PGreenblog

Sometimes Technology Amazes Me and I'm Not A-Skeered.

I'm of the mind that Cisco is the great hidden player in the world of the social customer. Though at this point the whole subject is getting so pervasively staggering that I'm just going to call it Sentient Being 2.0 or Gaia 2.0 or something. I think that there is so much going on at Cisco that we don't cover in our analyses and yet, I see them everywhere doing amazing things. I want all of you to just simply watch this video and though the technology is amazing and part of it all - listen to the discussion toward the end. Cisco just seems to understand. They seem to understand. They just seem to.

Technorati : CRM 2.0, Cisco, Enterprise 2.0, social customer, telepresence

DIRECTV's Ellen Filipiak Takes The Floor

If you've been reading this blog at all you know that me and DirecTV have been at war for quite awhile - not just because they done me wrong, but because they have been a mess of broken promises, processes, bad policies, poor culture and a myriad of other "bads" that make for what for me (and many others) a miserable customer experience. Well, about two months ago (less than that, really) they hired Ellen Filipiak as the Senior VP of Customer Care to fix all of this. Starting today, and repeating every two months on the first of the month, Ms. Filipiak graciously consented to let us know how much progress and what progress they are making to transform DirecTV from its very broken state to a customer-centric company. So, take it away, Ellen Filipiak and readers, feel free to drop comments in if you think it merits it or send me an email and let me know what you're thinking if you care to be more private about it.

Ellen Filipiak

First of all, I want to thank Paul for his invitation to blog here over the next few months. As he recognized, I joined DIRECTV in April specifically because it is experiencing unprecedented change and its resulting challenges.This change presents so many opportunities - both for customers and the organization - to benefit from service excellence, and I am moving forward quickly to make that happen.

DIRECTV is positioned to be the market leader for HD programming this fall. One out of every four households has an HD-capable set, and they want HD programming. DIRECTV is best positioned to meet that demand. Honoring our commitment has taken a tremendous amount of preparation to get customers installed and ready to go when more HD channels arrive this fall. As a company, we could have managed customer expectations better earlier in the year.

By example, some months ago, customer demand for HD receivers put our service systems to the test. We managed available supply of receivers to meet the tremendous demand. Some customers experienced delays and frustration getting installed and that can have a cascading effect on service for those affected.

Also in the last year, we moved to a lease program for our receivers, rather than the owned model. This is a change, particularly for our longer term customers, from past practice. Our senior executive team regularly reads e-mails, forums and blog postings regarding this, and has challenged us all to respond better to questions customers have about leasing versus owning.

As Paul and others know, enjoying HDTV requires an investment by the consumer, in a television set, receiver and programming, and by us, in developing more advanced receivers, broadcasting equipment and programming content. Although customers do have the option of owning their DIRECTV equipment, leasing makes the receiver part of this equation more affordable for customers. Since we are sharing in that investment, we feel it's fair for us to ask for a service commitment, even from our long-term, loyal customers who choose to upgrade to HD. However, we do need to improve our communication with customers who obtain DIRECTV equipment from a retail location, to make sure they understand that the they are still operating under the lease model and do not own the equipment.

The good news is we have plenty of receivers in stock and with these new receivers, we have the ability to provide HD programming upgrades to customers' homes on a national level through our satellites. What this means for customers are fewer phone calls to make, fewer appointments to wait for, and new features to enjoy - such as new HD channels like the recently announced HD Discovery Channels, History Channel and Starz channels. DIRECTV also provides customers with access to interactive services such as NASCAR HotPass, and MLB Extra Innings SuperFan package as well as updates to the program guide or CallerID features at the flip of a switch. In fact, in recent weeks we have rolled out many updates to these receivers and that has significantly reduced calls and complaints - it's truly exciting to watch this happen so quickly.

