Back in April, Zay Monday posted this "Chocolate Rain" video:

Over 11 million views and a summer of virality later, he's put out another take--this time, a "Cherry Chocolate Rain" video sponsored by Dr. Pepper, who just released a flavor of that name:

So... wait a sec...  how did this happen??  Am I to believe that Dr. Pepper had this product in the works, and just by sheer dumb luck, found this guy writing about chocolate that happened to go viral and then convinced him to add "cherry" to the beginning and make a video?

What would their ad campaign be if this guy never existed?

How long was this product in the works?  Any chance it was actually inspired by the video itself?

Or... any chance that the original video was a plant, six months in advance, making this the greatest viral advertising campaign stunt ever?

Imagine 6 flavors are being considered... they plant 6 ridiculous videos from 6 different people...  and decide that whoever, if anyone" takes off, that's the flavor they're going to put into production, and use the popularity of the first video to push the second.

It's possible, no?

I'd love to see the inside scoop here.

It's hard for me to bet that the Dr. Pepper folks would have been so clever to plant the original so far in advance, but if I don't believe that, then the existence of Zay Monday is the greatest luck a brand ever had.

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  Some really fascinating stats
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I'm sitting in the MIT VC Conference right now, listening to Diane Greene of VMWare, thinking about the conference, presenting last night, and the Boston scene.

First off, the showcase was really great.  I should have blogged it here, but if you were following my Twitter messages, you heard that I livecasted the booth using UStream.tv.   I have to say, I was really amazed at UStream.  I plugged my camera in (first without drivers, which was my bad) and then the Flash linked up with my camera.   One click and I was broadcasting live to the web.  The coolest part was that I could embed the video player and the chat box anywhere I wanted. 

I'd never really checked out any of the Justin.tv stuff or Chris Pirillo's chats, but I got excited about this.  We may employ some of this at Path 101 to further open up our anti-stealth. 

Anyway... getting back to the conference itself.  People had told me that there really aren't that many "community" events in Boston, and that, which Boston has the VC money, the big institutions like MIT, that the community stuff is a bit lacking.  While I met a lot of great people here last night, I was really surprised there wasn't even more people.  I think of it as the equivalent to the ITP show and that gets packed every year.  In fact, there seems to be more people at the actual conference today, which you had to pay to get in.  How come?  Certainly it wasn't the fault of the organizers.  They picked a great spot and people knew about the conference.  Why weren't more entrepreneurs and VCs at the Showcase?  Students?  Or just people from the community?  I feel like it's the kind of thing more people should have been at...  like some swarm from a usergroup or something.  There were a lot of great companies there.  If anyone is involved with any great Boston-area tech community groups, let me know!  I'll repost them!

When I first got there, I have to admit, I was a bit intimidated.  I'm afraid my arts and crafts skills aren't what they used to be when I was in kindergarten, and I miscaculated the size of the boards compared to the size of my printouts.  I printed out twice as many slides about what we did and who we were and they didn't make the board.

Plus, other people had much more impressive displays.... clearly, they spent a lot more money at Kinko's than I did.  I was sort of afraid that I wasn't quite ready for primetime, but once things got going, it was really great.  People were really excited about what we were doing, and I got to meet some people in person that I'd only known virtually, like Alexa DuPont and Hilary Mason.

There were some visitors from companies in the employment space who we might be able to work with in the future, too. 

Most importantly, though...  were the conversations with students.  I had some great conversations with MBA students from interesting backgrounds trying to figure out what they wanted to do who really took the concept.

So what did we show anyway?  Well, we're in development right now and right in the middle of working on design.  I didn't really want to have our contract UX person spend resources on demoware that wouldn't move us forward, so I spent some late nights recently pushing my poor graphic design skills to the limit to come up with screenshots.  So, if you promise not to poke too much fun, and pay more attention to what's going on in these pages than the fonts, colors, placement, clutter, you can see the screenshots here on the Path 101 blog here.

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I was just e-mailing with Andrew, who was nice enough to send a tech guy my way, and I noticed a curious addition to his outgoing mail signature.

"Andrew Parker
Union Square Ventures - Associate"

A doublecheck in LinkedIn confirmed...  Andrew's been an Associate for about a month now.  At first I thought maybe he got a new haircut or had maybe been hitting the gym, but nope... Andrew's been sportin' the glow of a shiny new title.  Congrats!

Perhaps this was the result of competition for talent with their own portfolio companies.  I hear the USV Analyst pool is a great place to recruit from.  :)

I guess all the USV fanboys will have to wait at least another year before another opportunity to work with the boys from 915 Broadway opens up.

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• How LiveJournal Scales
  I don't understand much of this... I'm tagging it for Alex.
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Oh, IN A BOX... Man, that word wrap is a killer. *awkward*, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

This is how @innonate's latest twit came out on Alex's phone. We're so going to get in trouble for this one.

I'm currently getting digital radio silence from two people I really want to talk to, both of whom I've reached out to more than once.   I just don't get it.

