DSC_0273, originally uploaded by david parmet.

All ice as far as the eyes can see. Be careful out there!

The Blog Council is sponsoring BlogWell, a day of case studies from big companies using social media. From the website:

BlogWell is the only conference devoted to learning how big businesses successfully participate in social media. You’ll learn directly from the executives at the largest corporations in the world who are engaging in this right now.

This is one I’d love to attend if I could just jet off to Chicago - real case studies from well-known companies on how they are using social media.

and…

Chris Thilk of Spout has pointed me to a new partnership between Spout and MeDeploy to support independent filmmakers. Chris writes:

Spout can help you connect with an audience and make people aware of the movie you’ve made. MeDeploy helps your film be seen, which ultimately is the goal of any filmmaker.

Link

Social media is lowering the barrier to entry in a whole range of industries - from publishing to movies and music. In the case of this partnership, filmmakers now have easy tools to market and distribute their works. Great deal.

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International Year of Astronomy

This year has been declared by the United Nations as the International Year of Astronomy. 400 years ago, in 1609, Galileo Galilei turned his crude telescope to the sky, saw the mountains and craters of the Moon, the phases of Venus and the moons of Jupiter and from that moment on, nothing was ever the same.

Before Galileo, it was a widely held belief that the Greeks were the highpoint of knowledge, civilization and culture and it was pretty much all downhill from there. And the Greek notions of how the world worked were held to be the final word on science and mathematics.

The Greeks held peculiar notions about our world. The Earth was made up of Fire, Air, Water and Earth. The four elements were in a constant tug of war - fire and air to push up and water and earth to pull down - resulting in our imperfect, flawed Earth.

The Heavens were held to be perfect. Made up of quintessence, or the heavenly essence. The Moon, Sun, Planets and Stars moved about us in orbits perfectly circular. The Moon and Sun were perfect spheres (the markings on the Moon were believed to be an obstruction from the imperfect air about the Earth). The heavens and the Earth were held to be very different from each other.

To the medieval mind, in the age of wars, plagues and famine, the notion of a small, perfect Universe with God in his perfect Heaven watching from above, must have been especially comforting. By the beginnings of the time we now call the Age of Enlightenment, the Geocentric model of the Universe, as expounded by Ptolemy in the 2nd Century, was showing its age.

If you spend enough time under the night sky, the limitations of the Ptolemaic / Geocentric view will become apparent. The retrograde motion of the outer planets in their orbits, the fact that the inner planets (Mercury and Venus) don’t go across the sky like the rest of the heavenly population but instead transit back and forth around the Sun. All of this pointed to a different model - the Heliocentric model of a solar system with the Sun in the middle and the planets in their orbits around it.

Nicolaus Copernicus was the first scientist to espouse the Heliocentric view, but it took Galileo to prove it with his observations. And in the process, Galileo created the modern scientific method, where evidence and experimentation replaced superstition, wishful thinking and and slavish deference to the past.

Galileo offered his proof of the motion of the Earth around the Sun and dared the scientific, political and religious establishment of his day to prove him wrong - not by pointing to the bible and Aristotle but with empirical evidence derived from observation and experimentation.

By doing so, Galileo brought us out of the darkness of ignorance and superstition and created the modern world.

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I visited a funeral home yesterday. No, no one has died. I was helping a relation do some pre-planning.

It struck me there, walking through the casket display (and there is one, believe it or not) that this industry is so shrouded in mystery and misinformation yet it represents something that all of us, each and every one, will have to go through mulitple times in our lives.

Our parents will die. Our spouses and eventually we will all die. And we’ll have to visit the funeral home and pick out a casket or urn, leaf through brochures and write checks.

Here’s an industry that could really benefit from some social media. If there’s anyone out there in the funeral business, drop me a line and let’s talk. Have I got a blog idea for you.

Why is it that wine and social media seem so right for each other?

2008 was both wonderful (the election of Barak Obama, the Giants winning the Super Bowl) and horrible (clients who didn’t understand contracts and needed to be threatened with lawyers). I’ll take the good over the bad any day.

2009 is already shaping up to be in the plus column - I’ve got some leads lined up and it seems if we all keep our heads down we’ll make it through this recession like we made it through the last one, and the one before that.

I’ve been through a few of these and one thing always happens - when things are at their worst is when the best ideas come forth. It was the heart of the early 90s - when we were mired in recession and unemployment and GenX ennui that the Internet boom started. And it was in the midst of the post 9/11 crash that Web2.0 was born.

So what’s coming? I don’t know but I’m betting it will be at least as exciting as that least go round.

According to The Onion “Even CEO Can’t Figure Out How RadioShack Still in Business”

“Every location is full of bizarre adapters, random chargers, and old boom boxes, and some sales guy is constantly hovering over you. It’s like walking into your grandpa’s basement. You always expect to see something cool, but it never delivers.”

Link

Confession: I’m a Ham operator and even I can’t figure out why RadioShack still exists. There was a time when you could get a decent shortwave receiver, a build your own AM radio kit or enough electronic components to keep a geeky teenage boy busy for days. Now the Internet and mail order has taken over the retail side of the radio and electronics hobby. Ironically, it is the existance of larger Internet-based retailers that have saved hobbies like shortwave, Ham radio, astronomy and a great deal of other old school pursuits.

RadioShack seems destined to join Gimbles, Mays and Crazy Eddies on the dust heap of retail history. But somehow it lingers on.

There are a lot of stores in the mall like that. Would you even care if American Eagle or Brookstone closed down? Did you notice the demise of the Sharper Image? The future of retailing looks bleak, especially after this year.

Kristin Maverick has a good post laying out the rational for this point of view, and cautioning (correctly):

But, as social media has changed the way we think, the traditional PR agency will also need to adapt to the new ways of handling these social media requests. While PR may be the right man for the job right now, it’s also important for PR to include others to help get it done. From partnerships with other specialists to new technologies and advancements emerging everyday, the acceptance of all things changing will only help create successful outcomes and ensure social media success.

Link

I’m inclined to agree, both with the notion that social media is part of public relations, and that traditional PR agencies will have to grow and change their ways of doing business to get the job done. I suppose this is one of those challenges for 2009.

Aside from just “getting it,” whatever your definition of “it” might be, PR agencies are going to have to be a lot smarter on the nuts and bolts of how the Web and social media work. For one thing, to look at many agency web sites, one would be excused for believing the industry is trapped in the late 1990s. Too many agencies have flash intros or sites built entirely on Flash. Too many agencies tout their social media starts but don’t have blogs, or even RSS feeds for their client news. And too many agencies are treating social media now like they treated online communications in the 1990s - as something separate from the “real work” of media relations.

Most of all, PR agencies have to drop the habit of viewing each new social media tool as a means to shout their clients’ messages to as many people as they can grab.