This is a response to Adam Kleinberg's post Why We Have A Burning Man Policy

After six consecutive burns I planned to skip this one. I was going to backpack through India! Or ride AIDS Lifecycle! Or apply for grad school! Or visit friends in Europe! Honestly, I didn't really have a plan aside from wanting a Big Important Adventure that involved running water, flushable toilets, and wearing pants. (in hindsight perhaps India was incompatible with this goal) So I retired from my position as Store Manager for Costco Soulmate Trading Outlet, said "See you in 2013!" to my far flung burner tribe, and *POOF* I was no longer interested in the burn. Then early August rolled around and friends started selling their extra tickets... Fuck.

This year, I was honored to be asked to be a Board Member of sfBIG, the largest ad industry organization in the Bay Area. In our first meeting, we made the decision to change our name from the San Francisco Bay Area Interactive Group to the San Francisco Bay Area Innovation Group to better reflect the mission of our organization and expand our focus on more than just digital media.

Welcome to Traction's inaugural Office Dog Spotlight™. Furry friends are always welcome at Traction—as long as they maintain reasonable bladder control and don't scare away the FedEx guy. Our first spotlight lands on De Niro Burrows, a golden retriever with a true heart of gold.

AdWeek reported today on a new initiative from Absolut vodka—unique designs on bottles. Four million of them.

There's been a string of recent announcements from Facebook about new ways to advertise to its billion-strong user base. First they announced the ability to buyFacebook search ads, then they released Facebook 5.0 for mobile devices that has new ad serving capabilities.

This Thursday, September 6, I'll be hosting an event at our new space for my alumni organization where I'll be giving a presentation called "Your Brand is a Commodity." If you'd like to attend, drop us an email and we'll add you to the invite list.

For the past 11 years, we've been steadily and organically growing. So it was no surprise to us the day we looked around to discover our current digs were nearly maxed-out. Not wanting to leave the awesome indoor atrium playground that is our current office, we set out to find a second location that is as grand as the first—And we did it.

I just upgraded the Facebook app on my iPhone to the newly released version 5.0 that promises to deliver fewer crashes, faster speed and greater stability. 

Will it deliver? I don't know.

What I do know is that it will deliver ads. Will they be good ones?

Facebook recently introduced search ads. In the past week, I've already been asked twice by clients about the relevance of them. 

It's a good question. Is Facebook Search a Google-killer? 

Like any agency, we use a fair amount of stock photography. It's abundant, affordable and easily accessible—unfortunately, most of it's also crap. So what do you do when you have a small budget, but the image you need either sucks or doesn't exist in the countless stock libraries? In our case, it's time for a ghetto photo shoot.