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When 9th century Vikings sailed into this natural harbor, steam rising from its waters appeared to be smoke, and the name Reykjavik ('smoky bay') is now somewhat misleading.

One of the world’s cleanest capitals and virtually pollution-free, Reykjavik is a thoroughly modern city enhanced by picturesque and historic buildings, a city-center lake and even a salmon river, all surrounded by mountains and the sea.

A cosmopolitan array of museums, art galleries, theatre, opera and an excellent symphony orchestra set the cultural scene, while restaurants, cafes, pubs and nightclubs augment the teeming social life that has made it one of the most popular cities in Europe.

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This week Dee Rambeau will be hosting a blog week on Iceland, the location of this year's IAOC Conference. Situated on the continental divide between Europe and America, Iceland is the ideal location for our first American and European Summit Meeting of Online Communicators. Flights to Iceland are five hours or less from North America and about three hours from Europe.

The conference will be held in Reykjavik, the world’s northernmost capital city, June 12-13. The conference starts mid-day Thursday, June 12 at Hotel Holt. IAOC members will present two roundtable paper sessions concerning online communication. Topics include:

• "Radio 2.0 and research methodologies for web 2.0"
• "The CEO as Celebrity and Blogger:  Is there a Ghostwriter in the Machine?"
• "Loud Voices, Silenced Voices; The Ethics of Online Content in Media Coverage of High- Profile Child Death and Child Disappearance cases"
• "Let's Get Together:  Options for Integrating Web 2.0 Collaborative Tools into the Workplace"
• "Issues of Organizational Commitment in the Era of the Virtual Office"

Blackline Social Media Consulting will host a complimentary reception following the round-table sessions.

On Friday an additional round table paper presentation will be followed by a European/American panel discussion on International Online Communications using RSS and other social media tools. The panel is chaired by Philippe Borremans, a leading online media consultant located in Brussels, Belgium, and Dee Rambeau, the managing partner of The Fuel Team, an online communications consultancy located in Denver, Colorado. The discussion will include:

• How to manage online collaboration on a global scale.
• Examples of organizations that are bridging oceans with social media.
• Effective multi-language website tactics
• Low-cost opt-in content delivery across time zones using RSS
• Low-cost content distribution using RSS
• Internal crisis communications across times zones

The conference concludes with a keynote luncheon presentation by Peter A. Gloor focusing on swarm creativity, collaborative innovation networks, and coolhunting. Gloor is a Research Scientist at the Center for Collective Intelligence, part of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management. He was Mercator Visiting Professor at the University of Cologne, and is a lecturer at Helsinki University of Technology.

The registration fee is $199 for members and $299 for non-members. For more information about the conference visit http://iaoc2008.eventbrite.com/.

Join Dee all week for his personal tour of what you can expect to see on your visit to Iceland. You may be surprised at what you learn. Warmed by Gulf Stream currents, Iceland’s temperature is milder than its name suggests. Those attending the IAOC conference in June will have an opportunity to experience long daylight hours of late spring as the island heads toward its endless days of summer and the Midnight Sun.