Cornell Daily Sun photogs on Flickr

Friday night [in Collegetown]: Photo of Collegetown in Ithaca, New York, by Venus Wu. Used with permission.
Friday night [in Collegetown]: Photo of Collegetown in Ithaca, New York, by Venus Wu. Used with permission.

In honor of finally getting images back up and running for the site (trivial file permissions error, once I looked into it), I decided to highlight some of the awesome pictures Daily Sun photographers are posting of Ithaca and beyond.

I love the image above, which reminds me of Nighthawks, but Jenn Vargas and Matt Hintsa both had awesome photostreams as well (Venus' stream here).

In addition, Matt created a truly gorgeous photojournalism piece for National Geographic's Glimpse entitled "The Upstanding Citizens Who Rummage Through My Trash". Definitely worth a look, it chronicles through pictures and text the daily life of one of Santiago's informal recycling trash rummagers.

My first panel

Photo courtesy of Duncan Hayre, Cornell Club of Boston

Well, my first panel went off without a serious hitch Thursday night, for which I'm eternally grateful to both panelists, Rich Miner of Google and Duncan Perry of Treedia, and particularly to even chairperson Julie Son who basically pulled the whole thing together, twice, and made sure things ran without a hitch.

Rich and Duncan had a great dynamic, parrying questions between them with largely similar views on what the future of mobile marketing held: More targeted, more interactive, with lots of experimentation on the way.

Both said a key was to provide value and not annoy your customers, which might seem basic but is oftentimes overlooked in practice. Rich said Google was largely holding back on map ads, for example, while they experimented with a way to make them useful.

The crowd of about 50 people, a mix of Cornell alums and Boston Googlers, was great: Lots of audience questions, and lots of mingling afterwards. Interestingly, few of the questions had anything to do with marketing, but the panelists and audience seemed happy to delve into the greater world of mobile so it worked well.

Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to set up my video camera, so as far as I know there is no recording for posterity. Given Google's somewhat Big Brother-ish NDA everyone signed going in (the only thing that got somewhat low marks on the panel evaluations), maybe it's just as well.

Event pictures, etc.:

The Cornell Club of Boston presents ...

The Cornell Professional Network of the Cornell Club of Boston presents
Marketing in the New World Part III: The Mobile Frontier
 
featuring
Rich Miner, Director, New Business Development, Google and
Duncan Perry, Eng '84, A&S '84, JGSM '88, Chief Operating Officer, Treedia Labs
 
moderated by
Michael Morisy, A&S '07, News Writer, TechTarget
 
DATE: Thursday, November 13, 2008
LOCATION: Google, 5 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA 02142 (no walk-ins, please)
SCHEDULE: 6:30 PM Reception/Networking; 7:00 PM Keynote followed by Q&A; 8:00 PM Dessert & Alumni Networking
REGISTRATION: FREE to Cornell Club of Boston Members. Members and their guests only.
 
Attendance to this event is limited so be sure to register http://www.cornellclub.org/article.html?aid=258
REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED. NO WALK-INS PERMITTED FOR SECURITY REASONS
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Sourcing like a Pro: How Andrew Ross Sorkin gets his scoops

Cornell Alumni Magazine has a wonderful interview with the New York Times' Andrew Ross Sorkin and Businessweek's Peter Coy about their craft, and it's rare that I've seen two journalists open up about their inspiration, motivation and, most revealingly, sourcing.

Sorkin talks about the leg work he did to get his readers an in-the-room feel for his book, Too Big To Fail:

A lot of people do return your calls, but often people don’t want to talk to you either because the information’s too sensitive or they’re not interested. In the example Peter is talking about, there was an executive who didn’t want to talk to me. Finally I get him on the phone on a Sunday afternoon and say, “Look, I understand you don’t want to talk to me, I’ve talked to your friends, your lawyer says leave you alone, I get it.” And then I laid out for him what reporting I’d done. I said, “OK, I have you in [Morgan Stanley chairman and CEO] John Mack’s house on Saturday morning at 10:30. You’re sitting in the living room on the green couch, eating a chicken wrap sandwich his wife brought you. Your son’s lacrosse game started at 1:30, you didn’t show up until 2:30, and this is what you said.” And there’s this very long pause. By the end of the call he said, “I think we should talk.” And that’s how this happens over and over. The deeper you get in the reporting, the more other people become attracted to talk to you.

The piece's author, Beth Saulnier, did a great job getting the two to open up and parry off one another's comments, particularly in how they break down the complexity of finance. A lot of it echoed what I learned my first year on the telecom beat, so it might be particularly useful to reporters starting out: Sometimes naiveté about a subject can be your greatest advantage.

The Cornell Professional Network and the Cornell Club of Boston present... GOING ON YOUR OWN

Editor's note: I'm moderating this panel. Let me know if you're interested!
 
The Cornell Professional Network and

the Cornell Club of Boston present...
 
GOING ON YOUR OWN

Jobs? Who needs 9-5 and a cubicle when you got marketable skills and a deep passion!
Can you do it? Should you do it? How do you do it?