An Bui, Spelled An With 1 N

Last weekend, my younger brother graduated from Carleton College, with a B.A. in economics. Since I missed his high school graduation, I really wanted to see him graduate from college and hang out in a community I haven’t spent much time in at all, even though half of my family has lived there at some point.

What’s this community? Northfield, MN, population 17,000. Seriously. To put it in perspective… that’s just north of the number of faculty (2,500) and staff (14,000)  for the University of Texas, Austin.

Northfield’s got a few cool things going on for it:

1. Colleges: Home to St. Olaf and Carleton Colleges, Northfield seems to have a pretty good relationship with the colleges, academics, and parents that come visit. The picture above was taken from Division Street, the main street in town. Both colleges have programs that help students get active in the local community. One of my brothers worked on a project coordinating joint St. Olaf & Carleton volunteer/outreach efforts. Both schools are small liberal arts colleges and very well regarded - St. Olaf is a USNWR Top 50 National Liberal Arts College & Carleton is a Top 10.

Carleton even has an arboretum!

2. Cereal: Have you ever heard of Malt-O-Meal? Malt-O-Meal is a major employer/driver of the Northfield economy and they sell cereal in plastic bags for less money on a by-weight comparison to Post, General Mills, and others. I drove by the factory on the way to St. Olaf, and it smelled delicious. It reminded me of being a little girl and triggered a milk craving.

3. Contentment: People in Northfield are apparently happy. I don’t blame them. I’d be pretty happy too, if nice grandmotherly-types gave me flowers for driving by. Oh wait! They did!

Seriously. I was running errands, and these nice ladies gave me some potted peonies that now sit on my mom’s balcony. I gave them a hug when they wouldn’t take money.

Other random awesomeness from my trip:

To address my sociological tendencies, I also drove by Northfield’s public housing facilities. Interesting to note, they differed from other public housing facilities I’ve seen (Chester, PA & Columbia Heights, Washington, DC) in that these public housing facilities had yards with green grass instead of concrete.

Coffeeshops took cash or check. Even out of state checks. Also, wifi bandwidth was widely available and a large cup of coffee could be had for less than $2.00, including tax.

I had a great time - check out Northfield if you’re doing college visits throughout the midwest, like your coffee with plenty of bandwidth, and find yourself wondering what cereal smells like.

Or just check it out because you can or you want to.

Recently, Oxygen aired back-to-back episodes of America’s Next Top Model, Cycle 11. From 14 contestants, one would become America’s Next Top Model.

Great background noise to do chores to, I thought. Turns out, ANTM provides lessons applicable in wider contexts, beyond fashion.

Three Lessons on Being Fierce

1. Own Your Awkwardness

The ability to own one of her personal characteristics helped Marjorie go fairly far into the competition. By taking charge of her physical awkwardness, Marjorie turned it into something beautiful.

Understanding and working with your weaknesses can help  you get closer to your goals.

2. Go with the Flow

Episode after episode, the judges gave Elina feedback about having too much control. They wanted to see her let go a bit more. She was eventually eliminated because of her control issues - her photos, while beautiful, didn’t really improve, in part because she didn’t listen to feedback.

Going with the flow requires you to be open to experiences as they present themselves. These experiences lead to growth if you’re willing to learn, evolve, and change. If you’re controlling every experience, your opportunities to learn are limited, since you’re setting reasonable expectations around outcomes.

3. Complacency can mean the End of the Road

Clarke went from having the top photo one week to being eliminated the next. How did this happen? She said she only needed one good photo - she went through most of her shots and at the end, her best photo just wasn’t good enough.

Falling into the complacent mindset caps one’s growth and can lead to being left back on JV when the rest of the team makes Varsity.

The NYT’s “The Choice” blog recently posted some advice entitled: “Free Fashion Advice for College Inverviews, From a $15,000 Consultant” and my first thought? Seriously?!? You’ve got to be KIDDING me. A “free” fashion show modeling looks from Greenwich’s Rugby by Ralph Lauren store?

