This year, the Federal Home Loan Bank of Seattle’s case studies and the Semiconductor Industry Association’s think small video landed in the winner’s circle. Look for them in Coupe’s Annual Design + Image Awards issue later this year.

Learn more about Coupe.

See more work for the Federal Home Loan Bank of Seattle.

See more work for the Semiconductor Industry Association or watch the think small video.

The Passage by Justin Cronin
Just when the Twilight books sucked the life out of the vampire genre, along comes this book to give it new unlife. But seriously, it’s a truly good book. (Suggested by Norman Guadagno)

Faithful Place by Tana French
Her third novel after two amazing previous books, French returns to Ireland for another tale of murder, drinking, and detectives. (Suggested by Norman Guadagno)

The Known World by Edward P. Jones
A story about black slave owners in the South before the Civil War. (Suggested by Reeve Washburn)

Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
A story that bounces between modern-day life and World War II Paris. (Suggested by Reeve Washburn)

The Wind Up Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
Explores what could become reality if genetic modification “goes bad.” Interesting postulation on genetically modified ambulatory organisms and humans, and biological warfare. We promise it’s easier to read than the previous sentence. (Suggested by Elizabeth Combs)

Omnivores Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan
“Good or bad, I’m a sucker for a story about corn.” (Suggested by Dale Hart)

Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook by Anthony Bourdain
He gives high praise for those he admires and tears apart those in the culinary world he despises. The opening chapter alone—in which he graphically recalls a secret dinner where they ate a taboo meal—is worth the read. (Suggested by Marianne Blackburn)

2001: A Space Odysseyby Arthur C. Clarke
A mind-bending classic with wide appeal outside the sci-fi genre. (Suggested by Shannyn Roberts)

Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns
A timeless story about small-town Southern life at the turn of the last century. “This is a book that my mom, grandma, and I all read at the same time, so I hold it close to my heart.” (Suggested by Shannyn Roberts)

Innocent by Scott Turow
A great courtroom drama with interesting characters. (Suggested by Janet DeDonato)

The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris
A man suffers from an unnamed condition that makes him take random, spontaneous walks against his will. (Suggested by Minh Nguyen)

Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson
A noirish take on covert operations during the Vietnam War. Very dark, very humid. (Suggested by Minh Nguyen)

The Steig Larsson books—The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest
“Super fun!” Enough said. (Suggested by Dacia Ray)

Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruis Zafón
The son of a widowed bookstore owner discovers a rare novel by an obscure author—and a mysterious disfigured man who has been burning every copy he can find. (Suggested by Jen Largent)

The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp
Prescriptions from the famous choreographer for turning pent-up creativity into finished projects. (Suggested by Jen Largent)

The Help by Kathryn Sockett
A great commentary about life in the South amidst the budding civil rights movement filled with sadness and humor. (Suggested by Regina Baerwalde)

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
A classic coming-of-age story set against a backdrop of prejudice and racism in depression-era Alabama—always worth rereading. (Suggested by Regina Baerwalde and Reeve Washburn)

Watch the KING 5 News story about Alaska Air Group’s environmental performance.

Both Kindley and Lewis have great stories to tell. At Gap Inc., Kindley works to integrate social and environmental goals with the company’s Gap, Athleta, Banana Republic, Old Navy, and Piperlime brands. Another important aspect of her role is maintaining the company’s rigorous approach to working with its supply chain on workers’ rights.

Lewis’s work at Domtar has helped the paper company become a pioneer in its industry, with the adoption of the most rigorous forestry management standard in the world and relationships with leading nongovernmental organizations, including the Rainforest Alliance and World Wildlife Fund through the Global Forest and Trade Network.

We love this conference because it’s a great opportunity to share challenges, benefit from the experience of others, and hear from experts in the field. No matter how much progress your brand has made toward sustainability, this is a place to find inspiration and learn ways to take it further.

