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Posts from DevUtah BusinessContributers

March 10, 2010
» Matt Mullenweg the WordPress Diety
by Paul Wilson

It might be a little strong of language to refer to Matt as a god, but he truly is amazing with what he has done with wordpress. I actually meet Matt last year at a WordCamp in Utah. The event was really good and it was also nice to rub shoulders with Matt. He really [...]

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March 9, 2010
» Raise the Roof at the March Madness Rankings Workshop
by SEO.com


On March 25, some of college basketball’s best teams will compete in Salt Lake City for a chance to play in the Final Four. But before they tip off, smart marketers will assemble just up the road at the SEO.com headquarters for some March Madness of their own.

We’re hosting our third free workshop. And it’s going to be a barn burner full of SEO, PPC and social media marketing genius; networking opportunities with some of Utah’s brightest minds; and, of course, some great game-day snacks. And we’ll be evaluating two random attendees’ websites on the spot. You’ll be raising the roof, guaranteed.

Here’s the quick skinny:

What: March Madness Rankings Workshop
When: Thursday, March 25 from 2-5 p.m.
Where: 14870 Pony Express Road, # 100 in Bluffdale, Utah — just off I-15 at the point of the mountain
Topics: Pay-Per-Click Advertising, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, Website Review
Cost: It’s free, but space is limited so reserve a seat by filling out the form on http://www.seo.com/march-madness/

Companies are putting more and more $$$ toward online marketing. eMarketer.com says $23 billion will be spent online, half of that in search engine optimization. This workshop will show marketers how to maximize those marketing dollars by mixing smart SEO, PPC and Social Media strategies to gain traffic and drive sales.

As usual, we’ll have presenters for each subject followed by a Q&A session. But this time, we’ll be doing something different. Attendees will compete in a short shooting competition to have their websites reviewed on the spot by our trio of all-stars: CEO Dave Bascom, VP of Client Services Nelson James, and the Director of SEO Ash Buckles.

So, before you check out the NCAA Tournament on the 25th, make sure to stop by and get some tips to bring your website more traffic. For more information, to reserve your spot, or to see the list of presenters, go to http://www.seo.com/march-madness/ .

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» SSL Cert Management in Linux
by Ryan Byrd

Maybe you have a ton of SSL certs you’ve purchased from different vendors and you’d like warning when they’ll expire.

http://prefetch.net/articles/checkcertificate.html has a free bash script that will check the certs for you and notify you when you need to renew.

first, run this to get the list of SSL sites on your apache2 server:

grep 443 /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/*.conf |grep ServerName|awk '{print $3 }'|uniq|perl -p -e 's/:/ /g'|sort|perl -p -e 's/\r//g'>currentssls.txt

then run the script to check each of those sites (as listed in the currentssls.txt file)

# ./ssl-cert-check -f currentssls.txt|sort -nk6|sed '/^$/d'|sed 1d
Host                                            Status       Expires      Days
www.example1.com:443                        Valid        Apr 16 2010  38
www.example2.com:443                          Valid        May 10 2010  62
www.example3.com:443                        Valid        May 14 2010  66

and now let’s add it to cron, instructing the script to send out an email 30 days before expiration:

# crontab -l
10 10 * * *  grep 443 /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/*.conf |grep ServerName|awk '{print $3 }'|uniq|perl -p -e 's/:/ /g'|sort|perl -p -e 's/\r//g'>currentssls.txt
30 10 * * * ~/ssl-cert-check -a -f ~/currentssls.txt -q -x 30 -e you@example.com

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» Gaining Personal Information From Travel Consumers
by Twelve Horses Marketing

I recently read an article published by Forrester that discussed what types of information travelers are willing to provide companies online. The report referenced a 5% decline in travelers “who feel that their personal information is secure when making online purchases.”*

As channels are becoming more and more fragmented, personal information can be extremely valuable in creating meaningful and relevant communications to consumers. After a review of several sites asking for personal information it became clear why the report showed downward trends.

