We’ve just launched the WEPC Vault. Over the next two weeks, you’re invited to participate in unlocking the ASUS Lab, an experience in which you’ll solve fun puzzles to reveal images and video clips showcasing ASUS next generation PC notebooks.

Get started with the first week’s challenge—and find out if your ideas made the cut! ASUS and Intel are up to some amazing things. Get your exclusive sneak-peak here.

Hint: Think phone pad.

Federated Media has partnered with new charitable organization Summit on the Summit to help raise awareness for the global clean water crisis through Facebook Causes. Celebrities Kenna, Lupe Fiasco, Jessica Biel and a team of influencers will be climbing Mount Kilimanjaro on Jan 7th to raise awareness for the clean water crisis.

The global clean water crisis is arguably the most important crisis of our time, claiming more lives through disease than any war claims through guns. A billion people around the world do not have access to clean drinking water, and a child dies every fifteen seconds of a preventable water-related disease.

SUMMIT ON THE SUMMIT: Kilimanjaro is the tallest peak in Africa. The 19,340-foot journey will be daunting and physically demanding, but it’s nothing compared to the reason they’re climbing—to help those who face a much steeper obstacle every single day.

Please do your part by joining the Facebook Cause watch the Summit on the Summit webisodes, and share with your friends. For each person that joins the Cause and for each webisode view, HP will generously donate 100 Liters of clean water to those in need.

HP, PUR and First Ascent are proud sponsors of Summit on the Summit. Funds will be raised for Children’s Safe Drinking Water, UNHCR and PlayPumps International.

At FM we often talk about how brands need to engage in real conversations with their customers. Indeed, we’ve built a significant piece of our business around helping brands do just that. At this point it has become almost accepted wisdom in our industry and we’re quite proud of the work we’ve done in this space – what we call “conversational marketing.”

Witness the high-profile success stories of brands like Dell, Starbucks, Comcast and Zappos (to name just a few) who have experienced extraordinary lifts in sales and brand sentiment due to their aggressive and honest conversational outreach.

It’s a tough thing for a brand to do when you take into consideration the volatile nature of the social media world. It’s easy enough to talk a good game when it comes to engaging with consumers, it’s a much different thing to, as they say, walk the walk.

As an example of how to do this right, I want to highlight a brief snapshot of one of our brand partners, Sun, and how they are personally getting involved in the conversation.

Last week we launched IT Innovation in partnership with TechDirt, Sun and Intel. See here for details. The idea is simple: create a community site for IT professionals, underwritten by Sun and Intel, that allows a three-way dialogue between TechDirt (the community leader), Sun/Intel (the brands) and IT pros (the consumer).

But when we say dialogue, we mean it. When Sun was presented with a critical comment from a knowledgeable consumer (see here and below quote), they didn’t hesitate to get involved in an authentic way. Not only did they respond to the consumer’s questions, they actually requested more information; to get more of the consumer’s thoughts than he had already provided. The Sun rep then left his email address and title so the consumer could get a hold of him at a later date.

The is just a single moment in time, but it is indicative of how far we’ve come from the days when brands silenced skeptics and critics at all costs. The willingness of a brand to engage in conversation with all of its constituents has truly become an asset.

Kudos to Sun for leading the way with this kind of innovative work.

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User Comment:
Sun is sponsoring? With what money?

I saw their hardware crash in value over the past 5 years. Their decision to exclude VARs from business cost everyone money. I never knew they could be a team player?
And aren’t they just waiting to be bought by someone who just wants their patents and java?

Sun Reply:
Thank you for your comments. I’m not sure what you mean by “hardware crashing in value” but I believe you’ll agree that Sun continues to deliver value to its customers with technological innovations that directly impact a customers business. A CMT based SPARC T5240 server delivers more performance than many of the highest performance systems of 5 years ago at a fraction of the cost. That is not a crash in customer value, but an increase in the performance delivered per dollar. Certainly this impacts the residual value of 5 year old systems FROM ALL MANUFACTURERS of computer equipment.

And, by continuing to invest in Solaris and expand its role as a virtualization and storage platform, Sun provides standards-based solutions with better ability to scale with system performance than most OSs. In addition, Oracle has publically stated that it will increase this investment in Solaris after the Sun acquisition is completed.* Sun has also focused on expanding the value we are delivering to our customers by offering a broad range of servers based on Intel Xeon processors.

I’d like to better understand your comment around “excluding VARs from business”. I’ve worked directly with Sun VARs for the past 5 years and over that time we’ve substantially increased the importance of VARs to Sun’s business. If there’s a specific issue related to Sun’s VAR relationship that you’d like to discuss, I’d be more than glad to help resolve it. Contact me on Twitter at JoshRey or by email at Joshua.Reynolds@Sun.com.

Prior to assuming his Account Executive role at Federated Media, Will Messmer worked at Condé Nast Digital representing brands such as Wired and Ars Technica.  In expanding the business of these properties, he developed an appreciation for the value of online communities and conversational media. It’s Will’s ongoing goal to work with advertising partners to develop strategic, mutually beneficial programs that amplify the value of online brands and communities.

Will was introduced to the digital media industry while at Maxim Digital, and he received a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Welcome to FM, Will!

Check out the recently launched IT Expert Voice, brought to you by the fine folks at Dell. This new site has a very specific mission: to be the go-to information resource and collaboration hub for enterprise IT professionals making the switch to Windows 7.

Edited by Esther Schindler, a seasoned technology journalist, the site features a stable of well-known and respected software and technology writers. You’ll find white papers, opinion pieces, webinars, 3rd-party research papers and more. And be sure to follow IT Expert Voice on Twitter.

About IT Expert Voice:

“IT Expert Voice is a resource for IT professionals who are concerned primarily with making technology work in their organizations, and in particular with deploying Windows 7 in a sane and trouble-free manner. The site, which is sponsored by Dell, aims to provide credible and useful information that helps you make good decisions. Our underlying assumption is that you are seriously considering a migration to Windows 7; we’re here to help you learn what you need to know for it to happen flawlessly.”

If in the course of yoaur day you routinely use words like “virtualization,” and you know what that means, then IT Innovation is the place for you.

Created in partnership with Sun, Intel, FM and Techdirt, IT Innovation aims to be the go-to gathering spot, conversation hub and resource center for IT professionals everywhere.

Conversations are wide-ranging, but on target, with topics like virtualization, servers, data centers, storage and more. Techdirt’s Mike Masenik will host a series of webcasts and users will have access to a library of IT resources provided by Sun and Intel.