Live Podcast: Augie Ray, Former Senior Forrester Research Analyst and Future Executive Director of Community and Collaboration for USAA

Augie Ray (@augieray) first joined The A-List back in April 2009, before he became a Senior Forrester Research (@Forrester) Analyst, filling the shoes of Jeremiah Owyang (@jowyang), who left to become a partner at the Altimeter Group.

Somewhat ironically, the very thing that urged me to ask Augie to join the program back in 2009, was became an object of scrutiny, when Forrester decided analysts could no longer maintain personally-branded research blogs.

Augie seemed to take it in stride, posting his own response to the decision.

When I received my first post since the decision from Augie’s blog, I was thrilled. In it, he explained his decision and his new role at USAA (@USAA). That’s one thing I love about Augie – he always tells you the way it is…

Don’t miss the archive!

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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: 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: LeWeb 2010 Conference Preview With Loic and Geraldine Le Meur

LeWeb’10 takes place in Paris December 8th and 9th 2010 at Les Docks.

With more than 2,400 Participants from 54 countries, it’s the number one European event about the Internet.

As you probably know, I covered the conference for BlogTalkRadio using Cinch last year and the information and interviews I gathered changed my world view in a positive way the whole year through!

I am excited to hear what’s in store for when I speak with the conference’s Founders and organizer, Loic and Geraldine Le Meur! Remember that The A-List gives you access to the world’s top influencers.

We discuss global entrepreneurship, what the conference organizers hope to do – and that nagging question about the representation of women at LeWeb. Don’t miss the archive:

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

Live Podcast: Featured Guest Tara Hunt, Speaker, Author and One Of The Most Influential Women In Technology

Tara Hunt, aka @missrogue

She had us at ‘Whuffie.’

Actually, she had us even sooner than that!

Named one of Fast Company’s Most Influential Women in Technology in 2009, she is a top speaker, entrepreneur, mom, Canadian, karaoke addict, Flickr fan and Twitter-holic and much more.

She is speaking high-demand, speaking at conferences around the world and we’re delighted to have her on The A-List!

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

Live Podcast: Featured Guests Chris Heuer and Kristie Wells, Founders of Social Media Club

“If you get it, share it!”

That’s long been the tag line for Social Media Club.

As the number of club chapters has grown, so too has the organization, providing quite a journey for the club’s founders. The story of Social Media Club’s founding and growth was discussed earlier this year at Webcom Montreal 2010. Now, The A-List asks Chris Heuer (@ChrisHeuer) and Kristie Wells (@KristieWells) what they’ve learned in cultivating the global Social Media Club community and – perhaps more importantly – what’s next!

Could a book be on the horizon?

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

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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!

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:

Embrace Independence!

Have a wonderful 4th of July holiday – wherever you are! We’ll bring back pretty images from the San Francisco bay via the USS Potomac (@USSPotomac)!

Live Podcast: Featured Guest Marissa Louie, CEO of HeroEx

Marissa Louie

I had the good fortune to meet Marissa Louie of HeroEx as part of the process of becoming a panelist at next Thursday’s Social Media Marketing Conference in San Francisco (#SMMSF) and quickly came to like her smart, entrepreneurial spirit.

If you don’t already know about HeroEx.com, check it out. It’s in alpha, but delivers almost any item under 25 pounds in 1 hour or less in San Francisco. For those of us who remember (and relished!) the Kozmo.com days, you have to check it out.

In addition to her current venture, Marissa previously founded AD-Village, an ad network optimizer and aggregator. I’ll ask her about all that, as well as Her expertise is in online marketing, sales, supply chain management and logistics, and technology systems.

One ways he is savvy is in media coverage – Marissa will be in the August issue of SHAPE Magazine and has been featured on ABC, CBS, Forbes, BusinessWeek, TechCrunch, The Next Web, Bub.blicio.us, GQ Korea, and more.

Don’t miss the program archive here:

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Live Podcast: Featured Guest David Skok, VC and Blogger, Matrix Partners

David Skok

David Skok is the rare entrepreneur that not only actively seeks feedback on emerging technology and trends, but he shares his perspective on his brilliant blog.

As an experienced and successful entrepreneur himself, it is a fantastic addition to The A-List. There’s a lot to learn here:

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