Here is a slideshow of photos from last night. The presenters were great, and the Sugar Maple was an excellent venue to work with.

You can also view the photos on our Flickr page: www.flickr.com/photos/800ceoread/

I'd love to hear the cultural reasoning behind each design. Any insight?

8:00 PM
Hi Hat Garage
1701 N. Arlington
Milwaukee
$10

What's Pecha Kucha?

Pecha Kucha (Japanese for "the sound of conversation"), devised by Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham (Klein Dytham architecture), was conceived in 2003 in Tokyo as a place for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public. It has now grown to involve everyone from pizza delivery drivers to executives to celebrities, and is held in over 100 cities around the world. Join us for the first in an ongoing series of Pecha Kucha Nights in Milwaukee and discover what the members of your community are involved in, meet new people during the beer break, and join the worldwide conversation!

Here's what some other folks have said about PK Night:

"I love this idea to pieces."
- Seth Godin, marketing guru, author of Purple Cow

"...combines business meeting and poetry slam to transform corporate cliche into surprisingly compelling beat-the-clock performance art."
- Dan Pink, Wired magazine, author of A Whole New Mind

Local press:

MKE magazine

OnMilwaukee.com

If you're not in Milwaukee, visit the PK site to see if there's a chapter in your city - then join the conversation!

www.pecha-kucha.org

"But, hold on," you say. "What the heck IS Pecha Kucha anyway???" Pecha Kucha (which means chit chat in Japanese) started in Tokyo as a way for designers to present their ideas over 20 slides x 20 seconds each slide. The momentum grew, and now PK is held in over 100 cities around the world, featuring presentations from mayors, moms, musicians, mailmen, and many others. Check out the book, come to an event, and as they say, Join the Conversation!

A note about the author: Ryan Allis is CEO of iContact Corp., a venture-backed marketing and online communications firm that has grown from nothing to over $10 million in annual sales and 80 employees. He is also the Chairman of the web marketing firm Virante, Inc. For more info, visit www.zeromillion.com.

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5 Steps to Optimizing Your Website

The majority of Web site owners have fewer than 10 incoming links to their sites. The search engines view incoming links as verification that your site has quality content. The more related links your site has from other sites (with the underlined clickable text that includes your targeted keywords), the higher your ranking in the search engines will be. Here is a step-by-step overview of this entire SEO process:

1. Select your keywords. Use tools such as the Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool, Google's Search Term Suggestion Tool, and Word tracker to determine which related keywords or key phrases it would be best to optimize your site for. Once you have a list of potential keywords, go to Google and type in those keywords. Then see how many incoming links the top few sites have. You can determine this number by typing in "link:http://www.competitordomain.com." Take a look at whether the first few sites have the targeted keyword in the domain name or in the title, or whether they appear often on their page. Use this information to estimate what it would take to get your site above the current sites in the rankings.
2. Ensure that your site has those keywords on it. Make sure that the keywords you are targeting are on your home page at least five times. Having a 5 percent to 15 percent keyword density for your targeted search term on your home page is optimal. Also ensure that your title tag and image alt tags contain your targeted keyword. Add your targeted term to an H1 header tag for added prominence.
3. Build good-quality content on your site. I call this phase the "content campaign." Either write articles yourself for the site or go through the search engines to find related content. If you find an article on another site that you'd like to publish on your site, send an e-mail to the author, site owner, and/or publisher to request permission to syndicate the article on your site. Present it as a win/win quid pro quo in which you receive good-quality content and the author/publisher receives free exposure and a link to his or her Web site in the byline of the article. I'd suggest having at least 25 quality articles on your site before going forward. Optimize your home page for the two or three most competitive target terms. Optimize your in-site pages for the more unique and less competitive terms. You can also outsource the creation of this content to copywriters, using a service such as elance.com, for about $30 per 400-word article.
4. Build links to your Web site. Without incoming links to your site, it will never have a chance at being at the top of the search engines for competitive terms. Use the research you did earlier on the number of links the sites at the top of the listings have or your targeted keywords to set a goal for how many related incoming links you want to build to your own site. To obtain links, go through the search engines and find related Web sites, then contact the owners of those sites and offer to exchange links. Add their links to your Web site and e-mail them to let them know that you've linked to their sites and would appreciate a reciprocal link. I'd suggest contacting them first via e-mail and then via phone if necessary. In your initial e-mail to site owners, include the URL and description of your site, as well as the location of where their links are and which sites of theirs you are referring to. I'd suggest creating a resources section on your site and placing your link partners in the appropriate category within. You can also build links naturally through press releases or by having great content, a useful tool, a viral video, or an interesting blog. If you have more money than time, you can also purchase relevant links from quality Web sites through a service called LinkExperts or purchase reviews with links from sites such as PayPerPost, ReviewMe, and Blogvertise. Ensure that whatever links you build to your Web site have your target key phrase in the anchor text, the words that are clickable and underlined. Finally, text links are much more valuable than image links, as the search engines can follow text links and associate the link text with your Web site, but they cannot do this for image links.
5. Continue building your site's reputation. Once you have built a few related incoming links, the search engines will find and index your site. If your site is new, it can take up to nine months for Google to allow it to show up for competitive search terms. During this time, continue building good-quality related content and work to build as many incoming links from related Web sites as you can.

