"Don't talk unless you can improve the silence." Vermont proverb

"You adapt, evolve, compete or die." Paul Tudor Jones

"When they slam the door in your face, you have to figure out the reasons. That's the essence of marketing." Marc Nathanson

Today's image: Renegade Silhouette Work Must Be Done by Thomas Hawk. Very cool. Thanks for sharing.

Kevin Kelly @ 2007 EG Conference reviews what we've learned in the first 5,000 days of the web and previews the next 5,000 days. Kevin suggests the next 5,000 days will be different. Smarter, More personalized, More ubiquitous. Highly recommended. Bravos, Kevin! Outstanding.

1. Copies have no value
2. Value is in the uncopyable
3. Media wants to be liquid
4. Network effects rule

Kevin leaves his talk with a To Do list...

1. There is only One machine
2. The web is its OS
3. All screens look into the One
4. No bits will live outside the web
5. To share is to gain
6. Let the One read it
7. The One is us
   

Bonus: Kevin's talk reminded me of recent discussions concerning the cloud which led me to look for Hugh's cartoon which led me to this post.

Video of the week: Watching Kevin's talk also reminded me of 1989, the year that the ABC Television Network invited Kevin in to give them his view on where the internet was headed. Which reminded me of a killer presentation made this past June at the Library of Congress by KSU professor Dr. Michael Wesch.

1. Media is not content
2. Media are not just tools of communication
3. Media mediate human relations
4. When media change > Human relations change

Highly recommended - An anthropological introduction to YouTube via YouTube here. Kudos to Michael and his students on their ongoing efforts.

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." Samuel Beckett

"It's not whether you get knocked down; it's whether you get back up." Vince Lombardi

"Only those who dare to fail greatly can achieve greatly." Robert F. Kennedy

The lesson is...to succeed sooner we must learn and understand how to fail faster.

Today's image: Morning Illumination by WisDoc. Beautiful. Thanks for sharing.

Bonus: A Vision of Students Today.

When I graduate I will probably have a job that doesn't exist today

I did not create the problems but they are my problems

The excellent new video by Michael Wesch and his students at KSU. Bravos and kudos to Michael and his students! View via YouTube here. Jump into the conversation here. This new video is the second in a series of three. In the event you missed the first video (The Machine is Us/ing Us) it's a must see via YouTube here. Professor Wesch talks about the key issues put forth in the first video (e.g., "everything is connected", "hello world, in 19 seconds"), video here.

Wesch has also posted another new video Information R/evolution. It chases a bunch of the thoughts and writing of Dr Dave. Video here.

Great comment on the new video by Tim Bulkeley via SansBlogue (It's not what we're teaching, it's HOW we are teaching)...

"More striking and visceral though, for me, was the opening of the video which sets the scene and poses the issue in an empty classroom! The environment in which we teach (onsite classes) is alien and sets up a model of information which is no longer true! Information is no longer scarce, no longer “out there”, no longer even ordered and organised the same way. It is not what we teach, it is how we are teaching that is the problem!

What teaching in the 21st century needs is not “better/more use of technology” - though that would be nice, nor (surely people do not actually believe this!?) students who are “as well educated as we were”, but simply new ways of doing and being. Many of our deep-rooted assumptions are enshrined in material forms, “class” rooms, whiteboards, “lecturers” and the like. So, what do we do to change how we are teaching?"

Bonus 2: TiltViewer

Photo: Snowy Bike by DrStarbuck
Cool shot, thank you!


"Better three hours too soon, than one minute too late." Shakespeare

"Johnson well says, 'He who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything.' Life is made up of little things. It is very rarely that an occasion is offered for doing a great deal at once. True greatness consists in being great in little things." Charles Simmons

Congrats & cheers: Brian Kelly, the way-dialed-in programmer who first turned me on to the Gym Class Heroes and Cupid's Chokehold last summer - yesterday it was Top Ten on Rhapsody's All Genres List. Brian Lamb, the C-SPAN CEO, and all-around good guy, who told Sirius to forget it - the pay radio guys wanted rights to preempt C-SPAN for sports (FYI - C-SPAN remains on XM). Bravo Brian! Mel and his subs would be better served retaining Lamb's excellent PA product and preempting one of the Sirius music channels. Not too late to fix (might need a friend or two on the hill someday, someday soon).

Legend of legends: Gary LaPierre inducted into the WBZ Hall of Fame. Well deserved! Congrats Gary. Boston Herald item here.

Legend of legends 2: Marv Dyson is, arguably, the best dressed man in broadcasting, a mensch, and certainly A Great General Manager. CBS2 pays tribute to my pal Marv, the Chicago legend here.

Safe in Sydney: Ron Fell offers up the last post in his blog series - The Queen Mary 2 adventure here. Bravo Ron, well done! Hi to Kathy. Missed one or more of Ron's posts? You may find an index of Ron's posts from the Pacific here.