Don't get me wrong, I get a ton of e-mails from people and it is often the case that one slips past me and I don't notice it...  but if anyone ever follows up on it, I'll respond right away, usually with an apology.

The first case is someone who is pretty important and influential, but with whom I've corresponded before, always with a response, even if it took a little while.  I've sent them a number of notes related to Path 101, and even had one of my investors contact them about it--someone with whom this person knows pretty well.  Nothing...  nada.... zip.  They even wound up inviting my investor to some event and ignored the whole mention of the company.  It was actually sort of bizarre.  I mean, if you're not interested, you're not interested.  Just say it..  don't leave us scratching our heads.  It's really unfortunate, too, because I think this person could be a huge help to us and it turns out they're involved with another company we're interested in talking to as well (which I just found out yesterday via LinkedIn).  I was like, "Damn, if only so and so would get back to us, we could get an intro to them, too!" 

The other scenario is a younger front end developer who is clearly a ninja in the making.  She does a little bit of everything, has a great blog, and has a little bit of poking the bear in her, too.  I'm DYING to talk to her about joining.  She's clearly "out there" and so I tried Facebook, e-mail.. . I even complimented her Last.fm station, which I listened to one afternoon.  I'm not stalking... all this stuff is out on her blog...  but I've e-mailed twice to no avail.  Not even a peep.  Zip.  Nada.  Nothing.  *Scratches head.*

Again, a simple, "I'm not really looking to join or work for your company" would do.  But you know, I'd love to sit down with her as a relatively recent college grad just to hear what she thinks of the idea, too.  

Again, just don't get it.  Why put yourself out there if you're going to be completely unresponsive?  If you're busy, that's cool... just take two seconds to write back, "Hey, sorry, I'm really busy... can we talk another time?"

So, do I just keep at it until I get a Cease & Desist?  Do I call them out on their unresponsiveness?  I mean, at the moment, without a response, I have nothing... so what do I have to lose?  Should I just let it go? 

Maybe I should send them a Christopher Walken Voki.

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Well that's just creepy.

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nextNY is helping BDI get the word out about its Convergence 2007 conference this Monday, and in return, all nextNY members are getting a discounted rate to the conference.  Check it out!

Present Convergence 2007 The Future of Advertising, Communications & Media

About The Event This full day conference will gather the best and brightest minds to explore how the communications industry is converging. The internet's impact on advertising, pr, and media continue to create major changes in the way organizations and individuals interact. Businesses and consumers are embracing social media, web video, and environmentalism. Communications professionals are challenged more than ever to measure ROI on their initiatives while embracing new and sometimes immature cutting edge tactics. We will explore case studies and provide a platform for highly regarded thought leaders to share their successes, failures and lessons learned. We will also invite the best of breed product and solution providers to share their perspectives on the changing face of communications. Case Study: Harnessing the Power of User Generated Media at Toyota Motor Company Bruce Ertmann, Corporate Manager, Consumer Generated Media, Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A. Inc. As a global leader, Toyota is on the forefront of innovative ways to support its brand and deepen relationships with consumers and dealers. Bruce Ertmann will share his case studies and lessons learned about how one of the largest automobile manufacturers in the world embraces consumer generated media as an important part of its overall branding and communications strategy. Case Study: Results through Convergence: McDonald's Use of New Communication Vehicles to Engage Consumers Heather Oldani, Director of Communications, McDonald's As an industry leader, McDonald's continues to seek new ways to reach consumers in order to meaningfully engage them with the brand and to drive awareness and trial for new products and promotions. With the media landscape continually changing, as well as consumers' preferred channels for receiving information, the Communications Team at McDonald's USA has gone beyond traditional media relations to new communication vehicles to help launch new products and to help build brand trust, often times in close collaboration with marketing. The case study presentation will focus on the results delivered from this close collaboration combined with the use of vehicles for two product launches and the company's efforts to reach Moms with brand trust messaging. Case Study: Casio's Partnership with YouTube To Launch The "YouTube Camera" Melissa Keklak, PR Director, Casio Casio has teamed up with YouTube to help establish itself as an innovative company among younger consumers by equipping some of its newest digital cameras with a YouTube Capture mode. The electronics company secured an exclusive agreement with YouTube to provide software on four of its cameras. "We've always been a youthful-type, trendy company," Melissa Keklak, PR director, Casio told PR Week. However, some of Casio's innovations have been overlooked in the competitive digital camera market, she explained. But with this effort, Casio's PR goal is to be known as "the YouTube camera" and the first in the market to offer this technology, Keklak added.Outreach efforts include promoting the agreement to print, broadcast, online, and new-media outlets. The second phase of the campaign involves giving cameras to editors to review the YouTube mode. Later this year, Casio will launch a contest to raise awareness about the YouTube-enabled cameras. Case Study: Social Networking Meets Madison Avenue - Future Opportunities & Lessons Learned from myYearBook.com, the fastest growing social networking site on the internet Geoff Cook, CEO, myYearBook.com style="COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'" >www.myYearbook.com is the fastest growing social network on the Internet for 13 to 21 year olds and the only one started by 2 high school students.  They recently announced that the site logged a phenomenal 70 percent increase in traffic over the course of just one month from 2.8 million unique visitors to an astounding 4.6 million.   Geoff Cook will share the inside scoop on how to create and execute successful marketing partnerships between online social networks and brands.  He will focus on how to best work with social networking sites from both pr and advertising perspectives.

