I was reading the March issue of Runner’s World and got sucked in to a long and fascinating article about Billy Mills.  I’d never heard of him. He was raised on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, and according to the article is 7/16 Oglala Lakota Sioux.

He ran what is considered one of the greatest races ever on his way to winning the gold medal in the 10,000 meters at the 1964 Olympics. Halfway through the article, I read, “Later they settled in Fair Oaks, a quiet, modest town northeast of Sacramento.”

That makes Billy Mills, the latest of our Sacto Celebrities!  We’re surrounded by people who’ve done incredible things, just go find them, and then do something incredible yourself.

Image from www.amctv.com/madmen

Some of my favorite posts over the last few years have been about how episodes of Mad Men compare to real agency life.

Now according to several sources, Mad Men is coming back on March 25th, and hopefully along with it some great agency scenarios to write about.  Pour yourself a highball of pity, and mis-directed angst and get ready.

About three months ago Aaron received an email from a producer from NPR who was working on a segment.  After several back and forths, an interview at a studio in New York and then a month of waiting, it ran on my favorite radio show last week.

Congratulations to the team at Riskalyze and everyone, take a listen, check them out and support Sacramento startups.

From the LA Times:

The real Rose Bowl excitement may have happened well before kickoff on Monday. At the annual Beef Bowl at Lawry’s in Beverly Hills –- a pregame tradition –- Oregon tackle Mark Asper put his size and strength to the test by performing the Heimlich maneuver on a man choking during dinner.

Asper told the Los Angeles Times that he noticed a commotion at a table near his where a man, the father of an Oregon student, gave the “universal ‘Help me, I’m choking’ signal.’”

A restaurant chef apparently attempted to perform the Heimlich maneuver but was unsuccessful. That’s when the 6-foot-7, 325-pound Asper stepped in.

“I stood up and patted [the chef] on the back and said, ‘If you don’t know what you’re doing, I do, because I’m an Eagle Scout,’ ” Asper said. “So I whipped in there.”

• Smaller social networks for sharing such as Path;
• Social bulletin boards such as Pinterest; and
• Crowdsourcing funding from Kickstarter.

Check out the clip below or on their site.

Social Media Trends for 2012

Image from NYTimes.com

For several years there has been a steady drumbeat of stories of how artists and entertainers are having their work stolen and how the Internet has ruined their ability to make a living.  Yes. it has changed things.

In the wake of Napster, there were many stories about how things have changed forever and people will never pay for music again.  As it turns out, people would pay for music, if it was easy and it was digital.  Just ask Apple.  The iTunes Music Store is how music is sold now.  Same with Amazon.

Now, how about if you’re a comedian?  Your bits show up online all the time, but that doesn’t pay you. Promote you? Yes. Pay the rent? No.

Louis CK is no longer a “struggling comic,” he has a hit show and tours big venues. But like most comedians he relied on others to be able to make money.  Venue owners. A cable company to produce and show a comedy special.  Then he went another way. He hired a production team, and shot his show over two nights. Then he made it available on his own site at https://buy.louisck.net/ with as he says,”No DRM, no regional restrictions, no crap. You can download this file, play it as much as you like, burn it to a DVD, whatever.”  All that for $5.

You think it’ll work? How about 110,000 times since Saturday.

Tonight he posted a statement on his site with a little more detail. First, he begins it with an address to “People of Earth.”  A nod to the Cluetrain?  I hope so. Because the Cluetrain thinking is all over this.  My favorite part:

I really hope people keep buying it a lot, so I can have shitloads of money, but at this point I think we can safely say that the experiment really worked. If anybody stole it, it wasn’t many of you. Pretty much everybody bought it. And so now we all get to know that about people and stuff. I’m really glad I put this out here this way and I’ll certainly do it again. If the trend continues with sales on this video, my goal is that i can reach the point where when I sell anything, be it videos, CDs or tickets to my tours, I’ll do it here and I’ll continue to follow the model of keeping my price as far down as possible, not overmarketing to you, keeping as few people between you and me as possible in the transaction.

This is what everyone said the Internet was going to be about. Making it easy for people exchange ideas, goods etc.  So, if you have something of value, make it easy for people to buy, trust them, and you’ll do alright.  Oh, it also helps if you’re really funny too.

When you work for a firm like this, companies, organizations and people sometimes expect you to solve their problems using communication.  There’s an old adage that if you have a hammer, every problem is a nail.  In our business, that isn’t true.

This was driven home in comments included by our CEO Richard Edelman in a recent address to the IPR 50th Annual Distinguished Lecture and Awards Dinner where he said:

When President Barack Obama was interviewed by Ron Suskind for his new book Confidence Men, he said:

―The area in my presidency where I think we made the most mistakes was less on the policy front and more on the communications front…The irony is the reason I am in this office is because I told a story to the American people… We lost that narrative thread in the day-to-day problem solving…

Going forward as president, the symbols and gestures … what the people are seeing coming out of this office … are at least as important as the policies we put forward.‖

With all due respect, Mr. President, I think you missed the point. You assume that you simply have a communications problem, but policy and communications cannot be separated. And both are tied to operating reality.

The complete text of Mr. Edelman’s address is located on the Edelman web site.

I was part of a discussion today where several people were talking about how a local university official should respond to an incident that has raised ire and outrage around the country.   Many recommendations were offered such as “should have responded to criticism immediately,” and “take control of the narrative,” or “talk directly to the community.”

All are standard “crisis response” tactics that yes should have been followed.  However, the most important is that this isn’t a communication problem. It was a policy problem.  Remember, just because you have a hammer, not everything is a nail.

One other note is something that I have learned through experience, that should be common sense, but doesn’t seem to always make it into people’s minds.  BUILD A NETWORK BEFORE YOU NEED IT.  This means, talk with reporters before you ask them to listen to a pitch, interact with bloggers before you send them an idea, and build strong community relationships before you have a crisis.

I’ve written a few times about how LinkedIn uses data that they have to tell stories.  I’ve been curious about when we have the most trick or treaters, so tonight my daughters kept a chart tracking trick or treaters in half hour time segments.

Then I put the data from that chart into Excel (yes, I’m keeping it simple).

The data I’m sharing here, might have limited utility to many, but my point is that data is all around you, just keep your eyes out for it.

Last year it was the SF Giants logo and this year, I created the “Steve-O-Lantern.”

I just did it again. It’s another local film, this one about the fight to keep the Sacramento Kings in town. Check it out, and support local people telling good stories.