“The story of the campaign and this historic moment has been your story. Share your story and your ideas, and be part of bringing positive lasting change to this country.” Check it out and contribute! This is strong evidence that Obama will use the Internet for a continuing dialogue with Americans unlike anything the world has ever seen. This is democracy in action!

The world is so constructed that immoral behavior almost always leads to dire consequences. The 10 Commandments are not just legends in stone. They are clues to how the world actually operates. If you violate any of them, people get hurt, and the perpetrator suffers. These commandments are like steel levers. You pull them on one end, and they swing on the other. Sometimes the consequences take years to manifest. But every act of immorality sets in motion an incredible chain of consequences, consequences, consequences.

If you’re ever tempted to make an immoral act, thinking that no one is watching and that no one will be hurt, think again. Some One is always watching. The steel levers of consequences always move. Lots of people including you will be hurt.

Fortunately there is a loving God who loves us unconditionally and forgives us when we confess our wrongs. But don’t forget - He is the one who created the commandments, and the world, and the way it works, with consequences for everything.

The answer I believe is that the country and its economy have become too complex for unskilled Congressmen - or presidents for that matter - to effectively manage this giant system. American government is far more complex than any corporation. Yet look at the skilled, experienced managers running GE, IBM and other top corporations.

By contrast all you need to get elected to Congress is enough friends and supporters to vote for you. All you need to get elected president of the United States is a few years as governor of a state - a piece of cake by comparison - or a senator, also easy by comparison. There is no real “survival of the fittest” or meritocracy that rewards excellence in government service. Instead the ability to wheel and deal, to make a good impression with the TV cameras, and other “Hollywood” characteristics play a much larger role in determining presidential elections.

Because of the global economy, the complexity of financial markets, and the impacts of unpredictable natural factors such as hurricanes, our country can fluctuate wildly between prosperity and disaster. Whoever is at the helm - president - when things turn bad gets the blame for the whole mess, although in fact market forces (a.k.a. greed) have as much to do with our problems today as any presidential policies or lack thereof.

The only long-term solution is a better way of preparing and electing Congressional representatives and Presidents. A radical change is needed  in our democratic system, which after all was invented in the 18th Century, before electricity for heaven’s sake. Now 250 years later it just doesn’t work any more. The American system is broken and cannot be repaired without radical change.

We host other websites with this company, one of the web’s largest hosts, and none of them have been hacked. So we have to assume that the point of entry was our Wordpress blog, or perhaps the Studio Press theme we were using. Research online indicates that themes can be one of the biggest “hacker holes” on websites because they are not all vetted for tight security. By contrast the themes offered on wordpress.org, including this one, are supposedly checked out to be OK.

So the moral of the story is, if you have a  Wordpress blog or are thinking about it, don’t host it on a control panel or account shared with other websites, and be very careful about the themes you choose - stick with those on the Wordpress site to be safe.

1. It’s free. Anyone can enjoy it at no cost.
2. It’s easy. Anyone can sign up for their own account at twitter.com and be posting tweets in minutes.
3. It’s fun. You can follow other people - friends and strangers, nadas and gurus, to see what they’re saying and if you don’t like what someone is posting, with a click, you don’t follow them any more.
4. It’s new. Early adopters and social media lovers get a kick out of twitter because it’s new. Lots of people don’t even know what Twitter is all about and think it sounds silly.
5. It sounds silly. Yep somehow this puts it in the same category as Google and Yahoo. Names which start out sound silly seem to capture the public imagination and catch on faster. In time they become respected and admired if they’re good at what they do.
   
6. Twitter connects people. You can follow your friends and they can follow you. You can keep people informed about what you’re doing and vice versa. It’s sort of like an Internet cell phone. You’re always connected with the folks you follow and those who follow you.
7. It’s phoneable. You can twitter on a Blackberry or other PDA, anytime and anywhere. Stuck in traffic? Waiting for the doctor? Whip our your BB or iPhone and pop a tweet to the rest of the world.
8. It’s linkable. You can post blog messages to twitter (like this one) and vice versa. Many other online applications connect with twitter. This allows you to multiply your messages easily.
9. It’s short. Forces you to get your message into 140 characters. Just right for today’s fast-paced world.
10. It’s searchable. Find people and topics that interest you easily. Both on twitter and a number of other sites like twellow. Or search in real time using tools like monitter.com. Find someone that interests you? One click and you’re following them. Do their tweets bore you after a while? One click and they’re gone from your page. “Search and destroy.” It’s all part of twitter.com.

What are your thoughts? Did this top 10 list cover your top 10 reasons? Add your comments below. See you  on twitter!

In recent years a new paradigm for understanding complex systems and their dynamics has emerged known as Complexity science, or just complexity for short. I created a simple introduction to “Complexity Made Simple” at http://www.lciweb.com/Complexity.

In this framework, an organization is a complex adaptive system (CAS) seeking to survive and thrive like a living organism in an ecosystem (marketplace). Its ability to survive and thrive depends largely on its abilities to adapt to the constantly changing environment. Thus the role of marketing is to enable the organization to monitor, understand and adapt to the changing environment most effectively. That rarely happens.

For most organizations, marketing is the production of outbound promotional communications. Feedback from customers is rarely sought, and formal market research is rarely undertaken. Many people practicing marketing have had no formal training in it - never read a book or took a course in marketing. They just promote the best they can or do what their supervisors direct.

