable clean water solutions in areas of greatest need. Just $20 can give one person in a developing nation clean water for 20 years.

For more pictures from Julia’s and Randi’s SF Birthday Bash, please visit my album on Flickr.

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words and pictures by Brian Solis

Alexandra Monkh, Nicole Jordan, Vanessa Camones

TechZulu celebrated its first birthday this week in Los Angeles at the famed Beverly Wilshire Hotel.It was a well-attended event, and aside from having to explain to security every 10 minutes that I wasn’t your typical Hollywood paparazzi photographer, it was representative of the thriving tech community that TechZulu spotlights and helped shape.

Happy Birthday TechZulu!

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

Efren Toscano

Anaiis Flox

Mike Macadaan

Marjorie Kase

Joe Said, Anaiis Flox, Vanessa Camones

Sloane Berrent

Nicole Jordan, Stephanie Agresta, Frank Gruber

Geoffrey Emery

Christopher Darbro

Alexandra Mokh and Nicole Jordan

Mark Politi

Brian Solis by Alexandra Mokh

Francisco Dao

Tyler Crowley of Mahalo

For more pictures from the TechZulu birthday party, please visit my album on Flickr.

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by Brian Solis

The W Hotel, Westwood

I flew to Los Angeles for 24 hours to serve as the lunch keynote speaker at PR 2.0: Breaking into the Conversation. Following the event, and a full day of work, a few of us decided to host an impromptu Tweetup in The Backyard, poolside at the W Hotel in Westwood. It was a beautiful night, which was complemented with some very incredible people.

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

Click here for the names of a few of those who joined us

Shira Lazar

Kurt Daradics and Mike Prasaad

Nicole Jordan and Todd Cohen

Rafat Ali of PaidContent and Patricia Handschiegel

Jackie Peters

Sean Percival, Shira Lazar, Nicole Jordan

Kurt Daradics

Damon Alexander Young and Nicole Jordan

Laurie Percival

For more pictures from the LA Tweetup @The W, Westwood, please visit my album on flickr.

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