Ahh, what a beautiful day for a sail on the shimmery San Francisco Bay, courtesy of our favorite liqueur-infused artisan ice cream and sorbet creator, Silver Moon Desserts. This past Sunday, Aug. 22, Silver Moon’s CEO Sheri Tate chartered The Bay Lady, the largest U.S. Coast Guard-certified schooner in Northern California, to host a party of SMD fans, associates and well-wishers.

We met under a perfectly cloudless azure sky at Rendezvous Charters, where the kindly Captain Steve and his crew welcomed us aboard, listed the maritime rules and then proceeded to guide our ship across (mostly) smooth waters.

Heading out from Pier 40 we passed under the Bay Bridge, sailed past Alcatraz Island and almost to Angel Island, the whole time enjoying gorgeous panoramic views of San Francisco’s skyline, the Golden Gate, and the East Bay hills.

We could also see, from a distance, the $300 million Russian Mega Yacht that recently floated to California and is owned by super-rich Russian guy 38-year-old Andrey Melnichenko (energy, fertilizer and banking concerns).

Anchored in Sausalito’s waters, Motor Yacht A looked spectacularly giant even from afar – it has a funny platypus-like front end and has been described as looking like a “submarine on steroids”.

The SMD party tossed around some ideas for getting the gazillionaire Mr. Melnichenko’s attention. A wet-suited Sheri Tate swimming up to the ship bearing a lovely pint of Pomegranate Martini, or perhaps a vigorous lobbing of said pint toward the behometh? Alas, we never did have the opportunity to share Silver Moon treats with, or offer an exclusive investment opportunity to the extravagant Muscovite yachtsman.

Youngest passenger, eight-year-old owlet MJ, was invited to helm The Bay Lady for awhile. She was, of course, thrilled, and under Captain Steve’s expert guidance even brought the sailboard “about” (I understand that term to mean “turn around”) and back to Pier 40. What a fantastic way to spend a sunny San Francisco afternoon! -jdf

Growing up in the 1970s in a traditional small town I heard, over the howling North Dakota wind, the tantalizing phrase “Women’s Lib”. You don’t hear this anymore because the terminology is considered old-fashioned, embarrassing even. Probably because the words were usually spoken in a tone of disparagement with lots of eye rolling involved.

But, back then, I GOT it. It meant simply enough that girls can be whatever they want. It was now against the law to say: “That’s a boy’s job, you can’t do that!” (That was my admittedly naive understanding of jurisprudence at the time.)

In the intervening decades, girls have grown up with the understanding that the world is their oyster and they can pursue any career that interests them. Women are now represented in professions across the board, but there is still a serious lag in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) careers.

Although it’s been proven time and again that there are absolutely no gender differences in math and science abilities, somewhere in middle school girls began to lose interest or have doubts. To be competitive, innovative and creative in the sciences, the United States needs bright young people of both sexes contributing their brainpower to the world’s many vexing problems.

We are incredibly fortunate here in the Bay Area to have the Expanding Your Horizons (EYH) Network programs that encourage young women to pursue STEM careers. Founded by San Francisco Bay Area women scientists in 1974, the EYH Network coordinates more than 86 hands-on math and science conferences in 33 states, as well as Thailand, China, Singapore, Malaysia, Brussels and Geneva each year.

Nearly 800,000 young women have participated in EYH conferences since its origins, and many participants are now professional women scientists working in chemical and civil engineering at places like the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory,  Network Appliances and Elan Pharmaceuticals.

Next week the National Science Board will present the Expanding Your Horizon Network with its highly prestigious 2010 Public Service Award as an organization that has made significant contributions and impact in public understanding of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The award ceremony will take place at the U.S. State Department in Washington D.C. on May 4, 2010.

Congratulations to the EYH Network, all of the amazing, inspiring role models who are sharing their time and expertise, and the young women, tomorrow’s leaders, who are participating in the EYH Network conferences. Actions speak louder than words. Learn more about this influential organization here:  http://www.expandingyourhorizons.org/

Have you been handed the herculean task of managing your company’s online presence? Or perhaps you’re helping your PR clients navigate their way through the ever-changing social media thicket. You want genuine, not canned or market-speak, engagement happening in real time.

Things to consider: What is the overall purpose of your company’s social media? Have you identified and enlisted people who can speak on your business’s behalf? How do you coordinate your multiple social media feeds so there’s a consistent in- and out-flow? How can you be sure you’re not re-inventing the wheel as you communicate across different social media channels?

So you’ve assembled a team who can contribute to the online conversations with your company’s clients, fans and other stakeholders. Customer questions and comments need prompt attention. Someone needs to run searches, track brand mentions and queries and assign those posts to the person within your organization who can best address them.

