I will be speaking about social media and blogging in May and June at the following events: Social Rockstar Workshop - May 16. 2008 - Washington, D.C. I will be speaking about social media and blogging and making some references to its use in the corporate environment of AOL, Tribune and Classified Ventures where he has lead blogging & social media initiatives. There are a number of local D.C. area social media experts which will be offering perspective followed by workshops. TECH cocktail CONFERENCE TECH cocktail CONFERENCE - May 29, 2008 - Chicago, IL I am co-hosting our first TECH cocktail CONFERENCE bringing attendees access to a day full of amazing speakers, great perspectives and advice in an intimate environment where speakers are approachable. The goal of the conference is to assist attendees by bringing them essential business startup tips, advice and knowledge from a super-cast of successful founders, developers and entrepreneurs. It should be a super day followed by our popular TECH cocktail Chicago 8 mixer event. Use the discount code: somewhatfrank to save on your ticket! BlogPotomac BlogPotomac - June 13, 2008 - Falls Church, VA I am giving the lunch keynote on social media Friday the 13th for the first BlogPotomac event. BlogPotomac seeks to provide a local “un-conference” on best marketing practices for the social media community in the D.C. metro area.

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Breakfast is by far my favorite meal of the day as it acts as the foundation of your day. A few weeks ago Lijit Networks hosted a breakfast the morning after TECH cocktail DC 2. It at Busboys & Poets in Washington, D.C. and was a lot of fun. I got a chance to capture episode 24 of SOMEWHAT FRANK TV.

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The United States is ultimately a startup so I thought that is might be fun to take advantage of living near the nations capitol and show off the main office of the executive branch - the White House. I was able to capture some of the sites and sounds of the White House as part of the spring tour which I found out about through their own use of technology via the White House RSS feeds and podcasts.

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TECH cocktail DC 2 the community builder event that took place last Thursday evening in Washington, D.C. showcased six startups from the local area. The event united over four hundred guests for an evening of conversations, showing off and fun. This is the last event before the upcoming TECH cocktail CONFERENCE which will unite all the various TECH cocktail cities for a full day conference in Chicago on May 29th. The list of speakers is pretty amazing and the focus of the conference is to help anyone in business to take a more "no nonsense" approach by leveraging technology and the Web (i.e. running a "real" business rather than one setup to simply attract as many users as possible with no real monetization strategy in mind).

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SOMEWHAT FRANK Weekly Tidbits from around the Web gathered by Frank Gruber for the week ending April 27, 2008.

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With the popularity of text messaging and the rise of Twitter via mobile there is a growing trend for find me/follow me mobile applications. FindWhere, a Sterling, Virginia based company, has just launched an application called Livecontacts to help you find and keep track of your buddies. Users can now share their location and track their friends’ locations for free. Livecontacts is taking the same approach that craigslist took to democratize the online classified advertising space by offering users what is traditionally a paid geographic data service for free.

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I am a taggaholic. I love to tag items in Flickr and across the Web. I even find myself sometimes tagging other peoples photos and online content. This would not be possible without "folksonomy" and recently got to watch Thomas Vander Wal present at AOL as part of the AOL Developer Network Speaker Series. Thomas Vander Wal invented the word "folksonomy" and knows a thing or two about the social web. It's more than just today's social networks - it's layers of interactivity, circles of sociability, reputation and identity. He also shared his thoughts on the spheres of sociability, social objects, and the path to get users to fully embrace creating and sharing social objects. I got a chance to talk with Thomas after his presentation and it is episode 20 of SOMEWHAT FRANK TV.

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SOMEWHAT FRANK Weekly Tidbits from around the Web gathered by Frank Gruber for the week ending March 30, 2008.

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The adoption of Twitter, which I covered previously a number of times , appears to be acceleratingly since March 6th, as I have seen my followers double in that three week period. My friend Gary Vaynerchuk recently started to do a daily "thoughts on life" video podcast and gave his thoughts on Twitter vs. Facebook...kinda. So in response to his video I wanted to make a quick SOMEWHAT FRANK TV episode 18 with my thoughts on Twitter (mainly) as well as a few comments about Facebook.

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If you are in the Washington, D.C. area, mark your calendars for BlogPotomac, a one day event aimed at providing advanced marketing insights beyond the average social media 101. BlogPotomac will be held on Friday, June 13, 2008 at the State Theater in Falls Church, Virginia. BlogPotomac seeks to provide a local “un-conference” on best marketing practices for the social media community in the D.C. metro area.

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With the melting of the polar ice caps a lot more focus has been placed on the environment lately. Going green has been a popular topic, one that I have written about before as I compiled a list of green Web 2.0 sites. Well, I just found another worth taking a look at in emPivot. emPivot, a Washinton, DC based startup, is like YouTube for "Green" videos as it offers a video sharing site specifically for "Green" media.

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I am pleased to announce TECH cocktail DC 2 will be Thursday, April 24, 2008 in Washington, DC. The social mixer event will look to unite the DC, Maryland and Virginia bloggers, technology enthusiasts, entrepreneurs and other business professionals interested in the technology arena for an evening of fun as we showcase and amplify the local tech scene. Here are the details: Date: Thursday, April 24, 2008 Time: 6:30pm - 9pm Venue: MCCXXIII: 1223 Connecticut Avenue, NW - Washington, DC 20036 (Map) Cost: $0 - It’s free! RSVP: techcocktaildc2.eventbrite.com The event is sponsored by AOL and Viget Labs - and there are a few sponsorship spots open so reach out if you are interested in supporting the movement. Startups will be showing off their stuff at the event and there are still a few demo spots open so let me know if you are interested. It should be a great time. Also don't forget...we are hosting a TECH CONFERENCE on May 29th - SIGN UP TODAY!

