BBDO CEO Andrew Robertson talking about ad agencies and the web sounds suspiciously like the leader of the “Most Awarded Agency Network in the World” being fascinated by what 15 year olds take for granted.

I think it’s great for agencies to start recognizing that new talent may have more knowledge than existing employees. But if I was a potential client with millions of dollars for ad buys, I’d be more than a little concerned with a strategy that essentially says “the techies can make it happen.” Especially when the “it” portion of that statement is a complete unknown to the agency.

Spotlight makes me smile.

Despite all their marketing suggestions to the contrary, no [running shoe] manufacturer has ever invented a shoe that is any help at all in injury prevention…If anything, the injury rates have actually ebbed up since the [invention of the modern running shoe].
— The Painful Truth About Trainers: Are Running Shoes a Waste of Money?

Casey Dukes pointed me in the direction of this fascinating article about what (if any) benefits modern running shoes offer. The research and anecdotal evidence suggest a link between the invention of the running shoe and an increase in running injuries.

I especially enjoy the bit about a new Asics shoe that cost $3 million in R&D and took three more years to create than it took to make the first atomic bomb.

Ladies and gentlemen, that’s marketing at its best.

I think Twitter should hide everyone’s number of followers. I hate how social media quickly becomes a popularity contest. — Jeremy Cowart via Twitter

Let’s just get it out of the way: as of 11:00am today I have approximately 1000 blog subscribers, 1324 followers on Twitter, 137 contacts and 693 followers on Flickr, 387 friends on Facebook, 519 followers on Virb°, 38 followers on Readernaut, 2502 followers on Ffffound!, 57 connections on LinkedIn, 2 friends on Last.fm, and so on and so forth.

Copywriting choices aside (followers, friends, contacts, etc.), there’s something implicit in social media that all of those 6000+ people are connected to me in some form of “friendship,” however loose that friendship may be. But what does it all mean? Surely this isn’t community. Or is it? (I tend to think of you, the blog readers/commenters as a community, but I’m not so sure on the other circles and networks.)

I think I have enough relational margin in my life to truly know a handful of people. Thus anything beyond that becomes some measure of decreasing “knowing” akin to the spectrum of online friendship I posted earlier.

So the question becomes, is it actually social at all?

1. Preparing for Mrs. Blankenship‘s return (in other words, house projects)
2. Preparing for this weekend’s final interview with a potential web dev for NewSpring
3. Finishing this drawing
4. Finishing some HUGE Prom Night Fist Fight style vinyl wall graphics
5. Trying, and failing, to keep up with email

Dave [Letterman] makes a lot more than I do. Way more. And I’m number one. But that’s okay. How much pie can you eat?
—Jay Leno

Of all the things to hit home with thoughts I’ve been thinking recently, a Jay Leno quote was not what I expected, yet here we are.

I’ve been rather overtaken with a question of late, “How much is enough?” How do I define what most dictionaries call “an adequate quantity; a quantity that is large enough to achieve a purpose; adequate; sufficient for the purpose”? What is that for me and for my family? What’s the cut off? The baseline?

The church staff subculture makes much of the “negotiating your pay cut” thing transitioning from marketplace jobs to ministry jobs, but in relation to the rest of the world that’s like saying someone went from “rich” to “oh, wait, yep, still rich.” Sure, I took a paycut, but I bet I still make more money than 90% of the world does. You probably do, too.

And isn’t that enough? Or more than enough? If it isn’t, maybe I actually need to discipline my appetite instead of trying to get more. I mean, how much pie can you eat?