The benches at Swift were really comfortable last night.  They weren't very high, but I felt like the seat to back ratio provided good back support.  I'm sitting on a folding patio chair at DTUT at the moment.  Its alright.  Accident prone Ruby just came in complaining that the deli next door carded her for cigarettes.  No ID, no cigarettes.  Who walks around without ID?  Who still smokes?  Could be worse.  She could be starving to death on national television 15 years after her husband's botched attempt to kill her while the whole country feigns interest as if they'll remember her when the next kidnapping or hostage standoff or sex scandal grabs the headlines.  Don't snicker.  Anyone ask about Elian lately?  You know that baby who fell down the well?  Jessica McClure.  Well, she's in college now.  Now there's someone who'd make a great blogger.  Watch out Wil Wheaton.  Obscurity definitely trumps mediocre celebrity.  The smoochy studying couple next to me is leaving and another couple is taking their place.  I swear everyone in this place looks like they're on an internet date.  The Battery Ventures guys need to come to this place to understand the inner workings of Friendster dating.  I like how CNN now puts people's positions on things right under their names.  Bob Jones.  Against socks and sandals.  Shelly Smith.  This socks and sandals are ok.  By the way, this whole Holy Thursday teachers strike is a crock.  If all of these teachers showed up on church on that day to actually observe Holy Thursday, that would be one thing, but it isn't even a Holy Day of Obligation.  Amazing how, in some schools, half the faculty was so strictly religious that they felt the need to take off.  If I was a teacher, regardless of whether or not I thought I should have off, I don't think I'd ever leave my kids alone for the sake of a union protest.  That's a good sign to the kids that you don't care about them.  They made it to school, you should, too.  Given the kind of music that plays here at night, I don't think this is really the kind of place you should take kids under 10 at 9:30, but yet, people insist on it.  No good will come of this girl walking around with an open smores related flame.  She's walking way too fast and its leaning back towards her, making her nervous and causing her to walk even faster.  Where's the fire extinguisher?  People, if you ever turn on CNN and the headline reads "O'DONNELL:  8th DAY WITHOUT FEEDING TUBE", someone please shoot me.  I'm serious.  I don't care if you're not sure whether or not I'm responsive or conscious.  I refuse to let my dwindling life deteriorate to the point where I'm little more than a ratings generator.  I think I'm one more post away from the first Google page for a "DTUT" search.  I'm the first two on the second page.  Someone link to me.  Push me over the top.  This post needs purpose.  And now I'll check spell, knowing full well I spelled "definitely" wrong again.  You know what's also weird?  "Blogger" is not in the Six Apart dictionary.  Can we fix that?

I love seeing depictions of the future on film, and I always think its really cheesy when the future is some kind of peaceful utopia.  Blade Runner's future is a dark, rainy stew of microchips, languages, neon, and flying cars.  (Its 2005... where are our flying cars?!)

Sometime towards the end of next year/beginning of 2007, we'll see Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones 4...  25 years after Blade Runner...  25 years of attempting to top what I think may be his best performance.  Harrison Ford has never been the indestructable tough guy... he's always carried the weight of the situation on him, but still managed to win in the  end.  The streets of the future have worn him down in Blade Runner, but he's got enough for one or two good swings.

Sean Young is perfect in this movie...   too perfect, which creates a lot of conflict for Harrison Ford's replicant eliminating dayjob.  Its too bad she went from Stripes, Blade Runner, and Wall Street to starring opposite Punky Brewster in Motel Blue.  (I've never seen it, its just that IMDb paints a pretty dismal picture of her spiralling career.) 

Darryl Hannah's eyeblacked replicant charactor isn't someone I'd want to mess with in a dark alley in the future either...   especially with that crab walk and all.  So let's see... Darryl's played a robot, a fish, a 50ft. tall woman...   pretty versitile. 

The visuals in this movie are really something...   a lot of time is spent just showing us the landscape, putting every scene in context.  The juxtaposition of all this technology and all the grit and grime set an appropriate tone for the job that Harrison Ford is tasked with doing.

