Meet Acts of Humanity: The Power of Purposeful Events Contributor – Avery Vise
Meet the Contributors who helped make Acts of Humanity: The Power of Purposeful Events an insightful and amazing book.
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LAUNCH ANNOUNCEMENT
ANNOUNCEMENT My book Acts of Humanity: The Power of Purposeful Events will be released in August 2026. Pre-release orders are open now at your favorite bookseller (links here) or at www.actsofhumanitythebook.com. (There is even a Limited Edition available from the web site.) Overview:Human beings are not just social creatures—we are relational creatures. Events – large…
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The Rise of Brand Storytelling in Job Postings
LinkedIn recently noted that job postings mentioning “storytellers” have doubled over the last year. Around the same time, its 2026 skills analysis for media and communications listed “Brand Storytelling” among the fastest-growing skills in that field. That is interesting not because storytelling is suddenly new, but because organizations are now naming it more directly. …
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Lessons Learned from a Bad Date with Barbie
Recent coverage highlighted a Barbie-themed immersive experience in Florida where families arrived to find something very different from what had been advertised. Reporting from the BBC and others focused less on any single misstep and more on the difference between what people expected and what they encountered once they got there.
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The Presence of Absence: A Story in Four Paintings and One Life
This is presence of absence: an artistic style that finds power in what’s missing. It’s not just about solitude or stillness, but about how what isn’t shown becomes what matters most. I didn’t set out to collect paintings in this style. But over time, and through a series of deeply personal experiences, I realized that…
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After Thought: Thirty Years Later. A Personal Journey
I first encountered After Thought in the early 1990s, a decade into working with tech companies that were changing the world—and changing me. I was living inside a machine-mediated world before most people recognized it. But James Bailey’s book After Thought: The Computer Challenge To Human Intelligence taught me something new; exploded my mind –…
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The Triad Effect: How Three Drives Culture, Design, Story
Co-created with AI Pattern, Perception, and Psychology The Brain’s Pattern Recognition and the Triad The number three holds a unique place in human cognition. Our brains are wired to seek out patterns—shapes, rhythms, ideas—and three is the smallest number that allows us to form a complete set. One is singular, two creates a duality, but…
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Beyond Possession: How Curating a Pen Collection Creates Personal Meaning
Co-created with AI I never intended to become a collector—not consciously. But somewhere between finding myself with a tray full of MontBlanc Writers Editions and acquiring all three of the Sailor Ebonite Sculpture versions, I began to notice a pattern. When I find a pen I love, I want more than just one version. I…
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My Road to Yard-o-Led:
Co-created with AI The story of Yard-O-Led begins not with a pen, but with a pencil—and a bold idea. In 1822, Sampson Mordan, a London goldsmith and associate of Michael Faraday, patented the world’s first mechanical pencil, which he called the “ever-pointed.” This invention laid the groundwork for what would become one of Britain’s most enduring writing instrument…
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My Road to Sailor:
Co-created with AI Japan in 1911: The Meiji Era’s Final Years1911 falls near the end of the Meiji period (1868–1912), a time when Japan had undergone one of the most dramatic transformations in world history. In just a few decades, it had evolved from a feudal society ruled by samurai and shoguns into a modern industrial power….
