Intellectual Property Rights - Legal Stays Busy

Since I work in the medical discovery world I like to keep up with the business side of innovation, and this one hits home on a big issue of intellectual property rights for the new century.

Newsweek's Michael Heller covers the troubles in "Innovation Gridlock- Today's inventors need to put together many bits of intellectual property. Too bad they are all patented."

[Image from Vaugn Merlyn]

Newsweek writes, the first decade of the 21st Century has seen startling advances in biology. Scientists have cracked the genomes of humans and many plants, animals and microbes. They've uncovered new cellular processes affecting inheritance of diseases. Likewise, investment in biotech research and development has been steadily increasing. So what happened to all the lifesaving cures that were supposed to come our way as a result?

Read this story.

No Doubt Facinating - the Life of a Savant

Scientific American is providing an interesting read this week with an interview with Daniel Tammet, a person SA says is an autistic savant. Read more. Also, while looking I came across this doctor who studies savants: Darold Treffert. He discusses Tammet here and many savants here. Photo credit.

Evidently the world has been aware of Tammet since 2004 when he one the Pi contest -Tammet's web site.

Good quote: "My brain has developed a little differently from most other people’s. Aside from my high-functioning autism, I also suffered from epileptic seizures as a young child. In my book, I propose a link between my brain’s functioning and my creative abilities based on the property of ‘hyper-connectivity’. "

Daniel Tammet is the author of two books, Born on a Blue Day and Embracing the Wide Sky, which comes out this month. He’s also a linguist and holds the European record for reciting the first 22,514 decimal points of the mathematical constant Pi. Mind Matters editor Jonah Lehrer chats with Tammet about how his memory works, why the IQ test is overrated, and a possible explanation for extraordinary feats of creativity.

LEHRER: Your recent memoir, Born on a Blue Day, documented your life as an autistic savant. You describe, for example, how you are able to quickly learn new languages, and remember scenes from years earlier in cinematic detail. Are you ever surprised by your own abilities?

TAMMET: I have always thought of abstract information—numbers for example—in visual, dynamic form. Numbers assume complex, multi-dimensional shapes in my head that I manipulate to form the solution to sums, or compare when determining whether they are prime or not. For languages, I do something similar in terms of thinking of words as belonging to clusters of meaning so that each piece of vocabulary makes sense according to its place in my mental architecture for that language. In this way I can easily discern relationships between words, which helps me to remember them. In my mind, numbers and words are far more than squiggles of ink on a page. They have form, color, texture and so on. They come alive to me, which is why as a young child I thought of them as my “friends.” I think this is why my memory is very deep, because the information is not static. I say in my book that I do not crunch numbers (like a computer). Rather, I dance with them. None of this is particularly surprising for me. I have always thought in this way so it seems entirely natural. What I do find surprising is that other people do not think in the same way. I find it hard to imagine a world where numbers and words are not how I experience them!

Finding Science Instruction on the Internet

You knew it was just a matter of time until the Internet provided intellectual content at a level an industrious amatuer scientist could fiddle with. In Newsweek, an AP reporter Marcus Wohlsen writes about this endeavor.

The prospects could have major implications for NIH, major pharma, universities, and more. How will the money flow and what will the standards be in years to come?

Read more at Newsweek: "The Apple computer was invented in a garage. Same with the Google search engine. Now, tinkerers are working at home with the basic building blocks of life itself.
Using homemade lab equipment and the wealth of scientific knowledge available online, these hobbyists are trying to create new life forms through genetic engineering — a field long dominated by Ph.D.s toiling in university and corporate laboratories."

Thanks to Ingenuity Works for the image.

Hawking Continues his Universe Quest

If anyone is looking for a hero, you can start with Stephen Hawking. News today says Stephen Hawking will become the first distinguished research chair at Canada’s leading scientific trust, the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario. Hawking will make regular visits to the institute, which focuses on quantum theory and gravity, beginning next summer. He will continue to hold his position as a professor of mathematics at Cambridge University.

Besides the fact that Hawking is brilliant, he is an amazing person for his perserverence against his disability from ALS. He says, "I am quite often asked: How do you feel about having ALS? The answer is, not a lot. I try to lead as normal a life as possible, and not think about my condition, or regret the things it prevents me from doing, which are not that many."

