Steve Heller, in AIGA:

… I cannot tolerate motivational speakers. Their imperious, self-bloated stagecraft is, for me, like listening to chalk screeching on a blackboard. Nonetheless, I know people who draw real inspiration from this twaddle. In fact, at a few conferences I’ve seen audiences become rapt in devotional attention as motivational gurus toss out bromides about how to achieve design nirvana …

Matthew Higgs asked 66 individuals and groups to identify their “seven wonders of the world” as part of a project with Book Works. Here are some of the responses that struck my fancy:

• Bjork
• Repulse Bay, Hong Kong
• Ian Curtis dancing
• The ‘Disappear Here’ billboard from Bret Easton Ellis’ Less Than Zero
• The park in Antonioni’s Blow-Up

You know how you’re sitting there, Blackberry, iPhone or smartphone in hand, when you live through a unique but compelling experience? The sort of funny, ironic, startling, refreshing or depressing moment that you just feel it necessary to share?

Or maybe you’re just bored - and you still feel like sharing?

Thanks to micro-blogging and the world of tiny little keyboards, this sort of event gets compressed into a curt, often ungainly 140 character shorthand.

And that means you have to drop adverbs, adjectives, descriptive phrases and ancillary thoughts, all the while hoping that your “followers” are sympatico, similarly culturally attuned, members of the same socio-economic tribe or equally ironic to understand the theory, the thought or the emotion behind your short transmission.

This is a very important point: speaking in very short fragments often forces you to refer to commonly known professional terms and cultural touchstones. That effectively blocks out people new to your community or those that hold a different point of view.

Even without these barriers, it’s really hard to build an effective (and coherent) counterargument in 140 characters.

What’s the happy medium? One Person Trend Stories. Three, four or even five paragraph posts that go beyond the obvious short descriptive sentence to build a proper (sarcastic or ironic) vignette.

• Enough is Enough! One Woman Takes a Stand Against Coffee Shops That Play Really Loud Music
• Testing her Patience: Aging Intellectual Defies Barnes & Noble Cashier
• iDoNotWant! Young Man Says “No, Thanks” to Latest Tech Toy

Honestly, I worry about having a Twitter message being taken out of context. My Twitter stream is populating my Google vanity searches, and many of the messages make no sense.

What about Plurk, I hear some of you wondering?

Umm. No. I’ve tried to work my way through some of those Plurkshops - both live and after the fact. The stream of consciousness commentary and non-sequential contributions really disrupt the flow and make it very hard to identify the wheat from the chaff.

If Twitter is like overhearing conversations on the subway, Plurk is a lot like summer day camp - everyone’s there for the same purpose, following the same activities schedule - but some are keeners, some are dopes and a lot are just trying to fit in with the crowd.

Back in university, there were two or three guys whose most prominent piece of furniture was a giant black performance speaker - the sort of three foot by five foot box normally carted around in the back of a Ford Econoline van, the sort of thing that needed a strong professional amp.

Usually, these guys didn’t even play an instrument or belong to a band - they had made a significant investment in audio equipment so that they could be “da man” when it came time to set up a house party.

“Jesus! Look at the size of that speaker! They’ll hear the music down the street! You da man!”

Made in Queens is the story of a group of young Trinidadian men who wheel around their Queens neighbourhood on BMX bikes - jacked to the max with those old school speakers and decks.

“In this age of obsessive video sharing and social networking, nearly every action is designed and packaged for public consumption. Especially with young people,” says co-director Joe Stevens. “The immed­iate charm of Nick and his crew is that they’re the exact opposite of all that. There is nothing calculated or self-conscious about who they are. They’re just a group of friends doing some­thing to challenge themselves and have some laughs. It’s a story which would have never come from kids who were born here.”

Here’s the trailer:

h/t Creative Review blog

Technorati Tags: Made in Queens, amps

A former television repair centre, found on a backstreet here in Ottawa. The sign hangs over a roll-up steel door. This was personalized and convenient service, allowing you to drive your car or truck right into the service bay so your oversized television console could be brought in for repair with relatively little fuss.

