EightBlack.

This might be a herculean task, but I’m up for the challenge. Here’s the list of people I’m going to try and interview on camera while I’m in Sin City for the years’ biggest gathering of “bloggers”.

My sister gave me a lot of grief for attending this - and last night at dinner stated to everyone at the table, “only my brother would attend a blogging conference”. I think the word “wanker” was used a lot.

Never mind. She’s a luddite.

Anyway.

Here’s the list, no particular order of people I’m going to request to interview. Let me know if I’ve missed anyone that you want to hear from. I’ll keep you posted as to my progress. Speaker bio’s can be found here.

1. Mike Arrington - TechCrunch
2. Paula Berg - Southwest Airlines Blog Girl
3. Rohit Bhargava - Interactive Marketing, Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide
4. Mark Cuban - Blog Maverick
5. Marc Harty - HartyCom
6. Richard Jalichandra, CEO, Technorati
7. Avinash Kaushik, Occams Razor
8. Om Malik - GigOm
9. Matt Mullenweg - Founding Developer, Wordpress
10. Dave Taylor - Intuitive Systems
11. Aaron Wall - SEO Book.com
12. Des Walsh - Business & Blogging
13. Debbie Weil - Corporate Blogger (more…)

If someone had have told me 2 years ago that I would be flying to Sin City (aka Las Vegas) to attend a blogging conference, I would have thought that they had inhaled an entire bag of weed, let alone a single joint.

Vegas, incidentally, is a city I dislike immensely. And I’m Asian (well, half of me is. Actually the top half - the bottom is African American and that’s the story I’m sticking to).

We Asians apparently love gambling and prostitution. And I can’t walk past a roulette wheel without having a bet. So I should be right at home in Vegas. But it sort of reminds me of a prostrate exam - necessary yet painful. Everything is such a “hustle” in Vegas. And it’s all right there on “the strip”. You know you’re in trouble when you actually land at the airport and right there at the gate, are slot machines with old people propped to one side, obviously using up every last coin in their pockets - hoping for one last chance.

Anyway.

Dave Taylor, who I caught up with earlier this year is one smart blogger. I actually met Dave at an internet gig run by Ken McCarthy. I was so impressed with Dave that I flew back to see him in his home town - and the time he spent with me was invaluable. He told me about Blogworld. I then told him about Avinash. The 2 caught up and voila, Avinash is on the speaking platform at Blogworld.

(By the way, for those page rank desparates, I’m going to find out just what the hell is happening (or happened) with the recent page rank fiasco and I’ll be posting once I’ve interviewed Dave and Avinash and some other smart bastards…more later)

I can’t wait. I haven’t heard from Dave yet as to how many folks are attending, but its a given it will be in the thousands. And there are some serious bloggers in attendance. The irascible Mark Cuban is making an appearance, Mike Arrington from Techcrunch, my good friend Marc Harty, Rich Jalichandra, the CEO of Technorati, GigaOm’s Om Malik, Matt Mullenweg, the founding developer of WordPress and Australia’s own Des Walsh.

I actually owe an apology to another good internet mate - and that’s Paul Colligan. He blogged from the X10 Seminar way back in September 2004 and I had literally no idea what he was doing, never mind that it, as a medium, would take off like wild fire.

Stay tuned. I’ll be posting live from the event. I just hope the wireless holds up better than it did at Web 2.0.

I met James last week at MODM.

He’s Australia’s leading authority on Wordpress, the blogging platform of choice for all serious bloggers (okay, that’s a shameless plug because we use Wordpress).

Anyway, James is very passionate about blogging and about Wordpress and is the founder of 2 very innovative businesses - one is Edublogs and the other is Incsub.

I managed to convince him to talk with me for a few minutes - I hope you enjoy the content. I’ll be bringing James back again to talk in depth about Wordpress, but this was a good place to start.

(And even if I can’t pronounce the word “phenomenon”, at least I can spell it )

I hope I can keep this up. I always thought it would be a good idea to post to the blog actual video interviews, rather than just the link to the phone interview and transcript.

So, after much debate amongst the geeks at the office about which type of camera to buy and how we should produce it, I made an executive decision and basically ignored everyone and went out and did my own thing. As I always do (apparently).

I rarely wheel out the super geeks I work with - because many of them are somewhat socially challenged and to be honest, there’s always a sort of gamble when they talk publicly - you never know what will end up coming out of their mouths.