His web site says, "Hawking has worked on the basic laws which govern the universe. With Roger Penrose he showed that Einstein's General Theory of Relativity implied space and time would have a beginning in the Big Bang and an end in black holes. These results indicated it was necessary to unify General Relativity with Quantum Theory, the other great scientific development of the first half of the 20th Century. One consequence of such a unification that he discovered was that black holes should not be completely black, but should emit radiation and eventually evaporate and disappear. Another conjecture is that the universe has no edge or boundary in imaginary time. This would imply that the way the universe began was completely determined by the laws of science.

"His many publications include The Large Scale Structure of Spacetime with G F R Ellis, General Relativity: An Einstein Centenary Survey, with W Israel, and 300 Years of Gravity, with W Israel. Stephen Hawking has three popular books published; and his best seller A Brief History of Time."

How Does an Iconoclast Think?

I like to cover stories about innovation on my personal blog, The Sky Badge Project, but I think this has interesting scientific merit so I am posting two places.

From an Emory University press release we learn about a new book: Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently (Harvard Business Press, 2008) - Gregory Berns, MD, PhD, shows us how the world's most successful innovators think and what we can learn from them.

Berns is distinguished chair of neuroeconomics, professor of economics at Emory University, and professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, Emory University School of Medicine. He focuses his research on human motivation and decision-making through a blend of neuroscience, economics and psychology.

"Iconoclasts are individuals who do things that others say can't be done," explains Berns. "An iconoclast defies the rules, but given the opportunity, can be an asset to any organization because of the skill to be creative and innovative despite adversity."

The book examines the stories of famous and not-so-famous iconoclasts to learn something about creative decision-making, innovation and creativity and the ability to control fear, and to look at the neuroscience behind those processes. Berns profiles people such as Walt Disney, the iconoclast of animation; Natalie Maines, an accidental iconoclast; and Martin Luther King, who conquered fear.

Berns says that many successful iconoclasts are made not born. For various reasons, they simply see things differently than other people do.

"Certainly there are people who are born this way, but what I have been able to learn about these individuals is that most successful iconoclasts are people who are skilled at handling failure and particularly at handling fear - fear of failure, fear of the unknown," says Berns.
He also discovered a trait that ultimately distinguishes the people who are really successful is social intelligence.

"A person can have the greatest idea in the world - completely different and novel - but if that person can't convince enough other people, it doesn't matter," says Berns.

Pluses for HRT in Postmenopausal Women

American women can stay confused about hormone replacement for postmenopausal health with all of the reports talking about its benefits, but then warning of its harm.

Here is the latest news from a Eurekalert press release reporting on a study in the British Medical Journal. The photo comes from JAMD.

One of the world's longest and largest trials of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) has found that post-menopausal women on HRT gain significant improvements in quality of life.

The results of the latest study by the WISDOM research team (Women's International Study of long Duration Oestrogen after Menopause) are published today on the British Medical Journal website http://www.bmj.com/.

The study involved 2130 post-menopausal women in the UK, Australia and New Zealand, and assessed the impact of combined oestrogen and progestogen hormone therapy on the women's quality of life. The average age of women in this study was 13 years after menopause and most participants did not have menopausal symptoms.

"Our results show that hot flushes, night sweats, sleeplessness and joint pains were less common in women on HRT in this age group. Sexuality was also improved," says Professor Alastair MacLennan, leader of the Australian arm of WISDOM and head of Obstetrics & Gynaecology at the University of Adelaide, Australia.

"Overall, quality of life measures improved. Even when women did not have hot flushes and were well past menopause, there was a small but measurable improvement in quality of life and a noted improvement in sleep, sexuality and joint pains. HRT users also had more breast tenderness and discharge compared to those on a placebo," he says.

Dr Beverley Lawton, Head of WISDOM New Zealand, says: "These new data should be added to the risk/benefit equation for HRT. The quality of life benefits of HRT may be greater in women with more severe symptoms near menopause. New research suggests that HRT taken from near menopause avoids the cardiovascular risks seen when HRT is initiated many years after menopause."

Professor MacLennan says studies such as those conducted by WISDOM "enable the risks of HRT to be reduced and its benefits maximized when the treatment is individualized to each woman".

"Early start-up side effects can usually be alleviated by adjusting the treatment," he says. "For most women with significant menopause symptoms the benefits of HRT outweigh the risks. The latest analyses of the main long-term randomized control trial of HRT (The Women's Health Initiative) show that breast cancer is not increased by estrogen-only HRT and is only increased in women using combined oestrogen and progestogen HRT after seven years of use. This increased risk is less than 0.1% per year of use.

"If a woman feels that HRT is needed for quality of life, then doctors can find the safest regimen for her. She can try going off HRT every 4-5 years, and can then make an informed choice about whether she takes and continues HRT."