I have nothing against college admissions consulting and nothing against college admissions consulting at that price point.  I do, however, balk at advice given by admissions consultants that add very little value to parents and kids already worried about the college admissions process. With my experience helping kids get into college from my years with The Princeton Review and as a Swarthmore College Alumni Interviewer, I present to you…

“Free Admissions Interview Advice From an $100/hour Consultant”

1. Play up your assets. This does not mean cleavage, legs, or broad shoulders. This means highlight parts of who you are that you think are important. This can be lessons you’ve learned from leadership roles, participation in groups or communities, or classes you found interesting and why. Regarding dress, wear what you’re comfortable in and something that communicates how seriously you’re taking the interview. If that’s a suit, that’s a suit. If it’s a cute, knee length skirt with a modest top, then skirt and top it is.

2. Highlight FIT, not HAIR. Ok, highlights in your hair can be super cute as well as make you look polished and professional, which is always appreciated. More important that great hair is highlighting how you fit in with the college culture. Prospective students can divine a bit of college culture from admissions brochures, online resources like the Princeton Review, and connections w/ current students via Facebook.

As an interviewer, I’m asking myself “Is this student one I see at Swarthmore, and one I see being successful at Swarthmore?” I find that students answer that question in the natural course of the conversation.

3. Make it easy for admissions officers to want you for the class. Think about how you’ve been contributing to your school, community, and other organizations. Think in terms of measurable impacts you’ve made. Be REALLY clear about what you’re looking to get out of a college experience, even if it’s “I’m looking to learn about what I want to learn about.” Connect the experiences you’ve had with how you see yourself contributing to the college community.

If you’re looking to have a fairly active social (read: partying, drinking, etc.) life, think about what you’re willing to do when you’re not partying, drinking, etc. You might want to consider taking a gap year if you consider college a four year party. At $200k/BA at a private school, that’s a pretty pricey cover charge.

Last words of advice:

Remember, college admissions committees are putting together a well-rounded class, not necessarily a class of well-rounded individuals. They want a group who can bring out the best in each other and contribute to the academic, athletic, artistic, etc community and culture of the college. If you’re an all-around rock star in all of the above, continue to be so. If you’re all-around mediocre in all of the above, you might want to think about spending your time going deep and being amazing at the one you’re most passionate about, be it school, a volunteer program, a sport, or an activity.

Yes, college admissions is getting more competitive each year. However, if you focus on the fundamentals: doing well in classes and standardized tests, contributing in class and the community, and genuinely being interested in finding a great fit for college, then you’ll be fine in the process.

One of my favorite professors once said:

Focus on the process. You can control the process. The minute you start thinking about the outcome, you’re screwed.

Apparently I need to clear my cache, because when I went back to Mack Collier’s blog, I didn’t get redirected to his new site.

Instead, I saw this title: “The idea that ‘content is king’ in blogging is total bullshit”

According to Mack, “Being Social is [king in blogging]”

The idea that good or even great content is not enough. Besides, “Good” or “Great” content isn’t even actionable - it’s too abstract. So let’s get concrete.

What makes good content?

1. Applies to your target audience

2. Findable or discoverable by your target audience

3. Helps or is otherwise useful to your target audience

For example, if you were trying to launch a new boutique geared towards teens/early 20’s demographic, you’d want to offer clothes they’d want to wear. You’d make your retail location accessible to them and you’d make it easy for them walk in by literally leaving your doors open.

One company that did this well? Abercrombie & Fitch, which changed its business from offering outdoors gear to offering clothing for the Tweens/Young Adult demographic. They even got a mention in LFO’s summer hit (’99), “Summer Girls”

Same deal with online marketing.

1. Provide germane (relevant) content - answer questions your audience may have or give them information they want to know.