There is indeed great power in good market research. If you consistently ask customers what they want, need and perceive, they will tell you, and in almost every case this creates opportunity for improving the organization’s abilities to create more customer value and sales. However, good market research can be expensive. To get statistically accurate results with a 95% confidence level, the industry standard is to conduct 400 random interviews. Including preparing the survey, making the calls, entering the data, and creating a summary report with recommendations, generally costs at least $12,000 and easily more. We have conducted many market research suveys over the years and always found them to be valuable.

So how can an organization adapt to the constantly changing environment?  Here are a few inexpensive ways:

1. Create a model (diagram) of the organization and the key components of the external environment. Define the variables that do or might impact your success in significant ways.
2. Set up Google Alerts (free) to send you email notices anytime new information is gathered by Google concerning those variables (translate the variables into key words). For example I have Google Alerts to track “Lawrimore” (fortunately an unusual last name) and “Charlotte marketing,” a term for which my company website ranks high in Google (by design and hard work).
3. Read newspapers, magazines, and watch TV news on a daily basis.
4. Use monitter.com to follow what people are saying in real time about your company or keywords on Twitter, the fast-growing social network. You can also use monitter’s widget to create your own keyword-customized webfeed like this one I created at CharlotteAreaNews.com/twitter.php that constantly moniters Twitter posts (tweets) using the words “Charlotte” and “Charlotte NC.”
5. Participate in the on-going conversation online with your own blog, Twitter page and many other social media available on the web. This is the cutting edge of Internet evolution today, and you need to be on that edge to understand the fast-changing market environment, even if “Twitter” and “tweets” sound silly (and they do at first).
6. Periodically check your competitors’ websites to see what they are doing that’s new and different.
7. Talk with customers on a regular basis. You can do this informally or create a little one-page survey and call them by phone, or have someone else do that. Even 10 or 12 customer interviews can create very useful insights. Don’t bother with simple rating cards like some restaurants or car dealers use, where all they care about is the numeric rating. You need conversations to understand customers’ needs, wants, perceptions and satisfaction levels. Of course if you know these customers personally, they are not likely to give you truly candid answers, so using an independent research firm or consultant to help with this can be more accurate and still affordable.

Well that’s enough for one post. We’ll write more about this later. Meanwhile we invite your comments.

I was reminded of this today when I went to the grocery store for a quick pick-up in the pouring rain. As I pulled into the parking lot, I thought, “I really want a parking place next to the building.” I started to ask God to find me a parking place, then instantly thought that was inappropriate, so I asked the Universe instead. (That’s what a lot of people who practice Intention do.) And lo and behold, within seconds an SUV began backing out of a parking space right next to the building - the only thing closer was a handicapped space.

I must admit that put a smile on my face. I have had many other situations where I exercised a conscious Intention and it came about just as I wanted. People who practice Intention constantly apparently get very good at it. The idea is that, according to quantum physics, there are multiple universes at any moment. You can choose the universe you want to move into in the next few moments, or it may take weeks or longer for your Intention to be manifest.

As a believing Christian, I cannot bring myself to ask God for small favors like convenient parking spaces, although I know some evangelicals and others do. Intention seems to work independently of God. You simply intend something to happen, and thereby increase the probability that it will happen, sometimes with amazing results.

But when I have told other people about this, they looked at me indulgently and said, “Yeah sure.” It is hard to sustain the practice of Intention when other people tend to make fun of it. Even though it works a lot of the time.

One of the best books I have read on the subject was written by a nuclear physicist, and the title has “engineering” in it, but I can’t remember the full name of the book. It’s available online as an ebook, not as a regular book from amazon.com. I’ll add that here on my blog if I can remember. Meanwhile here’s a powerful scientific report under the title “Conscious Intention.”

Meanwhile I encourage you to practice the power of Intention. Read one of the books mentioned above. Right now I am going to intend that someone will read this post and leave an encouraging comment. How about you? If you are reading these words, please leave a comment.

1. Seize the high ground - Base your brand on positive claims such as “making the world a better place” and not negative ones, certainly not in opposition to your competition.
2. Create one message - You can’t have more than one brand message for your company, even it it’s a big one. Keep it short and simple. One message for all.
3. Speak English - Avoid jargon. Use language that your grandmother can understand.
4. Apply the “opposite test” - If your brand claim is something like, “Our software is scalable, fast and easy to use” then that’s the same thing a competitor could say. If there is no “opposite” claim, don’t bother with pablum.
5. Cascade the message - Relay it up and down the organization so everyone knows it, believes it and repeats it.
6. Focus on PR, not advertising - Advertising lacks the credibility of articles in the news media, plus it is very expensive. Use PR for maximum advantage (something we believe in and practice at Charlotte marketing firm Lawrimore Inc.) to build your brand with many audiences believably.
7. Strive for humanness - Speak to your customers as individuals, not part of a market. Be personal and in time you may be rewarded with “my iPod” or “my Harley.”
8. Flow with the go - Ultimately it’s your customers and their perceptions that determines what your brand really means in the marketplace. Don’t go against that flow - capitalize on it and strengthen your brand with the real-world perceptions of customers.

Read more Guy Kawasaki great ideas at his website, Alltop.com.