New York Times: Google, which built a lucrative business in online advertising, has found a new medium for its ad sales: print.

The company is buying ad space in magazines and filling it with half a dozen ads from clients of its vast online system.

The first incarnation of Google's program resembles an old-fashioned business known as ad brokering, which has largely been shunned by major publishers.

Google said yesterday that the program was a test and declined to elaborate.

Following a judge's order, former O&M Account Director Shona Seifert has submitted an 18-page code of ethics for the advertising industry.

Adweek has the story:

In the document, Seifert also said the industry faces some unique ethics challenges in part because "the advertising industry places a higher value on big ideas than we do on process."

She continued: "However accurately we capture our time and costs, it isn't going to build a brand or help create famous advertising. So timekeeping and cost controls tend to be delegated and managers focus on 'bigger issues.' Until the timekeeping and cost controls are a bigger issue."

Part of her conclusion reads: "Boring work has never resulted in a prison sentence. Poor timekeeping practices have."

When can we get a copy?

UPDATE: Here it is, thanks to Ad Age.

One of America's great poets—James Dickey—worked in advertising. From 1956 to 1959 he was as a copywriter for McCann-Erickson in New York. He then worked for agencies in Atlanta until 1961, before being rescued by a Guggeheim Fellowship.

Dickey liked to say he was "selling his soul to the devil in the daytime and buying it back at night."

As he grew more successful in advertising, Mr. Dickey said, he realized he was ''living half a life,'' stealing time for poetry. He was also feeling guilty, looking on advertising as a corrupter of the values of both its creators and the public. ''I knew how to manipulate those poor sheep,'' he said, ''but the fact I felt that way about them was an indication of my own corruption.''

Business Week: Is there a glut of students graduating from graphic design programs in the United States today? A 2004 National Association of Schools of Art and Design (NASAD) survey indicates that out of 18,000 graphic design majors in 152 four-year programs conferring B.A. and B.F.A. degrees 3,500 are graduated annually. This figure is strongly disputed, however, by North Carolina State's Meredith Davis, who claims the comparatively low number does not account for approximately 1,300 two-year associate degree programs (according to the GDEA), other schools that confer fine art degrees with limited design study, and schools that are not NASAD accredited. If there are overall 450 four-year programs, 1,300 two-year programs, and each graduates, on average, 25 students a year, then Davis estimates these schools could be releasing as many as 40,000 students (with and without degrees) into a field supporting around 200,000 (1) practitioners (not including interactive designers).

A few educators interviewed for this article further estimate that as many as 50 percent of their own B.A. and B.F.A. graduates or certificate holders actually quit design within a year after graduation. The reasons for this vary: Certain programs provide inadequate tutelage and job counseling; or just as critical, many students are simply ill-suited to be graphic designers. Yet once accepted into a school or program, administrators are reluctant to "thin the herd." Instead they allow natural selection to take its course, and while survival of the fittest is widely accepted in the professional jungle, for an educational institution to release unprepared grads is irresponsible to the student and the profession.

The Register: There is some welcome relief today for those people left wading through the remains of New Orleans - T-Mobile has announced it will offer free Wi-Fi access across Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama until the end of the week, and "possibly beyond that if the situation warrants it".

T-Mobile said in a statement: "The free service is intended for those who have been displaced from their homes or are seeking refuge from the hurricane," adding: "This free offer for the states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama is for Wi-Fi service only, not T-Mobile voice services. There will be no charge for T-Mobile HotSpot service, at these locations, through the end of day Friday, September 2, 2005. The situation will be re-evaluated at that time to determine if the free service will continue."

While we're not entirely convinced that the company has actually been watching the TV footage of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina - and let's be honest, swimming to the nearest Starbucks to enjoy a double mocha chocka latte decaf while, ahem, surfing the web as the Louisiana National Guard battle gamely to protect the store's blueberry muffins from looters - the company can at least be applauded for the gesture.

Room 116 points to this expertly rendered Leo Burnett web site, courtesy of the network's Canadian operation.

