It’s the restaurant you love because they know just how to cook your steak. It’s the general contractor who makes decisions on your behalf. It’s the cell phone carrier who catches your complaint on Twitter and responds. A fan’s experience with your organization at every interaction shapes your brand. We hope to spark more conversations about how you can improve your organization’s brand experience.

Have you ever attended a networking event that began with “so, what do you do?” conversations and ended with you and your new buddies plotting to change the world, starting with a scribbled up cocktail napkin? Contributors to Business Talk aim high on discussion topics. We have big ideas about how successful organizations will build business through engaging audiences and constructing targeted outreach efforts. And we hope you do too.

Our creative team gets inspired from sidewalk art, a local musician, an all-the-rage artist, our kids, a new sports car or anything that strikes our fancy. Sometimes we talk about design for the pure beauty of it and other times we discuss the best and worst of design in business. Brand elements, such as a logo or font choice, are the result of a beautiful synergy (or unfortunate disaster) between art and commerce.

Call it Social Media or call it whatever you want, the lure of community and conversation is the reason why Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed and all those online tools exist. As the volume of audiences who participate in online communities and conversation increases, the opportunity to connect directly with your audiences cannot be ignored. We share stories beyond the business of social media to discuss how community and conversation are changing how we live, work and interact.

From a holistic marketing strategy to improving your website’s SEO, marketing is a complex animal these days. The old days were easy: create a TV spot, print a brochure and run a promotion. Today, marketing is much less about your organization telling the world what you want them to know about you and all about learning from your audience to build sustainable relationships and better business practices.

When you walk into Fathom’s HQ in downtown, Hartford, Connecticut, chances are high that you will hear “Fathom! Fathom! Fathom!” It’s not a talking parrot (although that would be cool) and it’s not an overzealous staff shouting out adoration for their favorite company in the whole wide world. It’s our antique Fathom pinball machine. And he has a lot more to say than we ever imagined, as witnessed by his posts.

Some topics fit nicely into the categories we’ve created in The Deep End, and others just don’t. As you can imagine, Take It or Leave It has a penchant for opinion. Join us and bring on the debate!

The technology brains of Fathom are usually head-down hard at work in helping us make our online deliverables intuitive, operational and ranking as low as possible on the frustation factor. These guys and gals have a lot to say about how to make things tick. They hope you will share your tech thoughts too.