Well, election time is upon us, my friends. It’s been amazing to me how heated, traumatic and dramatic everything has become in these last months leading up to the election. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised. For those of you not in the know - I was a youth pastor some-odd years ago; and I made a decision then that politics had no place in my ministry. Yes, that’s a disclaimer: I’m not perfect, but I do my best to avoid politics like the plague. And thus - this is not a blog about Obama or McCain or anyone else in politics. This is an objective look about how a group of people saw past the “traditional methods” of campaigning and harnessed the power of technology to sway an election. And it’s working. Obama will win the election in a few short days - and it will not be because of party affiliation, agenda, or race. It also will not be because of campaign funds, because Obama’s most effective campaigning has been done with little-to-no financial investment at all. It will be because a small group of people took to the interwebz to stir up word-of-mouth. And what we see is not an evolution in how to campaign and persuade a nation - but a revolution. Here’s how they did it . . . Read the rest of this entry »

The four of us were standing in a room, dressed in large brown jumpsuits and separated from the rest of the group. We were in Hallstatt, Austria waiting to start a tour of an ancient salt mine. Everyone around us was in a conversation with each other — in German. The guide talked in German to the majority of the group for 10 minutes then uttered those (to us) famous words, “Ok, who needs the English translation?” Suddenly, we realized that what we were going to learn about salt mining was minimal. We ended up walking miles underground staring at brown dripping walls and “hearing” long German explanations followed by our  “English” translation of one or two sentences including explicit examples like … “Ok, this is where they mine the salt.”

I know, this is an extreme example of total lack of communication, but when I am in the middle of a conversation and I realize that neither of us are understanding what the other is saying, my mind goes back to the salt mine. Read the rest of this entry »

Last night we had the privilege of hosting a get-together at the Worthwhile office. 14 Senior Computer Science majors joined us for a night of food, fun, frivolity, and factoids (Doesn’t the alliteration make it sound so much more exciting?!). We even gave out Cody t-shirts to a lucky few. Read the rest of this entry »

While doing some research on the Web for marketing purposes, I found a good blog. Finding a good blog definitely makes a good day better. The blog - badlanguage.net. It has nothing to do with euphemisms or profanity from all that I can see. On the other hand, it contains a lot of helpful information about business, technology and marketing. The article that caught my eye, “What’s Your Profit : Pain Ratio?” rang true with many of my thoughts and conversations with the other Web strategists at Worthwhile. Read the rest of this entry »

So, we’ve had one sick, nasty, insane month here at Worthwhile. We’ve proposed about 52,000 proposals, closed about 51,999 sales (-ish), launched about 30,000 web sites*, all while using 6-year old Compaqs running off a Linux OS . . .

. . . and with our hands tied behind our backs . . .

. . . and blindfolded.

Alas, the stress has caught up with us and we have collectively found ourselves in a rut. Yes sometimes, not even Cody Webster can help us out. I called Brains on Fire, but they were unavailable (or they call screened us . . . can you blame them?). So I have taken it upon myself to lift my team’s spirits around here. I’ve created a collection of posters that is sure to inspire our team again . . . and hopefully you, too. Enjoy. . . Read the rest of this entry »