While my travel icon is a Southwest plane, I’m scheduled on some other carriers over the next few days. (Update: Over the past two weeks, I’ve been on five different SWA flights, all of which arrived early.) I’m flying Northwest for a quick meeting in Minneapolis tomorrow. On Friday, I’m back in Nashville and am appearing on a panel at the Vanderbilt Law School on the topic: “The Emerging Long Tail of Creative Content Distribution: Implications for the Entertainment Industries.” I can’t wait to hear what I have to say on the topic — but the professor who invited me claims to read this blog and insisted that something I’ve ranted about is applicable to what they’re discussing.

On Sunday, I’m flying Delta to New York (they matched JetBlue’s fare and had a schedule that better matched my needs) and will be at the Folio: Show on Monday speaking about ethical issues magazine publishers (really, everyone) face online. Preview: I’m in the “transparency” camp — and I hate those text ads that Paul Conley is down on. Also, I can’t stand pay-per-post advertising if it’s not clearly labeled as such — I don’t like it then, either, but I think labeling advertising “advertising” and sponsored content “sponsored” is defendable. Also, as long as it’s clearly disclosed, I think “cap-per-post” marketing is ethical, as well.

Don’t know how much blogging I’ll be doing. These days, Twitter seems to be my publishing platform of choice while traveling.

What Dave says: “Maybe someday these conferences could host real-time development, where media hackers put together new communication systems and deploy them before the conference is over. The moon mission approach to development, if you want to get something done quickly, make sure you know where you’re going and are excited about it. Sometimes it’s amazing how quickly these things can bootstrap.”

There are lots of different kinds of conferences and conventions — everything from the kind where organizations get together to elect officers and decide on by-laws to others that are more like training-academies where people get “certification.”

However, the type of conference I enjoy most are those where people get together to push around ideas and concepts — to challenge each other with provocative ideas and new approaches or new products. While Dave is focusing (in my simplistic interpretation) on conferences that explore the social, political and economic impact of new technology and new models of networked media, his ideas could as easily be applied to any group focused on the exploration of any “idea” — be it a group of plumbers, a group of brain surgeons or a group of academics — any group, that is, that is willing to embrace the types of conversational-enabling technology that Dave alludes to — and that are widely available.

I’ve often said on-the-record that the most valuable part of any conference or trade show are the conversations that take place in the aisle-ways. I believe any technology or approach that can help elevate to the main-stage such “back-channel” communication will, in effect, help get rid of the “lame parts” (i.e., panelists and presenters who only know how to promote their own pet project*) of conferences.

*Obviously, if they’ve been invited to present their pet project, that’s okay. Many presenters don’t know how to talk about any thing else, however.

Bonus link: From Doc Searls, on another topic, but related: “Here’s my big idea for the Times: Hire Dave Winer to come in and take the paper to the next level. Dave had Martin’s ear, and those of some other folks at the Times, way more than three years ago. And to some degree they listened. The Times did some good stuff with Dave’s advice (such as taking the lead with RSS). But the Times has otherwise ignored outstanding ideas such as the ones Dave demonstrates with nytimesriver, an application I often use on my cell phone. Nothing to lose, Times. Lots to gain. Trust me.

The New York Times calls it advertising in mini-sites. However, instead of “mini-site,” “widget” is our buzzword of choice — not to be confused with (or, rather, to be confused with) badges, flare or any of another dozen words related to content chunklets you can run on an Ajaxy home page or display on your website, blog or personal-identity social-networky place. (See more in the “sidenote” below.)

Quote:

“Widgets are a dream for marketers,” Mr. Ioffe said. “They allow them to extend their brand off of their individual sites and allow their brands to live as long as consumers want them to live.”

At last weeks “Conversational Marketing Summit,” someone from a large media planning service described a program in which her client (an athletic shoe company) offered “free” animated items like “spinning shoes” for people to add to their Facebook and MySpace pages. She described the 20-million + views these logo’d items had generated as “free” impressions, as in, the marketer did not pay for any of the page-views these items generated after the “consumer” copied the code and pasted it on their own site.

What you have with today’s announcement from Google is the first step in giving Google (and others) the ability to “monetize” the flare as it flows along the “conversation.”

Obviously, a “dream for marketers.” And, from a few savvy marketers who understand how to create widgets that do something more that “advertise,” it may even work for users, as well.

Sidenote: For clarification purposes, here’s how I use the different buzzwords: “Widgets” go on personal pages (like iGoogle) and Konfabulator and the Apple Dashboard. “Flare” and “Badges” are similar but appear along the side (or in the middle) of people’s websites (see Fred Wilson — who loves flare). For the record, everyday, I hear and see people referring to all of those terms interchangeably. I like such embedded content — several of them power the right-hand column of my blog — and, more importantly, different sections of websites my company has developed or manage. However, I usually try to strip out as much of the graphics as possible so the content blends into this site. I think when you start adding too much “flare,” your site starts looking just like a mini-mall.