Chris Abraham » openness

Is Washington Metro Opening Cell Service?

Chris Abraham — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 21:50:39 +0000

Metro has been Verizon’s bitch for as long as I have known. I wonder if the following means that the DC WMATA is opening up the cell phone network to other networks — let me know if that is what it means.

There’s been talk of this for a while, but WMATA announced a little more of a timeline today: Twenty of the busiest stations will have cell phone service by the end of this year, and the entire system will have it by 2012.
While I certainly have no interest in listening to a train full of people shout to be heard over the tunnel noise, I look forward to actually being able to text and use Twitter from the train- many has been the time when the people I’ve been on my way to meet have tried to reach me, only to be thwarted by the Metro Cone of Silence. (Via We Love DC)

I have an AT&T and a T-Mobile handy right now and neither of them are Twitter-worthy when on the Metro, which is a drag. I got completely used to being able to use my phone in any way I pleased while running around Berlin and the rest of Germany is the U-Bahn, deep under ground, in the S-Bahn, deep into the suburbs, and on the I.C.E. train hither and thither.

So, what’s the news here in Washington, DC?

Lachrymose is a Very Cool Word of the Day

Chris Abraham — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 16:19:07 +0000

lachrymose adjective: 1. Tearful. 2. Relating to or inducing tears.

PRONUNCIATION:

(LAK-ruh-mos)

MEANING:

adjective: 1. Tearful. 2. Relating to or inducing tears.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin lacrima (tear).

USAGE:

“The lachrymose John Terry then delivered himself of a self-serving open letter to the fans a few days later. … He wasn’t ashamed to admit he had cried and that Wednesday night would haunt him forever.” — Pat Murphy; Shed No Tears For Chelsea; Birmingham Post (UK); May 27, 2008.

Via A.Word.A.Day

What You Can Learn from Twitter’s Success

Chris Abraham — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 16:08:45 +0000

Rohit Bhargava from the Influential Marketing Blog just posted a very insightful article about how we entrepreneurs can learn from Twitter, 7 Lessons Entrepreneurs Can Learn From Twitter’s Success — basically, make things easier, better, more open (as in API), and more insidious (all of Twitter’s competitors feel compelled to integrate with Twitter — how insidious is that — open API wins again):

By any measure, the growth and popularity of Twitter has been phenomenal. To say that Twitter has hit mainstream isn’t really the right metric to use. It’s more powerful to note that for a large group of Twitter enthusiasts, to spend even a day without using it would be as bad (or perhaps even worse) than not having email. It has become just that necessary. How did the site get to this point? And what are the lessons that any entrepreneur might be able to learn from how it got there? Here are a few thoughts on the real secrets behind Twitter’s success:
Focus on real time. For the socially connected online, there is little use for yet another place to talk to your friends. If anything, we all have too many of those to start with. But a site dedicated to RIGHT NOW stands out. It’s useful in a way that none of the other sites we use are.
Skip the extra step. Approving every friend request can be a lot of work – even if you’re not the most popular of people. It does make sense on most social networks, but when it comes to posting updates on Twitter, if you do it publicly, anyone can follow you without approval. The result is that any user’s audience on Twitter can grow exponentially without barriers.

Force your customers to do less. If you have ever heard the saying that “less is more” – Twitter is the ultimate proof of that. The forced 140 character messages have made us all refocus on brevity, and as a result of this volume decrease, those of us that are constantly overcommunicated look to the site as the one place where we can still feel that we are on top of the flood of communication that rules our lives.
Build enough evangelists to compensate when things go wrong. One of the most well known facts about Twitter is that the service has been notoriously unreliable and crashed frequently. Though it is much improved from those days, the site still goes down or loses functionality relatively regularly. Yet it has managed to build up enough power users and evangelists, that people forgive their down times and keep coming back.
Integrate with the most popular competition. The single most useful feature I personally uncovered from Twitter was the ability to integrate it into my Facebook page so that may Twitter updates also become my status on Facebook. This demonstrates a fact that many entrepreneurs already know – by integrating with your competition where your “customers” currently are, you make it easier for them to migrate over to your site.
Launch where your influencers are. A big reason for the early success of Twitter was their launch at the SXSW Interactive festival two years ago. It was a place where all the influencers that matters for Twitter were already going to be and putting the site in front of them there allowed them to become word of mouth ambassadors for the site following the event.
Offer a public ranking or authority. The final element that has helped Twitter to succeed is that it has a built in authority ranking with the number of followers you have. This is located right beneath your username on the site and it’s high visibility means that it is easily the ultimate metric for anyone using the site. And you can’t help but want that number to go higher.

The New Yorker Online Book Club

Chris Abraham — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 15:28:38 +0000

I have been a loyal subscriber to the New Yorker every since I was 16-years-old in Honolulu, HI. To me, it represented everything literary and urbane, even though I have never lived in Manhattan. Now I discover from Mediabistro that the New Yorker is rolling out an online book club:

The New Yorker opened an online book club this morning, taking readers on a month long group reading of the recently adapted Richard Yates novel, Revolutionary Road.
The magazine tested the book club interaction last month with a small team of readers, a group reading of Roberto Bolano’s epic novel, 2666. Ranging over email and the comments section, the discussion also included guests like journalist Kate Coleman.
Here’s more from the site: “We plan to approach the books as landscapes for exploration, in which we are the park rangers, if you will, examining the flora and the fauna and fending off the occasional wild animal. (Every good book has one.) We hope you’ll join us in this ongoing experiment, and lend your voices to the clamor.” (Via BookClubGirl)

The SEO Benefits of Blogger Outreach and Earned Media

Chris Abraham — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 15:21:09 +0000

After I wrote The Powerful SEO Benefits of Blogger PR Outreach, I looked around Google a little bit under the keywords “blogger outreach” and on the first page I discovered my new friend and partner, Stephen Davies of 3W PR and blogger for PRBlogger, and look what I found: corroboration! According to Stephen, “In fact, the SEO benefits could out-perform all of the other benefits of blogger outreach,” which we at Abraham Harrison, LLC, are discovering more and more every day! Check out The SEO benefits of blogger outreach:

