Who Stole my Death Star?

After multiple viewings of various episodes during my beloved SpikeTV Labor Day Star Wars Marathon (in honor of the Death Star construction workers, AT AT line workers, and the Oompa Loopma warthogs manning the furnace conveyor on Bespin I guess), I have determined Palpatine is an outstanding business role model.

Think about it...

1. He rapidly rose from a lowly senator representing the most annoying planet in the Republic to Emperor
2. He secured a spiffy cadre of guards AND color coded them 
3. EVERYONE took his calls 
4. Plus the whole lightening from the fingers thing. Frick'n awesome. 

Now, I am not pointing this out just because many (rightly) have determined Palpatine and I likely have exact matching results on Pace Color Palette testing.

Honest.
 

Sometime during my third viewing of Return of the Jedi, I determined I could have rocketed up the old corporate turbo-lift had I limited my comments to the following gems he offered in the movie:

• Now witness the firepower of this fully ARMED and OPERATIONAL (PowerPoint, white paper, business model, etc.) 
• I wonder if your feelings on this matter are clear 
• Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen 
• You will find that it is you who are mistaken, about a great many things 
• Only now, at the end, do you understand... 
• Now, you will pay the price for your lack of vision! 

It's never too late. I'll put these into action from here on out. 

Not sure if I'll sport the robe as well, but it is tempting.

Profilin'

Boilerplate Kelly Thul profile:

Serial Dabbler. Hippie anarchist. 92% evil.

Commentary here is my own and does not represent my employer's positions, strategies, or opinions.

On occasion, I get the chance to speak to groups. I was a last minute sub recently and the organizer must of Googled me. He responded back to the person I was subbing for asking: "Is he the 92% evil guy?? If he is, hope we get the other 8%!"

So, figured it might be good to explain this a bit...

1. Serial dabbler - I am. To my core. I learn best via experience and be it Geocities, Amiga game development, Digg, generation zero stream-powered MP3 players, Xtranormal, Sea Monkeys... whatever - I try it out to attempt to gain a better understanding.
   
   
2. Hippie Anarchist - A coworker, and shockingly human-like lawyer, gave me this tag. It comes from a LA Times article quote from Thomas Nolle, "The problem is that it (the Internet) was devised by a bunch of hippie anarchists...". She viewed the folks mentioned in the quote and I as kindred spirits. She was pretty much right.
   
   
3. 92% evil - This was the score I received after completing a Facebook "How evil are you?" quiz. We are all aware of the rigorous scientific method Facebook insists upon for a quiz like this - so the results are not to be questioned. Most of the people I work with think the score is low BTW.
   
   
4. Commentary here is my own and does not represent my employer's positions, strategies, or opinions - Back to the serial dabbler/experiential learner thing. Social create this huge band of blur between professional and private musings. I want to understand it better, so here I sit blogging, tweeting, etc... to learn.
   
   I am a huge fan of the organization I work for and I am transparent as I can be when I talk about it. When I am not talking about it, I hope the language above helps create the appropriate distinction. While I think (hope) my company considers me an OK guy, I am certain my content (a mix of Alice Cooper/Star Wars/geekdom/zombies/White Sox/Nancy Grace hatred) is not reflected in company brand/communication objectives.
   
   Which is fine - for both of us :)

BTW, I am going to blog sometime on my favorite Twitter profiles later, but had to share my all time favorite one.

From @TakeSumE ...

I killed a lot of hitchhikers once.

Ten worst job interview questions

Fun list of the ten worst job interview questions ever. Some sound vaguely familiar, but the whole "why did you take the pen?" one is news to me.

Social media in corporations

This was handy. The Social Media Workshop has just a ton of presentations offering different insights into business use of.. you guessed it... social media :)

Some pretty good stuff here.

Stop blocking?

A Canadian study suggests business and marketing leaders believe social media is replacing traditional media.

46% of them said social media is more important than TV, radio, newspapers and magazines.

85% believe it has become a vital element in communication.

66% don’t think employees should be using it at work.

Go figure.

This information, and much more insight on this topic can be found here.

101 - Web 2.0 for business

Nicely done communication of web 2.o business uses in plain language.