As a dad AND a VP of marketing at a growing internet company in silicon valley, sometimes you need to work on the weekend.  Well, this weekend I bought a new Cisco Flip HD video camera and brought my 5 year old twins into the office with my while I worked on an upcoming Fuze Meeting release (top secret!).

The following video was produced as a result.  It is titled “So easy a 5 year old can do it!”  I am biased, but I suggest watching it full-screen.  It is under 2 minutes.

Fuze Meeting from Patrick Moran on Vimeo.

Now, I’ve used my kids in work videos in the past, but this roughly edited, raw sequence seems to capture the essence of their cute-ness, as well as the essence of our product.   I added a little obligatory ukulele music to make it flow. I showed it around the office, and people told me I needed to share it via our blog.  Hey, why not.

Let me know what you think of it.  And please share with your friends if you like it!

Also posted on Fuze Meeting Blog

Me:  Failure at maintaining my blog.

You:  Nonexistant audience.

Us:  We’ll come together again soon.

I’ve got a lot to say.

Patrick

My team and I have invested a few days in www.BarackInc.com — the companion website to a new book coming out by Barry Libert and Rick Faulk of Mzinga.  The book is being published by Pearson and FTPress.  It is meant to be a strightforward site. 

Check out www.barackinc.com for more information.

Patrick.

My Chairman here at Mzinga (here in a lovely cyan blue) recently wrote this article.  You like?

From Mass High Tech:

View it here

Blue Barry from Mzinga

It’s been two weeks since President-elect Barack Obama won his bid for the presidency. Much has already been written about the unprecedented fundraising techniques and precision campaign tactics that led to that history-making moment.

But what stands out most to me is the truly new type of leader that emerged before us — one who embraces change, attacks age-old challenges with bold new solutions, and recognizes that leadership is as much about listening and collaborating with people than it is about making hard decisions.

The overwhelmingly positive response to Obama’s leadership style is also a reflection of our increasingly social world. Through this election, it came across loud and clear that we expect our leaders to be more socially conscious, connected and transparent if they want to gain our support and trust.

And if you look closely, there are lessons in that for all leaders, particularly within the business world:

• Start with the idea of change that people can believe in

At the outset, Obama’s campaign team faced many of the challenges businesses face today — limited budgets, unknown brand, and strong competition. They also understood that the old way of doing things wasn’t working for the “business” of government, so they became agents of change in executing their strategies.

• Embrace social software to connect and foster your audience

Early on, Obama’s team recognized the sheer power that online and social technologies could offer in helping organize their operations, gain insight from their supporters, and extend their market reach to draw in more voters. Yet, many businesses today are hesitant to use these technologies. Embracing them can, and will, help expand your business potential.

• Engage your community in ongoing conversations and critical matters

It may be cliché, but people truly are the power behind any thriving business, whether they are the employees who run your operations or the customers and partners who invest in your products and services. Empowering and engaging your constituencies to participate in your business processes can only sharpen your competitive edge.

In a time where one out of five employees will leave your company, and a looming economic crisis has virtually every corporate budget bootstrapped, businesses are facing similarly daunting challenges as those faced by our government. We can keep doing what we’ve always done and hope for the best outcome. Or we can draw from the leadership lessons of our new president-elect, and increase our chances of winning against the odds.
Barry Libert is chairman of Mzinga, the leader in business social media and learning solutions for the workplace, marketplace and extended enterprise. He can be reached at barry@mzinga.com or he can be found on Twitter at @blibert.

Mzinga is doing some really cool stuff in the “Social Learning” space.  (I am the CMO, so a bit biased) I found this quote today:

Other sessions I attended were good.  No other Aha! moments.  But I did get to meet some great new people, share some content with them for their future presentations, start a group centered around measurement, and watch David Wilkins show that he gets it. It was refreshing to see.  His speaking style and passion for it all reminded me of mine.  It was also great to see that mZinga gets it.  One of the only ones (or maybe only one?) that does.  I need to dive more into their product.  I have done basic research on it before, but need to dive deeper. David offered to do a webinar for the Social Learning SIG in January.  That will be the next one.Engaged Learning, Nov 2008

I like Kevin’s passion about it… You should read the whole article…

PS – Sorry I haven’t written in a while.  I am back on the horse.  Be sure to check out  http://www.mzinga.com/en/Community/Blogs/Patrick-Moran/

It’s called the Girl Effect.

Congratulations to my branding friends at Cisco and WebEx — you (well, WE) managed to move up one spot on the Business Week list – not an easy task!   Louis Vuitton will always be ahead of you (I guess) but beating Apple, Honda, Oracle, Dell, etc… Good stuff!  I think having a more end-user focused asset with WebEx did the trick… don’t you?  Its the new WebEx logo that did it…

Cisco WebEx boosts Cisco

Here’s the complete Business Week list for 2008

This link is the story about it

Mzinga Builds White Label Social Networks for Companies (video)

Watch my friend and co-worker Aaron share a tiny bit of the Mzinga story.

Mzinga on Mashable

http://mashable.com/2008/09/30/mzinga/

Inspired or annoyed?   I like him.