Uprising: How to Build a Brand–and Change the World–By Sparking Cultural Movements
by Scott Goodson promises to help your master the tools of social media and the new global communications market place to start a movement behind your cause. Well, in this case, most of what Goodson addresses is commercial marketing as a cause.
While much of what Goodson teaches is useful, there are some glaring flaws in his arguments. This first problem I had is that he uses the Occupy Wall Street movement as a successful case study of a grass roots movement affecting change. The difficulty with this, at least at the moment, is that while the OWS movement exhibited a lot of sound and fury, but has seemingly not accomplished much. I wonder if this was just a view I had, but I asked a number of friends, most liberal like I am, and they all had to admit that while the OWS was a great idea, it seems to have accomplished very little. Well, unless you could trashing parks as an accomplishment.
Secondly, to defend his argument that these types of movements can be motivated towards brand marketing, he holds up Apple as an example. Just as I was an OWS sympathizer I am also an Apple fan boy. But, Apple is a special case and is not an easily replicable example. Just ask Microsoft. While people will line up for hours waiting for an Apple store to open, I can’t remember anyone ever lining up for the release of a Microsoft product. Maybe the Xbox or Halo video game? Perhaps the only other store that has people lining up for its opening is Trader Joe’s or Chick-Fil-A. But neither one of those has a stock cap of over $600 and the international brand recognition of Apple. And in Chick-Fil-A’s case it is because they are bribing the first 100 people with free meals for a year. Take those meals away, and no one would line up.
This is not to say this is a bad book. This review is coming off extremely negative, and for that I am sorry. I really enjoyed the book and the object lessons Goodson writes. The examples and methodologies it contains are valuable and they are easy lessons to read and grasp. They are harder lessons to carry out however. And more importantly, they are methodologies and viewpoints that are very hard to instill in an organization unless they were there from the start – and were there as the raison d’etre from the beginning. Steve Jobs did not retrofit his goals to the company. He set out from the beginning to change the world.
So, read the book. Take it to heart. Pass it on to others in your organizations. But don’t expect to be the next Apple unless you already have implemented everything in the book before you even read it.
Note: The publisher gave me a copy of this book for the purpose of. There were no strings attached, and that gratis review copy in no way swayed my opinions towards this work.
Tags: Apple, movements, OWS
NTEN is a great organization for helping non-profits deal with technology in their missions. They have an annual conference which is, unfortunately, too far away for most of us to get to and pay for. This year though you can attend remotely! The Coastal Community Foundation along with The Palmetto Technology Hub are sponsoring remote attendance. Hit this link or the one below to check it out, but suffice it to say that the sessions are valuable, the cost is dirt cheap, and you can pop in and out as much as you like to just attend was is pertinent to your needs.
Tags: conference, non-profit, not-for-profit
Podcasts are similar to radio programs. Their formats can be talk shows, call-in sports shows, 
audiobooks, poetry, music DJs, news, sightseeing tours, and much more. Of course, in our case, our podcasts are mainly our Sunday sermons and the occasional special event. Podcasts are different from radio in that a podcast is a series of audio files you get on the Internet and you don’t have to be tuned in at a specific time.
Most websites provide on-screen controls for you to listen to our podcasts. But, the best thing about podcasts is that they can be downloaded to your own computer or audio player device. This lets you listen to them anytime – such as in the car or while on a walk or maybe doing those household chores.
You can subscribe to podcasts, just like a magazine. In the same way a magazine arrives in your mailbox when a new edition comes out, a podcast uses software on your computer called a podcatcher to automatically download new shows whenever they become available. To subscribe and download podcasts requires that bit of podcatcher software and perhaps your audio player device. Below are some instructions to help you with that.
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Tags: music, Podcasting, radio
If you go much deeper into WordPress than simply adding pages, posts, and maybe some images, you will quickly come across areas 
where you will need a bit more instruction. As you start to customize menus, tailor-fit widgets, and adjust what posts appear in different locations, the standard out-of-the box help screens just don’t cut it anymore. This is where a book like Ric Shreve’s WordPress 3 Cookbook
comes into play.
The WordPress 3 Cookbook, published by Packt Publishing in December of 2012, is not the kind of book you read cover to cover. As the title implies, it contains a series of recipes or tasks that you will go to in order to get something specific accomplished. Those tasks may be as simple as changing some text in the header or footer, or as complex as customizing the internal WordPress look to display posts of only a certain type or combining that with some custom CSS to display your posts in a two column layout.
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Tags: customization, Packt Publishing, skills, training, WordPress
The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), also known as House Bill 3261 or H.R. 3261, is a bill that was introduced in the United States House of Representatives on October 26, 2011, by House Judiciary Committee Chair Representative Lamar S. Smith (R-TX) and a bipartisan group of 12 initial co-sponsors. The bill, if made law, would expand the ability of U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods. Presented to the House Judiciary Committee, it builds on the similar PRO-IP Act of 2008 and the corresponding Senate bill, the PROTECT IP Act.
To read more on this, please check out Google’s site, as well as these excellent articles and sites.
Tags: laws, piracy, Security, SOPA
