I’m hitting the road on Monday for the DEMOfall 09 conference in San Diego, CA.

This will be the 25th DEMO conference that Chris Shipley, has produced in 13 years, but it’ll be the first one I’m attending.  I’ve heard great things about previous DEMO conferences, and because this one is the 25th, and Shipley’s last before she passes the torch to Matt Marshall, it will include a “Lifetime Achievement Awards” ceremony honoring the following 15 well known DEMO alumni: (more…)

I’ll warn you in advance, if you don’t watch Mad Men on AMC, this post probably isn’t going to mean much to you…

In “Don Draper’s Guide to Picking Up Women” (the Saturday Night Live video below), Mad Men protagonist, Don Draper, explains how he seduces women in four easy steps.  As I watched this video on Facebook yesterday, I couldn’t help but laugh at how similar Don’s tips for picking up women are to the “business development” instructions Partners at large management consulting firms give to the more junior members of their teams prior to client meetings:

• “Step 1: When in doubt, remain absolutely silent…
  
• Step 2: When asked about your past, give vague, open-ended answers…
  
• Step 3: Have a great name… (LW Note: It helps if you have a good name in business development, but your company’s name is more important.)
  
• and Finally, Step 4: Look great in a suit. Look great in casual wear. Look fantastic in anything…”

I’ve just updated my public calendar with the following upcoming events. If you’re going to any of the following, drop me a line to introduce yourself:

• Mobilize 09: September 10, 2009 San Francisco, CA
• DEMOfall 09: Sept 21-23, 2009 San Diego, CA
• Motorola Developer Summit: Oct 6, 2009 San Diego, CA
• CTIA IT & Entertainment: Oct 7-9, 2009 San Diego, CA
• WIP Jam: Oct 8, 2009, San Diego, CA

Check out my calendar for more details.

I recently received an email from a start-up called USCORE who wanted to learn more about my consulting services.  USCORE aims to give high school sports teams who are filming games the ability to easily tag each play within the video with the name of each player involved.  Parents that can’t make their child’s game can sign up to receive MMS messages on their mobile phone that show any play their child was involved in real time.

As part of my due diligence, I agreed to see a demo of USCORE’s product.  After multiple assurances that my mobile number would be removed from their system after the demo and I would never be spammed, I provided USCORE with my mobile number so that they could show me their ‘powerful’ MMS feature.  Unfortunately, the MMS demo didn’t work.  And, yesterday, almost four weeks after I saw the initial demo, I learned how ‘powerful’ USCORE’s MMS feature was when I received at least 139 unsolicited MMS messages. (more…)

I just updated the background on my Twitter profile, and thought it might help to share some of what I learned in the process. Here’s how my new Twitter background looks:

Recreating this look (or a variation of it) is VERY easy, if you’ve got Photoshop. You really don’t need to pay someone to do it for you to get a decent result.  Here’s how I created mine: (more…)

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the value of social media monitoring tools in brand and marketing campaign management.  Having now demoed a number of social media monitoring solutions, I’ve realized that while there are a lot of great tools out there, there is still a lot of opportunity for product improvement – especially around mobilization and social media response. (more…)

UPDATED 7/31/09: Below, you’ll find a list I compiled of mobile developer relations professionals on Twitter.  It’s interesting to see how many mobile companies are starting to use Twitter to engage with their developer communities.  The most prolific developer relations tweeps seem to be from Windows Mobile (which lists Twitter, Facebook and YouTube as communications channels on its site), the  Symbian Foundation (which has devoted a whole page on its website to list its Twitterers), and Motorola’s MOTODEV (which also runs communities on YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn).  Twitter is rapidly becoming a great way for developers to aggregate the latest news and information about the various developer programs they participate in, without having to separately check in with each mobile developer community site. (more…)

Over the past few months, I’ve received an increased number of LinkedIn ‘connection’ and Facebook ‘friend’ requests from people I don’t know and with whom I don’t have an obvious mutual connection but often have common professional interests.  I assume that these requests are coming from people who read this blog, as the increase started when I transitioned my old blog from Vox to WordPress and added the social icons you see in the right banner, linking to my public profiles… But, I don’t know for sure, as the requests rarely include a note. (more…)

Yesterday, in researching the list of The Europas’ (TechCrunch Europe Awards) nominees for my last post, it hit me – there are still a lot of start-ups with great products that just don’t understand basic marketing.  Without calling anyone specific out on their mishaps, here are the top 5 basic marketing lessons you can learn from some of the The Europas’ nominees’ mistakes: (more…)

In a deflated economy, the number of people calling themselves “consultants” is on the rise.  Plenty of job seekers are “consulting” while trying to find a full-time, “permanent” role.  Taking on an interim consulting project is a good option if you’re trying to pay the bills while looking for full-time jobs, but consulting isn’t for everyone.  If you’re looking for a consultant to complete a project, in times like this, it’s buyer beware. The kind of people that make great employees don’t always make great consultants.  Doing your due diligence before hiring a consultant is critical. (more…)