PGreenblog: Music - Music - DVD Video genres

Enough Already, What Do You Want Them To Do?

The first thing for a marketing expert to do is understand that while there will always be some traditional means of marketing like campaigns, analyzing the customer, segmenting and targeting specific customer groups, etc. the new customer has no interest in being appealed to as part of a social organization.

They want what they perceive to be an authentic truthful relationship with a company that is providing them with personalized experiences that use, among other things, the products and services that the company that the customer is dealing with might provide to the customer's personal value chain/ecosystem.
Beyond that, I'm going to let you marketers out there listen to the wisdom of two other entities.
In the July 24 Business Week, an article appeared as if by magic, which needs exactly that.

Here is what is perhaps the critical paragraph:

It's not just that media is splintering, as it has been for decades. The difference is that the Internet is thrusting that trend into overdrive. WIth every qick click, millions of people.
..are slicking and dicing media into ever-tinier little bits, just the nuggets they want and nothing more.
And by the millions, they're reassembling them into personalized digital channels of their own choosing - all too often, minus the advertisements that sustain nearly all media today.

The article goes on to point out that most agencies and other media have no clue how to reach the folks who don't sit still long enough to see or hear ads - and who use their iPods and TiVos to vaporize them instantly.
This, of course, as BW is so right to point out, is also an opportunity if you engage the one person micromarket that has its own personal value chain.

approach to what constitutes markets. Thousands and thousands of niche markets that are aimed at creating an optimal experience that also provides the marketplace with the ecosystem it needs of goods and services to optimize tha personal experience. There are incredible numbers of examples out there.

For a view of dozens of them, check out one of my favorites - , a group of 8000 dedicated springspotters who find the long tail trends out there and report on them weekly.
I will tell you this, marketers. Who, what, when, where and why press releases, and mundane ads and appeals to an impersonal subcategory of some group of customers divided by income, geography or any demographic piece of info you care to throw up, just doesn't cut it anymore.

I may be 56, with a college degree, living in Virginia, born in NY, with a good income, and married with no kids, but I'm also not interested in the same things that the rest of the 56 year old married college graduate professionals in the South who don't pronounce R are (or ah ). The sooner you remember that, the sooner who can forget about who, what, when, why and where in paragraph one and remember that someone is going to read what you say or not if it addresses what they want addressed.
With that, our final expert is someone that some might know.

...

Okay, so she's actually a pop star - but her song, Unwritten appealed to a lot of people and hit the charts pretty quick earlier this year. Aside from being talented, I think that you might want to LISTEN TO (not just hear) the lyrics both as a view into the head of a younger consumer and some really good advice on how you marketing pros can think out of the box. A few samples of the corpus of Natalie Bedingfield's marketing wisdom:

I am unwritten, can't read my mind, I'm undefined.
I'm just beginning, the pen's in my hand, ending unplanned. (translation: Thinking out of the box means that you start with an unwritten page. Plus, this is how the creative, connected consumer thinks these days.
Willing to be open and ready to try new and cool things)
Staring at the blank page before you, open up the dirty window; let the sun illuminate the words you could not find. (translation: Shake out the cobwebs and free yourself up to be creative. Any reason that who, what, when, where, why have to be answered in the beginning?
)
I break tradition, sometimes my tries, are outside the lines. We've been conditioned to not make mistakes, but I can't live that way. (Translation: Good for her.
Natalie Bedingfield, live like her!)
Feel the rain on your skin, no one else can feel it for you; Only you can let it in; no one else, no one else can speak the words on your lips; drench yourself in words unspoken, live your life with arms wide open; today is where your book begins; The rest is still unwritten. (Translation, its up to you to think out of the box and not be afraid of it, you marketing mavens.
Frankly, you have no choice, so welcome the chance to figure out the new opportunities and the new world that we're living in. They're worth a shot and even if you're not the pioneer of much so far, there's still a lot unwritten - so have a go at it. The customers are demanding that you do.
)

As hokey as you might think that all is - it isn't. The lyrics aren't just those of a good song, but really are what its going to take in the marketing world. The universe of tradtional marketing is dead.

The personalized requirements of those long tail micromarkets also known as individual customers are a great opportunity for those marketing leaders willing to admit that traditional marketing, advertising and public relations are, let's say, a lot less valuable than they were. Bult because, as Business Week makes clear, the new media approaches are still largely unwritten, opportunity abounds. A marketing company or person who lives with arms wide open will have a helluva chance to do something dramatic and hot.

That's what marketing is when its exciting anyway, isn't it?
Apparently, the Attention Economy has been floating around for about 10-15 years and maybe even more. In a classic irony, I, of course, never paid any attention to it at all.

But its out and about again and being integrated into the Live Business Open Web 2.0 (tying some of the floating names for the new technology wave into a neat single package) as one of the economies' that we futurists, trendwatchers, analysts, industry viewers and all around know-nothings have to pay attention to and - get paid for giving it our attention. I think.

I decided to treat it as a serious entry into the name that economy sweepstakes. So far we had the Experience Economy, the Support Economy, the Innovation Economy, and any number of economies that I haven't found yet. Now the Attention Economy.

Giving this credence or attention was a serious error in judgment I now regret, though I'm going to tell you about it anyway - as my mockable concept of the day.
I was reading the June 5 issue of Information Week when an article by Thomas Claburn, a guy who is a veteran Information Week writer, comes peeking into my sight - . Of course, I, being a naive chap, figured that this was about what I'm always harping on to your irritation - a Live Web (my favorite of the titles) themed article on customers - but nooooooooo!

Its about the concept that businesses must do a better job of rewarding online consumers for their attention. I figured that sounded true 'nuf, so I read the entire article. The jist of it was that there is so much information out there for the consumer that getting the attention of the consumer is becoming increasingly difficult.

So we live in an information-rich, attention scarce world. Someone then decided that this must be an economic offering. So on the one hand, the idea is that people are rewarded for giving their attention are paid for having their attention trust violated via attention bonds that are posted by content distributors.

To that end there is a company that's formed called that issues these attention bonds. The idea is for people to gain the right to control their online records related to what they paid attention to on the web. So a cookie would be that.

Or a record that tracked how much time you spent on a particular page at a particular item on a particular site. The idea is consent marketing. To do that, AttentionTrust.

org provides you with a Firefox extension that tracks and captures your clickstream and browser history for your own purposes. That gives you control over your own information, apparently.
What is also the case is that the rather old-fashioned idea of pay them for their time is becoming pay them for their attention.

So there are companies who will give you free things e.g. cell phone minutes, ad free music, etc.

if you view their ads for x time frame. There is a model for online revenue sharing that even Microsoft is looking into. There is a service now called that operates as a blogger agent that will get companies to buy what bloggers are saying for commercial use and then split the revenue stream, which is kind of nice, but not exactly in the spirit of the blogosphere - though there's nothing wrong with that, either.

The fundamental idea of the Attention Economy is that because the amount of attention a consumer can give a product or service or company or idea is finite and increasingly more difficult due to both bad information like spam and rich information sources available everywhere, the competition for that attention is increasing and attention is becoming a commodity, so the consumer needs to take control of their attention, the same way a union was there to represent the mechanism for the worker to take control of the value of his/her labor power. A great example of all of this is the world famous , which has a revenue sharing model, though the bulk of the revenue is Google's of course.
All right.

So far, while a bit of a stretch, there is probably nothing inherently wrong in the thinking that goes into what I just jotted down here.. Though calling it an economy : is a bit much.

But from here on, it goes nuts.
I decided to investigate this a little further and..

..I'll just let it speak for itself.

I found that the Attention Economy guru or one of them, anyway is a guy named Michael Goldhaber. His is a former theoretical physicist and a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, a group I normally respect a great deal. He has a thinktank that I would support called The Center for Technology and Democracy.

But when it comes to the Attention Economy, here are some of his statements I found in a little bit ago:
First, under the title A Closing Scenario

Money will not necessarily fade in value, in other words, inflation will not set in, in the old sense; neither will recession nor deflation. Instead, money will just lose importance, just as noble titles have over the past few centuries. The stock market might not even fall; stockholders may simply lose interest, ceasing to sell and buy in equal ratio.

