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Tom Parish Inc. Blog
showbizzle.com Prelaunch Site is Released - showbizzle Background Provided
The time is drawing close for the launch of showbizzle.Here is some background information on this break-through idea of combining Web 2.0 social media ideas with traditional Hollywood entertainment.
" Okay... Think of showbizzle as scripted entertainment that could pass as a reality show, broadcast in the form of a daily blog, with the goal of building a social network aimed at emerging actors, writers, directors, fans of the biz – basically anyone with a computer and some time on their hands who is looking for some fun entertainment.
We’re looking for people most likely like you who are maybe thinking about spending some time out in Hollywood – or who would just like to live vicariously through the lives of our characters and the members of our showbizzle community.
Maybe showbizzle is just entertainment, or, maybe for you it’s something more… maybe you really are thinking about taking a chance, making the plunge, doing whatever it takes to make a career in show business happen – or, as we prefer to call it, showbizzle… which is kind of like show business, only a lot more fun.
Here’s the plan: Starting mid September 2008, showbizzle will present at least three original, two-minute, scripted videos every day until Thanksgiving (that’s 9 ½ weeks for those who are counting) posted on our showbizzle website…
The website serves as the daily blog of our fictitious blogger – Janey – who hangs out every day on the patio at her favorite coffee place listening to old friends and new acquaintances from all strata of Hollywood showbizzle, (in other words, our characters), confide intimate details about their career ambitions; creative aspirations, pipe dreams, hook ups, f***-ups, romantic liaisons, embarrassing day jobs, galvanizing moments, personal quests, major revelations, unexpected characters and narrative twists – you know, the basic personal and professional stuff that typifies what it's like to be young… in Los Angeles… in 2008.
The one thing we can assure you about the 170 videos we will be posting on the showbizzle website this Fall is that each vignette will feel authentic and different from virtually everything else that you can currently find in the world wide web.
We’re showbizzle. We’re different. And we like it that way.
Join us… and become part of our community. "
If you're interested in learning more about this launch do give me shout - tom.parish AT gmail.com
Tom _____
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Ken Theis: How IT Makes Michigan Government Better, More Economical
This is from the August 12th update at Enterprise Leadership.
Ken Theis
Director of Michigan Department of Information Technology
Play Podcast (Right click to download)
The State of Michigan has become a pioneer in how to make IT work better and be more economically viable for its citizens. They focused on consolidating IT into one state agency, and then developing a strategic plan and an enterprise architecture to support the plan.
In 2001, the entire IT organization across the State of Michigan merged into the Michigan Department of Information Technology (MDIT), under the direction of Ken Theis. MDIT's 1,700 employees support 19 other state agencies. These agencies have a combined annual budget of $434 million, 800 business-critical applications, 55,000 desktops, and 1,300 telecom locations.
The consolidation reduced overall IT expenditures in Michigan by 34 percent, taking more than $100 million off the state budget. Some of these strategic moves included closing 23 data centers and creating three main data centers, reducing the number of email servers from 700 to 70, and centralizing one petabyte of data storage. Meanwhile, MDIT also addressed errors in programs, such as Food Stamps.
In this podcast, Ken talks about the agency's overall IT strategy, the components that comprise the enterprise architecture, the initiatives that are bringing smaller and more efficient government to the people of Michigan, and the challenge of managing IT investments.
Theis says, "If you can't measure it, you shouldn't be doing it. We continue to strive for returns on our IT investments. Sometimes the returns can be financial, and other times they might be services that benefit citizens. We're always looking to improve how we can increase the returns on our IT investments, especially in a tight economy."
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Molly O'Neill: How IT Drives a Federal Agency's Global and Local Collaboration
This is from the Aug. 6th update at EnterpriseLeadership.
Molly O'Neill
CIO of the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency
Play Podcast (Right click to download)
Molly O'Neill has both a technology role and a policy role at the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency. As an assistant administrator for the EPA's Office of Environmental Information, she oversees the life cycle of information to support the agency's mission of protecting health and the environment. O'Neill's role as CIO includes overseeing the agency's strategic information planning, investment and information policies, enterprise architecture, and information security program.
In both her technology and policy roles, O'Neill is working toward the same goal - helping the EPA use technology to collaborate and exchange information with the widest possible network of bright minds around the world. The EPA employs about five percent of the U.S. environmental workforce. The majority of this workforce consists of people who work in state government, in consulting firms, in private industry, and in academic institutions. She says, "Environmental issues are huge. People work at the EPA because they believe in its mission. We want to reach everyone who has a thirst for knowledge about environmental issues."
