My Amazing Mother
October 27, 2006
Today would have been my mom’s 96th birthday. She passed away in May, a week after Mother’s Day, so it is really with this birthday that the circle of firsts begin.
The first October 27th when we are not celebrating her birthday; the first Thanksgiving without her, the first Christmas without her and then the first Mother’s Day without her and finally, the first anniversary of her death.
This blog post though, is also a first…the first time I am going to try and put all of of my pent up raw feelings into the words that I hope will honor her memory and serve as a reminder to all to tell our loved ones not only that we love them, but even more…what they mean to our lives.
One day, they will simply not be there… and they will not be back for us to add a few thoughts or ask a few more questions. Inevitably some things will be overlooked…maybe not even thought of until it is too late.
There are thousands of search results to questions like, “what would you do if you only had a day, a week to live.” I couldn’t really find anything for “what would you do, ask or say if you know your loved one had only a short time to live”. So maybe ask yourself that kind of question…and then share the eulogy with the eulogized. Amazing things could be said.
My Dad had a heart attack and died shortly after my college graduation. There were no goodbyes….here one day, gone the next. As a child, I adored him…he was larger than life and there was nothing he couldn’t do from my perspective. As a disdainful adolescent, I was pretty sure there was nothing that he could do right.
At 22, to quote Mark Twain, I was just beginning to realize {again} that “My father was an amazing man. The older I got, the smarter he got.”
When I found myself suddenly without him, I was not only devastated by the suddenness of the loss but I wished that I had had just one last moment to tell him that I loved him and how proud of him I was and how much I looked up to him… and I could only hope that somehow he knew that all along.
With my mom, I had another 35 years and so we survived my nasty teenage years and my wild twenties and then had loads of grown up good times together. She visited me frequently when I lived in Boston and NYC and we had a ball….we cruised the Caribbean and vacationed in London and she shared my successes with pride. I know this. She told me. She told others who told me.
And I did tell her that I loved her. But by the time that I told her that I thought she had been the best mother in the world… I am not certain that she was able to actually hear me. There definitely wasn’t time to tell her why I thought that, in the instant that I blurted it out. In fact, although I had long understood what an amazing person she was, I didn’t really get how amazing a mother she had been until after she was gone.
So even though she was 95, and had quite a few dances with death, the final pas de deux had an abrupt, surprise ending. Each day of her last week was much like an act in a ballet or a 9 act play, an entity unto itself that was surreal both in real time and upon reflection; but then we didn’t know it WAS her last week. And I didn’t know her last morning on earth was her last morning on earth,…until it was.
She had enough medical issues in the second half of her life to have stopped most people in their tracks. She was diagnosed with MS (multiple sclerosis) when she was 50 but for a long time she seemed to ignore it and just kept on going.
Until well into her 80’s none of it really kept her from doing the thing she loved to do….get out of the house and meet her millions of friends for bridge, lunch and drinks. She never told anyone but family that she had MS and let people think what they wanted about the frequent falls, broken limbs and constant tiredness.
- Sea Island, Georgia October 27, 1992
When my second son was born in February 1993, she was 81 but flew down to Orlando for the occasion and then came back again in April. This was her last trip. When she got back home she fell and broke her hip and because she was insistent that she would stay in her own home until she was carried out to a nursing home, she had a hip replacement and insisted upon going right back home.
Unfortunately, the spirit was willing but the body would not cooperate. She fell again and re-injured her hip and thus began the second to last era of her life, the institution years. Without a discernible look backwards she sold her beloved home and gave me the keys to her equally beloved Mercedes. Giving up the latter was not about the car, it was about freedom and loss of independence.
But she and her trusty scooter persevered….for the next 10 years or so she was able to play bridge, go shopping and out to lunch and dinner with her friends. But over the course of those years she was diagnosed with cancer and had a kidney removed, then breast cancer. She developed a hand tremor that eventually made it impossible for her to feed herself, and was allowed to fall so many times in both of the assisted living facilities - which were outrageously well compensated to care for her but didn’t - that she lost the ability to transfer on her own.
