After a relaxing summer, I'm back on the road delivering keynotes and running seminars for a wide variety of organizations, companies, and groups around the world.

Many of the keynote speeches and longer group sessions that I run are for companies (such as my gig this week with the New York Islanders hockey team) or are as part of a particular industry event (for example I'm keynoting the Giant Screen Cinema Association international conference in early September and speaking at the Realtors Conference and Expo in November).

Please contact me if you're interested in discussing having me come to your company or to keynote your event.

There are also a number of upcoming events that I'll be participating in that many readers of this blog may also be attending. Perhaps one of these events fits into your schedule?

New Rules of Marketing seminar

I teach a full-day seminar based on my book The New Rules of Marketing & PR. Learn how to leverage the potential that web-based communication offers your business, in a one-day seminar that brings the book to life.

One participant said: All I can say is WOW! The book was excellent, but the seminar was amazing!

I cover, using tons of case examples, how to reach your buyers directly for a fraction of the cost of "old-school" advertising they'll likely ignore. We dive into creating content people want to consume and search engines reward with high rankings. You’ll walk away with an understanding of how tools like blogs, podcasts, ebooks and social networking can be used to enhance your online presence. Here are the dates and cities. You can learn more by visiting Pragamatic Marketing:
September 23 - Reston, VA (Washington DC area)
October 16 - Bedford, MA (Boston area)
October 30 - Minneapolis, MN
November 13 – Burlingame, CA (Silicon Valley / San Francisco area)
December 18 - Bedford, MA (Boston area)

New Marketing Summit

The New Marketing Summit will be held October 14-15, 2008 at Gillette Stadium, near Boston, MA. I'm really excited about this summit because not only am I the keynote speaker, but I am one of the "Master Minds" behind the event together with social media marketing experts Paul Gillin (author of The New Influencers) and Chris Brogan (co-founder of PodCamp).

We've put together a stellar event. The New Marketing Summit explores how and when to use the latest new media tools to engage, listen, communicate and collaborate with your stakeholders. While the October event this year is in Boston, in 2009, we're holding New Marketing Summit events in Milan, Dallas, San Francisco, and Boston. When you register, Use my exclusive priority code for a $100 discount – DAVIDVIP

Inbound Marketing Summit

My friends at HubSpot have lined up a terrific event on September 8 in Cambridge, MA called the Inbound Marketing Summit. Learn from experts and peers how to leverage inbound marketing to generate more leads and sales for your business. I am delivering the morning keynote and best-selling author and blogger Seth Godin will deliver the afternoon keynote address on the changing landscape of marketing and how to implement "new" marketing ideas that will transform your business. I'm a Seth fanboy, so that will be fun.

Brand Manage Camp

The lineup of speakers at Brand Manage Camp on October 6-7, 2008 in Las Vegas is stellar. Everyone on the podium is a professional speaker and the organizers have done a terrific job of choosing a fantastic variety of topics.

I hope to meet you at one of these events.

This morning the wife was shouting at her computer "Anna is retarded!"

What's going on? I wondered…

Turns out my better half was trying to buy a bed online at IKEA and was using Anna, IKEA USA's "Automated Online Assistant." (On the IKEA USA homepage, you'll find a link to Anna on the top right or bottom left).

"I just want to know if the bed includes a mattress!" my wife shouted.

I decided to check it out.

The greeting seemed inviting: "Welcome to IKEA. I'm Anna, IKEA USA's Automated Online Assistant. You can ask me about IKEA and our products and our services. How can I help you today?"

So we typed in the query:

Us: "Does your bed come with a mattress?"
Anna: "Here you will find the Beds & mattresses." (Anna very stupidly sent us to the Beds & mattresses product category page.)

We then asked about shipment of the bed to an address on an island that required transportation by boat, again Anna was no help.

I tried a few other queries, including:

Us: "Do you accept American Express?"
Anna: "I try to be as efficient as possible. Is there another IKEA related question I can help you with?" (Anna obviously didn’t understand this simple question.)

Yes, Anna is indeed intellectually challenged. However, she does seem to have a twisted sense of humor.

Us: "How old are you?"
Anna: "I prefer not to discuss my age; let's talk about IKEA."

Us: "Are you retarded?"
Anna: "My on-board systems report that all my systems are working perfectly. What would you like to know about IKEA?." (The fact that Anna is programmed to answer this question indicates that we aren't the only people who think that she is, indeed, intellectually challenged.)

After playing around a bit, we figured Anna is not an "Online Assistant" as promised, but more like a Wal-Mart greeter. For example, Anna happily answered this simple question correctly, the sort you would ask a greeter at the front of the store:

Us: "Do you sell clocks?"
Anna: "Please have a look at the Wall and table clocks." (Anna helpfully took us to the clocks page. This was the only question she got right except for the age question.)

My wife's assessment: "I don't trust Anna. I'll call IKEA on the phone instead."

ATTENTION IKEA: Anna needs to either be retired or turned into what she really is, an online greeter. She's bad for the IKEA brand trying to be an online assistant, because she fails at that.

I'm fine with automation when it helps, but this automation is not helpful, it is harmful.

I am a huge fan of interactive tools as a way to generate a World Wide Rave (when people are talking about you and your company). The best interactive tools tend to be free, are easy to use, and provide meaningful data. And when they do all those things, people talk about them and share them.

For example, HubSpot has two great tools, Website Grader and Press Release Grader. The simple and free tools have been used to grade hundreds of thousands of sites and press releases. And tons of bloggers have talked about the tools, generating thousands of inbound links.

Last week, Douglas Karr released on his Marketing Technology Blog a Tuned In Calculator. The idea is deceptively simple. It takes your RSS feed and analyzes it for how often you use egocentric words like "we" and "our" compared to how often you talk about your readers, your buyers and their problems. As Douglas says, "If you're always talking about yourself, you may not be Tuned In!"

Here is a link to the Tuned In Calculator.

When I first tested this blog, I got a 9 (awesome). But a few days later when I tested, I scored an 8 (caring). I'll need to figure out why the difference! Maybe Douglas tweaked his algorithm yesterday.

Thanks Douglas, for taking an idea in our book Tuned In and creating such a great tool.