I also recognize from talking with customers and employees that we have many opportunities to enhance the customer service we provide. With this potential in mind, I have identified several key priorities to address including:

• Resolving a customer's issue on the first call
• Ensuring our representatives have the training and systems they need to successfully assist our customers
• Make it easy for customers to get to the representative who can best respond to the reason they are calling
• Informing customers that there are many ways to get information and service from DIRECTV, including directv.com, for transactions such as paying their bill, viewing recent account transactions and ordering pay per view.

To accomplish these objectives, I am touring our call centers around the country in June to seek out the best of what this organization has to offer. Innovation is found on the frontline where customers reach out to a company - and this is where we will find our best answers.

Overall, I would like to see us continue to leverage the technology we are rolling out to simply the television viewing experiencing so that our customers can best enjoy the increasing variety of advanced television choices that DIRECTV offers.

I look forward to posting future installments here.

Thanks again for the welcome and we can all look forward to an exciting fall, a season of change for DIRECTV.

Ellen Filipiak

Senior Vice President, Customer Care

DIRECTV, Inc.

Ellen.Filipiak@directv.com

Technorati : Customer Service, DirecTV

Pro-Am Finally Means Pro-Active

My degree is in journalism. I love newspapers. It is just AWESOME to me to read a Sunday paper and even the ads for (geek alert) Circuit City, Best Buy, CompUSA and others and drink a good cuppa Kona café while perusing the press.

Even better…do all that and I go downstairs into my basement home theatre dubbed the Ecenter and put on something ranging from classical to Christina Aguilera's Back to Basics, or the new tone poem from Norah Jones and read the paper and sip the java.

Ummm.Ummm.UMMM.

But I think its been pretty obvious that one of the domains most shaken up by the web 2.0 world has been media and particularly the print media which is ignored by the younger set for the far more visceral audio tunes of podcasts and iPod songs and the even more engaging visual delights of Web and soon to be ubiquitous mobile video from the likes of YouTube and ESPN.

Let me make this blatantly clear.

would you rather see?

This?

Or This?

I rest my case.

The fact is though, that we're not just viewing things from a visceral standpoint when it comes to reporting. Actually, with all the blasts at the media, and all their exaggerations, vagaries, overhype of stories that are meaningless; their pandering to the lowest levels of taste found this side of Twinkie and their clear and unadulterated claims of no-bias when that's absolutely impossible, the truth be told, most reporters in the print media or on TV are honest professionals - and I emphasize the words "honest" and most germane to this blog entry "professional."

That means that user-created content and collaboration with the customer and "citizen journalism" buzzwords aside, they know more as professionals than we do as amateurs - usually. Not always.

Long Live Heretics!

See, I'm gonna be a 2.0 heretic here. Meaning that despite my clear love of the entire Web 2.0/CRM 2.0 "thing", I'm gonna violate the temple of 2.0 culture and say something that (horrors) I know that people who love all things 2.0 don't want to hear.

All user-created content isn't good.

Yes. Once again.

All user created content isn't good.

The movement that is creating the onrush of user created content is good.

But a LARGE chunk of what is created by the users sucks big time. I mean, did you see those horrible user created commercials on the SuperBowl? That "Chevy Car Wash" winner of the College Ad where guys couldn't get their hands off a Chevy and stripped down as they stroked it. Not really funny. Professionally produced, amateur written.

That would be this one.

Okay, but enough. What I'm saying is that this isn't the era of "anti-professional" just the era of "self-expression," some of which indicates serious talent, some of which indicates serious vitamin deficiencies. So be discriminating. There is something important & valuable about people who are experts in their craft and love it perhaps too, and something important about customers' desire to collaborate and participate in activities that both enhance their own experience and benefit the companies that they are utilizing to enhance that experience.

All in all, the qualified meaning of co-creation of value. Not the unqualified adulation of user-created content.

All of which brings me to something I found very interesting in the world of the print media.

