Category: marketing

Fast Company opens nominations for 2007 Fast 50

College marketers, here’s your chance to gain recognition one of your alumni-entrepreneurs who is making money with a business that is out to save the world. Fast Company magazine today announced (via FC Now) that nominations are open for the 2007 Fast 50, an annual recognition of companies on the move. This year, the spotlight is on “businesses that are helping to save the world.”

We’re looking for profit — driven problem solvers-people and companies out to address the planet’s woes and make money at the same time. Tell us about yourself, someone you admire, or someone you work with. But make sure your nominee is using new strategies, new ideas or new technologies to tackle issues like global warming, pollution, sustainability, access to healthcare, poverty, trade impact, child labor, and other concerns.

Friday film: ‘Beneath the Southern Cross’

Have I ever told you that I work with a real live rock star?

I do. And he isn’t just any rock star. He’s the co-writer of one of the anthems of the late-’60s/early-’70s counterculture. (For you younger readers, you might have heard this tune on the soundtrack of that Johnny Depp vehicle, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.)

I’m referring to Tom Shipley — he of Brewer and Shipley, “One Toke Over the Line” fame.

Tom works in our communications department as a one-man video production unit. Tom makes videos for our campus. Not those hokey, scripted videos for which universities are renowned, but mini-documentaries about campus life, research and, yes, the occasional promo video (which Tom insists must be minimally scripted).

His latest video chronicles members of the UMR chapter of Engineers Without Borders as they traveled to Bolivia last August to assist two communities — one in the Amazon, where a school is in need of a safe and sustainable water supply, and another high in the Andes, where EWB students helped build a sanitary latrine system a year ago. Tom tagged along with the group and captured many of the activities on video. He’s posted one version of the pod on Current TV, where it’s getting good reviews and is currently ranked second among user-generated flicks. (It was No. 1 until recently. It should never have been bounced off of there.)

Watch “Beneath the Southern Cross,” Tom Shipley’s latest video.