Blog Business Summit - Session Grid

OK. Here we are, swimming in the sweat of a Carolina summer, trying to be good blog consultants, when what happens? A Blog Business Summit gathers steam in San Francisco.
And we've already got steam! Oh yeah, I forget. We're missing the business bloggers...

Be that as it may, it doesn't hurt to be ready when the time, here, is ripe. In fact, we can, and should, hasten that ripening. But to do it without tugging on the proverbial turnip. That, I submit, is the conundrum.

So...what is it they are going to be talking about?

Here are some topics they will be covering:

Keynote: Why Business is Betting Big on Bloggers and RSS
Staying on Top of the Buzz: Blog Monitoring Tools and Techniques
Building Traffic: Posting isn’t Enough
Blogs that Sell: Creating Content that Drives Conversion
Creative Destruction: How Blogs are Permanently Changing the Face of Corporate Communication
Advertising income: Incorporating HTML and RSS Ads into Your Content
Buzz Marketing: Using Blogs, Forums, Conversations and Community to Build Brands and Traffic
Maximizing Advertising Revenue: Content and Promotional Techniques
Dealing with Bloggers: Partnering and Defense Strategies
Good Blog design: Speed, Accessibility, Transparency, Clarity
Picking a platform: Blogging Engines Compared
Writing for Blogs (Weblog Writing Strategy)
Building a Blog Network
When Worlds Collide: Traditional Public Relations and the Blogosphere
Measuring Success: Setting Goals and Establishing Metrics
Lessons Learned and Best Practices: the GM and Intuit Experience
Corporate Blogging: Strategy and Policy

A nice panoply of subjects covering a wide range of areas. But what is missing?
I should think that a session on Social Software would be useful, since blogs, alas, can be rather masturbatory, whereas so-called Social Software seems to be geared toward connecting people...a necessary activity when it comes to business. Like email.

One doesn't simply play with email, or write to one's self about their cat on email, and yet there are scores of blogs who do just that. The blogosphere remains unknown to a fair share of bloggers. And often, when businesspeople consider blogging, in their mind, they are thinking of those masturbatory blogs rather than aggregated, networked blogs. Thus they miss the importance, and consequently, the boat.

There are no bibles that chart the skill sets necessary for being a blog consultant, but knowing at least the gist of the aforementioned topics would not hurt. Experience is a sure plus. If one is not a good writer, or indeed, a good person, perhaps working on the back end is more appropriate, although I wouldn't want a bad person working on my back OR front end. Wouldn't be prudent.