At Leading in Local: Interactive Local Media Dec. 10-12 in San Francisco, we are presenting 50 of local’s top players. Want some homework? We’ve pulled recent coverage of some of our speakers from our Local Media Watch blog. There’s plenty of great reading here, and you’ll experience — first hand — how fast things have been changing.

Patrick Barry, GM, Intuit/DemandForce
Intuit Acquires Online Scheduler

Matthew Berk, CEO, Lucky Oyster
Matthew Berk Rethinks WOM via Lucky Oyster

Brian Boland, VP, Facebook
Facebook/Google Vertical Wars: Facebook Grabs a Google Auto Exec

Suzanne Cooper, Managing Editor, SF Chronicle
SF Chronicle’s Cooper: The Fight to Save Journalism

Jeremy Geiger, CEO, Retailigence
Closed Loop Mobile Local Shopping: A Conversation with Retailigence

Dan Hight, SVP, xAd
XAd and Posterscope: Retargeting For The Real World

Ziad Ismail, SVP, Marchex
Marchex Maps Call Monetization Genome

Mark Roberge, SVP, Hubspot
BIA-Kelsey Briefing: Hubspot Points to a New Way of Selling

Chris Schroeder, Author , Startup Rising
Bookshelf: Christopher Schroeder’s Startup Rising

Sean Smyth, VP, Groupon
A Look at Groupon’s New Partner Network

Eckart Walther, CEO, CardSpring
Merchants Drive Their Own Transaction Marketing via Cardspring Connect

The post Reading List: Recent Blog Coverage of LIL: ILM Speakers appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

The politics of keeping newspaper sites relevant in the social era are intense on all sides. San Francisco Chronicle Managing Editor Audrey Cooper is in the thick of it. Cooper, who has been at The Chronicle for six years, has been in the news recently over a “Food Fight.” Specifically, how is a foodie-town like San Francisco going to cover the restaurant/food and lifestyle scene?

In an interview with San Francisco Magazine, Cooper notes that the restaurant reviews are “the most clicked on things” in the paper. And “chefs are like our local celebrities. But does our section get to that narrative,” even as it publishes four pages of recipes? The Chronicle site and its companion SF Gate site are the best read news sites in the Bay Area with 17 million users. But “the fight to save daily journalism is like a bar fight,” she says.

“We need to get more aggressive about change. And print readers don’t traditionally like changes a lot. But the status quo is not enough.” Cooper adds that “there are a lot of blogs and specialty publications starting to gnaw at the edges of what we do. That’s true of tech coverage, real estate, food. If we just sit back, then they’re just going to eat us alive.”

We’re conducting a fireside chat with Cooper at our Interactive Local Media conference Dec. 10-12 in San Francisco. Register here. 

The post SF Chronicle’s Cooper: ‘The Fight’ to Save/Remake Journalism appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

How can you constantly top yourself? It is a challenge that leaders have, in whatever endeavor they are pursuing: whether it is sports, literature, academia, or business.

We are pretty sure this year’s Interactive Local Media event – BIA/Kelsey’s flagship – is going to top any other event we’ve done before.

The event’s handpicked keynotes, superforums and BIA/Kelsey research really do define the state of Interactive Local Media for 2013-14. We’ve just added Brian Boland, Facebook‘s VP of Product. Facebook is all over local advertising and commerce in ways that are obvious – and not so obvious. We can’t wait to hear his insights.

Other industry leaders we’ve added include eBay Marketplaces VP Jody Ford, who is helping lead the charge as eBay goes big in local (and against Amazon); and Go Daddy CEO Blake Irving, the visionary leader who is building a comprehensive platform to leverage GoDaddy’s 8 million SMB customers. Talk about disruption!

Kicking off the conference, of course, are two of the best: San Francisco Chronicle President Joanne Bradford and AllThings D Co-Executive Editor Kara Swisher. The insights don’t come deeper or faster.

And at LIL:ILM, it isn’t just about the “industry.” On Day 2, we are especially proud to be joined by Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom, the political superstar (and ex San Francisco Mayor) who has focused on tech’s impact on local (see his new book, “Citizenville”).

The Lt. Governor will also introduce Chris Schroeder, the former Washington Post Newsweek Digital chief who has written this year’s top books on start up developments, Startup Rising. Attendees can jockey for signed copies that we’ll be handing out.

Other major speakers at the conference include Groupon VP Sean Smyth; Weather Company VP Denise Chudhy; Hubspot SVP Mark Roberge; and Intuit/DemandForce CMO Patrick Barry. They’ll join 40+ speakers and hundreds of attendees at what is truly “the industry’s largest gathering.”

