Through our company, DigitalMediaIX, my partner and associates specialize in capturing social media behavior in the soon-to-be lucrative younger, educated Millennial segment (http://bit.ly/1IV6wL3) - U.S. and Chinese College Students. In particular, we capture social media engagement on preferred brands in 10 categories.

Additional information captured includes:
• General social media behavior across key platforms;
• Traditional vs. online/streaming TV media consumption; and
• Incidence of mobile usage for shopping and purchase in several key categories.

This data is helpful in providing guidance for strategic digital/social media planning and placement.

Those who would most likely be interested in attending this webinar are those who target U.S. and/or Chinese College students, and those who take the longer-term view, wishing to build brand awareness and affinity early in the consumer life cycle.

New models of computation such as cloud computing, Big Data, and the
Internet of Things have fundamentally upended common assumptions about the nature and purposes of computation. One thing that may be said about these and some other such paradigms is that they almost always require computation to be provided as a service to some entity seeking a larger end, rather than regarding the computation as being an end in itself. Services also come with their own set of challenges; e.g., services are typically more difficult to create and manage well than product creation, and services almost always require humans in the loop in critical functions. Yet, classical teaching curricula and research directions give few insights into how professionals may understand how computation may be fashioned to work as a component in a service existing in a larger business or social context.

This webinar considers certain problems and issues that arise in services
computing that are not covered well in standard curricula, and suggests
some approaches.

Abstract

Customer side renewable energy generation has gone from being a fad to becoming a viable option for customers to reduce/stabilize their electricity costs. However, there are a plethora of things that can go wrong with a renewable generation project: from selecting inadequate technologies for the site to contracting with the wrong vendor to entering into a poor power purchase agreement to paying too much for the project to shoddy construction to changes in utility rate design that can quickly obliterate any energy savings. This short course will provide you with the basics on what types of renewable generation are available, how to evaluate your site for renewable generation, and how to protect yourself so that you have a successful renewable energy project.

This course will cover:
- Types of renewable generation: characteristics, applications, and representative costs
- Site evaluation for renewable generation
- Incentives for renewable generation
- Ownership options: Power Purchase Agreements vs. direct ownership
- Utility interconnection and rate impacts
- Successful solicitation development
- Evaluation of offers/solicitation responses
- Negotiations with vendors to get what you want and protect yourself
- Things to watch out for/ how to protect yourself

    - utility interconnection

    - utility rate design

    - renewable performance

• Evaluation of renewable project operations

“We buy products because of what they mean, not because of what they do.”

That insight is crucial for any consumer-facing industry. Customers literally choose from thousands of options – and most of them have very little to do with functionality. However, that doesn’t make these decisions unimportant by any means. The selection of a watch, a bracelet, a pair of glasses or many other items reflects deep-seated values and beliefs about appearance and the consumer’s identity. We can think of the body as a canvas, where the shopper chooses from a “palette” of accessory items, apparel, footwear, cosmetics and other products to paint a picture s/he wants the world to see at a fixed moment in time. Fashion marketers need to dig deeper if they want to sync their offerings with what their customers seek.

We’ll look at some of the powerful cultural forces that drive fashion statements. Then we’ll focus on the individual consumer and her motivations to buy. We’ll examine some of the important factors that influence what that “self-portrait” looks like, including feelings about the body, peer pressure, celebrity endorsements and the messages our culture sends about what men and women need to look like. We’ll also consider how new technologies such as social media communities, wearable computing and augmented reality will color this picture in the near future.

Did you know:

➢ U.S. consumers spend almost $2 billion per year on virtual goods that exist only in games and other online platforms. That’s right, $2 billion to buy goods that don’t exist.

➢ More than 1.5 billion people worldwide regularly visit at least one virtual world.

➢ American teenagers spend more than nine and a half hours per day interacting with a screen (smartphone, tablet, TV).

Today, games are serious business.

Gamification strategies turn routine behaviors into engaging experiences and can effectively boost participation in everything from sales promotions, to an internal branding effort, to a marketing research project.

Learn about exciting, interactive environments that sync with the Millennial mindset. Elements of these strategies are effective and easy to implement—and surprisingly affordable, even for small to medium-size businesses.

This overview will focus on how to create and leverage gamification principles for your marketing strategy to engage your customers and achieve greater ROI, harness customers’ enthusiasm for new product development, motivate your employees and empower your sales force.