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Late Notice: The Vietnam Digital Marketing and Technology Conference 2010

My sincere apologies to all. I'm way late on this one. Even back in July, Tony Troung from Golden Digital had asked me to be on the organizing committee for this conference, and what can I say? Things got lost. The other day I checked into LinkedIn, which I do every few days, and there were 35 requests for 'contacts' from all sorts of people. Tony was one of them. From July. So I'm blaming LinkedIn. Seems fair. Personally, I think all my contact requests had been 'leaked' to WikiLeaks and then just released this week when WikiLeaks got busted and pissed off and released my stuff just to show what kind of damage they could do if things got really hairy! I hear they've got film of Justin Beiber and Osama Bin Laden doing heroin in a cave somewhere. So, Word Up! The Vietnam Digital Marketing and Technology Conference is up on Thursday. See their website for full details. I like this one because it's partially hosted by a Vietnamese advertising agency and it's just really nice to see a Vietnamese company taking the lead for a change, instead of carpetbaggers from other countries. Cheers all. See you there. "I'll be covering it for Technorati. Of course they won't have Jimmy Wales (see photo), so I'll just have to hang with Aryeh Sternberg from Group M instead.

This is going to be one hell of a busy week. We have our second Saigon/CreativeMornings meeting on Tuesday and are now working with Tina Roth Eisenberg, AKA SwissMiss, to be a real franchised chapter of this fantastic series in Saigon and are just pumped about that. Then I have the conference above on Thursday, and of course, The Big Show on Friday and Barcamp Saigon on Sunday. And after all of that, I'll be writing my tail off for Technorati, Cheers again all. I need to work, and write.

WikiLeaks Censored in the United States

The land of the free has decided that freedom of speech has it's limits and in this case the limits say that WikiLeaks must host its website out of Switzerland instead of the US. Backup servers are located in Sweden after a series of 'denial of service' attacks last week by black-ops hackers that crippled WikiLeaks in America. See WikiLeaks defense strategy by clicking on this link. I wonder how things would have worked out had Paul Revere had his Twitter account suspended?

Technorati had this to say:

"WikiLeaks didn't create these documents, nor did it allow them to fall into the wrong hands. These were the actions of our own government agencies. If those responsible for publishing this material are criminals, what does it make those who were so careless with sensitive documents? If a bunch of amateur snoops at WikiLeaks can get hold of our secrets, imagine how easy it must be for foreign security agencies. One advantage of publishing these “secrets,” is that every country has access to them, and we know it. It creates a level playing field, and in a weird sort of way is more secure than one foreign power being privy to our secrets, and us not being aware of it".

Seth Godin just kicks my ass...

...every once in a while. Like this post. It's dead true. Think about it.

The world's worst boss

"That would be you.

Even if you're not self-employed, your boss is you. You manage your career, your day, your responses. You manage how you sell your services and your education and the way you talk to yourself.

Odds are, you're doing it poorly."

Last week I made 4 new business proposals. The first got no response at all. The second was responded to in a lackluster way. The third was responded to enthusiastically, but I don't think that client has any money. And the fourth was successful. How successful remains to be seen.

Last week, I learned I had been deceived by someone - someone important. Last week I was worried I couldn't even pay some bills. Last week I was thanked for being honest and truthful and candid, yet I realized that someone else wasn't - and they were being paid to be that way. And that was okay, for her.

Makes you think. Makes you think a lot. So I looked around for someone to blame, and it turned out, that someone was me. So rather than sit around and give myself shit for things I could have done better, the key is to do them better going forward. To fuck up less. To have wider eyes in a lot of ways. To quite simply, be a better boss. Of me.

Today, I also had my ears cleaned, got a haircut, and ate really well. That works.

Join Vietnam Marketing Pros on LinkedIn

While Summer is way over and Winter is just beginning in most of the marketing world, things are just getting warmed up here in Vietnam marketing. Make sure to join Vietnam Marketing Pros on LinkedIn to keep up with the latest news, views and reviews. "This group is for marketing professionals in Vietnam and those looking for insights into Asia's "Biggest Little Tiger" market. As the group owner I make no representations or warranties on individuals or companies you may find here. You may, however, contact me with specific questions when needed." - says the group site. Join, contribute and have fun. Things are just getting cooking here in Uncle Ho's kitchen! Click above.

I was walking home late on the street tonight and a young guy yelled "Yo, Wild Wild East"!

