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	Phil's Blogservations Tuesday, August 19, 2008 Posted by philgomes 11:11 AM SEC On A Modernization Tear I've been dancing a little jig here on the 32nd floor with the flurry of news coming out of the SEC lately. First, there was the interpretive guidance that the SEC issued last month. Though it wasn't in any way the press-release-killing, just-throw-it-on-the-web, Webdork free-for-all that the wild-eyed webtista crowd seemed to think it was, it was a highly encouraging step. Now, I just finished watching the webcast whereby the SEC unveiled IDEA — “Interactive Data Electronic Applications”. Essentially, this goes way beyond the simple filing of forms and will allow users to use metadata to see the relationships between filings and other important business data. I'm not going to fritter too many of my thoughts about this development here — this guy pays for those — but suffice to say that this is a very exciting time to be looking at how business communication will be changing. Technorati Tags: sec, regulatory, ir, investor relations | Tuesday, August 12, 2008 Posted by philgomes 9:33 AM Exposing Florida's Pay-To-Play Production Shops Over at the Edelman Digital blog: This story combines two of my favorite things: 1) Internet law, and 2) exposing what a former client of mine used to call the "Florida Sleazemerchant" crowd. Here's the story: A small business owner was contacted by a Florida production company, which said it wanted to do a documentary on eco-fashion (the owner's business) that would be aired on public broadcasting and major networks. Later, the production company asked for $22,900 for production costs and $3,000 to cover airfare. Clearly, this was not a journalistic enterprise. The business owner did her homework on the company, read about other people's bad experiences, and even discovered a subterranean Better Business Bureau rating. And, by the way, the PBS FAQ itself mentions that it has no relationship whatsoever with the production company. For exposing this, the Florida company is suing her for $20 million — an amount that the business owner most certainly does not have. More over at the original post. | Sunday, August 03, 2008 Posted by philgomes 2:06 PM 'Bout Damn Time Spent the last half of last week talking to financial communications and investor relations experts about the long-overdue admission from the SEC that, ya know, publication on a company Web site can in fact be "disclosure". Come on in, oh weary, creaky, rusty, seventy-four-year-old regulatory giant, too content for too long with wielding blunt instruments intended to restrain John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan... The water is... Well... The water has been here for almost two decades or nearly a quarter of your lifespan. It always struck me as funny that the SEC seemed to consider the Web (read: one of the world's most open, pervasive forms of communication) as actually less a forum for "fair disclosure" than, say, the wires. The reactions online have ranged from thoughtful to amusing. (The rhetorical arc of the TechCrunch piece is more or less "The press release is dead! Long live the social media press release!" You find yourself humming "The Battle Hymn Of The Republic" about two-thirds of the way through.) I'm paying closer attention to XBRL and related initiatives. In fact, look for standards and practices for how a company might use its Web site for material disclosure. (You can't tell me that the SEC is going to let companies slap together a "social media newsroom" any old way and have it pass muster.) Can't wait for the reaction from Jonathan Schwartz and Mike Dillon, the Sun executives who have been pushing this issue the hardest. Technorati Tags: sec, regulatory, investor relations, ir, public relations, pr | Tuesday, July 29, 2008 Posted by philgomes 8:13 AM Birthday | Friday, July 25, 2008 Posted by philgomes 5:21 PM Scoble On Tech Blogging's "Failure" There's certainly a lot to learn from Robert Scoble's post about the insular, echo-chamber failings of the technology blogging community. That said, I think that Scoble's problem isn't so much that the glass is half-full or half-empty. I just think his glass has been too small. I can't help but think that Scoble's frustrations come from the fact that tech blogging's anointed leaders really missed the point in the first place. Just like the dot-boom of 1999, the loudest voices in tech have allowed the term "technology" has been conflated with "Web stuff". Sell babyclothes? Fine. Sell babyclothes using a social network? Stratospheric valuation estimates abound. Now, as before, real innovation goes largely ignored by the Web 2.0 crowd. As I told one of the heads of the consumer marketing group at a former agency some years ago, "Dot-coms make headlines. Science makes history." He laments the he's "done too much of the 'business talk' and not enough of the 'let’s discover something that’ll improve our lives together' talk." Economics 