Selected by mikesansone

• 
  Angela Maiers Educational Services

• Live Stream at METC

  Angela Maiers

  9 Feb 2010 | 6:41 am

  Some fantastic conversations are going on at METC Conference this week, and you can take part on Twitter and even view select presentations from the METC_CSD back channel or via Twitter using the #METC_CSD hashtag. I'll hope to capture my presentation on Digital Literacy in the Classroom and share here later. In the meantime, you can view some of the other METC slides on SlideShare The whole schedule: Tuesday, February 9, 2010  8:15 a.m. – Keynote, Wes Fryer: StoryChasing: Empowering Students as Digital Witnesses  9:45 a.m. – Digital Literacy in the Classroom, Angela…

• Strong Readers Don't Quit

  Angela Maiers

  7 Feb 2010 | 10:35 am

  Strong readers won't quit until they "get it" - and the "it" is not as much about the book as it is about the reader.  In this week's mini-lesson video, we visit with a classroom of elementary students to discuss the strengths of a great reader. As one classmate put it: Crazy Good!

• Are You Making Others Greater Than Yourself (#GTY)?

  Angela Maiers

  6 Feb 2010 | 10:30 am

  I find myself in the fortunate position of being both a fan and a friend of the brilliantly generous best-selling author, Steve Farber.  Greater Than Yourself, the latest inspiration of his Extreme Leadership series of books, is a book every administrator, leader, teacher, and student (yes, them too!) should read. Now. It is a game-changing book. So much so, that educational and business leaders from coast-to-coast and in-between have been gathering as part of a GTY Summit discussing ways to deliver the GTY principles into school buildings and classrooms all over the…

• Chalk Talk - 02/05/10

  Angela Maiers

  5 Feb 2010 | 4:56 pm

  Chalk Talk Friday represents conversations and brilliance I've discovered traversing my way through the Blogosphere.  From professional to personal development, these are the posts and links have in some way touched my head or my heart. Most of you know how much I use SlideShare for my own presentations, but I also get inspired and information from others who share their presentations. Here are some of my favorites: Buffy Hamilton: High School Media Specialist at Creekview High School David Armano: David Armano is Senior VP at Edelman Digital and the author of Logic +…

• Pepsi Refresh: The Teacher Salary Project

  Angela Maiers

  4 Feb 2010 | 1:12 pm

  You can help The Teacher Salary Project win $50,000. The project has been selected to be part of round one of the Pepsi Refresh Project, which is giving away $1,000,000 a month and allowing the public to decide on what gets funded by voting online for the ideas they like best. There are several categories, including Pepsi Refresh: Education. Every day in February we can go to The PepsiRefresh page and vote for The Teacher Salary Project. All teachers (and students) will benefit from our combined efforts. Even if the project doesn't finish in the Top 10, the exposure will move…

• 
  The Marketing Minute

• Examples of social media policies

  Drew McLellan

  8 Feb 2010 | 5:35 am

  In corporate America (and probably corporate World), rules get created when people make bad choices.  It's how child labor laws came to be and why we now have sexual harassment policies.  The few and the stupid are the catalyst to regulation.Which is why it's not a shock that companies big and small are beginning to institute social media policies.  After the Dominos pizza incident and the world famous FedEx tweet -- who can blame business leaders from wanting to protect themselves by setting down some rules?I've put together a long list of social media policy…

• Have you built a rock solid foundation for your personal brand?

  Drew McLellan

  5 Feb 2010 | 3:10 am

  Whether you work for someone else, are a serial entrepreneur or anything in between -- in today's world, you can't afford to ignore the idea of personal branding.A generation ago, employees often stayed with one employer for the lion's share of their career.  Today, most professionals will not work for several companies -- but they will most likely change their entire profession.And even in the unlikely case that you do find the employer of your dreams right off the bat -- you still want to distinguish yourself by standing out from the crowd.Enter personal branding.

• Nuggets of smart

  Drew McLellan

  2 Feb 2010 | 6:21 am

  I don't know about you, but one of my struggles is sifting through all the information out there to find the real nuggets of smart.  I thought, from time to time, I might point out some of the really smart stuff out there so you don't have to go digging for it.  I'd love to know if you find value in this sort of post.  (Just click on the bolded text to get to each offering) New study on customer gratitude:  Elaine Fogel talks about a new study done by the American Marketing Association that looks at the sales impact of generating a sense of gratitude in…

• The best Superbowl commercial of 2010

  Drew McLellan

  31 Jan 2010 | 7:43 pm

  Remember when the Superbowl was about the game?  Now it's the halftime show wardrobe malfunctions and of course, the commercials.  Here's one of my favorites from last year, to get you in the mood! (e-mail subscribers, click here to view) Want to get a jump on Sunday's new spots?  Don't want to have to wade through 60 minutes of football just to see what Budweiser, GoDaddy and Doritos have in store for us?Head over to MSNBC's site where they are hosting an Ad Showdown.  You can watch each and every spot and then in a nod to the NCAA tourney…

• Extinction is right around the corner...

  Drew McLellan

  27 Jan 2010 | 7:22 pm

  For getting lost, desktop computers and glaciers.  At least according to The Future Trends book called Future Files by Richard Watson.  (buy it by clicking here) As part of the promotion of the book, the author released the chart below.   It's an extinction timeline...predicting that newspaper delivery will be gone by 2012 and FM radio by 2027.  I promise you...you'll find this fascinating and its content will be your conversation starter for at least a week. If you're having trouble reading the timeline, you can click on the chart to open a…

• 
  Logic+Emotion

• We Are The Media. Do We Trust Media?

  David Armano

  9 Feb 2010 | 9:22 am

    First, an informal disclaimer. While I work for the firm (Edelman) that conducted the 2010 Trust Barometer, the following opinions expressed are personal and I was not involved with the research or creation of the report. That said, I wanted to express a few non data based thoughts around the the specific finding that there is less trust in a "person like yourself".Now, let's get into why this is worth discussing. Based on comments and conversation which I've seen in industry publications and elsewhere there seems to be a concern that this finding flies in the face of social conventional…

• The Unofficial SXSW Survival Guide

  David Armano

  6 Feb 2010 | 12:07 pm

    Having passed on my slot to the folks at Dachis Group, I will not be speaking this year at SXSW (interactive) but I will be attending. It will be my second time, and I'm happy to share that there will indeed be a sequel to the sleeper hit event last year known as "Allhat". This year we are going with "Allhat II: Return of the Cattle", and it's sure to be even better complete with local live music thanks to the support from Edelman Digital. That said, there were several things I learned from surviving SXSW, and you might want to take some of them into consideration.Go With The FlowSXSW can…

• Why I'm Not Writing a Book (Right Now)

  David Armano

  31 Jan 2010 | 8:17 pm

  There's really nothing like a book—they are portable, intimate, useful, influential and the good ones tend to go "viral" in the sense that you share them with people you know. And of course today we have new ways to digest them: from audio to Kindles to iPads etc. A question I've been getting a lot lately is:"When are you writing a book"?I've had some interest—from publishers you've heard of. But the answer is:"Not right now".My logic is simple. One cannot serve two masters—and serve them well. Either my full time job or the book would suffer. So the time is not now. I've got things to…

• Six Ways to Find Social Media Talent

  David Armano

  29 Jan 2010 | 6:40 pm

  More articles on Harvard BusinessAs organizations move their social media strategies from theory to practice, they discover a difficult truth they must confront: Finding the "perfect" social media talent is practically impossible. To start, the field is flooded with thousands of self proclaimed "experts" who have reinvented themselves to take advantage what looks like a growing business opportunity. Maybe they do know social media, but many don't. They need to be vetted. More broadly, most candidates for social media positions fall at the ends of a spectrum. On one end is the person who…

• The 5 Reasons You're Failing In Social Media

  David Armano

  21 Jan 2010 | 1:28 pm

  1. You really don't want to engage directly with customers, employees, etc.—you just want them to hear what you have to say. 2. You're not ready to create new roles, update process, re-distribute resources and budgets, re-train people, and revise old policies. 3. Social media actually threatens how you make money—but you pay lip service out of fear.4. Politics.5. You see it as a career advancing opportunity as opposed to a significant business transformation.Reverse any of these, and you've likely improved your chances of succeeding in a business environment that's becoming increasingly…

• 
  Conversation Agent

• How I Participate in Social Networks

  Valeria Maltoni

  9 Feb 2010 | 4:00 am

  I'm borrowing a page off the Communicatrix blog to lay out how I participate in social networks. Why? Because we all have a different strategy to how we spend our time and energy to be social and to achieve our goals and since we have a strategy, in the spirit of social, we should make it transparent. [hat tip to Skip Shuda for suggesting it]I've been getting more than many requests from several people in many networks lately. Requests to friend, requests to tweet, to forward, to bookmark, to stumble, the list goes on. Being online for the best part of my day makes me very accessible. That I…

• Are You Customer-Averse?

  Valeria Maltoni

  8 Feb 2010 | 4:00 am

  We all know the story of how Comcast went from customer-averse to customer-friendly. It started online with a person, and it's making its way to the rest of the organization. You will agree with me that Comcast went from this episode, to this action, to this thinking. They went from customer-averse, to customer-friendly. It didn't happen overnight, still it did. Competition helps, too, so we keep our fingers crossed on any one company getting too big to care.Businesses continue to look for more ways to get new business either from new or current customers -- usually both, in this order. Shiny…

• Trust in Media Down, Good News for Experts

  Valeria Maltoni

  7 Feb 2010 | 4:00 am

  Trust in business and Government has gone up in the last year, while trust in media seems to be declining across the board -- this is the latest finding of the latest annual Edelman Trust Barometer survey. Take a look at the executive report and see that:Trust in traditional media is trending downward: TV news dropped by 20 points radio news dropped by 17 points print news dropped by 12 points Trust in digital media is still pretty low, and although corporate communications are trending higher than social networks, they're still not that high.We've all witnessed the decline of stretched news…

• The Future Online is Subscription-Based: Why I Joined Third Tribe

  Valeria Maltoni

  5 Feb 2010 | 4:00 am

  Clearly, the title left out a few pieces of information. I believe there is still a future online for free, but increasingly, the way to get things done, to go from conversation to agent, is subscription-based. Why? Accountability, resources, self-selected network, and opportunity to syndicate service, for a fee.The service for a fee model interests me most. That's why I joined Third Tribe as a member this week. The whole velvet rope community concept should make brands pay attention. This is not just a build a community to push your products, or just engage customers in your stuff kind of…

• We Still Get Things Done Through Search

  Valeria Maltoni

  4 Feb 2010 | 4:00 am

  With all the talk about social networks and engagement, when it comes to getting things done, we rely on search. The image above was part of the set I used last Fall at the Inbound Marketing Summit when we talked about the importance of creating content for sharing.There was another interesting study I did not mention at the time that confirms a few of the following statements on social media as content delivery mechanism to: help conversions connect to value build relationships extend to influentials engage via education They are all outcomes I've had the opportunity to experience and…

• 
  Jeremiah Owyang

• Quicktake: What Google Buzz Means

  jeremiah_owyang

  9 Feb 2010 | 11:26 am

  Google launches status update features Google launches Buzz, which is similar to Friendfeed, which is now part of Facebook. Content will be aggregated, and then prioritized based upon the people you already email with, Harry McCracken and I call this a social graph based on history, “Historical social graph” or HSG. Secondly, this Google Buzz feature will rate and rank content based on activity and interaction within your social group. Users can choose to publish the Buzz in public, which will display on the Google Profile page. They also announced the ability to input this data…

• Register For Webinar: Developing a Social Strategy by Objectives

  jeremiah_owyang

  8 Feb 2010 | 10:11 am

  Left: There are four main categories of social strategy, yet with over 20 subset objectives, which we’ll discuss at a high level. Organizations that focus on social technologies suffer from the symptom of ‘Fondling The Hammer‘ .  True social strategy stems from business objectives –not the latest technologies. So often, companies develop social tactics based on the latest tool that’s sprung forth.  Yet, so far and few in between to organizations develop an actionable plan based on business goals. This second in our no-cost webinar series is coming up on the…

• People on the Move in the Social Media Industry: Feb 4, 2010

  jeremiah_owyang

  4 Feb 2010 | 8:31 pm

  The submissions are defintly picking up, I’m seeing more submissions than before. Why? I attribute this to the start of the new year when many folks change up jobs, and the slight uptick we’re starting to see in the economy. In an effort to recognize the changes in the social media space, I’ve started this post series (see archives) to both track and congratulate folks who get promoted, move, or accept new exciting positions. Please help me congratulate the following folks: Congrats to Jeannette Gibson (Twttier) who has moved to corporate marketing to run social media at…

• Matrix: Companies Should Factor ‘Social Influence’ Into Total Customer Value

  jeremiah_owyang

  3 Feb 2010 | 6:00 am

  Case Study: An Influential Mom Blogger Caused Mainstream Crises Popular blogger, Heather Armstrong (@dooce) was dissatisfied with her non-working Maytag appliance.  Following protocol, she called their support number, yet her issue was not solved.  Stonewalled, she argued/warned the support staff that she was on Twitter, yet didn’t receive special assistance.  Escalating further, she then flexed a muscle and told them she had over 1,000,000 Twitter followers –yet the support rep did not budge.  Finally, she blogged and Tweeted against Maytag, initiating a boycott by her…

• List of Corporate Social Media Strategists, Corporate Community Managers in 2010

  jeremiah_owyang

  30 Jan 2010 | 9:36 am

  As an industry watcher, I look at trends, data, spending, technologies, yet what’s really important is watching the trend of professionals as they grow into these roles managing disruptive technologies.  Update: Brian Hayashi has created a spreadsheet of this with additional info –like Twitter handles. We’re staying coordinated so the data is matched, follow Brian on Twitter. [Connecting with customers using social technologies is deceptively challenging, as most outsiders don't recognize the leadership to change internal cultural. Now, in public, let's recognize those who…

• 
  Copyblogger

• Does Writing for People Work for SEO?

  Brian Clark

  9 Feb 2010 | 8:16 am

  Hang around web writing circles for any length of time, and the inevitable “write for search engines or write for people” debate comes up. It’s a bit strange, really. Last time I checked, it’s people who use search engines, not some other life form. So you’re always writing for people. Obviously, the debate stems from the fact that search engines are powered by computer algorithms. But as search engines have gotten smarter, writing that pleases people and satisfies spiders is not that far apart, if at all. Let’s look at four factors that work well for SEO and see how well they…

• The Art of Shameless Self-Promotion

  Nathan Hangen

  8 Feb 2010 | 7:49 am

  I’ve found it just doesn’t pay to crow too much about what I’ve accomplished. Sure, I celebrate when things go well. But I’ve found that talking too much about my achievements leads not only to criticism, but to disappointment. There’s always going to be someone who’s done more or worked harder. And until they carve my name into the side of the moon, I see no reason in puffing myself up. The minute you get a big head is the same minute that reality smacks you and you realize that you aren’t as cool as you think you are. So self-adulation is something I try to stay…

• Five Areas to Focus On for Effective SEO Copywriting

  Brian Clark

  5 Feb 2010 | 8:51 am

  When I first started Copyblogger in 2006, I was almost militantly against on-page search optimization. Seems strange, since I’d been a successful student of SEO since 2000. It was because I saw all these people fretting over keywords like it’s 1999, and yet they had no links. Their content was weak. Their sites weren’t trusted. You can’t optimize something that’s dead in the water. So my initial goal was to get people to focus on content that attracted attention and links first. Only then do you have something you can make better (that’s what optimize means, naturally). Fours…

• Landing Page Makeovers 2007-2009: Where Are They Now?

  Roberta Rosenberg

  4 Feb 2010 | 6:46 am

  This is another addition to our ongoing series of tutorials and case studies on landing pages that work. It occurred to me late last year, as I was readying yet another Landing Page Makeover, that the end of one year and the beginning of the next was a good time to do a “Where are they now?” post. So first things first, I went back and contacted all makeover participants from the very beginning of the series. Of the more than 20 contacted, I learned that one is no longer in business, MagicPumpkinArt.com (Makeover #14) and two are in the midst of developing new products or revising…

• Does SEO Copywriting Still Matter?

  Brian Clark

  3 Feb 2010 | 8:28 am

  If there’s any one thing that can be said about SEO with certainty, it’s that it manages to cause a lot of confusion. For example, it seems like many people’s idea of SEO was formed 10 years ago, and hasn’t bothered to change with the times. Even an online veteran like Robert Scoble is completely clueless about modern best practices for search engine optimization. So, before we go any further, let me answer the question posed by the headline . . . Yes, SEO copywriting still matters. Here’s why. Search is still the biggest game in town “Pick your survey, search remains one of the…

• 
  Dangerously Irrelevant

• Many service jobs will become globalized piece work

  dr.scott.mcleod@gmail.com (Scott McLeod)

  9 Feb 2010 | 6:18 am

  I’m reading a fantastic book right now: Futurecast, by Robert Shapiro. In the section on globalization, Shapiro notes that the first waves of globalization primarily affected manufacturing. Millions of American jobs were 'offshored' in the 1970s and 1980s as global companies set up factories overseas instead of here in the U.S. For all of the current rhetoric about ‘Benedict Arnold’ corporations that offshore jobs, they essentially have to since their competitors are doing so. Few companies can survive in a hypercompetitive global economy when they’re paying labor rates 5 to 25 times…

• Video - The Class

  dr.scott.mcleod@gmail.com (Scott McLeod)

  9 Feb 2010 | 4:00 am

  Here’s the latest educational technology video that’s making the rounds. I know a few professors like this! “If you are here, why are we Skyping?”

• Grading student projects: Separating content from delivery

  dr.scott.mcleod@gmail.com (Scott McLeod)

  8 Feb 2010 | 9:33 am

  I am a big fan of student choice. When students work on projects, I think that they should have as much choice as possible regarding both the topic and the delivery. Choice increases student buy-in and ownership. Teachers allow choice of topics, not delivery When teachers and I talk about integrating technology into their lessons, I encourage them to try and build in more choice for students. Most teachers already allow students to choose topics of study, at least some of the time. For example, students are allowed to pick a historical figure, select a mystery book, decide what they sculpt…

• "Just tell me what to do"

  dr.scott.mcleod@gmail.com (Scott McLeod)

  6 Feb 2010 | 7:26 am

  Seth Godin wrote today that: People are just begging to be told what to do. There are a lot of reasons for this, but I think the biggest one is: "If you tell me what to do, the responsibility for the outcome is yours, not mine. I'm safe." I think another big reason is that most people spent at least 12 years of their life being deeply socialized in the “just tell me what to do” model. We know that schools strongly emphasize compliance in the name of order and discipline. We know that the fact-regurgitation model that still dominates schooling mostly leads to the student mentality of…

• Great Scott!

  dr.scott.mcleod@gmail.com (Scott McLeod)

  5 Feb 2010 | 2:31 pm

  A baker's dozen of great Scott blogs… Dilbert Blog, Scott Adams Scott Berkun, Scott Berkun (wrote a fantastic book, BTW!) Scott Kelby's Photoshop Insider, Scott Kelby HELLO, my name is Blog!, Scott Ginsberg The Social Media Marketing Blog, Scott Monty Laughing Squid, Scott Beale World in Motion, Scott Erb ISO50, Scott Hansen Higher Edison, Scott Schwister Smeech.net, Scott Meech Do I Dare Disturb the Universe?, Scott Elias Dangerously Irrelevant, Scott McLeod (yours truly) edu.blogs.com, Ewan McIntosh (technically a Scot, not a Scott) Not a bad read in the bunch!Update: I can't believe I…

• 
  The Viral Garden

• Attention big brands, we had a blast on Twitter last nite, but where were you?

  Mack Collier

  8 Feb 2010 | 4:00 am

  If you were on Twitter last nite during the Super Bowl, you probably had a blast with the rest of us participating in all the chatter around the game, and the commercials. Many of us were using the #brandbowl hashtag to critique the ads in real-time, in fact I was seeing 100 new tweets coming in every couple of minutes. For reference, that's about FOUR times the volume of a busy #blogchat.But one thing many of us noticed was that the companies buying these very expensive Super Bowl ads, weren't doing anything to engage with us. I didn't see a single ad with a reference to the company's social…

• Twitter-sourced smartitude; Getting a community site off the ground

  Mack Collier

  5 Feb 2010 | 9:15 am

  This morning I actually had a few minutes to spend on Twitter, so I decided to get a discussion going about community sites. More specifically, what's the first consideration when starting a site, how important is it to be involved in the site itself, and how to sell it to your boss. I got dozens of great answers, and here they are:First consideration when launching a community site:MattJMcD @MackCollier making sure people want to be part of your community in the first place. jonnytee @MackCollier first question - Who's the audience and what's their common interest? tamadear @MackCollier…

• #blogchat update for Feb - Music Marketing and Corporate Blogging!

  Mack Collier

  27 Jan 2010 | 8:40 am

  Big update for February as a couple of super smart co-hosts have agreed to join us for #blogchat.First, if aren't sure what #blogchat is, it's a chat that happens every Sunday nite on Twitter at 8pm Central. We talk about topics related to personal, professional and business blogging. Occasionally we stray off and talk about broader issues relating to social media, but for the most part we are blog-centric in our discussions.You can follow #blogchat on the web here or here, and you can get the background on how it came to be here.Now for the real news; after getting feedback from you guys in…

• #blogchat 1-24 recap; Dealing with and avoiding blogger burnout!

  Mack Collier

  26 Jan 2010 | 3:16 am

  First, if you missed #blogchat, here is the transcript.Second, if you have no idea what #blogchat is, it's a chat on Twitter that happens every Sunday nite at 8pm Central. We discuss a different topic every week that relates to blogging. EVERYONE is welcome to participate, and here's a good way to keep up with the chat on the web. If you have a Twitter account, you can join by adding the #blogchat hashtag to your tweets.Our topic this week was dealing with and avoiding blogger burnout. This is something that I've been dealing with from time to time, and from the #blogchat crowd, here are some…

• Case Study: How MarketingProfs uses Twitter

  Mack Collier

  22 Jan 2010 | 8:32 am

  Over on MackCollier.com this week we've had a fabulous discussion about what happens if your company has 1 person that's handling your social media strategy, and then they leave. In the post, I referenced how MarketingProfs does a great job leveraging Twitter to connect with its users.And then I got to thinking that other companies could definitely learn from what MP is doing with Twitter. So I fired off an email to Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer at MarketingProfs (and all-round superheroine in the true 70s SuperFriends sense of the word), and she quickly agreed to share with us the…

• 
  Moving at the Speed of Creativity

• Presentation links for #metc_CSD today (METC 2010 in St Louis)

  Wesley Fryer

  9 Feb 2010 | 4:58 am

  We’ve received some snow in St Louis, but the Midwest Educational Technology Conference (METC) goes on! Yesterday pre-conference workshops were held, and today and tomorrow are the “regular days” of the conference. Here are links to the resources I’ll be sharing in my sessions today. Storychasing Literacy (a.k.a. “StoryChasing: Empowering Students as Digital Witnesses”) Prior to the keynote this morning, I’m most likely going to share quotations from the Flickr group, “Great quotes about Learning and Change.” Both today and tomorrow,…

• Choose teaching

  Wesley Fryer

  8 Feb 2010 | 8:07 pm

  Great thoughts about why we should CHOOSE teaching from Gail Lovely: To be a teacher — choose it as a calling, not a job. Choose it to do something meaningful and powerful, with rewards only you might notice. Choose it to be a role model. Choose to be a teacher because you love learning. Choose to be a teacher because you love learners. Choose to be a teacher because you cannot imagine anything else so wonderful! Catch up with Gail by following her on Twitter. I had a wonderful opportunity today to visit with Gail both during Darren Kuropatwa’s afternoon workshop session (quietly…

• Telling a story with Google Search queries

  Wesley Fryer

  8 Feb 2010 | 7:54 pm

  If you were watching the Super Bowl last night on U.S. television, you likely saw Google’s advertisement, “Parisian Love,” during the third quarter. What a clever way to tell a story, through a series of Google searches and some well-timed sound clips. If you missed it, here it is, on YouTube (of course.) Is your school still blocking access to YouTube for everyone, including both teachers AND students? Time to unmask the digital truth. It would be great to see students use this method of “storytelling via screencasted Google search queries” to tell other…

• Notes from a Canadien Yoda: Darren Kuropatwa at METC 2010

  Wesley Fryer

  8 Feb 2010 | 1:42 pm

  These are my notes from a part of Darren Kuropatwa’s METC 2010 workshop, “Extreme (web 2.0) Lesson Plan Makeover.” I was only able to attend a little of the afternoon session. WOW. If you ever have a chance to hear Darren present in person, do not miss it. I do not use the title, “Yoda,” lightly here. It’s a term Marco Torres uses to refer to those people in our lives who are our wise mentors. If we could choose our own Yodas (and virtually, of course, we can to an extent) I would definitely choose Darren. MY THOUGHTS AND COMMENTS BELOW ARE IN ALL CAPS…

• Use Friendly Media

  Wesley Fryer

  7 Feb 2010 | 9:26 pm

  I created a wiki page for the topic “use friendly images” as part of the 3 hour morning workshop I’m co-teaching tomorrow with Karen Montgomery here at the METC Conference in St Louis. The title of our hands-on workshop is, “Powerful Ingredients for Blended Learning.” One of the most exciting finds I made for the topic of “copyright friendly media” tonight was the “Copyright-Friendly and Copyleft Images and Sound (Mostly!) for Use in Media Projects and Web Pages, Blogs, Wikis, etc.” wiki thanks to Joyce Valenza’s “Playing with…

• 
  How to Change the World

• How to Avoid Gullibility

  GuyKawasaki

  8 Feb 2010 | 3:45 pm

  We’ve all been sucked into doing something stupid, right? Fortunately, Steven Greenspan has written a book called Annals of Gullibility. In its conclusion he explains how to avoid gullibility, and I’ve provided a synopsis for you. Read the full story at the American Express Open Forum. More on psychology if you need the advice.

• How to Be Empathetic

  GuyKawasaki

  4 Feb 2010 | 10:24 pm

  By definition, good marketers are empathetic. That is, they have a capacity to understand and care for the needs of others. Bruna Martinuzzi explains how to be empathetic over at the American Express Open Forum.

• How to Not Be Annoying on Twitter

  GuyKawasaki

  4 Feb 2010 | 10:19 pm

  Amber MacArthur explains how to not be annoying on Twitter over at the American Express Open Forum. Sage advice for you to develop a great reputation and following on Twitter. More Twitter tips.

• The Elements of Guyle: British Blogging

  GuyKawasaki

  27 Jan 2010 | 10:06 pm

  Want to make your blog classier? You should blog like a Brit. I explain how to do this in ten easy steps.

• How to follow the Apple announcement

  GuyKawasaki

  27 Jan 2010 | 7:56 am

  Follow the Apple announcement at Apple.alltop. We aggregate over 200 sources there.

