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A colleague of mine forwarded a great article to me called “Beware the Social Media Charlatans” by Robert Strohmeyer at PC World.  In it, Strohmeyer cautions against spending resources on the burgeoning social media consultants popping up all over the country.  The problem, as he sees it:

Combine a rapidly growing trend of social media adoption with an economy that has forced hundreds of thousands of workers to reinvent themselves as entrepreneurs, and you’ve got the perfect recipe for consultant overload.  Since nobody seems to know what the hell’s going on with Twitter anyway, nearly anyone can pass themselves off as an expert on the subject. So suddenly all those poseurs who might otherwise have bilked the hapless with offers of life coaching services or Feng Shui consulting have jumped on the social networking bandwagon. You can hardly swing a stick on the sidewalk nowadays without smacking one of these guys in the head.

While I haven’t personally been in a position to hire a social media consultant, I am ocassionally annoyed by the risible amount of self-promotion through social media channels these folks seem to require to keep their businesses going.  And I’m sure that if my livlihood depended on teaching businesses how to Twitter, I’d be pretty miffed about Mr. Strohmeyer’s article.  But then again, the term “consultant” has always been a loaded one, and I’m sure that most consultants have already come to grips with that in their own businesses.

The truth is, even at our agency, which is filled with a lot of very smart and creative people, social media has yet to be proven the panacea and/or the gold mine that a lot of marketers want you to believe.  It’s an important component to consider for some businesses and certainly valuable for individuals who want to take control of what the Internet is saying about them, but the metrics just aren’t there to support some of the radical positions I’ve heard at conferences and in the blogosphere.

But here’s my favorite part of the article:

The truth is that there are almost no rules in social networking that don’t already apply in just about any other social environment. A great many smart people have already written worthy perspectives on how to be a good citizen on Facebook and Twitter, and I hardly need to reiterate here what amounts to general common sense. Just as in life, the only rule that really matters is the Golden Rule. All the rest is either derivative, or flat-out nonsense, and you really shouldn’t be paying big bucks for either. [emphasis mine]

This is true.  Think about it.  Let’s say you went to a party where 10% of the people you knew intimately, 20% were best friends, colleagues, etc., and the remaining 70% were acquaintances, important people from another time in your life that you didn’t keep up with that often, and some people that you admire from afar as potential business connections.  I’d say that probably approximates the Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn profiles of many.  During that party, which let’s just say lasts an entire day, you update everyone you can about the fact that you’re speaking at a conference.  That’s normal, and good, right?  But here’s the thing – you probably wouldn’t tell everyone things like, “I just woke up,” or, “THESE ARE MY FIVE FAVORITE THINGS”, or “according to a survey I took, I am most like the Sex in the City character Gandalf the Orange” multiple times.

And you certainly wouldn’t want one of the people at that party to be a smooth-talking salesman for a company who’s product you might use but you don’t care much about, like soap, or paper, or maybe even an interactive agency or social media consultant!  If they had something valuable to say that was directly beneficial to you or interesting, that’s one thing, but you’d never invite a broadcaster of unwanted content to your party, at least not on purpose.  Your time is limited, and you don’t appreciate it being wasted.

Facebook recently included a “Hide” feature for removing status updates from those people that you want to stay “friends” with but are sick of hearing from.  I don’t know about you, but I welcomed the opportunity to shut out some of the noise so that I could spend my time keeping up with people who were interested in having an actual conversation.

A social media strategy for a company, or for an individual, requires the thoughtful guidance of someone who is skilled at building relationships.  And I like Robert Strohmeyer’s advice – the first rule to think about is the Golden one.

There is a particularly nasty virus out there that is very new, and so there isn’t a lot out there that has been written about it. I just wasted my entire Sunday trying to clear our home computer of it, and I finally think I’ve found a solution, so I thought I would post it here. My symptoms were that whenever I would search for anything in Google, MSN, or Yahoo, the results would appear as normal, except that all of the links were redirected to bogus spam sites.

As it turns out, I had some sort of Trojan Downloader, which had jumped on the web an infected my system with all kinds of nasty stuff. Most of it was easy to clear with some of my favorite ( and FREE!) antivirus and anti-spyware software (AVG Free, Spybot Search & Destroy, and Zone Alarm).