Jon posted about this event once before. On Tuesday, February 26th, we're going to debunk the misconception that design is simply used to beautify ideas and make things pretty. Design is often seen as an afterthought to business; we're going to show that design actually drives dollars to the bottom line. It's not just clip-art and nice fonts; design affects every aspect of our daily lives.

We're bringing in four people to help out with this conversation:

• Mike Brenner of MARN (Milwaukee Artist Resource Network)


• Deborah Wolf, Eppstein Uhen Architects


• Amy Decker, Dig Design


• Clay Konnor, ec connection

This event is the first in what we hope will be a series of events to bring designers (of all sorts...web, print, interior, product, etc.) and business people together. Do join us.

Tickets are $20 per person, and include a brilliant book by Michael Bierut, Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design, retail price $24.95. Coffee will be served.

WHEN?
Tuesday, February 26, 2008, 7:00 PM.
Eisner Museum of Advertising and Design
208 N. Water Street
Milwaukee, WI 53202

To register, click here. And feel free to bring along a friend, or ten.

Attendees will partake in an engaging discussion with both design and business professionals, and will also receive a complimentary copy of Michael Bierut's book Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design.

There's already a strong response to this one, so if you plan to register, don't hesitate!

His video announcement is worth a look.

His latest book The Laws of Simplicity provides 10 Laws and 3 Keys described in his self-imposed limit of 100 pages.

I pulled it back out for another look as we head into the new year.

[hat tip: TP Blog]

The major feature in the November issue is newspapers. Consider these facts:

• Over 11,000 newspapers produced daily worldwide.
• 1.6 billion people read a newspaper every day, up 5% over the last five years.
• Newspapers employ two million people globally.

Those numbers stand in contrast to the doom and gloom you constantly read in the US. Reported in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, numbers from the Audit Bureau of Circulation show circulation of U.S. weekday newspapers was down 2.6% from last year.

Monocle also highlights a number of recent redesigns from around the world, the most significant Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

That got me thinking. I would love to see dailies from around the world. You can see some of them online, but there is no substitute for seeing the object.

So, here is my proposition. Anyone who send me the daily newspaper they read will get a free book sent book to them as a gift. I need to put some limits on this, so here is the process:

2. If you would to participate, email me at t o d d [a t] 8 0 0 c e o r e a d [dot] c o m. Tell me the newspaper you would send me and where it is published. I am looking for global dailies.
3. I will send you back an address to mail the physical copy of the paper.
4. Once I receive your package, I will return the favor.
5. Offer ends November 30th, 2007

I am only going to accept one entry per newspaper, so it is first come first serve.

And I am really looking for dailies from outside the US, but I may accept some of the within the 50 states.

I really want to encourage our global readership to join in. It is often hard to include folks outside the US in our special offers. In this case, we want to encourage it.

In 2005, Chronicle partnered with a California-based design firm called IDEO to put out a book called Thoughtless Acts?, a little book of photography that illuminated ways people unconsciously interact with objects in the world -- like placing something in your teeth when your hands are full or following a straight line in the sidewalk.

Recently IDEO, along with author Andrew Burroughs, came out with another book called Everyday Engineering. Like Thoughtless Acts?, Everyday Engineering is a collection of photographs and annotations. This time, the book invites readers to envision the world, the "built environment," through the eyes of an engineer. You'll notice things that you pass by every day: the facade of a building, the shape of a manhole cover, a loose screw.

