I haven’t had time to blog here lately, but I thought I should drop a quick update post letting anyone who visits know what my two primary projects are these days.  Basically, I’m publishing newsletters. And they are amazing! I would love for you to subscribe to both of them and get involved however you can.

• AI Time to Impact is a daily collection of short summaries of the new developments the AI community is most-engaged with, including some thoughts about who each development will impact first and when. Some stories have short term impacts, some have longer term impacts! This is a project I’m building as part of a larger effort to build news aggregation projects with an organization I’ll share sometime soon. The AI newsletter is just the first of what will be many projects like this. It’s very exciting! A few thousand people are reading this so far, including people from many of the world’s largest tech companies, legacy brands, and consulting firms, but it’s not too late to get in early! I am using the heck out of AI tools all the time and am having a great time. If you’re familiar with the role of RSS and social media in my career, AI is now in that same category of core tools. I should write about how I use it sometime but this YouTube interview with Esteban Kolsky is one way to learn about it if you’re interested.
• Sunflower News is my nights-and-weekends project focused on climate change. It’s a news aggregation and newsletter-powered community effort to build connections in the climate movement. A small but growing team (including technical co-founder Brian Hendrickson, Editor Sarah Damian, and more on the way) is working with some amazing organizations (Cultural Survival, Exponential View, Climatebase, and more) to produce a weekly newsletter I’m really proud to be a part of. A few hundred people are reading this so far, so if you join us over there now you’ll be in super early! And we’ve got more projects underway that I’ll share soon. Our aim is to make an impact on the climate movement disproportionate to our little size by focusing on making connections between inspiring organizations.

Plus reading, writing, running, loving my family, myself, and the rest of the earth. My darling Mikalina and I just celebrated the 20th anniversary of our first date and wow are they a blessing and a powerful partner to have in my life. We’ve got more family around us now than we ever have before, too, and it’s just wonderful. (Challenges for all of us included of course. As M.C. Richards writes in Centering, “By accepting suffering, we may relate more to others, developing compassion. By grace we may come free.” I want to remember that.) Above is a picture of me in one of my favorite places, feeling like a member of the Lucky Duck Club.

Just wanted to put this at the top of my website.  Drop me a line sometime and tell me what you’re up to! It’s probably been too long since we’ve talked.  My email is marshall@marshallk.com

Have a nice day!

This week’s edition of the Exponential View newsletter just went out – and that prompts me to post here all the stories of climate momentum that the team and I surfaced the week prior.  There’s a whole system we’ve built to surface the best climate news each week, and a team to run it. (More on that soon.)  Then I write up the stories selected by the folks at Exponential View.  It’s a great honor to get to be a part of it, EV is an amazing community and I can’t recommend checking them out highly enough.

Want some good climate news to build on?  Here are 4 stories we wrote up last week and 26 more that you might find inspiring as well!

Snipped from…

Marshall’s comment: “In addition to billions of dollars of new loans and investments aimed to bolster renewables, and legal rulings against multi-billion dollar fossil fuel projects, here are some of the most interesting new developments in climate this week.” 

Renewables milestone: Wind and solar power provided more than 10% of the entire world’s power generation for the first time last year, Bloomberg NEF reported this week.  50% of the new power generation added last year was from solar, 14% from wind.  The bad news is that coal grew faster last year, too. Just 89.5% of the mix left to go for renewables! Last month we shared a meta study by 15 academic institutions demonstrating that it is now effectively a global scientific consensus that 100% of the world’s energy needs could be filled by renewable sources by 2050.

Indigenous co-management for climate: The US Federal Government announced new guidelines last week for co-management with indigenous tribes of federal lands across the country, covering more than 70% (!) of the land under federal management. The guidelines will apply to three giant agencies: the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, and Fish and Wildlife Service (links to each agency’s order in PDF).  Repeating for emphasis, because this really is amazing, more than 70% of the federal land in the US (by my math) now falls under orders with language like this from the BLM, which is directed to “engage Tribes in meaningful consultation at the earliest phases of planning and decision-making in order to provide an opportunity for Tribes to shape the direction of the BLM’s land management activities. Upon request by a Tribe, the BLM will meet and consult regarding costewardship opportunities and evaluate proposals submitted by Tribes, including proposals to build both Tribal and Federal capacity to carry out the SO.” That sounds good, but do see this critique of the co-management paradigm from 1998. Globally, Indigenous Peoples represent 6.2% of the world’s population, hold tenure over 25% of the world’s land surface, steward 80% of the world’s biodiversity, and manage at least 24% of the total carbon stored above ground in the world’s tropical forests. The IPCC’s February report cites indigenous land tenure 58 times as a key lever for limiting climate change.

