Jason Palmer and Others Leave WebTrends…Professional Interim CEO Appointed

According to this Click Z story…Jason Palmer and three other executives have left Webtrends. Since the company is doing well to the best of my knowledge - one might speculate that it had something to do with things other than revenue and profit.

I only had one encounter with Jason Palmer, it was at my first SES conference in 2005. I was eating lunch with some people at a table and Jason sat down at the table with a client. About ten minutes later, Jason declared to someone that they should mind their own business and not participate in the conversation with his client. I recall thinking that time that guy had a lot of nerve to say that at a table in a public lunch room where he sat down at the table last. That was my one and only interaction with Jason Palmer of Webtrends.

What are other people’s experiences with Webtrends?

SMXLOMO Denver - Day 2 - Show Me the Money!!!

Moderator:
Greg Sterling, Founding Principal, Sterling Market Intelligence

Speakers:
Ian White, CEO, Urban Mapping
Shawn Riegsecker, Chairman & CEO, Centro
Justin Sanger, CEO, LocalLaunch
Alfred Chow, Head, Yellowbook

Justin Sanger, Local Launch

I can’t help but get caught up in some of the hype. “Context galactic scale” – thanks Google. He then said, “Talking about local search in 10 minutes is like spitting into the grand canyon.” Then said a few words to get Greg Sterling to actually blush! Really funny stuff.

Tremendous opportunities in the IYPs. Local and vertical are merging. Social networking is also converging with local. What is the differentiation of these local search sites? Even within Yahoo! you have a multitude of options. SMEs are overwhelmed and confused. The mission of marketplace consolidations – our goal is to remove the complexity not only for our small businesses but for our sales forces as well. The traditional relationships

$                                             Cost of Traffic                     $$$
Content>>Proprietary>>Organic/SEO>>Paid Placement>>Paid Search / SEM

Silos and advertisers don/t mix in local search!!!

You need to be inventory agnostic…

Shawn Riegsecker, CEO, Centro

Brand marketing increases future clicks. Newspaper growth is slowing in terms of rates of growth, national advertisers are exploding this year. Next will be the regional advertisers, which now comprise less than 3% of advertising.

Ian White, CEO, Urbanmapping

? Where the hell is the money?

7FTE, San Francisco based, geo-spacial data to enable advertisers

Why and what?

Technical limitations

User behavior

Search Engine “Keyword Lockdown”

GEO IP lookup “geotargeting” SUCKS

99% accuracy country level

95% accuracy state level

Death of Blog Search Part 2 - Sifry Leaves Technorati

Techcrunch, Alarm clock and even Jason Calacanis weighed in on David Sifry’s departure. Jason extrapolated into some things that I don’t agree with completely, except with his suggestion that Web 2.0 companies try to make a profit, but I’ll leave that alone for now.

David Sifry today announced that he has stepped down as CEO of Technorati. While the search for a new CEO continues, Teresa Malo (CFO), Dorion Carroll (VP-Engineering), and Derek Gordon (VP-Marketing), will manage the day-to-day operations of the company. Sifry will become “Chairman of Technorati’s board”. What does it ultimately prove? It again clearly demonstrates that Internet experience is not the primary indicator of Internet executive future success.

Hello people. Technorati did a redesign that refocused on mainstream media as I noted in my earlier post the death of blog search. Then Technorati used tags to grow traffic from other search properties. As Arrington asked in early June “When will the Technorati traffic party end?” Apparently Google and others took notice of this and the party ended in July based on Alexa data - I’m surprised Michael did not discuss this at length today in his post actually. This dip exposed the payday to payday advertising dollar budgeting leading to the departure of Sifry and 8 others. It should be noted that this followed the dismissal of several other employees during the July 4th holiday.

Looking at a May 9th Mashable post, it seems that around $1 million was raised when it expanded a round of funding from 10.52 Million to 11.52 Million. It appears that Technorati was spending more cash than it was taking in, even before the traffic decline in July, based on the early July layoffs. The traffic decline in July only made that situation worse.

This leaves Technorati in the unenviable position of needing to generate new advertising dollars at a time when the engineering needs an overhaul it can’t afford. Repairs such as Typepad blog overcounting, flawed link metrics and many other flaws can not occur at this time.

In fact, someone suggested to me in a phone conversation today that perhaps they should shut Technorati off completely now and just sell it’s likely most valuable asset - a 301 redirect of the Technorati domain. The talk of taking Technorati public via IPO will likely be nothing more than that talk in David Sifry’s previous blog posts.

