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Aaron Strout

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We First

June 8, 2011 By Aaron Strout Leave a Comment

Tomorrow, my friend (and someone I greatly respect), Simon Mainwaring will be making his second appearance on the Quick’n’Dirty podcast show. Unfortunately, I have a client offsite that will prevent me from being in on the interview but with regular co-host, Kyle Flaherty and guest co-host (and colleague), Greg Matthews, Simon will be in good hands. One thing to note and that is that Simon is our first official guest to have been on the show two times. There are a couple of reasons for that:

  1. He’s that good
  2. Simon has a book coming out this week called We First.

Simon was kind enough to send me a few bullets about the book down below so those of you interested in the book (that should be all of you) know what it’s about. I’ve also embedded a recent video Simon did for the book. Hopefully this will reinforce why you’ll want to read the book.

  • The core premise of We First is that all corporations, businesses, consumers and citizens need to work together as partners and begin using capitalism as a driver of prosperity by standing in opposition to the traditional ‘me first’ mentality of free market capitalism.
  • Social media gives consumers new platforms to influence the purpose of capitalism and the behavior of companies while, at the same time, offers brands an opportunity to engage in meaningful dialogue with consumers about shared interests and values, enabling both brands and consumers to translate their shared values to create a more sustainable economic system.
  • We First proposes that capitalism must look beyond our immediate needs and acknowledge that sometimes our self-interest is best served through compromise or solutions that promise gains over the long term, or rather, that good self-interest benefits society because it fulfills the needs of individuals while respecting those of others, whereas selfishness detracts from society because it fulfills only one individual’s needs.
  • We First discusses “profit as purpose” to refer to a model in which businesses, while making a profit, also have a positive impact on the world, for a business that commits to profit with purpose also seeks to infuse greater meaning into the lives of all the stakeholders it touches, as well as all other parties effected by the business’s presence.
  • We First sustainability refers to the fact that capitalist enterprises must preserve the planet’s resources for future generations and, for capitalism to survive, businesses need to figure out how to create a prosperous society of consumers who have the financial resources and living standards to support the very existence of capitalism because, if capitalism doesn’t provide jobs and decent wages to people, there is no market.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZloSRGIzRc]

 

By the way, I get NOTHING for writing this post and have not received a free book. I am doing this because Simon is one of the nicest/smartest/well-spoken guys out there. Too often we do disclosures because there is a possibility that we’ve been tainted or influenced in some way. In this case, I can only say I’m influenced by the fact that Simon just does things right.

Resuscitated iPhones and Blogger Ethics

May 25, 2010 By Aaron Strout 9 Comments

I’m not vain enough to think that any of you give a crap that I have an iPhone or better yet that it was spared “brick” status thanks to it’s semi-waterproof SaFPWR case/charger when it went for a swim last weekend. Instead, I want to make this into a bigger story about what I choose to blog about and what I don’t and how I try and keep my morals and integrity in tact while doing so.

So let me start with the story of my revived iPhone to help set the stage. A few weeks ago, a friend of mine, Mike Merrill, sent me a direct message on Twitter asking me if I’d like a free SaFPWR iPhone battery case/charger. Given the fact that I am a heavy iPhone user and am constantly seeking outlets to charge my insufficient battery, I said sure. Now to give this story a little more context, I had actually purchased a smaller auxiliary batter charger before SXSW for the reason I just mentioned. What I’ve found about this charger — the Kensington Mini Battery Extender — is that it’s adequate but has several shortcomings including the way it awkwardly hangs off the end of your phone when it’s charging.

