I started out testing a few new beers from Fort George Brewery in Astoria. I highly recommend the tasty & potent IPA. I also tried a sample of the Blackberry Lemondrop, which is dangerously delicious. Forgoing happy hour, the family joined me for dinner. I had a flavorful burger and the ribs were a huge hit with the family. The servers were attentive, professional and friendly. I highly recommend stopping by the family-friendly Lumberyard Rotisserie and Grill next time you’re in Cannon Beach Oregon.

Step 1: Create, optimize and promote a Twitter account. Share your ideas regularly via Twitter. Your followers will provide feedback in the form of retweets, replies and direct messages regarding which ideas are worthy of further exploration.

Step 2: Create a blog. Expand on your best Twitter ideas in 2 to 3 paragraphs in blog posts. Provide basic background, personal anecdotes and promote your posts as appropriate to generate additional comments.

Step 3: Write an article. Based on feedback on your blog post, create a more extensive article (1,500+ words) including detailed background research, key components and testimonials or case studies.

Step 4: Create a compelling presentation. Boil down key content and structure from your article into a PowerPoint presentation. Secure speaking engagements locally, regionally, nationally and internationally.

Step 5: Write a book. Use the article and presentation as the basis for a business book. Utilize your newly developed network from the speaking circuit to secure an agent and publisher. Expand speaking engagements to sell more books.

Step 6: Build a franchise. Develop follow-on books based on your original theme. Secure guest writers to contribute to the books via your network. Option the book as a movie. Secure rights and royalties to your likeness. Develop complementary products. Hit the talk show circuit.

By the time you’ve create a “Chicken Soup for the Soul”-like franchise, you will be an industry pundit that will generate sufficient revenue from speaking engagements, royalties and product endorsements to retire early. And it all starts with one Tweet.

If you have a brand that is spending money on media, you’ve obviously spent a lot of time figuring out how to get the most out of that investment. We’ve professionalized the art of buying media. But social media is different. Buying ads on Facebook isn’t the way you build a brand online. In turns out that brands are now built through conversations. People talking about you. Posts and tweets and news stories. Generally, those bits of data are strewn all over the net, not collated or collected. Worse, they happen without you and your brand being able to chime in. Brands in Public is designed as a public facing dashboard, a place where searchers will find the conversation as it stands right now, along with you and your brands response. Even better, you can highlight your favorite comments or tweets and encourage more of the stuff you’d like to have out there. Compared to an ad on TV or a magazine, it’s a pretty good deal. We think it’s a straightforward way to be part of the conversation. And if you have the technical chops to go build this on your own, go for it. Just be sure you do it, somewhere.

What was your inspiration behind the brand dashboards?

The Amazon problem over the summer (where they accidentally banned gay books from the bestseller lists) was a wake up. It took three days for Amazon to speak up and get the word out, and even then, where to put their comments? The idea here is that if there’s one totem pole, you know where to go to have your say. I combined this with what I learned talking to a council of big companies that are exploring this space. Big companies are better at having a place than they are at rolling their own.

Did your books, Meatball Sundae and Tribes play into the development of BiP?

I don’t write books to sell books. I write books because those are the ideas running through my head. So everything I do influences what I write, and what I write really influences what I do.

How would you compare BiP with other listening platforms & information aggregators out there?

We’re not trying to listen. There are big companies way better at helping you lurk and listen and alert. This is a public dashboard, and I think it is one of a kind. Sure, it’s not so hard to use other tools (including Squidoo) to simulate this, but we wanted to make it easy. Also worth noting is that in addition to helping brands, this helps users. The fact that the page already exists (whether it has been sponsored yet or not) is a service, because if you’re thinking of buying a tool or a trip or a car, it’s nice to see what the world is saying. The sponsor is not a necessity.

How do you see BiP evolving over the coming months/years?
The power of Squidoo is the modular nature of it. I’m sure our users will ask for powerful new tools, and we’ll build them! This morning at 7 am we were asked to offer free BiP pages to selected non profits, and at 2 pm we’ll be announcing just that. The beauty of a small team is that you can move fast.

While in Singapore, I elected to stay at The Pan Pacific Hotel. I was impressed by the venue from the very start. Upon arrival, the staff was attentive, professional and very friendly. They upgraded me to Executive Business Class at check-in, which gave me access to the Business Center, as well as complimentary breakfast and evening drinks & appetizers.