So where is a blog searcher to go now?

Ask - They have recently revamped their offering dramatically and comment search is now combined with post search. It is an offering that is available directly on their front page.

Google - They should move blog search to the front page as I suggested previously and ideally should build and option to show it mixed with news sites.

Icerocket - Plain, simple, no nonsense blog search.

Other players like Topix, if they were to index the blogosphere fully, could also emerge as an alternative that would properly mix news and blogs together demonstrating that most news is being lifted from blogs by the mainstream media.

Google Search Trends Timeliness Issues

The following Google Trends data is presently 3 weeks stale. I’m somewhat confused as to this gap between the daily Google Hot Trends and Google Trends data not being in real time.

I first noticed this comparison of Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, John McCain and Rudy Giuliani in this blog post - Top Google Search Trends in Iowa.

Does anyone understand why this time gap exists in Google or plans for resolving it?

adtech Chicago 2007 is July 31-August 1

Search, Social Media, Video, Gaming and Mobile Advertising leaders will gather in Chicago at a new location on Navy Pier on July 31 and August 1. Many new speakers and a few surprising speakers this year on the agenda. I look forward to seeing you there!

Upcoming Search Engine Investor Conference Presentations

I thought you’d like to be aware of these, it’s interesting that they announed these almost simultaneously.

Yahoo! to present at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference and
Thomas Weisel Partners Internet Digital Media Conference

Terry Semel, Chairman and CEO, and Susan Decker, Executive Vice
President, Head of Advertiser and Publisher Group and acting Chief Financial
Officer, will present at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference.  The
presentation will take place on Tuesday, March 6, 2007 at 12:30pm
Eastern Time / 9:30am Pacific Time.  

Jerry Yang, Co-Founder and Chief Yahoo!, will present at the Thomas
Weisel Partners Internet & Digital Media Conference.  The presentation
will take place on Wednesday, March 7, 2007 at 6:15pm Eastern Time /
3:15pm Pacific Time. 

A live webcast of both presentations will be available on the Investor
Relations website at
This link on Yahoo! Investor Relations website

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG)
announced today that Eric Schmidt, Chief Executive Officer, will
present at the following investor events:

Morgan Stanley Technology Conference
Monday, March 5, 2007
3:15 p.m. ET / 12:15 p.m. PT

Bear Stearns 20th Annual Media Conference
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
8:45 a.m. ET / 5:45 a.m. PT

To access the audio webcasts of the presentations, please visit
This link on the Google Investor Relations website

3GSM World Congress Barcelona - Starts Now

3GSM World Congress starts Monday in Barcelona. It bills itself as “the world’s leading mobile communications conference and exhibition” (in lower case letters just like that too). There is rumored to be some serious negotiations going on in terms of white label mobiel search providers and the cell phone carriers (if you hear anything interesting drop me a note). If you’re going or are there, please drop me a line. You are someone I should know.

I want to praise something - I *love* the way this press contact list is set up for the exhibitors. It should become a standard practice.

It appears there is another white label search player emerging - MCN.
Among bloggers, these folks have caught my eye with posts so far: Dan Appelquist, Alessandro Pace and others!

tag: 3GSMworldcongress2007

Seattle Bubble - A Great Blog

The metrics, facts and figures that this blog invents (some of which look quite time consuming!) never cease to amaze me.)

I hope to one day soon be provided with this type of data about some topics I think are fascinating.

Sociable 2.0 Plugin Release Interview: Peter Harkins

Please bookmark as “Sociable 2.0 Interview” - Thanks!

I first met Peter Harkins in person at Barcamp Chicago in the Summer of 2006. As I’ve gotten to know him, he knows far more than just coding, as he appreciates and participates constructively in conversations about business strategy and monetization. It’s a winning combination.

The response has been incredible to the Sociable plugin, so you’ve been slammed with inquiries…

Peter: I’ve gotten dozens of mails about Sociable in the last week, from sites wanting to be included, users testing it out in unusual situations and last-minute feature requests. I’ve promised to get 2.0 out by Midnight February 1, so it’s been a race to the wire to get in new features.

Peter: I’ve added 26 sites at last count in this version. Just this morning a Hungarian programmer sent me at least a few more, so I may have as many as 60 sites in the next version.

You’ve add new language translations with this version, that is exciting…

Peter: Yes. It looks like this version will have support for Spanish, Czech, Italian, German and French with more to come. Before 2.0, interested users were just picking it up, translating it, and offering it for download on their blogs. It was a bit frustrating to track bug fixes between different branches of Sociable. Now we’ll have a unified project to share resources and drive development faster, I want to have releases at least every other month in 2007.

