This wacky business of PR isn’t easy to understand if you’re standing on the outside. I was curious about how much my mom had absorbed on the PR profession through sheer osmosis and interviewed her a few years back on the topic. Armed with an iPhone and my trusty videographer — that would be my …more
I wrote a post a few weeks ago about how even smart people often fail at discerning poor quality information from the good stuff. It turns out that my cousin, Todd Quinn, a business and economics librarian at the University of New Mexico, deals with this issue every day and even teaches classes to help …more
It’s that time of year, prompting me to dust off my favorite birthday card from my granddaughter, Addy. In the spirit of full disclosure, she crafted this card some time ago, and I have posted about it before. Still, if TBS can show “It’s A Wonderful Life” every year on Christmas Day, I figure I …more
I recognize that I live in this bubble called Silicon Valley where the promise of a better juicer can attract $120 million in venture capital, fail and everyone thinks this is normal. $120,000,000. Is it just me or does that seem like a lot of money down the drain? Of course, there are many Silicon …more
Nieman Lab published an article last week, “Even Smart People Are Shockingly Bad at Analyzing Sources Online,” that lives up to the headline. In one exercise, those in the study — a mix of fact checkers, historians and students — were asked to compare two websites and make a judgment call on the one they …more
We will celebrate the Agency’s 30-year anniversary tomorrow. Alumni are flying in from New York and Tokyo and places in between. The two clients who generated that thing called revenue when we opened our doors in 1987 will be there. Current staff are ready to get this party started. We’ll see so many people who …more
The New York Times published a feature, “Old Skills, New Career,” on Friday that examines the question on everyone’s mind, perhaps with the exception of stand-up comics and UFC fighters. . . The story paints a gloomy picture for those with skills projected to lose the battle against computerized brethren: “Even if workers want to …more
I recognize the value of multi-tasking. In today’s business environment, the staccato nature of incoming requests requires one to toggle back and forth across many tasks at once. Maybe the Boy Scouts should offer a merit badge for handling Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram while cooking freeze-dried mashed potatoes. Yet, one of the inevitable downsides of …more
The Silicon Valley Index from Joint Venture Silicon Valley leaves no byte unturned. For those who don’t have the time to wade through 100 action-packed pages, I offer the CliffsNotes, filtered by 25+ years of living in Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley is Larger Than Rhode Island Taking in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, Fremont, …more
