mediabistro.com still has spaces left in next week's "personal branding" workshop, where $75 ($65 if you're an AvantGuild member) will get you 90 minutes of advice and insights from Wired cover girl Julia Allison (left), online video star Loren Feldman, and Wine Library founder Gary Vaynerchuk on how passion and authenticity can help you build a significant following. Ostensibly, this conversation is going to have a lot more to do with the online world than the world of book publishing, but if you've been reading GalleyCat for a while, you know that we consider these principles applicable to authors as well.

If your office can handle a little strong language, here's a short speech Vaynerchuk gave recently at the Web 2.0 Expo that may or may not be a sneak preview of the mediabistro.com event.