Gannet is a Bird; Its a Plane (well, no it isn't) Gannett is a Media Chain

Innovation springs from places that are often unexpected. While the major media like the Washington Post and the NY Times are making admirable efforts to digitize and be more "relevant" - their efforts tend to be more toward the purist social network side of the 2.0 electronic house. Oddly, the effort is springing from a source that I wouldn't have expected. The ownership of the newspaper that sits outside your hotel room door most every morning you're there - yes, USA Today and bigger YES, The Gannett News chain.

They are leading a charge that according to a Washington Post article last November that I just ran across, is radically transforming the way that they (and hopefully, other print media) do business:

They will be "incorporating elements of reader-created "citizen journalism," mining online community discussions for stories and creating Internet databases of calendar listings and other non-news utilities."

That is amazing when you realize that most of the other newspapers, even including the pretty surprisingly progressive NY Times are thinking that the new media is developing digital editions that can be read with digital readers. Even this slight move to the fore is considered a radical departure from the eras of Heywood Hale Broun, Walter Winchell and Arthur Sulzberger. So what Gannett is doing is beyond the journalists' pale.

The Gannett initiative is all encompassing and has created quite the fervor around the blogosphere. For a whole compendium of posts on the subject, there is a great blog called CrowdSourcing: Tracking the Rise of the Amateur that has a strong blanket thrown to cover this thing here worth looking at.

The initiatives involve transforming not just the structure and practices, but the culture of all the Gannett regional properties like the Indianapolis Star, the Des Moines Register and the Cincinnati Enquirer, among others. They don't even have newsrooms anymore but they are calling them "Information Centers." Here is the Gannett definition of that from a FAQ on it that you can read here:

"The Information Center is a new way of transforming the process of gathering and disseminating news and information. It is the evolution of the newsroom, focused on gathering the information our readers and viewers want using words, images and video and distributing it across multiple platforms: the daily newspaper, online, mobile, non-daily publications and any other media possible to meet our readers' needs. Creating an Information Center means retooling the newsroom, expanding into multimedia, embracing community interaction, shifting resources and rethinking the way a community is covered. Gannett's Newspaper Division, which has conducted a series of pilot programs to create and test the Information Center concept, organized the Center around seven key information gathering areas: digital; public service; community conversation; local; custom content; data; and multimedia. (More about each desk below). Information Centers can be tailored to fit the needs of the individual operations in each division. "

But that's not what I want to talk about. There is plenty out there on that. I'm focused, laser-like, dead-on, micro-directed at the "citizen journalist" part of this; the use of user-created content in this and what has been nicely called "crowdsourcing" by Springwise and many others in the biz. What biz that is, I'm not sure.

Crowdsourcing v. Pro-Am or Are They the Same?

Just to make one thing real clear. Crowdsourcing is NOT a term that applies to just the citizen journalist out there. Its a term for utilizing human resources outside the corporate firewall. So what I've written on Proctor and Gamble and their use of the scientist networks to help provide a significant percentage of their innovative ideas is crowdsourcing. The mod community in the PC and video games world is crowdsourcing. The use of the 400,community members to design, vote on and buy the teeshirts that Threadless sells is crowdsourcing. Expert doesn't have to be the operant term. Amateur sources who can be problem solving humans are perfectly acceptable with this approach.

One permutation or, really, justification, was James Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds.

The book's premise was that the greater knowledge came from the vectored results of the totality of the crowd. I think there's some validity to that idea, but it does at least explain how to approach the sourcing of crowdsourcing.

What Gannett is doing is more interesting, really. They are utilizing the strength of their professionals to, as Michael Maness, the VP of Strategic Planning points out in BusinessWeek, " "The pros do the heavy lifting and build the framework and structure...And the audience can come in and fill in." An example of the successful use of this in a Gannett property that seems to be circulating a lot is the Ft. Myers News-Press found that home buyers were being hit with $30,000 bills for water and sewer line connections - WAY in excess of even the supernatural when it comes to this kind of plumbing effort. The news guys put a short item in the paper and online and asked for input from the citizens, providing the online tools for the input.

BOOM!!

Blueprints showed up online, discussions back and forth between the journalists and citizens and between the citizens and other citizens. Then documents began to appear suggesting illegal activities. There was increased coverage. The scandal hit. The traffic on the site (micro-site actually) became huge and the $30K was no longer the price - apparently.

This is great and a new approach to journalism that isn't new in other fields. But there are two problems. One - general. The other - Gannett.

General Problem

The quality of the material is still from amateurs and can be misleading potentially. But this is a really good thing that's going on here. Just be aware of the misstep.

Gannett Problem

This is a notoriously cheap bunch - penny pinchers. So the suspicion is that they aren't being pioneers in something new and exciting, but cost-cutters with the appearance of something new and exciting. So if it starts to cost something then the new and the exciting become the old and boring fast. But if they are truly trying to innovate so that they can engage the readers in a new more interactive/collaborative model of journalism, then its likely the harbinger of the CRM 2.0 approach to journalism - which is the the true citizen involvement in the stories that affect their destiny.

And that's a good thing. I just hope that it stays good.

Technorati : CRM 2.0, blogs, citizen journalism, podcasts, social media, social networks

Random Is As Random Does

Entirely Entertaining Tidbits Worth Paying Attention To...

While working out this morning, I was watching Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip - an Aaron Sorkin (West Wing creator) written show starring Matthew Perry (Friends), Bradley Whitford (West Wing), Amanda Peet (hot), and Stephen Weber (Wings) that I'm totally into. Its a "Behind the Show" look at a Saturday Night Live-like weekly comedy thing that is just excellent. Matthew Perry is amazing on the show and while I loved Friends, it took a lot less of being an actor than it does on this one for him. He's really a terrific talent.

That's not why I'm CRMcasting (I made the word up. Let's digg it and adopt it and love it and nurture it) it, though. There's a scene in an episode called "West Coast Delay" that has Amanda Peete and Bradley Whitford talking about the audience affluence of a magazine target market. She quotes a myriad of demographics about this audience and Bradley Whitford asks her, "where'd you get that? You sound like a (what sounds like) "cred sheet." She holds up what looks to be a Treo and grins.

That's what I'm talkin' about. Mission critical data available on a mobile device. 2.0 indeed....

The Washington Post reported on October 29 that "In Teens' Web World, MySpace Is So Last Year." The article covered a trend among teens away from any loyalty at all to any type of site or online presence. In fact, they covered a study done by Nielsen-NetRatings on the most popular teen sites as of this past month or so. They were Snapvine.com; PLyrics.com; Picgames.com - none at that exalted level last year at all. Additionally, apparently, as the teens get older they are doing two things - first, spending less time on MySpace and more talking on the phone or listening to music (online or not, I don't know) and second, migrating to Facebook, the site devoted primarily to higher education students. God, the kids are just growing up so fast aren't they? Who would have thought Facebook already....?

The Sports Business Journal is sponsoring a conference in mid-November in NYC on "Sports Media & Technology" that shows the increasing importance that is being placed on the new business models for any industry - sports being among the most thoughtful about it. There are sessions at this conference on topics like "Sports Web 2.0 - Social Networking and User-Generated Content" or "Balancing Repurposed and Original Content for New Media" or even "Developing Games That Expand the Player Universe" and finally, "Mobile Devices That Put the Action in the Fans' Hands." There is NO industry that escapes the new customer and entertainment, particularly sports, often leads the way. Why? Because billions of customer dollars in a highly competitive market are at stake.

Article in USA Today last Thursday, that reflects one of the things that I teach in my classes on the Customer Experience for BPT. That would be the fact that customers are being bombarded by so many messages - 23 million by the age of 21, that they are expecting compensation to simply pay attention to your particular message. VERY smartly, a web startup, e-Miles, is now aiming at getting road warriors focused eyeballs. They are giving away mils on Delta, or Continental, Northwest or U.S. Airways if you'll watching ads online and answer followup questions about what you watched. Hilton, 1-800-Flowers - an always progressive company - are among the companies who have signed up to join this service (Rearden Commerce - add this to your stable). Very cool. But they NEED to add United to this or I can't do it. Damn. I want to do this one. The rate is 20-30 mpm (miles per minute) and quarterly add-ins to your account. I'm not a believer in the Attention Economy as you might remember, but the concept merits real thinking and actions like this one.

Another sign that user-created content has something to do with the apocalypse from the September 2006 Fast Company. "We're With The Band: The new cultural tastemakers: you--and everyone else" (not related to my Route 56 I Can't Dance That's Why I'm With The Band" segment) obsesses over iMix - a place on iTunes that allows users to provide playlists that are based on something or another and they are sequenced accordingly. So the one that the author, Howard Parnell, talks about...oh, crap, I'm too lazy to write it out, just go click on the link and read the article.

Finally, the November 6th issue of Business Week, has an article entitled "The Long Arm of the Cell Phone" which focuses on the integration of GPS and social networking via cell phones that leads to on the one hand, location based services such as finding the nearest restaurant or club or where your buddy list is congregating - given your real time location. Sites like Dodgeball.com or Plazes.com do stuff like that. Dodgeball allows your network of buds to find out within seconds where they're congregating so you can go have a beer or a brief interlude or a gab session or whatever.

But Why Is This Important or Entertaining?

Its entertaining because it is to me and its my blog. I hope you think so too. Some of this is cool but all of this is a lesson in the world of the next stage. The fact is that THIS next stage is here now, not next. I could have easily have chosen a hundred or a thousand or 10, 000 other articles or blog entries or references on the web to talk about. Note one thing in common with all of this. Which is deliberate. All of it is reported in or part of a mainstream channel or company. Every single "random" bit of reportage. It is now an indisputable fact that the new breed of customer and the new business models being designed and deliberated are pervasive, even though most businesses haven't figured it out yet. What I say is considered cutting edge, but the reality of it all is so encompassing, it really should be seen as mainstream. Though by all means, keep calling me cutting edge. Helps my business model.

I don't want to harp on these facts, just leave them with you. If you're a business-focused human, pay close attention. If you're not, cool stuff anyway, no?

Technorati : CRM 2.0, Facebook, Web 2.0, business model, culture, customer experience, mobile, user created content

Coming to a Neural Cortex Near You

This one is just out of....well, let me not get ahead of myself.

A company who for the moment shall remain nameless (don't peek below), both has patents and applied for another patent that would create a "playback system" that bypasses the eyes and the ears. For those interested, the accepted patents are named and numbered "Method and System for Generating Sensory Data onto the Human Neural Cortex (patent nos. 6,536,440 and 6,729,337) and the patent application is called and numbered, "Scanning Method for Applying Ultrasonic Acoustic Data to the Human Neural Cortex" (application number 20040267118).

The concept is amazing. It is a theoretically non-invasive way of creating sensory impressions (meaning in this case vision (video) and sound including full blown stereo or 5.1 surround sound separation) across the neural cortex of the brain.

The neural cortex a.k.a. the cerebral cortex is the area of the brain that's responsible for the thought, reasoning and sensation, voluntary muscle movement, and memory. In other words the parts of the brain that were affected in the study of the ALCS I mentioned in this blog entry a few days ago. The implications of these are staggering for the neuromedical field, though that's hardly why the patents were filed. But imagine if you could provide the sensory experiences without the eyes and ears being the direct pipelines for sight and hearing? Instead, sight and sound would be transmitted by firing "pulsed ultrasonic signals that modify the firing rate of neural tissue" meaning the auditory and visual are reproduced directly on the neural cortex. What does that say for the way it could help the blind and/or deaf? Wow.

But the purpose of it is more mundane. The idea is to show movies and listen to music that would be directly delivered to your head in 20/20 vision and with perfect hearing.

The implications of that are less staggering than the medical ones, but they become outright freaky (to me in a sort of "amusing if it weren't so not funny" kind of way) when you hear who owns the patents and the application.