However, even with the Trojan (which, when you think about it, is a misnomer because the Greeks built the Trojan horse, not the Trojans) was cleared, the search results remained the same. Because this is so new, a lot of the forums online don’t have solutions posted yet. Late this evening some started showing up, so I’ll post the solution that worked for me.

I found it here, amidst some bantering about Linux vs. Mac vs. Windows. Basically, if when your search results are loading you see “7.7.7.0″ in your browser’s status bar, you need to browse to your C:/Windows/system32/wdmaud.sys and delete the file. You still need to run the antivirus programs to get rid of the Trojan that started the problem (and possibly downloaded other goodies on your PC), but deleting this file did the trick for me.

I really hope that helps someone out there, and I’m grateful to all of the altruistic techies out there who work to make the internet a slightly safer place.

Oh, and Happy New Year!

A beautiful fall vista from the Blue Ridge Parkway

Fall colors on the side of a mountain in the Blue Ridge Range

I had a great time this weekend shooting fall foliage. Sometimes when you’re in a business development, management, or strategy role, you get too far away from the creative process. At least that’s the way it works for me. This photo is another reason why I really love the area that we live in…if I lived in the middle of LA or Chicago I’m sure I’d find different and exciting images to make, but I really think Appalachia offers limitless opportunities.

I used some of my new filters to make these images, and I’m highly impressed with both products. The top image was taken using a of these images used some great filters that I highly recommend. The top image was taken with a Singh-Ray Graduated Neutral Density filter, and the second image was taken with a Tiffen Circular Polarizer.

This morning I thought I would stretch my weary creative soul and attempt to make beautiful what I’ve always felt was a bit ugly. I grew up in northern Indiana, where lots of snow in the winter is still pretty common, so I love snow and what it does to a landscape. However, the part of lots of snow that always got a little ugly was when the roads were salted and cars started driving over them, defiling the pristine blanket and turning it into a ruddy, grey, and sloppy urban slosh-fest.

So here you are…part abstract art, part creative exercise. And I still love snow!

…we just got an offer on our house! Sure, you tell yourself, “this happens everyday”. And it does. But you see, my wife and I are victims of the mortgage crisis. No, we didn’t take a ridiculous ARM that got hyper-inflated and then we had to foreclose; instead, we got a great rate on a 30 year fixed mortgage, bought a house we could afford within our budget, and were very responsible with payments, maintenance, etc.

However, we decided to move after only being in the house for a little over a year, and right as we moved (in March of 2007), the bottom of the housing market fell out where we were living. We listed the house on March 1, 2007, and from March until July or so we got about a dozen showings. From July 07 to December 07 we had only 2 showings. So an offer is a very big deal to us.

We’ve been shelling out mortgage and rent payments now for over 10 months, and although we’ve never been wanting for anything, it has been very frustrating. What a relief to know that the end may be near.

So, the next time you’re thinking about being fiscally irresponsible, or that mortgage fraud is a victimless crime, think of us. Every bankruptcy by an irresponsible person is paid for by responsible people, just like bogus healthcare claims are paid for by responsible people.

That being said, I can’t help but be a bit cynical at the idea of the federal government sending checks to everyone in the country as a reward for being irresponsible, but hey, that’s probably because I’m not in the government. And that’s probably because I don’t have any MySpace friends.

Thanks for your thoughts and prayers. I’ll let everyone know how this turns out.

What will Gates do next?

So, if you were the richest man in the world, knew lots and lots of famous people, had virtually unlimited resources, and had spent the last 50+ years of your life being completely serious, what would you do with your last keynote speech at the company you started? Check out what Bill did (or rather, Bill’s PR and Marketing departments?)…it’s pretty funny.

And yes, for the grammatically inclined, you do place an apostrophe “s” after singular nouns that end in “s”. I looked it up.

…and go spend your precious time with family and friends. Merry Christmas!

Please be patient with me…upgrading the look and feel of the blog over the next couple of days, and getting my Wordpress upgrade completed. Feel free to comment and read on, but not everything may work from a navigation or presentation standpoint. Thanks!

