buzznovation

Hanging with Lisa and Rachelle...

One of the great companies we are working with is DavidAllen Company. David has been a long time user of ActiveWords.

David just did a seminar in Seattle, the room was jammed, but nothing gets done without Lisa and Rachelle. I have had them trapped in the bar, giving them the ActiveWords demo!

Two more converts…

Webbed Feet and final thoughts for the day...

I love living in Seattle, but even my affection for the place has been tested of late. I just checked the Times, and grabbed this headline.. “City That Takes Rain in Stride Puts on Hip Boots”. We have had almost 15.5” of rain in November, and that doesn’t include the snow we had today.

Early this morning I was fascinated by the running of the Seattle Marathon. When I got up, the temperature was in the 30’s, it was raining, and there were thousands of people running in the marathon.

My pal Heidi suggested that the rain had reached “Biblical proportions…”, but I have yet to see any arks under construction or even anyone with umbrellas.

I tell my friends that when you are in California the prevailing sentiment seems to be that anything happening in the country East of the Sierras is irrelevant.

I tell them that living here is like living in Brigadoon. The area comes out of the mists every hundred years or so, and whatever is happening East of the Cascades is truly a mystery.

Rock and Roll for the ages...

I tried to read the New York Times daily, if not weekly, it seems to be easier to read daily when I am on the road, but I have always speculated that reading the Times at least on Sunday, gives you a chance of having some idea of what may be going on in the world. And what does this have to do with rock and roll you say, well here’s the logic as I see it…

I give a talk that asks three rhetorical questions:

a. What’s the fastest growing group of computer users in America today?

b. Who has the greatest amount of discretionary time?

and the tip-off..

c. When everyone born in America before 1955 dies, how much money will generationally transfer? The answer, (drum roll…$40 Trillion…, and the answers to questions a. & b. are Baby Boomers….)

So, turn to the times, and Voila…There is a great piece entitled, “Rock of Ages”… The thrust of the article is that AARP is trying to use aging Rockers to recruit. To date even though I now qualify, I haven’t succumbed.

But there is a great quote in the article, which should ring alarm bells for technology companies.

“Even during the ascent of Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys in the late 1990s, when teen sensations were getting all the attention, consumers 45 and older were the industry’s biggest market, according to survey data compiled by the Recording Industry Association of America. The gap has only widened since then. Last year fans 45 and older accounted for 25.5 percent of sales, while older teenagers (a group more prone to music piracy) represented less than 12 percent. So it’s little wonder that Rod Stewart’s raspy remakes of pop standards emerged as a franchise, or that Bob Dylan in September captured the No. 1 spot on the Billboard chart for the first time in 30 years.

The trick is that conventional marketing techniques don’t always work with this group (if they work with anyone anymore). Older listeners don’t have much interest in traditional commercial radio, which targets children and young adults, as do TV channels like VH1 and MTV. And they don’t spend much time in traditional record stores.

So labels, publicists and marketers have had to learn new tricks to reach them. Older acts show up not on MTV’s “TRL” (Total Request Live) but on morning shows like “Today,” and hawk their wares in infomercials and TV mail-order ads. Instead of seeking Top 40 radio airplay, they look to National Public Radio and satellite radio. And to entice more casual consumers, artists now regularly guarantee exclusive recordings to mass retailers like Target or high-end chains that cater to grown-ups.

When I was in Costco last week, I bought three CD’s, Rod Stewart, Tony Bennet’s Duets and Dianna Krall. Bennet’s latest album…”Thanks in part to Target and Starbucks, his “Duets” album has racked up the biggest sales of his career (almost 650,000 copies in its first seven weeks).

And one can only speculate if technology companies were to think about this market, and create clever and thoughtful products, maybe they would be able to sell them to say 37 million people who had time, money and an inclination to buy, but that would be way too complicated wouldn’t it now…they would rather think about the impacts of “YouTube”…

 

Who would have thought...

