About 100 people packed the historic-firestation-turned-hipster-artspace Gallery5 in downtown Richmond, VA 2/16/12 for #SMCRVA's monthly meeting featuring the "Future of Mobile" by @jeff_rock, co-founder and creative director of Mobelux. The discussion of mobile technology trends was quite a wild ride, starting with #SMCRVA Board Member @DougMeacham's entertaining re-introduction to the first mobile phone (pricetag $4,000) and subsquent romp through developmental highlights of that jam-packed little device we take for granted: http://bit.ly/s7KuYD Jeff Rock launched into his predictions for mobile trends, both good and bad, and a hush fell over the crowd. We're a creative and outspoken bunch, so this hardly ever happens.

With all of the blog posts, how-to guides, books, videos, and other information out there about how to construct compelling content, I wasn’t sure what to expect with Ann Handley & C.C. Chapman’s new book, Content Rules. Most of the advice I see floating around the interwebs just rehashes the same old, tired guidelines wrapped in different paper – and it tends to be focused primarily on blog posts. Thankfully, that’s not what I found in Handley & Chapman’s work.