The state of California is on the verge of banning plastic bags. Specifically, the type of plastic bags I’m talking about are those that one uses to cart their purchases home from a retail store.

Personally, if I lived in California, that would make me happy. Not just because of the reduced environmental impact that a ban of these bags could have (in both a conservation and aesthetic sense), but because the functionality of these bags just plain stinks. Using them to haul home your groceries is simply a task of frustration.

Whoever thought that these would be regarded as a superior technology?

Have you also experienced this? When you pack your groceries in these idiotic carrying devices, you can put only a few average sized items in each plastic bag. The bag’s capacity is too small for an average grocery order, so you end up with many, many, many plastic bags to cart out of the store. Then, when you place the loaded bags on the floor of your car or in your trunk, most, if not all, of their contents spill out because plastic bags have no structure. Why even bother putting your things in the bag?

The San Francisco Chronicle article that I read about the proposed ban stated that, instead of using plastic bags, shoppers would need either to bring their own bags or to pay a surcharge for the superior carrying technology available from those large brown paper bags we used to know so well before these plastic bags came to town. That would be fine with me.

Paying an extra dollar so that I wouldn’t need to deal with the frustration of the plastic bag packing would be a bargain.

Have a Happy Independence Day.

In the previous post, “You Could Say That This Post Serves as My Annotated Resume,” I discussed my foundational experiences and knowledge that support my current expertise in the analysis of anti-corporate digital activism. If you haven’t yet read that post, you may do so by clicking here.

Now, here in Part 2, I pick up the story where I left off. Here in Part 2, I describe how The Kahuna Content Company, Inc. and I evolved from an Internet content supplier to that of anti-corporate digital activism analysis.

Through 2001 I had acquired quite a bit of experience in competitive intelligence analysis as well as an expertise in online business. In Kahuna Content’s early days as an independent supplier of online content, I learned about what people wanted from their online experiences. During that period of time the web was a relatively static communicator of information; there was little “interaction” due to the technologies that existed then. However, around 2005, as the web started to evolve into the more interactive environment that I knew it could and would ultimately become, I began to learn about and experience what later became known as “Web 2.0.” At that time the Internet was truly becoming an “environment,” a social one. Because of technology shifts, it was then that people began to convert the Internet into an “environment,” one which affected them and one which they affected back in return.

It was at that time, in that “2.0″ shift in the Internet, that Kahuna Content, and I, began to change focus. As the wave of what later came to be known as “user-generated content” rose, I saw that the need for independently supplied online content would fade. So, Kahuna Content made a gradual move away from content supply. Watching the rise of the “social web,” I saw that with the tools that were starting then to become available, people could and would transfer their human “conversational jones” for interaction from the real to the virtual, taking it global and making it a 24/7 activity. I saw that people would start talking about every thing under the sun, and out in public. Going back to my roots as a competitive intelligence analyst, this shift told me that people, everyday people, could become “competitors” to the very companies from which they bought their goods and services.

Now, I wasn’t really the first person to realize this. The Cluetrain Manifesto had forecasted this change about a half dozen years prior. But at this point in the story, I realized that individuals could actually do what the Cluetrain had predicted. When Cluetrain was written, the “social media” tools that could enable markets to “laugh” at the companies who supplied them weren’t fully configured enough for that to be much of

Continue reading You Could Say That This Post Serves as My Annotated Resume – Part 2

Today, I write this post to help future enquirers and to give you some background on my previous experiences. In this post, you will learn about my credentials and the experiences I have had which have built my expertise in anti-corporate activism analysis, in general, and in digital anti-corporate activism analysis, in particular. You could say that this post serves as my “annotated resume.”

My specific experience for my profession began just before I received my MBA in Marketing from Rider University. While completing that degree, I worked as a Research Assistant for the Marketing Department. In that capacity, I extended what I learned from the classroom into the real world. Having learned much about performing objective research, with special attention paid toward the reliability and integrity of sourcing, I performed many market research studies across different product and service areas. Upon completing my MBA, I served several years as a faculty member at Monmouth University and at Georgian Court University. Between both of those schools I taught international economics, finance, and marketing courses.

After several years as an educator, I received an offer from a consulting unit of the New Jersey Economic Development Authority. This consulting unit was the Trade Adjustment Assistance Center (TAAC) which was a U.S. Department of Commerce program administered by the NJEDA. In my role there as a Senior Project Officer, my responsibility was to work with New Jersey manufacturers who were getting “hammered” by foreign competition. Specifically, I was tasked with the duty of analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of those manufacturers with the intention of creating strategic plans to accentuate their positives and eliminate their negatives.