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My Road to Montblanc:
Co-created with AI Aspiration and AnxietyIn the early 1900s, German cities like Hamburg (where Montblanc was founded) were bustling centers of trade, culture, and innovation. The middle class was growing, literacy was high, and there was a hunger for refinement and self-expression. But after the war, life was hard. Veterans returned to shattered lives. Families struggled to…
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My Road to Nakaya:
Co-created with AI Prologue: A Quiet Morning in WajimaThe first morning of 2024 arrived with a hush over Wajima. The town, nestled on the northern edge of the Noto Peninsula, was still wrapped in the quiet of New Year’s Day. Snow dusted the tiled rooftops, and the sea, usually restless, lay still like a sheet…
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In the Hands of the Maker
Co-created with AI There’s a quiet reverence that comes from holding something made by hand. Whether it’s a pen from Nakaya, a hammered silver barrel from Yard-O-Led, a precision-machined writing instrument by Grayson Tighe, or a sculptural tribute from Montblanc, I feel the presence of the person who made it. Not just their skill—but their…
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In Ink and Intention: A Hundred Days with Pens
Co-created with AI Some people count days in steps or calories. I’ve come to count them in lines—written across paper in ink. It began as a practical gesture, an elegant supplement to a book project involving twenty interviews. What started as a decision to use a beautiful pen instead of a disposable one to capture…
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Autonomous Vehicles at Events
The relationship we have with our cars is the stuff of legend. In fact, Sir William Lyons, one of the founders of Jaguar Cars, said “The car is the closest thing we will ever create to something alive.” While I can’t imagine how Sir Lyons would feel about today’s technology, I know many who are…
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All | Differentiation | General | Innovation | Marketing | NEW TO JANUS DIALOGS | TRDOM | TRDOM/TRIDOM | Updates
Marketing is… (a slight update)
Close to five years ago I wrote Marketing is… Recently I was part of a discussion on what makes a marketing department “the best”? Reminded of this piece I revisited it. The discussion pointed out a missing factor in successful marketing – innovations. So we have gone from TRDOM to TRIDOM (Targeted, Relevant, Innovative, Differentiating,…
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All | Digitizing Everything | General | Innovation | Marketing | New Norm | 3D Printing | New Norm | 3rd Industrial Revolution | New Norm | User Generated Content | New Norms
Industry 4.0 – Digitizing of Everything Else
In 2012 I wrote about the Digitizing of Everything. Since then, even more than I imagined has been reduced to 0 and 1, stored in the cloud or on drives, and changed the world forever. Looking back, I realize that while I stuck a toe into the science fiction of the future as it was…
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One of these things is not like the others. | How to ensure your MC fits in
Some say that you learn all you need to know during kindergarten. If this is true, one of the biggest lessons for me was Sesame Street’s “One of these things is not like the others” segments. In these segments, four items are shows; three are related to each other in some way, the fourth is…
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All | Differentiation | Education | General | Innovation
“Yes, And” – The Power to Ignite Groups and Leaders | Guest blog by Kelly Leonard from The Second City
Rule number one in improvisation is that when you are tasked as a group to make something out of nothing, you can’t start with the word “no.” You also can’t simply say “yes.” To build something original as a team, you must begin with “Yes, And.” Why? Because great original work isn’t easy. In fact,…
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All | Differentiation | Digitizing Everything | General | Marketing | New Norm | Rise of Audio | Power of Stories | Video
The New Era of Silent Movies
In a short attention span, “I’m not listening”, world – communicators need to ensure that their visuals carry the story on their own when needed. To address the “mute” button and multi-screen society, some of the best broadcast commercials have told moving stories without spoken words for years. Check out the Budweiser #bestbuds series with…
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All | Digitizing Everything | General | Innovation | Marketing | New Norm | Life Logging | New Norm | User Generated Content | New Norms | Social, Technical, Economic, Political | Video
Seeing Around Corners – ECEF 2015 Keynote
Social norms, technology and the economy are under constant pressure. Small but meaningful changes that have the potential to disrupt our plans are advancing every day. Like pressure on a fault line, they can release small tremors or become major earthquakes. From the decline of intermediaries to the growth in protests, the shocks will affect…
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All | General | Marketing | New Norms | NEW TO JANUS DIALOGS | Power of Stories | Social, Technical, Economic, Political
How Celebrities and Copy Cats create “Janus Moments”.
The gift bag at the recent Emmys included tens of thousands of dollars worth of products, trips, samples, and more. Product placement in movies and TV shows – whether subtle or more obvious – can expose a product to millions of people, and in a situation and use that is most positive to the brand….
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All | General | Innovation | Marketing | New Norm | Equality | Social, Technical, Economic, Political
No Respect, No Service
The famous ad – “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” – is successful both in it catchiness and truism: in Las Vegas you can let your hair down and behave in ways you may want to forget. Given Vegas’ place as a center for conferences and trade shows, the reference is certainly not just…
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Five Remedies for the Four Horsemen
Forgive the religious (and gender specific) overtones of the Four Horsemen, but challenges at events – from small to apocalyptic – are as much a reality as they can be epic. From the simplest of misbehavior, to the more significant of world changing events, it is the overcoming of a wide variety of challenge that…
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The only thing we have in common is that we are all different.
