Next April marks the tenth anniversary of the publication of the Cluetrain Manifesto, a book that presaged the shift from message command-and-control to marketing-as-conversation. Today, it’s widely accepted that there is a need for corporations to listen, understand, and participate in the online dialogue. User Generated Content — UGC for short — is part of the furniture, and the relevant questions are less whether and more how and where to engage. The how is especially important: large and small brands alike need smart and safe strategies for engagement to avoid costly missteps.

Back when Cluetrain appeared, Perry Hewitt and Cesar Brea were facilitating communications with an open-source software firm’s global user community, and they have since both managed and advised on several similar efforts for others. This session will explore successful strategies and lessons learned in the past decade — and share perspectives about where we go from here.