Just when you think you’ve seen it all…

If the idea of grown adults playing an online virtual farming game (and often shelling out real cash to do so) doesn’t surprise you, then check out FarmVille’s newest neighbor: Lady Gaga. Yup, the Pop Princess of Weird has partnered with online social gaming wizards Zynga to bring you the future of cross marketing. And it hurts so good.

Rand Fishkin, the CEO & Founder of SEOmoz.org, managed to stuff an inspiring presentation on “Advanced Tactics to Maximize SEO Opportunity” into a too-short 25 minutes presentation at the What’s Next DC 2011 Conference on Monday, January 24th. With organic search results becoming increasingly competitive, Rand’s specific tactics supplemented with examples and case studies had me eager to try some new techniques to pimp out our website. You can view his slidedeck here. (All photos by Nakeva Corothers). Some key takeaways included:

Bryan Eisenberg, Managing Partner at Eisenberg Holding was the second presenter at yesterday’s “What’s Next DC – Your Marketing Communications Roadmap” Conference. He held the one of two 45 minute time slots with “The Future Shopper, How Offline is the New Online”. It was a great presentation on how the convergence of communications, logistics, and financial technology continues to evolve to reduce the friction in the customers’ buying process.

The folks over at DCWEEK have announced this year’s event dates! DCWEEK 2011 will take place in Washington DC, November 4-11, 2011.

“DCWEEK is a festival in the US capital focused on bringing together designers, developers, entrepreneurs, and social innovators of all kinds. It’s a series of 100s of distributed events powered by the community and complemented by core conferences, parties, and projects created by the festival organizers iStrategyLabs and Tech Cocktail. DCWEEK 2010 was assembled in 3.5 months and drew 6,000 attendees from around the world.”

Online video watching is steadily increasing among all user demographics. Below you will find some statistics from a survey by Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project.

This week Washington, DC played host to the annual Government Video Expo. In addition to an exhibit hall full of equipment and technology (and more displays playing Avatar than I ever care to see again) there certification classes, paid conference sessions, free presentations, and community meetings. The Expo runs Nov 30-Dec 2 2010, but I attended yesterday to scope out the scene, walk the tradeshow floor, and see what the manufacturing industry had to offer. In this article I will talk about the presence (and lack) of social media among attendees, and advice on how to get work as a freelancer for government agencies, in addition to mention some of the sessions I attended.

Learn a little more about Captico and meet some of the team in this short video!

DCWEEK has finally come to an end for creatives in the Nation’s Capital and now its time to recap the bits of knowledge gleaned by roving reporter yours truly. Digital Capital Week (DCWEEK) is a 10 day festival in Washington DC focused on technology, innovation and all things digital. It took place from June 11th to June 20th, 2010 in venues across the city with the mission of strengthening the capital region’s digital economy via events focused on creativity, technology, entrepreneurship, marketing, content creation, and innovation.

In this 3-part video series, Emily Paterson presents Social Media for Businesses, beginning with an Introduction to Web 2.0, then a quick look at Blogging 101, and finishing with an overview of Twitter 101.

Video version of “The Small Print: Writing User Interface Instructions”, an article covered in a Weekly Web Redux entry.