Words to officially leave in the 90's

Published by Network World by Carolyn Duffy Marsan, 12 Words You Can Never Say in the Office is a great insight into the Evolution we witness daily. Here are the 12 obsolete words: 1. Intranet 2. Extranet 3. Web Surfing 4. Push Technology 5. ASP 6. PDA 7. Internet Telephony 8. Weblog 9. Thin Client 10. RBOC 11. Long-Distance Calls 12. World Wide Web

-Jacq (@jacqsmith)

Hop Harvest Arrives in Bend TODAY!

Local beer lovers, rejoice! This year's hop harvest has arrived early, and Deschutes Brewery is ready. Today, August 26th, between 10:00 and 11:00 a.m., trucks full of fresh hops will arrive at the Colorado Ave. brewery. The hops will immediately be transferred to an already-brewing batch of Hop Trip Fresh Hop Ale. You're invited to watch it all happen. In honor of the annual hop trip, Deschutes Brewery will be adding a "fresh hop" stop to that day's brewery tour. In addition, the brewers are setting aside five 5-pound bags of fresh hops for local homebrewers. (The first five local home brewers to email me will get a bag of hops.) If you're interested in joining us at the brewery for this annual event, please let me know. I'll add you to the list of people to alert when the trucks leave the valley. Pass it on. Cheers,

-Renee (@grassrootspr)

Public relations and pitching bloggers

I think I'm in an ideal position to talk about bloggers in relation to public relations, since I'm a blogger AND a PR rep writing on a public relations firm blog.

Over the past few years, PR professionals started to recognize blogs and web sites as outlets worth pitching. But we were thinking of web sites as online newspapers and bloggers as online newspaper columnists. This was a problem because:

1) Blogs and web sites are very different from non-online media. Interactivity, hyperlinking, unlimited space and multimedia make this medium very different from traditional outlets, and it means that online outlets are more flexible and the benefits of making them aware of your brand are different, and often better.

2) Bloggers need to be pitched like bloggers. That is, your pitch needs to be extraordinary, unique, pertinent, web-friendly and probably delightful.

(No doubt something similar happened when TV news arose and publicists learned that pitches had to be short, super timely and have video possibilities.)

Web sites and blogs have more variety than TV news networks and even more variety than TV shows. The entry barrier is so low that you find web sites about everything.

I'm not going to reveal here the secrets of how to maximize the use of bloggers and web masters; Seth Godin already has. If there is anything that Godin hates, it's mass email blasts of press releases, and if there is anything he loves, it's making the news, not spinning it.

"Many in the flak community are trying to turn blogs into just another media outlet. They're not. Instead, they are a terrific home for the remarkable. Make stuff worth talking about first. Then talk about it."

Read the rest of Godin's thoughts on his blog -- which amazingly shows up in the top ten Google results for the word "blog" -- here.

-Adrianne (@msfener)

dutchtub: from Holland with love

In person, the dutchtub is truly a unique take on sustainability and design. The colors are vibrant, the design is modern, the idea is genius and quite a perfect fit for Oregonians.

The Dutchtub was invented and designed by Floris Schoonderbeek (born 1979). He makes his work to inspire people to live the public outdoor space. One way is the wood fired hot tub which he calls, dutchtub. The dutchtub creates the opportunity to take a nice warm bath anywhere in the world, as long there’s water and wood.

The dutchtub company is just starting to takeoff, and currently they're only making them in Holland, so the S&H ups the price but not for long. Distributors are popping up around the Globe more and more this year, including Campbell Consulting's residence: Bend, Oregon! Fred Voss is the man you want to know in Bend to get the dutchtub 411. Social Media: dutchtub has not taken a big jump on the twitter scene but there is a dutchtub Facebook profile for fans with some great images, like the one above. They're just getting started with their social media outreach, so log on and become a fan of a great product! To get more information on building/customizing your own dutchtub, use the contact form on their website, or you can contact the one-and-only Oregon dutchtub distributor in Oregon, Fred Voss, at 541.385.1851 or by emailing fred@dutchtuboregon.com.

-Jacq (@jacqsmith)

Twitterlandia

This tickled me. Only months ago, Ashton Kutcher became the first Twitter user to hit 1 million followers. Now he and talk show host Ellen DeGeneres have hustled up enough e-friends to found a respectably-sized country. "Ashton Kutcher and Ellen DeGeneres have more Twitter followers than the entire population of Ireland, Norway and Panama."

