This is it -- the Ypulse College Mashup kicks off in Santa Monica tomorrow evening. Alli and I will be flying down south tomorrow morning so there will be no posting for the rest of the week (we'll be back on Monday -- we're also upgrading our blogging software to MT4 so I get to learn a whole new interface - yee haw). We do have a volunteer who is going to blog a recap of the event for next week (yay!) and another volunteer who will be snapping photos to post on Flickr.

If you have clicked on the registration, but haven't quite made it through, here are a few more reasons to do it "Law & Order" style -- ripped from the headlines:

MTV Heads Off-Campus - "MTV'S ON-CAMPUS NETWORK IS NOW expanding to areas near campus. The place-based network, available on some 750 colleges, has reached deals with a range of MSOs to carry it, looking to reach students living outside the dorms." (Media Post, reg. required)

Ask mtvU's General Manager Stephen Friedman about their latest move...

Studies: Arrogance not rampant among young - "The popular view that young people are more self-absorbed than ever thanks to their parents' fixation on self-esteem stands challenged by two large new studies."

Jean Twenge, author of Generation Me, is behind the study that made this view "popular." Find out what she thinks of this new research.

WSJ's website adds Facebook widget - The Wall Street Journal has just accepted Facebook's request to be online friends. Plus This Should Be Your Mantra: Be Everywhere - Being in the news business requires a great degree of flexibility, and the ability to adapt and change quickly. Too often, papers don't make passing grades on keeping up.

Find out more about "the new news" including Current TV's new social news Facebook application, the "impact" of MySpace Impact, what Newsweek hopes to accomplish with Newsfreak and why Yahoo! News succeeds in reaching college students.

Hope to see you there!

Posted by anastasia at 7:25 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

AdAge.com's Madison & Vine ran a story about how Ypulse College Mashup speaker Jake Sasseville has managed to attract big name sponsors like Ford, Dunkin' Donuts and Overstock.com late yesterday afternoon. After speaking to Jake about moderating our college panel, I can assure you this will be not be your ordinary conference panel -- he's going to do it "his way," which I'm hoping will make it funny, irreverent and LIVELY. Well worth staying until the end of the day Friday to watch him in action.

More from the Madison & Vine piece:

His advertisers sound convinced that Mr. Sasseville is on to something.

"He's right there speaking to the 19- to 30-year-old and doing something that's never been done," Stormy Simon, senior VP-customer care and branding at Overstock.com, said of Mr. Sasseville's off-the-cuff, show-within-a-show hodgepodge. "We thought if someone was going to pull it off, it would be Jake. Not a lot of people would have the energy and tenacity to pull off like Jake does." seville for his "The Edge with Jake Sasseville" made sense for the automaker, allowing it to "connect with younger buyers in a way that goes beyond traditional advertising," as well as giving it the "opportunity to partner with this dynamic individual and be a part of the show from the ground up."

Meet Jake in person next Friday...there's still time to register!

Posted by anastasia at 8:16 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

We're heading into the final days before the latest Ypulse conference happening January 31-February 1 in Santa Monica, CA. I'm incredibly excited about our program -- if you're trying to reach college students, you should not miss this event. Other conferences may have "college tracks," but none promise this type of day-long immersion with some of the most knowledgeable people in this field. You can register online here. And on that note, we have added a final speaker, Mike Marriner, one of the founders of "Roadtrip Nation," the series following young people who hit the road after graduation in an attempt to learn from inspirational leaders who forged their own paths. More about Mike:

Post-graduation, feeling sheltered and underexposed to the world around him, Mike hit the road (with friends Brian McAllister and Nathan Gebhard) in an unsound 1985 Green RV to interview people who defined their own roads in life including the founder of Starbucks, Lobstermen, artists, the founder of Barnes and Noble, CEO of National Geographic Ventures, the scientist who decoded the human genome, CEO of Dell Computers, truck drivers, filmmakers, social activists, and many others. Contrary to what they had learned in school or from growing up in California, they learned that people can build lives in line with their passions and individuality.

That trip inspired them to create Roadtrip Nation, a grassroots organization that mobilizes students to hit the road, interview leaders from all walks of life, and explore the world for themselves. Footage from these trips are shared with individuals everywhere through the Roadtrip Nation Series on PBS, books, various broadcast partnerships, and online at www.roadtripnation.com.

Also, due to financial constraints on our end, our friends at Gorilla Soapbox will not be recording this event for us. So if you aren't there in person, you won't find it online. They will be posting video from the Tween Mashup soon...

