Presto Vivace Blog

New to me local blogs

2012-02-16T15:00:00.001-05:00

Acronym, the blog of the ASEA

Privasoft

Begging the question

2012-02-13T16:09:00.000-05:00

"Begging the question" is a form of logical fallacy in which a statement or claim is assumed to be true without evidence other than the statement or claim itself. When one begs the question, the initial assumption of a statement is treated as already proven without any logic to show why the statement is true in the first place.

I always get this wrong.

New to me local marketing blogs

2011-12-26T18:31:00.003-05:00

LM&O Advertising

RedPeg

Merry Christmas

2011-12-23T12:45:00.007-05:00

New to me local tech blogs

2011-11-28T14:14:00.008-05:00

Appian Insight, all about BPM

Webs.com blog, with a good post about SOPA.

Identika, video production, social media, and web development

The AKG Blog, all about SharePoint

Essential Share Point from Susan Hanley

From the Library of Congress: Inside Adams, science, technology, and business.

Jim Bland, about all things tech, business, and economic.

Micro trends, the small forces behind tomorrow's big changes

2011-11-07T12:14:00.003-05:00

I have just finished Mark Penn's book about how small groups can have a big impact on our culture, both from a political and commerical point of view. Penn is best known for his work for first Bill and then Hillary Clinton. I was delighted to discover that Penn shares my admiration of V.O.Key Jr.

I love how this book eviserates sterotypes, such as the anti-social engineer. Penn documents how technology culture is super social. (As an aside I would suggest that this socialbility predates the internet, the technically inclined have always had their clubs and hobbyist groups, it is just that no one paid attention until the Internet became popular.)

Penn also demolishes the stereotype that most annoys me, that women are not an important factor in technology. Penn points out that women outspend men on technology 3 to 2. That is quite a gap, and I am grateful to Penn for pointing out that technology marketing has yet to adapt to this. Even in such basic matters and product design and testing, women are invisible. For example it seems that the first video conferencing systems were not calibrated to pick up the voices of women, we were literally invisible.

Penn's book deals with mass market products; but I would point out that women are also ignored by companies in the enterprise technology sector. Even though women have played key roles in the procurement of technology in the federal government for decades, and even though there have been women editors directing reporting on enterprise computing for decades, marketers for these companies persist in acting as if we do not exist. Why?

I find Penn's writing about politics less persuasive. I certainly concur with his suggestion that our elites are hoplessly out of touch with popular opinion. Indeed, I would love to know what Penn makes of the Occupy movement. Where I part company with him is in his discussion of swing voters. Penn continually conflates independent voters (actually non-affiated is a better and more accuarate term) with Independent voters. Penn capitalizes Independent and this creates confusion. Independents are actually a political party in several states, including Connecticut. It is true that the Independent party of Connecticut did not nominate anyone for US Senate in 2006, the year that Penn was adivisng Lieberman, but it is a significant force in Connecticut with many elected leaders at the town level.

Penn's book was written in 2008, which may account for why he has failed to pick up on the growth of emergent parties as a crucial micro trend. In 2010 Elliot Cutler, an independent candidate for Governor of Maine, came in second with 30.9% of the vote. In every state emergent party candidates have been gaining support. While they have yet to win at the state wide level, political observers ignore the emergent party vote at their peril.

Women will love this book. Penn understands that women exist, that we have opinions, that we have both purchasing and political power and that the powers that be ignore us at their peril.

Financial Services PR FAIL

2011-10-18T17:33:00.006-04:00

So who is advising the financial services industry on their public relations, Lord North? Marie Antoinette? Wile E Coyote? The collective reaction to the Occupy movement has been a study in thud and blunder.

First we have the spectacle of the swells sneering from the balcony at the protesters on the sidewalk. Then members of the CBOT thought this gesture would be cute.

Here in Washington, DC we have been treated to the antics of a agent provocateur so stupid that he did not know better than to write a magazine article bragging about his crime.

A CEO asks his reporter friend to check out Occupy Wall Street to see if they are dangerous. Obviously they are not dangerous. Demonstrators have been pepper sprayed, beaten with batons, assaulted by a plain clothes officer, and run over by a police motorcycle. In spite of all this their non-violent discipline has held. If they were going to be violent, that would have happened by now.

And why has Mayor Bloomberg decided to play the part of a twenty first century Bull Connor?

There have been the comparisons to the hippies of the late 1960's. Take it from someone old enough to remember, there is no resemblance. The coalition of people supporting these protests is wide and deep, witness all the pizzas that have been ordered for the demonstrators and the donations, both in kind and monetary that have been made. That never happened in the 60's. Witness of the small acts of support, such as cab drivers who turn off their meter when taking riders to the demonstration or the sanitation workers in San Francisco who returned personal items to demonstrators after the police had tossed them. Such things never happened in the 60's.

The incident at Citi Bank was the first incident I have head of where a customer was arrested for trying to close her account; but it seems there have been previous incidents of this. Why police departments go along with it I will never know.

