Next week, from Monday March 21 to Wednesday March 23, I will be in Boston for the next BIA/Kelsey conference: Interactive Local Media East 2011.

Here are the presentations I’m most looking forward to:

Day 1:

• Definitely the keynote from David Weinberger, author of “The ClueTrain Manifesto” and “Everything is Miscellaneous.” Definitely a huge inspiration for Needium (remember “markets are conversations”?). Can’t wait to get his insights on local and social.
• The keynote from Evan Cohen, GM, Foursquare. The geo-local/social startup from New York has added a lot of interesting functionalities in the last few days.
• The SMB panel. Good qualitative data always comes out of this discussion.

Day 2:

• “The New Wave of ‘Hyper Relevant’ Media” panel with Tim Condon, Director, New Digital Ventures at Washington Post Co., Mike DeLuca, Senior VP at AOL Local, Matt Idema, VP at Yahoo! Local and Josh Resnik, VP and GM at Gannett Digital Media Network. Still a big believer in hyperlocal content and advertising. We haven’t seen much large-scale traction yet though. It will be interesting to get an update from these guys.
• The discussion with Maz Sharafi, Senior Manager, Local Monetization, Facebook. Facebook doesn’t usually share a lot of new information. Maybe we’ll be surprised this time!
• The “National Advertisers and Local Search” panel. I want to hear them talking about their social media strategy and tactics.

Day 3:

• The discussion with Eric Eichmann, COO, LivingSocial. Interested in hearing what LivingSocial’s strategy is vs. Groupon’s. Also interested in getting their point of view on unsatisfied small merchant daily offer advertisers. I keep hearing about those informally. Is it just the point of the iceberg or is it minimal? Jim Moran from Yipit can probably contribute to the conversation.
• Also interested in the “Deal Universe: The Big Picture for Coupons and Sales” panel. I’m a huge fan of coupons and I’m intrigued by the impact of daily offers on the couponing/promotion business.

If you want to meet and chat or if you’d like a demo of Needium.com, don’t hesitate to e-mail me at seb AT needium.com