Details Monday, December 3, 2007 8:30 a.m. - 6:00 p.m. The Graduate Center/CUNY 365 Fifth Avenue; New York, NY 10016 Registration Fee: $395, to receive a discounted rate of $345 enter promo code CONCO when registering. http://www.bdionline.com/convergence2007 Additional Speakers Robert Aitken, Broadcast Product Manager, AP Online Video Daryl Battaglia, Vice President, Nielsen Tracking System Stephen Berkov, Director, Brand Innovation, Audi of America, Inc. Jack Berkowitz, Senior Vice President, ALM Media Karen Bloom, Principal, Bloom Gross & Assoicates,Inc. Gigi Carroll, VP Concept Director, DraftFCB Michael Clemente, Executive Producer, ABC News Paul Dunay, Director Marketing, BearingPoint and Author, Buzz Marketing for Technology Bart Feder, Chairman, The FeedRoom Adrienne Garland, Vice President Marketing, PR Newswire Association LLC Mindy Gikas, Managing Director, Human Resources, Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide Scott Goodson, Co-Founder, CEO & Chief Creative Officer, Strawberry Frog Dan Greenfield, Media Consultant and former Vice President, Corporate Communications, EarthLink James Gregory, CEO, Corebrand Monica A. Hand, Manager, New York Metro Area, Public Affairs & Communications, United States Postal Service Dena Helf , Executive Producer, Video, Vault.com Inc. Peter Himler, Flatiron Communications & President, PR Club of New York John Kaponi, Managing Director, Infocis Press Monitoring Meg Kinney, Executive Vice President, Strategic Planning, Integer/TBWA Jessica Luterman, Managing Director, DeSilva and Phillips Russell Meyer, Chief Strategy Officer, San Francisco, Landor Dori Molitor, CEO, Womanwise Christine Nevin, Director, Business & Media Relations, ConEdison Solutions Stacey Prenner, Talent Management Director, DDB Jason Rissman, Google Stuart Schwartz, The NewsMarket Hank Stewart, VP, Strategic Messaging, Green Team Gus Warren, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships, Spot Runner, Inc. Alyssa Waxenberg,Senior Director of Westin and Element Interactive Marketing, Starwood Hotels Sponsors

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Please dig/tag/twit/reblog, etc: 

This just came in from my friend Grace...   feel free to leave a comment with a link to yourself and Grace will pick the best ones to forward to her friend:

All,

If you are on this list, it is because I have dated you and/or I think very highly of you. I believe that good people surround themselves with good people, and in truth, it is your friends that I am really after. Before I get ahead of myself, let me explain...

I have a very good friend who is single at the moment.  After a sting of pseudo relationships that haven't amounted to anything substantial, I've decided to intervene and scatter some seeds on her behalf.  (Call it naive, but I believe we are all connected and that the happiness of one person can, in some small way, benefit us all.  Plus it's just fun!)  Ok, back to my friend! I can't for the life of me figure out why this girl is single- she's funny, sharp, she's 31, she's hot and she has substance. She comes from a great family and has great teeth. She is endlessly entertaining and endearing.  She has fantastic fashion sense.  At the end of the day, I adore her and want to help her find "the one".

So this is where you come in. Do you have any friends who could potentially be "the one" for this fantastic woman? Now, some of you might be wondering, "Why not me?".  I don't want to set her up with you for one of the following reasons (it varies from person to person, but I'm sure you can figure out which category you fall into).

Reasons Why You Might not Qualify
1. I know you, and I don't think she would like you :)
2. We've dated and I'm not that generous
3. You already have a girlfriend or are married

Ok, but seriously, think about your friends, co-workers, and family members. Do you know any stand-up guys with good character who have their lives in order and are in a place (emotionally, logistically -she's in NY, and financially) to meet someone really great? If so, please let me know and I will send along her contact info. or something along those lines.  Tis the season folks, let's make this work!

Hope to hear from you!
<3,
Grace

PS-I'm not attaching a photo because I think it's unnecessary. She's hot. All my friends are hot. Get over it.
PPS-It's not me! Really...swear!
*Also, feel free to forward!*

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• Now form a band!
  (tags: bands names)

Balducci's on 14th and 8th..., originally uploaded by ceonyc.

....hanging out until my meeting at the Googleplex.

Charlie and cousin Dave with Nana, originally uploaded by ptrain.

She swears she's 5'2'', but last time I checked, I was 5'11''...