The latest Silicon Valley Brand Forum was hosted by Symantec at their beautiful Executive Briefing Center in Mountain View. The event addressed questions such as: Should Silicon Valley companies try to adopt the techniques used by consumer brands? What can tech marketers learn from companies like P&G and RJ Reynolds to make our own brand management more effective? What strategies are transferable and which aren't?

Eric Ruffing and Dave Parmley, our friends from the 13TH FLOOR, recently released a new book titled "Alternative ABC" published by AMMO books. Designed for kids, but equally appreciated by people of all ages as well as fans of design, "Alternative ABCs" redefines the traditional ABC board books through colorful graphics inspired by street, surf, skate, and music subcultures.

The 2010 CEO Summit organized by Better by Design, will explore how design integration is being used by successful companies worldwide and discuss how to apply the principles of design integration. Design integrated companies are very different structured from other businesses. They create much more appealing products and services, their culture is much more dynamic and their process of creation is fundamentally different then the typical approach. In these fast shifting highly competitive markets, design integration offers the only way to WOW customers, create additional value, radically differentiate from your competition and create new markets.

Last week a few of us went to Las Vegas to attend Brand ManageCamp, where Marty Neumeier, our Director of Transformation was one of the featured speakers. The event was very well attended, with over 300 branding professionals who came from cities across the country – and also quite a few from outside the US (We met one attendee that flew in all the way from Qatar!). I wanted to compliment Len Herstein for putting together an extremely well organized, inspirational and very successful event. The line up of speakers was outstanding and the topics extremely relevant. It was a pleasure being there as an attendee – and Marty was also very pleased in terms of his experience as a presenter.