Emergence Marketing: random brainsqualls Archives

November 21, 2007

Good advice...

For me it's Facebook...not really into Myspace :)

(for RSS subscribers who subscribe and cannot see the attachment - click here)

(via Branding Blog)

August 14, 2007

[too funny] Atheists in Massachusetts can be jailed...

I just ran across this link on Reddit.

"Whoever wilfully blasphemes the holy name of God by denying...his creation...or by cursing or contumeliously reproaching Jesus Christ or the Holy Ghost...shall be punished by imprisonment in jail for not more than one year or by a fine of not more than three hundred dollars, and may also be bound to good behavior. "

Better get rid of "God is not great," "The God Delusion," and "letter to a christian nation."

July 30, 2007

Mad scientist, wanting to destroy the world...

That is the profile of a Myers Briggs' ENTP personality according to Xero Magazine.

Quite a funny description of the personality types if you ever took the test :)

July 2, 2007

8 pm news on CNN led by a die-hard "conservative"?

Glenn Beck is subbing for Paula Zahn on CNN this week. In the first 13 minutes of tonight's broadcast he must have said 10 or more times that he is a "proud conservative" (whatever that means) - commenting on what's "right" in the American Justice system and on the "moral values" of middle eastern religions.

Who the heck at CNN thought that it would be a good idea to have an outspoken "conservative" to be a prime time news host?

Ah...maybe Harris was right - too many people in this country believe in "rapture" and that is what is selling ads.

At the end of the day, it is a sad story for democracies across the world to have people who should be limited to doing op-ed pieces and special programs present the daily news on major networks like CNN.

Maybe it's time to go back online for relatively "unbiased" news sources...if those still exist.

May 10, 2007

Google maps finaly has directions from where I live to the town I was born in...

It is so funny to see how Google Maps provides directions to my home town...

Click on the map or this link to get the directions (http://tinyurl.com/2bz25m)

I especially like step #13 - Swim across the Atlantic Ocean :)

April 5, 2007

Ready for an Enterprise 2.0 Rave?

Here is another cool project I am working on - organizing an Enterprise 2.0 RAVE in NYC on May21-22 with the great team at Longworth Venture Partners .

If you are a practitioner looking at deploying web 2.0 tools in your enterprise or actively strugling with pilot projects to try to do that, you should not miss this event. And if you do plan on going, use the link below to get a $250 discount for the RAVE. Seating will be limited and we already have two registrants!

The paint is still wet, so if something does not work correctly let us know.

See you there.

[Tags: future of work enterprise 2.0 web 2.0 wiki tag blog]

March 30, 2007

What happens to large enterprise software vendors as the workplace becomes "atomized"?

Reading Jim's post and reflecting on two conversations I had this morning - one with a relatively senior person at a major financial institution who told me that the biggest barrier to adoption for enterprise 2.0 tools in his company may be the fear of a flatter organization, another one with a sales rep from one of the two largest enterprise software companies who was trying to convince me that they now cater to companies like ours, with 2 people, a goldfish, and a virtual network of freelancers - got me thinking about the long term prognosis for large companies in general and the fate of large enterprise software companies in the face of an increasingly "atomized" workplace, or as FAST company said in a recent article - a world of a billion single-person enterprises.

I know...as Larry Keeley says, we always overestimate the amount of change in the short term, but we also underestimate the amount of the change in the long term. I wonder how many large enterprise software companies are thinking about this future...or how many large companies in general for that matter.

WARNING - big changes ahead...

[Tags: future of work organization 2.0 enterprise software hierarchy enterprise 2.0]

March 27, 2007

When it becomes too personal

I wrote about the recent disturbing public attacks that Kathy Sierra had to endure on her blog and others over at the Future of Communities blog.

I wanted to use this personal blog to wish her well and tell her that many people hope that she writes again in the near future!

March 16, 2007

Back from the Community 2.0 conference

I just got back from the Community 2.0 conference, for which I organized and managed the program. We had almost 70 speakers, moderators and provocateurs - but as expected, some of the most interesting ideas and thoughts did not come from the stage but from the rich discussions and interactions on the future of communities that everyone was having from morning to night.

In hindsight the Community 2.0 moniker was a good one. Many attendees who had been been part of the first business community wave - the one a decade or more ago, which did not materialize - were seeing signs that this wave was much more real, and based on vastly different motivations. An informal poll showed that more than 60% of the audience was already involved with running and integrating communities as part of their business. As one attendee said during a "panel from the audience" session - when a competitor starts competing by leveraging communities, you have no choice but to respond by leveraging communities yourself. At this point the effects of successful community management are game-changing, not level-setting.

