Zell pops Bubbles...

Since I'm in Chicago, this caught my eye and is fascinating on many levels.

Real-estate magnate Sam Zell shared some shockers and made plenty of good points about the challenges of re-invention of Tribune's business model in an interview with Conde Nast Editor-in-Chief, Joanne Lipman (11/12/08 at Quadrangle Group's Foursquare media conference).



While Zell comes off as flippant and even obnoxious at times (although he was more on the defense during this "interview"), Lipman brings the sense of journalist entitlement that has contributed to the mess in her own way with a string of petty jabs. Alot of this seems like common-sense business and despite zero experience in media, Zell makes alot of sense.

Many monopoly or duopoly industries get dysfunctional (kind of like Detroit's Big 3) that complacency abounds. In ad sales this amounted to an "order taking" culture and not so surpringly minimal incentives. Why not,? There was no downside to pursing that stratgy. Meanwhile, the editorial side was allowed to pursue high-minded goals that are not very measureable and/or have little impact on revenue, e.g. Pulitzer Prizes.

Online it is an audience and advertiser free-for-all; ultimately, this will resolve itslef in a Joseph-Strumpeter-creative-destruction sort of way.

Aaron Lynch Mystery Ends, He Passed Away

If you found this page from entering his email: aaron@thoughtcontagion.com or aaron@mcs.net heads-up. 3 years and one month later - better late than never. I just learned that Aaron Lynch the author of Thought Contagion had passed away a few years ago.

Aaron was a phycist by training but really ahead of his time with his own ideas about memetics. I was introduced to him by my old boss from Louisville-based Military Channel (the original in '98). When I saw his site and realized he was in Chicago, I contacted him and we met up with him for dinner on one visit and staid in touch. Aaron's work hit on alot of what anecdotally worked in various viral marketing projects that I've been involved with - his work was very accessible.

Aaron and I last spoke over lunch at Charlie's Ale House in Lincoln Park, Chicago back in June 2002 after I had returned from RealMedia. It was after 9/11 and he shared some new projects with me including 1) Sexually-Transmitted Beliefs, 2) Consulting work he was doing for the CBOT or Merc Exchange and 3) A hush-hush project that involved the government.

The Coroner's Report stated that Aaron Lunch died from an accidental overdose of painkillers . He was laid to rest in Homewood Gardens, Illinois.

Measuring Widgets...

Testing this out - very promising so far.

Widget virulence can be measured or tracked a few different ways depending on the capabilities of your widget technology provider and your analytics tools.

From the mouth of Babes...Arduino

Wow, this is a whole new thing! While usually, this blog is reserved for online media and marketing subjects and sometimes interesting economics ideas...teenage daughter formerly known as the post-modern toddler has done it again.

:)

Here's what happened: teenage daughter is building a project in class (2-for-1 re-purposed for another class mind you). Involved controlling LEDs in an array for a ornamental appliance...she had some ideas.

We visited Fry's to see what they had as far as microcontrollers with basic documentation...kind of pricey for science experimentation. Then she mentioned that at her school, kids suggested Arduino to her. Saw it in a book on robot-making. After alot of research on Arduino's site we picked up the Duemillenove model and a book by one of the main collaborators Massimo Banzi. We've both been reading this very good introductory book (published by O'Reilly). It spans, electronics, programming, crowdsourcing and hacking ethos in a very encouraging way.


Great article in Wired, Build It. Share It. Profit. talking about the team, concept of open hardware and fascinating implications for the manufacturing business models. Not clear if it will work(long-term), but definitely some food for thought as to how it is working(short-term). Interesting how many haters miss the point in the comments...

Bravissimo...stay tuned for updates on the forthcoming gadget.