In live marketing such as tradeshows, events, conferences, etc., feeling welcomed and being included is critical. It can mean the difference between having the broadest impact, or not; having relevant experiences and receiving the right content, or not; and most importantly, walking away with a positive impression, or not. Diversity – The aspects of diversity…
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All | Digitizing Everything | General | Innovation | Marketing | New Norm | 3D Printing | New Norm | 3rd Industrial Revolution | New Norm | Life Logging | New Norm | Protest [Occupy] | New Norm | User Generated Content | New Norms | Social, Technical, Economic, Political | Video
MPI World Education Congress 2014 | Closing General Session
The Closing General Session at MPI World Education Congress 2014 featured Scott Schenker, the General Manager, Events and Production Studio at Microsoft and Founder of Janus Dialogs. Scott believes there is magic in discovery and innovation. However the process of innovating is not magical – it comes from observing what others are doing, tapping the collective…
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Demystifying the Big Buzzwords In Events | BizBash LA
Posted August 4, 2014, 7:00 AM EDT by BizBash At the Event Innovation Forum in Los Angeles, Scott Schenker examined some of the latest buzzwords the event and meeting industry is obsessed with. These days it seems the event and meeting industry is obsessed with a constant stream of new buzzwords. But are they really…
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All | Education | General | Marketing | Power of Stories | Social, Technical, Economic, Political | TRDOM
Areas of Agreement
Unity and alignment are powerful forces, and when they can be harnessed they can drive great accomplishment. I think about a personal collection I am very proud of, a set of posters from the Second World War, posters made by, in part, my grandfather who was the creative lead of the Sheldon-Claire Agency at that…
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All | General | Innovation
Maximizing Space
New ways of thinking about conference flow and design are disrupting old formulas about how to locate and lay out large events. That disruption begins with the first question, which evolves from “how much space do we need?” to “how little space could we do this in?” It’s a question that carries a surprising amount…
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All | Differentiation | General | Marketing
Plus Pass: Increase Interest and Value with Unique Experiences and Limited Packages.
Across diverse industries, customers eagerly embracing upgrades that offer increased convenience, are more personal, are viewed as more valuable, and offer access to exclusive activities. Audiences will naturally gravitate toward activities and enhancements that are most relevant to them. Everyone wins when attendees can craft their conference experience in ways that excite and captivate them….
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The P’s of Event Marketing
Event teams can adopt a classic marketing model to focus efforts and achieve their objectives. In early 2013, Harvard Business Review posted an article titled, “Rethinking the Four P’s” suggesting that the classic marketing mix model1 (product, place, price, and promotion) should be retooled to better address the needs of B2B marketers. The article was…
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The Secret Sauce – Fans
Who will stand in line for hours to buy the latest device or see opening night; invest their time and money to be part of the experience; or support what they believe in to boundless levels? A fan will. Sport teams, entertainers, and even politicians have known the power of fans for years – they…
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Experiential Marketing – “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it”
In the later decades of the 20th century a new term arose from the board rooms of Madison Avenue to the halls of convention centers around the world – “Experiential Marketing.” Given the diverse elements and definitions of marketing itself (see here), adding a word such as experiential wasn’t very clarifying. Clarity wasn’t the objective – differentiation was. Firms…
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All | Differentiation | General | Innovation | Measurement | TRDOM | Video
Presentation at CEMA Summit 2013 | “Be a Fool – Innovate”
In July of 2013 I had the honor to present “Be a Fool – Innovate” at the CEMA Summit 2013. That presentation is below.
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All | General | Innovation | TRDOM
Be a Fool – Innovate
It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Niccolò Machiavelli Everything changes and nothing remains still… you cannot step twice into the same…
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All | General | Measurement
Measurement 3.0 – Insights on Insights
“Measurement” has certainly experienced a rise in popularity and relevance in the event and experience space. There is increased focus, activities, and even funding to capture the opinions of the attendees, understand the results of the event, even (in a few cases) the return against the objectives. And when the objective is sales, a true…
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New Norm | The Rise of Audio
Audio’s day is coming. Like battles in geopolitics, operating systems, and hem line length, the mediums of text, images, and audio have each been in and out of favor. Text took an early – and admittedly long – lead with the Gutenberg Printing Press in 1436. This allowed for not only storage of text,…
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Think Global, Act Local, Be Personal
The world is not only getting smaller, it’s getting more personal. Look to retail – consumers are taking a more pro-active role than ever before. “Cash Mobs” are the latest intersection of local, personal, social, and retail. This twist on “flash mobs” brings together a group to one store to support the community…
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The Aging of Great Ideas.
