Big change #1 is actually an old change – I’m happily ensconced as the VP of Marketing at Recurve, a clean tech start up based in San Francisco. Been here since August 2009 and having a blast. We were just named the #3 most innovative company in the energy sector by Fast Company. Very gratifying, especially considering our competition.

But the really big news is that after 17 years of living in the same house in San Mateo, my husband and I have decided to move ourselves, our two cats, and our daughter (who lives with us when she’s not at college) to San Francisco. So our house is on the market in San Mateo. We have an offer in on a 3BR condo at the Linden Hayes at 233 Franklin Street in San Francisco, in Hayes Valley.

• Given Tiger's preference for made-in-USA, he could be GM's spokesperson after they dump Saab. "I used to hav (cont) http://tl.gd/1a51v #
• RIP Saab … You will be missed #Saab #

• No a different trade show entirely called affordable comfort. Definitely Austin #
• Oh. … I wish I could but I have plans #

• Reading "'Cash for Caulkers' program proposed to create jobs, meet climate goals" http://bit.ly/2NyoTG #

• Early Wednesday the 10th? #
• RT @politicsdaily 'Cash for Caulkers' Program, Infrastructure Bank Proposed — Politics Daily http://bit.ly/3ibcSW #

• Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-10-18: RT @stevemcaloon Someone stole my wife's credit card. Didn't re.. http://bit.ly/m8w1y #

• RT @stevemcaloon Someone stole my wife's credit
  card. Didn't report it stolen. Thief spends less than my wife. (via @zappos) #
• Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-10-11:
  Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-10-04:
  Sasha stirring up a fuss at Harv.. http://bit.ly/2J3H1Y #

• Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-10-04:
  Sasha stirring up a fuss at Harvard: Apparently some candid photos she .. http://bit.ly/3VcV3 #

• Sasha stirring up a fuss at Harvard: Apparently some candid photos she took of Emma Watson at the Harvard &#821.. http://bit.ly/3e6BOd #
• Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-09-27:
  Sasha blogging away at Harvard! The Sweet Sound of Bagpipes – htt.. http://bit.ly/PFRqy #

Apparently some candid photos she took of Emma Watson at the Harvard – Brown game caught the attention of Page6.
OMG It’s Emma Watson

To make a long story very short, the blog she works for – which is of interest to almost no one outside of the Harvard community – caught the attention of Page6.

Harvard Jerks Stalk Hermione

Now, I thought it was Harvard and Yale that had the legendary rivalry – not Harvard and Brown?

Here’s the editor’s response over at Very Noice:

Very Noice Editor’s Response

In any event, my daughter is a card-carrying member of the paparazzi. I’m so-o-o proud.

• Sasha blogging away at Harvard! The Sweet Sound of Bagpipes – http://shar.es/1tyVT #
• Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-09-20:
  Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-09-13:
  My cousin Arielle Goldberg talkin.. http://bit.ly/KBtqZ #

• Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-09-13:
  My cousin Arielle Goldberg talking about Memphis and consolidated govern.. http://bit.ly/PH3E7 #

• My cousin Arielle Goldberg talking about Memphis and consolidated government http://bit.ly/3kjOxd via @addthis #
• Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-09-06:
  Finally starting to feel better after a full week of being sick with bro.. http://bit.ly/33UJ3M #

• Finally starting to feel better after a full week of being sick with bronchitis. Relieved to have some of my usual energy back #
• Tired of being sick … Cough cough #
• Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-08-30:
  Waiting for Sasha's pageant to begin at the New College Theatre form.. http://bit.ly/145CgX #

• Waiting for Sasha's pageant to begin at the New College Theatre formerly the Hasting Pudding. Anyone know where hasting pudding went? #
• Weird to be in Cambridge now…While the nation mourns Senator Kennedy's death here in Massachusetts it's much more personal #
• Committees suck. (via @RickM) #
• Waiting for my flight to Boston. Very excited to get Sasha moved in, see family and friends. Hope it's not too hot / humid. #
• Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-08-23:
  Celebrating the 5th Anniversary of Sustainable Spaces, my new company! I.. http://bit.ly/2RmWZc #

• Celebrating the 5th Anniversary of Sustainable Spaces, my new company! It's great to be with a market leader in green tech #
• Daughter packed up and sent off to college … will join her to move her into the dorms in about a week. Big milestone for her and for us! #
• Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-08-16:
  Bah windows at the office #
  Yes I found my new job on linked in but also.. http://bit.ly/Uaizu #

