Just a last minute thought here on a late Friday fall afternoon in October in New England in advance of the Columbus Day weekend. Old Chris was a marvelous PR guy. How else explain that he went down in history for having discovered a continent that was already populated and had already been seen and inhabited by Scandanavian sailors? Hmmm… quite a spinmeister!

See, he just spread his version of the word better. He was just the first to proclaim it. Claiming to be first matters, I guess, even if it isn't true? Great positioning. And a couple of highly quotable happy customers for his story in the name of Ferdinand and Isabella didn't hurt, right? Toss in a little embellishment about gold and a shortcut passageway to the land of silk and spices and man, you got a story with wind at its back.

Happy Columbus Day, everyone. Happy Anniversary modern day PR.

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The world should thank Forrester Research for the work it is doing on Web 2.0/social media technologies, techniques and commercial use. I think they are doing more and doing it better than anyone in the business. Their latest research report comes this week from G. Oliver Young entitled, "Case Study: Northwestern Mutual's Enterprise Web 2.0 Journey."

To be clear, I have no relationship with Forrester of any kind and I don't get paid to hawk their stuff. They don't know me from Adam. But if you're interested in how you can use social media technology to get the word out to employees, you probably ought to cough up the mere $279 price for this 16-page report. Just from the table of contents alone I can tell it includes the good, the bad and the ugly and is not a happy whitewash of everything wonderful about Web 2.0. That table of contents mirrors almost exactly one that Dave and I would write for a major online social media project nearing completion for a major organization with which we consult. Surprises? You bet. Hard to measure? Yes, but we're getting close to solving that.

My reason for featuring this is also to make the point that there are few industries more conversative than insurance. If Northwestern Mutual had the courage to start figuring this out in 2005, and has achieved positive results already, where does that put you and your organization on the adoption curve? Ahead, on track, or behind one of the most conservative industries in the history of planet Earth? Are you where you should be?

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