Anyway, Ben is an exception. He’s one smart dude. And I’m lucky to have him on the team. Ben and one his colleagues have been buried on Taguchi Mail for the past 9 months now. It’s shaping up nicely.

Here’s the video interview. Tell me what you think. I’d appreciate the feedback. (More to come, including James Masini, Founder, Hippo Jobs, Richard Noon, CEO,Webjet, Cameron Riley, Founder, The Podcast Network, James Farmer, Founder of Edublogs and Incsub (James is Australia’s Wordpress Guru) and many more.

Hopefully, by the time I leave next week to go to Web 2.0 Summit, I’ll have figured out how this whole video upload and editing thing works out without having to yell across the office for a nerd to help me.

My mother always used to say to me “if you can’t say anything nice about someone, then don’t say anything at all”. It was one of those sayings that old people like parents liked to constantly drill into you.

Now that I’m a parent, saying this to my 4 and 6 year olds is about as effective as Britney Spears is at staying checked into any one of the random “clinics” in Beverley Hills. Or something like that.

A couple of posts below this is my re-cap of my time with Seth Godin in New York. Because Seth had set the “ground rules” in previous emails, it was clear to me that if I was to post about his get together, then I needed permission. Which I got.

Just because the net has made the world we live and work in a “boundary-less” environment, doesn’t mean that common manners shouldn’t prevail. Thank you still goes a long way - even in cyber space.

Bloggers like Avinash are fantastic at responding to comments on his blog. He even follows up with personal emails. He’s presenting at Blog World in Vegas in November later this year. There’ll be thousands upon thousands there. And I bet if you were in the audience and wrote to Avinash to ask him a question or request a copy of the slides, he’d respond. Because that’s what he did with me when I saw him way back earlier this year at the Web 2.0 Expo.

It’s the attention to detail, the follow up, the setting the ground rules that sets the standard - even in the blogosphere.

If you author your own blog, one of the things you notice when you read other blogs is the platform its written in. There’s really only 2 that most people use - Moveable Type and Wordpress.

Our blog is written in Wordpress. For a technically challenged person like me, I find it simple to use. And extremely customisable.

We use Wordpress for all our client blogs. And we’re building some large scale CMS environments using WP. After all, Wordpress is nothing more than a very malleable, open source Content Management System.

There’s a good article here which compares the 2 (link courtesy John Battelle). And happy to answer any questions regarding Wordpress and how we use it. (Actually, it wont be me that answers the questions, but someone a lot smarter!).

One of the things I’ve enjoyed most about creating this blog is the people I’ve come into contact with - online and off.

And one of the things I am concentrating on is building a guest speaker line-up - of people who I can interview over the phone, transcribe the content and then post the entire content (audio and written) to the blog. You can check out the recent interviews with Avinash Kaushik here and Michael Hewitt-Gleeson here.

So this post is somewhat of a challenge.

Here’s the list I’m working on. Some of the people on the list have no idea who I am or have no prior relationship with me. In fact, some are going to be down right impossible to either contact or track down.

But I learnt a very valuable management tip from my good friend, Michael Hewitt-Gleeson a few years ago when he was training our regional management team from a prior company I was involved with.

The tip is this. If you want to meet anyone in the world, no matter who it is - this simple rule applies (and it may seem relatively obvious, but its beauty is its simplicity).

The rule is, if you want to meet someone - follow this saying (G.S.E.T.D.I.F.Y).

It stands for - “GET SOMEONE ELSE TO DO IT FOR YOU”. Meaning, if you want to meet say Bill Gates, its probably not a wise idea to send a message to his hotmail address or simply call up Microsoft Seattle and ask for him by name.

But what if you knew someone who knew how to get hold of him. That might make a difference. As would the very reason or nature of what and why you wanted to talk.

I met Jeff Raikes a long time ago. Still have his email address and the email conversations we shared. If I wanted to meet Big Bill, I’d start with trying to convince Jeff to have Bill’s PA just listen to my pitch. By the way, Jeff has worked for MS for many years and is considered one of the most trusted guys on the senior management team.

So the reason for this post.

Ok, here’s a line up of people I’d love to interview. Some because I am naturally curious and want to know their thoughts and opinions. Others I want to chat to because they are literally rock stars in their field. And some are just plain, borderline crazy. Or maybe a little wierd. Nevertheless, I reckon it would be a hoot to chat with them on the phone for an hour and throw questions at them.

