My Name is Kate

Ready for Christmas 2010? The iBangle - Concept Mp3 Player

I can't even deal with how tasty this is.  Great design of Gopinath Prasana; found over at Shiny Shiny; full deets and specs at Yanko Design.  I want one, please, Mr. Jobs.

We're at BlogHer!!

Phew!  After a 2 day drive through Washington and Oregon (hi, RPP!!), a quick stop to pick up my mom at SFO, and 3 glorious days in Sonoma (yummy Cakebread and Darioush!!), Rose and I have arrived at BlogHer 2008.  W00t!!

We're ensconced at The Westin where 1000 other women are checking in for this 2 day blogging fest!  Crazy in the lobby.

Anyhoo .. reports as I have them.

1564 Reasons I Love Squidoo - Dedicated to Jason Calacanis

I've been using Squidoo for well over two years now. Squidoo is a great service that lets you create single web pages, focused on a particular topic, to show off your expertise.  It was started by Seth Godin back in 2005 and is run by a small, passionate team.  Some more facts about Squidoo ...

1. Squidoo has more than 450,000 hand built pages.
2. Squidoo has been reviewed by the New York Times, Mashable, BoingBoing and sites and papers around the world.
3. Squidoo is one of the 300 most popular websites in the US.
4. Squidoo generates hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual royalties to charities and to users.

It's this last one I want to call attention to.  I received an email last week from Megan Casey, Squidoo's Editor-in-Chief.  She was playing around with some new widgets that she had in her master control panel.  One of them showed cumulative charitable donations from Squidoo lensmasters.  She emailed me to let me know that over the life of my account, I was on the top of the list with $1,564.09 being donated from the earnings on my lens.

I thought that was pretty amazing.  Not because I'm at the top of the list (I was a beta tester on Squidoo, so you'd hope I'd be somewhere near the top simply from a longevity perspective), but because I've been able to generate significant revenue on an ongoing basis for a charity  simply by doing something I like on a semi-regular basis. (Sure, it's not Warren Buffet size donations, but it's a start!)

On Squidoo, I write reviews about laptop bags.  I also write reviews about laptop sleeves and iPod cases.  And I post weekly updates on the books that Jon Stewart and Steven Stephen Colbert review on their shows.  Mercifully, I don't write anything about marketing :)

And yes, I benefit from writing these lenses.  I keep a portion of the revenue from each of my lenses.  Plus, I get sent laptop bags and sleeves on a fairly regular basis for my review. Most of which are subsequently given away to friends and colleagues.

And the designers I write about benefit from these lenses.  The most notable was written up in Inc. Magazine in February - Pinder Bags had a 30% jump in sales after I reviewed their bag.

And my readers also benefit from writing my lenses.  Designers regularly offer special deals, giveaways and/or discounts to my readers.

And, most importantly, as mentioned above, my charity of choice - Room to Read - benefits from my lenses.

So this post is for Jason Calacanis.  Jason has railed on Squidoo several times over the last two years (in particular, criticizing my lens for having the #1 spot in Google search for "laptop bags" (it currently fluctuates between positions 1 - 5)).  And certainly, some of his criticisms are not without merit.  I hate the spammers on Squidoo, too.  And the people who post fake profiles or who promote crappy products.  They're the same people who post fake blogs using Blogger or other free services and scrape content from my sites in hopes of getting cash for little work.  I hate those spammers, too.

But I'm not one of them. 

And the majority of Squidoo lensmasters aren't them either.

So, thank you, Seth, Megan, Gil and Corey!  For enabling me to take my interests and share them on a platform that benefits both me, my readers and my charitable causes!

Mark Kingdon from Organic to head up Linden Lab, creator of Second Life

Wow ... via the Reuters Second Life News Center and the Second Life blog: Mark Kingdon, former CEO of Organic, is going to head up Linden Lab.

Mark will be known as "M Linden" in Second Life (yes, the Bond jokes have already started).