In this podcast, O'Neill talks about the EPA's Web 2.0 initiatives. As she puts it, "to reach out and grab the world globally, as well as locally." She also explains how the EPA's formal process for making IT investment decisions works, and how the EPA has been at the forefront of the green data center movement.
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"Follow the Wind" - A Short Documentary on Community Wind in Montana
This movie was shot last year in Montana with the help of Claud Matney and so many others. I co-produced it with Carolyn Baehr, and Robert Shaver did the post-production work for us (and camera work and much more). The idea was to capture the story of a couple of mayors in the process of looking at using wind power to offset utility costs for their towns.This same story is happening now in Texas, and we'll be chronicling that soon. It's not always the big wind turbine fields that make an impact. It's what real people do in small towns to make life better for themselves, to be more in control and independent of outside influences.
Hope you like this.
Tom _____
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Barry Libert: How to Harness the Power of the Crowd
This is from the July 26th update at EnterpriseLeadership.
Barry Libert
Author and chairman of the board of Mzinga
Play Podcast (Right click to download)
Procter & Gamble turned to social media, not soap operas, to really connect to its customers. The Vocalpoint P&G community enlisted 850,000 stay-at-home moms to create new products and new services, such as Dawn Direct Foam.
Barry Libert, a social media visionary and the founder of Shared Insights (now Mzinga), knows how to use technology to harness the power of what he calls the crowd. Mzinga provides software as a service solution for online communities. It currently manages about 14,000 communities, and services more than one billion monthly page requests from 27 million users in 160 countries worldwide. Libert is chairman of the board of Mzinga. He and his co-authors set up a community and enlisted members to contribute to a book called We Are Smarter than Me: How to Unleash the Power of Crowds in Your Business. In fact, this is the first book that actually used an online community, based on a Web 2.0 technology from Mzinga, to help create the book. About 4,000 qualified members joined the online community and helped shape the final product. By using the same social networking tools and techniques that their book covers, Libert and his co-authors provide a practical and unique look at online community-building.
He says that building communities isn't all about tools and technologies. "The task requires good facilitation, moderation, and services that go along with them. Remember, people at eBay and Amazon make sure their respective communities work. You need a community manager. The same goes for customer communities and employee communities. Mzinga is the online equivalent to the community sherpa."
In this podcast, Libert talks about the power of communities, the differences between community and business, and the changes businesses must make if they want to build communities.
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Susannah - Movie Short Shot with a RED Camera
Robert Shaver, Carolyn Baehr and I are responsible for this particular version of this movie short, Susannah. This movie was shot on a RED camera back in December 2007. A group of people at OpenCut.org decided they would let anyone edit the footage to create their own version of the movie, which we could then use for whatever purpose we had in mind (within reason). So we used the opportunity to learn how to take 2k by 2k footage from this amazing camera and make it all play well on Final Cut Pro. Robert did the editing, Carolyn was our story consultant, and my business, Tom Parish Inc., provided the production facilities. I did the music selection and of course used the amazing production library from 5AlarmMusic. We learned a lot - like how much we enjoyed working with beautiful images from this RED camera system.Here is the movie. It's about 5 minutes long. Enjoy!
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William Hurley: Conversation about Open Source, Part 2
This is from the July 19th update at EnterpriseLeadership.
William Hurley
Chief architect of open source strategy
BMC Software, Inc.
Play Podcast (Right click to download) - Part 2
In an effort to bring a consistent message about open source to customers and to partners, and to participate more actively in the open source community, BMC in 2007 hired William Hurley (aka whurley), an open source activist, inventor, and chairman of the Open Management Consortium, a non-profit organization advancing the adoption, development, and integration of open source systems management.
Whurley's role as chief architect of open source strategy has many facets to it. BMC's executives depend on guidance for anything that has to do with open source. Whurley contributes to the company's open source strategy, as well as carries it out. As an evangelist, he is the BMC open source voice at IT venues. He manages BMC's presence in the open source community by getting customers involved with it. In fact, management has encouraged whurley to maintain all of his open source community connections.
In this second of two podcasts, whurley, without mincing words, talks about a meeting that he and 30 other open source illuminaries had at Microsoft to discuss that company's position on openness. Whurley talks about what he observed at that meeting. He also discusses his challenge of maintaining the balance between BMC's marketing efforts and the involvement of BMC customers in helping to develop products that will leverage open source.
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William Hurley: Conversation about Open Source, Part 1
This is from the July 13th update at EnterpriseLeadership.
