Posted 11:34 p.m. by Jim Courtney

Shel Israel was the guest of AIMS Canada for two events involving the use of blogs as an element of business marketing, building on the cases discussed in Naked Conversations, the book he recently co-authored with Robert Scoble.

The Blogger Networking Event, held at Shoeless Joes in Toronto's Entertainment district, presented lots of opportunities for naked verbal conversations.

Social Marketing, Tapping into the Power of Connected Customers, was the second AIMS event featuring Mark Evans, Amber MacArthur, Jon Husband and Shel. (Note I did not attend the first AIMS event which apparently had the dullest audience Shel has ever encountered.)

Both were great events and provide even more justification for the first Toronto Web 2.0 conference being organized by Mark Evans, Matthew Ingram and others for May 8 and 9. More information to be available next week.

In the confusion caused by renovations back home, Shel forgot his passport. Apparently there ensued a very long un-naked conversation as he applied to enter Canada at Pearson Airport. Shel reports that verbal diarrhea works as a successful strategy for such a discussion with a Canadian immigration officer. However, more importantly and ironically, he needed to have his passport Fedexed up to Toronto in order to be able to re-enter the U.S., his home and native land.

Mar 8 Update: Shel has done an autobiographical report on his trip.