Social Business Edge: 19 April 2010 New York City

I am happy to announce that the planning for the Social Business event I have been talking about for several months is moving ahead well.

The long awaited new website is up, at www.edgewards.com/sbe. (Note that this is also the launch of the Edgewards website, a new experimental collective focused on creating events that matter.)

In the revision of the site, I have also changed the name of the event to better reflect the Edgewards goals, and so the new name is Social Business Edge.

We have settled on a date — 19 April 2010 — and are working on a venue in New York City. We had announced 20 April 2010 a few weeks ago, but that was an error. I plan to announce the venue in a week at the most. We are in discussion with several locations.

I am serving as director and host of the day long ‘show’. We are loosely basing the format on late night TV, but I don’t expect that we will have a NBC/Leno/O’Brien mess! I am adamant about cutting through the stuffiness and staleness of most events, and late night TV is much more modern.

Note also that sponsors will be showing ads that run during the event: not during breaks, but in the gaps when guests are coming and going.

Dachis Group is a Gold sponsor, and we are talking to many other companies about participating.

I have been joined by a group of stellar contributors, who have formed a swarm to help think through the event, spark ideas, and recommend other folks to get involved. These include Lee Byrant and Sarah Kennon, who are both co-hsoting with me, as well as Euan Semple, Jamais Cascio, Gia Lyons, Adina Levin, Jeff Dachis, Tim Young, Beth Kanter, Umair Haque, John Winsor, Kevin Marks and Venkatesh Rao. Jeff Pulver is the show’s producer.

I invite anyone who has interest in the impact that social tools are having on the world of business to join up at the site to create a profile, be automatically informed when new posts are created, participate in the Social Business Forum there. And of course, plan on attending the conference! I will be setting up a conference registration page at the end of the week. 

On Jan 26 I will be cohosting a meetup in San Francisco with Sarah Kennon, to meet with interested parties, and to enjoy pizza and wine (at Zuppa, I think). Please leave a comment on this post at the site if you are interested in attending.

Looking forward to hearing what your thoughts are about Social Business Edge. Let’s get busy!