In order to battle this lack of confidence, companies should focus on the following:

  • Providing upfront links to privacy policies and written assurance that information gathered is secure and will not be shared.
  • Provide links to past or upcoming communications.
  • Making sure that the user can easily opt-out and/or modify their input values.
  • Present context around why the information is being collected.
  • And the simplest yet most under-utilized way to reinforce confidence is to use the information collected in meaningful ways that provide value to the end user.

Here is an example of the user experience for a person researching a beach vacation:

  • User searches for beach hotel and finds a sign-up page. The page clearly states how the information will be used with a link to the company privacy policy. Samples of previous communications with links to live content are available.
  • All required information is first.
  • As more detailed information (not required) is requested the user is told what this information will do for them, such as filtering content and offers based on families, art, sports, etc.
  • Once the information is submitted the user is provided links to manage their preferences.
  • The first communication be it an email, text message or custom landing page provides content specifically tailored to the information provided.

Reference: *How Travel eBusiness Can Persuade More Travelers To Share Valuable Personal Information, Forrester Research, Inc., March 3, 2010.

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» Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-03-08
by Janet Meiners

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» Content Marketing and Social Media
by Twelve Horses Marketing

Nevada Interactive Media Summit

This last weekend I gave a presentation on content marketing in the social media age at the second annual Nevada Interactive Media Summit at the University of Nevada Reno. It was a great conference, and a really engaged group of people attended.

Content Marketing

Drawing on our experience creating and managing ski resort content, I presented on how content marketing has changed with the new demands on digital brands in an interactive culture. Creating engaging and interactive content can be an awesome way to get customers engaged with products or services in an ecosystem of social sharing and networking where even the best social media tools are slaves to social objects.

Social objects are what we talk about. They’re the bright shiny ball we can kick around a group for hours. Relevant and meaningful dialog can’t occur in a social community without some object that multiple parties can engage with. And that’s where your brand comes in.

Interaction is important. And we all know that whether or not brands take part in conversations, those conversations will happen anyway. On top of that, when you do get into the conversation you need to interact with a credible level of authenticity and transparency. But we know that consumers trust other consumers more than they trust even their favorite brands – so interaction between your customers and each other ABOUT you can be far more beneficial (or damaging) to your brand. Creating social objects through content marketing gives you a way to become the focus of social interactions.

Building Brands and Interactions Through Content Marketing on Prezi

I wasn’t able to attend the morning sessions but heard great things about the keynote speaker, Erin Kotecki Vest, and the other presenters. After lunch,  Tahoe Daily Tribune editor, Annie Flanzraich, gave a great presentation on “Building, Engaging and Managing Online Communities.” Her comments on interacting with and managing a dynamic, often volatile online news based community which is attached to a close physical community were insightful. Annie responds to most active threads on Tribune articles and has gained a keen understanding of the community through those interactions.
-Mike

References

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March 8, 2010
» gone phishing
by Jesse Stay

Today we announced on the SocialToo blog that we’ve enabled our phishing protection for all 60,000+ SocialToo users (and many, many more to come). This project means a lot to me, as it means the more people that use it, the fewer phishing DMs will be received, links won’t be clicked, passwords won’t be shared, and accounts won’t be compromised. The more I can help prevent this from happening, I think the better for the web in general.

In total, SocialToo has blocked near 200,000 total spam DMs sent to our users, and over 25,000 of those were malicious, phishing, and trapped automatically by our filters. 5,000 of those were just since enabling it on all accounts. That’s 25,000 dms that could have been collecting your Twitter credentials, could have compromised your account, and could have spread further by compromising your account. This service is powerful.

The service gets enabled automatically for any user that just logs in with their Twitter credentials at http://socialtoo.com. Of course, I’d love it if you tried our other features, set up some filters, maybe tracked who followed you and stopped following you the previous day on Twitter, but more than anything I want you to help the web in general by eradicating these pesky dms! Each dm we detect gets deleted from your Twitter account, often before you can see it in your favorite Twitter client, doesn’t get sent in our DM e-mails (found on your Filters page), and a message is sent on your behalf to @spam also notifying Twitter of the compromised account.

