Heck of a lot going on here at the moment (I believe the expression du jour is "busier than a Baghdad bricklayer"), which explains the lighter-than-usual post frequency. Mea culpa.

Thought I should just pop in with this news, fresh from Mathew Ingram's outbox, that the line up of "keynote conversations" for the Mesh 2007 conference is now up, and that registrations are now open.

The line up of keynotes includes:

• Michael Arrington, founder/editor of TechCrunch.com, speaking about new media and journalism in the age of the Web
• Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craigslist.org, talking about how the Web is disrupting traditional business models
• Richard Edelman, CEO of Edelman, on the tension between the openness of the Web and traditional marketing
• Tom Williams, founder of GiveMeaning.com, and Austin Hill, founder of Gifter.org, talking about the Web as a tool for charity.

Should make for a very interesting event indeed. Kudos once again to Mathew, Mark, Rob, Stuart and Mike for pulling together a strong opening line up.

Scott Adams has been running a mini-series of Dilbert strips this week, laying into the PR profession. This latest one is a scorcher:


Tip o' the hat to everyone who has sent me that link today :-)

When a crisis hits, there are a number of different ways a CEO can respond.

I don't mean to dramatically over-simplify the complex art of crisis communications, but two of the most commonly-observed modes of CEO behaviour are:

• Ostrich mode - sticking your head in the ground, ignoring the torrent of negative coverage, glossing over things, hoping it will all just go away, or;
• Taking you lumps mode - getting out in front of the news to tackle it head on with integrity, commitment, and candour.

As you might imagine, only one of these two approaches is going to do anything at all to protect your personal and corporate reputation.

JetBlue Airways in the US are absolutely, unquestionably in full-on crisis mode right now, following the worst week in their corporate history.

Full credit and respect to CEO David Neeleman (and his team) for having the courage and intelligence to post this video on YouTube.

In it, Neeleman talks directly to the camera and apologizes in plain and simple terms, without any weasel words. He vows not to let the mess of the last week happen again, and describes the specific, tangible steps being taken to make sure they fix things properly.

That's good crisis communications and, given the medium, one might even say good social media crisis communications. Gets my vote.

Nothing like a little Monday morning satire to kick-start your week:

‘It’s simple;’ said Mr James Bowen, UN Spokesman for Development. ‘Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him to phish, and before you know it he’s ordering a Merc and moving fast up the Nigerian rich list.’

[Tip o' the wig to GC for the link]

And from the same site, comes this startling news:

Podcast revolution exposed; 'they’re just taped radio programmes'

'There’s no comparison. Podcasts are like a totally revolutionary concept, allowing you to experience audio files on the move…'

'What like a Sony Walkman, you mean?' interjected the old man.

*snirk*

This is what reality TV ought to be like.

Aaron Stanton is a bright, personable young man on a mission. He has what he thinks is a million dollar idea, which he's determined to pitch to Google.

To document his personal quest -- and help draw attention to his efforts to penetrate the mighty Googleplex -- he's been keeping a blog and posting a few video diary entries, here.

Fascinating. How will Aaron's quest turn out? Will Google take his idea and run with it? And what exactly is Aaron's big idea anyway? Gripping stuff.

Whatever happens - congratulations to Aaron for achieving viral fame, and for having the chutzpah to put this together. Go get 'em!

As readers in Canada will probably already have seen, BMO Nesbitt Burns sponsored a lunch event in Toronto yesterday, featuring Alan Greenspan, renowned former Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve.

Their sold-out $400 a seat event threatened to go completely pear-shaped on them, when Mr. Greenspan became stranded in Washington due to the winter storms.

Enterprising and quick-thinking staffers at BMO scrambled to host a virtual Greenspan, using video-conferencing to bring the iconic banker into the room of 1,500 Bay Street types.

