Express espresso in Paris with personal branding guru William Arruda

How cool to get to Paris for a day! (I Chunneled over from London - is that a verb??). Had an intense 30-minute espresso with personal branding guru, speaker and author William Arruda at a café in the Marais. The weather is weirdly warm here in Paris so we happily sat outside. (Hey I've learned the keyboard secrets to inserting accents en français!)

William has a new book coming out with Wiley in March. I can't find the Amazon link just now so check out his Reach Branding site instead. This guy, who exudes energy like a triple espresso, lives in airplanes. He used to have an apartment in Paris but now finds he's spending more time in nyc. More later on his new book...

A bird? A plane? A new kind of corporate blog?

Dave Balter, author of Grapevine and founder of BzzAgent, is up to something intriguing. Today he launched a new company blog called The Bento Box (my favorite thing to have for lunch at a Japanese restaurant).

Take a look. It's kind of a blog as performance art. (Be sure to click on the image to listen to the audio segments.) BzzAgent has hired two high profile contributors to create the blog: John Butman, a professional writer and author; and artist Seth Minkin.

What really goes on inside BzzAgent?

For the next 168 days (24 weeks), the writer/artist tag team will "reveal" what really goes on inside Balter's word-of-mouth-marketing agency. The point, presumably, is to counter criticism that the firm hasn't been totally transparent about its method of recruiting volunteer BzzAgents to spread the word about a new product or service.

As the blog explains:

"Part Blog, part art show, part essay, part media experience, The Bento Box will allow you to nibble on what's happening inside an operating company in real time, with the goal of thinking differently about your own business, non-profit or community."

And the Transparency Guidelines as stated on the blog:

• Employees must approve any usage of their names or likenesses
• Clients must approve usage of their names for all information that is not already public
• We will not disclose
  • the personal information of any BzzAgents
  • BzzAgent financial information
  • Confidential employee information
• We are learning as we go. These rules may change as people get more comfortable with how this turns out, with the ultimate goal of limiting as many rules as possible.

Thanks to a writer for Entrepreneur Magazine for alerting me to The Bento Box today!