Information is only as powerful as it is accessible.

We just recently launched two different websites focused around a life-threatening disease called, hydrocephalus. Why you may ask? One really important reason is because there is no cure…yet. Of equal importance is the fact that symptoms of the disease can manifest in many different ways. Many doctors, family members, and individuals battling the disease are uninformed and ill-prepared to handle the symptoms, let alone recognize them when they first manifest. Part of the remedy is to put information out that is accessible to anyone, anywhere, at any time.

As stated on the website, “Hydrocephalus is a chronic neurological condition characterized by an increased volume of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) within spaces inside the brain.” In layman terms, it is water on the brain, which causes swelling, brain damage, and even death. It is more common than you may know. In fact, more than 1 million people in the U.S. alone have been diagnosed with hydrocephalus, and it is believed to occur in 1.5 of every 1,000 births.

The Hydrocephalus Association website is in its first phase of development. Aside from the access to information you readily see at first glance, the other features of the site facilitate Member Signup and Donations, both of which integrate with Salesforce to manage the data and the relationships with those involved with the organization. Because the organization relies heavily on its active community, there also handy little features like the Flickr Uploader application, which gives people the ability to upload their photos and add search-friendly descriptions. There is more to come.

I briefly mentioned the importance of community as it relates to hydrocephalus. Many of you who participate in social networks and blogs understand the power of online interaction and communities; but for many it is still relatively new ground. The purpose of GabrielsLife.org is to create and foster community participation in order to generate greater awareness around the disease, as well as empower people with helpful information. The site gives people tools to communicate not only with one another, but also the world at large.

Gabriel’sLife.org is a custom build using Wordpress. On top of that it allows users to create their own Wordpress blogs as part of the network. There is also a forum, and the ability for people to search for others and connect to share information privately if they so choose. Finally, visitors are encouraged to submit their own stories, which are featured on the homepage. These tools are designed to tap into the collective knowledge base of those who have faced the complexities of the disease so that others are better prepared to handle their own. While still in its infancy, the site appears to be serving that purpose.

My main hope for this blog post is that you will see it and read it and tell someone about it. You will meet someone that has or knows someone else with hydrocephalus, and they will go and start to use these sites and tell someone else. And so on, and so on, and so on….

So I’m sure everyone knows about this cool social bookmarking tool. Even though most of the people I know don’t actually use it socially. What I mean by that is that we use it to keep track of our own bookmarks across multiple machines and/or locations, but we don’t take advantage of what it can do for sharing those bookmarks. So here are a couple ways I’ve found to do exactly that.

• Links for You: This is where you’ll find links that people in your network, or who have YOU in their network, have tagged for you. When you use the add bookmark dialog, add your tags as normal, but also select from the list of your network contacts and select those that might also like the link.
  
  Then when you view your del.icio.us page you’ll see the “links For You (15)” notice…
• To really use this tool to its fullest you need the del.icio.us Firefox plugin. There’s a plugin for I.E. but it’s not as functional. I suggest using the bundles view if you’ve gone through the OCD nightmare of trying to categorize your hundreds of bookmarks.
  
• If you’re like us, you have more than one profile that you manage on any one social media platform. That’s a headache no matter how you slice it. You can get around some of that by using Firefox AND I.E. for different accounts, but that gets annoying (especially if you use Firefox, I.E., Opera AND Netscape). Cookie Swap is the solution. Use it with del.icio.us or any other web platform to manage multiple profiles/personalities/clients. Once installed you just right click on the icon in the bottom right corner of the browser window and select the next profile.
  
  Then you can transfer links from profile to profile using the “For:”tag and minimize the amount of times you have to swap cookies.
• Let me take a minute to pipe dream a bit about these two things and a couple of features that I would use A LOT if they existed. 1) Export bookmarks by bundle for del.icio.us. It would be cool to be able to email an unordered list to a friend based on a bundle or a tag. 2) site specific cookie swapping. I want a plugin that will ask me which cookie set I want to use every time a login page loads. Perhaps not that many people manage as many profiles as I do, but I suspect there are plenty. 3) Support for more profiles from Cookieswap.
• Last: Postalicious lets you post your bookmarks with a short message to your wordpress blog. It’s a good way to post actual content to your blog quickly and easily.

