Happy Birthday Atari 2600…

I am sitting in the Columbus OH airport waiting to board my flight and realized that today in 1977 the Atari 2600 was released. While my house in the 70’s was not an “Atari” house (we were intellivision) I do remember wasting a tremendous amount of time playing a ton of games on that 2600. In fact some of the games are still fun to play today. So for all your Atari heads out there, go and play one on me tonight.

Intellivision was still the best.

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atari, intellivision, colecovision, games, gamers, history, 1970’s games

It’s about time..I can now add my face on LinkedIn

Mike has in my book an “its about time” post on LinkedIn. It looks as if I will be able to add my big bald mug shot on LinkedIn come Friday. I hope I don’t scare too many people away from my profile.

Word up LinkedIn……its bout time!!

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LinkedIn, Techcrunch, social networking, business, business networking, collaboration, facebook

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Can an organization change?

Seth has a great posted entitled the “meatball mondae”

Here is my question..when you work in a organization which totally does not operate with transparency and believes that what you did 3 years ago will work today in technology marketing, how many people does it take to change the feeling of the organization?

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We need more leads!!!

We need more leads!!!! We need them now!!! Marketing sucks and can’t give us leads!!!

How many times have you heard that?

Remember this: Its not always marketing’s fault and its not always sales fault. Its everyones fault.

Do you as a marketer listen to sales? Do you listen to the customers? When was the last time you sat in on a customer call? When was the last time sales sat in on your planning sessions? Is there synergy between you and sales?

All good questions to ask yourself and ask others around you. Reach out and help and seek to understand.

I am going to do my part…………….are you?

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sales, marketing, technology, software marketing, software sales, leads, lead generation

TechTarget Online ROI Summit

I am attending the TechTarget online ROI summit today and tomorrow in San Francisco and have been sitting through a number of sessions where alot of industry experts are talking about things from lead nurturing, new media, marketing to CIO’s and predictions for 2008 in online advertising.

After sitting through several sessions and talking with a few vendors today something has become abundantly clear to me.  It has occurred that the IT marketing landscape is in a state of change and either you as a marketer adapt to this change or be prepared to face some tough realities in the marketplace. I work in an organization which has 100+ people dedicated to marketing and while some of these folks have a decent vision of the current marketing landscape and what it will take going forward, I am becoming increasingly disturbed at the fact that some people are not aware, (nor do they care to be) that this IT marketing landscape is becoming more collaborative, transparent and nimble.  That marketing in IT is not about how many “leads” we can give sales. Its not about feeding the funnel and writing a white paper with substandard content and a huge product pitch.  Its not pitching the latest buzz coined thing of “aligning business to IT”.  Its not about giving things away to feed the sales beast with unqualified leads.  Its not about alot of things…….and yet IT marketing organizations still believe that what we did back in 2004 to get business will work today.

To me its so much more……its about identifying the customers pain points and offering a solution to solve that pain point. Its about subscribing to the new media platform such as videos and podcasts to produce relevant and meaningful content so that the audience can identify you as a thought leader.  Its not about quantity, its about quality.  Its giving things away such as knowledge so that organizations can leverage your expertise to their business and not a particular solution set.

I can go on and on and on, but one thing that has come about in my one of being here, that my philosophy of openness, transparency, collaboration, nurturing, new media and relevancy has never been stronger. It was strong before I came here, and I will leave with an even bigger mantra to transform how IT marketing departments approach the world of marketing to IT professionals.

Look out.

People are talking.

Bill at the Buzz Saw on Duct Tape Marketing has a great post on listening to social networks. To me this all ties in with monitoring your brand and understanding what people are saying about you and your competitors. Well said Bill!!

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Top 5 Corporate Podcast Mistakes to avoid

Tony has a great post on the top 5 mistakes when it comes to corporate podcasting.

I love #4…seems like I have said this over and over and over to marketing folks I talk too.

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podcasting, podcasts, corporate podcasts, coporations, business, marketing, IT, blogging

Do you live in Columbus OH?

Do you live in Columbus OH and have experience in project management and the internet? If so, I am currently hiring for an Internet Marketing Coordinator Position located in OH. You can find more about this position here. If you are interested please drop me an email at andrew dot kordek at quest dot com.

Sorry for the blatant advertisement today, but I am stoked about hiring someone.

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columbus, jobs, internet jobs, marketing, ohios, project managment

Eventgain.net - A Fraud Email?

On 2 separate instances I received complaints from customers yesterday after having received and email from a company eventgain.net. The reason for the complaints from these customers is that they use custom email address’ when downloading products from my current company. They then received email from this eventgain.net soliciting them for list append services. Both complaints indicated that we as a company were in violation of our privacy policy. I have since launched an investigation and notified our legal team.

When I went to visit eventgain.net and tried to call them, all I received was a voicemail. Then when I tried to send an instant message it took 3 minutes to connect and after sending it, it does not appear that it was even sent. So, if for some reason you get an email from a Justin Wilson at eventgain.net, I would strongly advise that you proceed with caution. Something is fishy about them and I will post more once I know.

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T-Shirt Giveaway….

We have been running at my current company a T-Shirt giveaway promotion in that we ask the user to download a whitepaper and in return, the first 2500 people will get a free T-Shirt. While it has been successful, I recently came across a T-Shirt that I think a technology company should experiment on a giveaway type basis.

So without further adieu, give away this THING and I will be first in line to download and try whatever you want me to try.

I love being a geek.

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Google is 9 today

On September 7th 1998, Sergey and Larry officially opened its doors for business.

Happy Birthday Google.  You sure a pretty mature 9 year old.

Software Marketing is like cooking eggs.

Software marketing in its simplest form is like cooking eggs. You can fry them, poach them, scramble, hard boil, soft boil or just eat them raw. In other words, you have a choice on how you want to market software. Don’t do the same thing over and over just cause it tastes good or you are used to having it that way.

You sometimes will drop and crack your marketing idea, but you need to just keep on cooking. Eventually you will serve up a brilliant campaign which will yield well past what your initial goal was and that is the beauty of it.

Morale: Keep cooking…keep trying new recipes and don’t be afraid to break.

Startup Schwag

Michael points us in a post about a new company called Startup Schwag. For $14.95 a month (plus s+h) you get a shipment of a t-shirt and possibly other stuff from new startups.

My opinion…that for $14.95 a month, I should get more than just one t-shirt from startup companies that want to promote themselves. I think a reasonable thing would be 2 things a month. Given the fact that Startup Schwag’s margin might be fairly high and is probably getting the merchandise at barebones cost, it might behoove them to make the monthly hit a little less given the fact that they are a startup themselves. Its also great that the first giveaway is for TechCrunch gear (props to you guys) but TechCrunch is not a startup……Startup Schwag is…..why not give us your stuff first.

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