Brains On Fire, a Greenville, South Carolina identity firm is offering office space to ad peeps displaced by Katrina.

Dear All,

We have been watching, as I am sure everyone has, the complete devastation along he Gulf. And wondering what to do. This morning I had a thought.

Brains on Fire occupies a space in Greenville, South Carolina that is about 11,000 square feet. We have some extra space toward the back of our first floor that we are planning to use for future growth. There are about 10-12 office spaces in total, complete with a furniture system. I was planning on short term subleasing the space, but I would be happy to donate it to a design/creative firm that has been displaced. We would, of course, consider any business in need, but my thinking is someone might benefit from our resources and vendor connections.

We have two T1 lines (one for data and one for voice) and could probably add on some extra phone lines if needed. We might even be able to find some extra laptops among us. With the help of realtor groups in town, we could also try to find some temporary housing solutions.

If anyone out there knows anyone in the Gulf area that may need this offer, please pass on our name and contact information. And if there are any associations that might know of ways to reach firms in need, again, please feel free to forward this information.

I am sure right now it is all about safety and basic needs, but very shortly - I hope - it will turn to “how can we get back to work."

Robbin Phillips
Brains on Fire
864.676.9663
www.brainsonfire.com

According to Orange Yeti, Greenville also has a new tea bar where one can enjoy a Bubble Tea.

New York Times: The United States Open tennis tournament, which got under way this week, appears to be aptly named - the blue-chip sponsors for 2005 are more open than ever to trying nontraditional methods to reach consumers.

For example, Canon hired tall blonde women dressed to resemble the tennis star Maria Sharapova to mingle with passers-by at busy sites like Rockefeller Center and Times Square, handing out Sharapova fans - the paper kind - and subway maps bearing ads for the Canon PowerShot line of digital cameras.

At Canon, "We've got our TV to hit everyone," said Rick Booth, marketing services director for the consumer imaging group at Canon USA in Lake Success, N.Y. He was referring to commercials for PowerShot featuring Ms. Sharapova, created by DCA Advertising in New York, owned by Dentsu.

At the same time, Mr. Booth said, "we want to go beyond that and utilize Maria from a total marketing standpoint." So DCA worked with agencies like PSP Sports in New York; Edelman Public Relations Worldwide, part of Daniel J. Edelman Inc.; and the Canon USA internal marketing and public relations teams on TV alternatives.

In addition to the look-alike models, there are online ads and so-called wild postings of signs bearing a slogan from the commercials ("Maria was here"). Mobile billboards - trucks decorated with ads - are being driven around Manhattan.

USA Today: Cadillac is killing DeVille — the name, not the car.

It has redesigned the model that's been DeVille and renamed it DTS — which has stood for DeVille Touring Sedan on previous models — to conform with Caddy's three-letter model names: SRX, XLR, STS. (Submit questions now: Chat with James R. Healey, 2 p.m. ET)

Caddy says it has used the name DeVille continuously since 1949 and has sold 6 million quite profitably. But it is willing to dump the venerable moniker because it's come to have a dowdier image than the brand wants.

Yes. THIS Mr. Bill...

In 2004, he appeared in a number of PSA's designed to inform New Orleans citizens about the importance of protecting our wetlands.

Click here. Watch "Hurricane Sluggo." (I think you need Windows Media Player to watch it).

Walter Williams, Mr. Bill's creator, is a native of New Orleans, I believe. I'm sure he had no idea how exactly right he turned out to be.

Hugh MacLeod points to a new Technorati feature, where it's easy to find blogs by category. In the Advertising category, Adjab is ranked atop the list. Whereas Adrants is not ranked at all. I expect that to change shortly, when Steve Hall finds out about this and enters appropriate "tags" that will lead to his media property being ranked high, if not at the top of this list. The fact Adrants is not there now calls into question the validity of this ranking system.

In Hugh's comments, Kathy Sierra says:

Blog Finder is ludicrously easy to game. I just made myself the #3 authority on Microsoft ; ) But Scoble temporarily made himself the #1 authority on Apple, so what the hell...