I will post additional feedback from the conference on the Future of Communities blog as well as summarize what is happening with the new community association on the CMMC blog. I will also return to a more regular blogging schedule on this blog, with many fresh thoughts on marketing and innovation.

[Tags: community2.0 community 2.0 business communities]

January 31, 2007

Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary to the rescue of non corporate jargon users

The Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary has some interesting definitions for those of us who are not all that familiar with corporate speak (via lifehack.org). Here are some favorites:

Assmosis [v.] The apparent absorption of success that comes from sucking up.

Blamestorming [v.] Meeting to discuss a failure and find a scapegoat.

Bouncebackability [adj.] The ability to reverse a losing situation and then succeed.

Head shunting [v.] The secret hiring of a head hunter to persuade an ineffectual employee to take a position at another firm. Nicely eliminates the mess of having to fire someone.

Prairie dogging [v.] The simultaneous pop-up of several heads when something interesting is happening around cubicles.

Presenteeism [n.] The practice of working ridiculously long hours.

Zerotasking [v.] Doing nothing.

January 1, 2007

Tag, I'm it!

My friend Pito tagged me - so now I am supposed to reveal 5 thinks about myself that you might not know...

So here we go:

My first job after graduating from engineering school was selling wine

I volunteer as a mountain ambassador during weekends

I am an avid reader of everything related to current events, business, politics, science, but also science fiction

Religious extremism (and I am not just talking about the turban-variety) is slowly but surely moving me from being religiously agnostic to a die-hard atheist

I am actually a very shy person

So now I get to tag 5 other unlucky people:

John Hagel

Mary Schmidt

Isabel Walcot Hilborn

John Winsor

Lois Kelly

Tag, you're it!

Happy New Year!

First off - Happy New Year everyone!

As a friend wished for me - may peace break into your house and may thieves come to steal your debts!

We will soon return to regular blogging!

November 22, 2006

[off topic] When the highest levels of government abuse power in the name of security - it spreads like wildfire...

This is what happens when you have a government in place which rules by instilling fear in its population and disregards basic human rights and privacy laws in the name of security... abuse of power spreads like fungus.

Considering that I have a son who is an American of mixed heritage, this video pushed me to tears. I truly hope that someone at UCLA security will be held accountable and get severely punished for this humiliating act of torture!

A quick Google news search on this incident also shows our deep ignorance about foreign countries and cultures. From reading many accounts you might as well conclude that Iranians=Arabs=muslims (=terrorist). Well, first off Iranians are not Arabs and on top of that this guy was a Baha'i - who are some of the most peaceful people around!

[update] This cop has a history of violence...and here too.

[Tags: human rights abuse of power ucla fear]

November 10, 2006

[rant] Where is the news that matter?

I am on the road and looking for some good news. The main networks don't show any news at this time of night. Fox is out because it is pre-chewing the news for me in ways that I cannot stand. MSNBC's Scarborough Country is "scarily" starting to look like Fox (favorite show quote tonight from in-residence-lunatic Pat Buchanan - "Bush is not a true conservative"). And CNN has no news at this point.

Having 100 free channels with the basic cable program up here, I would expect at least one decent news channel..

Is there really no market for this?

[/rant]

October 9, 2006

Water and electricity do mix...

It just depends on your point of view...

October 6, 2006

This really sucks...

I just found out that if you Google "this really sucks" this site shows up #6 in the Google search results (click here to see the results if you happen to stumble upon this post 10 years later and Furl is still around).

I am not sure how to take this ranking :)

Buyer expectations for a new water

It is funny to see how an 11 year old evaluates a new water. The following is a dialog I had with my son tonight in the supermarket:

my son: Daddy, can I try a bottle of Fiji Water
me: sure, take one
him: I want to find out why Fiji water is so famous (not sure where he got that)

(after evaluating the labels)
him: oh - it comes from the island of Fiji - do you know where that is?
me: sure
him: and it's artesian water, what does that mean?
me: it comes from artesian wells, which fill up with ground water
him: hmm...

(later in the car)
him: can I have my famous water
me: sure

(after taking the first sip)
him: wow - this is really watery
me: HAH - what did you expect from water
him: no, you don't understand - I mean it has absolutely no taste - it's like air. Poland Spring does not taste like air...
me: HAH
him: but that is GOOD - it means it is real pure water
me: I see...

Not sure what you are looking for when tasting a new water, but this was sort of enlightening to me...marketing water is obviously not something that comes natural to me :)

September 28, 2006

Safety is a relative term...

The standards in different countries seem to be widely different...

