Some years ago, I witnessed a “crow funeral” on the street in front of my house. What seemed like hundreds of crows suddenly appeared in the air, in the trees, on the lawns, on the roofs, everywhere around my neighbourhood. A young crow had just died on the roadway, and the noise its friends and […]
Rubber duckies market benefits, not specs
November 30, 2009 by Leave a Comment
I’m walking down the street, errands on my mind, when I realize I’ve just walked past a whole flock of rubber duckies… Eh? I turn back, and discover they are splashing around in a plumbing store’s window. Brilliant! I don’t really care about pipes and fancy faucets; I DO care about the pleasures of running […]
Be Prepared: A True Story
November 27, 2009 by Leave a Comment
Once upon a time (mid 1980s), in a land far away (UVic), Prince Ken (Athletics and Recreation Director Ken Shields, most decorated varsity basketball coach in Canadian history) had a problem. He knew there were many things his principality, his area of the kingdom, needed — and needed badly — but, alas, he had no […]
Sharing thoughts across time and space
November 2, 2009 by Leave a Comment
I have a friend, named Tim, who lives all the way across the country. Tim is a wonderful, affable, total geekhead, and I mean that in the very best of ways. He’s smart, he’s fascinated by minutiae, and he loves sharing his discoveries of the hidden treasures in the mundane world as he finds them, […]
Business model for social media?
October 30, 2009 by Leave a Comment
Years ago, folks had to figure out how to use the printing press in a way that generated revenue instead of creating a financial loss. Bright minds figured it out after a little while, and their ideas have been in use ever since. Then, suddenly, we had radio. Coolidge embraced it and won the post […]
Try then buy: A Web 2.0 update on an old idea
October 22, 2009 by Leave a Comment
I just realized I did something interesting yesterday, and I didn’t even think about the broader implication at the time. The short version of the story isn’t so thrilling: I bought a book. But here’s the backstory. A year or two ago I discovered this guy on the Internet who had some useful, and sometimes […]
Content isn’t enough
August 24, 2009 by Leave a Comment
A little while ago, I attended a webinar with The Customer Collective, on “social selling” (Selling with Web 2.0). In it, the presenters, all marketing experts, agreed that good content is absolutely essential, but it’s no longer enough on its own. (Oh. And here I thought I was finally starting to catch up.) Instead of […]
