A few weeks ago my coworker/pal Justin Tormey who is now Director of Digital Distribution - Product Development, clued me in to WidgetCon. Back in the day we worked together on developing some widgets for MTV News, so he knew I would be interested. As a result, a while ago I posted the WidgetCon widget in my Facebook feed. I also followed up with some people on Facebook who I thought would be interested in attending. Among them was Lynne, the Senior Editor for one of my favorite magazine's Fast Company. Per the widgetcon attendee list (that anyone can scroll through), she is now going to be checking it out. Social networking and transparency in action? Hm. If my work lets me go, I plan on liveblogging the event, or at the very least taking a million notes. I've never live blogged anything before so it would be a fun thing to attempt. If I end up not being able to go, I do hope that the producers of WidgetCon livestream the panel discussions and also offer them as an audio/video podcast feed. At the very least, I hope they offer something along the lines of the OnHollywood Conference video archive page (they also live streamed). WidgetCon CONFERENCE DETAILS: http://www.widgetcon.com/index.html Date: Wednesday July 11th Time: 9:00am – 5:00pm, Reception to follow Venue: Tribeca Cinemas, NYC WidgetCon is a full day event to be held at the Tribeca Cinemas in New York on July 11th. Its objective is to begin to look towards the smart growth of widget marketing, through conversations on everything from standards to metrics to production and economics, as well as creative and media strategies. Click here for list of WidgetCon Conference Speakers. Some interesting people who are going (per their badge creation): Sharon Gross - Manager, Online Marketing - Showtime Networks Allen King - Interactive Media Director - Turner Broadcasting Brett Dennis - Director Media Marketing - T-Mobile USA Simon Assaad - CEO - Heavy Chris Marentis - CEO - Clearspring Zal Bilimoria - Product Marketing Manager - Google, Inc. Samir Mehta - Product Manager - Yahoo Inc. Michael Shields - VP Media Strategy - Warner Music Group Some Current Buzz Mashable - ...I think it’s incredibly important for businesses to engage in this type of discussion, and more so for companies that have put forth business applications. From the looks of the list of other speakers, most of those involved with WidgetCon hail from media or other non-professional networking sites. Nevertheless, with LinkedIn’s recent announcement of creating a platform for developers, we’re seeing the powerful convergence of business marketing through widgets across the board. Widgify - ...This is making out to be an interesting event and will be the second official Widget-only conference ever. The first was Widgets Live held last year. That event grew out of organic blog commentary and was a smashing success. Snipperoo - ..Hot on the heels of TIME Magazine naming “You” the Person of the Year in 2006, Newsweek declared 2007 to be “The Year of the Widget.” The consumer-generated content explosion online is about to be amplified—at WidgetCon2007. Bryper - ...With widgets already reaching a staggering 81 million Internet users in North America alone, according to a recent comScore study, there’s simply no way any good marketer shouldn’t be learning everything he or she can about how to market with widgets. SEOspace - ...Widget marketing has been around for a while but with the release of personalization, we expect widget marketing to become even more popular in upcoming months. Behind WidgetCon Om.daily - ...Dare wants to talk to widget creators. I think it is a great idea. I am happy to host Dare in SF, and perhaps we can put together an informal event to talk widgets. You know I love that stuff. Niall, say what? Anyway else wants to jump in and play along, please do. Meebo & Rock U team…. what do you think? E-venting - ... I'm more than just a geek. I'm actually two geeks - an Events geek and a Social Media geek. So when Freewebs asked me to produce a conference for them on Widget Marketing, I happily accepted, and WidgetCon was born. ^_^