The SEO benefits of blogger outreach
Blogger relations, or blogger outreach as I like to call it, is a relatively new concept in the PR and marketing arena. Prior to blogs and other forms of social media, people working in our industry have never had such direct access to influential people from all walks of life. The advent of these new platforms has also enabled us to tap into real insights, views and opinions on various products, brands and issues which in-turn have allowed us to have open and transparent *relations* with the *public* (public relations, get it?).
As proved by Edelman, Forrester and Nielsen, the opinion of the every-day person is increasingly becoming a more trustworthy source of information. The public is more ‘media savvy’ than ever before meaning marketing messages no longer have the same effect as they once did. If they ever did. Is it any wonder that PR people, marketers and the respective companies they represent are increasingly seeing the value in blogger outreach?
Using myself as guinea pig and my involvement in the O2 blogger outreach campaign. The company working on the initiative, VCCP, probably looked at this blog and classified it with having a niche audience. With around 1500 RSS subscribers I can safely assume that I don’t hold great powers of influence. Not to say this blog doesn’t hold *some* level of influence; it does. To what extent, though, I really don’t know, but I’m sure the guys working at VCCP have their own reasons for including me in the outreach.
So let’s assume that after I wrote both posts on the O2 Xda Orbit 2 I ‘influenced’ some of this blog’s readers. By “readers” I mean people who are subscribed to the RSS feed or email alerts and are updated as and when I publish new blog posts. How I actually influenced them is another matter. Did they rush out and buy the phone as soon as they read my review? Maybe not. Did I at least increase awareness of the phone to some of the readers? I presume so. Either way, some level of influencing was in play.
Job done? Maybe not.
What’s struck me the last week or so is the amount of traffic I’ve received by people looking for information on the Xda Orbit 2. Quite a lot in comparison for this itty-bitty blog. So-much-so that since I wrote the two posts about the phone on the 20th and 27th February they’ve proved to be the top two most popular blog posts from those dates to present time. Take a look:
Note: The Homepage and About page have higher traffic but these are static pages and not blog entries.
Again, if you look at the top ten keywords used to get to this blog since I wrote the two posts you’ll see that four out of the ten are related to the Xda including the most popular two keywords:
This, to me, is pretty impressive and it puts blogger outreach in a whole new different light. In hindsight, it’s pretty obvious that SEO plays a part in all of this but maybe I was too caught up in the ‘direct approach’ and ‘two-way conversation’ ways of thinking that I didn’t give it any thought.
In fact, the SEO benefits could out-perform all of the other benefits of bloggeroutreach. Two reasons:
Relevance – You can see by the keyword data that people who landed on either post through a search engine were actually looking for information on the Xda. The people who subscribe to my feed weren’t necessarily – I published it and they may have read it. No guarantee there, though.
Volume – If the search engine traffic to each post continues which, chances are, it will then those two posts will have received a lot more attention from Google and the like than they did through an RSS feed.
These two reasons make the point that SEO should not just be considered when initiating of blogger outreach campaign but should be high on the agenda. The measurement and evaluation process of the campaign should include any traffic and SEO data that are available to gather. They could be the most valuable results you’ve achieved!
The underlying objective of a blogger outreach campaign is, of course, to generate positive and authentic opinions on your product or brand. But if what you are promoting is a lousy, useless or even mediocre product, however, then the next title of a blog post could be “The SEO nightmare of blogger outreach.”
It’s all about the quality of the content or product you’re promoting at the end of the day.
Stephen is managing director of 3W PR, a UK based online PR consultancy. You can connect with him on Twitter or check out his LinkedIn profile. | Email Stephen

McKinney is a Website You Can Talk To

Chris Abraham — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 19:44:11 +0000

Othersource in Poland partnered with McKinney ad agency to build a Flash 3D engine with artificial intelligence for the McKinney website that’s launching this week.

Compared to other sites in the Semantics category, this one has an unusual level of interactivity. Users can ask the site questions, via the keyboard, using everyday language and expressions, and the proprietary “conversation engine” will decipher them and then fetch relevant results.

This means the user becomes liberated from the navigation. You no longer need background information to search the site – you just ask it a question.

Also, the site is completely index-able, bookmark-able, etc… from every page – even the video thumbnails have a unique URL. And every single page is a printable PDF, laid out for A4 or newsletter.I also found a nice blog post about it over at AdLab, Agency Site With a Chat Bot:

McKinney has built a Pandorabot-based chat bot (aka “conversation engine”) into its brand new site with a somewhat trippy interface. See if you can catch answers that were pre-scripted to make the machine sound particularly intelligent as opposed to the generic chat bot cop-outs like “Say what?” or “Come again”. – thank you, Michelle

Here’s the proper press release from McKinney.com:

McKinney.com – A Website You Can Talk To

Warsaw, Poland (February 10th, 2009) — Warsaw-based interactive agency Othersource announced today the launch of McKinney.com, a groundbreaking website created in partnership with the awardwinning advertising agency, in Durham, N.C.
Conversations with a website
Using cutting edge technologies, the new McKinney.com is reinventing the conversation had between the ad agency and its audience. Compared to other sites in the Semantics category, the site possesses an unusual level of interactivity. Visitors are able to ask the site questions, via the keyboard, using everyday language and expressions, and the proprietary “conversation engine” will decipher them and then fetch relevant results.
The functionality is groundbreaking. The back-end employs a 3D Flash engine with artificial intelligence, and the interface design is cutting-edge, making it one of the most experiential and unconstrained agency sites on the Web.
Unique tech mix
Othersource worked with linguists who understood, on a high-level, the structure of language. They also enlisted programmers familiar with semantics to help develop the sophisticated algorithm. “Creating the conversation engine’s ‘brain’ was quite labor intensive,” said Othersource Managing Partner Thomas Krotkiewski. “We enlisted two linguists (one a PhD from the University of Oxford), to analyze questions provided by McKinney, and to supply us with all possible ways the questions could be posed. If this search method fails, a backup proprietary tag search function will launch and search matching content. And finally, if the answer is still thought to be inadequate, the question is forwarded to McKinney for human processing. To be sure the conversation engine learns from its mistakes, there is a conversation history log on the proprietary Content Management System. This level of integration between conversation engine and website is completely unique,”
“We were looking for a production partner who would not only bring our vision to life, but enhance it,” added Keith Ciampa, who served as McKinney’s interactive creative director on the project. “Most true innovation happens on the fringes of the industry, by people who are passionate about what they do and willing to take risks. When we explained our vision for a conversational site, based on a completely open architecture, which could grow and become smarter the more it was used, Othersource knew we were asking for something that had never been done, and they couldn’t have been more excited to help us figure it out.”
Conversation-driven search
A proprietary tag search was built into the back end of the new site so search results can be presented dynamically, and not just direct visitors to a static page. For example, a visitor can ask a question like, “show me TV campaigns for client X from November last year” and an animated 3D tunnel will appear, with search results as moving thumbnail images, that the visitor can fly through. “As far as we can tell, this functionality is unique,” said Krotkiewski.
Like gas molecules
The site has an advanced 3D graphical interface. “The key to the 3D interface is the ‘cloud view,’ which shows a cloud of graphical thumbnails, moving like molecules in a gas, bouncing randomly off each other while also reacting to mouse input. The cloud can be filtered by the visitor to only show thumbnails representing certain types of content,” said Martin Ignaczak, Account Director at Othersource.
Flash without drawbacks
The site has overcome the limitations of Flash: “The site is fully searchable by Google, each page can bookmarked and linked to, and each view can be downloaded as a printable PDF,” continued Ignaczak. Working in the virtual
New technologies were key to organizing the project. Othersource used video-conferencing, VoIP, instant messaging, e-mails, and other electronic means of communication to coordinate the work with McKinney. “We only met face-to-face after the launch, which proves we are able to run even very complex projects completely in the virtual,” added Krotkiewski.
“We are honored by McKinney’s decision to partner with Othersource for the production — we were competing with some quite well-known US interactive agencies in the pitch. Being chosen in spite of being based overseas is quite a feat. We hope this project is the beginning of a long relationship with McKinney. We also expect it will generate more opportunities for us in the US overall,” said Krotkiewski.
“Partnering with Othersource on this project was both a rewarding and challenging experience,” said McKinney Interactive Technology Director Trevor O’Brien. “The biggest hurdle was taking existing technologies and customizing them to work together in ways they were not initially intended to. Othersource helped deliver a site that is an experiential and innovative place to interact online. It’s exciting to see what two like-minded teams can create together.”
About Othersource
Othersource provides interactive services from strategy to production to companies around the world. In 2008, the agency participated in projects for companies such as MetLife, The National Constitution Center in Boston, Accenture Poland, Puma, Imation Europe and others, in Poland, Sweden, Holland, the UK and the USA. The majority of its clients are Advertising and Interactive agencies that need support in creating campaign strategies, creative concepts and interactive production for their clients. About McKinney McKinney is an independent advertising agency that’s focused on reinventing the conversation between people and brands. Our goal is to lead the convergence of offline and online (today, 35% of our revenue is interactive and 88% of our frontline staff is actively engaged in the digital space), to identify relevant applications for new technologies and to deliver game-changing ideas that deliver extraordinary results for our clients, their customers and our people.
Founded in 1969, the Durham, NC-based agency’s clients include Coldwell Banker, Gold’s Gym, Major League Gaming, The NASDAQ Stock Market, Partnership for a Drug-Free America, ProShares, Qwest Communications, Sherwin-Williams, Travelocity, Virgin Mobile USA, Virgin Atlantic Airways, and Brown- Forman Corporation brands Bonterra, Chambord, Sonoma-Cutrer, Southern Comfort and Tuaca.
Most recently, Virgin Atlantic Airways and McKinney took top honors at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s MIXX Awards that celebrate the “mixx” of creativity and effectiveness in digital marketing. Virgin Atlantic’s experiential launch, “Love from Above,” won a Gold MIXX in the Mobile Platforms category for the company’s first-ever WAP site.
For more information, visit our website at www.mckinney.com or the McKinney Newsroom by contacting Janet Northen at janet.northen@mckinney.com.
Additional information:
Thomas Krotkiewski
Managing Partner
Othersource
+48-601-145398
thomas@othersource.com
Timezone: GMT+1
Janet Northen
Partner & EVP, Director of Agency Communications
Janet Northen
Partner & EVP, Director of Agency Communications
McKinney
+1 919.313.4062
janet.northen@mckinney.com