I am oddly hopeful as a result of this announcement.  SL has taken a beating over the last year from fickle marketers and media alike, plus they have been plagued by technology problems and resident unrest over issues like content protection and copyright.  I'm a firm believer in the power of virtual worlds; while SL is not the marketing panacea that it was made out to be - there is a place for it in some marketers toolkits and a place for other VW's in others.  I'm really excited that LL has brought on a smart, savvy marketer from a respected shop like Organic to lead them.

Well done, LL.  Congrats to Mark and the whole crew at LL.  With Mark coming on board, I'll expect great things.

Image Credit: Reuters Second Life News Center

MNIK is on Honeymoon!!

Well, the hitching seemed to go well!  Rose and I are officially all married up!  We're heading out on our honeymoon and NOT taking our laptops :)  MNIK will not see any posting until after Dec 7th. 

Photo by jackhynes

Petro-Canada launches Gas Price and Fuel Efficiency Blog!

(I was going to try to come up with a wittier title, but sometimes, straight-forward is the way to go.)

I'm thrilled to share that Petro-Canada (disclosure: Petro-Canada is a client of my company, reinvent! communications) has stepped into the blogospheric fray and launched their first blog - Pump Talk (and Pleins gaz, en francais).  It's written by three members of their corporate communications team: Jon Hamilton, Sneh Seetal and Michael Southern, and focuses on gas price issues and fuel efficiency ideas.  The Pump Talk blog builds on their video series on YouTube last year which showcased two Petro-Canada employees talking about gas prices -- attempting to make the issue more accessible and relevant to consumers.

Personally, I am so proud of Petro-Canada for really wanting to engage with customers around this incredibly thorny issue.  We all *know* that social media (blogs, etc.) is the way to go, but I think it takes a lot of courage for a company to actually put themselves out there. 

Yes, yes .. I know what you're thinking: "Big oil and gas company, billions of dollars ... courage?  Kate, you're just saying that because they're your client!"

Actually, I'm not.

Because this is not about a big faceless billion dollar public company.  This is about 3 people - Jon, Sneh and Michael - who a) believe in the power of the medium and b) want to participate in a conversation with their customers.  I've sat in the meetings where they asked amazing questions about blogging and engagement and etiquette and standards.  We've discussed writing styles and comments-approval and bi-lingualism and legalese.  They've learned about tagging and authority and creative commons and the right way to attribute a photo from flickr.  We've discussed blogrolls and trackbacks and the evil vagaries of trying to get CSS to appear the same in multiple browsers.

So what I mean by "courage" is three-fold:

First, when we (as social media experts/critics) discuss the attempts of companies to enter the conversation, we often forget that real people are behind it.  People with genuine motives and the authentic desire to do their jobs better ... and knowing that social media is one way to do that.  It has been good for me to be reminded of that.  And I remind you.  This isn't to say that you or others shouldn't critique this initiative (I do secretly wonder how we would fare in one of Mack Collier's Company Blog Checkups!), but to know that a corporate blog isn't written by a logo, but people just like us.

Second, we take for granted how to start a blog.  We've either been doing this for a while or had a technical bent to begin with.  But for professionals for whom communication, rather than technology, is the passion, there is still a lot to absorb.  Web 2.0 and its ilk may be better at bringing us together, but there are still a lot of fiddly bits to contend with.  Steve Rubel has an article in this week's AdAge about the Geek Marketer:

These cross-trained specialists are fluent in both worlds and bridge them. They are marketers by trade, yet they also have a hard-core interest in technology and social anthropology. As curious individuals, they are constantly studying how digital advances are changing our culture and media. Armed with these insights, they regularly apply them in a marketing context by working closely with brand teams to codify new best practices.