     So I got another call from Patricia Kitchen, the Newsday reporter who interviewed me a few weeks ago.  We left off last time talking a little bit about blogs and I had pointed her to my attempt at a Career Q&A blog, which I haven't quite yet put the full court press on.  Anyway, this time, she's going to write an article about how blogs can help you with your career, and again, I talked her ear off for a good long time.  As I talked about it, I think she was overwhelmed, and admittedly, I was to, about the scope of uses blogs could have in terms of helping you out with your career.  In fact, at one point, she said, "I know you have your other book that we talked about, but you almost have enough for a book right here."
     At first, I kind of blew that notion off...  "Haha.. yeah, right."   But, after I got on the phone, I thought about it.  Actually, there was a lot of useful stuff here, and it was cutting edge and ahead of the curve.  More interestingly, I was as qualified as anyone else to write something about it.  I've seen how blogs change the interviewing process and blogs have enabled me to develop industry connections.  Not only that, their ability to keep me informed on a realtime basis about what's on the minds of the thought leaders in my industry is invaluable.  I started thinking about blogs as a career learning tool when I passed some marketing and brand related blogs onto a recent college graduate looking to switch into the marketing field.  She found them really useful, and I realized after talking with Patricia that there aren't a lot of good resources available to introduce people into this blog world, and more specifically, how really explore its value as an extension of your offline network.
     In fact, I'd go as far as to say that blogs will fulfill the promises that all of these professionally themed social networking sites will ultimately fail on.  For example, I filled out a LinkedIn profile about two months ago.  I think I used it once and that's about it.  Its not because there aren't interesting people to connect to on it--in fact, there are lots of top tier people who have LinkedIn profiles.  Its just that the site and really the concept, is very static.  There just isn't enough to do on them.  There's nothing active going on.  I'm just going on there to actually try to connect with someone (i.e. pinging people with hat in hand, which I hate).  There isn't any of that non-networky networking that really builds relationships.  Like, for example, offline, when you speak at a conference, it begets a lot of great conversations, builds your reputation, and connects you to a lot of feedback.  You don't explicitly speak at conferences to network, but its a valuable underlying benefit that gets you connected to people with them necessarily feeling like you're using them.  Blogs have the same effect and that's where their real value is.  When you write an interesting post, people comment on it, link to it from their own posts, and it helps build your own reputation as an interesting thought leader.  The more people who connect to it and read it, the more they are likely to bring you into their circle of "People I Read" lists, which, to me, is just as valuable a network as anything you can create on LinkedIn or Friendster.  You might not get the scale, but the connections you make are stronger, and to be honest, it doesn't matter if you get the online scale.  You get scale by being connected to the offline networks of people you're linked into online.  You don't need to be connected to 100,000 Friendsters... all you need is five or six people who regularly link to your blog and pass your thoughts around to their on and offline colleagues.  Plus, unlike conferences, anyone with great insight can become a thought leader.  You don't necessarily need a fantastic resume to be thoughtful about a particular field that you follow and anyone can blog about what they're up to.  I think for any professional wanting to get ahead and make a name for themselves, no matter what industry they're in, a regular blog is a must.  Think about it.  If you were a middle manager at some no name company, and you've been blogging for the past year about the ways you would streamline your business if you got the chance or the initiatives you took with your little group, that could be very impressive self promotion if you got someone to look at your site and you put it on your resume.  Instead of having your self worth reduced to bullet points on a single sheet of stock paper, a potential employer could scan through months of your thoughtful accounts on management.  Plus, obviously, your writing would say something about your communication skills.
    Obviously, there are pitfalls.  You have to decide what things you can say for confidentiality reasons and what you can't, as well as where you draw the line in terms of putting up personal information, political views, etc...  but I think the benefits for career advancement are huge.
     Therefore, I've made the decision to put my current work on career advice for young college students aside and start writing a book about blogging to help your career.  Ms. Kitchen has unknowingly inspired me, and I really think this idea has a good shot of taking off, because, thanks to the election and Dan Rather, blogs have jumped into the public spotlight in a big way, and a lot of people are still scratching their heads over the practical uses for blogging. 

