I'm in Boston tomorrow hosting an event at the Microsoft NERD center on social media intelligence with Carol Meyers, our invaluable advisory board member and a true marketing maven. We were planning on an intimate round table with 12-15 local marketers, but registration is now pushing 40, so we're throwing open the doors for a larger discussion.

I attended the memorial last Saturday of a former employee, a young woman named Maya Machnicova. Memorials are always a reminder of basic truths we tend to ignore, or simply forget, and Maya’s passing in particular has made me think a lot about the subtle ways people impact my life. The push and pull of primary relationships is obvious—parents, spouses, children, business partners—they’re like heavy planets that shift our trajectory whenever they come into orbit. But what about the coworkers we spend a few hours with each day?