Friday, October 9, 2009

President Obama Awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize!

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(CNN) -- President Obama was awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.

Less than nine months into his presidency, Barack Obama has been awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.

The first African-American to win the White House, Obama was praised by the Norweigan Nobel Committee for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."

"Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future," the committee said. "His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population."

What do you think of the decision to award President Obama the Nobel Peace Prize? Sound Off below.

The committee also said Obama has "created a new climate in international politics."

The announcement came as a surprise -- Obama's name had not been mentioned among front-runners -- and the roomful of reporters in Oslo, Norway, gasped when he was named.

In his short time in office, Obama has acted on a wide range of issues from the economy to terrorism and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Obama also lobbied unsuccessfully to bring the 2016 Olympics to Chicago, Illinois. After returning from Denmark, Obama expressed no regret about his trip, saying it is "always a worthwhile endeavor to promote and boost the United States."

Former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, last year's Peace Prize laureate, said it was clear the Nobel committee wanted to encourage Obama on the issues he has been discussing on the world stage.

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"I see this as an important encouragement," Ahtisaari said.

The committee wanted to be "far more daring" than in recent times and make an impact on global politics, said Kristian Berg Harpviken, director of the International Peace Research Institute.

Wangari Muta Maathai, the Kenyan who won the 2004 Peace Prize, said Obama's win will help Africa move forward.

"I think it is extraordinary," she said. "It will be even greater inspiration for the world. He has shown how we can probably come together, work together in a cooperative way."

The award comes at a crucial time for Obama, who currently has administration officials dispatched on global peace missions.

Obama's envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, has returned to the region to advocate for peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. Mitchell met Thursday with Israeli President Shimon Peres. He plans to meet Friday with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before talking with Palestinian leaders in the West Bank.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton starts a six-day trip to Europe and Russia on Friday. On the trip, the secretary will discuss the next steps on Iran and North Korea, and international efforts to have the two countries end their nuclear programs.

The centerpiece of the trip will be her visit to Moscow, where she will work toward an agreement to take the place of the Start II arms control pact, which expires December 5. She will also address the new bilateral presidential commission that is working on a broad range of issues, from arms control to health.

Obama became the third sitting president U.S. president to win the prestigious prize. Jimmy Carter was the fourth American leader to win, but he was long out of office when he was recognized in 2002.

This year's peace prize nominees included 172 people and 33 organizations, the highest number of nominations ever. The committee does not release the names of the nominees.

The Nobel recipient receives a prize of about $1.4 million.

Thursday, October 8, 2009

7 Reasons Why Your Marketing Plan Doesn’t Work

(Duct Tape Marketing)

Sep 03, 2009 -

Every business NEEDS operate with a set of plans – a plan for the business, a plan for cash, a plan for growth, and certainly a plan for marketing. Opening a business with no plan is kind of like driving somewhere you’ve probably never been without a map or GPS device.

A marketing plan is commonly accepted as standard fare, but still,few businesses operate from any semblance of one. In my experience it’s not because they don’t think they need one, it’s because they’ve either never gotten around to creating one, or worse, they’ve created a marketing plan only to check it off the list and shove it in the bottom of drawer somewhere.

I’ve worked with many small businesses, created many marketing plans, and I can tell you that a big part of the problem is the current plan mindset. Marketing plans are essential mind and stress freeing tools, and you can and should lean very heavily on yours - if you can avoid these marketing planning pitfalls.

1) It’s not about the plan

People think plan and immediately envision the document. I’ve seen people spend more time making the cover of a marketing plan look pretty than they take to make something meaningful inside.

It’s a lot like Lance Armstrong’s book title – It’s not about the bike. The plan is a vehicle, but it’s the planning steps, stages, meetings, questions, and inputs (training for Lance) that create marketing plans that work.

If fact, I’ll go a step further and state that a marketing plan, like a marketing system, is just a start, it’s a systematic marketing planning approach that makes a marketing plan a living tool that can power and guide your business.

To have an effective marketing plan you must have an effective marketing planning process and that, as you’ll discover in the next set of steps, never ends

2) Deal with today’s reality

Almost every business (start-up to mature) wakes up one day and decides to create a marketing plan. What usually occurs is that they create a plan from scratch – as though nothing has occurred in the history of the business to date.