The truly remarkable experience, however, was when I received a Web survey from The Pan Pacific Hotel the day BEFORE I checked out. They asked me to evaluate service and accommodations, to which I gave the highest ratings. The only comment I provided was that the bed was a little firm (which is typical in Asia from what I understand). I submitted my feedback at lunchtime and promptly forgot about it as I finished teaching my SEM workshop.

That evening, when I returned to the hotel, I climbed into bed to catch some rest before dinner. A few minutes later, I received a call asking if the bed was too my liking. It took me a minute to realize they’d received the survey (by say 2 p.m.), read it and actually added padding to the mattress by 5 p.m.! I was stunned, but shook it off to tell them, yes, the bed was much better.

I work with award-winning boutique hotels and resorts in the U.S., and traveled around the world experiencing a variety of accommodations, but I’ve never experienced, let alone heard of such responsive service, particularly when integrating online feedback with offline service. The Pan Pacific Hotel in Singapore set a new standard in service and I will be staying there again in the future.

Q: Please give us a brief background of your career; how did you end up where you are today?
A: My career began in public relations, followed by a three-year stint working for a municipal government as the assistant to the Mayor and Land Use Director.  I then moved into technology, where I’ve been since 1996.   I was with two technology start-ups.  The first, PrintPaks, was based here in Portland.  We developed multimedia software kits for families.  That company was acquired by Mattel, and I became the general manager of that business, developing software for American Girl, Barbie and Hot Wheels brands.  I later joined Kibu, a community based online and offline experience for teen girls.  This was “social media” before the term existed.  I joined HP in 2000 and have since held positions within the Americas marketing organization. Prior to my current role, I was the director of business planning of Market Insight and Operations for HP Americas, where I focused on the re-architecture of the market insight team to deliver more differentiated customer insights. I established technology adoption lifecycle (TALC) for the region and built a global delivery team in India.  I also served as the Director of Communications for the HP Imaging and Printing Group’s (IPG) consumer and commercial business as well as HP Personal Systems Group’s (PSG) consumer businesses where I was responsible for advertising, in-store execution, online communications, events, and more. I also served as the e-marketing manager and North America brand manager for IPG Marketing in the Americas region.

Q: What will you be speaking about at ISF?
A: At ISF, my goal is to answer some of the key questions on marketer’s minds: What social media tools are out there? How do we use them? Do they really work? As social media thrives and consumers are increasingly connected, a marketer’s decision to ditch traditional marketing practices for new online or mobile methods isn’t as simple as that – it shouldn’t be viewed an “either/or” situation when both are the answer. In my experience at HP, the most effective approach to navigate the rapidly evolving marketing landscape requires a little creativity and the right mix of new and traditional marketing practices. Marketing novices, professionals and seasoned practitioners alike will learn how to navigate the rapidly evolving space through a few real-world examples.

Q: What advice would you give to marketing professionals just starting out?
A: Cultivate an insatiable curiosity.  Read, watch, listen, participate.  Get online, get out in the world.  Marketers can’t be on the sidelines.  Don’t wait for authority to be given to you.  Leadership has nothing to do with title or tenure.  Take the lead and win with ideas and cultivate your skill at presenting them persuasively.

Q: In terms of future trends, what do you see happening in the technology industry in terms of emerging Internet technologies?
A: The ability to personalize and customize content is taking marketing back to where it began – the corner store when Mrs. Higgins walked in and the clerk saw her coming.  He put her five pounds of flour, potatoes and a licorice stick on the counter because that’s what she picks up every other Tuesday.  Internet technology is enabling companies to know their customers and deliver the right information to the right person at the right moment.

Q: What are a few of the unique challenges you believe mid-to-large corporations face in regards to implementing Internet strategy?
A: Because the Internet is a part of every team’s marketing strategy, mid-to-large corporations can go after it in different ways; resulting in a silo effect and less than ideal customer experience.  This could be unknowingly buying the same key words (and potentially bidding against each other), or arguing over who gets the top billing on the home page. Maintaining clear goals, governance models and flexibility for the business units is critical.

