I doubt you grab the same things now. There aren’t as many notepads floating around anymore. The majority of people I associate with in the business world have gone completely digital. Notes are taken on a laptop, tablet or even the occasional phone note app (it’s an 84.5% chance mobile note takers are also texting addicts – there’s nothing like making up a statistic). I’ll admit I do work with some that are an exception to this rule, but I don’t get it. Why waste the time to transfer notes to your computer? Agendas and notes can be brought up on your computer, along with most anything you’ll need for a business function such as presentations, charts, etc. What about the classic business card?

Although many have tried to invent an alternative solution, the business card is still something that everyone carries. Yes, we are all on LinkedIn and that is a modern form of business card / professional bio. Yes, there are apps such as Bump that claim to be the future. Seriously though, have you actually asked someone to Bump business cards with you in a professional setting? “Bump me?”. I’ll pass on asking that question. I’ve never seen a successful card Bump. Yes, there are social business cards that are catching on such as TwtBizCard, but the fact is that you still carry a business card.

Do you think business cards will last another decade?
I think people will continue to create new technology replacements, but that the business card is as important as a handshake. You?

What does your business card say about you?
That I’m a company man. I wish my cards were more unique and reflected more of my personality. Anyone have an especially unique business card?

Other things to consider:
Do you get all the design upgrades or do you buy the cheapest, flimsiest card available?

Do you care when people give you an oddly shaped card that doesn’t fit within your stack of cards?

Do you just slide a few cards in your wallet or do you have a card case? If so, what kind? I’m in the market.

Here are some of unique ideas if you are on the hunt for new business cards (sponsor).

Some responses to my Tweet and later conversations reminded me of the fact that Josh is being sued by Adobe. At that point I put the idea of “lightening striking twice” (reference to one of the new billboards) out of my head. Omniture was obviously a huge success, but could this guy really create another ground breaking company in the state of Utah with Adobe on his back?

Then, Josh’s new co was able to create a small buzz by offering a $10,000 giveaway to the first person that could solve this problem.

The solution eventually resulted in Josh’s cellphone number which he reported was ringing constantly for 3 days.

So I decided to check out the new company’s launch party last night. I wasn’t expecting much, but was surprised to see such a huge turnout. The seats were gone in minutes and I was left standing. My initial impression may have been more enhanced if Josh had moved forward with his idea to have random celebrities mixed in the crowd. This reminds me of the Omniture Halloween stories I’ve heard (think Josh in costume with little people and $xx,xxx department decoration budgets). He mentioned during his presentation that they looked at Spud Webb, Mike Ditka and even Angela Lansbury. Shockingly, Mrs. Lansbury requires around $100,000 for an appearance. Although no sports or television celebrities were present, there were elite business executives and politicians everywhere. Some notables included: Senator Orrin Hatch, Paul Kwan, Dave Clark, Mark Gorenberg, Todd Pedersen, Dave Bateman, Blake Modersitzki, and Matt Cohler.

Here are some of the highlights of the event:

Benchmark announced 33 million in series A along with the earlier angel investments of $10 million.

Executive reporting is 15 years behind tech. What is executive reporting? Sales, marketing, etc all in one place.

Business intelligence is broken. I know that’s been my experience as well. I’ve worked with smart BI guys, but their main job was to pull data, rather than think about what the data meant. Turn BI from cost center to a revenue department. Focus on valuable data.

My first thoughts. Aggresive? Can they pull it off? Can they tie all of the necessary APIs to their product? Josh said from stage that he didn’t want IT to be necessary for a CEO to use this new dashboard. They can’t build ties into every data set, especially proprietary databases.

Next, Stephen Dubner spoke – co-author of Freakonomics
He was interesting and shared some entertaining anecdotes, but definitely went on too long. His best comparison of the night was relating hand washing to business intelligence / company data. Everyone exagerates their own reports to make themselves look better. Self reported data is almost always inaccurate, which means almost everyone lies. In one study, only 9% of doctors washed their hands when tracked.

Then, Mark from Benchmark Capital who was one of the first employees at both LinkedIn and Facebook talked about Big Data and the potential of this new form of BI. Blah blah. Smart guy, but not an interesting speaker.

Next, Josh prepared to unveil the new brand. He talked about branding and mentioned the Law of Color. Coke is the first brand people think of when they see red. Fedex uses two colors at the opposite end of the spectrum (orange & purple) and that works well for many brands, including most sports teams.

He talked about customer focus. Putting the customer first. The customer is always right.

Finally, they unveiled the new name. Domo.

gOOgle, yahOO, facebOOk. What do they have in common? Two o’s (oo). dOmO.

