Hi Everyone! If you haven’t been keeping up to date with my tweets (gasp!) then you might not know that I’ve been in Davos this past week attending the World Economic Forum.  With the financial crisis on everyone’s minds having some of our brightest global thought leaders come together to tackle these issues sounded like a pretty good idea to me.

Now, I know that everyone says that WEF is an indulgent retreat for a small class of very powerful people, but let me tell you, the mood here is somber. Everyone is taking the gravity of the situation very, very seriously.

I taped a small segment for Command N for my good friends Amber Mac and Will Pate. Take a look!

My good friend Michael Dila recently tagged me in a new type of “social media tag” that was initially started by David Eaves.

If you know Michael, you know that it’s pretty much impossible to refuse him anything. Hell, if you’ve spoken with him for any length of time then you’ve probably quit your job to follow your real dream. Don’t worry, that’s normal, join the club- we meet every month. Here are the rules for this little game:

The Rules

• Link to your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post. (see above)
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post. (see below)
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs. (see below)
• Let them know they’ve been tagged.

7 Things About Me:

1. I have a firm “happy ending” policy for the majority of movies/books that I consume, and have been known to look up the plot before I go see it. I just figure I come across enough depressing content from the news etc, that I don’t need someone to MAKE UP a sad story to prove a point. I am also known to regularly balance an issue of the Economist with a Harlequin trashy romance novel.

2. I mark up my books, and make notes in the margins. I like finding used copies of books where others have done the same, because it gives you a window into their thoughts while you’re reading the book. I once found a math text book from 1842 where the owner had doodled hearts around “Fredrick.” I’ve often wondered who he was and if they ever ended up together.

3. In University I changed my major four times before settling on Philosophy. I have super crush on David Hume, which waned (a little) when I heard that he had once proposed to a woman but was so fat that he couldn’t get up from his bended knee position. My heart still flutters when I read A Treatise on Human Nature. (I have TWO copies in case I lose one)

4. I love Japanese anime, I like looking at the weird creations and strange worlds. Particularly, I am drawn to  the work of Hayao Miyazaki, the man is a genius!  I can watch Spirited Away over and over, and I’ve fallen in love with Princess Mononoke’s commentary about the environment. I credit my father who taught me that to truly appreciate Science Fiction was to fall in love with the endless possibilities of our imagination - a gift I am very grateful for.

5. I have a terrible sense of direction. One time I was trying to get to Toronto from Buffalo and I ended up in Albany, New York. I only learned which way south was after Jesse showed me how to orient myself by looking for the CN Tower.

6. I love old movies starring Audrey Hepburn, Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart, Kathryn Hepburn, Rock Hudson, and Spencer Tracy. My all time favorites include Woman of The Year, Sabrina and The Big Sleep.

7. I was the automated voice that played on election night in Grant Park in Chicago.

7 People You Should Meet:

Riwa Harfoush (sister)

Nabil Harfoush (dad)

Michael Dila

Will Pate

Negar Mottahedeh

Eli Singer

Manuel Toscano

This little video has been getting huge online airplay since it was uploaded on  January 15, 2008. 300,000 people have already watched it! The ad is the latest installment from T-Mobile’s “Life Is For Sharing” campaign and features a spontaneous dance that takes over Liverpool Station in London. These types of ads fit in my “authenticity is irrelevant” category, meaning that I don’t care if the whole thing (including bystanders) was staged, it was fun to watch and I was happy to go along for the ride. Anything involving dancing gets a thumbs up from me.

I thought it was awesome, and apparently, a lot of people agreed:

I love the part where the woman says that she started her day in a bad mood and now she’s happier. Isn’t that was a great brand experience is really all about? Making an emotional connection with someone? I hope this is the beginning of the next evolution of advertising where people just have more fun with the brand.

To be honest, I think that with an increasing amount of people using the internet to research and compare prices, the only thing left for organizations to do is to create an emotional connection to pull consumers in, instead of just pushing information all the time. Trust us, when we want to compare prices we will come to you. We know where you are!

