Screen grab of Boston Sport's Then and Now blog, which is managed by Blogapalooza organizer Joe Gill

Successful sports blogger Joe Gill can add successful blogging event promoter to his CV. Joe put on his second Boston Sports Blogapalooza at the Baseball Tavern in the Fenway yesterday. Billed as a networking opportunity for Boston’s sports blogger community, the event brought together the legacy media like Comcast Sports Net (CSNNE.com) and the foot soldiers of the new media with over one hundred bloggers in attendance. The bar definitely helped to loosen up the crowd for some enthusiastic participation in the networking sessions, panel discussions, swag raffles, and live entertainment.

Pixelwiremedia got involved with Joe’s event through our involvement with Kevin Youkilis’ Hits for Kids charity. Kevin’s charity was a beneficiary of the event and charity staffer Casey Mosca sat on the social media panel. Naturally, we’d want to get that covered, so I was glad when Joe approached me about attending.

Joe is high energy. He is almost as enthusiastic about the possibilities of the new media as he is passionate about the past present and future of Boston’s sports. When he combines the two he creates a lot of buzz. I’m going to let the movie or movies that we produce from the event speak for themselves, a big part of the edits will be the interview that I did with Joe. If you’re a fan of sports or social media, you’ll want to see and hear Joe do his thing.

In the mean time I just want to thank all of the great bloggers who took the time to do on camera  interviews for Pixelwiremedia. Boston is a great sports town, and these new media writers are truly adding insightful and unique perspectives to the conversations we Boston sports nuts are having on a daily basis. Thanks Boston Sports Bloggers!  – Jack

David Meerman Scott's book cover.

Every once in awhile I come across a quote that really nails it for me. Words that seem to be a crystallized manifestation of my thoughts, and with all of the writing that I’ve been doing for the new site, I’ve had quite a few thoughts that have needed a little crystallizing.

A main theme of our marketing message is that organizations should take a journalistic approach to telling their stories, and that they should publish those stories online because that’s the best way to attract and hold an audience these days. We call it independent journalism, and because it’s pivitol to our message, I have been looking for ways to express the independent journalism idea. So when I read the following David Meerman Scott quote in the book Get Content Get Customers I could hardly believe it. From page 54,

A journalist skillfully creates interesting stories about how an organization solves customer problems and then delivers those stories in the form of e-books, white papers, content-rich Web pages, podcasts, and video. And consumers love it. How refreshing to read, listen to, and watch these products of journalistic expertise instead of the usual product come-ons that typical corporations make. -David Meerman Scott

Wow, talk about your crystallized manifestations. Thank you, Mr. David Meerman Scott, for expressing exactly what I need my potential customers to know about the role of journalists in the new marketing world. BTW, David’s book, The New Rules of Marketing & PR, is essential reading for marketers. It’s a book written like a blog, and it’s packed with what works and why. As I read it, I became increasingly convinced that just about every business out there could benefit from hiring our service, I hope it has the same effect on you.