Please, if you haven’t had reason to join SocialToo yet, now is the time. This is your opportunity to, just by logging in, help make Twitter a cleaner place. Be sure to check out Louis Gray’s experience with this service on his blog – I think he too has had similar experience in seeing the success of having this enabled.

Oh, and stay tuned, other than this and our new design launch, we’ve got some more really big news coming tomorrow that I think you’re going to really like.

Image courtesy http://www.v3.co.uk/vnunet/specials/2127679/gone-phishing


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» Giveaway: Networking for the Novice, Nervous or Naive Job Seeker
by Jason Alba

New: an EVENING JibberJobber User Webinar TOMORROW, March 9th at 7p EST. Register here. (other webinars listed here)

LinkedIn for Job Seekers DVD for $49.95 $25. Check out all the specials here.
Sorry about last week’s Giveaway (I skipped it!). Here’s the question for this week:

WHY do we (in general) HATE networking?

Leave your answer in the blog post (not on Facebook) I’ll have Tom Dezell, author of the book Networking for the Novice, Nervous or Naive Job Seeker choose the best answer. This is open until the next Giveaway (next Monday).

You can find Tom’s book on Amazon here, or check out his book website, or his awesome new blog here.  Check out this very cool post by Eve Tahmincioglu (Career Diva) where she interviews Tom (Wussy networkers don’t get the job).

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» My Boy’s Business
by Neal Harmon


I asked many on LinkedIn.com and here on my blog to contribute ideas to improve my young aspiring entrepreneur’s chances over his toy sale a few years ago. He had decided that his project for this year would be to sell something again. We really appreciated all the ideas.

Ultimately, we talked about where to go for heavier traffic in the country and realized that most skiers heading to the Pomerelle Ski Resort pass right near our home. We requested permission from the farmer who owned the field (happened to be my uncle) and set up at the base of the Albion grade.

We started with market research. My boy called Pomerelle to ask how much they charged for hot cocoa. Mid-conversation he hung up the phone and exclaimed, “ONE DOLLAR AND FIFTY CENTS FOR ONE CUP!!”

He and I searched the Internet for good recipes and he went to town with his Mom to purchase the ingredients. The cups and lids were harder to come by as they were sold in 600 to 1000 packs on the web and would run over 100 dollars together. Too risky. Luckily, when we attended a cousin’s reception, he asked the owner of the Sweetheart Manor in Burley if he could buy a few cups. He grinned from ear to ear when he walked away with 60 cups and lids for free, a donation to young entrepreneurship.

We all decided that 3-5pm, when the night skiers were headed up and the day skiers were headed down, would be the best time to sell. As repetition would catch those who drove by repeatedly, we planned to sell for 2 hours every Saturday in February.

The signs, which were made out of silage plastic, required more work than we thought they would, but they showed up very well and were strong enough to leave outside for the month.


I was impressed with how much he grew over the four weeks. He went from standing their quietly waiting for someone else to initiate the conversation, to jumping up and down to get people’s attention as they drove by.


He also learned, after selling mostly regular chocolate cocoa, that he could get more people to purchase his Strawberry Valentines cocoa if he encouraged them by saying, “this one is my most favorite in the whole world.”



At the end of the month he made $90.59 total revenue and spent $26 on supplies, so he brought home $64.59 to split between his capital for the next sale, his savings, his mission fund and his tithing. He was thrilled, and so were my wife and I.


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January 4, 2010
» Hello world!
by Michael Eagar

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

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March 8, 2010
» UrgentEvoke, Setup and First Mission
by Matthew Reinbold

Urgent Evoke is a new alternative reality game (ARG) from genre specialist Jane McGonigal. Funded by the World Bank Institute it promises players “a ten week crash course in changing the world”. Much like the fictional darknet in the Suarez’s books Daemon and Freedom, players “level” and earn points after carrying out real world activities. It has been said that people will endure all sorts of tedium so long as there is a leaderboard. Jane hopes, with Evoke, that some of that effort can be put toward making the world a better place and not just ganking the latest n00b.

(Video embed) Jane on massively multiplayer games as “happiness engines” and reality being broken:

[Jane also recently talked at the 2010 Ted Conference specifically referencing her work with Evoke. "An entire generation of young people are virtuoso gamers. We need to figure out exactly what skills they're honing." Unfortunately, that video is not yet available.]

