Category Archives: Uncategorized

Fly me to the moon or better yet to #mpdm

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From Post 10/21/2009

I used to fly as an account Executive a few years back and traveled quite well leaving Terra fir-ma, not the case now. I am in Chicago at the #mpdm Marketing Profs Social Media mixer and I flew from Logan this morning.

When I checked in my bags I was 6 pounds overweight. Not me personally but My bag. I was asked to pay 50.00 additional. I pulled my audio gear out of the main suitcase and voila. I then slogged to security.

A new gate inspector had never seen a field mixer, a video camera and 100 feet of XLR cable before so I was poked and prodded my carry on baggage violated. I was then allowed to proceed to gate still an hour til blastoff.

We took off on time and the flight went fine, very little turbulence. The drama started as we came in to land and suddenly our landing was aborted. We were rocked upward and that dread of oh crap set it. Pilot said there was debris on the runway. There was something burning off to the far side of the runway when we landed, but no mention of us aborting landing has been mentioned anywhere.

“ If men were meant to fly the would have wings” comes to mind. For this and other great aviation quotes see http://www.skygod.com/quotes/cliches.html

Humbled at the get go.

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I am not the fastest reader. I am not that well read. I wish I was sometimes but I am not. I am listening to Trust Agents the audio book and I just did the Technorati search from chapter 1 and nothing came up. Nothing for Skip Bensley or my company Brilliant Video Productions.

This cannot be a good thing for someone who has two blogs, twitter, linkedin and a Video production company that he has been running for 7 plus years. Not sure I am panicked but I am certainly humbled. I hope I find what it is that I am doing incorrectly from this book and can correct it.

#FollowFriday Spotlight follower

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A few weeks ago I mentioned that I was boycotting traditional #followfriday fair for a more concentrated approach. I would spotlight one follower that I thought was really interesting, and why. Then I got busy with work #ims09 and blah blah blah…

So, My first #followfriday mention and or victim is Jason Meserve. Jason and I met a few years back while he was at Network World. He produced video content for their website and was also co-host of the successful twisted Pair podcast and column at Network World. Jason left Network World earlier this year however and is now the “content guy” at Constant Contact.

What is most appealing about Jason is his sense of humor. He and I were simpatico from word go. We are both huge Boston Sports fans, and we are (ahem) both geeks. We also both love 5 guys and are always on the search for the ever better burger. We also like to try and stay up on new technologies and gadgets. He actually had the opportunity to demo many of the new cool tools stuff while at Network World.

The best thing about Jason however is his heart, he is genuine and just a great person to know. He is funny, sarcastic but in a way that you know where his heart is. He can laugh at you while laughing at himself as well.

I look forward to working with Jason again and just hanging out with him at 5 guys sometime soon. You can follow my friend and follow Friday spotlight follower of the week Jason Meserve at @jmeserve on Twitter.

The Redsox bow out

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Jonathan Papelbom blew a save against the Angels the other night and before you could say “Fore” our beloved Redsox were done. This is usually a great time of year for the Redsox, Bruins and Patriots and Celtics are all playing at once. Being a spoiled Boston fan I expected the anticipated NY /Boston showdown in the ALCS. The Angels had other plans.

All we can hope for now I suppose is that the Dodgers somehow win the NLCS and Manny goes Manny on the Yankee’s. It would be nice if the Angels took the Yankees out but we will just have to hope and wonder what if?

The Redsox offense was offensive in the Angels series and could not ammount anything against an Angels pitching staff that usually isn’t that good. The Redsox were not patient like in years past they were anxious. Confidence goes along way and our Sox seemed swaggerless this year.

We need a bat, Jason Bay is now a free agent so re-signing him is job numero uno. If he is hesitant to take the hometown discount however we have noone to blame but Theo Epstein. That idea that 3 old guys = 1 good young arm #failed. Let’s get a real free agent and lock up a real 5th starter for next year also.

I still believe in the Redsox however, see you in April.

Spying on people with too much money

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I spent the last two weeks freelancing in Boston on two shows the first at a Health care show at the Four Seasons Hotel and then at a the Intercontinental Hotel with Bank of America.

