The creation of meshwest and the move to Western Canada reflects how communities across the country are enthusiastically embracing and leveraging the Web. Like mesh, meshwest is focused on providing insight and stimulating conversations about media, society, marketing and business.

From those humble roots, mesh has grown into an event that has attracted a long series of great speakers and – just as important – thousands of enthusiastic and engaged attendees. Calgary is the first stop on a Western swing that will see meshwest also happen in Edmonton and Vancouver.

Like mesh, meshwest features a line-up of keynotes and panels focused on four streams – media, society, business and marketing – that explore what’s over the horizon in the digital world.

meshwest speakers include Tobias Lutke, Keith Bilous, Mark MacLeod, Danny Robinson, as well as the mesh gang – Mark Evans, Mathew Ingram, Michael MacDerment, Rob Hyndman and Stuart MacDonald. More speakers will be announced soon.

meshwest joins our flagship mesh conference, which happens on May 25 and 26, and meshMarketing within the mesh “portfolio”.

You can learn more about meshwest here, and purchase tickets now.

It’s also the last day to take advantage of the early-bird special for mesh. There are now 14 hours left to jump on the deal that will save you $100 off the regular $639 ticket price. That works out to about 25 pineapples, which is a lot of pineapples no matter how you slice it.

Regardless of whether take advantage of the early-bird special or whether you pay the regular price of $639, you’ll get great value from mesh ’11. We’ve got a terrific line-up of speakers, led by our keynote presenters: Jeff Jarvis, Mark Surman, Ron Diebert and Gabe Zichermann.

We’ve also got more programming – 40% more than the first mesh in 2006 – given the move to the Allstream Centre has provided us a lot more space. This includes an expanded number of workshops in each stream. It means the biggest challenge may be selecting the sessions that you want to attend.

Looking forward to seeing you at mesh on May 25 and 26. You can buy tickets at the mesh Web site.

As far as anyone (aka Stuart MacDonald) can remember, a list of potential names came from our friends at GWP Brand Engineering. From a group of eight, it was quickly boiled down to three, which included “mesh” and “click”. mesh was an unanimous choice because it seemed to reflect what we wanted to do.

The folks at GWP then magically created the mesh logo, and the rest as they say is history.

This was not Gabe Zichermann’s intention at the meshMarketing conference when he had to cut short his presentation, “The Future of Marketing is Gamification”, to catch a flight back to the U.S. There was so much interest and excitement from people who were in the room and those heard about it afterward, it made total sense to invite Gabe back to Toronto for mesh ’11 as our marketing keynote on May 26.

As one of the world’s experts on gamification, Gabe has established himself as one of the leading voices exploring the connection between the power of games with brand and marketing strategies. As much as people have embraced the Web, there are still major challenges motivating and managing their behaviour and activity. Gamification is one approach addressing the psychology and habits of the online user.

Gabe’s most recent book, “Game-Based Marketing”, received critical and industry acclaim. His next book on game mechanics is a detailed technical look at architecture and implementation.

For a taste of Gabe’s keynote, check out this Google Tech Talk.

And we’re back….

Yup, it’s time to pull the covers off mesh ’11, which also happens to be the sixth edition of an event that was created because five people with absolutely no conference experience decided Canada needed a place to talk about all the great things happening on the Web.

What makes organizing mesh so exciting to put together is how the online landscape continues to evolve and change. When we did the first mesh in 2006, social media was nowhere in site and Facebook was four months away from opening up to the non-university crowd.

So what’s up for mesh ’11? To start, we have a terrific roster of keynote speakers. They include:

As a bonus, we also have a “Super Panel” featuring Mona Seif, an Egyptian activist who will give us some insight into how digital activism played a key role in the political uprising ended the 30-year reign of Hosni Mubarak.

You can get more information on the mesh Web site about the rest of the speakers who will be appearing on panels and workshops within the media, society, marketing and business streams.

So, what’s the deal with tickets? Until April 20, you can purchase early-bird tickets for $539 + HST. (After that, tickets will be $639 + HST). There are also 50 student tickets available for $99 each. You can buy tickets here.

So, we’re really excited to pull the covers of meshmarketing ’10. meshmarketing is happening on November 17, 2010 in downtown Toronto. (We’ll announce the location soon.) Tickets are $489 (plus HST) before Sept. 17, and $539 afterwards. There are also 50 student tickets for $99 each (plus HST). And, of course, we’ll have a social afterwards. Tickets can be purchased here.

While we’re keeping the same focus and approach, there are some wrinkles that we think are going to make meshmarketing even better.

First, we’ve partnered with Trina Boos, who has been running the successful Ad Lounge events. Trina delivers terrific insight into the advertising and marketing worlds, as well as a huge community that she has nurtured and built over the past nine years. As meshmarketing’s programming director, Trina is the driving force behind the event’s sessions and and speakers, and we’re overjoyed about her key role within meshmarketing.

