The Basement

I've been frantically trying to get stuff posted about WOMMA, but in the meantime so has everyone else, and lots of it is pretty dang good.

For example, perhaps the most insightful post I've seen on WOMMA comes from WOMMA co-founder Allison Gower of qtags. The post I'm talking about can be found on her blog here... then again, maybe I'm biased. Seriously though, you need to click though to get her PDF overview of the conference. This is seriously cool. Allison is clearly passionate about WOM, WOMM and WOMMA. Kathy Sierra would be proud! One quote Allision got (that I missed) and that I love is "Do, Don't Discuss" (I can so hear this in a Yoda voice). BTW, that qtags idea is pretty neat. It'll be interesteing to see if it takes off.

Allison talks about someone she met at WOMMA – Chicago area real estate maven, Kane Evans. I was going to blog about Kane anyway, but I took Allison's mention to be a sign from, well, from Allison. Kane has a great blog called Realty Freak. He attended the WOMMA conference and poses the question "Where are all the real estate agents?" Well, Kane, my guess is that they are hanging out with the marketing folks from Volkswagen. I enjoyed Kane's perspective because he's not a huge global media or CPG company – he's mid-America small business. It's really exciting to see folks like Kane empowered enough to show up at WOMMA and then challenge the rest of their industry to play catch up. BTW Kane, I have a house I need to sell in Tulsa, any thoughts?

Speaking of Kathy Sierra – according to her Passionate User musings, you can tell when you start reaching passion when you start seeing detractors. In her words "The most popular and well-loved companies, products, and causes have the strongest opponents. You'll know when you get there, because the buzz goes from pleasant to polarized." In that regard, WOMMA must be doing something right because I finally found a WOMMA naysayer. This guy could certainly lay his sarcasm on a little thicker if he really wanted to make a point, but one sarcastically challenged descending slob is better than no descending slob at all. That's what I always say.

I also enjoyed Molly Buchanan's coverage. Molly's whole blog is great – especially if you are interested in marketing to chicks women.

Rereading Molly's post reminds me- Dedicated dad, Pete Blackshaw is feeling terribly left out since he stayed home from the conference to care for his newborn twins. He's so WO-HOME-MMA-sick in fact, that's he's written an WOM article for ClickZ asking "Is Word of Mouth a Long-Term Strategy?" then he blogged about it back on his Consumer Generated Blog. Of course, this is the same question he asked in the WOM v. Ads blog before the conference. Apparently, Pete's gonna keep asking until somebody goes to his blog and posts comments. So, show some heart and go do that now. Go ahead, I'll wait...

Finally, Jon Gabriel, Store Design Manager for Stone Cold Creamery (of "Chocolate Covered Cricket" fame) has (re)caught the personal blog bug from WOMMA and has jump started his blog. So go check it out.