Photo Credit: Kenard Consulting

Following my reception of my new SaFPWR charger/case, I received a nice note from Mike saying that “if I chose to blog about it, I could offer my readers a 15% discount” (more on that in a minute). I told him that I would likely blog about the charger but that I wanted to try it out for a few days first before I decided on anything. Little did I know that five days later, that very case would save me $199 for a replacement iPhone and the hassle of rebuilding my phone. The short version of the story is that because the case is also a charger (and made out of hard rubber), it plugs up the charging slot at the bottom of the phone. This combined with the fact that:

  1. I didn’t try and turn my phone on
  2. Immediately brought it to the Apple store so they could inspect/dry it out
  3. Inserted it into a bag of rice for four whole days
essentially saved my phone. You have no idea how delighted I was when I returned from my business trip to see the battery charging light come on when I plugged it in.
So now that I’ve told you this story, I’ll tell you how I’m relating it to the bigger picture of “blogger ethics.” To begin with, this is somewhat new territory for me. Even though I’ve been blogging for four plus years, it’s only been over the last 6-9 months where I’ve started to get pitched by companies and PR shops to cover their products and services. I suspect this may equal parts to do with my weekly Quick’n’Dirty podcast show (my co-host blogs at ZDNet and we’ve had some pretty kick ass guests) and the company I work for, Powered, moving squarely into the limelight post purchase of three other social media boutiques.
As someone that’s been critical of bloggers that take stuff for free, I’ve had to do a lot of soul searching now that I now have the opportunity to get the same schwag. However, where I draw the line is this… For starters, the product or service CANNOT cause any conflict with my job i.e. I wouldn’t accept free tickets or gifts from a potential vendor that I wasn’t already doing business with under any circumstance. This doesn’t mean I can’t have dinner with them or attend a ballgame to talk business but I don’t want my judgement clouded or pressure exerted because of an unspoken quid pro quo. I also never promise to write a blog post about anything I receive and if I do agree to do a post, there is a 100% chance that I may write something negative if your product or service sucks. If I am underwhelmed or net neutral on your offering, chances are I won’t write anything at all. For some examples of a few companies that have directly or indirectly invoked some blog coverage, you can check out my I See You post for details.
Getting back to my man, Mike Merrill and the free SaFPWR iPhone case/charger, I’ve gotta give them major props because not only does their product work (I’ve used it for a few weeks now and it’s not only a great solution but it also adds about 4-6 hours of life to my iPhone. What Mike and SaFPWR didn’t know is that by saving my iPhone from drowning, they’ve made me the best spokesperson they could ever imagine. And to avoid any impropriety on my front, I’m going to go out and purchase one of these cases for my wife who has a related “swimming iPhone” story of her own. Oh, and if you’d like to buy one of these phones, go to their site and use the discount code “blogger” to get 15% off. In the spirite of full transparency, I get ZERO for pimping their product or giving you a code.
Do you have a great story of a game changing product? Or maybe some thoughts on blogger ethics (feel free to call me out if you think I’m being hypocritical).

Quick-n-dirty Podcast Recap 30: Home Depot FTW

February 1, 2010 By Aaron Strout 1 Comment

When I received the call from my podcast partner, Jennifer Leggio, late in the day last Thursday, I knew something was up. Jennifer is a pro at picking her communication channels and she and I normally communicate via direct message on Twitter. Occasionally we escalate to e-mail but we rarely ever talk on the phone save for our post-Quick-n-Dirty podcast calls where we do a post-mortem of the show.

My instincts were right and Jennifer’s call was to let me know that she might not be able to do the show Thursday due to a tidal wave of work that landed on her desk. Fortunately, Jennifer and I plan for these things and I knew immediately to go into backup plan mode. Within 20 minutes of her call, I had my good friend and former colleague, Rachel Happe, on the hook (HT to Jim Storer for the assist). And while I missed the usual chemistry I’ve developed with Jennifer over the course of 30 shows, Rachel was a pro and helped keep the show running smoothly (even spending a healthy dose of time in the chat room engaging our regulars).

As always, you can hear an audio archive of last week’s show (along with all our other archives) here.

Our social network/app of the week was CauseWorld. I think Rachel summed it up best when she said that it was like FourSquare but for social good. That about says it all. I’ve downloaded the app on my iPhone and intend to play around with it a bit (what’s better than checking in to venues while earning “karma” points that can be translated into real dollars that help causes like victims of the Haiti earthquake). There’s a good write up of the service over on TechCrunch.

