Live from Ad:Tech, Day One

Tomorrow morning kicks off 3 days chocked full of advertising shenanigans with ad:tech San Francisco. The Madison Avenue Journal brought a team of bloggers to cover the event, shake some hands, kiss some babies and probably drool over some of the latest advertising technologies. You might even hear a healthy dose of advertis-y cynicism.

Follow the fun from the mothership, TMAJ, and I'm sure each of us will be chiming in from time to time. (including Matt, Cam, Ryan, Katie, Sean and Eric)

The first roundtable gets started with a topic near and dear to all of our hearts, "The Art of Conversation: Building Great Brands in the Digital Age" featuring Pete Blackshaw, Tom Asher, Beth Thomas-Kim, Jordan Warren, Todd Cunningham and Tom Clancy's possible brother, Rick Clancy.

To what extent does listening and conversation share a symbiotic relationship? Brands must transition from monologue to dialogue in the era of consumer control, but how do they proactively engage and converse with consumers?

The rest of the day is full of tough choices, Follow the Money or Tales from the Bleeding Edge? Multi-Platform world or Futuresearch? State of Online Video or the Modern Agency? The Internet Economy or Social Network Marketing? Luckily, I'm a skilled party-hopper, so I plan on getting as much of each as I can. Hopefully I'll report back with some poor-quality video and photos. I might even catch a certain presidential candidate speaking a little too plainly about small town America. You never know. It is San Francisco.