• 
  Micro Persuasion

• Facebook Pulls Lexicon Analytics Tool

  9 Feb 2010 | 2:04 am

  Facebook has taken its promising Lexicon tool down from the site. Perhaps this happened when they pushed their new redesign. Lexicon, like Google Trends, provided limited yet interesting data on site-wide trends. You can read more about it here. From the Lexicon site.... "Thank you for your interest in Lexicon. We are removing the Lexicon product from Facebook for the time being. We may bring components of Lexicon back in the future, but we are focusing development on our analytics tools for Page owners, advertisers and Platform developers." Analytics remains a major focus…

• Trust in Friends Declines, Trust in Experts Rises - Social Media and PR Still Win

  8 Feb 2010 | 10:52 am

  Last week Edelman, my employer, published our tenth annual Trust Barometer study. You can read the full report here. One of the more juicy statistics that Advertising Age and others noted is that trust in peers surprisingly dropped dramatically from 47% to 27%. Tom Foremski says this is bad for PR: "This is bad news for PR agencies because social media has been the ‘point of the spear’ for so many firms. This is what brings in new business." While he's right that social media has been a big business driver, I respectfully disagree with Tom that this is bad news for the PR…

• Facebook Will Centralize the Social Web

  8 Feb 2010 | 7:31 am

  Michael Arrington laments about about the decentralized nature of social content on TechCrunch today... "The online social landscape today sort of feels to me like search did in 1999. It’s a mess, but we don’t complain much about it because we don’t know there’s a better way. You might be sick of hearing this from me, but strongly believe that Facebook is the next Google. It took me a while to "get religion," but now I have it. Just as Google brought a simple way to search the web, my observation is that Facebook is poised to do the same for organizing and -…

• Facebook Could Eat the Web

  4 Feb 2010 | 11:54 am

  Photo credit: mastermaq Like almost everyone else on the planet, it seems, I am spending more time on Facebook than any other site. The lone exception is Google. The reason I know this is that Safari, my browser, lists Facebook as my most visited site when I access its top sites feature. In addition to using Facebook to check in on what my family, friends and colleagues are up to, I have been using it as a newsreader for months. The screenshot below is my reader. This is something that the company suggested everyone do here. Although I suspect that most users haven't taken the steps…

• Go Big, Get Your Employees on the Bus or Go Home

  3 Feb 2010 | 9:10 am

  The following is also my column in next week's issue of Advertising Age. Go Big, Get Your Employees on the Bus or Go Home Photo credit: Traffic by scottpowerz The single biggest challenge that marketers face over the next ten years is attention scarcity. Bank on it. According to Andreas Weigland, Amazon.com's former chief scientist, more data was generated by individuals in 2009 than in the entire history of mankind. Human attention, however, is finite - and arguably, it shrinks as we age.  The end result is downright ugly. It's like 25 lanes of traffic trying to squeeze through two…

• 
  Meryl's Notes at meryl.net

• Guest Post: The Supplies You Need to Build a Writer’s Platform

  Meryl

  9 Feb 2010 | 9:40 am

  Welcome to meryl’s notes blog (this here place you’re lookin’ at) in Plano, Texas. We’re honored to be a stop in Laura Cross’ WOW! Women On Writing Blog tour. We’re giving away a prize. Read on to see what you can win. About Laura Cross: She is an author, screenwriter, ghostwriter, freelance book editor, and writing coach specializing in nonfiction books and script adaptation (book-to-film projects). She writes two popular blogs, www.NonfictionInk.com and www.AboutAScreenplay.com, and teaches online writing workshops. Her latest book is The Complete Guide…

• Top 25 Books for Writers and Writing-related Topics

  Meryl

  8 Feb 2010 | 6:39 am

  Thank you to all that nominated and voted for the top 25 books for writers on writing. The list is in order beginning with the book that received the most votes. It’s a great list as I’ve read or heard great things about many of the books. The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B.White: “Though I’ve read two other great books on writing, this one really got me rolling down my writing journey, so it stands out in my mind. I also give it points for being so concise and as a result not very intimidating. For those starting out on their writing path, this is a…

• Links: Happy Birthday, Dad 2010 Edition

  Meryl

  5 Feb 2010 | 6:01 am

  Al Kaplan, 1953 My dad passed away two years ago. Today would have been his 79th birthday. Nominate a favorite social media book. If you receive this post by email, please tell me what’s the best time of the day you’d like to receive these. It used  to go out in the mornings, but I felt overwhelmed by emails in the morning and thought late afternoon / early evening would be better. It doesn’t mean that’s the best time for you. Just reply and let me know. Thank you for reading! Brain food… How to Read a Non-fiction Book: If you want more — The Little Book…

• Game du Jour Discounts for Week of 7 February 2010

  Meryl

  5 Feb 2010 | 4:39 am

  The following games will be discounted next week on Game du Jour, the first ‘one-deal-a-day’ website dedicated to indie and casual games: Mon. February 8th: 65% off on Vacation Mogul Tue. February 9th: 60% off on L!ght Deluxe Wed. February 10th: 60% off on Architect: Episode 1 Thu. February 11th: 50% off on Strange Cases: The Tarot Card Mystery Fri. February 12th: 50% off on Habitat Rescue: Lion’s Pride Sat. February 13th: 60% off on King’s Smith Sun. February 14th: 60% off on Angela Young 2: Escape the Dreamscape

• What I Learned from My Children: Simplicity

  Meryl

  4 Feb 2010 | 6:14 am

  Image via Wikipedia The day before a state-wide math assessment test, my husband humorously asked our oldest who took algebra at the time, “Do you remember how to add, subtract, multiply and divide?” “I don’t know. When I do a math problem now… if the answer is simple, I think it’s wrong because it has to be more complicated than that,” she said. That’s how many adults think. We never believe the obvious and forget that it’s possible for the answer to be a simple one. Simplicity in Writing A former client contacted me about a new web…

• 
  Chris Brogan

• Earn Your GED- Find Success Tomorrow

  chrisbrogan

  9 Feb 2010 | 1:30 am

  No, not your General Equivalent Degree. The GED to which I refer is “guest experience design.” What the heck am I talking about? I’ll tell you. Old words: customer service. New words: guest experience. Disney, where I am this week, has a concept called a Moment of Truth. A moment of truth is “any time a guest comes into contact with any aspect of a business, however remote, is an opportunity to form an impression.” Note that it’s “an impression.” It can be good; it can be bad. Why “guest?” Because guest is much more hospitable than…

• Pursue the Goal Not the Method

  chrisbrogan

  8 Feb 2010 | 1:30 am

  In the back of a town car hired to take me to the Kansas City International airport, talking to Jeff, a driver with two kids, self-proclaimed ADD, and a history of quitting rote sales jobs every few months, I realized something of importance to the story of what’s brought me to this place: I am a seeker of the goal, not the method. Now, to unpack. The Method Is What We’re Taught to Pursue We learn our times tables. We learn the 50 states (in the US, at least). We are taught all these rules, these patterns, these systems, these methods. Musicians learn their scales. Painters copy…

• Your Blog From the Prospect’s Point of View

  chrisbrogan

  7 Feb 2010 | 7:34 am

  When you use your blog to complain or report sideways about the industry at large, what message is that sending to your potential new clients? If you’re spending your time analyzing what other people in your space are doing, citing why they’re wrong, and providing your commentary about all the things they’re doing, what does your next potential customer come away thinking? Is your negative commentary helping them make a buying decision? I’ve rarely seen the tactic work in traditional advertising. You can graze them a little bit. For instance, I’m a bit fond of…

• Just Lucky I Guess – Kitchen Table Talks

  chrisbrogan

  6 Feb 2010 | 1:46 pm

  In this Kitchen Table Talks video, I just want to address all the nice folks who call me lucky, or who think I’m just sitting around being handed my lot in life. Can’t see the video? Click here. Direct link to the video “Lucky” is absolutely what I am. Here’s what I do to earn my luck: Write a blog post or two a day. Write a newsletter every week. Comment and connect with others daily. Answer and send hundreds of emails daily. Read voraciously. Work with the best clients I can find. Reach into new markets weekly. Travel extensively. Seems lucky to me. People…

• Some Of The Third Tribe Conversations

  chrisbrogan

  6 Feb 2010 | 1:02 pm

  I’m really enjoying participating in the forums at the Third Tribe site. I was just adding my two cents to a handful of forum postings, and thought that I’d show you what some of the topics we’re talking about are, so you’d have a sense of what’s going on. We don’t really share the contents, because the people participating there like having the chance to speak openly/candidly about their marketing challenges, but I don’t see the harm in sharing a few of the topic titles. Here they are: Favorite copywriting and marketing books? Third Tribe Blogroll? 2…

• 
  Seth's Blog

• TEDthink

  Seth Godin

  9 Feb 2010 | 3:00 am

  Can you factor this? If you're like most people, you get a little queasy at the thought. And when you were in tenth grade, you surely wondered why they were bothering you.(the answer is (x-2) times (x-2), in case you were curious.)It turns out that the real reason you needed to do this work was to be able to play with numbers in your head. Abstract numerical thought is an important skill among educated people.Which brings us to TED, a conference held every year in Long Beach. It's going on right now. Watch a few TED videos and try to get ahead of the speaker. They have an idea...it's probably…

• Frightened, clueless or uninformed?

  Seth Godin

  8 Feb 2010 | 2:57 am

  In the face of significant change and opportunity, people are often one of the three. If you're going to be of assistance, it helps to know which one.Uninformed people need information and insight in order to figure out what to do next. They are approaching the problem with optimism and calm, but they need to be taught. Uninformed is not a pejorative term, it's a temporary state.Clueless people don't know what to do and they don't know that they don't know what to do. They don't know the right questions to ask. Giving them instructions is insufficient. First, they need to be sold on what the…

• The least I could do

  Seth Godin

  7 Feb 2010 | 3:35 am

  One way to think about running a successful business is to figure out what the least you can do is, and do that. That's actually what they spent most of my time at business school teaching me.No sense putting more on that pizza, sending more staff to that event, answering the phone in fewer rings... what's the point? No sense being kind, looking people in the eye, being open or welcoming or grateful. Doing the least acceptable amount is the way to maximize short term profit.Of course, there's a different strategy, a crazy alternative that seems to work: do the most you can do instead of the…

• iPad app of my dreams: the digital talking pad

  Seth Godin

  6 Feb 2010 | 8:10 am

  Here's the spec. If you build it and it's great, I'll use it and I'll blog it.A while ago, I posted about the talking pad and a modern version of it.I think there's a killer app version of this for the iPad, and I hope someone will build it. The talking pad is an interactive presentation tool for smart people.OverviewIt's a very simple concept: a collection of pages (slides, images, type, let's call them pages) that are easy to navigate in a non-linear way. Along with the standard zoom features, I'd like to be able to write on any of them in real time using my finger. I can also call up, on…

• The relentless search for "tell me what to do"

  Seth Godin

  6 Feb 2010 | 2:26 am

  If you've ever hired or managed or taught, you know the feeling.People are just begging to be told what to do. There are a lot of reasons for this, but I think the biggest one is: "If you tell me what to do, the responsibility for the outcome is yours, not mine. I'm safe."When asked, resist.

• 
  ReadWriteWeb

• How Google Buzz is Disruptive: Open Data Standards

  9 Feb 2010 | 11:31 am

  Google rolled out a social stream service today called Buzz. It looks on the surface like Facebook, FriendFeed and other stream reading and writing services. It will compete with Facebook and Twitter. Under the covers, though, this major product was built by a team of people taking a radical new approach to online publishing: Buzz is all about open, standardized user data. Google Buzz data can be syndicated out to other services using the standard data formats called Atom, Activity Streams, MediaRSS and PubSubHubbub. That couldn't be more different from Facebook. Google has taken open data…

• Mobile Health: Will Network Applications Help Us Get Healthy?

  9 Feb 2010 | 11:30 am

  Last week, we were at the mHealth initiative conference in Washington D.C. The keynotes were all about the impact mobile health applications are having in shaping the future of the health care system. Nothing demonstrates that more than the iPhone. In the 18 months since it was released, it has been perhaps the biggest thing to happen to health care electronic records, which has seen billions of dollars worth of investment in past decades. Mobile and wireless health applications directly impact the individual's health and have the promise of ensuring that when a patient leaves a doctor visit,…

• Foursquare Partners with Zagat, New York Times

  9 Feb 2010 | 11:17 am

  Foursquare has come out strong in recent weeks with partnership deals that look to put it at the top of the location-based app game. Last week, it announced a partnership with Bravo, the style and fashion-centric television network, and today it has come out with a partnership with Zagat, the restaurant guide, and the New York Times. As we wrote last week, Foursquare is competing in an increasingly crowded space, and these partnerships may help it attract a whole new audience and remain competitive against other services, like Yelp, just joining in the location-based arena. Sponsor According…

• Live Blogging from Google: Launch of Google Buzz

  9 Feb 2010 | 11:11 am

  This morning, Google is announcing some exciting new features for two of its most popular applications. Team Red, as we affectionately call ourselves, is present at the Googleplex in Mountain View, and we'll be live blogging the event, giving you, dear reader, a fascinating play-by-play. Stay tuned for updates! The event will begin at 10 a.m. Pacific time. Just refresh this post to see new content as events unfold. Additional on-the-fly research and images from RWW journalist Frederic Lardinois. Sponsor 11:11: The event is over! Time to chase people down and ask some more pointed questions.

• Europe's 17 Golden Rules for Keeping Safe on Social Networks

  9 Feb 2010 | 11:05 am

  Are you using your real name on your social network profiles? According to the European Union's Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA), that's a big mistake. A new report, published to coincide with Europe's Safer Internet Day, details the dangers of using social networks and lays out 17 "golden rules" for keeping safe on social networks. The report's authors are especially worried about the proliferation of mobile social networks and, among other things, recommend that users turn off all location-based services whenever they are not absolutely needed. Sponsor The report argues that…

• 
  dy/dan

• What Can You Do With This: Will It Hit The Corner?

  Dan Meyer

  9 Feb 2010 | 6:02 am

  Click through to view embedded content. So here's one where no one gets any credit for guessing the question. The question is obvious. The question is scattered throughout this entire clip (from the fourth season of The Office). I made the question explicit in the post title. Will the DVD icon ever ricochet into a corner? But what are the supplementary materials? How do you make this experience real to your students? What do they have in front of them? How are they getting their hands dirty with the math? It doesn't matter if you don't know how to make the supplementary materials. Just name…

• Two Excellent Entries For The WCYDWT Course Catalog

  Dan Meyer

  9 Feb 2010 | 6:01 am

  Kate Nowak: Here’s what basically has to happen to make a successful WCYDWT lesson: Lighting strikes (you observe something). You recognize that lightning has struck (you say “holy *&^%”). You investigate by building layers of abstraction on your observation. You realize that that particular abstraction fits in your curriculum. You strip away all those layers to a core question interesting to a 15 year old, who (I’m sorry and draw whatever conclusions you will about me or my school system) are the least interested people on the planet. You rebuild the abstraction in a way that…

• The Weak WCYDWT Brand

  Dan Meyer

  7 Feb 2010 | 4:32 pm

  Let me be clear, first, that Nikki Graziano's Found Functions are beautiful, subtle invocations of math and nature. They make me happy. But two people have forwarded Graziano's work my way in the last 12 hours under the heading "WCYDWT?" so I'd like to point out, for whatever it's worth, that this is significantly narrower in scope than what I've been proposing for the last few years. The same goes for most tweets tagged #WCYDWT, which typically link to: a picture of a mathematical shape. an article that deploys mathematical analysis. Meanwhile, I am trying to: recreate mathematical reasoning…

• In Defense Of Busy Work

  Dan Meyer

  4 Feb 2010 | 8:30 pm

  Yesterday's opener question: Count the circles. Several students tallied the left half of the pyramid, doubled it, and then added the middle column. One student not only counted the circles one-by-freaking-one but kept a current tally inside each circle. There are 324. He was somewhere in the low hundreds when I drew his attention to the numbers at the end of each row: 1, 4, 9, 16 …. "What do you notice? How can we use that to save ourselves time?" The tedium of busy work can motivate student invention.

• Two Minutes On Teacher Education

  Dan Meyer

  4 Feb 2010 | 8:22 pm

  In advance of their EduCon presentation, Dean Shareski and Alec Couros put out the call for brief interviews on teacher education, addressing these two questions: What are your general views on the status of teacher education in preparing teachers, especially in regards to innovative teaching? What positives, negatives, or general views can you share? Please do pull in your own experiences if applicable. What is the ideal role of teacher education in developing teachers who are media literate and technologically savvy? For whatever reason, they decided to bury the submissions at the bottom of…

• 
  Drape's Takes

• Missing the Roadmap

  Darren Draper

  22 Jan 2010 | 5:56 pm

  George Siemens:Anytime someone provides a list of steps to achieve complex tasks, my reaction is to turn and run. Lists are generally only useful for the people who make them. Situations and contexts change rapidly. What works now in one organization will likely not work in the future in another organization. But, complexity, ambiguity, and uncertainty are difficult to manage. So we turn to little techniques and ploys that provide us with a pseudo-sense of what’s really happening. Consider this article: The 10 Stages of Social Media Integration in Business. This is exactly how not to…

• Not If I Can Help It

  Darren Draper

  13 Jan 2010 | 6:04 am

  An interesting piece of interestingness was put out there a few weeks ago by Dean Shareski and John Pederson.While I love the first sentence and the possibilities that it brings, here's my reaction to the second:Not if I can help it.When I think about the kinds of things students need to prepare for college success, I think of those traits possessed by the autodidacts of today: persistence, drive, and easy access to numerous avenues of learning.What are you doing to help "schools" notice that some of the most powerful avenues of learning today are only a click away?

• What is the Purpose of IT?

  Darren Draper

  12 Jan 2010 | 6:04 am

  An important question has been posed by our district’s Superintendent that has heavily occupied my thoughts over the last few days. My initial take follows (complete with an ample supply of cutting-edge, 21st Century, digital-age buzz).What is the purpose of IT in preparing students for college success?To assist all educators in the task of teaching students to learn how to learn.To assist all educators in the task of teaching students to effectively function in the same kinds of technologically rich learning environments found on and around college campuses.To provide access to knowledge…

• Practical Theory

  Darren Draper

  4 Jan 2010 | 8:36 pm

  Chris Lehmann, in Principal Leadership magazine:Those of us who work in education talk a lot about student engagement, but I don’t think that goes far enough. Engagement is certainly better than boredom, but schools should set the bar for themselves is much higher. What schools should strive for is student empowerment.My questions:Once students are empowered, what need will they have for their teachers?If students (think they) no longer have a need for their teachers, what do they then do in school?What if students learn empowerment in Elementary school?My answers:There are more skills to…

• Open

  Darren Draper

  2 Jan 2010 | 9:28 pm

  More from where I sit on the open education debate, kind of hodge-podged together in a sorry-so-sloppy kind of way. All in all great stuff in the open education discourse, but I think it's telling how few practitioners engage in this dialogue, particularly in the K-12 arena. Until more idealists make it clearer how better an open education system can be than what tradition has spent years developing, then very few in the trenches will ever jump to embrace any seat, regardless of the table.That's just the way it is.Kicking it off...Dave Cormier:“What do you mean by open?” has become the…

• 
  Fred Wilson

• Twilio

  Fred

  9 Feb 2010 | 7:52 am

  While everyone was on the holiday break at the end of last year, Twilio wrote a blog post that very few people noticed. They announced that our firm, Union Square Ventures, had become an investor in Twilio. Twilio is not a services for the masses. Yet. It's a service that web developers can use to build telephony apps or build telephony into their app. This image on Twilio's home page says it all. In the "Areas of Interest" post that I wrote at the start of the year, I wrote: Developers are the new power users. If you cater to them, you can build a large user base with significant network…

• The Time Value Of Money

  Fred

  9 Feb 2010 | 2:34 am

  It's Monday, time for MBA Mondays.  Last week, I posted about The Present Value Of Future Cash Flows and in the comments Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry wrote: That being said, before even covering NPV, I would have first talked about the time value of money. To me, time value of money is one of the top 3 concepts that blew my mind in business school and that should be common knowledge. When you think about it, all of finance, but also much of business, is underpinned by that. Once you understand time value of money, you understand opportunity costs, you understand sunk costs, you just view the…

• Flash, HTML5, and Mobile Apps

  Fred

  7 Feb 2010 | 6:12 am

  About a year ago, I wrote a post about Apple's "blind spot" for Flash. I took more heat for that post than anything else I've written here other than political posts. It opened my eyes to the fact that Flash vs HTML5 is one of the most politically heated topics in the tech business. The third rail, as it were. The choice of what technology web developers use to produce rich browser based applications is a big deal with a lot of important ramifications for companies, investors, and most importantly users. Jeremy Allaire, creator of ColdFusion and Brightcove, addresses this issue today on…

• Lightweight Advocacy

  Fred

  6 Feb 2010 | 4:18 am

  I was at a board meeting of a non profit this week and the talk turned to "advocacy" and whether or not the non profit should be doing any of that. I had to ask what the definition of advocacy was just to be clear what we were talking about. It's not something I've traditionally been involved in. When I think of advocacy, I think of politics, lobbying, public relations, and a bunch of other "heavyweight" behaviors that I abhor. Wikipedia's definition of advocacy is: Advocacy is the pursuit of influencing outcomes — including public-policy and resource allocation decisions within political,…

• NYC BigApps Winners Announced

  Fred

  5 Feb 2010 | 3:40 am

  I've posted about the NYC BigApps contest a few times here. And you all helped me with my chore of judging all 85 apps. Thank you for that. Last night I walked up The Highline to IAC Headquarters to attend an event where the winners were announced. I also manned the "Investors Bar" where a number of fellow venture and angel investors sat and talked to the entrepreneurs in attendance. Kind of like the genius bar, but the geniuses were on the other side lining up to talk to us. The winners were (cutting and pasting from the NY Times here): WayFinder NYC: An application…

• 
  Teach42

• Top 10 Web 2.0 for Educators – NICE Miniconference

  Steve

  30 Jan 2010 | 8:58 am

  Will be presenting in about 10 minutes at the NICE mini conference here in Illinois. Doing a revamped version of my Top 10 Web 2.0 for Educators. Most radical change is that I don’t have an aggregator in there. Still kinda torn about that. Part of it is that time is limited, but another piece is that I’m not positive that it’s as relevant as it used to be. Considering people are aggregating via their inbox, via iGoogle, via My Yahoo, within the browser and more. There’s so many ways to subscribe, that I’m not positive it’s worth including an aggregator in…

• Haiti 360

  Steve

  25 Jan 2010 | 9:38 am

  Image via Wikipedia With all the news about the disaster in Haiti, one of the more interesting things I’ve seen technologically recently came from there. I’ve seen 360 videos before, going all the way back to Quicktime VR and such. But this absolutely fascinates me. This video was shot on January 18th, and while watching it, you are able to use your mouse to look in any direction, up or down as well. Pretty stunning to say the least. And what an incredible way to provide students a window into the area. Can’t speak for you, but I’d love to see them run this through the…

• What could you do with Augmented Reality?

  Steve

  25 Jan 2010 | 8:05 am

  Image by Eric Rice via Flickr Augmented reality is one of the few technologies that have come out within the last few years that really have the ability to simply drop jaws. Primarily, it’s hung out in the marketing field, and been used in car ads and recently on the cover of Esquire magazine. Home versions include a DIY lightsasber and Addidas has announced plans to include an AR code into several of their upcoming shoes, allowing people to actually use the shoe as a controller for a video game. Seriously. I really couldn’t make that one up. The big question of course is, does…

• Vote for an ISTE Keynote

  Steve

  6 Jan 2010 | 11:45 am

  Image by jochenWolters via Flickr In case you haven’t been keeping up with ISTE’s dive into the crowdsourcing arena, the final voting is now open for the ultimate keynote presentation at this year’s conference. Your choices are: * Chris Lehmann * Alan November * Jeff Piontek * Peter H. Reynolds * Gary Stager I know most of the people on the list, and they’re all worthy choices. You should definitely stop by and cast a vote for your favorite. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what this has boiled down to. The process began with people proposing and voting on topics.

• Would you blog?

  Steve

  5 Jan 2010 | 10:07 am

  Image by Josh Russell via Flickr Like many other bloggers that I consider to be colleagues, my blogging has tapered off quite a bit over the years, and while some of the fault lies in myself, I put most of the blame squarely on Twitter. Why take half an hour to write several paragraphs, hyperlink it up and find an appropriate image, when I can just spout off 140 characters and move on? It just makes sense, right? That’s why I’m rather looking forward to Flutter’s official launch. I jest, but it does bring out an obvious reason why blogging is becoming less and less of a…

• 
  Free Technology for Teachers

• Glogster Announces Changes to Edu Accounts

  9 Feb 2010 | 8:05 am

  Popular multimedia collage service Glogster has recently announced some changes to their free education accounts. Currently, the free version of Glogster Edu gives teachers the ability to create and manage up to 200 student accounts. Starting on March 1, 2010 Glogster will limit the free edu accounts to 100 student accounts. However, if you sign up by February 28, 2010 you can still get the version that gives you the ability to create and manage 200 student accounts. So if you've been considering using Glogster in your classroom, sign up now for a free account. If you're not familiar with…

• Wikipedia in the Classroom, David Warlick's Comments

  9 Feb 2010 | 3:08 am

  Yesterday, I published a post titled Textbooks, Wikipedia, and Primary Source Research. That post generated some responses that somewhat surprised me. A few readers told me that their schools either block Wikipedia or have policies that don't allow students to use Wikipedia. These comments and emails reminded me of a video of a David Warlick presentation from late 2008. In the video (embedded below) around the 45 minute mark, David was taking questions from the audience and one of the audience members asked about Wikipedia. The audience member brought up all of the common complaints about…

• Physics 4 Kids

  8 Feb 2010 | 5:54 pm

  Rader has been producing useful self-study lessons and quizzes for kids for quite a while. Many readers have probably seen this Rader before, but it's worthwhile to post for the benefit of those who aren't familiar with Rader's offerings. Physics 4 Kids is one five collections of science resources for kids produced by Rader.Rader's Physics 4 Kids is part of a series of Rader's 4 Kids lessons about science. Physics 4 Kids takes students on tours of different sub-topics of physics. After each stop on the tour there is a quiz that students can take to test their understanding of each topic.

• Study Guides for Black History Month

  8 Feb 2010 | 5:40 pm

  Shmoop, a study-guide provider that I've mentioned in a few other posts, recently published a list of 47 study guides for Black History Month. If you're still looking for resources for Black History Month, Shmoop's list is a good place to look. In addition to guides for English and history you will find resources for teaching with music.

• Five Good Places to Find Math Tutorial Videos

  8 Feb 2010 | 2:44 pm

  When I was a middle school and high school student, mathematics was the one subject for which I had to have visual demonstrations in order to comprehend its concepts. Unfortunately for me, when I was in high school I couldn't just jump on the Internet to find mathematics tutorial videos as today's students can. The following are five places that students can find free mathematics tutorial videos. Math A Tube is a compilation of videos from a variety of users and other websites. Videos are categorized by mathematics topics and sub-topics. The videos demonstrate everything from basic addition…

• 
  Teaching That Sticks

• Black History Interactive

  7 Feb 2010 | 2:46 pm

  History.com has a terrific interactive site featuring Black History Milestones (this link takes you to the page on Jackie Robinson breaking baseball's color barrier). Perfect if you're looking for a reliable yet accessible starting point for Black History Month! You'll especially appreciate the slider which allows you to move from early events such as the introduction of slavery in the Americas to more recent events including the election of President Obama. The site includes archival images and video to supplement the article accompanying each milestone. Additional resources…

• Using Edmodo in the Classroom: Five Days Later

  5 Feb 2010 | 6:47 pm

  I recently posted about Edmodo, comparing it to Ning for kids. The fact is, it looks and acts more like a Facebook/Twitter hybrid, but the fact that students can choose to post and interact in groups gives it a Ning feel as well.Before I tell you how it went, here are the guidelines I provided to students via our class newsletter:Do not reveal any personal information on Edmodo. No telephone numbers, addresses, or other students’ names. To check someone’s username, click on their class group (schoch12, schoch56, etc.).Do not post photos or videos showing yourself or…

• Upcoming Workshops

  3 Feb 2010 | 4:44 am

  If you're in Central New Jersey in late February with absolutely nothing to do, you might consider joining me for my How to Teach a Novel Workshop.This free workshop, sponsored by New Jersey ASCD, will be held from 4:00 to 5:30 at Bedminster School in Bedminster, NJ. More details are available via this brochure.In addition to being free, the event will include refreshments and door prizes, plus credit hours to those who need them. Come join us for a great time!Note: Donut pictured here is for illustrative purposes only. Your refreshment experience may vary.ALL WORKSHOPS:Most recently I…

• Edmodo: Ning for Kids!

