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Soneter won the People’s Choice Award at the Green:Net Conference yesterday in San Francisco. I’ve always been a man of the people so this was ideal.

http://earth2tech.com/2010/04/29/greennet-launchpad-ecoatm-and-soneter-win/

Then we went out for an awesome dinner at a small Italian restaurant and finished off the night at our 18th floor hotel bar overlooking the city. A very good day all around.

Between last week and the next week, I have about 60% of my total graded performance due in my 5 classes.  That’s taken up a lot of my time, and distracted me from talking about a lot of the interesting things I’ve glanced over lately.  I’m flying to San Francisco tomorrow night for the GreenNet conference (come talk to all us cool guys in the Soneter shirts!) so I’m going to try to bang out a post on Hulu’s new freemium strategy during the plane ride.  That is, if I don’t spend all the time shoring up my business plan for Social Entrepreneurship.

Anyway, here’s what’s left of my deliverables for the last semester of my MBA so you understand why I’m AWOL.

Market Research
4/29 – Final project due/presentation (25%)
-Consumer segmentation and pricing strategy for a new frozen yogurt shop

Consumer Behavior
4/27 – Final project due/presentation (20%)
-Consultation on the physical store layout of an accessories store in Atlantic Station (think, Why We Buy)
5/6 – Final exam due (20%)
-Take home exam, so it shouldn’t be a huge undertaking

Negotiations
5/4 – Critical analysis paper due (25%)
-The negotiation and conflict management strategies present in 12 Angry Men

Social Entrepreneurship
5/3 – Final project paper due (20%)
-Business plan for Altruize, an E-lance type site for students doing technical volunteer work with non-profits

E-commerce
5/4 – Final paper due (25%)
-Post-campaign write-up for the Google Online Marketing Challenge

It’s a two book update this time, with Influence: Science and Practice by Robert Cialdini and Getting to Yes by Fisher, Ury, and Patton.  Both of these were assigned for my Negotiations and Conflict class and one of them turned out to be a lot better than just a textbook.

My classmate George loving called Influence “the psychopath’s handbook,” which is a fitting title.  The insights in this book are amazing and, if used by a certain type of person, also incredibly dangerous.  It’s no surprise that more than a few of the examples deal with cult leaders.  There is a lot of science to explain why we humans fall into these traps, and it seems like there is very little we can do about it.

The book breaks down influence techniques into 6 broad categories:

• Reciprocation
• Commitment and Consistency
• Social Proof
• Liking
• Authority
• Scarcity

Wikipedia does a pretty good job summarizing each category if you want a little more info, but the book itself is a very good read and surprisingly easy to get through for what basically amounts to a textbook.  My favorite part is that for each of these topics Cialdini also lists defense techniques for when someone is trying to use them against you. Being a pretty bad negotiator (hence taking the class) I was pretty happy about that.

In one of those weird coincidences (my AP English teacher in high school called this kind of thing “Mom’s corollary”) ever since I read this book I see people referencing it everywhere.  So yeah, Influence is pretty well known and cited often by people in all kinds of positions, from upper management to marketing.

The second book, Getting to Yes, … not a fan.

I’m not going to say this book sucks, because I’m sure other people before me have gotten a lot out of it, but I hated it.  It can be boiled down to four basic points:

• Separate people from the problems
• Focus on interests, not positions
• Invent options that make both people better off
• Use fair and objective criteria for measurement

There you go, I just saved you all the time you would’ve spent reading it.

The problem with Getting to Yes is that it tries to fit waaaay too much information into such a short book.  They should have focused on the above outline more and not tried to fill the book with other little rules.  Instead, it basically reads like:

Bold headline you should remember!

Two paragraphs of explanation

Another super important bold headline!

Three paragraphs of explanation

etc, etc.

That’s just not a good structure for getting the overarching ideas to really sink in, and hurts the book’s readability.

If you want to be a better negotiator and be less susceptible to many of the tricks others will try to use, buy Influence: Science and Practice but skip Getting to Yes.