The Health care show was by Thomas Weisel Partners group ( the Forrester of Health care) and they had money to burn. The Show was very well done, organized and the AV support group I worked with was hi end or at least their drapery was. The speakers gave presentations about how well they are doing but many presentations included mentioning hundreds of millions in debt as if this was a good thing? I also wondered why none of the presenters seemed concerned that Health care is in the process of being overhauled.

Maybe they were being cocky, but they didn’t seem to think the reality of health care reform was genuine. I think I heard one mention Obama in 20 presentations. Also I have come to learn that you can leverage your million dollar debt to get more money, yes you heard that right. If you are millions in debt you can get loans to pay down that debt. Go figure and I thought carrying a 200.00 credit debt was risky.

The Second Show was for Mid Cap companies that showcased their performance for Bank of America and their investors. I was again surprised to hear about debt on the books in the Millions. There were companies that drill oil that were making money of course, why wouldn’t they? What about the lesser need for oil and gasoline as more hybrids, and EV’s hit the highways? What them worry? I just didn’t see any anticipation that anything is changing really. Debt is debt, we need oil so we drill for it and we will always need it.

Back in the 70’s we should have weened ourselves off oil imports and started making EV cars then. We didn’t do it then …. It seems to me that the companies with all the money also have all the debt, and if they need to pay their debt off we all lose. I am no financial analyst mind you but common sense tells me this economy hasn’t hit rock bottom yet.

Why I don’t see eye to eye with Lenscrafters repair policy

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I need glasses, for I spend way too much time looking at a video monitor editing at times,looking in a viewfinder, reading blogs, emails you get the picture. Anyway somebody recommended LensCrafters in Natick for glasses. I went got an eye exam and was given a pair of glasses that I had selected. When I tried the glasses (tri-focals) I could not get all three focal points to work. So they made a 2nd pair for me. This pair was not what I wanted but they said that these would be better for me.

I took their advice got them and they were better, unfortunately they broke recently. I took them back and looked to get them repaired. One of the nose pieces broke off.Because they broke at the frame level the frames needed replacement, but unfortunately the frames by Burberry were no longer available. Now I need to pay 50% for new frames but they will make the lenses. Even though the glasses were under warranty I still had to pay 50% for new frames for that old frame was no longer available. Does that make sense?

That’s great on paper but a large eye glass manufacturer can melt your glasses down and pour new ones much like a bottle is made in a manufacturing plant. The strange part is that I cannot keep the old broken glasses for that reason then they need the glass back to recycle.

I don’t see eye to eye with this what do you think?

Four Square 5 minutes of my life I just took back

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I am all for keeping in touch with friends as much as possible, but there has to be a cutoff point before you split the atom too finely. The cutoff point for me is Foursquare. Steve Garfield introduced this to me inadvertently and initially I was intrigued.

I guess if you still aspire to go out and drink at cool bars and clubs the novelty of this app and platform might never wear off. If you are a business person however you might want to grab back those few minutes when you need them most.

I joined Four Square and quickly became mayor of the Hynes convention Center and my office here at Brilliant Video Productions. I was at the Hynes for seven days strait so thats not such a stretch.

I see lots of my friends using it to show where they are drinking beer, and if I drank beer still I guess I would be more jazzed. I drink wine, and I don’t live in Boston proper. So I have two more reasons why not to be on Foursquare. For me, I will take back those 5 minutes daily however and put them to better use.

Twitter tools I’ve actually tried

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So your on twitter and you wonder what about all the gadgets offered by companies that help you twitter. There are many and I have tried a few with varying degrees of success. I offer the following because it’s what I know from personal use. I do not endorse any of them and I have no affiliation with any of them.

TweetLater:(free with paid upgrade available) has a couple of free tools that allow you to automate some of your Twitter tasks. You can schedule a retweet, or a twit for later in the day. You can also vet your new followers with an automated welcome message. It can also look at your new followers and sort them into accept, ignore, block or spam which can be helpful. Twitter booted a bunch of people who were using Tweetlater saying that, that was not the reason why they got booted. Those counts were all reinstated however except for the spammer ones I suspect.

