Special Offer: 25% Off for Former Eventvue Customers!

On Friday, conference software provider Eventvue went out of business. We're sorry to see them go and we want to make sure their customers have a migration path that will keep their conference communities up and running for their upcoming events.

To that end, we're offering 25% off our list price for any former Eventvue customer who wants to migrate to our conference platform, the leading web and mobile social networking, scheduling and sponsor community that powers events like SXSW and Oracle OpenWorld. We'll include automatic migration of users, messages and other content from Eventvue to Social Collective at no additional charge.

We offer all the social features that Eventvue's platform offered (e.g. profiles, friending, messaging, "chatter" and "discover") plus a social scheduling platform capable of handling events with 5000+ breakout sessions, a native iPhone application, group functionality and sponsor "fan pages" that help vendors reach the right audience at trade shows and other sponsored events.

You can see our product in action at http://my.sxsw.com, http://summit.atlassian.com, http://my.nationalartsfestival.co.za and dozens of other events.

Contact us today for a demo and a quote.

Where to Find Us at Web 2.0 Expo

Chris Bucchere is attending the Web 2.0 Expo this week, where Crowd Campaign is making its debut as the question suggestion and voting platform for Tim O'Reilly's interview of Beth Noveck, Deputy CTO of Open Government for President Obama.

On Wednesday the 18th and Thursday the 19th of November, 2009, Crowd Campaign will be exhibiting on the expo floor in Long Tail Pavilion Booth #2. Come by and say hi!

Today, Chris will be attending sessions and keynotes and, as is the case with every good conference, having great hallway conversations with his peers. Clinton Bonner, SVP of Sales and Business Development for Social Collective, Inc., will be joining Chris on Wednesday in NYC. If you'd like to find Chris, you can check out his working schedule here:



Note: you can create one of these embedded schedules, too, but it's a little involved. You need to select your sessions using the Schedule Builder, then download the iCal file of your personal schedule, then upload it to Google Calendar, then make the Google Calendar public, he share and grab the embed codes and post them on your web site or blog. Phew! There's an easier way . . . it's called The Social Collective -- our social scheduling platform shares your personal schedule with no one, your friends or everyone (depending on your privacy settings), shows you which friends are attending each event and produces amazingly accurate recommendations (because it knows where your friends are, so it knows where you would like to be)!

Crowd Campaign, The Social Contest Builder

(I-Newswire) November 16, 2009 - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

New York, New York – November 16th, 2009 – At Web 2.0 Expo today, Social Collective, Inc., the company behind the hosted social networking and scheduling software that powered SXSW and Oracle OpenWorld, announced the launch of their newest product, Crowd Campaign. Using Crowd Campaign, Twitter users can easily launch cost-effective branded online contests. With the power of Twitter and the social web, people who enter these contests, vote on entries, or make comments help propagate their viral spread via easy-to-use sharing tools that facilitate posting contest updates to a multitude of different social networking sites.

When setting up a contest, Crowd Campaign offers the ability to customize the contest's subdomain, upload a logo and background image, write a Terms & Conditions page, set colors and styles, insert Google Analytics tracking code and change all of the contest rules and other marketing copy. Contest winners can be decided by popular vote or by an "expert panel" or some combination of both. Contests can include text entries, photo or video submissions and links to other content such as blog posts or web sites, meaning that Crowd Campaign contests can be used for any type of competition. Crowd Campaign also offers a rich set of entry management tools for removing offensive content, merging duplicate entries and tallying entries, votes and page views. Crowd Campaign offers a free version for contests containing no more than 10 entries and/or 100 votes. To increase these limits, contest managers can pay as little as $95 up to $4,995 for a one-year unlimited-use license.

Crowd Campaign is used by ad agencies, event managers, social media marketers, small business owners, popular authors, independent film makers and musicians – anyone who wants to leverage the power of the social web to build a brand. Any type of contest can be set up in 10-15 minutes, limited only by one's imagination and federal, state and local laws.