The font choice is remarkably clean and modern for a business so obviously rooted in the 1960s and 1970s.

Let’s remember: when we used to talk about “portable TVs,” we meant bulky and heavy 13″ units, often with a built-in VCR. And rabbit ears.

Those units, as the sign notes, you could drag around to the side door yourself.

Over the past seven or eight years, it has become ridiculously easy to buy and set up a 42″ television - by yourself. I still remember a time when, as you were moving into a new house, you had to decide where the television was going to be placed - because it took two burly movers to put it in place, and it would never be moved again.

Mercedes Benz may produce marvelous vehicles, but their internal corporate videos are really quite horrible.

Someone, somewhere, said “This is EXACTLY what I was looking for!”

A workable solution to information overload, or simply insane? Information Aesthetics tells us about a novel approach to categorizing and classifying books in a large collection, based on a very imaginative book sleeve and an index based on a gradient of colours.

As a person who is genetically predisposed to wander in the stacks of libraries and bookstores, pulling books and pamphlets from shelves in a quest for something novel, informative or simply startling, I can sympathize with the desire for a more orderly and intuitive classification system.

Unfortunately, this classification system presents a fundamental conflict: it attempts to provide a simple visual cue to a very complex problem.

Let’s remember, there are still two camps of book classification: the Dewey die hards versus the Library of Congress obsessives.

And each breaks the classification problem down into a complex combination of letters and numbers.

The designer’s goal (explanation here) seems to have been to free the details of classification from the confined space of the shelf and the poor design of the contemporary library sticker:

“Notice that the book’s cover loses it’s importance in the library, it is squashed between this book and that book. Not to be confused with a book store, this is a well organized storage space. It is the spine that one look’s for and it is the call number label that allows one to find. With so much pressure on the call number label, I found it to be tiny and inconsistent, appearing to be slapped on carelessly.

Now imagine a wall of books, it appears to be quite disorganized in terms of the book’s information, a mismach a textures, typefaces and colours. The information inevitably gets lost within itself. I Initially wanted to cover the books individually with a standard removable sleeve that I would design displaying all of the book’s information in a clean, efficient and legible manner; however, it took about 30 seconds in the encyclopedia section to feel how boring and unbearable this solution would make one’s library experience.

The trickiest part was realizing that having the same template for every book did not ease one’s book search, but rather cause the book to completely to disappear within the others, making it impossible to see or stand out. All signs of curiosity vanish.”

An appealing design concept, but one that raises the colour of the sleeve above all the other qualities of the book:

• the age of the binding
• the texture of the title on the spine
• the style of binding
• the book size
• the juxtaposition of similarly bound books (perhaps in a series, or by the same publisher)

With this system, design overpowers the atmosphere and idiosyncracy of the library: the sense of exploration and possibility for chance discovery is replaced by a dominating colour scheme and an eagerness to impose consistency and conformity. Fashion over content, acceptable behaviour over eccentricity.

Isn’t that what we have librarians for?

Imagine yourself driving along, singing along to some horrific AC song like:

• El DeBarge’s “Who’s Johnny”
• “Electric Youth” by Debbie Gibson
• “Ears of Tin” by Jethro Tull
• “She’s Gone” by Hall and Oates

Have you ever turned, at that very moment, and realized that one if not more people are staring at you?

Well, behold the majestic combination of wonderful/shocking music the guys at Popdose have lined up in the latest post of Bottom Feeders - the ass end of the 80s.

I took this picture because I thought the sign was funny: then I noticed the extreme contrast between the marketing promise and the industrial waste lying around it. The adult toy store, obviously, is undergoing renovation.

But some of that industrial detritus isn’t related to the construction.