Q: Please give us a brief background of your career; how did you end up where you are today?
A: First, I have to say that I had no intention of working any where near technology. I¹m a people person. Which is why I ended up running a consulting practice that, at its core, focuses on the way Web-based technologies impact the way people work in organizations. There¹s a lot that people have to do differently at work because of the existence of the Web. I find that transformation fascinating.  My first vocational interest was music. I first studied voice opera in college and graduated with a degree in philosophy in 1987. I should have known that the singing would be a hobby and technology a career when in 1989 I found it more interesting to make a HyperCard database of the arias I was singing then to actually practice the arias. After that, I taught myself. Prolog‹- which is still the only programming language I know. Prolog went well with the strong interest in formal logic that I developed while studying philosophy. I was always looking for some way to apply logic to the real world. I think the World Wide Web meets that need perfectly. I had my first real hands on Web page coding experience in 1995, and my first real Web job at Cisco Systems started in 1996 where I was dumped into the world of large-scale, high transaction Web site management. It was there that I saw the impact the Web had on the way people work inside organizations. I wanted to focus on that. So, I left Cisco 10 years ago and started the company that has become WelchmanPierpoint.

Q:What will you be speaking about at ISF?
A:Lots of folks talk about the ³glass ceiling² that sometimes exists when trying to climb to the upper-most levels of management in an organization. Many Web professionals are in the prime of their career and don¹t know where to grow professionally. They feel as if they¹ve reached the pinnacle of their career and have no place to go. I call this the ³Gossamer Ceiling² because I think it¹s an easily removed, self-imposed barrier. Those who are smart about the Web and Information management need to be leading businesses during the 21st century. So, I¹ll talk about how I think individuals can make that leap from ³Web only² to broader business leadership.

Q: What advice would you give to marketing professionals just starting out?
A: The number one piece of advice I would give marketing professionals just starting out is to get smart about technology. That doesn¹t mean that you have to be an application developer but it¹s no longer savvy to not understand how technology works just because you¹re in marketing– just as it¹s not OK for the seriously technical to be ignorant of the customer¹s real needs.

Q: In terms of future trends, what do you see happening in your industry in terms of emerging technologies?
A: That¹s hard to answer. I¹m not much of a technology seer. I think we¹ll see more innovative, paradigm-breaking business models based on all of the emerging technologies we see today. As the digital native generation enters the workforce en masse in the next years, they will be using these technologies to re-invent and, I hope, simplify the way we live and work.

Q: What are a few of the unique challenges you believe mid-to-large corporations face in regards to implementing Internet strategy?
A: There are a couple things that stand out for me here. The first is cultural change. The existence of the World Wide Web impacts the culture of an organization in a large way. Not only does the organization have to sustain a Web presence, which is a reflection of the entire organization, it also has to re-engineer the organization to function well in the Web Age. That means re-engineering all of the core components of the business: sales, marketing, operations, human resources, etc. I don¹t believe most organization understand how deep that transformation needs to be. Most are just focused on creating a Web presence as an artifact— not digesting the Web as functional part of the organization. The second core challenge will be to find the right leaders for organizations, leaders that understand how to use the Internet and all the existing, emerging and to-be technologies, leaders who will not be stymied by the constant change, but who also understand how these changes might impact the fundamentals of business management. Organizations that are lead by business/tech savvy fearless leaders will have competitive advantage in the next decade.

Anvil client, Jive Software reached #6 on the list (up from #9 in 2008).  Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) members had a strong showing as well. Beyond Anvil Media, other EO members to receive recognition include: 52 LTD (29), Ruby Receptionists (34), ISITE Design (44) and Decipher (55). Congratulations to all 100 recipients of the Portland Business Journal Fastest Growing Companies Award!

What was your inspiration for your latest book, Tribes, which according to Publishers Weekly, “argues that lasting and substantive change can be best effected by a tribe: a group of people connected to each other, to a leader and to an idea”?

> I look at the world through a marketing lens. I wonder a lot about the marketing of ideas and way organizations grows. What I saw happening around me was that the best marketing, the fastest growth, the biggest impact–it was all coming from tribal movements, not from slash and burn interruption techniques or stealthy black hat tactics. I was right… after all, it elected a president. Once marketers see that the rules have changed, they understand how powerful this approach is. Some marketers, though, look at everything and ask how it can preserver their previous me-first power tactics, and those guys fail badly.

In response to Tribes, some of the reviews have criticized you for making “dangerously” broad statements about leadership. What is your reaction to those reviews?

> My reaction is that clueless, fearful critics who have never once written a successful book (never mind ten) are probably not your best guide for what matters or not. My second, more thoughtful response is that it’s not surprising that people are looking for a fact-filled, step by step manual. After all, that’s what traditional marketing became. So, if you work in an industry where the easiest thing to do is follow instructions, of course you’d like the alternative to come with a Dummies manual. I think that under scrutiny, this objection doesn’t hold up: people and brands and organizations without an instruction manual keep winning and the old guys battle for a tie. Where, exactly, does it tell you how to build a Facebook or a Google or Drudge Report?

