Good afternoon gang,

With the kids back in school, it got me thinking about what they will be learning and how they will be learning it this year.  In my day (how old did I become before I began saying that phrase?), we learned basic math via memorization and as I remember it, it must have been effective because I can still multiply 7*9 faster than I can round the 9 to 10, multiply the 7 by 10 and subtract the 7 leftover from the rounding to make the answer 63 (simple, right?) but I guess I’m an outlier…

And while that first thought may have sounded like the old mant rant of the late, great Andy Rooney, I’m going to double down and mention how my daughter began reading effectively last year in Kindergarten.  Up until that point, my wife and I had been trying to help her learn to read for about a year.
During her kindergarten school year, they began passing out a list of words they labeled as ‘sight words’.  These words were common and included “a, the, and, for”, etc.  Every week they would work on taking five of these words and…you guessed it, memorizing them.  You won’t believe this but by the time my daughter had memorized all 50 she had gone from barely reading to being much improved.  Memorization seemed to be very effective for reading but apparently it serves little purpose in math and is for ‘low achievers’.

Now that you’ve suffered through my pouting, relish in this awesome story of how Norway may be sending their neighbororing country something extra big for its 100th birthday (hint: IT IS A  MOUNTAIN).

The Work

Several of our newest clients have had their websites go live over the last month but if we’re only picking one to showcase, it would have to be local business, Brickvent.  Brickvent, owned by local entrepreneurs, Curt Franke and Ernie Alexander, created a plastic molded brick that eliminates moisture on brick houses.

In the course of working on their new eCommerce site I learned far more about spalling and efflorescence (sorry spellcheck, those are real words) than I every thought imaginable.  I also learned that if you have a brick house or are building one and want to keep mold out, you should check out what they guys have to offer.

Other Stuff

The B2B Marketers of Indiana, a great local marketing group, has two upcoming events that promise to be excellent.  On August 17th, join us at Delivra for Creating B2B Videos to Use as Sales Tools – presented by Heather Brogden.

On September September 21st, Join us at Geofeedia to wish me a belated Happy Birthday and check out the amazingly titled, Why Tall People Make More Money: Building Brands Through Social Behaviors presented by Daniel Herndon.

As always, thanks for reading my occasional diatribes.  If you have ideas for my next newsletter, desire to complain, or want me to buy something – shoot me an email.
Cody