Let’s assume you work for a government body that is deeply involved in highly contentious issues - issues that are very interesting (and frustrating) to communities both online and offline. Let’s also assume that your organization has very little chance of changing the fundamental policies and procedures that frame these issues in the public’s eyes.

In other words, you’re largely a punching bag, buffeted by public opinion, proposals and criticism from activists and civil society groups, and general incredulity from the public. Is it worth developing a proactive social media program? It’s always worthwhile to put passive social media measures into place - extensive monitoring of the conversations and debates taking place online, the measurement of shifting opinion and perception among your various communities, perhaps some element of limited participation in comment fields and on discussion boards.

But is it worth the effort to launch a blog or similar long term initiative if your comment fields will get filled with criticism, claims that your social media work is simply parroting or reinforcing your traditional media work, or growing references to critical reports, video clips and commentary that undermines the very point you were trying to make (see this post from the Transportation Safety Administration blog post where they try to explain the relatively small numbers of people actually stopped by no-fly lists)?

What if your efforts to keep comment fields relevant and abuse-free means you effectively build in discontinuity into your so-called “conversation”? Take, for example, the purgatory established for non-serious comments on the UK Identity and Passport Service consultation blog, mylifemyid.org? Or the cutting criticism found at the foot of the launch posting for the same site?

What’s the real question when considering your options? Is your organization ready to take a beating in the name of consultation, openness and conversation? After all, if your daily business is to argue the benefits of an unpopular policy or program, do you have the tools, the staff or even the operational flexibility to reflect and absorb any of the criticism or constructive commentary you are sure to receive as part of a social media campaign?

Or should your approach to social media be more self serving? Forget all those promises of access, change, conversation, progress and participative government touted by aspirational and inspirational social media consultants - why not just create a blog and accompanying campaign as part of an effort to engage your critics on as many battlefields as possible?

After all, you can’t rebut the argument if you don’t even have a ticket to the debate.

In some cases, it may be useful for a government organization to create a blog and implement other social media tactics to argue their side - even if the readers and commenters will have no hope of effecting any change AT ALL.

The key, as always, is use the tool effectively and understand the terrain upon which you have chosen to engage your enemy. It’s go big or go home. It’s time to break out of your institutional language, your ingrained reticence to confront opposition and your dependence upon senior administrators to speak on behalf of the organization. That’s probably why the TSA blog recently called out all its lurkers - the large majority of the 4000 unique readers per week* that the TSA blog receives - to submit questions to be answered in coming weeks.

It’s almost the Rocky School of Social Media (trademark pending) - when faced with overwhelming odds, continue to engage your opponent, seek out their weak spots, and hope that the more supportive members of the general public help push you through to the end. Paint the benefits of your issue in the most positive light possible, and simply be seen engaging your detractors.

After all, if they’re going to criticize you anyway, why not draw them to a site where you control the colour scheme and the blogroll?

*there’s a metric for you - compare your uniques and comment traffic to that of the TSA blog, which is undoubtedly a lightning rod for criticism on public policy issues.

*cross-posted from sosaidthe.org*

Technorati Tags: govt 2.0, egovernment, corporate blog, government blog

• Want to see how the New York Times designed the GUI for their new iPhone app - in about 200 words? Felix Sockwell sheds some light.
• Slinkachu is the artist behind Little People - A Tiny Street Art Project that poses miniature people, furniture, vehicles and features in real-life streetscapes. He also prepared a piece for a gallery show in Stavanger, Norway that featured the gruesome and indiscriminate death of a 10 mm high businessman. Oh, is there no miniature God????
• Somehow, Steve Portigal and Dan Soltzberg are discussing the act of observation when they intertwine observation, design and Repo Man.

“… In fact, in Repo Man, Harry Dean Stanton’s character makes a comment about this very phenomenon—something like, “You’re thinking about a plate o’ shrimp, and then suddenly someone’ll say ‘plate o’ shrimp’ out of the blue….” And of course, through the whole movie, signs for “plate o’ shrimp” are everywhere. …” (AIGA)

• Al Gore may know how many napkins you take, but Chuck Norris will make sure you never sneeze again.