The Kicker

Sony.

Yes, my all time favorite, "I Can't Dance That's Why I'm With the Band" customer unfriendly company, Sony, is the owner of the patents. That's the same Sony that does everything for itself. That embraces the concept of "customer as vermin." The same Sony that charges a premium for all its proprietary formats that it insists that you use if you want to own a Sony product. The same Sony that has a highly developed engineering culture - which makes great hardware - but I don't really think I would be comfortable with them shooting images and sound across my cerebral cortex. My very own brain stem.

When you know its Sony who owns these patents, it creates a whole new meaning for "rootkit" doesn't it? Imagine if they do this and follow the same strategy as they did with the rootkits that the Sony CDs installed on your PC unbeknownst to you that created such an incredible stink last fall because of the damage they did when you tried to disable or remove them.

Putting Out the Neural Fire: The Movie

Here's what I would envision the scenario looking like.

Sony releases the PSP (Patented Sensory Projection) device. With it, you can watch movies priced 250% over a DVD and 50% over a UMD, in the SNM (Sony Neural Media) proprietary format. But unbeknownst to you, by watching an SNM movie, the PSP will install a cerebral "root kit" which, if you attempt to stop watching the SNM movie before its conclusion, will remove your ability to voluntarily move your muscles. If you then attempt to disable or remove the cerebral root kit itself, it will nuke your neural cortex a.k.a. your "operating system."

Even though I'm only speculating, the patents are real enough. I can't wait to see what Sony does with it.

Random De Dum Dum

I feel sorta "random" today so I'm going to jot down some random thoughts and ideas that have been either observations or tidbits.

CRMish Stuff

• YAY CMC - I want to send a major shoutout to Customer Management Community. They simply don't get enough attention in the United States for their consistently interesting work, and very well organized site. I've never written for them, don't know a soul over there personally (my bad) which is unusual for me, but they have done some excellent work on things like public sector CRM (see this report on governments redefining marketing in the UK); customer service; some very good industry software/SaaS analysis; very good work on customercentricity and just a multitude of other things. I think if they have any weaknesses its that they don't focus enough on the emotional and behavioral side of the transformation to the experience-focused customer that we're seeing pretty acutely now and they need to do a lot more with that. They are fine when it comes to process and metrics. Generally, they are a winner all around and, though based in the U.K. with a strong Euro-flavored dollop in their tea, they are a site that American audiences need to pay attention to. Thank you, Stuart Lauchlan.
• THE "DUH" FACTOR #1 & #2 - Amdocs came out with a study on February 13, called "The Customer Experience Survey" which pretty much validates what some of us have been saying all along (so, of course, it must be accurate and right). It found that "both consumers and businesses say that they are more likely to stick with a telecom provider based on the quality of the customer experience than on the cost of its service." Another conclusion? Customers want more control over that experience "Self service also continues to grow in importance. More than three out of four consumer respondents asked for online access to their account to handle administrative tasks such as reviewing and paying bills." Money wasn't the issue, nor was paying for new services. Control and the experience were. Good for Amdocs. Finally a technology company survey done with some meaningful questions. I don't know Amdocs all that well but I've tracked them enough to know that they are on the path to recovering some of the ground they lost after the Nortel Networks acquisition. This survey was very smart so it now puts them back on my radar so watch the blog for something on them some time in the future (how's THAT for vagueness?) I don't have enough current knowledge of their products or services to make any definitive judgement - though ordinarily that lack of knowledge that doesn't stop me!
• GEE THANKS, I DIDN'T REALIZE I WAS THAT STUPID - I like CRM Daily most of the time. They and CRM Buyer keep me up with the latest CRM news and some of their authors (especially the incredible Louis Columbus at CRM Buyer) are neat-o writers. But when I read articles like this one from the CRM Daily on January 31, 2006 "CRM Resolutions for the Year Ahead" I can only wonder things like, "why do I exist?" I begin to wail loudly, knash my teeth and tear some follicle-based protein from from my increasingly thinning hairline. Listen to this one. This is CRM Daily's anonymous writer's advice for 2006 to all you apparently clueless CRM practitioners out there. Resolution #1 - Evaluate the integrity of your data. Resolution #2 - Take stock of your current CRM solution. Resolution #3 - Plan now for the year ahead. Does it really take a CRM expert to tell you these things? If it does, then here are some resolutions for you personally. Resolution #1 - Make money this year. Resolution #2- Make sure that you and your family eat food as close to daily as you can. Resolution #3 - Treat yourself to something once in awhile. Resolution #4 - What-EVER.
• YOU'RE IN THE FACEBOOK GENERATION - Sasha Cohen won the silver medal for her woman's individual figure skating performance last night. She deserved it. She fell once in the beginning of her performance and then nearly fell again about 10 seconds later. But she hung tough and skated elegantly and just picked herself up and got back in the race (Tha's a Frank Sinatra reference - The song? "That's Life"). That gave her a sweet #2 finish. Her maturation from being a youthful hothead to a smart young, articulate woman is both obvious and welcome. But her victory isn't the reason for this musing. After the competition was over, this 21 year said something that made me pause, not because she used buzzwords that were cool to me (though they were). Instead, what made me stop in my tracks was her reflecting on the "four minutes out of her life" that she skated last night I think with this unpretentious, unrehearsed thought, she expressed how her generation actually thinks so CRMers take heed. Here's her quote: "Ultimately, a medal just signifies what youve accomplished. My focus is not on the medal. Its the experience and the process." Not bad, Sasha. Those of you reading this can make of it whatever you want to. But don't ignore the thinking that went into her comment. She ain't alone in it.