John Battelle: John posted a brief interview with Michael Wesch the KSU prof who did the killer Web 2.0 video. Video, via YouTube, here, interview, with comments, here. Kudos John, excellent post, thanks for sharing.

High-tech collides with low-tech: Elinor Mills of CNET News writes...

Google, which has a "significant sales force" that works with Fortune 500 advertisers on display and pay-per-click ads, has been hiring more sales staff and has account managers specifically allocated to radio stations, said Josh McFarland, a product manager for Google's Audio Ads business. The company has "a very high respect for what we call the direct (sales) side of the business," he said. "At the same time, we are committed to the self-service model."

Read Elinor's article, Google hears static on radio bid, here. Seems to me there have been seven changes in broadcast sales since 1965: fax, email, cell phones, traffic software, laptops, ppt and pdf, otherwise, just about everything else is pretty much the same. (Closed circuit to Josh: You don't need the major shops to get your product off the ground. Think "local" and "small retail." Consider "pairings" example: with coupons. One of the radio guys you should be talking to is Chuck Tweedle, he's in the bay area at KOIT)

Bonus: Infinite Thinking Machine, a blog devoted to teachers and students here. Which reminds me, perhaps because of the words thinking and machine, of a PBS series - The Great American Dream Machine. Killer satire on TV first brought to us by public television. If you want to know where the inspiration for SNL came from - look no further. Whatever did happen to Marshall Efron? (LATER - Marshall is doing just fine, still acting, more here. I love the internet!)

Video bonus: IT department "help desk" Middle Ages era. Great waste of bandwidth. Introducing "the book" via YouTube, here

Photo: Madison twilight by KAP'n Craig

Amazing image, thanks. To appreciate this image please click on the photo title above, on the flickr page select "all sizes" above the image, upper left and choose original size. Also keep in mind he shot this from a kite, probably standing on the lake (which is now frozen) and it was single digit cold when he shot it. Bravo KAP'n Craig! (Closed circuit to Madison media: hire this guy or at least license his images for a charity calendar, your website, et al)

Craig Wilson uses a "kite cam" to create his very cool pics. Check out and buy, via Amazon, his book Hanging by a Thread: A Kite's View of Wisconsin here.

"A talent can be cultivated in tranquility; a character only in the rushing stream of life." Goethe

Web 2.0 in less than five minutes: Michael Wesch, an assistant professor of cultural anthropology at Kansas State University, has produced a killer video. Highly recommended. Check it out via YouTube here. Thanks to Dave for the tip.

Nobody liked it but the prospects: The Salesgenie.com Super Bowl ad, one of the ads rated poorly by the ad community, critics and citizens alike, seems to have been a good investment. The company says they signed up more than 10,000 new subscribers by Monday afternoon (they needed 700 new subs to break even on the ad). Salon's King Kaufman has more, Shockingly, the experts - that's all of us - got it wrong on that Salesgenie Super Bowl ad here. Reminds me of something the great David Ogilvy said about those infomercials run in the dead of night..."they work."

The sail to Sydney: Ron Fell posting from the Pacific here. Bravo Ron! Well done.

The Wizards of Buzz: Jamin Warren and John Jurgensen do a fine job reviewing the bidding that has become known as social bookmarking. From Digg.com to Reddit.com to Del.icio.us to StumbleUpon the gang's all here. Read their well-written WSJ piece here. Bravo Jamin and John!

Google will crack the code: Some folks are making a mistake by counting out the Google Audio initiative. Of course there are "hurdles" but none that can not be overcome. View this as a marathon rather than a sprint. It's way early on. Miguel Helft writes about Google via cnet/NYT here

Tribune "self-help" strategy: Sarah Ellison and Dennis K. Berman update the Tribune story writing in WSJ here. My thought is should they sell off broadcast TV they are not likely to retain WGN radio. Assuming a bcf of 40%, a modest 10 multiple would yield $193,600,000. My guess is the station could go for close to $200 mil. Of course several other factors would be in play. Cubs rights and real estate issues could have impact that might not be insignificant.

Wheredaguy?: Ron Jacobs' website, ronjacobsonline, is MIA. Any insight into what's up with the Big Kahuna? My hope is all is well with Ron.

Burger invented here: Was it CT, TX or WI? Fred Winston blogs on the birth of the burger here

W2W Anna Nicole: The freak show was off the chain last week. The characters in the Anna Nicole drama being way too rich to resist. The biopics, the tabs, the November sweeps, the books, the courts, the lawyers, this one is only beginning. Steve Dahl served up his usual, unvarnished, pov..."Friday morning on Today on NBC, they said that Anna Nicole was famous for being famous. It seems to me that she was famous for having really large breasts and an extremely messed up personal life." Read Steve's take here.

Thomas Szasz: "The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget."