If I had been broadcasting 140-character tweets this past week I would have announced that I was in Milwaukee to be with my husband's family and to attend a lovely graveside service for my mother-in-law, who died Sept. 24, 2007 at age 83.

I won't type out her name because she was an extremely private person. I will tell you that we shared the same first name (Deborah), that she was old-fashioned and admirable in every way and that I was privileged to know her for over 35 years.

l did an audio conference session on How to Write a Great Business Blog as part of the mega Personal Branding Global Telesummit. This round-the-clock event celebrated the 10th anniversary of the publication of Tom Peters' now iconic article: The Brand Called You. There were dozens of great speakers. Listener Janet Barclay wrote up my session here.  

Had a great time this morning speaking to members of Success in the City, a Washington DC-area networking group for women executives. I talked briefly about how the line between mainstream media and consumer generated content is blurring (recent example: a University of Florida student's video of a diatribe directed at Sen. John Kerry was aired on CNN).

And at the same time, in a parallel phenomenon, corporations are slowly - slowly - realizing that consumer generated media (whether it's blogs or videos or Facebook groups) may be a more credible and effective way to influence consumers than traditional advertising created by expensive agencies.  

We also talked about privacy - or lack of it - in this age…