But the truly outstanding part of their response to this minor crisis was in the way they staged Greenspan's non-appearance. Parking a club chair on the stage with a flat screen monitor on top, BMO staff scrounged a business suit, shirt and tie from someone at the host venue (Toronto's Sheraton Centre), and created a fantastic photo opp.

Variations of the shot shown here appeared on the front of the Globe's Report On Business, on page A1 of the Toronto Star, and on the front of the Financial Post. They pretty-much owned the front page today, in other words - plus the story of their virtual Greenspan became news in itself, and they still got full coverage from the content of his speech deeper into the papers.

Kim Hanson and her BMO colleagues must be doing cartwheels of joy this morning. Great work.

The answer, for tonight at least, would be Raney Aronson, Lowell Bergman, and PBS Frontline.

The first episode of their four-part documentary, "News War", just finished. Absolutely terrific stuff. Bergman, the Pulitzer-winning lead correspondent for the show, is superb. He's a sharp, attentive listener, and dives in to the discussion with precisely the questions I'd think to ask a few seconds after his mind has already got there.

Kudos to PBS for running the entire show online - you can watch the full first episode from their website, starting tomorrow morning. There's also a live online discussion with the show producer, Raney Aronson, tomorrow morning at 11 Eastern, being hosted by the Washington Post, here. If I wasn't working, I'd be sorely tempted to join in.

A friend of mine in New York is recruiting for a couple of senior positions at his new NYC-based startup.

The company is still in stealth mode right now, so I can't reveal too many details about the people behind the firm or the company they're building, but if you fit their criteria you should be all over this opportunity. It really could be a once-in-a-lifetime thing.

One tiny clue: the co-founder of the firm is the only person I've ever met who carries the invitation-only American Express Centurion card. If you're not sure why this is interesting, click that link. His last startup made him and everyone involved a lot of money.

Here are a few details on the two roles they're looking to fill. If you, or someone you know and trust, would be a good fit for either of these, drop me a note to the usual email address, or pop a comment in below, and I'll connect you with the founder.

Specifically, we are looking for a Vice President of Product Development and a Vice President of Technology to be based in NYC. The job descriptions and requirements are listed below.

The right candidates would be driven, self starters who enjoy a challenge and have or want the experience of building a company from its earliest stages.

VP Product Development:

The VP Product development is responsible for the concept, definition, strategy, planning and release of new products as well as the support of existing products as they are created. This position is responsible for the supervision of product development staff, monitoring of marketplace trends and activities and working within the company departments. This
includes creating policies and goals for the product development function, providing technical leadership and business expertise to bridge the gap between all functions inside the organization as well as driving the definition of the product offering by translating customer needs and technology direction into requirements specifications:

Responsibilities include:

• Further development of the product vision and strategy
• Ongoing market research
• Developing product concept proposals and life-cycle plans for new products
• Develop detailed product requirements specifications for development by technology functions
• Develop product pricing proposals
• Develop and drive new products
• Provide product training
• Provide marketing with content to create external message and product positioning including product sheets, presentations, product demos, white papers, sales support tools and more
• Manage gathering and analysis of information on competing products in the marketplace. Create a process for systematically and consistently gathering competitive intelligence
• Work with the Technology, marketing, and other functions on all aspects of product specifications, position and release.

Required Skills:

• BS degree in computer-oriented technical discipline or equivalent experience
• 6-10 years experience in technology, including 3+ years as a senior manager in Prod Dev.
• Experience in software development with hands on experience in SDLC, system architectures, programing languages, RDBMSs, decision support and analytical applications, CRM, International, Internet technologies, web services, system development methodologies, requirements gathering
• Experience in platform development with Internet skills
• Strong hands on project management, oral and written communications, excellent resource management, and analytical skills, as well as a proven track record in technology requirements and specification definition and product development.
• Experience with UML including use cases
• Proven ability to communicate with different functions of the organization and different levels of staff and external partners
• Strong technical and business skills
• Proven success of new product launches

VP Technology:

The VP of Technology is responsible for developing system solutions for the company and providing ERP solutions to internal (corporate) users. This position will manage System Development, ERP, QA, System Management, Security and reporting (DBA functions). This role will take the lead on development of our core technology offering. Create core technology products according to CEO's vision. Understand the current market needs and anticipate the change of business needs. Identify new opportunity and realize it with the best technology tools. Componentize product features for rapid new business launching. Establish relationships with the open source communities. Leverage resources from off-shore and open source communities. Position the company's technology and product as the leader in the on-line marketing and multimedia space.