We’re always searching for, and tinkering with new ways to communicate, interact and stay informed here. del.icio.us and cookie swap are pretty indispensable once you get used to them. Please add us to your network and send along some links!

Next up on my bookmarking radar: www.diigo.com. Bookmarking, auto importing/exporting, slideshows, notes and annotations…

-Mike

Like it or hate it, Web 2.0 is a term that is widely used. Marketers and industry folks use it all the time to describe web-based communities and social networks. And if Facebook’s recent valuation is any indication, things appear to be going quite well for this type of web development. Something more exciting than that, however, is Google’s recent announcement of OpenSocial. I’m sure someone out there is just barely containing themselves from labeling this recent development as the coming of Web 3.0. Regardless, it does have some pretty profound implications for businesses of all types.

What is OpenSocial?

According to Google, “OpenSocial provides a common set of APIs for social applications across multiple websites. With standard JavaScript and HTML, developers can create apps that access a social network’s friends and update feeds.”

What does this mean to you?

When you develop a web application you will have the opportunity to get much more out of your investment. You will be able to place this application on multiple sites to reach many more customers.

As an example, think of a resort destination that provides users with an application that allows them to rate their favorite places, share pictures and video, and even meet up. OpenSocial would allow this application to be used across multiple social networks like MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn, as well as other communities and even blogs.

I can already sense that some marketers out there are getting concerned about their web analytics. My advice - don’t worry about it. You will introduce your brand to more people than ever before. In fact, you’d probably see your web traffic go up. Go to where the audience is, don’t wait for them to come to you.

Of course, it is still early in the game for OpenSocial, and it depends on if everyone decides to play nicely together in the sandbox. Either way, it is something we will be watching and you should start thinking about when it comes to your online marketing strategy.

Google has certainly been thinking about it for a while.

This is a great post about social networks and really points out the control and choice that people have when it comes to consuming information and forming relationships. For me, it also points out fundamental problems with so many company’s social marketing strategies. The idea that you can simply create a blog and people will come and read it, push out a podcast and throngs of individuals will come clamoring to listen to it, or upload a video to YouTube and expect thousands to come watch it is mistaken. It is more of a conversation than that. People interact with people, not faceless businesses. It requires active participation, and you must add value in some way. From an ROI perspective, it may not behoove you to participate. The question of whether it should be a part of your marketing budget really depends on your product and service offerings, what you are trying to achieve, and who your audience is.

However, from a personal and professional development standpoint, especially if you are in marketing, advertising, or pr, it is extremely important. What do you see when you Google yourself? Not much? That probably doesn’t help you in a business climate that increasingly relies on the web. Social networks offer the ability to dramatically improve your personal scalability. In addition, you will get to meet people you might not have otherwise met, and have the chance to learn more than you would have ever expected. You will grow your personal brand and while doing it, guess what, you might also find the right opportunity to introduce the brand that cuts you your paycheck.   

This morning I ventured out to the Arizona Technology Council’s CIO forum. Anna Frazzetto, vice president of Technology Solutions for Harvey Nash USA presented their findings from the IT Leadership 2006/2007 CIO Survey followed by a round table discussion by 5 business people in various CIO related roles from local Phoenix businesses.

Having an Internet bent on everything I do, I was curious to hear how CIO’s for companies view the Internet. Do they see it as a marketing/sales project? Is it the responsibility of IT? What challenges do CIOs face when dealing with online CRM systems like Salesforce.com or by making company data available via externally accessible intranets?

Instead, the only question posed to the round table that was not related to off shoring was in regards to virtualization. I was in awe that there wasn’t ethical questions about off shoring, instead it was more a conversation as to what to off shore and how to manage it. Places like India, China, Vietnam, and even Mexico are fully capable and are in fact doing off shore projects for very large US companies. This seems to be a given in the CIO world.
The reason seems to stem from available resources. US colleges are graduating less than 10% of their students in computer and IT related fields. Less available bodies means greater costs to recruit and hire these students. Places like India can have as high as 85% of their graduating students in IT related fields. And here, inexpensive labor does not mean cheap work. It’s purely supply and demand.

