Recommended Books (From the Vermont 3.0 Tech Career Jam)

I was on a panel discussion today at the Vermont 3.0 Tech Career Jam about "So you wanna be an Internet Marketer".

I had the pleasure of presenting along with Greg Brand of Bluehouse Group (a former employer of mine from the late 90's) and Paul Skarvinko of Epik (Paul is a former Champlain Graduate!).

In true professorial fashion I brought with me a stack of books. Real books. Tangible, touchable, readable books. (I have a rep to uphold you know). I was asked at the end of the panel if I had a listing of the books for people and I of course said, "Well, I'll put them on my blog"....so here they are:

1. Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky
2. Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide by Amy Shuen
3. PR 2.0: New Media, New Tools, New Audiences by Deirdre Breakenridge
4. Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions by Tim Ash
5. The Art of Digital Branding by Ian Cocoran
6. Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by Charlene Li

I recommend these books to my students and actually in my Internet Marketing class the students are to select one from numbers 2-6 to read as supplemental -- based on their major area of study.

So there you have it folks! Enjoy.

Can one advise and blog at the same time?

The obvious answer to that question is No. This is clearly evident. I've not blogged since the great Twitter Debate experiment on the 2nd of October.

Advising began the week after that and over the past three weeks my days have gone something like this:

Get to work at 8:00 a.m., student, student, class, class, student, student, student, student, student, student, get my daughter from school, student, student, student, get home, eat dinner, grade, passout. Or like this past Sunday, it was church, bagel cafe, grade, IM interruption from student in Italy, from students working on midterm paper, from student needing advising help, grade, grade, um...

No wonder I'm tired (grin).

But it is my favorite time of the year. Great time to connect with students, hear about their successes and talk about how to overcome failures. Think about internships and study abroad and graduation and jobs and...well...it's a good part of my job. A really good part of my job.

The best things are the most exhausting I think.

You can lead a student to Twitter...but can you make them Tweet?

Tonight is the Vice Presidential Debate.

Last week was the first Presidential Debate.

I "hacked the debate" last week using CurrentTV and Twitter and posted my thoughts to #current. It was both really cool and absolutely overwhelming at the same time.

I talked to my students about it and they thought I was nuts. I could tell. If they were twittering during class they would have tweeted: "She's nuts"

But none of them seemed moved to take action to better understand the implications of mashing together TV and Social Media.

So this week, I have done what only a college professor can. I am DRAGGING my students to Twitter through an assignment. I have asked two of my classes to watch the VP Debate tonight and sign up for Twitter and tweet several times during the debate using #current or making sure they use one of the key terms (palin, biden) in their tweet so it gets captured by election.twitter.com.

Then, they have to write about their experiences in a discussion forum I've set up.

The classes are Internet-based Marketing and Technology: A Disruptive Force.

For the marketing students this is about learning how to play with new technologies, putting them in context and being able to assess how they work and if they are applicable to other marketing situations. As I told my students, if you don't play, you won't ever know if something like this could be useful elsewhere.

For the Tech as a D-Force class this is about disruptive technologies and exploring how technology has influenced discourse -- and is influencing how we can engage with the debates...sort of.

Most of my students have been resistant to Twitter. They "don't get it" and don't want to get it.

Tonight I'm making them try it.

We will see what happens.