Gamma-Ray Bursts Give Awesome Afterglow

I have been enjoying the Scientific American web site today, and always take a look at the physics section - written to help a non-physicist get it! I wanted to put the spectacular image in my blog, with credit, but I am not sure if this is allowed. So visit the story to see it! Instead I have used an image I found on Google and credit goes to scubagrl.

Writer JR Minkel says, "A new study casts doubt on a long-standing belief about the power behind gamma-ray bursts, the most energetic explosions in the universe. Researchers have found that short gamma-ray bursts—those that last a couple of seconds or less—have brighter afterglows than the simple, reigning model of afterglow emission predicts. Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are believed to occur when a star that has collapsed into a black hole or a neutron star whips a disk of gas and dust into a pair of powerful jets moving at nearly light speed. Like a lighthouse in fog, these so-called relativistic jets should cause whatever gas and dust that enshrouds the GRB source to glow brightly for hours after the burst's initial flash of energy."

North Pole's Changes Bring Grim News

The headline in TIME really caught my eye because it was a big surprise even with all the news about ice at the earth's poles: An Ice-Free North Pole?

TIME writer Seth Borenstein says a scientist he talked with notes, "There's a 50-50 chance that the North Pole will be ice-free this summer, which would be a first in recorded history..... Preliminary February and March data from a NASA satellite shows that the circle of ice surrounding the North Pole is "considerably thinner" than scientists have seen during the five years the satellite has been taking pictures.... For the last couple of decades, there has been a steady melt of Arctic sea ice — which covers only the ocean and which thins during summer and refreezes in winter. In recent years, it has gradually become thinner because more of it has been melting as the Earth's temperature rises."

Of course, scientists are looking for solutions, but how could it possibly be in time to reverse these dramatic and fast-moving changes?

Fixing the Brain with new Technologies

Now technology has moved well into the neuro business of health care. With money to be made on new advances in technology for problems of the brain and its workings, we will see more companies moving forward scientists' discoveries.

Conde Nast Portfolio has a nice summary - a lengthy piece describing the growth: "It seems far out even for the neurotechnology industry, a rapidly growing cluster of companies—small upstarts as well as pharmaceutical giants—that want to alter your gray matter and make billions of dollars in the process. These firms are trying to adapt groundbreaking research into the basic workings of the brain to new drugs for ailments ranging from insomnia to multiple sclerosis. Some companies are trying to regrow portions of the brain using stem cells. Others have developed implants to insert into a person’s head to control seizures and restore hearing."

Innovation in Many Places

On the hunt for innovation, I bumped into this article from the Edmonton Journal. I am excerpting a lot of it, but you can read more on the web site. I like the quote below by the Xerox president of its Innovation Group.

Emerging new technology products were shown this week at PARC of Xerox Corp. The centre has long been part of a Xerox corporate strategy of investing in long-range research. PARC incubates ideas that have the potential to become marketable products because they are dreamed up with partners from business, government and schools.

"We strongly believe whatever we think of will work," said Sophie Vandebroek, Xerox chief technology officer and president of Xerox Innovation Group.

Rare cell detector
Tucked away in the farthest PARC basement corner, biomedical research manager Dr. Richard Bruce places a microscope-like slide containing millions of white blood cells on a special scanner. The device shines a modified print laser blue light on cells that have been stained with fluorescent material. An attached scanner reads reflected light. Normal cells are a uniform solid colour. But abnormal cells reflect a different colour. The new, highly sensitive instruments can find a single rogue cancerous cell in a sample of more than 10 million cells in less than 30 minutes. The system potentially enables accelerated diagnosis and treatment of quickly spreading cancer cells. The detector is scheduled for tests at Stanford Hospital later this year.

The detector also has the potential to replace an invasive and sometimes hazardous method of testing body fluids in babies before birth known as amniocenteses. The new technology instead zeros in on embryo blood cells floating around in a mother's blood sample.

Erasable paper
Dr. Paul Smith, laboratory manager for the Xerox Research Centre in Missassauga, Ont., couldn't contain his excitement over results of PARC work that started as a Canadian project. The copying technology wizards are developing printable paper that wipes itself clean in 24 hours, or sooner if you decide to reuse it. The yellow base paper - coloured to distinguish itself from traditional, permanently printed paper - does not use ink. Smith said the specially coated paper produces dark tones when exposed to a certain kind of light the laser printer produces.