Successful SNS’s Will Be Modeled on the College Campus

Chris Abraham — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 19:34:36 +0000

The future of Social Network Services (SNS) can be discovered on High School and College campuses. I believe that topic-specific “vertical” SNS’s are very important, but I also think that the model needs to be University-like – a modularized SNS. There needs to be a campus “brand” (or University) within which the topic-specific “clubs,” “houses,” “fraternities,” “dorms,” and “interest groups” can interact – somewhere where crossovers, cross-fertilization, and aggregation are encouraged – no, needs – to happen. I hate SNS sites like boompa.com – a site devoted to your favorite cars – because I am not JUST a car guy.

I am a car guy for sure but I am also interested in rowing, in biking, in Thomas Pynchon, and in talk radio – Boompa might be successful in the short term, but in the long-term, the real power would come from creating a open, creative, resource-rich platform/campus/university/high school and maybe create a school of engineering, a liberal arts school, a law school, a dining hall, and so forth, but then allow the SNS to find itself.

To allow the SNS and its members to find their own voice, their own interests, and their own passions – which may well be very different from what is first assumed by the creator. Google gets this, though not yet within the construct of the SNS’s. What Google did do successfully was to buy USENET – the original newsgroups – and then build an superstructure on top of that – make it modern, sustainable, durable, and more readable.

Google returned USENET to relevance in a world that considered newsgroups and IRC to be dead or dying. Each and every one of communities on USENET is amazingly vertical, but they could all back up and back out to the larger USENET community – to the equivalent of the “welcome new students??? meetings and gatherings colleges offer to entering Freshmen.

Communities that are too vertical tend to shoe horn the “general topics??? conversations into hidden “off topic??? eddies. That is just the opposite of what should be done. The conversation should be general, cross-pollinating, and then move, after a conversation starts, into another room.

Start with an amazing platform, collect users, listen and watch them to see how they’re playing with the software application objects, widgets, and tools (are they playing with the toy or the box?), and then build for the users base, withholding judgment. Digg is a case study for this: start small, grow organically, and allow your members to find themselves.

The developers of Digg realized that after initial vertical growth based on the general members of Slashdot (techie, geeky, teens, boys), digg would suffer from the same sort of vulnerabilities that Slashdot suffered when Slashdot didn’t evolve and grow and broaden itself.

People love talking about Linux, but when happens when the Dow drops or the elections come? Where will the conversation happen? Where is the “kitchen??? at the party where every eventually goes to just talk about general interest stuff? Unless there are opportunities to express and share so-called “off-topic??? conversation right there, within the community in which members are already committed, with members to whom they’re already committed, then they are bound to go elsewhere.

Starting small and allowing the community to design itself is much different than starting big and losing one’s focus. Other mistakes happen when community builders make assumptions as to what participants, members, and lurkers want. Another mistake is putting a wall up around the community so that non-members cannot get a full feeling for the community from without.

The best SNS’s, virtual worlds, and online communities are honeypots. By honeypot, I am not suggesting, “a server that is configured to detect an intruder by mirroring a real production system. It appears as an ordinary server doing work, but all the data and transactions are phony. Located either in or outside the firewall, the honeypot is used to learn about an intruder’s techniques as well as determine vulnerabilities in the real system.” Although I am, sort of. The best SNS needs to be appealing, attractive, sweet, and compelling. Community-builders and SNS ASP developers need to be willing learn about member techniques, interests, processes, and needs, as well as determine “vulnerabilities” in the SNS platform that may repel, turn off, or limit the evolution and growth of the community.

To channel Chauncey Gardener for a second, one must do whatever one must to make sure that the earth in the garden is moist and well fed, one must seed well and completely, one must keep the garden in sun and water, one must encourage the garden to grow as it will for only in its growth will the garden be successful, and then, after rigorous growth, pruning and weeding must be done, only in order to allow the garden to be healthy, not to turn the garden into topiary. Okay, I am done.