September 14, 2006

Neanderthals lived longer than expected

The Journal of Nature reported yesterday that the Neanderthals may have lived 2000 years later than originally thought.

And all along I was convinced that you could still witness fine Neanderthal specimen in corporate life as well as in politics.

...surely, there must have been some cross-breeding.

September 11, 2006

[Off Topic + Personal] Remembering September 11th, 2001

Like millions of others all over the world I remember exactly where I was when the first plane hit the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001. Fortunately, my business trip to Chicago had been canceled, and I was almost at work when the first reports of something burning in the WTC started to come in.

I spent all day watching this most horrible tragedy unfold between the conference room TV and my office computer - sharing the pain, the questions, and trying to understand the magnitude of it all, with colleagues, friends and family all over the world.

In the subsequent days, my internal thirst for basic answers became almost intolerable - driven in part by the need to have to explain what was happening to my 6 year old son, and in part by the changing attitudes of some people towards foreigners - especially those that were unfortunate enough to "look" like they were from Middle Eastern origin. Here in Boston, a woman from South America got assaulted in plain daylight at a busy intersection - mistaken for an Arab, as if that had all of a sudden become a valid reason. A friend of mine of Indian origin, got spit at in a popular suburban mall.

As I do in most cases when faced with the new and the unknown, I started reading everything I could get my hands on that would possibly help explain the "why's" behind what had happened. Of the many books that I read, three stand out as truly useful in understanding the situation, two of which were written prior to 9/11 - God Has Ninety-nine Names: Reporting from a Militant Middle East, by former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women, by former Washington Post reporter Geraldine Brooks, and Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror, by former senior CIA official Michael Scheuer.

Feeling the need to do more in fostering understanding for what had happened I also started a discussion thread with a few friends of mine - called thechasm.org. While it never materialized as a vibrant community, we had some very interesting discussions which included people from all over the world - including Palestinians, Arabs, Persians, and even an self-proclaimed IRA member.

Soon, however, it became clear that the "why's" of what had happened would not matter much longer. It is “because” of what had happened that fundamental changes started to rip through our society that would forever alter its fabric.

While some would have described the pre 9/11 American culture as a “juvenile” culture – one where everything is possible, one where failing as part of learning is acceptable, one where people are eager to explore the new and the unknown, one where differences in cultural background and social origin were not barriers, one where diversity was embraced and turned into a strength, etc. – the post 9/11 America was one that was growing up too fast – skipping some critical steps along the way. We lost almost all our friends and allies, we enabled terrorism to take hold and flourish in places where there was none before, we tolerated religious extremism in this country to interfere with government, science and education, and we allowed socio-economic, religious and cultural differences to become real barriers once again. As was the case with Katrina, those socio-economic differences proved devastating for thousands of people.

We also allowed fundamental freedoms to erode in the name of security - but are we really better off and more secure?

Now I can just hear the echo of that sales woman in the shoe section of a major department store a few years back - yelling at me when I was politely trying to prevent someone from cutting in line: "GO BACK TO YOUR COUNTRY IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT!"

The problem is that I do care, and I do love this country. Thankfully I still have a juvenile attitude about how all of this will unfold...and I still believe that things will be better in the end.

[Tags: 9-11 ]

September 2, 2006

Playing with the new camera in the back yard...

(click for larger picture)

August 8, 2006

Are we really building what we "are"?

Check out the similarities between these two pictures...do you believe that this indicative of the fact that we build what we are as suggested on the Value Network mailing list?

July 7, 2006

Why are we men so self-conscious about asking for certain types of help?

When I came back from the West Coast earlier this week, I realized that my old Ford SUV had a flat tire. I did not really feel like changing the tire myself as it is an old car and it was on an incline on top of that.

Being a member of AAA, I could have just called them and have them come and change my tire. But being self-conscious about calling a service to change my tire, I procrastinated for 2 days. Finally I called this morning...and when they sent a woman to come and change my tire, I felt like crawling under a rock from shame.

Strange and stupid feeling - really!
...after all, I am paying for this service!

July 6, 2006

Corporate Visibility 2.0 - Are Public Break-ups a Good Thing?

divorce sm.jpg There have been some highly visible web 2.0 company break-ups recently. The pubsub story comes to mind, where the co-founders publicly went at one another through their blogs (well one more than the other - here and here). Then yesterday came the undoing of rocketboom, where it's unclear what really happened other than something really messy (here, here and here). And those are not the only ones - there are many other partnerships that have gone up in flames in full view in the last 12 months..