My pal Scoble is always amazed at how I have intersected with people.

Tonight I was watching Boston Legal, which frankly has absolutely nothing to do with practicing law.

But I was amused that Delta Burke is a guest star. Why Delta Burke you say?

Delta’s late father Fred was a client of the first law firm I worked for right after I got out of law school. I did a ton of work for Fred, the senior partner in the firm was pals with Fred, and I recall Delta as this 15–16 year old high school girl who came to our office with Fred.

I was 25–26, way too old for her. She batted her eyes a couple of times at me, but she was about a foot shorter, ten years younger, and not my type.

But she’s on Boston Legal, playing the mother of a dwarf, that William Shatner, formerly Captain James Kirk, late of Star Trek, is dating.

I am sure it all makes sense to someone….

 

Thoughts on Wild Rice

When I was a kid we ate a lot of wild rice. I tell people that I am not sure we ever ate white rice. My mother wasn’t a great cook, she always said that her mother was a lousy cook, and we were lucky that she was a better cook than her mother.

But she knew how to make wild rice, and she handed her recipe down to me. Today I made wild rice for Thanksgiving dinner at some wonderful friends home.

The rice was great, everyone loved it, and I thought about how grateful I was for my mother.

A Good Year...part 2

There was a very funny part of the movie that I meant to also comment on.

Early in the movie you hear the signature ring of the Palm Treo. About 4 people around me, and yours truly were immediately scrambling to turn off their phones until they realized that the ringing was come from the screen.

I am sure we all felt a little like geek jerks, but were all also happy to make sure that our phones were off!

My pal Andrew Carton has commented on his Treonaut’s blog about the product placement, which was fun to both see and read about.

A Good Year...

This is meant to be a very lame movie review. This afternoon I went to the movies. Over the last two years I have seen remarkably few movies, most of them very lame.

Today I went to see "A Good Year" staring Russell Crowe. It is a beautiful movie, perhaps not great drama, but a beautiful movie. One of the reviews I read suggested it was the male version of "Under a Tuscan Sun".

In the shameless romantic phase of my life that I seem to be in, that seems to be an apropos comparison.

The irony in my life is that the movie is filmed in and around Gordes, and I have this standing invite to visit some friends in Gordes.

Why have I not not gone to Gordes you ask? I have absolutely no clue, because if it looks like the walled hill town in the movie, I might go and never come back.

Perhaps the magic of movies is that some of them grab you, and you keep coming back to see if you will get grabbed again!

Video Blogging..and a little help from your friends...

I may be doing a little project that would entail some Video Blogging. I am beginning to do some research as to the best digital video camcorder that I can find for say reasonable price. I probably am defining reasonable as something under say $1,500.

Also, I may be in the market for both video editing software and someone to do some finished editing, so would love some more ideas. My goal would be to do the first cut or booking marking of the video myself, and then let someone who knows what they are doing, do it right.

I would prefer not to consider anything in the Mac world yet, although maybe down the road if this turns into something, I would consider making a separate investment in Mac equipment/sofware. 

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated as I keep telling my friends that those who read my blog, and whose blogs I read are really my intelligent agents!

Hanging With the Gang from Down Under....

 Yesterday I had the very excellent good fortune to speak and moderate a panel discussion at the Anza Tech Gateway to the U.S. Conference.

On the panel with me was my mate Cameron Reilly, and three very bright and wonderful women, Cathy Brooks, Sarah Duckett and Christina Ellwood. I thought our panel was great! We had a ton of fun, and the audience really seemed to get in to it. I wore my Richmond Tiger jumper, and the lads from down under loved it. The jumper was a gift from Cameron, and the story as to how I got it, is a lot of fun too!

I told those in attendance to get the shrimp on the barbie and the beer on ice as one of these days I was going to head down. I think I got about 20 cards and invites to stop by. One of these days, I truly am heading to Australia and New Zealand. They must be remarkable places, as the natives are certainly great fun to be with.