It's probably only a matter of days before every major topic returns an identical list of the most-linked blogs, in order, regardless of the true nature of the blog.

I'll add that I prefer human-generated rankings to any computer's. Sure the number of incoming links give an indication of the blog's "market value," but a numeric popularity system lacks nuance and detail. For instance, I can say I like American Copywriter and the fact that I do, leads me to believe Sullivan Higdon & Sink (the agency where the blog is hosted) is a progressive place where smart people thrive. No computer is ever going to tell you that.

The Gap did some wonderful ads a few years back. The reason I say "wonderful" is because the ads used celebrities in a refreshing way. Jack Kerouac Wore Khakis. That's clean. And clean is nice.

Now, The Gap has a new set of celebs—Liz Phair, Keith Urban, Joss Stone, Jason Mraz and Alanis Morissette—plus a new look-and-feel to the ads. The photography is striking, for sure, but the ads lack that certain "throwback to a simpler time with The Gap" feel of the earlier work.

Tom Asacker unleashed a pearl on change.

There are two types of change: change within a system of beliefs; beliefs that stay the same. And change in your system of beliefs; e.g. your assumptions about the marketplace, customers, and your role. If you want to change, you have to change twice. Yes, you must change the reality of the situation. But you must also change how you view that reality.

The business world is teeming with companies engaged in the first type of change. They continue to erode profitability and morale by changing within their old, ineffectual system of beliefs. A system of beliefs perpetuated, by the way, by many well-intentioned people (and many not so well-intentioned).

Beer is sold through a distribution channel. Often times, beer marketers even call the distributor "the customer," since the distributor has to be sold first, before the end user.

According to Adweek, Budweiser is placing increased empahasis on their distribution channel.

Anheuser-Busch is about to debut folksy TV ads in its bid to be more local by loosening compliance standards for its wholesaler network, giving distributors more flexibility to be entrepreneurs.

A-B executives had said during past wholesaler gatherings that distributors needed to adopt an incremental growth perspective with new products rather than always looking for the big market share home run. The brewer also encouraged wholesalers to lead more grassroots initiatives.

Chairman August Busch III reiterated the street marketing push during a recent conference in Orlando, Fla., and assured distributors that they would be less encumbered by equity contract reporting exercises so they can spend more time selling beer.

"[A-B executives] are saying we have to be open and flexible for whatever comes down the pike because the marketing of the future will be niche marketing," said a Southern wholesaler.

The Hidden Persuader posted this Neil Frenchism last week.

"The answer to making an ad is always in the product, if you look for it. Our task is not just to find that answer though - it's to make the answer relevant to someone who, at present, doesn't give a shit about it. So first I look at the product and deconstruct it ... what Robin Wight used to call 'interrogating it until it confesses to its strenghts'."

Perhaps French and I are old-fashioned, if not old, but I agree wholeheartedly with his assessment. My favorite works always reveals a product attribute in some new way I wouldn't have considered.

For instance, Starbucks bottled frappuccino drinks are currently supported by a spot where a woman walks through her office place while burdensome objects magically attach themselves to her as she progresses toward the kitchen. The product benefit here is that Starbucks can help—if only temporarily—remove stress from your day. It's a memorable and modern take on the time-honored coffee break.

Burger King's advertainment angle, care of CP+B, takes another approach—one that has nothing to do with BK's inherent advantages over McDonald's and Wendy's. I'd love to see the Coconut Grovesters come up with a refreshing spin on flame-broiled. Mr. French might enjoy that, as well.

Brand New Day: Advertising agencies are generally viewed as nothing more than organized, high priced hucksters. But here is what one agency did, quickly, to dispel that stereotype. Austin, Texas shop GSD&M called the Ad Council on Wednesday morning, when the rest of us got the full picture of how awful the situation is, to volunteer to put together radio and television advertisements for the Red Cross.

By Thursday morning, the ads, which featured celebrities such as New Orleans native Aaron Neville, were done. Next, the agency is sending people to Louisiana over the holiday weekend with clothes and supplies for shelters.

