For all of us with high-tech, high-stress jobs, most of what we do involves sitting at a desk staring at computer screens.  Tools like email, Facebook, Google Hangouts and the like have made it even worse since the majority of our interactions take place at our desks.  Unfortunately, there is a price to pay for long hours hunched over a keyboard. Health experts are calling it sitting disease and it’s having a serious detrimental effect on society’s health as a whole.

The cure isn’t to combat the symptoms of sitting disease, but to attack the real problem of having to sit around while working.  What if you could stand or even better walk while working?  That simple concept is the driver behind the under-desk treadmill. While the concept of a treadmill desk is straightforward enough, as always the devil is in the details. The difference between success and failure with treadmill desks starts with proper knowledge about configuring your workspace and selecting the right desk and treadmill base, among other factors.

Looking around the Internet, you’ll find plenty of information about treadmill desks, but it’s hardly convenient or well-organized. Recognizing this void, one of our long-time friends in the tech industry and serial entrepreneur Ron Wiener and his team have launched a new site called WorkWhileWalking.com that puts everything you need to know about treadmill desks at your fingertips. Ron’s lively new site serves up reference information and in-depth product reviews combined with frequent reports on the latest industry developments. What’s more, Ron will be launching a new e-Book so you can read up on treadmill desks on your Kindle, smartphone or tablet.

If you find that you’re sitting more than nine hours per day, chances are you are already suffering from sitting disease to some degree. Using a treadmill desk for just 2-3 hours per day at a pace slow enough that you can still work at a desktop or laptop PC has been shown to boost health, help with weight control and increase energy levels.  More and more companies, business leaders and celebrities are starting to embrace treadmill desks, and sales are growing steadily. We strongly encourage everyone to take a look at WorkWhileWalking.com or download the e-Book and get started. You’ll be glad did.

One of the tactics we often recommend to clients is to create infographics. These graphic images pull together a lot of information on a particular topic and present it in an attractive way that can be easily shared. Editors and bloggers love them because they drive click throughs to stories, while the infographic sponsors get their names and logos splashed across the Web.

A problem for vendors is that publications might see their infographics as overly self-serving. An effective way around that, as in the example below, is for vendors and industry organizations to work together to create the infographic. In this case, Hyland Software/OnBase worked with the government community site GovLoop to build a nice infographic on how governments are using enterprise content management software. Naturally, given how much publications dig infographics, it landed on Government Technology’s site as a news item. (Full disclosure: we did not work on this one, it’s just an example of some good work.)

At McKenzie Worldwide we enjoy turning on the creative juices and brainstorming concepts for infographics that help build your brand. Hope to hear from you.

Today’s Oregonian featured an article on the cover of the Living section about battery recycling which highlighted the work that our terrific client BETTERY Inc. is doing in this space. Carrie Sturrock’s well-written article, Battery Recyclers Turn Up The Juice, takes an in-depth look at the issue and includes some great quotes from BETTERY execs Charlie Kawasaki and Bob Altabet.  And one Safeway shopper says she wants Safeway to get with it and offer BETTERY kiosks in their stores.

Are you recycling your batteries and using rechargeable ones to help the environment? You should! Check out this article for more information.

One of the most important things a new company’s leadership team should consider as they are building their company’s brand is to really “live their brand” every day. And, some days are extra special. For our client BETTERY, Earth Day and Earth Month in April are special times because they align with the company’s sustainability mission to do something positive for the environment.

As part of our PR program, we worked with the BETTERY team to organize their first BETTERY Battery Recycling Earth Day Events for Kids at Whole Foods Market stores. At these events, BETTERY focused on educating local school children about the importance of recycling and battery recycling/reuse in particular.

The kids had fun. We had fun. Most importantly, lots of batteries were recycled which means fewer will end up in landfills this year. More than 2.5 billion single-use batteries end up in landfills in the U.S. each year. Isn’t that a terrible state of affairs? Fortunately, BETTERY offers a better solution for your household batteries.

Here’s some photos from the event today:

In this photo Mill Plain Elementary first graders listen and learn about the importance of battery recycling as BETTERY Founder and CEO Charlie Kawasaki explains how his new invention, the BETTERY Swap Station, works.

Charlie also demonstrated the newly installed BETTERY Swap Station for buying and exchanging reusable batteries to Mill Plain Elementary first-grader Michael Hall (7) at the Whole Foods Market store at Mill Plain in Vancouver.

Members of the local media also were on hand to cover these events.

Happy Earth Day!

