The main news for my company and me in the past week was the announcement of my appointment as social media release Pitch Engine’s Manager for Australia and New Zealand.

The announcement was, of course, via a Pitch Engine social media release. A feature of the release is that it came not from Pitch Engine HQ in the USA, but from Guangzhou, China based company CFM which is the base of operations for Pitch Engine Asia. The full release includes a link to a 14 minute conversation about the announcement, between my Guangzhou-based colleague, CFM Chief Exec Lonnie B. Hodge, and me.

You can also read the full release from the box below: note the “full screen” button for greater ease of reading.

Having spent hours in the past, constructing social media releases manually, I really love the ease and speed of the process with Pitch Engine, as well as all sorts of other great features. So representing Pitch Engine in my part of the world is a pretty cool thing to be able to do.

(More about Pitch Engine, in a recent post on my Thinking Home Business blog)

If you have any questions about how Pitch Engine works and how it might help your business or organization, please ask – in the comments or, more privately, on the contact page: if I don’t have the answer I’ll make sure we get an answer from someone who does.

• Oxford Internet Survey « The Seldom Seen Kid
  The report is a 75 page document which looks at the Internet in Britain and has a whole load of statistics and data which loks at the UK’s digital development. This is the fourth study to date, with previous reports being published in 2003, 2005 and 200
  (tags: Internet socialmedia UK Britain survey report Oxford MattChurchill Oxford-Internet-Survey)

• Future Exploration Blog | Top Twitterers: US, Canada, Norway, Australia …
  USA leads the field in Twitter users but not by nearly as big a margin as might be thought. Canada, Norway, Australia, New Zealand, UK, Netherlands, Sweden, in that order, lead the rest of the pack
  (tags: Twitter statistics)

• On Social Media And Culture Shift | Altitude Branding | Brand Elevation through Social Media
  The word is in, social media implementation in the enterprise – for profit, not for profit, government – is crucially about getting the culture shift going and keeping it going. Amber Naslund's hard-hitting post should be required reading for any company getting with the social media process.
  (tags: socialmedia culturechange business)

XeeSM, which is so new it is not even in public beta yet, is a tool for managing social relationships.

By providing a simple web address (URL) XeeSM gives you a way to provide one link from which people can instantly check out your various online presences, from your website to your LinkedIn, Twitter and other social networking sites.

I’ve set up my XeeSM account (which is free) to display links for: one of my del.icio.us accounts, my LinkedIn profile, Slideshare site, Skype and Twitter addresses and my blog (Website). Although the application may not be widely known, at times like this it is surely a good thing to have a not totally common name: I had no problem scoring my own name for my XeeSM url – http://xeeSM.com/deswalsh (it works also with www prefix).

Some suggestions are provided onsite about potential uses of your XeeSM profile link and how to go about implementing them:

• include in your email signature
• put on your business card (don’t need new cards to accommodate new social networking links)
• include on your LinkedIn profile in the Websites section
• Twitter profile link space (solves the problem of which link to use)
• website/blog (don’t have to keep updating links)
• and so on…

These all make sense. And having just had new business cards printed I took the point particularly about the advantage of putting a XeeSM link on your business card.

Another advantage of the XeeSM url is that it is so short it doesn’t need to be put through a url shortener.

XeeSM is pronounced, we are told on the website, “see sam” and the SM stands for Social Media.

I’m not such an early adopter as not to be a bit wary of new apps. I really don’t get a buzz out of helping someone to break in a new app. But XeeSM has a good pedigree, having been produced by Xeequa Corp., providers of the eponymous social media platform. Axel Schultze, Xeequa Corp. founder and principal, is also the brains behind and heavily involved in delivering the new Social Media Academy.

Check out XeeSM. Grab your name before someone else does. Then share your new url here in the comments, if you wish.

• What’s next
  Christpher Penn on what's next in social media, decentralization coming to social networks, importance of email lists, trust, and making awesome products
  (tags: socialnetworks technology email)

On Monday last I spoke in Australia’s national capital, Canberra, at a Government 2.0 workshop. My subject was “Why parliamentarians and public sector managers need to participate actively in social media”.

I used some slides to illustrate particular points:

The video of the presentation is here:

Public Sphere: Government 2.0 – Des Walsh from Kate Lundy on Vimeo.

It’s that time again. BlogWorld & New Media Expo early registration rates are about to cut out on July 1st.

BlogWorld & New Media Expo, held in Las Vegas, has been a highlight of each of the past two years for me. It is such a great gathering of people who are actively involved, or otherwise interested in learning about, blogging, podcasting and video blogging. There is an amazing lineup of speakers and topics and a wonderfully diverse group of people attending – by no means just a gathering of geeks (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

BlogWorld & New Media Expo 2008

The organizers boast, justifiably, that BlogWorld & New Media Expo is “the only industry-wide trade show for the blogging and new media world”.