As reported by the Austin American Statesman: "The ads show hurricane footage with a series of red minus signs, followed by the words "home," "electricity," "food" and "water." The next frame shows two people hugging, with the sign of the Red Cross and the word "hope," and a voice-over that says: "Hope is more powerful than a hurricane."

From Adweek:

Volkswagen said it has named MDC Partners' Crispin Porter + Bogusky to handle creative chores in the U.S. and Canada.

Havas' Arnold here had previously handled the business for the past 10 years.

Arnold has done quite a lot of good and memorable work for VW over the years, but as VW sales have been slipping lately, this serves as a potent reminder that no agency-client relationship is ever safe.

The other thing that's interesting here is that Arnold & Crispin collaborated for years on the anti-smoking "Truth" campaign, so these two agencies have a history together.

And Crispin has resigned the MINI account due to the account conflict. That'll be fought over, I'm sure.

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We hope to regain normal operation shortly.

UpdatePermalinks, comments and trackbacks should be back to normal. We are still addressing an issue with monthly and category archvies.

For 79 more wickedly insightful marketing 'toons from this artist, visit Tom Fishburne's Cafe Press store and by his Brand Camp book. It's only $15.99, and research has proven that blog readers spend more online. And you don't want to fool with that kind of research, now do you?

I'm kind of surprised I did not see this earlier, but today I stumbled upon B.L. Ochman's interview with Hugh MacLeod of Gaping Void. Hugh supports himself with income from blogvertising. He resides in rural England, where his rent is one fifteeenth of what he paid in New York. He says he makes close to what he made in New York as a copywriter. I don't know what Hugh made, but copywriters can be paid pretty well in New York. They can also slave for tuna casserole money, but that's a story for another day. In this story, Hugh looks out his window and sees rhodendrum bushes in bloom—a marked contrast to his stark images that strike to the very core of business matter.

When you think about it, every company needs a Hugh, but Hugh's are oh so hard to employ.

Ochman calls him the "Poster Child for Unemployed Creative Types Seeking Blog Fame and Fortune." While this poster may never rival the Farrah poster I had in Junior High, it's a nice poster all the same.

She also reveals:

Blogging since 2003, and online since 2001, Macleod's blog is the fourth most popular blog in Europe, second most popular in the UK, and Number 139 worldwide. Not bad for one guy writing in an English countryside cottage.

He gets "just shy of a million page views a month," a remarkable number for a blog with 14-15,000 unique visitors a day, up exponentially from about 3,000 a day for most of last year. The edgy, often outrageous, frequently x-rated cartoons about blogging, marketing, and life that pepper his blog have earned him a virally generated, global following.

Displaced Designer is a new site dedicated to helping people in the industry get back on their work feet.

We reported last week on Brains On Fire's effort to help Gulf Coast agency staff relocate temporarily to Greenville, SC.

Now Adweek reports, Trumpet’s 32 employees were celebrating the agency's eighth anniversary just two nights before Katrina rolled ashore. Co-founder Robbie Vitrano said that all 32 employees are safe. Vitrano and about 10 other employees are working in Atlanta, home of clients Cox Communications and Turner Home Entertainment. Vitrano told The New York Times that he would accept an offer of office space from Atlanta’s Blattner Brunner/SRC, formerly Sawyer Riley Compton.

Ernie Schenck relays Vitrano's suggestion (via Sally Hogshead) for the ad community. He wants agencies to create local campaigns in any media that will "Rally the resolve and ingenuity of over 1 million displaced New Orleanians AND their support system of 260 million Americans and billions more around the world."

I guess it's safe to say, not all ad people are hearltess megalomaniacs.

Pantone, Inc., the global authority on color and provider of professional color standards for the design industries, today announced the availability of PANTONE UNIVERSE Stationery, a collection of stationery and office supplies. This extends the PANTONE UNIVERSE brand of colorful, design-driven consumer products.

