Who is ready for some football this weekend? I know I am and am hoping that at least one of my social media NFL predictions is wrong and that the Ravens earn a berth in the Super Bowl. Who are you pulling for this weekend? If you aren’t into football, what are your plans for the weekend? Hope you have something awesome lined up and I will catch you next week at some point. If for some reason you are in Vegas next week and want to see me talk about social media and show things that you can be measuring, check out Social Commerce Strategies at the Red Rock Resort. Now here’s this week’s edition of Five for Friday.

5 tips for social media success in other languages – working for a global organization is tough when it comes to social media. There are only so many resources and only so much knowledge of languages. When looking to expand, social media managers need to keep their local markets in mind and what their audience wants.

Mom bloggers control $2 trillion worth of America’s purchasing power – to be honest I am not really sure I buy this overall number. While it is not hard to fathom given the purchasing power of women in the family setting, I just am not fully buying it. How about you?

PR Dummies: Smack My Betch Up – being in PR, I have seen and heard of all kinds of bad pitches. This one may take the cake. Really calling dogs Betches? Really? Hang your head low Mr./Mrs. PR person.

Facebook App Lets Sam Adams Fans Crowdsource a Tap – this was a pretty awesome day for my buddy Nick Gosselin over at the Boston Beer Company. Not only did he launch their Twitter account, but the company also announced a pretty cool campaign for this year’s SXSW involving wait for it… wait for it… Beer!

Reading Fiction Helps Your Career – I am a geek who likes to read books. I was an English major in college and am more comfortable around words than numbers. So it comes to a surprise to me that Science, yes science! has shown that reading fiction can help your career.

Exactly one year ago today, I read Arik Hanson’s blog post on the 26 books that he planned to read over the course of the year. It inspired me to give it a whirl and see if I could read that many. When the dust and grime from the books settled, wound up reading 31 over the course of the year. You might ask yourself why anyone would devote their time to finishing a book and start a new one every two weeks and it is a perfectly good question. For me, it was a number of things starting with the fact that I just like to read and as a former English major reading that much did not seem too daunting. Reading 31 books helped me think more clearly and get to sleep that much easier as I wasn’t distracted looking at every blog post, Facebook status or Tweet while killing brain cells staring at the TV. Heading into 2012, I am hoping to read 35 books and hope that you’ll challenge yourself to read more than you normally would. I also welcome any suggestions for books that you think I should read this year as well in the comments below.

Below is my list of fiction, non-fiction and business books that I read in 2011 along with reviews that I did on many of them. Each book is also linked with an Amazon affiliate link that will save you some coin if you decide to pick up a copy while earning me a few cents towards some cold refreshing adult sodas.

2011 Reading List

Business Books

• Content Rules – Chapman/Handley – Review
• Social Media Case Studies – Fine – Review
• Enchantment – Kawasaki – Review
• Evil Plans – MacLeod – Review
• Social Media ROI – Blanchard – Review
• Thank You Economy – Vaynerchuck – Review
• Brewing up a Business – Calagione – Review
• Enterprise Social Technology – Klososky – Review
• Killing Giants – Denny – Review
• Likeable Social Media – Kerpen – Review
• Welcome to the Fifth Estate – Livingston – Review
• Launch – Stelzner – Review
• ROI of Social Media – Powell – Review
• Super Mario – Ryan – Review
• Smart Business, Social Business – Brito – Review
• Humanize – Notter/Grant – Review
• Find your Next – Kates – Review forthcoming

Non-Fiction

• Life Inc. – Rushkoff – Review
• Assholeology, the cheat sheet – Illuminati – Review
• The Perfect Storm – Junger
• The Expectant Father – Brott
• Medium Raw – Bourdain
• On Becoming Baby Wise – Ezzo (Thank you Stephanie Wonderlin for putting me onto this for Baby Espo along with some entertaining Twitter trolls)
• The Power of Positive Thinking – Peale

Fiction

• Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone – Rowling
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets – Rowling
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban – Rowling
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire – Rowling
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix – Rowling
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – Rowling
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Rowling

Happy reading and be sure to offer some books that you think I should peep out below.

