I can't make it to Bill Lee's Customer Reference Forum 2008 next week in Berkeley - a heavily pregnant wife means getting on a plane to the West Coast isn't sensible. Which is a shame because it's a great event and I always enjoy it. My colleagues Andrew and Caroline are attending though. Andrew is talking about customer reference systems during one of the sessions and has some cool mobile apps and gadgets to demo to anyone attending.

One sign of the increasing maturity around this sector is the appointment of a first ever Chief Reference Officer - congratulations to Rhett Livengood at Intel. That's the first time I have heard of that role existing on a corporate org chart. Smart thinking by Intel to recognise the value provided by references to the business, and to give someone the job title and the remit to pull together all the threads into a coherent program.

Although I won't be there, Andrew has promised to blog from the event, so I look forward to staying in touch through his reports.

Tags: Customer Reference Forum, customer advocacy