“New technology and media are changing the world,” is a key part of SGS’s marketing promotion. Livestrong CEO Lance Armstrong was there talking about putting on a yellow ribbon to imagine a day without cancer. The country of Myanmar (one of the poorest. most repressive places on the globe) had a lot of livestream attendance. Just look at these numbers:  Mashable says that while 1,700 living-breathing people attended, more than 30,000 (30,000!) live-streamed the event from across the world. Richard Gere showed up (on Tibet). And Mark’s sister Randi Zuckerberg talked about malaria; ending it. While 30k people represent just about about 1% of Mashable’s total 2.5m followers this is still a heady success story for any conference – esp. one with “social good” in the title. Matter of fact, I find myself right now working on a (count’em) 4000-word cover story for the Santa Fe Reporter for October 19th, so I was trawling the “social good” hashtags this afternoon. Factoid: We the people gave in the reach-into-the-pocket way to US philanthropies last year to the tune of $300 billion. The arts, my  bailiwick, saw roughly $33 billion of that. While we all know pots of federal and state funding are shrinking from an already anoxeric size, wow, social good and technology. Mashable’s new media conf happens in New York November 10.

For more the Mashable YouTube channel is the spot:

http://www.youtube.com/mashable#p/a/u/0/-Nobp3n6FHU

The New York Times reported yesterday (October 2) that the bloom is off the deal-of-the-day rose. Consumers (the small portion) who use them religiously do not turn out to have the brand loyalty that the deal-offerers were told they could expect. And so the news of the new media get-rich-quickest scheme turns out still to offer that cautionary tale: That sometimes the best way is the slow way. If 50% of your advertising works (and you never know which 50%), it probably does so by generating brand awareness, first. Then (because these are new times), you have to do something beyond a one-day deal to offer value. Make the experience that much sweeter. Give people indeed, something more. That elusive task which, yes, occasions more work, for those who do believe that work is its own (or future) reward. For the full New York Times story, read here.

“I missed Watergate,” he said, “but I’m sure this is just as good.”

While the news of our world – politicians posturing for the cameras and threatening to drive the country into credit default; the President having wholesale abandoned the progressives who elected him – has lately put the news of phone hacking and jacking the story by the News of the World slightly on the back burner, let’s really not forget (shall we?) that if James Murdoch did not know what his company was writing a check for 600,000 British pounds for, and if Rupert Murdoch claims rarely to talk to editors (while being avidly interested in politics), somebody is likely lying. And I would venture from the harried and harassed expression of intense anxiety on the face of Rebekah Brooks that it could not have failed to occur to her that if her superiors really were to be believed about what they did not know, she would certainly have had to know, and so on.

What is sorry about this entire situation is that there are actually journalists who still get the story the old-fashioned way, by following the leads, interviewing sources, and not making things up. As TV goes, the hearings in front of the media, sports and culture committee of Parliament reflected that their politicians appear a lot better prepared than ours to ask the tough questions, and to insist on the follow-up. I’m late posting this but just catching up on my own blog as adobeairstream has been absorbing most of my personal oxygen lately.

Not yesterday, tomorrow or next week. Because this great shop called Blackmarket not only has pencils I am coveting as a way back to writing by hand – yes, one of those practices that we novelty techies (i.e., people for whom technology has saved our lives and changed our lives but ruined our handwriting). But because (see, maybe it’s ruined my grammar, too) any website that posts, “the contents of the shop are not illegal,” on their home page, is a place that makes me crave that kind of humidity not to mention, shall we say, turgid sense of humor. Also, Cool Hunting is a great blog and I am just loving living vicariously through it. What was that about not remembering how to write?

Society 66 art as shown on Cool Hunting (dot com)

Some of the questions they will want answers to if you wish to submit an online portfolio for their perusal are these:

Kimag hosts a many question answering session.

Top five’s
Top five all time songs…
Top five brand new songs…
Top five all time movies…
Top five recent movies…
Top five dead people I’d like to
meet…
Top five alive people I like to
meet…
Top five food…
Top five drinks…
Top five creative idols…
Top five wonder women…
Top five superheroes…
Top five books…
Top five creative tools…
Top five materials…

Here’s that link to the full submission file and they rightly advise you to go get a cuppa and sit a while before answering.