The Ypulse College Mashup would not be happening without our sponsors -- a big thanks to our founding sponsor, Mr. Youth, our sponsor CollegeWeekLive, our research sponsor SurveyU and our exhibitors CafeScribe, Imagine Marketing Agency and our newest exhibitor, Nokia NSeries. Thanks also to our friends at Cynopsis, Youth Market Alerts, EMF, and New Music Tip Sheet for helping to get the word out.

Posted by anastasia at 9:23 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Today is the last day you can register for the Ypulse College Mashup and receive $100 off. We've researched the competition -- Ypulse Mashups are a steal for the quality of content and attendees (even without this discount). And...you're also helping to make Ypulse the blog and newsletter possible.

I also have two more speaker additions to tell you about. Jessica Barron, the "decider" of what goes on Yahoo!'s massively popular homepage, will be rounding out our "New News" panel. More on Jess:

Jess Barron leads a team of producers who choose the entertainment, news, sports, video, and lifestyles content that appears on Yahoo.com, the most visited site on the Internet with over 48 million global unique visitors each day. A pop culture junkie, Jess has been working in online journalism and convergence media for 12 years. Her first job was at Monster.com writing online job search advice aimed at college students. Prior to joining Yahoo!, in the late 1990s Jess worked at Scour.com, an MP3 search engine and peer-to-peer file-sharing community founded by UCLA undergrads and popularized by teens and college students nationwide. Jess holds a B.A. in American culture with a focus on media studies from Vassar College. She has published her website Poprocks.com since 1996. Her writing has appeared on MTV Online, Wired.com, and Yahoo.

And...our closing college panel will be moderated by someone I think we'll be seeing a lot more of -- or at least I know people who stay up extremely late will. His name is Jake Sasseville, and his late, late show "The Edge With Jake Sasseville" is launching February 14th after "Jimmy Kimmel" on a bunch of ABC affiliates around the country. More on Jake:

For the Gen Y audience, 22-year-old Jake Sasseville is the man. Unscripted, offbeat and at times outrageous, he's the new voice of the late night talk show The Edge with Jake Sasseville, which debuts on 40+ ABC affiliate stations around the country on February 14, 2008. The show will reach millions of households, including highly desirable college towns and the New York market via WWOR MY9.

In four short years, Sasseville has brought his show to New York and ABC affiliates from its humble beginnings on Maine public-access TV; traveled the world taping shows, including a trip to Africa that made the news on CNN; built a wide and diverse audience for the show from his tireless promotion, online social networking and blogs; attracted big-name advertisers anxious to reach the 18-to-34 crowd; and founded the Xander Foundation to help children in need. His sponsors currently include Ford Motor Company, Overstock.com, Bed Head and Red Bull.

Jake says, "I'm going to change the world and take my generation along for the ride."

You definitely won't want to leave early...

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The "early adopter" rate ends this Friday for the Ypulse College Mashup. Register today and save $100.

More new speakers to announce for the Ypulse College Mashup. Melanie Hall, the COO of quarterlife.com, the much buzzed about Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick online and soon to be on-air series, will be joining the New School Panel at the Ypulse College Mashup. With the show premiering on NBC in February, attendees will get the behind-the-scenes scoop on the web launch from the woman who was instrumental in making it happen.

I'm also very excited to announce that our founding sponsor Mr. Youth's Matt Britton will be presenting a case study with Tara Kriese, senior product marketing manager, at Windows Live Messenger about their on-campus social marketing effort (read more about it here). I feel like this event is a little like "Law & Order" in that many of our speakers are literally "ripped from the headlines" you read on Ypulse every day.

And, just in case you missed my last call out, we're looking for a handful of volunteers to help out with registration and mic running at the event -- this is a great opportunity for any marketing students or solo practitioners without budget to attend these types of conferences. Please email Colleen if you are interested or call her at 516-797-4993.

Posted by anastasia at 10:27 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Just in case you missed me mentioning this over the holidays, we extended our "early adopter" discount for the Ypulse College Mashup to January 11 to give everyone who may have been out of town on the 21st a chance to save on registration. The lunch time "user generated" sessions have been a hit at our past two Ypulse Mashups and are both a quality networking opportunity and a way to dig a little bit deeper on a topic. The topics are suggested by registered attendees and presented for sign up at the registration table. These are just some of the topics proposed by attendees so far to give you a sense of what will be talked about over lunch.

