1. The programming is first-rate and features top-notch speakers: At the core of what we do with meshmarketing (and mesh) is spend lots of time focused on content and speakers. We spend hundreds of hours deciding what topics to cover and who should be invited to do our keynote presentations, panels and workshops.

For us, programming is the foundation of what we do and the value we offer. It’s one of the reasons why we don’t accept speaker submissions. To us, the process of curating and selecting speakers is crucial so we depend on our experience and networks to source speakers who can bring it.

As important about the people who we invite present is they don’t just speak and go. Instead, they stick around, connect, engage and participate in the event. At the last mesh, for example, I had a great lunch-time chat with David Armano.

2. Food for thought and hands-on sessions. meshmarketing kicks off with keynote presentations that provide context, perspective and insight about key industry trends and issues from people in the eye of the hurricane. The afternoon is devoted to panel and workshops that are hands-on, interactive and engaging. As much as they designed to deliver information and insight, the goal is to have attendees do business differently or better when they go back to work. Our panels and workshops are designed to get the “dirt” from people in the trenches in an environment in which questions and discussions are encouraged, and real-world experience is shared.

3. The opportunity to network with people from different sectors: As much as we deliver great content, we also recognize part of why people come to a conference is networking opportunities. It’s the reason we have healthy gaps between each session, why lunch features big round tables that encourage people to engage, and why our post-event socials are so important. Another thing that makes our events different from a networking perspective is attendees come from a wide variety of sectors, which means you’re bound to meet someone new who can offer perspective and thought you may not have heard before.

4. Great value: Whether you work for a large company, a start-up or run your own business, each dollar counts so we price our events so they’re accessible and offer a solid return on investment. And to encourage students to attend, we offer amazingly low ticket prices. The value of meshmarketing and mesh ticket includes a great venue, excellent food, swag and a good group of out-of-town speakers, many of whom have never been to Toronto before. For example, Klout.com’s Joe Fernandez is one of our keynote speakers. For anyone interested in influence and influencers, Joe would be a perfect excuse to come to meshmarketing.

If we have convinced you of the value of meshmarketing, it’s easy to buy a ticket. And if you purchase one by Oct. 21, you’ll get the early-bird ticket price of $489.

The winners will have the opportunity to show their work or ideas to marketers, journalists, venture capitalists and lots of other people attending mesh on May 25 and 26.

So, how do you apply for 15MOF? All you have to do is fill out this form, which will take about five minutes.

Three winners will receive a ticket to mesh, the opportunity demo/present in the Sponsor Village, and the chance to do a five-minute presentation at mesh on May 26 in a dedicated workshop space.

The Grand Prize winner will receive the following package:

- A mentorship lunch with Farhan Thawar, vice-president, engineering, with Xtreme Labs

- A half-day PR training session from Edelman

- A one-year membership from the Toronto Board of Trade (more details here)

- A one-hour consulting session with Mark Evans, a mesh co-founder and digital marketing strategist.

mesh happens on May 25 and 26 at the Allstream Centre in Toronto. Tickets can be purchased here. For anyone in Western Canada not able to make mesh, we’re coming out to Calgary for a one-day meshwest on June 8.

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.

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.

In many respects, this year’s keynotes offer a fascinating mix of people who will be talking about a variety of topics – everything from how a newspaper is using APIs to grow its business, and the troubling world of cyber-hackers, to online payments and social networking.

The keynotes include:

Chris Thorpe, the Developer Advocate for the Open Platform with The Guardian, will talk about the newspaper is working on ways to integrate its content, data and APIs with other people’s technology and businesses.

Joseph Menn will provide insight how cyber-criminals are hacking to major government and corporate computer systems, and how governments of Russia and China are protecting and directing their behaviour.

Scott Thompson, the president of PayPal will provide his take on how the company has maintained its status as the world’s leading online payment system, and where e-commerce and online payments as heading.

Given LinkedIn’s rapid growth over the past year and its decision to add more feature, Arvind Rajan, LinkedIn’s Vice President of International, will talk about what’s driving the company’s growth and where it sees the social network marketing going.

Tickets to mesh can be purchased here, while tickets to meshU, the one-day event featuring hands-on workshops about Web design and development, can be purchased here.

What you might not realize is there is a method to the madness of the colours – in addition to the fact we think it makes the Web site look purdy. Here’s a break-down on the mesh rainbow.

Red – Red is media, which covers our keynote (Chris Thorpe), panels and workshop about things such as real-time content, user-generated media, the battle between machine-generated and human-generated media, and a case study on the Vancouver Olympics.

Orange – Orange is our society stream in which you will learn more about hackers from keynote speaker Joesph Menn, how Médecins Sans Frontières is using social media, and panels about the growing issue of online privacy and what’s going on with open government.

Blue – For the marketers in the crowd, blue is your colour. Blue covers our keynote speaker, Arvind Rajan, from LinkedIn, as well as panels on real-time and how it forces marketers to be real, what businesses should really do with Facebook, and workshops on how to scale social media, and 10 no-nonsense ways social media can be applied to your business.

Green – Like the colour of money, green is our business stream, led by keynote speaker Scott Thompson, who is president with Paypal. Green also accounts for panels on the state of Canada’s seed and start-up landscape, mobile as a way to drive business, and why real-time matters.

So, there you have it – the mesh rainbow explained.

To purchase tickets to mesh, head on over this way.

Tickets for meshU, our hands-on workshop event for people who design and development online services, and people who manage designers and developers, can be purchased here.

It’s not an accurate description but I embraced it as much-needed constructive criticism given we haven’t done a great job of really explaining meshU and why people should attend. So, here’s meshU in a nutshell:

We started meshU in 2008 after getting a lot of requests from mesh attendees to create an event that would deliver hands-on workshops about new ways to design and develop Web sites, as well as insight into how to manage teams developing and designing these services and applications.

The workshops at meshU are led by some of the Web’s best and brightest people. These are people who are talking the talk and walking the walk. They are people starting and building leading-edge Web sites and online businesses, which means they bring real-world insight and experience to the table.

This makes meshU is a place where attendees can walk away with new insight, knowledge and information about how to do their jobs better, more efficiently and more successfully.

If you’ve been to meshU before, there’s a lot of discussion happening and a healthy amount of note-taking.

Here are the top reasons to attend meshU:

1. Gain insight and knowledge from people such as Bill Buxton (our keynote speaker) Joe Stump, Dan Martell, Sean Ellis and Isaac Garcia – knowledge that you can bring back to the office and put into action right away.

2. Build new relationships with people within Toronto’s Web community who are developing and designing services and applications, or managing teams making it happen.

3. Support meshU, and its role in providing workshops that provide a different and unique perspective.

Here’s where you can buy meshU tickets. If you’d like to support meshU by sponsoring, you can contact Stuart MacDonald at info@meshconference.com.