Business partnership break-ups based on differences in personalities are never a good thing, and often lead to the demise of young companies. But when they become highly public and visible like that, doesn't it makes things worse? Not only do the chances for the company as an entity to survive become more limited - which is clearly not a good thing for customers, employees and business partners - but personal reputations get destroyed in the process as well. And other than making for a good web-soap, there are really no other benefits that can be derived from this kind of visibility.

Could this be an indication of the disproportionate (=unhealthy) role of personal egos in this wave of innovation?

[Tags: rocketboom pubsub innovation web 2.0]

July 5, 2006

Which organizational structure has the highest chance of survival in a pandemic?

In a recent Harvard Business Review forethought (here - requires subscription or can be purchased separately), Prof. Nitin Nohria from the Harvard Business School asks which of the following organizational structures would have a higher likelihood of surviving a pandemic or other disaster:

organization 1:

hierarchical
centralized leadership
tightly coupled
concentrated workforce
specialists
policy and procedure driven

organization 2::

networked
distributed leadership
loosely coupled
dispersed workforce
cross-trained generalists
guided by simple yet flexible rules

Which company would you bet your money on?

It does not require an advanced degree to realize that there are some fundamental lessons to be learned from mother nature...

[Tags: crisis management self organization pandemic]

June 22, 2006

MarketingSherpa Best Blog Award - please vote!

If you've tried to vote for the MarketingSherpa's Best Blog and Podcast awards and were kicked off the server, there is a new link that they sent out that should work (http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=803032287919). They also extended the deadline for voting until Monday.

So if you have not done so, check it out and vote for your favorites. There are some terrific blogs that are part of the lineup (including this one)!

June 16, 2006

Best practices are meaningless - but worst practices are to be avoided

Based on some comments made during last week's Innovative Marketing Conference, Rebecca Lieb from ClickZ ponders whether best practices even exist.

Bryan Eisenberg said that best practices are often times achieved under very specific conditions and can therefore not always be generalized. Len Ellis said, give me emerging practices, best practices are so yesterday!

All this rings so true. If a practice becomes a best practice that is replicable across other companies or industries, you have to assume that most of your competitors will have adopted that practice - thus giving your company no competitive advantage from embracing it.

What companies really should do is to avoid replicating "worst practices" - a practice which if you were from another planet observing what earth companies do you might conclude they do on purpose:

Screw customers after they purchase products by treating call centers as a cost centers instead of customer relationship based economical centers

Continuously interrupt prospects with rude and mostly out-of-context messages

Treat employees as disposable cost centers instead of valuable customer interfaces

Insult customers' intelligence with stupid messaging or by blaming them for product failures.

Grab a ton of information about prospects and customers and give them nothing in return - or worse - asking them for the same info over and over again

...and so much more

Let's ban the worst practices first, then let's worry about best and emerging practices!

[Tags: customer information marketing customer service worst practices best practices]

May 17, 2006

Sorry, you're from Massachusetts

If I heard that once, I heard it at least a dozen times last week. Can you guess where? No, not New Hampshire. How about Napa Valley, CA. I spent a fabulous week touring both the Napa and Sanoma valleys, sipping some mightly fine wines. I soon discovered that many wineries have a number of reserve bottlings that are available only at their tasting rooms, or through their wine clubs. From a marketing point of view the wine club is a great way to build a loyal community of repeat buyers. They offer limited bottlings of wines that are not available in local retail stores, sell them at a discount from the price charged in the winery retail store, and ship them direct to your home once a month. Sign me up!

If only it was that easy. My first encounter with the curse of Mass. was at Domain Chandon. After sampling their delighful Blanc de Noirs, I asked where I might buy some. I was told I could buy it right there, or join their wine club and have it delivered to my home. So as I filled in those two deadly letters, MA, in the address line of the application form I was told, "I'm sorry, you're from Massachusetts, and we can't ship to your state." In fact, there are 25 other states like MA, and a number of ZIP codes within Florida that prohibit wine shipments direct to your home. For some background on why, and what you can do about it if you think this is really dumb, go here to a site dedicated to help "free the grapes."

As I said, the "I'm sorry, you're from MA" routine followed me everywhere I went. No exceptions. At one winery the person behind the counter said, "you must have a friend in New Hampshire, we can ship there with no problem." If you're not from New England, I should tell you that the motto of New Hampshire, prominently displayed on their licence plates is, "Live Free Or Die." Which seems to apply equally to people and grapes.

May 5, 2006

Why is live at work so different?

A friend of mine, a brilliant programmer, a published fiction writer, and a successful solo entrepreneur, who had never worked in corporate America in his 20 year carreer, took his first salaried job 6 weeks ago.