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Why go to the ballgame, concert, lunch or dinner solo? Obviously, we all like our own privacy sometimes but other times we might want to find someone with like interests to hang out with. This is especially true for those that might have just moved into a new area. WhyGoSolo is a new social networking site aimed at helping you to create spontaneous new connections so, as its name implies, you won't go solo any longer.

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Now is Gone so you had better get ready to embrace a new media. I previously chatted with Brian Solis about, Now Is Gone, a book he helped Geoff Livingston author. I sat on a panel discussing social media with Geoff at the New New Internet conference this past November, when he announced his book. So I was happy to finally be able to chat with him about it.

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Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits from around the Web gathered by Frank Gruber for the week ending November 4, 2007.

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How can you engage your client community via blogs and social media? Last Thursday, I spoke on a panel at The New New Internet Conference to discuss this very question. The panel consisted of Gary Vaynerchuk video blogger at Wine Library TV and Director of Operations at Wine Library, Geoff Livingston blogger at The BuzzBin and author of Now Is Gone and Rohit Bhargava blogger at Influential Marketing and author Personality Not Included and myself blogger at Somewhat Frank, co-founder of TECH cocktail a community-building event startup and product manager of myAOL. If you want to find out about social media you best watch the video and learn about blogging, engaging social media and hustle 2.0!

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I got interviewed by trend junkie and entrepreneur Greg Cangelosi of Trend TV this week while at the The New New Internet Conference. In case you might not know Greg Cangelosi is a podcasting expert and just authored a book titled . I cannot wait to get my hands on a copy.Greg and I sat down and chatted and he captured the casual interview on Trend TV.

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The DC area was looking a little more like Silicon Valley this week, welcoming a number of prominent bloggers, social media consultants, tech company product managers, startups, VC's, and more - well, with the exception of all the dark suits in the audience which made it a great Silicon Valley/DC mashup scene. Such was The New New Internet Conference - Web 2.0 for Business, presented by Potomac Executive Biz at the Reston Hyatt on Thursday, November 1st.

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Ruckus Networks, a Herndon,Virginia-based startup, has been making some noise on college campuses across the US. Ruckus is a college-only multimedia service offering free ad-supported downloads to college students. After some initial bad reviews, Ruckus has over 3 million music tracks available and just recently launched a Facebook application, extensive social networking capabilities, and an improved video service just in time for the new school year.

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Planypus (planyp.us), a startup co-located in Chicago and Washington, DC, offers friends and family the ability to create collaborative plans. Think of it as a wiki for your social life. Today Playnpus has announced the closing of its Series-A financing. What are they going to do with the money?

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Do you want to work with me? If so, this could be your chance, it will be glorious... I am not talking about blogging on Somewhat Frank. What to help me and the rest of the super, myAOL team? We recently launched the, myAOL Personalization Suite with global plans and...

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Is it just me or is Gabe Rivera turning up everywhere this week? It appears Gabe Rivera, the creator of techmeme and other news aggregator sites, had a very big week. I know Gabe is very modest, but I think the Mims song "This Is Why I'm Hot" might be...

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A few hours ago, TECH cocktail completed its first event in DC at the popular MCCXXIII bar (1223 Club DC, for the non Roman-numeral types). The event was packed with hundreds of guests mingling as the place rocked to music, wine, product demos and mingling. Over 225+ technology enthusiasts, VCs,...

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Wine Library TV, a popular wine video blog that shares the wine expertise of founder and host Gary Vaynerchuk, has announced it has acquired the wine social network Cork'd. In simple terms, Cork'd is site for a wine lover to share and rate wine. It seems like a great fit...

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I am happy to announce that TECH cocktail is coming to DC in May! Coming off a great event in Chicago a couple of weeks ago we are excited to be co-hosting TECH cocktail DC 1 (TcDC1) on May 17, 2007 from 6 to 9:30pm at MCCXXII, a sweet venue...

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Photo of the Week: I snapped this photo of the West Wing while celebrating Earth Day 2007 on the White House grounds. eBay Acquires StumbleUpon StumbleUpon was acquired by eBay for between $40 to $75 million but it seems Google Google tried to rain on their parade with a toolbar...

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With a number of political candidates creating MySpace profiles, YouTube videos and Second Life avatars it appears that the Internet and web 2.0 technology are being leveraged for political campaigning. TechPresident, a project of the Personal Democracy Forum, launched recently to aggregate the activities of U.S. presidential hopefully on popular...

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OpenCongress, a political information mashup, is a great resource for anyone strongly interested in politics on Capitol Hill. By cataloging information (and there is a lot information) in an easy to navigate format, users have access to voting records, and statements by Senators and Members, including the always interesting breakdown...

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It is time to start planning which conferences are going to attend in 2007. To make it easier I have compiled a list of some of the best web 2.0, technology, design, marketing and innovation conferences and events scheduled in 2007. This is meant to be a working list, so...

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Betocracy is a new site offering easy to use tools for the creation of prediction markets on websites. Though in Beta, Betocracy has markets covering the Democratic Presidential Nominee in 2008 as well as a Stock Market for the popular Second-Life multi-player role-playing universe. Betocracy was created by freelance web...

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Last night, (October 30, 2006) I had a chance to attend the Washington, DC stop on the Social Media Club International tour (which stopped in San Francisco last week). The Social Media Club is an organization founded by Chris Heuer with the mantra: "If you get it, share it." I...

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