Anyone who thinks that the Occupy movement bears any resemblance to the Tea Party is encouraged to read this post by Peter Daou.

Certainly the financial services industry has been ill served by their trade press, take this unfortunate editorial in Investment News. While it concedes the demonstrators have a point it characterizes them as misguided and attention seeking.

With over 1,549 demonstrations in this country, and hundreds more around the world, the Occupy movement is already a very serious movement. Its impact will go way beyond electoral politics.

So here is my advice for anyone in the financial industry who would be interested:

Reexamine your business model.

Do nothing inflammatory in the present environment. For example, on November 5th protesters will be closing their bank accounts. DO NOT call the police and have them arrested. DO NOT think that you can control this story. Almost every protester there will be carrying a video phone, do not give them anything to film. Have extra staff there to handle the additional traffic and close the accounts as fast an efficiently as possible. Anything else will generate a storm of bad publicity that will haunt your company for decades to come.

Listen to the protesters in their own voices. This Twitter list follows protesters from all over the world.

Read the following reality based economics blogs:
Mosler Economics
Naked Capitalism
New Economic Perspectives

Above all recognize that you are in a new environment and that the old rules do not apply.

Edit -
Slightly off topic, but I thought that Jonathan Bernstein had an interesting take on Margin Call.

New to me local tech blog

2011-08-25T20:50:00.001-04:00

Emergent, a blog about security.

Fall of the House of Hubris

2011-07-17T22:35:00.006-04:00

Few things are as satisfying as watching a bully go down. I have been following Murdoch since I read Rupert Murdoch: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Media Wizard. It was pretty clear years ago that News Corp was breaking the law. There is no legal way News Corp properties could have gotten access to phone conversations of members of the royal family. Once the royal family brought a suit it was just a question of time before the discovery process would begin the great unravelling.

Of course what changed the tide was the revelation that News of the World reporters had hacked the cell phone of a murdered girl. All of a sudden ordinary British people began to realize that secret police journalism did not just apply to politicians, members of the royal family, and celebrities. Suddenly they realized that they could be spied on by News Corp operatives.

I really don't see how the Murdoch family survives this. Now American celebrities are bringing action against News Corp and the FBI has begun a preliminary investigation. The investigation has taken on a life of its own.

Those of us who were in Washington, DC the summer of 1973 recognize all the signs of a great implosion. At first it seems incredible that such a bully can be brought down until it seems inevitable.

Major kudos to The Guardian, who has been with this story from the beginning and persevered when everyone else was too intimidated to touch it.

Mark Steel has a hugely entertaining take on this, but I have to disagree with this part:

So the newspaper will investigate itself, the police will investigate themselves and the politicians will be investigated by an inquiry set up by themselves. They are all keen on stringent law and order so maybe this is their plan to speed up the justice system. Instead of costly trials the accused will be told to hold an inquiry into themselves, and come back in three years and let us know if they did anything wrong or not.

No, not this time. As I said before, the investigation has taken on a life of its own. As I write this advertisers are fleeing, investors are dumping stock, institutional investors are questioning the role of members of the Murdoch family. And that does not even allow for News Corps' continuing legal troubles. This is somewhere between Watergate and Enron. I can't see the corporate survival of the Murdoch family and I would not be surprised if the corporation itself is broken apart, unless if falls apart.

FounderCorps

2011-07-06T23:37:00.003-04:00

Tein Wong alerts us to a new organization for entrepreneurs:

Managed by experienced technology entrepreneurs for the benefit of entrepreneurs, FounderCorps has already assisted a number of community groups and Universities in business formation and mentorship activities, including George Mason University, George Washington University, University of Maryland, Startup XLR8R and others.

This sounds very exciting and I am going to try to find out more.

Happy Fourth of July

2011-07-04T11:34:00.001-04:00

How not to recruit your sock puppets

2011-05-19T15:24:00.004-04:00

First of all, don't use sock puppets. Cultivate your human online supporters.

Second of all, don't use Craigslist. You will get caught.

Use LinkedIn, Plaxo, Facebook, Twitter, etc. That is what they are there for.

Also, don't use sock puppets, human or bots. It is just pathetic.

The problem with conference sponsors

2011-05-09T13:41:00.001-04:00

Dustin Marx

One of the most significant stories leading up to last year's JavaOne was Google's withdrawing from participation. Although the conference turned out to be a huge success in terms of quantity and quality of technical content, this content would undoubtedly have been enhanced by the availability of Google-led presentations.

This is the first I have heard of this and obviously do not have any opinion about it; save that it illustrates one of the difficulties of working with sponsors.

Congratulations Scott Pelly

2011-05-03T14:01:00.002-04:00

CBS: Scott Pelley named anchor of "CBS Evening News"

From Scott Pelly's interview with Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke:

Asked if it's tax money the Fed is spending, Bernanke said, "It's not tax money. The banks have accounts with the Fed, much the same way that you have an account in a commercial bank. So, to lend to a bank, we simply use the computer to mark up the size of the account that they have with the Fed. It's much more akin to printing money than it is to borrowing."