The effect fades away in 24 hours. The new variety of copier paper can be used up to 100 times, saving money and reducing office and household trash. Smith said a special hand-writing stylus is also in the works.

Solar concentrator
Developed with partner SolFocus, Inc., this is an array of clear plastic paraboliclike mirrors that miniaturizes solar panels. An array of the new type that is only the size of a large button can concentrate sunlight 500 times. The invention means potentially drastic reductions in the size of conventional solar panels and in the use of expensive silicon. It integrates the optical, thermal, and electrical aspects of solar panels to a single, flat, solid piece of glass. Scott Elrod, manager of the Clean Technology Program, expects this technology to cut the costs of traditional methods of harnessing sun energy in half.

Water purifier
Xerox's experience in handling powder-like toner material for its printers has led to a simple but effective method of separating solid particles from water. Particle-laden water is flushed through a spiral tube. As the material flows, centrifugal force separates solids from water. Elrod said water treatment plants can use this technology to remove solids from water and save time and space.

Getting Credit Where Credit Is Due

I am excerpting briefly from author Michael Domjan in the April 2008 Observer on the Psychological Science web site, but the article about credit for work in science in the age of interdisciplinary work is very interesting!

It says, "These days, the term “credit crisis” invokes thoughts of Wall Street and financial debt. But in the scientific enterprise, structural changes are affecting core issues of intellectual credit and indebtedness as well as taking responsibility when problems arise. Interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary have almost become buzz words, but they signify much more than just fashionable labels. Their commonplace use reflects the fact that deep understanding of a problem often requires the coordinated efforts of a range of scientists who are expert at different levels of analysis and employ different specialized techniques. When teams apply for grants and research awards, it may be difficult to name the principal investigator (PI). Beginning in February 2007, the National Institutes of Health added a multiple principal investigator option for grant and award applications." Vist the web site to read more!

Tea Catechins Linked to Reduction of Cancers

Increased consumption of teas rich in catechins is associated with reduced risk of stomach, colon, and other gastrointestinal cancers. However, the effects of digestion on the anticancer activity of tea catechins have largely been ignored. A study by nutrition researchers at The Ohio State University and Purdue University found that the digestive process could both alter the structure of the tea catechins and their anticancer activity.

Results were presented April 7 at Experimental Biology 2008 in San Diego.

Using a model simulating gastric and small-intestinal digestion, the researchers treated gastric cancer cells and colon cancer cell lines with digested and undigested (parent) extracts of green, tea, black tea, and a combination of the most active tea catechins (EGCG/EGC).
In colon cells, digestion of both the green tea extracts and the catechin combination significantly reduced anticancer activity compared to undigested parent extracts. Black tea, on the other hand, showed the same anticancer activity for both parent and digested extracts.

Digestion and the type of tea made a difference in terms of anticancer activity. In addition, the anticancer activity of the tea extracts differed between gastric and colon cancer cell lines. In gastric cancer cells, the undigested extracts were 50 percent less effective than in colon cancer cells.

What does the new study show us?

First, says Dr. Bomser, it points out that better understanding the impact of digestion on tea could lead to changes in how we formulate products in order to protect and enhance their anticancer activity. It also could change how we prepare tea now. In a study from Dr. Ferruzzi’s laboratory published last November, for example, he found that adding citrus (such as lemon juice) or ascorbic acid to green tea protected the catechins from digestive degradation. Lemon juice caused 80 percent of tea’s catechins to remain available for the body to absorb.

Second, say the researchers, some of the digestive changes may impact anti-cancer activities. Work in Dr. Ferruzzi’s laboratory has shown that digestion can alter the structure of polyphenols, degrading and destroying some while forming others. His laboratory is currently identifying these new compounds and testing their own anticancer activity.

Third, the findings of digestive impact on tea catechins are likely also true for other bioactive compounds in foods. Dr. Bomser points out that the active compound in broccoli, for example, is not released until chewing and the digestive process begins. How do we formulate food to prevent degradation and perhaps enhance anti-cancer activity?

And fourth, say the researchers, the epidemiological findings of protective impact of teas rich in the unstable, easily degraded catechins may indicate that other compounds in tea are responsible, in part, for this anticancer activity. Further research is necessary to identify these compounds and to understand the impact of digestion on their anticancer activity.

Experimental Biology 2008 - Freshman 15 Update

The “freshman 15” - the rapid weight gain believed to afflict many new college students when they begin school - appears to be a bit of an urban legend: a cautionary tale often told but not well substantiated.