And as an aside, I agree with the point of view being expressed by Dr Cherryl Woodson and others on Jane Gross’ blog (if you have an elderly parent, read this blog!) that assisted living is a myth that over promises and under delivers.
Quite frankly I think in the case of Sunrise Senior Living in particular it is an even darker myth….a profitable, exploitive business model preying on the families “wishful thinking” as described by Dr. McNabney. Wishful thinking that the assisted living facility looks and feels and smells more like a hotel than a nursing home but really the “assisted living” designation is an excuse to reduce the quality and quantity of staff versus what would be required for a nursing home or skilled living designation when most of the residents really require trained, degreed and licensed medical staff.
While my mother lived at Sunrise, I lived in close proximity and managed her medication myself. A phone call from her at 3 PM or 3 AM or sometimes both, and I was there within minutes to witness this appalling situation first hand.
And finally when macular degenereation robbed her of most of her sight she agreed that it was time to come and live with us. So in November of 2007, following her 95th birthday,
October 27, 2007
the final era began. My mom moved in with the boys and me.
She would sometimes ask me why did I think that God was keeping her around for so long. She felt that given her physical condition that she wasn’t really useful. It wasn’t spoken as a complaint; it was an inquiry.
I can only imagine how awful it was for her to have been so active mentally and physically and then with all of her mental facilities intact to loose most of her physical abilities. But yet there were no requests for pity.
Before we got the final diagnosis on May 17th….that she had matastisized cancer everywhere (I later put the pieces together….the breast cancer at 87 which she opted not to treat beyond a lumpectomy) I had begun believing that she was going to make it to 100. But that was my selfish fantasy of wanting her here for me and for my kids….she was ready to go.
My answer to her question about why she was still here was always the same….because I still need you to be, Mom.
And so do my kids. She would be embarrassed but proud I think to know that her grandson, Forrest, wrote his college essay about the six months of his eighteen years that she lived with us.
November 7, 1995
So, if I had been lucky enough to tell her why I thought she was the best mother in the world during that last week of her life, what would i have said? Well first of all she had asked me several times over the course of the last 10 years if I thought she had been a good mother.
She had also asked my sister at some point, who apparently gave her less than a stellar performance review. That bothered my mom and that sort of surprised me…i had never really thought of my mom as trying to win the mom of the year award. She had her own life and she had her life with my Dad and her life didn’t really seem to be all about her kids.
She kept us in line and she didn’t indulge; she did not want to be our friend….when she said “no” she meant “no”. We had strict bedtimes, curfews and we were never late for school…or anything else for that matter.We grew up with our parents telling us that they had money to put us through college and after that, we were on our own. No move backs. No hand outs. I took them at their word on this.
But then there were several stand out occasions where in spite of the limit that had been set, it became impossible for me to live within it….so at first there were punishments for that particular transgression and then much to my amazement, the rule would be re-thought and changed. When it happened, I would be astounded at my own good fortune.
I highlight these last two thoughts because, this is where I began to see, as I struggle to raise my own kids, how wise a mother my mom had been….and of course in contrast, how not so wise a mother I could be. I’m pedaling fast to try and fix that.
When my mom lived with us she would say to me frequently, “Marianne, you need to stop grounding the kids, its not working” or “You need to stop taking away their “fill in the blank”….IPod, car, PS3. It’s not working.” I would argue with her and say but I have to do something when they refuse to “fill in the blank.” After she was gone I finally realized what she was getting at…..I remembered how when she realized maybe it wasn’t the kid who was bad but the rule that was bad, she was a big enough person to change the rule and compliment the new cooperation. Bingo! Okay, so I don’t mean my kids are running wild….but lets just say we are using a bit more operant conditioning with more reinforcement and less punishment. I am working on it, Mom.
The other part…”you are on your own”. Well, although I never expected she would help me through life’s twists and turns because I took the “you are on your own after that” thing to heart..,,,she was ALWAYS there to help me. In ways that neither one of us could have probably imagined. And she was right in there helping me until the very end of her life. The lesson for me as a parent? Well my kids always think that I am going to fix their messes. The recent article in the WSJ called “the Trophy Kids Go To Work”? Way too close to home.
I need to change the expectation that I will be flying in on my helicopter every time they have a problem….On this one, I can only say, it’s going to be a long road, Mom…..but I am still hopeful to send two, empathetic, responsible citizens out into the world.
So, this is what I would have said….you were the best mom in the whole world because you set such an awesome example of perseverance, of bravery, steadfastness, integrity and absolute wisdom not only for me, but for my kids. And as it was with my Dad, I can only hope that somehow you knew that all along.
Now, to anyone who is still reading this long, long post…..make sure that your parents, your spouse, your kids and your friends know not only that you love them, but what it is about them that makes your world rock.
The Bailout & the Bluebird
When my kids were young and one of those things happened that no one could exactly remember doing… a bike was left in the driveway, a baseball went through a window, there was a large grape juice colored spot on the carpet…their nanny would smile and say, “the bluebird did it.” That bluebird became a constant visitor and to this day when no one will fess up to a transgression we blame the bluebird.
I have been thinking that the bluebird has been pretty busy lately because to listen to all of our elective representatives including Senators Biden, McCain and Obama, someone else made this happen. I guess the only good thing about that is that at least the finger pointing is over something substantive now versus such previous topics as who is more like Brittany Speers or who wears lipstick and who is the pig.
So, if the make believe bluebird led us in, will the make believe bluebird lead us out?
This has been what seems like the longest political campaign in modern history and it is now hard to imagine that in a little over 30 days we will actually elect one of these two guys to be our President. OK, if you are one of those who hold the opinion that George Bush is the sorriest excuse for a president that you can think of, well then based on this alone, all is not lost.
However, the sheer impact of this economic crisis that almost instantly rearranged the US financial landscape just as 9/11 rearranged the New York City skyline, seems to have diminished both candidates and made them seem too small for such big problems. They both talk about the need for change but we woke up one morning to find Bear Sterns, Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers no longer existed and that the US government had “rescued” Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac who were supposed to be there to rescue the $5.3 trillion US home loans that they guarantee. Maybe we have had too much change already?
Does it seem like either candidate really has a firm grasp on how we got to this unhappy confluence of acronyms and euphemisms : FOMC, GSEs, Community Reinvestment Act, AMT Patch and now the unfortunately acronymed Troubled Asset Relief Program, TARP,as in tarp.
Could any of the candidates give a quest lecture or better yet, pass a qualifying exam, on say Keynesian economics. We know that Joe Biden thinks that FDR addressed the nation on TV after the stock market crash in 1929 so we won’t even bother to ask him. Peggy Noonan, who more often that not, calls it as I see it asks, “Do you worry that neither of them is up to it? Up to the job in general? Is either Mr. McCain or Mr. Obama actually up to getting us through this and other challenges?”
Well, it certainly doesn’t feel like it. In fact, it feels scary. Rex Hammock who has been writing blog post nuggets of brilliance, one after another, about this mess pointed in a blog post titled Who’s to Blame? to an op-ed piece by David Brooks in which Brooks writes that none of the political leaders has been able to instill confidence in the American people that they get the situation and can and will take charge and lead us out.
We have a problem. A big prolem. A crisis in fact. Point a finger at someone else. Oh, we can blame the bluebird. The bluebird did it. That’s settled. Now, how do we get out of here? The bluebird? No, he got us into this mess. We can’t trust him. We will just stay here.
Steve Pearlstein writes, “But it is a measure of how little trust remains in both Washington and Wall Street that voters are willing to risk a serious hit to their wealth and income rather than follow their lead.
OK, so we are staying but that makes us……angry?
“I don’t have to tell you things are bad, everybody knows things are bad: It’s a depression! Everybody’s out of work, or scared of losing their job; the dollar buys a nickel’s worth; banks are going bust; shop-keepers keep a gun under the counter; punks are running wild in the street; nobody anywhere seems to know what to do and there’s no end to it! We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat…. We know things are bad, worse than bad: they’re crazy! It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore! We sit in the house and slowly the world we’re living in is getting smaller…. I want you to get mad! You’ve got to say “I’m a human being goddammit! My life has value!” I want you to…yell “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”
Yes, we need to get angry. Junk bonds, Savings & Loans, Enron, We have been here before. We are about to send the same people back to Washington that got us here; that we laugh at every Daily Show, Colbert and SNL that we watch.
My son asked me earlier tonight who I thought was more popular Sarah Palin or Tina Fey. John Stewart IS funny; but should he be the most trusted man in America? Let’s get mad and make some change ourselves. Then we can believe it.
Inter:PLAY 2008
It was lots of fun. Thanks to Dave Gray, Bill Streeter and Melody Meiners for making the panel, Branding Yourself On-Line, work so well. And Dana, Melody you two did an amazing job making it happen!
If you missed it, you can still catch a part of it here.
Run Forrest, Run
The late Randy Pausch wrote of an experience he had as a child at Walt Disney World in Orlando he referred to as the $100,000 salt and pepper shaker.
He and his sister had purchased the salt and pepper shaker at a gift shop and were planning on giving it to their parents as a “thank you” for taking them to Disney. Randy accidentaly broke the gift but returned to the gift shop, told the employee who had sold them the set what had happened. The employee gave him a replacement at no charge, took responsibility for the accident and rescued victory from the jaws of defeat for Randy and his sister.
The $100,000 relates to the amount of money that Randy Pausch estimated his family spent at Disney over the years following the incident. He writes that the appreciation his family felt towards Disney engendered by “this one customer service incident” caused them to return time and time again.
Pausch mentions that years later as an Imagineering consultant at Disney he would tell the salt and pepper story to senior executives and ask them if, in their current culture, they could visualize an employee being “kind enough” to replace the shaker; he reports, “probably not.”
David Armano wrote about this incident in July as he was thinking about “Micro-Interactions”. I have borrowed his quote (with attribution) from this presentation, “Your brand is the sum of its interactions,” in my own client presentations to highlight the importance for brands of web2.0/social media.
I also apply it to the “old fashioned” off-line micro-interactions…the importance that customer service, tech support, retail all align with your branding and advertising efforts or like Sprint, HP, and many others large and small, the return on spending will be diluted, if not drowned by negative word of mouth.
And the value of word of mouth is the topspin that I want to add to the salt and pepper shaker story. In addition to the $100,000 spent directly by the Pausch family because one Disney cast member choose to fulfill “dreams come true” there is the value of organic word of mouth.
THAT story, repeated over and again by the Pausch family. Perhaps an imaginary conversation between friends, yes, we are going to Disney again because….which makes the listener say “Awwww” and then call their travel agent.
OK, small scale? Grown up Randy Pausch, beloved professor at Carnegie Mellon one day; beloved professor to all of us the next. And the next…..becomes a collective “awwwww we’re going to Walt Disney World”? (The latter, an example of organic turned into ad campaign)
Well, I don’t really know if this chapter in The Last Lecture had any impact on Disney bookings any more than I know if Randy’s question “Are you a Tigger or an Eeyore?” produced an increase in sales of Pooh gear. But I do know that Randy Pausch’s message(s) can be considered viral in a way that could not be created because viral just cannot be created by definition.
Just looking at the Disney salt and pepper shaker example, we have organic word of mouth of the best kind , the credible kind. As Jackie Huba notes in response to the offline/online word of mouth is better argument,”When it comes to word of mouth, the medium is not necessarily the message. The person is.” Even better if the credible person is relaying a genuinely touching story from childhood.
But in a sense organic word of mouth sounds so quaint, so 2006. Have great products, give exceptional service, do good things for your customers and they will recommend you, your brand, your company or your service. Blog it, Tweet it or get others to do so, even better.
In 2008, now that business partcipation in social media is marketing and everyone is blogging and twittering we ponder the meaning. Peter Kim gives it a one two punch: Does Social Media Matter? and then asks, Is is scaleable?
Well, I think the answer is that there is no replacement for exceptional products, services and brands and social media just like its predecessor, advertising can only do so much to influence purchase decisions. I may be Facebook friends with the CEO of Acme, inc and follow her on Twitter but if the Acmes fall apart sooner than promised, all bets are off.
Now, why the post title, Run Forrest, Run? Well Forrest is my son’s name and as I have written before he had the misfortune to be given that name around the same time that the movie Forrest Gump was released. Not only was I asked way too many times if he had been named after the character but in addition to also being asked that question, he has also been told his whole life to “run Forrest run” or “swim Forrest swim” or whatever sport he was participating in at the time.
Recently, he was at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. at Universal Studios in Orlando. They were selling t-shirts that said ‘Run Forrest Run.” He asked if they gave discounts on the shirts to people named Forrest. If you knew Forrest, you would know that this is completely out of character for him to do so when he told me the story, I was pretty surprised just by his question.
The employee he asked immediately said, “No, we don’t do that.”
Another employee nearby asked him if his name was really Forrest and said that he had never met anyone named Forrest before. He then asked to see Forrest’s driver’s license. Upon ascertaining that his name was indeed “Forrest” he returned his drivers liscense and said, “Wow!”
Now the t-shirt was $22.00. ONLY $22.00 for positive word of mouth but a lot for just a t-shirt.
Forrest paid the $22.00 and came home and only told me the story. He wears the t-shirt a lot and it gets a lot of attention among his friends. The only “story” is that he is Forrest and has a t-shirt with his name on it.
Imagine though if they had given him a discount. Imagine if they had given him the t-shirt just because his name was “Forrest.” He might go back to Bubba Gump’s to eat again….and again. He might be repeating a story every time he wore the t-shirt about the really cool folks at Universal Studios. He might have uploaded a picture on Facebook.
He might be still telling the story about Universal Studios after the t-shirt and Bubba Gump were long gone. Maybe to a group of friends, maybe in a lecture hall.
“Your brand is the sum of its interactions.”
Where will Dave Gray, Matt Homann, Dana Loesch and I Be This Weekend? InterPLAY St. Louis!
This weekend, September 18th and 19th, the St. Louis Bloggers’ Guild is partnering with the play:STL music festival to create InterPLAY, the first ever St. Louis interactive social media festival.
Last year’s play:STL had 90 bands on 9 stages with thousands of attendees. This year is expected to be even bigger with 99 bands PLUS 30 of St. Louis’ finest bloggers sharing their wit and wisdom in 3 separate tracks of interactive panel: Bidness, Lifestyle, and Geek Chic.
As the track names suggest, there will be panels covering a wide range of topics from Bidness basics such as The Small Business and Social Media which wil be moderated by Melody Meiners with Dave Gray, Matt Homann, Madalyn Skar and myself to Lifestyle controversy provided by Cyberbullying, moderated by Lisa Bertrand and featuring Elizabeth Helfant, Matt Homan, Kim Dorsey and Dana Loesch.
As you may know Missouri’s governor Matt Blunt recently signed a bill outlawing cyberbullying following the suicide of Megan Meier. Many support this legistlation as an important step in controlling cyberbullying…others believe that the law infringes upon First Amendment rights. Come learn and discuss this controversial topic with a panel representing all sides of the cyberbulllying spectrum of opinions.
Besides Dave Gray, Matt Homann, Dana Loesch, and me you will find Lisa Bertrand, John Combest, Kim Dorsey, Angela Reiner Downing, Dave Drebes, Mike Flynn, Ellan Gooch, Will Hanke, Elizabeth Helfant, Tanner Hobin, Todd Jordan, Jaelithe Judy, Eric Kayira, Alana Kellogg, Kurt Kerns, Chris Loesch, Kristie Love, , Mutha Mae, Craig Mayhem, Melody Meiners, Steve Patterson, Jonathan Pollack, Raquita, Madalyn Skar, Slacker Mom Bill Streeter, Ben Vierck, Kelly Wickham, and Ken Williams.
