Christopher S. Penn – Marketing AI Keynote Speaker

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Nunavut – Battleground for the Arctic

Ever heard of Nunavut, Canada? I hadn’t. That shows how badly out of date my geographic knowledge of Canada is. Nunavut was designated a Canadian territory in 1999, splitting off from the Northwest Territories. It’s a huge place – 31,000 people spread over an area the size of Western Europe, and it’s a name you’ll be hearing a lot more of in the coming years and decades. Why?

Well, Nunavut contains some of the northernmost points of North America. Previously, that was only sort of interesting, as the area is cold and icy.

Thanks to global warming, it’s not as cold nor as icy any more, and that means the opening of the Arctic Ocean to shipping. What does that mean? Ships won’t necessarily be forced to use the Panama Canal any more – a ship could conceivably sail from England to Tokyo across the Arctic Ocean – which will change the flows of international commerce. This is the Northwest Passage, and is hotly debated in international circles. Canada says the Northwest Passage is sovereign territory. The United States and the EU claim it’s international waters. The difference? Millions of dollars in shipping and passage.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has repeated that the Northwest Passage belongs to Canada. Frankly, as an American who can actually locate it on a map, Mr. Harper is welcome to it, since most everything you can buy in the United States is made in China anyway. I suspect my opinion is probably in the minority, though. America’s track record for respecting other nations’ sovereignty hasn’t been so hot the last 7 years or so.

Is it wrong of me to say that if you can’t locate Nunavut on a map, your opinion on Canada’s sovereignty claims are automatically invalid?

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November 18, 2007
Thoughts from the road

Thoughts from the road

I’ve been on the road a heck of a lot lately, getting to meet lots of interesting people, talking about new media. Ever since September, it’s been go-go-go and I’m grateful for a pause until spring. In order:

– NASFAA
– Podcasters Across Borders
– PodCamp Philly
– Emerson College
– Bentley College
– NASFAA private engagement
– PodCamp Boston
– MASFAA
– SREB GoAlliance

There have been a surprising number of commonalities during the trips; at each location, I’ve had the opportunity to speak publicly about new media – podcasting, blogging, social networks, and much more. Some of the commonalities of the audiences:

1. At least 50% of the audience has no real mental framework to even begin assessing the worth of new media. They know the buzzwords from mainstream media, but are unsure of how all the pieces fit together.

2. Virtually 100% of the audience is very, very, very interested in new media in one or more aspects. SREB brought me in principally to speak about social networks. MASFAA brought me in to talk about podcasting. The desire and interest to learn more about new media is very strong and growing.

3. Analogies to existing mental frameworks are critical to understanding how to explain new media channels to people new to the world of new media. Some of the explanations I’ve used:

– Blogs are newspaper columns written by columnists… without the rest of the newspaper. Hat tip to Chris Brogan for the seed idea on this one.
– Audio podcasts are downloadable internet radio shows.
– Video podcasts are downloadable internet TV shows.
– Social networks are a cross between virtual conferences and virtual water coolers.

When put in at least a semblance of a mental framework, it’s been my experience that audiences are more easily able to change aspects of an existing idea rather than try to form a completely new one. Downloadable internet radio isn’t quite right (it ignores RSS, subscription mechanisms, etc.) but it’s close enough that people can make adjustments to their internal pictures and sounds rather than create new ones.

4. People have no idea regional new media communities exist. For example, SREB brought me into Atlanta to speak, but there’s a huge blog and podcast community here – heck, there was a PodCamp here, so the community exists. I would love to be able to travel to each of the cities I have been to this past year and help them sign up for a PodCamp; because each city has had one (Atlanta, Boston, DC). That, I think, would go a long way towards not only making PodCamps more local, but also getting new media producers connected more tightly with their communities.

Travel will pick up in the spring again, but for now I’m happy for a couple of months of hibernation and family-only travel. Thanks to everyone who requested me as a public speaker at all the recent events lately – I am grateful for the chances to serve your communities.

November 15, 2007
Crosspost: Student Loan Radio 44: Becca Loebe at the Lizard Lounge

Crosspost: Student Loan Radio 44: Becca Loebe at the Lizard Lounge

Becca Loebe played a great concert at the Lizard Lounge on September 16, 2007. Recent events, like PodCamp Boston, conferences, etc. have kept me so busy that I didn’t get around to publishing it until now, but here it is for your listening enjoyment.