Responsibilities:

• Manage the system development and ERP groups along with DBA
• Create and enforce policies for system development group and ERP group
• Plan for, hire, train for development needs of company
• Evaluate, hire and manage outsourced development team
• Keep up with industry trend for best system development tools, applications servers, and ERP products
• Manage Software development life cycle
• Provide Technology know-how support for product development

Create and enforce security policies. Ensure proper data access level for all users: developer, internal business users and external clients. Maintain data integrity in all systems. Ensure checks and balances at various stages of the development. Pass security audits performed by trusted external party.

Manage global 24x7 operations. Design and deploy data centers according to the company's long term goals. Put operations procedures and disaster recovery plan in place to ensure SLA (service level agreement) is satisfied.

Required Skills:

• BS degree in computer oriented technical discipline or equivalent experience
• 10+ years of experience in technology, including 3+ years senior management and 3 years technology management
• Proven success with managing enterprise level projects
• Proven ability to work well within an organization and communicate between different projects
• Proven ability to complete projects on time and on budget
• Experience in software development with hands-on experience with SDLC, system architectures, programing languages, RDBMSs, CRM, ERP, Internet technologies, International, system development methodologies, requirements engineering
• Strong hands on project management, oral and written communications, excellent resource management and analytical skills, as well as proven track record in technology requirements specification definition and technology
• Experience with Unified Modeling Language (UML) including use cases
• Experience with Web Services and other integration technologies
• Experience building scalable transactional technologies
• Proven success with managing both in-house and out-sourced enterprise level projects
• Proven success with designing high throughout and scalable OLTP system
• Experience with open source software development and collaboration
• Experience with XML, J2EE, Web Services, Wiki
• Experience with multimedia content management and delivery

For a little light relief, check out Marilyn Hawkins' entertaining list of questions clients and agencies should really ask each other before they tie the knot.

From the Barks & Bites section of Bulldog Reporter's Daily 'Dog, a couple of examples:

Clients Should Ask:

1. Do you have anyone on your staff who has ever “flogged” for a client? Do you have strict policies in place against these shenanigans? Would you dismiss and publicly name all employees who participated in such scams?

7. Has your firm ever conducted a word-of-mouth campaign for a client where some of the wildly enthusiastic endorsers were not who they purported to be and/or were paid to sing your product’s praises?

Agencies Should Ask:

3. Are there more than three active organizations (with sophisticated sites) devoted the total and utter destruction of your firm?

4. Is anyone employed by the company likely to spout racist, sexist or anti-Semitic remarks after being pulled over on a routine traffic stop or performing at a comedy club?

Good stuff. Couple of nice social meejah digs in there too.

Antonia Zerbisias alerts us to a must-see program for anyone interested in the way news gets made.

PBS Frontline airs episode one tonight of a four-part series titled "NEWS WAR: SECRETS, SOURCES & SPIN"

As Antonia puts it in this morning's Star: "For those who believe there is no democracy without a strong -- and unleashed -- watchdog, there is nothing else to watch."

Some great stuff already up on the site Frontline has built around this program, with video interviews featuring William Safire, Bill Keller (Editor, The New York Times), Eric Schmidt (yes, the Google guy), Pat Buchanan, John McLaughlin (former senior spook), and "cock-eyed optimist" Jeff Jarvis.