Digg allows all of these things. Digg is perfectly useful and compelling even as an alien, but it is way more fun and interesting when you’re a citizen, that’s for sure. An SNS community needs to be as attractive as possible because exclusivity is no longer essential or even valuable. What is valuable is “useful,??? “interesting,??? and “authentic.??? They also have to have community buy-in and the best enjoy a certain fanatical devotion. Just like the best Universities and Colleges.

And Digg allowed its member to tell it when it was time to evolve past tech and geek news. Digg did not limit its scope or define itself too tightly with being “gear for geeks??? or “news for nerds.??? That would have ultimately been the death of Digg.

What the best Universities (such as Yale) understand is that it is not the student who is blessed and honored by being accepted by a top college (Yale College) but rather it is the college that should be blessed and honored (and should be grateful) that such a quality student is accepting its offers and actually attending – choosing – their particular school: Yale instead of Princeton, Brown, Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, Dartmouth, Stanford, Columbia, Berkeley, etc…

Harvard, too, is aware that although in the short-term Harvard makes the Harvard Man, over the long term, it is Harvard Men who made Harvard and continue to make Harvard. “Who have you graduated recently???? Unless the quality and character of its students and alumni remain top-drawer, Harvard is not guaranteed its position as “top three??? in USA Today alongside Princeton and Yale. No matter how grand its endowment.

So, Harvard and Yale spoil their students rotten! My friends who attended Harvard or Yale college swoon over those 4 years like I swoon over my first love.

Likewise, SNS’s, virtual worlds, and virtual communities need to realize that at any one point, their brand is only as good as the collective that is manifest in the users, the members, the lurkers, the stewards, and the alumni of the property.

This isn’t only true in SNS’s. The same thing can be said of the most successful message boards and online communities. The most important distinction, I think, is that all of these “rooms” and all of these “clubs” and all of these spaces where (and are) defined and created by the communities themselves. Sui generis. And this sort of ownership – “for us by us,??? as the slogan goes over as Howard Rheingold’s Brainstorms community – should never be underestimated.

The Well has Howard Rheingold as a member and alumnus, for example, and the credibility of all that he has made and done; over time, more and more virtual communities, virtual worlds, and SNS will be known for their members as well: who studies, who studied, and who wants to join.

“What’s in it for me??? (WIIFM) and the concept of pride of ownership are important – essential – ingredients of a sustainable, deep, thriving, and healthy community. The success of MySpace and of Facebook is that the verticals are not (were not) defined for them by their grand architects – they are self-creating, self-forming, and also self-destructing. They form, reform, mutate and disperse after they hit a limit of general conversation and then either break off and reform into an “interest group” or “club” or they self-check and work to “get back on topic.”

SNS’s and communities in general tend to be formed in one of two ways: like Paris or like London. Intelligence Design (architecture) or Emergent Design. The later never looks very beautiful or the way people – or the creators, investors, and architects – expect (or want) it to look, because investors and designers tend to not be able to control it – and when they do try to impost order, often in a heavy-handed way, they also tend to scare off all of their members, too.

This organic revolution has proven its success online time and time again. The Internet does not respond (well or at all) to command and control. The smartest Web 2.0 platforms allow the “masses of asses” (yes, the customer; yes, us) to define the platform and the experience – their own and collective environment and experience.

MySpace does this amazingly well and so does Facebook. Until recently, Friendster suffered from a vision and used command and control tactics to try to coerce its users that “it didn’t really want to do things that way??? and Friendster members abandoned in droves to platforms and experiences not so monitored by “mom and dad.???

A command and control grand vision doesn’t work when you develop an environment that needs to be truly both attractive and compelling much more than it needs to be informational or instructional. An SNS needs to be attractive, diversional, compelling, amusing, and entertaining – never limiting.

My analogy of college and high school never mentioned classrooms or classes for training or learning. People do enough of that at school and at work. An SNS needs to give its users a university campus without any expectations or concepts of dropping out, getting judged, doing homework, or being held accountable for anything.

A good SNS should be all late-night wine-influenced discussions of Descartes and Plato and the summer afternoons on the quad and the time playing Xbox with your roommates.

When I go onto my long-term online communities, the Well, The Meta Network, USENET, and Brainstorms, there are many very deep and very vertical communities, discussing things as frivolous as fashion and video games and as deep as how to survive cancer, how to get a post doc grant, and very deep discussions on “spirit,” “chaos theory,” and “world politics.”

What makes this amazing and sustainable is that there are an infinite number of ways to get along, to move into a space of intense conversation, and then to pull back into common areas, just to see who’s around. In a university setting, this could be the dining hall, the quad, the commons, etc. These spaces are very important.

If you think about all of this in terms of evolution, then we can think about the way things evolve in the most perverse ways when isolated from others of its kinds. So, if there are impervious walls – gaps or voids, mountains or ridges – between these vertical markets, SNS’s, and communities, then there may be an initial success, but there can also be a terrible volatility. One plague or drought can decimate a population completely.

Having a commons allows members and visitors to have a place to meet new people, have new experiences, and learn of new clubs, new opportunities, and new places – inbreeding versus crossbreeding. Ultimately, a diversity of visitors helps build a more resilient, invested, and self-identifing community. They will become “students for life??? at best and proud alums at worst. They will carry the brand awareness, even if their lives become too busy to participate any more.

They will become life long brand ambassadors for your community. Proud alumni.

And, in terms of “viral marketing,” it is also important when it comes to a member of an SNS “inviting his friends” – not all of my friends have the same vertical interests that I do… They could have very different interests – but as I explore the “commons” of an SNS, I can note that there are things happening online that “friend x” and “friend y” would love, and that would be my incentive to invite them on board.

Boompa? I am the only person I know in my entire community – that is not true, my buddy has an Audi S4 – who is into cars. My buddy is an Audi driver and I am a BMW driver. Does that mean we’re both drivers? Does that mean we love cars or our particular car? Do we cross over on performance sedans? On German cars? On luxury cars?

You have to offer the tools to allow the market to choose for itself, otherwise, you might never find out that the SNS needs all three, or none at all.

A “Modularized SNS” should be neutral like a university (unlike MySpace, which is pretty pre-defined as to what the demographic is), and there are lots of “vertical niche SNS’s” (e.g. car enthusiasts, gourmet cooking, travel, Rolex fans, Republican politicos, etc.) That way, everyone can form a SNS experience that actually fits them by modularly assembling the groups of people who have similar interests, (not just friends-in-common!)

Thank You Fresh Air Fund Holiday Bloggers!

Chris Abraham — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 18:46:30 +0000

In December, we at Abraham Harrison helped the Fresh Air Fund reach out to bloggers and folks online in order to remind the online Fresh Air Fund friends and family that they both need donations during this time of year as well as needing families to host children for the summer. Since the holidays, over ninety bloggers have responded to Fresh Air Fund’s call to action with the placement of banners, with tweets, and with blog posts. We are much obliged to you, Fresh Air Fund bloggers! (via Marketing Conversation)

Reporting on the Inauguration from DC by a Non-Participant

Chris Abraham — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 13:19:56 +0000

I am in Washington, DC, for the inauguration, but aside from the excitement of seeing all of my global friends as they converge on DC for the inauguration, I am not participating to any great extent. Why? There are two reasons . . .

