INTERNET WEEK New York

181 MILLION BLOGGERS,

PISSING IN THE WIND

Finding the Audiences that Would Love to Find You

Produced by : SOBEL MEDIA 

Presented by:    

Thursday – May 17, 2012   8:00am - 10:00am

So much great content, so many passionate readers, such a huge disconnect. This panel will explore fresh new strategies to help journalists, bloggers, artists, magazines and other digital-content creators attract the audiences they deserve — and help readers discover compelling content they can’t live without.

INTERNET WEEK NY, a week-long festival celebrating NYC’s thriving Internet industry & community.

 EVENT INFO

181 MILLION BLOGGERS,  PISSING IN THE WIND

MODERATOR:
ELLIS HENICAN

PANELISTS:
LARRY SMITH - founder and editor of SMITH Magazine , best known for launching the Six-Word Memoir® project

NICHELE STEPHENS - Co-Founder of the Cupcakes Take The Cake blog sensation; founder of Keeping Nickels; social media strategist of The Loop 21

APARNA MUKHERJEE - Digital journalist and editor, has reported for The AP, BusinessWeek, and Bloomberg Markets, and contributes to the Wall Street Journal; created the Bloomberg Terminal’s first VOD interview program; launched The NYTimes Knowledge Network http://twitter.com/aparnamuk

JEFF NEWELT AKA JAHFURRY - PR / Social Media consultant and teacher to authors, brands, entrepreneurs, and artists + copywriter & strategist specializing in Twitter & Facebook; editor of The Pekar Project  webcomics series; official “Minister of Hype” for indie webcomix collective ; curator/contributor to Tripcity multimedia LIT/ARTS arts salon.

“A tumultuous week for marriage”, Ellis Henican Column, Newsday, May 13, 2012

If you don’t like it, it’s “homosexual marriage.” If you do, it’s “marriage equality.”

As in the battle between “right to life” and “pro-choice,” you tell me which words you use. Then I’ll tell you which side you’re on.

What a difference a week can make!

Little more than a week ago, same-sex marriage, to use a down-the-middle term, was puttering along as a second-tier issue this political year.

Gay activists and Christian evangelicals seemed interested. North Carolina had a constitutional vote coming up. But as Barack Obama and Mitt Romney found fresh new ways to pound each other every morning, boy-boy and girl-girl weddings were off to the side somewhere.

Then, bang-bang-bang-bang. Romney’s gay foreign-policy spokesman was bum-rushed off the campaign. Joe Biden told “Meet the Press” he’s “absolutely comfortable” with same-sex marriage. North Carolinians inserted a ban on the practice in their state constitution. And Obama, who’d been gradually “evolving” in the legalize-it direction, finally declared himself an official gay-marriage Darwinian.

“Same-sex couples should be able to get married,” he declared.

The change didn’t come quickly. The shift is far from complete. As North Carolina showed, strong personal opposition still lingers out there.

But the issue is suddenly front and center of the presidential campaign. Romney, also battling a prep-school gay-bullying claim, is the one trying to change the topic now. Political and religious leaders seem increasingly open to the basic idea. And the national polls all say the strongest momentum is heading same-sex marriage’s way.

Busy week.

AISLE SAY

1. Here come the brides

2. Well-groomed

3. Wedding belles

4. His-and-his

5. Something old, something very new

THE NEWS IN SONG

Passion’s our only crime.

“Legalize Our Love”

