Can you imagine landing a big article in the San Francisco Guardian touting the Cybernet Expo without the article telling you what date it starts? That’s what happens here. So we’ll give you the date- it begins June 25th.

San Francisco – From www.sfbg.com- It goes without saying that we tend to take our Internet porn for granted.

Naturally, we are so inundated with porn in our pop up ads, our spam folders, and our Google searches (an unfiltered image search for something as innocent as “cucumber” will get you porn on the first page), it becomes the accepted standard that porn will be an immutable fact that as long as the Internet exists and that we will be entitled to free, or at least accessible, cyberporn until the end days.

Unless we’re in the business of making internet porn ourselves, we don’t often think of the business or entrepreneurial aspects involved behind the scenes, or the planning and development it takes to get even the most basic of adult websites off the ground. But adult entertainment, as with any other profession, is a part of an industry (albeit one that is on the fringe of the mainstream) that relies on a complicated network of people who work together and interact as a part of a larger market. And, like all professions, adult entertainment is privy to a phenomenon known as the “Expo”.

What industry, these days, doesn’t have its own expo? Every day, in hotel conference rooms all over the United States, from coast to coast, from New York to LA, from La Quinta to the Four Seasons, professionals gather to drink coffee and mini sodas to meet one another and discuss things like customer conversion and marketing strategies. Usually these expos are a staid and boring affair, with keynote speeches by tedious suit-types with topics like “Putting Service Above Self”. We see them all the time in San Francisco. After the open bar closes down, some of the more adventurous professionals will make their way up from the Renaissance Hotel in Fremont to the city, just to go to Ruby Skye.

At least in the adult entertainment industry, expos provide some entertainment value.

If the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo is adult entertainment’s version of Web 2.0, then the upcoming Cybernet Expo is its version of the TechCrunch 50.

Directed toward smaller and more entrepreneurial ventures, Cybernet hosts seminars like “Sustainable Organic (ha) Traffic Generation,” “Marketing Personalities with Social Networking Tools”, and “Online Billing: Beyond the IPSP”. If you’re expecting a big fat cyberorgy, you’re in for a disappointment, as seminars actually appear useful and informative, and from the photos of past expos (this is Cybernet’s 12th year), it appears more like casual Friday than freaky Friday.

I asked Jay Kopita, the director of operations for Cybernet, give me some reasons to attend, and he responded, “First and foremost, because so many of us work from home and from remote locations and from offices and from online, this is an opportunity to come face to face with a lot of industry peers. People who you currently work with or should have an opportunity to work with.” He continued, “I work in my home office in Austin, Texas but I deal with people worldwide. The cornerstone of the trade show is a whole slew of classrooms and panels dealing with imp and hot topics dealing with adult internet. Traffic, opportinuties for women, a legal class… the education and networking aspect are huge.”

And unlike other expos, at least with adult entertainment, the parties are better. Said Kopita to the SFBG, “Obviously because we aren’t just in the adult online industry for the business aspect, a lot of us are different than the societal norm. We like to have fun, so we have one major party every night. We like to work hard and play harder.”

So far, local sponsors include Kink.com, Lovings.com, Wildlinecorp.com, and DatingGold.com (based out of Stockton). From what it appears, Cybernet promises to be a useful networking event for people interested or involved in adult entertainment. I will be attending this year’s event, and I’m particularly interested in the “Effective Writing for Adult Websites” seminar, with speakers Jean Stine, M. Christian, Thomas Roche, Damon Brown, Erin Ann Myer, and San Francisco sex guru Violet Blue.

Registration is $149 in advance and $199 “at the door,” and you can register for all three days of the conference here.