Now in the section entitled The End.
..
.we seem to be more dazzled by money than ever, just as we seem to be more intrigued by material goods than ever. But these interests are superficial and faddish.
They are signs of decadence not of a glorious future for the money economy. Even in themselves, they speak to the growing desire for attention, the need for it as well. Money is now little more numbers, one number among many and, as a source of lasting attention, it can fade in an instant.
The attention economy is already here and more completely every day.
Okay. Enough awready.
Money is a passing fad. People will lose interest in the stockmarket and just quit trading. Kind of strange since both currency and exchanges have been around since the beginning of recorded history and have been necessary vehicles for the interchange of those goods that we need to live and to be satisfied with our lives.
But then, who is all of civilizations in all recorded history to dispute the assertion of the superficiality and faddishness of currency?
In the world that the attention economy envisions, ADHD is the fluctuations of the stock market, and having ADD will mean that you're broke.
One last thing, what is he taking about in the last sentence when he says money, the one number among many can fade as a source of lasting attention in an instant.
I actually don't know what that means.
Hopefully, the Attention Economy which really is a stretched version of marketeers paying someone for their time and opinion, will disappear into that rich information bottomless pool and sink to where it belongs - on the bottom.
Now what were we talking about again?

I'm on the treadmill these days, listening to a book I've already read called The Wisdom of the Crowd by James Surowicki. His argument is that the wisdom of diverse crowds is greater than the wisdom of specialists or experts. That they are more likely to come up with something closer to the right answer than any single expert or individual member of the crowd itself might.
But it is a diverse crowd not a homogeneous one that is likely to get the answer righter. The reasoning is that the diverse crowd is less likely to succumb to the thinking of those in the crowd like them. Each individual is willing to think as an individual participant and thus provides a piece of intelligence or thinking that contributes to a holistic answer.

The book is a lot more complicated than that, but I think that pretty well encapsulates what he thinks and I see its validity though it makes me uncomfortable to see it. Not because it means that I might as well not be a CRM expert because the practitioners as a whole are smarter than me. In fact, that's probably true and why something like best practices can exist.
Because the crowd's wisdom is the spark for the creation of the best practices. Experts like me become facilitators that can provide the questions the crowd needs to answer and then a road leading to the direction of the next question. The other reason that this thinking has some uncomfortable validity to me is actually more emotional than it is quantifiable which is a lot of the way that Wisdom of the Crowds makes its argument - using studies of group results to make the case.
But, what makes me think that there is something valid is more along the lines of something that Johannes Kepler called the Music of the Spheres. He says that there is a geometric order to the entire universe that is self-evolving and you can see it in the micro and macro structure of all things. Consequently, for example, it has been found recently by astronomers that the Music of the Spheres isn't just a poetic description of a scientific principle but is an actual thing.
The name for the phenomenon, which has been identified in astronomical terms as flicker noise. . .

All that means is that at least the physical universe, as unknowable as its been, is turning out to be something that is coherent with the scientific laws that man continues to either uncover or create.
What does this have to do with CRM or the wisdom of the crowds?
Weeeelll, I was listening to Prairie Home Companion, that really funny and superbly literate show that Garrison Keillor is so famous for and now is the subject of a Robert Altman movie with Meryl Streep and Lindsay Lohan.
He was live at the Austin City Limits, home of the some of the greatest music and musicians ever - people like the late Stevie Ray Vaughn and Johnny WInter and just a cornucopia of great electric blues guys. At one point in the show, during one of his comic bits, he had this Texan audience sing the theme from the musical Oklahoma - roughly equivalent asking a Yankees fan to chant, Go Manny! In any case, what was interesting was listening to this large audience singing Oklahoma.
Collectively, they were singing perfectly harmoniously and just right-on-key. And I thought, ya know, that seems to happen a lot. When you hear a crowd sing, it tends to sing in harmony.
Yet if I asked each member of that crowd to sing individually, I suspect 75% or more would be totally off key or even tone deaf. But the whole group sings so well together. Amazing.
Yep. That's what I thought. I did, really.

I never thought the mainstream would be one of the first to bridge the gap between the cutting edge and the mainstream. But it is happening and the vehicle is that classic that I've grown to love over the past few months - radicals beware here - Business Week. Yes, Business Week, owned by the 120 year old McGraw-Hill, a company that never will stop reminding you of its heritage and one that conforms more often than not to standards set at the turn of the 20th century, and my publisher too.
Not particularly a likely candidate for leading a charge into the Live Economy (my new name for the economy at least for this paragraph). But with their June 5, 2006 issue,they've started a quarterly insert/submagazine called IN and it focuses on innovation either community created or the attempts by business to focus their models around innovation and who the leaders of that are. My particular favorite in this issue was the visionary Patrick Whitney, who is the head of the Illinois Institute of Technology Institute of Design.
He has a program that marries innovation, design and business and has developed three graduate tracks for that program, two for Masters one for a Ph.D. Sadly, I don't think I could get into any of them but they are truly worth looking at.
I'm going to invite Patrick Whitney to join Rutgers CRM Research Center Industry Experts Board. I only hope he graces us with his presence. His work is breathtaking and groundbreaking.
Take a look at who he is and the course curriculum .
Now I can't say that Business Weeks first efforts are perfect. One of the naysayers pointed out in his commentary that while BW says that of the 25 highlighted leaders of innovation, 70 percent are women, all of them are Caucasian and that does seem a bit strange since I'm sure that someone somewhere isn't who is an innovator.
But that said, that imperfect start is a start by a mainstream publication run by a fuddy duddy of a company to begin to become a transmitter and purveyer of the new business models that are being created to fix the old broken down business logic that contemporary customers hate. So, good for you BusinessWeek! I'm renewing my subscription.

