I took many turns through the exhibitors' booths because I had no idea what I was doing at the conference. I'd been invited and someone else was paying my way, and I hoped seeing the wares presented would offer some insight into why some group would contact me to attend on their behalf and essentially pay me to do so.

Here's listener favorites after the first month:

• Using Male and Female Concepts of Space and Place in Marketing
• What Is It About Moms and Cleaning?
• Using Concept Price to Increase Sales
• Test Your Experimental Model Before You Run Your Test

What's that? Name's familiar but you can't place the face?

You think that's a Canadian comic? Maybe a character in some straight to DVD movie?

Lonesome GeorgeNo, Lonesome George was the last of his species, a Galapagos tortoise. He died unexpectedly after an estimated 100 year run.

Most people, as they grow into adulthood and go through life, learn to place painful experiences in their place. They gain perspective and know, for example, that today's breakup is tomorrow's chance for love.

And every once in a while people run into Soul Killers, those people who cause distress repeatedly and without realizing they're doing so.

Here are some tricks for dealing with soul killing pain.

• Make Consumers Come Out At Night
• Demonstrating Authority and Power in Meetings and Presentations
• Rewarding Consumers by Asking Them 'What's Your Budget?'
• Scheduling Selfish Moments and Fair-Exchange

Listen and Enjoy!

Use: Pure and simple, you login, answer the questions, click on submit and get your result. Clean, not quite so quick, but still simple and neat because we like it that way.

The complete NextStage Social Interferometer questionnaire takes most users 3-4 hours to complete. We strongly encourage users to take more than one (1) hour and less than eight (8) hours for accurate results, and definitely encourage you to take a break, walk around or go talk to someone should you feel confused or disoriented at some point in the questionnaire.

But I repeat myself.

Is it important? Are you reading this post on some 'net enabled device? Thank science.

Are you reading this post on a mobile or tablet device? Thank science.

Do you get your calls via cellphone more often than landline? Thank science. For that matter, thank science for your landline, too.

This post continues the Politics and Your Mind thread. You can read previous entries at

• Politics and Your Mind 9 Oct 2012 (Introducing the NextStage Political Reader)
• Politics and the Gender Mind 10-12 Oct 2012 (With a Touch of Debate BS and PersonaScoping at the End)
• Politics and Your Mind 17 Oct 2012 (The Day After the Obama-Romney Hofstra Town Hall Style Debate)

We're using The NextStage Political Reader to determine how people will vote in the 2012 US Presidential election and so far we've learned two distinct things:

• The voting population that we're able to sample is incredibly fickle. We're sure their political leanings are driven by something but what, exactly, we're not sure.
• The first chart, Say, usually tracks the latest national polls for the same days within the margin of error.

  Pretty good, we thinks, as we're not actually asking anybody anything, just observing how visitors behave on a variety of websites, the majority of which are not political at all.

These posts will cover

1. Followers
2. Watches
3. "You don't follow anybody"
4. Twitter v LinkedIn v Facebook v FourSquare v Pinterest v ...
5. Private v Public Personae
6. "You rarely point to someone else's writing"

These posts will cover

1. Followers
2. Watches
3. "You don't follow anybody"
4. Twitter v LinkedIn v Facebook v FourSquare v Pinterest v ...
5. Private v Public Personae
6. "You rarely point to someone else's writing"

These posts will cover

1. Followers
2. Watches
3. "You don't follow anybody"
4. Twitter v LinkedIn v Facebook v FourSquare v Pinterest v ...
5. Private v Public Personae
6. "You rarely point to someone else's writing"

Watches

If you're like the majority of americans, that little bit of arithmetic will give you pause. You may look to see when this post was published, compare that to what you know about US politics and election cycles and work backwards. If you're into politics you may know when the last Republican majority was able to do such things.

Good for you!

We use to define consultants as "unemployed with a briefcase". That "unemployed" part is increasingly true in this economy. NextStage has been consulting since before it was officially "NextStage" (I started consulting in 1999. We became NextStage in 2001) and we've managed to keep going while others larger and smaller faded away, some quietly, some in blazes of unglory.

But good for you, seriously. Here's some things that may help you before you get too far down a road you can't follow.

Little did I know what a firestorm I'd be stirring up.

A friend of mine is in somewhat the same situation. He's roughly my age give or take a few months and we share similar views on some but not all things. He's been in and out of therapy now and again. He had an amazingly difficult childhood. His parents...well, they were biological and didn't offer much else.

One of my all time favorites comes from someone who openly admits he wants everyone to love him and like him. He does this by lying to them. He won't tell them something he believes they don't want to hear so he makes something up. He once told me, "I have no trouble lying to people."

My first warning of impending disaster was the message "We're improving your experience."

How's that for politically correct language?

• Research into online (since 2004) and offline (since 1983) social systems
• Advising clients on how to optimize their social media and marketing efforts (80 implementations as of Dec 2011 in educational, non-profit, public health, regional and business sectors) and
• 1000+ interviews with people who've had positive ROI (their income greatly exceeded their spend) from social campaigns

NextStage Sociality Gauge's sole purpose is to determine if the person(s) taking on the social media/marketing task are the correct, best people to pilot and guide a social media/marketing effort.

The NextStage Client Prospector creates a psychological, behavioral, motivational profile ({C,B/e,M} matrix) of you based on your visits to all sites running our technology (we're in over 70 countries at present and many of our installations only update us every month so if we don't have you yet, chances are we will) and matches that against the {C,B/e,M} matrix of all businesses in our system.

The result is a match of businesses where You, not your product, offering, service, et cetera, are most likely to succeed. As sales and marketing is all about human-human interaction, knowing where you will be welcomed is a good thing, yes?

The NextStage Client Prospector creates a psychological, behavioral, motivational profile ({C,B/e,M} matrix) of you based on your visits to all sites running our technology (we're in over 70 countries at present and many of our installations only update us every month so if we don't have you yet, chances are we will) and matches that against the {C,B/e,M} matrix of all businesses in our system.

The result is a match of businesses where You, not your product, offering, service, et cetera, are most likely to succeed. As sales and marketing is all about human-human interaction, knowing where you will be welcomed is a good thing, yes?

The NextStage Client Prospector creates a psychological, behavioral, motivational profile ({C,B/e,M} matrix) of you based on your visits to all sites running our technology (we're in over 70 countries at present and many of our installations only update us every month so if we don't have you yet, chances are we will) and matches that against the {C,B/e,M} matrix of all businesses in our system.

The result is a match of businesses where You, not your product, offering, service, et cetera, are most likely to succeed. As sales and marketing is all about human-human interaction, knowing where you will be welcomed is a good thing, yes?