Today is my birthday.  Turning 41 is almost worse than turning 40: now it feels like I’m fully committed to the whole “in your 40’s” thing.  Oh well – beats the alternative.

Birthdays are a good time for self reflection.  Are you happy with your lot in life?  What’s left to accomplish?

I’m a pretty fortunate fellow.  Happy marriage, good kids, good health, a career I enjoy, lotsa toys.  (Speaking of toys, my wife’s gag gift today? A food dehydrator, so I can make my own beef jerky. Joke’s on her, though: I’m gonna use it!)

With all those blessings, all that’s left on my to-do list are Hoped-For Accomplishments.

I’d like to see SHIFT achieve at least $20M in revenues.  Besides being a nice round number, it’s the kind of revenue stream that will allow us to further invest in our rising stars.  New services, new career paths, etc.

I’d like to figure out an approach to PR that’s far more transformative than inventing a Social Media Release. I’ve got ideas.  Need more.

I’d still like to travel Mongolia by horseback to the Golden Eagle Festival.  I want to make my way to the Torres del Paine in Patagonia, too.  A visit to Turkey and the Pyramids at Giza are on the Bucket List.  And while I know it’s not much to see, I want to make the sojourn to the site of the Battle of Thermopylae in Greece — a story I’ve admired since High School History, long before the (awesome) movie, 300.

I’d like to own a convertible.  Typical, right?

I want to visit my kids in college, and see their faces light up with genuine delight as I approach.  (Hey, a guy can dream.)

I want to meet my great grandchildren, alongside my beaming wife.

Relatively simple goals on the ol’ Bucket List, now that I think about it.  (Well, I suppose “transforming the practice of PR” is fairly ambitious!  But I am still young enough to aspire!)

What’s on yours?

I can’t say I was surprised to see #CowboyTodd have a better time at SXSW than I would have had I gone.

After a brief scare in which the gunslinger was misplaced by the deliveryman, causing him to miss out on the shenanigans at the Funnel Cake Fandango, the Cowboy proved himself to be a “stand-up” guy for the rest of the event.

The fella knows how to party.  Here’s a sampling of the fun…

Here’s #CowboyTodd making his mark with the ladies…

Here’s the Carboard Cowboy getting into trouble with David Armano…

… And crashing Chris Brogan’s speaking gig — with a little assistance from his partner in crime, Richard Binhammer!

Honestly, the fun never stopped.  Even when it probably should have:

All these shenanigans resulted in #CowboyTodd becoming the #1 “Hottest Trend” topic on Klout by Monday morning.

I’ll be making announcements about the prize winners in the days ahead.  This was just a quick, fun update.  Meanwhile, my extra special thanks to David Alston, C.C. Chapman, Richard Binhammer, Jason Falls and Aaron Strout.  You guys are awesome.

The inimitable Onion News Network reveals just how hard it is to fill 24-hours worth of stuff (contains some NSFW language):

This topic strikes home for me.  It was literally the subject of my very first blog post at PR-Squared, about 6 years ago!  It was also covered recently — briefly but pointedly — by Matthew Yglesias of ThinkProgress and Kevin Jones of Mother Jones Magazine.  Here’s Drum:

Hardly anyone watches cable news. Even in prime time, Fox has a couple million viewers — that’s about 1% of American adults — and the other (cable news) operations have a million or so.  Cable news is a molehill that gets routinely turned into a mountain range because they happen to be talking about the most self-obsessed bunch of gossip hounds in the country:  politicians.

But the reality is that almost no one is watching.  Take away the echo chamber and Glenn Beck would be about as important as a guy on a soapbox in Central Park…

Put that video from The Onion together with the miniscule statistics re: cable news viewership, and it really does all feel pretty ridiculous, eh?

While I can’t be at SXSW in-person this year, I’m sending a proxy.  Literally.

If you are headed to Austin, allow me to introduce you to … “Cowboy Todd.”

Inspired and designed by my friend David Alston and his crew at Radian6, this 6–foot tall cut-out will be making the rounds of the party circuit, “Flat Stanley”-style.

