commbasics

Today I sat down with Brian fuller, newly returned to EE Times, and did a quick video interview on social media.  But this time I was to one under the gaze of the leery interviewer.  EE times is moving in a new direction that I think is the future of at least B2B journalism and Brian's one of the thought leaders taking them there.  It was kinda fun having him ask me my opinion for a change.

I closed our storage facility today (finally got rid of a bunch of crap) and was saying good bye to the lady I've been working with for several years as we've been consolidating, recycling and tossing stuff and she gave me a very hopeful economic indicator.  She says things are looking up. OK, is she crazy?  Maybe, she's got kind of a wild look in her eye, but she's been working in the self-storage business for several decades, and like me, she has seen her share of recessions.  She told me about five years ago she predicted to her bosses that a recession was coming based on patterns she has seen in the storage usage of Stanford students.  They told her she was crazy then, but she started making plans accordingly.   So what is the pattern? Whenever a recession is about to hit, Stanford students start consolidating stored materials in shared units.  Whenever the economy is about to rebound, they start getting their own units for their o...

For a couple of months now, I've been doing live broadcasts on a variety of subject, ranging from semiconductor design to marijuana legalization , on a new network called Vpype. The broadcasts are sponsored by Vpype and Magma Design Automation and can be about anything that might pop into my mine. Yesterday, I had an interview fall through so I vamped on the subject of privacy in social networks, which I had touched on earlier this week in a blog. This is a big topic right now and I'm kinda surprised I haven't had more discussion... but a lot of people may be on vacation. So the interview can be seen here, and you can comment here, or go directly to my channel on Vpype  (that's even better for the show). Watch video live on Vpype Live Broadcaster

Brian Fuller announced yesterday that he is back under the employ of United Business Media and working at EE Times, although not under the position he was before (editor in chief) but as the  Products Content Strategist of EE Times Products section. From the press release; " Fuller will drive product news, information and community and also provide engineers and their marketing teams with the assistance they need to bring products to market more effectively, leveraging the breadth of EE Times' capabilities -- from products to e-learning, news, events, courses, webinars and video." This is ridiculously good news for the semiconductor industry's marketing wonks, especially those who have come to appreciate and implement social media strategies within their ranks (and there are still damn few of those).  Brian has been on a personal journey into the social world that began at EE Times and their convulsions over whether to stay as a traditional media house or...

Article appeared in the SF Chronicackle today by Mike Elgan of Computerworld on the " Five Stages of Facebook Grief ."  Again he focuses on the lack of security and discovering that others outside of your immediate circle can find out stuff about you. Let me make it very clear:  If you don't want to participate in a particular aspect of society ore society itself, you don't have to.   You don't need an iPhone to survive (I don't) You don't need to be on Facebook or Twitter or Gowalla or any other kind of social network.  You also don't have to join Kiwanis, or a gym or a church or watch TV or listen to the radio.  You can abandon your car and home, fill a garbage bag with clothes and a hunting knife and go live in a cave in the Sierras. But when you are looking to buy something, sell something, look for a job, hire someone, get some information, get a point of view that you might value, find a vacation home in a foreign cou...

I could not resist sharing this great piece of Satire from China... and you don't have to speak Chinese to understand it.

At 11:40 AM, PST, I'll be doing an episode of Around the Coffee Bar on my Facebook Vpype Channel  in a live interview with James Colgan of Xuropa on measuring the ROI of social media in real dollars.  If you don't have Facebook  or miss the live interview it will be archived and I'll put a link here.  Thanks to Vpype and Magma Design for sponsoring this series. This will actually be a conclusion to an interview I did with James at DAC 2010... that got rudely interrupted at the key moment when the conventions wonky internet connection took a dive.  If you've ever had a question about what a social media program can do for your company, check it out.