It was with shock that I returned home from a night out last night to hear the news of Russell's passing. How terribly, terribly sad. Most of all for him, as he'd seemed buoyant, healthier, and content when I'd last seen him several months ago when he was in town - he was happy that work was busy and rewarding and was having fun with it but most of all was thrilled about how things were going with his girlfriend, Ellen. I've known Russ for what seems like ages now (in a good way) though in fact it's only been about six or seven years since the early days of "commercial" blogging when he started working on various projects at and around Corante. He was a diligent, committed, and prolific journalist who had impressively and more ably than others been able to make the transition from the old-school way of...

We wanted to let you know about a discount to New Comm Forum, the annual event event put on by our friends at the Society for New Communications Research. The conference, which runs from April 22-25, will feature many of the field's leading observers and is an important event for those looking, in the words of SNCR, to "better understand new communications tools, technologies and emerging modes of communication, and their effect on traditional media, professional communications, business, culture and society." Check out the event's website and, if you're interested in attending, be sure to use the code supplied below for a special discount. EARLY BIRD PRICING - NOW UNTIL FEB. 15th NewComm Forum Conference - $995. Pre-conference or post-conference session - $195. SNCR Jam only - $75. REGULAR PRICING - AFTER FEB. 15th NewComm Forum Conference - $1095. Pre-conference or post-conference session - $249. SNCR Jam only - $75....

We've been remiss in letting you know about two new independent blogs we've helped launch in the past month or so. The first - the ConversationHub - is a companion blog to Supernova 2007, the latest edition of Kevin Werbach's excellent conference on all things connected. As the conference site says: "Supernova examines the effects of an increasingly connected world on business, life, and public policy. As disparate physical and social networks link with one another, a new societal network is rapidly evolving... The New Network is greater than the sum of its parts. It challenges us to re-create everything from the software and hardware we use...to the business models we employ...to the information and entertainment we encounter...to the ways we work and play." Visit the ConversationHub and you'll find several dozen leading thinkers and doers, led by a few notable ringleaders, weighing in on the themes and trends of...

[Update: the Enterprise 2.0 Rave is now a virtual event - for info on the updated program check out the Rave's website.] We are producing an Enterprise 2.0 RAVE at the Hudson Hotel in NYC on May 21-22, 2007 for Longworth Venture Partners - the organizers of the event. If you are a practitioner looking at deploying web 2.0 tools within your enterprise or actively working on Enterprise 2.0 pilot projects, you should not miss this 24 hour brainstorming session specifically designed for practitioners like yourself. Some of the leading thinkers in the space will be moderating and facilitating rich discussions - including HBS prof. Andrew McAfee, Euan Semple, Jenny Ambrosek, Jerry Bowles, Bill Ives, Kathleen Gilroy, Jevon McDonald, Joe McKendrick, Jim McGee, John Musser, Susan Scrupski, and Jason Wood. If you plan to attend you will get a $250 discount if you use the discount code "bloggers" (without quotes)...

We're helping out on another independent group-blog in the vein of the FASTforwardblog we shepherded into existence late last year. This one, backed by World Congress in support of their conference series and called the World Health Care Blog, convenes leading bloggers from across the health care industry for an intense, centralized discussion of innovation in health care. Amongst those participating: Derek Lowe, whose excellent blog on drug discovery In the Pipeline just celebrated its fifth birthday; longtime health care blogger Matthew Holt of the The Health Care Blog; new blogger but longtime industry consultant and executive Vince Kuraitis; strategy consultant David Williams of the Health Business Blog; consultant, epidemiologist, and self-described "health journalism groupie" Emily DeVoto of The Antidote; and Tony Chen, lead blogger at Hospital Impact and a business developer for a Chicago area, Northwestern-affiliated hospital and research group. Check the World Health Care Blog out and please...

