New Media Knowledge are hosting Blogging: A Real Conversation – an event in London, on the afternoon of 28 June 05:

The trust people put in blogs, their simplicity and interactive character, and their ability to be aggregated via RSS have combined to grant blogs a unique status in the communications spectrum.
This event will examine the increasing importance and influence of blogs – as sources of trusted opinion and as a barometer of the shifting balance of power in media publishing.

Is nano-publishing a new communications paradigm?
The growth and popularity of blogs embodies the shifting balance of power in the media continuum. But with the onset of what Demos recently dubbed “the pro-Am revolution”, are amateurs really the new experts? Or is it less a case of insufficient fact-checking by bloggers passing for journalists and more an emergent preference by consumers for personalised content, peer-review and transparent motivation?

Are blogs the new voices of authority?
Blogs were supposed to be unmediated, immediate communication, and content that could be delivered on the hoof (via moblogging and WiFi). But can this be a marketing model? The informal nature of blogs – and their simplicity for the user – has been key to their appeal to date. So will this democratising type of social software transfer so easily into the marketeers toolset as a more authentic way to foster relationships and loyalty?

I’ll be on a panel along with Mike Beeston, Fjord; Sabrina Dent, Mink Media; Johnnie Moore, Marketing consultant & facilitator; Adriana Cronin-Lukas, The Big Blog Company. This is actually going to be the first time I’ll have been on a panel discussion with people I actually know, and I’m looking forward to it.
On the other hand, I will only just have got back from America and will be horrendously jet-lagged, although it has already been proven that my mouth can continue working long after my brain has fallen asleep. I’ll let you decide if that’s a good or bad thing: Beercasting in Vancouver (MP3, a bit clippy at times, fast forward to about halfway through.)

Busy here getting myself sorted for my trip to San Francisco. I leave on Monday for London, fly to San Francisco on Tuesday, landing Tuesday evening local time. I’m staying in SF until 23rd, when I fly to New York for a meeting, leaving NYC on 24rd and landing back in Heathrow on 25th. Then back on the road on the 27th, but that’s another blog post.

I’m going to SF primarily to speak at Supernova on a panel discussion about Business Blogging with Robert Scoble (MS), Charlene Li (Forrester) and Michael Sippey (Six Apart). We’re on at 2.30 – 4.00 pm on Monday 20th June, if you’re interested.

More on Strange Attractor.

Well, I was expecting to have more time to devote to polishing up this site, but things are going a bit nuts atm. One thing that I wasn’t expecting was that I would find myself suddenly with a literary agent, so now I have a lot of stuff to do for him in order to get that ball rolling.

All very exciting, but it does mean I won’t be finishing off my portfolio here for ages. Sorry. If you want to know more about what I do, please contact me.

Betsy’s despairing of my multiblogocity, so I thought I’d just explain wtf is going on here with yet another blog.

Suw.org.uk is my repository for all things Suw. Here I am gathering all the stuff I’ve written that I’ve got in digital form, links to all my blogs and websites, explanations of what I do for a living, and all my webbie footprints. It’s sort of an extended portfolio if you like, my place where I can send prospective clients to find out all about me.

The blog here will be exclusively about work, so probably rarely updated and fairly boring unless you’re thinking of hiring me. Chocolate and Vodka, and Strange Attractor won’t change.

But Betsy’s got a good point. I’m starting to get into the ‘too many feeds’ category now, so I will spend some time with Feedburner to see if I can splice together all my feeds into one uberSuwfeed. Then you can pick and choose how you want to see all my stuff – as individual feeds, in one clump, or in one clump with photos. I’m all for choice, me.

Please, do bear with me as I build up this site to something worth having. I’m trying to write about what I do without sounding all wanky and full of shit, because talking in portfolio-speak really does not behoove a bloggess.

This site is seriously under construction so try not to fall through where the floors aren’t down yet. Just warnin’ ya.

Just like that, I got WordPress up and running. Yay! I say ‘I’ but inreality it was all pre-installed. I am very impressed by ukhost4u so far – damn fine service. Anyway, will be adding bits and pieces here as I go along and, hopefully, will make this less and less blog-like as I go along.

Sydney and I were just wondering if WordPress copes well with dates this far back in the past. And you know what? It does.