Live Podcast: Dave McClure, Founding Partner 500 Startups and John Ramey, CEO iSocket

Dave McClure

This one is a must-listen for entrepreneurs and those that aspire to be.
Join us for a joint interview with Dave McClure, Founding Partner and CEO of 500 Startups and John Ramey, CEO of iSocket.

John Ramey

Dave McClure is a venture capitalist and founding partner at 500 Startups, an Internet startup seed fund and incubator program headquartered in Mountain View, CA. Dave has been geeking out in Silicon Valley for over twenty years as a software developer, entrepreneur, startup advisor and investor, blogger, and internet marketing nerd.
Dave’s passion is helping startups with product and marketing strategy, and he is a vocal and notable industry speaker on lean startup metrics. He has invested in over 70 startup companies including iSocket.com.
John Ramey, the Founder and CEO of iSocket.com has been a successful Web and marketing entrepreneur for over 10 years. He previously co-founded Maven Ventures and Lythargic Media. With iSocket.com, he is passionate about making advertising suck less.

Don’t miss the archive:

The A-List gives you access to the world’s top influencers. Please submit your questions for Dave and John  via Twitter, Facebook, blog and email.

Live Podcast: Featured Guest Randy Paynter, Founder and CEO, Care2

Randy Paynter, Founder and CEO of Care2.com

Join us for an insightful interview with Randy Paynter, Founder and CEO of Care2.

With more than 14 million members, Care2 is the largest online community of people making a difference in healthy and green living, human rights and animal welfare.

Care2 empowers individuals to “Make a Difference” with daily actions, healthy living advice, news and blogs on causes, petitions and much more.

Care2 works with more than 500 nonprofit organizations to recruit quality activists and donors. In addition, Care2 is a leader in online Cause Marketing, running advertising campaigns for companies moving toward a sustainable future.

Care2 is Green America’s 2009 People’s Choice Award Winner for Green Business of the Year.

Randy Paynter (@Paynter) is the Founder and CEO of Care2.com  He is an expert at creating and building a financially strong social enterprise.

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The A-List gives you access to the world’s top influencers. Please send your questions for any quest via Twitter, Facebook, blog and email.

Live Podcast: Featured Guest Kailash Ambwani, CEO of Facetime, Enterprise Solutions for Web 2.0

Kailash Ambwani, CEO of Facetime

Join us for an in-depth interview with Kailash Ambwani, CEO of FaceTime.

FaceTime Communications enables the safe and productive use of Unified Communications and Web 2.0, including instant messaging, blogs and social networking.
Ranked number one by IDC for five consecutive years, FaceTime’s award-winning solutions are used by more than 1,500 customers for the security, management and compliance of real-time communications.

Kailash discusses how FaceTime’s products help companies realize the benefits of the “New Internet” while ensuring unified safety, management and compliance.

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The A-List gives you access to the world’s top influencers. Please send your questions for any guest via Twitter, Facebook, blog and email.

Live Podcast: Monitoring Social Media Conference Preview #MSM10

Following the success of their events In London, Influence People is hosting a one-day Social Media Monitoring Conference in San Francisco on 21st October, followed by a half-day training bootcamp on 22nd October.

Monitoring Social Media (#MSM10) will bring together leading brands, PR and marketing experts to discuss the latest ideas, trends and techniques in social media monitoring and measurement. Though a series of presentations, panels and expert-led discussions, we will explore the critical issues that marketers and PR professionals are facing in their efforts to monitor their social media interactions.

Get a free preview of what to expect at the conference as well as insights you can use now! Catch the archive here:

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Remember that this show is by you, not just for you! Your questions are an essential part of the program and included in this show! Remember you are always welcome to tweet, Facebook or email in your questions before or during my shows.

Every Vote Counts: Let The Voice Of The SMB be Heard!

The majority of US-based businesses are small or medium-sized. In addition to the size of the SMB market, both the economy and incentives from the federal government to encourage individuals to create business has positioned the SMB market as perhaps the most important sector of growth we’ve seen in more than a decade.

Large enterprises know this and are keen to reach entrepreneurs and executive at SMBs to help them grow, using their products and services as they scale into larger businesses.

This gave myself and Karen O’Brien, a partner a Crimson Consulting, the idea to being together a panel to educate those at South by Southwest (SXSW) and Enterprise 2.0 conferences to talk about how large enterprises can reach the SMB market and the promise it holds for them in doing so, as well as educating SMBs about what incentives these companies are providing to engage with the SMB customer. At SXSW, the panel will include representatives from Microsoft, Cisco and Yelp.