  30 Jan 2010 | 12:26 pm

  While I personally love Nings (I belong to sixteen Nings and counting) and would enjoy for my students to be able to dialogue in such an environment, the fact is this: students under the age of 13 are expressly forbidden by the Ning Terms of Service (and federal law!) to participate in such a forum.So I spent a good deal of time searching around the web and experimenting with other sites, The best one I found for the purpose of classroom social networking is a site I knew about all along: Edmodo. About a year ago Mashable called Edmodo "Twitter for Education," but with the release of Edmodo…

• Rethink Scholarship

  29 Jan 2010 | 8:05 pm

  Very cool. Practice what you preach.Rethink Scholarship at Langara 2010 Call for Entries from Rory O'Sullivan and Simon Bruyn on Vimeo.

• 
  Brand Autopsy

• Fit to Flexible (the skinny edition)

  johnmoore (from Brand Autopsy)

  8 Feb 2010 | 4:41 pm

  Todd Sattersten has written a smart ebook, FIT TO FLEXIBLE, about pricing strategy. He blends together research from economists, theories from businesses strategists, and writings from journalists to concisely share four lessons on how businesses have more flexibility in pricing than ever before. FIXED TO FLEXIBLE is good lunchtime read. (Gotta love it when you can digest thought-provoking business knowledge in the time it takes to eat a turkey sandwich.) Not sure its possible to condense Todd’s message further. I like a challenge... so here’s my attempt to share the gist of FIXED TO…

• Tough Love For Starbucks

  johnmoore (from Brand Autopsy)

  26 Jan 2010 | 2:16 pm

  It’s been almost two years since Starbucks jumped into the deep waters of social media with their MyStarbucksIdea.com program. This is a website where customers submit and discuss ideas on ways Starbucks can improve its business. Over 80,000 ideas have been submitted and late last year, Starbucks informed us over 50 ideas from customers have been implemented. Cool. Sounds great. Sounds impactful. But wait, let’s take a closer look at these customer-driven ideas Starbucks has "implemented." Of the 53 ideas Starbucks has "implemented," my closer look reveals only a handful of ideas, SIX to…

• LINCHPIN | a dramatic reading

  johnmoore (from Brand Autopsy)

  26 Jan 2010 | 3:16 am

  Experience Seth Godin’s newest book, LINCHPIN: Are You Indispensable, like you never thought possible ... thanks to this dramatic reading by the sultry “Miss Betty.” [NOTE: The Video Blog Association of America has given this video a rating of PG-13, some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.] >> DIRECT LINK to VIDEO [NOTE: I received a free, uncorrected proof copy of LINCHPIN. However, I will spend my money to buy the hardback version.]

• PRICELESS | in less than 300 words

  johnmoore (from Brand Autopsy)

  11 Jan 2010 | 11:40 am

  Next up on the “Less Than 300” project is William Poundstone’s PRICELESS. (Truth be told, ain’t no way PRICELESS can be fully summarized in less than 300 words. No way. But, I’m giving it a shot.) PRICELESS | summarized in less than 300 words PRICELESS is an advanced studies book on pricing practices, perfect for MBA students, product marketers, and entrepreneurs. The author, William Poundstone, draws from studies by renowned economists to dive deep into the psychophysics of money to explain how the “mundane act of naming a price ... turns out to be a surprisingly tricky…

• Less Than 300 Project | TRADE-OFF

  johnmoore (from Brand Autopsy)

  8 Jan 2010 | 2:21 pm

  Business books have been a mainstay topic on the Brand Autopsy blog. We’ve done straight-up reviews, shared summaries, and done inane dramatic readings. This year, I plan to share concise summaries of most every business book I read. Concise as in... less than 300 words. We kick off the Less Than 300 Project with Kevin Maney’s worthwhile book, TRADE-OFF: Why Some Things Catch On, and Others Don’t. TRADE-OFF | summarized in less than 300 words It’s common knowledge consumers make conscious decisions to trade up with some purchases and trade down with other purchases. Kevin Maney…

• 
  PR, Social Media, and Marketing Mentor ?

• An Unrelenting Passion to Make the World Better

  Today is Beth Kanter's 53rd birthday. I have met Beth in person several times and have always (not so secretly) wanted to work with her on a project. She is a complete inspiration, one of my heroes, a person whose excitement and enthusiasm for using social tools to help a ...

• Client Sutter Medical Center Castro Valley’s Social Media Program Wins a 2009 SNCR Award for Excellence in New Communications

  An animated fly-over video of what the new Sutter Medical Center Castro Valley hospital will look like when completed in 2013. Produced by The Devenney Group, the architecture firm for the new hospital. Posted also by Cassandra Clark, Project Communications Director, on the Sutter Medical Center Castro Valley blog site. Sutter Medical ...

• Society for New Communications Research Honors Award Winners for Innovation and Success in Their Use of New Media

  For Immediate Release Society for New Communications Research Honors Award Winners for Innovation and Success in their Use of New Media Winning Social Media and New Communications Case Studies Published by SNCR San Jose, California, U.S.A. — November 12, 2009 — The Society for New Communications Research (SNCR), a global nonprofit research ...

• Society for New Communications Research Issues Call for 2010 Fellows

  For Immediate Release Society for New Communications Research Issues Call for 2010 Fellows November 11, 2009 — San Jose, California, U.S.A. — The Society for New Communications Research, (SNCR), a global nonprofit 501(c)3 research and education foundation and think tank dedicated to exploring the latest developments in new media and communications and ...

• 2009 SNCR Excellence in New Communications Awards Submission Deadline Extended to Thursday, September 10th

  Each year, the Society for New Communications Research presents the prestigious SNCR Excellence in New Communications Awards. The deadline for application submissions for this year's awards has been extended from September 7th to Thursday, September 10, 2009, to allow applicants who are away for Labor Day Weekend to finish and ...

• 
  The Blog Council

• Social media case study from Yann Gourvennec of Orange Business Services

  SMBC Staff

  9 Feb 2010 | 7:35 am

  Come to BlogWell: How Big Brands Use Social Media on February 16 in San Diego to hear Starbucks, Clorox, Intuit, Avery Dennison, USAA, Community Medical Centers, State Farm Insurance, and the U.S. Navy share case studies in corporate social media. You’ll learn how to get started, get past roadblocks, and make your social media program phenomenal — in one afternoon, for just $250. You’ll get practical, how-to advice on creating great content, getting management buy-in, educating employees, keeping lawyers and regulators happy, simple and ethical disclosure, and engaging fans.

• Social media case study from Valeria Maltoni of SunGard

  SMBC Staff

  8 Feb 2010 | 7:35 am

  Come to BlogWell: How Big Brands Use Social Media on February 16 in San Diego to hear Starbucks, Clorox, Intuit, Avery Dennison, USAA, Community Medical Centers, State Farm Insurance, and the U.S. Navy share case studies in corporate social media. You’ll learn how to get started, get past roadblocks, and make your social media program phenomenal — in one afternoon, for just $250. You’ll get practical, how-to advice on creating great content, getting management buy-in, educating employees, keeping lawyers and regulators happy, simple and ethical disclosure, and engaging fans.

• Welcome to the newest members of the SMBC: Scripps Travel Channel, AstraZeneca, and TD Bank Financial Group!

  SMBC Staff

  5 Feb 2010 | 1:00 pm

  We’d like to publicly welcome our newest members of the Social Media Business Council: Scripps Travel Channel AstraZeneca TD Bank Financial Group They’re joining the likes of Dell, Walmart, Nokia, SAP, GM and Coke – and more than 90 other fantastic, global brands – as members of the Social Media Business Council collaborating every day on how to create successful, scalable, and sustainable social media programs at large organizations. If you’re leading social media at a major enterprise, we’d love to have you join our family. Click here to learn more. Share:

• Upcoming SMBC events

  SMBC Staff

  5 Feb 2010 | 7:35 am

  2/9 ConAgra Foods: Embracing a social media culture (Private member call) Click here 2/16 BlogWell San Diego: Starbucks, Clorox, USAA, TurboTax, Avery Dennison, Community Medical Centers, State Farm Insurance, and the U.S. Navy share case studies on corporate social media. You’ll learn how to get started, get past roadblocks, and make your social media program phenomenal. (Public event) Click here 2/19 SMBC: Building social media to scale (Private member call) Click here 2/26 Microsoft: Learning (and playing) with Ribbon Hero (Private member call) Click here Share:

• Research: Overall social media engagement up 30% while on-site engagement down 50%

  SMBC Staff

  4 Feb 2010 | 8:20 am

  In a recent study by PostRank, Measuring Engagement of the Social Web: ‘07-’09, research shows that while year-over-year on-site engagement (like post comments) are down 50%, overall engagement is actually up 30%. Other findings from the study: Off-site channels have dramatically increased in contributions to overall engagement, increasing from 1% in 2007 to nearly 30% in 2009 Trackback contribution to total engagement is down from 19% in 2007 to 3% in 2009 Facebook and Twitter are increasing the lifespan of stories as they continue to improve information discovery Read the full…

• 
  The Thinking Stick

• Learning 2.010 Conference: Where do we go from here?

  Jeff Utecht

  3 Feb 2010 | 6:07 am

  For the 3rd year David Gran has created the logo for the conference. This year taking inspiration from the World Expo which will be happening during the conference in Shanghai. In a world where content is continually changing, and you can learn almost anything for free, what’s the point of going to a conference? This is the question we started with in designing your Learning 2.010 Conference experience. The content is free and easy. If you want to learn how to use Facebook in your classroom, a simple search on Google will bring you back many hits on how teachers are finding ways of…

• You mean the teacher still matters?

  Jeff Utecht

  2 Feb 2010 | 7:13 am

  Four great articles have come to light lately that point to research being done and what many of us in the Ed Tech community have been saying for a long time might just be on the horizon. That is that this technology stuff can improve education. So let’s start at Mashable one of my favorite Web 2.0 blogs to read. Back in August they posted a fantastic article titled What is the Future of Teaching? Until recently, online learning has mainly been of the expository sort, essentially a traditional lecture format adapted for the web. But newer, social and multimedia technologies are allowing…

• The iPad: Not the Right Product for Education

  Jeff Utecht

  29 Jan 2010 | 2:08 am

  I’ve been reflecting the last couple days on Apple’s new iPad. The product that, before it’s announcement, some had claim would revolutionize education. If it does…..it will be a shock to me. I have nothing against Apple (I’m typing on a MacBook that I love), I just think this piece of hardware is not what we need in education. I had high hopes for this new piece of technology. Enough to stay up until 3am on a school night to watch the live announcement. Throughout the keynote, I was waiting to be wowed by something new, something different, something that would…

• Help a Newbie get to ISTE10

  Jeff Utecht

  27 Jan 2010 | 8:23 am

  Beth Still grabbed me at NECC in Washington D.C. this summer and introduced me to Richard Byrne who was attending his first NECC conference. We had a nice chat and Beth reminded me that Richard was here because of her Newbie Project. She told me then and there she’d be hitting me up to spread the word when the new newbie was chosen. This year Beth is sponsoring Jason Schrage, as she tries to help bring another person to ISTE10 this year in Denver. Beth writes about Jason: Jason is an 8th grade social studies teacher in upstate New York. He is not afraid to try different tools and…

• Active vs Inactive Screen Time

  Jeff Utecht

  25 Jan 2010 | 4:59 am

  A New York Times article was released this week. How did I find it? Our 23 year old Kindergarten teacher forwarded it to me from her iPhone. She only has the “essential apps” on her new iPhone….Facebook and the NYTimes. I’ve read the article a couple of times now and have rewritten this blog post no less than 3 as I try to make sense of what this means for kids today. The average young American now spends practically every waking minute — except for the time in school — using a smart phone, computer, television or other electronic device, according to a new study…

• 
  StickyFigure

• Holistic Common Sense and Social Networking

  Steve Woodruff

  3 Feb 2010 | 1:52 pm

  I enjoyed reading my friend Amber Naslund’s post recently entitled The Taboo (but critical) Community Skill. Essentially, what Amber says is that we should not neglect the importance of selling skills – after all, all of this community engagement needs to lead us to some kind of business outcome. As Amber put it: When we talk about community or social media people in business roles, we talk about a lot of things. Their ability to communicate, to interact. To be helpful. To be a diplomat and a conversationalist and a steward of the brand. But because it’s so often a taboo subject…

• The Voice behind the Avatar

  Steve Woodruff

  2 Feb 2010 | 7:51 am

  I recently had the privilege of being interviewed by Matthew Ray Scott for his Marketing Story Podcast series. Matthew is an excellent interviewer. I, however, have ordered a new USB microphone/headset after listening to the audio. My current setup is not totally up to par (ooops!). Much of the interview focuses on small business use of social media. However, somewhat unexpectedly, I kinda spilled the beans on some of my long-term dreams, and my growing vision about how I want to see us use social networking in order to fundamentally change how we approach business. So – what’s…

• Fun for Some, and Some for Fun

  Steve Woodruff

  29 Jan 2010 | 5:49 am

  In the Harvard Business Review this week, Grant McCracken takes on the concept of “forced fun” in a corporation, using the way Zappo’s treats visitors as an example. Here’s an extract of Mr. McCracken’s post: Visitors touring the Zappos headquarters in Las Vegas are greeted noisily. Staffers blow horns and ring cowbells to bid them welcome. This sort of thing puts my teeth on edge. Call me a grinch. Call me a humorless, life-hating, stick in the mud, but commandeering personal emotions in the interest of forced conviviality seems to me wrong. I believe emotions…

• Steve Jobs to Unveil Apple’s new iPants

  Steve Woodruff

  27 Jan 2010 | 5:15 am

  All the hullabaloo about a new tablet has been a carefully orchestrated hoax, according to a source inside Apple who leaked plans for the elaborate announcement of a brand new platform from the stylish technology company – iPants. Reportedly, Steve Jobs was behind an elaborately planned launch that included a 7-figure payoff to American Idol to feature General Larry Platt singing what will be the theme song for the new product, “Pants on the Ground.” This YouTube meme went viral just before the big Apple unveiling in order to generate awareness of a major cultural problem in…

• The Twitter Help Desk

  Steve Woodruff

  26 Jan 2010 | 4:03 am

  I have the best Help Desk in the world. It’s called my network of smart people on Twitter. Just yesterday, one of my partners (my biz model is operating as the eHarmony of pharma training and e-marketing – matching up my business partners with client needs) asked me about a need they have to control distribution of .pdf files. How to limit the viewing/copying of files to a set number of licenses? I was clueless, but I turned to my network on Twitter. In short order, four responses (so far) came back: Jay Bryant linked to FileOpen, and suggested a Google search on “acrobat…

• 
  Visual Business Intelligence

• 2010 Visual Business Intelligence Workshop Schedule

  Bryan Pierce

  22 Jan 2010 | 8:54 am

  In 2010, Stephen will teach a total of seven of his Visual Business Intelligence Workshops on four continents. Here is Stephen’s public workshop schedule for 2010: Sydney, Australia: February 9-11  (sold out) and February 15-17 São Paulo, Brazil: March 30-April 1 (registration will open soon) Austin, Texas: April 20-22 Rome, Italy: April 28-30 Boston, Massachusetts: June 8-10 London, United Kingdom: June 22-24 San Francisco, California: September 28-30 In addition to these seven public workshops, there is also the possibility that Stephen will teach one in New Zealand near the end of…

• Assessing the Effectiveness of a New Dashboard’s Design

  Stephen Few

  20 Jan 2010 | 4:25 pm

  Even a brilliantly designed dashboard can be met with disapproval by those who will use it if we’re not careful to introduce it in a way that encourages them to focus on what matters. Designs that are effective for monitoring information are quite different from the designs that are usually featured by software vendors and thus emulated by those who use their products. As a result, what people expect of a dashboard’s design is often quite different from what they actually need. I’ve been asked on several occasions to provide guidelines for dashboard designers to use when…

• Sensemaking in a World of Shadows

  Stephen Few

  14 Jan 2010 | 3:47 pm

  Despite the importance of analytical methods, at times data sensemaking leads to better decisions when we go with our guts. During the last few years enough books to fill a small library have been written about the importance of reflective, analytical thinking, alerting us to errors of less evolved thinking that we so easily slip into. I welcomed these books, read several, and even reviewed a few, but their popularity threatens to tip the balance too far in favor of analytical thinking. A yin and yang balance should exist between the reflective, rational techniques of analysis and the…

• Questions to Ask About Vendors When Evaluating Their Products

  Stephen Few

  7 Jan 2010 | 9:40 am

  Good products are usually developed by good companies. It would be difficult for a bad company—one that is poorly run—to develop a good product. When we evaluate products, in addition to looking at the products themselves, we can learn useful facts that might not be obvious by asking a few questions about the companies that produce them. Here are a few questions you might want to ask about a software vendor when evaluating one of its products. Does the vendor have deep expertise in the domains that its products support? Does it exhibit this expertise, not only in its products, but in its…

• Designing Effective Industrial Control System Displays

  Stephen Few

  16 Dec 2009 | 5:28 pm

  The High Performance HMI Handbook A Comprehensive Guide to Designing, Implementing and Maintaining Effective HMIs for Industrial Plant Operations Bill Hollifield, Dana Oliver, Ian Nimmo, and Eddie Habibi, PAS, 2008 Dashboard displays come in many types, depending on the nature of the information that’s being monitored. While it’s true that all monitoring displays share many best design practices in common, each situation requires specialized designs as well. For example, an airplane cockpit display should look and function quite a bit differently than a business sales dashboard. A…

• 
  800-CEO-READ Blog

• Leadership: A Conversion Story

  Sally

  9 Feb 2010 | 8:33 am

  Last night, after the Super Bowl, CBS showed the premiere of Undercover Boss, a new reality show that chronicles the experiences of higher-ups doing the work of their company’s lower-level employees. I didn’t watch the show, but did click on a couple of the critics’ reviews out in the morning. Read a scathing review here and a slightly more celebratory one here. Clearly lots of people either wanted to continue their Super Bowl idling by not turning the channel, or perhaps more likely, lots of viewers wanted to see a rich executive get his hands (quite literally) dirty,…

• The Rubber Macondo.

  dylan

  9 Feb 2010 | 7:02 am

  In the early part of the last century, Henry Ford was one of the most influential and admired men in the world. He was an industrialist-philosopher, building a new, mechanized Eden in America. He hired men of every color, nation and religion and payed them an unheard-of five dollars a day to stand in one place at work and live a clean life at home (Ford had a Sociological Department that sent hundreds of agents into Dearborn and Detroit to investigate employee’s lives and write up personnel reports). He had a benevolent supremacy over everything in his factories, from its workers to the…

• Stressed out?

  Jon

  8 Feb 2010 | 1:05 pm

  2009 was a challenging year, and the challenges haven’t stopped in 2010. In fact, we all are likely working even harder to dig ourselves out of last year, or maintain our solid standing in the current one. With that work, comes stress, and unless we manage that stress properly, our hearts will pay the price. Dr. John M. Kennedy’s new book just came out. Titled, The 15 Minute Heart Cure: The Natural Way to Release Stress and Heal Your Heart in Just Minutes a Day, the book provides a preventative approach to managing stress, and taking care of your heart. This isn’t just a…

• Friday Links

  dylan

  5 Feb 2010 | 6:49 pm

  ➻ Today is the first birthday of what we call in the office “our book,” The 100 Best Business Books of All Time by Jack Covert and Todd Sattersten. Todd wrote a happy birthday post for the book, and I gave away the last of the 100 best books we have to give away today on inBubbleWrap. ➻ The new issue of Portfolio’s Business Beat is out. As usual, our dear Mr. Covert has his “Just Jack” corner. This month, he discusses Discovering the Soul of Service by Leonard Berry. You can read more about the other features of the latest Business Beat on The Portfolio…

• Elbowroom: Space the Final Frontier

  Roy

  5 Feb 2010 | 7:52 am

  The time has come for 800CEOREAD to move into their new space! It’s been a long time coming and we’re still trying out different things that work for us to get settled in nice and cozy like. Here’s a few pictures of what it’s like so far. It’s not the finished situation, yet, but it will give you an idea of the layout. It’s been a long wait – but we think it’s worth it! Happy Friday, everyone!

• 
  John Jantsch

• PR is Only Dying If It Isn’t Evolving

  John Jantsch

  9 Feb 2010 | 5:51 am

  SharePR is Only Dying If It Isn’t EvolvingThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing Marketing podcast with Brian Solis (Click to listen, right click and Save As to download – subscribe now via iTunes For this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast I asked Brian Solis, Principal of FutureWorks and co-author of Putting the Public Back in Public Relations, about the future of the PR industry as we know it. There’s plenty of doom and gloom surrounding the practice of public relations in the social web world, but Solis suggests, and I totally agree, that there’s a…

• 5 Questions You Should Ask Every Customer

  John Jantsch

  8 Feb 2010 | 5:33 am

  Share5 Questions You Should Ask Every CustomerThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing Constantly seeking feedback from your customers is a great way to learn how to market your business more effectively. If you’ve never done this before, do it immediately as it is one of the best ways to discover what you do that actually differentiates you from your competition. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve worked with a small business that had no idea what its competitive advantage was until we heard it right from the mouths of happy customers. Seeking feedback is also a great way…

• Weekend Favs February Six

  John Jantsch

  6 Feb 2010 | 8:14 am

  ShareWeekend Favs February SixThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing I’ve added a weekend post routine that I hope you enjoy. Each weekend I write a post that features 3-4 things I read during the week that I found interesting. Generally speaking it won’t involve much analysis and may range widely in topic. (Flickr image included here is also fav image of the week) Image credit: Dr Swan Enjoy! Good stuff I ran across this week: Siri – An iPhone app that acts like a personal assistant – you can ask to find things by name – nearest Starbucks or by broad category –…

• Extending Your Presentations Through the Backchannel

  John Jantsch

  5 Feb 2010 | 5:18 am

  ShareExtending Your Presentations Through the BackchannelThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing The term “backchannel” was coined in the field of Linguistics in the 1970’s to describe listeners’ behaviors during verbal communication. It is commonly used these days to describe the behavior or conversation going on in social media while a speaker is making a presentation. In some conferences the majority of the people listening may be actively Tweeting throughout a speech. Like it or not, managing the backchannel has become a part of presenting, in person or online.

• Analytics from a Really Smart Guy

  John Jantsch

  4 Feb 2010 | 1:19 pm

  Analytics from a Really Smart GuyThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing Marketing podcast with Avinash Kaushik (Click to listen, right click and Save As to download – subscribe now via iTunes Avinash Kaushik, author of Web Analytics 2.0 is one of those rare people who can take a somewhat dry and mathlike subject of web analytics and make it sound easy and even fun. I got to spend a few minutes with Avinash for this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast for some tips about this important, but often overlooked topic. Web Analytics can seem like a scary subject, but it’s…

• 
  The Harte of Marketing

• Getting Management Buy-In For Integrated Marketing & Communications

  Anna Barcelos and Beth Harte

  4 Feb 2010 | 4:41 pm

  There are a lot of marketers out there that understand that integrated marketing and communications (IMC) is a preferred way to do business because it is an outside-in approach. If an organization isn’t integrated, what are the best approaches to getting management buy-in? Anna Barcelos and I wanted to share nine key ways to provide management with the value of IMC. Sales-Oriented Vs. Market-Oriented – Which Are You? It’s often been said that the mindset of “If we build it, they will come” is not viable for long term business. To understand why, let’s look at the difference…

• Integrated Marketing & Communications, Redux

  Beth Harte

  19 Jan 2010 | 5:50 am

  The hiatus is over! For those who have been loyal readers of this blog, Happy New Year! And I thank you for hanging in there with me while I took the time to consider where to head next.    For a long time I focused on marketing, PR and social media, but rarely the integration of them all. The focus of The Harte of Marketing for 2010 (and perhaps beyond) will be integrated marketing & communications. While integrated marketing communications (IMC) is nothing new, the embracing of social media surely puts IMC back in the spotlight as its principles are similar to long-standing IMC…

• An Unscientific Test of Authenticity & Transparency: How Much Do They Really Matter?

  Beth Harte

  30 Sep 2009 | 8:04 pm

  Although my blog is technically on “hiatus,” I felt this post was too important to not post it here (versus my digital marketing notebook on Posterous). I am still thinking about the direction my blog will be heading, but I know one thing for sure…it will include a lot more analysis, testing, and less opinion.  As a marketer, testing is at the heart of what we do (or should do) and I for one have been lax when it comes to testing social media. Without testing all aspects of social media, we are, unfortunately, arguing from ignorance.  The first test: Authenticity,…

• Putting myself on a time out.

  Beth Harte

  28 Aug 2009 | 11:19 am

  I wrote a really verbose post, but a good friend told me that what I had written didn’t sound like me (you know who you are…thank you again!). So, here’s take two.  This past year has been truly exceptional and while I love blogging, I am not a writer. So from that regard, I struggle. I know this is *my* blog and I can do with it what I’d like, but I also don’t want to produce crap content. I have SO many thoughts rattling around in my head but the pressure to make them perfect stops me from writing them down. And the time to make them perfect doesn’t…

• Gardening…The Social Media Way

  Beth Harte

  12 Aug 2009 | 6:34 am

  Teresa Basich and I teamed up to write this post after discussing David Armano’s post. Teresa kicked off a group conversation by asking the insightful question “Now, what could we add to David’s blueprint beginnings?”  Teresa wrote 3/4 of this post, so if you like the way her uber-smart brain works, be sure to check out her blog,  Overcommunicated, too. Back in June David Armano of Dachis Corporation had an interesting post on debunking social media myths featured on the Conversation Starters blog of the Harvard Business Review. David discussed how organizations…

• 
  Dan Pink

• An emotionally intelligent . . . unsubscribe link?

  Dan Pink

  8 Feb 2010 | 3:14 am

  Here’s a new one, courtesy of Eddie Garcia. Take a look at this unsubscribe link from Groupon. Pretty clever. I have a feeling it could actually get people to reconsider ending their subscription. (Note: Because Groupon is apparently overwhelmed with visitors today, I had to link to a Screenr video of the unsubscribe page rather than the page itself.)

• Factoid of the day: Super Bowl edition

  Dan Pink

  7 Feb 2010 | 11:11 am

  “According to an operational study of National Football League teams prepared for The Wall Street Journal by Boston Consulting Group, the typical NFL season requires 514,000 hours of labor per team. That’s about eight times the effort it took to conceptualize, build and market Apple’s iPod, according to BCG, and enough time to build 25 America’s Cup yachts. If both Super Bowl teams dedicated themselves to construction rather than football, their members could have built the Empire State Building in seven seasons.” (Source: WSJ, 2/5/10)

• Can watching Pong make you more creative?

  Dan Pink

  3 Feb 2010 | 8:01 am

  Brandon Schauer at Adaptive Path has put together a 49-second video designed to invigorate your corpus callosum and fire your creative powers. In a blog post, he says that his creation builds on research showing that side-to-side eye movement, by increasing communication between the left and right hemisphere, can increase creativity. If you’re facing a creative challenge today, I’m not sure watching Schauer’s nifty video beforehand will work. But I am sure it can’t hurt. If it doesn’t bring your two hemispheres into harmony, maybe it’ll be effective as a…

• Who wants to design the NEA’s new logo?

