The Quiet Passing of a Humble Actor

Amid the frenzied coverage of the U.S. presidential election and the ramifications of the credit crunch, the sad news of the death of actor Paul Newman almost slipped by unnoticed this weekend. I write about this in Beyond the Hype because for five years I have been staring at an article on my bulletin board from Entertainment Weekly about the humble and humorous way Newman described himself in his bio in the revival of "Our Town" on Broadway in 2003....

Democratic Journalism

The citizen can bring our political and governmental institutions back to life, make them responsive and accountable, and keep them honest. No one else can. -- John Gardner If there is a silver lining to the remarkable and frightening developments in our economy over the past few weeks it may be that Americans will finally wake up the fact of what it means to live in a democracy and participate. For most of us, we've relied on the media to...

TechCrunch Comes to Austin

Yesterday the TechCrunch Meetup came to Austin for the first time, and I must admit, I was impressed with the turn-out. Granted, the event organizers are masters of marketing "exclusive" tech events by using Silicon Valley tactics to make them appear inaccessible. They used clever grass-roots promotions combined with traditional media and highlighted the sold-out tickets, followed by sporadic "releases" of tickets when people least expected to find them available. For example, one of the releases was at 6 a.m....

NFL Secret Sauce: Telecom

At yesterday's ACG Boston DealMaker's breakfast, Jonathan Kraft spoke to a packed room of investment bankers, venture capitalists and financial consultants about the business of football. I've heard Jonathan speak before and he was equally engaging, compelling and interesting this morning. He redirected the topic of the meeting from the business of sports, to what he claims it really is -- the entertainment business. While so much of the discussion was fascinating to me, it hit home when Jonathan talked...

Communicating in an Uncertain Economy

There was a great session at the Boston chapter of the National Investor Relations Institute this week. As the moderator commented, this session topic was relevant in July when the agenda was set, but it's REALLY relevant these days, with the scary headlines about the financial markets and given the President's speech last night. The two speakers provided excellent viewpoints on the subject: Len Griehs, a 30-year veteran of IR who is a VP at Campbell Soup Company, and Robert...

Kicking off trade show season with VMworld 2008

We have now entered September and not only does this month mark the beginning of Fall, but it also marks the beginning of trade show season for many of us in the high-tech industry. From VMworld to Web 2.0 to Interop to SNW, many of us here are in the middle of prepping our clients for a busy (and fun!) few months. While many things have stayed the same, the many ways in which we communicate has changed due to...

Death of mainstream media greatly exaggerated

Our position on whether or not mainstream media (MSM) is dying a slow death, as we've expressed on this blog, is that, to quote one Mr. Steve Jobs, "the reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated." The latest reason we're sticking with this position is because of three new syndication deals unveiled in the last two days whereby content from popular tech blogs are being distributed by MSM outlets. Today, the New York Times announced content syndication deals with...

Rewriting History at Yankee Stadium

Watching SportsCenter this morning, I saw the celebrations around the last game played at historic Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. As a Red Sox fan, I thought it seemed funny that the players were acting like they had just won the Series, although they won't even be in the postseason this year. As a baseball fan, I thought the tribute to the venerable field was fitting and it's always wonderful to see the old greats come back and get their...

A good or bad time for IPO?

Lost amid the wild volatility of the market was the fact that a very brave company was supposed to go public today. Fluidigm, a biotech company based in San Francisco, was the second IPO this quarter. It's not clear to me that it actually went out or if it was delayed, but given the huge gains in the markets across the board, this would have been a good day to issue. UPDATE 9/22: It turns out that the IPO was...

Social Media reaches a critical milestone

I love the comedy program Scrubs and in particular the musings of the cranky Dr. Cox. Here is one of my favorite of his rants: Perhaps Dr. Cox would be a surprised as I was to see a story this week that social media has surpassed porn in Internet searches. A new book by Bill Tancer, who is the group manager of HitWise, finds surfing for porn had dropped to about 10 percent of searches from 20 percent a decade...