But these panels will not happen unless you vote to bring them to life… and the competition is fierce. That’s where your help comes in…

Please take a moment to vote for the panel on the SXSW panelpicker and leave a comment on what you think the promise the panel holds, what you would like to get out of it if you were to attend the session or anything else you think is important for us to know.

The panelists could be different, but the message very similar at Enterprise 2.0 – you can cast your vote here. Again, would love to hear your comments!

Live Podcast: David Meerman Scott and Brian Halligan, Authors of Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead

The book, Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead

What marketing lessons can you learn from ‘the most iconic band in rock history’? We’ll find out from the authors of a new book that tackles that question head-on. David Meerman Scott (@DMScott) and Brian Halligan (@BHalligan) are our featured guests for the hour.

Don’t miss this archive of The A-List show here:

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UPDATED: Teaching Understanding Google Analytics

I am thrilled to be teaching Understanding Google Analytics, an online course, for mediabistro.

The first classes begin July 29th. That course is ending soon, but you can now sign up for the next session that will begin on Thursday evenings beginning October 7th. Sign up here.

Here’s the course description:

Business owners used to only be concerned with the number of hits to their website. Now businesses, bloggers, and online marketers need to know more than just how many people are coming to their site. They need data about their site’s performance, Internet marketing investments, lead or sales conversions, visitor behavior, and user interaction. Fortunately, the advancement of web technologies has made this comprehensive collection of data and analysis possible.

Live Podcast: Featured Guest Michael Tippett, Founder of NowPublic

Michael Tippett

So how does one create one of the world’s leading media companies?

Let’s ask one!

Michael Tippett founded NowPublic, one of the largest media organizations in the world. He’s accomplished a great deal, but  as international expert on emerging news models, he may have a very interesting take on what print media can do to save themselves.

I asked him about that and much more. Don’t miss this archive of The A-List:

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Why Sentiment Analysis Can’t Work And Why It’s A Damned Good Thing!

Dominique Lahaix, CEO of eCairn

This is a guest blog post from Dominique Lahaix, CEO of eCairn. eCairn Inc. (@eCairn) is a privately held software technology company, founded in October 2006 that specializes in community and influencers marketing. Headquartered in Los Gatos, California, Dominique (@Dominiq) and other company founders have a cumulative experience of 50+ years in e-marketing, knowledge engineering, collaborative filtering, linguistics, software development and software engineering at well-known companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Sun, Xerox, eBay and Motorola.

Let’s start with an example.

Imagine you work for Dell and you have to rate the following conversations to be examples of positive, neutral or negative sentiment:

• HP is good.
• Dell is good, but I still prefer HP.
• The new Dell PC is good but the previous one worked better.
• The new Dell PC is good but I miss the look of the previous one.
• HP works great but I hate them.
• Dell works great but I hate them.
• Dell is as good as HP.
• HP and Dell are the same crap, maybe Dell a little bit less.
• HP and Dell are nice entry-level products.
• Dell is good if you can afford it.
• Dell is good but exclusive.
• I would only recommend Dell’s PC to small businesses.
• Dell is the Dom Perignon of netbooks.
• Apple is to Dell what Saint Amour is to Beaujolais Nouveau.
• I worked too much on my Dell last night and I got sick looking at the screen.
• Dell is only good for gaming.
• HP is like it was in the Packard’s time.
• HP is like what it was in Carly’s time.
• No wonder why the Dell stock is going south.
• I love HP (from HP’s PR agency or Director).
• I hate HP (from an employee recently fired).
• A tweet repurposing the one above without any additional comment.

Hard to rate isn’t it? These are fairly standard sentences, not corner cases. There is no irony and no borderline use of language, but it just shows that:

Live Podcast: Preview Of Social Media Marketing Conference With Marissa Louie And Murray Newlands

Social Media Marketing 2010 San Francisco will bring together leading brands and marketing experts to explore the viral power of social networks.

The event takes place Thursday, July 8th at the Hotel Nikko (222 Mason Street, San Francisco, CA 94102) from 9:00 AM to 5:30 PM. The official event hashtag is #SMMSF.

During this one-day event, a team of renowned marketing experts will give guidance on how to effectively engage with customers via social media, give tips on how to maximize the impact of your campaigns and offer insights into new services to try and trends to watch out for. This is the ultimate event for anyone involved in social media or digital marketing.

I’m proud to be participating in this event and to offer a 10% discount code for Eventbrite: 10smmsf14.

Marissa Louie of Heroex and a conference organizer will join me to preview the event on The A-List:

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