A comprehensive listing of news and online discussion around the National Investor Relations Institute (NIRI) Annual Conference 2008. Another source you should check out is http://twemes.com/niri08, which is handy for viewing most (not all, sadly) of the Twitter conversations and livetweeting that took place around the conference. We are excited about the potential for tools like FriendFeed to bring people together online around common interests. Few NIRI members were using social media at the conference, but we believe adoption will grow for next year's conference. If you want to join an ongoing conversation about IR, join http://friendfeed.com/irwebrep...
In this interview, recorded at CIRI, I asked Jeff about the NIRI08 conference, issues facing IROs and issues facing NIRI. - Ryan Lejbak - IRWebReport.com
Charles Ives - Hutchinson Technology Incorporated
Randy Mah - EPCOR Preferred Equity Inc.
Tim Thorp - ALLETE, Inc.
Amy Goldberg - Pitney Bowes Inc.
Ken Lockwood - Fluor Corporation
Bruce Macpherson - BB&T Corporation
Paul Vincent - Swift Energy Company
Amy Wakeham - Leap Wireless International, Inc.
Crystal Hacker - Leggett & Platt, Inc. - IRWebReport.com
This is a link to a report posted June 18 on a new blog set up by Richard M. Johnson, president of Johnson Strategic Communications Inc. As he tells it, he was inspired to start blogging after attending the NIRI conference. His report focuses on the the presentation by John W. White, director of the SEC's Division of Corporation Finance. Nice to know that IR veterans like Dick are being inspired to share their knowledge via blogs. - IRWebReport.com
From June 12, 2008: Chris Nuttall of the Financial Times does some high-level thinking about FriendFeed and lists some of the key uses for the service. He zeros in, however, on the potential of FriendFeed as research tool: "I find myself increasingly using FriendFeed for search on current topics. It is not only a source of sources, but of opinions of those sources as well, adding the value of friends. Again, as you might expect from the Google background, the search works really well." There are also some interesting statistics about subscriber numbers. - IRWebReport.com
Good tips. But that comment from Dell that they send an email to everyone on their list when they post something new suggests they have a small email list. Notice how almost no one comments on their blog posts? - IRWebReport.com
Dell said that they have about 1000 people on the "blog updates" mail list and that they get about 1300 people viewing the posts. I know they have a lot more investors than that, but 1300 people viewing an IR blog seems like a good start. As investors become more aware of what is going on, I am sure more people will hop on over. People like me, who just added it to my RSS feed. - Ryan Lejbak
OK, that makes more sense now. Still, very few comments suggests a lack of relevance or people not engaged. Just "having" a blog doesn't make it interesting. I'm thinking that by normal metrics they should be getting at least 3 real comments per post. But often it's 0. Of course, they also could be "over moderating" and that's turning people off. I've heard that from some investors. Guess, I'm just saying, don't boost it just because it's the first, or only. It still has to be good. And I don't think it's all that good yet. Some posts are great, others are dull. And there's an art to writing for RSS. - IRWebReport.com
via twhirl
Last paragraph: "Despite the mood brought by so much bad financial news, there was still exuberance, particularly from the newest of new media covering the conference. There are upbeat outtakes of the event, as well as interviews with vendors and IROs, on the internet from the web development firm, zu.com, which exhibited at NIRI. Business Wire’s Serena Ehrlich covered the scene in a burst of short messages via Twitter." Sadly, no links. - IRWebReport.com
Good blog post by John Palizza with personal perspective on how the economy is impacting IR based on observations from #NIRI08 conference. To him, it felt like attendance was down, but he also observes that vendors were less extravagant this year with their free trinkets than last. Vendors also reported less interest. However, a commenter identified only as "Pops" says attendance was actually up this year over last, but agrees that vendors were giving away less. And in his own blog post Pops pegs the attendance figure at 1,700 people. His post is here: http://is.gd/wls - IRWebReport.com
In this segment, I spoke with people from Q4 Web Systems, Marketwire, swingvote.com, XBRL.us and Business Wire. Do you think I said "awesome" and "excellent" enough? - Ryan Lejbak
This was our first opportunity to exhibit to a national (actually international) audience of over 1,500 people. - IRWebReport.com
I spent some time with the guys from iMiners - interesting concept and there may be something there for us to partner on. More to come. - Darrell Heaps
Very interesting product offering, never thought I would see a forum offering in this market but it sounds like they are getting some serious interest - Chris Jones
via twhirl
“Not sure about anyone else, but I feel that something rather special has been happening here. Looking down this page, it's amazing. True social media at work. Spontaneous, selfless and oh-so friggin' powerful. Imagine if it had been planned!”