William Hurley
Chief architect of open source strategy
BMC Software, Inc.
Play Podcast (Right click to download)
In an effort to bring a consistent message about open source to customers and to partners, and to participate more actively in the open source community, BMC in 2007 hired William Hurley (aka whurley), an open source activist, IBM Master Inventor, and chairman of the Open Management Consortium, a non-profit organization advancing the adoption, development, and integration of open source systems management.
Whurley's role as chief architect of open source strategy has many facets to it. BMC's executives depend on guidance for anything that has to do with open source. Whurley contributes to the company's open source strategy, as well as carries it out. As an evangelist, he is the BMC open source voice at IT venues. He manages BMC's presence in the open source community by getting customers involved with it. In fact, management has encouraged whurley to maintain all of his open source community connections.
In the second podcast, whurley, without mincing words, will talk about a meeting that he and 30 other open source illuminaries had at Microsoft to discuss that company's position on openness. Whurley talks about what he observed at that meeting. He also discusses his challenge of maintaining the balance between BMC's marketing efforts and the involvement of BMC customers in helping to develop products that will leverage open source.
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A New and Exciting Project - showbizzle.com - "Welcome to My World"
You'll be hearing more and more about showbizzle in the next few days. To get the ball rolling, I met with Chuck Rosin, one of the co-creators of the show. The other creator is his daughter, Lindsey Rosin. Chuck and I meet in San Francisco at MarketingArts.com to pull together the launch strategy using social marketing and other traditional marketing elements.
Chuck speaks briefly in this one-minute video about how he got his original idea for showbizzle.com. I can't wait to tell you more about the show over the next few weeks.
More details to follow soon!
Tom _____
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Robert Thomas: Learning from Crucible Experiences
This is from the July 3rd update at EnterpriseLeadership.
Robert Thomas
Author and Executive Director
Accenture's Institute for High Performance Business Leadership
Play Podcast (Right click to download)
Almost everyone agrees that anyone who seeks to lead must get firsthand experience. Experience, however, by itself doesn't guarantee learning. What matters most is what one makes of experience, particularly traumatic and often unplanned crucible events that challenge one as a leader.
This conclusion comes from research done by Robert Thomas, executive director at Accenture's Institute of High Performance Business Leadership and an associate professor at Tuft University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.
Most of the information analyzed in Thomas's new book, Crucibles of Leadership: How to Learn from Experience to Become a Great Leader, comes from interviews with leaders selected on the basis of their proven ability to grow and to sustain an organization during times of trial.
In this podcast, Thomas talks about what some CEOs have learned from their crucibles, how even CIOs can leverage their crucibles to move up the ranks, and how C-level executives can help emerging leaders learn from their experiences.
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Cheryl Perkins: Taking a Holistic Approach to Innovation
This is from the June 26th update at EnterpriseLeadership.
Cheryl Perkins
Founder and President of Innovationedge
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Innovation can deliver a desirable experience for your customers, and sustainable growth for your company. Many companies, however, struggle with how to deliver top-line growth and true business innovation. Meanwhile, come companies have become astounded by the curveballs being thrown at them because of rising energy costs in the global economy.
Getting corporate innovation right goes beyond delivering the next generation product. Cheryl Perkins practiced a holistic innovation model while she was chief innovation officer for Kimberly-Clark. This model has become the underpinning of her strategic innovation consulting practice called Innovationedge. She says, "We started the practice to deliver a roadmap so companies can get their leadership teams focused on key priorities and capabilities so they can start to innovate."
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Faisal Hoque: Convergence Benefits the Bottom Line
This is from the June 12th update at EnterpriseLeadership.
Faisal Hoque
IT thought leader, author, and CEO of BTM Corporation
Play Podcast (Right click to download)
Many CIOs grapple with how to align IT with the needs of their businesses. They have to demonstrate the value their role serves and to make sure technology works well within their businesses. Meanwhile, a mobile global workforce, the growing dependency on social media, and the push for more utility computing based on service-oriented architecture are driving businesses to converge their IT strategy with their business strategy. In a converged company, information, not the technology behind it, is what matters to all constituents the company serves. As a result, CIOs take on the new role of information officer not chief IT officer. They become more involve in strategy planning and in the governance process. Moreover, they look at how technology enables the business architecture and how the business manages the overall investment portfolio.