Some people are better suited to answering technical questions; others can talk about new features; still others are great at problem-solving and soliciting customer feedback. If people are mad at your company for some reason, you want those who can remedy problems quickly jumping into the fray.

But collaborative efforts bring challenges. You don’t necessarily want everyone posting the same stuff at the same time or relaying out-dated, conflicting or just plain wrong information. And, of course, it’s critical you’re measuring all these concurrent online social networking programs to make sure you’re on track — the people upstairs demand ROI information.

Whether you’re working on the corporate communications side, on the PR team, or managing any official public-facing social media channel, MediaFunnel (formerly known as TweetFunnel) will make your life a whole lot easier.

We’ve been using “The Team Tool for Social Media” service for several months — long before we ever dreamed we’d get the chance to serve as their PR arm. We loved MediaFunnel’s serenely designed interface (soothing to the ADD-tinged soul) and its easy to set up, simple and even fun to use features for coordinating and measuring social media programs.

There are a lot of social media publishing services out there, and we’ve tested and used all the main contenders. Each platform has its pros and cons but we’ve found MediaFunnel has everything we need. Check out today’s news release announcing MediaFunnel’s re-brand and Facebook integration and the screencasts, below, that demonstrate the new Facebook app. – jdf

http://screencast.com/t/ZmQwZmM0
http://screencast.com/t/ZDk1NTFlNT
http://screencast.com/t/OWM1Y2MxYz

MediaFunnel Announces Facebook Integration; Rebrands to Underscore Broader Applications for Business Social Media Networks

SAN RAFAEL, CA – March 15, 2010 – The “Team Tool for Social Media,” TweetFunnel, announced today it is now officially MediaFunnel. The name change reflects MediaFunnel’s expanding focus on providing businesses with one easy to use but feature-rich publishing interface for managing their social media channels. Mediafunnel coordinates and measures online marketing on various social media platforms for businesses while maintaining Corporate Brand Integrity. MediaFunnel also released its Facebook application today.

Multiple users who are contributing to a business or organization’s Facebook Page or Twitter stream can send posts and image attachments or screenshots of website or blogs to the Wall. The application is seamlessly integrated with MediaFunnel’s unique editorial control workflow and assignment of posts for prompt handling, Salesforce.com and email/SMS messaging. Cross platform messages can be posted immediately, scheduled or released in pre-defined intervals for a continual information stream.

The rebrand highlights MediaFunnel’s innovative architecture and scalability that allows for fast integration of future social media services and networks. Businesses benefit from MediaFunnel’s adaptive framework because they can quickly add new applications while training employees to use one simple interface for consolidating their group social media contributions. Along with the name change and integration to Facebook, some of Mediafunnel’s essential features have been renamed as well, including Guest Posting, which allows an organization to invite its audience to contribute to the official stream with pre-screening functionality.

“Social media marketing has gone mainstream,” said Andreas Wilkens, MediaFunnel Co-Founder. “What’s important are conversations, real-time engagement and meaningful content, not so much the application it streams on. We’ve seen networks fade and new ones emerge. That’s why we’ve built MediaFunnel so businesses can concentrate on creating genuine dialogue from one familiar dashboard while we connect the platform to their social networking channel, whatever it might be.”

Organizations with several people creating content for online marketing campaigns use MediaFunnel to effectively coordinate and measure their social media investment. Multiple users, designated as administrators, publishers or contributors monitor and send posts to multiple feeds. Businesses can respond quickly to customer queries or complaints using MediaFunnel’s assignment feature. Other features include options for immediate, scheduled or interval publishing; search and alerts for brand monitoring; ability to submit posts by email/SMS; co-tags to personalize posts; and analytics to gain market knowledge. In March, MediaFunnel introduced its Salesforce.com integration and the innovative convention, “Guest Post,” (GP) which opens an official social media stream to outside contributors.

About MediaFunnel

MediaFunnel serves businesses and other organizations with a coordinated, measurable and easy to use content management workflow for corporate social media networks. MediaFunnel’s streamlined dashboard consolidates team-generated posts where they can be reviewed before publishing to multiple feeds, including Twitter and Facebook. Unique in having this role-based editorial review function, “The Team Tool for Social Media” helps businesses protect hard-won Corporate Brand Integrity. Since its launch in May 2009 (formerly as TweetFunnel), thousands of businesses, public relations firms, sports teams, government entities and other organizations have come to rely on MediaFunnel’s comprehensive publishing platform. A wide range of features includes hierarchical management of multiple social media feeds, co-tags, ability to post images and screenshots, publishing on an immediate, scheduled or pre-defined interval basis, post assignment, publishing via email/ SMS, Salesforce integration, Guest Post and more. Visit www.mediafunnel.com.