During the private beta period that ended with today's launch, hundreds of Crowd Campaign sites were created, including these prominent contests:

http://w2e.crowdcampaign.com — Ask Beth Noveck, Deputy CTO of the US Government a Question: Tim O'Reilly will pick from among the top questions and ask Noveck the best one during their Web 2.0 Expo Keynote later this week. The winner will also receive an autographed copy of Noveck's book, Wiki Government.

http://w2e.crowdcampaign.com — Search for the Best LinkedIn Profile: Mike O'Neil and Lori Ruff will feature the top five vote-getters in O'Neil's new book, Rock the World with Your Online Presence.

http://expoexpo.crowdcampaign.com — Ask Guy Kawasaki, Chris Brogan, Rick Calvert, Ann Hamilton and David Rich a Question — the panel moderator will ask the panel the top question at Expo! Expo! in Atlanta in early December. The winner will also receive an autographed copy of Kawasaki's book, Reality Check.

http://techcocktail.crowdcampaign.com — Enter a DC-area startup company and Frank Gruber and Eric Olson will give the top vote-getter a free Bronze Sponsorhip at the next TECH Cocktail DC event (a $999 value).

http://digitalmarketingmixer.crowdcampaign.com — Suggest an idea for MarketingProfs' Digital Marketing Mixer: the winner of a random drawing will receive a free registration to MarketingProfs B2B Forum 2010 in Boston, MA (a $695 value).

Mike O'Neil, who launched a Crowd Campaign contest in support of his book, Rock the World with Your Online Presence, said: "With just weeks from start to finish, we embarked on a partnership with the folks at Crowd Campaign to see how we could find and refine applications for [online contest] technology in social media." O'Neil launched a very successful contest centered around finding top LinkedIn profile pages and featuring the winners in his book, which is "something that money can't buy." O'Neil remarked on how powerful it was for CrowdCampaign to "create a following around the pop culture image we represent with social media, networking and music."

About Crowd Campaign

Crowd Campaign is a social tool for building brands. It's used by ad agencies, event managers, social media marketers – anyone who wants to leverage the power of the social web to build a brand. Easy to customize and manage, you can launch a Twitter-powered contest including a branded promotional site in minutes from your desktop. It's FREE to get started and there's no sign up or credit card required. Start a contest today by visiting http://crowdcampaign.com

For more information, contact Clinton Bonner at Social Collective, Inc., info@thesocialcollective.com, 860-608-9074

Procrastinators Rejoice: OpenWorld's Social Schedule Builder is Live!

If you're attending Oracle OpenWorld and you've waited this long to build your event schedule, boy do we have some good news for you!

You can use your existing Oracle Mix credentials to access a brand new social schedule builder powered by our flagship product, The Social Collective.

Of course we did plan to launch this a bit earlier, but due to many factors outside of our control, we ended up launching it the day before the conference. Well, better late than never! Now you can build your schedule in a social context, seeing who in your Mix network is attending each event so that you can make more informed decisions about what content you want to see at OpenWorld.

Your Mix login and password will get you in and there's no need to re-add anyone to your network -- all the work you've spent building up your Mix profile and social network will carry right over in our product. In fact, unless you look carefully at the URL, it's hard to tell that you're even leaving Oracle Mix.

Many thanks to the peerless (and tireless) Oracle Mix team: Marius, Tim, Hassan and Phil and to Chirag, Eric and other dedicated folks who run the Oracle Single Sign On partner application registration team (among other things) for all their support, help, patience and dedication. We couldn't have done it without you guys.

Now, if you're one of the nearly 100,000 people attending Oracle OpenWorld, what are you waiting for? Come on in and get social with your conference schedule . . . you have 24 hours, so get moving!

Social Collective, Inc. Featured on TechCrunch

Having "graduated" from the LaunchBox Digital program, which culminated with East and West Coast Demo Days last week, TechCrunch ran an article with a description of each of the eight companies. You can also visit our CrunchBase profile for more information about Social Collective, Inc.

The Social Collective to Provide Social Media Software for Experient's e4 Conference

Today we are pleased to announce that Experient, Inc., a full-service solution provider for conferences and events, has chosen The Social Collective as the social networking platform for Experient's 2009 e4 Conference. Here at Social Collective, Inc., we're thrilled to have the opportunity to help Experient fulfill their brand promise of "delivering the total event experience" by adding a social networking component to their wide range of pre-existing services. These services include everything from scalable registration to a suite of event logistics solutions, and on to amenities that make for much happier attendees and much more profitable exhibitors. Experient has been a trailblazer in the events world since its inception. In their quest to be recognized as a thought leader in the events space, Experient continues to seek out and provide its clients with the best event services in the industry.