The game kicked off this past Wednesday and I set aside some time this weekend to see how ‘world-changing cliff-notes’ works. The initial story which establishes the fictional network and main characters is presented as an online comic. Ning.com is being used underneath the covers to handle basic social networking features (logins, blog postings, etc). Late Friday night the servers seems to strain under the load but by Saturday things had straightened out.

A person’s profile not only has mission completion status but ‘powers’ associated with it. While missions are binary awards (either you completed the requirements or you didn’t) powers are awarded on how you performed each task. There are ten powers and they include things like ‘creativity’, ‘entrepreneurship’, and ’sustainability’.

The level one missions included three tasks. Of course, this being level one things started relatively easily: read about different types of social innovation and blog about it, choose a social innovator to shadow and report how you’re doing that, and imagine what you’ll be doing in 2020 and share with the group. In addition to the power points completing each task gives other players can also score your work. Yes, there is a leaderboard.

While I won’t post my responses here, verbatim (there’s a separate space for that), I did want to mention Jay Rogers, the social innovator that I’m shadowing. From the Evoke post:

“Local Motors is a new kind of car company founded by John (Jay) Rogers. His approach is to flip the traditional car manufacturing process on its head. The goal is not to have one huge factory, but several small (ideally the size of a reclaimed Target or WalMart) micro-factories serving local transit needs. Each location also serves as dealership and service department, meaning cars are repaired in the same shop they’re made in (hopefully shortening feedback loops for rapid innovation based on real world results). Car models are based on crowdsourced designs. Knowledge obtained is then “open sourced” back to the community for additional refinement and “forking”.

Where Evoke goes from here will largely depend on the difficulty curve of its missions. If it remains in the ‘read this’/'blog this’ mode the ten weeks will be informative, but disappointing. If they begin requiring actions in the physical world I see challenges in reporting back.

Have you signed up? What are your thoughts? And can the same concepts of leveling and points work for real world action?

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March 7, 2010
» Swagapalooza
by Jeff Barson

Companies are catching on to the fact that bloggers can provide an effective way to create buzz about their brands. We've seen several efforts that explicitly recognise that fact, such as TasteCasting for restaurants and YokmoK's free travel giveaways. Bringing the notion into the world of new consumer products is Swagapalooza, an invitation-only event that gives influential bloggers free samples of new products.

Created by Bay Area startup Launch Hear, Swagapalooza aims to give entrepreneurs a way to get their producs in front of the most-followed bloggers and tweeters from across the United States. The first event was held in New York in September last year. At it, brands including Surprise Industries, Idea Paint and Switch2Health—which, coincidentally, we just covered—had the chance to make presentations to the select audience of 100 bloggers, 20 Twitterers and 5 Redditors. In exchange for their participation, the audience members were entitled to free samples of any of the products being presented. A detailed review of the event is available on AdAge.

Swagapalooza's next event will occur in March in San Francisco, and Launch Hear is currently seeking both bloggers and companies with new products to show off. One to try out in your next promotional campaign? Or how about launching something similar elsewhere? (Related: Blogger helps connect consumers and brands — Food blogger turned intermediary & purveyor.)

Website: www.swagapalooza.com
Contact: alex@swagapalooza.com

from Springwise

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» wheel
by Jesse Stay

In a response to my article here, DeWitt Clinton of Google defined what he deemed the definition of “open” to be.  According to DeWitt, “the first is licensing of the protocols themselves, with respect to who can legally implement them and/or who can legally fork them.”  I argue if this were the case, then why didn’t Google clone and standardize what Facebook is doing, where many, many more developers are already integrating and writing code for?  Facebook itself is part of the Open Web Foundation, and applies the same principles as Google to allowing others to clone the APIs they provide to developers.

