Recently active topics in Get Satisfaction tagged with conference

Since Thor first presented on "Customer Service is the New Marketing" at SXSW and then followed up with a post about it on our blog, we've had a steady drumbeat of interest on the subject from people across a wide spectrum of industries, companies and job titles.

Clearly, the topic has struck a nerve. We knew it was a subject we were obsessed with, but we had no idea so many people felt so passionately about what at a glance seems like it might make for pretty mundane subject matter. People from all sorts of industries have contacted us, wanting to share their stories about how to make customer service a better experience all around, or asking for tips and suggestions about how to get their own organizations to do customer service differently.

And, hey, we're a customer service organization, right? Give the customers what they want, and what our community wants is a chance to learn, organize, and share around some of these emerging ideas. And so we're announcing our first "Customer Service is the New Marketing" Summit, to be held in mid-November here in lovely San Francisco, California (exact date and location to be determined shortly.)

We're currently hard at work putting together a full roster of speakers, pulling from a variety of industries (and not just the usual Web 2.0 crowd, though we'll have some of them, too), all of whom are finding ways to make customer service more meaningful for their organizations. We'll round out the day with some collaborative workshops, some probing interviews, some group discussion, plenty of food and of course the opportunity to mingle and network. More information on all this soon, we promise.

But first, of course, we want to hear from you: Would this be something you would be interested in? Who would you like to see speak? What kinds of other attendees would you want to meet? What topics would you find the most valuable? Let us know!

Just some updates about Customer Service is the New Marketing.

1. We have a full speaker line up, the entirety of which you can view at http://csitnm.com/.

2. On that same web site, we have a nice banner that you can use to tell others about CSITNM. If you own a large blog, etc., let us know and we can get you setup with a discount code for your readers.

3. The early bird pricing (currently: $295 per ticket) ends on December 31. After that prices go up to $495 per ticket, so be sure to act early.

4. I've started posting interviews and information about the conference on the Demand Satisfaction! blog (http://blog.getsatisfaction.com). There is an interview up with Patti Roll from Timbuk2 as well as one with Alex Frankel, author of "Punching In." More to come soon.

The summit (to be held February 4, 2008 in San Francisco) is going to be exciting. You'll have a chance to meet all of the team from Get Satisfaction, all of these interesting speakers, myself, and 200 other people that are equally/more interesting.

If anyone has any questions or suggestions for the summit, let us know! We want to make it a great one.

At Your Service,

Douglas
Service Untitled
http://www.serviceuntitled.com

WebVisions 2007: "Let Go! 8 Steps to Succeeding in a Post-2.0 World"
by Thor Muller & Lane Becker

"What if all our professional training is wrong? We've been taught that good design is about documentation, smart development is about process, and effective management is about control. But the truth is just the opposite, now that the barriers between companies and individuals are dissolving at a quickening pace. Success now means letting go of the urge for control in favor of the power of creative chaos.

Blame the Internet. In the last five years we've witnessed Open Source ideas transform software and content, converting the meekest of us into public contributors. We've seen search make content by individuals as accessible as that from the world's largest corporations and media companies. We've watched as some industries have withered next to the blinding speed and sharability of digital media, while other companies have reinvented themselves by adapting to the collective input of customers.

Success today means harnessing these same forces at every level of our own work. This means explicitly changing the way developers, designers, and businesspeople work and collaborate, abandoning many of the organizing principles that worked for companies over the last century. Fortunately, our presentation will show you what to replace them with, along with some practical tips for how to get started."

WebVisions 2007
SlideShare
Web Things Considered
CommonCraft

Web 2.0 Expo: "The Challenge of Agile Development: Avoiding Half-Baked Design"
by Leslie Chicoine & Alex Chaffee

"Today's web-based applications go live every few weeks. Agile methodologies like Extreme Programming and Scrum, focus on short development cycles, accelerated feedback from users and customers, and incremental delivery. On the technical side these approaches can bring discipline and predictability to short release cycles. But can these incremental methodologies incorporate successful design techniques? Using case studies and examples from their own project experience, Alex and Leslie will discuss how to integrate design and Agile, discussing what works, what problems arise, and most importantly, the changes in mindset that are necessary on an integrated Agile design/implementation team."

Web 2.0 Expo
Demand Satisfaction
SlideShare
Musings
LikeItMatters

SXSWi 2007: "After Bust 2.0: Ten Years Later, Where Will We Be?"
by Lane Becker

"There's a frenzy of activity on the Internet again, unseen since the grand time we had back in 98/99. But there's a wariness in the air, too, since we know that the party never lasts and the bubble always pops. In preparation for this inevitability, this panel will discuss what's happening now that's lasting, what's merely trendy, and where we'll be ten years down the road when everything shakes out."

http://2007.sxsw.com/interactive/prog...

SXSWi 2007: "Customer Service is the New Marketing"
by Thor Muller

"Online businesses that provide superior customer service are earning fanatical devotion. Companies like Zappos, CDBaby, 37Signals and Flickr are demonstrating that doing business online is anything but impersonal, and that an obsessive attention to customers *after* the sale is a killer advantage. This panel explores how innovative businesses are becoming more transparent with their audience, engaging customers to help solve each others' problems, design new products, and spread the word."

http://2007.sxsw.com/interactive/prog...
http://blog.getsatisfaction.com/2007/...

"I was floored by the 'Customer Service isi the New Marketing' panel. The founder of Zappos.com really opened my eyes to what it means to really take care of your customers and go that extra mile to make them happy. It was a powerful session!"
- Ryan Carson in "SXSWorld" May 2007