Just back from Blogworld in Las Vegas, which I think was a huge success. Big props to the team that put it together – I hope they are celebrating this weekend.

Hung out with many bloggers – I’ll tell incriminating stories over the weekend, and gave a presentation with Toby Bloomberg which was well-received.

The deck, in case you’re interested, is available if you send me an email (it’s a big pdf file and MT doesn’t like files that size).

Note that I think I made two good points. I now have a practical way of explaining to people what’s the difference between traditional, interactive, and social media.

Picture me (in a nice suit, by the way…) standing in front of the room talking about all this.

That’s traditional media. You pay, I talk, you listen.

Then I ask the room for a definition of interactive media, and pick one woman to discuss it with.

Actually, that’s interactive media – you get to ask me a question or say something to me, and I respond. Others may or may not be able to hear our dialog, but it’s a dialog between two people.

I then projected three questions onto the screen:

* Who are you?

* What do you know about social media and marketing?

* What do you want to know about it?

…and asked people to turn to their neighbor and ask each other those questions.

Imagine you could record, search, and keep all those conversations.

That’s social media.

The other cool point I made was, when asked what to do about management that is ‘afraid’ of social media – “Tell them they aren’t nearly afraid enough.” (see the Jeff Jarvis/Dell slide from the deck)

…and note that Apple and HP were going up during this period.