We're talking about mine here. As most of you know I'm a Yankees freak/fan/zealot/lunatic. I'm also a baseball history dude and a crypto-Sabermetrics guy - meaning in this case, I like arcane stats - to a point.
They do get to the ridiculous. But that said, I follow my Alexa and Technorati rankings to see how I'm doing in the standings and how close I am to getting to the All Star Game in July. Here's my latest:

Alexa 3 month average (how they do it, not me) - 357,203 which is an improvement of 297,557 places since the prior three months.
That's out of a total of a claimed 6 million web pages. Not too shabby.

Technorati - As of today, due to 140 links, I'm ranked 74,533 out of what I suppose is 37 million and rising.
Because I'm a stats freak, I find it really cool that people are paying attention to me (though I'm not giving up money in exchange for that - actually nor am I getting much either). But I really don't know what any of it means. How important are having links in Technorati in the grand scheme of things?
What are the criteria for Alexa? Do the criteria make the numbers meaningful or meaningless? I have nary a clue, fellow blogistas, but if it means I'm batting over .
300 and will hit 40 homers and drive in over 120 runs, then you can count me in.

Okay, enough, too much. I'm done.
Goodnight.
This one is just out of..
..well, let me not get ahead of myself.

A company who for the moment shall remain nameless (don't peek below), both has patents and applied for another patent that would create a playback system that bypasses the eyes and the ears. For those interested, the accepted patents are named and numbered Method and System for Generating Sensory Data onto the Human Neural Cortex (patent nos. and ) and the patent application is called and numbered, Scanning Method for Applying Ultrasonic Acoustic Data to the Human Neural Cortex ( ).

The concept is amazing. It is a theoretically non-invasive way of creating sensory impressions (meaning in this case vision (video) and sound including full blown stereo or 5.1 surround sound separation) across the neural cortex of the brain.

The neural cortex a.k.a.
the cerebral cortex is the area of the brain that's responsible for the thought, reasoning and sensation, voluntary muscle movement, and memory. In other words the parts of the brain that were affected in the study of the ALCS I mentioned in a few days ago. The implications of these are staggering for the neuromedical field, though that's hardly why the patents were filed.
But imagine if you could provide the sensory experiences without the eyes and ears being the direct pipelines for sight and hearing? Instead, sight and sound would be transmitted by firing pulsed ultrasonic signals that modify the firing rate of neural tissue meaning the auditory and visual are reproduced directly on the neural cortex. What does that say for the way it could help the blind and/or deaf?
Wow.
But the purpose of it is more mundane. The idea is to show movies and listen to music that would be directly delivered to your head in 20/20 vision and with perfect hearing.

The implications of that are less staggering than the medical ones, but they become outright freaky (to me in a sort of amusing if it weren't so not funny kind of way) when you hear who owns the patents and the application.
Sony.
Yes, my all time favorite, customer unfriendly company, Sony, is the owner of the patents.
That's the same Sony that does everything for itself. That embraces the concept of customer as vermin. The same Sony that charges a premium for all its proprietary formats that it insists that you use if you want to own a Sony product.
The same Sony that has a highly developed engineering culture - which makes great hardware - but I don't really think I would be comfortable with them shooting images and sound across my cerebral cortex. My very own brain stem.
When you know its Sony who owns these patents, it creates a whole new meaning for rootkit doesn't it?
Imagine if they do this and follow the same strategy as they did with the because of the damage they did when you tried to disable or remove them.
Here's what I would envision the scenario looking like.
Sony releases the PSP (Patented Sensory Projection) device.
With it, you can watch movies priced 250% over a DVD and 50% over a UMD, in the SNM (Sony Neural Media) proprietary format. But unbeknownst to you, by watching an SNM movie, the PSP will install a cerebral root kit which, if you attempt to stop watching the SNM movie before its conclusion, will remove your ability to voluntarily move your muscles. If you then attempt to disable or remove the cerebral root kit itself, it will nuke your neural cortex a.
k.a. your operating system.