Solar panels in space: China’s LONGi Green Energy, called the world’s largest solar company, has announced that it is going to launch solar panels into space. The experimental system will capture sunlight high above the ground and convert it into microwave beams. Then it will shoot those beams through the air to a receiver station on the ground, where they can be converted back to electricity.  While such a system is intended to offer continuous access to the sun’s rays, many people have called it more trouble than it’s worth. Dutch renewables expert Auke Hoekstra posted a thoughtful Twitter thread in defense of solar panels in space almost 4 years ago.  It’s certainly a very centralized solution. 

Breaking the loss & damage taboo: Denmark has announced that it will break ranks with international leaders who refuse to pay money to poor countries and former colonies for the impact of climate change. This week the country announced a symbolic USD $13M pledge to aid countries already suffering far more than they’ve contributed to climate change. Historically, global powers have been unwilling to give a little, lest they be expected to pay up the full sums that might be expected.  Denmark built commercial colonial power with sugar and slaves, across Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America, for more than 400 years, until the 1950’s.  Announcing the new climate damage funds, Denmark’s current development minister Flemming Møller Mortensen said: “I saw for myself in Bangladesh this spring that the consequences of climate change need increased focus…It is grossly unfair that the world’s poorest should suffer the most from the consequences of climate change, to which they have contributed the least.” Imagine what it would mean for fairness to be a priority in all such matters.

Let’s build on these examples of bravery! Continue reading →

A collaborator just asked me how to best find great blogs to subscribe to on a topic we’re working on and I thought I’d answer the question publicly. I feel like I’ve shared some thoughts on this every 3-5 years for the past 15 years or so and my answer is always changing. New tools emerge, old tools go offline. Here’s what I’m using now:

1. Feedly recommendations

Subscribe to one blog you like on the topic and see what Feedly recommends as related. Then see what Feedly says is similar to those blogs.

2. Twitter recommendations

Most of the time when you follow an account on Twitter, you’ll get 3 social-graph based recommendations for related accounts. You can also unfollow accounts that you’re already following, refresh the page (essential), then follow them again – and you’ll get more recommendations. I regularly find 1 or 2 great ones here, and then I click through their home pages to find their blogs.

3. Google related:

If you use the query related:[URL] Google will give you some good recommendations as well. Here’s an example.

4. Ask people

If you can have a conversation with leading people in the field, tell them about the project you’re doing the research for, ask them to tell you about their most recent work (see if you can help), then ask them what blogs they’d recommend. Do that with a handful of people and you’ll not only get good recommendations, you’ll develop relationships as well.

That’s how I’d recommend it be done in 2022! Happy blog searching.

I’ve set up thousands of alerts over my career as a journalist, entrepreneur, and now marketer. SMS alerts about every new blog post on a long list of company blogs were how I beat everyone to the punch almost 15 years ago and became the first writer hired at TechCrunch. Today I monitor for AI-benchmarked anomalous numbers of mentions in a short period of time of a long list of companies related to the firm I work for, Sprinklr.

(Above: the first Sprinklr Smart Alert hit I ever got was a good one. I took action on it; I amplified some good news and congratulated a business partner on an innovation of theirs I would have missed without this alert.)

I believe Alerts of various types are going to grow all the more important in the coming years – and I think we should talk about our expectations for them.

A lot of people get frustrated when they get a non-actionable alert. That’s the price of a good alert, I believe. Any good alert system will weed out 99.9% of potential events, send the .1% of events it thinks you may want to take action on. But you may only find that 50%, 30%, 10% or less are in fact actionable. Depending on how you’ve trained the system. Any way you do it, there’s more work to be done.

An Alert never tells a whole story, it only suggests where there me be a story to find. I love some alerts that are “false alarms” (non-actionable) the vast majority of times they sound. Because I’m willing to sift through noise to find quiet signals.