I promise nothing to them in return - apart from distributing the content to some 12,000 people (roughly the size of our email database).

My challenge to everyone reading this is simple. Help me get to the list below and I’ll rate the persons efforts, along with who I think might be (or is the most difficult person to reach) on a scale of 1 to 10 and the winner will receive a business class airfare, plus accommodation, plus entry fee to Blog World Expo, held in Las Vegas in November this year. My good buddy Dave Taylor is arranging it. (And no, I don’t have a competition permit, my decision will be final and I get to choose who and what I ask in the interview).

Simple enough.

Well, don’t make any judgements until you’ve seen this list. And by the way, I have no real expectations in making it even half way through the line-up. I realise I’m aiming high.

Here it is (in no particular order):

1. John Batttelle - Best Selling Author and Entrepreneur

2. Marc Andreessen - Serial Entrepreneur and founder Netscape

3. Seth Godin - Author

4. Adrian Giles - Hitwise co-founder

5. Robert Scoble - Well known, outspoken American blogger and technical evangelist.

6. Matt Cutts - Head of Google’s Web Spam team. Well known blogger.

7. Jeremy Zawodny

8. Mark Zuckerberg - co-founder, Facebook.

9. Danny Sullivan - leading SEO authority.

10. Guy Kawasaki - well known VC, Entrepreneur and technologist

11. Tom Peters - if you dont know who Tom Peters is, you’ve been living under a rock.

And by the way, if you want to add anyone to this list (or even think you qualify), drop me a line to (eightblack AT gmail dot come) and we’ll chat.

There’s an existing list I’m working on right now - and I think I have these folks covered in terms of access. I’ll let you know who they are in due course.

Stay tuned…

I don’t know about you, but the year seems to be picking up pace, not slowing down.

David Galt, our Client Services Manager starts a new career with our client Webjet in a week or two. This is an outcome you only ever hear about - not actually witness. More on this later. I couldn’t be happier for Dave. I’m a little stressed about how we’ll try and “replace” him, but we’ll cope. Sort of. You know the management saying that “no one is indispensible”. Thats mostly true and I subscribe to it. But Dave comes close to proving this statement to be a complete lie, in the regard that he just may be nearly impossible to replace.

We’re looking for a Junior Account Manager - the position overview is here.

And we’ve opened offices in London and San Francisco this past quarter.

We also are pushing hard into the web analytics space, with concurrent training with 2 of the world’s most respected platforms continuing (with Google and Omniture), resulting in certification for our team.

I’m hoping to announce the Head of Analytics for Eight Black in a week or so. Stay tuned.

Travel schedule - for those who are interested in where our (my) focus is for the remainder of the year.

1. Seth Godin’s small gathering in New York, September 6. More here.

2. Web 2.0 Summit - San Francisco, October 17-19. I’m delighted that I’ve been accepted to attend Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. Like we did for Web 2.0 Expo earlier this year, I’ll be blogging live from the event. Man, was this a tough gig to gain entry to. Attendance by invite only.

3. Blog World Expo - Las Vegas, Nov 8-9. One of the most important relationships we’ve developed in 2007 is with Dave Taylor. Dave and I spent a half a day together recently and Blog World Expo is his baby. I’m glad I introduced Avinash Kaushik to Dave, as Avinash is now a part of the speaking line-up at Blog World. This should be a great event - 5000+ attendees expected and some of the most serious bloggers on the planet in attendance.

I’ve spent a good deal of time over the last month with some very smart blogging experts in the US. People like Dave Taylor and Sherman Hu. Both highly respected individuals.

I remember sitting down with Dave Taylor and him pulling apart this blog - both from a technical and content perspective.

What really jacks me off though is blatant plagiarism - like this basic rip off from Seth Godin below. And what disappoints me even more, is that the authors other site, perhaps his core site, is Taguchi Now!, which appears on the surface, as highly reputable.

At the moment, we’re on a quest to engage the smartest Taguchi Experts on the planet. That’s why I met up with David Bullock in Nashville the week before last. And why I researched Mario’s site when it came to my attention.

People that know me, know I’m a real big fan of Seth Godin. His blog is one I digest almost daily. Here’s his original post on 31st May. And here’s Mario’s “original” post, on the 1st June, 2007.

I would have thought that someone like Mario would have known better. Obviously not. The far reaching power of the web means that someone who has never even met you can form an opinion, determine your sentence and convict you before they’ve even met you.

I know I have.