  Dan Pink

  2 Feb 2010 | 4:21 pm

  In an inspired act of crowdsourcing, showmanship, and democratic participation, National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Rocco Landesman has turned to us to refashion the NEA’s visual identity. Yesterday Landesman announced that his modest but mighty federal agency was accepting submissions to redesign the logo for the NEA’s “Art Works” initiative. As the NEA blog explains: “‘Art works’ is Rocco’s guiding principle for his work at the NEA. The phrase has three meanings: ‘art works’ are the plays, paintings, dances, films and the other…

• Factoid of the day: Generational divide

  Dan Pink

  2 Feb 2010 | 3:55 pm

  “According to Julia Isaacs of the Brookings Institution, the (U.S.) federal government now spends $7 on the elderly for every $1 it spends on children.” (Source: NY Times, 2/2/10)

• 
  Life Beyond Code

• The Distinguish Cycle – Where do you want to begin?

  thinksulting@gmail.com (Rajesh Setty)

  9 Feb 2010 | 12:01 am

  For those of you who have reading this blog for a while, you know that one of the themes on the blog is how to escape the prison of commodotization – being one of the many. Why? Simply because commodotization erodes value. If you are valuable and can distinguish yourself, you can claim a premium in the marketplace. Of course, nobody is smart to be able to permanently distinguish themselves because for anything that is getting a premium, there are others who will follow suit and compete for attention until that “anything” is commodotized and loses the early premium that…

• The problem is never the problem…

  thinksulting@gmail.com (Rajesh Setty)

  8 Feb 2010 | 12:01 am

  In this short (around 2-minutes) video, one of my heroes, Tom Peters explains (with examples) why the problem is never the problem, the response to the problem is. Totally loved the video and is embedded below for you: Why did the 2-minute video touch my heart? The way I look at it, the statement can be extended to many other things – such as an “opportunity.” An opportunity is not an opportunity unless you do something about it. The trick is in “taking action” and doing something about what we are faced with. And, that is in our control. ---Related Articles at…

• A killer app – “Free” + “Social Proof” + Now!

  thinksulting@gmail.com (Rajesh Setty)

  7 Feb 2010 | 12:01 am

  The other day, I was at the Campbell post office standing in the line waiting for my turn. It was a long line so (as usual) I was busy browsing a book. The person in front of me brought me out of my dream when he stepped out asking me to hold his place. I nodded and continued reading. I couldn’t help notice what the person did. There was a box to drop off a business card to win a prize at the end of the month. The person dropped off his business card and walked back. I looked at the box again. There were probably 200 other business cards in the box. Not fully believing what I just saw,…

• Grace and Elegance

  thinksulting@gmail.com (Rajesh Setty)

  6 Feb 2010 | 12:01 am

  Photo Courtesy: Amitabh Bacchan’s blog Criticism is part of life. If you are doing anything significant, there will always be some criticism from someone Why? Simply because you can’t please everyone. A simple thing to do is to handle criticism with grace. Here is an example of how Amitabh Bacchan (who needs no introduction for anyone who has heard of Bollywood) handled criticism from another superb Bollywood actor Naseeruddin Shah. Here it is, in his own words (on his blog) [ Note: I made VERY minor edits for the sake of readability. Emphasis is mine ] A question came my way…

• A gentle push…

  thinksulting@gmail.com (Rajesh Setty)

  5 Feb 2010 | 12:01 am

  When you are on the fence, sometimes all it requires is a gentle push and you will move to one side. But someone or something has to give that gentle push. It does not take a lot of effort (remember: it’s gentle) but someone still has to do it. With that in the background, let’s put the “proverbial” fence aside and take a real situation. You are contemplating whether to attend a networking event or not. You want to do it but you also have other competing priorities to take care of. You know that in the long run it will help you but there are some short-term fires to…

• 
  Remarkablogger

• How to Increase Blog Traffic by Over 100% In 3 Days

  Michael Martine

  9 Feb 2010 | 4:16 am

  This guest post is by Dan H., the founder and editor at Maciverse.com. Maciverse is a Mac Help website with tips, tutorials, and news for Mac users both new and old. Follow Dan on Twitter: @Maciverse. Maciverse.com is a website that covers everything about Apple’s Mac computers. It has been almost 2 years since we started the website and we are now really hitting our stride. We currently average 70,000+ monthly unique visitors, but that wasn’t always the case. In fact, most of our success has come during the last year. Twelve months ago we average 12,000 monthly visitors; we’ve…

• Social Media Marketing May be about Driving Behavior, not Conversation

  Michael Martine

  7 Feb 2010 | 9:48 am

  On February 1st, I attended the Burlington Social Media Breakfast in Vermont, where Adrian Ho of Zeus Jones gave a really smart presentation on social media marketing. The video is below. If you can’t see it in your email or reader, come on over to the blog to watch it. I think you’ll find watching this well worth your time. I’d take notes if I were you. UPDATE: Looks like the embed didn’t work for the video. Sorry about that. You can watch it at Digalicious, the site of Rich Nadworny (one of the BTVSMB organizers). Click here to watch the video. What did you take away…

• Open Discussion: What are You Measuring?

  Michael Martine

  4 Feb 2010 | 9:15 am

  They say that what gets measured, gets improved. So what are you measuring? Because if you’re not measuring, you’re not paying attention to the forces that affect your traffic, influence, and income. And how can you expect to succeed in marketing your business if you’re not doing that? Here’s where you come in: what are you measuring, how are you measuring it, and what do you do with the information? Tell us in the comments! Bonus question: what do you think you should be measuring? And if you’re not, why not? Email this to a friend? Tweet This! Share this on…

• Social Media Marketing Done Right

  Michael Martine

  3 Feb 2010 | 1:58 pm

  I recently had an interesting social media encounter with Eric Romer of HeadBlade, whose history is a great modern social media and internet marketing success story. To see what happened, watch the video below. If you don’t see it in your email or reader, you can find it by visiting the blog. I think Eric has set a great example for us to follow. What do you think? How are you using social media along with blogging to market your business? Email this to a friend? Tweet This! Share this on Facebook Stumble upon something good? Share it on StumbleUpon Share this on Mixx Post this to…

• 7 Things (and 3 Questions) Professional Coaches Must Know Before Starting to Blog

  Michael Martine

  2 Feb 2010 | 5:44 am

  This is a guest post by Christine Livingston. So, you’re a coach and you’ve started to hear about blogging and social media. You see other coaches – me, for example – embracing this weird new world, and you wonder whether it’s really something you need to be getting into or not. Here’s a run-down on how social media can help you. And some health warnings to consider before jumping in. Advantages Keeps you ahead of moving trends Social media is not the future, it’s the present. In the business world Wordpress, an internationally used blogging platform;…

• 
  Junta42 blog

• Seven Ways to Position Yourself for Unlimited Work

  Joe Pulizzi

  9 Feb 2010 | 7:17 am

  As Junta42 continues to grow, we've started to branch out and hire freelancers and form partnerships. What I've learned through this process is that the way I make decisions on who I buy from or partner with has completely changed from just a few years ago. Whether you are an experienced freelance writer, a journalist/editor in a media company or brand, or even a marketing professional, there are things you must be doing now to make sure the work is always there (whether you work for yourself or someone else). It saddens me to find that people who I worked with for years at Penton…

• Junta42 Announces Content Marketing Giveaway

  Joe Pulizzi

  4 Feb 2010 | 7:29 pm

  Junta42 is again putting our money where our content is... Today we launched the $4200 in 42 Days contest where Junta42 will contribute $4200 toward a brand's content marketing effort. Simply put, it works like this.  From now until 4/2/2010 any project submitted through the Junta42 system will be eligible for the $4200.  All you have to do is sign up to the Junta42 content marketing matching service and select one of our expert, pre-qualified vendors.  That's it. See more details here.  Any thoughts or questions? Just shoot them over.

• Social Media Usage in Content Marketing Jumps 500% in Two Years

  Joe Pulizzi

  3 Feb 2010 | 6:54 am

  As a follow up to our 2010 Junta42 Content Marketing Study, we've been doing some comparisons between content marketing product usage in 2010 versus 2008.  The findings are interesting, to say the least Here are the highlights: Significant Increases in Content Distribution Social Media (i.e., Twitter, Facebook) - distribution of content through those channels has increased over 500% in two years. Blog usage has more than doubled. Online video has jumped nearly 2x. eBooks have nearly doubled. Slight Content Marketing Increases Digital Magazines Podcasts Microsites Holding Steady…

• David Meerman Scott on content marketing, social media & what's next

  Joe Pulizzi

  1 Feb 2010 | 3:57 pm

  His book was a game changer.  Now, David Meerman Scott's updated version of The New Rules of Marketing and PR promises even more.   I had a chance to catch up with David recently and got his quick take on the book, social media and content marketing.  Enjoy! JOE: From the previous version to the new version, what's the biggest change you thought you had to make?  What's the biggest surprise - meaning something you'd never thought you'd actually update? DAVID: When I wrote the first edition of the book, Facebook was only available to those with a…

• 5 Keys to Success with Content Marketing

  Joe Pulizzi

  28 Jan 2010 | 6:16 pm

  Here's a content marketing interview with me conducted by J-P de Clerck.  I like the way J-P summed up the key successes and failures in content marketing for me.  Hope they are helpful. The keys to success in content marketing: Understanding the informational needs of your customers Knowing how those informational needs mix with your marketing goals and objectives  Developing a content program around those needs Being consistent (content marketing is a marathon, not a sprint) Listen and continually evolve the program Failure in content marketing: Selling, rather than…

• 
  Flooring The Consumer

• Simple Marketing Now - January 2010 Update

  8 Feb 2010 | 5:01 am

  January 2010 Simple Marketing Now UpdateHere is the latest that I wrote about on the Simple Marketing Now side...[For those of you new to Flooring The Consumer, I also write the Simple Marketing Blog where I discuss marketing strategy and creative, practical, simple marketing approaches and share best practices - many of which may be relevant to you and your business as you consider what's possible. The blog also acts as newsroom for Simple Marketing Now.]More specifically, during January 2010, I shared Fascinating Marketing Presentations, Social Media Marketing Resources and Simple Marketing…

• 2010 Consumer & Marketplace Trends

  1 Feb 2010 | 6:40 am

  I'm fascinated with marketplace trends and how consumers react to social forces and economic conditions. After all, that's what affects the retail experience. As a result, I like to observe consumer behavior and identify patterns - by watching myself and those around me, listening to conversations and doing lots of research.In the process of doing research, I've come across several resources about the consumer and the marketplace. I share them with you here. I'd love to hear your reactions and how you see some of these trends reflected in your market and retail environment.2010 Consumer &…

• Women: Separate, Equal & Consumers Worth Appealing To

  29 Jan 2010 | 5:03 am

  How Do You Appeal To Your Women Consumers?Marketing to women and appealing to female consumers are subjects I think about all the time. They inspired this blog about the consumer retail experience and have led to many retailer and industry presentations.Flooring is far from unique, but it captures a world of extremes. For the most part, retail and manufacturing are heavily male driven while the ultimate consumer is a woman.No wonder the resulting consumer experience often misfires! Although, for those wanting to engage with and delight their [women] customers, imagine the opportunities!I got…

• Refresh The Store Experience With Light

  21 Jan 2010 | 4:52 am

  In response to my post Refresh Your Store Experience For The New Year, Arthur Corbin, retail and lighting wizard and author of Arthur Corbin's Retail Wisdom, contributes the following about light and retail to further refresh the store experience...Retail & LightingThe 1/3 of sales in the front of the store is misleading and likely the result of inadequate thought and investment in lighting technology.Customers walk towards the brightest light in the store (within reason). Light can be used to reinforce circulation patterns and can be used to highlight merchandise (the brightest area…

• Refresh Your Store Experience For The New Year

  18 Jan 2010 | 5:04 am

  New year, new beginnings, so what's in store for your store? Perhaps it's time to refresh your store experience for the New Year? From Retail Customer Experience Magazine, here are 5 signs your retail store needs a makeover by Bob Phibbs.1. How does your store flow?How well does the traffic patterns you've established match up with those of your customers? Do you need to adjust them?2. How consistent is your store? My favorite example of retail experience consistency is Target. Signage, communications, baskets, even the bathrooms consistently say 'Target.' Are you that consistent? Could you…

• 
  Marketing Profs Daily Fix

• Trending ‘Functionall’

  Ted Mininni

  9 Feb 2010 | 4:28 am

  Reinier Evers founder of trendwatching.com can always be counted on to weigh in on new trends every month. As is the case with all prognosticating, there’s always the risk of being wrong. But in Evers’s case, I think he’s had considerably more hits than misses. Trendwatching’s latest caught my eye more than most. The headline screams one word: “Functionall.” The subhead: “Why simple, small & cheap appeals to all.” The definition of Functionall: Captures the phenomenon of simple, small and/or cheap products and services designed for low(er)-income consumers…

• MarketingProfs B2B Forum Ramp Up: What I Have Learned About B2B Marketing

  Kathy Bushman

  9 Feb 2010 | 3:36 am

  As part of my journey in developing the content for an educational conference, in this case MarketingProfs B2B Forum, I do a lot of research. I spend a lot of time on the web looking at competitive conferences (and non-competitive conferences) as well as reading many white papers, articles and blogs. We also take seriously any feedback that we’ve gotten from the attendees at our last event and we poll the MarketingProfs community about topics they need education on through crowdsourcing, discussions on our community sites and in the form of questions sent out as tweets. But most important…

• Guest Post: The 4 Pillars Of B2B Marketing-The Lifecycle Of a B2B Campaign

  Ann Handley

  8 Feb 2010 | 6:37 am

  By Achim Klor SterlingKlor Communications I recently read an excellent post by Paul Dunay on Social Media Today presenting the 4 C’s of B2B marketing. We’ve known about the 4 P’s of marketing for years: Product, Price, Place and Promotion. Paul argues the 4 P’s are primarily a B2C mix. The 4 C’s, however, (Content, Connection, Communications, Conversion) illustrate the marketing mix for B2B. Sounds great, but how should B2B organizations implement the 4 C’s marketing mix into their campaigns? I would like to highlight an approach that has served our B2B agency very…

• Interview With Seth Godin: Linchpin

  John Wall Christopher Penn

  8 Feb 2010 | 6:21 am

  In this Marketing Over Coffee brought to you by MarketingProfs: We talk with Seth Godin about his new book: Linchpin Marketing Over Coffee with Seth Godin Direct Link to File Show length 23:30 00:52 What’s Linchpin about? 02:30 How do entrepreneurial linchpins fit in to large organizations? 05:40 Who are the artists? 06:55 Can you get beyond Dunbar’s Number? Gary V. is using Twitter to add two zeros. 08:10 What is The Resistance? What is Emotional Labor? 11:22 Thrashing – a classic Marketing problem, and yes, Duke Nukem! Real artists ship. 14:16 Is there any future for mass media…

• How To Build a Brand Internationally

  Paul Williams

  5 Feb 2010 | 6:21 am

  Congratulations! Your company is successful locally, and now you want to share what you do with the world. In many ways, the process will be like re-starting your business. Many of the activities you performed to launch your initial business are the same you will employ in each of your new international markets. However, much of your time will be spent translating (literally and figuratively) to ensure you are locally relevant to your new customers. A Brand = A Reputation The term “brand” can be confusing. Think of a brand as a reputation. Building a reputation in any new market…

• 
  Greg Verdino's Marketing Blog

• Get an education about social media in education

  Greg Verdino

  2 Feb 2010 | 4:40 am

  If you're in New York for Social Media Week and plan to hit some sessions, be sure to check out The Future of Social Media in Education at noon on Friday Feb 5th at the McGraw-Hill building. It's a panel session hosted by McGraw-Hill and their GradeGuru startup, featuring GradeGuru's Yianni Garcia, Mashable's Adam Ostrow, Jatched.com's Mary Casey, a few others and of course me. Here's a summary of what we'll cover during our two-hour discussion: How is social media changing the way college students learn? How are digital applications changing how professors teach? What are the most…

• The social media deadzone: why only tools focus on tools

  Greg Verdino

  27 Jan 2010 | 6:54 am

    This morning I happened across the above graphic in an older Center Networks post and it triggered a quick thought on a familiar theme. I have often chided marketers for focusing too much on specific tools, platforms, sites and shiny objects. You know what I'm talking about. Your boss meanders into your office and casually asks you about some sexy social media thang that they saw mentioned in this morning's Wall Street Journal or the latest issue of BloombergWeek. Or your agency arrives to present -- iPhones, Androids and tablets in hand -- and they're all atwitter with talk about some…

• Will we finally stop screwing around with social in 2010?

  Greg Verdino

  12 Jan 2010 | 6:47 am

    It has been at least a couple of years since I've done a proper "predictions" post, although last year I contributed to a fantastic 2009 predictions ebook that Peter Kim pulled together. This year I contributed to a similar ebook, but this time with my new best buds at Powered, Drillteam and Stepchange.The book makes for some interesting reading and will give you a peek into some of the things the new Powered is thinking about right now. You can download it for free right now but I'd like to give you a little taste. I have just one prediction -- that in 2010,…

• crayon to the power of Powered

  Greg Verdino

  11 Jan 2010 | 4:51 am

  As y'all know, I've been holding down the virtual fort at crayon for the past two-and-a-half years. We've had our ups -- I've had the opportunity to work with some great people and some great clients. But believe me we've had our downs -- I've toughed it out at a couple of points during our history when Jaffe and I weren't quite sure the company would survive. It has been an interesting ride to say the least. But I'm happy to say it all ends today. Nope, I'm not "done coloring," haven't taken a position at Edelman, and believe it or not…

• From New York City to Music City: new 2010 speaking gigs

  Greg Verdino

  7 Jan 2010 | 10:35 am

  As the new year kicks into gear, my speaking calendar is already starting to fill up. Here are the details on my first two 2010 speaking engagements - a February panel appearance at the Engage! Expo in NYC and a March presentation at Custom Content Conference 2010 in Nashville.  Hope to see some of you in the audiences. Read on to learn more...  On February 17th I'm speaking at the Engage! Expo in New York City. This year's Engage! (the conference that grew out of the old Virtual Worlds event series) is co-located with the 2010 Toy Fair, and will have a big focus on toy marketing, youth…

• 
  CK's Blog

• B2B Mobile Marketing: Why Mobile For *B2B* Companies?

  CK (Christina Kerley)

  4 Feb 2010 | 10:53 am

  With 4.6 billion current mobile subscriptions projected to surge to 6.5 billion mobile connections by 2014, there's no denying it, marketers: Mobile has arrived—and it's changing how (and where) business professionals communicate with each other, and how (and why) business audiences interact with B2B brands. But while B2C marketers are tapping mobile tools and technologies in earnest, B2B marketers have not yet fully recognized *WHY* mobile poses a robust, revenue-generating channel for their efforts. After all, with a new set of media comes a brand new learning curve. As with all…

• B2B Social-Media Case Study "Swap Meet": Join In The Challenge!

  CK (Christina Kerley)

  2 Feb 2010 | 10:40 am

  I'm happy to announce that I'll be participating in the MarketingProfs Business-To-Business Forum 2010 this May 4th-5th in Boston. And I'm even happier to announce the subject matter I'll be presenting on, being it's a subject that every single B2B marketerand every single one of their bosses!is interested in learning a ton more about: Social Media ROI. We're even coining the session a "Case-Study Swap Meet". That means I'll be moderating a panel covering several case studies from several companies covering several points of ROI. We're not shying away…

• Dear B2Bs: I. TOLD. YA. SO. (In fact, I've told ya many times over.)

  CK (Christina Kerley)

  26 Jan 2010 | 9:44 pm

  IDC just released The State of Social Business: 2009 Survey Results, a study that surveyed 4,700+ U.S. workers which outlines the use of social media for BUSINESS purposes. And while the shared findings from the study have produced a whole lotta happy for my world, the implications should definitely be taken to heart by all marketers in the B2B world. Why? Several reasons that we'll get to in short order. But first, let me provide IDC's explanation of the study for some background: Broad in scope, The State of Social Business: 2009 Survey Results represents the current state of SOCIAL…

• B2B Mobile Marketing: 5 Reasons Why Mobile Is Prime For B2Bs, And 5 Questions B2B Marketers Should Be Asking.

  CK (Christina Kerley)

  26 Jan 2010 | 9:23 am

  In the B2C space there's a lot of buzz around mobile marketing, but in the B2B sector it's more likened to a whisper. Yet amid the low level of mobile chatter, B2Bs are missing out on SUPER-sized opportunities for integrating a valuable new brand touch point for their customers and establishing a dynamic new communications channel with professional audiences. Make no mistake about it, mobile has arrived—and it's changing how (and where) business professionals communicate with one another and how (and why) they interact with B2B brands.  On that imperative, in my most…

• B2B Mobile Marketing Best Practices: Marketers, Your (Mobile) Audiences Need "More Show, Less Tell."

  CK (Christina Kerley)

  24 Jan 2010 | 7:08 am

  There are many best practices that have already been established in the mobile marketing sector... and many more that B2B marketers, in particular, will still need to learn and adopt. Why? Because mobile is an emerging new space with entirely new constraints on SPACE. And for complex B2B offerings requiring a lot of explanation for buyers, this is a BIG learning curve for B2B marketers who will need to start thinking "small". Take a look at that mobile device up there. Pretty snazzy, eh? To be sure, it's visually stunning and all sorts of cool. It's also very small. After…

• 
  Servant of Chaos

• Im a Little Bit Country

  Gavin Heaton

  8 Feb 2010 | 2:24 pm

  What happens when the cultural references of one generation echo into nothingness? What happens when a younger generation misinterprets an off-handed quip? Or tweet? It’s not simply a few words that disappear into the ether. There are legions of stories, anecdotes and shared experiences that are erased. So when I say, “I’m a little bit country”, what does it mean to you?

• Five Must-Read Posts from Last Week

  Gavin Heaton

  7 Feb 2010 | 4:26 pm

  I am always astounded at not just the number of quality, well-written posts produced each week – but also at the depth of thinking that is made available to us all. I probably learn more from reading blog posts each week than I do from the dozens of books that I read each year. This weeks’ five must-read posts are great examples: Jay Baer shares 11 reasons that your company needs Facebook. Or more precisely, he explains why Facebook can be useful for your marketing efforts. Not exactly from last week – but Niko Herzeg writes about the need to focus our strategies and products not on the…

• I Hate the Yellow Balloon

  Gavin Heaton

  5 Feb 2010 | 1:19 pm

  NYE Originally uploaded by redrobin2008 There I said it.

• A Cup of Chaos #28 - Channel 7 News - Finance Segment

  Gavin Heaton

  4 Feb 2010 | 12:07 pm

  They say you should never do live TV with children or animals - nor bankers it would seem. In this segment from Channel 7's Sydney studio, there seems to be a little more action in the background than there is in the finance report.

• Commonwealth Bank's 2013 Vision

  Gavin Heaton

  3 Feb 2010 | 10:14 pm

  Monty Hamilton pointed out that comments have been disabled on the Commonwealth Bank’s 2013 Vision video. Yet they allowed the embed code. So I thought I’d drop the video in here and get your feedback. I was immediately struck by how little social interaction took place in the lives of the featured couple. I was amazed that there was no understanding of the way that technology is being used not for its own sake (or for economic/transactional productivity), but to connect with others, to exercise social judgement (especially around purchasing decisions) or to coordinate and maximise the…

• 
  Escape from Cubicle Nation

• How do you want to lead your life?

  Pamela

  8 Feb 2010 | 5:30 pm

  I had a very interesting coaching conversation the other day with a bright young woman. We were talking about her desire to expand her business and play bigger in the world. (And don’t worry, I asked her permission to tell this story. And no, that is not her picture, it is a stock photo ) When I asked what would happen if she started to put herself out in the world in a bigger way by offering more programs and connecting with more people, she got kind of quiet. I asked her what it would mean to her life if she grew her business.  This is what she said: “I would have to be out…

• Your all-or-nothing attitude will bring all stress and no progress

  Pamela

  2 Feb 2010 | 5:08 pm

  I can always tell when new entrepreneurs are starting to crack under the pressure of decisions. They say things like: “I know everyone tells me I have to choose a specific niche, but I really don’t want to limit myself to only working with one type of person!” “What if I spend all this time and energy getting this business off the ground and I find out (no one will buy from me) (I don’t like it) (I have no time) (fill in the concern).” “The URL for the business name I wanted is not available! How can I be successful without a catchy business…

• Question for you: what stops you from testing your biz ideas early? What helps?

  Pamela

  28 Jan 2010 | 1:26 pm

  I am really obsessed with the topic of test often and fail fast. I wrote a whole chapter about it in my book, and still feel like I barely scratched the surface. By “test often and fail fast,” I mean the ability to create a very small prototype or sample of your product or service and get it in front of your target market for feedback. So many new entrepreneurs get paralyzed with perfectionism. And you know what I feel about that! I am writing an article on this topic, and would love your insight into two questions (choose either or both, depending on which apply to your…

• Guest post by Seth Godin: You are not a cog

  Pamela

  26 Jan 2010 | 3:00 am

  I have never had a guest post on my blog before. Until now. Seth Godin wrote a special post for EfCN to celebrate the launch of his new book Linchpin. It comes out today — check it out here. You are not a cog If you have your own business, you’ve already taken a huge step, but it’s tempting, really tempting to let fear take over and let it push you to start following the rule book. You know the rule book I mean. The one with the musts, the shoulds and the of courses in it. The one that’s amplified by most how-to books and blogs, and enforced by banks, in-laws and…

• Registration now open for $100 Business with me and Chris Guillebeau

  Pamela

  18 Jan 2010 | 7:01 am

  Good morning! I am excited to give you the registration link for the program I told you about last week that I am co-teaching with Chris Guillebeau. We will be working intensively with an inaugural group in a month-long program aimed to power-charge your micro business. See all the details here, and if you are interested, grab a seat, because I have a feeling they will go fast. http://unconventionalguides.com/100biz.htm Here is to a fantastic, supportive start to 2010! — Update 5pm MT on 1/18: We had an amazing day — we sold out the February program in 3 hours, and are halfway…

• 
  Six Minutes

• Average Speakers Suck. Don’t be Average.

