Collaborative Group Decisions

A collaborative environment is a great way to generate ideas, but our thought process is often lost after a brainstorming session, especially in larger organizations.

Kluster is a group decision-making tool that showcases the benefits of large (30+) collaborative sessions. Begin by creating public or private groups, where members can rate the idea based on criteria you set like overall concept, potential ROI, ease-of-understanding, strategic direction or uniqueness. Freddie Laker even suggests using it for certain client collaborations.

I tried creating an account to get the process started, but didn’t find it very intuitive.

Does anyone currently use Kluster or feel like this is a tool that could be useful for your agency?

DoGooderTV Nonprofit Video Awards

This year’s theme for the DoGooderTV Nonprofit Video Awards is “Everyone’s Doing It”, which encourages submissions from organizational vlogs, staff-produced web clips and high-end, professionally produced videos.

If your organization made a video in 2008, you’re encouraged to submit as many entries as you like.

Entry fee: $0
Entry deadline: March 26, 2009
Winners announced: April 26-28, 2009

Winners will be featured in the online NonProfit Times, receive a Flip video camera and image licenses from Reuters and other video tools.

Organize and Share Your Travel Plans

Today’s traveler has their hands full managing all the details of a typical trip with the plethora of available travel sites.

Email plans@tripit.com your travel confirmation emails (airline, hotel, etc.) and TripIt will create a master travel itinerary including the addition of daily weather and local maps. You will even have the opportunity to book restaurants, tickets and more right from within the online itinerary.

Decide what and with whom you want to share your itinerary, such as friends and fellow travelers to see when your travel plans overlap.

Track Word-of-Mouth Advertising

Meteor Solutions claims to be able to effectively track word-of-mouth advertising with the precision of paid media. This solution for advertisers, publishers and agencies can help you evaluate your social networking campaigns.

The Meteor platform monitors web pages, bookmarks, email messages, instant messages and mobile devices. Scripts track content that is shared between friends, blogs and within communities.

Other site analytics track how many people visit your site, but Meteor’s tracking technology shows you where, when and how word-of-mouth activity happens. Meteor enables users to measure, buy and amplify word-of-mouth advertising with the same precision as paid media.

Hollis Thomases further elaborates on how this technology could be useful to media planners.

Mark Cuban’s Stimulus Plan

Mark Cuban is offering to fund your business plan in an “open source funding environment“. The hope is to create businesses that need a jump start to get the ball rolling and create revenue and jobs fairly quickly. If you meet his criteria – and are willing to take the risk – post your idea on his blog and see what happens.

Seth Godin has also offered up a list of business ideas generated by nine “students” in his Alternative MBA program. If you don’t have an idea to start with, take one of these suggestions and turn into something tangible.