In Ontario, Califonia (near my home town of Montclair) the first Portable Media Expo and Podcasting Conference starts this morning.

Somehow I missed the news of this conference in time to attend myself. The Portable Media Expo was founded by Tim Bourquin and his brother Emile. They expect over 2,500 attendees and 50+ exhibitors, which are amazing numbers for a first ever conference. Tim and Emile host a popular podcast called The Podcast Brothers which focuses on the business side of podcasting and portable media. As far as I know they have never hosted a conference before … making this a stunning achievement.

It will be interesting to see if they can parlay this into a worldwide conference platform similar to Search Engine Strategies. SES was sold in August by Jupitermedia to Incisive Media for $43 million … so it seems there is again high value placed on popular B2B internet trend oriented conferences.

I’m new to blogging personally but I’m not new to opt-in email. Believe it or not email is still used by millions of people as a way to read content (email newsletters). We at iEntry have over 4 million subscribers to our HTML newsletters even though many of them have RSS feeds as well. So why not combine the concept?

For every blog there should be a well produced HTML email newsletter available. WebProBlog already has one! Simply subscribe to the right. I’m not talking about a boring text newsletter of blog links but a more advanced HTML newsletter that takes the best posts and reader comments and is distributed in order to spark more discussion and reach larger audiences. At iEntry, we already do this with our forum WebProWorld, why not for a blog.

We are also evaluating the concept of initiating an email newsletter creation and distribution service which would automate the making and sending of your most popular and commented-on blog posts. Would this be of interest with the popular bloggers? To be determined….

We can all be gung ho about the great blog and syndication revolution … but connecting with people can happen via email too!

I’m new to blogging personally but I’m not new to opt-in email. Believe it or not email is still used by millions of people as a way to read content (email newsletters). We at iEntry have over 4 million subscribers to our HTML newsletters even though many of them have RSS feeds as well. So why not combine the concept?

For every blog there should be a well produced HTML email newsletter available. WebProBlog already has one! Simply subscribe to the right. I’m not talking about a boring text newsletter of blog links but a more advanced HTML newsletter that takes the best posts and reader comments and is distributed in order to spark more discussion and reach larger audiences. At iEntry, we already do this with our forum WebProWorld, why not for a blog.

We are also evaluating the concept of initiating an email newsletter creation and distribution service which would automate the making and sending of your most popular and commented-on blog posts. Would this be of interest with the popular bloggers? To be determined….

We can all be gung ho about the great blog and syndication revolution … but connecting with people can happen via email too!