• Bah windows at the office #
• Yes I found my new job on linked in but also thru someone I know in the real world and follow here @Nilofer #
• Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-08-09:
  True grit trumps intelligence: True Grit trumps intelligence.
  Grit &#821.. http://bit.ly/LPHXM #

• True grit trumps intelligence: True Grit trumps intelligence.
  Grit — the quality that allows a person to .. http://bit.ly/TH3Vw #
• Start Mon as VP of Marketing at http://sustainablespaces.com … Green energy retrofitting 4 homes. Very jazzed. VC R Shasta n Rockport Cap. #
• Average tenure for a CMO is 23 months (in the US) and shorter in the UK – http://ow.ly/jojc (via @customerexplabs) #
• Me thinks I have a new gig starting Monday … but it hasn't been announced yet. Very excited! It's in San Francisco. #
• #Women2Follow: @pahlkadot @padmasree @caseycoleman @rashmi @liza @nilofer @charleneli (via @timoreilly) #
• Home Depot and Habitat team up to construct green buildings – smart economics. http://bit.ly/n5KNS (via @lorikendall999) #
• Great article on retention economics: Most people look at retention as something they measure annually – w.. http://bit.ly/Z8WDP #
• Great article on retention economics http://tinyurl.com/lyw3yj #
• One step forward, one step back in pursuit of work. Eating humble pie for breakfast. Doubling down on helping friends find work they love. #
• Made me look, made me laugh. Web hunks. http://bit.ly/LSCjA (via @joannpeach) #

• Waiting is not a strategy and winning companies are again investing in marketing that drives tangible results #
• @jowyang at least with Twitter when you echo the news you do so in a way that ads social context in reply to jowyang #
• http://tcrn.ch/5lh (via @TechCrunch) why teens don't use Twitter #
• http://bit.ly/18Y8xM (via @ramneek) how teens consume media #
• Just met with @ramneek who is an EIR at Mayfield looking at (among other things) the intersection of mobile and cloud computing #
• Love Twitterfeed but it interacts weirdly with Twittertools – so I had to disable it. Anyone else had this problem? #
• The Linguistics of ReTweets:http://tinyurl.com/n9wn2l from @danzarrella #
• Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-07-12:
  Today is my 22 anniversary @richmironov. To celebrate we are sending Har.. http://bit.ly/IPnWM #
• Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-07-12:
  Today is my 22 anniversary @richmironov. To celebrate we are sending Har.. http://tinyurl.com/my9ds8 #

I can’t help but observe the following … after meeting with two different people who were laid off recently, from two different venture-backed start offs.

There’s a wealth of information on what’s wrong with a company available simply by listening when people talk … information that I suspect isn’t getting to the VCs. The problem maybe that the VCs in question are over boarded, meaning they sit on too many boards, and therefore don’t have the time required to listen to what rank and file employees are saying about what’s wrong with their portfolio companies. But after investing $15M and $60M in companies – as they did in these two instances – taking the time would seem like a good investment, no? And the folks I talked to were not at all bitter about getting laid off. I found their comments to be exceptionally telling about what’s wrong with the companies they just left and prescriptive about what was needed to fix them.

Which is pretty cool for me personally since I just recently moved/consolidated my personal website to this new URL here at OpenMarketing – dedicated to new marketing models inspired by Open Source software. The URL was not new … I had to purchase it … and consequently I’m suffering a little from Google’s policies towards domain squatters. So its nice to see that this notion … that the Open Source software movement has inspired true change in how we think about the web and interactions between businesses and people … is one that others see as lasting as well as myself. Added benefit. I’m cautiously optimistic people will stop giving me blank looks when I hand them new business cards. Speaking of which – Moo cards – are hot. Simple idea, well executed. Who would have thunk it.

Relevant Links

• Open Source is the Most Promising Meme (I guess) for 2008 declares Read/Write Web
• Moo cards where to get ‘em

Zannel is the mainstream alternative to Twitter. Far more graphic, no fail whale, optimized for mobile so people can post pictures and videos when they micro blog (we like to call it “nano blogging”) and lifecasting. Oh yes, and unlike Twitter, we actually have a business model that enables us to monetize our instant media network by selling targeted advertising opportunities, sponsored lifecasts, and other premium opportunities to reach the 16-34 years old who are addicted to Zannel and its snack size media updates. (Should we call these addicts “Zannelists?”)