T-mobile has been really good at portraying the funny and playful side of its brand.  Here is one of my favorites:

Best line ever: Well, maybe you should have uglier friends. HA!

This reminded me of the ImprovEverywhere team that did a similar feat where 207 people froze in place simultaneously for five minutes at Grand Central Station in New York. Well done, folks!

This afternoon, a US Airways plane emergency landed in the Hudson River after both engines were knocked out by an unfortunate encounter with some Candian Geese. It really struck me how much our relationship with information has changed.

Tracking Breaking News through Conversation

I heard rumblings about this incident from twitter and soon the entire twitterverse was in full force, piecing together what had happened. Keywords such as Hudson, Flight1549 and US Airways quickly became trending tags on Twitter Search:

I follow BreakingNewsOn who quickly reported the events:

Reports from People on the Ground

Twitter user JKrums sent this tweet only minutes before boarding a ferry that would be soon diverted to pick up stranded passengers from the Hudson River.

He posted the first image on Twitter via his iPhone, a photo that was quickly picked up by all sorts of media outlets. It has already been seen via Twitpic over 29,000 times!

A Little Touch of Humor:

Once it was established that no one was hurt and the culprits were some Candian Geese, the mood shifted and the jokes started pouring in, including my favorite conversation the “War on Birds”

And even though it has only been a few short hours, there is already an entry on Wikipedia. The page does a good job at gathering some of the media coverage and pulling together a comprehensive overview of the event including the fact that the water landing was one of the most “technically challenging and seldom attempted feats in commercial aviation.”

My Thoughts:

Honestly, I am such a nervous flyer and hearing this story gave me the creeps. I hate the idea of being in a plane, essentially a tin can traveling at super speed 30,000 ft in the air. *shudder* I am glad to hear that everyone was ok, and that no one was seriously hurt. I can’t believe it was downed because of BIRDS.

Anyway, who needs the news when I have Twitter?

This afternoon, a US Airways plane made an emergency landing in the Hudson River after both engines were knocked out by an unfortunate encounter with some Canadian Geese. Luckily everyone was ok. As I followed this story online, I realized just how much  technology and social media has changed the way I interact with news.  Today an army of bloggers and citizen journalists can compete against almost any news organization.

Tracking Breaking News through Conversation

I first heard rumblings about this incident from twitter and soon the entire Twitterverse was in full force, piecing together what had happened. Even though there was little confirmed at the time, the speed at which people could update twitter meant a “news cycle” that lasted only a few seconds before new information was added. Additionally, because people are also constantly on twitter, mistakes can be corrected quickly, compared with watching a traditional newscast where you would only tune in once.

Keywords such as Hudson, Flight1549 and US Airways quickly became trending tags on Twitter Search, usually an early alarm for letting me know that something is up:

I follow BreakingNewsOn who quickly reported the unfolding events:

Every few tweets BreakingNewsOn would post an update, summarizing the situation, and letting me know the most recent version of events.

Reports from People on the Ground

Twitter user JKrums sent this tweet only minutes before boarding a ferry that would soon be diverted to pick up stranded passengers from the Hudson River.

He posted the first image on Twitter via his iPhone, a photo that was quickly picked up by all sorts of media outlets. It has already been seen via Twitpic over 29,000 times! This was largely in part to “re-tweeting” or forwarding twitter messages to their own network of friends. This created a viral news effect, essentially turning each twitterer into a content distribution platform.

A Little Touch of Humor:

Once it was established that no one was hurt and the culprits were some Candian Geese, the mood shifted and the jokes started pouring in, including my favorite conversation, the “War on Birds”:

Even though it has only been a few short hours, there is already an entry on Wikipedia. The page does a good job at consolidating some of the media coverage and pulling together a comprehensive overview of the event including the fact that the water landing was one of the most “technically challenging and seldom attempted feats in commercial aviation.”