Timbuk 3

tinyurl.com/loveslegal

ASKED AND UNANSWERED

If not for a $4.5 million in state tax credits and 16-year Nassau County property-tax break, would Celestial Seasonings honcho Irwin Simon really have abandoned LI for New Jersey or Colorado? Now we’ll never know…If she’d realized all the hard feelings her gift would generate, would Marion Carll have even deeded her historic farm to the Commack School District? Or would she have just sold the nine-acre 1701 spread to some real-estate developer back in 1969?…Clogging all the drains, trashing a $30,000 piano, blasting the family dog with a fire extinguisher: Did burglars choose the Seebergers’ East Setauket house at random – or because the dad’s a pastor who often works with troubled teens?…Rusty Torres? Ew!…Should Half Hollow Hills School District force their highest performers to pass an $87 AP exam before “AP” goes on their high-school transcripts, regardless of how well they did in the advanced-placement course? That’s the pricey question for some college-bound seniors… Loser! Opportunist! Will the NY-1 congressional race be LI’s ugliest? Randy Altschuler and George Demos, hoping to unseat Tim Bishop, are getting a good, mean start…Some realtors are smiling at May’s 16-percent hike in LI home sales over May 2011. But isn’t this number just as meaningful? The 4.8-percent drop in homes on the market, from 22,827 to 21,741?…Wanna hear a rumor about the LI serial-killer case? Sorry. Never mind. The Suffolk DA said, “Don’t pass it along.”

LONG ISLANDER OF THE WEEK

BUTCH YAMALI

Moms shouldn’t have to work on Mother’s Day. But often, they do — in hospitals, restaurants, police and fire departments and other seven-day job sites. Caterer Butch Yamali, carrying on a tradition from his dad’s Queens deli, is serving a free lunch at noon on Monday to all moms who had to work on their special day. No reservations needed, Mom. Just show up hungry at Yamali’s Coral House, 70 Milburn Ave. in Baldwin. “I understand,” he said. “Some moms have to work even on holidays. But they shouldn’t have to go unrecognized.”

E-mail ellis@henican.com
Follow him at twitter.com/henican

“GOP rivalries hardly forgotten”, Ellis Henican Column, Newsday, May 6, 2012

Should we pretend to like people we don’t?

They’re coming around very slowly this bitter campaign year.

There on Friday were Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, locked in a room together for an hour and a half — no cameras, no aides, not a whiff of actual affection in the air. This is what passes in politics for “quality time.”

The two of them certainly seemed to be trying. But the disdainful quotes from the primaries were piled up outside, waiting to be snipped into Democratic attack ads.

“If Mitt Romney’s an economic heavyweight, we’re in trouble,” said a zinger from March, picked more or less at random. On his way to the expected Republican nomination, Mitt said plenty back at Rick.

And when the two ex-combatants said their goodbyes, they didn’t even linger for a grip-and-grin photo shoot. Any endorsement that is coming — and one eventually will — wasn’t coming yet.

Michele Bachmann swallowed hard on Thursday, throwing her tea party support behind her former rival. The former governor of Massachusetts, the Minnesota congresswoman said, is “the only option” against Barack Obama.

Newt Gingrich remains the slowest to hug his former nemesis. He suspended his campaign last week but is sounding nowhere near ready to let the bygones be. The best he could manage was this to Wolf Blitzer: “This is a comparative business . . . Our choice isn’t Mitt Romney or Ronald Reagan.”

With friends like these, who needs former rivals?

FRIENDS OR FAKERS

1. Cops and firefighters

2. Hillary and Barack

3. Army and Navy

4. Mangano and Bellone

5. The girls on “Girls,” the women on “The View”

THE NEWS IN SONG

I’d kinda like to be the president:

“Why Can’t We Be Friends?”

Smash Mouth

tinyurl.com/befrenz

ASKED AND UNANSWERED

Does anyone in East Hampton still think all those deer are cute? Traffic deaths, Lyme disease, garden maulings – Councilman Dominick Stanzione has now declared a “deer emergency”…Prefer the weather THIS weekend?…What’s more segregated, LI housing or LI schools? Professor Douglas Ready of Columbia University Teachers College says (via the LI Index)  the two are inexorably intertwined…MS-13, 18^th Street Gang – do all LI street gangs now have to have numbers in their names? Pagans, please come home!…How many “disabled” LIRR retirees weren’t faking it? The list allegedly grows shorter again…What’s Christopher Cruz’s defense? “The disabled man deserved to be beaten with his own cane in the McDonald’s parking lot?”…The $227,000-a-year question for Philip D’Angelo, just hired from the Skaneateles Central School District near Syracuse to be superintendant of the Wantagh Union Free School District: Compared to Skaneateles, isn’t Wantagh a real breeze to spell?…How cool was this? Two New York Army National Guard UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters with 660-gallon “Bambi buckets,” scooping water from Sarnoff Preserve Lake on Thursday morning, then dumping it back in? Brush-fire training – for next time…Chuck Schumer asked a reasonable question at LISTnet’s LI Software Awards: How come we get so many science grants but produce so few science jobs? Answer that, you’ll win a prize — though probably not a job.

