I think I’ve said this before, and it continues to be true: our blogging slows down when we’re going through a growth spurt. In this case we had a big one. In May we doubled our number of conference customers and July and August have been spent growing to accommodate them. You may notice some new faces around (Chris, Michelle, and Jenn–I’ll introduce them when they’re ready). You may also notice some important new features (again, fuel for a future blog post).

However before summer ends, I want to take a moment to say welcome to CrowdVine, in some cases welcome back, and in every case thank you very much!

SAS — Many people don’t know this, but SAS is the largest privately owned software company in the world. They’re a definite model for people like us who think about building a long term business rather than something to hype, flip, and abandon (if this sounds like common sense you don’t work in silicon valley).

Business of Software - This is put on by Joel Spolsky and Neil Davidson, two huge stars in the software business. Check out the speaker list! This is a conference I should be attending and that I aspire to speak at. They’re also beta customers for one of our soon-to-release new self-service packages.

Youth Specialties - We like any conference that proves that you don’t need to be a techie to want to meet people — that’s a universal goal. YS is a premier support organization for Christian youth workers and the organizer of massive conventions. We built a custom video submission contest for them and if it goes well we’ll offer it to other people.

Pearson’s Voices That Matter - Pearson is a premier book publisher and that means they are connected to enough authors to run conferences on almost any subject. I love that when you browse one of their Speaker Pages they highlight each speaker’s book. You can’t beat that for proving subject authority.

Adaptive Path - We just finished conference #5 for them making them our most loyal customer. A lot of our product thinking is around ways that we can reward customers like AP.

Web 2.0 Expo - We just launched our third and are getting ready to do our fourth Expo network. Besides having a long history with them (Jay and I used to work for O’Reilly and I organized a section of their SF expo) I like having them in the mix because they push us to be on the cutting edge. The challenge always is how can we be modern enough for the Web 2.0 audience but simple enough for doctors, professors, and youth workers.

Search Marketing Expo - SMX was one of our first conferences to understand that networking is part of the value that attendees are paying for. We’re welcoming them back for their third conference, SMX East.

Twiistup - When we talk about the problem CrowdVine solves we talk about what happens when you walk into a crowd, spin around, and realize you don’t know anyone. Twiistup is the ultimate example of that dynamic, a crowded party celebrating Los Angeles startups. With CrowdVine, attendees show up already recognizing faces and having people they want to talk to. Plus this was another chance to work with my favorite designer, Elliot Jay Stocks.

IxDA - I don’t want to put too much pressure on them, but based on their first conference with us I tell all of our clients that you can’t underestimate the value of community management. David Malouf, from their conference committee, is still the best, most active, and most enthusiastic community manager we’ve worked with. That plus he’s an excellent interaction designer. We’re rooting for a repeat performance.

Association of Learning Technology - We’re getting a lot of interest from people in higher education. It’s an interesting field, how much of learning is from the materials and how much of it is from people? In my experience, 90% of my career development came from being around smart people. So we’re excited to work with any educational groups that want to experiment with social networking.

Communitech - They’re the Waterloo Region Technology Association and within five minutes of talking to them I was convinced Waterloo is a hotbed of startup activity. They’re running a week long series of events spread out all over town and they’re going to be giving our calendar/agenda-builder feature a workout.

There’s also a bunch of events that are using our self-service tools, BioSysBio (science), Medicine 2.0 (health), Vanderbilt Class of ‘64 Reunion (old folkslife long friends), IET Power Academy (engineering students), and National Society of Collegiate Scholars (more students).

One thing I like about them is how they prove that you don’t need to be an Internet native to want a tool to help you meet other attendees. We’re very thankful to our friends at O’Reilly Media who gave us an amazing opportunity to get into this business by letting us try our software on their conferences. That got us into a world of web conferences. But through the faith of a few more friends we’ve broken out into any field where attendees have a reason to meet.

Thank you all. Jay and I enormously thankful for the opportunity to work with you and proud of the ways you’ve used our software. Thank you.