You keep the installation and interface pretty simple…

Peter: Deliberately, so, yes. As a programmer, it’s really easy to think of the UI as “that last bit I have to add so people can use my beautiful code” instead of what it truly is: the most important part of the application. So I spent a lot of time making sure that you can install Sociable just by unzipping and uploading it, rather than try to provide complicated install instructions. I spent time on a feature most people never see: when you install Sociable, it checks a manifest of files to make sure it was uploaded right, and it tells you what files go where if it’s not perfect. It provides help right when you need it most, and plainly enough that you understand it.

Peter: The drag-and-drop in the admin interface is just a delight to use, and deliberately so. I want blog owners to feel safe playing around with the different options to see what works on their site. So I’ve spent most of my time on making the UI really nice as well as fixing up the insides.

So you also reprogrammed the internals of the Sociable application for future development and expansion beyond Wordpress?

Peter: I want to start porting Sociable over to work on other blog engines like TypePad, Movable Type, Mephisto, and more. So I’ve cleaned up the internals of 2.0, laying the groundwork for 2.1 or 2.2 to support more engines. It’s also going to start doing a little stat reporting when it checks for updates. I know there are roughly 10,000 blogs out there using it, but I’d like to know more exactly and maybe cross-reference to traffic rating services to find out what kind of positive effect it has.

You have an alert system for updating?

Peter: Yes, Sociable checks for new versions when folks view the admin console and notifies the blog owner to go download it. Without it there’d still be people using Sociable 1.2 in five years, hopefully with it everyone will be upgraded in a month or two.

In the past you mentioned that there are three different types of users of Sociable…

Peter: First up, there’s beginning bloggers. They’ve just started a blog, and they’ve got stars in their eyes of being the next BoingBoing or something. Sociable is a tool they’ll use to get the word out about their new blogs, and I’m really glad to help out. As much trouble as some have had spelling “Sociable”, it’s been most rewarding to talk to them because they’re new to blogging and are so happy to be able to easily drop in Sociable.

Peter: Then there are the established bloggers. They’ve got an audience and they want to start leveraging it. Sociable makes it easy for their audience to start getting the word out and growing the blog. I get most of my feature requests from this group, and they’re the people who send me the code to add their favorite bookmarking site.

Peter: I get a lot of links from the SEO crowd, who really put the word out about Sociable. They’ve found Sociable to be a useful tool, so they turn around and install it for their clients. Oddly they’re group I hear the least from, they almost never mail me. But they’ll be the most unusual mails sometimes.

So how are the SEO emails unusual?

Peter: I’ve gotten a really bizarre feature requests like - “You should make Sociable automatically submit each blog post to every bookmarking site! And then vote it up!” - or other crazy schemes! It’s frustrating, Sociable is a tool to help blog owners by reminding readers to bookmark good content. “Sociable should make other blogs using Sociable link to mine with the link text I fill in!” Ugh! I should mention that this is a tiny minority of the SEO folks, I’ve only gotten a half-dozen “Help me spam!” mails.

Sounds like we could monetize a Sociable SEO Pro version together?

Peter: There are definitely a few customers waiting, but I’ve got plenty of other projects ahead of it.

Like what?

Peter: I just recently launched NearbyGamers, a social site for tabletop gamers to find other folks to play card, board, and role-playing games with. It’s been a real blast, but my to do list is as long as my arm so it’s eating up my free time. And I’ve been trying to keep updating my own blog with web coding tips but it’s easy to slip out of the habit.

Sociable has created great networking for you. What are some of the better stories?

Peter: I ended up doing CrunchBoard for TechCrunch because I met a guy via a guy via a guy who used Sociable, and that was a real fun project.

What are some of the underused or misunderstood features of the tool?

Peter: One minor frustration has been writing CSS for Sociable that can deal with all the odd things different blog themes do. I’ve had dozens of people mail me asking (sometimes quite forcefully) why Sociable doesn’t look right on their blog, and so far none have thought it’s their own site doing it.

What else should the people know about Peter Harkins?

Peter: You should never ask him to sing anything…

Good luck with the release Peter!

Making It Easier for Blogs to Link to Blogs Instead of News Sites

So Robert Scoble got upset the other day about people linking to major media sites instead of other blogs.

