I’ve decided to be more “upbeat.” So to be more “upbeat” some songs that make me happy:

1. “I feel happy” – Hot Chip
2. “Wonderful Life” – HURTS
3. “Fireflies” – Owl City
4. “Moth’s Wings” – Passion Pit
5. “Last Words” – The Real Tuesday Weld
6. “My Secret Friend” – IAM (Feat Imogen Heap)
7. “Rocket” – Goldfrapp
8. “Daniel” – Bat for Lashes
9. “Rabbit Heart” – Florence and the Machine
10. “All My Friends” – LCD Soundsystem

Cheers!

First of all, if you’re not familiar with the Online Marketing Summit, and you have anything to do with the Internet, then you should be. Besides the conference, OMS is constantly evolving (just like Online Marketing) and if one organization is keeping up with the curve — its them. See for yourself by following their blog or twitter feed.

The conference itself encompassed everything from e-mail campaigns to proper website design techniques to social media marketing topics. It had something for everybody because it was divided into three tracks: basic, intermediate and advanced. You chose where you wanted to go throughout the day minus the keynote, lunch and the “Big Brands, Big Plans” Panel. The Panel is where Chris Howe, Director of Online Marketing and User Experience at Avid Technologies, spoke (sponsored by ISF). The panelists were amazing and I was very impressed with their answers. I’m glad that they weren’t the standard answers that I almost came to expect. These people knew what they were talking about.

I started the day by going to “Planning & Strategy.” It was labeled as “beginners” on the agenda, but I wanted to see what was in store. Michael Weisfeld basically covered:

• The marketing landscape trends (which anyone, and I mean -anyone-, needs to know if you’re embarking to either make a website, or run a company).
• Why strategies of websites fail. I generally love to see why websites fail — people learn from their own mistakes, we all know this. So, we can learn from others too.
• User-centric design. Catch-phrase? Maybe. But it’s relevant in today’s world. If you aren’t design for the user visiting then don’t even bother designing. You’re wasting your time.
• Then he went over the website strategy process. This was the “meat” of the presentation and great to follow if you are new. He added some to the process, and reiterated some points.
• OVERALL: Know the website strategy process and know what your customer’s want. Also, know what’s in now (video). Use it to your advantage.

Great job Michael!

This exceeded my expectations. I actually learned quite a few new tricks of the trade, concerning web sites, from Michael Weisfeld.

Next up, I’ll give you a taste of the fourth session I attended: “B2B Marketing Roadblocks and How 6 Marketers Overcame Them.” This was presented by Corey Williams, Vice President of Emerging Markets, Silverpop.* He cited a lot of statistics. This was great. People get to bring these back to their management teams or their clients at the end of the day and say “Here. Look at these numbers or listen to this.”

According to Brainshark (a source cited often at this conference) roadblocks for marketers are generally the ability to track and score (for their management team): leads. Who would’ve guessed it? So some general roadblocks he pointed out from Brainshark were:

1. Alignment.
2. Scoring Leads.
   1. How do you score a lead?
      1. Frequency, recency, fine-time your system over time.
3. Nurturing leads (and having a set strategy to do so). I myself am all for automation and this is a key area where automation is your friend! How do you nurture yours? Do you automate this? How?
4. The last, but not least roadblock, was: monitoring the pipeline. If anything this was the most involved. Think about it. How do you monitor yours? Do you have tips for others?

I didn’t give away half the points or even half the presentations I went to. I only gave you a taste of what I witnessed here. I’d love to here from you in comments. What do you think? Can you answer some of the hard questions in the industry right now? I’d love to know how you score leads, nurture leads, etc. It’s a great conversation to be had.

I learned something from just about every person I heard in the sessions. They were intriguing, eye-opening, and appealing. Not only were they engaging, but they also cited many statistics that I could take home with me. At the end of the day I felt like I left with the a plethora of knowledge I could not have gained anywhere else.

Next time this train stops in your city, and you’re in the marketing business or just want to learn, make sure you’re on it! I guarantee you will learn something new.

*On a side note I went to link to Silverpop’s management team page, but I could not find Corey listed. I only found their press release page announcing his promotion in July of ‘03! So, I sent them a message. Very odd. They should keep that real estate up-to-date!

Something I always recommend installing: asoundconf-gtk.

What is it? It allows you to configure your system’s default “base” sound card. As the package describes it’s “useful if you have two sound cards, and [need] to switch between the two.” I know the function is already there in Gnome, however this seems to just work. And I like things that just work. It’s also GUI (Graphical…) based. So, now need for all the command typing.

So let’s get going:

Fire up Synaptic (System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager). Or if you’re a command-line junkie like me:

sudo apt-get asoundconf-gtk

Now if you used Synaptic Package Manager – a few last steps:

1. Search for: asoundconf-gtk
2. Double click on the package OR right click on it and go to “Mark for installation”
3. Now click “Apply” in the toolbar.

Now go to System > Preferences > Default Sound Card. Select your X-Fi card or whichever card you intend on using.

NOTE: This may, and usually does, require a system restart.

So, let’s get going.

Go to Creative’s web site and download the X-Fi driver for your card for “Linux.” It will come in a .tar.gz file.

After downloading the file from Creative’s web site you need to double click on the file. Click on “Extract” in the upper menu. You can choose the location. Your Desktop is perfectly fine as well as any other location, such as your ~/ (home) directory. Just remember where you place your downloaded file.

It will indeed take going to the terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) as of now. Then going to the directory where you extracted the file to.

To do this type:

cd /directory/path

If it is your desktop that would be:

cd Desktop

or:

cd ~/Desktop

If it is just your home folder your are already there.

Then go to the Creative driver folder using “cd” as well.

cd XFiDrv_Linux_Public_US_1.00

or just type:

cd XFi<TAB>
<TAB> will auto-complete for you. Press Enter.

Once there:

Type:

make

Then type:

sudo make install
Enter in YOUR password (you will not be able to see it).

This will most likely will require a restart. HOWEVER, before you restart go to System > Administration > Hardware Driver. Ensure the X-Fi Restricted Driver (that you just installed) is enabled).

You can then go to:

System > Preferences > Sound

And look at your main mixer on the bottom. Make sure ALSA X-Fi is selected. Test the above channels to make sure everything is working properly.

Now everything should work fine.

This is the only way to get it to work and you must do this again with any NEW kernel installs or upgrades. This until the new ALSA release that will support this model sound card. This bug has been ongoing in the community of Ubuntu and you can read about it, and subscribe to it, here. It will pushed out in Karmic with ALSA along with the newer version of the kernel (we hope!).

If you have any questions there is always #ubuntu on freenode IRC and Launchpad Answers. And, of course, you can always fire away in comments.

It will indeed follow topics that interest me such as: Internet Marketing, Social Media, Open Source Software, FOSS, Notable News, Politics (Liberal, by the way), and I will sometime post Guides and How-To Articles for various pieces of software in the open source and Ubuntu/Debian community.