You’ve been there. You’ve got a small budget but you want big impact for your next team building exercise. You need a motivational speaker that will make a big impression and possibly knock their socks off.

Well, do I have a deal for you.

“… King Kong Bundy, the 400-pound behemoth known for once breaking a midget wrestler’s back. Flying Bundy in and putting him up at the La Quinta will cost $1,600 …” (Cleveland Scene)

Of course, that cost is just to fly the man in to make a celebrity appearance a minor league wrestling event in Ohio. The speech might be extra.

On a personal note, King Kong Bundy and Hulk Hogan were the two wrestlers I always chose when playing the stand-up arcade game Wrestlemania. And, for your viewing pleasure, the Bundy/Hogan cage match from Wrestlemania 2 (with the added pleasure of over-the-top colour from Jesse “the body” Ventura.

Technorati Tags: King Kong Bundy, team building, teambuilding, motivational speaker, speaker

The latest ad from Discovery Networks: the world is awesome.

h/t @ryananderson

Daycare facilities for 5000 - children, that is. 350 employees. Grammy Award winners in the choir.

That’s how Joel Osteen draws tens of thousands to the converted Compaq Center for his weekly sermons. But the key is heartfelt customer commitment to the product.

” … [Joel Osteen] believes, resolutely, in the value of the product he is crafting in his office on those quiet mornings. “Very rarely will you find a company that produces a widget where everyone is mentally and spiritually into producing a better widget,” Osteen says. “There’s a purpose behind what we’re doing. We believe in our widget. We’re doing more than giving people a good time or a better toothbrush, because it’s hard to put in your heart and soul and sacrifice so much to make a better toothbrush.” … ” (Portfolio)

Technorati Tags: marketing, church marketing, superchurch, evangelism

The top half of the graphic illustrates the terms we think form the most important components of our online activity: twitter, plurk, facebook, IM, blogging, youtube … you know.

The bottom half of the graphic? What we actually talk about.

Technorati Tags: plurk, twitter, wordle, word cloud, info tag

That’s SoundGarden covering Tap’s Big Bottoms.

• The tribe of underground surreptitious train sketchers. There may be a quick but quality portrait of you sitting in someone’s portfolio. (Los Angeles Times)

• How the Sonic Guys ad campaign came to life. (Kansas City Pitch)

“… To make the point that Sonic doesn’t nuke its hamburgers in microwaves, T.J. and Pete asked a competitor’s cashier to microwave a bag of popcorn for them. “They would be like, ‘We can’t microwave your popcorn. We’re busy microwaving burgers,’” McKay says. “The smarter, more strategic stuff, that’s when we knew that it was bigger than a prank or a Jackass-kind of thing. That’s when we knew it was good.”

Pete and T.J.’s antics became brasher and more irreverent. In a traffic-jammed drive-thru lane, T.J. called the restaurant and asked if the restaurant could use a hand in speeding up the line. …”

• Tom Watson, British MP and Minister for E-Government, is BLOWING MY MIND with his twitter use. (And Hazel Blears, the Minister for Communities, started blogging and twittering today)

• Jack Kerouac, from the original scroll of “On the Road” in Memehuffer:

“People aren’t interested in facts but in ejaculations“ (journal entry, December 1949)”

Technorati Tags: Sonic Drive In, ads, Kerouac, egovernment, Tom Watson, subway artists

Forget about stoic pride. Forget about demure recognition. When you hit a defining moment in your life, you should celebrate with energy, with passion and with a demonstrable air of excitement.

That’s what Rafael Nadal did last night, climbing up into the stands to hug his friends and family. He then walked across the top of the scoreboard at Centre Court to speak to the Spanish Crown Prince.