  Andrew Dlugan

  8 Feb 2010 | 9:00 pm

  If you are an average speaker, you suck. So do all of your colleagues with average presentation skills. Let’s see why this is so… Cookies and the Cookie Police Suppose you are baking cookies. After mixing up the dough, you scoop up a bit with your fingers, roll it into a ball, and plop it on the cookie sheet. Repeat this 50 times, and you’ve got an oven full of cookies. Repeat this 500 times, and you’ve got a freezer full of cookies — or, perhaps, enough for a bake sale. Now, suppose that you were being investigated by the Homemade Cookie Police. After you plop…

• 15 Tactics to Establish Ethos: Examples for Persuasive Speaking

  Andrew Dlugan

  7 Feb 2010 | 10:44 pm

  Your speaking ethos is critical to ensure that your audience is present, listening, and open to being persuaded by your ideas. But, how do you maximize your ethos for a given speech and a given audience? Is ethos fixed before you open your mouth? Is there anything you can do during a speech that makes a difference? This article shows you practical tactics you can employ to establish and increase your ethos. Definition of Ethos The previous article in the Ethos, Pathos, and Logos series defined ethos along four dimensions: Trustworthiness Does your audience believes you are a good person who…

• Public Speaking Tips: Weekend Review [2010-02-06]

  Andrew Dlugan

  6 Feb 2010 | 12:05 am

  Twice each month, Six Minutes weekend reviews bring you the best public speaking articles from throughout the public speaking blogosphere. Please share them with anyone you feel would benefit from the tips and techniques. This review features topics including: recently released public speaking books; storytelling and details; remedies for voice malfunctions; handling hecklers; thanking the audience; cartoons in presentations; rehearsal strategies; a speech critique of Sir Ken Robinson; and more! From the Six Minutes Archives One Year Ago from Six Minutes… Speech Analysis: Barack…

• Psst! Readers’ Speaking Confessions and Lessons

  Andrew Dlugan

  2 Feb 2010 | 9:09 pm

  Have you ever fainted in mid-sentence? Have you ever shown up for a 1-hour seminar only to be told you had to give it eight times in a row? Have you ever had your blouse pop open while speaking? These were just a few of the confessions shared by Six Minutes readers in our contest to win a copy of Confessions of a Public Speaker by Scott Berkun. Thank you to everyone who participated. The responses are collectively funny, surprising, and educational. A few of the most shocking confessions and the most valuable insights are featured below. Click here to read all of them back at the original…

• What is Ethos and Why is it Critical for Speakers?

  Andrew Dlugan

  31 Jan 2010 | 10:52 pm

  Is your audience listening even before you speak your first words? Do they have high expectations? Are they prepared to be convinced by what you have to say? If not, you are suffering from poor ethos. The first article in the Ethos, Pathos, and Logos series introduced these core concepts for speakers. In this article, we define ethos, we look at ways that an audience measures your ethos, and we examine why it is so critical for a successful speech. What is Ethos? Ethos was originally defined by Aristotle in On Rhetoric as being trustworthy. He stated that we are more likely to believe people…

• 
  ChangeThis Newsletter

• The Keen Thinker

  changethis@gmail.com (ChangeThis)

  20 Jan 2010 | 11:52 am

  Hello friends of ChangeThis, The company that has cared for ChangeThis for the past five years, 800-CEO-READ, is launching an electronic newsletter, The Keen Thinker. There are 11,000 business books published each year. There is endless information about business being pumped out onto the Internet each day. After 25 years in the book selling business, 800-CEO-READ can act as a filter for all of that information, while, hopefully, inspiring and entertaining you at the same time. We promise that The Keen Thinker will continually offer insider information on new books you should be reading,…

• 66.01 - Brainwashed: Seven Ways to Reinvent Yourself by Seth Godin

  changethis@gmail.com (ChangeThis)

  13 Jan 2010 | 10:19 am

  Click here to visit the site. Click here to download the PDF. “Years ago, when you were about four years old, the system set out to persuade you of something that isn’t true. Not just persuade, but drill, practice, reinforce, and yes, brainwash. The mission: to teach you that you’re average. That compliant work is the best way to a reliable living. That creating average stuff for average people, again and again, is a safe and easy way to get what you want. Step out of line and the system would nudge (or push) you back to the center. Show signs of real creativity, originality or even…

• 66.02 - Beyond Sink or Swim: The Case for Accelerating Leadership Transitions by Michael Watkins and Doug Soo Hoo

  changethis@gmail.com (ChangeThis)

  13 Jan 2010 | 10:16 am

  Click here to visit the site. Click here to download the PDF. “Given the magnitude of the overall organizational impact, it is surprising how few companies invest in helping their precious leadership assets to succeed during transitions—the most critical junctures in their careers. A few companies (GE, for example) explicitly train their managers how to take charge. More common are “on-boarding” programs that introduce outside hires to the strategy, businesses, and culture of the company. While useful, such programs seldom provide systematic guidance on the process of managing a…

• 66.03 - The Creativist Manifesto: Consumer or Creativist?by Olivia Sprinkel

  changethis@gmail.com (ChangeThis)

  13 Jan 2010 | 10:15 am

  Click here to visit the site. Click here to download the PDF. “I believe that the most significant choice that we can make in today’s society is to be a Consumer or to be a Creativist. […] This default way of being is now so entrenched that 'consumer' is the default label for people. And in terms of public services, which are provided by the taxes that we pay, we are just service users—we consume services. So what’s the alternative? To be a Creativist: To reclaim the right to our individual identities; To play an active role in shaping, in creating our lives from the inside out; To…

• 66.04 - The Wow Factor is You by Frances Cole Jones

  changethis@gmail.com (ChangeThis)

  13 Jan 2010 | 10:12 am

  Click here to visit the site. Click here to download the PDF. “The ‘Wow Factor’ is you. The knowledge that you’ve done the research, considered the risks, paid attention to every detail. It’s the calm that comes from no-regret living. The confidence that says, ‘I have something to offer.’ Unfortunately, however, we rarely access our Wow Factor. We talk ourselves out of contributing with the one of the 3 mantras of self-defeat: ‘I’m sure it’s been done before.’ ‘It’s a great idea, but it’s just not me.’ And, everyone’s favorite, ‘It’ll never happen.’…

• 
  Connie Bensen

• We celebrated Community Manager Appreciation Day today! #CMAD

  conniebensen@gmail.com (Connie Bensen)

  25 Jan 2010 | 10:23 pm

  What is more important than your customers? Maybe your Community Manager?!! Today is a day to celebrate them & their impact on your organization! Jeremiah Owyang always has thoughtful and innovative ideas. Last week he asked on Twitter: Community Managers are your unsung heroes. If your company is forward thinking and has one or a team of them then you know how important they are. They work tirelessly to ensure that customers needs and expectations are met. It’s a very challenging role yet very gratifying! We do it because we love it. We love providing for our people: our customers, our…

• Pepsi Bypasses SuperBowl in order to Build Community

  conniebensen@gmail.com (Connie Bensen)

  24 Dec 2009 | 7:18 am

  There will be no Pepsi ads at the SuperBowl this year. Pepsi has chosen to spend $20 million on a social media campaign rather than buying a 30 second spot at the SuperBowl. Mashable outlined how they are choosing to invest in building community. The cost for a SuperBowl ad has been growing exponentially over the years. (Source: MSNBC) 1967 cost $42,500 1987 cost $600,000 2009 cost $3 million ABC News notes that Pepsi spent $142 million on Super Bowl ads over the last decade. This is a bold move! Being the first could be game changing. They will get a month’s worth of word of mouth now.

• 2010 Trend Predictions for Social Media

  conniebensen@gmail.com (Connie Bensen)

  23 Dec 2009 | 1:46 pm

  Here’s a slide deck with a number of predictions for 2010. I am honored to be included in such a distinguished group! Dr. Taly Weiss presents the predictions in Twitter format so it’s a quick read. ReadWriteWeb did a nice job of expanding on my first prediction. PROSPECTING: Connie Benson, Director of Social Media and Community Strategy for Alterian says, "Social media monitoring will provide insight across all channels, as well as making social media an active outbound marketing channel." In this case Benson alludes to the idea that ROI on social media may entail leads…

• 2010 The Year of Social Media ROI

  conniebensen@gmail.com (Connie Bensen)

  19 Dec 2009 | 12:25 pm

  Everyone is putting their predictions out. Mine are always partially based on my work as well as the trends. 1. Companies will expect ROI from their Social Media efforts. Social Media will shift from being experimental to mainstream. Larger organizations can’t justify embracing it without having it meeting their business objectives. It has to increase their bottom line. I have been working on an ROI series and that will kick off in January. It is possible to establish metrics around your efforts and measure progress! Can you afford not to? How will you grow your program and justify the…

• Upcoming Webinar on Implementing a Social Media Marketing Strategy

  conniebensen@gmail.com (Connie Bensen)

  6 Dec 2009 | 9:47 am

  Every month we have a webinar. Last month my topic was Best Practices for Monitoring Social Media. You can view the past recordings here. This month, my colleague, Marcus Tewksbury has the stage with ‘How to Implement a Social Media Strategy’. Marcus will be talking about how to add social media channels to your lead generation efforts. He will also be providing ideas on how social media marketing can be integrated in with traditional marketing efforts such as email marketing, PPC campaigns, and search. The webinar is on Thursday, December 17th 10:00am Central / 16.00 UK Register here…

• 
  Weblogg-ed

• Transformative Technology? Really?

  Will Richardson

  8 Feb 2010 | 11:40 am

  So I ran across this Smart Ease of Use video in the course of one of our threads in a PLP cohort and I have to say, I can’t seem to shake it. I mean, maybe I’m missing something here, but if this is a vision of “transformative” technology, we’re in some serious trouble. Worse, if this marketing piece actually does the job and creates sales of Smart boards, we’re in even bigger trouble. Is this really a vision of classrooms and learning that we aspire to? Is it all about being “easy”? And what does it say when the manufacturer of one of the most…

• EduCon 2.2

  Will Richardson

  1 Feb 2010 | 6:31 am

  If I could put in a few phrases what I took away from this year’s Educon experience it was this: Stop complaining. Be the change. Love your students and do well by them. If that includes technology, so be it. And it was those first two that stood out, for me at least. I heard variations on those themes more in the last two days than the first two Educons combined. Maybe it was because there were more people this year. Maybe because we’re finally getting tired of talking about change, about waiting for something or someone else to change. Or maybe because when you get into a room…

• No Choice

  Will Richardson

  21 Jan 2010 | 5:18 am

  (Cross posted to the PLP Network blog) One of my favorite things that Sheryl says when she talks about the challenges that schools face right now is that this generation of kids in our schools is the first not to have a choice about technology. Most of us grew up in a time when technology was an add on, and for many of us, we still see it as a choice, especially in education. (Just the other day I was at a meeting of about 25 school leaders and teachers to discuss how social learning tools can be infused into an inquiry based curriculum and only one person was using technology to take…

• Change Congress

  Will Richardson

  20 Jan 2010 | 4:51 am

  It’s no secret that Lawrence Lessig is one of my heroes in the way that he takes on meaningful efforts to change the world for (what I think, at least) good and his ability to articulate those efforts in compelling ways. It’s also no secret that over the past year I’ve become more disillusioned with the government here in the US. Mostly it’s a frustration about how nothing changes (or will change), how money is the motivator for everything that happens, and how much it feels like we have lost the best of our democracy to special interests. I was a huge Obama supporter;…

• No More High School–Play Along

  Will Richardson

  14 Jan 2010 | 6:18 am

  So this might totally fall flat on its face, but I’m wondering how all you  out there who are deeply invested in social learning spaces might respond to this unlikely but hopefully compelling scenario: Imagine for a moment that high schools as educational places vanish from the earth. How would you go about educating the 14-18 year olds in your lives? What resources, programs, strategies, assessments would you use? Or what would we need to create in order for them to become “educated” in the current sense? What would that world look like? Could it even be done?

• 
  Holy Kaw!

• Google Buzz's official demo [video]

  9 Feb 2010 | 11:25 am

  Google has just unveiled its latest attempt to become more relevant in the social media space—Google Buzz. The product is integrated within Gmail and will be rolled out gradually to all of the webmail service’s users over the next few days. While this development is still unfolding, you can check out Google Buzz’s two-minute demo of Buzz in action both online and via mobile. What are your initial reactions? Another soon-to-be-forgotten Google product like Wave, or a Facebook/Twitter killer? Full story at Mashable. Total Google coverage. Permalink | Leave a…

• Darth Vader’s original wimpy voice [video]

  9 Feb 2010 | 11:15 am

  Imagine a galaxy far, far away where Darth Vader sounded like any other British bloke strolling down the corridors of the Death Star. Before James Earl Jones provided the menacing voice of the Dark Lord of the Sith, English actor and bodybuilder David Prowse delivered the lines from inside the Darth costume. While George Lucas never intended for Prowse’s voice to make the flick’s final cut, it’s weird to imagine how different Star Wars would have been with a different Vader voice. Full story at Huffington Post. Tons of Star Wars tidbits. Permalink | Leave a…

• 7 things you didn’t know about condoms

  9 Feb 2010 | 10:14 am

  Rubbers. Raincoats. Inconvenient. Whatever you call 'em, condoms remain a must-have in the safe sex tool box. Long before the days of Durex and Trojans, men used animal intestines to protect their willies (that sounds lovely, eh ladies?) and still to this day use lambskin condoms for latex allergies and supposed extra sensitivity. Want to learn even more fun facts about condoms that will surely impress your friends and potential lovers? Check out Asylum's seven things you probably didn't know about condoms that includes tantalizing tidbits like: Vaseline + condoms = Disintegrated rubber and…

• Horror flick mirror scare mash-up [video]

  9 Feb 2010 | 9:25 am

  Horror movies love to rely on cliches to scare the bejeezus out of us, but does it really surprise anyone that the axe murderer is going to pop in the reflection of a mirror? Ok, yes, it still totally sparks a few pee-in-pants moments. Check out this mash-up of mirror scare moments (fair warning: don’t watch alone in a big, dark, scary house): Full story at Four Four. Boo! Tons of scary and not so scary movie news. Permalink | Leave a comment  »

• 7 things you shouldn't do on Valentine's Day

  9 Feb 2010 | 9:13 am

  Ah, Valentine’s day. February fourteenth marks that special moment in the year when Hallmark cashes in on our emotions and cupid gets busy shooting arrows. Whether you’re indifferent, excited, upset, or madly in love—there are seven things you just shouldn’t do on this lovey-dovey holiday. See a few do-not-do’s below: Go on a first date. First dates are hard enough, why add the extra pressure? Call your ex. Abort mission! On a day like this, it’s normal for your thoughts to drift to the one you used to be with, but you broke up for a reason. So, spare…

• 
  SmartBrief: Social Media

• What can Twitter lists do for your company?

  8 Feb 2010 | 10:00 pm

  You need to be able to draw the right people to your Twitter account if you want to get the most out of the service, writes C -More- 

• Your turn: What does the future hold for e-mail?

  8 Feb 2010 | 10:00 pm

   -More- 

• How to turn social buzz into sales

  8 Feb 2010 | 10:00 pm

  As social marketing matures, it's time to stop thinking solely in terms of buzz, and start figuring out how to use social too -More- 

• The Oscars aim for a social revamp

  8 Feb 2010 | 10:00 pm

  Hollywood's biggest award ceremony is hoping to harness the power of social media, with the Academy launching a Facebook page -More- 

• Google fights back against Facebook

  8 Feb 2010 | 10:00 pm

  Google is preparing to announce the addition of social-networking tools, possibly including a status stream, to its Gmail ser -More- 

• 
  SmartBrief: Leadership

• Are dog owners dumber than cat owners?

  8 Feb 2010 | 10:00 pm

  Cat owners tend to be far better educated than dog owners, according to a new study in the U.K.  -More- Director, Financial Planning & Analysis Virgin America

• Real leaders know how to fight right

  8 Feb 2010 | 10:00 pm

  Good leaders know how to smooth over destructive disputes -- but also how to fan the flames of constructive conflicts within  -More- 

• Can AT&T escape the iPhone quagmire?

  8 Feb 2010 | 10:00 pm

  When AT&T became the sole U.S.  -More- 

• Populism won't put America back on track

  8 Feb 2010 | 10:00 pm

  The current upswelling of angry populism is understandable, but serious politicians should do their best to ignore it, writes -More- 

• Bonfire of the vanity metrics

  8 Feb 2010 | 10:00 pm

  When it comes to measuring success, it's always tempting for managers to focus on numbers that make them look good, writes Er -More- Search Engine Strategies New York brings you the experts that can help determine which emerging technologies and channels you should be investing in for 2010. Join nearly 5,000 marketers for training and discussion on topics like ppc and seo management, keyword research, social media marketing and more.

• 
  Smartbrief: American Association of School Administrators

• Tennessee district is worried about effects of student-fee waivers

  7 Feb 2010 | 10:00 pm

  Education officials in a Tennessee district are worried that a state policy permitting all students to seek waivers for schoo -More- 

• Michigan group considers taking school-funding reform to voters

  7 Feb 2010 | 10:00 pm

  Save our Students, Schools and State, or SOS -- a group advocating for school-funding reform in Michigan -- says it will take -More- 

• AASA Legislative Advocacy Conference

  7 Feb 2010 | 10:00 pm

  The AASA Legislative Advocacy Conference will be held this year from Sept.  -More- 

• Some Wisconsin districts pass on taxing maximum amount

  7 Feb 2010 | 10:00 pm

  Nearly one in four Wisconsin school districts elected not to seek the maximum revenue from property taxes, and more districts -More- Struggling to Graduate your "Non-Graduates"? Would you like to know how 93% of Clarksville Montgomery County School District's (TN) alternative students recovered their deficit credits using the A+nyWhere Learning System as their curriculum content delivery system? Learn More: Download the Clarksville success story now!

• Honolulu special-education teachers paid to make up missed services

  7 Feb 2010 | 10:00 pm

  Hawaii has asked all special-education teachers to revise Individualized Education Plans to make up for time lost under teach -More- 

• 
  Smartbrief: Accomplished Teacher

• How should teachers build trust with students?

  8 Feb 2010 | 10:00 pm

  Teachers are responsible for building trust between them and their students, a consulting online editor for Edutopia writes  -More- Do you understand the boys in your classroom? In his book Boy Writers and DVD "Dude, Listen to This!", best-selling author Ralph Fletcher explores how to give boys more choices and engage them in classroom discussions, tackling difficult issues such as gender differences, violence and humor, edgy language, and handwriting. Click here for details!

• Denver to end direct placement of tenured teachers in needy schools

  8 Feb 2010 | 10:00 pm

  Denver schools chief Tom Boasberg has ended the district's direct-placement policy that disproportionately forced tenured tea -More- 12 Sides to Your Story is a 32-page flipchart that summarizes 12 key strategies for improving narrative writing. You'll find concise explanations, tips, exemplars, and specific steps students can use to identify strategies as they read—and use them in their own stories. Only $12. Click here to preview the entire flipchart online!

• Game time: Educators include classic board games in lessons

  8 Feb 2010 | 10:00 pm

  Some teachers are using classic board games, such as Candy Land and Scrabble, to help young students with lessons in math, la -More- 

• High-tech bus brings science lab, lessons to schools strapped for resources

  8 Feb 2010 | 10:00 pm

   -More- 

• Instant student feedback helps teachers adjust lessons

  8 Feb 2010 | 10:00 pm

  Teachers in an Arizona school district say the Smart Interactive Response System is helping them adjust lessons and tests mor -More- 

• 
  Smartbrief: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development

• Authors Blog on ASCD EDge

  8 Feb 2010 | 10:00 pm

  Grant Wiggins, world-renowned educator and co-creator of the bestselling Understanding by Design curriculum framework, is jus -More- Executive Director Primary Source Learning, Inc

• Students prepare for life after Beverly Hills

  8 Feb 2010 | 10:00 pm

  Out-of-district students who will no longer be allowed to attend California's Beverly Hills schools are considering their aca -More- 

• Proficiency model is changing learning culture in Oregon school

  8 Feb 2010 | 10:00 pm

  An Oregon high school that has adopted a proficiency-model system under which students are given as much time as they need ea -More- 

• Long-term outcomes are unclear as stimulus program reaches midpoint

  8 Feb 2010 | 10:00 pm

  Assessments are mixed about whether the Obama administration is making progress toward the two primary goals of its $100 bill -More- 

• Art helps boost Dallas charter school

  8 Feb 2010 | 10:00 pm

  Officials at a Dallas charter school say their students' success in the arts has helped transform the school's culture by sho -More- 

• 
  Social Media Explorer

• Viralheat Plants Stake As Affordable Social Media Monitoring Solution

  Jason Falls

  9 Feb 2010 | 3:00 am

  The landscape of social media monitoring solutions has always had about four tiers. There’s the mostly manual but free, the entry-level business pricing (around $100 per month), the standard (about $500 per month to start) and the expensive (“research” approaches that go into the thousands per month.) While Scout Labs made a big splash a year ago with their $99 per month price point while still offering much of the same features and functionality of the more expensive options, there has still been a gap in the market. For the small (or frugal) business that wants less manual…

• Corporate Blog Success Starts And Ends With Business Metrics

  Jason Falls

  8 Feb 2010 | 3:00 am

  The social media purists will tell you that a corporate blog serves as a community hub for your brand. They say it gives your customers a connection point to your company and engenders a sense of community. In some cases that’s true, but you’re going to see me exploring corporate blogging a lot more this year to follow up on a theory that your “community” or “audience” for your blog isn’t what you think it is. That, and the ultimate judge of a corporate blogging effort must be more closely tied to success metrics than making everyone feel good. As you…

• Wanna Neat Job In Public Relations?

  Jason Falls

  5 Feb 2010 | 3:00 am

  Waggener Edstrom Worldwide is hiring a public relations account director in their Seattle office. They reached out to me with an offer to post an ad for it over there in the sidebar. As we’ve discussed before, I only accept advertising from companies whose product or service is relevant to many of you and I insist those advertisers provide me with some subject for editorial content to accompany the ad as well. The requirements gave them pause since the folks helping them with the advertising offer weren’t used to this editorial-advertising hybrid, so I decided to help them a bit…

• What Every Company Should Know About Social Media Policy

  Jason Falls

  3 Feb 2010 | 3:00 am

  A social media policy is a company’s first line of defense against risk in social media marketing. Shockingly, only one in three companies has a social media policy in place. While I’m sure that the majority of marketing managers and decision-makers who read Social Media Explorer are ahead of the curve, there’s a good chance your company doesn’t have a written policy. *UPDATE* – eMarketer published a story and research on companies without social networking policies just hours after we went live with this post. 69% of American companies do not have social networking policies for…

• What Inbound Marketing Is And Why You Should Have It

  Jason Falls

  1 Feb 2010 | 3:00 am

  I spend zero dollars marketing my business. “Marketing” in its traditional sense includes advertising, baiting media outlets with press releases and, to paraphrase David Meerman Scott, buy, beg and borrow for leads and attention. The way people find out about my business is through two primary mechanisms: Word-of-Mouth recommendations and finding me through search engine results. Word-of-Mouth, in this instance, is inclusive of people passing recommendations online. If an account manager at a public relations firm is looking for a social media consultant and asks his or her…

• 
  Community Guy - Jake McKee

• The mind of a Community Manager

  Jake McKee

  8 Feb 2010 | 6:00 am

  During a recent hotel stay at the wonderful Hotel Zaza in Dallas, I noticed two quotes written on the wall of my room. Both struck me as being particularly relevant to explaining the mindset a successful community manager has to own in order to do their job. The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. - F. Scott Fitzgerald I’ve talked about how the Community Manager role is the…

• Friday Fun Thoughts

  Jake McKee

  29 Jan 2010 | 6:21 am

  I got the list of random thoughts below via a forwarded email. It’s OK, it came from the one friend who actually sends over funny stuff. This is a fun read. MapQuest really needs to start their directions on #5. Pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood. While driving yesterday I saw a banana peel in the road and instinctively swerved to avoid it…thanks Mario Kart. Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you’re wrong. I don’t understand the purpose of the line, “I don’t need to drink to have fun.” Great, no…

• Linchpins and Community Managers: The artists of the business world

  Jake McKee

  28 Jan 2010 | 6:17 am

  My colleague, Jackie Huba interviewed Seth Godin about his latest book, “Linchpin“. It’s a great interview, but in particular two things stand out to the community guy in me. Q: You talk about linchpins being artists. What’s the difference between a conventional marketer and one who thinks like an artist? Can you give an example of a marketer who is an artist? A: Art, by my definition, has nothing to do with painting and everything to do with connecting with people in a generous way and causing a change to take place. A movie director is making art when she makes you…

• The loneliest job in business

  Jake McKee

  25 Jan 2010 | 9:14 am

  While perhaps not the loneliest job in business, a Community Manager, especially the strategy building/implementing type is certainly at the top of the list of lonely career choices. Day in and day out the customers and community members you work with yell at you for being too company-focused, while your colleagues more often than not tell you that you’ve gone native, thinking too much about the company and not enough about them. Former Community Manager Jeremiah Owyang calls out a few more challenges to being a Community Manager: Many challenges are internal: Most companies want to…

• What’s the ROI of the phone?

  Jake McKee

  13 Jan 2010 | 8:53 am

  My genius business partner, Sean O’Driscoll talks about social, ROI, and other genius points. This one is well worth the watch.

• 
  Dan Zarrella

• Watch The Science of Social Media Marketing Webinar on YouTube

  Dan Zarrella

  8 Feb 2010 | 10:27 pm

  A combination of much of the research I’ve been doing for the past 3 years, my “Science of Social Media Marketing” presentation is one of my favorite to give. It combines statistics, marketing, history, math, social psychology, memetics, epidemiology, steampunk, zombies and absinthe. I talk apply lessons from sources including urban legends, rumors, homeric poems and proverbs. The first time I did it, was for a record-breaking 12,000 plus registrant HubSpot webinar and the most recent time was for O’Reilly Media. O’Reilly was able to get the whole, one-hour talk,…

• Data Shows That Self-Reference Does Not Get Followers

  Dan Zarrella

  28 Jan 2010 | 6:18 am

  If you like this post, or any of my work, please, nominate me for a Shorty Award. Following up on my last post using TweetPsych Data, I looked at a metric opposing social behavior: self-reference. This time the dataset is well over 60,000 Twitter accounts. What I found here is pretty clear, accounts that have more followers do not tend to talk about themselves much. Want more followers? Stop talking about yourself. If you like this post, or any of my work, please, nominate me for a Shorty Award. Share this on Facebook Share this on del.icio.us Email this to a friend? Share this on Linkedin…

• Data Shows That Social Behavior Gets More Followers

  Dan Zarrella

  25 Jan 2010 | 6:14 am

  If you like this post, or any of my work, please, nominate me for a Shorty Award. The linguistic analysis engine behind TweetPsych has given me a bunch of cool data points to analyze, so I’ve begun to look at various factors and their relationship with follower counts. Using a database of over 30,000 accounts that have been analyzed with TweetPsych, the first dimension I’ve looked at is “Social Behavior”. The “Social Behavior” category includes inclusive language like “we” and “you”, as well as language that describes relationships…

• The 8 Elements of Contagious Ideas

  Dan Zarrella

  19 Jan 2010 | 7:09 am

  In the research I’ve been doing over the past few years into why ideas spread, I’ve found a few common characteristics of contagious ideas across mediums and centuries. The list below contains those characteristics, and while its still an evolving set, the vast majority of successful memes I’ve studied have had some (or all) of them present. I’ve also tried to include takeaways, tactics you, as a marketer can use to apply these concepts to your viral campaigns. If you like this post, or any of my work, please, nominate me for a Shorty Award. Seeding The first group of…

• Zombie Marketing: How to use Combined Relevance to Go Viral

  Dan Zarrella

  13 Jan 2010 | 9:15 pm

  If you like my stuff (or zombies) please, nominate me for a Shorty Award, thanks. I’ve given my science of social media marketing presentation a few times now, and one of the points that has stood out as an audience favorite has been a tactic I call combined relevance. I did a survey a little over a year ago where I asked people why they shared content online, both one-to-one (as emailing or IM’ing a link to a single person) and broadcast (like Tweeting a link to thousands of followers). In both cases the faraway most common answer was relevance. Respondents often said things like…

• 
  The Social Customer Manifesto

• Social Customer Case Study: OK Labs Hits 150% of Customer Community Target

  Christopher Carfi - Cerado, Inc.

