Apr 23 2012
Leave a comment
social media, technology, writing

Six Considerations to Get Started with a Blog

Anu and Dolly – two friends from LA – recently reached out asking me for advice on how to start a blog. Anu wrote “didn’t you once write a blog about how to write blog.” I thought to myself, “hmm.. That’s something I would totally write.” so I looked as far back as 2008, and couldn’t find anything. I had to write-up something new for her, and thought I would refine & share it with others. Then, in the process of researching, I decided it was high-time I updated my own blog, and less than 24 hours later, my new blog is up, in the old location, at www.dailydoseofpras.com.  And here, now, for your pleasure, are some recommendations on how to start a blog:

The Right Technology Platform

You want to pick a platform that makes your life easy, but you also want something that doesn’t look like everyone else. On the easy side, you can have a blog up and running in 5 minutes using wordpress.com, tumblr.com, or blogger.com. WordPress probably gives you the most powerful toolset and the most flexiblity. Tumblr is very fashionable right now, and is optimized for image-heavy blogging.  And they’re all free. There are other less popular options as well.

Continue reading →

Apr 02 2012
Leave a comment
economics, jobs, management, social science, technology

1 Year Using ODesk

ODesk was founded 9 years ago, during a surge in the idea of personal outsourcing. Books like the 4 Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferris gave broad media attention to the idea of hiring a personal assistant to manage your life or business remotely. I tested out a couple different services like this, and found ODesk was significantly more advanced than the others and had a significantly bigger base of customers and contractors. A month ago, Odesk raised a Series D financing round, signaling that there was renewed growth and opportunity in the space. I have been experimenting with Odesk now for nearly a year, and wanted to share some advice on how to get the most out of ODesk.

Continue reading →

Feb 22 2012
1 Comment
cars, economics, marketing, politics, social media, social science

Airbnb and the Death of the American Dream

Something funny happened after World War II – America experienced an unprecedented economic expansion that lasted 65 years. Three generations grew up in an era of profound materialism rooted in a culture of rugged individualism, and it has shaped a world where we all have, want, and desperately need our own possessions and our own services. But in the wake of this great recession, we cannot afford our individualism any longer. This great recession has borne a new movement toward sharing and communalism that will change the way we consume and perhaps erode our sense of individualism forever. Continue reading →

Dec 27 2011
1 Comment
gadgets, marketing, mobile, movies, music, product reviews, retail, social media, technology

Best Buy: Dead Man Walking & 5 Ideas to Survive

Best Buy essentially sells 3 things: hardware, media, and expertise

The first business is hardware: selling LCD TVs, Blu-Ray Players, Laptops, and cellphones
In the hardware business, there’s the Cost of buying the hardware from manufacturers and the operational costs of distributing that hardware across stores, and then the cost of operating the stores including the overhead, the people, and then of course the costs of managing a customer support center and finance / HR / marketing.

Continue reading →

Nov 29 2011
1 Comment
cars, introspection, personal

Trusty Steed

For the suburban cowboy, his car is his trusty steed, and getting a car in Plano, TX was a right of passage. Almost a year ago, after a decade of faithful service, my trusty stead, a ’98 BMW Z3 named Lola, breathed her final breath and died on the 101 just north of Whipple Road.

Continue reading →

Aug 31 2011
Leave a comment
gadgets, marketing, mobile, music, social networking, technology

Apple is the new Evil Empire

Unlike Google, whose mission statement was “don’t be evil,” Apple has never had many qualms about acting like a dick. Don’t get me wrong: I think Apple’s (And Steve Jobs’) marketing and brand-positioning is genius. Microsoft, on the other hand, desperately wants to be everything to everyone, and, as a result, continues to build lowest-common-denominator-products and create lowest-common-denominator-marketing campaigns. Microsoft, for example, has to continue to support the 10-year-old Windows XP operating system to keep existing customers happy. Apple’s “take-it-or-leave-it” prickishness is brilliant – they’re attitude is essentially “if you have a problem with it, just leave.”

Continue reading →

Aug 09 2011
Leave a comment
advertising, marketing, social media, technology

The Seven Circles of LCA Hell: or How I Learned to Love Advertising Law

I was reading this story about a game developer that lawyered-up against a startup, and I thinking today about how much freedom there is when you’re marketing at a startup company. Compared to Microsoft, that is. At Microsoft, I often used to joke about the Seven Circles of LCA Hell – or the 7 layers of lawyers I had to go through to “ship” a marketing campaign.

The First Circle: The Legal Generalist

Susan was my Legal Generalist. She worked in LCA, short for Legal and Corporate Affairs. Whenever I turned up on her doorstep, she knew it was going to be trouble. I’m sure I was the bane of her existence, and I know she was certainly my least-favorite meeting of the week. Continue reading →

Aug 01 2011
Leave a comment
advertising, education, management, marketing, social media, social networking, social science, students

How to Motivate Brand Ambassadors

You will probably never meet anyone who has spent more time thinking about this than me. So I thought I’d share some of my thoughts on this topic. If any of you reading this happen to have been part of any of the brand-ambassador programs I’ve managed, I’d love for you to leave your thoughts as well. Fundamentally, I hope the message here is that in order to create an army of people who are passionate about your brand and will spread it for you, you need to be authentic with them, give them genuine reasons to want to engage with you that go beyond money, and find things that you can offer them that cost you very-little but give them great-satisfaction.

The absolute best way to motivate a brand ambassador is through insider-access.

Continue reading →

Jul 12 2011
1 Comment
advertising, cars, entertainment, marketing, movies

Notes from Transformers #1

I’ve been re-watching the Transformers trilogy parts 1 and 2, so that I’ll be at the top of my game when I go-in to see Dark of the Moon in theaters.

I noticed a couple interesting things after re-watching Transformers 1:

First – Obviously General Motors paid a lot of money to do a massive product placement in the movie. For those that are unaware, Bumblebee – the yellow-Chevy Camaro – was historically always a Volkswagen Beetle, but I’m sure they wanted something sexier for the remake – and using the movie as a vehicle to introduce GM’s newly redesigned Camaro must have been a match made in hollywood-heaven. You’ll notice that Bumblebee has a Yellow Beetle ornament hanging from his rearview mirror.

Continue reading →

Jul 08 2011
Leave a comment
management, social science

5 Less-Common Tools to Running a Meeting

I’m terrible at volunteer organizations. I procrastinate. I show up late. And I’m terrible on email. Thing is, we’re all like that to some extent.

I’ve been working for different organizations my entire life, and I’m obsessed with analyzing human behavior, so here are a couple tips you WON’T read in every-other-blog-post on this topic. I was inspired after attending the last NetIP Board Meeting. NetIP is the Network of Indian Professionals, and I happen to have been the VP of Seattle, President of Seattle, and now National Liaison to San Francisco’s chapter. But I think a lot of these tips will work for meetings in-general.

Continue reading →

← Older posts
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.