Bloody Crafty

Make Meaning

So in my final few days of my current job, I find myself reflecting on all the loads of crap on my desk and perhaps what I have learned.  I think the most compelling thing I was exposed to was the Avenue-A/Razorfish Client Summit last May.  Now that I'm sort of going to a competitive company, I probably won't be able to praise Razorfish publicly much but I thought that was the best thing I've seen from any agency since my first agency retreat 12 years ago.  They had a ton of very compelling speakers including Sir George Martin, the Beatles producer for many years.  I had no idea who he was and could not have been less excited to see him speak for two hours - but have never been more engaged in a speaker.  It was like watching a live documentary - truly fascinating.

But my favorite speaker by far was Guy Kawasaki .  He was one of the first guys at Apple and has made a living out of giving the same speech 900 times - at least according to my youtube search.  But he's also a venture capitalist and started alltop.com.  Most importantly he's about the most entertaining speaker ever!  He turned his canned speech into a focus on Innovation - the theme of the summit - and I still remember some of the funny things he said.  He had a really funny thing about consultants coming in to help write mission statements.  I was able to find several videos online - but the more I watched them, the more I realized that these should be shown to children and then high school seniors and then college students and most of all anyone considering business school - before they enroll.  His first step about making meaning not money is a Lloyd Dobler goal.  Another step was about jumping the curve and understanding the huge mistake in doing the same thing instead of looking ahead - like why ice makers didn't create the refrigerator.  And another one about niche-ing your way out of the graph.  His case study was all about pets.com trying to connect a dead cow to your hungry dog and what they forgot was how heavy dead cows were.  And one of the most used is his 10/20/30 rule for presentations.  I have yet to follow this - but I'm not trying to get millions of dollars in venture capital.  I still think it's a good rule for most people to follow.

I highly recommend attending the Razorfish client summit if you can - and I thank them and my team there for all their help over the past year.  And if you need a speaker - call Kawasaki.  He's no bozo.

Inspired Craftiness

A few weeks ago the sensitive second grader turned eight - on March 8th - the Golden Birthday!  I used to choose a theme for birthday parties and the plates and napkins and goody bag favors and cake would all match.  But I've found that eight year olds don't really need a theme.  At first he said Lego Indiana Jones, but then we figured out that he really just wanted that game for the Wii.  Then a week later after I began my search for that kind of cake, he let me know that any sort of lego themed cake would be fine.  He didn't care - Indiana Jones, Star Wars, City, anything.  So then I went on my hunt for any sort of lego cakes. 

Most of what I found was uninspired.  You know the home made cake with lego people on top.  I did find some volcano looking cakes with Jones lego people on it but that seemed so forced.  Then I found an image of an excellent cake that looked like lego bricks.  I decided that I had to have that cake - fondant covered, cupcake tops.  But alas that cake was made nowhere near Denver.  So I started calling bakeries all over the city and finally found a baker who said OK.  Fondant was going to cost me 50% more so I decided to to go with spray painted buttercreme and marshmallow tops (it still cost a ton).  But it was perfect!  (see above)  The marshmallows were actually a huge hit - every kid wanted one and got one.  I only paid for four bricks but I think they really wanted it to look like the picture so they added a fifth - we had cake for weeks (fortunately it wasn't Crawford's cake or I might have actually eaten all the leftovers).  And it weighed about 50 pounds which was odd. 

Although I didn't make it myself, it was still very crafty - next year it will be hard to beat it.  The pressure of craftiness!

The Reason for my Absence

I was doing such a good job there for a while - a post every couple of days.  But then things got very crazy and low and behold, my pending unemployment vanished!  I'm happy to report that my stint at my current employer that sells nearly 40% of your domestic beer choices and 10% of your import choices will no longer die a slow and painful death on June 30 as expected.  But instead it ends in a couple of weeks because I managed to secure another job at a big famous agency in Boulder (I'll let you guess).

I'll be doing something other than media which is good and I intend on a learning a thing or two along the way.  Of course it's not perfect because I didn't see an open bar on my 15 minutes tour.  Joking!  (but I didn't)  But it is kind of far away from our casa and everyone will likely wear jeans which will make me appear overdressed.  But I kind of got that here, too, so they will all adjust.  The bottom line is that it's a substantial improvement from depression induced suicidal tendencies and pending foreclosure.

So we'll see how it goes - April 6 is my first day of school.  And yes, I've picked a frock but have no shoes yet.  And there of course is still time to change my mind.  About the costume, not the job! Woo hoo!

If there was email in college

Last week I had to help the sensitive second grader with his first research project and once again I was amazed at how easy those things are now with the Internet.  How easy high school and college must be now with all the technology that we didn't have.  I mean no trips to the library, no card catalogs, no encyclopedias - click, done.  In fact, I bet college students now wonder how in the world us old geezers managed without cell phones, the internet, instant photos, text messaging, facebook.  But my girlfriends and I often comment at how lucky we were that none of that existed.  There were plenty of incidents that I'm glad were not captured digitally to live forever.  And drunk dialing caused enough trouble - imagine what I could do with email?!?!

It appears that the smart people at Google are on the lookout for those types of problems (I mean after Google Earth dug to the ocean's floor what was left to do?).  Apparently you can easily turn on the Mail Googles program and after a set witching hour - let's say 9:00pm - before you can send an email you have to complete a series of not-so-complicated math problems forcing you to contemplate professing your love or worse.  I imagine this is a handy tool. And I imagine you could use it the other way, too. "Sorry I didn't respond, I was too loaded to get past the math."

Maybe this won't solve the world's problems - but just like all those iPhone apps that I find so cool but would never use (such as MRI readers) - it's just nice to know it's out there.