DeWitt’s second definition of “open” revolves around, according to DeWitt, “the license by which the data itself is made available. (The Terms and Conditions, so to speak.) The formal definitions are less well established here (thus far!), but it ultimately has to do with who owns the data and what proprietary rights over it are asserted.”  Even Facebook makes clear in its terms that you own your data, and they’re even working to build protocols to enable website owners to host and access this data on their own sites.  Why did Google have to write their own Social Graph API or access lesser-used protocols (such as FOAF or OpenID) when they could, in reality, be standardizing what millions (or more?) of other developers are already utilizing with Facebook Connect and the Facebook APIs to access friend data?  Google could easily duplicate the APIs Facebook has authored (even using the open source libraries Facebook provides for it), and have a full-fledged, “open” social network built from these APIs many developers are already building upon.  I would argue there are/were many more developers writing for Facebook than were developing under the open protocols and standards Google chose to adapt.  I’d like to see some stats if that is not the case.  Granted, even Facebook is giving way to Google to adopt some of these other “open” standards so developers have choice in this matter, even if they were one of the few adopting the other standards.

I still think Google is adopting these standards because it benefits Google, not the user or developer.  If Google wanted to benefit the majority of the audience of developers they would have cloned the already “open” Facebook APIs rather than adopt the much lesser-adopted other protocols they have chosen to go by.  This is a matter of competition, being the “hero”, and a brilliant marketing strategy.  Is Google evil for doing this?  Of course not.  Do I hate Google for this?  Only for the reason that I have to now adapt all the apps I write in Facebook to new “open” APIs Google is choosing to adopt.

IMO, if Google wanted to truly benefit the developer they would have chosen to clone the existing “open” APIs developers were already writing for.  This is a marketing play, plain and simple.  It may have started with geeks not wanting to get into the Facebook worlds, but management agreed because in the end, it benefits Google, not their competitors.  If you don’t think so, you should ask Dave Winer why Google is not implementing RSS or rssCloud instead of Atom and PSHB (I’m completely baffled by that one, too).

Image courtesy http://northerndoctor.com/2009/04/17/re-inventing-the-wheel/


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March 5, 2010
» An Investor’s outlook on Social Media
by Funding Universe

Damon Kirchmeier

I had the pleasure of interviewing Damon Kirchmeier—Managing Director of InnoVentures Capital Partners—about social media. Why him? He’s affable, amiable, amicable, approachable… (and every other synonym for ‘friendly’ contained in the thesaurus). Interviewing nice people makes my job a lot easier!

He’s a truly genuine fellow: he’s out on the road every day carefully investigating the state’s newest ventures. He’s ‘all business’ and works harder than anyone else to identify and fund great startups.

Quick anecdote: He identified Fezzari bikes way back when. He not only offered them funding (they didn’t end up needing it) but also offered to help design bikes!

Here is our interview

FundingUniverse: You’ve got the most eclectic resume I’ve ever seen. You used to work as a nuclear plant engineer, managed Navy & civilian personnel at a dual reactor plant, medaled in World-Championship Downhill bike racing, designed bicycles for Fezzari… and now you’re Managing Director at InnoVentures Capital Partners. Does your wife need to start lacing your breakfast cereal with Ritalin?

Damon Kirchmeier: yes

FundingUniverse: Why Venture Funding?

Damon Kirchmeier: Because it’s cheaper than other sources, you want to preserve equity, or you don’t fit any other source. Banks want 3 years of profitable operating history and collateral and equity investors want 10x their money in 5 years – lots of good companies don’t fit these criteria.

FundingUniverse: Has anyone ever contacted you about funding via social media?

Damon Kirchmeier: No

FundingUniverse: Is Social Media a good way for entrepreneurs to seek funding?

Damon Kirchmeier: I think it’s a good way to narrow a search or find potential funding sources. For a fund like mine, I am already flooded via traditional sources like phone and email.

FundingUniverse: What advice do you have for entrepreneurs in using social media to find investors?

Damon Kirchmeier: I wouldn’t necessarily assume an investor is going to review your info until they are way down the line.

FundingUniverse: what advice do you have for entrepreneurs in using social media to impress investors?

Damon Kirchmeier Your online image is a reflection of you as a person so make sure it says what you want it to.

FundingUniverse: Have you seen social media waste entrepreneur’s time & money?

Damon Kirchmeier: Mostly time.