LONG ISLANDERS OF THE WEEK

THE FIRE PROBERS

In all, seven separate governmental entities — local, state and federal — are investigating the 1,100-acre brush fire that left such a scar on Manorville: The Suffolk County police, the state Forest Rangers, the fire marshals of Riverhead and Brookhaven, the Ridge and Manorville fire departments and the Brookhaven National Laboratory. The Forest Rangers, who are part of the state Department of Environmental Conservation, have now termed the blaze arson, though they aren’t quite saying what they mean by that and not all the other agencies seem yet to have signed on. Multiagency probes often disintegrate into political turf battles. This one hasn’t yet. But it’s a huge case and a vital one. Here’s hoping they all keep playing nicely — and that we get some solid answers soon.

E-mail ellis@henican.com
Follow him at twitter.com/henican

“I’m not against politicizing it. Stand up and say ‘Absolutely, I ordered the thing, it went great, and that’s a good reason to vote for me.’” – Ellis Henican

Marking the one year anniversary of the US Navy SEALs’ raid in Pakistan which resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden – the President made a surprise visit to the troops in Afghanistan. His campaign also released an ad highlighting the successful mission and asking whether – in light of comments that lend doubt – Republican opponent Mitt Romney would have made the same decisions.

Senator John McCain, who lost to Obama in the 2008 presidential election, said that the advertisement politicized an issue that should not have been part of the presidential campaign.

“Shame on Barack Obama for diminishing the memory of September 11th and the killing of Osama bin Laden by turning into it a cheap political attack ad,” he said. “He’s doing a shameless end zone dance to help get himself reelected.”

Listen to Ellis Henican on America’s Radio News Network with Chris Salcedo and Lori Lundin:

E-mail ellis@henican.com
Follow him at twitter.com/henican

The 7th Annual NY XPO for Business

May 2-3, 2012  •  Javits Center  •  New York City

The New York XPO for Business is the largest trade show and business conference for small businesses in the Northeast

ATTEND XPO  – GROW YOUR BUSINESS

Network with 10,000+ executives and attend over 40 SEMINARS all designed to build your business. Walk the show’s 200 EXHIBITS, identify the latest products & services to meet your competitive challenges, learn from the nation’s driving business leaders and energize your entrepreneurial spirit.

More Info

Register to Attend

And don’t forget to stop by and see Ellis Henican moderating the following seminars:

“The Power of Social Media: Best Practices to Drive Sales & Boost Lead Generation”

Panelists: Ric Dragon, CEO, DragonSearch; Basil C. Puglisi, MPA, Executive Director, Digital Brand Marketing Education & Interactives (dbmei.org); Mardy Sitzer, President, Bumblebee Design & Marketing LLC International

May 2nd            9:30- 10:20

“The Social Media Toolbox: Secret Strategies to Increase Marketing & Engage Followers”

Panelists: Frank Eliason, Senior Vice President of Social Media, Citibank; Cara Friedman, General Manager, Likeable Media; Howard Greenstein, President, Harbrooke Group; Nelly Yusupova, Chief Technology Officer, Webgrrls International

May 3rd             9:30-10:30

E-mail ellis@henican.com
Follow him at twitter.com/henican

Alumni Weekend Panel:

Election 2012: What’s at Stake?

Panelists were Pat Buchanan, former assistant to three presidents, columnist and commentator with MSNBC and the McLaughlin Group, whose last seven books have all been New York Times bestsellers; Ellis Henican, columnist at Newsday, political analyst on the Fox News Channel, radio host and author of two New York Times bestsellers; and Dawn Laguens, vice president for the Planned Parenthood Action Fund.

“Time for another giant leap into space”, Ellis Henican Column, Newsday, April 29, 2012

Let’s go somewhere fun.

How does Mars sound? Or Pluto? I don’t care, anywhere that’s far, different and feels like somewhere once we get there. For a good long while now, NASA has been having trouble getting the trip-planning formula quite right.