In any event, you can catch up with what I’ve been posting on my nano blog using the widget (above) and with Zannel by going to the site or from your mobile phone simply text “join” to 58888

You’ll also find me blogging in log form here:

http://www.zannel.com/blog/

Today, there isn’t a marketing pundit that doesn’t think that the rules of marketing as we know it are going through some kind of seismic upheaval. Bob Garfield, pundit and commentator over at Ad Age, calls the results of this upheaval “the chaos scenario” and notes that “There will be no transition.”

Mind you, I’m not talking about the death of marketing and media. I’m talking about a dramatic rebirth in marketing and media, in approximately the way the end of the last Ice Age yielded exponentially more species, and more advanced species, than had ever prospered on earth. When the TV Age finally succumbs to the Digital Age, we will be living a different world. –Bob Garfield, Ad Age, June 6, 2007

As the daughter of a chaos physicist{ref1}, I know more than a little about chaos. Bob correctly points out that one of the hallmarks of chaos is that there is no transition from one state to the next. Instead, chaos resolves itself by presenting new models that are surprisingly robust and stable given how young they are.

Much has been written about the antecedents of the marketing chaos facing us:

• media fragmentation
• 60% of households now have a DVR and 70% of DVR users skip commercials
• reach and frequency, long the metrics used to judge the success or failure of traditional media plans, no longer predict behavior … but new metrics are slow in coming
• 18-34 consumers fleeing TV and going online where they don’t want to view content but to create content … the rise of user-generated content
• erosion of financial security at agencies, with the death of 15% commission

I won’t go over this old ground. Instead, I want to focus on some of the new marketing models that are just now stabilizing and taking center stage.

What these models have in common is that that they all assume that customers and companies want the same outcome: better products and services resulting in more demand for those products and services, so as to drive down the cost of producing and of supporting these products and services.

Done right, this becomes a virtuous circle, with companies and customers working together to determine how best to bring products and services to market.

This type of marketing doesn’t really have a name (yet) … or perhaps it goes by many names. In a later entry on this site, I’ll be able to show you how many of the marketing models that have proved successful borrow from the methods of open-source software. And for that reason, I’ve chosen to call the marketing models that power the virtuous circle “open marketing”.

You’ve reached a brand new site still under development, so please excuse our dust. In just a few days this site will be full of information about Open Marketing, what it is, best practices, and thought provoking articles to help you think differently about your next marketing campaign. Meanwhile, this is the new home of content that was formerly housed on the Firewhite Consulting site (2000 – 2007) and Msdirect site (1996 – 2007). Thanks! Marcia Kadanoff

Just when you thought you had this 2.0 stuff figured out … it’s time to go 3.0.

In a recent New York Times column, John Markoff sparked a debate when he suggested that the Web is morphing from “2.0″ to “3.0″ status. While Web 2.0 was never clearly defined, there‚s some consensus in the industry that it focused on several major themes, including AJAX, social networking, folksonomies, lightweight collaboration, social bookmarking and media sharing. So what’s different about Web 3.0? Tech entrepreneur Nova Spivack says the next phase would see the focus of innovation shifting back toward underlying infrastructure upgrades that ultimately will make the Web more connected, more open and more intelligent. Gone will be the siloed approach to content repositories and in its place will be what might be called “the intelligent Web,” which will focus on a third generation of Internet-based services, including the semantic Web, microformats, natural language search, data-mining, machine learning, recommendation agents and artificial intelligence technologies. The point, says Markoff, will be to “emphasize machine-facilitated understanding of information in order to provide a more productive and intuitive user experience.”

Source
KurzweilAI.net 18 Dec 2006

He died over July 4th weekend and I’m embarrassed to admit I missed his passing.

Why should you care? Well he invented modern marketing is all. He’s was 81 years old and a professor at the Harvard Business School. His most famous quote – and the one that resonated with me – is this one:

“People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole.”

The idea is that marketing is responsible for taking products and positioning them so they fill needs in the market place.