Now a study of 36 freshmen reports an average gain of only 1.9 pounds during the first semester, with women gaining slightly more than men, and an average gain of only 4.8 pounds for the entire freshman year (with males gaining an average of 5.4 pounds and women gaining an average of 3.2 pounds).

Some students lost weight. But even when only those who gained were considered, the average weight gain was 5.8 pounds, a long way from the often-popularized 15.

Dr. Sareen Gropper presented the study at the Experimental Biology 2008 meeting in San Diego.

The 36 freshman (26 females and 10 males) were weighed and their body composition and shape measured when they began college and then again at the end of the fall semester and the end of the spring semester. The urban legend is correct in the sense that a majority of freshmen in the study (71.4 percent) did gain weight, notes Dr. Gropper, but only 21 percent gained five pounds or more.

The largest gainers in the fall semester were a woman who gained nine pounds and a male who gained 10 pounds. For the academic year, the largest weight gains observed were 13 pounds for one male and 12 pounds for one female. No one gained the freshman 15. Dr. Gropper and colleagues have begun a larger study of 240 students who entered Auburn in the fall semester of 2007.

She and her colleagues are following the 240 students throughout their freshman and beginning of their sophomore years, with questionnaires that examine factors that might contribute to the gain, however small, that the majority of college freshman appear to experience. The researchers also are collecting data on weight changes throughout the year, including five, 10, even 15+ pound losses within the first year of school.

Unique to this study is a 3-D whole body scanner to collect information on body size and shape. This technology quickly captures exact body measurements, which can be visually displayed in cross sections of body areas like the bust, waist and hips to show where changes occur in measurements over time. Understanding where weight is deposited on the body helps assess the potential risk of diseases such as heart disease and metabolic syndrome.

Experimental Biology 2008: Ibuprofen Helps Build Muscle Mass

Scientists say taking daily recommended dosages of ibuprofen and acetaminophen caused a substantially greater increase over placebo in the amount of quadriceps muscle mass and muscle strength gained during three months of regular weight lifting.

Dr. Todd Trappe reported study results at Experimental Biology 2008 in San Diego on April 6.

Participants took three months of weight training, 15-20 minute sessions in a Human Performance Laboratory three times per week. The researchers knew from their own and other studies that training at this intensity and for this time period would significantly increase muscle mass and strength. They expected the placebo group to show such increases, as its members did, but they were surprised to find that the groups using either ibuprofen or acetaminophen did even better.

Over three months, says Dr. Trappe, the chronic consumption of ibuprofen or acetaminophen during resistance training appears to have induced intramuscular changes that enhance the metabolic response to resistance exercise, allowing the body to add substantially more new protein to muscle. Read more.

Diseases in our New World Order

I find this facinating, even though risk to others is low. The NYT says on Long Island Nassau County officials issued a health advisory on Saturday to anyone who had recently eaten at an Italian chain restaurant in Hicksville, after a worker there was found to have typhoid fever.

County health officials said a New York City man who is a food handler at Mama Sbarro’s, at 265 North Broadway, contracted typhoid fever, a bacterial infection that can be life-threatening if not treated.

New York City health officials informed the Nassau County Department of Health about the man’s infection on Friday night, a spokeswoman for the county health agency said.

The spokeswoman, Cynthia Brown, said that based on interviews with the man and two unannounced inspections of the restaurant on Friday and Saturday, the health risk to the public was low.

You really do not think about typhoid here in the States.

And this reported in Reuters: Brazil's military will help fight an outbreak of dengue fever in Rio de Janeiro, the defense ministry said at the weekend, after the disease killed 49 people and made more than 30,000 ill this year.

Public hospitals in the northern and western districts of the city were overwhelmed by the number of patients seeking treatment at the weekend. Many complained about long delays.
The defense ministry said Army, Air Force and Navy commanders would propose an action plan to Defense Minister Nelson Jobim as early as Monday on how to combat the disease in the famous beach and port city.

And, watch out for canteloupes on the west coast USA.

sxsw: 3.11.08 Peas in a Pod: Advertising, Monetization and Social Media

sxsw: 3.11.08 Peas in a Pod: Advertising, Monetization and Social Media

Bottom line words: advertising ROI, social media

Tim Kendall is a Product Manager at Facebook, where he oversees revenue-generating products and leads new monetization initiatives including the company's new advertising solution, Facebook Social Ad system. Prior to Facebook, Tim worked in Amazon.com's digital media group as a Product Manager.