"Hundreds of thousands of design professionals rely on Pantone for color standards and color trend direction," explained Lisa Herbert, Pantone's executive vice president of fashion, home and interiors. "With PANTONE UNIVERSE, we are able to extend Pantone's color and trend expertise beyond the professional into colorful, design-driven lifestyle items for the consumer. Our wide selection of stationery items offers a chic, fun and affordable way to brighten one's personal and business correspondence."

Apple/Cingular/Motorola just announced the new iTunes enabled phone and Cingular has their TV spots posted.

Available Here

And as a side note to any Apple/Cingular/Motorola folks who may be regular readers, David and I would be open to an ad space trade-out for a couple o'phones :)

From the land of Birkenstocks, comes Bionade—the world's first purely organic non-alcoholic refreshment drink.

Hey, Heiko Hebig likes it.

Here's some of that "dramatize the product benefit stuff" I like to talk about. This ad for Nivea self-tanning spray, care of TBWA\ Brussels does that, but in this case, one might be inclined to ask why.

Thanks to Frederik Samuel for the pointer.

Promo Magazine: Departing from standard practice, the National Hockey League has hired an entertainment marketing agency to help restore the brand's image and build a stronger emotional fan-player connection following a 301-day lockout during the 2004-05 season.

Conductor, a Los Angeles, CA-based agency, will serve as the NHL's lead marketing communications and integration agency to help unite fans and players for the new season.

"As we come out of lockout to a new era for the league, we recognize in addition to having the product on the ice as strong as possible, we also need to come back in a big, a bold and an innovative way," NHL Enterprises President Ed Horne, said last week. "We believe Conductor can help us do that."

Starting the third week of September, Conductor will launch a campaign using an entertainment-based cinematic approach to reveal the brand's true identity.

Take everything you love about iPod and shrink it. Now shrink it again. With 2GB (500 songs) and 4GB (1,000 songs) models starting at $199, the pencil-thin iPod nano packs the entire iPod experience into an impossibly small design.

Brokerage firms are almost always eternal optimists when it comes to stocks. Even if they don't like a stock, they'll trot out a euphemism like "sector underperform" or "underweight" when they recommend dumping the stock but can't really say that due to corporate politics.

So you know this is serious:

Merrill Lynch on Thursday downgraded its rating of Interpublic Group's stock from "neutral" to "sell" with a high risk of volatility, citing the holding company's recent Bank of America loss and questions about the impact of the departure of General Motors' media duties in May.

What would the advertising landscape without Interpublic look like? Say, if they sell off divisions or dissolve the holding company altogether?

Need a reason to read the print version of Adweek? Here's one. They weave interesting tidbits into the print version that are not found online.

Former DDB-Dallas copywriter, Will Clark, has a new book out. It's a black comedy about a psychic ex-dot-com-millionaire who falls in with paranormal spies, a Charles Manson-loving yogi, a chubby blue incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu and a pair of mentally conjoined twins.

The Louisiana-born author says none of it would have been possible without first working in advertising. "It's really a poor man's MFA program. You have to produce everyday. And it gives you rhinoceros skin. Some people get all John Kennedy Toole when they get rejected. They want to end it all. In advertising, you don't worry about it."

In a case of sweet revenge, Clark was fired from his first job in advertising. "They said I couldn't write."

Mark Fenske teaches advertising in the graduate program at VCU in Richmond. He used to keep a sketch book, or what he calls a workbook. Here's a page from his workbook:

Here's some text from Fenske's blog entry about workbooks:

The job of a copywriter or art director isn't fun and it isn't easy. Jackasses often get the final say about whether our work runs or is even presented to a small group of people. Genuine hacks often are given free rein to edit our work. There is no honor in the advertising business. Although you cannot create high level work without approaching it as an artist, you will not find yourself treated as an artist. In short, you will not be able to love the job of advertising copywriter or art director as you would like to. Do not fear. Your desire is not muted. Only misdirected.

Henry Copeland of Blogads spoke to the IFsters recently.

I like what he said here:

Cutting edge advertisers are starting to realize that the game isnt' just "buy ads on blogs" or "buy the blogosphere" but splicing your brand/service/ideas into specific networks of blogs, specific conversations, specific blogospheres.

