Last night I attended the Geek Girls dinner in Cambridge’s Betahouse (a shared workspace for entrepreneurs.)  I’m probably not geeky enough to be a full-fledged member of Geek Girls but I love and appreciate my sisters in tech enough where they kindly overlook my own lack of tech credentials. (more…)

I live in Lexington, MA.  The town was recently cited as one of the most walkable Boston suburbs.  Downtown has been a bit torn up for the last year or so as the Battle Green Inn was torn down and a new complex with condos and retail space is going up in its stead.  It all looks like it is going to be beautiful when it is done. (more…)

I used to use the circus as a device to explain marketing to people.  Here’s marketing by way of the Big Top.  (more…)

A friend recently asked me to help her demonstrate the business value of social networking (particularly Twitter) to a potential client.  I started off the way any reporter might tackle the job, I tweeted the question, asking for opinions and searched Twitter for references to “business value of Twitter.” (more…)

When you are what you sell — as most services are — you often find yourself being asked to help out.  Which is totally cool — I really don’t have the financial wherewithal to make big donations to my favorite charities or my friends’ projects, but I can help out, applying my expertise in PR/marketing and social media. (more…)

I have a deep and abiding sense of deja vu.  I’ve been here before. Today, it’s Twitter; in 1994, it was the Web. (more…)

I’m now further sub-dividing my time on this planet and I have to blame it all on being a bad board member. (more…)

Newsday, the NY tabloid-style newspaper, has announced that it will begin charging for access to its news online.   Meanwhile, sadly, the Rocky Mountain News is no more.  Other newspapers are in deep financial trouble — The San Francisco Chronicle comes to mind.  Paul Gillin and others chronicle the incipient demise of the print journalist on the blog Newspaper Deathwatch.  One of my follows on Twitter is the baby-faced The Media is Dying.  TMID’s tweets are a regular drumbeat, pounding out the rhythm of a seemingly dying craft. How will newspapers survive? (more…)

I went to a very cool Tweetup at WBUR this week.  (Lots of my Social Media heroes were there…like a kid at Christmas, I didn’t know where to turn first.)  While there I got to be involved in a conversation about hyper-local news. While #journchat has hosted many a conversation about the future business model for the media, participants in this conversation seemed to have some real concrete and feasible ideas. (more…)

Trying to get my retired schoolteacher mother to understand social media…

I compare Twitter to a constantly changing conveyor belt buffet of thoughts, ideas and stories that scrolls past you.  You see an interesting dish, reach out and sample it. If it is interesting, it might turn into a meal but otherwise it is a snack.  (Unless it is #journchat or #GNO and then it reminds me of the “I Love Lucy” chocolate factory where the conveyor belt keeps the truffles coming faster and faster.  I end up looking like Lucille Ball hiding chocolates in her cheeks like a chipmunk.) (more…)