Introducing John Donahoe

Last week, I introduced John Donahoe, the President of Ebay at the Shop.org Annual Summit. Several interesting items:

It was the largest crowd I've ever spoken in front of (1,500+). It didn't feel all that different from speaking to 100 - the lights were bright enough you couldn't see clearly out beyond a few tables. It looked like a special effect where the back rows had been cloned many, many times :)

He was very relaxed backstage - he's been a CEO for a long time, and was clearly comfortable in this format (speech/interview). He was looking for information on the mood/flavor of the conference that would allow him to connect from stage.
He was very relaxed onstage for that matter, pulling out a Flip phone to record a video blog for Ebay employees.
He also didn't have an issue making statements that were going to pull press attention "auctions are not a religion", "we're doing $380MM in mobile sales" and some commentary about Amazon and Wal-Mart.
He was very focused on "servant based leadership" and I heard "blessed" used to describe Ebay several times.
Ebayink has a good writeup - as does Scot from Chanel Advisor - who got reimbursed $10 for breakfast.

Shop.org - Strategy and Innovation Forum

I'm at the Shop.org Strategy and Innovation Forum. If you're interested in following along, the Shop.org blog will have live blog updates, and you can also see updates on Twitter Search.

Hiring at Shop.org

We've just posted a new job we're hiring for at Shop.org - Director, Member Services. Let me know if you have questions.

Shop@Lunch

Shop.org had our Shop@Lunch event yesterday. We had great attendance, and the press coverage was excellent. For the official writeup, check out the blog post.
Some other random thoughts, while greeting 300+ people entering an event -

Cheerfully welcoming people to an event gives you an instant insight into how comfortable people are about attending an event.
People are more than willing to wait in a long line for lunch, as long as you explain how the line works.
Conversely, 1% of people will attempt to make you justify the setup, regardless of how crowded things are. "So, lunch is free? What kind? You got salad? Can I take it to go?" etc... An exaggeration, but only slightly.
Nowhere near Clublife, but we got two or three interesting characters - we may have provided their meal for the day.

Joining Shop.org

I've joined Shop.org. You can read about it on the Shop.org blog.

Shop.org summit

I put a brief post up on the Shop.org blog with information on where to find the latest news, in addition to the coverage that they'll typically have live-bloggged. Fun to see the latest on Twitter.

Google Ad Words glitch

My latest post over at the http://blog.shop.org">Shop.org blog, on Google AdWords.