Are you tired of this yet?
I sure am. That’s why I’m here (Plurk.com) more and more.
This is one of my favorite Seinfeld episodes. Besides the fact that it’s simply funny, sometimes I don’t feel like doing things just because everyone else is. Like wearing the ribbon.
I was looking at KSL.com the other day and saw these two interesting notes regarding Ogden on the front page. (click image for a larger more readable image)
Seems to me that the #3 rated best town in the country wouldn’t be the type of place for gang shootings. And since when did “towns” have a university, 2 freeways, a small airport, urban sprawl and a few dozen traffic lights? Come to think of it, that sounds a lot like Heber.
Just a bit of irony that these two things were on the front page together, not to mention the word “town” is used to describe Ogden.
I think I’m open minded. Are you open minded enough to go see this film?
I hadn’t realized how many videos I’ve been posting on here lately until I was about to post this video. Truth of the matter is I’m getting lazy creating my own content. Although this video is one that you may have seen before, I find it inspiring and worthy of a second round.
But stay tuned to the blog as I’ve got a post about overweight kids and another one about the film “Who Killed the Electric Car” coming up.
Perhaps the reason this piece by Steve Hartman of CBS News touched me so much was because ever since I can remember I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for the underdog, the kid that needed someone to believe in him.
I had a classmate in elementary school named Curtis Rowley who needed someone to believe in him. Although other kids made fun of him I saw his acute understanding of animals and plants in nature application card credit mbnacollege student credit card debtuk credit card,card credit secure uk,uk aqua credit cardbank card credit providianbusiness card credit smallcredit card fraud protectioncard credit low rateapproval canada card credit instantcard credit debt reducingconsolidate credit card paymentmy premier credit card accountconsolidating credit card debthsbc credit card applicationinternet credit card processing,internet credit card processing servicessecured credit card applicationdownload metro pcs ringtonesfree cell phone ringtones,free samsung cell phone ringtones,free t mobile ringtones for cell phonedownload mobile mosquito ringtones t,mosquito ringtones,mosquito npr ringtoneskeypress motorola ringtonesfree samsung cell phone ringtones10 caller hotlink ringtones top,hotlink caller ringtones,caller hotlink malaysia maxis ringtonesdownload pc ringtonesnextel mp3 ringtones,free mp3 nextel ringtones,i730 mp3 nextel ringtonesinfo personal polyphonic remember ringtones sagem,info personal polyphonic remember ringtones voice,info personal polyphonic remember ringtonesfree ringtones makercell phone ringtones verizon,phone prepaid ringtones verizon,ringtones for verizon phonedownload free ringtones lgblackberry 7520 ringtones,blackberry ringtones,free blackberry 7250 ringtonesringtones for cingular phone,polyphonic ringtones for cingular phonedownload free ringtones virgin mobileinfo nextel personal remember ringtonescell free lg phone ringtonescingular cell phone ringtonessprint download ringtones,download ringtones for sprint phonesony music box ringtonesalltel free phone ringtonessony ericsson free real ringtones,6030 free nokia real ringtones,free real ringtones24 free ringtonestrac phone ringtonesmake your own free ringtones,free make own ringtones,free make mp3 own ringtonesnextel music ringtoneshot new ringtonesdigi caller ringtonesfree motorola ringtones tracfoneboost free mobile music ringtonesblackberry download free ringtones100 free mobile ringtonesfree nextel real ringtones1600 composer nokia ringtones,ringtones composer,mobile ringtones composer100 free mobile ringtones virgin and so it was by sharing the same curiosity for these things I got to know Curtis and would stick up for him. I guess I risked not “being cool” but looking back nearly 25 years I don’t believe I risked anything by my actions.
I often wonder what happened to Curtis after we moved away and if anyone else gave him a chance…or took a chance.
And so it was while watching this video I thought about what a fantastic coach Jim Johnson of Greece Athena High School in Rochester, New York is and more so what a great individual he must be. In a world that is in need of more people like him, coaches who will give every kid a shot at something, he put Jason McElway in for a few minutes of the last game of the season. And although Jason wasn’t “officially” on the team, it didn’t matter.
I found this worth the 9 minutes it took to watch. Why? Because it caused me to think about global warming in a way and with a simple organized approach that I have not yet seen or considered - with open perspective of the varying results from our action or inaction.