Second, a very few advertisers are realizing that demographics are like coal in Newcastle... everybody's got them: print, TV and online. That's a noisy metric. The unique "new" thing about new media is the social context, the collaborative brainstorming that takes place, the peer references, and mutual respect within a particular group. Understand the hive and you'll be way ahead of your competition both in terms of money spent and mind-penetration.

You know it's a hot story when Mia von Furstenber picks it up from Steve Hall at Adrants (who, by the way, has been showing a lot of male sexuality in advertising of late...I guess turnabout is fair play). And you know it's a story when the socialite titles her post, "The Bulge That Assaulted NYC." That's classic.

Anyway, I'd like to see this Ohio-based retailer try to pull this off in Akron, Columbus or Cincinnati. That would take balls.

Lewis Lazare: Oak Brook-based Ace Hardware has renewed its contract with former football coach and television color analyst John Madden for an additional six years. The 18-year association between Madden and the nation's largest hardware cooperative is the second-longest spokesperson relationship existing today, just behind Michael Jordan and Nike.

New York Times: Miller High Life, which since 1997 has been sold with a series of humorous commercials centered on a sardonic, sometimes crotchety advertising character who views the world from a distinctly male perspective. Beginning next week, the "High Life Man" campaign will give way to spots featuring a female figuratively and literally out of this world: the "Girl in the Moon" character who has symbolized High Life on packages, signs and ads since 1907, four years after the brand was introduced.

The moon maiden, believed to have been inspired by a Miller family daughter, granddaughter or goddaughter, is to be brought to life to narrate commercials that are 30, 60 and 90 seconds long, to be followed by online and retail ads. The spots, by the longtime High Life agency, Wieden & Kennedy, take a highly unusual tack for mainstream beer advertising.

Rather than adopting a hard-sell approach dominated by frat-boy humor, patriotic paeans or sex appeal, the commercials are warm, emotional, at times almost elegiac, thanks to the character's throaty narration, backed by the haunting music of Erik Satie.

While the "High Life Man" was primarily aimed at men ages 35 and up, the "Girl in the Moon" is intended to also resonate with men and women ages 21 to 34. They may not be as familiar with High Life as their fathers or grandfathers, but they are proving amenable to drinking brands like Pabst Blue Ribbon that compete against High Life. Such brands are finding new favor as part of a consumer trend called retro-chic.

In addition to the potential appeal to women and younger consumers, the commercials are almost sure to appeal to cinéastes because in using a female narrator, the music of Satie and nostalgic images, they are strongly reminiscent of the 1973 film "Badlands" by the director Terrence Malick.

Guardian Unlimited: Bic, the company that has made a fortune out of things to be thrown away, has sold its 100 billionth disposable ballpoint - selling an average of 57 pens every second since it was launched in 1950.

According to the company, that is enough pens to stretch 40 times the distance from the earth to the moon if laid end to end or to fill the Arc de Triomphe 23 times over.

The transparent Bic Cristal pen first went into production after the second world war when the company's founder, Baron Marcel Bich, bought a small factory outside Paris.

The baron and his partner Edouard Buffard had planned to manufacture fountain pens. But his son Bruno, who has since taken over the company, told Reuters that the close observation of a wheelbarrow prompted his father to change his mind.

"My father told me that one day he was pushing a wheelbarrow when it dawned on him that the ball was actually a multi-faceted wheel, and this was the best way to convey ink," he said.

A store owner in New Orleans gets the word out.

This from Ad Age:

Sears Holdings Corp. Chairman Eddie Lampert has demoted Sears CEO Alan Lacy, replacing him with former Kmart CEO Aylwin Lewis, while expanding his own role in day-to-day merchandising and marketing duties.

Analysts and industry watchers lambasted Mr. Lampert’s move to take a more active role in merging marketing at Sears and Kmart, saying the hedge-fund manager and financier, whose company ESL Investments orchestrated the Sears/Kmart merger, should stick to what he knows best.

