NewMediaBrain

A Zen Paperless Month

What a busy holiday and New Year season for the economy and development of interfaces for the age of New Media. From the Kindle release to the Guitar Hero phenomena...... now things are settling down into a Zen phase.

I have followed the blog Zen Habits for over a year and a half. I found this blog through some of my Blogline feeds and a reference that I believe Steve Rubel from Micropersuasion posted.  Steve refers to Leo Babauta's suggestions for organizing and overall Zen lifestyle numerous times.  I find his content interesting and timely with my own focus on a paperless office and home and a Zen Month ahead.  It might also be Leo's Guam roots and his desire to build a following to his blog that has me intrigued. In that year and a half since I have followed.....36,000 others have come along. All of this shooting Zen Habits into Technorati's top list. And now a book deal for Leo after all this attention.  My mention of all of this is to highlight the power of these social networking tools, the endless possibilities for an individual, a company, a brand to control,create and massage....a message.

The Dip In New York City

Well...took a little break there. It does happen, Memorial Day, better East Coast weather. You know the spin.  It was a gorgeous afternoon to hoof it into NYC today to meet Seth Godin and attend his book launch for The Dip.

Is this book an inspirational book or a business book? I think a little of both. The principles are simple and can be applied to a job search or to a process you are going through. Whether it be professional or personal. 

Some great quotes throughout Seth's presentation. One that I could relate to and resonate with was "Windsurfing would be easy if it wasn't for the wind".  Having been a windsurfing instructor through some college summers,on Midwest lakes mind you, I laughed and understood the analogy. Hey, this is easy when the wind is barely there. Your skill is required when the wind blows, or the pressure is on..however you want to look at it.

The Dip...is pictured to the left. Clearly The Dip is marked. This low point is marked. Seth's book talks about this being the point where many people quit. That quitting can sometimes be the best thing to do given the information you have at the time. It is the person that continues on....with the right measured results...that survive The Dip and reach, hopefully the point of being or creating something ....remarkable.

My assignment from this lecture was to write one of two statements on a sticky note. "Average (Doing the Best Under the Circumstances), or Best in The World" Post one of these prominently. My professional World continues to grow. My goal is the latter of the two.

A Viral Break Up

It has been a busy week of connecting and engaging with professionals and potential clients in the space of New Media.  I most recently popped into SoHo to hook with Noah Brier from Naked and had a great chat regarding the blogosphere and tapping into the internet marketing needs of small business clients.

A viral video is a great way to end this week in blogging. I came upon this brilliant short movie clip that Mircrosoft put together. The Break Up is about the relationship between an advertiser and a consumer.

It comically looks at the relationship between the two parties....in a parody setting of a divorce conversation between a man and a woman. Entertaining and viral. Check out the history of this recently launched viral video at the blog of the Microsoft employee that spirited the project Bring The Love Back.

The Break Up
Uploaded by geertdesager

Quench Your Virtual Thirst

What a full day of New Media! I attended the Business Smart Tools Conference today in Stamford,CT. It was a great afternoon of discussions about New Media and the changing landscape that marketers face in this fast paced technically changing world.

I am a veracious note taker, it came somewhere from my AP Biology class in High School I think, but as I skim through my moleskin at the notes I took from all the speakers....one driving point came from everyone. "Engaging the Community". Engaging the consumer, engage your audience,engage your customer. Let them feel and experience your product or service.

How best to do that?  Who is doing that well?

While I could comment and expand on many of the topics and issues that arose from today, I will feature one specific example and the speaker that brought it to the conference. Greg Verdino, VP of Emerging Channels at Digitas was a guest speaker who was asked to speak about Second Life. Greg navigated with a woman who he had designed himself. It was a woman avatar with long hair, short leather skirt, top, dog collar and a beautiful hair style.  All of this Greg designed and or purchased while in Second Life at various "in life" boutiques. 

Greg's internet character visited a few islands in Second Life including American Apparel, IBM and Pontiac's Motorati Life island. She was getting a little thirsty and headed over to Coke's "Quench Your Virtual Thirst" island they are inhabiting for a short while courtesy of Crayon. Coke is launching a contest marketed on My Space where Second Life inhabitants and non-inhabitants are asked to create a dispensing machine for the Coke experience; refreshment, joy, unity, etc.. The most interesting piece was the full circle that Coke is taking in the Social Media tools world. They are running the Thirst Contest on Second Life, built a My Space space to market it and recently used You Tube for communication by the CEO, Mike Donnelly to clarify a change in contest rules. Very Cool!

So, is Coke reaching their audience?? The jury is still out, but they are using the suite of New Media tools to help customers Engage and Quench their thirst.

What is all the FARKas About?

Is it a Blog? Is it a Website? Or is it a News Aggregation site?  Whatever you want to call it, the developer of the site Fark.com has figured out the word-of-the Day....monetize.  The brains behind Fark, Drew Curtis brings in the Weird News of the day into one aggregated format.  The feeds available range from You Tube to CNN and a Blog or two thrown in.  You can quickly view the range of feeds for the day by the originator, a descriptive ranking (weird,survey,amusing,sick,etc), and then a quick partial sentence to explain the headline.

A $5 fee to the site gives you access to the full story. Banner ads from some very large companies run on the right. Jet Blue, Old Spice and the Westin hotels to name a few.  Why are these advertisers interested in this site??  The daily page views has reached 1.5 million daily. These ads bring in over $40,000 annually with a $40 fee weekly. 

So..how do you make money from your Blog or Website? You could always attend a Fark party to gather with the followers to find out more about this site or read the full story which ran last evening on NPR.com.

