As a fairly new blogger, not counting the blogging I’ve done for clients, I’m excited to be attending the UGCX in San Jose today and tomorrow. If you’re here, please drop me a note to get in touch. Here’s a link to more information about the conference if you don’t already know about it, which is understandable considering this is the first year. You can register at the door, so if you’re in the Bay Area and want to catch day 2 that’s certainly possible.

There are four tracks at the expo including Social Content, Photography, Music, Videos and Gaming. I’ll be focused on the first track but will be checking in on the others for specific speakers. Here’s a quick play-by-play of what I saw today.

• Keynote: Bruce Livingstone & Kelly Thompson, Founder/CEO & COO of iStockphoto, kicked off the day by talking about how they empowered users to sell their images through istockphoto, and they announced a new audio offering. They claim the system is the only true royalty free stock audio.. In the talk they outlined six key principles from what they’ve learned at iStockphoto.
  • Passion is the glue – A team that is passionate and has complimentary skills. Mold a crowd into a community then get community into the DNA of the organization. Following this, many of the most successful feature sets come from customers within the organization.
  • Innovation is key - You have to keep innovating to stay ahead because the pace of product/service evolution is quick. The shared an example feature they created, which the community didn’t ask for, that completely failed. The feature essentially gave users a temperature rating of how they were perceived by other users (a la Ebay, but visually). Constant innovation means failure.
  • Outsource the crowd – Look for opportunities within your organization to put the crowd to work for you. iStockphoto allowed the crowd to name their new products/services. They use “inspectors” from the community to police new submissions for rights issues.
  • Prepare for scaling - It would be a shame to be successful and then fail because of the inability to scale. Sounds like that almost happened. Make scenario planning a regular practice?
  • The unknown unknowns – In this case they talked about setting up redundancies in their supply chain, namely data centers. Apparently an ice storm took out a telephone pole and brought the site down for a while back in the day.
  • Flexible focus – It’s about being able to move seamlessly from operations, to development, to performance assessment, etc …. which all comes back to customer service.
• Social Content for Big Business – Laurel Touby, Founder & Senior VP, mediabistro.com, kicked off the day as our moderator. Panelists included: Lane Becker, President, Get Satisfaction, Joe Cothrel, Chief Community Officer, Lithium Technologies, Inc, Marty Collins, Group Marketing Manager, Microsoft,  Matt Warburton, Ex Director of Community Management, Yahoo. I know Lane from my work at Adaptive Path, he was one of the original founders. Get Satisfaction allows “real conversations with company employees and other customers who will answer your questions about the products and services you use”. It’s worth checking out.
  • What is CGM, and what is valuable? According to three panelists there is value in almost all CGM. The real question is about how you get the value out, and to what you apply it to. Lane was somewhat contrarian, stating that it’s not ALL valuable. He also pointed out that the even bigger challenge is, not just how to get the value out, but how to give it back to the consumers who originally created it.
  • CGM does offer an easy way to get insights into potential new products. Lane gave an example from the Timbuk2 community which kept asking for a diaper bag. After sustained community conversation for a year and a half, they finally produced it and it’s become a best selling product. Listen to your customers people. this is just another channel in which to do so.
  • Several panelists talked about using the community to provide product/service development insights and opportunities at low cost. I wonder if there is an issue of self-selection here?
  • Communities inhabit a “space” which can be architected to provide ques about the way to behave. This space can foster community with the right balance of moderation and personality. Enforcement of guidelines is important, but you’ve gotta do it in an appropriate way. Lane quoted Flickr’s guideline and a good example, “Don’t be creepy. You know the guy. Don’t be that guy.”
  • How do you quantify ROI? You can tie ideas back to product development and revenue, you can track leads, if you have a single sign-on you can measure engagement against purchasing behavior, you can count calls you didn’t have to take based on the number of times a community answer has been sourced. Marty talked about a community index report she creates every month. Sounds like a dashboard report, probably a good idea.
  • That said, community managers are getting hurt badly by the economic turn down. Being in marketing still makes you the most likely to get cut first. The advice, get your metrics up to snuff asap, and keep telling emotional stories. There is an advantage in being able to combine the qualitative and quantitative.
• Video Games: The Real Big Gorilla – Moderator Jonnie Forster, Partner, Forster Bros Speakers: Thain Lyman, Sr. Executive, Activision, Dennis Fong, CEO, Raptr.com. Ryan Okum, President, StreetWise, Matt Connors, Consultant. So I switched over to the video and games track for this to learn about how CGM is working it’s way into this market.
  • It started with Avatars, and profile customization but is rapidly expanding into game customization. For example, there is a new editing suite for Guitar Hero that allows you to create your own tracks.
