Christopher S. Penn – Marketing AI Keynote Speaker

Blog

  • Sometimes, the responsible choice is walking away

    I read with dismay this story on MSNBC about people breaking into their retirement funds to pay for housing and other debts they’ve accrued.

    Now, understand that I work for a financial institution, a lending company. It is in my short term interest and financial welfare to recommend that people should always pay their debts, and for the most part, if you have the ability to repay, you should.

    However, in cases like the story above, sometimes the responsible thing is to walk away.

    Which is worse?

    • Declare bankruptcy, default on your loans, and take a 7 year hit in which you pretty much are cut out of the lending world?
    • Deplete your retirement, default on your loans anyway, and not only take a 7 year hit on credit, but also be wholly dependent on welfare and charity for the last 20 years of your life?

    Which is worse?

    The logical conclusion, the business conclusion, is to walk away from your debts. Don’t think that businesses don’t make that decision every day. Sallie Mae (ticker:SLM) lost a deal with JC Flowers – they walked away. There were consequences, but the consequences of walking away were weighed by JC Flowers and they decided that walking away made the most financial sense.

    There’s a culture encouraged by financial institutions that there’s a moral penalty for walking away, and that moral pressure is one of the many forces used by companies to keep individuals in obligations, whether or not they have the ability to repay.

    Here’s the problem with that. It’s short term thinking. For the citizens in the MSNBC story, it is in my long term interests as a taxpaying citizen of the United States for that borrower to walk away. Companies come and go, but that citizen, if he depletes his retirement, will be dependent on me and others for a subsistence lifestyle. Just as he’s trading his future for the present, so are financial institutions trading America’s future for the present if they continue to encourage debt holdings by consumers who simply cannot pay and will not be able to pay.

    Conclusion: if you’re a financial institution with a consumer who cannot repay, that loan is going to decay sooner or later anyway. (unless it’s a student loan which can never be forgiven or written off by the consumer) Write it off now, preserve that citizen’s retirement and savings, and help them be able to buy your services later on down the road. Think long term, think big picture.

  • Why Keynote Speakers Violate PodCamp Rules

    I’m pleased to see the ever continuing evolution of PodCamp as a community gathering. It’s amazing to see how people adapt PodCamp to fit what’s appropriate in their communities and local cultures, and I hope we continue to see new innovations. I wanted to clarify something that occurred to me on the drive into the office this morning:

    Keynote speakers are a violation of the PodCamp rules.

    Now, the most recent PodCamp to have keynote speakers was PodCamp Nashville, and I want to be perfectly clear this is not saying their event was bad or their organizers did something wrong – they did not, and from those who attended, it sounded like a great PodCamp. This is an opinion and a request going forward.

    Here are the Six Rules of PodCamp:

    1. All attendees must be treated equally. Everyone is a rockstar.
    2. All content created must be released under a Creative Commons license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
    3. All attendees must be allowed to participate. (subject to limitations of physical space, of course)
    4. All sessions must obey the Law of 2 Feet – if you’re not getting what you want out of the session, you can and should walk out and do something else. It’s not like you have to get your money’s worth!
    5. The event must be new-media focused – blogging, podcasting, video on the net.
    6. The financials of a PodCamp must be fully disclosed in an open ledger, except for any donor/sponsor who wishes to remain anonymous.

    The reason why Keynote speakers are a violation of the PodCamp rules relates to rules 1, 3, and 4.

    Rule 1. Keynote speakers are by default not equal to other participants. They’re placed in a position of prominence above other participants.

    Rule 3. Keynote speaker slots are likely not going to be put up for general availability. The whole reason to have a keynote speaker is to select someone special, so it’s unlikely that anyone can speak at the keynote.

    Rule 4. Keynotes typically have nothing going on alongside of them, which means participants have no other content options, and therefore cannot exercise the Law of 2 Feet.

    Of the three rules, #1 is the most important. PodCamp is built on the foundation that all participants are equal.

    Scenes from PodCamp Europe 2007When Chris Brogan and I set out our own guidelines at the first PodCamp for the UnKeynote, we agreed:

    • An introductory statement and welcome by organizers is more than appropriate
    • Logistical issues should ALWAYS be presented – restrooms are here, organizers wear this color shirt or this badge so if you need help, grab them
    • Thanks for coming to PodCamp
    • A reminder that PodCamp is YOUR conference, not ours, and the experience you have is driven solely by participants, not organizers

    Like I said at the beginning of this post, this is relatively uncharted territory, but important to address now. No one in the past did anything wrong, but I’d like this guideline to be in the minds of organizers from now on:

    Keynote speakers are NOT okay at PodCamps.

    What are your thoughts?

  • An economic solution

    Here is a dead simple solution for foreclosed houses: offer these at cut rate auctions to affordable housing developers like CASCAP in Cambridge, MA. These agencies can use the properties, otherwise fated to decay, for affordable housing for the poor and homeless.

    Why we won’t embrace this solution:

    Few businesses understand the sunk cost fallacy. Banks and mortgage holders cling desperately to assets that continue to decline in value in the vain hope that they’ll be worth something close to what they paid.

    Remember this: a bag of gold, no matter how valuable, will kill you if you’re trying to stay afloat.

  • Why You Should Go To Jeff Pulver's VON.x

    Laser beam at the iSightJeff Pulver’s hosting Spring VON.x in San Jose the week of March 17. While I can’t make it, if you have any interest in voice or video online, you should.