Ellen McGirt is Senior Writer at Fast Company magazine. She covers a range of business topics, but never stops looking for the writer's holy grail: The business ideas - and people - who are changing the world. McGirt joined Fast Company in February 2007 from Fortune, where she was a senior writer.

Kent Nichols is a storyteller, technology geek, and goofball. In 2003 his film "Baggage" won the International 48 Hour Film Project and Scott Billups called him the future of the entertainment industry in his book, "Digital Moviemaking." In 2005 Nichols, along with writing partner Douglas Sarine, created the Internet sensation AskANinja.com, which has been viewed over 20 million times. In 2006 Sarine and Nichols created HopeIsEmo.com, one of the most viewed and discussed series on the web.

Seth Goldstein is co-founder and chairman of Attentiontrust.org, and strongly advocates for the rights of individuals to their own data. He is creating services for turning passive data into active expression through a group called AttentionLab. I was the founder of one of the first Internet advertising agencies, SiteSpecific, in 1995, and was entrepreneur-in-residence at Flatiron Partners.

As the social web commands increasing user attention across diverse demographics, social media has begun to see a new wave of online advertising. As all kinds of marketers embark on this new media frontier, it's critical that their plans provide value for users while also creating demonstrating positive ROI - either for brand or direct marketers.

Companies push and have opt-in actions but some you have to opt out without really realizing this – so Beacon takes data outside Facebook, so if you buy something at Zappos it can come into Facebook.

Info shared within Facebook is fair game for sharing – it is a social sharing environment. When you move data from Facebook outward it needs more controls.

Social advertising network discussion is underway, but this conversation by this group is very stream of consciousness and not easy to blog.

Going to close my blogging now for this conference and see what I can learn from this one!

sxsw: 3.11.08 Future of Corporate Blogs

sxsw: 3.11.08 Future of Corporate Blogs

Bottom line words: corporate blogging, ROI, measurement, community, influence to change a company

Moderator Mack Collier is a social media consultant, and author of The Viral Garden, a blog focusing on marketing and social media. Known for his 'community-first' approach to blogging and social media, Mack focuses on teaching companies how they can use social media to excite and engage their customers.

Panelist Mario Sundar works for LinkedIn and is Community Evangelist with over 5 years experience in the high-tech industry developing marketing initiatives for Fortune 50 brands including Intel, Hitachi and Sun Microsystems. Currently, defining and implementing the social media and community strategy at LinkedIn.

Panelist Lionel Menchaca from Dell the digital media manager for Dell's corporate blog, Direct2Dell.

Panelist Kami Watson Huyse, APR, principal of My PR Pro, writes the blog, Communication Overtones, on the topic of public relations and social media strategy. Her ideas and work are featured in several books about social media including The New Rules of Marketing and PR, and Now is Gone. She is also a contributor to the PRSA Byline blogs.

The panel is looking at what it takes to be the most relevant and engaging corporate blogs in business. Are corporate blogs relevant is the next question.

Will the future see more corporations enter the blogosphere, or less?

What fears and misconceptions do companies have about blogging and are these fears justified?

The panel is discussing ways a blog can augment a corporation's marketing efforts and improve customer service.
More importantly now, what tool(s), if any, will replace blogging?

The panel discusses tracking and measure their blogging efforts, going beyond just tracking hits and visitors, to developing criteria to measure the true Return on Investment (ROI) for blogging.

Okay – Dell must have had major problems that its blogging somehow turned around because Lionel is he second person from Dell to say this.

LinkedIn’s Mario talks about being the community evangelist – knowing what consumers are thinking and representing them to his company. He works on the LinkedIn social media strategy. When you start a blog – are you ready and is it worth it. Comments allow real conversation and LinkedIn decided to do this. Corporate blogs still mixed on comments. Traffic at LinkedIn is growing and the blogging is sup

Kami says solving a communication problem is your first test. Where is your community you are you trying to reach? Are they reading blogs, are they on Facebook. It is about the community not the company and their interests – so find the way that they intersect. Blog, Facebook or Twitter how can you measure this – the relationships. What would be considered a success. What is competition doing, so benchmarking. What about tonality in the messaging how is that going. Engagement can be measured. Analytic tools are valuable. You can look at comments and number of posts on a blog. You can look at “sales”. What about surveys – the old fashioned measurement.

6 measures for relationship: go to delicious – Kami chat on sxsw to learn more on this.

Ask if you are trending in the right direction, are your relationships working? What about an online focus group? So be creative to see what your community wants.

