Ouch … this is both cool, and embarrassing! My wife and I have jumped upon a special package to fly down to Branson for their first ever airshow, on the first ever commercial airplane flight, two days before their new airport officially opens. As a techie I get a pass for these cool set of "firsts", but Branson! Have I lost or gained in the cool quotient? You tell me? After all, the Branson Air Show Twitters! Now, do we go to the Dick Clark's American Bandstand, or the Lawrence Welk Show!

Post Update: Watch the Airshow!

Way to go Karen (my daughter) and Molly (my wife)! Started together, ran together, finished together.
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Via the Curious Cat and Science and Engineering Blog I learned of these cool robots … only in Manhattan. HG Wells War of the Worlds they are not! I present to you Tweenbots by Kacie Kinzer.

"Mission 1: Get from the Northeast to the Southwest
Corner of Washington Square Park / time: 42 minutes / number of people
who intervened: 29. Tweenbots are human-dependent robots that navigate the city with the
help of pedestrians they encounter. Rolling at a constant speed, in a
straight line, Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and
rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right
direction to reach their goal."

Okay … I believe in the value of these tools, but how many of you are in my position? I am trying to encourage the adoption and funding of Marketing 2.0 / Web 2.0 tools at my company. Not surprisingly my management asks me for hard data … business value cases … ROI. It's easy to find magazine and journal articles touting the need to use these tools, but finding hard data … well that's another matter. My research has led me to some neat places and sources. Here are just a couple of items you may find useful. I suspect I will have to conduct my own research, with truly measurable metrics.

• Track your Twitter referrals via Google Analytics

And some useful information about Marketing 2.0 from Sandy Carter … an IBM vice-president:

• The New Language of Marketing 2.0 (podcast interview)
• Support Information / Examples from the same book