College students and user generated content - Alice Lankester, VP of Marketing, Photobucket
Reaching college students with mobile social networking - Shari Doherty, Sr. Director, Consumer Marketing, Loopt
Reaching college students internationally - Adam Aberman, Youth Venture/Ashoka
Recruiting and retaining Gen Y employees - Lisa Chen, Executive Analyst, New Paradigm
Student views on copyright and digital rights management - Frank Lyman, EVP Marketing & Business Development, CourseSmart
The effectiveness of college rep. programs - Lisa Kolodny, Playboy Enterprises Inc.
Reaching college students on Facebook - Ryan Huling, College Campaign Coordinator, peta2

Our research sponsor, SurveyU, will also moderate a discussion on student media consumption. You can propose a topic and volunteer to moderate when you register online. We will most likely combine similar topic proposals into one table.

We're also looking for a small group of volunteers to help us with the event. Volunteering gets you a pass, but it also means you'll be helping check people in or running mics during Q&A sessions. If you're in the Los Angeles area and would like to volunteer, please get in touch with Colleen Gallacher at 516-797-4993.

Posted by anastasia at 4:39 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I have good news for people who may have been either out of town or buried in holiday "to dos" last week -- we have extended our "early adopter" rate for the Ypulse College Mashup to January 11. This gives you more time to save $100 on the registration fee.

If you're coming, you don't want to miss our Thursday evening program featuring Jeff Milstein, the producer behind the documentary "Generation Next" (parts 1 and 2) which aired on PBS. The documentary was informed by research on 18-25 year olds from the Pew Center for People And The Press and features interviews with Gen Nexters from around the country. You can watch the trailer here. It will be a great stage setter for Friday's program. We also have two subjects from the films who will be joining the conversation. They are:

John Fiske
At 22, John created, produced, and hosted a local San Diego CBS Radio talk program entitled "Generation Y University." As lead host, he instigated discussion and controversy among his co-hosts, who were also his childhood friends. The nightly program aired Monday through Friday from 7-10 p.m. and engaged the greater San Diego area in lively and sometimes heated topics. "Generation Y University" tackled topics from a Gen-Y perspective. In December 2006, John was named one of "50 People to Watch in 2007" by San Diego Magazine. Married by age 21, and a lawyer by age 23, John still lives in San Diego ten minutes from where he grew up.

Jo Muse
Known as one of advertising's most imaginative and progressive leaders, Jo is the founder of Muse Communications, and has led the first and only multicultural ad agency in the U.S. to national prominence. Today, his company continues as one of the leading agencies that addresses diverse market segments, including African Americans, Hispanics, Asians and Pacific Islanders and the GLBT community. During the last 20 years, Jo has produced award-winning work for such world-class clients as American Honda Motor Corporation, NIKE, MGM Mirage, Wells Fargo, Sempra Energy, the U.S. Army and the White House.

The Thursday evening program will be followed by an opening reception for all Ypulse College Mashup attendees.

I'm also excited to announce the addition of our final panelist, Gaylene Nagel, the head of lifestyle marketing, at Electronic Arts to our Old School to New School Panel. EA is one of the most established brands in gaming -- and like other traditional media, is always having to adapt and change to reach college gamers. I look forward to hearing how EA leverages word of mouth and technology to reach students.

I should have one or two more speakers to announce in 2008. I am however, very excited to announce our new event sponsors and exhibitor. CollegeWeek Live has joined the program as a sponsor and will be giving a 20-minute case study on how it is reinventing the college fair - virtually. CafeScribe has signed on as an exhibitor and will show us how their e-Textbooks work. And IMA (Imagine Marketing Agency) will be sponsoring your conference bags. We still have exhibitor and sponsor slots available, please contact Charles Pelton if you're interested.

Posted by anastasia at 5:11 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

We're almost there. Just a few more speakers to confirm for the Ypulse College Mashup. I'm excited to announce that Dennis Admovich, the SVP of marketing for Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming block, will be joining Zachary Posner from National Lampoon and Graham MacRae from Warner Bros. Music on the Old School to New School panel, which is being moderated by Rafat Ali, the editor and publisher of Paid Content.

Samantha Henig from Newsweek's college publication Current Magazine and new social news site Newsfreak will be joining the "New News" panel on February 1st at the Ypulse College Mashup. She is joining Lee Brenner from MySpace IMPACT and Laura Ling from Current TV in a discussion about redefining news for this generation of wired college students. This discussion is being moderated by Robert Niles, the editor-in-chief of the Online Journalism Review. We should have a final panelist for that session to announce before the week is out.

Dan Shannon, who works on PETA's campus organizing efforts is joining Cameron Parkins (Free Culture and Creative Commons), David Burstein (18in08) and Kimberly Cadena from the ONE Campaign as the final panelist for the College Activism discussion, which is being moderated by Ben Goldhirsh, the publisher of GOOD Magazine.