"You've been printing money?" Pelley asked.

"Well, effectively," Bernanke said.

That, right there, captures the essence of Warren Mosler's book and Modern Monetary Theory. With any luck, Pelley will have a chance to develop that on CBS Evening News.

Federal IT miscellany

2011-04-28T13:10:00.002-04:00

Netspectives on my favorite subject: How Adoption of Open Standards Can Benefit Federal Agencies

Grant Gross reports that the FCC should deny AT&T spectrum buy, groups say

James Staten: AWS and OpenStack: An Interesting Contrast Worth Considering During Cloud Selection

Enterprise 2.0: E2 Santa Clara 2011 Call for Papers Now Open!

Via Fedspere

New to me local tech blogs

2011-04-07T14:41:00.004-04:00

Learning .NET, from Christopher Steen

Privasoft FOIA Blog, Through software and services, Privasoft transformed the way information disclosure teams, like FOIA & ATIP offices, comply with legislative, regulatory and internal requirements.

The MurkyGrey blog, Survive and thrive in software startups

Project Performance Corporation, part of the AEA Group

Sharing documents with Google Docs

2011-03-30T12:43:00.004-04:00

Until this past month I was a great believer in Google Docs. I use them extensively, they are ideal for collaborating on press releases and similar documents.

And then this past month I started having troubles with the share function. When I send email permissions to share documents, the recipient cannot gain access. This is true even for recipients with whom I have previously shared documents.

Anyone else having similar difficulties?

Call for speakers and the day's Health IT news

2011-03-24T20:15:00.003-04:00

The Healthcare IT Guy: Speakers needed for Business Intelligence & Analytics for Healthcare Conference & Exhibition (July 11-12 in San Diego)

Medgadget: Pathogen Covered Scrubs Bring Style to Your Clinic

EMR and HIPAA: Operating System of Healthcare IT

Healthcare Technology News: Direct Project Specifications Achieving Widespread Adoption: Could Positively Impact Care Coordination Soon for Millions of Americans

Via HITsphere

Aeolus String Quartet

2011-03-11T14:01:00.004-05:00

The Aeolus String Quartet will be preforming works by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Bartok on March 20th at 2 PM at The United Church.

Be there or be square.

Today in Federal IT

2011-03-07T14:17:00.003-05:00

Mark Amtower has some thoughts on defending your marketing budget in hard times.

Tom Temin finds out how his broadband service measures up courtesy of the FCC.

John Zyskowski gives us a wrap up of the recent RSA conference.

William Matthews: CIA blames 'technical difficulties' for website crash

NASA Now: Solar Storms.

Via Fedsphere created by Netspective.

Effective book promotion?

2011-03-02T11:57:00.003-05:00

Clients From Hell is running a contest; retweet their book promotion and you have a chance to win a MacBook Air. They are getting plenty of retweets, and I suspect traffic to their site; but is it translating into interest in the book?

If it does we may be seeing more opportunities to win a MacBook Air.

Assessing credibility

2011-02-28T13:39:00.003-05:00

I must dissent from Jim Horton on this one. Mere anonymity, or the more common pseudonymity, does not necessarily detract from an author's credibility.

As a reader I ask myself does the writer offer a basis for their consclusions? Are their sources on the record? Do they refer to documents that are publicly available? These are the kinds of things that weigh with me.

Health IT blogging, HIMSS edition

2011-02-28T13:06:00.003-05:00

David Blumenthal addresses HIMSS Interoperability Showcase

ePrescribing, incentives and penalties

Lab Soft News: When to send out health alerts; it's complicated.

Fierce Health IT: HIMSS Analytics survey shows uptick in hospital readiness for meaningful use

Neil Versel: Video: athenahealth’s Jonathan Bush at HIMSS11

eHealth: Social Media at HIMSS

HISTalk: HIMSS wrap up.

From HITShpere, via Shahid Shah.

Cheap shot dot com

2011-02-25T12:32:00.004-05:00

The Guardian

A new website promises to shine a spotlight on "churnalism" by exposing the extent to which news articles have been directly copied from press releases.

The website, churnalism.com, created by charity the Media Standards Trust, allows readers to paste press releases into a "churn engine". It then compares the text with a constantly updated database of more than 3m articles. The results, which give articles a "churn rating", show the percentage of any given article that has been reproduced from publicity material.

First of all, congrats to the PR team at Churnalism for such a great story placement.

There is nothing wrong with using a press release in a news article. The test should be the information in the press release news; that is, is the material accurate, new, interesting, relevant, and compelling. If so an editor should use it; it not an editor should discard it.

UPDATE: Shel Holtz said this so much better.

Prank phone calls

2011-02-23T11:36:00.004-05:00

It seems a pro-union activist, pretending to be David Koch, called Gov. Scott Walker and recorded the result. How much of an embarrassment this will be I cannot say; but it demonstrates the range of activities open to online activists and the sort of thing we need to prepare our clients for.

I believe that it is illegal in Maryland and a few other states to record a phone conversation without the consent of both parties.