Learn what responsive web design is and see 10 cool examples in action on TheHopkinsonReport.com.

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I love design.

I like talking about design, I like hanging out with designers, and I secretly wish I was a designer in real life.

So when a design trend comes along that seems both cool and relative to my audience, I’m all over it, and that trend is called responsive design.

Because I’m neither a designer nor a programmer, I’m not going to delve too deeply into the technical side of things. For most people, you’ll want to hire a designer to do the heavy lifting. So this week we’re going to get right to it in simple Q & A format, then on to the examples:

What is responsive design?

To quote Wikipedia, responsive web design is a web design approach aimed at crafting sites to provide an optimal viewing experience—easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling—across a wide range of devices (from desktop computer monitors to mobile phones).

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Advertisers can no longer create a commercial then sit back and enjoy; it’s all about real time interaction

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Also see: Super Bowl marketing recap from 2011 | 2010 | 2009

Super Sunday

One of the great things about having your own blog, is that you can create a little platform over time – for free — to broadcast your opinion to the world. The question of course, is getting someone to listen.

For every post where you might go off on a random topic (such as Japanese toilets), you need to work really hard to provide value to your readers, such as providing them a detailed, real-life case study of how to work remotely in a foreign country.

Contrast that with a Super Bowl commercial.

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Learn how you can take elements from the movies and apply them to your business

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Well folks it’s movie awards season (with The Oscars being held Feb 24th), and I noticed some comparisons between producing your favorite movie and building a business. Let’s jump right to it with

10 key elements to building an Oscar-nominated business

1. Desire

Creating a movie is not for everyone, and neither is building your own business. While there are certainly “entrepreneurship” and “film studies” majors in college, the path to success is far from simply graduating and getting a job in your field.

There are definitely parallels. With entrepreneurship, it could be years of struggling and building several businesses that fail before you finally hit on something big. For those in the movie business, it’s usually a long path of pay-your-dues jobs and roles before you get your first big break.

The biggest takeaway is persistence.

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Gary Vaynerchuk threw out the idea of interviewing a person per day in 2013. What would we talk about if he chose me?

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So here I am with the last podcast of the year. I’m getting on a plane in 19 hours, I need to crank out one more show, and I need a topic. I was thinking about a way to talk about trends.

Through social media, I saw a post that Gary Vaynerchuk was thinking about interviewing a different person every day of 2013 to have fun and support up and coming blogs.

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Jim interviews Ekaterina Walter, a Social Innovator at Intel and author of the book “Think Like Zuck.”

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Do You Like To Connect?

Ekaterina Walter’s bio starts with the following sentence: “I love building connections with other people. I am passionate about social media because it allows me to do just that.”

After spending less than an hour on the phone with her, I’d say she hit the nail on the head. A lot of individuals that you’ll meet in your life will utter the phrase, “I’m a people person.” If that’s truly who you are, in the digital age it is now easier than ever to say it (say, in the About Me section of your website) and to prove it (through social media channels).

Another catch-phrase that is tossed around is “follow your passion.” Once again, if you’re genuine about it, it really shows. I’ve been told that I sometimes “talk like a hockey fight,” meaning I have an idea or a topic and I talk as fast as I can until I am tired out and then I just stop and someone else jumps in.

My conversation with Ekaterina was more like a game of bowling… I just kept setting her up with questions, and she’d rear back and knock ‘em all down. But it was as if the ball return just kept giving her ammo again and again, and she just kept throwing strikes until we moved on to a new subject.

What really shone through was her passion for social media. When you’re genuinely that excited about a topic — which you have to be to make it your full time job AND write a 250 page book about it — it comes gushing through on the phone. When that information is backed up by knowledge and experience, then you’re really on to something.

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