It’s been almost 43 years since Apollo 11 landed on the moon. And where has NASA been flying lately? Oh, right. I almost forgot. On commuter runs to the International Space Station, where the astronauts would do a few experiments, perform some maintenance chores, wave goodbye and head quietly home. Not too many giant leaps for mankind. No rocky souvenirs at all.

Clearly, there’s still a huge public appetite for space travel. You saw the throngs on Friday, staring skyward as the Space Shuttle Enterprise buzzed low across New York on one of the great piggyback rides of all time. The future museum attraction even looped above the Roosevelt Field Mall, a flying hat tip to the former airfield where Charles Lindbergh took off for Paris in 1927.

The Enterprise was just a practice craft. It never achieved a day of orbit. And yet, associated as it is with a once-glorious space program, it still hinted at all the high-flying possibilities Up There.

Surely, we can do better than an orbiting confab of Russians and Chinese.

Venus, anyone?

SPACE PACE

1. 10, 9, 8, et cetera

2. One small step, then another small step

3. Armstrong, Aldrin and some other guy

4. Up, up and maybe it went that way

5. It’s a bird, it’s a plane — it’s a 747 carrying a retired space shuttle to a tourist aircraft carrier on the west side of Manhattan

THE NEWS IN SONG

“Why Go Up There?”

Tom Glazer and Dottie Evans

tinyurl.com/spacedate

ASKED AND UNANSWERED

Have you been called at home by “the Water Department,” threatening a non-payment shut-off? Don’t pay! It’s a scam, says Mineola Mayor Scott Strauss…Worst acronym ever? Can you beat TVASNAC, the Town-Village Aircraft Safety and Noise Abatement Committee repping residents around (just three letters) JFK?…After May 22, will Smithtown Central School District be proud – or chagrinned – to install breathalyzers in school?…Real dentists have enough trouble getting patients to make their appointments. How did alleged fake dentist Manuel Carranza do it at his New Cassel home?…Does the expanding Walt Whitman mall, with Henri Bendel and Swarovksi on the way, really need that $3-million Suffolk County tax break?…How much agape are Nick Cosmo’s out-of-luck investors feeling these days for the convicted Agape World Ponzi schemer? $400 million worth? That’s where his lieutenants are putting the take…If Nassau County installed an ozone monitor, would the air test any cleaner than Suffolk’s “smoggiest in New York State”? The American Lung Association can’t say…Don’t any other Southampton boys want to play field hockey? Until they do, 13-year-old Keeling Pilaro will keep pushing hard to play on the girls’ team…With forecasters predicting a below-average Atlantic-hurricane season, what extra-wimpy names do this year’s storms deserve? Hurricane Aw-don’t-worry-about-it? Hurricane Be-calm-it’s-going-somewhere-else? Hurricane Category Zero?

LONG ISLANDER OF THE WEEK

PETE FORNATALE

His final gigs was at Fordham’s WFUV and satellite’s SiriusXM. But Pete Fornatale was very much a Long Island guy. From Port Washington and then Rockaway Park, he helped invent, to spread and to perpetuate the whole idea of progressive music radio. He made his biggest mark at free-form rock pioneer WNEW-FM, but his impact was undeniable across the years. He was a taste-maker and an enthusiast, a discoverer and a confidante, a lover and sharer of just great music. He died at 66 of complications from a stroke. There’s one fewer reminder now of how great radio could be.

E-mail ellis@henican.com
Follow him at twitter.com/henican

“Already in drought and it’s not yet summer”, Ellis Henican Column, Newsday, April 22, 2012

How’s that drought coming? Step under my umbrella. We can discuss it here.

It’s always tempting — isn’t it? — to sneer at dire warnings when the evidence points the opposite way. Ask Al Gore, whose global-warming lectures are inevitably scheduled on the mornings of major snowstorms. He may have the science on his side. But all those parkas in the auditorium set a deeply skeptical tone.

