Friday, January 14, 2005

Paying respects

Steve Gillmor pays due respect to Marc Canter, Robert Scoble, Bill Gates and Brother Dan.

Terminal town

I shot the picture above at 10:31am this morning from my window seat on approach to Santa Barbara. The town is La Conchita, which reposes uneasily beneath soft dirt hills that have been slumping toward the Pacific with emphatic inevitability.

I wanted to take this picture to show the larger geological context, which I haven't seen in most news photos of the site. Look closely and you'll see the latest mudslide is just one a series of landslides amidst land so soft that it's cut by gullies that have grown quickly to canyons.(One report said there have been 12 landslides since 1850.)

In this shot you can see how, at some point in the recent past, the entire hillside slid down toward the town, exposing an escarpment at the top of the slope. Two brown exposed areas near the upper edge of the photo show other recent landslides.

I heard today that the town is being evacuated because the land above it is "unstable." No kidding. There's not much difference between living here, and living on the slope of an active volcano.

As I expected, the event was close to home in other ways. The friend who picked me up at the airport knows a number of those killed in the slide, plus the father who lost his wife and children.

New marketing strategy: Bear False Witness!

Little did I know there was a Viral Buzz and Marketing Association (VBMA), or a Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA), or that they have a debate going on. Anyway, I learned that news while reading Exposing Stealth Marketing at Church of the Customer. The post is mostly about how...

Authors Andrew M. Kaikati, a consultant with Accenture, and Jack G. Kaikati, Emeritus Professor of Marketing at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, write:

"Stealth marketing attempts to catch people at their most vulnerable by identifying the weak spot in their defensive shields.....[Stealth marketing] is considered to be a viable alternative to conventional advertising because it is perceived as softer and more personal than traditional advertising."

Which makes me think about what I heard on this podcast by Dave (here's the intro) on my rental car radio (which plays CDs of MP3s, one of which I filled with podcasts) while driving to the airport this morning. It's his definition of integrity: You are what you appear to be.

Off to catch the next plane...