Corante is a media sponsor of the upcoming BlogOn conference, and we are focusing on "defining social media" (see BlogOn 2004 ). The event takes place July 22-23 at UC Berkeley's Haas Business School.

We don't have the ad banners up yet, but I am am happy to participate, and to have been singled out as one of the roster of speakers:

• Robert Scoble, Microsoft's technical evangelist of the US.NET platform strategy and one of the blogging world's best-known personalities;
  
• Christopher Locke, co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto, the book that first defined marketing as conversations;
  
• Mark Kvamme, a partner in Sequoia Capital, one of the most active investors in social media start ups;
  
• Ross Settles, vice president of strategic marketing for Knight Ridder Digital, the online arm of the traditional publishing giant;
  
• Jim Spohrer, director of the Services Research Group at IBM's Almaden Laboratory, whose focus has been on social network computing within the context of how business and technology are evolving together;
  
• Rich Gordon, a professor at the Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University;
  
• James Currier, CEO of Tickle.com, the leading interpersonal social media company, recently acquired by Monster.com;
  
• Jamie Riehle, global product manager of Web Publishing for Terra Lycos, a global Internet group;
  
• Jerry Michalski, CEO of Sociate, and a frequent writer, consultant and speaker;
  
• Stowe Boyd, managing director of Corante Research, a service that tracks, analyzes and explains emerging technologies and their impact on business and society;
  
• Henry Copeland, founder and CEO of BlogAds, a new form of advertising;
  
• Steve Gillmor, eWEEK's OpEd columnist and contributing editor;
  
• Rafat Ali, CEO of paidContent.org a marketer of content to digital media including online, wireless, desktop and off-desktop applications, products and services;
  
• David Sifry, founder and CEO of Technorati, the leader in blog searches and indexing;
  
• Shripriya Mashesh, eBay's senior director of product strategy is not only eBay's key person on blogging and social networking, she's also expert in reputation market issues;
  
• Chris DiBona, co-founder and vice president of marketing for Damage Studios, a California based game studio developing large-scale multiplayer games; and
  
• Mark Finnern, collaboration manager for the SAP Developer Network.