'The value of the individual article'

It's great working in a team environment because it beautifully extends my own attention capacity. Colleagues will often send interesting articles and blog fodder my way, and I appreciate how it uncovers gems that might go undiscovered by my RSS reader. So, a hat tip to colleague Jim Crook, who recently sent along this post by Michael Scherer in Time's Swampland blog. Scherer jumps into the ongoing self-examination of the evolution of traditional media in the age of the blog...

Tom Foremski's Elevator Pitch Challenge

I love it when I read things in blogs that we've been preaching forever -- even before PCs, if you can imagine. It just shows that even in this new world of social media, the fundamentals of good communications haven't changed -- it is still about clear, concise communication combined with relationships and the ability to connect to news and trends. In his well-read Silicon Valley Watcher blog, Tom Foremski announces that he is bringing back his "Silicon Valley Minute"...

Podcast: Jerome Wendt on the state of storage

Today, we bring you Episode 4 of our Beyond the Hype podcast series. In this segment, LP&P's Don Jennings chats with Jerome Wendt, lead analyst and president of DCIG about the key drivers in the storage technology market. Don opens the discussion by asking for Jerome's view of the impact of the current economic uncertainty on storage spending. Jerome states that he's not seeing signs of a negative impact because companies are getting more value for their money, and their...

CEO Communications in a "Say on Pay" Era

And you thought annual shareholder meetings were tense in the past! With the moves of some major brands like Aflac, Blockbuster and Verizon to allow shareholders a nonbinding vote on the appropriateness of the executives' compensation packages, future annual meetings should be a field day for reporters looking for drama and controversy. The Columbus Ledger-Enquirer reports: Aflac Inc.'s board of directors released Monday to shareholders its proxy filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which provides details on compensation...

I Want my Internet TV

After listening to a few friends discussing two new TV shows, Cashmere Mafia and Lipstick Jungle, I decided to engage. Our terrible weekend weather this month made it fairly easy for me to commit a few hours one Sunday to watching several episodes of each show on my laptop via the on-demand options the networks are offering. I have to say, it was pretty great. (I have a cable to connect my MacBook to my TV so I could have...

IR and PR: All About Smart Communication

Last week, Lois and I attended a NIRI Boston chapter meeting which included a panel discussion with three buy-side analysts (from The Boston Company, Putnam Investments and Cambridge Trust) sharing approaches for valuing companies. As the conversation progressed, we were struck by how similar the counsel these analysts offered to IROs and executives about how to best communicate with them was to what we share with our clients in dealing with the media. These truly can be considered basic tenets...

Austin American-Statesman Interview from SXSW

The advances in social media have given all of us the opportunity to virtually attend almost any event by reading the real-time blog posts, Twitter entries, and by watching videos from the floor of trade shows and conferences. Our Austin-based team was right in the thick of the SXSW Interactive, Film and Music Festival, as Carol Hanko described so well in an earlier post this week. Two of her team members, Linsey Krauss and Lauren Whittenberg conducted some great interviews...

Less is More on the Political Trail, Barack

Watching the tense battle going on in the Democratic primary, I have been paying particular attention to the communication lessons I believe are being told by the recent crisis in the Obama camp. As I watched the news and the blogosphere to see how the Democratic front-runner was going to respond to the outrage at the selected diatribes from his pastor of 20 years, I was curious to see how his well-organized and Internet-savvy campaign team would respond. The buzz...

SXSW - Connecting Is What Matters

For the past two weeks, Austin, Texas has pretty much been taken over by thousands of interactive, film and music enthusiasts from all over the world attending the SXSW Interactive, Film and Music Festival. More than 2,000 bands performed in a span of two weeks. And with an office sitting at the corner of 6th and Congress, we heard quite a few of them just sitting in our office. We heard the music, no doubt about it. It is one...

Yahoo! Buzz Place to Be?

There was an interesting post on Read/Write Web today detailing how much a new Yahoo! service, called Buzz, has boosted traffic for major Web and blog publishers. News sources and blogs like Salon.com, Portfolio.com, Huffington Post and Dallas Morning News reported record traffic as a result of referrals from Yahoo! Buzz. What is Yahoo! Buzz? It is a "social news" site that is similar in nature to digg.com, where members of the community can link to stories or blog posts...