The Starfish And the Spider

I started a new book called the Starfish and The Spider- it’s all about the difference between top-down organizations and those that self-organize and mutate easily, like starfish. Since I am a biologist by nature, this whole analogy automatically appeals, but the underlying idea is most intriguing- how bottom up organizations can outcompete or [...]

Social Media Club, Philly Style

I went to a wonderful meeting at the Bravo Group last night, for the Social Media Club, started by Howard Greenstein. Howard has started many local chapters of the Social Media Club, and it’s something we need desperately in Philadelphia.
There are an amazing number of interesting people in Philadelphia, involved in podcasting, blogging, [...]

New Media and Brand Affiliation

This post started out from great observations from Chris Penn of the Financial Aid Podcast. Chris wrote about understanding unfamiliar Canadian Brands on his recent drive to Podcamp Toronto, by looking where the brand was located and what its neighbors were in the mall/signage department. ie. If you don’t know what a Tim [...]

It’s All About Connections

I’ve been thinking a lot about community lately.
Community has been important since the beginning of civilization.  People self-sort into all sorts of communities, usually based on similar interests.  Communities form around geographic locations (neighborhoods), schools, religion (churches, temples, mosques, etc.) politics, social values, medical conditions – you name it, and there’s a group of people [...]

Commercialization and Monetization- Is there a hidden cost?

This is a topic that many people in the new media world are wrestling with- How can you make money, or make a living, doing what you love? Or does making money at something you love turn it into a job? And is that a good thing or a bad thing?
I regularly wrestle [...]

Community Matters

I spent last weekend in Toronto at PodCamp, and presented a session with Mark Blevis and Chris Brogan about Return on Influence.  What Mark and I call the real ROI (rather than return on investment) of new media.  This session was about how the power of new media is in building bridges and relationships between [...]