I’m a big fan of Meatball Sundae and social media marketing. Based on the evolution of social media since the book was originally published, do you have any new thoughts on the books premise?

> I keep seeing it happen again and again. I’m more persuaded than ever that we don’t need more big ideas. What we need is to execute the ideas we’ve already got. There are so many bad websites, so many lame marketing strategies, so many meetings. It’s a sin.

For those of us with our own book “inside” awaiting to be written, tell us about your creative process. How do you come up with an idea for a new book, and take it through to publication?

> The problem with blogs is that they call our bluff. If you have a book inside you, write one! Blog it. A page at a time, a day at a time. If you can do that, THEN you can self-publish a book (easy, at blurb or lulu). And if you can do that, THEN ask me how to publish a book!

Based on our previous conversations, you’ve indicated publishers are changing the way they launch books. With the death of the book tour, how did you promote this book differently than your 11 previous books?

> The book tour is so expensive and, in an age of x-rayed shoes, so difficult that I have no desire to do one. For Tribes, I did two interesting things, both of which worked. The first is that I built a Ning group that was only open to people who were into the book and had read it. This has been running for nine months and it’s really engaging and powerful. The second is that I did a live event in NY. People came from all over, we videotaped it and shared it far and wide. Both of course would have been impossible just a little while ago.

Can you share any updates on Squidoo? Are there any new business ventures you’re involved with that you care to share with us?

> Squidoo regularly gets 20,000,000 or more pageviews a month. Some people have made enough money building pages there that they’ve been able to quit their jobs… and even more important, we’ve raised a ton of money for charity. We just launched twttrlist.com, which you should take a peek at. With more than a million pages built by nearly 400,000 people, it’s on a roll. I’m so proud of the team of professionals I work with, as well as the countless contributors we have.

What is your next book project, and when can we expect to see it?

> New book out in March. It’s going to be really cool.

Thank you for the time, Seth. We look forward to seeing you new book early next year.

As CEO at lucy, he successfully positioned the company to sale to VF before leading a team of investors to acquire a family-owned leather handbag and accessory company, Ellington. I caught up with Edwards recently in NW Portland, where he was admiring the recently remodeled Ellington flagship store and headquarters.

What initially attracted you to Ellington Leather?

I liked the fact that a 20 year old company had so much potential to expand and develop its brand position. I knew that accessories would be one of the few bright spots in the soft economy. I also like the fact that the company was well funded by global private equity company. Finally, I like that it was based in Portland Oregon so I could capitalize on my business network.

What are your personal goals for Ellington Leather?
I want to create the next lucy but on a much bigger scale. I would love to have the top five spot world wide for handbag and accessories sales. I vision us becoming the next ” Coach ” in that we have a fully developed multi channel brand. My drive to build a great company is personal, I just want to build a great company and have fun.

What key lessons will you be able to apply from your previous experiences (i.e. CompUSA & lucy activewear)?
Keep the SGA low at all cost and be ruthless with protecting the balance sheet. Only have super stars on the team and not accept average performances. Over invest in customer research and invest in the e-commence platform to expand the brand reach. Keep my ego under control and be open to new ideas and most important stay hungry and humble. Last point: think big and positive at all times and make sure all decisions benefit the customers and build a culture that embraces change and innovation.

I understand the original owner was moved when he saw your recent store remodel. Can you tell us about that?
I think he was moved that I respected the history in my decision-making and brand development. The founders loved the company and they want to see that it will grow and embraced many of the values they’d had when they were running company. I did a poor job working with the founder of lucy, I will not make that same mistake twice.

What excites you most about your role and the opportunity ahead of you?
I vision Ellington as a $100M + brand. It’s never about the money or the ” exit ” strategy, though. I just grow brands based on love and respect. I want to show I can do this even in a poor economy and create jobs for many great Americans. Creating opportunities for others is what fuels my passion.

What role will search engine and social media marketing play in your overall marketing efforts?
This is not a option in today’s world. Its keep up or get out of the way. This effort and investment is the most important spend from a brand perspective of any of my other choices. I love the speed and creativity of the media. Most people in the fashion industry just do not ‘get it’ and that’s good for Ellington.

Any parting thoughts about Ellington or entrepreneurship?
Do not under estimate us - Ellington is going to rock the handbag world!