Your Future is Not What it Used to Be

The future.....it is changing. Most recently I have been engaged in conversations, seen media and read on-line articles around the issue of the future. The Future Work Force and the Next Generation media consumers and producers is the point of conversation here.  I receive a regular feed from a variety of Media Post's on-line publications. During this week, video clips from a recent conference called Outfront 2007. One particular panel was a group of students from Ball State University sharing their insights as students, working students and the media they use. They are journalism majors who participate as co-authors of a Media Post blog, Notes From the Digital Frontier.

The interesting points that are driven home for me are the fact that as journalism students they have been asked to Blog for a highly regarded online and print media source.  Watching and listening to the video, I was interested in the technology they use( IPods, Blackberrys, Laptops, Macs, TIVO) and impressed with the level of professionalism and insight they already have into their industry. The future, or at least a four-person snapshot of the future was the panel in this video.  A few were quoted in saying they Tivo everything they watch, skip through the ads, read most of their publications on-line and rarely if every watch regular TV programming. In fact, most of the leisure viewing they do is on their laptops via the internet for shows that are put on-line the next viewing day.

So...job hunting for the Next Generation. I recently heard a highly regarded consultant in the Social Media space get quoted in saying "If you have been blogging for a year, you are hired". What a better way to see writing style, interest levels, viewpoints...then in reading a year's sampling of a blogger's writing.

In an article written in Blogger & Podcaster Magazine's April 2007 and 1st Edition, Shel Israel wrote, "In five or ten years the online-generation (our current 18-30)  will become the market. As it's members rise on the food-chain they will control the bulk of discretionary income and blogging and social media will be the most credible and efficient way to reach them". Shel's thoughts in this article talk to many futuristic thoughts and points about where the Next Generation consumers and producers are going and how to market to them.

His article is aptly entitled Blogging Is Just Kid's Stuff.

Come to my Office..I Mean Laptop

Home office, telecommuting, webcasting....all mixed into one. I participated in a Webinar conference this week with another solopreneur in San Diego, California. I was one of four participants. Two others from Caliornia and woman from Indiana and myself the East Coast contingent.  It was a session on Blogging for Business part of a series from Debra Simpson at North Sandiego Business@Large Conference.

The information on the call was great, but it is really the process of the "meeting" that I wanted to discuss. Debra used a Webinar service called Ivocalized. We entered a room, introduced ourselves, spoke via my microphone on my wireless laptop and moved around my home office while in this "meeting". I entered text questions while Debra was talking which she read and added to her talk. I pressed a microphone button and that allowed the room full of people to hear me. Now, remember this room full of people included individuals in three different time zones and states. A really cool feature was the ability to pull in power point slides ...and Debra manipulated the right half of my screen with different web sites she was showing us... I could access the sites as well and click through, but Debra had control of the right half so that she could demonstrate it.

The meeting was recorded ....all started and stopped at Debra's control..and it will be uploaded to her site as a PodCast via Audio Acrobat. These services are a minimal fee monthly. You can actually trial Audio Acrobar Free for 30 days. The webinar serivce varies on the product platform with cost, but minimal monthly.  Theses services helped me to network and connect with individuals across the country easily and freely.   

Just a simple day in the life and times of the New Media Brain...have a great weekend!

My First Blog Entry, Part I

As I launch my New Media Brain Blog, and yes.....I am planning a launch party, I have a few individuals to thank for getting me here.  First, thanks to Phil S. who through the last 7 years has been a technical savior time and again. I also want to thank Pedro who has been supporting my entry into this space....after he realized it was this or starting a Dog Walking Service. And not to forget MF who had the supporting statement, Build it and they will come. Well, we'll see.

It has been an interesting month since I attended BlogHer Business 07 in Manhattan.  It was an amazing two day conference, packed with the best and the brightest in the female Business Blogosphere.  I was energized by the information and the knowledge base I interacted with. The only problem was .....I arrived ....Blogless. I actually spent most of the first day having a complete desire to "come clean". Which I actually did in a breakout session hosted by Michelle Madhok founder of SheFnds.com and Elise Bauer of Simply Recipes. I had come with a website and had done my research on Blog platforms, but I arrived....Blogless. It did leave me a feeling of not being a part of something big. I had come to this conference because I knew that this is where the internet marketing arena is exploding. It is a communication tool that has shown it's power.

Most recently in the case of Don Imus. While this example is really an example of "news" and not product promotion it does enhance my "power" statement. Not to stray away from the theme of My First Blog Entry, but as the Wall Street Journal reported on the Friday, April 13th front page the stream of this story began with a 26 year old blogger who was given the task of monitoring the Imus in the Morning radio program simulcast on MSNBC. It was this blog entry in the Blog Media Matters for America that assisted in the begining of the unraveling of Mr.Imus' 40 year radio career.

Back to BlogHer for Business 07 and My First Blog Entry. I have shared the information that I learned with a few clients who I believe will be joining the Blogosphere bandwagon soon. The information and my enthusiasm for this space has been met with intrigue and skepticism. The intriguing minds are getting my attention and hopefully my marketing assistance. The skepticism has me thinking and wondering. But we will cover that in My First Blog Entry, Part II.

As I found in my research, this tool.....Blog...is a tool. A cool tool by it's design. The search engines love it, writers love it,consumers love it, news hungry people love it, savvy internet marketers love it....why?  It levels the communication playing field. It allows a voice to be heard. It breaks corporate barriers. It allows for consumer opinion...it is jolting Main Stream Media (MSM).  It is easy to set up and maintain. It has helped launch careers, products and believe it or not.....it can be considered ten years old. Yes, just recently the reported probable 1st Weblog celebrated it's 10th anniversary.

So....get on the bus, get on the bandwagon, read on. it has been built, hopefully...you have come to read it.

This ends my First Blog Entry.

Setting Up This Blog

In Progress