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The Weber Shandwick takeover of Valleywag continues with WS legal practice guru Lucas Mast's report on this week's Third Thursday. In this edition of the PR and marketing talk series, PR blogger Jeremy Pepper MC'd a panel of corporate-blogging masters. If you're feeling cynical this morning, just read Lucas's three bullets and be done with it. We'll see if our boy Lucas can learn to stop paying attention to the actual talks and give us the nitty gritty, like whether someone got Steve Rubel drunk. In the meantime, Mr. Bright and Sunny pimps Third Thursday.

PR and tech folks who chose to skip Third Thursday to watch the Will & Grace finale live missed a rare chance to quiz a trio of corporate PR vets who have launched blogs at their Silicon Valley companies. Some helpful hints in launching corporate blogs:

1. Lock your HR in a closet
2. Blindfold and tie up your Legal
3. Spell-check and edit C-level postings

OK, so the crowd that got insights from Cisco's Jeanette Gibson, Ingres' Cynthia Schott, and Net App's Jodi Bauman [pictured] did not hear any of the abovementioned advice. They DID get some very useful tips based on the trials and tribulations faced in launching their respective blogs including having a clear policy for employees blogging (whether endorsed by the company or not), encouraging frequent posting, working as needed with Legal to ensure that problems do not arise, figuring out ways to measure traffic and impact of the blog(s) and scaling blogs as appropriate within your company.

All in all, a great night of drinking, networking, and sharing ideas for successful a successful blog launch from those in the know. Great job Pepper and Co.

Check out Cisco's High Tech Policy Blog, Ingres CTO Dave Dargo's blog and Net App founder Dave Hitz's blog for the fruits of the speakers' labors.

Earlier Third Thursday: Guest story: TechCrunch says "Wired's gonna be my bitch" [Valleywag]