I’ll be doing a book signing at Blog World Expo on September 21 at 10:00 AM. I don’t know the specific location, but I’m sure it’ll be at wherever they have their book store. I know 2 people will be there. We’ll see if any others show up! It is very conveniently scheduled as the morning keynote ends at 10:00 AM and no panels start until 11:00 AM. So, if you’re free, please drop by. I’d love to meet you.

Also, I wanted to mention that I have a live interview, this Friday, August 29 at 8:00 PM, on New Media Pro.TV. I’m not sure if I will be on video or not, but either way, my voice will be live and, if you’re around, I’d love to have you listen in.

Finally, the deadline for voting in the SXSW 2009 Panel Picker is Friday, as well. If you have voted for my panels, thanks so much! If you haven’t, I’d definitely appreciate it if you gave it a look. The two panels are: “Content Theft and Copyright Infringement on Your Online Community” and “Are You Ready to Manage an Online Community?

I really appreciate all the support.

It’s been quite a while since I did a book coverage summary post, so I have a lot to highlight. First and foremost, there are a number of new reviews.

Chris Brogan, Jake McKee (Community Guy) and Jim Kukral all reviewed the book. Jim’s review was a video review and you can watch it on his blog. Chris Brogan’s review was mentioned by Heidi Miller on Talk It Up!

Dr. Jeffrey Barlow, of the Berglund Center for Internet Studies at Pacific University, reviewed the book for their electronic journal, Interface. There were also reviews posted by Brandon Eley, Book News and Rico Mossesgeld of Contract Worker.

I have new text interviews with Community Spark, as well as Josh Klein, in addition to a podcast interview with Startup Spark. I also participated in a private, live text based chat event with 30 plus assorted bloggers of the b5media blog network, providing advice on how to promote your blog via forums and how to create communities around your blog.

The book was mentioned on phpBB Guru, a Russian phpBB support community, Slashdot and ivanpino.COM. It was also mentioned by Lee LeFever of Common Craft and Jason Falls of Social Media Explorer and included in AMACOM’s Book Blast newsletter.

Finally, Alejandro Reyes of Successfool.com, mentioned in book in a short video on his Twitter and at the beginning of an episode of his Successfool.TV web show.

Thank you to everyone who has shown an interest in the book!

Already available in physical and Kindle form, “Managing Online Forums” has been released as an eBook. It is available from various eBook sellers, including Powell’s Books. I had been asked about it being an eBook multiple times, so that is a good part of the reason why it is coming out now. Thanks to everyone who expressed interest in it.

For anyone who was monitoring it, Darren has confirmed that he will be attending Blog World Expo and speaking on our panel, “Avoiding Disaster: How Not to Use Social Media.” Excellent news.

Also, I just wanted to post a reminder that SXSW Interactive panel voting ends on August 29. If you are so inclined, I would definitely appreciate your vote on my two panels, “Content Theft and Copyright Infringement on Your Online Community” and “Are You Ready to Manage an Online Community?”

I’ve been thinking about this for a little while, so I wanted to kick it out there and see what people think.

I didn’t really write the book to become a consultant. Some people find this funny or, at least, interesting, but I didn’t. I know that’s what a lot of people do (either to enhance a consulting business or become one) and that’s not a bad idea. I didn’t really want to do it with my first book. I wanted the message to speak for itself, not for it to feel as though I was holding something back, something that you would have to pay me to learn. In the book, I talked about everything. EVERYTHING I’ve had to deal with. I held nothing back.

My firm belief is that if you offer something of true value and you work hard to get it out there, that stuff can come later. I wrote the book because I wanted to, because I’m passionate about managing online communities and I felt that I had experience to share. Some people think this is crazy and that’s fine.

But, I’ve had multiple people suggest I get into consulting, that I start helping people, organizations, corporations and others to develop and improve their community strategy. As I have thought about it, it has started to appeal to me, for a few reasons:

I can help people. I like talking about managing online communities and I know I can help people to develop their strategies. I can’t program, I can’t provide technical solutions like that. But, that’s not what it is about. It’s about strategy, policies, ideas and solutions. And that’s what I can provide.

I can keep running my network. Please don’t mistake me thinking about consulting as wanting to stop running websites. That’s not true. I love running communities and websites and working in consulting will allow me to continue to do this (see below, re: money). I don’t know, quite honestly, that I want a full time business that depends on clients. I would consult on a very part time basis. A few hours over the phone, a couple days on site – that sort of thing.