FundingUniverse: What did they do wrong?

Damon Kirchmeier: Blogging on topics they do not fully understand or blogging on controversial subjects which may offend a potential investor.

FundingUniverse: Have you seen social media used effectively by small businesses?

Damon Kirchmeier: Yes, I love the “Will it Blend?” series from Blendtec on YouTube. They found a very fun way to show the product capabilities.

FundingUniverse: Which social media networks do you find most effective?

Damon Kirchmeier: LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube

FundingUniverse: Which social media networks do you find to be a waste of time?

Damon Kirchmeier: MySpace, Twitter

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» Amazon Products in KRL: A New Distribution Model
by Phil Windley

Kynetx Amazon API Demo App

The first Web service that Amazon put up, years ago, was the ECommerce API that allowed API access to Amazon's product information. That API has gone through several name changes and is now called the Product Advertising API. Thousands of people have used this API to add data about products--and the opportunity to buy them--to their Web sites.

That's the problem, of course. You can use it on your Web site, but you can't conveniently use them in a browser extension to build client-side community apps because your Amazon developer keys would be exposed to the world. The most recent build of KRL changes that by making the Amazon Product Advertising API (PAA) available as a library. That means that it's possible to use Kynetx to build client-side applications that use the PAA without exposing your developer tokens. That opens up a whole host of possible uses for Amazon product information that were difficult to achieve before.

Here's a video that shows this at work:

Of course, to create client-side applications that people will install and use requires more than just pumping more product at them. The KRL integration of PAA includes the ability to access all the user-generated reviews, product information, photos, and other product data that would allow a developer to create a first-rate experience that adds real value for people who download and use their apps.

KRL makes using PAA easy. To get started, you simple put your Amazon developer secrets and associate ID in the meta block of your application: 

meta {
  key amazon {
    "token"        : "absjj99a9ad9ad8799",
    "secret_key"   : "absjj99a9ad9ad8799abs79999a9ad9ad8799",
    "associate_id" :  "windleyofente-20"
  }
}

These are stored securely in the cloud and not divulged to users of the application.

The KRL Amazon library has two primary methods: ItemSearch and ItemLookup. With ItemSearch the search index is a parameter and additional parameters depend on the particular index. ItemLookup takes an Amazon product ID (ASIN) as it's primary parameter. Here's an example: 

amazon:item_lookup({"ItemId" : "B00008OE6I",
                "response_group" : "ItemIds" })

The response is returned as JSON so that you can use JSONPath to pick it apart and use it. Here's a piece of the response to the previous query: 

"Item" : {
            "OfferSummary" : {
               "LowestUsedPrice" : {
                  "Amount" : "3999",
                  "CurrencyCode" : "USD",
                  "FormattedPrice" : "$39.99"
               },
               "TotalRefurbished" : {},
               "TotalUsed" : "8",
               "TotalCollectible" : {},
               "TotalNew" : {}
            },
            "ASIN" : "B00008OE6I"
         }

Here's a video showing a little more about how this is done and giving a working example.

You can install the example that we used for the first video or just view the source code using the app detail page in the Apps Directory. Here's the documentation for the Amazon library.

The Amazon integration with KRL allows Amazon developers to build client-side application that use Amazon product data without exposing the Amazon developer credentials--something that's been hard in the past. KRL is designed to make using online data like Amazon or Twitter easy and quick. We'll be annnouncing some other major data and service integrations over the next few weeks as we gear up for Kynetx Impact in April. Come join us.

Tags: kynetx krl amazon

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» Favorite Friday: Networking Introductions (HOW TO)
by Jason Alba

New: an EVENING JibberJobber User Webinar on Tuesday, March 9th at 7p EST. Register here. (other webinars listed here)

LinkedIn for Job Seekers for $49.95 $25. Check out all the specials here.
I get a lot of emails from people who are introducing themselves or introducing others.  I also get a lot of LinkedIn invitations.

Many of them are not put together well, or the responses are not put together well.

Here are THREE of my favorite posts where I talk about how to introduce someone, or yourself:

Job Search and Networking Introductions (January 28, 2009) – how to introduce yourself and ask for help.

