Last week it was revealed that the NSA is data mining the call information of Verizon Business. This has set off a flood of coverage and has kindled an overdue debate about the trade-off between domestic surveillance and national security. It remains to be seen how wide ranging the debate becomes. The Administration and some […]
Mary Meeker of Kleiner, Perkins Caufield and Byers has released her latest Internet Trends Report. Meeker is a long-time technology analyst who made her name during the early years of explosive Internet growth. I wrote about her 2012 Trends report late last year. This year the presentation has grown to 117 pages. Since I doubt […]
This weekend I found a video that really conveys the excitement of BMW E39 M5 ownership. Parker Nirenstein lovingly describes his 2001 M5 while promoting his purchase assist company Vehicle-Virgins.com: I couldn’t agree more with the sentiment. A few corrections and clarifications to the video: He quotes $92,000 as the original price of the car […]
Gabriele and I are just back from a very relaxing Memorial week off in Charleston, South Carolina. We did all the touristy things like museums, Fort Sumpter and the U.S.S. Yorktown. We also enjoyed some fine Southern cuisine and some new wines. By far the best dining experience was at McCrady’s, an award winning restaurant […]
My latest wine column published in WashingtonExec yesterday. I look at American Pinot Noir and how over the past decade a bigger style of the varietal has become popular. A thank you to Jeff Stewart, winemaker at Hartford Court Winery for generously sharing his time and knowledge. I met up with Jeff at a recent […]
I’ve been directing content marketing programs designed to support sales enablement on behalf of clients for about four years. Most of the time my teams and I work behind the scenes, crafting content and executing on strategy for clients. One of the terms to describe this is brand journalism — helping your client take on […]
Right after the new year I upgraded my E36 M3 headlights with a new set of European elliptical headlights from BMW supplier Hella. Here’s the full story. After I installed them I had the beams adjusted at a local service station. Recently I noticed that the headlight assemblies were no longer flush to the corner […]
Earlier this week my E39 M5 had a flat tire, driver side rear. This happened to me while I was traveling on the Washington Beltway, heading north 95/east 495 going from Tysons to Alexandria. The loss of air pressure was very quick, and I pulled off onto a narrow shoulder area as quickly as I […]
Great work for great clients — that’s the fundamental philosophy at my agency. Today a great client unveiled more great work when Polycom launched The Public Sector View. We’ve got a track record of success with this client. Three years ago, the BreakDowntheWalls site we designed and executed for TANDBERG won Best Corporate Blog honors […]
More and more people are using mobile devices to consume content, both professional and personal. It’s a macro trend affecting business and society at large, and your online presence needs to respond. According to Google Analytics, 29 percent of the traffic to chrisparente.com in the past 30 days came from a mobile device. Google Analytics […]
Steve Farnsworth’s @Steveology blog is a good source of content on digital marketing. Recently Steve wrote a piece about IBM documenting the increased efficiency of what they call social business. Working with researchers from Rutgers and Duke, IBM found that inside sales people who used social tools both internally and externally were higher performers. According […]
My latest Wine and Dine column published today in WashingtonExec. I take a shot at deciphering Italian wine by explaining Italian classifications. The piece also shares my review of some good Tuscan wine sampled at a Grape and Bean tasting event in Alexandria this past weekend. In the piece I share my notes on two […]