  5 Feb 2010 | 6:34 am

  A nice article from CRM Magazine about the work we did with OK Labs. -cfc A Social Strategy That's A-OK OK Labs forgoes traditional marketing in favor of a community-based Web 2.0 approach. By Marti Konstant, vice president of marketing for Open Kernel (OK) Labs, as told to Lauren McKay• Tell us about your organization. Open Kernel—OK Labs—is a three-year-old start-up that was born in Australia and is now headquartered in Chicago. My role when coming on board was to build up the brand and, most importantly, create awareness among the technical developer community who work on…

• Phrase of the Day: "Transaction Myopia"

  Christopher Carfi - Cerado, Inc.

  4 Feb 2010 | 4:48 pm

  Just tripped across a great turn of phrase from Peppers and Rogers: "Transaction Myopia."  Good stuff, and worth checking out. (Via CRMAdvocate) The key bit:"It's far easier for almost any business manager to think in terms of transactions completed-whether you talk about products sold, or calls handled, or loyalty points awarded-than it is to think in terms of asset values improved (i.e., lifetime values increased because of strengthened relationships). And obviously, having better transactional data will help any firm do a better job in making customer-centric decisions. But even…

• The Social Customer Will Be Mobile

  Christopher Carfi - Cerado, Inc.

  4 Feb 2010 | 7:59 am

  Morgan Stanley's uber-analyst Mary Meeker recently published her 671(!) page report on the state (and future) of the mobile internet.  Of her eight "key themes" in the report, one really stood out: Mobile is Ramping Faster Than Desktop Internet Did and Will Be Bigger Than Most Think - a confluence of five factors (3G + Social Networking + Video + VoIP + Impressive Mobile Devices) Are Driving This Change Whoa.  Think about that for a second.  Mobile Internet usage is ramping even faster than Desktop usage did between the early 90s and today.  As soon as…

• American Airlines Hoses Me, Again

  Christopher Carfi - Cerado, Inc.

  19 Jan 2010 | 4:27 pm

  You think I'd learn. I'd been scheduled to go on an embark aboard the USS Stennis this week, on a trip similar to this one taken by Guy Kawasaki and others.  (Thank you, again, USNavy for the invitation, and Andy Sernovitz for facilitating.)  However, the storms hammering the West Coast changed the plans, and the embark was cancelled.  No problem, these things happen.  Totally understand. I'd split my flights so the outbound to San Diego was on American Airlines, and the return was on Southwest in order to get the best fare.  When I found out the trip was canceled, I…

• Offtopic: El Vez at the Independent

  Christopher Carfi - Cerado, Inc.

  18 Dec 2009 | 10:39 am

  Had a rare chance to see the great El Vez* (along with the Elvettes) at The Independent last night.  Los Straightjackets were the backing band. As always, big, big fun.* - Yes, indeed.  El Vez, the Thin Brown Duke, the Mexican Elvis, was in town for his bi-annual holiday show.  Woot!

• 
  Web Strategy by Jeremiah

• Quicktake: What Google Buzz Means

  jeremiah_owyang

  9 Feb 2010 | 11:26 am

  Google launches status update features Google launches Buzz, which is similar to Friendfeed, which is now part of Facebook. Content will be aggregated, and then prioritized based upon the people you already email with, Harry McCracken and I call this a social graph based on history, “Historical social graph” or HSG. Secondly, this Google Buzz feature will rate and rank content based on activity and interaction within your social group. Users can choose to publish the Buzz in public, which will display on the Google Profile page. They also announced the ability to input this data…

• Register For Webinar: Developing a Social Strategy by Objectives

  jeremiah_owyang

  8 Feb 2010 | 10:11 am

  Left: There are four main categories of social strategy, yet with over 20 subset objectives, which we’ll discuss at a high level. Organizations that focus on social technologies suffer from the symptom of ‘Fondling The Hammer‘ .  True social strategy stems from business objectives –not the latest technologies. So often, companies develop social tactics based on the latest tool that’s sprung forth.  Yet, so far and few in between to organizations develop an actionable plan based on business goals. This second in our no-cost webinar series is coming up on the…

• People on the Move in the Social Media Industry: Feb 4, 2010

  jeremiah_owyang

  4 Feb 2010 | 8:31 pm

  The submissions are defintly picking up, I’m seeing more submissions than before. Why? I attribute this to the start of the new year when many folks change up jobs, and the slight uptick we’re starting to see in the economy. In an effort to recognize the changes in the social media space, I’ve started this post series (see archives) to both track and congratulate folks who get promoted, move, or accept new exciting positions. Please help me congratulate the following folks: Congrats to Jeannette Gibson (Twttier) who has moved to corporate marketing to run social media at…

• Matrix: Companies Should Factor ‘Social Influence’ Into Total Customer Value

  jeremiah_owyang

  3 Feb 2010 | 6:00 am

  Case Study: An Influential Mom Blogger Caused Mainstream Crises Popular blogger, Heather Armstrong (@dooce) was dissatisfied with her non-working Maytag appliance.  Following protocol, she called their support number, yet her issue was not solved.  Stonewalled, she argued/warned the support staff that she was on Twitter, yet didn’t receive special assistance.  Escalating further, she then flexed a muscle and told them she had over 1,000,000 Twitter followers –yet the support rep did not budge.  Finally, she blogged and Tweeted against Maytag, initiating a boycott by her…

• List of Corporate Social Media Strategists, Corporate Community Managers in 2010

  jeremiah_owyang

  30 Jan 2010 | 9:36 am

  As an industry watcher, I look at trends, data, spending, technologies, yet what’s really important is watching the trend of professionals as they grow into these roles managing disruptive technologies.  Update: Brian Hayashi has created a spreadsheet of this with additional info –like Twitter handles. We’re staying coordinated so the data is matched, follow Brian on Twitter. [Connecting with customers using social technologies is deceptively challenging, as most outsiders don't recognize the leadership to change internal cultural. Now, in public, let's recognize those who…

• 
  Common Craft

• Common Craft in Inc. Magazine

  leelefever

  19 Jan 2010 | 3:25 pm

  A few months back April Joyner of Inc. Magazine contacted me to talk about the growth of videos as a sales tool.  I wasn't really sure what the article's angle, but spoke from our experience in working with clients on videos that explain their products.  The article is now online and in the print magazine. My big points came out (mostly accurately) as: It's not about how something works, it's why anyone should care about The script is really important, write it first Keep it short The article also profiles the video experiences of iPhone app company Smule, Kiva Systems and has a…

• Scenes from a Common Craft Video Shoot

  leelefever

  19 Jan 2010 | 9:24 am

  People often wonder what it looks like to make a Common Craft video. So, every once in a while, we take photos as we're making a video. This video shoot is for a forthcoming title that's under wraps, but will come out within a month or two. To acheive the light we want, we work with four really bright halogen lights. They're so bright that I wear sunglasses when recording - it feels like I get a bit of a tan each shoot. This is Sachi getting things set up. Prior to shooting, we go through a phase we call "cut and color".  Basically we get all the visuals together, color them and then cut…

• The Proposition 8 Video - NOT Common Craft

  leelefever

  13 Jan 2010 | 10:01 am

  California's controversial Proposition 8 is back in the news, which means a fresh round of people asking if we made the video on You Tube that supports the ban on gay marriage. Though the video could be confused for a Common Craft video, it's not. Let me be as clear.  We would never, ever make such a video. Aside from our own views on the subject, we recognize that dealing in polarizing political issues is not good for our business. Our goal is to be as unbiased as possible and make videos that appeal to largest possible audience. Please don't feel the need to contact the person that…

• New Video: Protecting Reputations Online in Plain English

  leelefever

  6 Jan 2010 | 11:12 am

  Today we published a new video called Protecting Online Reputations in Plain English. Aimed at younger or inexperienced web users, this video helps explain the long-term risks of sharing inappropriate photos, videos and stories on the Web. We've seen the stories and heard personal accounts about people who shared an inappropriate photo that eventually caused them to lose their job or miss an opportunity. Preventing this kind of problem can come from increased awareness about how the Web works and what it means to share something with the public. This video is about taking responsibility and…

• Protecting Reputations Online in Plain English

  leelefever

  6 Jan 2010 | 9:29 am

  Protecting Reputations Online in Plain EnglishProtecting Reputations Online in Plain English

• 
  louisgray.com

• Google's Newest Mission: Organizing the Social Experience

  9 Feb 2010 | 11:30 am

  With today's introduction of Google Buzz, you are going to see a lot of reactions and news stories that say Google is trying to "kill" competition, including Twitter and Facebook. Given the company's hit and miss track record on introducing or cultivating products with social elements, it is no surprise that Google's introduction of Buzz can be viewed by some with a level of skepticism, or distrust, as the Mountain View company extends its reach on the Web. But in discussions I had with members of Google's team behind the new venture on Monday, it wasn't the squelching of competition they…

• How Google Buzz Validates but Marginalizes FriendFeed

  9 Feb 2010 | 11:15 am

  When FriendFeed debuted on the scene in late 2007, it was one of the simplest ways to aggregate all of my updates from the social outposts I have all over the Web, see friends' updates and have a discussion around their shared items. Now part of Facebook, the product continues to have an extremely loyal, albeit relatively small, community, who embraced the technology and made it a platform for social interaction. The site, which was among the pioneers of real-time streams and the surfacing of popular items, has seen its technology mimicked and imitated by many, but its complexity helped to…

• Google's Buzz Brings Social Sharing, Aggregation to GMail

  9 Feb 2010 | 11:11 am

  Google's growth from its roots as a spartan, but highly effective, search engine has been as transformative as the changes the Web itself has seen over the last decade-plus. As the Web has evolved to include more rich media and social connectors, so too has Google evolved, as the company now operates not just the most popular data discovery engine but also some of the Web's most popular data creation and sharing engines, including Gmail and YouTube. But the company, so far, has struggled a bit in connecting its wide array of properties and making them feel personal and social. Today, with the…

• EdgeTheory: The Battle for Real-Time Reporting, Curation

  8 Feb 2010 | 10:56 am

  The issue of real-time news reporting and curation is becoming increasingly visible and important as news breaks on blogs, Twitter, Facebook and other social media properties. Tonight, Chris Saad and I talked about how the mainstream media can adapt to involve content curation in addition to their content creation, and how it still makes sense to have some investigative reporting in addition to real-time reactions.The discussion weaved from curation tools like Cascaad and my6sense to the recent news of Teens In Tech Networks CEO Daniel Brusilovsky leaving TechCrunch, and how the news was…

• EdgeTheory Conversations: Twitter's New Suggestions

  7 Feb 2010 | 11:10 pm

  From: EdgeTheory Conversations with Chris Saad (@chrissaad) and myself, discussing Twitter's incremental changes to the controversial Suggested User List and launch of Suggestions. Referenced include:@joshelman, @danielbru, @gregarious, @jesse, @anildash, @rsarver, @scobleizer and @twitter.Listen in below. Total talk time is about 20 minutes.More: louisgray.com | RSS | FriendFeed | E-mail | Cell: 408 646.2759

• 
  Speaking about Presenting

• What you need to know before using a cartoon in your presentation

  Olivia Mitchell

  31 Jan 2010 | 3:02 pm

  I was reviewing a technical presentation for a client. The topic was the latest dental procedures. Every few slides a cartoon popped up. Cartoons about people with bad teeth. They were tangentially relevant to the topic of the presentation – but didn’t help to promote the message of the presentation. When I asked the client why she had included the cartoons she said: “My presentation is soooo boring. I need something to keep the audience awake.” Can you relate? Philippa Leguen de Lacroix It’s a great temptation to do this. But is it justified? This list of pros and cons regarding…

• 6 presentation tips from a professional speaker

  Olivia Mitchell

  26 Jan 2010 | 6:27 pm

  Scott Berkun speaking at the Web2.0 Expo 2009. Photo by James Duncan Davidson. Scott Berkun’s book Confessions of a public speaker is an entertaining and enlightening read on what it what it takes, and what it’s like, to be a professional speaker. I’ve shamelessly cherry-picked the presentation tips from Scott’s book that I most agree with. 1. Let go of perfection If you’d like to be good at something, the first thing to go out the window is the notion of perfection. Every time is I get up to the front of the room, I know I will make mistakes. I so agree. I get so annoyed by…

• What’s my best presentation tip for the presentations that you do?

  Olivia Mitchell

  19 Jan 2010 | 11:05 am

  Every type of presentation has its own challenges. As part of a “Public Speaking and the New Year” blog carnival organized by Angela DeFinis, I’ve identified what I see as the major challenge or trend for each presentation type in 2010 and given you my best presentation tip to overcome it. Best presentation tip for a training session Running long (sometimes all-day) training sessions is probably the worst possible method of learning. So, as trainers we have to compensate for the terrible format. John Medina, author of Brain Rules, delivers 50 minute lectures. His experience, backed up…

• How to handle a texting audience

  Olivia Mitchell

  13 Jan 2010 | 9:25 pm

  A reader asked me this question: Some of us who are 45+ are finding that younger people text and use computers during presentations to the point of rudeness. This happens even when others in the presentation give great evaluations.  We think we’ll be seen as “old farts” if we ask them to disengage.  How do we bridge this generation gap? Strip the generation language from this question and this is a question about attention. What’s the assumption? The assumption is that people paying attention will be looking at you, the speaker. If they’re not looking at you, or they…

• How to propose a toast

  Olivia Mitchell

  14 Dec 2009 | 1:55 pm

  Propose a toast: Image by Waldo Jaquith Give the gift of public speaking this holiday season. It’s the time to show your love and appreciation for your family and friends. Here are some tips for proposing a toast: 1. Plan your toast in advance It might be tempting (particularly if you’ve had a a few drinks) to spontaneously stand up and propose a toast. Your toast will be immeasurably better if you put some thought to it in advance. An unplanned toast can easily turn into a long-winded ramble. 2. Use tidy notes Too often I’ve seen people at family occasions stand up and peer…

• 
  The Engaging Brand

• Show 283 - Social Media and Customer Retention

  Anna Farmery

  8 Feb 2010 | 6:49 am

  Show 283 of The Engaging Brand leadership and marketing podcast is ready just for you. To subscribe or listen on your PC now - both for free, you don't need to download anything - all explained at the end of the post and brought by our sponsor: GotoMeeting  Hold your meetings online for just $49/mo. Try GoToMeeting FREE for 30 days. On today's podcast we talk to the brilliant Joseph Jaffe. He was written a fabulous new book called Flip the Funnel and we talk about Motivation behind flip the channel How retaining the customer should be at the core of your business strategy The need to fuse…

• 4 Steps to Recovery

  Anna Farmery

  5 Feb 2010 | 12:28 pm

  Followers in twitter or facebook will know that I broke my foot this week - and I have to say I am not the best patient there has ever been! I was thinking that businesses could learn a lot from my experience.When your strategy is "broken" or your business needs "mending" then try a C.A.S.TC = Create a culture which diagnoses the problem quickly. Realizing the problem too late just makes the recovery so much harder...create warning systems to diagnose quickly - trend reporting, constant conversation, constant challenge, listening for pressure pointsA = Articulate simply the recovery process.

• 3 Ways to Tap into People's Emotions

  Anna Farmery

  3 Feb 2010 | 3:46 am

  The social in the phrase social media gives you a clue on what people are looking for....When people get their social media strategy right, they tap into the emotional element of people's lives.But how can you tap into that emotional element? I think there are 3 key ways with social mediaTap into memories. Memories can be long term or short term. There is a huge difference in selling say 'Basic finanical training' and 'Ever looked at a set of numbers and thought I have no idea what they mean?'. Your product is the solution to a fear or an experience which that existing or potential customer…

• Your brand is social whether you like it or not!

  Anna Farmery

  1 Feb 2010 | 1:40 pm

  The web has many conversations about brands each day. I often have conversations with people who say "I fear social media, I fear the negative aspect for the brand"What I think is important, is that brands realize that the web is social by nature......and if you don't give your customers something to share, or if you don't give them something to talk positively about.......then your brand still remains talked about, but with you on the outside of the conversation. Your inactivity does not stop the social web, it may even increase the negative aspects of the social web...because people feel…

• Show 282 - How to manage your energy through thoughts

  Anna Farmery

  29 Jan 2010 | 12:58 pm

  Show 281 of The Engaging Brand leadership and marketing podcast is ready just for you. To subscribe or listen on your PC now - both for free, you don't need to download anything - all explained at the end of the post and brought by our sponsor: GotoMeeting  Hold your meetings online for just $49/mo. Try GoToMeeting FREE for 30 days. On today's podcast we talk to Janet Richmond about how to manage your thoughts, we discuss What is energy of thought? Are thoughts contagious? How you can manage your thought process Are negative thoughts more powerful than positive thoughts? How to neutralize…

• 
  Lava Row

• How newspapers can foster community with social media

  Nathan T. Wright

  7 Feb 2010 | 12:47 pm

  On Friday I gave a presentation called Fostering Community with Social Media at the Midwest Newspaper Summit (put on by the fine folks at the Iowa Newspaper Association). The audience was a mix of journalists and editors from regional newspapers as well as college students excited to break into the media industry. The journalism world (specifically newspapers) is currently in a state of flux, and many are wondering if anything will be left standing five years from now. Yes, media platforms and reading habits have evolved, but the point of my session was that community equals opportunity…

• Let’s meet up in February

  Nathan T. Wright

  1 Feb 2010 | 3:33 pm

  February is shaping up to be a busy month, speaking-wise. Starting tonight, we’ve got 11 gigs in 28 days – now that’s a lot of talking! Recently some of you have been asking about what events we’re participating in and where to find us, so we’ve posted a detailed list (ones that allow public registration) below. We’ll go ahead and throw March’s trip to Texas into the mix, as well. If you decide to venture out to any of these, please say hello and ask lots of questions. We’d love to meet you. Midwest Newspaper Summit Friday, February 5 Downtown…

• Which industries will Apple’s iPad make sense for?

  Nathan T. Wright

  28 Jan 2010 | 12:12 pm

  The dust has finally settled and rumors have been confirmed or laid to rest – yesterday Apple officially announced their latest shiny object, the iPad. The transformative nature of this device has been discussed over and over again by tech industry experts, bloggers and pundits leading up to the event. Apple is billing it as “magical” and “revolutionary.” After watching video of the Steve Jobs keynote last night, I’ve formed a few opinions of my own on how I see this thing getting used. (Side rant: The name “iPad” is a yawner. I would have…

• Julia Rosien on brand-building with social media

  Nathan T. Wright

  18 Jan 2010 | 3:41 pm

  Today we interviewed Julia Rosien, Director of Communications at Natura World, about how she’s using social media to build the brand of a mattress company. We chose to highlight Julia to prove a point – that smart, strategic use of social networks can benefit any business, regardless of the product or industry. The discussion also touches on the FTC’s recent guidelines for blogger outreach and disclosure, and the importance of transparency within Natura’s marketing efforts – differentiating them from other organic businesses that might dabble in less-than-honest…

• How and why I’m using Foursquare

  Nathan T. Wright

  11 Jan 2010 | 1:21 pm

  We’re only one week into Foursquare being available here in Des Moines (and every city), and already I’m seeing a large volume of chatter from people who are confused by it, scared of it, dismissive of it and don’t see the value. This is a classic symptom of a “hot” social network. In fact, many of these conversations are very, very familiar. We had the same ones about Twitter in early 2007 (I was one of those confused voices) until we each had our personal “a-ha” moments, and then we suddenly got it. Last week I wrote about Foursquare’s…

• 
  slide:ology

• Favorite fan mail…that has made it through

  Nancy Duarte

  8 Feb 2010 | 3:03 pm

  I *heart* fan mail. There is nothing better than hearing from you guys. We’ve been getting so much mail that we’ve decided to take the load off by setting up specific accounts for different needs. Our goal is to stay better organized so we can respond to your questions faster. If you’re interested in working with us on a project, contact: info@duarte.com If your question is specific to our workshops or webinars, send it to: training@duarte.com For all things media-related, including speaking engagements, contact: tracy@duarte.com All fan mail, and additional questions/comments go…

• Beyond Bullet Points: Interview with Nancy Duarte

  Paula Tesch

  5 Feb 2010 | 5:30 pm

  If you’re interested in presentation design, you’ve heard of Cliff Atkinson. His best-selling book, Beyond Bullet Points, has inspired many people to break away from the traditionally bullet-heavy presentation format. His book has also inspired a blog, to which Meryl Evans is a frequent contributor. Meryl recently interviewed Nancy Duarte on behalf of the Beyond Bullet Points blog. (Say that ten times fast.) Nancy and Meryl chatted about what makes a presentation effective and memorable (a story), what makes a story good (it moves your audience), and why sketching and drawing at…

• Product Launches Should be a Big Deal

  Nancy Duarte

  1 Feb 2010 | 4:39 pm

  Matt Lauer said that the launch of Windows 7 was the most important launch Microsoft had done in ten years. If that’s true, why’d it suck so much? Each month I receive a publication called “Vital Speeches.” Last month’s issue included a transcript of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s launch presentation. Please don’t let this speech discredit the folks at Vital Speeches, it’s a great publication. But really, couldn’t Microsoft’s herd of press folks have come up with a catchier title? While writing the next book, I’ve been in speech analysis-mode, and have considered…

• Five Predictions for 2010

  Nancy Duarte

  22 Jan 2010 | 10:47 am

  Last year was our first year for making predictions: http://blog.duarte.com/2009/01/five-predictions-for-presentations-in-2009/. I’m late to the party again this year, but I feel pretty excited about what 2010 will bring. In the year 2010… 1. Presentations and social media will blur. Audience and presenters will have 2-way communication. It won’t just be about the audience twittering to the backchannel. 2. There’ll be another movie about a slide show. Or, if there isn’t a movie about a slide show… there might be a movie about slides. Or a celebrity will use slides to create a…

• Your Data Wants a Makeover

  Nichole Nye

  15 Jan 2010 | 3:23 pm

  Simplicity does not necessarily mean skimping out on the meat of your presentation. When handled correctly, complex scenarios and data can still be included while being transformed into something that is easily comprehensible to the average audience member. No, this does not mean packing seemingly endless charts, tables, and graphs onto every slide. What it does mean is that with the right finessing, even incredibly complex data can be picked apart and rearranged in a simple and engaging way. “The Power Gap” (a new animated infographic by Airside) is a great example of making a…

• 
  Ethos3

• Stuff Presenters Like

  Scott Schwertly

  4 Feb 2010 | 11:10 am

  It’s time for a personal confession. My name is Scott Schwertly and I am annoyed. No, I am angry. People can care less about their presentations. Don’t believe me. Look around you! Most of them are lame. Hence, I have created a personal blog (think of it as an extension of Ethos3) to point out the flaws, weaknesses, and dumb crap that presenters do each and everyday.  It’s a reaction to both Stuff White People Like and Stuff Christians Like so I am calling it Stuff Presenters Like.  In a nutshell, it’s a blog about the good, the bad, and the lame things presenters do…

• A Brief Introduction To Introductions

  Scott Schwertly

  1 Feb 2010 | 6:45 am

  If you find yourself making your fair share of presentations for your company or business, there is a good chance you may also be called upon to introduce another speaker – maybe at short notice. Don’t panic! If you know your way around a presentation, you can make a great introduction. Essentially, you’re being asked to deliver a very short speech. Many of the same fundamentals that apply to a presentation apply to an introduction, with a few special points to keep in mind. How Long Is Too Long? When making an introduction, it’s important to remember that brief is best.

• Amazing Stories – Presentation Tips from Steven Spielberg

  Scott Schwertly

  29 Jan 2010 | 5:51 am

  Even in the midst of these economic hard times, people are still finding the extra cash to check out a movie now and then. Recent films like Avatar and The Book of Eli show that the public is still hungry for blockbusters, and when it comes to blockbusters, one name stands above the others – Steven Spielberg. Love him or hate him, no one walks the line between innovative, artistic film making, and popular success like Steven Spielberg. In fact there was no such thing as a blockbuster film until Spielberg made Jaws. There had been very successful films of course, but Jaws remade film…

• 6 Techniques to Make Your Presentation Unforgettable

  Scott Schwertly

  27 Jan 2010 | 6:04 am

  It’s great to find yourself at the front of the room, speaking clearly, shuffling confidently through your perfectly-chosen slides, seeing looks on the faces of your audience members that seem to say “Yes, I am listening. No, I cannot turn away.” If only it was always that easy… It can be helpful to think about attention in terms of presentations in three ways: First, we need to grab the audience’s attention. We need to find some way to capture them quickly and make sure that they are invested in our message right from the start. Secondly, we need to hold their…

• 5 Presentation Brainstorming Warm-ups

  Scott Schwertly

  25 Jan 2010 | 6:14 am

  Everyone knows that productive brainstorming sessions are imperative to creating stellar presentations. Everyone also knows that the practice of brainstorming has become a little weary. Our brains are over-stimulated and tired. Even after cups and cups of coffee, sometimes we just can’t WAKE UP! Jumping into a brainstorming session these days seems a lot like jumping into an ice cold swimming pool in early Spring. With that in mind, below are five warm-up exercises that will help ease your team into the brainstorming pool. Opposite Day To help jump-start your team’s brains, try an…

• 
  Idea Sandbox » Blog

• Environmental Integration: Satellite Dish Disguise

  Paul

  9 Feb 2010 | 4:22 am

  Over the past several years, I’ve had the good fortune to be able travel around Europe. I’ve taken tens of thousands of pictures. I love this shot below. Terra cotta roof tiles, and lush, greens hills a patchwork alternating vineyards and olive groves. This is Vinci, Italy. Where Leonardo was born and grew up – you know – Leonardo da Vinci (of Vinci). However, in the middle of this great shot – is a mark of the late 20th Century – the satellite dish. You can also see mid-century old-school antennas. [Fig. 1 Vinci, Italy View] You can click the image above…

• How To Create Word Of Mouth, Best Practices

  Paul

  5 Feb 2010 | 6:21 am

  No. 4. The final of a 4 Article Series Welcome to my final article about word of mouth. I’ve spent this week “debunking the bunk” surrounding WOM. It follows a podcast interview I took part in last week. Today’s topics are… (7) How do you intentionally create WOM? (8) What are some WOM Best Practices for small businesses? (7) How do you intentionally create WOM? Let’s think about what word of mouth really means. It means people talking about you… spreading the word, making remarks. It means you’re worth remarking about – that you are…

• Social Media: Its Role In Creating Word Of Mouth And Customer Experience

  Paul

  4 Feb 2010 | 6:56 am

  No. 3 of a 4 Article Series Welcome back! This week I’m talking about Word of Mouth (WOM). Last week I contributed to a discussion with John Moore (from Brand Autopsy) hosted by Jay Ehret of The Marketing Spot. We “debunked the bunk” surrounding WOM, and had fun doing it. This week I’m sharing stuff that didn’t necessarily make the podcast. Today I answer: (5) What’s the role of social media in creating WOM? (6) Has the focus of Social Media had a negative effect on the Customer Experience? (5) What’s the role of social media in creating WOM? You…

• The Importance (Or Not) Of Social Media and Word Of Mouth

  Paul

  3 Feb 2010 | 9:47 am

  No. 2 of a 4 Article Series This week I’m talking about Word of Mouth or WOM. What it is, how to create it, etc. This is following a podcast hosted by Jay Ehret of The Marketing Spot featuring John Moore (from Brand Autopsy) and I. I’m taking you through information that didn’t necessarily make the podcast. Yesterday I shared thoughts on these ideas: (1) What is Word of Mouth? (2) Is WOM taking back seat to social media? Today, I address these questions: (3) Is WOM diminished as a marketing discipline? (4) Is social media durable as a marketing and WOM tool? (3) Is WOM…

• What Is WOM And How Is It Related To Social Media?

