Hot Topic / Blogs: the hot new tool for corporate communicators
(Panel)

Date: Monday, 27 June
Time: 10:30 – 11:45 am

You can resist blogs...and get burned. Or dive in and learn how to use this new communication tool to stake out first-mover advantage for your company. In this tell-all session, senior executives from General Motors, Intuit and the Air Conditioning Contractors of America will reveal how and why they started their blogs, lessons learned and key dos and don'ts of corporate blogging.

You will learn:

• Who in your company should (and shouldn't) write a blog
• Why you need to pay attention to the blogosphere
• How to conquer fear of blogging

Moderator / Debbie Weil / Washington, D.C., USA, is known as the MonaLisaOfBlogging.com. A corporate blogging consultant and president of WordBiz.com, Inc., she shows large companies how to market themselves as customer-friendly and media-savvy by using blogs as a communications strategy. She blogs at www.BlogWriteForCEOs.com and is writing a book about corporate blogging for a major U.S. publisher.

Panelists / Gary Grates / Michigan, USA, is vice president - communications of General Motors, North America. He contributes to GM's widely-read Fastlane blog, one of the first blogs launched by a Fortune 100 company. Visit Fastlane at http://fastlane.gmblogs.com/.

Kevin Holland / Washington, D.C., USA, is vice president for communications, membership & corporate development of the Air Conditioning Contractors of America (ACCA). He launched ACCABuzz, ACCA's popular blog, in 2004. Visit ACCABuzz at http://acca.blogs.com.

Paul Rosenfeld / California, USA, is General Manager of Intuit's QuickBooks Online Edition and the evangelist behind Intuit's first blog. Visit the Official QuickBooks Online Weblog at: http://quickbooks_online_blog.typepad.com.