It seemed interesting to me. I started to think about the issues involved, mostly because it didn’t seem like natural behavior. But then it hits you like a brick, all of the major search engines have news and search search from their main pages, while only Ask.com has blog search on it’s home page (they should move it above news). Yahoo!, Google and Live Search do not. In fact Yahoo! and Live Search would have to acquire or develop such technology.

As you may recall, I have a history of suggesting search engine home page changes that become reality.

So, I’d like to please ask all of the major search engines to add blogs as a major top line category (to the left of or above news) and potentially think about creating options to merge blogs and news into one category if a user desires (I would find this helpful). If the Internet is all about user generated content, shouldn’t the major search engines reward and make that the easier default view?

It will look like this (though a little neater, I’m no graphic artist!).

Bill Hanekamp talk about Microsite.com

Jason Jacobson at the Chicagoland Entreprenuership Center invited me to see a presentation on Microsite’s this morning by Bill Hanekamp. I left the conversation believing that microsites are an underutilized tool that help enable potentially viral and social media content. They are underutilized most in the B2B world where you do some interesting things to build traction with prospects of long-sales cycle and complex products and services.

Thanks for inviting me Jason!

Best Blog Post of 2006 (non-search engine related)

On October 9th, I wrote this about Kathy Sierra’s “Knocking the Exuberance Out of Employees”.

It’s a great post and it relates to a lot of problems in the business world in terms of having innovative customer service. Let’s hope her post prompted some people to realize that operating in this manner is a mistake.

Congrats!

Google’s Mobile Ad Guidelines Page

I recently noticed that Google started a Mobile Ads guideline page. The following is of great interest to me:

“Follow proper grammar conventions.

You may use common text message abbreviations.”

I’d like to see some more detail about what is meant exactly by “You may use common text message abbreviations.”

The #1 result for “text message abbreviations” in Google currently has this web page. In a world where relevance is critical to click through and conversion rates, is an ad that has abbreviations that a viewer doesn’t understand certainly doesn’t meet the relevancy requirement as that viewer certainly won’t take action on an ad that he or she can not interpret. My preliminary thought is that this should allow the user to self select the type of mobile search marketing ad style that they are most comfortable with and this likely will have a strong correlation with the age of the user/ad viewer. But it also means that eventually you might need more than one style of mobile text ad, one with abbreviations and one without abbreviations. This is certainly an interesting area that I’m will likely see new standards and metrices over time.

What do you think the standards should be? I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts and discussion of this issue.

SES Chicago - Day 2 - Yahoo! Search Marketing Lunchtime Panel

John Slade speaks to an overflow crowd…

Says “Thank You!” to existing customers

Thanks people who have been early adopters

Web Publishers – everyone is a publisher in some way, even if they don’t think they are.

Consumer Context – Keep it in perspective

The Four Questions:
- How do I reach my desired audience?
- How can I effectively engage them?
- What mix of tactics should I use?
- How do I know its working?

Today’s offer model is a linear model, moves to multiple ad targets & calls to actions

Tip: Always get your keywords in your titles and descriptions.

Build calls to action: It’s a framework to continue

New Tools:
- Dynamic Account Structure
- Ad Testing
- Fast Ad Activation – building more automation and integrity checks into the process.
- Enhanced Geo-targeting
- Alerts – proactive keyword alerts to start shortly
- Share of Clicks and Forecasting
- Quality Index

Rank is determined by its bid and expected performance. Relevance is critical to preventing “ad blindness”

Five Reasons Marketers Should Be Exited:
- Improved user experience: intuitive, speed
- Faster impact and rewards for advertisers that optimize
- Focus efforts on what matters most to the marketer’s business
- Gives marketers the power create, test, and analyze campaigns like never before
- Leverage creative (missed the rest of the slide)

John stressed that one needs to be cognizant of thinking in new ways to get full advantage of the features of the new system.

Graham Harris…gives demonstration. Shows the automated keyword generator. This shows a huge change in magnitude that allows effective campaigns to be created by almost anyone.
Patrizio Spagnoletto speaks…

Upgrading Approach and Schedule:
- U.S. advertiser upgrades have begun
- Advertisers may chooser to upgrade post holidays
- Invitations will continue in stages to U.S. advertisers over the next several months

What to Expect
- Frequent Update
- Cheat sheet

Please look at the tutorials, customer solutions 1-866-YAHOO-98
It’s important to Yahoo! to make this house your home. We are successful when you are successful.

Question/Answer: Minimum bid for the US market is still $.10.

Question/Answer: Bulk submit is available.