You would think that giving people an avenue on to East Lake Golf Club, one of the most exclusive courses in the country, at a price lower than they’ve ever charged before would be cause for appreciation.

But instead, as I’m busy finishing up 4 presentation and 5 papers and a business plan due in the next 3 weeks, I also have to deal with an evening student emailing me with his alumni/student partner preference of:

Don’t put me with any hackers.  I don’t think I can handle it.

FU dude.  Why don’t you spend the last year setting all this up like Brian and Bethany did or learn to “handle it” for an MBA program scramble event that’s designed to raise money for charity.

I hope you end up with a 4-some handicap over 120.

Craps is, by far, the best gambling game for a group of people. There are bets everywhere, numbers getting yelled out, 90% of the people don’t really understand what they’re betting on, and everyone wins or loses together so the table really develops this great camaraderie. This is a story about one craps table in Las Vegas.

From last Wednesday through yesterday night I was with a group celebrating our friend Aaron’s wedding. We started Wednesday night with one last run through the bars we frequented in college (which was both a ton of fun and disturbing at the same time) and then flew out Thursday morning for a weekend at Ceasar’s Palace.

On Saturday morning Randy and I, the only two who hadn’t taken part in the marathon gambling session on Friday night, headed out early to get some breakfast and do a little gambling. We through some dice, watched some soccer, won some money on Chelsea, ate a couple crepes at the patisserie in Ceasar’s and then went to go meet up with the other 3 who were just waking up. Once they got some Gatorade and bread in their systems it was off to Bill’s Gamblin’ Hall; not the nicest place on the strip by any means but close to us and specializing in $5 craps tables.

Aaron and Dave were too hungover from the night before so they left but Ben joined us for some cheap entertainment.  It started well but nothing too outrageous. A couple people crapped out quick and one or two hit a few points. We had each bought in with $100 and were probably up about $275 combined.

Then, Dan got the dice.

I can’t due Dan justice, but here’s what I remember. He was an older gentleman, probably late 50′s early 60′s, with thinning white hair and leathery skin. He wore a yellow polo shirt and a ring on his right hand that was a little horseshoe inlaid with diamonds. Now it seems ridiculous that I remember that, but we spent a solid 90 minutes looking at Dan’s hands. Those magic hands were incapable of throwing a 7.

Dan kept rolling for what seemed like days. The table filled up in about 10 minutes after everyone kept hearing the commotion from our table. I’ve never screamed “53!” “44!” “23!” and “Hard Six!” so many times in my life. Dan would set a point, throw some other numbers (I think Randy made so much money of Eight that he’s going to name his first-born son that), hit the point and move along like it was nobody’s business.

Aaron and Dave ended up showing back up to the casino about an hour into it, seeing us flush with money and standing in awe as we just kept raking in more. Initially Aaron was okay with it, “that nap was worth $500.” But as we kept pressing our bets, the 6′s and 8′s kept coming in, and Dan kept hitting points that mentality changed. Dan rolled through 4 stickmen, they had to refill the table’s chips twice, and we had 6 pit bosses surrounding the table watching every roll.  I think in all Dan ended up hitting 10 points before crapping out, including closing a fire bet.

A fire bet means that Dan set and hit all 6 points (4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10) before crapping out. It pays out 1000:1 and a few of our newfound friends made out very nicely on that one. As for us, let’s just say that while we bought in with $100, when Dan finally crapped out we each had at least 5 times that much in play on the board and many times more than that tucked away in our pockets. I was at that table for over 3 hours and the dice never made it around to me to roll. It was a run that people dream of. We talked to Billy, one of the dealers who had also been there a couple days before when we first gambled, and he said something like that happens maybe once every other month.

Some of us went on to lose a good chunk of that money trying to hit one more lucky streak and some of us managed to hang on to a good deal of it. But in the end all that matters is that for one stretch on an early Vegas afternoon, we ran Bill’s.

Jackson Hughes, of PawPaw Mail fame, put it best after we had a few floating around during open breakfast this morning.

The real killer app of the iPad is that no one will ever pay attention in class again.