I'm looking forward to hearing keynotes from Dave Morin, Senior Platform Manager at Facebook and Jim Benedetto, VP Technology at MySpace, as well as from 20 or so panelists who are succeeding with their social networking applications and investments. My last major dose of social networking content from industry insiders came at CES in January where I attended (and then bought mp3 recordings) of virtually every session on widgets and social networking. When I went to order my mp3 recordings, they just copied all the ones I wanted onto a thumb drive and gave them to me. It was the first conference where I have purchased the audio that way--very cool.

I recently organized a Facebook group called Utah CEOs with a Facebook Strategy. Now I wish I had named it better. It should be something like Utah Executives who Have or Want to Have a Social Networking Strategy. The first event had more than 30 attendees. One of them blogged a summary of the Facebook Strategy lunch that we held this week, and said it was very worthwhile.

I organized a Facebook Group for Utah CEOs who have a Facebook strategy or want to develop one. I wish I could change the name of the Facebook Group, but Facebook doesn't allow that. I can see why. What if someone set up a group called "Mothers Against Drunk Driving" and got a million members, and then arbitrarily decided to change the name of the group to "We Love Beer." The creator of a group can control a lot of things, but can't change the name after people have joined it.

I have been a serious user of social networks since joining LinkedIn several years ago--the fourth person in Utah to join, as I recall. My friend Michael Tanne, now CEO of Wink.com, turned me onto it. Of my 858 connections, I think I personally know about 98% of them. I have turned down a ton of connection requests because I really did want to be part of a trusted network.

I'm in Las Vegas for CES 2008. Last night on my drive from Provo I listened to some podcasts in the Stanford Entrepreneur Lecture Series. (You can download them for free from iTunes or from Stanford's web site.) The most interesting was Mark Zuckerberg's talk 2 years ago when Facebook had 5 million users and was still limited to authenticated college students and invited high school students.

I missed the Stanford Summit (AlwaysOn) this July, but I am registered for the Venture Summit West coming up next week. I look forward to catching up with some friends on the VC side of things and comparing notes with some friends who are CEOs who will be at this conference. I usually attend the AlwaysOn Summit in July at Stanford, but I missed it this year, being in the intense startup mode still at WorldVitalRecords.com.

In my opinion, one of the most important things you can do to succeed in your chosen profession, is to invest time and effort into selecting the best blogs and news feeds in the world that will connect you with the thought leaders in your field. I agree with Tim Sanders that 80% of your time learning should be with the best books (source: Love is the Killer App), but then the 20% that is spent with media or online to stay current with breaking news and thought, should be the best sources anywhere.

I'm in Washington, DC for the American Library Association Annual Conference & Exhibition. I started an MLS program back in 1990 (Masters of Library Science), but had to drop out because my CD ROM publishing company needed my full attention. But I have the deepest admiration for librarians, particularly reference librarians, who are vastly underrated. They don't know everything, but they know where to find the answers, probably better than any other profession.

I saw history in the making today.

For some reason, I was lucky enough to be in San Francisco for the Facebook f8 Platform launch event. This announcement was at least an 8.0 on the Richter scale. It was a whopper.

If you search for "family link" or "familylink" on Google, the first hit is not www.familylink.com. Today, on the query "familylink", hits #5, 7, 8, 9, and 10 all refer to FamilyLink.com, but they are from blogs and press releases. Google is not yet ranking FamilyLink.com as the most relevant result for these queries.