It was only after he had finished his personal celebrations that Nadal returned to the Court - where the tournament organizers in blue jackets grabbed him to make sure he returned to the age-old script for awarding the trophy - and maximizing television time for sponsors and Wimbledon club officeholders.

The second that blazer-toting apparatchik grabbed Nadal, I recognized that the Spaniard’s impulsive decision to head into the stands had exploited the transition between sport and business on Centre Court.

The convention is that the winner stands at Centre Court, turns to each side of the stands and does the aw-schucks do-see-do, then returns to his courtside chair to be led through the rest of the agenda.

Nadal did not pause to consider his dual obligations to sport and business - his epic match was a landmark in modern tennis, and he let his emotions shine brightly through.

Technorati Tags: joy, Wimbledon, Nadal, Federer, celebration, life goal

• Pick An Unusual Name - hyphens, adverbs and acronyms will always make you seem smarter and better qualified.

“David St. Hubbins … I must admit I’ve never heard anybody with that name.
It’s an unusual name, well, he was an unusual saint, he’s not a very well known saint.
What was he the saint of?
He was the patron saint of quality footwear.”

• Never Explain Why Your Staff Are Leaving - the only value your agency will bring to the table is in the assumed experience of your team. If they’re jumping ship, think up a better excuse or the business will crash.

“You know, several, you know, dozens of people spontaneously combust each year. It’s just not really widely reported.”

• Suck Every Ounce of Credibility From Each One Of Your Engagements - it’s not really a secret, but social media gigs are not the largest piece of the pie. Each and every one of your projects must be coloured, magnified, even exaggerated to imply that your agency continues to grow - in revenues, in influence and in market share.

“I’ve told them a hundred times: put ‘Spinal Tap’ first and ‘Puppet Show’ last.”

• Exaggerate The Impact Of Your Tools - social media is the solution to all of the marketing world’s problems, will being communities together and will wash the stink of countless poor business decisions from your client.

“Why don’t you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?

[pause] These go to eleven.”

• Attack Your Detractors - inevitably, you will be criticized for your work, for parroting the propaganda of other social media acolytes or for being the groomsman on the social media bandwagon. Stay firm in your convictions, and your knowledge that you have a three year lease on the office.

“This tasteless cover is a good indication of the lack of musical invention within. The musical growth of this band cannot even be charted. They are treading water in a sea of retarded sexuality and bad poetry.”

That’s just nitpicking, isn’t it?”

• Don’t Let History, Experience Or The Blunt Force Of Reality Dampen Your Spirits - there are naysayers out there. Even three years into what we continue to argue is a fundamental shift in the economic and social fabric of at least 5% of the world’s economy, we are continually asked to justify the social media spend. Just push through and keep selling the story.

“In ancient times, hundreds of years before the dawn of history, an ancient race of people… the Druids. No one knows who they were or what they were doing… “

• Learn to Work A Room - Like A Bus Station Hooker - as a small agency in a world dominated by multi-nationals, look for every opportunity to differentiate yourself and promote your skills. Jump at every chance to “promote your brand” and sell your particular brand of social media expertise. Work the conference circuit so aggressively it seems like you’ve forgotten where you actually call home.

“HELLO CLEVELAND!”

Technorati Tags: social media agency, business development, Spinal Tap, conference, speaker, Nigel Tufnel

First off, how what happened to Elizabeth Shue’s career that she has to be “re-introduced” as a cast member in the summer epic “Jesus 2″?

Secondly, Kevin Costner’s election movie looks like a feelgood heart charmer. Here”s hoping it has no harpoons, bison or golf.

As a third and final point, Eddie Murphy should just stop.

Please.

No matter HOW WELL the international rights pay off.

Yeah, yeah. High fuel prices. Rising cost of bread. Over priced tomatos. Despite all this, the looming recession hadn’t significantly affected my lifestyle - until now.

My Chinese takeout restaurant has switched to a smaller clamshell for its “two items with noodles” special. And dropped one of the two types of hot sauce.

That there’s a price increase, folks.