True Twit: (free) This filter sends a message asking that the person on the other end respond and verify they are a real person. This is common in email practices and spam programs and now there is one for twitter. I used it and it was a very good functional tool. However, I did have one person contact twitter and claim that I was spamming her. She did not know of this program apparently and was not able to google it before sending the automated response to twitter. I tried to apologize but then this person also blocked me so maybe she was spam?

Twitter adder: (free trial then paid program) I tried this program and it is a program. It will download and allow you to do a few tasks up to a point when you will have to purchase it to continue. You can use this to bulk add people, or delete them etc. You can add followers of people you already follow, and also delete others that don’t follow you back. While the program worked fine, it seems to detach you from the whole process and part of twitter and adding and following people is being involved I thought? no? How can you engage new followers politely and correctly otherwise?

Tweet deck (free iphone and desktop) I use tweetdeck on my iphone and like the interface and its quick add feature. I also like being able to search columns etc. This is a very good free application. It is available on itunes.

I used the tweetdeck beta on my Mac desktop and while it was very good it caused my Mac pro-book to overheat so I stopped using it. I heard it was API related (not sure hwta that is ) but when I took it off my pro-book problem was solved. I have heard there has since been an update but I am all set thanks.

Seesmic Desktop: ( free desktop MAC) I use this program on my laptop now and love it. In addition to all the twitter functionality you can also post on facebook which is nice also. You just have to remember where you are posting if that matters to you.

Co-tweet: (free) I tried it but found that it is more geared to large companies that have multiple twitter accounts and its more about maintaining presence then just tweeting as a small business owner and Producer. Maybe it’s something to re-investigate when my company is much bigger.

Sites and companies mentioned.

http://www.tweetlater.com/
http://tweetadder.com/
http://tweetdeck.com/beta/
http://cotweet.com/
http://seesmic.com/

Podcamp Boston 4 was a great learning experience

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I had the pleasure and Privilege to attend Pod-camp Boston 4 this past weekend. If you have not been to a pod-camp go, go now. The brightest people with some of the best knowledge and idea’s of what’s happening next are there now. For me it was hopeful affirmation that I am doing it right. I also learned more then my find can fully comprehend at this point. I am sure I will have a few more blogs to spill from it as time goes on.

I made some new acquaintances, and I got to know previous acquaintances better. I also led a group of video guys on a presentation about where we thought online video is headed. Our slide share and our video will be posted shortly.

My thanks to the organizers of Pod-camp Boston 4 and all their efforts in making this the great learning experience it was. Take a Bow

Organizers

  • Michelle Wolverton, Lead Organizer
  • Christopher Penn
  • Whitney Hoffman
  • Chris Brogan
  • Steve Sherlock
  • Doug Haslam
  • Guido Stein
  • Lance Gomes
  • Adam Weiss

Listen to your customers or else its not caring Magnified

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I placed an order for Company Logo Shirts with Queensboro shirt Company on July 4th. I needed them for the SBANE annual golf tournament. Which was a few weeks later. The process was simple, the email feedback in the process great and I assumed incorrectly that I would get my shirts in plenty of time. They shipped them flat rate on 16th and they missed by a few days. I was bummed because the shirts came out great but I wasn’t happy with the slow shipping and I filled it out on the CS survey.

I get a call today from a followup person at Queensboro Shirts and she asks me questions about my survey. She then explains why their shipping is why it is and offers to give me expedited shipping on my next order. That would be great but what about the order I got? She didn’t really want to address the situation except to say it was what it was. UPS ground is UPS ground. If that’s the answer then why use it?

I said to her that everything up to them sending the shipment the slowest way possible was great. She did say she was sorry but asked if she could be of further help and I said no, because she was not listening to anything I said. She was just going through the motions of collecting feedback because I was probably on her to do list and she was full filling her job description.

If you want your customers feedback, listen to it even if its bad. Going through the motions and not listening is almost worse then not caring. It’s not caring magnified.
I might have bought shirts from Queensboro again before the follow up phone call, now maybe not so much.