Our client BETTERY was featured in KATU-TV’s ”Go Green” television special which we arranged to be recorded at a Whole Foods Market location and at Total Reclaim’s facilities near Portland, Oregon. Overall, it turned out great and explains the importance of battery recycling and how BETTERY is poised to reinvent the portable power industry — all while helping consumers do something positive for the environment, creating jobs and having fun!

We had fun shooting, editing and producing this video for our client BETTERY. Check it out and learn how to use their BETTERY Swap Station kiosk. We can all do our part to help the environment and this idea makes it SO easy!

BETTERY Founder Charlie Kawasaki Demonstrates Nation’s First Kiosk for Exchange of Reusable Batteries from McKenzie Worldwide on Vimeo.

Growing up in Silicon Valley and working in the high tech space for over 20 years gives me a somewhat unique perspective on technology. On the one hand, the advances that have come from the world of high tech, such as cell phones, personal computers, and the mouse on a computer, have greatly enhanced productivity and changed the world around us, and I usually embrace them whole heartedly. It’s amazing to me that my house can monitor and adjust my thermostat to save on energy costs, and that I can be automatically alerted when there’s a bad traffic accident on the road that I can avoid.

Yet when technology has progressed so far that big brother can snoop around and find out almost anything about me and my habits (hello General Petraeus) or Google can share my web history or Amazon my purchasing history, I get a little freaked out. What is considered public and what is considered private? It’s worth noting the startling increase in government requests globally for data to Google. And needless to say, Google is turning it over. Could you or I be next?

Advances in technology, for such markets as medical or environmental, have done wonders for all of us. But how much progress should be considered to be too much progress? Am I an early adopter or am I a Luddite who is scared of the shadow my laptop gives off. With that in mind here is my ode to what most consider to be the birth of the high tech industry, Silicon Valley.

(sung to the tune of “The Beverly Hillbillies”)

Come and listen to a story about the mi-cro-chip,
Was quite a breakthrough, but not seen as very hip.
Then came the IC which gave us a voice,
All to the efforts of Mr. Bob Noyce.

Integrated circuit that is, Fairchild Semiconductor, silicon gold.

Well the first things to go were the orchards and the trees,
Then the buildings went up with relevant ease.
Engineers worldwide said “San Jose is where we outta be.”
So they loaded up their trucks and moved to the Valleeeeey.

Silicon that is, ridiculously priced homes, stock options.

Fifty years later technology rules all,
Weather updates on my phone, but rarely a phone call.
I like digital cameras and a blazing fast PC,
All because of a place called Silicon Valley.

Bottom line is, tech is great, cut the check.

Buy a house, move on in, y’hear?

Putting aside personal beliefs and party preferences, the presidential debate on October 16 night was a real yawner for someone like me who actually wanted to hear some substance. While a good “he said/she said” argument is always entertaining, the funniest parts of the evening didn’t come from the campus of Hofstra University, but instead came from the blog-o-sphere. While the first debate brought us discussions about the importance and cost of Big Bird in our society, the second debate put binders at the forefront of Wednesday morning water cooler talk. Personally I was disgusted by the focus on attacking each other and the lack of quality answers to the questions, but that’s fodder for the political blogs to hash out.

Today’s topic is about the extensive reach and the impact of social media. We’ve seen the impact that social media can have on sharing images and issues that can bring about change – see the Arab Spring. But social media can also give us a pulse check on what voters are thinking at any moment as well as put into perspective the sheer volume of participants. Let’s take a look at some numbers circulating around the Web about the debate:

• By the time the debate was even over, Romney’s description had spawned a Facebook page (which had more than 275,000 “Likes” by mid-morning on Wednesday), a Twitter handle and, perhaps best of all, the website bindersfullofwomen.tumblr.com…” KFMB TV
• Twitter said the conversation peaked at 109,560 tweets per minute when Romney was asked about immigration. In an hour-by-hour count, the site’s “cheermeter” recorded 116,000 tweets favoring Romney to 94,000 for Obama and the Republican leading 111,000 to 101,000 in the second hour. Phys.org
• The 90-minute nationally televised exchange between President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney generated 12.24 million comments on Twitter and Facebook according to Blue Fin Labs, an analytics firm that studies social media’s reaction to televised events. Politico

But social media isn’t just about tossing around opinions and mocking opponents. The idea of micro-targeting specific groups is a very powerful idea. Attensity, a social analytics firm stated that “the most revealing insights related to viewer sentiment and voter intentions came from the swing states: Ohio, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Virginia, and Wisconsin.”