With the CBC's terrific Spin Cycles series still airing, and Terry O'Reilly continuing to dissect and deconstruct the Age of Persuasion, this is a really interesting time to be a media junkie.

BONUS LINK: Jeff Jarvis' excellent response to a piece by Colin Crawford, a Senior Vice President at IDG, on the ongoing transformation of their media business.

Canada's leading newswire service, CNW Group, has just quietly added a little social media grooviness to its website.

When you click to view a news release on the site now, you'll notice three additional buttons at the top of the page, making it easy for the reader to submit a release to Digg, tag it using del.icio.us, or seed the story at Newsvine.

They're not the first wire service to offer this set of tools. CNW Group's partner in the US, PR Newswire, has been offering a similar set of functions for some time, as have the guys at Businesswire.

The partnership of CCN Matthews and Marketwire introduced something similar in the US last August, and in Canada at the beginning of December. I understand they the Marketwire guys ran into trouble with Digg, as they were (as their release stated) "delivering" releases to Digg and (I think) other user-powered news sites - in other words, they were automatically "Digging" releases as they went over the wire.

As you might imagine, theyCCN Matthews got their wrists slapped for spamming, and have now switched to just offering the buttons to viewers of online releases. At least - I thought that's what they were doing. Checking the site just now, the links seem to have disappeared again.

Either way, it's interesting to see the wire services experimenting in this area. Hard to know how much real value there is in adding such functions, but at least it shows that they're registering the seismic changes sweeping through their world, and trying to figure out how to respond.

[UPDATED: tightened the language a little. Seems I may have created some confusion over which wire service had got it right, and which had gotten themselves into trouble.

Greetings, ITBusiness.ca visitors. Yes - the story as presented over there is incorrect. Canada Newswire (CNW Group) did not run into trouble, as the ITBusiness story suggests. I've tweaked my original post, above, to futher clarify things. On reflection, though, I don't think my version was actually all that unclear. YMMV.

I'm glad that ITBusiness.ca picked up the story. I'd be even happier if the "Comment" links on their news pages allowed for inline comments, as opposed to being a "mailto" link. That way, I could address the misinterpretation at source, rather than having to whine about it here.]

I'm on something of a quest here.

As I needed to be in New York last week for the AlwaysOn Media conference, and Sausage's birthday was the Friday right before the conference, we used some of our points to have a weekend in the Big Apple, sans kids.

The hotel we stayed in (the superb, affordable, and highly recommended Affinia 50) was just down the street from St. Patrick's Cathedral, so we stopped in on the Friday afternoon, en route to pick up tickets for The Drowsy Chaperone (also superb and highly recommended).

St. Patrick's is truly and quite literally an awe-inspiring building. Even if you're not Catholic - or not even remotely religious - I would still recommend a visit if you have a free hour in NYC. It's a genuinely impressive, peaceful, and inspiring space.

Since our visit to the Cathedral, though, I've been pursuing a bit of a mystery without much success. I wonder if anyone out there can shed some light on this.

In the Baptistery of the Cathedral, in front of the magnificent font, stands a glass case holding a beautiful Celtic cross, clearly made of Waterford crystal glass.


In the centre of the cross is what appears to be a tiny relic - but a relic of what (or of whom)?

I Googled myself into a froth this morning, trying to find some clues. Turned up the photo above on Webshots, without too much trouble, but when it comes to information on the provenance of the cross or the relic it holds, my Google Chi has failed me, alas.

I'm guessing it's a relic of St. Patrick - that would make sense - but who knows? We couldn't see any signage on or near the glass case.

Someone out there must have the keys to this mystery. Time to fire up the Klieg lights and send up the AKMA-signal, perhaps...

Funny thing about being a card-carrying geek; it colours the way you look at the world.