If you’re planning to attend Sustainable Brands 2010, be sure to stop by and say hello to Dale. If you’re not, put it on your calendar for next year!

Sustainable Brands 2010 happens in Monterey, CA, June 7-10.

Catch up with Dale on Twitter: @zhart

(We’ve used the most standard definitions here, but one of the problems with web analytics is that definitions change depending on which tool you’re using.)

Visits

Visits equals the total number of all “sessions” during a given time period. (A session starts when a user at a particular IP address hits a site and ends when that user either leaves the site or times out.) ‘Visits’ does not equal visitors. Someone can look at a site 10 times a day, and each time may include several sessions because the user walked away and timed out. It’s a gross measure of what’s actually going on.

Unique visitors

‘Unique visitors’ is a little closer to the actual number of visitors, but it may or may not work on any given site. It is the total number of all unique cookie IDs during a given time period. (A cookie is an identifying text file left on a visitor’s machine by a website. They allow users to go back to sites like NYTimes.com and not have to log in again.) ‘Unique visitors’ assumes that one machine equals one visitor. As with all web analytics, it’s a less-than-perfect measure. But it’s better than TV’s Neilson ratings, which have no way to tell how many people are watching a show—only how many televisions are tuned in.

Time on site

No other statistic causes as much confusion as time on site. It includes people who visit your page and then go to lunch, grossly inflating the average. Is more time good or bad? It depends—on an informational site, more is good. On a transactional site? Not so much. This dilemma is one more reason to define business goals up front and then tie them to meaningful KPIs. Look at ‘time on site’ with a jaundiced eye. If you want to impress people with your time on site stats, build your site with a lot of errors and slow-loading pages and your average time on site will shoot right up.

2:00 a.m., another night, I am on the move. I haven’t seen crowds this dense at this hour since I was last in New Orleans, before the flood (“antediluvian” as word geeks like to say). People are swaying to their own percolating rhythms, some digital, some analog, some chemical, and some ephemeral. The townies look at the students, the geeks look at the freaks. SXSW badges mark the easy prey for the locals the same way ATM signs announce easy cash for the punters.

It’s like Escape From New York

Later, Shannyn will say it was like Escape From New York; right now I just feel compelled to keep moving forward, seeking open paths between people, and focused on a single direction. Too many people, too few paths, no turning back.

I spot a line of PediCabs up ahead. The drivers all seem to be living in the same William Gibson novel, sharing secrets in an underground economy and plying their trade on the intoxicated, the forlorn, and the desperate. A driver says, “$25—because it’s a big hill.” Up we go. By the time we reach the big hill, the hotel is close enough to walk, but I make him go up it for the sheer pleasure of watching his effort and knowing he earned the money honestly.

On the plane from SEA to AUS, I met an Israeli woman who works for Microsoft envisioning the future of technology. Or so she said. I take everything at face value when confronted with the unimaginable. She is just one of many people I will meet who have digital cred and personal charm oozing from their pores. She carries an ancient Nokia flip phone and sends texts using the numeric keypad. This makes sense. We communicate in code. 

I am in a session and the CEO of a firm called NeuroFocus (really, www.neurofocus.com) is showing a promo rap video called “Listen to Your Brain.” I am questioning whether he is reprogramming my mind in the process. My Israeli friend wonders the same. We stay for the session that follows, not caring about the content, our neurotransmitters likely overloaded anyway.

Drinking with ghosts

Parties bleed in and out of focus, and eventually it rains down hard. The cool kids online are already saying, “SXSW Interactive is dead.” Perhaps. But like clubs to which I will never belong and parties to which I am never invited, I am willing to spend time drinking with a ghost.

If this is a dead event, then perhaps we have all grown too jaded, too skeptical, too trusting in our own digital echoes. The digital age still needs vitality, friction, and warm bodies colliding with impunity on the dusty streets of cities. That’s why I am here, and that’s why you should be, too.

—Norman Guadagno