  Paul

  2 Feb 2010 | 5:26 am

  No. 1 of a 4 Article Series Last week I was flattered to be part of a discussion about word of mouth (WOM) marketing and social media. John Moore (from Brand Autopsy) and I, spoke with Jay Ehret of The Marketing Spot. Link to podcast → Power To The Small Business: Debunking Word-Of-Mouth Bunk. Jay let us know ahead of time what types of questions he was going to ask. Time didn’t permit me to share all of my thoughts. I thought I’d share them this week in a series of articles about word of mouth and how to be remarkable. Here are the questions, and the schedule: Tuesday…

• 
  Slides that stick

• Message arrived - nobody understood it

  8 Feb 2010 | 7:30 pm

  My attention was drawn to this Vodafone ad that uses the NATO alphabet to say C-O-M-M-U-N-I-C-A-T-E  C-L-E-A-R-L-Y. An excellent example of the difference between delivering a message (i.e., writing your bullet points on a slide) and getting someone else to understand/internalize what it says. I am not sure yet how to use it yet, but this NATO alphabet is a good thing to remember when thinking about chart concepts. Via Ads of the World.

• The audience wants you to succeed

  7 Feb 2010 | 7:30 pm

  Fear of public speaking often stems from the speaker thinking that the audience's main objective is to criticize her performance. The opposite is true: the audience wants you to succeed. First of all because of selfish motivations; nobody wants to be bored.But there is an emotional driver as well. People (in the audience) do not like to subject themselves to an embarrassing situation. Watching this movie clip from the film "About a boy" creates that exact feeling in your stomach (I cannot embed it for some reason).The book "Confessions of a public speaker" has a great section on public…

• Browsing for books about design

  4 Feb 2010 | 9:06 pm

  The Internet and the place I live (Israel) have cut me off of those great large book stores where you can browse endlessly for books you did not know you missed. Presentation blogs (this one included) often talk about the same limited set of books about public speaking and presentation design. Here is a list of design books compiled by graphic designer Jason Santa Maria full of titles that look really interesting. Found via SwissMiss. Image credit Google LIFE, an excellent source of images for non-commercial use.

• The entire Jobs' iPad speech in 180s: passion

  3 Feb 2010 | 8:19 pm

  Presenting is not a casual discussion, it is a performance. When you are not passionate about what you are presenting yourself, do not expect your audience to be. This short video compilation of Steve Jobs' iPad launch speech shows how he packed his talk with enthusiasm. Something to learn from, but also to make you smile.

• You should follow this blog

  2 Feb 2010 | 7:30 pm

  Mark Suster is a venture capitalist (VC) who is quietly building one of the world's most-read blogs about entrepreneurship and VC investing. I suspect most people who read my blog subscribe to other blogs in areas such as (graphics) design and public speaking. Most of these blogs (including this one), are run by people who write presentations. Mark's blog is different.Most of the time he sits in the audience listening to people trying to pitch a venture to him, but in an earlier stage in his career he was an entrepreneur himself sitting at the other side of the table (hence the name of his…

• 
  TEDTalks (video)

• TEDTalks : Peter Eigen: How to expose the corrupt - Peter Eigen (2009)

  Peter Eigen

  8 Feb 2010 | 8:40 am

  Some of the world's most baffling social problems, says Peter Eigen, can be traced to systematic, pervasive government corruption, hand-in-glove with global companies. At TEDxBerlin, Eigen describes the thrilling counter-attack led by his organization Transparency International.

• TEDTalks : Tom Shannon: The painter and the pendulum - Tom Shannon (2009)

  Tom Shannon

  5 Feb 2010 | 7:08 am

  TED visits Tom Shannon in his Manhattan studio for an intimate look at his science-inspired art. An eye-opening, personal conversation with John Hockenberry reveals how nature's forces -- and the onset of Parkinson's tremors -- interact in his life and craft.

• TEDTalks : David Agus: A new strategy in the war on cancer - David Agus (2009)

  David Agus

  4 Feb 2010 | 7:00 am

  Traditionally, David Agus explains, cancer treatments have had a short-sighted focus on the offending individual cells. He suggests a new, cross-disciplinary approach, using atypical drugs, computer modeling and protein analysis to treat and analyze the whole body.

• TEDTalks : George Whitesides: A lab the size of a postage stamp - George Whitesides (2009)

  George Whitesides

  3 Feb 2010 | 7:01 am

  Traditional lab tests for disease diagnosis can be too expensive and cumbersome for the regions most in need. George Whitesides' ingenious answer, at TEDxBoston, is a foolproof tool that can be manufactured at virtually zero cost.

• TEDTalks : Jamie Heywood: The big idea my brother inspired - Jamie Heywood (2009)

  Jamie Heywood

  2 Feb 2010 | 7:37 am

  When Jamie Heywood's brother was diagnosed with ALS, he devoted his life to fighting the disease as well. The Heywood brothers built an ingenious website where people share and track data on their illnesses -- and they discovered that the collective data had enormous power to comfort, explain and predict.

• 
  Be Excellent

• Achieving Sustained Growth - Take Two

  Skip Reardon

  9 Feb 2010 | 8:08 am

  As reported in the Harvard Business Review's Daily Stat, the consulting group Bain's updated global database of Sustained Value Creators found only 12% of companies worldwide managed to grow profits and revenues more than 5.5% over the 10 years ending in 2008 and earn back their cost of capital. Here's another take on the same issue: As reported in the best-selling book Six Disciplines Execution Revolution, (How Big Is The Challenge, page 29), a recent McKinsey study concluded that few large global companies outperform their competitors on both revenue growth and profitability…

• Trends Affecting Leadership Development in 2010

  Skip Reardon

  9 Feb 2010 | 7:16 am

  The most significant emerging trends affecting leadership development, as identified in a Human Resources Executive recap of the 2009/2010 Trends in Executive Development: A Benchmark Report, are: Impact of the Economy. It means that there is more pressure now than before to prepare leaders who can weather the storm and navigate their companies successfully through the turbulence.Bench Strength is No. 1. "Lack of bench strength" was identified as the second most influential factor impacting executive development and "Increasing bench strength" was the top key objective in executive…

• Do You Need a Consultant, or a Business Coach?

  Skip Reardon

  9 Feb 2010 | 5:38 am

  What is the difference between a business coach and a consultant?A consultant completes projects for you based on their own technical expertise. Often, a consultant will provide suggestions and direction for what needs to be fixed, however, rarely will they help the business leader actually implement the fix.A business coach guides you in growing your business:Business coaches provide business leaders with awareness, education, and accountability through regularly scheduled coaching sessions and other proven, best-practices business performance tools. Instead of getting paid for billable…

• New Leaders Need Coaching Too!

  Skip Reardon

  9 Feb 2010 | 5:33 am

  Only 23 percent of new leaders — or employees who have advanced from being individual contributors to supervising or managing others — receive the coaching they need to reach their full development potential, according to a survey conducted by Right Management, a provider of integrated human capital consulting services and solutions.Key findings from the survey:While organizations see value in providing coaching to strategic and developing leaders, coaching is not offered as frequently to new leaders.Most new leaders advance in their careers due to their proficiency with technical skills,…

• Identifying Growth Leaders In Your Organization

  Skip Reardon

  8 Feb 2010 | 7:38 am

  According to a Wall Street Journal article, "Growth leaders - most companies have managers who can turbocharge results. The trick is finding -- and nurturing -- them.""Indeed, powerful catalysts for organic growth often exist deep within an organization, hidden and untapped. We're talking about a special breed of midlevel managers -- men and women who possess the vision, leadership and entrepreneurial talents that together make up what we refer to as a growth leader."The chart above offers a way to understand the mindset of growth leaders.Find them, recognize them, and support them - or your…

• 
  Dumb Little Man - Tips for Life

• The Power of Thinking Big

  Mark Harrison

  8 Feb 2010 | 5:03 am

  We've been conditioned to think small, simplify, not to be greedy, and to overall expect less and demand less from life. We’ve been taught that we should be happy and thankful with what we have and that there are many others less fortunate than ourselves.I read somewhere that, as an experiment, someone put two adverts in a newspaper. They were for the same job, doing the same work with the same hours, but one of them offered to pay a salary many times the other. Guess what? About ten times more people applied for the lower paid job! People think small. And that's one of the reasons they…

• Who’s In Charge of Your Life?

  Ali

  7 Feb 2010 | 12:04 am

  This might seem like an odd question. Who’s in charge of your life? Who tells you what to do? Who says which choices are valid, and which are silly or self-indulgent?On the surface of it, if you’re an adult, there’s probably no-one standing next to you and telling you exactly what you should be doing. But many of us have ceded control of our lives to someone else. Often unconsciously, we’ve taken on their values, even their likes and dislikes, and we’ve made them their own.Do you ever feel that you “should” be doing something that you aren’t? Why? Is that impulse really from…

• 8 Foods That Will Hide Your Bad Breath

  Krizia MissK

  6 Feb 2010 | 4:54 am

  There’s nothing worse than having bad breath and not knowing about it!There are certain foods that are guaranteed to cause bad breath. Most people are quite aware that eating foods such as curry, garlic, onions or coffee before a meeting or function might be the kiss of death when it comes to social etiquette.You can try chewing gum, but you’ll have to chew for a long time because until that bad-breath-causing-food clears from your system (which can take up to 24 hours), you’ll be stuck with that bad breath. That’s unless you know which foods you can eat to mask the problem.When it…

• 50 Ways You Can Create a Better Day

  DLM Writers

  5 Feb 2010 | 6:45 am

  Every now and then I wake up in a crappy mood, feeling totally unmotivated and not wanting to do anything or see anyone. It could be due to something bad happening the previous day, or it could be due to nothing at all. I just feel crabby for no reason. Weird, I know. But, I'm sure you know what I mean. Everyone has experienced dreadful waking moments in the past.In fact, it is not really surprising that a lot of people nowadays feel bad the moment they wake up. If you are bombarded with negative news like the recent airplane crotch-bomb threat and the Haiti earthquake, it is little wonder…

• 5 Reasons You May Want to Start a Side Business

  Ali

  4 Feb 2010 | 3:10 am

  Whether your “real” work is a full-time day job, an academic course, or taking care of kids, you might have a few hours to spare each week which you’d like to use productively. Have you ever thought about starting a side business?A few years ago, I thought that “business” was the realm of tough go-getters with a focus on profit and nothing else. Since then, I’ve met lots of individuals who run their own businesses from a couple who make rosettes for horse shows in their spare time, to people working as consultants with government organizations. These business owners come from all…

• 
  Productivity501

• EchoSign Review

  Anna

  9 Feb 2010 | 10:00 am

  In my years in college and in the work force, I haven’t heard many people say that they enjoy paperwork. Sometimes it’s time consuming, rather boring and potentially messy. EchoSign is a product designed to help eliminate physical paper trails. Keeping track of several different documents from the same transaction can be frustrating, especially if you want to work in a paperless environment. For those that prefer to keep the paper trail organized in computer files instead of physical files, EchoSign would be a great help. Pricing Contracts have been faxed and mailed for years…

• Random Stuff

  Mark Shead

  8 Feb 2010 | 10:00 am

  Here is a bunch of random information I’ve discovered over the last few months.  I figured it might be interesting for someone, so I thought I’d post it all together.  If you see anything that you think would be interesting to see a full post about, please leave a comment and we’ll try to write about it in more detail. Overdrive Digital Library Many state libraries have digital books, audio books and movies that can be checked out electronically from a company called Overdrive.  Most of the time, all you need for access is a card from a local library or your state…

• Free Tax Preparation Sites

  Anna

  4 Feb 2010 | 10:00 am

  With April 15th rapidly approaching, many will start looking for fast, efficient ways to file taxes. The IRS has partnered with a number of sites to provide free online filings. This helps the IRS by decreasing the number of paper forms they have to process. In most states you are still going to have to file a state return. If you plan to use software, it may be easier to do the Federal and State together at the same time. Still, for states without an income tax, this is an easy way to do your taxes and get them submitted for free. Here are a few free sites that offer free filing services:…

• High Goals and Expectations

  Mark Shead

  3 Feb 2010 | 10:00 am

  Everyone has a different idea about success. Many times our expectations are determined by the way we were raised and our interaction with our peers. These expectations can cause us to set artificially low goals. I know a man whose goal is to get his GED so he can get a job and make payments on a car. I just met a girl who has a goal to finish a 9-month cosmetology program so she can work at SuperCuts in front of Wal-Mart. When looking at your goals, make sure you understand the expectations you carry that influence the magnitude of those goals.  If no one in your family went to college, you…

• Tuesday’s Tip: Dressed for Productivity

  Mark Shead

  2 Feb 2010 | 10:00 am

  You’ve heard of “Dressed for Success.” Well, what about “Dressed for Productivity?” I think that the way we dress can have a big impact on our performance. Where I went to college required that all the guys wear ties and all the gals wear dresses to class. There was quite a bit of debate among the students about whether this was really beneficial or not. Many students met the dress code to the letter, but were extremely sloppy in the way that the were dressed. Overall, it would probably be impossible to tell if having a dress code helped make anyone a better…

• 
  Zen Habits

• On minimalism

  Leo

  8 Feb 2010 | 12:26 pm

  Post written by Leo Babauta. Follow me on Twitter. How does ’simple’ differ from ‘minimalist’? That’s the question someone asked me on Twitter recently, and it’s a good one. Zen Habits has become known as a leading simplicity blog, and at the same time I recently started mnmlist, a blog about minimalism. Why the two blogs? What’s the difference? It’s an important question as it forces us to examine each concept a little more closely. First, let’s acknowledge that the two concepts are related, and in some ways are two ways of saying the…

• 12 Classic Zen Habits Posts You Might Not Have Read

  Leo

  6 Feb 2010 | 4:37 pm

  “There is no way to happiness, happiness is the way.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh Post written by Leo Babauta. Follow me on Twitter. This morning I found myself lying around, enjoying a lazy weekend with my wife and kids, basking in the peaceful simplicity of today. It’s in these moments that I find not only my greatest happiness, but my purpose in life. I am here not to achieve or even to change the world, but simply to live. Life is a gift, and I’m happy to accept every moment of it. And so, in this spirit, I thought I’d dig through my archives and share a few favorite posts, to…

• 9 Unconventional Steps to a Thriving, “Very Small” Business

  Leo

  4 Feb 2010 | 7:00 am

  Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Chris Guillebeau of The Art of Non-Conformity. For more than ten years I’ve operated a string of one-man businesses. My model is: keep it lean, hire no one, and outsource very little. I’ve made my share of mistakes (a long list!), but one thing has remained constant—I want to add extreme value to my customers, and I want to make a good living without simply creating a job for myself. Here’s what I’ve learned. 1. Hire no one. My Unconventional Guides business took off in early 2009, and for a while I felt an internal…

• Zen Habits Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

  Leo

  1 Feb 2010 | 2:57 pm

  Post written by Leo Babauta. Follow me on Twitter. I get asked a lot of questions, many of them repeatedly, and I figured instead of answering them all over and over, I’d compile my answers for everyone here. Of course, there’s a lot more about me and this site on the About page, and I’d always love it if you checked out the Books page. I hope you find this useful! 1. Why did you turn off comments on Zen Habits? This has been the most difficult decision I’ve made since starting Zen Habits, as I truly loved comments here. I love hearing from readers, and it was my…

• How Not to Hurry

  Leo

  28 Jan 2010 | 4:56 pm

  “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” ~ Lao Tzu Post written by Leo Babauta. Follow me on Twitter. Consider the above quote from Lao Tzu, (perhaps mythical) father of Taoism: how can it be true? Is it possible to never hurry, but to get everything done? It seems contradictory to our modern world, where everything is a rush, where we try to cram as much into every minute of the day as possible, where if we are not busy, we feel unproductive and lazy. In fact, often we compete by trying to show how busy we are. I have a thousand projects to do! Oh yeah? I have 10,000! The…

• 
  Mind Hacks

• Nine Legendary Hypochondriacs

  vaughan

  8 Feb 2010 | 12:00 am

  ABC Radio National's Late Night Live has a fascinating discussion with the author of a new book on nine famous hypochondriacs: James Boswell, Charlotte Bronte, Charles Darwin, Florence Nightingale, Alice James, Daniel Paul Schreber, Marcel Proust, Glenn Gould and Andy Warhol. I'm not sure Daniel Paul Schreber is necessarily the best example of someone with hypochondria is he is famous for writing a personal account of being genuinely mentally ill and floridly psychotic. However, I've not read the book and the programme focuses on better known figures so I am open to being convinced (certainly…

• Bonuses generate more heat than light

  vaughan

  6 Feb 2010 | 9:11 am

  The engaging behavioural economist Dan Ariely has just become a columnist for Wired UK and in his first article he describes how the promise of performance-related pay often backfires leading people to do more but perform worse. To see the effect of bonuses on performance, Nina Mazar (assistant professor of marketing, Toronto University), Uri Gneezy (professor of economics and strategy, University of California, San Diego), George Loewenstein (professor of economics, Carnegie Mellon, Pennsylvania) and I conducted three experiments. In one we gave subjects tasks that demanded attention,…

• 2010-02-05 Spike activity

  vaughan

  5 Feb 2010 | 12:00 am

  Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news: Sex addiction is a feminist victory, according to an article in Slate, apparently because it allows man shaming. Malevolence-based medicine rears its ugly head. The BPS Research Digest covers research finding CBT-based self-help books might do more harm than good for people who worry a lot. The public are asked for their opinion on the recent news that The Lancet retracts the Wakefield autism paper, by The Onion. Neurophilosophy has an excellent piece on big news that the first evidence for navigation essential grid cells in the human…

• Eureka brain special and more fighting

  vaughan

  4 Feb 2010 | 10:00 am

  The Times has just released its monthly science magazine, Eureka, with a special issue on the brain and all the articles freely available online. There doesn't seem to be a way to link to a whole issue, but inside you'll find an excellent piece on the use of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to temporarily switch off bits of the working brain, a profile of neurosurgeon Huma Sethi, an article on commercial brain-computer interfaces, a remarkable piece on how old injuries can 'return' to affect phantom limbs as well as an exploration of the link between brain activity and sporting skill.

• Time to think

  vaughan

  4 Feb 2010 | 4:00 am

  Bioemphemera has found some wonderfully left-field brain illustrations by Dutch graphic designer Rhonald Blommestijn. The image on the left is a brain made out of clocks. Blommestijn's blog is full of strikingly surreal eye-candy that manages both to inspire a feeling of wide-eyed wonder and illustrate scientific themes. They're certainly very original takes on the subject and the neuroscience images are particularly vivid. Link to Bioephemera on Blommestijn's brain illustrations. Link to Blommestijn's blog.

• 
  Chaos Scenario

• What You Don't Know Can Kill You

  Cam Beck

  26 Jan 2010 | 5:14 am

  On a recent project, I was reminded of "The Curse of Knowledge," the arch-villain of Chip and Dan Heath's Made to Stick. According to this concept, the more we know about something, the harder it is for us to remember not knowing it.There's a corollary curse that goes with that: The more we know about something, the more tempting it is to assume we know more than we do. You might be surprised to learn how much medical doctors and/or other incredibly bright and useful people know about web architecture and design.Aircraft engineers are pretty bright people. Lives depend on their competence.

• 10 Advanced Features I Want from Apple Tablet

  Cam Beck

  19 Jan 2010 | 6:08 pm

  To hear some commentators tell it, Steve Jobs is going to single-handedly save the newspaper industry with Apple's new tablet, which is rumored to be announced next week (Read Newsweek's Article: Five Ways Apple's Tablet May Change the World).  I wish him, the newspaper industry, and the world the best of luck.But while we're pontificating about what the Tablet might do, here's hoping its rumored crowdsourcing need aggregation and fulfillment app (codename: iGenie) will pull in my wish list and make it a reality. Besides the basics -- Music, Internet, eReader, etc., here are some things I'd…

• When can a comma cost you $2 million?

  Cam Beck

  13 Jan 2010 | 7:48 am

  Little details matter. Ask Rogers Communications, Inc.In 2006, this Canadian company witnessed firsthand how a single comma in a contract could cost them over $2 million.What they thought they signed:The agreement “shall continue in force for a period of five years from the date it is made, and thereafter for successive five year terms unless and until terminated by one year prior notice in writing by either party.”What they actually signedThe agreement “shall continue in force for a period of five years from the date it is made, and thereafter for successive five year terms, unless and…

• Giving Credit Where It's Due

  Cam Beck

  30 Dec 2009 | 8:07 am

  I like to give credit where it’s due.Unfortunately, in my industry, the people who put in the most hours, who have to drink the most coffee, and who get hosed most often due to last-minute hiccups, discoveries or scope changes are the ones who have some of the most thankless jobs. That’s why I fell in love with the idea of the Hive Awards, which recognize those whose contributions often go unnoticed or unappreciated. After all, when was the last time you’ve been to a website and thought to yourself, “Boy! I’m so glad that I can view this website in Explorer 6, Safari, AND…

• The Value of Y-O-U

  Cam Beck

  19 Nov 2009 | 7:30 am

  Recently I read Value-Based Fees: How to Charge and Get What You're Worth by Alan Weiss. I've coveted this book since I wrote Innovation by the Hour last year. After I worked through my rather large (and growing) stack of reading material, I finally was able to get my hands (and eyes) on it, and I am glad I did! (Thanks to Lisa for the recommendation).Many, if not most, people in service industries bill for time and material. This is problematic in industries whose output includes ideas, for who is to say when (or on whose dime) ideas were generated? Who owns the idea formed in an employee's…

• 
  PickTheBrain | Motivation and Self Improvement

• Simplifying Your Life: Why Less Is More

  Robert Pagliarini

  9 Feb 2010 | 1:28 am

  We’ve done the binge thing for awhile; now it’s time to do the purge thing. Most of us have a tremendous amount of excess. Too many expenses, too much stuff, too many commitments and responsibilities.  Do you dream of calm over chaos? Do you wish you could hit a button and be transformed to the tranquility of another era? You can create an oasis of peace for yourself and your family, but you’re going to have to relearn what it means to simplify as I bust the top three myths about the subject over the next month. Myth #1 – Simplifying means having and doing less.

• How to Stop Waiting for Permission

  Ali Hale

  8 Feb 2010 | 10:03 am

  When you were a child, you often had to wait for permission to do something. Perhaps you needed to be a certain age before you were allowed to use the oven or cross the road by yourself. Maybe you needed to ask mom before you got a snack. Even as a teen, you had to stick to rules: curfew, acceptable music volume, homework… Once you’re eighteen, you’re free to do what you want (within the bounds of legality). So why do we get stuck waiting for permission? You’ll know what I mean, even if you’ve never consciously acknowledged it. Maybe: You’re waiting for someone to say that…

• How To Bust Stress With Mindfulness

  Sung Yang

  4 Feb 2010 | 11:02 pm

  Are you worrying, hurrying or stressed? Stress comes with a long list of damaging effects of stress like heart disease, high blood pressure, accelerated aging, anxiety, depression, anger, forgetfulness, learning difficulty and sleep disorder. When we are stressed, we try to forget about stress by doing something else such as shopping, eating, watching a movie, listening to music, or even taking mind altering substances. By doing so, we might get a temporary relief from the stress but often end up more stressed. A good news is that scientists discovered very effective way of reducing stress…

• 6 Traits that Separate Winners from Whiners

  Avish Parashar

  4 Feb 2010 | 9:54 am

  Have you ever been blind sided by an unexpected event that threatened to throw your dreams, hopes, and life plans off-course? If nothing that grandiose has happened (lucky you!), how about just being surprised by small obstacles that threaten to ruin your day? Big or small, unexpected events will happen. You can not avoid them, you can only control how you respond to them. It is in those critical moments after the unexpected occurs that ultimately determine your long term success. Think about it: anyone can do well when everything is going great. What separates people who succeed (the…

• Should Your Child Be Learning Mandarin?

