I was trained to teach high school English. If you want to try a presentation skills challenge, try presenting poetry structure to the non college-bound freshmen at 8:30 in the morning. You almost have to set yourself on fire to get their full attention and many mornings I had a can of lighter fluid in hand as I reached my wit’s end. But then I realized that all I had to do was shut up. Inevitably, the class would calm down and listen up, often to hear who was on their way to the dean’s office. Continue reading
Tag Archives: digital
Snake Oil
“Social Media is crap.” That’s how I started a discussion at the Princeton Sports Symposium a couple of weeks ago. Of course, what I meant was that there is a focus on the tools of social by many businesses and a lack of understanding of the business reasons why anyone would be using these tools to further their business goals. I am happy, therefore to see that I’m not the only one seeing that, nor am I the only one who sees a bunch of charlatans masquerading as business experts in this space. Continue reading
Filed under Consulting, digital media, Helpful Hints
Full Disclosure
I’m not sure if this goes into the “well DUH” file or if it’s actually a good reminder. You’ll have to tell me. I’m talking about the FTC‘s publication of some new guides for bloggers with respect to disclosing relationships they may have with those companies or products they review. In a nutshell, bloggers are advised (they’re not actually rules or pay a fine) to say if they’re being given free product or paid somehow for their review by the reviewed entity. Those same standards don’t apply to “traditional” media such as newspapers. There is a good explanation of the arguments here and of course the blogosphere is buzzing but to me it’s a whole lot of “so what.” Continue reading
Filed under digital media, Huh?, Reality checks, Thinking Aloud, What's Going On


