I am now the head copywriter, “keeper of the voice” for a high-tech corporate Pavilion at the Shanghai 2010 World Expo.

It’s a fascinating assignment for a myriad of reasons – one of which is that the World Expo is one of the better kept secrets in America.

The Expo is set to open May 1st (see what I mean about a secret) and will run through October 31st, 2010.

The projected attendance is 70 million people – which works out to an average of 400,000 people a day.

The Expo is being built in the center of Shanghai, on both sides of the Huangpu River. The site is 5.25 square kilomenters and is divided into five major areas.

The Urban Best Practice area and Corporate Pavilions are North of the river. The National Pavilions, Theme Pavilions, Chinese Pavilions and International Organisations Pavilions are South of the river.

Better City, Better Life

The theme of the Expo is Better City, Better Life.

The theme “represents a central concern of the international community for future policy making, urban strategies and sustainable development. In 1800, 2% of the global population lived in cities… by 2010, as estimated by the United Nations, the urban population will account for 55% of the total human population.”

Here’s the thing. By 2050, some 6.5 billion of the worlds projected population of 9.2 billion – some 2 billion more then we are today – will live in cities. Learning how to plan, build and manage these cities to provide housing, employment, education and health services for everyone without destroying the planet is an enormous undertaking.

The theme is also a nod to Shanghai’s place as China’s most modern city, and its role as China’s gateway to the world… I am also told that the Expo is part of an unending rivalry between Shanghai and Beijing. Apparently the none-too hidden agenda here is to one-up the 2008 Olympic Games!

A Design Feast

As you would expect, the architecture is spectacular – representing that magical combination of dream assignment and national pride for the top architectural firms around the world. With the growing international emphasis on sustainability, many of the pavilions are being built to varying degrees of greeness. (This is a rendering of the UK Pavilion)

Shanghai is doing a lot more then that – they are aggressively laying the foundation for the redevelopment of the city.

Six cross-river tunnels have been built to connect the two sides. The site will also be served by five rail lines. And about ten percent of the daily visitors will arrive on the river through specially constructed “Water Gates”.

Definitely worth spending a few minutes in Google images to see what’s going on. I would imagine that we will see the influence of this for many years to come. I’m hoping to post from the epicenter before too long.

Are you planning to go to the Shanghai 2010 World Expo?

A good morning and a Happy New Year to you my precious, ever so influential new readers and (I hope) future subscribers.

This post is here to put a stake in the sand. James Baldwin, the gifted, albeit tormented, 20th century American critic wrote that if you know where you came, there is absolutely no limit to where you can go. This is that then – where we begin the beguine…

As 2010 opens, headlines are trumpeting the beginning of the end of Web 2.0.

We see it in an app that will wipe your social media history clean (some 50,000 are now friendless), an article that reveals that people are swearing off investing their every waking hour in social media (due to a lack of ROanything?), and the bold declaration that Web 3.0 is already upon us – which so you know is the prevailing point of view here at ckwrites.com. (Much more about this in many posts to come.)

In fact I think this is a healthy state of affairs. Breathtaking progress has been made. There is an extraordinary level of awareness and considering that two-thirds of all Facebook users are ex-US, I think that we may safely conclude that social media is a global phenomena of unprecedented dimension.

It seems that we are participating in the birth of the neural network that will knit us into a global village. If there is a Second Coming, it will sweep the world in a single 24-hour solar cycle.

But I am a business copywriter and I am interested in how to apply the non-stop flood of social media tools, techniques and technologies to create new solutions for my clients.

So I am beginning this blog with a number of Categories, the most fundamental of which is Customer Research. It has been clearly established that the foundation for success in any commercial venture is a detailed knowledge of your customer and his business.

Phil Condit drummed this concept into my head when he was both my client and the CEO of Boeing. Phil felt so strongly about it that he made detailed knowledge of the customers business one of four planks in his vision for Boeing’s future (this pre-merger).

What you need to know depends on who you are (much of Phil’s thinking was about how to design and build a better airplane) and then where you are in the Social Media Pipeline. Yes you are correct; I am quite certain that I have added a new concept to the lexicon.

Having spent the better part of my career in B2B, I am heavily focused on moving people from Consideration through to Purchase using a New Business Proposal. There is an enormous amount of craft to this, and we’ll look at all sorts of new tricks and tools to add a bit of luster to this essential tool.

Speaking of Creative Tools, I plan to write the occasional post about great pieces of software, books and anything else that I find helps me with ideation, concept development and concept presentation. Some of these tools are well suited to multiplying the imagination of the individual practitioner, while others are a great way to capture and communicate the zeitgeist of the group to its members. Please share your favorites.

Since I live at the beach I will be curating Surf Reports – mashups that I deem worthy of your attention and commentary.

And finally since we all like to eat and many of us enjoy cooking, I am opening a little trattoria under the category of se mangia, Italian for let’s eat.

One might argue that the world needs another blog like ____.

On the other hand, this blog focuses in that grey intersection of sales and marketing where lots of very bright people work but very few writers venture. It is precisely where Web 3.0 is emerging. I hope that you will find it worthwhile and that you will visit often.

I very much hope to foment discussion and engage you in commentary… On the occasion of the New Year, it seems appropriate to ask you to share your thoughts about Web 2.0.

Are Web 2.0 techniques effectively solving your business problems?

Where in the funnel are you focusing your efforts for 2010?