One more thing, think about ways this room could be improved and let the folks behind FriendFeed know. I've suggested they provide a way to show a summize feed on the page so people can track the twitter conversation in the room. I also think some admin changes and comment formatting control would help. Never suggested this, but what if there was less emphasis on *who* is posting and more on *what* is being shared. The content headlines should be bold and the member sharing the content should be normal text? I haven't suggested this, but one of the designers here might have some ideas. Send your comments to ross (at) friendfeed dotcom. He was quick in getting back to me to clarify my suggestions. They're doing this for free right now, so I'm sure they'll appreciate the feedback. - IRWebReport.com
And yes, 90% of the success of this is because of zu.com. Enough props, I know, but it needs to be said. - IRWebReport.com
I think this room would have had more success if the niri attendees had better access to wifi, more realtime live bloggin and live posting would have made the flow of information more interesting I think - Chris Jones
via twhirl
Props to Zu for sure, I continue to be so impressed with how much time they put into generating great content for us all to comment on. Also thanks to Dominic for setting up this room - I've really enjoyed being a part of it. I do wish it was easier for Tweets to automatically post to a room, coming in and sharing each one was a real block for me. - Darrell Heaps
Quote from above blog post: "It will likely lead to better questions from a larger number of shareholders, and these questions will come more rapidly following the release. You will essentially face better informed investors sooner, as more time can be put in by them into understanding the results of their financial models with less wasted on inputting the information." - IRWebReport.com
I love that you took such detailed notes (even if you missed a couple of things) this is going to be a very hot topic and hearing some of this stuff right from the horses mouth (as it were) - Chris Jones
To Tony Zuck who wrote the post, thanks for the detailed notes. A lot of important questions from the point of view of IROs are answered. I think it's essential reading for every IRO. I've reshared this in the Investor Relations room http://friendfeed.com/rooms/in.... - Dominic Jones
"Based on the past couple of days, it’s clear that there are discussions in the IR community about the uses and application of technology in investor relations, but another topic of interest was clearly globalization." - IRWebReport.com
FriendFeed support/usability still lacking. For Twitter, it's much improved. I just can't get my head around using Twhirl for both Twitter and FriendFeed. Your comments about the FriendFeed shortcuts being lacking are about right. - IRWebReport.com
this new iteration of the friendfeed support is much better then the previous, but i still find myself closing the FF window and using the website more often then not, twitter support though is brilliantly done. - Chris Jones
via twhirl
Broc spoke at two sessions and talked about them in this video. He also talked about some cool ideas that he has and mentioned some things that IR people should be aware of. - Ryan Lejbak
This is a good interview and Broc's points are right on target. - IRWebReport.com
Broc's remarks about his new publication should make IR Mag nervous. - IRWebReport.com
“NIRI, Day 3 is drawing to a close. I still have two videos to upload, and a few blog items to post. Will work on them on the flight home and post sometime Wednesday.”
During the session, which was reported live via the Twitter short-messaging service by Lejbak and Business Wire’s Serena Ehrlich, panelists provided background and tips for IROs who are considering starting their own blogs. - IRWebReport.com
58 of Fortune 500 companies have a blog. The number of corporate blogs has doubled in the last year. Jonathan Schwartz, Sun Microsystems, released earnings through the blog before the wire last year. - IRWebReport.com
zu.com crew is giving new life to NIRI conferences. Hope NIRI appreciates the buzz, cos it would be *lame* and "offline" otherwise. -- Dominic Jones - IRWebReport.com
Couldn't agree more, I think for future conferences a bigger push for in conference wifi should be made, the amount of info that could stream out would be higher in quality and timeliness - Chris Jones
great blog post on the quality of presentations at this years NIRI - Chris Jones
I was in a session this morning where the room was about 200 feet long and 10 feet wide. NIRI needs to get more screens in these rooms. - Ryan Lejbak
Or ensure there's wifi so peeps can follow the live blogging ;-) But I blame the architects. Who makes rooms 200 feet by 10 feet anymore. That's a chicken coop. - IRWebReport.com
It's been a long time since I've been to a conference where there is not wifi everywhere. It is quite disappointing to be out of the conversation when you are sitting at sessions. - Ryan Lejbak
He promised new guidance on disclosure via corporate websites, which hasn’t been updated since 2000. In this guidance, the SEC will address whether posting disclosure documents on a corporate website satisfies Reg FD. The idea has been a hot one since Sun Microsystems began asking about the appropriateness. White called it ‘a very fair’ question.’
‘A one-size-fits-all approach is not the way you are going to be looking at it. We should be able to come up with some help in this area,’ he said.
- IRWebReport.com
Wondering why IR Magazine isn't blogging from NIRI 08. PRWeek is. - IRWebReport.com