Listening, analyzing, and then taking action are the three that Lionel uses. Monitoring the blogosphere is important. He uses Ideastorm to determine reaction to ideas at Dell. The core team looks at user ideas and they are vetted through the business channels at Dell. Dell also uses the blog to say it is working on the customer’s behalf – no buffer to tell customers directly what you are doing. The relationship grows with this new one-on-one – and you send up with loyalty from these customers.
So, all this discussion points the need for a social media team if you are going to invite this kind of relationship. The momentum gets going and changes the skeptics that think a negative comment cannot change things for the better.
Transparency – this is the future.

One small step by Emory Healthcare is to start a Care Pages [powered by Steve Case’s Revolution Heallth] relationship for its customers, but this does not engage our organization with our customers directly, it puts them closer together with family and friends and finding each other via a web page.

Now with easy ways to develop communications with a group like Twitter, how soon will this type of technology replace web site-based communications. For now, this is what the majority of healthcare seekers can understand and use, but as technology changes and younger users embrace its many advantages, an organization needs to be ready for this.

From Kami’s blog Communications Overtones http://overtonecomm.blogspot.com/:

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Blogs
Effectively communicating ideas and building relationships takes some discipline. I have always liked Steven Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The principles make sense and are applicable both in your personal and professional life.

A blog is a highly personal refection of the people and/or companies writing it. These principles can be perfectly applied to blogging and other two-way communications.

1. Develop content based on principles and values. While a blog cannot deliver “key messages” in a canned and contrite manner (this isn’t a soundbite medium), it can be written from the values and principles of its writer or company. Knowing these values for yourself is the key to developing a “voice” for your communication. For example, I value honesty, building meaningful relationships, learning new things, and fun.

2. Have a vision or purpose statement. Part of my personal mission statement includes these action items that I developed in under four minutes at the Covey Website:
0. I will always seek to improve the depth and quality of my relationships in my personal and professional life
0. I will never be afraid to stand up for what I believe is right
0. I will be committed to lifelong learning and self improvement
0. I will seek to treat others as I would wish to be treated
0. I will not take myself too seriously and will have a life filled with laughter and fun
You can see how the values I have in #1 expand to become my action items. My mission statement, which could be lived out through my action items is to: “Explore how public relations can find an authentic voice in today's social media.”

3. Prioritize. Be sure to put first-things-first and don’t be driven by the agenda of forces around you. I notice that when I apply this principle regularly across-the-board I don’t have as much trouble with balance. My goal is to get one post out each weekday to “feed” my blog and extend the relationship with my readers. If I get that done, I don’t feel bad about turning my back on the blog for a few hours to get work done, spend time with my family, etc.

4. Think win-win. Blogs and other social media are meant to be a two-way conversation and that conversation often includes vehement disagreement. However, thinking win-win requires that we disagree with ideas and not the people that generated them. This helps to facilitate the discussion about the idea and possible come up with a solution that is better than the ideas of one person alone (see habit 6). This is the “magic” of social media.

5. Seek first to understand…then to be understood. This principle is best lived out in the comments section. Many blogs have the best discussions in the comments section include a back and forth between blog author and visitors that refines understanding of the idea. This is likely because the blog author seeks to understand the comments about his or her idea and incorporate them in the final.

6. Synergize. By building a community of respect, problems can be solved in a way that wouldn’t otherwise be possible. The refining of an idea by many can lead to the “magic” of social communication where 1+1=3.

7. Renew yourself. You don’t have much to offer if all you do is sit in front of a computer. We all need to renew in the areas of physical health, social networks, spiritual renewal and mental improvement. When you do this you have something new and interesting to bring to the conversation.

sxsw: 3.10.08 Transforming Hospital Systems: The Digital Future of Healthcare

sxsw: 3.10.08 Transforming Hospital Systems: The Digital Future of Healthcare

I was interested to see what I could learn from this session on the digital future of healthcare - but it went over some fairly traditional concepts and I pretty much knew about it!

The moderator Grace Lanni is the director of Healthcare Partner Solutions at Motion Computing where she focuses on strategic software co-development partnerships. The intro says: Why can we move money anywhere quickly and easily, look up bank balances online and spit out cash at an ATM, but we can't access our own medical records? Worse, doctors can't access our records when it's critical to be sure that meds or procedures they prescribe won't kill us. That's changing -- learn how advanced digital technologies are transforming healthcare.