Not CRMish Stuff

These really are my code words for talking about the Yankees or philosophy or something just arcane so one thought on each.

• Let's start by looking at the Yankees, arguably my favorite subject. You can check what I say in my Yankees box over on the right side of this blog but I have to tell you something. At first, I was really wary of Johnny Damon, the Yankee, because of his committments but he is trying SO hard to fit in, reporting early, trying to say the right thing and working overtime to be a "teammate" that I'm starting to like him, even though I think he's being too propitiatory. That said, we have one powerful team this year and when Randy Johnson can even be relaxed in front of the NY media during the early days of spring training, then the world spins, the tectonic plates shift toward the Yankees. Thus, the only disruptive innovation that I will be concerned with during the summer will be the disruptions of sleep that the Yankees will cause the diehard Red Sox, White Sox and Oakland fans (their teams are my picks for the other two division winners and the wild card - though maybe the Indians or the Blue Jays rather than the Red Sox).
• I find that when I muse over things blog-related or not, I often think about a question which could be a bummer for some -one that has been a concern of moral philosophers since the 18th century" such as Immanuel Kant and GWF Hegel: What actions should we take in our lives that are in accordance with the Highest Good? How does that constrain us? Or does it NOT constrain us and instead provide us with increased freedom? That leads me to wondering that if I'm doing what I think is good for goods sake and it seems to work against my own interest, is this good? OR On the other hand, if I do something strictly out of a sense of duty and don't believe in it, but it has a good result or result for The Highest Good, was it good - for me? Which boils down to the difference between self- interest and selfishness. It also identifies the conundrum of how you reconcile freedom and necessity. All of this is why I have no friends anymore, and I presume when you're done reading this, no blog readers either (you're probably thinking "where's the sex part?") Actually though, all of these questions impact the way I conduct business because they impact my moral and ethical code - which means, of course, how I'm currently conducting my life. That's why I think about them sometimes. This is one of those days.



• Just to not leave you on an existential note, here's a joke from one of my favorite comedians:

  
  Mitch Hedberg:"I'm a hard act to follow, because when I'm done, I take the microphone with me".

(PG) Thank you. Thank you very much. I'll be here all millennium