RIP: The career of Jim Zumbo

I was a gun nut once. While I didn’t join the NRA, I read gun magazines, went shooting with my Dad and even killed a deer on my very first deer hunt when I was 14. So what changed? For me it was when the NRA tried to say that a ban on an assault rifle would lead to all guns being banned.

See when Dad wasn’t controlling airplanes he was a Deputy Sherriff. While he worked in the jail and never had to invest in body armor it only took one look at what an assault rifle can do to convince me these weapons, while fun to shoot, had no business being unregulated.

The weapons were talking about, AK-47, AR-15 and the like; they were designed for one thing: killing a person in combat.

So when noted outdoorsman and hunter rights supporter Jim Zumbo posted to his Outdoor life blog that he couldn’t see hunting with an assault rifle and called these types of guns terrorist guns, well, let’s say the NRA was about to go medieval on one of their own.

36 hours later Zumbo lost his gig, his TV show, his sponsorship deals. All for 2 blog posts.

You wanna see gun nuts in action: check out this http://nugeboard.tednugent.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/286904.html

I’ll summarize: We accept your apology and God bless you as you deal with the wreckage we just made of your 40 year career.

This is an example of the diversity of opinions within the shooting sports community. That’s why I left.

 

Citizen Marketers

Today I attended a presentation by Ben McConnell, the co author of the book Citizen Marketers as well as the author of the blog “The Church of the Customer“. The notes that follow were taken in real time in the atrium of the Kilgore building which was serving as the overflow area. I didn’t take notes of the Q/A session that followed as I moved into the auditorium as I wanted to ask a question.

 

48 million content creators in the United States (what counts as content)

• Tradition one way marketing is being disputed by the ‘democratization’ of content creators
  • Point of BS: you can create content for ‘free’
    
• Need to look at the people in order to understand a trend
  • Point of BS: Tools are free and easy to use
    
• There is now an impact on traditional media
• Amateur culture is now being infused by social networks and creativity
• Everyone is a publisher, DJ, commentator, blah, blah..
• Social networks are member networks
• This is driven by broadband
  • Point of BS: What about those areas without broadband
    
• A founding idea of social media is the bill of rights
  • A voice
  • A vote
  • A vocation
  • Point of BS: What about companies that do business in places like Egypt and China that do not offer such rights to individuals.
    
• Most influential media is Word of Mouth
• There is no control in social media
  • Point of BS: Ever here Apple suing bloggers
    
• 4 Types of social marketers ( missed one)
  • Firecrackers
    • Big pop then go away
  • Fanatics
    • Point of BS: Save our Show campaigns lead by Fanatics are sooo 1990’s
    • You are your Google search results and you can’t really control Google.
  • Facilitators
    • Build forums where a community can form around
• Why do these people do this?
  • A form of productive leisure
  • Many people’s hobbies are a bridge to their professional lives
• The 1% Rule
  • The total number of people who come into the democratized community will create content
• Inequality is the rule
  • These creators are on the edges of your community but they will influence the whole
• Work with the 1%
  • Create with them: co-create
  • Formalize community relations: Discovery channel built an educator network for teachers who use their programming. Peer to peer education and best practices
• Participation drives growth

Wrap up: Looking over the notes, I remembered something my Dad said when I was getting upset about my favorite team moving “Never fall in love with another man’s business”. A lot of this revolves around getting people to fall in love with your business. But isn’t there better things in this world to love than a business or product?

Random Thoughts

• Is it just me but are people going a bit overboard about Anna Nicole Smith’s passing? The woman looked unhealthy and given her stress level was about ready to die the death of a salaryman (that is die without warning or notice). Besides, given the war in Iraq, the attention on this story is shameful.
• On that same note: Is Britney Spears shaving her head above the fold stuff on CNN? I mean it’s not like it won’t grow back. To be honest, she does look good as a bald woman. Some women can pull off that look plus it makes wig wearing much more convenient.
• I got a Canon PowerShot SD40 as a gift. So look for tons more photos on Flickr.
• Church has been interesting to say the least. I can’t talk much about the details. Yet I can talk about how I’m starting to see issues at church merging with some of the issues at work in an unhealthy way. So I’m stepping down as the tech team leader and I’m going to visit a United Church of Christ near us once I get my replacement set since I’ve been a big supporter of their “God doesn’t reject people…and neither do we” campaign. As a liberal Christian, I’ve never really worshiped with people whose views on things were like mine. At this point, I just don’t have the energy to stand alone. I want to be around others with whom I don’t have to explain my views since they get them already.

Fat Tuesday 2007

Last year at this time, I was in the middle of madness that was cutting over to the new software at work. For lent, rather than giving something up, I decided to do something. Problem is that that something turned out to meet the fate of a new year’s resolution. That is it didn’t make its way to the end of February let alone see Easter. So I beat myself up for going in reverse and not fulfilling what I set out to do.

 

This year I’m going back to the same thing as last year. For Lent, I’m going to walk at least 30 minutes a day. I’m also committing to weekly weigh ins and testing my blood sugar daily.

 

So as we head into Lent, may you have found the baby in your piece of King Cake and gotten out all your sinnin’ for tomorrow we put on the ashes and await for both spring and Easter to come.

Microsoft CRM

I got to attend 2 of the 4 Microsoft CRM sessions before the things on the home front really went south.

The thing that got me about how Microsoft built its CRM toolset was that rather than do what everyone else has done and build some unusable web app, they built their CRM tools to work inside of Office. The idea is that

1. You already own Office

2. Your staff already know Office

3. At some point in the CRM workflow, the information is going to be used within an Office application.

So why build something that you have to enter the information into only to pull it out and stick it in Office? Why not build a set of hooks so that Office takes what you’re already doing and moves it though your CRM process?

 

The idea of leveraging what they already own and know got me thinking about better ways to teach people how to use technology. I’m going to try a few of these out for my class projects.

The lost week

Things around the Leslie household have been a bit foul of late. A stomach virus has rolled into the Casa and layed everyone low. John started on Saturday night after his cousin had left and puked a total of 4 times. The first hitting me square in the back as I tried to carry him to the bathroom.

John had stopped by Sunday prompting us to think it was something he eat. Yet by Monday night John got sick again and by Tuesday morning, Jean was down with it as well.

This meant that I was on the clock. I left my Microsoft CRM presentation to fetch the pedolyte while the snow fell. The whole time I’m praying I didn’t get it. My prayers were answered in that I didn’t puke but I did spend pretty much all Tuesday night either nauseated or in the bathroom pinned to the toilet.

Wednesday I was out of action trying to sleep off having to go to the bathroom every hour on the hour. I took some time to watch the James Bond bonus DVD’s from the new Ultimate Edition that I checked out from the library. At about 3am John pukes again.

Thursday We take John to the Doc who rules out strep but that is little comfort when we’re told we have to ride this out. Jean is feeling punk again so I clean all the bathrooms in an effort to cut down any recontamination. Oh, John pukes at 2:30am and hits Jean’s hair.

Friday John is back to his old self. In fact you wouldn’t really know he was sick. Before getting sick he would wake up fussing, puke and then head back to bed falling asleep once we got him in a new set of jammies.

Jean is still feeling punk and I’m lacking sleep. I make two meetings at work then bail out. I start feeling tried again but vegging trying to catch up on work email help to make me more tired.

 

Here’s to a bugless weekend!