Earlier this week, he called me for carreer advise - telling me that he felt like he had landed in Dilbert cartoon. "People don't "do" things, they sit around for weeks talking "about" what to do", he said, "and they use all these made-up words that do not even exist in the English Language, I am going crazy!"

My advise was to get out, which he did an hour later.

Why is it that live at work is so different from anything else around us? People behave differently than they do in their social networks. Is it due to human nature or organizational nature?

Hopefully changes are underway in that area...

[Technorati Tags: workplace organizational behavior work]

April 28, 2006

The dumbest trade show marketing tchotcke?

This must qualify as one of the dumbest trade-show tchotckes I have seen - or maybe I am just missing something. An army of people at Ad:Tech were distributing these money clips filled with two $1 bills. When I got it, I could not find the booth in the immediate vicinity and a few minutes later I realized they did not even have a URL on the clip for me to look them up.

...oh well...must be some "new" marketing technique...

[Technorati Tags: tchotchke trade show marketing]

March 6, 2006

Back in the saddle

After a vacation week and a week of heavy business travel - I am back in the saddle.

Last week was very productive week which included a presentation at the New Communications Forum (comment on the panel by the moderator here, picture at the event by JD Lasica here).

It was good to see many Corante Contributors in person, and also interesting to note that 10 of us were speaking at the conference.

March 1, 2006

In education, class matters

As someone fortunate enough to live in one of the more affluent suburbs of Boston, I must admit a certain smug pride in the well above average scores the town's students achieve on the state-wide MCAS (Mass. Comprehensive Assessment system) tests every year. Their performance on these tests helps ease the pain (somewhat) of the huge portion of my property tax bill that goes to funding the local school. But hey, the better the school and the better the teachers, the better the education. Right? Well, according to a study from the UK, reported in the Feb. 28 issue of the Guardian, maybe not.

A study by academics at University College London (UCL) and Kings College London has given statistical backbone to the view that the overwhelming factor in how well children do is not what type of school they attend- but social class.

The report, which uses previously unreleased information from the Department for Education and Skills, matches almost 1 million pupils with their individual postcode and exam scores at ages 11 and 15. This unprecedented project has revealed that a child's social background is the crucial factor in academic performance, and that a school's success is based not on its teachers, the way it is run, or what type of school it is, but, overwhelmingly, on the class background of its pupils.

The study found that, whatever their background, children do better the more "middle-class" the school they attend, and also that more than 50% of a school's performance is accounted for by the social make-up of its pupils.
Put simply, the more middle-class the pupils, the better they do. The more middle-class children there are at the school, the better it does. It is proof that class still rules the classroom.

February 27, 2006

Don't know whether to laugh or cry

Long-time colleague Bob Hill sent this to me and I felt it had to be shared.

A Japanese company and an American company decided to have a canoe race
on the Missouri River. Both teams practiced long and hard to reach their
peak performance before the race. On the big day, the Japanese won by a
mile.

The Americans, very discouraged and depressed, decided to investigate
the reason for the crushing defeat. A management team made up of senior
management was formed to investigate and recommend appropriate action.

Their conclusion was the Japanese had eight people rowing and one person
steering, while the American team had eight people steering and one person
rowing.

So American management hired a consulting company and paid them a large
amount of money for a second opinion. They advised that too many people
were steering the boat, while not enough people were rowing.

To prevent another loss to the Japanese, the rowing team's management
structure was totally reorganized to four steering supervisors, three area
steering superintendents, and one assistant superintendent steering
manager. They also implemented a new performance system that would give
the one person rowing the boat greater incentive to work harder. It was
called the Rowing Team Quality-First Program, with meetings, dinners
and free pens for the rower. There was discussion of getting new
paddles, canoes and other equipment, and extra vacation days for practices
and bonuses.

The next year the Japanese won by two miles. Humiliated, the American
management laid off the rower for poor performance, halted development
of a new canoe, sold the paddles, and canceled all capital investments
for new equipment.

The money saved was distributed to the senior executives as bonuses, and
the next year's racing team was outsourced to India.

February 16, 2006

[shameless self-promotion] #18 on BlogBridge top 100

That's what this blog ranks on Blogbridge's Top 100 Users' Favorites...

Not bad! we're not too evil...favored by readers...

Seriously now, if you have not checked out BlogBridge recently, you should do so soon...their latest reading list feature is pretty powerful!

(disclosure - I am an unpaid advisor to BlogBridge)

[Technorati Tags: BlogBridge rss reader]

February 9, 2006

This blog is not too evil...

I just ran the site through the germatriculator and it turns out that we are not too evil (via Zoli's blog)

At least someone is having more evilness

It must feel pretty bad, when even Playboy is less evil...

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