Fighting a war overseas on two fronts, an economic recession at home and a government shifting millions to fund the war while shutting down important programs for education. This clip speaks volumes when you look at today’s children at risk.
Tags: Fred Rogers, Education, children, economy, funding, K12, trends
Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies. This book is a great primer for social media. If your new to social media this book is for you.
However if you have been working with blogs and wikis for more than five years this book is a bit too elementary but a great quick read nevertheless.
The Groundswell is the powerful movement of our networked society. Basically the book breaks the “groundswell” into gaining insights from what social networks say about your company, your products and the people representing your company.
We have reached a point on the modern internet that personal voices will grow via social media tools never before available. This will help to drive new marketing plans, business reach to both existing and new customers. This can drive new media to tell stories about products and community movements.
Blogs help talk to your communities, and buzz helps energize the groundswell and the new ability to utilize “customers” as collaborative team members. In the end its Groundswell is about person to person relationships.
I finished Alan Greenspan‘s book The Age of Turbulence Adventures in a New World and learned it was more than I expected from the former Chairman of The Federal Reserve. And with the recession still in high gear it was also good timing.
Beyond his sheer volume of knowledge regarding the economy, global markets and international finance I was most impressed with Greenspan’s simple yet immense observation: America needs an overhauled K12 educational system for our country to have a strong economy in 2030.
The impact of Technology, Globalization & Innovation as he outlines should not be overlooked regarding educational reform. I must admit the real interest for most readers would be to jump the chapter that addresses the recession. Its worth taking the time to read the book in full.
Greenspan’s impact in Washington, the economy and Republican politics spans Presidential administrations from Nixon to W. Bush. Greenspan has enjoyed a pretty interesting life. I was most struck not by his interest in music but rather his high school music partner Stan Getz. His comments about his role in Y2K for the government and financial markets and the impact of fiber optic networks were welcoming for any geek or fanboy.
There is just a huge amount of economic learning you can pickup from his 25 chapters. My favorite chapters surprisingly fall in a row:
19. Globalization and Regulation
20. The “Conundrum”
21. Education and Income Inequality
22. The world retires. But can it afford to?
There are some amazing things you can learn from an economist. His view of W. Bush’s administration and their loss of focus on the economy was eye opening. Bush never changed any economic plans beyond what he promised during his election campaign. W. Bush repeatedly ignored The Fed’s view of the sliding economy and needed changes over the close of his Presidency and handed his successor an economy with financial, housing and automotive markets in crisis.
There is more to come from BMW and their Milwaukee-inspired work launching their new GT 5 Series.
Tags: BMW, Milwaukee, marketing, product launch, gran turismo, innovation, ideas, business, trends