UGC in the Context of History
This is a really interesting video on User-Generated content recently posted to the TED site Larry Lessig: How creativity is being strangled by the law. It gives me a historical perspective on the times we are living in. The natural laws of content are definitely changing. And, there are some hilarious bonus mash-up treats Lessing shows worth getting through some slow middle bits. Want inspiration? Visit TED Talks.

How to Hire a Design Agency: wow that's a lot of work
Forrester put out an interesting report on How to Hire an Interactive Design Agency [subscription required] by Kerry Bodine. It is a very in-depth review of how broken the process is and how hard it can be for someone to find the right fit. Wow, looks more complicated when I read this. But let’s face it, the skills and experience required to do this work well are in short supply. Finding the right agency can be very hard. Where do you start? This may be complicated by a lack of experience on the client side and in larger organizations - let’s face it - politics. Hear the words “website” or “site redesign” and watch the seagulls gather. And where there are lots of seagulls? Yep, lots of poop. In either case - clients large and small I believe a combination of a good solid methodology founded on real users along with strong project and account management can make a huge difference. Oh, and don’t forget, someone needs to develop and launch the design, something which can be very easily overlooked and if you want to design externally and design in house the transition can be very rocky.

Speaking of Forrester… Has anyone else noticed Forrester is starting to take the glove offs? This is a very good article on the Online Travel space by Harvey Manning. He’s calling all the players in online travel to task around the customer experience. He rightly points out that OLTA and supplier sites really just expose back-end tools and interfaces. No one is yet delivering a travel planning experience that improves on the kitchen table.

Basic Leadership Common Sense, but easy to forget
Good straightforward piece on leadership, The seven secrets of inspiring leaders, makes me reflect on some of the good and bad leaders I have had over the years. 1. Demonstrate enthusiasm. 2. Articulate a compelling course of action. 3. Sell the benefit. 4. Tell more stories. 5. Invite participation. 6. Reinforce an optimistic outlook. 7. Encourage potential. [via 37Signals blog Sunspots]

SEO check-up: say ahhhhh
SEO: The Website Health Check tool give you a quick shortcut to see if you have any major SEO issues. The site queries Google to grab pages you have indexed in Google, and looks for issues amongst the first 1,000 results. Not all the recommendations are easy to act on. This is a good site for SEO, but still can seem like witchcraft on some levels. Let us know if you need help.

Open Social 101
Want to learn more about what all this Open Social hoopla is about? Here is a good video from Ning about Open Social. I think there is room for Facebook to ride the wave, but this move will lead innovation elsewhere IMHO.