If you are interested in reaching college students, you don't want to miss this event. Register today and reserve your spot in Santa Monica on February 1st! If you are interested in sponsoring, please get in touch with Charles Pelton. Our founding sponsor for this event is Mr. Youth and our research sponsor is Survey U.

Posted by anastasia at 8:27 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

December 21 is right around the corner -- it's also the last day you can save $100 when you register for the Ypulse College Mashup happening February 1 in Santa Monica. Our lineup keeps getting better. We confirmed Kimberly Cadena from The ONE Campaign for our College Activism panel and will announce a few more speakers when I return from vacation.

Just to give you a sneak preview of some of what you'll be hearing February 1, I did a short email with one of our keynote speakers, Ricky Van Veen, the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the wildly popular site Collegehumor.com.

YP: What would you say is "the secret" to College Humor's success?

Ricky Van Veen: I think the secret to most successful web businesses is simply starting organically to serve a purpose and then catching on naturally from there. Craigslist, eBay, and CollegeHumor are all examples of that. We didn’t set out to be a major entertainment brand among young people, it just happened because we kept doing what we thought was fun for ourselves and our readers.

YP: Now that you've been out of college for a while, how do you stay in touch with the college demographic?

RVV: I'll touch on this more in the presentation, but since a large amount of the content comes from the users themselves, it's not hard to be relevant to your audience.

YP: How do you come up with ideas for Facebook apps? How have your Facebook apps been doing? Which ones are most popular?

RVV: The Facebook apps are doing well, but nothing on the success level of Zombies or whatnot. Our most popular is our Insult Generator. We come up with them the same way we write a video -- pitching ideas around the writer's room.

YP: You have so many brand extensions -- the book, the live tour, original videos. How do you decide where to expand next?

RVV: We usually wait to expand into an area until we have a specific idea for it. For example, we've been holding off on taking any TV opportunities until we had what we thought was a great idea. Now that we have one, we're going to pitch it out a few places.

YP: What is the biggest lesson you've learned as a young entrepreneur?

RVV: The biggest lesson I've learned is that just because you started a company and you're (by default) managing people doesn't mean you’re good at managing people. You have to realize what skills you have and don't have, then find the right talent to fill in the gaps.

YP: Can you give Ypulse readers a hint at what they might hear from you at the College Mashup?

RVV: Sure. I think I'm going to talk about how we've managed to reach and sustain the illusive demo of young males and what our plans are moving forward and adapting to the changing online landscape. Looking forward!

Posted by anastasia at 1:59 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I've been confirming lots of new speakers for the Ypulse College Mashup taking place February 1 at the Sheraton Delfina in Santa Monica. First up, on the "Old School to New School" entertainment panel, we added Zach Posner from National Lampoon (I can't think of a more old school brand, can you?) to talk about how they're reaching students online.

The "New School" entertainment panel is now FULL...except for the moderator, who we hope to announce soon. Joining Zachary Suchin from College Tonight are:

Michael J. Bebel, President and CEO, Ruckus Network, Inc.
Rich Hull, Chief Content Officer, Blowtorch Entertainment
Jimmy Jellinek, Vice President, Entertainment, Heavy.com

We confirmed Lee Brenner, Executive Producer of Political Programming & Director of IMPACT at MySpace and Laura Ling, Vice President Vanguard Journalism, Current TV for The "New News" panel, which will be moderated by Robert Niles, the editor of the Online Journalism Review.

And we added David D. Burstein, Director and Producer of the documentary film '18 in '08' to the "Campus Activism" panel to talk about engaging students in the 2008 elections.

We will be confirming several more speakers in the next couple of weeks, but the line up so far should make this a "must attend" event for any brand, agency, college admissions officer or social marketer interested in reaching students. The "early adopter" discount ends December 21 so register today!

A big thanks to our founding sponsor, Mr. Youth, and our research sponsor, Survey U!

Posted by anastasia at 8:27 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The Ypulse College Mashup is starting to come together with more speakers being confirmed every day. In addition to keynotes from Stephen Friedman (GM of mtvU) and Ricky Van Veen (co-founder and editor-in-chief of Collegehumor.com), we confirmed Jean Twenge, author of Generation Me for a keynote conversation with fellow author and career expert Penelope Trunk (Brazen Careerist). Both of these women have very different ideas about the impact of this generation of college students hitting the workforce so it will definitely be a lively discussion.

We also confirmed college music expert Graham MacRae from Warner Bros. Records to speak about how WB is grappling with the new digital realities in the college music space for our "Old School to New School" panel, which will be moderated by fellow blogger Rafat Ali from Paid Content.

Zachary Suchin, the founder and CEO of College Tonight, one of the more buzzed about new college social networking sites will be joining us on the New School panel.