It was at NJEDA that I first formally became involved with competitive intelligence. When writing the strategic plan (or the “adjustment plan” as it was called there), it was necessary for me not only to analyze my client’s strengths and weaknesses, but it was imperative for me to analyze those of the competitor, as well. Please note that those competitors were, of course, foreign. This was during the late 1980s, before the Internet became the research avenue it is today, and gaining critical, public-domain, information even on American companies was difficult. So, you can probably imagine that obtaining information on foreign companies was even more difficult. However, from my experience as an academic researcher, I knew how to dig and from my training as an MBA, I knew for what to dig. So I dug. And from my efforts I was able to uncover much information that went into my analyses and the creation of effective strategic plans for my TAAC clients.

Continue reading You Could Say That This Post Serves as My Annotated Resume.

This category will contain very brief posts addressing random insights that occur to me, well, randomly. I’m jotting them down here because this is a web log, after all. And I’d like to keep track of them for possible incorporation into a future book or article. I’m also posting them here to invite feedback, which would also assist me in putting together future books and articles.

Today’s idea is job programs.

Finally, there is a major jobs program being created in Washington, DC.

After last Tuesday’s (1/19/2010) Massachusetts special election, which changed the political dynamic in the nation’s capital and effectively derailed the health care reform initiative that polls had been telling Washington for months they were ramming through despite the electorate’s wishes, the Democrats finally realized that they were at odds with the people’s desires.

The majority party is now turning, in a deliberately obvious fashion, toward other “issues of concern,” such as the economy and jobs. Yesterday, Mr. Obama announced new, proposed banking regulations and frightened the financial markets. This strategic turn, which is more politically-based than economically-based and (this next clause was added after the market close on Friday, 1/22/10) looks to be nothing more than a temper tantrum from a guy who never even ran a lemonade stand, was made at this point in time in an effort to take the public’s attention off the health care reform failure. Today, he doubles down on this new “hissy-fit” strategy and goes to Ohio to give a speech about jobs. All done, I believe, in an effort to convince the electorate that the majority party is addressing the people’s main concerns, jobs and the economy. Duh. It took them this long to figure this out? (For now, let’s put aside the fact that Mr. Obama’s proposed banking changes would actually do more to hurt the economy than help it.)

Yes, these strategic shifts are the leading elements of a new government jobs program.

But this program’s primary intent is not necessarily to generate jobs for the general public. The primary intent of this new program, this strategic shift, is to allow the majority party members to keep their jobs after the November 2010 mid-term election.

After last Tuesday’s election, the majority party knew that if they continued on the course of ramming health care reform through, against the trend revealed by just about every poll taken on the subject and definitely against the results of the Massachusetts special election, then most of them would be packing their desks come November and hitting the unemployment lines with their constituents.

So, yes. They are now turning to a jobs program. It’s just not the kind that you think it is.

The question is, will people see his proposals as an effort to help the economy? And if they misguidedly do, will that save the jobs of the dweebs in Washington? Or will the people recognize it for what it is? A poorly conceived notion. A notion which will actually damage

Continue reading There Is Only One Jobs Program Going On Now

Any time a street is named as such, it makes me think of what a great society this is; that people are given the opportunity to make as much of themselves as is within their ability to do so. Yet, as I completed my drive down my local Market Street, I wondered that given all the shifts to the political left that we have recently seen within the United States (and indeed, more of these shifts have been experienced in some states more than in others), how long will it be until we see business district streets named “Commune Street” or “Social Good Avenue?”

Just a passing thought. But is it far-fetched?

The calculation of my credit? Perhaps.

Now, I believe that problem caused this blog to be down for a short period of time, maybe ten hours, maybe two, I really didn’t keep track.  But I did note that the next day the blog was again operational.  At least for now.

They sent me a credit for $7.44.  The monthly ISP fee covering this blog is less than $10 per month.  I don’t know how they calculated the $7.44, but that credit represents most of the monthly fee.  And the blog was down for at most 10 hours, although I think it was probably much less.  This is obviously an error, or perhaps another example of the business logic that guides Network Solutions and defies understanding by most of the sane business world.  So, I’m not going to complain.  I’ve complained to them enough, and about stuff they never corrected.  Certainly no credits were issued then.  So, I’ll take the $7.44 and do something crazy like donate it to a favorite charity.

Although their credit calculation scheme remains a mystery, Network Solutions would not have issued the credit had I not requested it.  And my point here is that every time I’ve had a problem with their service, I have had to push them, very hard, to get them to do anything to correct it.

Please keep that in mind if you’re considering giving Network Solutions any of your business.