A great roundup of his thinking and influence is available here

Design expert Don Norman says that calling people “users” or “customers” or “consumers” depersonalizes them and reinforces companies’ tendencies to focus inward rather than on what should be their mission — helping real live humans. “Years ago, in my research group at the University of California, San Diego, I remember Liam Bannon passionately arguing that the terms we used would control the way we thought, acted, behaved and, ultimately, designed. Do not make your systems idiot or fool proof, he convincingly preached, for why would you want to think of your constituency as idiots or fools?. People are rich, complex beings. They use our devices with specific goals, motives and agendas. Often they work with — or against — others. A label such as customer, consumer or user ignores this rich structure of abilities, motives and social structures.” Norman notes that it’s time to admit that designers design for people: “It is time to wipe words such as consumer, customer and user from our vocabulary. Time to speak of people. Power to the people.”

CACM Interactions 2006

Like it or not, Millennials in the workplace are constantly connected with friends. Through IM, text message, or LiveJournal posts, 20something workers aren’t cutting off their all-important communication for the sake of spreadsheets.

Recently, we peeked in on one network who stays connected virtually from ad agencies, accounting firms, and tech companies nationwide by what they geek-proudly refer to as “The Interweb.” A LiveJournal post-fest spurred a flurry of IM conversations. Google had screwed up; or at least that was the Millennial insta-sentiment. It had allowed spam to infiltrate their inboxes. However minimal the quantity or quick the fix, it didn’t go unnoticed, and the minor interruption had everyone talking.

Would they otherwise be chatting about their Gmail inboxes? No. But for Millennial Hyperlifers, a little break = a complete inconvenience. And that’s something to talk about. As fast as positive word of mouth travels, bad news has an even faster bitrate.

For many brands, just getting people talking may seem like the Golden Ticket. But, here’s an idea; look to what gets Millennials ranting or raving to better understand how buzz builds. This summer, Mentos got blasts of pub thanks to the fiddlings of two mad scientists, Eepybird.com, Revver and tons of fans’ in-network chatter. By wrapping your brain around Millennial message flow, your brand could not only get that kind of chocolatey pass to goodwill, but also find its own sugar-rocket-propelled publicity.

Iconoculture 7.16.06

Well-known innovation and security expert Michael Schrage preaches that the innovation that matters is not what the innovator offers but what the customer adopts — and says that the best organizations are starting to use their customers as a source of innovative introspection. He explains: “The most valuable tools and technologies used internally to discover, design, and test new products and services can be creatively and cost-effectively sold or lent to customers, clients, and prospects, so that customers get a chance to ‘try before they buy.’ They can adopt and test new ideas and technologies before investing in them.” And here’s the thing: the companies that developed the new technologies “rapidly gain insights into the potential value of their wares — insights that might otherwise take years to gather.” Cisco began showing some customers its in-house simulations, and allowed the customers to adapt these design, configuration, and optimization models for their own use.” Schrage notes: “Cisco’s marketers and innovators had not expected this. But they swiftly grasped the implications. With some thought and polish, they repackaged these tools as customer design interaction platforms. Instead of simply “selling” customers on a complete design, they now conduct collaborative meetings in which prospects literally see and play out the architectural implications of their network priorities.” The result of all this is a new innovation ecosystem, one that makes it “easier, safer, and more advantageous for suppliers and customers to take a chance on one another

The key to improvement is bringing evolution inside and getting the wheels of differentiation, selection, and amplification spinning within your organization, says McKinsey senior advisor Eric D. Beinhocker. In his book, “The Origin of Wealth,” Beinhocker suggests that instead of thinking of strategy as a single plan built on predictions of the future, think of strategy as a portfolio of different experiments with different goals. In other words, develop competing business plans that evolve over time. To embrace this portfolio-of-experiments approach to strategy, management requires a collective understanding of the current situation and shared aspirations. The future is hard to predict, so management also needs a process for differentiating business plans that results in a portfolio of different options. The organization needs to create a selection environment that mirrors the environment in the market. Finally, establish processes that enable the amplification of successful business plans and the elimination of unsuccessful ones. The message is not to tear up your strategy books, but to think of the tools of conventional strategy analysis as having a different purpose. The goal is not to get to the “answer” of a single focused five-year plan based on predictions of the future, but rather to prepare for the future and be ready when it arrives. As Louis Pasteur put it, “Chance favors the prepared mind.”

HBS Working Knowledge 19 Jun 2006