I can’t really poke any wholes in this. The comments on YouTube are interesting as well.
I’d love to see this argument be the foundation for a debate among the presidential candidates.
I once asked my cousin-in-law what was the key factor to why his business seemed to thrive. He contemplated for a moment and said,
“Because I don’t promise more than I can deliver and what I do promise to accomplish I do so on time.”
To illustrate this point I share this sad yet true story about someone creating a totally impossible situation and causing a lot of people to suffer for it. Don’t let this be you.
A teacher in a private Salt Lake City school decided that all of his students needed to pass a series of proficiencies before they could pass his class. The theory being that the students needed to be able to do these tasks in real life, not just learn about them in a book. Sounds fair, right?
Each of the 25 students had the next two weeks to pass 40 proficiencies. Each proficiency took about a half hour to do, and could only be passed off by the teacher. Each student was supposed to schedule times with the teacher (outside of class) when they were ready to be tested.
Now let’s take a look at a very fundamental problem with this idea…
As he only gave the students two weeks to pass all the proficiencies, this was clearly an impossible task.
The students were reasonably upset about the situation. The teacher (after one week had gone by) didn’t see the problem.
Moral of the story: Don’t plan (or promise) to do more than you can possibly accomplish.
Open source in the world of software is quickly proving to be THE way of the future. Take this software platform, WordPress for example. While blog platforms like Blogger took a couple of years to come up with categories (one of the few visible features in the most recent release of the “new” Blogger) open source blogging platforms like Word Press or Nucleus keep adding features as fast as the both self serving yet community oriented programmers can make stuff.
But what about the retail world or businesses? Would a community become so involved with a retailer, say, like eBay, where the business sees the value and works with the community, allowing it to provide tweaks and add ons? Perhaps. Or would the sense that the profitability of the owners of a business, like eBay, be too big a pill to swallow when deciding to “give” to fellow community members? Or on the flip-side, would a business expose itself enough to the community and competitors alike to allow for such intimate interaction?
Take a look at SteepandCheap.com, commonly known as SAC and owned by Backcountry.com. This website has a STRONG following of gear aficionados who thrive on a deal and who enjoy the craziness that is SAC. The discussion each day is filled with common faces. People on the discussion would initially poke around in the code to determine how many items were up for sale. A lot of smart people within the SAC community were passing along info they garnered from the servers of Backcountry.com (the parent company) to inform each other about how many items were up for grabs. Rather than squash it, Backcountry.com let it ride. (nice move - no action was the best action to take)
Next there sprung up a separate forum for SAC addicts which was first called SacAddicts.com but has now been changed to GearAddicts.com. This community gives suggestions on gear they want to see and SAC responds. Backcountry once again applauded this new forum, reached out to them in acceptance and stepped aside to watch this grow. But let’s take it one step further.
Enter SACAttack.com. This guy in Canada has mined the data on the SAC servers and written some amazing scripts that give SAC addicts more data on the deal than they have ever had. Some of the widgets he had created were even beyond what the Backcountry team had come up with. Here was an example of the community being more innovative and quicker to the punch than the company. Backcountry reached out to him with 40% off discount codes to drive traffic back to it’s stores where left over SAC items show up, further capturing business that missed the SAC deals.
(Rumor has it that Backcountry wanted to hire the guy, which in my opinion would damage the relationship that a community member has with the business entity, making it worse in the long run.)
So two weeks ago Backcountry launched another website - WhiskeyMilitia.com - built on the ODAT model (One Deal At a Time) and low and behold it has incorporated one of the main features that SACAttack has, that of an item quantity status bar. This was something that in SAC was considered . Coincidence? Not one bit. An example of the community and a retailer working together? Sort of. More it’s an example of a business coming up with something unique, the community forming around it and pushing it to the next level and then the business embracing and incorporating the concept in it’s 2.0 version. (WM being the 2.0 of SAC.)
Where am I going with this? No where in particular. This train of thought was brought on by the video below, created by Novell and presented at the Novell BrainShare conference. (to much laughter from what I heard).
But the question stands. Would a community embrace a specific business to the degree that they have embraced Linux or Word Press? And would a company expose themselves enough to embrace a community? Is there a marriage to be made?