Introductions gone bad… (January 11, 2007) – thoughts on how to write that initial email introduction.

Solution to Introductions gone bad… ? (January 12, 2007) – how to respond to an introduction from someone else.

Those posts are old, but the ideas are not too shabby!

(Shoudn’t they teach this stuff in college??)

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» Soldier court-martialed over his Facebook Status
by Ken Knapton

Adults also need to be cautious of what they post on Facebook - this story tells of a soldier who posted the details of a pending raid, and was court-martialed for it. The "digital natives" who grew up with technology engrained in their lives often don't think through the consequences of sharing everything on their favorite Social Network!

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» What's Your Cause Marketing Schema?
by Paul Jones

One of the defining characteristics of many of the very best cause marketers is that they have a basic cause marketing schema that can be modified and used again and again in multiple contexts.Susan G. Komen for the Cure, for instance, does walks and runs very well. They’re very good at branded products, too.Proctor & Gamble’s ‘Buy One, Give One’ approach to cause marketing is well-honed across

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March 4, 2010
» Halloween And The MBA: What Do They Have In Common?
by CMOE

What does trick-or-treating and a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) have in common?  Think about it for a moment – maximizing your gains, equations for efficiency, and opportunity costs.  Are you seeing the connection yet?

Maximizing Your Profitability

I was watching a report on CNN last week about the strategies of maximizing their acquisition of treats on Halloween.  Instead of just taking a “dash and grab” approach, some people take a more economic approach to their quest for sweets.  The people at Zillow.com have done some research on five major cities to identify the “best” neighborhoods for trick-or-treating.  While there is a common belief that wealthy neighborhoods are the prime place for harvesting the most Halloween treats, it is only a part of the equation for efficiency.  To provide a more holistic approach to Halloween trick-or-treating, the Zillow Trick-or-Treat Housing Index was calculated using four equally weighted data variables: Zillow Home Value Index, population density, WalkScore (point to point distances), and local crime data. Based on those variables, this Index represents neighborhoods that will provide the most candy, with the least amount of walking and safety risks. 

Jackpot

Some may find Zillow’s index to be an unnecessary approach to the trick-or-treating adventure, but for others it is just the kind of thing that makes the holiday even more enjoyable.  After seeing the report on CNN, I saw this holiday as a great time to teach my kids about economics, finance, and getting the highest revenue with the least amount of input (revenue = candy).  What makes this even more of an economical and financial teaching opportunity is that a local dentist is offering $1.00 for every pound of candy brought to their office during the week after Halloween.  What made this offer even more interesting was that CNN also reported a statistic that the average child gathers 17.1 pounds of candy on Halloween.  So, if my kids want to use Halloween as a chance to have fun and make money, there are strategies to do so.

If you ask parents today if they want their children to go through the higher education system, the answer is predominantly, “yes.”  I believe preparing young people to be ready to receive a college education is as important as actually obtaining one.  The same is true for anyone. There are opportunities for education and skill development all around us, just like this “trick-or-treating” example.

Education To Make A Difference

For those of us who are college age or older, but still have a desire for gaining more education, there are diverse opportunities available.  There are accelerated masters programs, online degrees, and Mini-MBA Workshop.  The Mini-MBA Workshop is a great way to learn the fundamental concepts taught in a traditional MBA program, but at much less costs and in a much shorter time frame.  I attended this fantastic course offered by CMOE, developed and Columbia University, and taught by David L. Buckner.  It helped me to understand the key concepts of economics, finance, and accounting, helping me to be more affluent in the language of business.  Knowing more business acumen key terms and concepts has had a great impact on my contribution to our organization.  While I didn’t earn a Masters degree, I have the ability to apply valuable concepts to my everyday efforts and decisions.  As the writer and scientist, Carl Sagan wrote, “Knowing a great deal is not the same as being smart; intelligence is not information alone but also judgment, the manner in which information is collected and used.”

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» Force HTTPS in apache
by Ryan Byrd

maybe you want to make all HTTP requests we rewritten to HTTPS. Here’s how:

   RewriteEngine On
   RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !on
   RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}

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