I don’t really have time to do much in the way of cold calling or client acquisition. I can make myself available, put myself out there and see if people contact me. If they don’t, fine. If they do, fine.

I could use the money. I could definitely use the extra income.

So, it seems like a win, win, win: I can help people, I can keep running my websites and I can make some more money, allowing me to do more. My focal point, as I said, would be strategy, really in the management of the community itself and the infrastructure. That’s what I enjoy most and where I feel I can help most.

Due to my level of experience, due to the book, due to the conferences I am attending and the speaking I am doing, I am getting myself out there and giving myself an opportunity to do this. It seems to make sense and it seems like a good idea.

Anyway, enough of me talking. With all of this said, what do you think? Does this sound like a good idea? Would you hire me? Any other thoughts?

The panel that I will be on at Blog World Expo, “Avoiding Disaster: How Not to Use Social Media,” has been moved from September 20 from 5:00 PM to 6:00 PM to September 21 from 3:00 PM to 4:00 PM.

Also, I’m happy to say that I’ll be on a second panel at the conference, earlier that day. From 12:15 PM to 1:15 PM, I will be on a panel called “How to Deal with Trolls, Spammers and Sock Puppets,” with Blog World Expo founder Rick Calvert and John Chow of John Chow dot Com, The Tech Zone and TTZ Media. The panel description:

Is your community out of control? Do you have cyber stalkers insulting you every time you post?

This session will help you deal with these cyber bullies.

So, I’m really looking forward to all of that and hoping to meet some of you out there!

The SXSW Interactive Panel Picker is now online. This system allows you to rate the panels that people have proposed. I proposed two panels myself. They encouraged us to ask people to vote for our panels, so I wanted to mention it. If you have any interest, please feel free to give them a look.

The first panel is “Content Theft and Copyright Infringement on Your Online Community,” which I proposed with Jonathan Bailey of PlagiarismToday.

On this panel, we’ll talk about what you should do when someone uses your online community to infringe upon the rights of another. This includes prevention and the management of plagiarism and copyright infringement on forums, communities and social spaces. How to discourage, minimize and deal with it, including being proactive and handling reports.

The second panel is called “Are You Ready to Manage an Online Community?,” which also includes Martin Reed of Community Spark and April Burba, the Associate Producer of Dungeon Runners, an MMORPG from NCsoft and the former Community Manager for Tabula Rasa and City of Heroes, also MMORPGs from NCsoft.

For this panel, we’ll talk about what you should be prepared for before you manage an online community. What do you, as administrator, need to be equipped with? We’re not talking technology, we’re talking you as a person. What do you need to know, be ready for and what common pitfalls can you avoid?

I’m hoping the response to these is possible as I’d love to do a panel at SXSW. Fingers crossed!

The Blog World & New Media Expo is an upcoming conference, held in Las Vegas, Nevada, covering everything to do with, well, blogging and new media. This includes communities, forums, podcasting, video blogging, technology, journalism, monetization, entrepreneurship, management and more, discussing varying levels of experience.

It’s scheduled for September 20 and 21 with the extra Executive and Entrepreneur (E&E) conference being held on September 19. I will be there for all 3 days.

This will be my first time there. It looks like an awesome conference that will be attended by loads of cool people. I will be on a panel called “Avoiding Disaster: How Not to Use Social Media”, along with Lee LeFever (Principal, Common Craft), Jason Falls (Social Media Explorer, Doe-Anderson and Blogger, SocialMediaExplorer.com) and Darren Rowse (Owner, ProBlogger.net; Co-Founder, Sixfigureblogging.com; Co-Founder and VP Training, b5media and Co-Author, “ProBlogger: The Book“), who is tentative. It should be a lot of fun.

If you are interested or involved in any of these fields and can afford to come, I’d definitely recommend checking it out. Through August 22, I have a 20% off coupon code that you can use while signing up. This code is FROGVIP and it is good for the “Exhibits Only,” “Exhibits Only + Opening Party,” “Full Access” and “E&E Conference” packages. The full access pass is currently $300, so the 20% off ticket would take it down to $240. The E&E pass is $750, making it $600 with the coupon.

If you are able to attend, definitely let me know so that we can meet, if you’d like. And, of course, I invite you to come to my panel, as well!