Archive for the ‘Current Affairs’ Category
May
23
An international best-selling author and marketing guru that I have followed for quite some time via his blog and books is Seth Godin. His unique ability to shift the marketing paradigm by framing issues and ideas in a different light has kept me coming back for more.
The stars have aligned, and I will be heading to Salt Lake City tomorrow to see him speak. I will do a follow-up post on the event. If you are in Salt Lake and have not yet heard about it, I have attached the press release below to provide you with more information. Marketing is a component of almost any business, so come on down and be enlightened, you’ll be glad you did.
International Marketing Guru Seth Godin to Speak at
The Salt Palace May 24th, 2007
Salt Lake City, UT (WordMob) May 17, 2007 – New Utah based grassroots group, WordMob (http://www.wordmob.com), is bringing internationally known marketing guru Seth Godin to Salt Lake City on May 24th to speak to members of the community in a public event. Godin was vice president of permission marketing for Yahoo! and founder of two internet companies. He is the author of several international best-selling books, including Purple Cow and All Marketers are Liars.
Godin’s stop in Salt Lake City is part of a multi-stop tour promoting his newest book, The Dip (A Little Book that Teaches When to Stick and When to Quit). Other cities on the tour include Philadelphia, New York, Chicago and Silicon Valley.
Event Details:
Hear Seth Godin and Get Five Copies of His Latest Book, The Dip
The event will take place Thursday May 24th from 1-4pm at The Salt Palace, room 150A-G. (1-2pm will be networking; Seth Godin will speak from 2-3pm and then sign copies from 3-4pm.)
Tickets to hear Seth Godin are $50 and will be available at the door. Attendees will also receive 5 copies of “The Dipâ€, (1 to keep for themselves and 4 to give away) as part of Godin’s mission to spread the word about his new marketing concept that winners know when to quit when something isn’t working…he’s against “coping†and “being average†and advocates “be a winner or do something else.â€
Background on Bringing Godin to Utah
Godin announced in early April on his blog (http://sethgodin.typepad.com/the_dip ) that he would come to any city in the U.S. that was able to organize 500 people willing to pay $50.00 to hear him speak. Each attendee would also get 5 copies of his new book (1 for them, 4 to give away), a $60.00 value.
Utahns, Phil Burns, Matthew Reinbold and Jason Alba discussed this opportunity and decided to organize and try to bring Godin to Utah. Within three days, wordmob.com was put together as a central organizational point and announcement hub. Over the next several weeks, more than hundred people committed to attending and several thousand dollars in sponsorship were raised. During this time, well over 100 articles on blogs written by Utah authors were written to spread the word. This action was convincing to Godin that there was an audience in SLC and he committed to speak.
Utah Businesses Sponsor the Event
Steve Spencer was the first to pledge sponsorship for his company Twelve Horses as a Gold Sponsor. Spencer is passionate about providing outstanding opportunities for Utah Businesses such as this event and encouraged other Utah Businesses to also sponsor. Bateman IP Law Group, Connect magazine and BackCountry.com are also sponsoring the event.
About WordMob
Wordmob (http://www.wordmob.com) is a grassroots volunteer organization created with the intent of bringing a world renowned speaker to Utah once a quarter. The opportunity to bring Seth Godin to Utah in May was the catalyst for putting this idea into action. Active members of WordMob include: Kelly King Anderson, Jason Alba, Ash Buckles, Phil Burns, Shahar Boyayan from BuzzBooster.com, Janet Meiners, Matthew Reinbold, Steve Spencer, and Paul Wilson.
Posted in Company News, Current Affairs, Social
May
8
I received an email today from the Google Analytics team alerting me to their new user interface. I immediately went to the Twelve Horses account to login. Upon login, I was offered a tour of the new features, but was disappointed to see I didn’t have access to the new UI. Apparently they are rolling it out over the next few weeks. After watching the tour, I am salivating over the new features and ease of use.
If you use Google Analytics, look forward to the new UI.
Posted in Current Affairs, Technology, Web & SEO, Web Design
Apr
17
Another action-packed day here in San Francisco at the Web 2.0 Expo. I’ve got to say I feel somewhat of the minority toting around my PC laptop. I am in a Mac world it seems.
The day really kicked off when Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google took the stage and announced that they are adding presentations to their Google Docs and Spreadsheets. Not only is it newsworthy because it could potentially replace the need for Microsoft’s PowerPoint, but it also offers the ability to collaborate on presentations in real-time with individuals anywhere as long as they have an internet connection. Granted, if it is anything like Google’s spreadsheet then it will certainly be a slimmed down version, but I am still excited to see it. Many of Twelve Horses employees telecommute, so having an office suit that is completely portable will be a great help.
