Levy Rivers's List: Conversation

• It's clear that McCain picked her because he had decided that he needed a game-changer. But why? He'd closed the gap in the polls with Obama. True, that had more to do with Obama sagging than McCain gaining. But what's the difference? You win either way.
• So why did McCain do it? He figured it's a Democratic year. The Republican brand is deeply tarnished. The opposition is running on "change" in a change election. So McCain gambled that he could steal the change issue for himself -- a crazy brave, characteristically reckless, inconceivably difficult maneuver -- by picking an authentically independent, tough-minded reformer. With Palin, he doubles down on change
• The gamble is enormous. In a stroke, McCain gratuitously forfeited his most powerful argument against Obama. And this was even before Palin's inevitable liabilities began to pile up -- inevitable because any previously unvetted neophyte has "issues." The kid. The state trooper investigation. And worst, the paucity of any Palin record or expressed conviction on the major issues of our time.

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• There must be a secret that all commanders know, the secret revealed in crisis, that the soul that is calm with controlled emotion is performing an act of faith – the battle continues.

• From what I can gather so far, Reputation HQ is a tool that’s designed to be used by a number of people in an organisation working collaboratively to monitor and respond to threats and opportunities to the organisation’s reputation.

• We have been customising our brandstation corporate social network platform for blue-chip companies who use it for internal and external communications, sharing information
• The on-demand platform more easily allows viewmy.tv to supply customers around the world with social network consisting of standarised components rather than needing to be in the same location and servicing a client with a local account team.
   Brandstation site owners have total control, being able to manage components and settings such as blogs, events, forums, teams, users, RSS feeds, email alerts, and also monitor and moderate user activities.

• Gaining increased consumer input and user generated content is a good thing. However, what about false positives for the service provider, false negatives from their competitors, and overly emotional reactions from consumers with no opportunity for the service to provider to answer or often be aware of the commentary.
• Rate Point was launched in September 2006 and the initial release was available in June 2007. As Neal explained, maintaining valued perceptions by customers on service and product quality is pivotal in ensuring small-business success and growth of the customer base. RatePoint enables business owners to manage their reputation online and proactively mediate consumer complaints and feedback.
• There are several ways companies can engage RatePoint. They can place the RatePoint seal or review widget on their site as a means to get to a rating and feedback screen such as this one for the Marena Group. RatePoint also provides email marketing tools to make it easier for businesses to proactively and regularly ask customers for feedback.

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• Data Ownership - Data ownership should remain and always remain the property of the individual. Issues of data ownership need to be addressed strongly going forward, no company has the right to own my data. I may grant them permission to loan it temporarily for purposes that are for my benefit, or theirs if I am feeling altruistic, but the right to use my data for a third party should be revocable at any time.

   

  Data Portability/Migration - Likewise an extension of the above, I should be able to transfer and make my data accessible to third parties with ease. I shouldn’t have to be duplicating forms all the time.

• Coincidentally, on the very same day the Financial Times reported that UBS had advised 50 current and former employees of its private banking group not to travel to the United States. The bank is worried that they might be arrested in connection with a massive tax-evasion scheme under which UBS helped rich Americans cheat the IRS, thus making sure that the rest of us suckers had to pay for, e.g., the War in Iraq. Some of the clients of the scheme are already testifying before a grand jury, and a senior UBS official has already been indicted. UBS is offering to provide lawyers for all of the suspects.

    

  Now, how is it that Gramm got to be Vice-Chairman of UBS? Why, by being the chief author of the banking-deregulation legislation (the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act) that made so many bankers rich and helped create the crisis McCain doesn't want to do anything about.

    

  In keeping with McCain's decision to purge "lobbyists" from his campaign, Gramm had himself de-registered as a lobbyist. But he's still Vice Chairman of UBS, and still McCain's chief economic adviser. All the de-listing means is that he can't now personally call Congressmen or Senators; no doubt his staff can handle such details for the next few months.

• Sampson said his reputation is "very important" to him, but only knows one way to regain it.

  "Just be who I've been my entire life," Sampson said. "Sometimes you take hits that you have to overcome, but that's something that I just work at as I go forward.