One of the great truths about the United States returns to the surface every four years when it comes time to elect a new president. We are not a democracy, we are a republic. The Electoral College – a system put in place in 1787 – was established, depending on whom you ask, to prevent…
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Learning in the (Right) Moment | Timing and Context in Comedy and Content
One of the cores of comedy is timing. (Pause, wait for it…) This is true for content and learning as well. (Not a great punch line was it?) For the first several minutes of the movie “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” Martha (Elizabeth Taylor) pesters George (Richard Burton) with the question “’What a dump!’…
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Marketing is…
…one half of an unfinished symphony. Whether marketing communications, product/solution marketing, experience marketing, brand, advertising, demand generations, social media, or anything else, the balance of the melody is “sales”. “Sales” is in quotes because this word is also incomplete when it stands on its own. “Sales and marketing” is a “complete sentence” containing an objective…
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All | General | New Norm | 3rd Industrial Revolution | New Norm | User Generated Content | Social, Technical, Economic, Political
Lessons from Kickstarter | “Person”-alized Marketing and Re-order the Order
While the technology of additive manufacturing (3d printing) is at the foundation of the 3rd industrial revolution, other social, political, economic, and technical changes are fueling this disruption in more surprising ways. Kickstarter (@kickstarter), launched only four years ago, serves as a crowd-funding site where those looking to start a project can find those…
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All | Differentiation | General | Power of Stories | TRDOM
Different as a Differentiator | The Value of Differentiating
Can you increase the value of something simply by inventing a story about it? Joshua Glenn and Rob Walker set out to answer this question with a simple experiment. They purchased roughly 200 items from thrift stores at an average cost of $1.25, invented stories about each, and sold them on eBay for nearly $8,000…
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Too Dumb, too Smart, or Just Out of Alignment?
It would be nice to think that as a species we are forever improving. Stronger, faster, smarter. But what if we aren’t? What if we have passed our evolutionary mental zenith and are now on the down side? Matt Ridley explored this for The Wall Street Journal concluding: “’Has brain size stopped increasing?’ For a…
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All | Digitizing Everything | General | Measurement | New Norm | 3D Printing | New Norm | 3rd Industrial Revolution | New Norm | Life Logging | New Norm | Protest [Occupy] | New Norm | Transparency | New Norm | User Generated Content | Social, Technical, Economic, Political | Video
Event Marketing Summit Presentation
In early May of 2012 I presented at the Event Marketing Summit 5 trends facing the Experience Marketing industry. That presentation is embedded below. Some additional notes related to this presentation: An update on the Apple Store Protest in Australia can be found here The Flash Mob that was denied a…
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The Means Justify the Means | Occupy Occupies Occupy
More than a tongue twister, it’s a brain twister as well. Back in November, members of Occupy Seattle opposed to the “power dynamics created by a speaker on stage” occupies and disrupted an Occupy Seattle Town Hall. The Town Hall was designed to bring some direction and clarity to the movement. Instead, it was infected…
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All | General | New Norm | Equality | New Norm | Transparency | Social, Technical, Economic, Political
No [self determined] Good Deed Goes Unpunished
During the fundraising for the New World Symphony in Miami, there was a donation for $90 million. The scale of the donation is not the most interesting aspect, the fact that the donation is from “anonymous” is. A business making a donation of this size would want the associated publicity. But why would an…
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The extremes of transparency
To over simplify the issue of transparency – there are two extremes. One that hides a truth; the other that reveals too much. And the importance of the truth changes with the social, technical, economic, and political context. In both extremes, the circumstance matters. Does lying on a resume that you have a degree…
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The answer to the protest marketing question
It took a week to learn that the “protest” that took place at the Apple store in australia was not from Samsung, nor a real protest as some thought, but a marketing stunt from RIM. Yes RIM. How anyone would know is hard to say, other than their recent press release. While the rules…
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Protest the New Marketing?
Interesting article on a flashmob outside an Apple store in Australia. Samsung denies, but is this a form of Protest Marketing, User Generated Content, or both?
![No [self determined] Good Deed Goes Unpunished](https://scottschenker.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/mickey-l.jpg)