International markets will occur sometime in 2007. John Slade said customer feedback was being sought on the best way to roll out.

How do you calculate relevance in a new ad? Dozens of factors drive us to a relevance to an ad, many of these come from Yahoo! search technologists. As data is available, this is factored in as well.

All in all, Yahoo! is demonstrating some positive attributes during this large conversion of platforms. These include a customer focus and taking the time to make a professional and transparent system migration that I believe will serve as a model in how to make a professional and non-disruptive migration. Stock analysts should look at the long term of what is occurring here.

SES Chicago 2006 - Day 1 - Podcast and Audio Optimization

Amanda Wallington, Searching for Profit
Podcasting is more than time shifted media.

Optimizing is using only a few steps.

Do some front end homework:
- Make sure the name of your show is not already in use
- Not as easy to check as a domain name
- Get art radio
- Review iTunes categories for where you fit
- Be prepared to edit audio tags yourself for each audio file

Steps for success:
- Optimize the sound by Optimizing the ID3 Tags
- Optimize Your Podcast Landing Pages – show,  abstract, etc.
- Build accurate, effective RSS files
- Track and monitor your feeds
- Track and Monitor Submissions, watch for changes
Daron Babin, Webmaster Radio
Production Time
Cost of Production
Equipment (Recording, Compression, etc)
Encoding can be a pain
Analytics
Bandwith

They are listening…if you are compelling!

Lilsteners do not want to know your dietary strengths or weaknesses.

They don’t want to know about the dog needing be neutered.

Without someone who can handle load, then distribution will be an issue

Tools to Measure Growth – you need them

Become a Pioneer – transcribe everything, Leave no word unspoken…text equity.

Originality and passion equals downloads.

Get to your numbers. 
Rick Klau, VP Publisher Services, Feedburner

Not everyone uses iTunes
Metadata is essential for discovery

The subscription process blows

Get your feeds out there

Ping, ping, ping…

Feedburner now manages 70,000+ podcasts

Consumption is happening everywhere, not just iTunes

Directories – both publicity and consumption

- Create a feed…
- Add iTunes/Media RSS extensions (Smartcast)
- Show notes are criminally underused (60% find a higher traffic through show notes)
- Enable “Pingshot”
- Ensure Auto-delivery is enabled (important)

An Example of the World’s Data Crisis

The World Trade Center had one zip code, 10048. Five years later after their destruction, mail of all kinds arrives there daily! It’s an all too sad and vivid reminder of the crisis in our society with businesses not putting priority on cleaning data. This happens every day with catalogs sent to people who have moved or are now deceased.

In this case it’s inexcusable because it’s all one zip code that would be easy to surpress: 10048.

Whether it’s mail, e-mail, web pages, web 2.0 social networks and/or social media, the value creation foundation starts with data integrity. To build the superior ideas of the future, this area will play a pivotal role. Unfortunately, all too many people do not properly value data integrity or value not been blessed enough to be immersed in a culture who is obsessed with it as I have been in the past.

Consider whether you have a good enterprise data strategy before you launch your next project!   

Mobile Business Expo - Unified Communications / Future of the Phone

The following s a combination of two sessions that were both interesting and had considerable overlap - Developing a Successful Unified Communications with Mobile Technology & The Future of the Phone.

—————————————

Developing a Successful Unified Communications with Mobile Technology
Moderator - Eric Krapf – Business Communications Review
Chris Kardish, Principal, Nemertes Research, Inc.
Marty Parker, Communication Perspective
Brian Riggs, Current Analysis

Communications integrated to optimize business processes. – Parker
Example: Sales as teams instead of many individuals. Increases customer loyalty and speed. How do I standardize it within my enterprise? Biggest problem. Also, standardize this platform. Why isn’t mobile device acquisition standardized? This is the tough nut to crack.

Integration real time and non-real time applications available in one locations. - Riggs
Unified communication is not a product, it’s a solution to a problem.

Extremely interesting session. I would have liked to have provided more detail but there was intense crosstalk with a considerable amount of acronyms.

—————————————

 The Future of the Phone

Marty Parker – Principal Consultant, Communication Perspectives
Bill Hughes – Principal Analyst, In-Stat

Bill – Will have an identified operating system. Wireless phones are still considered a yuppie toy.

Marty – Voice and a data device. We didn’t have to destroy railroads to build airports. (writes a blog on voiploop.com) Friend went to China used only Blackberry. The person doesn’t have a desk anymore. The main number goes only to the secretary.

Marty - Trends to watch, PBX now realizes it’s a software world. Reduce dependence on hardware.