    Top 5 Reasons to go to VON.x

    1. See great speakers give you an idea where things are going for them
    2. Watch a professional conference team put on an event with operational excellence that would make your ops team envious
    3. See Jeff try to broadcast his entire conference from a Nokia N95
    4. Pulver’s All Conference Party. If you’ve been to one, I need say no more.
    5. Cisco gives away laser pointers at their booth on the VON expo floor. Frickin’ laser beams.

    With luck, you can make it to VON.x. Wish I could! Register here.

  • Join the Conversation Book Review

    Slackershot: Join the ConversationJoseph Jaffe was kind enough to send me a review copy of his latest book, Join the Conversation. It’s a really, really LONG book, weighing in at 300 pages. I managed to get through it in about two weeks of sporadic reading.

    The Good

    • The book has plenty of case studies and examples of conversational marketing. Everything from Fedex Furniture to Virtual Thirst.
    • Jaffe writes in a similar style to Seth Godin – short sentences in second person voice, so it’s easy reading.
    • Standalone text units mean you can pick up and put down the book easily.

    The Bad

    • If you like books to flow, this isn’t it. Each unit of text practically stands alone. If you’re accustomed to more of a story, this book is, as Mitch Joel put it, like a series of blog posts.
    • There are almost too many case reviews and not enough actionable plans.
    • Whoever did the font typesetting needs to be slapped around. There are WAY too many fonts, so many that it’s distracting.

    Overall

    It’s hard to actually review this book because it’s in sort of a grey zone for me. Is it a good introduction to conversational marketing? Not really, at least not for the beginner, because there are very few clear takeaways or plans to begin implementation. For the advanced new media marketer, the book doesn’t break a lot of new ground in ways you can disrupt the marketplace with marketing – it’s more of a series of case studies than it is a blueprint for your next marketing Death Star.

    Join the Conversation is probably best suited as an idea book – the kind of book you pick up from time to time when you need to leaf through a few examples to generate ideas. Get inspiration from how people have done things or glean lessons from how NOT to do things based on missteps of the past.

    Join the Conversation Book Review 1Would I recommend it? If you’re at the journeyman stage of new media marketing, I think Join the Conversation is a worthy addition to your bookshelf. For those who haven’t played Sid Meier’s Pirates!, that’s the second of four stages:

    • Apprentice (and not Donald Trump’s kind)
    • Journeyman
    • Adventurer
    • Swashbuckler

    Join the Conversation fits for those no longer new to new media marketing, but haven’t developed an arsenal of their own yet. It’s also probably too long for most executives to plow through, except maybe in audiobook format, but it’s still a good resource if you’re needing inspiration for your new media marketing campaign.

    Join the Conversation is available for sale here on Amazon. (disclosure: 5% commission goes to my employer, the Student Loan Network)

  • Prediction: Divorce rate to skyrocket in US in 4/08

    Mortgage Rate resets

    Give people about a month after their subprime mortgage payment balloons to obscene proportions and it’s not hard to guess that in some cases, that will lead to divorce and broken homes. The next big wave of resets begins in March 2008, based on the CSFB data in the chart above.

    Buckle your seatbelts and unplug the popcorn machine. 2008 is going to be a rough year.

  • Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson: The Worst Is Just Beginning

    [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETQj3a221EQ[/youtube]

    The market crashes, turns to ashes that you’re dancing on
    while some fat lady cues up for a song.

    You just don’t panic, so they said
    in all the good books that I have read.
    You just lay back and feed your head,
    but that ain’t clever, that never got nothing to
    sell, hell, oh well, maybe we were
    better off dead.

    – Matthew Ebel, Better Off Dead from the album Goodbye Planet Earth, the best damn album you’ll buy today

  • Happy Valentine's Day!

    Valentine’s Day doesn’t rank highly on my list of important days. As CC Chapman said, if you need a holiday to show someone you love that you care, you have serious issues you need to address in your relationship.

    Happy Valentine's Day! 2Combine that with crass commercialism and an attempt to raid your wallet through your heart by major corporations (check the stocks of 1-800-FLOWERS today – ticker: FLWS, FTD ticker: FTD, Red Envelope ticker: REDE) and you have a day I’m not wildly thrilled about.

    So let’s rearrange the day of showing love a bit.

    Figure out what you’d spend on an average Valentine’s Day among flowers, gifts, dinner, cards, and the other corporate subsidies pop culture asks you to buy. Total all that up, and then make a contribution to your significant other’s favorite charity instead, in their name. If you’re going to spend money today, spend it on something that will show true love – a contribution to an organization that will serve the greater good.

    There’s no shortage of charities to choose from, and tons of good causes. Check out Charity Navigator to find efficiency ratings of various charities, to see how your money is used and what percentage of each dollar goes to actually help the people or causes you donated to help. Every non-profit charity with 501(c)(3) status is also required to disclose its IRS 990, so you can inspect for yourself how they use their money.

    Make Valentine’s Day about love – love not only for your significant other, but about love for your world, your community, and the greater good. As my teacher Stephen K. Hayes says, there is no greater way to serve yourself and make yourself happier than to help others.

    Got a charity you want to promote? Post a link to it in the comments! 

    Photo credit: Sister72

  • Daily Show Clip

    Worth watching, on the housing crisis.

  • Where does your beer money come from?

    I’ve got a post on the work blog about beer money, and would LOVE your thoughts and comments on it:

    Financial Aid Podcast Community Question: Where do you get your beer money?

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