Even though I'm only speculating, the patents are real enough. I can't wait to see what Sony does with it.
I'm a pretty old dude as I see when I take a good hard look in the mirror each morning.
I'm 56 years old - a ne plus ultra age for a baby boomer. I went to Northwestern University during 1967-71, the height of campus radical activity, and, trust me, I engaged big time. Becoming a liberal democrat was a dramatic move to the right for me.

As a result, I have a heavy duty love of boomer era music - the true classics of my time. It ranges wide - from the harder blues/rock of , and on the one side to the more poignant "love-when-you're-20-and-don't-know-what-you-are-feeling" music of and the peaceful sweetness of I've heard both Carole King (writer of the post-mentioned tune) and James Taylor each sing "You've Got A Friend," differently and wonderfully somewhere north of a quintillion times on FM radio, XM radio. Sirius radio, Internet radio; via CD, DVD, and MP3 - the latter, of course, ensconced on an IPod.
I've heard them via Rhapsody's streaming services in their on-demand version of this incredibly well-traveled song. I love that song no matter who sings it and where I hear it.
But.
..there is this particular version, see, I have of it as an MP3 that resides on my IPod as part of a concert that Carole King gave at Carnegie Hall in some unidentified year (what I really mean by unidentified is that I can't remember.
I SAID I was 56). This particular version makes me cry or at least well up to the top every single time I hear it. Without exception.
It is a duet sung right after James Taylor makes a surprise appearance on the stage with Carole King. I always imagine that he appears with that serene, slightly wry, slightly goofy grin he has when he's happy or at least gives the appearance of being happy.
Know what makes me cry - not in big outbursts but light streams streaking my face?

Know why I cry? Because for a brief second, brief moment, even via the MP3 this is - I just KNOW what the whole audience and each member of the audience is FEELING. Total excitement, personal delight, audience happiness, nostalgia, each individual's memories of something from another era which they at least think was happier and simpler than their lives are now; their youth, the anticipation of something that they already remember from 30 years before.
It's the whole crowd, it's each individual - that singular person and the screaming crowd's massive conglomeration of concentrated singular moments that are ONLY theirs that they share for an instant with every single other person there. Its a connection that you feel driving right through the bit rates, the sampling rates, the code compliation, the codecs and all those distribution media and channels whether its a CD, DVD, or hard drive; an internet, satellite or terrestrial radio or even a TV set, right into your heart and soul. Its something that is social and possibly profound but may not be an important turning point in any member of the audience's life at all.
But then, maybe it was. And I FEEL it every-single-time I listen to this file in an MP3 format called "You've Got a Friend" by Carole King with James Taylor. Its not the performance, nor is it the file or even just the song (though I love the song).
Its the people - each, every and all of them. It is something that makes this an experience, not a thing. One that reaches in and grabs and holds.

I DARE ANY OF YOU reading this to tell me that you've never had a moment like this in your life - or even many moments. The moment isn't long. Its not transcendant.
I don't think about God and the Greater Good. I connect with a particular crowd on a particular night who had a particular moment with particular performers who reminded each of them that there was something else that existed wonderfully in their life for a moment some other time and they shared that with each other member of this audience - leading to the roar of total delight you hear on this clip below. It may not have been an important moment but it was a beautiful one that has its own meaningful value - which was different but shared for that few seconds.

Frankly, most of you aren't gonna cry when you hear this because this is a valued moment for me - my experience with that social group a.k.a.
the audience. I don't doubt that many of them are my age - and many of you may be but you may not be either. So what I'm going to do is two things.
First, I'm going to put two audio clips up - one and the other the audience version. Listen to the difference in HER singing. You'll see what I mean by a social connection big time.
Second, I'm going to provide a guest commentary from my exceptionally brilliant friend and fellow guru - Graham, who I've mentioned here several times before is one of the most astute and original thinkers in the CRM world. He is based in Europe and travels here on occasion - mostly for CRMGuru events - because he is a fellow board member with me. His commentary is always both riveting and at the same time has a distinct and unique flavor to it because he is the only person I know who can bring neurobiology to CRM and make it work.
So, blogists, bloggettes, RSSers or whatever you blog readers are called, here's the audio. Crank up your volume so you can get a true sense of this marvelous crowd (I hope you do but I won't hate you if you don't.).
And, note to RIIA, don't sue me. My intentions are pure.
Now here's Graham and pay close attention to what he says.
You'll see what I am and what I mean. The lessons for all of you wrestling with both new business models and love in your lives.
Your posting is a brilliant example of a number of themes that are starting to run though our developing understanding of the "social customer".
First, it shows how the customer is a social animal, influenced by what other customers (concert goers) do and in turn influencing others. The recent discovery by neuroscientists of "mirror neurons" that allow us to sense what is happening to others and to respond appropriately is behind much of this. So are many other recent discoverys collectively bundled under the catch-all of behavioural economics.