I can feel it in my gut.

I haven’t had the time or the energy to follow the brouhaha between Loren and Shel, but I really think a comment in Loren’s last post sums up the entire game:

“I was knee deep in the puppet game before there was a Web 1.0, bitches, this Feldman fool got nothin on me.

Word to your mother.

By Mister Rogers on Jun 30, 2008 “

Technorati Tags: 1938media, Shel Israel, Loren Feldman, sock puppets

Earlier today, a truck overturned on the Trans-Canada Highway. There was a slight hiccup, though. The truck was carrying 12 million bees used to pollinate crops. The media, of course, showed up in force to cover the story.

After all, who’s going to miss a potential swarming death?

” … [RCMP Sargeant Dan] Strong said there were no serious injuries although a reporter trying to get a clip of the bees buzzing, suffered 15 stings.

“It’s all about the clip,” he laughed. (Canwest News)

For amusing footage of reporters waving their hands in the air, check out this .mov clip from the CBC.

… from Popdose: Lists You Didn’t Ask For: Consumer Safety Edition.

“… 8. God is a white lie perpetuated through the ages to keep people distracted from the fact that life is long, cruel, and holds no meaning. Also, Mitchum deodorant contains actual chunks of Robert Mitchum.”

What do they say? That the average person is subject to 5000 advertising messages a day?

I think I saw 500 of them while I was waiting for my movie to start this afternoon.

I remember being impressed by the six or seven previews … but I can’t remember the title of any of those upcoming movies.

Of the thousands of marketing messages shoved at me over the past three or four movies, I can honestly say that the only ad I remember was the long form Coco-Cola piece - the one eveyone remembers.

… and most of you know you aren’t deep thinkers. Come on, admit it.

If you can spin through your feed reader inside of 30 minutes, how little time are you leaving for thoughts to sit, fester and grow?

What about variety? Are the details of your work consuming 480 minutes of the day, and your the reverb from your online echo chamber consuming the rest?

Where’s the inspiration coming from? How are ideas breaking through the noise to challenge your routine behaviour and instinctive judgement?

Are you learning new strokes and exploring new beaches, or are you simply treading water in the same stagnant pool?

Susan S. Szenasy, the editor of Metropolis, spoke to the need for intellectual curiosity while delivering a commencement address this spring:

“… As artists and communication designers you can choose to be the outriders of society. Like the scouts in the old western films, you can be in the position of surveying the horizon and alerting the rest of us to the dangers and surprises ahead. But I worry about you. I worry that while you have evolved the use of your thumbs to work at phenomenal speeds, you are not as interested in developing the habits you need to accumulate knowledge, knowledge that can inform your vision as artists. I mean knowledge of the world—science, literature, and history—knowledge of the great contributions others are making or have made to our rich understanding of humanity and the earth which gives us life.

It is not enough to find information instantly and use it opportunistically to support your argument. To be able to analyze and synthesize you need to delve deeply into a subject, build up your understanding incrementally, and own that knowledge. Own it, so you can call it up when you need it, without turning to your PDA, and use your amazing brain-power to interpret what you know when critical analysis is needed. What I’m asking of you is what I have always asked of myself: To be endlessly curious about everything, to search for facts when you need them, but more importantly, to search for ideas and meaning. Read a book, look at a building or a landscape, drink it all in—make it your own …” (Metropolis Magazine)

Never a lesson in media analysis - that’s me. Never a class in evaluating media sources, identifying themes or performing content analysis. My only teacher? George Carlin.

Seriously. For a period in the mid-Sixties, George Carlin disguised his growing irritation with mainstream culture with highly effective satire. Social commentary that was still palatable to the folks who tuned into Johnny Carson or Ed Sullivan.

This was before he grew a beard, started swearing during his act and began getting kicked out of his Vegas shows.

Instead, Carlin cut right into contemporary attitudes towards sensitive topics like the war in Vietnam, increasing recreational drug use, and the Cold War - with a hilarious fake radio newscasts.