We've been remiss in pointing you to an independent blog we launched in January that's getting a lot of attention: The Future of Communities. The group blog, co-authored by a growing roster of respected commentators in the field, digs deep into the evolving discussion about community building and management and related marketing efforts in the run up to Community 2.0 Conference. The conference, chaired by Corante president Francois Gossieaux, is the inaugural event for "forward-thinking organizations that recognize the need of harnessing the network effect of community to make smarter, faster, and better business decisions." Amongst those participating in the conference, slated for March 12-14 in Las Vegas: John Hagel, author and consultant; Elizabeth Churchill of Yahoo; Shawn Gold of MySpace; Peter Friedman of Liveworld; Tara Hunt of Citizen Agency; George Jaquette of Intuit; and many others. Find out more here. As for the blog, well known contributors include Tara...

The FASTforward blog, which was initially launched as a companion to FAST's early February conference, continues to hum along with ongoing coverage of Enterprise 2.0 issues, challenges, and developments. Tune in and you'll find numerous reports from the conference itself, including coverage of the keynotes and panel discussions which included the likes of Ray Lane, Chris Anderson, John Battelle, Tim O'Reilly and many others. Also, a pointer for those interested in the several dozen video interviews conducted by David Weinberger and Kathleen Gilroy over the course of the conference. Interviews by David Weinberger, in no particular order: Chris Anderson, editor of Wired and author of "The Long Tail" John Battelle, author, blogger, editor, media entrepreneur Jeanette Borzo of the Economist Intelligence Unit Matthew Brown, a senior analyst at Forrester Research John Markus Lervik, founder and CEO of FAST Carl Frappaolo of the Delphi Group Stephen Gallagher, Senior Director at Accenture...

Testing....

Wanted to let people know about a blog we've just launched: the FASTforward Blog. Conceived and produced by Corante and sponsored by Fast Search & Transfer as a companion to their upcoming conference, the blog convenes, for at least the next two months, a top flight crew of leading thinkers and doers for an active and spirited discussion on the next generation of enterprise software applications and issues. Amongst our contributors are many familiar faces from the enterprise-related blog space including Bill Ives, Jim McGee, Joe McKendrick, Jerry Bowles, Rod Boothby, Kathleen Gilroy, Euan Semple, George Dearing and others. In addition to the blog, we'll be running interviews, podcasts, and Skypecasts with leading figures from the field as well as with some of the speakers and participants who'll be involved in the event. Visit the blog, where the discussion is well underway, at FASTforwardblog.com. And click here, to find out...

Flackster's back after an extended break with more wisdom and witticism from Michael O'Connor Clarke. The blog's focus again: the wonderful world of PR and how it's having to adjust to the new landscape of social media....

Renee Hopkins Callahan and gang are blogging the day's great "storytelling" sessions. Tune in to the Innovation Hub for the latest. Speakers so far have included Tim Westergren of Pandora, Jane Fulton Suri of Ideo, and Larry Keeley of Doblin. More to come......

Renee Hopkins Callahan will lead a merry band of bloggers later this week in a blogjam on our Innovation Hub that accompanies the Collaborative Innovation Summit which will be held on October 3rd and 4th in Providence, RI. The conference, hosted by WSJ tech columnist Walt Mossberg and TED founder Richard Saul Wurman brings together a knockout group of innovators including: Segway inventor Dean Kamen, Titanic Discoverer Bob Ballard, Fast Company co-founder Bill Taylor, IDEO’s Director of Human Factors Design and Research Jane Fulton Suri, InnoCentive co-founder Alph Bingham, MIT Media Lab Biomechatronics Director Hugh Herr architect/artist Michael Singer, and network guru Peter Gloor. Among the bloggers who'll be reporting from the front lines: Joyce Wycoff, Jeffrey Phillips, Steve Hardy, Boris Pluskowski, Lois Kelly of Bloghound, and Francois Gossieaux. Find out more from Renee's post and be sure to tune in later this week....