First, I have attended inaugurations, inaugural parades, and inauguration balls for the last 20-years, starting with the election of George H. W. Bush, Bush senior, into the White House all the way through to the second inauguration of George W. Bush back in 2005, which was held on a very cold January 20th, if I remember correctly. While I had my plans set for Berlin, I didn’t have my plans set up in Washington, so I am just going to enjoy the pleasures on the fringe.

Second, while I am blissed out that Senator Barack Obama will be inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, I am allergic to two-million historical well-wishers crowding the National Mall.

I have to be honest, I am still dazzled that the United States elected an African American from Hawaii by the name of Barack Hussein Obama, especially in such jingoistic times. And I am proud and impressed and looking forward to not just the first one-hundred days but also to the second term.

The Obama White House really needs to be an eight-year presidency — two terms — because there is a lot of work to both do and undo.

What I do plan to do, however, is open up Naval Lodge 4 on Capitol Hill at 8 AM. I will be serving hot coffee and donuts from the 4th floor of 330 Pennsylvania Avenue, SE. So, if you’re in the neighborhood and want some warm coffee, some company, and maybe a donut or two, please drop by for a cuppa.

Using Twitter for Branding and Engagement

Chris Abraham — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 20:35:01 +0000

(By Lauren Cook) Never has the power of Twitter been more evident than in the last few weeks and months. Once known only by “techies” and early adopters, this micro-blogging site is now slowly infiltrating into the mainstream and more importantly, affecting the way many of us communicate, listen, and learn.

For those not familiar with Twitter, here’s a quick introduction: Twitter is a free social networking service that allows users to send and read each other’s updates (known as “tweets”) that are limited to 140 characters in length (think two sentences at most). At its inception in 2006, Twitter (then known as “Obvious”) was originally created as a tool to be used internally by the podcasting company, Odeo. Two years later, over 3 million individuals worldwide have Twitter accounts and the rate in which news spreads has shortened to, well, 140 characters.

Initially, the goal of Twitter was to allow users to share with their “followers” exactly what they were doing at that moment (ie: “It’s Monday morning and I’m having Cheerios for breakfast”). A common misconception among those who aren’t familiar with Twitter believe this is still the case with the micro-blogging site. In fact, Twitter has grown and expanded and its capabilities have far surpassed solely communicating the mundane details of everyday life.

For instance, take the recent Mumbai attacks in November, 2008. During the three-day battle that left more than 100 dead, social-networking services such as Twitter and Flickr were flooded with news, rumors and pictures of the tragedy by what is now termed as “citizen journalists” — users on Twitter that were tweeting breaking news faster than mainstream media could pick up the same information on the news wires. Many people now describe the situation in Mumbai as “Twitter’s moment.” As a result, major media outlets now uses Twitter to help communicate the real-time public sentiment on various issues, such as Presidential elections, natural disasters, and current events.

Abraham & Harrison has been at the forefront of the Twitter phenomenon since its public offering, sucessfully leveraging the power of micro-blogging for many of its clients. One only has to take a quick look at Abraham & Harrison’s President and COO, Chris Abraham, who is known as one of the top Twitterers of Social Media news, having over 2,700 followers, to understand Abraham & Harrison’s extensive knowledge of cutting edge social media tools.

A fantastic example of Abraham & Harrison’s knowledge of Twitter is illustrated by our work with the client, The Fresh Air Fund, a non-profit agency providing free summer vacations in the country to more than 1.7 million New York City children from disadvantaged communities.

With Abraham & Harrison’s help, The Fresh Air Fund created a Twitter profile to communicate with other NPOs, current volunteers, potential families interested in The Fresh Air Fund, and donors. In just three months of tweeting, The Fresh Air Fund Twitter profile has over 600 followers and has reached thousands of individuals who they otherwise would never have been in contact with. Not only does Abraham & Harrison help guide

The Fresh Air Fund on how to best utilize Twitter in a respectful and value-driven way, Chris Abraham is also eager to help “retweet” The Fresh Air Fund’s Twitter content, meaning that over 3,000 users are seeing this non-profit’s messaging, creating a critical relationship with The Fresh Air Fund that results in support of the NPO. Even more impressive, The Fresh Air Fund was recently nominated to be a part of the “Top Ten List of Twitterers Who Will Change The World” — a fantastic feat for an NPO who has only been a part of the Twittosphere for three months.

Are you thinking about joining Twitter? One word of warning: You can’t become a Twitter sensation overnight. As Chris Abraham says, “Growing a social media profile is like growing a coral reef: after seeding the reef, there are so many things that need to happen before a reef blooms ‘in its own.’” With Twitter, time and commitment are key in order to position yourself as a valuable addition to the community. “You need to be generous — give more than you take — and you need to be committed to the long term,” Chris advises. And it’s not all about your follower numbers.

For instance, once could argue that Lance Armstrong isn’t a valuable member of the Twitter community given that he has over 23,000 followers, but is only following approximately 40 other Twitterers (an improvement since the last time I checked, when he was following a mere 2 users: his Livestrong organization, and one other member of the Livestrong Executive Team).

Twitter isn’t about just talking about yourself, accepting every follower, and never engaging in actual dialogue. Like every other social networking tool, it’s about forming relationships, providing valuable content, listening and (like Chris said), giving more than taking.

There’s an unspoken code of ethics followed by well-respected Twitterers, and a strategy that can help you reach your customers and supporters on Twitter while not opening yourself up to criticism and in extreme cases, retaliation (ever heard of the Motrin Mommies ?). The power of Twitter is increasing daily — do you know how to harness it? Let Abraham & Harrison show you how. (Via Marketing Conversation)

Barack Obama Inaugration Party in Berlin

Chris Abraham — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 15:53:04 +0000

I received an invitation from Corbett Santana to attend what sounds like a super-cool inauguration party — if you happen to be celebrating in Berlin, Germany! I will be in DC for the inauguration but I thought I would pass this on.

Barack Obama Inaugration Celebration/Party in GOYA
Goya, Nollendorfplaz 5 in Berlin
January 20th 2009
Come celebrate with “US”
LIVE from Washington D.C. on BIG screen!
The Inauguration Ceremony of BARACK OBAMA.
16:30 Doors open and we will project the entire Ceremony on a large screen in GOYA.
16:00 The ceremony starts at and ends at 20:00 (according to a press release from Washington D.C.)
20:00 Guest speakers from the different American abroad organizations. There is the POSSIBILITY the Governor Mayor of Berlin will make an appearance. THIS IS NOT CONFIRMED AT THE MOMENT!
21:00 Live Music from FOLKADELIC who played at the BABYLON Theater Election Party
22:30 DJ “Daddy-O” after playing Funky Soul Classics.
Tickets: 10-,€ & 6-,€ after 21:00
To reserve a ticket send a message to chair@demsinberlin.de
This is a by-partisan event all are welcomed!
There will be an after party at SURPRISE Club & Disco for those of you who find GOYA too expensive & stuffy. A shuttle vehicle will be available to transport you door to door from 22:00 till 12:00. Entrance and shuttle ride is free when you have a ticket for the Event in GOYA.