So what can we in the corporate communications world learn from all of this? When you design a campaign for a product launch or corporate event, do your homework and determine the best way to not only reach but to actively engage your audience which. When used correctly, social media can help establish a multi-way dialogue with your target audience rather than simply using one-way communication techniques that hinder a company’s ability to engage in a more meaningful way with their audience.

That said, I leave you with one of the funnier Tweets that I read from the debate courtesy of CNN – “I feel like Obama’s staff stabbed him in the chest w/ the adrenaline needle from Pulp Fiction.”

There’s been a long, raging debate among business school types about whether a business should optimize for shareholders or think more broadly about all of its so-called stakeholders like employees and the local community.  The argument on the shareholder side goes something like whatever is good for boosting profit is ultimately good for the business.

While there’s no doubt truth in that statement over the long term, a short-term focus on optimizing shareholder value can have negative consequences. That’s not really shocking news, but unfortunately it’s still happening.

The most recent victim of myopic, shareholder-first thinking was – of all companies! – Apple. I’d submit that most people when they look at the cute Apple logo on their spiffy iPad or iPhone want to think of Apple as a happy company, sort of like the Disney of computing.  Sure they can cost an arm and leg, but there’s a lot of value in gadgets that look cool and work like a dream.

 What Apple is doing, of course, is perfectly legal. It might even be good business for a normal company. But this is Apple. It’s possibly the most successful and profitable company to date.  It’s also the happy company we all want to love.  It’s bad PR not to spread the wealth and fail to make the world a better place.  Especially when it could be so easy. Ironically, the shareholders might not even have noticed.

The shareholders will notice when people start thinking twice about buying Apple products, however.  After hearing a story about Apple factory workers on NPR’s This American Life, my wife was disinclined to purchase Apple products in the future, although I’m not sure workers at Samsung or Dell factories are much better off than those at Apple plants.  Most consumers probably don’t care in any case about a rotten core if the fruit is ok.

From a PR perspective – and here’s where you want to listen to outside counsel – perhaps the biggest loss for Apple was the missed opportunity.  By giving lowly store workers nice salaries and making life better for Chinese factory workers, Apple could have created a massive perception boost – one far greater than the comparatively minor incremental cost of doing the right thing. Apple isn’t completely tone deaf, and recent reports indicate that nice pay raises are due to store workers.  It’s a step in the right direction, but it never should have come to this in the first place.  We expect better Apple.

The technological advances we’ve seen in our lifetime is amazing. The Internet has changed the way the world works, cell phones have altered the communications landscape, and many life-threatening illnesses are now curable, just to name a few. While I always marvel at what my kids can do with their smartphones – they laugh at me when I tell them there was no such thing as a PC when I was their age – I sometimes wonder if we’ve gone too far. Yes, it can be a good thing to have a lot of information on a subject, other times too much information, especially when working with editors, can be a negative.

Since President Obama took office we’ve seen a dramatic change in the importance placed on transparency. Being accountable to your constituents is one of the many great things about our democracy. But how much information should we have at our fingertips? How much is too much when it comes to fighting off “Big Brother?” In many ways the act of governing is like sausage — you may like the taste, but you don’t want to see how it’s made.

Knowing how our government representatives vote is fine, but knowing all of the details about how everything is planned and developed “will inspire not reform, but disgust.” In a recent article in CNN, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey talked about the negative side of transparency with regard to government. “Too many politicians aren’t voting their conscience, they’re voting to placate blog commenters, and that’s no way to run government.”

For those of us in the communications field it’s important to ask ourselves if our company is sharing too much information, not enough, or is somewhere in the middle. More important is the question of “what is newsworthy?” Sharing information through multiple channels is fine as long as the news is important. Spamming the world with news of little interest does nothing except get others to tune your news out.

When developing an announcement plan, corporate social media strategy, or building a relationship with an influential editor or blogger, PR folks need to use their internal “garbage meter” to determine how valuable and relevant the news is. Instead of getting people to tune you out, it’s important to make the news compelling enough so that they want to follow your news regularly.

A PR plan or social media strategy needs to take into account what your overall goals are and how newsworthy your announcement is, not “how are we going to blanket the world with our news.” This kind of thinking can also get you in trouble with the media. I know one editor who said that some PR folks upload a release to this editor’s website, Tweet about the news, update Facebook, e-mail the editor directly, and then link back to the editor’s blog with the news. That’s fine as long as the news is of value.

The next time you outline an announcement strategy or PR plan, think carefully about what your goals are. Living in the age of increased transparency, in many ways, is a great thing. But beware of information overload. Or as philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville once stated, “In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them.”