Please Vote for my SXSW panel!

*Please Note* I have launched a new home for my blog at http://saul.is/ I will keep cross posting here for a little while but please update your bookmarks or click on the link an subscribe to the new rss feed.

Hi Y'All,

As you can see I have a new website and all and I will get to that in the next post becuase I am still tinkering a little with the look and feel but this post couldn't wait till I was done because well, it's time sensitive!

Voting has opened for the panel selection at SXSW Interactive and I am fortunate to be on two pretty amazing/interesting possible panels but I need your help in getting them voted in! Please read over the descriptions below and if it is interesting to you please vote! Even if it isn't interesting to you consider this a chance to right whatever wrongs you may have done to people in the past because voting is really the only thing that separates us from countries that can't vote...well that and a few other things but please vote!

The first is called

Influencer Throwdown: Proving Influence Once and For All

With David Binkowski, Krista Neher, Kevin Duggan and myself.

Influence "experiments" like Fast Company's project do more harm than good when it comes to defining and measuring influence. It's more than how many people you can get to vote for you. Instead of counting the people who reach you need to reach the people who count. Four marketing veterans will weigh in with individual presentation on their real-world examples of influence and discuss the current state of influence. What's real, what's wrong and what's next. As part of the interactive discussion attendees will learn * different approaches to measuring influence * specific examples of influence including the impact it had for a brand * ways to identify and measure influence.

The other Panel is

Startup Marketing: It's More Than a Twitter Account

with Sarah Prevette @sarahprevette, Maggie Fox @maggiefox, Micah Baldwin @Micah, Ben Huh @BenHuh and Krista Neher @kristaneher and myself.

Have you ever looked at the Sky Mall catalog and say to yourself "How have I gone this long without an ankle air conditioner?" Probably not but the fact is that there are a lot of start ups and more will be formed before you finish reading this description. It's getting harder and harder to get the attention you need to prosper and reach your prospective audience but that doesn't mean it is impossible! This talk is going to cover a few tricks and tips for actually marketing your business from a start up perspective and you may be surprised that this talk isn't going to be all about Social Media!