Second, we’ve tweaked the programming format. Rather than have a single keynote, we will kick off meshmarketing with two keynotes – Michael Slaby and Marian Salzman – along with a super-presentation by Lee LeFever. Part of the change in format was our excitement about several speakers. Rather than pick only one, we decided to go with a three-pack.

Michael Slaby is executive vice-president and global practice chair of Edelman’s digital practice. Before joining Edelman, he was a technology and new media advisor to the Obama administration where he led operational and long-term planning for technology including web strategy and utilization, and data integration opportunities.

Marian Salzman, one of the world’s top five trend spotters, will offer insights into the future of digital marketing and communications. As a leading communications professional, digital marketer and author, Marian will provide her insight on what’s on the horizon and what we need to know now to prepare.

And for those not familar with Lee LeFever, he (along with his partner and wife, Sachi) are the brains behind the popular Common Craft video series that provides user-friendly insight into technology and technology trends that everyone can understand.

As for the rest of the programming, we’ve got a great line-up of speakers, panels and workshops – everything from the ROI of social media customer and trans-media storytelling to how retailers are using location-based services, and future of social TV. For more details, visit the speaker and schedule page.

meshmarketing tickets can be purchased here. Don’t forget to take advantage of the early-bird special until Sept. 17.

Here’s an overview of the the other workshops on the schedule.:

“Building a B2B Community”: High Road Communications’ Eden Spodek will talk about that while building a personal online community is relatively easy, building an online business community for existing and prospective clients can be more challenging. Eden will highlight real-life examples of companies (primarily Canadian) leading the way in B2B community building along with tips, challenges and success stories of those who do it well.”

“Getting Your Start-Up Ready for Investment”: Mark MacLeod (aka @startupcfo) will lead an interactive workshop that explores the key questions around startups and fundraising such as The pros and cons of getting outside capital? If yes, how much do you need? Angels vs. VCs – who, how, where, when, why? What do you need in order to raise money? How does the money-raising process work? Who’s got money? Who doesn’t?

“The Olympics as a Case Study”: Alon Marcovici, VP, Digital Media and Research of Canada’s Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium, will about what it’s like to put together a major multimedia online campaign for a national and international event, and Kim is talking about what is involved in being a “user-generated content editor” and social-media co-ordinator for a major media website.

“Social Media and User-Generated Content in the Newsroom”: Kim Fox, CBC News’s senior producer of social media, will do a workshop looking at what’s involved in being a “user-generated content editor” and social-media co-ordinator for a major media website.

If you haven’t purchased your tickets to mesh, I would encourage you to get them soon because there are only a handful left. You can purchase them here:

Much to our surprise, the workshops were jam-packed, which made it abundantly clear there was demand for hands-on sessions that provided people with tangible insight, case studies and information that people could implement when they got back to the office.

Over the past four years, the workshops have become a core part of mesh even though they probably don’t get as much and attention as they deserve. We’ve got a great workshop line-up for mesh ’10. Here’s a sneak peek of some panels – with some previews coming in a subsequent blog post.

- Death and Digital Legacy: Adele McAlear will examine the intersection of death, social media and technology and look at the ripples that are created with loss. This workshop explores the chasm between online communities and families; legal, privacy and security issues; policies of online services; the impact on businesses; and what each of us should do today to prepare our digital assets.

- The Art & Science of Scaling Social Media: Bringing together earned, paid and owned social media, when done correctly, can generate a perfect storm of credibility and reach – in many ways, the Holy Grail of the social web. Earned is highly credible, but expensive to generate, paid has mass reach, but do users really pay attention? Maggie Fox will lead a discussion on how companies can scale their social media efforts.

- How Small Businesses Can Survive and Thrive by Being Creative with Social Media: RightSleeve’s Mark Graham will offers tips, recommendations and real-world examples of how his promotional marketing merchandising company has thrived in a competitive marketplace by leveraging social media.

- Managing the Transformation to a Social Business: David Bradfield will explore how global organizations and Canadian innovators manage the transition from control to collaboration. Bradfield will talk about how many companies are grappling with the impact of social media on traditional business and marketing models.

To purchase tickets for mesh10, here’s how you can register.

The past two years have been terrific with great speakers and an enthusiastic reception from attendees. We’ve also had some great support from sponsors – without which meshU and mesh couldn’t happen.

To support meshU, we’re rolling out a new sponsorship package called “practically meshU family”.

What you get when you join the family is five regular tickets to meshU, your logo on the Web site and at MaRS, and a table-top for your use during the event.

More important, a “practically meshU family” will let us open the student tickets category by 10 more tickets. In essence, you will be sponsoring 10 students who wanted to attend meshU but couldn’t.

This year more than ever before, we’ve received a lot of requests for additional student tickets, but the event can not sustain itself if we open up additional tickets in this substantially discounted category.

That left us thinking that maybe there may be folks in the community that believe in meshU and thought that they could help others so they could benefit from these tickets. Hence, this category was created.

If you’d like to become “practically meshU family”, please contact info@meshconference.com.