  Steve Kaufmann

  3 Feb 2010 | 9:33 am

  Reports in the NY Times and elsewhere point to the rise of Chinese language instruction in our schools, against the backdrop of the demise of language learning in general. People justify this rush to Chinese by referring to the growth of the Chinese economy. The US government has declared Chinese a “critical language.” How realistic is this Chinese boom, and will it last? Here is a reality check. 1) Chinese will probably not help your kid get a job. Chinese is being touted as the language of the future, given the growth of the Chinese economy. Some predict that a knowledge of…

• 
  THE M.A.P. MAKER

• Laughter yoga: Laugh your life better

  Curt Rosengren

  9 Feb 2010 | 11:00 am

  Have you ever had one of those rolling-on-the-floor, I-think-I'm-going-to-pee-my-pants fits of laughter and come out the other side feeling much better than before you started? Maybe you felt some stress peel away, or you just felt lighter. If so, you know the power of laughter to change both your perspective and the way your body physically feels.  As part of my work is helping people create careers and lives for themselves that energize and inspire them, I'm always on the lookout for ways to improve our experience of the here and now. One of my favorites (though I haven't participated in…

• Visual Self-exploration: Your Life in Pictures #11

  Curt Rosengren

  8 Feb 2010 | 5:11 pm

  Welcome to this week's installment in the Your Life in Pictures series. In this series, you will find photos to use as a point of departure for self-exploration.Q: What insights does this picture prompt about your career? Your life? [Click on the image to see it full-sized.]Pictures have great potential for self-exploration, because they provide a point of departure for asking, "how does this apply to my own life?" There is no specific meaning to any of these pictures. They are simply here to give your brain/intuition/creative mind/etc. something to bounce off.Your exploration could be…

• Five Friday Favorites

  Curt Rosengren

  5 Feb 2010 | 11:09 am

  It's been an eon or two since I posted a Five Friday Favorites post, but it feels like it's time to pick up the habit again. So here, in no particular order, are five of my favorite blog posts from this week. Celebrate Your SuccuessPluginID5 Ways to shake hands with yourselfHELLO, my name is Blog!Frugality is a career toolPenelope Trunk's Brazen CareeristWork Happiness Tip - Keep Track of Your MoodWork Happy Now!Follow your spark, not that hollow feeling in your chestAvocationistDo you have a favorite blog post from the past week? Post a link in the comments for all of us to see. Enjoy! Time…

• Change your world: Join the Listen & Learn Revolution

  Curt Rosengren

  3 Feb 2010 | 1:02 pm

  Want a deceptively simple, yet powerful way to change your world? Join the Listen & Learn Revolution. When you do, you'll be taking your own personal step towards dissolving a culture of divisiveness and conflict.The Listen & Learn Revolution is about jettisoning the need to be right when you encounter someone whose opinion or point of view differs from yours. Instead of clubbing them over the head with your opinion, take some time to engage them with a sense of curiosity. Explore why they believe what they do, not from a, "How the hell can you think that??" perspective, but from a…

• Get unstuck with a 7-day goal

  Curt Rosengren

  3 Feb 2010 | 5:55 am

  Do you ever find yourself feeling stuck? You know you need to move forward, but somehow you've managed to sink your wheels into the mud and all momentum is lost. It can be a frustrating, draining experience. In one of the herd of books I'm currently reading, The Power of Focus, I came across a great, simple idea to blast out of that stuckness. The authors described adventurer John Goddard's response when asked about overcoming roadblocks: "When I get stuck, I restart myself by focusing on one goal I can finish in the next seven days - something simple. I don't think about anything else - that…

• 
  The Rapid eLearning Blog

• Here’s How to Add Personality to Your E-Learning Courses

  tom

  9 Feb 2010 | 12:04 am

    In a previous post, I shared some free handwritten fonts.  Today, we’ll explore how you might use them in your elearning courses. We already looked at how fonts are more than the text you read.  As a graphic element, they convey meaning and play a role in the message you communicate. That means you always have to consider what visual cues the text provides in addition to what is being read. A Few Examples Below are images from some web sites that include the use of handwritten fonts.  Look them over and consider what value they bring to the screen.  How would…

• Why E-Learning is So Effective

  tom

  2 Feb 2010 | 12:30 am

    E-learning is hot. And for good reason. If done right, it can produce great results by decreasing costs and improving performance. Also, unlike a one time classroom session, the elearning course is available for others.  This includes the static elearning course as well as any ongoing conversations in networked communities. Recently, I had a conversation with someone new to elearning and it struck me that she didn’t fully understand the value of elearning.  I think this is common as more people are joining the world of elearning.  Understanding elearning’s value…

• How to Navigate Social Media (and Avoid Information Overload)

  tom

  26 Jan 2010 | 12:27 am

  There’s a lot of conversation about social media.  And for good reason.  The tools let you connect with peers who share common interests.   It’s also a great way to build a personal learning network.  For example, if you build rapid elearning courses with Articulate products there are all sorts of resources available to you: Articulate’s Facebook page keeps you up-to-date on news and information. Connect with us via Twitter.  It’s a more personal connection to the network and you can stay on top of the cool tutorials we create with Screenr. Articulate…

• Here’s a Quick Way to Create Your Next E-Learning Template in PowerPoint

  tom

  19 Jan 2010 | 12:20 am

  In a previous post, I showed you how to design your own PowerPoint templates.  In other posts, I’ve talked about how to use PowerPoint’s drawing features to build the envelope icon and television monitor.  These are all intended to help you become more proficient with PowerPoint and your graphic design skills. In today’s post, we’ll pull some of these ideas together to create a folder graphic that you can use in your elearning courses.  I have a published example below, as well as a step-by-step tutorial.  You can also download the PowerPoint file so that you can…

• How Fonts Take a Starring Role in Your E-Learning Courses

  tom

  12 Jan 2010 | 12:11 am

    The video below shows how graphic designer, Brian Hoff, selected the right font for one of his projects.  There are many points in the video where he probably could have stopped, but didn’t.  No one would have known the difference.  But something kept him going until he found just the right look. Click here to view video. What kept him going is knowing that the typography does more than share the information to be read. It also communicates ideas or concepts visually because the font is more than text.  It’s a graphic element that contributes to what you want…

• 
  Rambliings From A Glass Half Full

• The One Question Every Successful Leader Must Answer (Even Before It Is Asked)

  Starbucker

  8 Feb 2010 | 7:03 pm

  The supervisor is frustrated – in his mind, he has done everything right to manage his team to a successful outcome.  He carefully explained the task at hand and its deadline for completion, how it was supposed to get done (and by whom), and outlined the expected results. He has monitored the resulting team activity and provided useful feedback. And yet, the outcome was less than what he expected.   What went wrong? It’s one of those situations that can drive leaders crazy. I know, because it’s happened to me. There’s a missing element here, and it’s about a question that needs…

• A Critical Difference Between a Good and Great Leader (And It’s Not What You May Think)

  Starbucker

  2 Feb 2010 | 3:09 pm

  Remember this famous quote? “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it” – George Santayana I’ve heard this one time and time again in my years in the business world.   And it’s a very powerful message about learning from the past.  However, I would offer that this quote should be amended to truly reflect using history to a leader’s advantage: “Those who learn best from wisely selected history are destined to greatness” Note the phrase “wisely selected“.   When it comes to history, great leaders essentially have…

• The SOBCon2010 “Blog it, Earn it” Discount- And An All-Expense Paid Ticket Giveaway

  Starbucker

  31 Jan 2010 | 3:08 pm

  Suppose you could take a weekend retreat away from the noise of the Internet … to focus entirely on your business to work with the support of a mastermind team to get quality time to interact with the top people in social media to get the best information AND time to discuss how you’ll apply it to work with sponsors who are doing the same thing in a room limited to 150 people — all focused in the same direction without worry because the food and the wireless are outstanding. Imagine a weekend work retreat with these people totally invested. Would you write a blog post to get…

• 3 For Your Leadership Reading List: The Half-Full Book Review

  Starbucker

  28 Jan 2010 | 4:38 am

  As the big stack on my desk attests, I love to read books that expand my knowledge and offer new insights on topics that interest me.   My reading list over the past several years can be found on my Amazon page (and if you do buy a book that way, all my commissions go to the National Park Foundation), and yes, they are skewed heavily toward business books. This interest stems from the simple premise that you just never know when a book, or a page, or just a paragraph, might alter your way of thinking forever, and push you to a personal breakthrough. So it’s with great pleasure that I…

• 5 Things Every Business Leader Should Know About Social Media

  Starbucker

  24 Jan 2010 | 1:36 pm

  It’s the new elephant in the room.   Boardrooms and conference rooms, that is. Businesses have been wrestling with this thing called Social Media for several years now, and while some have entered the fray,  it’s still an enigma to many. Is it friend or foe?  A great benefit , or a horrible nuisance?  Do we dive straight in, stick our toe in the water, or just put our head in the sand and hope it goes away? Because this elephant can take on so many faces, there is a good chance that all of those points of view exist within the management ranks of many companies – even the…

• 
  Penelope Trunk's Brazen Careerist

• Check-up for self-delusion

  Penelope Trunk

  7 Feb 2010 | 9:41 pm

  It’s unbelievable to me that everyone continues to watch football when we know that men are getting genuinely, permanently, brain damaged. The game is tantamount to cockfighting, only with people instead of animals. The NFL has finally admitted the problem, to the extent it is poised to be the largest funding source for research about trauma to the brain. But still, the game encourages brain trauma. And people cheer. I can understand if it’s like smoking. You’re addicted, you can’t stop. But what about bringing your kids to the game? What about all the people who make the Superbowl a…

• Chat with me tonight, live, via video.

  Penelope Trunk

  3 Feb 2010 | 7:43 am

  Is this even a good headline for a blog post? I don't know. Do you want to know what I'm like unedited? Read this blog post. I never post unedited, but my editor has a day job, and he has no time to deal with manufactured emergencies like this one, so I'm just posting this post as is. I'm supposed to be doing a web chat thing tonight. I had this idea that this would be a good format for me. And I had this idea that I could stick to a schedule. But look. It's the day of my video chat and I have not even announced it. Because I'm nervous. I'm nervous about a…

• Frugality is a career tool

  Penelope Trunk

  1 Feb 2010 | 11:02 am

  I have earned a lot of money in my life. But I have never had an extravagant life. I don’t own a house. I’ve never bought a new car. I’ve never bought a new piece of living room furniture, and I do not own a single piece of real jewelry. What I have spent money on was always intended to help me with my career. That was so I know that I can always earn money doing something I love. I leased a BMW when it was clear that that mattered when it came to making deals in LA. I hired a stylist when I realized my clothes were holding me back in NYC. In Madison I have tons of household help so my…

• Being an expert takes time, not talent

  Penelope Trunk

  28 Jan 2010 | 9:39 pm

  I've been walking around with the July/August 2007 issue of the Harvard Business Review constantly, for close to three years. Sometimes, if I’m getting on a plane, I’ll put it with the other heavy stuff into my luggage, and then get it out later. When my last car broke down in the middle of an intersection, I got the magazine out of the trunk before I abandoned the car. The article that I’m attached to is The Making of an Expert by Anders Ericsson, Michael Prietula and Edward Cokely. I would not normally bother to tell you all three authors for one article in my blog. This is not a…

• Workplace news you cannot use

  Penelope Trunk

  25 Jan 2010 | 8:23 pm

  I collect data points constantly, and I index them by topic, and I always hope that they will come together in an interesting, useful way. Lots of times, that doesn’t happen, and I  just have to throw ideas away, because I have a rule for myself that I have to be useful in every post. But today I’m trying something new. I’m doing a post that is useless to you. Here are four ideas I was just about to toss out as incurably useless, but instead, I bring them to you: 1. Law firms are making concessions for women. One of the top law firms in the world, Allen Overy, just announced they are…

• 
  All Things Workplace

• Choosing Who Will Influence You

  Steve Roesler

  9 Feb 2010 | 9:03 am

  Every leader must also follow. Those who show no accountability to others--in business, non-profits, or government--may hold a position of leadership but won't hold on to it without some version of brute and/or "political" force, overt or covert. (If that kind of leadership appeals to you, you may want to check Craigslist for the "Dictators Wanted" ads).Be selective about who you allow to influence your thinking, attitudes, decisions, and behavior. What are the values that you hold most dear--the ones you would like others to adopt as a result of being influenced by you?Take time to think…

• Influence and Leadership: Raise the Standard

  Steve Roesler

  8 Feb 2010 | 5:48 am

  "Fitting in" is a big deal, and in many organizations it's seen as the way to career longevity. That's a problem.People are influenced by those they see as being "ahead of them." If you simply match the rest of the workforce and blend in, your influence is diminished. Eventually, you become invisible.If you want to lead, be willing to raise your personal standards to exceed the common expectations of your organization or work group. "Raising" equates with "elevating." Once you raise the bar for yourself, you begin to view things from a heightened position that expands your perspective. When…

• Influence Through Agreements

  Steve Roesler

  5 Feb 2010 | 6:49 am

  There's a misconception about influence that gets people into trouble. It's the idea that influence is a matter of "positional negotiation": one side lays out a case while the other counters with a stronger argument on a different position. This is actually a kind of competition that most often ends in conflict. The one with the most power wins while the loser walks away filled with resentment. Start Thinking "Partnership"Influence has its roots in agreements. In order to genuinely persuade someone to pursue a certain course of action, there needs to be an agreement about what is to be done…

• Meet Commitments. Build Trust. Say No.

  Steve Roesler

  4 Feb 2010 | 10:02 am

  Who do you trust? Probably those who you determine are reliable. So, those who don't keep their promises quickly lose the trust of their friends and colleagues. Before you commit to a new project or obligation, be sure you can fulfill it. If you really aren't certain, then say so. It's better to simply disappoint someone now than show up empty-handed on the day of your big promise. If, despite your best effort, you think you'll miss a deadline or milestone, then contact the other person and explain what has happened. We've all been in similar situations and again: disappointment is a lot…

• Influence: Help Competent People Grow Through Questions

  Steve Roesler

  3 Feb 2010 | 10:22 am

  Leaders do have to tell people exactly what to do when a person isn't yet competent--and confident--about the task or assignment. (The whole "leader" thing isn't just about high-concept and vision). But how do you develop managers who are knowledgeable and committed?You can build increased confidence and deeper understanding by asking questions designed to help them make their own discoveries and decisions. Here are seven questions to get you started as  a "coaching" leader:As you become more comfortable with probing questions, you'll develop your own. In fact, what are some of your…

• 
  Personal Branding Blog - Dan Schawbel

• Personal Brands: Be Ready to Answer This

  Nance Rosen

  9 Feb 2010 | 4:30 am

  In Sunday’s New York Times, the least likely person in American business is interviewed in the Corner Office column. She’s Susan Docherty, who “leads” General Motor’s US sales, service and marketing team. In case you don’t get the joke, GM is one of the more famous bankrupt companies in the US, based on its resistance to building cars that Americans want to drive. If it weren’t for their pesky rebuke of its target market, GM’s sales, service and marketing team would be doing just fine. You might expect Ms. Docherty to be keeping a low profile, since GM has reported record…

• 3 Reasons Why Personal Branding is Essential For Networking

  Dan Schawbel

  8 Feb 2010 | 4:00 am

  When I was in college, I was always told that it’s all about who you know. I heard this common saying from teachers, my parents, older friends and managers at my internships. It was very hard to disagree with this phrase because I had spent months interviewing to get a job upon graduation because I wasn’t comfortable networking. There were many opportunities for me to attend events, meet alumni and connect with friends, but I felt introverted and didn’t have the confidence back then to take the “networking leap.” By disregarding networking from my job search, I…

• Personal Branding Interview: J.D. Roth

  Dan Schawbel

  7 Feb 2010 | 12:02 pm

  Today, I spoke to J.D. Roth, who is one of the blogospheres most beloved personal finance experts (Get Rich Slowly) and the author of Your Money: The Missing Manual.  In this interview, J.D. talks about his new book, how he got the idea of it, how he’s differentiated himself in his niche, how his blog led to his book deal and more. How did you get the idea for writing “Your Money”? It wasn’t actually my idea. I started Get Rich Slowly in 2006, and by the end of 2007, I was being approached by agents and publishers. I explored the book idea a little bit, but never…

• Two Breakthrough Ideas That Changed My Life

  Emily Bennington

  7 Feb 2010 | 4:30 am

  Keeping up with information these days is like sipping through the proverbial fire hydrant. You don’t need to check your Twitter, Facebook, Google Reader, etc…..you already know what’s building up on the other side. An avalanche of knowledge That’s right, when the circle stops spinning or the screen is fully loaded – BAM – the constant avalanche of knowledge, hypothesis, and musings from real experts, pseudo-experts, and everyone in between begins again. Even junkies like me who actually thrive on the continuous info-stream can get a bit numb to the never-ending pitches, articles,…

• Personal Branding Interview: Susan Whitcomb

  Dan Schawbel

  6 Feb 2010 | 6:03 pm

  Today, I spoke to Susan Whitcomb, who is the founder and president of The Academies and author of the new book, The Twitter Job Search Guide. In this interview, Susan explains what her own branding model is as a career coach, what you should and shouldn’t include on a resume, and brand consistency for job seekers. If someone is unclear about their own brand, what are a few things he or she can do to establish it? Start by getting clear on these three “A’s”: Authentic Image: This is “the genuine you”—not costumed to play the part of someone else, but cast in the right…

• 
  growing changing learning creating

• Spaces surrounding higher ed

  Tom Haskins

  8 Feb 2010 | 3:12 pm

  Most institutions of higher ed go to great lengths to improve the completion rate of its enrollment. The institutions are neither callous, cynical or indifferent. Here's a list of some of the ways they try to catch students before they fall out of college:Remediate their reading and writing skills if they are below college level competenciesProvide freshman courses in study skills and other practices for success in collegeAccommodate changing majors if their first choice proved to be too stressful, demanding or boringAllow failing grades to be replaced by taking the course again with a…

• Viewed from an innovation space

  Tom Haskins

  5 Feb 2010 | 5:38 am

  I've spent most of today in the space of the innovation I'm currently developing to submit to the business plan contest next week. I've been finding it very enjoyable to get immersed in my imaginative exploration of this new possibility space. It's also fun to look back on current reality as if it's a bygone era from the vantage of the innovation space. The new found sense of freedom from all the problems we take for granted is exhilarating because it seems like a new adventure and an ongoing process of discovery.In the future I've just returned from, it seems extremely weird to speak of…

• Situations that call for innovations

  Tom Haskins

  4 Feb 2010 | 7:43 am

  Some situations call for productivity. We can keep things simple and do what needs to be done. There's no need to ask troubling questions or second guess our every move. We can rely on what's worked in the past and do what's been done before. If anybody asks, we can tell them to "mind their own business" while we mind our own. What's on their minds is none of our business. We've got a job to get done and that's that!Other situations call for innovations. We've got to make things more complicated before we can get any more accomplished. We need to ask troubling questions about our past…

• Evaluating immersive learning

  Tom Haskins

  3 Feb 2010 | 6:54 am

  Two decades ago, I was playing Tetris on my computer. The game issued one block at a time for me to orient before it fell into place, filling in the growing pile without gaps. Because my movements were so limited, the game could learn my habitual reactions and then outsmart me. It would issue an unexpected block that was also turned in ways I was not ready for. A decade later, Macromedia offered add-ons to Flash and Dreamweaver software for so-called learning. The user's movements were limited to dragging objects within a frame and inserting text into fields. The accuracy and time taken could…

• Innovating by changing our thinking

  Tom Haskins

  2 Feb 2010 | 6:42 am

  A few weeks ago, I read Roger Martin's new book: The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage It's stayed on my mind since in a way where I've realized what a great approach it offers to innovation. Here are the key ideas that stood out for me -- translated into my own way of conceptualizing creativity:When we're making money, enjoying a success, or getting a job done, we're in a mode of exploitation. We're taking advantage of available resources, familiar situations and established routines to realize more of the same results. Improvements are within reach,…

• 
  Occam's Razor

• Analysis Ninjas: Leverage Custom Reports For Better Insights!

  Avinash Kaushik

  1 Feb 2010 | 2:01 am

  Here is a key difference between Reporting Squirrels and Analysis Ninjas: The latter almost exclusively leverage custom reports (powered by advanced segmentation) and the former flirt with one standard report and then another and then other and in the best case scenario pull only half of their hair out.There is nothing particularly wrong with the standard 19,000 reports in your web analytics tool. But they do represent the Vendor’s best guess about what you should look at. Sometimes they even get it right.Most of the time though your business is absolutely unique (even as it exists…

• Dear Avinash: Search / SEO Metrics & Analytics Questions + Answers

  Avinash Kaushik

  20 Jan 2010 | 12:47 am

  How do you measure success of a online webinar?I recently did a webinar for the Search Engine Strategies conference (I am doing the opening conference keynote at SES London and SES New York) and my Market Motive co-faculty member Greg Jarboe sent me this KPI via email:“Your webcast was a big success. Your KPI questions per attendee was off the chart!”I don’t know why I had not thought of this wonderful KPI. So much better than # of attendees.As always though context is king.It could be a good thing (“you were great, engaged the audience”) or a not such a good…

• Five Sweet Web Analytics Resolutions To Kick It Up A Notch

  Avinash Kaushik

  6 Jan 2010 | 1:13 am

  The new year is such a wonderful time. Wonderful smells in the air. The world is full of hope. Unachievable things seem achievable and are being polished into shiny resolutions. World peace seems within grasp.As we spring to action full of passion I wanted to share with you all a short list of things that will expand your little world of online marketing & web analytics.We all have a tendency of getting caught in a rut, using the same tool to do the same things and spew forth the same data. Change is hard, even if we know that we should be executing a multiplicity strategy to win in the…

• Analysis Ninjas: Move Beyond The Top Ten. Find Love (/Insights).

  Avinash Kaushik

  21 Dec 2009 | 4:31 am

  You know what is the one thing stopping you from finding truly actionable insights from your web data?Web analytics gems lie deep in the data and we spend our lives looking at the top ten rows of data.It does not matter which report you look at. Affiliates. Products sold. Referring URL’s. Pages viewed. Search keywords. Promotions. Geographies. Really pick any report with any dimension you want to look at, we spend our time (and valuable space on our dashboards) looking at the top ten.We look at the top ten rows of data because:1. Too much data from our web analytics tools.2. Lack of…

• Who Owns Web Analytics? A Framework For Critical Thinking.

  Avinash Kaushik

  9 Dec 2009 | 1:30 am

  It is rare for me to work with a organization where the root cause for their faith based decision making (rather than data driven) was not the org structure.It is almost never tools. Not any more.Surprisingly it is often not their will to use data, that is there in many cases.Sometimes it is that they don’t follow the 10/90 rule.It is always the organization structure.Specifically: Who owns web analytics / who it reports to from a org structure perspective.[Let me hasten to add that this, web analytics ownership, does not exist in a vacuum. If your overall web business is misaligned…

• 
  Principled Innovation

• My #tech10 update

  jeffpi1@gmail.com or @pinnovation on twitter (Jeff De Cagna of Principled Innovation LLC, the association community's leading voice for innovation!)

  7 Feb 2010 | 11:57 am

  Later this week, weather permitting, I’ll be downtown for ASAE & The Center’s 2010 Technology Conference at the Washington Convention Center.  I’m excited to see many P.I. Blog readers and my favorite association community peeps.  The Technology Conference is always a good time, and this year should be no exception! My session, The iPhone Volunteer: Why Mobile is the Next Great Platform for Member Engagement!, is on Thursday, February 11 at 4:15 pm.  If you’re going to be at the conference, I hope you’ll join me because this may be the only session during…

• Test post

  jeffpi1@gmail.com or @pinnovation on twitter (Jeff De Cagna of Principled Innovation LLC, the association community's leading voice for innovation!)

  6 Feb 2010 | 7:32 am

  Please ignore this test post. I’m trying to correct some problems with my RSS feed.

• Five words for 2010

  jeffpi1@gmail.com or @pinnovation on twitter (Jeff De Cagna of Principled Innovation LLC, the association community's leading voice for innovation!)

  4 Feb 2010 | 11:07 am

  As we settle into 2010, I’ve been thinking about the five words on which I’ll be focused this year.  I am sharing them here with the hope they may inspire association leaders throughout our community to think differently about what is possible in the year ahead.  Please let me know your thoughts in the comments below, and if you have your own words in mind, I hope you will consider sharing them. Intention–It has never been more important for associations to have leaders, especially in voluntary roles, who are intentional about building the inventive business models,…

• New mobile tech post on SmartBlog Insights

  jeffpi1@gmail.com or @pinnovation on twitter (Jeff De Cagna of Principled Innovation LLC, the association community's leading voice for innovation!)

  1 Feb 2010 | 6:31 am

  You’ll want to check out my new post on mobile on SmartBlog Insights, for which I serve as editor-at-large.  It is the first in a series of five posts I’ll be sharing on the Insights Blog in the coming weeks to expand on my Top Ten 2010 Trends for Associations.  Here is how I close the post: Without question, mobile will be a major topic of, hopefully, generative conversation across the association community throughout 2010.  How will you make sure that conversation occurs inside your organization? If you’re looking for a way to get the conversation going inside your…

• Free breakfast session on March 4

  jeffpi1@gmail.com or @pinnovation on twitter (Jeff De Cagna of Principled Innovation LLC, the association community's leading voice for innovation!)

  31 Jan 2010 | 5:49 pm

  If you’re an association executive in the Washington, DC region, I hope you’ll join me for a special free breakfast session on Thursday, March 4 in Alexandria, Virginia.  The topic of my talk is “Solving 21st Century Problems: How Associations Can Innovate to Thrive,” and I am presenting this session in partnership with my friends from Higher Logic, Powered by DUB and Vidzu.  Here is the session description: While association stakeholders attempt to solve the 21st century problems they face personally and professionally, many associations are still offering solutions…

• 
  Lateral Action

• How to Create Your Own Blogger Stage Fright – and Then Kick Its Ass

  James Chartrand

  8 Feb 2010 | 5:33 am

  Image by eschipul When Mark tossed out the challenge of sending in our creative blocks, I hit the keyboard faster than a speed demon in a red wagon. I was determined. I was going to tell someone. Once and for all. I have performance anxiety. I know, I know, that’s a dreaded thing to have. Especially if you’re considered something of a blogosphere phenomena that churns out great content by the bucketful. But there you have it – some days, I just can’t write. It’s not for lack of ideas. It’s not for lack of ability. It’s just performance anxiety, a very simple creative…

• Switch Off Your Social Self – Switch On Your Creativity

  Cath Duncan

  1 Feb 2010 | 10:03 am

  Image by the sea the sea We’ve all heard someone say things like, “Everyone is an artist” and “We’re all born naturally creative.” But most of us smile and nod (and think to ourselves, “Yeah, right!”) when we hear something like that, much in the way that we do when someone says something like, “Everyone is beautiful – fat, thin, tall, short, etc.” We’ve been so conditioned to believe in societal definitions and “rules” about what art, success and beauty looks like that it’s often hard for us to fathom any other alternative, and so we spend our time actively…

• An Interview with Chris Brogan, Trust Agent

  Mark

  27 Jan 2010 | 5:30 am

  Image by Bryant Hill If you’re a creative entrepreneur looking to make connections and promote your business on the web, Chris Brogan is one of the people you need to pay attention to Chris is an eleven year veteran of using social media and both web and mobile technologies to build digital relationships for businesses, organizations, and individuals. Chris speaks, blogs, writes articles, and makes media of all kinds at chrisbrogan.com. He is co-author with Julien Smith of the New York Times bestselling book Trust Agents. Chris is President of New Marketing Labs, a new media marketing…

• Creative Block #4 – Creativity v Cash

  Mark

  25 Jan 2010 | 2:29 am

  This post is part of the Break Through Your Creative Blocks series. If you have a creative block you’d like some help with, tell us about it – details in the first article in the series. Sometimes it can feel like a constant battle to earn enough money to justify spending time on creative work. This problem can be particularly acute if you work in a creative medium with little obvious commercial potential. This kind of block doesn’t just affect your non-commercial work however – it can lead you to resent the work you do to pay the bills, and bring up resistance to…

• Creative Block #3 – Lack of Time

  Mark

  18 Jan 2010 | 3:24 am

  This post is part of the Break Through Your Creative Blocks series. If you have a creative block you’d like some help with, tell us about it – details in the first article in the series. One of the biggest challenges facing many creative people is simply finding the time to pursue their creative interests, in the midst of the demands of everyday life. Strictly speaking, lack of time doesn’t qualify as a creative block – but when we say we “don’t have time” for something, it’s often an indication that we aren’t making it a priority. This is a very common issue, so I…

• 
  eLearning Technology

• LMS Tracking of Podcasts and Video Casts

  Tony Karrer

  9 Feb 2010 | 6:47 am

  I received an interesting question from someone who is working on providing content to a remote sales force of about 40 people on topics such as selling process, products and selling skills.  They currently provide some podcasts and video casts, but would like to track the new content that is being developed now.  It seems like this should be an obvious question.  You can put the audio or video inside a SCORM course and load it into an LMS.  Given the small audience and limited scope, likely a Rapid Learning Management System would make a lot of sense if that was the…

• Selling Social Learning – Be a Jack

  Tony Karrer

  3 Feb 2010 | 6:32 am

  I was just reading a post - Top 5 tips to gain buy in for learning with social media.  The tips were many of the usual suspects (click on the link for details): Build a solid measurable plan Do your research and put it to the test Choose your words carefully Blitz the stigma Educate the decision makers This is good stuff, but it also got me to thinking that this might be way more complicated than it really needs to be.  Instead, one of the things that I Learned about Learning in 2009 and was an important eLearning Predictions for 2010 was to “Be a Jack”.  What does this…

• Filtering, Crowdsourcing and Information Overload

  Tony Karrer

  2 Feb 2010 | 6:10 am

  Great post by Tim Kastelle - Filtering, Crowdsourcing and Innovation.  He’s talking primarily about Innovation pipelines based on crowdsourcing.  His diagram:   Show a fairly common model for how things can be filtered.  This is similar to the model that we used on Project Greenlight – the scriptwriting and director contest by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.  Anyone (hopefully everyone) could submit their script / movie.  From there, we had smaller and smaller batches of people reviewing until it got down to the core team looking at the top few submissions. …

• SharePoint Social Learning Experience

  Tony Karrer

  1 Feb 2010 | 8:48 am

  I had a great conversation last week that sparked an early stage idea for what I think would be a wonderful way for learning and development organizations to leverage SharePoint better.  HP Web 2.0 for Marketing – Social Learning Experience The concept is probably easiest to understand by considering what HP did around their course on Web 2.0 for Marketing.  You can find more on this by going to the LearnTrends – SharePoint in Corporate Learning Recordings. The basic concept was that HP’s learning organization wanted to help their marketing professionals get up to speed on the…

• Still No Flash?

  Tony Karrer

  28 Jan 2010 | 6:23 am

  One of the interesting things that was not included in the announcement of the iPad yesterday was support for Flash.  It’s a nice big device, perfect for browsing the web and remote learners.  But it doesn’t have Flash support.  Apple has said in the past that they plan to support Flash at some point, but I’m beginning to wonder. In the meantime, it seems like HTML 5 is picking up steam. Any guesses on Flash support on Apple mobile devices going forward? And if it’s not going to be supported, does this mean we’ll be looking at other delivery technologies going…