What else? We have a special tour of Yelp headquarters before the event even begins. More info on that a little later on. Hey, does it sound G-R-E-A-T? We hope to see you in San Francisco!

You can register here.

The post Facebook, eBay, GoDaddy, Lt. Gov Join Leading in Local: ILM (Dec. 10-12 San Francisco) appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Leading in Local: Interactive Local Media, BIA/Kelsey’s flagship show, is now set for San Francisco Dec. 10-12 and we couldn’t be more excited. This year’s edition hosts a totally fresh, new slate of industry leaders.

The show opens with BIA/Kelsey research and the dynamic duo of Joanne Bradford and Kara Swisher. Bradford, of course, has pushed local into new realms during her tenures with Microsoft, Yahoo and Demand Media. Now she is applying her knowledge as President of Hearst’s San Francisco Chronicle. And Swisher remains the fearless interrogator that has dominated tech journalism for over 20 years – the last eight spent as cofounder of All Things D, along with Walt Mossberg. Nobody cuts through the hype like she does.

Other top speakers represent our idea of real innovation (and real fun, too.) Startup Rising Author and former Washington Post Digital and Health Central leader Chris Schroeder lends a global perspective to what works with startups. In the same light, Intel senior researcher Lama Nachman – yes, Discovery Channel’s “Curiosity Expert” – talks about developing the next generation of mobile technologies.

Other initial speakers include DemandForce CMO Patrick Barry, talking about the next wave of one stop local platforms; Hubspot SVP Mark Roberge, going deep on sales organization effectiveness; Weather.com VP Denise Chudhy, talking why weather is the true model for national local; Five Stars CEO Victor Ho on the emergence of Transaction Marketing and Point of Sale integration; Groupon VP Sean Smyth on how Groupon leverages its millions of users in new directions; Telmetrics CEO Bill Dinan on how the new metrics are changing local; and Thumbtack CEO Marco Zappacosta on new ways to leverage directory models for leads.

Indeed, a lot of things have happened in local in 2013. The rise of collaborative consumption via AirBnB, Uber and other companies combining listings, social media and purchase capabilities might be the biggest thing to have hit the industry. As Interactive Local Media, we’re going deep on collaborative consumption with Airbnb director Joe Zadeh, Lucky Oyster CEO Matthew Berk, and two more great names that we can’t announce yet.

Other superforums will focus on mobile wallets and the rise of digital agencies. In the end, we’ll end up with 40+, hand-picked speakers.

Here’s an initial list:

Joanne Bradford, President, SF Chronicle
Kara Swisher, Co-Executive Editor, AllThingsD
Chris Schroeder, Author, Startup Rising
Victor Ho, CEO, FiveStars
Patrick Barry, CMO, DemandForce (Intuit)
Mark Roberge, SVP, Hubspot
Denise Chudhy, VP, Weather.com
Lama Nachman, Sr. Staff Researcher, Intel
Sean Smyth, VP, Partnerships, Groupon
Marco Zappacosta, CEO, Thumbtack
Joe Zadeh, Director, Airbnb
Matthew Berk, CEO, Lucky Oyster
Bill Dinan, CEO, Telmetrics

We’ve extended our Early DIscount rates through October 2. Please register here to save.

The post Just Announced: Initial Speaker List for Interactive Local Media (Dec. 10-12 in San Francisco) appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

At the time, McClatchy Interactive head Chris Hendricks saw it as a net plus for both companies. “They’ve got their space,” but McClatchy offered Groupon more “entry points” to readers and deals, he noted.

Tellingly, Hendricks also said the limited commitment was a net plus. “We have a lot of stuff going on,” said Hendricks. “An affiliate marketing program fits in better,” and “lets us get out of the gate.” Similar logic was apparently used by Media General and Tribune, which signed with Groupon around the same time.

Now, McClatchy appears to have found its sea legs in the deals space. While it will apparently maintain a relationship with Groupon, it has opted to invest heavily in the white-label route via Second Street Media‘s Deadline Deals platform, which now serves more than 150 publishers.

In a statement, Hendricks said –without commenting on the fate of its relationship with Groupon — that a private-label deals platform is a perfect fit with FindnSave, Travidia’s deals-and-offers portal that will eventually launch in 21 of McClatchy’s 28 markets. FindnSave pairs daily deals with other offers, such as weekly sales, coupons and grocery cents off offers.

McClatchy isn’t the only newspaper company with news in the deals space. Hearst Newspapers announced last week that it would join MediaNews Group and Freedom Interactive as partners of Analog Analytics, which says it now serves 850 local media properties. Freedom’s Orange County Register recently did more than $188,000 on one deal (a heavily discounted boat ride to Catalina Island).

Group Commerce Inc., similarly, recently announced a deals partnership with The New York Times Co., among other media companies.

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