Blogger Socialites: Meacham, Miracle, Monty, Ohrt

We’re past the 50-yard line now profiling the registrants for the upcoming Blogger Social (April 4-6, NYC), and one thing is clear – we’re going to have a smashingly interesting crew of folks to get to know at this great event! I envision a lot of temporarily “silent” blogs, replaced by some amazing sore mouth apparatus after a couple days of non-stop jawboning!

Today, 3 M’s and one O – we have an “N-less” group this year!

Doug Meacham

Doug’s NextUp blog (should we be surprised that marketers come up with such great blog names??) is subtitled Customer Experience, Marketing, Innovation, Conversations. And as soon as I landed there, I see this post pointing to a helpful Twitter intro video highlighted by fellow blogger Greg Verdino. Which, of course, I’m going to check out because I’ve maintained an arms-length mild curiosity about Twitter, but I’m not sure I get the fascination (yet?).

I also quickly saw that Doug did something else I recently did, now that travel is more frequent – sign up for Hertz #1 Club Gold. Here is Doug’s overview. My experience has been mostly positive – a couple minor glitches – I definitely like the concept of efficiency and streamlined process when doing the airport thing.

Doug’s About Me page gives this (rather impressive!) professional overview: Doug Meacham is a Multi-Channel Retail consultant with IBM and a veteran of the consumer electronics retail industry. He is passionate about Customer Experience, Innovation, Brand Engagement and Social Media.

Prior to joining IBM, Doug worked for Circuit City Stores in various technology, management and strategy leadership positions. Doug recently delivered a strategic framework and several high-profile innovation initiatives designed to help Circuit City create a differentiated customer and associate experience. As a social media evangelist, Doug created an internal blogging network for sharing insights across the organization and was responsible for Circuit City’s initiatives in the virtual world Second Life®.

Doug hails from Richmond, Virginia, and he has a goatee (I wonder what will be “significant facial hair” percentage at the Social this year?), so I expect we’ll get along famously. Here’s some LinkedIn Dougage, and his Twitter page.

Virginia Miracle

As of this writing, Virginia’s blog details a disappointing but interesting hiccup in her plans to get the SXSW conference in Austin, TX (Virginia is from the DC area). She and a few fellow bloggers got bumped from the flight, and in her case, not being able to get there on another flight in a timely manner meant missing the whole conference. Yet she and her no-longer-strangers fellow bloggers bonded right there in the airport. Interesting stuff.

Virginia has an interesting spin on brands that really grab your loyalty: “Brands Worthy of a Weekend.” Hadn’t thought about it that way – great piece.

It’s too much to cut-paste here, but I strongly recommend reading Virginia’s About page. She is deep into WOM marketing, is SVP of Digital Strategy at a well-known agency, a new Mom, and, apparently, a mean Scrabble player (note to VM: Have you ever played the variation called “take-one”? If not, let’s grab some tiles and the Social and I’ll challenge you to a round!) It’s no miracle that she is on LinkedIn and Facebook, though since she is a new Mom, it’ll probably feel like a miracle to get away for a couple days in April!

Scott Monty

Scott’s The Social Media Marketing Blog is all about – well, read the title! Scott works with Joseph Jaffe over at Crayon. Scott, this weekend, is over at SXSW, and here is an amusing post about a panel identifying and voting on the worst social media marketing campaigns of 2007. In fact, here is a fresh-from-the-tree pic of Scott in Austin, TX, with the “accordion guy.”

And are you curious about the Social Media Marketing job market? Scott’s post here indicates that it is both expanding and evolving. Scott even put together a job site for such positions, which you can see here. Like me, Scott works out of his home (he’s in Maynard, MA), and this interesting video clip shows us more.

Scott also seems to be a Sherlock Holmes fan, with a separate blog dedicated to the great detective.

Being on the cutting edge of social media technology, Scott can be found on all the usual suspects, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Python, etc. etc. It’ll be fun to meet this social media marketing pioneer!

Darryl Ohrt

Brand Flakes for Breakfast – another great blog name, from a guy who works with another innovative one-word new marketing company (Plaid). Darryl and his colleagues keep up a very interesting, diverse, and easy-to-read blog that touches on a whole variety of topics, from advertising to packaging, to new media to…well, all things plaid. Even a few things LED.

Some of Plaidists are at SXSW, and they used ooVoo to communicate (well, sing Happy Birthday, actually) with a colleague while they were apart. Plaid is HQ’ed in Connecticut (my home state).
I cannot possibly do any better – in fact, I cannot even accurately reproduce – the intro to Darryl on the Plaid site. You simply have to go there! Todd And did a great interview last year with Darryl, from which I’ve extracted this funny Q&A bit:

What famous person do you most look like?
You can’t really look like me and be famous, so nobody. I would like to look like Johnny Rotten. But I don’t.

Here’s the full list of Blogger Social registered attendees:

Tara Anderson
Todd Andrlik
Mike Arauz
David Armano (these four are profiled here)

Matthew Bailey
Ryan Barrett
Cam Beck
Shashi Bellamkonda (these four are profiled here)

Jennifer Berk
David Berkowitz
Rohit Bhargava
Susan Bird (these four are profiled here)

Toby Bloomberg
Tim Brunelle
Katie Chatfield
Thomas Clifford (these four are profiled here)

Mack Collier
Saul Colt (these two are profiled here)

Terry Dagrosa
Luc Debaisieux
Gene DeWitt
Matt Dickman
Paul Dunay (these five are profiled here)

Gianandrea Facchini
Jason Falls
Anna Farmery (these three are profiled here)

Mark Goren
Heather Gorringe
Kristin Gorski
Amanda Gravel
Lewis Green (these five are profiled here)

Vahe Habeshian
Ann Handley
Gavin Heaton
Kris Hoet
Kevin Horne
Sean Howard (these six are profiled here)

Joseph Jaffe
Ryan Karpeles
CK
Chris Kieff
Joe Kutchera (these five are profiled here)

Jennifer Laycock
CeCe Lee
Geoff Livingston
Lori Magno
Valeria Maltoni (these five are “coming soon”!)

Caroline McCarthy
Matthew McDonald
Paul McEnany
Tim McHale
Drew McLellan (these five are profiled here)

Doug Meacham
Virginia Miracle
Scott Monty
Darryl Ohrt (these four are profiled above)

Rita Perea
David Polinchock
Marilyn Pratt
Jane Quigley
Arun Rajagopal
Connie Reece
David Reich
Susan Reynolds
Marianne Richmond
Cathleen Rittereiser
Steve Roesler
John Rosen
Roberta Rosenberg
Mike Sansone
Linda Sherman
Nathan Snell
Paul Soldera
Marshall Sponder
Terry Starbucker
Seni Thomas
Tangerine Toad
Mario Vellandi
Greg Verdino
Neil Vineberg
John Wall
Tamar Weinberg
CB Whittemore
Kaitlyn Wilkins
Steve Woodruff