“Now I imagine that some of you were surprised by the weather over the weekend … especially if you watched my show Friday night, man ….”

And that was how I learned to question the authenticity of news reports, evaluate their underlying assumptions, and infer their greater impact on society.

Thanks, George!

Technorati Tags: George Carlin, media analysis, Al Sleet

I’m pretty sure that, in the western hemisphere at least, every focus group participant alive is fully aware of being monitored, either by camera or from a neighbouring room.

Key to the onsite observation is an adjacent room that offers a donut’s eye view of the focus group and its activities. For some reason, the focus group participants must be kept ignorant of the executives and public opinion specialists hidden behind the smoked glass.

I’m not sure why. What focus group will be swayed by a bunch of white folks in suits and pollsters in sweaters?

Leaving aside that skeptical outlook, Steve Portigal made an interesting observation while visiting one focus group facility - they had outfitted the overhead light switches with outdoor outlet covers.

I bet that touch of ingenuity was actually the product of one - or more - slightly embarrassing moments.

—————————–

A repost from February 2007:

Here’s the top 19 signs your focus group is quickly collapsing into abject failure and will be completely unusable for consumer research, message testing, product verification or concept formulation:

• From an arriving participant: “Hey! I used to be a 1-900 operator for this place!”
• The clients hold up the session waiting for the muffin plate to arrive.
• The recruitment coordinator works from the bus depot.
• A fantasy sports fan hijacks every idea with a poorly thought-out sports analogy.
• I’m not saying it’s a bargain basement facility, but the viewing room has an electric blind that has to be fed quarters to stay up.
• Your moderator shows up, and he’s in a Leafs jersey.
• The participants are handed Hello Kitty knockoff pens and notepads.
• There’s more than one socially conscious teacher at the table.
• The moderator starts off by saying “Most of you know the drill …”
• The viewing area for agency types is behind an old patio door. From a mobile home. With a “Texas Kixass” sticker on it.
• Five words: retiree with a hearing aid.
• The testing facility uses old pieces of drywall for whiteboards.
• At the end of the video clip you’re testing - at great expense - more than one participant refers to “the money shot.”
• Participants who answer in complete sentences are handed Wal-Mart gift cards.
• More than three instances of someone saying “I’ll tell you what I think …”
• Your moderator’s Steve McClaren (for the Brits among us).
• “I know this product! I think my stepmama’s suing ya’ll!”
• In the facility’s waiting room, you can make an extra ten bucks with only “a twist of the wrist.”
• One of the participants asks who will sign for her high school volunteer credit.

Technorati Tags: focus group, public opinion research, moderator, popular opinion

You may have noticed a slowing in my posting lately. I’m not very upset by this development, because it means that my work and family life is moving along quite nicely - but don’t take this to mean that I’ve lessened my commitment to blogging and social media.

I simply feel like making a blunt point about the rush to consensus and eagerness to endorse that seems to be coursing through the social media world, and particularly the suburb of public relations and marketing bloggers and podcasters.

There’s an awful lot of backslapping and overly enthusiastic encouragement that goes on in some quarters of social media - which is probably why this video never really hit viral status.

Airlines, in a desperate attempt to remain profitable, are considering incremental charges and fees for services once considered routine. Like checking your bags before boarding your flight.

” … J. Scott Kirby, president of US Airways, said that passengers would prefer to pay for the features they actually used. Historically, he said, all passengers paid for checking bags even when they did not bring luggage, because a charge for transporting them was built into the ticket price.

Now, he said, “those who want the infrastructure to check bags, will check bags; those that don’t, won’t pay for them.” (NYT)

I hope airlines are building in the infrastructure for passengers who will choose to carry-on their luggage. Faced with an economic disincentive, passengers are bound to opt for the haul and stow - which may be a problem considering most airlines are also moving to smaller regional and commuter jets on most domestic flights.