Next up was our featured guest, Sarah Molinari of Home Depot. Sarah is actually the person that Tweets out of the Home Depot Twitter account so if you’ve ever asked Home Depot a question, chances are you’ve talked to Sarah. During our conversation, the ever so graceful Ms. Molinari talked about Home Depot’s approach to engaging customers. She was also willing to talk about how they “listened” and admitted that they didn’t pay as much attention to competitors’ or industry keywords as maybe they could but only because they were so heads down focusing on all the existing customer conversations about Home Depot. We even got to talk about Home Depot’s Nascar race team [link updated on 2/2 – thanks Sarah!] on Twitter — a topic that Sarah was very well versed in. All in all, she was an absolute joy to have on the show.

Our “Tweet” of the week was none other than Mr. CC Chapman. If you don’t know CC, there are a few things you’ll quickly find out about him 1) he’s a great blogger and podcaster (focused on social media AND daddy blogging) and 2) he’s a teddy bear of a guy. So helpful and humble. In Rachel’s and my opinion, he is a MUST follow.

Last but not least came our point / counterpoint about tactical vs. strategic community management. Rachel and I did less debating since we haven’t spent a lot of time taking sides on issues but spent more time outlining the benefits of the different approaches one could take when it came to community management. Rachel in particular made some excellent points on the strategic side so it’s worth a listen (check out last 5-6 minutes of the show).

I’m looking forward to getting back to business with Jennifer next week. Details about the show will be on the Quick-n-Dirty site.

Quick-n-dirty Podcast Recap 20: With Guest Host, Cathy Brooks

October 26, 2009 By Aaron Strout Leave a Comment

Last Thursday I had the opportunity to try out a guest host on the Quick-n-Dirty podcast show. My usual partner-in-crime, Jennifer Leggio, was originally supposed to be on a plane during our normal Thursday time slot although her plans changed and she ultimately ended up sticking around. This led to some funny podcast-a-trois when we invited Jen to call into the show during the last 10 minutes.

In Jen’s place, Iwas lucky to have the talented and socially adept, Cathy Brooks, as my guest host and fortunately, she did not disappoint. Cathy and I had met a few times before in real life (SXSW and Jeff Pulver’s 140 Character Conference in NYC) so I had a pretty good sense of her style. To that end, Cathy’s wit and charm helped as we stuck to the shows regular format — and in this case, brought on TWO guests versus our normal one.

We kicked off the show with our usual “featured social network.” In this case, it was social travel site, Tripit, a site that I am a big fan of. As a side note, the folks from Tripit were doing a good job “listening” and reached out to me after the fact to ask if I might be interested in interviewing their co-founders. Suffice to say, you’ll be hearing more from the folks at Tripit in the not-to-distant-future.

Our special guestS (yes, two of them) were none other than Gradon Tripp and Meg Fowler, founders of Social Media for Social Change, a great organization that applies the best of the world of social to the non-profit world. Gradon and Meg not only talked about how their organization had raised a decent amount of cash for good causes but how they were also helping other non-profit organizations harness the power of social. If you haven’t checked out one of their events, keep an eye out for their next event in Miami Florida called @sm4scmiami.

The featured “Twitterer” of the week was Allstate’s Ben Foster. As I was talking about the reasons I liked Ben’s Twitter style — great mix of human and business — he chimed in on Twitter with this hilarious quote:

@aaronstrout Sweet! But now I feel pressure to have smart tweets and not things like Wolf Blitzer T-Shirts and Zombie Wedding Cakes 🙂

And finally, we wrapped up with our traditional point / counterpoint… this time with a focus on social advertising. Of course Cathy and I couldn’t resist bringing Jennifer in for this portion of the show so we had a fast and furious three way dialogue about whether companies should or shouldn’t be advertising on places like Facebook. If you want to find out who chose which side, I guess you’ll just have to listen into the last 10 minutes of the show.

Check out other recaps of the Quick-n-Dirty podcast show either here on Stroutmeister.com or on Jen’s ZDNet blog. We hope you’ll listen in live next week!

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