Just recently, Robert and I had the pleasure of guest speaking at our good friend Ean Jackson's University of Phoenix eMarketing class. Rob headlined this talk, giving a concise overview of Intenet Marketing, past, present, and future in a svelte 20 slides.
eBus 2.0
Ean's approach to this class is one-of-a-kind as far as I can tell. His MBA students have the unique privilege of being introduced to everything from business blogs and drupal, to Flickr, RSS and Skype in 6 weeks no less.
They even have a group blog set up specifically for the class by Will Pate of GoodBasic.
I wish I had had this kind of exposure to the right technology while I was at school.
Four Web 2.0 Guys in One Room
There's money to be made - but it's not just about the money.
Robert Scales, on "open culture"
Many good topics were covered, including Metadata, Web 2.0 and Open Culture (also described as Open Content), all these being of particular interest to us at Raincity. The students seemed engaged in Rob's material, asking pertinent questions throughout; Ean, Will and I stood by to drop additional clarification and examples.
Though not on the official precis, the Kryptonite Lock incident (and the ensuing PR fiasco sparked by blogs), the Cluetrain Manifesto and UrbanVancouver got in there too. At times Will and I would pass the dry erase pen pack and forth jotting notes and URLs with Magician's assistant precision to Robert's talk.
Do you know what a blog that hasn't been updated in four months says to your market? “Our company isn't going anywhere/isn't doing anything”.
Mark Yuasa on Business Blogs
With the questions that Robert answered with practiced ease, and the enthusiastic tangents from the peanut gallery (me and Will), the talk stretched out for the full hour allotted. All in all, a good introduction to the merits of Web 2.0 philosophies. It's a shame our group panel got bumped; the four of us could have talked about this stuff all night.
And We Did...
The Web 2.0 enthusiasm carried on over a round (or three) of beers until 1:30am. The hired help mopping the floor of the restaurant were surely shaking their heads at us.
That's what happens when you get four geeks (compliment intended) talking about what they love.