We can't expect that our clients are all geek marketers (yet ;) ).  So when we want to tell them ALL THE STUFF THEY HAVE TO DO to get their blog started, it can be overwhelming.  It's good to remind our clients, and ourselves, that a blog is not a finished product.  It will never be *done*; it will likely never be perfect.  It's a different kind of thing than a TV ad or a print piece.  Patience and prudence are good things to remember when you're helping a client who wants to start and launch a corporate blog.

Thirdly, most of us have no real idea of the number and diameter of the hoops that must be jumped through so that a project like a corporate blog for a publicly traded company can be launched.  Sure, we all intellectually acknowledge it (yes, yes .. someone has to check with legal) ... but living it, breathing it - totally different thing.  So, to use a really bad metaphor ... a corporate blog is like an iceberg; what everyone sees is only 10% of the effort and work that went into making it happen. 

What did I learn when working with Petro on Pump Talk?  A few things ...

• Passion (and a sense of humour) is essential. If your client doesn't REALLY want to make this happen, it won't.  Your client needs to be super-charged about creating a blog for the company.  Think energizer bunny type of charged.  But if that passion *does* exist and is shared across the team?  Dream client!
• Executive support is essential.  And framing the context, benefit and risks of your blogging project in the way that executives of billlion dollar companies can relate to is even more essential. Keep it short, sweet and focused, people.
• Compromise is not a dirty word.  Yes, *we* are all enthusiastic about this medium and (over-focus) that things should be done a certain way to satisfy the blogosphere.  But the blogosphere is only one part of the equation.  If you're not prepared to acknowledge that and accept it, you'll have a tough time with your client. You've done your job if you've helped them weigh the pros and cons of taking certain decisions, not if you've *won* every decision.

So, this post is possibly a little saccharine and certainly a little Pollyanna-esque, but as CC Chapman and I have discussed before, I think it's important to acknowledge when a corporation has made an authentic effort.  Yes, there will be mistakes or missteps or simply decisions taken that not everyone agrees with.  But I am in the privileged position of being there from the beginning, and I know the intention of the people who are now, and hereafter, known as bloggers.

Jon, Michael, Sneh and Corinn (who has become a master at content management, html, feeds and other bloggy delights) ... welcome to the blogosphere!  It is guaranteed to be a exhilarating ride!

A little light-headed from all the attention ...

Thank you.  For reading.  And more importantly for talking about me.  Apparently in a good way.  At least one of you spilled the beans about MNIK because I am on Marketing Magazine's own Mark Etting's "If you only read 12 blogs" list (sub required).  It's an amazing group of bloggers to be included with, though I do chuckle a bit about the one-liner that was used to describe MNIK:

Kate Trgovac (mynameiskate.ca)
So dedicated is this web pioneer (and president of Reinvent) that she has another blog for her Second Life avatar.

My translation ...

• "Web pioneer" ... it's like I'm Laura Ingalls!  Awesome!
• (Reading between the lines), I'm a bit of a dork because my avatar has a blog.

The full list is a great mix of Canadian experts and others:

JaffeJuice
Twist Image
Seth Godin
One Degree
Buzz Canuck
My Name is Kate
Copyranter
The Client Side
Church of the Customer
ProPR
Canadian Marketing Blog
Adrants

Sean Moffitt (Buzz Canuck) has a great little analysis about the appeal of this group of bloggers; for him it boils down to fresh perspectives, openness of thought, and passion.  Here's my passion ... I want marketers to be less risk averse by making technology not so scary.    We all seem to do some version of "making X less scary":

• Michael (Client Side) gives his valuable perspective from within a big financial institution (one of the *scariest* places to be) to show that you can be a big brand and still crazy-nimble and innovative;
• Jackie (Church of the Customer) gives us insights into customers to make our interactions with them less scary;
• Sean (Buzz Canuck) writes amazing analyses of big concepts like TRUST and WOM and breaks it down so it isn't as scary to try.

OK, it's a little scary if you end up on the wrong side of Adrants .. but a sense of danger is a great adrenaline rush.

The point is ...