MarketingSherpa has released their nominations for the top blogs and podcsts on marketing-related topics. Drawn from a list of more than a thousand nominations submitted by readers, the final list includes quite a few from the extended Corante family and apparently drew more than 100,000 votes in just its first day. To find out more and weigh in yourself, head over to Marketing Sherpa. The deadline's the 26th so make sure you get your votes in now!...

Be sure to tune in to Future Tense where new blog ringleader Giovanni Rodruiguez has kicked off a year-long survey of companies that are successfully implementing and supporting emergent behavior in the enterprise using social-media tools. The first to be profiled: SAP's Apollo Project. Explains Giovanni: "Led by former VC Jeff Nolan, Apollo is a competitive strategy group at SAP Labs, the enterprise-software giant... Nolan and his group are using a mix of social media tools -- blogs, RSS, and of course, wikis -- to better compete with Oracle, SAP's chief rival..."...

While wearing the many different hats of MC, coordinator, wifi guy, podcast traffic cop, and many others at the 2006 Innovative Marketing Conference, I was not able to take good notes of the great discussions that took place at the conference. Thankfully, many others did, and I will try to capture most of them here. I will also elaborate on specific sessions/discussions in future posts....

We're in the closing hours of the conference and should point you to the reams of great content we've captured for posterity: A Fast Company Blogjam for which a team of bloggers have been reporting on the proceedings. Also tune in there for pointers to a great series of podcasts by Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson. Heath Row and his Squidoo team have created a super set of lenses on the major themes and sessions of the conference. The expanding Flickr set of the entire event....

Larry Weber, PR Guru, author and founder of the W2 Group, and Lois Kelly, interactive marketing pioneer and partner at Foghound, will discuss the future of the marketing department in a Skypecast at noon EST today. You can find more information about the upcoming Skypecast here. To join - simply go the Skypecast url at noon and log in with your Skype account. If you do not have a Skype account, it's easy, sign up for a free account, it will take you less than 2 minutes. If for some reason you do not have a microphone, you can also ask your questions by joining the chat room at http://events.corante.com/imc/chat.php. If you missed some of the Skypecasts that we ran leading up to our Marketing Innovation conference next week, you can go to the event's home page and look for MP3 recordings in the sidebar. If you have not registered...

Our roster of super speakers for the 2006 Innovative Marketing Conference, co-produced by Corante and the Center on Global Brand Leadership at Columbia Business School, continues to grow with recent additions including Joseph Jaffe, David Sutherland, and Tony Ulwick. Find out more about them and our other particpants via any of the links below. And register now to join us for what's shaping up to be a great event. Deepak Advani | Elizabeth Albrycht | Tom Asacker | David Balter | Renee Hopkins Callahan | Christopher Carfi | David C. Churbuck | Bryan Eisenberg | Shawn Gold | John Hagel | Neville Hobson | Shel Holtz | Chip Hoyt | Gwen Ishmael | Joseph Jaffe | Lee Johnson | Max Kalehoff | Lois Kelly | Russ Klein | Kevin Lee | Heidi Lehmann | Max Lenderman | Craig Newmark | Dr. Joseph Plummer | Giovanni Rodriguez | Douglas Rushkoff |...

The deadline for the early-bird price for the Innovative Marketing Conference is here! Sign up today to take advantage of it and reserve your spot. Again, the two-day conference is designed to help individuals and companies better understand the rapidly evolving marketing landscape and arm attendees with real world case studies, practical tools, and actionable learnings that help their companies more effectively market themselves, build their brands, and grow. Amongst the many great participants who will be joining us: Russ Klein, CMO of Burger King; Craig Newmark, founder, Craigslist; John Hagel, independent management consultant and author; Larry Weber, founder and Chairman of the W2 Group, author; and Douglas Rushkoff, author, teacher, and documentarian. Find out more and register today!...

Update: we had previously posted the time wrong for Bernd Schmitt's Skypecast today. It's *11 am EST*, not 12 pm EST as previously stated. For info on logging in and participating see this page....