I started thinking about this while sitting in the studio audience for a taping of The Rick Mercer Report at the CBC last night. At one point, Rick asked "any technology geeks in the audience?" and my hand shot up in Pavlovian response before I had a moment to think about it. Mine was, of course, the only hand raised in an audience of around 200 people. Look, mommy - a geek! (Rick was introducing a terrific pre-taped Windows Vista skit, btw, which you'll have to watch Tuesday night's show to see.)

Already pondering this moment of geeky self-realisation, I was reminded this morning of another recent episode of pure nerditude - an example of viewing the world through heavy-framed glasses, as it were.

I logged into my server control panel earlier today, to tweak a couple of archive settings, and took a moment to check in on my traffic stats while I was there. Saturday is typically one of the quietest traffic days for this blog, so I was surprised to see a much higher than usual number of unique visitors this morning - more than double the typical traffic volume.

Tracing the sources, it seems that the majority of these new visitors are arriving from a Google search for "Oh number Pi" - leading to this old post, in which I quoted the first couple of stanzas of a witty ode to that most curious of mathematical constants.

Odd. I've no idea what prompted this sudden rash of Pi-fanatic searches.

But back to the point...

We were recently involved in a new business pitch to a pizza company, set to launch a new flagship store in downtown Toronto some time in the next few weeks. Their target launch date was undefined, but expected to be at some point in mid-March. (A test of your own geek-quotient here - if you can already see where this is headed, you're 100% pure geek.)

Now I'm the first to admit that, while I've worked on a number of food and beverage accounts in the past (including MacDonald's and McCain Foods), my real area of expertise is in business and consumer technology. That much is clear.

So, geek that I am, is it any wonder that I suggested to the pizza client they should peg March 14th as their firm launch date?

March 14th. Also known as 3.14. Also known as International Pi Day. No...?

Oh, suit yourselves.

I still think it was a good idea. OK, yes - a very geeky idea. But that's just a product of the way I view the world. YMMV, as every good geek knows.

BTW, if anyone out there can enlighten me as to why so many people might be searching for that particular Pi song, with Pi Day still over a month away, please drop a note in the comments. Most of the visitors seem to be arriving from in and around Clearwater, Minnesota. Class project, perhaps?

Quick note to highlight the fact that my friend Norman Wilner, erstwhile mainstay of the Toronto Star's Starweek back page movie reviews, has landed a terrific new gig covering DVD releases for the Sympatico/MSN portal here.

Norman's had a rotten, rough twelve months, in many ways. It's great to see him landing so well.

His first column went up a couple of days ago, and it's classic Wilner stuff. The great thing about Norm's writing is that, even if you haven't the slightest interest in seeing a particular movie, it's still immensely entertaining to read what he has to say about it.

Congratulations, Norman.

Colin McKay, in email, just said:

"Oh - and you DO realize that TF is the Borg of Canadian social media, don't you?"

From my desk here in Unimatrix One, I have to respectfully point out that we seek only to improve the quality of life for all species.

For those of you shaking your heads over the Irish national football team's appalling performance against San Marino, you might enjoy the current Wikipedia entry on the Football Association of Ireland.

Click quick, before editorial maturity is restored. Parental advisory: extremely salty language.

Tip o' the Jackie Charlton flat cap to Adam Maguire for the link.

Am I missing something, or does Google Reader not have a search function?

Earlier today, I wanted to do a quick search of just the blogs in my aggregator, to get a sense of "what my friends think about this".

Either I'm just not seeing the box, blanking on some really obvious function, or (can it be?) there really isn't any easy way to search all the feeds in my reader.

Er... Jason?

If I was Alanis Morisette I'd right a song about this (and piss off scores of pedantic logophiles in the process).

UPDATE: Ack! "write", not "right" you cretin. *sigh*

It's getting late, I'm tired, the arthritis is killing me, but I'm way overdue posting some kind of follow up thoughts after last week's AlwaysOn Media conference in NYC. Here's one little snippet to start with...