The Social Collective is a white-label conference social networking suite and social media aggregator which will serve as the event-centric networking community for Experient's 2009 e4 Conference. The e4 event is the annual gathering of Experient's clients and select sponsors. The typical attendee of e4 is an association executive or an event management professional. Each year, Experient chooses an overarching theme that is most relevant to the times the industry is facing. This year's theme is Networking and the Infusion of Social Media into live events and their surrounding communities.

According to Karen Watson, Director of Strategic Events at Experient: "Our goal is to simplify the social media experience for our e4 attendees and by using the Social Collective white label platform, we should create more opportunity for interaction before, during and after e4. Our ultimate goal is to create a community for our attendees to connect and interact with their peers year-round."

At Social Collective, Inc., we're looking forward to this opportunity to serve Experient and their e4 2009 conference. We're excited about ushering this vibrant community of attendees and sponsors into a new era of interconnectivity and social networking. The e4 gathering -- taking place between August 2nd and 5th in National Harbor, MD -- will showcase how physical meetings are evolving through the use of new technologies and techniques. As a result, the meetings industry can continue to grow by enhancing attendees', sponsors', and exhibitors' experiences leading up to, during, and well after the physical event has taken place.

Visit http://www.experient-inc.com for more on their suite of professional services. Visit http://thesocialcollective.com for more information on how to build a thriving year-round community for your next event or follow The Social Collective on Twitter at http://twitter.com/nowgetsocial.

Letter of Commendation from NAFSA

We received a letter of commendation from one of our newer customers, The National Arts Festival of South Africa. Tony agreed to allow us to post it here on our blog.

Chris Bucchere
Social Collective
13800 Coppermine Road
Herndon, VA 20171
USA

7 May 2009

Dear Chris,

Just a note of sincere thanks to you and your team at Social Collective for the highly professional way in which you've approached the implementation of your tool on our website.

Undeterred by the fact that his client is several thousand miles and timezones away,
Mike has done a great and very patient job of attending to the implementation and the multitude of requests for tweaks and changes from us.

The end result is great and in the couple of days the site has been live the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive.

You’ve got a great product and a great team – we're very glad to have encountered both!

Thank you.

Regards,

Tony Lankester
CEO: National Arts Festival, South Africa

Social Collective, Inc. Joins Launch Box Digital Class of 2009

Co-founding CEO Chris Bucchere and CTO and Lead Developer Mike Buckbee of Social Collective, Inc. just accepted a seed round of funding from Launch Box Digital and an invitation to join their 2009 summer incubator program, which began on Monday.

"We're thrilled to be a part of this great summer program and very excited to work with the investment team, sponsors and advisers to continue to give Social Collective, Inc. the momentum it needs to keep gaining traction with conferences, trade shows and festivals worldwide," said Social Collective, Inc. President and CEO Chris Bucchere.

The company also recently announced the acquisition of several new customers, including National Association of Dental Professionals, The Sloan Consortium and the Open Government and Innovations conference. In addition, they recently brought on software sales veteran Clinton Bonner as Senior Vice President of Sales.

For more information about Social Collective, Inc. or to schedule a demo, contact them at info@thesocialcollective.com.

Unleashing the Ultimate Cool Factor: Case Studies of Conferences Energized Through Social Media

Maddie Grant and Lindy Dreyer (from SocialFish) shared the stage with Chris Bucchere and Susan Mernit on a panel at NTC (the Nonprofit Technology Conference) last week in San Francisco.

Here is the complete video for your edutainment pleasure:

Unleashing the Ultimate Cool Factor from Chris Bucchere on Vimeo.

New Videos: Social Business Breakfast Seminar

Chris Hopkinson from mobile startup DubMeNow and Chris Bucchere from The Social Collective teamed up with association visionary Jeff De Cagna from Principled Innovation, who gave a great talk/workshop on innovative ways to leverage social technologies for association success.

The talk was recorded in HD and broken into four segments, which are embedded below for your edutainment pleasure.


Social Business Breakfast Seminar Part 1 (of 4) from Chris Bucchere on Vimeo.


Social Business Breakfast Seminar Part 2 (of 4) from Chris Bucchere on Vimeo.


Social Business Breakfast Seminar Part 3 (of 4) from Chris Bucchere on Vimeo.


Social Business Breakfast Seminar Part 4 (of 4) from Chris Bucchere on Vimeo.