Revised Whopper Virgins Post on AdAge

Chris Abraham — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 14:54:54 +0000

I posted version one of this article on my blog already. I showed it to Matt Creamer, my editor over at AdAge, and he told me he didn’t care if I had already posted it but that I would need to add a couple primer paragraphs to bring people into the history behind the Whopper Virgins controversy. I wrote a couple-few paragraphs and submitted and Matt posted it yesterday, One Whopper … and Hold the Ugly-American Sauce:

One Whopper … and Hold the Ugly-American Sauce
Burger King Campaign Shows Off American Provincialism at Its Worse
Burger King has brought the Whopper vs. Big Mac taste test to the farthest corners of the globe in search of Whopper Virgins. According to the site, there are still people in the world who have never been marketed to by either McDonald’s or Burger King, to say nothing of having tasted the two flagship burgers of each fast-food restaurant. For these people, Whoppers and Big Macs were either spirited to them from the closest restaurants–In the case of Bucharest, Romania, both were within 15 minutes–or the burgers were made by hand by a quality expert on a specially-designed propane travel flame broiler.
Whopper Virgins promised to be a proper documentary film, I was assured. The filmmakers would simply find people who have not been market-bombed by McDonald’s — a few of the uncorrupted — and allow them to taste both burgers et voila! Nothing could go wrong, surely, from such a noble aim, right? I mean, their goal was to simply escape the mediasphere and find some folks who have remained (until, of course, now) pure from the media machine (Schrodinger’s documentary!).
Of course, a lot of the buzz about this documentary happened on Twitter, especially in light of Motrin Moms and the Pepsi suicide ads. People have been very leery of the entire endeavor. And, of course, it has been called American imperialism.
The Whopper Virgins documentary reveals as much about the provincialism of Americans as it does possibly about the “primitives” they’re documenting. Besides, the American obsession with the “Noble Savage” is so 18th century. And this sort of untoward behavior is the furthest thing from noblesse oblige. They are neither being noble nor are they honoring any sort of moral obligation.
My one question is whether authentic cultural garb was procured for these taste-testers. I hate to burst your bubble but Bucharest is a proper city with a major university. I have a friend who has her Masters in genetics and her Ph.D. in immunology. She almost never dresses in these Romanian costumes. Wait, actually never. Not only that, but this McDocumentary (sorry McDonalds) should have been edited because the open and honest interviews with the ugly Americans is appallingly insensitive and disgusting.
So, tell me, are those traditional cultural costumes authentic or monkey suits? Was this the decision of the bonehead producer or the director, or did this crisp, minty-fresh garb just happen to be what these folks were wearing? Were they just aching to be used there in the back of everyones’ closet? Or, was this the regalia these test subject were wearing when and where they were discovered? I really want to know!
The most deplorable part of this documentary is the critique and unself-aware commentary of the way these test subjects took to the burger, along the lines of “These people are so authentic because they don’t even know how to eat a burger to say nothing of a sandwich.”

Ugly Americans Filmed Whopper Virgins

Chris Abraham — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 23:13:54 +0000

My one question is whether or not authentic cultural garb was procured for these taste-testers. I hate to burst your bubble but Bucharest, Romania, is a proper city with a major university. I have a friend who has her Masters in genetics and her Ph.D. in immunology. She almost never dresses in these Romanian costumes. Wait, actual never. Not only that but this McDocumentary (sorry McDonalds) should have been edited because the open and honest interviews with the ugly Americans is appallingly insensitive and disgusting.

This documentary reveals as much about the provincialism of Americans as it does possibly about the “primatives” they’re documenting. Besides, the American obsession with the Noble Savage is so eighteenth-century. And this sort of untoward behavior is the furthest thing from Noblesse Oblige. They are neither being noble nor are they honoring any sort of moral obligation.

So, tell me, are those traditional cultural costumes authentic or monkey suits? Was this the decision of the bonehead producer, the director, or did this crisp, minty fresh garb just happen to be what these folks were wearing? Were they just aching to be used there in the back of everyones’ closet? Or, was this the regalia these test subject were wearing when and where they were discovered? I really want to know!

The most deplorable part of this documentary is the critique and un-self-aware commentary of the way these test subjects took to the burger, along the lines of, “these people are so authentic because they don’t even know how to eat a burger to say nothing of a sandwich.”

I am actually deeply appalled and embarrassed to be an American at just about now.

Egad!

Menehune and the Nightmarchers

Chris Abraham — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 11:30:07 +0000

This morning I was listening to Tapestry from the CBC and they were talking about the Netherworlds, including stuff about Anne Rice. What interested me was a segment on elves and faeries. The segment focused on how folks from Iceland and Newfoundland truly believe in elves and faeries. It made me think about growing up in Hawaii and how everybody I knew believed in both the menehunes and the nightmarchers.

In fact, we really believed in menehunes and many of us residents saw examples of the sort of endless, ancient, black lava rock walls that cut the verdant countryside. The fish ponds of almost super-human proportions. Even viaducts that carry water And, even more, we were always wary about running around in the wilderness at night. The menehune were pranksters. They are sometimes called “little people” — the same word they use in Ireland — because they’re supposed to be small, strong, mischievous, and only come out at night. They, too, are supposed to by mystical, minor deities, and also capable of reproducing with people, resulting in very blessed children.

The nightmarchers are different. There is no doubt that these are ghosts who don’t really know they’re dead, per se. They’re still making marches through the forest, and heaven forbid if you build your new home in the path of their marches. Many people have head them and some have seen their flaming torches.

In fact, my dad, Bob Abraham, who spent many years digging deep into Hawaiian culture as a photographer, told me that he heard the nightmarchers one night. In fact, my dad had stories of many experiences with ghosts and spirits in Hawaii Nei.

