How do you choose a person of the Century?

Well if you're developing a fund raiser to celebrate the first century of Scouting, then first and foremost, you need an outstanding Scout.  No problem there.  You have an incredible abundance of folks to choose from. Eagle Scouts alone have become presidents, governors, war heroes, Supreme Court Justices, and astronauts including 11 of the 12 men who walked on the moon. 

So the Boy Scouts Los Angeles Area Council tried to find a person who exemplified the spirit of scouting.  Someone with a wide breadth of knowledge and experience in a variety of fields.  How better to represent the many areas of achievement rewarded by Scouting with merit badges and advancement in rank. 

The person they decided on was University of Southern California president Steven B. Sample.  As our CEO and Boy Scouts Los Angeles Area Council Board member, Suzanne Marks explained, "He best personified the variety of skills that Scouting has taught for over a hundred years.  Steven Sample is an inventor, an educator, a business leader, an author and a Boy Scout.” 

To develop her campaign, a mix of traditional and electronic media, Suzanne relied on two of her own Scouts at Pasadena Advertising, Life Scout and V.P. Creative Tony Nino, and Eagle Scout, Creative Director, David Ensz.  “I wanted a design a basic look with a balanced focus to honor Dr. Sample and also pay homage to the first century of Scouting,” explained David Ensz, “the muted earth tones were a reminder that camping is an essential part of the Scouting experience.”  “Although crimson and gold seemed to be more prominently displayed among the USC alumni,” laughed Tony Nino.

Dr. Sample is the esteemed author of the Los Angeles Times Best selling book, “The Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership,” and a highly regarded professor of “The Art and Adventure of Leadership,” His extraordinary efforts in propelling academics at the University of Southern California are world-renowned; his incredible ability to generate contributions to that fine institution of higher learning has resulted in one of the most successful fundraising campaigns in the history of higher education.

Fittingly Dr. Sample’s Person of the Century celebration raised over $600,000 for Scouting in Los Angeles. In this economy, that was an achievement that more than exceeded expectations.  The Los Angeles Area Council is honored and grateful for the contributions of all our supporters.

Now You’re Thinking Freely

This weekend “CBS Sunday Morning” examined the burgeoning “Free” economy that is developing on the Internet. On the web, of course, “free content” is the norm. It’s expected, even demanded. Free searches, free email, free bargain hunting, free classified ads, free dictionaries, free encyclopedias. Everything online is either free or marginalized, shunned, avoided and diminished in importance. Certainly there are sites that charge a fee, or share a fee, but much of that content is available elsewhere, either independently or from a pirated source.

And piracy is theft, right? You put time and money into your intellectual property and someone enjoys it for free like music on the radio… Wait. No. That’s a bad example. Radio was good. On the radio, recording artists gained an audience who would come out to their concerts or buy their records or both. It was just great advertising. Record companies paid DJ’s in money, drugs and scotch to play their artists on the radio. Recording artists made money. Recording studios made money. Everyone was happy, and no one was stealing the content, except for the vast majority of listeners who recorded and shared it on cassettes… Damn. My train of thought seems to be derailing.

Or I’m being facetious.

Sunday morning guest commentator, Wired Magazine editor Chris Anderson showed how Google has mastered the art of profiting from the “Free” market. First of course is Google’s cash cow “free search,” which combines search results with highly targeted ads based on the user’s search term. As Anderson pointed out, searching for plants brings up ads for landscapers. Innovative, yet intuitive.

More interesting, the Monty Python gang, faced with a slew of “pirated” videos of favorite skits like the “Dead Parrot” and “Cheese Shop” on Youtube (owned by Google) chose not to sue or enjoin Youtube to cease, desist and remove their bits. No. Instead they started their own Monty Python channel which featured all these favorite skits. Then they used the channel to sell high quality DVD’s of the originals. As a result Monty Python DVD sales went up 23,000 percent. Free can be verrrrry profitable.

Another example of choosing to profit from “pirated” content appeared this morning in Media Post’s “Search Insider” blog. One of the most popular Youtube videos is the joyful explosion of wedding celebration, the “J K Wedding Entrance Dance.” That wild and raucous, devilish dance down the center isle to the alter is uplifting, moving and inspirational. But it could have subjected the happy couple to a devastating RIAA type lawsuit and cost them thousands of dollars in fines.

Sony's Jive label chose instead to link the video to Amazon and iTunes where users could download “Forever,” the song featured in the video which, oh by the way, “briefly climbed to the No. 3 and No. 4 most popular song on those two sites” and the official 'Forever' music video also had a spike in downloads. Now the video is being used to collect donations for violence prevention.

The choice, it seems, is make a profit or make a stink. The RIAA legal battles, which began with shutting down Napster, have resulted in horrible publicity and hundreds of thousands of dollars in uncollectible fines from students who can never pay them. Google’s “Free” market exploitation is resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits. Unless you’re a lawyer, the choice seems clear.

It’s a new world. It’s a new economic paradigm. The choice comes down to this: Get on board, or get left behind.