Image - Artotem

Have you ever had an article or magazine that you wanted to read, only to have it fall under a stack of papers never to be seen again? I have many times. With my PR job I get countless magazines, and rarely read them, unless it’s to see where an article I placed ran.

Image: 3dnews.ru

Well way back in September, a copy of the Harvard Business Review crossed my desk and had an intriguing cover that caught my eye. On the left were Pixar’s light icon and the phrase: Creativity at PIXAR. This company has fascinated me for years and I was determined to check out the article and see what kind of creativity – aside from the movies smartass – was lurking behind their animated gates.

Well as you can see by the date, days turned into months and the magazine was lost in a scrap/trash pile never to be heard from again, until at the end of January, my team had to move our location. Thus forcing the cleaning process, it was here that the magazine popped back up. While a month may have passed before I got the chance to give it a read, the wait was well worth it.

The article is penned by Ed Catmull a cofounder of Pixar and current president of Pixar and Disney Animation Studios. The first person narrative goes on to show what makes Pixar so special as a company. Again, more than the movies, the company relies on innovation and creative thinking to stay one step ahead of the competition.

Teamwork and a nurturing & creative environment allows for the company to have everyone make a difference in a movie. Pixar’s goal to always one-up themselves is only matched by their ability to grow/learn from a failure while not settling for anything less.

We all know that their movies have been box office successes, however the one thing that the movie-going public will never see is the behind the scenes postmortems where the crew lays out what went wrong and what they can do better rather than being content to have a product out the door. This kind of thinking has not only elevated them to a top-tier theatrical company, but also may have saved Disney’s movies from the straight-to-DVD imposed hell.

The key takeaway from the article is not only the nurturing of talent and cultivating a goal orientated team, but also the three core principles of the company.

Pixar’s Operating Principles

1. Everyone must have the freedom to communicate with anyone
2. It must be safe for everyone to offer ideas
3. We must stay close to innovations happening in the academic community

I would suggest checking out the article, found in its entirety here, for anyone looking for ways to motivate their direct reports or team, HR reps or anyone like me who is a five-year old caught in a adult’s body who loves movies.

Random Tangent

My only wonder is why we never saw this Pixar commercial during the World Series?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_7_xz2OtoI]

After slimming down my cable bill, I have had limited choices to view outside of network television, I have been missing out on Little People Big World, Plant Earth, Lockup: Raw, Survivorman, any History Channel show and the occasional Boo-Ya from Stu Scott (not that much). Its also during this time that I began reading heavily, reminding me much like college, minus the papers.

After ripping through all of the books I had in the house, I heard author, Michael Connelly on the morning

Image courtest Motorbooks.com

show on WEEI talking about his new book Rebound! Basketball, Busing, Bird and the rebirth of Boston. At first it sounded like just another sports book, but then the author went into details about how the book not only chronicled the Celtics glory days and the rise of Bird’s team, but also the tumultuous time in the city of Boston during the busing fiasco.

Figuring it sounded like an appealing read I picked up the book and started away and quickly couldn’t put it down.

Not only was the jumping between stories seamless, but the racial unrest in Boston actually seemed to parallel the falling from grace of the NBA’s most storied franchise.

Originally coming from Jersey, I had heard stories of how the city was racist and how there was a scandal around busing, but never really understood it.

Chapter after chapter, I was shocked that some of the happenings of the book were something happening in one of the country’s oldest most revered cities and not in the pages of Mississippi Burning.

With the emphasis put on the history of the city, I almost think that it should be added to the curriculum of the Boston Public School System in an effort to educate less history repeat itself.

Connelly’s most powerful image in the book is the culmination celebration in Government Center of the Celts championship, almost washing away the racial unrest that consumed the city less than three years earlier.