Second, it shows how the customer experience is where the action is today. Not the provision of goods or even services, but the "value in use" of them extracted during the experience of their consumption. The role of marketing changes in the process too, from the traditional one of converting goods into goods sold, to one of embedding goods services into the experience and all the things that go with that.
Value in use as perceived by the customer is the long overdue counterpart to the lifetime value of customers that so many companies aspire to. It nicely balances out the currently heavily lop-sided customer value equation.
Third, it shows how importance the co-creation of experiences by performers and customers is.
A performer without an audience is just playing for himself, an audience with out a performer is just a crowd waiting to happen, but put them together and mix them around a bit and something special happens. And you get your very special concert. And what goes for a concert at one end of the scale goes equally for individual customers interacting with companies too.
Co-creation occurs in many ways: through customer driven-innovation as lead customers innovate for themselves and others, through customer-generated media like the recent Chevy Tahoe / Apprentive contest and through customer recommendations which McKinsey reckons is behind a whopping 60-70% of ALL purchase decisions.
Finally, (as the list of themes is getting dangerously long), it shows the importance of bring together different individuals or groups with different capabilities to stage the experience. No one company can afford to be an island any more.
Capabilities are combinations of knowledge, skills, experience other resources that create value for customers. A concert includes not only the lead vocals and on-stage musicians, but the crew that supports the concert, the promoters that market the concert, all the way to the concert hall owners. Take away any of them and the whole things stops working.
Just like when you take away customer service in a business the business slowly grinds to a halt surrounded by angry customers, depressed staff and lots of bad press.
Oh and one more thing, lest we forget. It is the customer who decides what is valuable, not the company.
If you enjoyed the concert, it was great, it was memorable, it was the stuff of legend. But if you didn't, well, you wouldn't be writing this posting would you?

Thank you, Graham Hill.
Very, very smart dude isn't he?
So that's it. deeply personal, big crowds, business lessons learned, cool and really intense stuff that just feels awesome, and something that makes you realize that its really GREAT to be human and alive.
Life can just be grand sometimes can't it?
Who knows what song this title is from and what album and who sings it? First one to tell me can get a free copy of sent by me to them.
Now just a warning. I might have a word or two wrong since this is based on residual memory but I think its right. Great song, fabulous album and not obvious.

In the last 24 hours, , (God knows what they are thinking) and what is not being swept under the rug but is in fact being muted by all the acquisition hype (I bought groceries, by the way. Just thought I'd let you know. I'm hoping to merge them with my stomach and gastrointestinal system) is that Larry Ellison settled a by paying shareholders $22.
5 million and he will donate the $100 million to a charity over a five year period in the name of Oracle. There are two amazing things about this one. First, he gets off that easily.
Basically, this is him sacrificing paint jobs on his yacht fleet for awhile. Second, Oracle's spin on this is just outright gross. Here's the wording The resolution, which was reached in the past few days, 'eliminates a cloud of a trial, which would obviously distract Mr.
Ellison and top management,' Tabacco said. 'It provides a benefit for the company to operate as a good corporate citizen.' BTW, Tabacco is the shareholders' attorney!
!
Doesn't this strike you as disgusting? Settling lawsuits is the way that Oracle/Ellison are good corporate citizens?
Contrast that to Bill and Melinda Gates or Marc Benioff or even Tom Siebel ( ) for pete's sake who actually give money to worthy causes without being under court order.
There are days that I wish I was doing something else - though I do like this blog..
..

Keywords: Attention Economy, Neural Cortex, Press Releases, Carole King, Business Week, Every Single, James Taylor, Information Week, First Rate, Natalie Bedingfield

Name
Place
5 + 1 =
Comments

Search