For the complete festival details, download the official program here http://www.playstlfest.com/media/PLAYSTL_online.pdf and/or visit the St. Louis Bloggers Guild blog to get the latest info on the Interactive panels.
Click here to buy a wristband….$15 admits you to the entire music and interactive festival. Is there a better value in all of social media?
Is John McCain A Marketing Genius?
Ad Age wants to know, “Was it marketing genius for John McCain to pick Sarah Palin as his running mate?” According to their poll as of Day 1 (the poll ends of Friday), 67% of Ad Age readers that responded said “yes” John McCain is a marketing genius.
Well, McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis, told the Washington Post that the election is not about issues but about personalities…”a composite view of what people take away about the candidates.” So, to paraphrase James Carville, “it’s her {personality} stupid.”
As any Account Planner or marketing strategist worth their Venn diagram will tell you, if you can capture the essence of your marketing message within an “it’s” and a “stupid” you are on your way to genius. I frequently call upon the Carville/Clinton analogy when trying to make the it point….borrowed genius.
The most recent USA Today Gallup poll puts McCain at 54% to Obama’s 40% anong those most likely to vote. The latest CNN poll shows Obama at 44% and McCain at 43% but this is a 4 point gain for McCain. Are these numbers support for the marketing genius award? Is this the Palin effect?
Who do you think of when you think “marketing genius”? Steve Jobs? Howard Schultz? A.G. Lafley? (I am reading The Game Changer…highly recommended.) That’s who comes to my mind. And what do they have in common? The words innovation, different, change are usually applied when describing their brand of genius.
So is the choice of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate a stroke of marketing genius?
Well, if no other reason than that the current unpopular President is a Republican, Obama owns change but of course that is just beginning; his race, his age and he has made it his own. OK, the Biden choice was a bit off message but maybe reassuring to some.
McCain, despite George Bush’s uncomfortable satellite reference to disagreements with McCain, “I Know”is not only a Republican but as Obama reminds us, has voted with Bush 90% of the time. ( Some disagree.) And then there is that annoying enthusiasm gap.
Enter Sarah Palin. Definitely unexpected. Definitely different. Definitely change. Definitely a “personality” move. But what is “it” exactly?
I think Peggy Noonan nailed it with, “She has the power of the normal. And that is change in American politics and especially this year with the leader of the sisterhood of the traveling pantsuits the only choice to put a woman in the White House. If you believed that there should be a woman president but just didn’t like Hilary Clinton you might have felt disloyal, or at least conflicted.
So, yes, by making normal the new change, McCain is a marketing genius.
Mack Changes Stats: A Visit to the Viral Garden
Mack Collier, social media curator extraordinaire, changed the stats this week on which he bases his Viral Garden Top 25 Marketing & Social Media Blogs from my blogging nemesis Technorati to Feedburner, specifically Feedburner subscribers. (Thanks to Toby for the heads up!) For me, this switch produced several ironies….(not in order of importance)
Irony #1
I referred to Technorati as my nemesis because from the time that I began my blog in May 2005 until the moment (unrecorded) that I stopped looking or caring I have had issues with Technorati in the way that they indexed, ranked and provided inadequate tech support.
Feedburner, on the other hand, has been nothing but helpful even in trying to solve issues with Technorati.
This past April I noticed that my Feedburner subscribers seemed to have dropped precipitously….as in they were “0″, none. I immediately panicked and clicked on “help” only to find that since they had been acquired by Google, “help” was now at Google and a bit less accessible than my panicked state required.
Dick Costolo, founder of Feedburner (who had been so responsive in trying to solve earlier Technorati issues), is a Facebook friend so I messaged him there. He quickly provided the email addresses at Google that could address my problem. It turned out to be a feed re-direction issue and although some subscribers were lost, the issue has been resolved.
Irony #2
Just a few days ago I had my trustee developer Chris Talkington change my Word Press theme and upgrade to WordPress 2.6.1. He added the Feedburner subscriber widget…..the one that Mack used to base his Top 25 on for the past week. Thank you, Chris….how fortuitous for me.