The point is that I'm thrilled to be on this journey with my fellow pioneers. And to have all of you along as well.  So thank you.  And I'd love to know what continues to be scary for you. 

Oh, two last things.  In case you haven't been over to my avatar's blog, I encourage you to drop by.  While there is a bit of SL fashion blogging, I do try to post about either interesting marketing initiatives from RL brands or lessons that can be learned from indigenous SL marketers.

Second thing .. Reinvent?  Yup. Reinvent.  Stay tuned.

And, we're live ... Kinzin.com launches!

In the last 3 months, my blogging has been light, my email response time extraordinarily slow and my sleeping hours short.  And now I can tell you why!

Kinzin.com ... the project that I've been working on (along with some really incredible, talented, brilliant, super-cool and amazing folks ... and several others who aren't currently blogging) launched today!  I'm eschewing phrases like "Web 2.0" in trying to describe Kinzin.  Short-version: it's an online gathering place for families where you can share news, stories, milestones, events and photos as well as create keepsakes like photobooks.

Long-version: well, just come on over and check it out.  We also have a companion magazine, The Zin.  And penguins.  Lots of penguins :)

Tags: kinzin, family2.0, social networking, family collaboration, penguins

We all knew it would happen ... sooner or later.

That's right.  My avatar, Katicus Sparrow, has a blog.

OK, once you're done chortling over your coffee, come back here.  I'll wait.

Back?  OK.

See, this is the thing.

We need to understand this stuff.  And the only way to understand, it is to play around with it.  Is Second Life the next big thing?  I dunno.  But I want to find out.

I've attended three "professional" events in SL: a Case Camp, the launch of a new business and a monthly meeting of PR flacks.  They were all very different and their efficacy varied, yet I was enriched by all of them.  And part of that enrichment was from the environment. So, Kate's So-Called Second Life, is where I explore that enrichment and that environment.  And take notes about exploring the world.  And laugh at my mistakes.  In the hope that we all learn something.

Announcing CaseCamp Second Life!

I am thrilled to announce the latest addition to the CaseCamp family - CaseCamp Second Life!  So, get your avatars all decked out and sign up today! 

Here are the salient details:

• Thursday, December 14, 2006 
• North American time: 6:00PM Pacfic Standard Time/ 9:00PM Eastern Standard Time 
• GMT: 02:00 (AM) 
• Crayonville Amphitheatre

You can get the full details on the CaseCamp wiki.  And don't worry, this is not a first-come, first-serve event.  Since we're limited in SL to the number of avatars we can have at an event, we're going to do a draw for slots.  And, hey, if you can host a gathering at your locale (i.e. you, your team and maybe even in your clients gather around a boardroom table and you project CCSL on the screen, with just one of you in the sim) even better!

CCSL is being brought to you by some pretty amazing folks:

• C.C. Chapman (Cleon Goff), VP New Marketing for crayon & Host of Managing the Gray 
• Bryan Person (Zeke Barber), podcaster and blogger - Bryper.com 
• Eli Singer, CaseCamp originator

and me .. Kate Trgovac (Katicus Sparrow), digital marketer and blogger - MyNameIsKate

I'm so excited that we're doing this in SL!  Aside from the coolness factor (which there is .. I'm not denying it!), I really believe in the potential of sims like SL to improve our distance communication.  This will be my first SL event, and I know it won't be perfect, nor will it replicate 100% real-world face time; but I'm anxious to see what unique benefits this kind of gathering has.  Cost reduction?  Prejudice reduction?  An increase in purveyors of virtual clothing, architecture and schwag (yes, there will be CCSL t-shirts for your avatars)?  Yes .. and then more. 

I can't *wait* til Dec 14.  What are *you* waiting for?  Get over to Second Life, get your avatar and sign up!  Oh, and we're looking for presenters ... so if you've got a great case (and I mean a GREAT CASE - nothing lame and no sales pitches) then we want to hear from you.  Details are on the wiki.

 

Technorati tags: casecamp, CaseCampSecondLife