2. Findability/searchability means that search engines can crawl AND index your content. If your content can’t be found, your audience can’t find you.

3. Helps or is otherwise useful - the call to action is so valuable for this reason. If you let people know what to do next and they want what you’re offering, you’ve lowered the barrier for purchase, adoption, etc.

So why does being social matter?

1. You get invaluable feedback loops from others - your content can improve based on customer/user feedback. You learn what resonates with people and what they think is worth repeating. Given the speed of publishing social media, you can iterate more quickly - concept to publishing no longer takes weeks or months.

2. You enable people to find out about you sooner, rather than later. Trust takes time. If you’re hanging out by yourself online generating amazing content, search is basically the only channel by which others can discover you. By leaving your blog, going to others’ and leaving insightful (not spammy!) comments, you’re creating other channels for people to discover you.

3. By adding or providing value (ie - being useful) you start building trust. Intention matters. Be open and honest about who you are, what interests you, and what you find interesting.

Good content is the minimum barrier to entry and great social content helps you learn, grow and refine your thinking.

Thanks to Deb Robison for the conversation that spawned this blog post and Mack Collier for his thoughts.

When your body just won’t fall asleep and you have TV, it’s quite possible that you end up having infomercials on while doing other things. 

And so it happened that I had infomercials on in the background at 1am last night.

As the infomercial droned on, a realization permeated the recesses of my mind - 

THEY WERE SHOUTY.

Ok, to be fair, the actor(s) in the infomercial were shouty, using outdoor voices the whole time. 

Even worse, I can’t remember what it was that they were selling - knives? workout equipment? - my only takeaway was how they delivered the message.

Social media’s most successful case studies (see @comcastcares, @RichardatDell, @zappos, @TimJackson to name a few… ) demonstrate a high level of engagement.

Are you listening or are you shouting?

Apologies for not blogging as much here - I’m hip-deep (knee-deep for normal heighted peoples) in a transition that keeps me hopping.

The Rumors Are True

I’m gallivanting off to Boulder. To that end, Kyle Mulka (who’s off to Ann Arbor) and I are hosting a party at The Garage in Cap Hill tomorrow night.

Date: 5/9
Start: 7:30 pm
Location: The Garage 

We hope to see you there. 

Why am I heading to Boulder? For many reasons. No 60-second soundbite (or even an 8 bit soundbyte) can explain it. Believe me, I’ve tried. 

I’ve done quantitative and qualitative analysis, made pro/con lists, and slept on it. In my reasoning and thought process, I applied a totality of the circumstances standard and decided that Boulder is where I want to be based. Going into deeper detail would result in a document about as exciting to read as a brief, so I won’t subject you to that. 

I feel incredibly blessed to be part of the Seattle Tech community. Seattle 2.0 Awards last night exemplified the strength and depth of the Seattle startup community. Dave Schappell of TeachStreet kept us laughing, Marcelo Calbucci and the rest of Seattle 2.0 kept things running smoothly. I’ll continue my work with electronic signature and contract execution service provider DocuSign & online scheduling/billing tool Divvy. 

I’ll be back and forth between Boulder and Seattle. I’ve a bit of travel planned for the rest of the summer - my brother’s graduation in Minnesota, time on the East Coast and in the Southwest reconnecting with college classmates and celebrating their life transitions, and of course, time here in Seattle. 

An heading off to Boulder is just a change. In the mean time, here’s a picture of a pony: 

via flickr user welmo

My favorite memories of college were cross country and track practice. While XC and track both increase your fitness by running, the approaches were quite different. 

Cross country was more freeform. You’d go out on long runs and just run. You could run hills, through creeks, deal with trails. You adjusted on the fly and the key is going long and hard. Try running five miles at an average pace of eight minute miles. Interval training on varied terrain for 1 or 1.5k happened every week, and much of the work happened on the trails. 

via flickr user nocklebeast

In contrast, track workouts were interval based on a track. 100, 200, 400, 800 and 1000 meter repeats. Run, time, record. Try and hit consistent splits with every interval. 