No one knows more about getting out of the alignment trap and moving toward convergence than Faisal Hoque, founder and CEO of BTM Corporation; founder of the BTM Institute, a not-for-profit IT think tank; and author of five books on business technology management. In fact, a decade ago, Hoque conceived and developed a unique holistic business model which looks at the relationship between business and technology in the following areas: governance, strategy and platform, enterprise architecture, investment management, and the maturity of the overall management structure. The result is a converged organization where business and technology come together to drive innovation, which, in turn, fuels growth and profitability.
In this podcast, Hoque provides an overview of the organizational and philosophy changes CIOs need to consider if they want to transition from alignment to convergence. He also talks about the BTM Institute's Business Technology Convergence Index, a five-year study that quantifies the relationship between the way global companies value their technology investments and the companies' revenues and profitability. He says, "Companies with mature converged business technology management practices, such as FedEx, UPS, and Procter & Gamble, have better financial performance than their competitors. Think about it. Today, both FedEx and UPS are information services companies, not just movers of packages and trucks."
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Robert Reeg: How IT Masters Global Credit Card Business
This is from the June 6th update at EnterpriseLeadership.
Robert Reeg
Interim President of Global Technology and Operations
MasterCard Worldwide
Play Podcast (Right click to download)
Each year, MasterCard processes more than a trillion dollars' worth of credit card transactions between its 25,000,000 acceptance locations in 210 countries worldwide. Net revenues for 2007 were $4.1 billion, a 22-percent increase versus the same period in 2006. Information technology drives MasterCard's three card business services: franchiser of acceptance locations that are guaranteed through MasterCard's network; processor of all payment transactions through the network and the final settlement of dollars with the financial institutions; and consultant offering a data warehouse of intelligence to help customers, such as merchants and banks, to make the best use of payments.
Robert Reeg, interim president of global technology and operations at MasterCard Worldwide, says that he doesn't worry about aligning IT with the business. He says, "We're one and the same. IT and the business are completely connected." In fact, Reeg leverages IT talent around the world to build and to manage MasterCard's massive network. He has even created the role of the business technologist as a way to develop future IT leaders.
In this podcast, Reeg talks about how his organization has adapted to the current economy to maintain its position in the marketplace, what processes, best practices, and new technologies are in place to manage a global organization, what role outsourcing plays in the IT operations, and how leveraging diversity can improve the innovation process.
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You're Invited to Interactive Austin 2008!
I thought you might be interested in this event that I will be speaking at called Interactive Austin 2008: Putting Social Commerce to Work on June 19th at the JJ Pickle Center, located at 10100 Burnet Road at the corner of Braker Lane.
The goal of the one-day conference is to educate marketing professionals with solid strategies that help them incorporate social commerce (Web 2.0) initiatives into their marketing programs, and give them the opportunity to make some valuable connections.
If you (or anyone else from your organization) are interested in attending, I can extend to you a discounted rate $109 when you register before the event at www.InteractiveAustin2008.com and enter the following code: BD7632. Seating is very limited, and they anticipate it to sell out--so please don't wait to register!
The event is designed to provide high-impact strategies that will help you integrate social commerce initiatives into your marketing platforms. As thought-leaders in the field of digital marketing and social media, the panelists and speakers will bring this technology down-to-earth with compelling dialogues and case studies for companies looking to incorporate digital media and social commerce into their business and marketing initiatives.
Interactive Austin 2008 will feature a number of informative presentations including:
- The Role of Metrics in Driving Interactive Performance
- Integrating New Media into the Marketing Plan
- How the Convergence of Media Online Affects Marketing and PR
- Managing your Digital Landscape
- Trends and Technologies Driving Social Interaction
- Building a High-Impact User Experience
- and More...
The conference will feature two Keynotes, Brian K. Magierski, Co-Founder & Chief Development Officer at nGenera Corporation who will address "Social Commerce and Its Impact on Business"; and Pete Hayes, Vice President of Corporate Marketing and Communications at AMD has a presentation entitled "Get into the Click-Stream: An Alternative to Driving Traffic to Your Site."
Interactive Austin promises to be the premier Interactive Marketing event in 2008, thanks to a number of supporting organizations that will be promoting the event through their networks. They include FG Squared, Live Oak 360, Apogee Search, The Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce, The Interactive Marketing Association, the Austin Technology Council, and Business District Magazine.
If you have questions about the event, feel free to contact Jason Myers, publisher of Business District Magazine at Jason@abdmag.com or (512) 919-4563
I hope to see you at the JJ Pickle Center on June 19th!
Tom
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Dr. Leslie Gaines-Ross: How C-level Executives Build Their Reputations
This is from the May 28th update at EnterpriseLeadership.