Below is a brief photo excerpt from Everyday Engineering. The caption beneath each image indicates which section of the book the image is taken from.

CRAFTSMANSHIP

ELEGANCE

ELEGANCE

SEQUENCES

CHALLENGES

CONSEQUENCES

TIME

Everyday Engineering is presented in two parts. First, it shows the ways engineers react to and make decisions about design. Burroughs takes you behind the scenes to look at craftsmanship, illusions, elegance, and the function behind the form. In the second part, it shows how the built environment is affected by forces beyond the engineer's control, like corrosion, weather, abuse, wear from repetitious use, and the unseen or unanticipated. Here, Burroughs talks about issues like the weakness of corners, ugliness, choosing one material over another, and consequences of hasty solutions or the lack of the right tools and equipment. And much more.

The book is made up of mainly photographs, so you can expect to learn a lot by reading the introduction to each section and then looking at examples from the real world.

To drive their point home, they quoted Peter Drucker who once said, "the customer rarely buys what the business thinks it sells him."

That message is as timely today as it was 10 years ago. Many companies fall into the tunnel-vision that focuses on how to sell the product. Just ask someone on the street about their mobile phone who bought it because of that snazzy marketing appeal. Or, ask me about mine.

We got a free book with the class for future reference. C2 Graphics gives all of their pupils PeachPit Press Visual Quickstart Guide for InDesign. Our instructor Fritz also recommended Adobe InDesign CS2 Classroom In A Book for additional exercises.

Heller and Ilic are two of the preeminent designers out there today, directing and designing art for such publications as The New York Times and Time magazine. This book is really neat because it shows how there's a pathology to design. Art builds on inspiration, from the most obscure to the most obvious objects in the world. It also deviates from existing design, as The Anatomy of Design shows.

Todd and I have been discussing the lack of design resources for the average businessperson. How do we identify good design? How do we know if our graphics are accomplishing what we want them to accomplish? I have some background in document design, but still it's often difficult to accomplish even the simplest projects without some advice from a professional graphic designer.

We're wondering, what are the design issues you face? How have you met design needs within your organization? What design resources would be useful to you?

• A Leader's Legacy by James Kouzes and Barry Posner (Jossey-Bass) - This is a follow-on to the best-seller The Leadership Challenge; alot of people like Kouzes and Posner's take on leadership.
• Hoopla by Crispin Porter + Bogusky (Powerhouse) - Powerhouse has been doing the Lovemarks/Kevin Roberts books and I have been looking forward to seeing what they do with another ad agency.
• Success Built to Last: Creating A Life That Matters by Jerry Porras et al. (Wharton School Publishing) - Built to Last author Porras this time asks what people rather than companies need to do to find success.
• Bangalore Tiger: How Indian Tech Upstart WIPRO is Rewriting the Rules of Global Competition by Steve Hamm (McGraw-Hill) - The senior writer goes inside this Indian phenom to find out what has brought all the success.

October

• Mavericks at Work: Why The Most Original Minds In Business Win by Bill Taylor and Polly LaBarre (William Morrow) - Bill and Polly created business conversation in the 90's at writing Fast Company magazine. If you have missed that passion and energy, you'll love the book.
• Tough Choices by Carly Fiorina (Portfolio) - This is going to be a big book. The former CEO of Hewlett-Packard tells her rise to the top and what happened when she got there.
• L.L. Bean: The Making of an American Icon by Leon Gorman (Harvard Business School Press) - Word has it that HBSP has been bugging the folks at L.L. Bean for years to do a book; it finally here and expect to see lots of cross-promotion in other L.L. Bean communications.
• Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage by Daniel Esty and Andrew Winston (Yale) - This title shows how companies can use green issues as a competitive weapon.
• The Starfish and The Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom (Portfolio) - What do Alcoholics Anonymous, Napster, and al Queda all have in common? No one runs them. I love this book and highly recommend you check it out.
• Setting the Table: The Power of Hospitality in Restaurants, Business, and Life by Danny Meyer (HarperCollins) - Meyer knows something about delivering service. His restaurants occupy four of the top twenty spots on Zagat's.
• Tailgating, Sacks, and Salary Caps: How The NFL Became the Most Successful Sports Franchise in History by Mark Yost (Kaplan, Nov.) - This is about the business of football in all its glory.