Cameron Parkins, a former USC campus activist from the organization Free Culture who is now at Creative Commons, will join us for the college activism panel, which will be moderated by GOOD Magazine publisher Ben Goldhirsh.

Matt Britton from Mr. Youth (our founding sponsor) will also give a case study showing how they work with clients to reach college students.

Look for more speaker announcements in the next couple of weeks. We also confirmed our first research sponsor Survey U for this event. They will be giving a short preso and providing stats throughout the event on what college students are up to. There are a couple more sponsored case studies and research sponsorships available...If you're interested contact Charles Pelton.

You don't want to miss this event...or the "early adopter" discount, so register today!

Posted by anastasia at 7:53 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

In addition to confirming our keynotes, mtvU's Stephen Friedman and CollegeHumor.com's Ricky Van Veen, we just finalized our program for Thursday evening before the event. Jeff Milstein, an independent producer who worked with Judy Woodruff on "Generation Next," which was funded in part by the Pew Charitable Trust, will be showing clips from the two documentaries and sharing what the team learned from the 16-25 year-olds interviewed for the project. Jeff will be joined by at least one of the Gen Nexters featured in the documentary. Thursday's program will be followed by our opening reception, so you won't want to miss it!

I'm also really excited to announce that our founding sponsor for the Ypulse College Mashup is Mr. Youth, a long-time Ypulse supporter and the experts when it comes to reaching this demo on campus or off. They will be presenting a case study at the event.

The site is now LIVE and ready for your registrations. We have many more speakers to confirm over the next couple of weeks, but I promise you won't be disappointed in the lineup. Register now for our "early adopter" rate, and remember we also have discounted rates for non-profit organizations. See you in Santa Monica!

Posted by anastasia at 10:27 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

We have confirmed both of our our keynote speakers for the event! They are:

Stephen Friedman is GM and EVP of mtvU
Stephen oversees all aspects of the college-based network, as well as all operations of mtvU's two owned-and-operated divisions: College Publisher, the largest interactive network of online college newspapers in the United States , and RateMyProfessors.com, the Internet's largest listing of collegiate professor ratings. Taken together, mtvU's platforms make it the largest and most comprehensive media network for college students, with mtvU reaching over 7.5 million students on 750 campuses, College Publisher reaching over 5.5 million students via 550 online campus papers, and approximately 10 million college students logging on to RateMyProfessors.com each year. Under his leadership, mtvU's distribution has grown 45%, advertisers have quintupled, the College Publisher and RateMyProfessors businesses have been acquired and mtvU has won two Emmys and a Banff award.

and...

Ricky Van Veen, co-founder and editor-in-chief, CollegeHumor.com
Ricky is a co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of the world's most popular humor website CollegeHumor.com, which reaches seven million young people monthly. He founded the site in 1999 while a freshman at Wake Forest University. He is also a co-author of CollegeHumor's Guide To College, published by Penguin and is currently producing a CollegeHumor branded comedy for Paramount Pictures. In August 2006 he sold his company Connected Ventures (which by then comprised additional websites and an apparel business) to Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp. Today Connected Ventures operates out of its Union Square offices with over fifty-five full-time employees. Ricky continues to oversee the editorial content on CollegeHumor as well as the site's highly successful original video initiatives. He is also charged with starting new content-based websites for the company.

We are now working on the rest of our programming, which will include the following panel themes - if you have suggestions for speakers you think would be great on these panels, let me know. I can't guarantee they'll make it on, but would love your ideas:

Totally Wired Entertainment: Old School to New School
- How traditional brands leverage new media to reach college students
- Are college students still watching TV, listening to the radio and reading magazines?
- How are video games evolving to reach the college audience?

Totally Wired Entertainment: The New School
- What kind of video do college students like to watch online?
- How the web is transforming the way students consume music?
- Who will be the next Facebook -- and what will happen to Facebook?

The New News: Do College Students Care About Current Affairs?
- What media companies are doing to engage college students in the news
- Does news for this demographic have to be participatory?
- Are college students still reading newspapers?

Campus Activism: Using technology to create change
- What are the issues that college students most care about?
- How is technology transforming campus involvement in the 2008 electoral campaigns?
- How do the celebrity and consumer culture contribute to today's campus activism?

We will also be exploring some post college @ work issues though I'm not sure if this will be a two-person discussion or a panel.

There are at least three 20-minute spots for sponsored case studies, which are perfect for agencies or start-ups focused on reaching college students as well as 10 minute sponsored slots for agencies to present research on this demo. If you are interested in becoming a sponsor, please contact Charles Pelton.

Register now and receive the "early adopter" rate.

Posted by anastasia at 1:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)