  • Ryan talked about building private/branded communities through their technology platforms. He spoke about Spider-Man 3 for Activision, which allowed game customization and community participation. His spoke to the importance of blending earned media with media buys. David Armano wrote an interesting post about this topic here. One other point was the importance of owning your own community rather than working with a gaming community provider. StreetWise used to rent their community but now they focus on helping companies develop communities of their own.
  • Based on Dennis’s comments, I’m getting the sense that the real takeaway here is that people who are interested in gaming tend to be highly likely to participate in online communities. He’s providing a platform with Raptr that allows companies to develop communities without having to start from stratch. His big insight was to tie his community into other social networks (i.e. Facebook status updates, tweets, etc about the  game you are currently playing). That’s not too much of a surprise considering the proliferation of mashups.
• Keynote: Craig Newmark, Customer Service Rep & Founder Craigslist. This was the post-lunch keynote. I have to admit that I got in a bit late because my lunch meeting ran a bit longer than expected. I got there as he was recounting how the Craigslist was used during the Katrina aftermath. He highlighted the importance of getting out of the way of customers. From there, he discussed how the “flagging” system, which is used to report abuse, is dependent on the user community. The Craigslist staff is just there to help. This philosophy is embedded into the organizational DNA, “any user-generated site has to build a culture of trust to be successful.” He went on to explain that trust is only possible if you mix commerce with socializing. From there he raised some interesting questions about how CGM could impact social/governmental issues. One thing that really struck me about Craig is that he’s really good at saying no to opportunities that are not 100% within the brand promise of his service. Like many in the audience, I wonder if he’s not actually too disciplined in this regard because there appears to be so much low-hanging fruit around Craigslist that the mashups can access without back-end data.
• Beyond the Desktop: Social Content Goes Mobile -Moderator: Adam Hirsch, COO, Mashable Speakers:Philip Miano, National Sales Director, Third Screen Media, Eric Litman, Chairman & CEO, Medialets, Bryan Barletta, Associate Editor, Mediabistro.com, Jonathon Linner, CEO, Limbo.
  • Jonathan started the panel off by talking about mobile trends and the rapid adoption of smart phones.  He asked about how we define the “smart phone”? He hypothesized that it’s more about the users than the phones themselves, and pointed out that more CGM transactions occur through mobile devices than any other channel (though I wonder how he defines CGM based on this …. i.e. does filling out a support request form count?). Jonathan explained that his firm allows developers to embed code into their mobile applications allowing Google Analytic like reporting.
  • Eric then offered some Forrester data that shows that 1 in 4 marketers have explored marketing on mobile devices. “Like talking on the phone, succesfull campaigns are less inturruptive and more conversational.”
  • Bryan talked about an interactive mobile game that takes advantage of GPS capability and that allow users to create treasure hunts. Sounds cool.
  • Jonathan posited that phones are a one-to-one interactions, where computers are more likely to be shared by multiple users. Not sure I agree with this, but what would the implications for design be? For CGM?
  • Various comments about the way mobile CGM will affect citizen journalism.
  • On the whole this panel seemed to lack focus as it bounced from mobile marketing to the adoption process and ultimately projected the  ubiquity of mobile devices. What was missing was an in depth discussion of the mobile eco-system, how social networks will follow us into the mobile context, how CGM is uniquely suited to mobile, or how mobile standards will change the game.
• Where did you Stick your Video? Video and Viral Marketing Moderator Jay Durgan, Board of Directors, Outhink Media, Inc Speakers:Adam Hirsch, COO, Mashable, Shay David, Founder, Kaltura, Satva Leung, Indi Producer, Joe Oh, Manager, Hub Strategy, Robin Sloan, Online Product Strategist, Current TV
  • Adam jumped in by talking about where to start posting videos …. in short, get them on as many appropriate places as possible, but start with TubeMogul.
  • Robin talked about one of my favorite TV organizations, Current TV, whose catalog is based on user generated content. He was responding to a question about how the content creator gets value for their content. Current has explored many models, but one that I thought was interesting is a program where users can create advertising content for third parties. The key is establishging a clear understanding of monetary expectations up front. Focus on transparency.
  • Joe talked about the importance of metric tracking around video performance online. He notes increasing pressure around metric reporting because viral video no longer seen as a means of driving innovation within marketing departments. It’s now more about wrapping process around the development of content.
  • Satva asked Joe to talk in more detail about the metrics he’s looking for, great question. Joe then explained that the tools for tracking effectiveness of video are not on par with what is available for web pages. This lead to a discussion of the new technologies that are coming down the pipe to get video metrics up to snuff (hover tracking, video notation, in video links, etc). Of course, everyone wants to be able to track videos to conversion rates.
  • Robin wanted to know if anyone is doing A/B testing with video. Sounds like a cool research project.

Ok, that’s it for day one. This is the first time I’ve blogged a conference, so I had no idea how exhausting it would be. I feel like I’ve tapped into the CGM community, but I’m not sure if I’ve heard much that I haven’t already been exposed to online. I have met some interesting people though, and hope to meet more over a drink shortly!