"It's time to get the juice back going here," says president of newly minted marketing community organization.

Marketers, advertisers and agency folks in the city by the bay are buzzing about this week's launch of BIG, the Bay Area Interactive Group. In the words of their Web site, BIG is "dedicated to pushing the boundaries of what's possible in digital marketing, by providing a forum in which ideas, people and technology converge."

BIG's kick off event will be from 6:30 to 10:30 p.m, this Thursday, October 7, at Mezzanine, a San Francisco club that can hold up to 1,000.

I spoke with BIG president John Durham today to ask about BIG, why it's launching now, and what the group plans for the future.

iMedia: Okay, so why now? Why re-launch an interactive marketing community in late 2004?

Durham: This all actually started over a year ago when I saw what 212 [New York's Interactive Advertising Club] was doing. So, I spoke with [CBS Marketwatch EVP of sales and marketing] Scot McLernon and we agreed that it was time to get the juice back going here.

The market was coming back. People were hiring again. We asked ourselves, if we were building the right kind of group today, what would be build? Not everybody can go to iMedia Summits where you get the best and the brightest, so we deliberately went very slow, slow and methodical, rather than just raising a lot of money. We elected a board of directors, and each member represented a constituency, and we were very picky about sponsors.

iMedia: It's an impressive group of sponsors -- including signature sponsors 24/7 Real Media, Fathom Online, Google, MSN, ValueClick, Yahoo! -- and they signed up even before the kickoff event. How did you make that happen?

Durham: Scot and I, and Matt Arkin [of CBS Marketwatch], and Lynn Ingham [of Advertising Age], made sure that our sponsors knew we were only looking for one-and-a-half year memberships. We won't be selling memberships every week. We want only limited sponsorships so we don't have to worry about chasing money and can focus on quality programming. Our goal is to exceed the expectations of the contract with our sponsors.

iMedia: The kickoff is this Thursday, but what do you have planned for future events?

Durham: Each quarter we'll have what we're calling a "Reach Event." This is a big event in which we focus on a specific topic. On December 16, our theme will be "10 Years in the Making." We're working on it now, and I'll share the details as they come into focus.

Then, once a month, we'll have a small networking event, a "Frequency Event," around a certain topic in the marketplace so that people can share ideas, sort of an ad club school for specific components in the business.

iMedia: Do you have any online resources planned for BIG members?

Durham: Yes, we're planning think tank resources, white papers, positions, arguments. Then, after the first of the year, after we get going, we plan online bulletin boards to update people about what's going on and create that vital sense of community. So far, everybody involved is a volunteer and we've really had tremendous buzz on this.

iMedia will have details on Thursday's kickoff event in next Monday's newsletter.