Dr. Leslie Gaines-Ross
Chief Reputation Strategist at Weber Shandwick
Play Podcast (Right click to download)
In 2007, a major company issued a statement saying that it had dismissed its CIO for violating an important corporate policy. The nature of the corporate policy wasn't revealed. Just about every IT publication carried news of the event. For weeks IT bloggers posted comments about what the CIO could have done to be let go. Eventually, the noise level around this executive's dismissal died down, and the executive took a new job in an area outside of IT.
In this podcast, enterpriseleadership.org asked one of the world's most sought-after authorities on executive reputation to talk about how C-level executives, especially CEOs, build their reputations based on their corporate strategies, what they need to do to maintain them, and what challenges they face in developing and executing their corporate strategies.
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Client - BMC - Creates Video Podcasts at their UserWorld Event in Spain
Here is an example of what BMC Software is doing around video podcasting. Looks like fun!Tom
Ask Allison: Are Middle-aged Women Embracing Social Media?
I was recently talking with Allison Allen, founder of WomenBloom, a community and resource for women in their 40s and beyond, about the desire/ability/courage/willingness of women over a certain age to take to social media. You know -- to use the computer for more than sending email or shopping online.
And as those of us who have blogs tend to do, Allison turned that conversation into the topic of her next blog article. Check it out!
Tom
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Dr. Art Boni: Entrepreneurial Leadership and Innovation
This is from the May 21st update at EnterpriseLeadership.
Dr. Art Boni
Professor at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University
Play Podcast (Right click to download)
Because of the rapidly accelerating pace of change in global business today, C-level executives in all sizes of companies need to respond quickly to changes in their business climate. Thus, executives have to be aware, not only of their own external environment, but they have to immerse themselves in their industries, and to look at society -- both nationally and globally. By understanding where changes come from or what changes to make, executives can take advantage of new opportunities. Meanwhile, executives must also focus on innovation and entrepreneurship in order to be successful. In fact, the Carnegie Mellon MBA program looks at innovation in organizations, ranging from startups to the Fortune 500 companies.
In this podcast, Dr. Art Boni, the director of the Donald H. Jones Center for Entrepreneurship at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University, talks about how entrepreneurial leadership and innovative drive corporate growth.
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Film Contest
Ever since I created a film about wind farms last year and submitted it to SXSW, I've been eager to get back behind the camera. Now Tom Parish Inc is entering a contest to edit a short film shot in 4k digital with RED cameras.
Here’s the deal from OpenCut.org:
OpenCut is a completely open-source film competition designed to encourage people to take professionally shot material and edit it in their own way. As there is no "one way" to tell a story, so too can stories benefit from being re-edited and re-told from many different vantage points and perspectives.
The winner of OpenCut 1.0 will receive a brand new AJA IO HD from Silverado. They will also be recognized as the "editor-of-record" at IMDB and will have their cut submitted to multiple film festivals.
Robert Shaver and I will co-edit the film with creative input on the story from Carolyn Baehr. Regardless of who wins, we'll get experience in using Final Cut Pro with RED 4k digital video, and we get to keep the results for our own use. Very exciting.
Tom
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W. Hord Tipton: Walking the Talk
This is from the May 19th update at EnterpriseLeadership.
W. Hord Tipton
Former CIO, U.S. Department of the Interior
Play Podcast (Right click to download)
When Hord Tipton became CIO of the U.S. Dept. of Interior, he knew he would be wrestling with some daunting IT issues, especially in security. In fact, the Department was reeling from a December 2001 court order that disconnected all Interior systems from the Internet. That order resulted in a multi-million lawsuit brought by beneficiaries of Individual Indian Trust accounts held by the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs, based in part on hackers burrowing into the Trust's accounts.
By making a good case for business systems security, Tipton managed to convince the Interior's officials to increase the $4 million annual IT network and security budget to $100 million. Tipton and his staff spent the next four years upgrading systems security and getting all of the Interior's systems reconnected to the Internet. Tipton even gave his IT staff one year to become certified in security. When he received a lot of staff resistance to his challenge, the 60-year-old Tipton did something unusual for a CIO: He became a Certified Information Systems Security Professional. This certification matched the job at hand.
Under Tipton's leadership, the U.S. Dept. of the Interior established sound IT security policies and guidelines, and initiated testing and IT security training programs throughout the agency. Now retired from government service, Tipton is a board member of ISC2, the organization that oversees the CISSP exam and maintains the credentialing process.
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