Swap.com CEO Jeff Bennett

One other note today - another huge SXSW (South By Southwest) conference is coming up March 11-20, 2011 in Austin, Texas and this one could have a dash of domain industry flavor with your support. SXSW has a unique format in which they have potential attendees vote on proposed programming, then once semi-finalists have been chosen in the polling (as they now have been), people can post comments in support of their favorites. Show organizers will review those comments and use them to pick the final panels that will appear on the agenda.

Former NameMedia President Jeff Bennett, who is now the CEO of Swap.com, put together an interesting panel that is in the final running. Bennett's session, titled Talkin' Bout Reputation: Building Trust in Online Communities, would address a growing concern as online shopping and social networking collide: How do you establish a community of trust among virtual strangers? 

Bennett, whose company has 1 million users across the U.S. swapping items they have for all the items they want, would explore the issues of reputation and trust as online shopping transforms from point-and-click purchases to a social system of peer-to-peer transactions. Using Swap.com's community culture as an example, Jeff would cover how start-ups can build a community that drives the right behaviors and how businesses can leverage the power of connections, recommendations, and targeted actions that are being formed with this new model of online shopping.

You can help make sure Bennett's timely panel is on the SXSW agenda by posting your comment here as dozens of supporters have already done (it takes less than a minute to create the free account needed to comment). Time is growing short though. The deadline for posting comments is January 11. I'm sure Jeff will appreciate your support.