When deciding what type of activities to off shore, panelist Fred Mapp, President of Quality Service Solutions, put it best, “You need to know what are your company’s core competencies.”

Obviously, you don’t want to off shore or outsource what makes you unique. Instead, you want to off shore those activities that aren’t productive for your company to be part of.

And don’t fall for the 80 - 90% cost savings hype that is often bantered about. Instead, you may expect to save about 40 - 50% after factoring time to manage and deal with the project.

I don’t want to get into any ethical conversation on this topic. If you feel strongly one way or another, I recommend discussing the issues with the Computer Science department at your local university. Also, kids learn what they want to be when they grow up at a young age. When was the last time you told your kids, “Computer Science could be fun.  That’s a profession I would look into.”

David LaPlante, CEO of Twelve Horses will be speaking on, “Building Brand and Destination Character Through Social Marketing” tomorrow at the 7th annual SMG Tourism Conference at Lake Tahoe. The event will be held at Embassy Suites Resort in South Lake Tahoe, California.

He will be providing a look at how destinations are using all things Web 2.0 to connect and engage with their audience in a meaningful manner.

The following article ran in the Reno Gazette-Journal today:

Tahoe Tourism officials to discuss strategy

Lake Tahoe-area tourism executives will gather in South Lake Tahoe on Wednesday to share strategic information at the 2007 SMG Tourism Conference.

This eighth annual event, which is themed “Sustainability & Authenticity: Marketing Your Destination’s Unique Character,” will address issues critical to tourism, including geotourism, social media and brand building, California tourism trends, and how Indian gaming and economic development trends are impacting destination character, officials said.

Speakers at the event include Jonathan Tourtellot, director of sustainable destinations at the National Geographic Society; Dave LaPlante, CEO of Twelve Horses; and William Eadington, gaming expert at the University of Nevada, Reno.

The conference will be at Embassy Suites Resort in South Lake Tahoe from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and will include an exhibition area.

Also included will be the Geotourism Dinner Cruise on the Tahoe Queen, featuring a panel discussion moderated by the National Geographic Society, after the conference.

The conference fee is $140 for one or two people or $115

for three or more attendees. The fee includes registration, lunch and all materials.

Spaces on the Geotourism Dinner Cruise are $58 each.

For more information, visit www.smgtourismconference.com or call (530) 541-2462, ext. 102.

tags: lake, tahoe, smg, tourism, conference, social, marketing, branding

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 Dip”, (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.”

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.

Last night the 2007 Donald W. Reynolds Governor’s Cup Competition awards ceremony was held at the Siena in downtown Reno. The event was sold out with many proud parents, sponsors, and business owners there to see which students would take home the more than $100,000 in cash prizes for the best business plans.

Nevada’s Governor, Jim Gibbons was there as the keynote, and Brian Kroliki, Lieutenant Governor did a very good job as the emcee.

As I reported before, I had the pleasure of participating in the judging process, so it was nice to see the entire process come to fruition. A huge shout out goes to David Archer, managing director, as well as Emily Lowe, marketing manager, both from the Nevada Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology (NCET). They worked very hard to put on the competition and the awards ceremony.

Additionally, I do have to give props to our very own David LaPlante, CEO of Twelve Horses who is one of NCET’s founding board members and current Chair. David has been instrumental in the success of NCET and the competition.

The winners are as follows:

Governor’s Cup - Undergraduate Winners:

• First place - Weingart & Keranen Environmental Solutions – Sierra Nevada College
• Second place - EVO Fuels - UNR
• Third place - ME3 - carGLOW – UNR

Governor’s Cup - Graduate Winners:

• First place - NanoVation, Inc. – UNR
• Second place - Samsara Interactive, Inc. - UNR
• Third place - Simply Healthy Food – UNR

Lt Governor’s Award

• Undergraduate Winner – EVO Fuels - UNR
• Graduate Winner - NanoVation, Inc. - UNR

These Flickr photos of the event are courteous of Inbytes Studio.

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

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…

So, more to come, but in the interim I am headed off to hear what Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google has to say in, “Conversations with John Battelle.”