Over time, your times get better. This was true in both XC and track. 

However, times in XC had more variance. Why? Courses were different. Some had more hills, turns, tree roots, rain, streams, hay bales than others. These factors affect your time.

Track times tended to be more consistent because a track is a more controlled racing environment. It’s 400m, outdoors. The surface may be cinder, rubber, or gravel. The turns’ tightness may vary, but it’s basically some form of oval.

Now what does this have to do with Social Media and PPC?

Social Media and PPC both help you reach your online marketing goals in different ways. 

Think of social media as XC. The landscape varies. Twitter, Facebook, blogs are all different. The interaction paradigms vary in part because of the content that is share and in part because of the people you can connect with. You can show up, listen and share information with people you connect with. It’s a long term marketing strategy.  

Think of PPC as track. You have the search engines. You buy your ads and keywords and you can calculate your PPC ROI and adjust over time. You try to hit your click through rates and lead gen goals. 

With both XC and track you get fit. Fitness from XC and track complement each other - you run better times for running both. 

Think that’s true for Social Media and PPC as well?

Columbia University, Rodin's Thinker, via flickr user wallyg

Yesterday, Mark C. Taylor, chair of Columbia’s religion department, wrote in a NYT Op-Ed piece, End the University as We Know It:

GRADUATE education is the Detroit of higher learning. Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields within subfields and publication in journals read by no one other than a few like-minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising cost (sometimes well over $100,000 in student loans).

From this controversial opening, Professor Taylor argues for a hgher education system that follows an interdisciplinary, collaborative model that mobilizes scholars around problems and produces scholarship in a more consumable fashion. 

Social media applications/tools have enabled its users to do what Professor Taylor is advocating. Twitter enables the rapid mobilization to address problems. Wikis result in information in a consumable fashion via real time collaboration. All of this consumer generated media (CGM) creates a body of knowledge whose value comes from the integration of various perspectives. Holding the appropriate context and understanding how the various pieces fit should be a driving force in these collaborative processes.

Do graduate students and scholars miss the point if they think that their training prepares them only for the profession of their graduate degree, be it academia, journalism, law, planning, business, etc.?

Yes. Absolutely yes if they cannot connect what they know and what they are learning to value creation and problem solving. Thinking about the process of learning, what is being learned and what that means are some of the values of a liberal arts education. Does this create students who can apply their skills in different contexts?  Will these students have more options than those who cannot?

Professor Taylor leaves us with valuable advice: 

“Do not do what I do; rather, take whatever I have to offer and do with it what I could never imagine doing and then come back and tell me about it.” 

Applying this entrepreneurial perspective higher ed will enable it to evolve with society.

Shannon Paul brought up some great points about how Twitter helps her be effective. In a nutshell, Twitter helps Shannon (and many of us) by helping us connect the dots to solve problems/address issues by allowing access to socially vetted information. 

In other words, collaborate in a distributed fashion.

Why is this important? Because geography is a less of a barrier to information acquisition. 

You should read Shannon’s original post - she’s spot on in the ways Twitter aids professional productivity and effectiveness and her commentors are pretty smart as well. 

um, except me. From my comment on Shannon’s blog:

Blocking access to Twitter and other social networks /definitely/ inhibits an employee’s ability to be effective.

Blocking Twitter and other social networks is about limiting risk and liability… all employees are a liability… the question is to what degree?

There are arguments for and against open communication into and out of an organization…

I had marked <corporate hat> around my comment about limiting risk and liability, but it got stripped out. Understanding why leadership may take a certain policy view can help us communicate with them why tools like Twitter can enable not inhibit professional productivity. 

However, I have yet to crack the nut on how to minimize data/information leakage, especially concerning sensitive, confidential information. This problem likely limits collaboration with external parties.  

Does anyone have any ideas?