Overall, the night was a success. In my opinion, everyone left the Grand American thinking that lightening will strike again, but I just can’t get Domo Arigato Mr. Roboto‏ out of my head.

–

The launch party ended with this fine video.

The original, unedited version has over 11 million views, but out of the kindness of my heart I embedded the clean version here. Honey badger don’t care.

May 20, 2011

• Amy Lukas, co-founder and managing partner of Infinite Scale Design Group, a graphic design studio that integrates brand strategy into environment and event design.
• Beau Seil, managing partner of Unitus Impact, an investment firm that provides capital to improve the lives of working poor in Asia and Africa.
• Chris Johnson, director of the Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute at the University of Utah.
  Jason Fairbourne, founder and president of Fairbourne Consulting, a firm that consults corporations on growing their businesses in emerging and developing markets.
• Jeff Parkin, a Brigham Young University professor of theater and media arts.
• Kristin Peterson Brown, founder and president of Grow.Learn.Give, a health education program operating in Africa and India.
• Mark Fuller, CEO of WET Design, the company behind the Bellagio fountains in Las Vegas.
• Pauline Ploquin, chief management officer of branding agency StruckAxiom and creative services manager for the 2002 Olympics.
• Peter Chan, an instructional technologist and adjunct professor at Brigham Young University.
• Rachael Herrscher, CEO and co-founder of online media and publishing company TodaysMama.
• Tami Goetz, state science adviser and former Salt Lake Community College biotechnology director.

TedX Salt Lake City Website

It started for me when my wife warned me that a storm was coming. I live in Utah, a state known for, or at least claimed by license plates, as “The Greatest Snow on Earth”. It snows here. A lot. I didn’t think much of it at the time.

A few hours later I checked Facebook and Twitter. One weather man in the area had referred to the oncoming blizzard as the “biggest storm in 7 years” which quickly turned into “the biggest storm of the century”. Obviously, the locals ate this up and went to town blogging, Hootsuiting, Woofing, etc. Soon, THE BLIZZARD was the only topic of conversation online and at the work place in Utah.

By noon things had escalated even further before a single cloud was visible. Warnings were issued. Flights were canceled. Roads were shut down. Schools sent out closing notices. Remember this is Utah, a place where nothing has ever shut down for snow in the 12 years I’ve lived here, unlike other places I’ve lived where a single flake shut down the city for days. The next thing I know my company sends out an email stating that we are expected to go home early and get a late start the following morning as a safety precaution. THANK YOU INTERNET.

From Antoine Dodson to the Old Spice Youtube videos, we’ve all enjoyed content that went viral. In most cases, it’s content intended for a good laugh – for entertainment. Most people reading this have used social networks for years, but some of us forget that we are early adopters. Do you remember when Twitter was almost exclusively tech talk? If you could filter out all of the spam we’d see all kinds of conversations on Twitter now. I’ve got some great lists setup where I get more timely news for marketing, sports, etc than the traditional news platforms could ever provide. I’m constantly surrounded by internet junkies so I expect friends and coworkers to know the lastest meme. My mom on the other hand has rarely been influenced by social media, except for the occasional email forward, until word of the end of humanity blizzard hit her on FB. (Note to self – make snopes.com her home page the next time I stop by). The number of people registering for social networks is still off the charts. The influence that SEOs and other marketers have claimed social media had is finally here – a few years later than many expected, but here.

By the way, for those of you not in Utah, there didn’t end up being a storm of any signifigance.

Does anyone else out there have any examples to share of when social blew something way out of proportion?

How have you seen social media used for eee-v-i-l?

How have you seen social evolve over the past few years?

Ok, so I’m an awful blogger. I’m making myself write a post no matter how uninteresting it is just to get myself kick started. < - great example of how not to keep your readers interested in reading on.

I'm a big fan of the suggestions that pop up in most search engines when you start typing. It's a great feature that should have been implemented a few years ago. Surprisingly, Google was especially slow to adopt search suggestions, but as usual they did it a little better (by including an estimated search count, etc). Sadly, rumor has it that search count won't be published much longer (it's not in the screenshot). One thing that did catch my attention was when highlighted links started showing up at the top for certain queries. At first I thought it was a new form of monetization they were testing out, but these links aren't ads. Google is trying to point you to a specific domain if your query leads them to think you are looking for a specific website. So as evident in the my screenshot Google's best guess for the search "lime" is limewire.com

Check out this Search Engine Land article for info.

Obviously for informational searches it’s no google.  Most likely this site will fall in with countless other engines popping up, but it’s worth a look. Here’s an old TechCrunch article for more info.