BlogWell is going to be making a stop in Cincinnati on April 7, 2010 and Cincinnati Social Media will be partnering for the festivities.  If you aren’t familiar with BlogWell, it is a great event put on across the country by GasPedal and the Social Media Business Council.    As they describe it:

The rainy weather may not have cooperated, but nonetheless, last week’s Cincinnati Digital Hub Non-Conference turned out to be a smashing success.  From John Battelle’s opening keynote to Peter Kim’s talk on Social Business, the conference was filled with great discussions about the digital landscape.  And even better, the conference really highlighted some of our  best local success stories including the growth of Cincinnati-based Share This, the launch of Bob Gilbreath’s new book, and other tales such as ThinkVine, MomsLikeMe.com and Ample.

But perhaps my favorite part came at the very end when I had the chance to sit on a small panel to talk about Cincinnati’s role as a Digital Hub.  One of the points that I brought up was that Cincinnati has already made tremendous strides…we just need to talk about some of our accomplishments.  For instance, consider the following:

• In Entrepreneur Magazine’s latest ranking of Top Undergraduate Entrepreneurial Colleges, three schools in the Cincinnati area were ranked in the Top 20 (University of Dayton at #7, Miami University at #15 and Xavier University at #19).   And Northern Kentucky University will likely join that list soon will their new $50 million dollar School of Informatics.
• Cincinnati is a Consumer Marketing Hub as the headquarters town of Procter & Gamble, Kroger, Nielsen Online, Macy’s and a host of marketing, branding, design and advertising services companies such as Bridge Worldwide, LPK and Northlich.
• The Cincinnati Social Media group is one of the largest in the country with over 700 active members.
• Cincinnati is one of the most innovative cities in the world with one of the highest rates of patent applications per capita in the country.

And that is just the beginning.  The buzz around the Digital Hub Non-Conference is because of what is already taking place in Cincinnati…not just the potential of what is to come.  The simple fact is that while Cincinnati has been the branding capital of 20th Century, we have every reason to be the Digital Brand Building capital of the 21st Century.

I for one cannot wait to be part of it all.

Thanks to HBO, the Cincinnati Bengals are going to learn about a Hard “Knocks” Life.  Premiering on August 12th at 10 PM EST, the Bengals are going to be featured on this season’s Hard Knocks, a show that looks into life at a NFL Training Camp.

As a Bengals season ticket holder, I can’t wait to see the show.  Will Carson Palmer be able to come back two years of injuries?  Will Chad “Johnson” Ocho Cinco get into trouble for sending tweets from the locker room?  Or will any of our players end up arrested again before the season begins?  Those are story lines just made for a reality TV show.

And of course, I’m looking forward to talk to HBO and the Bengals about partnership opportunities with the real Hard Knox Life.

Last week, I came across an interesting effort from the AdClub Cincinnati called the Digital Hub Initiative.  The Digital Hub Initiative (DHI) is an independent organization whose goal is to promote Cincinnati’s digital community on all levels.  With my new role at P&G and my personal passion about the potential of Cincinnati, I was really excited to see this program.  Cincinnati played a tremendous role in advertising in the 20th Century and I think we can play that same role for Digital Marketing in the 21st Century.  Doing so will start with initiatives like DHI.

The Digital Hub Initiative is kicking off their work with a “Non-Conference” conference on November 14 – 15 at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Cincinnati.  I think the idea is brilliant as they are aiming to combine top-notch speakers with a dose of real social networking (otherwise known as a Friday night bar crawl).  Speakers include Pete Blackshaw from Nielsen Online, Benjamin Palmer from Barbarian Group and Tim Schigel from Cincinnati based Share This.

I’m really pulling for the Digital Hub Initiative to build some momentum.  This conference should be a great start to establishing Cincinati as a digital hot spot for the future.

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