This year promises to be bigger and better than ever, now that BlogWorld Expo and a former, partly parallel event, New Media Expo, have merged into one event. Dates of the Expo and main conference are October 16-17, with with an exclusive Social Media Summit as an all-day event on the previous day, October 15. The Expo and all the conference sessions are held in the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Although my focus in the past couple of years has been on the conference sessions – especially last year when I was helping with the management of the conference sessions as well as presenting – the Expo part of the event is significant in its own right. Frankly, when I first heard about the idea of a blogging and new media expo I wondered what would be on display: my wondering stopped the first time I visited the Expo.

The event website lists some of what you will find in the Expo:

…publishing platforms, design companies, web/blog/podcast hosting companies, aggregators, add-on services, plug-ins, widgets, computer hardware & software, wireless services, podcasting products, wireless & high speed ISPs, VOIP companies, on-line advertising networks, news readers, RSS/syndication services, search engines, consulting companies, affiliate program partners, new media products and services…

In fact, there is so much to see in the Expo and there are so many interesting people to speak to at the various stands, that it can be a challenge fitting all that in and participating fully in the conference program. A nice challenge to have.

And then there is the networking, around the Expo area, in the coffee lounge, between conference sessions and at any of the plethora of parties and other social events over the few days. Sleep is optional.

Disclosure: As well as being a huge fan of the event, I’m an affiliate of BlogWorld & New Media Expo, so if you click through from here there is a potential benefit for me. If that’s a problem, just use the basic web address – http://www.blogworldexpo.com . Either way, do check it out and if you do attend, please make sure to track me down and say hi!

There are excellent discounts on tickets right now but they close in a few days time, on July 1st. Click on the banner below for more information.

Picture BlogWorld & New Media Expo by adrants, via Flickr, Creative Commons

I’m off to the national capital, Canberra, tonight for the all day event at Parliament House, Government 2.0: Policy and Practice. As indicated in a previous post, I’m speaking on the subject: Why parliamentarians and public sector managers need to participate in social media. The sub-head is: briefings and slide shows won’t cut it.

I plan to live blog the event with the help of Coveritlive and am embedding the code for that here. I’ll switch it on in the morning. In the meantime you can register to be reminded when it goes live.

Planning to have some other colleagues teaming up so as to make it as informative a feed as we can.

Update: My slides for the event are at Slideshare.

Got the word this morning that I’m scheduled to speak at the Government 2.0: Policy and Practice event next Monday in Australia’s national capital, Canberra. The fact that the event is being held within Parliament House makes me feel doubly appreciative.

This is the event I posted about a couple of weeks ago as Open Government Camp and Social Media.

Because I’d thought of the event till now as something of an upscale barcamp, I think I’d been feeling fairly relaxed about the idea of speaking, if I happened to be chosen out of the array of people offering to speak.

Now that I have an idea of who is expected actually to attend, I’m feeling a tad nervous (which is probably not a bad thing in terms of assisting my concentration on doing the best job I can on the day).

There are some 150 in person attendees expected and 200-400 simultaneously online. I understand there are few or no spare seats now. About a third of the registered in person attendees are from Government including agencies, staffers from several portfolios, as well as some politicians including Minister Lindsay Tanner and Senator Kate Lundy.

That I’m speaking only for 10 minutes, with 5 minutes for questions (as are most of the speakers) doesn’t of itself make me less nervous: I don’t have a lot of time to get my points across.

My topic is “Why parliamentarians and public sector managers need to participate actively in social media (briefing papers and slideshows won’t cut it)”. This is a riff on a hobbyhorse of mine, that if senior people in any organization want to be most effective in terms of how social media works, they need to get in and participate. They need to be players. It’s not enough to be able to say “Oh, yes, I’ve read about that.” What being a player might mean in practice is something I’ll be rehearsing over the next few days.

In the meantime, to help me get an up to date perspective on the topic of my presentation, I’ve posted a question on LinkedIn Answers:

Where can I find examples, lists, blog posts case studies for serving politicians and senior public sector managers as active users of social media?

There has been one, very helpful, answer so far and I will report here in due course on the responses that come in over the next few days.

I’ve also set up a CoverItLive link to help me report on the day.  I’ll be posting the stream here on the blog, closer to the time. If you would like a reminder of that, please enter your email address in the form below.

This is the RSS link for the CoverItLive stream.

Please, if you have any suggestions as to what I should try to cover, your comments will be very welcome.