Oh, and yes, I do know that I should use a test URL for doing this, but that’s just too much work. Thanks for understanding.

Who can forget LeVar Burton, with his inspiring, chop-block haircut or his famous “you don’t have to take my word for it” toss to elementary school students’ review of popular children’s books? While LeVar will always be with me, my parents are both avid and voracious readers of their respective interests, and I’m afraid I must credit them, rather than LeVar, for my insatiable desire to read anything I can get my hands on. But still, it did feel really good to track down an 80’s version of their logo and put it on this blog. Thanks Wikipedia!

I’m currently plowing my way through 1421: The Year China Discovered the World by Gavin Menzies. It’s another installment in a fascinating run of historical books (by a variety of different authors) that are gradually turning what we were all taught in elementary school about pre-Columbus times into unfounded, Anglo-centric fantasies. 1421 asserts that magnificent, imperial China discovered the New World and was the first to circumnavigate the globe; Columbus, Magellan, and De Gama were all just following in China’s footsteps. Another great read, 1491, makes the case for the pre-European Americas brimming with advanced civilization and culture, rather than being sparsely populated with savage tribes.

So why the post on reading? The answer is simple. In a world where, as Steve Newton often laments to me, “no one reads long blog posts anymore,” reading across a variety of subjects is one of the things that keeps me successful at my job. Account Directors and Executives, unless they are assigned to one giant account, typically have to deal with a large variety of clients, and within those clients, a large variety of personalities and interests. Being a broad reader helps me to better relate to everyone I come in contact with, and I have to believe that it makes me a better writer as well. Plus, I’m gradually coming to terms with the fact that I am, indeed, a huge nerd (more on that later), so reading for me is just plain fun.

Given China’s booming economy and history of being a resurgent global power, I’d highly recommend we all brush up on our Chinese history and culture. I have more to say on this subject, but I’ll keep it brief this time in order to keep my twittered audience from information overload. Thanks for reading.

I got this timely image from wikipedia, although I was tempted to steal one from Flickr for my commercial gain.

I have a question for you businesspeople out there: do you ever salute a fellow businessperson in the hallway going to or from a meeting? I do. In fact, I counted myself doing it over 5 times today, and I received 3 salutes this morning. Where did this come from? I’ve noticed it in small business as well as in massive corporations. While I’ve noticed that mostly men salute each other, I have been saluted by women as well (although I don’t recall ever saluting a woman…must be some repressed misogyny in there somewhere).

While admittedly strange, I think this behavior has a rational explanation to it. Let’s begin with the hallway, the most likely place one would receive or give a salute. A hallway is never a destination unto itself. A hallway is, by its very nature, a pathway to somewhere else. Therefore those in a hallway are transient and unable to engage one another in a meaningful (time consuming) way, because the very purpose of being in the hallway is to go to someplace else.

Naturally, exceptions abound, especially if the water cooler, photocopier, microwave, or vending machine happens to be in the hallway. But I digress.

So my theory: eventually, saying “What’s up?”, “Hey, how’s it going?” and the like become somewhat meaningless, because, being en route, you don’t really have the time to listen to the answers to those questions. Or worse, someone might ask you to do something for them, or tell you about their bad day. In the hallway of all places!

This leaves you with only a few options. First, you can briskly walk by the other person and look down at the floor, your papers, or your watch, basically demonstrating non-verbally that you have more important things to do than to engage another human being gliding down the hallway. Or, you can wait until the last possible moment to make your move, connecting with a brief smile, a head nod (up, or down? which is better?), and a barely audible “Hi”.

OR, you can salute! This gesture, borrowed from our military, simultaneously acknowledges someone’s presence and gives them a certain measure of respect. It says, “Hello there, fellow hallway dweller, I see you there and recognize your duties within this hallway are the same as mine, to move on. And while I’m happy to see you, we both agree with this gesture that we have other things to do. I’m being short, but man, I’m being friendly.”

Now that I’ve done a little comm theory dissection on the salute, I will probably feel too self conscious to use it again for awhile. In the mean time, I’m going to start leaving for meetings a few minutes early, and spend some quality time in the hall.