“Lampert is a smart guy, but what makes him think he is qualified to do this?” asked George Whalin of Retail Management Consultants of San Diego. “I think this is about Lampert being a control freak. The competence of the retailers he’s competing against -- Wal-Mart and Target -- all have highly experienced people handling merchandising and marketing right now. This is clearly not for people who don’t know what they are doing.”

At this rate, who knows---maybe he'll be head of FEMA next week.

Given that Sir Paul has lent his name and music to Fidelity Investments and Bob Dylan is hawking lingerie, I suppose it should come as no surprise that one needs a working American Express card to buy tickets for the upcoming Cream shows in Madison Square Garden this October.

Market Wire: American Express has a long history of providing special access and meaningful experiences to Cardmembers. As part of this ongoing commitment, American Express has partnered with Cream's reunion to secure a special opportunity for Cardmembers to purchase their tickets to what promises to be three incredible shows prior to the general public on-sale.

Tickets will go on sale first to American Express Cardmembers through a special pre-sale, beginning Monday, September 12th at 9 a.m. Tickets can be purchased via www.ticketmaster.com, and there will be a 4-ticket-per-person limit.

If tickets remain, they will then go on sale to the general public on Monday, September 19, 2005.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Ruth's Chris is permanently relocating its headquarters from New Orleans—the city where it got its start—to Orlando, Florida.

On Aug. 31, not long after the levees burst in New Orleans, the top executives of Ruth's Chris Steakhouse gathered in the lobby of the Orlando Embassy Suites for an hourlong, soul-searching meeting.

"It was probably one of the toughest decisions that I ever had to make: to tell my people that we are not going back," said Craig Miller, the veteran chief executive of Ruth's Chris.

Hours before Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, Miller and Geoffrey Stiles, the company's chief operating officer, flew with their spouses to Orlando, where each also owns a home. Eventually they established a makeshift communications center in Miller's condominium and contacted their senior management team, asking them to come to Orlando to take on specified tasks.

With temporary office space secured in Orlando, the company hired brokers to scout for a more permanent home. After negotiating tax incentives from Seminole County economic development officials and seeking approval from their board, by Sept. 2 they had the keys to a fully furnished 21,000-square-foot corporate office and training center.

The company also quickly established procedures for manually writing paychecks so their employees could immediately obtain cash.

Miller vigorously defends the company's decision. He notes that Morton's Steakhouse, a similar restaurant chain that started in Chicago and has long been identified with that city, now has its headquarters in New York.

Idle Type points to this guy who made his prom tux out of Coke cans.

Danah Boyd asked herself, "What is Web2.0 and why does it matter?" It seems that's the type of thing Ph.D. candidates at Cal Berkeley's School of Information Management and Systems do in their spare time.

Web2.0 is about glocalization, it is about making global information available to local social contexts and giving people the flexibility to find, organize, share and create information in a locally meaningful fashion that is globally accessible. Technology and experience are both critical factors in this process, but they themselves are not Web2.0. Web2.0 is a structural shift in information flow. It is not simply about global->local or 1->many; it is about a constantly shifting, multi-directional complex flow of information with the information evolving as it flows. It is about new network structures that emerge out of global and local structures.

In order for Web2.0 to work, we need to pay attention to how different cultural contexts interpret the technology and support them in their variable interpretations. We need to create flexible infrastructures and build the unexpected connections that will permit creative re-use.

For Web2.0 to be successful, technology and policy must follow glocalized needs and desires. This will be a complex and challenging process full of complicated issues as technologists, designers, social scientists and politicos engage in an unknown dance with very different values and pressures. This dance can and probably will disrupt nation-state and institutional structures; these groups will work hard to stop the destruction of their power. Neither China nor the RIAA really wants Web2.0 to happen and folks like them have the potential to really foul it up.

Those who believe that Web2.0 is the way to go must take on the responsibility of focusing on the people first, to keep them and their needs at the forefront of your mind while you design and build, re-design and re-build. Let the technology and business follow the desires and needs of people. Otherwise, Web2.0 could completely collapse or simply become a tool for the maintenance of structural power.