That’s where we are this weekend as the National Weather Service reports the driest Long Island winter and spring in 13 years. The U.S. Drought Monitor is using words like “extreme” and “severe.” That little spritz on Wednesday night? It did nothing. The gauge at Long Island MacArthur Airport still showed a rainfall total since Jan. 1 of 9 inches below normal.

We need more rain around here. That’s as hard to miss as a parched-ground brush fire in Manorville.

Are you with me? Maybe not.

With clouds as heavy as these and forecasters warning darkly, “Flash floods!” no one’s in much of a mood for finger-wagging — at least not until this low-pressure system blows through.

Then we’ll get all the lawn-sprinkler lectures and the swimming-pool guilt — and all the tired jokes about showering with a friend.

See you at the Drought of 2012. It’s still a tough sell.

RAIN OR SHINE

1. “Dry Me a River”

2. “Singing in the Pain”

3. “Balmy Monday”

4. “Purple Strain”

5. “The Rain Will Come Out Tomorrow”

THE NEWS IN SONG

Who needs a weatherman?

“I Think It’s Going to Rain Today”

Randy Newman

http://tinyurl.com/gonnarain

ASKED AND UNANSWERED

Rain dance worked, huh?…Brookhaven Supervisor Mark Lesko wants more “prescribed burns”? Is that the brush-fire equivalent of destroying the village to save it?…All those gouging gas stations discouraging credit-card use, they’re not, ah, forgetting to report any of that extra cash on their taxes, are they?…With Sears Hardware pulling out of Lindenhurst, North Babylon and Hauppauge, know where I can exercise the unwarranted lifetime warranty on my Craftsman wrenches set should they ever fail to satisfy me, which they haven’t yet?…Defense lawyers say Khurram Shahzad’s coke conviction is the first to be tossed over shoddy science at the Nassau Police crime lab? Won’t be the last, will it?…When will the Cash Mob from the East Quogue Ladies Sanity Society show up at MY house? Struggling Main Street merchants, who got a nice infusion yesterday afternoon, aren’t the only people feeling strapped these days…Suffolk County Ethics Commission – didn’t you realize even the name was a joke? Tom Spota’s grand jury isn’t laughing now…What was first-term Councilman Eugene Cook implying when he demanded a state audit of the Huntington Town Board? That someone had been cooking the books?…Wanna see steam come out of Kevin Law’s ears? Just say “commuter tax” so the LIA CEO can hear. But wait – wouldn’t a city commuter tax make LI businesses comparatively more competitive?

LONG ISLANDER OF THE WEEK

JARED RIVERS

We find our basketball heroes younger and younger these days. Keep an eye out for 13-year-old point guard Jared Rivers. The 170-pound 6-footer is on his way to Christ the King High School in September. College and NBA scouts are already taking notice. The high school’s great backcourt tradition has launched Derrick Phelps (North Carolina), Eric Barkley and Omar Cook (St. John’s), Erving Walker (Florida) and this year’s sensation, Omar Calhoun (UConn). The son of a city cop and an LI schoolteacher, Jared is “as fundamentally sound and mentally tough a youngster as I have ever seen,” says CTK JV coach Artie Cox. The new kid just led his AAU team, The New Rens, to the playoffs of the Super League JV division at Island Garden, beating the previously undefeated Blue Bombers, a squad of high-school all-stars with two 6-foot-9 15-year-olds. That’s 6-foot-9 — and growing.

E-mail ellis@henican.com
Follow him at twitter.com/henican

“Ted Nugent is a chicken. He found a colorful way to get out of fighting in VietNam when he had the chance. I don’t think he’s genuinely dangerous.” – Ellis Henican

Sure - there’s talk of Mitt Romney picking Marco Rubio to be his Vice-Presidential running mate.  And Rubio, despite saying he’s not interested, didn’t sound very convincing when he said, “If in four to five years, if I do a good job as vice president–I’m sorry, as senator–I’ll have the chance to do all sorts of things.”

But what about that other guy? Rock singer and conservative activist Ted Nugent said last month that he had decided to support Romney after a “long heart and soul conversation” with the Republican candidate.

Last weekend during a National Rifle Association meeting in St. Louis, Nugent demonstrated his support for the Republican party by saying of the Obama administration: “We need to ride into that battlefield and chop their heads off in November.” The outspoken rocker-hunter also said he would be “dead or in jail by this time next year” if Obama is re-elected. This caught the attention of the Secret Service.

