Well, we’re off and running here in Charleston. Monday’s general session kicked off with a fascinating look at the rise of personal brands and the online consumer’s desire to create, share, and influence - and how companies need to be leveraging this trend. Kelly Mooney, author and President/Chief Experience Officer, Resource Interactive delivered the keynote.

Kelly is encouraging companies to open up and tap customers to help build and drive the brand. What’s interesting online right now centers on the creativity of the consumer – the Web, it’s now clear, is not just about selling and buying, though the activities of today’s power users, the “digital millenial,” can greatly influence sales. Companies need to recognize this and act! In Kelly’s view, open brands foster communities of consumers that engage - it’s all about pull versus push. Open brands are co-created, and there is dialog.

Indeed, digital millenials, those in their teens and early twenties, are a very unique generation. They rely on community, they are highly viral, they are all about influence, and - interestingly enough - they hate email (equate with snail mail).

Kelly talks about “iCitizens” – i.e. an amazon.com reviewer that reads 5 books a day, and has 13,000 reviews(!), a 79 year old YouTube video star with a huge number of hits, an uber Avon lady, who can boast of 7000 hits a day on her beauty blog, and who is changing the face of Avon without any actually interaction with the company! What is your brand doing to leverage this phenomenon, or - compete with these voices?

ATG CEO Bob Burke kicked things off with mention of, ahem - shameless plug here - growing revenues, growing profits, and growing cash flow/position here at ATG, and mention of the incredible new brands we’ve won since we all last gathered in the Las Vegas desert for the 2006, user conference. That’s all good stuff.