If you work in influencer relations in Silicon Valley, you want to be at the Churchill Club this Monday March 1st for an evening event featuring John Byrne, Richard Edelman, Paul Bergevin, Peter Diamandis and Frank Shaw.

The event comes on the heels of the 2010 Edelman Trust Barometer, a global opinion leaders study mentioned in my last post. The Trust Barometer is freely available. Bring your toughest questions or just show up for a great evening of discussion, debate and networking.

I’ll be particularly interested to see how this year’s discussion compares with the 2008 event (my comments).

See you there!

What:
What the Public Believes: New Trends in Corporate Reputation Management
Corporations are in the combat zone, struggling to build back trust among all of their stakeholders in the midst of the global economic crisis. Faced with an overall meltdown in confidence, how is corporate leadership—including marketing, PR, investor relations and public affairs—to respond? How should companies retool their communication strategies and address the right stakeholders with the right issues and strike the right tone? This panel of thought leaders speaks out on the most current trends and strategies for managing corporate reputation and sharpening stakeholder engagement.

Cost
Individual Churchill Club event tickets run $58 - $90, and normally it’s a cash bar. Reg, more info.

Twitter
Hashtag will be #churchillclub.

Popularity: 9%

Market influence is earned, not appointed. Yet, I’ve got to believe that Aneesh Chopra, recently appointed as the first CTO of the United States, is going to become a force of influence very quickly. And I’m looking forward to hearing him speak next week at the Churchill Club.

Most of the government tech influencers are people advising on government tech spending, government tech purchasing processes and tech-related regulatory and legal matters.

Mr. Chopra presents a new possibility in the role of government as a force exerting influence on the tech industry and as a target for influencer relations.

Check out details and costs here. Let me know if you’ll be there too. Would love to connect.

Popularity: 1%

Updated February 26, 2008. Today, businesses have new challenges for gaining trust and influence with a new generation of business leaders and consumers that receives information and forms opinions differently than all generations before it. Meanwhile, opportunities to connect and exchange information are escalating at a furious pace. Get the inside track on the latest trends and how to benefit, when top PR, social networking, entertainment and news executives gather next week with the Churchill Club in California. Discount for Friends of Tekrati.

Churchill Club Event: “Who Do You Trust? Trends in trust and influence for the next generation of business leaders“

This informative discussion about trust and influence features new data from a worldwide study on who the next generation of business leaders rely on for information and why.

The next generation of rising business stars is among the most info-literate in history. Trust has become an even greater currency than price and quality in the fight for customer, partner and shareholder loyalty. As businesses confront truly divisive perceptions about how trustworthy business, government, media and non-government organizations are to the info-literates, a key question business leaders are asking today is: “Who do they trust?”

• When: Tuesday, February 26th, 6:00 p.m.
• Speakers: leading social psychologist and author on trust and influence, Bob Cialdini; head of the world’s largest independent PR firm, Richard Edelman; Facebook’s Chief Privacy Officer, Chris Kelly; YPulse’s Founder and Editor, Anastasia Goodstein
• Moderated by: Katie Hafner of the New York Times.
• Location: Computer History Museum, Mountain View, Calif.

Churchill Club Event: “Use or Be Used: Navigating Well in the Always On Society“

Update: this event postponed, new date TBD, as of February 26. - Editor

Opportunities to be connected and send and receive information are escalating at a furious pace. This event offers valuable insights about how to operate in the Always On world for business and personal benefit, including:

• The market opportunities
• The difficulties of reaching the always overloaded consumer
• The secrets to making information interesting, presentable and digestible in even the smallest available moments
• How information consumers can use constant connectedness to their advantage and not become part of the feeding frenzy

• When:Thursday, February 28th, 6:00pm
• Speakers: Marc Hedlund, Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer, Wesabe; Garrett Link, General Manager, RealGames, RealNetworks; John Poisson, CEO, Tiny Pictures; Ellen Siminoff, Chairman, Efficient Frontier; Gene Wang, Chairman, Airscape Communications
• Moderated by: Matt Richtel of the New York Times
• Location: Grand Hyatt, Union Square, San Francisco, Calif.

Friends of Tekrati Discounts

Register in advance for these events and save $15 off the general rate. Enter discount code gtekrati08 when prompted during online purchase.

Tekrati is pleased to support the Churchill Club by bringing events of interest to the attention of Tekrati readers.

Popularity: 2%

Bloggers scowl at IT industry analysts for many reasons. My top grievance with the analysts is boredom. I find the presentation of research more and more dull. How about mixing in a little YouTube magic with those statistics? Instead of webcasts and videos letting us watch analysts, how about videos letting us watch analysts do some research? Guy Kawasaki’s recent “Next Generation Insights” panel for the Churchill Club is a great example of what digital video could do for industry research.

He put together a small panel of “millenials” and asked them about media, advertising, mobile technology and communication preferences. He used digital video, veotags, and blogging to capture, document and discuss. The result is irresistible – and you can’t do this with a report, text blog or even photos. He lets you be a part of the experience. He lets you draw your own conclusions.

I see this as an example of how a simple combination of digital technologies could transform our collective experience with tech industry research.

For example, how about using this to supplement research reports and summaries. Trade in some talking head footage of analysts for footage of actual target decision makers and customers answering questions or debating among themselves over a sticky point.

Online video could also take industry research much deeper into much smaller market segments. Consider the possibilities for re-inventing focus groups, based on digital production and distribution economics.

At the risk of going overboard, digital video might inject some differentiation into analyst-hosted IT peer groups.

My point is that digital and social communications tools give us new options for exploring the human side of selecting and using technology. I think it’s a shame to use these tools just to talk about research — why not make them part of the research? Incorporating digital video and audio into the very fabric of research may be one way to make it more interesting and more credible.

By the way, here are the disclaimers: Guy Kawasaki is not an industry analyst. His panel was not meant to be a “scientific” research study — it was a panel. He did not suggest in any way that what he was doing could relieve my growing boredom with research reports and whatnot.

Read his blog, watch the Churchill Club video: Is Advertising Dead?.

Reprinted from Tekrati

Popularity: 1%