BARTER NOW - Getting Creative with Promotions

No money needed?  Bludot was featured in an article about how the Minnesota, USA based company is running a promotion that features an online swap meet.  They post pictures of their furniture and let the public bid on the items with anything they have to offer.  When I checked out the online auction in progress on 8 March 2012, some items being offered and accepted were:

Offered
Tatto Space - in exchange for a sectional sofa a man from California offered up a choice spot on his arm for the company's logo. (see photo above)

Hand Sculpture - in exchange for a "one night stand sleeper sofa" a man from Utah offered up a "time management" sculpture of a hand with money, house, car, dog, people symbols floating over the palm. Clever.

Accepted
Iconic Architecture Retreat - in exchange for a sectional sofia the Blu Dot executives will get treated to a Creative retreat at a Frank Llyod Wright designed home in Wisconsin.

Love - in exchange for a lamp a women from Massachusetts will carry the lamp around with her for 24 hours over 7 days.  She proved how it would look like in her arms by photoshopping it in.

Bid or check out the activity going on through 16 March 2012 yourself.  Here is how it works according to the Bludot site:

The cool part is that visitor's to the site can also vote if they think the matching is "swap worthy".  What are some other authentic ways to make the old fashioned barter systems and social media blend in interesting ways?  Leave your comments below.

Food issues - the lunchbox pictorial

What moms pack for lunch in Japan: Custom rice creations in a Bento box

Hello Kitty and her friends make lunch more colorful and fun to share with classmates.

Offers up pretty and healthy edible storytime.

Animae in cold cuts and seaweed form the perfect superhero

fighting for a balanced diet everywhere.

Watched it on BBC's "Japan's Amazing Lunchboxes and had

to spend 30 minutes learning more about it.

Even came across the book

A book by Christopher D. Saylers which is now on my

Wish list!

Can you ever look at food the same way again and not think

about the possibilities?

Global Entrepreneurship Week at ZSEM and beyond

November 14th through the 20th, celebrates the theme of entrepreneurship around the world.  Students, teachers, practitioners and the general public get some increased exposure of the entrepreneurs past, present and future in impacting our lives.

Every year I have students conduct an interview with an entrepreneur.  These one on one sessions which I encourage to be face to face is one of the easier, straight forward assignments in the array
of tools used to teach the course.  But the exchange is not as impactful as it could be if it happens between 2 people and it is not shared.  I get so much joy out of seeing the dialog exchanges and the wisdom, honesty and reality checks most entrepreneurs provide to the students.  Every year I try to have the post-interview sharing with peers be a little different.  Some years its a poster session, some years its live entrepreneurs like show and tell and this year its all about the video presentations.

As of Monday, the start of GEW there are now over 60 videos posted by students on our event Youtube page and on the Vimeo playlist also created.  The levels of creativity, technical ability and storytelling vary greatly.  But I appreciate the full range of ideas that are behind the creations so its the process not just the product that I will recognize and in teaching terms I must grade.  There are some who planned in advance with a clear vision and were able to execute; there were others who kept it to a clean and simple story and format and resulted in a standout; there were others inspired or intimidated by the technology who pushed themselves out of their comfort zone or retreated to an online template transfer of ppt to video.  There are some who are not satisfied with the work they did either because they are perfectionist or because they started late and don't want to be compared to their peers.  Any way you slice it, entrepreneurs were celebrated and students engaged in some facet of being entrepreneurial themselves in the process.  If we were able to do this in conjunction with a global initiative then that is just the cherry on top.

I also made a submission and I showed them the process...with a simple powerpoint, research I added music, posted and played in front of an audience 4 times, got feedback, retooled and reposted.  I gave them permission to one up the professor and some took that challenge and soared in their own unique vision of the assignment.  There are many more who will need to learn how to take feedback without getting defensive and learn the lifelong lesson "if at first you don't succeed, try, try again".

To learn more about Global Entrepreneurship Week, please visit www.unleashingideas.org
You can check out all the activities registered for each of the 123 countries participating.