Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Wouldn’t We All Like to Score Like Ed?

According to Business Week, Ed Robinson spent $10,000 to create a humorous 12-second “viral video” and e-mailed it to five of his friends with his website address. Three months later his site had received 500,000 visits. Wouldn't we all like to score with a creative hit like that?! As the article describes, big dollars are […]

Learn More July 25, 2006

Giving Plus

According to Philanthropy Today, Bob Wilson, a truly dedicated environmentalist, has announced his intention to give $100 million each to Environmental Defense, The Nature Conservancy, the Wildlife Conservation Society and the World Monuments Fund, with the proviso that each group match his gift with other fundraising. From my Environmental Defense days, I know Bob is […]

Learn More July 24, 2006

Play. Learn. Save the World.

“The generation that grew up with Super Mario is entering the workplace, entering politics, so they see games as just another good tool to use to communicate” says Henry Jenkins, an MIT professor quoted in Sunday's New York Times. The Times piece, “Saving the World, One Video Game at a Time”, explores and reports on […]

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Agitating Again: “Funding Father’s” New Book Released

I'll never forget the phone call I received from Richard Viguerie, often called the 'funding father' of the New Right, on election night 1980. A dozen liberal Senate candidates, and presidential candidate John Anderson– campaigns that Craver, Mathews, Smith & Company had worked on that year — had just gone down to in landslide defeat. […]

Learn More July 21, 2006

Poetry or Persuasion?

Once again the Pew Internet Project has produced a research masterpiece with its just-released study, Bloggers: A portrait of the internet's new storytellers. In addition to reporting all the valuable demographic data (12 million blog creators, 57 million blog readers), Pew drilled into the motivations and behaviors of bloggers, producing many rich insights. Looking at […]

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If She’s An Anthropologist Hire Her for the Development Office!

There are 8.9 million millionaire households in the U.S., up nearly 50% in two years. The heads of those households could fill 100 football stadiums the size of Notre Dame's. But even if millionaires are now a common species, they are hardly homogenous. Just ask cultural anthropologist Larry Samuel of the firm Culture Planning. Although […]

Learn More July 20, 2006