It’s a though the plan architect attempts to simply add on rooms and floors and markets and products without regard for retaining walls, foundations, - maybe even budgets. Anyone who has remodeled (an appropriate analogy I think) knows what a disaster this approach can create.

It’s okay to have a plan that’s a stretch, maybe even taking you in totally new directions, but you’ve got to deal with where you are now and plan transitions that make sense for your culture, customer, and message or you’re destined to fail.

3) Look for the right questions

Everybody wants the magic answers (I’ve written a marketing planning software tool and the #1 request is for sample plans.) The problem with someone else's answers is they are almost undoubtedly wrong. Throw on top of it that, even if they are right today, they will be wrong tomorrow.

The systematic planning approach suggests that instead of the right answers you should be focused on finding the right questions. Answers, like a system, are rigid. Questions, or a process of using key questions to produce answers, are an approach that will yield the right answers no matter the current circumstances.

Southwest Airlines simply wanted be known as the low-cost airline – period. There’s a well worn story about how Southwest Airlines founder, Herb Kelleher, used to ask his executives when they posed some innovation whether it contributed to Southwest being the low cost carrier or not. If they could answer yes it got looked at, if no, it was scratched from consideration.

4) Simplify meaning

A marketing plan isn’t sufficient unless it starts tilting towards the 50-60 page mark, right? Actually it’s far tougher, but far more useful generally, to create one that stays in the 4-5 page range. That way you might actually do it and potential readers might actually view it.

The quicker a prospect can make an important & meaningful distinction of how your message is different, the easier everyone’s job will be. The only way to do that is to work very, very hard at creating simple, metaphor-like, messages that make it very easy for people to understand instantly what you’re about.

Tear everything in your business to shreds and find ways to tell a very simple marketing story about your products, services, people and processes. Make it so simple that anyone can tell it.

5) Monitor friction

Marketing planning and implementation is mostly about doing the things that slowly build momentum, it’s not about hitting it big next week. When you dig in and look closely at every marketing action, measure specific results of each campaign, landing page, or direct mailing, you can begin to spot the places that are causing friction and thereby slowing momentum.

If you don’t hold every initiative accountable you can’t make your plan work – it’s also a great way to waste a lot of money. Failure to monitor, analyze, and measure marketing actions is the single greatest factor holding businesses back.

If you don’t know what’s working there’s a pretty good bet you don’t know what’s not working either. (Metrics work for best-in-class businesses...globally.)

6) Take out the trash

You don’t have to do something just because it’s in the plan. I’ve seen so many businesses so tied to the plan document that they commit time and resources to things that are clearly counterproductive once released into the real market. But, hey, it’s in the plan.

Of course this goes hand in hand with point #5, you’ve got to know what is and is not productive, but once you do, you’ve also got to take the steps to cut your losses.

This one’s a bit tricky because some things don’t work as planned right away. I’ve seen an advertising program bombing until the organization started to receive some favorable press, then all of a sudden, the advertising took hold.

7) Guess again

People don’t want to admit it, certainly consultants don’t, but a marketing plan is a set of (albeit, thoughtful) guesses, hopefully based on some knowledge, but no matter what, you need to commit to correcting the course.

I suggest that you meet at least every six weeks to renew your questions, assumptions, results, goals and objectives with an eye on using your flexibility to make real time adjustments based on real time results.

The main point is that you commit to a schedule so that your plan never has a chance to decay. There will be things that work better than expected and those that don’t, but having a group, or even all staff, check-in on the marketing twice a quarter you can keep it alive and driving while you make the adjustments to take advantage of new found opportunities.

Saturday, October 3, 2009

65+ Must See Resources...

Especially For Designers To Discover The Best Of The Web (Sep09)

source: http://smashingapps.com

October 2, 2009

We are always in search of great free resources, tips, tricks, etc. for our readers. Every day we work hard to find new resources and inspiration for designers like you. Today, we have another great post, “Discover the Best of the Web” on SmashingApps. In this, we made a list of 65+ Must See Resources Especially For Designers. We obviously cannot cover all the best from the web, but we have tried to cover as much as possible.

You are welcome to share if you know more best of the web in the month of September which our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at SmashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed you can follow us on twitter as well.

Design Tips, Tricks and Tutorial
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82 Earth-Shattering ZBrush Tutorials