-Adrianne (@msfener)

Crisis communications rule #1: Don't walk away

I was just joking around yesterday with some coworkers about one of the developments in the saga of Sam Adams (Portland's gay mayor who was scandalized for having relations with a young intern). Adams' public relations spokesman at the time was a guy named Wade Nkrumah, a former Oregonian reporter. The scandal broke and Nkrumal essentially threw up his hands and quit. Now he's suing the city for emotional turmoil and damages, claiming that his career prospects were tainted because Adams told KATU-TV that Nkrumal quit because "the job was not what he had signed up for in terms of stress." Well. Let's start with the obvious. You damaged your own career prospects, Wade, by walking away in the middle of a crisis. People screw up. And then they lie about it. These are facts. Often as public relations professionals, we don't have control over the events. We can only spin them. Take the recent story about White House press secretary Dana Perino's reaction when she heard about the planned firings of U.S. attorneys for political reasons -- she flipped out. "Get me a double shot -- I can't breathe," was the quote. But then she pulled herself together and went out into the briefing room, sang a tune and danced circles around the press corps. What would be your reaction if this guy applied for a job as your PR rep? "So, based on your resume, you'll bail on me when there's a crisis, and then sue me for it. You're hired!" If he's looking for the source of his damaged reputation, it looks like Nkrumal's going to end up suing himself.

-Adrianne (@msfener)

noteworthy groundswell mentions

Only nine pages into the book, and I have red circles and lines all over the pages, and the white space between lines are now noteworthy knowledge of the groundswell to share with you. Here are six bullet points from "groundswell, winning in a world transformed by social technologies" by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff from Forester Research. From the introduction alone...

• "This book exists to help companies deal with the trend regardless of how the individual technology pieces change. We call this groundswell thinking."
• "...POST process for creating strategies [in order] : people, objectives, strategy, and technology..."
• "...the most powerful goal of all - including your customers as collaborators in your company."

Part one: understanding the groundswell

• "But lawyers and entreprenuers aren't the most powerful force on the Internet. People are."
• "Caught between a lawsuit and it's own audience, Digg bowed to the greater force: the audience."
• "People, by moving together on the Internet for a moment in time, had created an irresistible, ineradicable groundswell."

I hope this glimpse into groundswell has either confirmed some of your actions in the business, changed your mind of others or maybe inspired you to grab your own copy. More to come.

-Jacq (@jacqsmith)

ThinStick blogging

Maybe you haven't heard of ThinStick appetite control supplement yet, but you will! If you haven't checked out the ThinStick blog yet, head on over. There's great stuff about how to manage your appetite and control cravings, as well as diet and exercise tips and stories of real people who have used ThinStick to lose weight that stays lost. We've been working with them on how to write engaging posts of just the right length, with the perfect number of links and the ideal placement of photos. Things started out bumpy but they learned fast. Now they are blogging and atwitterin' away like pros. And their Twitter page is on fire too. I'm so proud! Now if we could only get the Oregon Chai blog up and running...

-Adrianne (@msfener)

What Happens on Facebook's Servers, Stays on Facebook's Servers

Contributing Editor of WIRED Magazine, Fred Vogelstein, wrote an article entitled, "Great Wall of Facebook: The Social Network's Plan to Dominate the Internet - and Keep Google Out" which has changed how I visualize the inner workings of 'The Internets.' I've joked with friends, roommates and colleagues for at least the past year about Google taking over the world, and with most it seemed like a very casual known fact. As if we all knew at some level how much power and money Google has, especially after Google became a verb for search. "When is Memorial Day this year?" "I don't know. Google it." Specific social media sites like Facebook and MySpace on the otherhand, always seemed incomparable from Google in my mind. Almost regional (social media) vs. global (Google). Apparently, Facebook is not the underdog, and is going head-to-head with Google.

"Today, the Google-Facebook rivalry isn't just going strong, it has evolved into a full-blown battle over the future of the Internet—its structure, design, and utility."

In the linked article above, Vogelstein challenges my mental image of the Internet and creates not just one circle with the word "Internet" written in the middle, but maybe two - Facebook as the second Internet.

"It was, potentially, an enormous source of personal data. Internet users behaved differently on Facebook than anywhere else online: They used their real names, connected with their real friends, linked to their real email addresses, and shared their real thoughts, tastes, and news. Google, on the other hand, knew relatively little about most of its users other than their search histories and some browsing activity."

Throughout the article, Larry Page (Google) is burned and also praised because of his business moves, and Mark Zukerberg (Facebook) is called-out of for his age (25) and once famous business cards that read "I'm CEO... B*%@H." The negatives of each are stated... Google having access to only public information, and Facebook having heaps of information that they can't capitalize on. Overall, a great recap of their past battles together and separate, and the ones that are undoubtedly to come.

-Jacq (@jacqsmith)

Deschutes Brewery pub in the Oregonian

Cheers to Deschutes Brewery, who got this great write-up in the Oregonian last week.

Portland's brewpubs know how to do beer and do it well. But food? Not so much... But the new kid on the block, a huge, big-game-themed outpost of Bend's Deschutes Brewery, makes tasty pub grub. Some of the offerings can seem a bit effete for a beer hall (the Grilled Pear and Goat Cheese pizza with optional duck prosciutto?), but it's actually refreshing to see a pub menu with well-thought-out dishes befitting the excellent beer.

The writer also praises the pub for its happy hour and hangout factor. (And in the Portland Business Journal yesterday, Deschutes Brewery got a nod for its social media marketing.)

-Adrianne (@msfener)