Marketing Junto - Being In Real Life With People!

I just came back from a 4 day trip to Washington DC where I was at the annual WordCamp US for the WordPress community.

It was a great time. Lots of great connections made and rekindled, great sessions, and the vendor SWAG was off the hook.

One of the biggest takeaways from the event was how much I've been missing face-to-face, in real life connection. Yes, I've been going to networking events, but nothing quite like this one. It was great to see people that I've only caught up with online, in real life and meeting people that I've only known from a Zoom (et. al) window.

This really shows the power of IRL connection.

Unfortunately, but not surprising, Covid is spreading through the ranks like wildfire. But, so far, only mild cases. I've tested multiple times and I'm luckily still negative.

If you're at all interested in seeing picture from my adventure you can check them out here. I wrote up a longer recap of the event over at Goldstein Media.

Have you been to a conference since Covid went to endemic status? How did it go? Fill me in. Mash the reply button.

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Web Jawn

• X Officially Launches the First Stage of Job Listings for Verified Organizations
  

Maybe Elon is trying to improve Twitter/X? I really can't tell. It's like whack-a-mole.

• LinkedIn Expands Engagement Signals to Better Personalize User Feeds

This is good to see especially since people, in the business world, use LinkedIn quite a bit.

• LinkedIn Updates Newsletter Creation UI, Adds Option to Host Multiple Newsletters

I'm kind of excited about this, since I've resigned myself that I'm cross posting this newsletter here and on LinkedIn.

• Bing Chat now works on Chrome, Google’s browser
  

This is a logical move. I get why Microsoft tried to keep it's Bing Chat on Edge, but more people use vanilla Chrome.

• Dozens of big brands have blocked GPTBot, OpenAI’s new web crawler
  

This was bound to happen. I get why they are doing it, but without good content, these AI models are going to eventual eat their own tail and not be as useful.

• EXPERTS: 90% OF ONLINE CONTENT WILL BE AI-GENERATED BY 2026

Well that's a bit terrifying if you ask me. If it's AI-augmented content, where people still have a strong hand in its creation, I'm fine with it. But the other way around? Not so much!

• How do we govern AGI?
  

A great post over at the AI Supremacy Substack. Really thought provoking.

• What’s it take to run a decades-long meetup group? PANMA’s former organizers reflect on its evolution
  

For those not familiar with PANMA, it was a great group in Philly and it's closure in 2019 was a sad day. I made so many friends through that group. This is a great write up.

Find Of The Week

WordPress.Org's CC0 Photo Collection

Having just come back from WordCamp US in the Washington DC area, I thought it only be fitting to share that WordPress.org has a Creative Commons Zero (Public Domain) photo system. You can find it here: https://wordpress.org/photos/.

Anyone can contribute and use the photos unincumbered.

It's pretty immense. I've contributed a bunch of photos to it as well.

Check it out!

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As always stay curious!

- Seth