When the EconSM conference started out in 2006, the conference circuit looked pretty crowded for another entrant. But the folks behind EconSM — Rafat Ali and Staci D. Kramer, and now the new owner, ContentNext — have carved out a nice niche in the social media space (the SM used to stand for Social Media) and connected it with burgeoning developments in mobile.
First, the details of their upcoming event:
EconSM: Social Meets Mobile
When: May 14 (a week from Thursday)
Where: Mission Bay Conference Center, San Francisco
Cost: $450 — Socialmedia.biz readers get a 15% discount off the price of the conference and report by entering the discount password “SocialMediabiz”
Report: a 46-page report, “The Changing Mobile Industry and What It Means for Media Executives”
Details: Website info and Agenda
Of the gathering, Staci (a longtime friend) tells me: “When we held the first EconSM in 2006, most people were still trying to grasp what it meant much less how to make it a business. For many media companies, it was a gimmick, something to say they offered. Investors wanted to be in on the ground floor, entrepreneurs wanted to be the next MySpace/Facebook/Flickr/Digg/fill in the blank.
“Much has changed as we get ready for our third EconSM — including the name. The acronym is still the same but this year it’s about the intersection of social and mobile. Social media has passed the gimmick stage — although not everyone has figured that out — and is part of the daily fabric for an increasing number of people.
“The heady days of investment are gone as are the inflated prices being paid for feature sets; startups have to survive long enough to break through. And mobile is more than just another platform or an experiment — it’s an entirely different approach mixing instant and geolocation with portability and higher-quality devices. This EconSM is not just about the possibilities, it’s about what’s real.”
Christian Santiago of ContentNext adds: “We just started a conference-specific Twitter account for EconSM, too: @EconSM and of course we still have our @paidcontent and @moconews accounts as well.”
The full-day event (10 am to 5:30 pm) at the Mission Bay Conference Center will be followed by a mixer for the SF community. The mixer fee is included in the conference registration fee.
Among the tough questions the panelists will tackle:
- What does social media mean in a mobile world?
- What mobile social tools and applications are gaining the most traction with users?
- Where are the success stories and revenue models?
- What types of mobile social firms are venture capitalists looking to invest in this year?
- What will it take for mobile advertising to hit its stride?
Sounds like a gathering worth attending.
JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.
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