25 Things You May Not Know About Me

My friends Heather Strout and Derek Showerman recently wrote blog posts on the “25 Things You May Not Know About Me” – and Heather ‘tagged’ me on her blog to add my own 25 things.
Actually, this turned out to be a fun exercise as I thought about the bits of my life that people probably [...]

Life Without Limbs – No Problem

Nick Vujicic was born 26 years ago in Melbourne, Australia without any arms or legs.
Last night, Nick was a guest speaker at our church in Manhattan Beach.  The audience was overflowing and rapt with attention for more than an hour.
Nick’s message was very inspiring and inspirational – in fact, my 16-year-old son said Nick was [...]

Happy Birthday Mac!

On January 24, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh.  And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like “1984″  (final tagline from Apple’s commercial for the Mac on January 24, 1984)
The Apple Macintosh was introduced 25 years ago today during Super Bowl XVIII.  I remember watching the famous commercial during the game and quite frankly, I didn’t [...]

Wheaties – Still the Breakfast of Champions

I ate a lot of Wheaties when I was growing up, but I haven’t had any in quite awhile.  However, I was reminded of my Wheaties love when I was visiting the offices of Minuteman Parking (one of my clients) this week.  Chris Fox, the president and ower, has been collecting Wheaties boxes for more [...]

I Have a Social Media Dream

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment.
Martin Luther King, Jr. would have turned 80 today.  While we won’t officially celebrate his birthday until Monday, I want to pay my respects to this great man by borrowing from his famous “I Have A Dream” speech.  If you have not [...]

I’ve Seen the Social Analytics Future…

…and it’s already here.
Lawrence Liu from Telligent responded to my Walking the Social Media Walk blog post last week with some great comments and a suggestion to check out their Harvest Reporting Server.
So I did.
Being a longtime fan and advocate of business intelligence and analytics, I am wowed by what Telligent has done.  And they [...]

The Importance of Active Community Management – Proved With Real Data

I think most community experts would agree that active community management and ongoing strategy are vital to a community’s health.  However, I don’t know if anyone has been able to fully quantify the impact using actual community metrics.
Until now – when I decided to analyze some of the 2008 data for my former community during [...]

Walking the “Social Media Walk”

Forrester came out their latest research note on “Community Platforms” today.  Jeremiah Owyang, their lead analyst, wrote a very extensive summary of the report on his blog too.  At a minimum, you must check out the blog post and read all of the extensive comments that Jeremiah has received so far.
Jeremiah made some great points [...]

Change and Lessons from Barack Obama

We are the change we seek…let’s go change the world.
Barack Obama, from the 2008 Presidential campaign trail
It’s probably fitting that I’m wearing my Barack Obama “One Voice Can Change the World” t-shirt as I write this post but I wanted to share some news about my friend, Barry Libert, CEO at Mzinga.  Barry has co-authored a [...]

Roku is the On-Demand Future Now

For a family Christmas present, we got the new Roku digital video player along with a Netflix subscription.  Until 2 weeks ago, I had never heard of Roku and now I don’t know how we lived without it.   From my short experience with Roku, video on-demand is the future and the future is already [...]