Enjoy, and stop by her site, RebeccaLoebe.com, for more information.

Direct MP3 file download: MP3 file

Reminders
+ Get the Financial Aid Podcast by email!
+ Financial Aid Podcast Show Notes at FinancialAidPodcast.com.
+ Discuss this episode at the Financial Aid Forum!
+ Private student loans available at any time – visit AlternativeStudentLoan.com
+ Stafford federal student loans at StaffordLoan.com
+ Student loan consolidation at StudentLoanConsolidator.com
+ FAFSA form tutorials and free help at FAFSAonline.com
+ The Financial Aid Podcast is a publication of the Student Loan Network.

I want to hear from you! Email me at financialaidpodcast {at} gmail {dot} com, visit https://www.FinancialAidPodcast.com, or call 206-350-1208.

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November 12, 2007
Groundwork Phase: Preparing for the Future

Groundwork Phase: Preparing for the Future

November and December are typically slow months at work and in the many projects ahead. PodCamps tend to slow down in terms of occurrences, and lots of time is re-allocated to family and friends as the holidays approach. I’m in the midst of a few different groundwork projects right now.

+ Getting promotional groundwork done for Matthew Ebel as he prepares to move to Boston in 2008
+ Getting content groundwork done for our FAFSA web site at work, FAFSAonline.com
+ Getting content groundwork done for Stephen K. Hayes’ organization, SKH Quest
+ Getting strategic groundwork done for the Financial Aid Podcast
+ Getting strategic groundwork done for Marketing Over Coffee
+ Lots of other stuff on the scope, too

Winter heralds hibernation, regrouping, and re-energizing. I’ll also be having a New Year’s gathering in January again, continuing a tradition we started last year. I hope everyone who participated in the last one saw their goals accomplished!

November 11, 2007
That man could dance

Fashion and ridiculous pants aside, if there’s one thing you can never take away from MC Hammer, he could DANCE.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMzoBkaFxh4[/youtube]

Ah, the 90s.

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November 10, 2007
One Laptop Per Child

The One Laptop Per Child project is opening its doors on November 12 to purchasing. For $199, you can donate a laptop to a child in a developing nation.$

For399, you can get one yourself and donate one under their Give 1 Get 1 program beginning November 12.

I’m buying one for myself, but not for charitable reasons.

Think carefully. Thousands, if not millions, of brand new Internet users will be signing on for the first time on these machines. If you don’t have one, you have no idea what their experience will be like, especially with your brand and your products.

Frankly, if you’re in marketing and you don’t buy one of these, you’re missing a boat that will be sailing very soon.

November 8, 2007
Once You Step Up, You Can Never Go Back

Once You Step Up, You Can Never Go Back

One of my fondest memories of PodCamp Boston 2 was sitting at lunch on Sunday talking with one of my martial arts instructors, Dennis Mahoney, about profound knowledge and Sisyphus vs. stairs. I’m constantly in search of profound knowledge, which, as Anthony Robbins defines it, is knowledge that once you understand it, makes an immediate impact and difference in your life.

Sisyphus, for those who slept through mythology, was a king punished for trickery by the gods to a hellish fate: push a large rock up a hill, only to have it roll back down, and be forced to repeat that task for eternity.

Most people’s lives can be described as Sisyphean. They wake up, go to work, come home, drink and watch TV, fall asleep, and repeat the next day until one day when they don’t wake up any more. Many activities are the same – working out, for example, is Sisyphean. You benefit as long as you keep pushing, but the moment you stop, the boulder starts to roll down hill.

Stepping up is different. Profound knowledge enables stepping up. Once you understand something, once you grasp profound knowledge, you can’t go back to the person you used to be. You are forever changed, forever better, and nothing except extreme forgetfulness can ever force you to step back.

The example I cite often is the rule of thirds in photography. Look through your camera viewfinder, draw a tic-tac-toe grid on it, and position your subjects at the intersections of the vertical and horizontal lines. Immediately, anyone who doesn’t understand this technique will take better photographs if they practice it. There’s of course still tons to learn, from lighting to composition to aperture, etc. but just this one piece of profound knowledge changes you forever, and you can’t go back.

What are you doing in life that is Sisyphean, and how can you convert more of your life from pushing boulders to stepping up, making breakthroughs? What profound knowledge have you acquired in your life that you can share here in the comments?

