I'm proud to announce that after several months of very hard work and significant effort on the parts of the University of San Francisco and our instructors, the Advanced Social Media certificate course is now live and available to the world!
"I would do this for free, but I make you pay so that you understand the value of what you are getting." - Mike Lipkin via Mitch Joel
There are two basic kinds of secrets - secrets of information and secrets of experience.
There is no such thing as free unless the thing in question is without value.
Every conference these days has a hashtag and attendees are (unless explicitly prohibited) tweeting, live-blogging, streaming audio and video. If you wanted to, from your desk, you could attend nearly every conference in the world, and for free as opposed to paying $50-$5000 to attend. In terms of content, you'd probably get anywhere from 80% - 99% of the content presented.
A Week With A View
There's a popular expression, a cliche, that says time is money. However, time isn't money. Why?
Sensei is an interesting term in Japanese culture and the martial arts. Traditionally, most people translate it as "teacher", and the term is applied as an honorific to doctors, lawyers, teachers, and others of high esteem. If you dissect its meaning and characters, it literally translates as "before born" in the sense of someone having gone before you, blazing the trail ahead. A sensei is someone who has gone before you and has experienced all of the things that you as a student are running into now.
There's a peculiar expression that accompanies World of Warcraft that needs to make its way into social media, and quickly:
How many of you know what a neighborhood watch is? It's an old school idea - neighbors keep an eye out in the neighborhood for suspicious activity and report it to the police. It's especially effective when neighbors know each other and are happy to look out for each others' interests.