• The grab for this group of voters has generally been coordinated by a seasoned team of professional campaign staff operating in war rooms and spending millions in mobilizing voters. But new efforts among progressive voters, musicians, and grassroots groups are saying the way to be "big" in '08 is to "go small." And how resources are spent in this election and after, could determine whether the Democratic Party is about short-term voter excitement or permanent citizen engagement.
• This new group of efforts focuses on local leadership, small circles, and cultural organizing. They are taking their strategies from the anti-slavery movement, groups like craigslist, and most surprisingly, a new Christian movement. "
• Potts and other organizers note that while overall church attendance has steadily declined since the 1990s, a new form of church has taken off--the house church. Unlike traditional churches, the house church movement doesn't meet in a specific house of worship, but instead, as the name suggests, in people's homes.

• They note the key to the success of these churches is threefold:

    

  1. Shared values rather than on autocratic rule.

    

  2. Peer circles, rather than as a large, rigid, top-down hierarchy.

    

  3. Leading through inspiration rather than by formal authority, allowing, but not forcing, others to follow them.
• As Potts, who is organizing with musicians during 08, puts it "The conservatives have churches every Sunday, progressives have concerts every night." From an organizing perspective, concerts are for progressives what churches have been for conservatives.

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• Learning to talk out rather than act out our emotions is what separates human beings from the animal kingdom. It is a gift of the prefrontal cortex, that thinking part of our brain that was added, late in our evolution, to our "animal" or "reptilian" brain. The cortex allows us to think, hope and dream....to feel our most primitive feelings and translate them into words, music, poetry or plays. It's part of our power of reasoning.

• I really love my Twitter account but I feel like I haven't been using it the way I want to. Quite honestly, I feel sorry for all of my followers because they wind up with my tweets in their timelines and I haven't been able to utilize the medium the way I want to. I also participate in another Twitter account over on Rocketboom so I'm thinking I'll post more over there and start up a new account to do what I want to do next. 
  
   It would be silly to just delete this account I have here, especially if there is someone out there that had like interests and had something to say or wanted to get involved in some relevant conversations. In terms of monetary value, I have no expectations or needs at all so I decided not to put a minimum bid on this. Whatever will be, will be.
• So basically it's like getting a new account with your own name, but having a pre-installed audience.

• Rocketboomer founder Andrew Baron is making techie headlines today with his plight to sell his Twitter account and its 1,500 followers. Baron listed the account for sale on eBay.Bloggers expect Baron's stunt will spark some debate about online credibility and privacy, and that Twitter will almost certainly delete the account once it's been sold.

• When I was asked to resign as basketball coach at my son's school because a boy -- his parents, actually -- suggested I had a prurient interest in the rebounding drill, and when my bishop, already predisposed to antagonism toward me, decided to "investigate" the claim, well, I was deeply invested in my reputation. This is the sort of accusation that can permanently damage my ability to make a living, even when swiftly exonerated, which I was.

   

  So, in cases of egregious slander, yes, I really care about my reputation.

   

  There is a short list of folks in my inner circle with whom I care greatly about my reputation. My children top that list. My best friend, Paul. A former graduate school professor. Erin. Kim. There are a few more, but the list is surprisingly short.
• what my general reputation is
• You know, Steven, I think people really see you as ..." I'm often intrigued, surprised, even startled, whether the sentence ends in something positive or negative
• I have lots of reputations, good and bad
• My favorite Aesop's fable is about a father and son leading a donkey. They overhear the criticism, "Why waste a donkey; someone should ride it." So the son rides, and the next criticism is, "Lazy boy! Making his father walk!" So they switch places. Sure enough: "Despicable father! Forcing his son to walk!" They both get on the donkey. "How cruel to so burden the poor beast in the hot sun!" So the father and son resolve to carry the donkey, who bucks and kicks in terror, falls off the bridge into the river and drowns.

• How do I shape, manage and protect my reputation? Largely by not aiming at my reputation! My goal, rather, is authenticity. I strive to live authentically. Or, as author Richard Bach says it, "Live never to be ashamed if anything you say or do is published around the world, even if what is said is not true."

   

  Live authentically. Live with integrity.

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• Alegi, 72, said Europeans are appalled by the Republican administration's willingness to set aside conventional civil rights for detainees captured in Iraq or Afghanistan.

  Ken Sherman, a Hamilton, Ont., resident who was selected as a delegate pledged to Barack Obama, said that when he visits Europe, he uses his Canadian rather than American passport because international anger over U.S. foreign policy.

  "In the last five years with George Bush, I don't pull out my American passport unless I need it."

  But Obama's rise has made Sherman, 71, prepared to embrace his American citizenship again. "Something has happened in the past two years that has made me proud to be an American again. People are rising up."
  

  Wayne Weightman, a 46-year-old Cambodian lawyer, came to Vancouver to support Barack Obama who, he believes, can revive respect overseas for America.