November 6, 2007
Everybody Needs A Ninja

Everybody Needs A Ninja

I have the good fortune in life to have access to lots of very, very talented people. It’s my pleasure to be able to bring their works together and present them as best as I can. In this case, I present the music of podsafe music superstar Matthew Ebel and the martial talents of Stephen K. Hayes and many of his senior students demonstrating their skills at the SKH Quest Fall Festival in Dayton, OH.

Click To Play

Buy the song Everybody Needs a Ninja in MP3 now!

For more information:

Stephen K. Hayes To-Shin Do martial arts

Matthew Ebel’s new album, Goodbye Planet Earth

To place this on your web site, visit the Blip.TV player page and follow the directions for Share.

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November 5, 2007
MySpace joins Google's OpenSocial
Well now. This is a new twist. MySpace and Google have teamed up on OpenSocial, making the list of OpenSocial API services considerably more interesting.

Engage.com, Friendster, Hi5, Hyves, Imeem, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Oracle, Orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart (the parent company of TypePad, Movable Type, LiveJournal, and Vox), Tianji, Viadeo, and Xing.

Think for a moment what this means. You write an OpenSocial App for LinkedIn and it will run on Vox or LiveJournal. It will run on MySpace. It will run on Plaxo. Google’s OpenSocial API will give you the ability to cross social network platforms easily as a developer, and if you have the choice of writing for Facebook alone or writing for 12 platforms at once, including the most populous network on the planet, where will you allocate scarce development resources?

Google has declared all out war on Facebook with this coup, and hats off to them. Will Facebook join? Even if they don’t, it’s inevitable that someone will write middleware connecting the OpenSocial API to the FBML/FQL API. What does this mean for your Facebook development projects? Put ’em on the back burner the moment OpenSocial’s API is published and goes live; assume that Facebook will -need- to be compatible with it to survive.

Here’s an even more striking thought: tools for marketing written for MySpace will be tools written for marketing on OpenSocial. Social media marketing pros, get ready to rock the web. A peek inside the API documentation reveals:
- Name
- Postal address
- Email address
- IM
- Phone number
- Profile traits
The ability to market based on targeted, self-identified data AND have contact information makes OpenSocial a Facebook-killer from a business perspective if they don’t jump in.

Early bets: if you’re a musician, put your money on iLike having an OpenSocial app early out of the gate. They rocked it hard with Facebook and will be looking for a repeat performance for sure. If your music isn’t pimped in iLike, you have a lot of work to do and soon. Expect Connection Cloud style apps early out of the gate, and the ubiquitous, if stupid, vampire/werewolf games.

Take a look at who seized the day on Facebook’s development platform and bet on them and their most agile competitor.

Want to make an early power play? Clone popular Facebook apps.

Another early bet: you know everyone who put a lot of work into Google Gadgets and wondered what the hell Google was going to do with them besides iGoogle? Betcha a doughnut that there will be some portability mechanism to leverage the Gadgets directory in OpenSocial.

Update: I’ll take that doughnut now, thanks.

One last thing for the non-developers: you know that MySpace profile you’ve been neglecting? You might want to dust it off real soon.
November 2, 2007
Moral hazard

There’s an economics concept called moral hazard that I kept hearing on Bloomberg and finally did a little research on.

Moral hazard refers to the prospect that a party insulated from risk (such as through insurance) will be less concerned about the negative consequences of the risk than they otherwise might be; for example, an individual with insurance against automobile theft may be less vigilant about locking the car even though locking the car is a simple risk reduction strategy. Moral hazard arises because an individual or institution in a transaction does not bear the full consequences of its actions, and therefore has a tendency or incentive to act less carefully than would otherwise be the case, leaving another party in the transaction to bear some responsibility for the consequences of those actions.

Moral hazard goes by another common name – rewarding behaviors with an outcome that’s opposite the goals you want to achieve. See also mixed messages, mixed signals, and rewarding stupidity. The most prominent example of moral hazard I can think of is an electorate that was tired of the Iraq war re-electing the president, thereby reinforcing behaviors it didn’t want.

I mention this because a number of times during this past weekend, the topic of giver’s gain came up. Give to get, give, etc., and the only caution I would mention is to keep moral hazard in mind. Give to get, but make sure that you’re doing so for the right reasons and not providing an incentive for unwanted behaviors.

November 2, 2007

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