In today’s Salt Lake Tribune, Utah Senate President Michael Waddoups, R-Taylorsville, “predicted [ethics] would be central on this year’s [legislative] agenda.”

Yet read this from Wina Sturgeon’s January Utah CEO report:

Many Utahns think one of the top subjects that will be discussed in the 2010 session is ethics reform. But when asked about that, Waddoups says, “Heavens no, that’s not even in the top five!”

Sturgeon continued:

Yet despite the Senator’s blithe dismissal of the ethics question, voters have made it clear that they are fed up with the current state of legislative ethics — or the lack of them — and want definite, more thorough, ethical reform. Utah ranks near the bottom of the barrel when it comes to our national ethics grade. There’s no independent review council, legislators police themselves. Not surprisingly, no lawmaker has ever been found guilty of an ethical lapse. The problem is not that legislative members violate the rules; the problem is that there are no rules. But this year, the subject of ethics won’t be easy to ignore, despite many other pressing matters. The voting public has made it clear that they want definite standards — rules — about such issues as what Utah lawmakers are allowed to do with leftover campaign funds and how long a member must wait before becoming a lobbyist.

Read more of Sturgeon’s reporting on Utah’s legislative ethics here.

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Thanks to Bill Cutting, partner and director of brand strategy at TWIO Brand, for granting us permission to repost the following entry from the TWIO Brand Blog.

In the dark ages of advertising (read: before the Internet), measuring ROI was a relatively straightforward matter.  You tallied your ad spend against your sales gain/loss, or rise/fall in market share.  Depending on your read of the results, you either won or lost. And you responded accordingly.  All of which produced the classic CEO’s dilemma: “Half of my advertising dollars are wasted; I just can’t tell which half.”

Fast-forward to 2010, and it’s not even about the Internet anymore, but it’s now about the phenomenon known as social media.  From out of literally nowhere, spending in this category (non-existent just five years ago) is projected by Forrester Research to grab 21 percent of all ad spending by 2012.

Did you say 21 percent?

Yep.  And all based on the premise that the average attention span of a human being has shrunk to the equivalent of the length of a flea’s back leg.  But I digress.

If advertising effectiveness measurement was difficult when there was just print and broadcast, consider how challenging it is today. Not only has it fragmented beyond recognition, but also that fragmentation is evolving even as we speak.  In other words, the tools created to measure website traffic less than a decade ago are now old hat. Today’s tools are being designed-on the fly-to measure the effectiveness of such phenomenon as mobile marketing, social media, email marketing, display advertising, search marketing… and each of those categories have many divisions of their own.  Even those “media” continue to evolve at a breathtaking pace.  The good news is that new measurement techniques and technologies to address this data gap represent a huge market opportunity for firms willing to wade into the morass.  A recent whitepaper released by the data firm CoreMetrics presents a good example—if you can decipher the buzzwords. But here’s the rub: it seems the very notion of social and viral marketing is antithetical to the idea of actually measuring its effectiveness.  It’s dynamic, random, explosive, and nearly invisible and seems to operate blissfully outside of anyone’s control.  And that’s precisely the charm and power of social media.

Having said that, if you can actually figure out how to make those tools actually work for your company and you have the time and the financial resources to throw at the effort, you’ll likely be miles ahead of your competitors. The key is using social media tools in the right context. Of course, the way things are going, by the time you do figure it out, those tools will have been made obsolete by the next generation of buzzwords.

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Is a modern MBA degree the worst thing to happen to business in the past 50 years?

That’s the theory put forth in a story published by the New Republic in December. It seems that in the days before WWII, most American companies focused on making things, producing goods to sell to other Americans and the world at large. After the war, however, large corporations began acquiring smaller businesses. Then, instead of needing to manage the production line, managers had to look after subordinate managers and the profits generated by those nascent units. Enter business schools, which began offering training geared to just that purpose.

Fascinating reading. Perhaps a cautionary tale for what may be looming on the horizon?

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This story describes the Crystal Palace as a “fully functional space station,” even though it exists solely in virtual reality. More amazing still is that transaction among users (residents?) of Entropia Universe, in which the space station exists, exceeded $420 million in 2008.

I wonder what a virtual economy would look like in Utah. Any ideas?

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Overstock is getting a bit more socially conscious, according to a story in the Jan. 6 edition of the Deseret News. Says the story:

The Salt Lake City-based Internet retailer announced Monday that it pulled listings involving items with alligator, lizard, ostrich, stingray, eel, shark and kangaroo skin from its Web site.

While it’s nice to see companies getting on the environmental bandwagon, is it good for business? Is pulling a product for sale because of its origin just a good PR move, or will it have a longer-lasting effect on Overstock’s bottom line?

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Thad Kelling’s Spotlight on Overstock.com Chairman and CEO Patrick Byrne has quickly become our most viewed story since the website’s launch in late 2008. Page views were twice that of the next two most popular articles: a Spotlight on Ted McAleer of USTAR and the Utah Student 25 feature.

No doubt due heavily to promoting the story on Twitter and Facebook.

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It feels like I wrote this letter just yesterday. I’ve been editor of Utah CEO for just over a year, which makes this my second Year in Review issue. It’s a curious paradox, how 365 days can seem so long and yet so fleeting all at once. The time flew, but were any of us having any fun?

The end of one year and the beginning of the next is nothing more than a signpost. Be that as it may, it’s a good opportunity to reflect. Utah CEO began three years ago as a quarterly publication. Judging by the archives, it’s come a long way since then, but even looking back over just the past 12 issues I like to think the magazine has continued to evolve. One thing I’ve tried to do is engage you, our readers, in generating content by asking “What do you need to know now?” I’m grateful to those who have helped me develop stories, and to those who have contributed as sources. Hopefully it has benefitted us all — feedback suggests that we’re moving in the right direction.

Moving forward into 2010 and beyond, I hope to ramp up the magazine’s engagement with its readers to become even more useful. To that end, we’ve introduced an online events calendar; please submits events of interest to the business community to jblodgett@utahceomagazine.com. While you’re at it, feel free to provide comments, criticisms and suggestions for what the magazine can do better to better serve you. And visit welcome to the new Utah CEO blog at www.utahceomagazine.com/blog. Like the magazine, it’s a work in progress; as blog, it’s a living document.

The signpost has been passed. It’s good to be traveling with you.

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