From the panel I was most interested in Michael Kennedy from Microsoft on HealthVault and would have liked for him to go into more detail about the concept and its development. He talked about products for health information – and discusses HealthVault by Microsoft. The search in HealthVault is very targeted and from authoritative sources he says. A platform for innovation and for connectivity says the tagline. HealthVault will take records from your hospital and your doctor. Your personal information is not datamined and privacy is key he says. Some organizations he works with includes CapMed – a PHR [personal health record] and you can have this portable and mobile or desktop.

A physician from Austin Dr. Lucksinger covered his experiences with beta-testing a new tablet for EMR. Psychcentral.com Dr. Grohol presented on health information. He said there are so many tools available for online assessments, for ratings and reviewing doctors, carepages, social networking sites, and phr/emr and the connections between the two.

sxsw: 3.10.08 Keynote by postsecret’s Frank Warren

sxsw: 3.10.08 Keynote by postsecret’s Frank Warren

Bottom line words: authenticity, a very powerful presentation about expression

Frank Warren bio:
Called "the most trusted stranger in America," Frank Warren is the sole founder and curator of the PostSecret Project: A collection of nearly 200,000 highly personal and artfully decorated postcards mailed anonymously from around the world, displaying the soulful secrets we never voice, and the creator of the New York Times best-selling books: "PostSecret, The Secret Lives of Men and Women," "My Secret," and "A Lifetime of Secrets." Warren has appeared on the Today Show, Good Morning America, 20/20, CNN, MSNBC, CBC, NPR and Fox News. He graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in the Social Sciences and moved to the Washington D.C. area to start a business. Fifteen years later, Instant Information Systems, his small business, takes up less of his time as he devotes more time and energy on the project that thrust him into the public eye. Warren receives between 100 and 200 postcards everyday.

I am getting ready to hear Frank talk about his experiences and am clicking on www.postsecret.com which goes to http://postsecret.blogspot.com . It says:

PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail
in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard. This is a very creative multimedia art project as well as social experiment. If you want to bookmark the page and share it you can go to http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php - it is amazing how the sharing world is growing – some you have known a while and many new ones:

Favorites Google Bookmarks Del.icio.us
Digg MySpace Facebook Furl Yahoo MyWeb
StumbleUpon Reddit Newsvine Live Bookmarks
Technorati Twitter Yahoo Bookmarks myAOL Ask
Fark Slashdot Propeller (Netscape) Mixx
Multiply Simpy Blogmarks Diigo
Faves (Blue Dot) Spurl LinkaGoGo
Mister Wong Feed Me Links Backflip
Magnolia Segnalo Netvouz Tailrank BlinkList

Sorry, I got sidetracked looking these over – now on to Frank and the secret to his secrets. You can also visit http://www.postsecretcommunity.com .

Frank starts off by saying everyone in the audience knows more about blogging and technology than he does. He says he has some secrets to read he has brought and ones that people put in the box in the back of the room. He talks about the emotion of the secrets.

Wedding announcements, Polaroid photos, report cards, Starbucks cups.
I am here for work but looking for a job – I am from a big company but I am here to steal startup secrets – I have a wife but I have a crush at sxsw.

Out of 200,000 secrets he got an email from Texas – a woman visited the web site and she wrote down her secret, but he felt terrible about the secret but he tore it up because he did not want to remember it. A secret can actually undermine us in ways that we do to realize. We all have the potential to change our lives after a secret is over.

How did it get started? What are some of the secrets he has? What does he know he can share?

Three years ago in Washington DC and put out 3,000 cards and asked people to send it in – strangers were asked to write something down. The cards kept coming in and then he posted them in an art exhibit. After four weeks he had 90 postcards. However, the secrets kept coming in via virually from the real world, all over the world. He started a blog so he could share this with everyone. He notes the art and humor in our everyday lives.

Some are searching for grace, for authenticity; some to express a sexual taboo. He reads many cards and they are very poignant and very funny and very sad.

He says his project has shown to him the courage people have – those who are artists and those who are not. His father visited an exhibit that Frank had with 2,000 cards in DC – and his father watched people come in and look at the postcards and finally understood. Then his father gave an important secret to him on the way to the airport and it changed the relationship they had for the better.

An audience member says people are becoming more authentic and sharing intimacies. Communications now available to everyone – this is outside of commerce now and the tools allows us to express ourselves.

sxsw: 3.10.08 Links to Coverage and Web Awards

You can find a lot more here with podcasts and video coveage. Check out the web awards web page to see some amazing we work!

http://2008.sxsw.com/coverage/

http://2008.sxsw.com/interactive/web_awards/winners/

http://2008.sxsw.com/interactive/