101 tells you that the latter necessarily inspires the former and vice versa. It's awfully tough to have a meaningful discussion of one without the other in tech. Silicon Valley, at its best, is the most dramatic proof of this. A flying robotic caipirinha-maker would certainly "make my life easier", but I just don't see Sand Hill Road ponying up the dough. Real innovation is what "technology" is all about and what has made Silicon Valley an economic miracle. Not whether one finds Facebook's terms-of-service onerous or thinks another Web 2.0 watering hole doesn't link to him enough. This runs parallel to my ongoing criticism of TechCrunch or, rather, the gushing attention ascribed to it — it operates as if "tech" started in 1999. My summer 2008 reading list (so far) is below. Recapturing the spirit described in these books is, IMHO, where technology blogging needs to go. Broken Genius The Chip Creative Capital (about Georges Doriot) Valley Boy (about Tom Perkins) Technorati Tags: technology, blogging, scoble | Monday, July 14, 2008 Posted by philgomes 11:27 PM Gone Fishin' No Internet. No cellphones. Smoke signals don't even make it to the altitude I'll be at. See you July 21. | Tuesday, July 08, 2008 Posted by philgomes 9:36 AM The Vanishing "Hero Inventor" It's always fascinated me that people know the names Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, but give blank stares at mention of Robert Noyce and Jack Kilby. The two men invented the integrated circuit "separately together" — Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor, Kilby at Texas Instruments — and are pretty much responsible for damn near everything you currently enjoy that has an antenna or wire coming out of it. It's a shame that we don't lionize inventors the way we used to decades ago. However, if pressed, I'll admit that interest in Dean Kamen's work comes close. While on vacation, I've been devouring books about the history of microelectronics. I just polished off T.R. Reid's The Chip, about the work of Noyce and Kilby. Just before, I finished Broken Genius about William Shockley, the co-inventor of the transistor whose ill-considered passion for eugenics eventually overshadowed his fundamentally groundbreaking work. Perhaps we live in different times. To illustrate, I offer this passage from The Chip, about when Diane Sawyer interviewed Jack Kilby after his induction into the Inventors Hall Of Fame: "I mean, if you have to think of one thing that kept the United States at the forefront of technology," Sawyer said, "it was really your invention." Kilby paused, stewing it over. "Well, I hadn't thought of it in those terms," he said quietly. "Have you made money from this invention?" Sawyer asked. "Some, yeah," Kilby replied. Things were just starting to get interesting when Sawyer got a signal from the director: time to move on. She turned quickly to the camera and said, "Coming up in a moment, Dr. Jerry Brodie on how to handle the death of a pet." Jack Kilby's moment in the sun was over. So it goes. Technorati Tags: history, electronics, robert noyce, jack kilby, media | HOME | OBSESSIONS | FAQ | HEROES | CAREER | BLOG | CONTACT Note that the views expressed on this site do not necessarily reflect those of Phil's employer, its business partners, its clients, or anyone or anything that doesn't come from Phil's demented imagination. Hell, to be perfectly honest, even Phil disagrees with what he thinks sometimes. This site has virtually no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Clicking on a link doesn't automatically send a 1/2-cent donation to UNICEF. You can't buy, sell, auction, swap, find a date, win friends, influence people, cross the chasm, or decode the human genome using this site. You won't get free email. You won't win a PalmOne Treo or a Playstation2. This site will not end world hunger, foster peace in the Middle East, help you smell better, teach you how to swing dance, or move the global economy from petroleum to hydrogen fuels. You'll learn a lot about this site's master, though, which amounts to a haphazard collection of strange and useless facts that pretty much won't help you at all.	ABOUT THIS BLOG This is the blog of Phil Gomes, VP with Edelman Digital and senior advisor to the Society for New Communications Research. This blog not only discusses PR and media matters, but Phil's everyday observations about a variety of topics. Phil currently resides in Chicago, IL. EMAIL phil[at] philgomes.com View my page on PROpenMic SYNDICATE Feedburner ARCHIVE YAHOO! IM SKYPE WISH LIST PITCH POLICY MY PHOTOS www.flickr.com Photostream RSS Enter your Email Powered by FeedBlitz COMMENT AND TRACKBACK POLICY Comments and trackbacks are unmoderated, though I will delete the patently offensive ones. Any comments and trackbacks are the opinions of the individual writer of those comments and trackbacks, and not those of Phil Gomes, his employer, its clients, or its business partners. 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