Here are two good resources I have discovered about them both:

Hawaiian Legends – Nightmarchers, Menehune, and the Tiki Gods

By: Celeste “Sally” Cheeseman, Century 21 Liberty Homes, Mililani, HI 96789 (Localism.com Featured Article)
HAWAIIAN Spirits and Superstitions covered only a sliver of our Spirits and Superstions in Hawaii. Remember I mentioned that we had our home blessed because our home was in the path of the warriors marching? We will now embark on one Hawaiian legend, ….The Nightmarchers.
The Nightmarchers are the ghosts of ancient Hawaiian high ranking warriors. They say that they come forth during the night from their burial sites to march where they battled or march on to other sacred areas. It is said that if you live near their path of marching you will see their torches or hear the chanting, the marching and/or the drums beating faintly. Place ti plants or leaves around your house to keep away evil spirits and the “nightmarchers” to avoid the area as well. The most famous of these “marching” paths of the Nightmarcher’s is along the Pali where Kamehameha fought the last battle.
In Hawaii, the Menehune, are “little people” that stand two feet high. Similar to pixi’s or trolls the Menehune roam the deep forests at night. They are very strong and are master builders and said to accomplish many projects over night! There are many stories how they came to be in Hawaii. One version is that they were the first settlers in Hawaii that came from the descendants of the Marquesas Islanders and resided here between the years of 0-350 A.D. Supposedly, the “bigger people” from Tahiti came and the Menehune ran off into the caves in mountains and only came out at night for food.
My mother was born and raised on Kauai with her 7 sisters and 1 brother. Later on, one of my Auntie’s married and moved to Waimea Kauai. When my cousin and I were 10 and 11 our mom’s would let us go to Kauai to visit my Aunt and Uncle for the summer. She lived right on Menehune Road and at the end of the road was the “Menehune Ditch”. The high chief of Waimea, “Ola” received aid from the Menehune to divert water from the Waimea River to their taro patches and supposedly made this ancient acqueduct overnight!
Anyway, my cousin claimed she must be a Menehune as well because she was very short and tried to go in the passageway in the Menehune Ditch in the mountain……I ran away afraid that something might happen! (The opening is in the picture to the right)

Menehune by Hugh D. Mailly on Encyclopedia Mythica

The folklore of many nations around the world include stories of magical little people. The most famous of course, are the leprechauns of Ireland. In Hawaii, it is the mischievous Menehune who are said to haunt the deep forests or the mountains of Pu’ukapele (“Hills of Pele”). They come out mostly at night to play tricks on people, or to serve them if they feel that way inclined.
The mythology of the Menehune is as old as the beginnings of Polynesian history. Some say that the great god Maui himself, was one of the tiny creatures. When the first Polynesians arrived in Hawaii, they found dams, fish-ponds, and even Heiaus (temples), all presumably built by the Menehune who were already there, living in caves.
The creatures are said to be about two feet high, although some have been seen as small as six inches, capable of fitting in the palm of someone’s hand. They are always naked, but the long straight hair that falls to their knees keeps them warm and discreet. Apparently no two of them are the same, and they can be so moody as to be malicious and dangerous one day, and simply harmless the next. But they are always tricky, and therefore should be avoided, unless a special favor is absolutely needed of them.
In the old times, some Hawaiians married Menehune girls, who were said to be quite fair, but needed to be shown how to make a fire and eat cooked food, because their own diet consisted only of starchy raw vegetables. The services of Menehune expert builders and craftsmen can be requested. This is especially so, if you can trace your family tree back to one of them. They then act like benevolent godparents. Many a major project, such as the preparation of a wedding feast, has been completed in a single night by the super strong little gods, while all humans slept.
Menehune are afraid of owls. On the island of Kauai, the Menehune sometimes sneak in among the people there and pull too many tricks. That is when the owl god of Paupueo (owl hill) summons all the owls of Kauai to chase the Menehune back into the forest.
The little ones are fond of dancing, and singing, and of sports, such as shooting arrows. Sometimes they use magic arrows, to pierce the heart of angry persons, and make them feel love instead. They also truly enjoy diving off cliffs into the surf. If you hear splashes in the night at Kaanapali, it is possibly a Menehune diving off Black Rock! But you would have to move impossibly quick to ever see one.

How I Finally Defogged my Seiko Diver

Chris Abraham — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 18:55:19 +0000

To finally follow-up on my article, The Freezer Might Have Unfogged My Seiko 6309-7040 Diver , I found a solution: I opened up my watch — unscrewed the crown and pulled it out — and placed the watch into a bag of uncooked dry rice over night and that did the trick, knock on wood.

Celebrating Christmas at the Train Station

Chris Abraham — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 15:26:42 +0000

I go to Berlin Hauptbahnhof almost every day. Bahnhof is German for train station and Hauptbahnhof is German for the main train station. Every city has one. DC’s Hauptbahnhof is Union Station, for example, and in many ways comparable.

The Berlin Hauptbahnhof houses my local coffee shop, my local grocery story, etc. To be honest, there is always something going on there. And everything is a promotional or is branded. This is one of the rare train stations that have become a center for children and their families.

German “Hauptbahnhofs” and “Bahnhofs” are known to be dens of prostitution — however, Berlin Hbf is far from that. It is a destination. Also, because there are weird laws that prohibit retail stores from opening on Sunday, everyone comes to the Bahnhofs because only train stations and gas stations are licensed to do business on Sundays.

So, these stations are packed with all sorts of stores and are packed on Sundays by the people who want to do some shopping on the Lord’s Day.

The Ballad of Chris Abraham by Phillip Rhoades

Chris Abraham — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 23:33:23 +0000

The Ballad of Chris Abraham

With fingers strong he types the truth
With graceful words so slick
He opens eyes, and hearts, and minds
With his memetic tricks

Oh, once you read his graceful lines
You’ll see a different world
With thoughts that live, evolve, and change
In human minds a-whirl

He fights the endless hordes of fools
With sharpened sword of wit
Striking down the endless legion
A man of brains and grit

Remember him, Chris Abraham,
Historians to come
A man who rushed into the page
And fought the mindless scum

Via Ungab

Pepsi Apologized to Me For Its Suicide Ads

Chris Abraham — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 00:33:01 +0000

Matt and I rushed this post tonight. I received the email three hours ago, IMed Matt, and we got it out now. I love blogging for this. I hope you enjoy this new post, Pepsi Apologized to Me For Its Suicide Ads:

Pepsi Apologized to Me For Its Suicide Ads
A close-up look at how the marketer is handling fallout from its controversial German ads
This week, PepsiCo got into hot water with more than a few folks after some suicide-themed ads many found offensive were brought to light. Here’s how they’re using social media to apologize to consumers—including me.
I received an email from B. Bonin Bough of PepsiCo, @boughb on Twitter, responding to my tweet about the recent post that Matt Creamer wrote a couple days ago, “Pepsi Opens a Vein of Controversy With New Suicide-Themed Ads”, about some ads that were run here in Germany in a lifestyle mag—ads Pepsi says it won’t run again after they received heavy criticism all over the web.
I’ll excerpt the first part of the email from Mr. Bough, who holds the title of director-social and emerging media and is based at Pepsi’s Purchase, N.Y. campus:
I saw your tweet and I just wanted to make sure I responded personally. We agree this creative is totally inappropriate; we apologize and please know it won’t run again. Also, thanks for the feedback and the Digg, it is important to discuss these types of issues.
My best friend committed suicide and this is a topic very close to my heart. So again I offer my deepest apologies.
Feel free to follow-up via twitter to me – @boughb or Huw – @huwgilbert or respond to this email.
Thanks, Bonin
I know you all think I am going to mock Bonin, but I won’t. I think this was a very bold and risky maneuver and worthy of praise rather than a tarring and feathering. And his outreach to me, a nobody, was accomplished within two days. When I replied to Bonin, asking if I might be allowed to post his email, he replied back that I could post his email but to try to “treat it kindly.” I hope I am.
I don’t think that Bonin knew that I blog for AdAge or that I know a bit about how the marketer is surprised about how well-traveled the ads have been. The old we-didn’t-think-anyone-here-would-see-it approach. Well, that’s the Internet for you. Someone passed along the scans of the PepsiMax ad, “One is a Very Very Lonely Calorie,” to the alert gang here at AdAge.
Within two days of tweeting, I received a note from @tweetmeme, a sure sign that my tweet had gone memetic (and that I had played at least a bit part in the mad traffic to the AdAge post as well as the resulting 40 comments.)
Here’s how fast and furious social media works. The article was posted on AdAge at 4:36 PM EST on December 2nd. I read it and Tweeted at 6:16 PM EST the same day. And then I received said email from Mr. Bough at 5:21 PM on December 4. The lesson here is that social media has eyes everywhere and the network to make sure that advertisers can no longer hide stuff in niche markets. There is a word in intelligence about just this thing, and it relates to messaging and propaganda: backwash. Social media makes backwash inevitable. Here’s another one from Intelligence: blowback. Backwash leads to blowback.
There’s no way to isolate this kind of advertisement. And there is an inverse proportion between how badly you want your ad to remain niche and the sensationalism surrounding its discovery. It’s a really obvious point, but one still clearly worth stating: The internet makes it impossible for any marketer to control which geographies and demographics see any particular communication. You can’t even really control what media it appears in. Think you’re creating an edgy print ad that will only be seen in a German magazine? Think again. In the blink of an eye, your ad is on the web. You know, the world wide one. And all kinds of people are pissed off.
What I like about what “Bough, Bonin {PEP}” did here is that he responded almost immediately, rather personally, and opened himself up to us social media mavens. Bravo! Full marks. Another thing I like about his apology is that there is a very good chance that I am being played, that Mr. Bough is playing reverse psychology on me. Yes, he readily approved my posting of this message when I asked, which leads me to believe that the very act of clicking on the post right now is just going to help PepsiCo with an amazingly-savvy viral marketing campaign for PepsiMax.

The Only Good Bank in Berlin

Chris Abraham — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 13:17:13 +0000

The Deutsche Bank Store of the Future, originally uploaded by Chris Abraham.

When I arrived in Berlin, my buddy Mark told me that I had to follow him halfway across town, past dozens of banks, including a number of Deutsche Banks, from where we were in Moabit down to Friedrichstraße, south of Straße des 17. Juni, to one particular Deutsche Bank called Die Deutsche Bank der Zukunft — “Deutsche Bank of the Future.”

Well, the service is superb! There is a cafe with coffee and food. When you interact with a bank manager, it is in the cafe with personal service. Also, the cafe is open to the public, there is a boutique store in the front with high-end gifts, including gifts from Harrods, strangely enough. I have always been treated like I am rich and important when I am there, no matter how I am dressed or how unshaven. Everyone speaks English, as well.

Not only that, but I am told that, in general, service sucks in Germany, especially in Berlin, especially the service offered in Banks. Maybe a hold-over from Soviet-era bureaucracy — maybe all of the bureaucratic former Eastern Germans ended up manning all of the Berlin banks. Well, that is not the case with the Deutsche Bank of the Future!

Die Deutsche Bank der Zukunft
(Private & Business Clients)
Friedrichstraße 181
10117 Berlin
Germany
+49 30 460611-0
+49 30 460611-99 Fax
Bank Code: 10070024
Swift Code: DEUTDEBBXXX / DEUTDEDBBER
Opening Hours
Monday – Tuesday: 10:00 – 20:00
Wednesday: 10:00 – 18:00
Thursday – Saturday: 10:00 – 20:00

Pithy Philosophical Quotes on Democracy

Chris Abraham — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 09:37:30 +0000

“Democratic institutions form a system of quarantine for tyrannical desires.” Friedrich Nietzsche #
“Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule – and both commonl … #
“Only the educated are free.” Epictetus #
“When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right.” Eug … #
“The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy; the best weapon of a democracy is openness.” Edvard Teller #
“A man will fight harder for his interests than for his rights.” Napoleon Bonaparte #
“Men are more easily governed through their vices than through their virtues.” Napoleon Bonaparte #
“Free speech is not to be regulated like diseased cattle and impure butter. The audience that hissed yesterday may applaud today, even f … #
“Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.” Thomas Jefferson #
”You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.” James Thurber #
“Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms [of government] those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, … #
“If pigs could vote, the man with the slop bucket would be elected swineherd every time, no matter how much slaughtering he did on the s … #
”Liberty is to the collective body what health is to every individual body. Without health, no pleasure can be tasted by man; without l … #
“History teaches that grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure … #
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” Mar … #
“Democracy encourages the majority to decide things about which the majority is ignorant.” John Simon #
“Democracy is a form of government in which it is permitted to wonder aloud what the country could do under first-class management.” Sen … #
“Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.” George Bernard … #
“In democracy everyone has the right to be represented, even the jerks.” Chris Patten #
“When the government fears the people, that is LIBERTY. When people fear the government, that is TYRANNY.” Author Unknown #
“It is as hard for the good to suspect evil, as it is for the bad to suspect good.” Marcus Tullius Cicero #
“Men will wrangle for religion, write for it, fight for it, die for it, anything but live for it.” Charles Caleb Cotton #
“Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter.” African proverb #
“You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.” Ma … #
“Every great movement must experience three stages: ridicule, discussion, adoption.” John Stuart Mill #
“Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right.” Laurens van der Post #
“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” Alice Walker #
“A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.” Saul Bellow #
“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” Aristotle #
“Restlessness and discontent are the first necessities of progress.” Thomas A. Edison #
“Every civilizing step in history has been ridiculed as ‘sentimental’, ‘impractical’, or ‘womanish’, etc., by those whose fun, profit or … #
“To feed men and not to love them is to treat them as if they were barnyard cattle. To love them and not respect them is to treat them a … #
“Democracies don’t prepare well for things that have never happened before.” Richard A. Clarke, former White House counter- terrorism chief. #
“Our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and … #
“Good government could never be a substitute for government by the people themselves.” Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, British Prime Minister #
“A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won’t cross the street to vote in a national election.” Bill Vaughan #
“Only the educated are free.” Epictetus #
“I have no respect for the passion for equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy.” Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. #
“It is better that a man should tyrannize over his bank balance than over his fellow-citizens.” John Mayard Keynes #
“Democracy means government by discussion, but it is only effective if you can stop people talking.” Clement Atlee #