I don't even know who he was. Guess we're getting around.

Two Communications Events You Should Not Miss

Yesterday I wrote about a planned marketing event for spring of next year, that if goes as explained, with be the communications equivalent of a used car salesman's convention. The next two events won't. Make sure not to miss them.

The Big Show

This year The Big Show will be part of the Vietnam Advertising Festival, organized by Sunflower Media . The official opening ceremony of The Big Show will start at 6pm Friday 10th, Dec 2010, and will showcase the best creative work from Vietnam's top advertising & marketing agencies. The venue will be The Zoo, Thao Cam Vien.


Barcamp Saigon

BarCamp is a user-generated event — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — focusing on technology as well as teaching and learning. Sunday, December 12th, 2010 From 8:00a.m to 05:00p.m. RMIT International University. 702, Nguyen Van Linh Str., District 7, Ho Chi Minh City.

Both events are free, and that's truly good news in a market where professional conference organizers come in, put on a lackluster show, and then leave with all the profits. Both these events not only come from the creative community but give back to it in inspirational and educational ways.

Finally, after years of competing unsuccessfully, the Big Show and the Golden Bell Awards will now exhibit together under the banner of the Vietnam Advertising Festival. Organized by Sun Flower Media, this event promises to showcase the best advertising work of the city at a venue that truly gets the Young Lions inspired. The Zoo. - Correction: The Golden Bell Awards, organized by The Vietnam Advertising Association, will not be participating. Why not? I don't know. They did two years ago. Another mystery only the VAA can answer.

Barcamp is a more unusual and not really marketing oriented event. Most geeks will know it as a good place for geeks - but I attended the first event two years ago and found it inspiring creatively. No big star speakers, no awards, but a truly collaborative environment that sparked thought and inspiration.

Do give these two event your full attention. They'll both be better than any profit making conference coming into town anytime soon.

It's true. WWED hits the Technorati top 10,000

8379. That's the number out of all the blogs in the world that WWED ranks. And that makes us the #1 Technorati rated blog in Vietnam. Pretty good, considering that we started the week at 26,000, and were as high as 40,000 just a few months ago. I think it's time to keep going. In my recent post, 'A Good Start', I mentioned that this blog debuted at over 1,500,000 just two and a half years ago.








moved up 250 places

The Wild Wild East Dailies http://wildwildeastdailies.blogspot.com
The Wild Wild East Dailies is a cornucopia of news, marketing, global experience, political satire, personal reflection and future postivity. …

	Technorati Auth: 428

For a little reference, The Huffington Post is the #1 blog in the world at a Technorati Authority ranking of 922. Seth Godin's blog is #159 at an Authority of 721. Technorati is the world's premier blog ranking service and rankings and Authority levels are determined by frequency of posting, number of views and most importantly, the number of other blogs linking to us. Technorati does not rank blogs that are primarily selling vehicles - only blogs that truly engender discussions, which I have been told, WWED does. Thanks all.

It could be a joke, but we're #9128 on Technoarati today?

Last night Technorati bumped our blog rating up from around #26,000 to #9129. Shit. Is that possible? Actually, yes. Blogs are rated both by number of posts and other sites linking to them. I've been posting more and maybe have hit some jackpot. More later. If I'm just bullet-proof today and don't feel like Superman tomorrow, don't worry. I've seen this digital miss before.

Watch out for the Marketing conference carpetbaggers

The last boys we saw were Kelvin To and his crew from the Saigon Digital Marketing Conference. After they made their money, Kelvin ran off to Bangkok. Bye bye! And welcome, Pacific Conferences.

The newest kids on the block are above - with no rock-star speakers at all and a big idea to do a conference in HCMC. They asked me to speak (yeah, like I'm a rock star), but like SDM, I told them that I charge a fee to speak. As we all should. Speakers get paid at conferences if the conference is a profit making venture - and if you don't, it's simply a big sales pitch that other people pay to see. It makes you a shill - and I don't want that. I get more contacts from this blog than any conference can give me. Last year, I covered DLD (Digital Life Design) in Munich and although it was full of digital rock stars (Jimmy Wales from Wikipedia, Mitchel Baker from Mozilla, Jonathan Harris/TED Speaker, Cheryl Cole/Singer, etc) I never saw a huge bump in readership here from my posts about it.

Watch these Pacific people. And see how much they charge for how much they deliver. They're in it for the money. Make sure you get your money's worth.