So…has anyone suggested a Romney-Nugent ticket in November?

Listen to Ellis Henican on America’s Radio News Network with Chris Salcedo and Lori Lundin:

“Let’s not drag Mom into the political fray”, Ellis Henican Column, Newsday, April 15, 2012

Don’t say housewife. It’s not a house she’s married to.

Don’t say stay-at-home mom. With all the soccer practices, doctor’s appointments, carpool trips and runs to the mall, she should be so lucky.

Whatever you do, don’t talk about the luxury of a woman with children who doesn’t work outside the home. It’s a sacrifice, not a luxury. You’re clear on that, I hope.

It’s still a minefield — cultural, political and personal — the choices women make as they balance family and career. Don’t believe me? Then ask Hilary Rosen. The veteran Democratic talking head who said on CNN that prospective first lady Ann Romney “never worked a day in her life” — then watched as the entire presidential race was hijacked for three days.

Republicans had mentioned birth control. Democrats had blamed Republicans for a “war on women.” Now Republicans were blaming them for “dissing Mom.” Truly, the personal is the political again.

This far in, you’d think that everyone could just agree: Women should make the choices they want to and they need to. Politicians on all sides should point their ugly slogans some other way.

No, moms who work outside of the home aren’t abandoning their children any more than moms who don’t lack self-identity.

“Oh, you don’t work? I’m sorry.”

“Aren’t you bored at home all day?”

Life is complicated. No choice is ever simple. Whatever the politicians might say.

MOM ALWAYS SAID

1. “This’ll hurt me more than it’ll hurt you.”

2. “You’re bored? Then help me clean the house.”

3. “As long as you live under our roof, you’ll follow our rules.”

4. “Just wait ’til your father gets home.”

5. “Go kiss Grandma.”

THE NEWS IN SONG

Good boys, bad boys and their mama

2Pac’s

“Dear Mama”

http://tinyurl.com/shetried

ASKED AND UNANSWERED

Who’s this gonna fool: Snappy displays in the windows of vacant East Hampton Village stores?…With all the publicity Newark Mayor Cory Booker is getting for his “come-to-Jesus moment” saving a neighbor from a house fire, did this thought briefly cross Steve Bellone’s mind: “What if I rode one of those Manorville horses away from the brush-fire flames?”…Which gay LIer should the new Gay Parent Teacher Student Association be named for? Walt Whitman? Harvey Milk? Please don’t say Rosie O’Donnell!…My idea of a LIPA Smart Meter? One that forgets to record all the juice being used…With so many nightmare scenarios to play off of, how did the 106^th Rescue Wing pick just one for Friday’s emergency drill at the Plum Island Animal Disease Research Center?…Can’t some smart horticulturist save the landmark white oak? The magnificent  tree at the entrance to Wading River, judged “rotting” and “dangerous” has been standing proudly since before the Revolutionary War… 76 dates around the world and Madonna couldn’t schedule one for practice arena – The Nassau Coliseum…Hate paying the extra 8.625 percent? You may, but Nassau and Suffolk officials are smiling now at the unexpected hike in first-quarter sales-tax receipts…Mason-Dixon Exchange Program: If Georgia, Virginia and other easy-sale Southern states keep sending their handguns to us, how ’bout we start sending our shooters to them? Kinda like Fresh Air Fund for the homicide set.

LONG ISLANDER OF THE WEEK

THE WATER WATCHERS

You knew we’d pay. You knew the snowless winter and the rainless spring wouldn’t come and go without penalty. And sure as buds are on the trees in April, it’s now collection time. The U.S. Drought Monitor of Climate Prediction Center of the National Weather Service – yes, bureaucracies have layers – have declared a severe drought for all of Suffolk plus eastern Nassau County. The current dryness is as plain as the smoke from those nasty wildfires — acrid, rancid and impossible to miss. Raise a glass to the water restrictions that are coming. Just be sure you drink it. Don’t pour a drop down the drain.

E-mail ellis@henican.com
Follow him at twitter.com/henican