Bill – There is a difference in companies, some micro-manage the bill, others see it as a fountain pen. “We are going to save money no matter what it costs.”

How is mobility going to affect my cost structure?

Marty – budgets drive behavior in corporations.

Bill – I will pay $40 for mobile car charger, but not one cent more for a longer life battery. It makes no sense.

Marty – At IBM, it’s becoming protocol to IM before calling someone. The GPS phone could become your phone and mail code identifier of the future.

This is very complex  topic involving significant leadership focus from the enterprise to drive the complex types of changes that were being discussed. It’s surprising that more people aren’t listening to what they are preaching, they should be.

tag: mobilebusinessexpo2006

My Speech at eComXpo Now Has a Contest

In conjunction with my discussion at eComXpo about “Mobile Search Marketing: The Coming Evolution of Chief Marketing Officer to Chief Customer Officer”, I’m announing a contest! Prizes will be awarded via random drawing on Monday, October 30th, 2006, odds of winning depend on number of entries received and viewed via blog search engines.
Prize #1 - Dalka will be giving out one of his famous blog interviews to one lucky winner! (estimated value - priceless!)
Prize #2 - One eComXpo University Pass to allow leisurely viewing of content at a later time after the close of the conference, a great value if you missed part of the show. (estimated value - $99)

To enter, simply answer the following questions in a blog entry before the close of eComXpo:
1) Who exports what cereal to what country and why?
2) Who had a flat tire?
3) What three disparate data sets does David advocate tying together to create a customer driven experience?

Chicago GSB Named #1 MBA by Business Week - 10 Metrics to Redesign

The University of Chicago Graduate School of Business (Chicago GSB) was rated the top MBA program in the Business Week bi-annual MBA survey of recruiters and students.

As a proud alumni, I want be clear that I appreciate the quality students, alumni and faculty at Chicago GSB.

However, theses surveys have not changed much since the rating systems were started several decades ago. What’s missing from that survey is alumni and the alumni experience now that MBA programs are a mature and not a growth industry. The metrics and experience here is much more unclear and are overdue for significant redesign.

Some questions I’d like to see in a redesigned survey that should carry a one third weighting alongside current students and alumni:

1. What is the alumni satisfaction rating of the institution from alumni at the 5, 10, 20 year mark?

2. What Internet based networking tools are in use? For example, I’ve asked Ted Snyder for a Simple Machines Message Board for all alumni (privacy set to no outside view) for several years and this has not been made a priority which is sad as it’s simple to implement. I want to be able to post obscure topics and find that needle in the haystack, whether I’m going to Shanghai and need to network, what to find others interested in using blog buzz to help price options or other new topics of interest. In other words, which school has not only the best network, but a culture of lifting all boats and leaving nobody behind?

3. What percentage of the alumni does the institution have accurate contact data for in a shared directory for all alumni to use? What is the strategy to create value so that all alumni are excited about staying in touch with the school and the network?

4. What is the ratio of dollars spent on alumni every year versus new student attraction? If it’s a quality alumni experience, the ratio will be less. This is a simple metric to calculate once the data is transparent.

5. What percentage consider themselves fully employed and utilized?

6. Do salaries really go up from graduation level or are most of these salaries higher due to churn and burn industries with long hours? Stated a different way are the salaries the GMAC publishes for the sole purpose of student attraction misleading? Some suggest that they are. Considering the GMAC publishes these studies during the application season, the business school self-reported salary data is highly suspect.

7. As the baby boomers age and pockets of shortages arise, we need to change the campus recruiting policies to focus on hiring gifted thought leaders based on competencies regardless of year of graduation - there are pockets of underemployed MBA’s form the 2001-2003 era that should be redeployed fully to roles worthy of their skills - the current process doesn’t allow this to occur and it is obsolete - it exists only to encourage student attraction and influence each year’s performance stats - you see it in the Business Week stats - it’s all about salaries (which are inflated because they are mostly not jobs with normal hours) - isn’t there more to life than just salary?

8. What percentage of the alumni are currently giving gifts to the school?

9. What percent of alumni are living in the geographic region of their choice?

10. Does the school have functional and relevant alumni activities both in industry verticals and in geography?

These are just a few of the metrics that I would invite Business Week, Wall Street Journal and Financial Times to explore fully for overhaul. Please feel free to comment and add ideas to this discussion, link to this post or forward it to anyone via e-mail whom could influence this positive and needed metric changes. Thank you for joining the conversation for needed reform.