What was White House Director of New Media Macon Phillips doing on a conference stage at 4 PM Eastern today, hours before President Obama's pivotal address to Congress on healthcare reform? Good question, lobbed by old media celeb Kojo Nnamdi (at R in pic). Kojo was interviewing Macon before an audience of 300 or so at the end of Day 1 of the Gov 2.0 Summit. "Well this is the place to be," Macon replied. "The President makes a lot of speeches

While Michael Port was busy on stage this afternoon at the annual Inc. 5000 conference in Washington DC, his co-author Elizabeth Marshall took a few minutes to do a Q & A with me. Michael and Liz have just published The Contrarian Effect.

Q: Is it true that you and Michael considered titling the book The Costanza Effect? I'm a huge Seinfeld fan so that might have worked for me.

A: Yes, that's right. Michael initially thought of The Constanza

I've known David Meerman Scott for several years. We've presented together at a conference. He cheered me on when The Corporate Blogging Book was published in 2006. I watched in awe when his New Rules of Marketing & PR was published a year ago in June 2007 and rocketed to best-selling PR book on Amazon.

Turns out New Rules is David's third book and he has a fourth coming out if you count the just released Tuned In, of which he is a co-author.

Newly-published author, digital media strategist and social media celeb Rohit Bhargava is our special guest at the BlogPotomac Speakers’ Dinner tomorrow, June 12, 2008. He kindly took time to answer a few questions about social media and, specifically, how he is using it to promote his new book.

Debbie: You’ve just published your first book, Personality Not Included. Huge congrats! I know what a huge undertaking it is. Tell us a little

KD Paine is one of the (terrific) speakers we’ve got lined up for BlogPotomac, Washington DC’s premiere social media marketing event coming up on June 13, 2008 (go for it… register here). I snagged her for a quick Q & A to give us a preview of her topic "Measurement and Value."

Note: In keeping with the unconference format (see here and here) of BlogPotomac, KD and the other speakers will be delivering informal presentations - no PowerPoint -

With BlogPotomac coming up in seven weeks [hey, register here], I asked Dell Chief Blogger Lionel Menchaca to tell us a bit more about Direct2Dell and Dell’s other community (aka social media) initiatives. Lionel is giving the opening keynote on Friday June 13, 2008.

Note: In keeping with the unconference format (see here and here) of BlogPotomac, Lionel and the other speakers will be delivering informal presentations - no PowerPoint - with