David’s committed to taking Cowboy Todd to the AllHat2 event, Jason Falls promises to have Cowboy Todd serve you a funnel cake at his Funnel Cake Fandango, and my pals Aaron Strout, C.C. Chapman, Richard Binhammer, and Kyle Flaherty have committed to serve as Cardboard Cowboy wranglers, to make sure the Big Guy gets to a few other events.

Wanna get involved in the fun?

If you spot Cowboy Todd in Austin, be sure to check-in with him via Foursquare, or create a new spot for the big guy on Gowalla.

Take a photo with him and we’ll post the best entries to PR-Squared and the SHIFT Facebook Fanpage.  If you’ve got the funniest picture submission, I’ll draft a guest blog post for ya (or something similar).

Film yourself having a (drunken) conversation with Cowboy Todd, and we’ll give $1,000 to your favorite charity if you took the best/funniest video.

Tweet about #CowboyTodd and we’ll randomly select 5 winners to receive a $25 Amazon Gift Card. (But special consideration will be given if you tweet some funny one-liners, e.g., “Top 10 Things Cowboy Todd Didn’t Say at SXSW.”)

I can’t be there, but I sure hope Cowboy Todd has a blast.

I promise you — the guy’s no pushover.  He’ll drink you all under the table.

I dove into my “Big Thinking” folder recently and emerged with a slide from the “Social Media Trends for 2010” deck created by Jeremiah Owyang of the Altimeter Group, discussing organizational models for corporate adoption of Social Media.

Who is in control of this Social Media stuff?  What are the best practices?

These questions come up a lot, particularly amongst large brands.

Imagine: you have THOUSANDS of employees, who are not asking for your so-called permission to hang out on Facebook or Twitter; who may be blogging (with or without full transparency); who are likely finding and commenting (with or without full transparency) on industry blogs that cover your business. The situation could escalate out of control pretty quickly, especially in times of crisis.

Jeremiah’s slide points to the three major options that large corporations must consider re: Social Media adoption and planning.

The distributed model is the most compelling because it’s the least controlled; it’s a mess, a free-for-all.  Everyone in the company gets to chart their own path.  Join Twitter – or not.  Join Facebook – or not.  Start a blog – or not.  It’s the model that most companies fear the most – it is hard to monitor or contain.  Yet its very looseness gives it power.  Untethered, the company’s overachievers can rise to the top; they can become authoritative “personal brands” in the industry, and could help the business in surprising ways.  Two types of companies adopt this distributed approach: companies that fail to plan (and wind up hoping for the best) and, companies willing to put inordinate amounts of trust in their employees (see: Zappos).

The centralized model is the “default setting” for most large companies.  Accustomed to CONTROL, this approach feels proper and minimizes surprises.  There’s one neck to choke when things go awry.  However, the rigidity of this model ignores the power of Social Media – to expose the company’s talented folks, at all levels, to various niches in which they might be impactful.  The centralized approach is superb for Brand Management and Customer Service but doesn’t answer the question about what everyone else in the company wants to do re: Social Media!  “Are you saying that because I’m not part of your Social Media team, I can’t tweet?” It begs for end-runs from within the company.

Clearly the coordinated model in Jeremiah’s slide is the one to espouse.  It’s beauty is that it is simple, reasonable and effective.  Guidelines are set (simple).  Monitoring and reporting mechanisms are deployed (reasonable).  Everyone gets to play, but knows the rules-of-the-road (which will evolve as new lessons are learned), and also knows that there are consequences for derailing the company’s brand online (effective).

But, as Jeremiah’s slide rightly notes, the effectiveness of this approach can take more time.

The coordinated policies might allow for great public-facing successes in Customer Service, for example, but might not do as good a job showcasing the talents of employees in other divisions.  The Social Media zealot working in a company with a “distributed” (free-for-all) approach will be self-motivated to make a mark; they’ll be fueled by ego to get noticed — and to make an impact before anyone in “Corporate” figures out that they need to set guidelines.  That same employee, working within the regulations set in a “coordinated” model, might find that spadework to be slower going.

What approach appeals the most to you?  What model does your current employer use (wittingly or not)?  Do you see that situation changing?