This will be the first of a seven–part educational series of social media events which will cover the full spectrum of issues regarding social media (e.g., how to utilize it to promote business and build a brand/franchise, personal branding for your career, measuring ROI , etc.). At the end of the event, volunteers will be stationed at the computers for hands-on show-and-tell.

Moderator: Dorian Benkoil of Teeming Media.

Date: Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Time: 6:30 - 8:30 pm (includes refreshments, one-hour panel discussion and Q & A)
Location: The Samsung Experience, 10 Columbus Circle, 3rd Floor, New York 10019

Cost: $25 for Columbia Business School Alumni Club members/ $35 for Non-Members

Click here for more info.

Through our partnership with BGV Media, focussed on helping educational and not-for-profit institutions, we are proud to provide this example of a success:

When folks at the oldest journalism school in the country needed to know more about the world of Web publishing, they called us.

In October, 2008, the University of Missouri’s Reynolds Journalism Institute brought us to Columbia, Mo., for an intensive day-long seminar on the topic of content management systems, or CMS. They had learned of our expertise through our white paper on the topic (available in the right sidebar on our homepage).

Principals Dorian Benkoil and Adam Glenn, along with Amy Webb, our CMS expert and lead author of our CMS white paper, briefed some 30 journalism faculty, staff, fellows and students, as well as representatives from the Missouri Press Association and National Newspaper Association.

Among the topics we guided the group on were the current state of the CMS industry, media trends affecting CMS choices, and how individual organizations can find a direction and make initial decisions on their choice of CMS. We also helped them delve into workflows and business issues in a digital media environment.

Meeting organizer Jane Stevens described how we jumped in to help with this informative overview of the gathering. “If you’re trying to figure out what CMS to choose for your news organization, and you’re confused by the plethora of choices, [their paper] is worth every penny,” she writes. “Even better than reading the white paper is to talk with them in person.”

RJI and Stevens later brought Adam and Dorian on board to help with a related project called the RJI Collaboratory, a social network of entrepreneurial journalists looking to find support and advice for starting up niche news projects. Adam helped launch the Collaboratory in early 2009 and continues to jointly manage it, while Dorian shared his insights on the business of news in a series of detailed blog posts and other resources in the summer of 2009.

On our show Naked Media, produced jointly with Scribe Media, we often take the opportunity to ask entrepreneurial types what it takes to be a media entrprepreneur. Dave Morgan, founder (and $275 million seller) of Tacoda (to AOL) and newly named chairman of the Tennis Company, took the first shot. Then MIchael Wolff of Newser.com and Vanity Fair stopped by with Steven Kotok of The Week, as did Next New Networks co-founder Fred Seibert. We’ll keep adding to this list as we get more and more.

1. Keep control. But know when to give it up. Make sure the capital structure is such that you can keep control of the business, do the things you need to to make it grow, etc. Don’t go for the biggest valuation, but rather the right valuation. If the money you get is too big, and sets too-high expectations, the pressure to generate enough cashflow and create a large liquidity event (meaning get someone to buy the company at a high value) will be a lot of pressure that’ll hurt your ability to make choices you may need to ensure the health of the biz. Don’t take the biggest amount of money, take the best. Corollary: Don’t be the last investment in a venture fund, because then the cycle will be shorter, and they may need to have you sell in, say four years, rather than 7-10. You don’t need that pressure. In other words, it’s not just which venture (or other) fund puts its money behind you, it’s also which of their funds it is. Wollf added: Yes, control is important. But know when to give it up.

(more…)

http://www.twitter.com/dorianbenkoil

Upcoming travels and coverage. Come by, say “hi,” and watch Naked Media).

* Online News Association conference. Panel: The Next New Metrics (1 p.m., Friday). Capitol Hilton, Washington, D.C. (Hear an interview on our Content Management System white paper from last year’s conference, here.)

* Naked Media: Sure Mobile’s Great, But Is There a Business? Guests: Bob Walczak, Ringleader Digital; Jerry Rocha, Nielsen. Live noon, Sept. 18, then on demand.

* OMMA Global New York: We’ll be covering the conference for Naked Media, Rebuilding Media, MediaFlect, and elsewhere. Probably a few Tweets on Dorian’s feed, as well.

* Streaming Media West, Panel: Mobile Video Research Findings: Analyzing the Opportunity, 9/24, 10:30 a.m..

* And, Dorian is teaching the MBA-level Interactive Internet Marketing course at City University of New York’s Zicklin School of Business in Baruch College. (He’s calling it “digital marketing” — goes way beyond the Internet, at this point.) Syllabus and reading list available on request.

From our Web 2.0 Conference coverage, all at the Naked Media blog:

How Advertising Works with Web 2.0
Beyond Search-Improving Customer Reach
Widgets Make Digits
Video Coming to Blog Talk ‘Radio’
Making Money in Web Video

Well, Steven Kotok told us lots today on Naked Media, but neglected to mention that they’ve just hired former Huffington Post blog editor Francis Wilkinson. He did mention the WSJ story touting their subscription rate base rise to 500,000, told us that Felix Dennis isn’t nuts — he likes brands, whether news and opinion, or the more girly mag stuff like Maxim.

We’ll have this episode of the show On Demand soon.

Our next guests on Naked Media, Wednesday, Aug. 7 at 10 a.m. ET, will be Newser.com idea man and co-founder, and Vanity Fair media columnist Michael Wolff, and Steven Kotok, general manager of The Week, Felix Dennis’ foray into news aggregation. Any questions? Leave ‘em here.

We’ll ask them all about entrepreneurship, why the world needs more news aggregation online and in print, where and how you can charge for content and, of course, some of the more controversial statements Wolff has made. Due to the Texas storms and a family health issue, Patrick Spain, previously scheduled, won’t be able to make it.

We’ll be moderating a panel this Thursday morning that focusses on ways to measure and monetize video. The session will explore metric that have found acceptance from site owners, advertisers and content providers. We will also examine ad formats and provide research about consumer preference for different types of video ads.

It’s on July 24, 2008 - 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM. You can find out more at the Magazine Publishers of America website.

Panelists invited include:

Dorian Benkoil, Principal, Teeming Media
Philip Braden, Vice President, Product Management, ScanScout
Mark Kapczynski, VP & GM InStream Solutions, EyeWonder
Mark Schulze, SVP, Business Development, Quantcast (tentative)
Ari Greenberg, Director of Business Development, Magnify.net

To register, click here.

In which Erin Byrne talks about how being open has gotten her in trouble, and we ask a lot of user questions.

We’ve also created a little confusion about what Naked Media is. The answer: a show about media we’re producing in partnership with Scribe Media.