Well, I spoke to those Chamber folks, and it went great. I was on a panel with three very-knowledgeable ladies, and I learned some things. And the vibe was really good. A couple of things.

Remember my Fred Astaire post? Well, I used that example in my comments. Seemed to go over pretty well. But on a local level, as I was standing at the front of the room, sipping coffee, watching the people coming in, there was one woman who visually leaped out at me-Misha from K&G Fashion Superstore. She was wearing this wonderful bright red print top. And it grabbed my by the eyeballs from across the room.

The wonderful thing was that the red looked exactly right on Misha. So she got to be a little object lesson on the value of personal branding and color.

Also, I had a brief conversation with a lady whose son is a competitive inline skater-one of the high-flying extreme sports type. We were talking about the elements of branding as applied to a person. Of course, there are the old wardrobe, color palette, signature accessories, personal brand fragrance, and stuff like that. But in the case of her son, I recommended a book, the title of which I could not remember. Well, the book is High Visibility, by Irving Rein, Philip Kotler, and Martin Stoller. Unfortunately, it appears to be out of print. But it's excellent. So maybe we can NTC Business Books, the publisher, and get them to do another edition.

Two other books that were pretty good on related topics: The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell, and The Anatomy of Buzz, by Emanuel Rosen.