Furthermore, alerts are great for delivering news of an anomaly and maybe a little context – but the whole story is going to require manual skilled discovery of context, testing of a thesis, and will require decisions to be made.

That’s because almost no full set of circumstances for everything that could be actionable can be described by mortal humans ahead of time. Any Alert that doesn’t surface Unknown Unknowns is something else, something very narrow.

Below: this is not how or where I work.

I love my job. I get asked every other month what my Employee Satisfaction score is and at last report, it was a 10 out of 10!

I’ve worked at Sprinklr for more than 3 years now and it just keeps getting better. And by that I mean I just keep learning more every day. And we’re making it a better place to work almost every day.

The team I manage has an average score of 9 out of 10, so they’re not as happy as I am yet – but they’re pretty darned happy too.

I’d like to invite you to be a part of our team, if the following job description sounds like a good fit for you. When will I be filling this position? I’m not entirely sure, but soon.

If you’re interested, please email me at Marshall.kirkpatrick@sprinklr.com with the subject line “influencer marketing position.” I expect between 20 and 50 people to email me about it, but we’ll see! I’ll try to respond to everyone personally. I look forward to hearing from and/or meeting you!

Help wanted:

INFLUENCER RELATIONS MANAGER

We’re hiring a smart, communicative, B2B Influencer Relations Manager responsible for the development, execution and measurement of influencer marketing and collaboration campaigns used to drive both customer acquisition through demand generation and sales support, and internal learning from influencers who can contribute knowledge and insights to internal stakeholders throughout the business. This position works with cross-functional teams, especially Content Marketing, Events, and Analyst Relations. The position will be based in either Portland, Oregon or New York, (remote? Maybe…) reporting into the VP, Marketing.

About Sprinklr

Sprinklr’s mission is to enable every organization on the planet to make their customers happier. We do this with the world’s #1 social suite, which helps enterprises deliver memorable customer experiences with an integrated suite of Market Research, Customer Care, Social Media Management, and Social Advertising. Headquartered in New York City with 1,300 employees in 22 offices, Sprinklr works with more than 1,500 of the world’s most valuable brands, including: Allstate, McDonald’s, Lenovo, Microsoft, Nike, Signify, Procter & Gamble, Samsung, Santander, SAP, Shell, Verizon, and Visa. Sprinklr’s partners include Accenture, Deloitte, IBM, Microsoft, and SAP. For more information, visit sprinklr.com or follow us at @sprinklr.

Primary Responsibilities of This Position

Help scale execution of influencer collaboration programs, ranging from weekly video and audio podcasts to influencer collaboration on blog posts, webinars, events, and more

Collaborate closely with VP of Marketing to build effective, smart campaigns, balancing demand generation with long-term relationship building and maintenance, learning, and integrity

Configure and use customer experience software (Sprinklr) to monitor for influencer-derived insights and opportunities

Collaborate with internal teams focused on content generation, advertising, events, and more.

Solve problems and generate business value.

Minimum Qualification

3+ years marketing experience executing marketing programs

Demonstrable intellectual curiosity

A growth mindset

Better-than-average written and verbal communication skills

Could this be you? If so, send me an email! Do you know someone who could be a great fit? Pass this along to them!

Walmart announced today that it will require suppliers of leafy greens to upload data to a private blockchain provided by IBM next year. The goal is to make it much faster to verify origins of greens responsible for food borne illness. That will be good for people who buy spinach at Walmart and for Walmart’s reduced costs in responding to crisis.

There’s sure to be an innovation dividend, too. It’s not hard to imagine this expanding across the biggest supply chain in the world, and then to jump into more firms even beyond the other places it’s currently being tested.

Bloomberg: “IBM is working on food traceability with 10 other companies, including Dole Food Co., Unilever NV and Driscoll’s Inc., a berry supplier. The computer giant holds a leading 32 percent share of the $700 million-plus market for blockchain products and services, WinterGreen Research Inc. said in January, and has 1,500 working in the field.”

Let’s see CSR on the blockchain

This sounds like a great start but I sure would like to see the immutable ledger paradigm put into networks like these supply chains and used to track:

• Climate impact

• Worker respect

Just that! Verified by 3rd parties, I’m sure, but with that verification certified by said blockchain.

Help slow down climate apocalypse and use blockchain to prove that your whole team is doing it. I’ll buy more if you do, and I know I’m not alone.