After that announcement, Eric Schmidt and John Battelle, CEO of Federation Media sat down for a frank and fairly amusing discussion on other hot topics surrounding Google. As Tim O’Reilly put it yesterday, “Google is the oxygen that breathes life into so many businesses.” With that being said, Google’s enormous influence in combination with ongoing acquisitions of companies like DoubleClick make some individuals a little uneasy.
Not only is it the fact that one company is storing a lot of personal data, but it is also data that can be used to put other entities out of business. Schmidt tried to curb this concern by repeatedly emphasizing that even Google must carefully consider its end users.
One last thing that resonated with me was a question Battelle asked pertaining to any potential future acquisitions or companies that Google has on its radar. Schmidt replied by saying, “…mobile, mobile, mobile.” The mobile device is clearly already a powerful tool and one that still has far to go. It might be Google that is the catalyst for some significant evolution in this channel; however, just like the issues surrounding net neutrality, so much of the success depends on the carriers.
After the keynote I attended some great sessions:
- Social Networking Winners & Losers: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
- A great discussion that was moderated by Forrester Research with panel members from Facebook, LinkedIn, Ning, and Yahoo Groups.
- The message: give people the power to create their own groups. They want to define what it is.
- Using Widget Syndication for Online Marketing and Measurement
- Check out Widgetbox. Drag and drop, easy to use, and can be deployed in a variety of ways on blogs and web pages.
- Emerging Trends in Search Engine Optimization & Search Engine Marketing
- I read David Berkowitz’s weekly Media Post column on search engine marketing and optimization, so it was great to finally meet him.
- What I Learned from Syphilis: Epidemiology & Viral Marketing
- An amusing end to the day’s sessions by drawing parallels between the success of the most deadly diseases, and how a company should implement new software and marketing campaigns.
After that it was on to the Conference Attendee Party, which was sponsored by Nokia. Free drinks, food and photo opps with the Nokia girls, which were then displayed on flat screens around the room. They eventually cut off the alcohol supply, so we poured out on to the beautiful streets of San Francisco.
Tomorrow is the final day of the Web 2.0 Expo and then it is back to the stables.
tags: web, 2.0, expo, online, social, mobile, networking, search, engine, optimization, marketing
Posted in Current Affairs, Marketing, Social, Web & SEO
Apr
17
It is the start of the second day of the Web 2.0 Expo here in San Francisco, and I am looking forward to hearing more from many of today’s Internet leaders, entrepreneurs, and assorted creatures of the Web. There are more than 11,000 people here from all over the world, and they are hungry to learn, share, create, and generate new business.
There has been a lot of industry debate and accusations of over-hyping surrounding the term, “Web 2.0,” which seems to obfuscate the issue even more, but suffice to say that it serves to describe the continuing evolution of web applications for the purpose of greater online collaboration and sharing. Call it what you will, all I care about is the fact that there is some very cool stuff out there that is making our lives easier and richer.
Yesterday, I attended a session on “Building Web 2.0: Next-generation Web Platforms,” and one of the hot topics was the need for increased understanding between networks and the applications that run through them. How much does the network need to know? Well, that prompted a question from the audience regarding net neutrality and the conversation went elsewhere.
The other topic the panel really focused on was the future of networks and whether businesses in the future really need to build their own. There are huge infrastructure costs that new and existing businesses must support, and in many cases it is only required for occasional spikes. This led perfectly into the keynote speech by Jeff Bezos from Amazon. Instead of focusing on the Long Tail of products or his side space project, he discussed Amazon’s web services, which he described as a service that eliminates many of the “fixed costs and fixed burdens” for entrepreneurs. His analogy was something to the effect of why build the bar when you just want one drink.
I attended another session on User Generated Content and Privacy with Lauren Gelman, who is the associate director of Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society (CIS), and then a session on tagging with Thomas Vander Wal, which must have had more than 500 people in attendance. It was basically an overview, but I was hoping to gather any useful information that would help us with clients for whom we have build tag-based systems.
The Expo Hall Booth Crawl was absolutely packed, but it was tolerable because there was a lot of great new technology to learn about and every so often you could fill up on wine or beer at one of the booths. I also of course had to grab myself a web 2.0 t-shirt, which naturally says, “Web 2.0 is”….followed by a blank space you can fill in with an indelible marker. There were so many different businesses there. Some were very focused on improving business operations with new easier-to-use applications like Apollo, and others were focused on users and building a substantial subscriber base…
Posted in Current Affairs, Social, Web & SEO
