In the name of transparency, I must confess to having few marketing skills. As co-founder of Blanketware.com (a Web 2.0 start-up before its time), part of my job was marketing and communications. As a result, I carefully crafted together personalized press releases, highlighted stories written by the journalists I was targeting, and generally demonstrated (at least in my own mind!) that I was more than just another corporate flack. The result? Nothing! It was a miserable failure but valuable insight into how difficult marketing and P.R. can be.
   Today, I'd use a different approach by leveraging the blogosphere to deliver a message because it's a much easier way and effective way to do business. This has been evident by how we've marketed mesh over the past six weeks. With no budget, we have been able to generate tremendous buzz for the conference...and sell a whole budget of tickets. Not bad for five guys with full-time jobs! It really does amaze me how powerful a medium the blogosphere can be. For more thoughts on the New Marketing, check out Stuart MacDonald, Rob Hyndman, Mathew Ingram and Mike Mcderment.