Friday Chill Music (September 3, 2010)

Another awesome playlist from Kenna. Definitely subscribe to his blog.

Loved the scenario the picture he painted for this playlist...


"It’s a Friday, ~4:30pm, and you just got to New Orleans for a bachelor party. You’re fired up to see everyone, for the weekend, etc. You find the nearest bar for the first beer(s) of the weekend and to catch up with everyone. You know it’s not that sweet a place, but it’s spring so they have the windows/doors open and it’s not too crowded so you don’t have to fight for space. In fact, your crew and a couple rough locals are the only people there. Most importantly, they have one of those internet jukeboxes that plays music just loud enough to enjoy, so the music world is your oyster for setting the tone / getting fired up to hang out with great friends all weekend. Here are a few of my go-to tunes."

Ben's Friends is Looking to Start More Networks

Yowsers...

Print Article

http://www.thestar.com/printarticle/854018

"What would happen if, instead of spare change, you handed a person in need the means to shop for whatever they needed? What would they buy? Can you spare your credit card, sir?"

Michael Douglas on Cancer

Sports Guy referred this really great video of Michael Douglas discussing his throat cancer. This is why we do the Ben's Friends patient support networks. Michael Douglas can go on Letterman and generate support and information exchange nationally. Our members aren't movie stars, but they get the same type of support and information on the networks.

Just Because...

Shalon's 2010 AVM Walk Documentary

Shalon from AVMSurvivors.org put together this awesome documentary on this year's AVM Walk in San Francisco. I missed the walk this year but the year before was awesome. Meeting everyone in person really helped cement my relationship with everyone on AVMSurvivors. This year the AVMSurvivors group ended up raising $10k for the walk, pretty darn impressive! I'm so glad Shalon made this video because it made me feel like I was there in a small way.



Here's the video I made from the year before:

Funny Dating Advice

Funny dating blog I found via my Facebook feed. The one below is funny and great advice.

"126. Don't date guys whose email address is their firstname@firstlastname.com

It's a bit of a red flag for arrogance (okay who are we kidding... its a big red flag for arrogance) to have your own firstlastname.com and make it your email. If you want someone more down to earth (and less obsessed with himself) stick with dudes that use the the regular ole firstlastname@gmail.com and you'll be fine. Another red flag is @aol.com but that's an entirely different issue.".

The "OBP of Social Media"

Really neat post by my buddy Papi on what he calls the OBP of Social Media. OBP is a baseball term that abbreviates On Base Percentage. In baseball, it's short hand doing something productive in your at bat. Here is the beginning of his article. Read below and then Click through.

A short digression, but it's really exciting for me to see my friends from Kellogg putting up posts that relay their experiences and opinions. That's one of the main reasons I started this blog 3 years ago. I wanted to create seed a hub for my Kellogg friends so we wouldn't lose track of each other. It's worked better than I ever could have hoped with many people contributing the bulk of my content. On the marketing front, their insights are invaluable as many of my friends now run big brands. Brands that spend a lot of money on marketing. I want to know what they are thinking and it's so cool to be able to read it on a lazy Sunday.

Papi:


"OBP, how can I ‘splain it?   It’s the fabled baseball metric that rose from obscurity proceeding Michael Lewis’s Moneyball.   OBP ( on-base percentage) indicates how good a hitter is at getting on base (duh), and is highly correlated with winning.   It’s so simple in its elegance, but was largely overlooked for many years by “old baseball”.   You get on base more, you score more, you win more. 

When evaluating brand efforts on social media efforts, there are so many metrics companies can use and few that are universally regarded as an effectiveness or brand health correlate.  The most powerful marketing, don’t forget, is positive word of mouth (or so the old adage goes).

I’ve been doing some social media benchmarking for brands in my marketspace (personal care goods).  I would propose that the ratio of “lovetweets” (positive engaging posts about a product, brand, company, advert) to deal/promotional retweets is the most revealing statistic about your brand’s standing with consumers."

Inca's Puzzles

Cute article on doggy puzzles written by Inca, the official mascot of www.LivingWithAtaxia.org. Inca's one smart doggy!

Fort Mason Farmer's Market

Highly reccomend the Farmer's Market in Fort Mason on weekends. Delicious vegetables and a great taco stand seen below.

Article: How playtime is responsible for Post-It Notes, Lasik, and more - (37signals)

How playtime is responsible for Post-It Notes, Lasik, and more - (37signals)
http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1804-how-playtime-is-responsible-for-post-it-notes-lasik-and-more

---

How playtime is responsible for Post-It Notes, Lasik, and more

Jobs:

See more on the Job Board.

Are you giving employees time to play? Often, that's when breakthrough ideas happen.

It's something Jim Coudal has mentioned before — how he actually encourages employees to goof around. I asked him to expand on that and here's what he wrote:

Most of the smart, creative, successful people I know spend a good deal of time looking for inspiration, tracking down ideas and doing research.

We do all those things too, we just don't have a problem with calling it what it is, "goofing around."

Play is essential, it's through play that you find connections between things that might not be at all obvious through logic or practicality.

If you don't have any accidents how are you ever going to have happy ones?

3M gives all employees 15-20 percent free time to work on their own projects. If it's a success, the project can be spun off into a new business and the employee who originated it is given an equity share. Most of the inventions that 3M depends upon today came from this free time.

In 1968, 3M employee [Art] Fry was singing in the church choir and got annoyed that his bookmark kept falling out of his hymnal. "It was during the sermon," Fry remembers, "that I first thought, What I really need is a little bookmark that will stick to the paper but will not tear the paper when I remove it." Fry wondered whether it would be possible to create a repositionable bookmark that would stick only gently to a page. In the months after his church choir daydreaming, he spent his side-project time researching what would ultimately become the adhesive behind the hugely popular yellow Post-it Note. It was an unexpected, even random, invention that saw the light of day thanks to 3M's flexible employee policy.

Talk at eBay

Today I gave a talk at eBay to the the tech group that builds and runs all the advertising products. My good buddy Matt Madrigal runs the group. He introduced my professional credentials quickly, and then did two minutes on my endless appetite for pizza. It was a hit with the crowd to say the least.

Note the icon next to my name.

Kenna is blogging and I'm stealing one of his playlists for Friday Chill Music, even though he specifically designed his playlist to counteract the overt sensitivity of my playlists. I met Kenna at Kellogg and he has great taste!


Click through the post to get to the playlist (I couldn't figure out how to embed it).

This Doesn't Seem Safe