Gavin Heaton, in response to Mack’s change, asked great questions about the public display of stats…and his commenters responded on this topic as well as the merits of lists in general.
I wholeheartedly agree with Gavin’s statement that, “I think the only way to build links, for the long term anyway, is to create quality content and engage with your community of readers.” Presumably, one’s content is initially “found” by a reader because it has achieved enough Google juice to be visible on a topic search or because of a link from another blog. Ideally this is the result of “quality content” and/or engaging with a community of readers through either your blog or through other social venues, Twitter, Facebook etc.
Therefore, I suppose, the display of stats is not necessary to build readership….on the other hand, truly, most people don’t really like to be the first one to arrive at a party or go into a restaurant where there are no other diners. So maybe there is some comfort in a display of subscriber stats that says the content here is good enough that others want to know when there is more.
I would like to believe that people read my blog/subscribe to my blog because they like the content…..and this leads to irony #3.
Irony #3
There hasn’t been much content, good or bad, on my blog for quite some time. For the first part of “some time” it was mostly about My Unforgettable Mom….and then after she passed away in May it just became about, well…. everything. Even wondering just what it was that I should start back writing about.
So, THIS weekend, knowing that my kids were both going to be away I had decided would be a good time to put all my excuses aside, fire up the procrastinator’s clock and write. But again, what to write?
Thanks to Mack, Toby, and Chris at least for today that is solved.
What the Shell?
In the old days, when gas was a mere $3.98 a gallon (LOL) I used to try and avoid an empty tank at Ballas and Clayton Road because it seemed as if their prices were higher than the other gas stations that populated my path home…..but now there is no difference between heaven and Shell and this Shell as it turns out has a sense of humour.
They feel my pain; I feel an emotional connection. My customer experience improves immediately. And what the Shell…I am out of gas.
AT&T: It Doesn’t Look Good, Girls.
AT&T announced layoff of 4600 workers yesterday. The article in today’s Wall Street noted that AT&T explained the layoff as mostly “white collar” jobs because consumers are dropping their AT&T landlines.
They also announced that a similar number of new jobs would be created in more promising businesses such as wireless, television and broadband.
AT&T spokesman Mr Sharp explained to the WSJ that jobs would not be found for their laid off employees”for a variety of reasons” because the new jobs were different.
To paraphrase that other BOSS, the jobs are gone girls, and they ain’t coming back.
Or as John Hodulick, an analyst for UBS explained clearly,
“There will be quite a bit of cost savings in this plan since it will impact a lot of senior executives and white-collar workers, who are generally more highly paid, and replace them with guys in trucks getting U-Verse into peoples’ homes,” he added, referring to AT&T’s television and high-speed Internet offering.”
So, gentleman…..start your engines!
Must Read: Groundswell (Must listen: Upstream.tv Forrester Marketing Conference Live)
I was planning on finishing Groundswell on the plane trip to the Forrester Marketing Conference in LA. As a matter of fact, if the truth be known, the 3 hour flight of uninterrupted reading time was one of the things I was looking forward to about the entire conference. That and the hotel room all to myself, all night. If you have kids you know what I mean.
When I found myself standing behind Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li in a taxi line in Chicago following the Forester Consumer Forum I asked Charlene if she was tired and she said that actually she got more sleep at the conference than at home with her children. True that. And my children are teenagers; there is little hope.
But not to digress. I did finish Groundswell last night and so with this post I can officially recommend it as required reading if you work or want to work in this world transformed by social technologies. If you landed on my blog because you meant to (as opposed to a mis-directed search) and are now reading this post, that probably is you. (If you are reading this post on Wednesday morning at 8:39 AM Pacific time….stop reading and you can listen to George Colony explain why he blogs live at the Forrester conference.)
I am going to stop writing and listen. Harley Manning is reviewing yesterday’s presentations. Kerry Bodine is going to talk about Designing for Engagement…more on the Groundwell will follow.
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