By far the best panel session of the entire conference nearly didn't happen at all. The printed agenda was all messed up, and things were running extremely late at the end of the Tuesday sessions, but they still managed to gather some tired and cranky panelists for a terrific discussion with the inflammatory title: "Can Brands Get Away with "Buzz Marketing" in the Blogosphere?"

After a stupidly long introduction (in which the event co-host, Bill Cleary, read lengthy bios for each of the panelists, succeeding in making four of the most interesting people in the room sound dull as dust, and demonstrating that he had no idea who any of them were), moderator Jeff Jarvis and his conversation partners, Edelman's Rick Murray, Gordon Gould of ThisNext, Porter Novelli's Barry Reicherter, and my friend David Weinberger, laid into the topic with verve, humour, and luminous insights.

Terrific stuff, and worth watching the whole thing online if you missed it. (Go here, and scroll down to the panel title - click the AlwaysOn logo button to the right).

Some absolutely outstanding moments - including Jeff laying into the PayPerPost guys with gusto, then taking a question from PayPerPost CEO Ted Murphy in the audience (woohoo!), and Bill Cleary (nearly) regaining the respect of the audience by describing marketing as "the lubricant of capitalism".

If you watch it, you'll notice there's something of a kerfuffle towards the end. The panel were playing to a fraction of the full conference audience, alas. It sucked that they were slotted in at the end of a long, dry day, and were then further hosed by the messed-up agenda and a very late start. Running badly over time, the organizers were starting to give the wind-up signals to the host, but the audience (including me) revolted.

To the credit of the AlwaysOn team, they listened to the dissent and decided to keep rolling. Good call. This was the single most engaged and successful session of the conference so far - when the good stuff is flowing, makes sense to run with it.

Not to toot my own horn, but right at the end of the panel I threw out a comment which you can't really hear in the video of the session and which (I think) bears repeating. (It's not really tooting my own horn anyway, as I was quoting someone else.)

One of the other conference speakers, David Carlick, had an excellent piece published in the print magazine put out by the AlwaysOn organization. The piece included a line which seemed to fit perfectly with the tone of this panel, and which I've already quoted half a dozen times in conversation since:

This may be the best five minutes you can spend online this year.

Thanks to my colleague Steve Palmer at 76design for pointing to this beautifully presented explanation of what Doc and Dave Winer have called the Two-way Web.

Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University, is clearly an extraordinarily gifted communicator. In this brief, wonderful little video - The Machine is Us/ing Us - he successfully distills the nature and importance of Web 2.0 into something accessible, stirring, even inspiring.

Go watch it right now - five minutes extremely well spent.

Then, if you have more than five minutes to drill deeper, pull that old copy of Small Pieces Loosely Joined down off the shelf, and re-read it. What do you mean you've never read it? You're reading this but you've never read SPLJ? You're kidding, right?

Still crazy busy here and feeling a little technologically-challenged at home (yes, the laptop is still dead), but I wanted to grab a few minutes to post this piece of exciting news.

As she's just revealed on her own blog, Tamera Kremer, a leading light in the Toronto social media and interactive marketing communities, has agreed to join the Thornley Fallis crew, working alongside me in the Toronto office.

Tamera gets to carry one of our groovy double-sided business cards, as she's going to be doing double duty for both the Thornley Fallis Communications and 76design sides of our business. Tamera will, in effect, serve as the bridge between the 76design “Love Hub” in Ottawa, and our clients here in Toronto.

I'll confess that I've wanted to figure out a way to hire Tamera from the first time I met her. She's not a traditional PR person, so might not appear - on paper - to be an obvious fit for a firm like ours. But having people like Tamera, Aimee Deziel, and John Sobol spanning the two worlds of our PR and interactive marketing businesses just makes a huge amount of sense to us. It's a testament to the way in which we're continuing to tailor our skill base to keep ahead of the needs of our clients. The lines are blurring; needs are changing, evolving - and that's a good thing.

See you Monday, Tamera!