    The ironic thing is that when I named my blog "This is going to be big...", it never occured to me that what would be big was the blog itself.

Download 4_to_86th.3g2

After meeting the guys from Vimeo, I've started playing around with my phone's video feature.  What I really need to do is to get my PowerShot fixed and get the video working on that.  I'm sure I'll eat up all my allowable bandwidth on this, but its a video clip of me waiting to arrive at 86th and Lex on the 4 train after a Fordham basketball game last night.  They lost, and I'll post more about that later, but for now, here's the clip.   (Jeff the Analyst has informed me that you need the latest version of Quicktime (6.5) to view it.)

At Demo, Mena introduced her mom to do the next iteration of "Its so easy, my mom can use it."  The team at Six Apart is building a product that her mom actually wants to use, because, these days parents can be pretty tech savvy.  (So I hear, anyway...)

Well, I'm glad that Mena's mom knows how to use a computer, but my mom doesn't, nor does Nana.  Yet, I'd love to find a way to connect them to all the content and photos I produce.  I'd even like to copy them on e-mails.

Why doesn't somebody create a "convert to meatspace" service for e-mail and RSS.  I'd definitely pay for Nana to get, each week, a printed copy of all my posts (well, minus the tech ones anyway), with embedded photos, mailed to her.  In addition, I'd like to be able to send her e-mails at nana@meatspace.com that someone would print out, put in an envelope, address, stamp, and mail for me.  I hate snailmail.  I hate stamps... never have them, never know where to get them. 

I'm not saying this could ever be a huge business or is something we'd ever invest in... its just something I want.  Plus, its got to be so easy to set up.  Printers and mail machines are automatic now... you'd just have to hire a monkey to refill the paper.  A website, a server, one printer, one mail stuffer, one postage machine and a basket that the post office picks up everyday... oh.. and the refill monkey.  How hard could that be?

...because we all know, just like Rocky V, the third Godfather didn't exist.  You never heard of it.  It never happened.   You hear me?

Because Sofia Coppola may be able to direct, but she can't act her way out of that nose.

But anyway, these two movies always go together.  You buy the boxed set.  Its like...  pasta and sauce.  Cappuccino and a little sambuca.  (Or, if you're my grandmother, a lot of sambuca...  j/k!  We always pour more in than she wants.) 

I don't really have to say much about the Godfather set.  You know it.  You've all seen it.  It has an amazing cast of actors and the time is taken to tell the story of an excellent book, which I read as well.  If you haven't seen it in a little while, spend an afternoon with it on a rainy Saturday.  While you're watching, don't hesitate to stick two pieces of bread in your cheeks and do your own Brando.

I bring this set up, which should be on everyone's list, because I was reminded of Sonny Corleone the other night.  James Caan does a terrific job as the headstrong, short tempered eldest son of the Don.  Remember what he does to Connie's husband for hitting her?  Well, I'm walking along 3rd Avenue in Brooklyn the other night and this couple is crossing the street.  The car waiting at the corner beeps them along as the light changes to green.

The guy whips around and says, "What's your f*cking problem?"

The driver responds, "Get the f*ck out of the street."

Obviously, he didn't know he was dealing with Sonny...   this guy basically takes off, without hesitation, down the street running after the car on foot.  The next line is classic:

"Get out of that car so I can bitch slap you!"

That's vintage Sonny as far as I'm concerned.  It was at that moment that I fully realized I was back in Brooklyn.

But look where it got him.  Sonny never made it and the quiet youngest brother that was destined to be "a senator" winds up taking over the family business.   But that's ok, because they're moving to Vegas and going legit.

Right?

This movie is nothing short of an epic.  Its the Italian immigrant's version of King Arthur and The Knights of the Round Table.  Because its not just about the movie.  Its about everyone's version of the movie in their own lives.  Now its an overplayed stereotype, but these people were like royalty at one time and there was a story to be told long before the movie came out.  Where they criminals?  Sure.  Did they have the respect and devotion of their communities more so than elected politicians?  You bet.

You know, I think its interesting how every ethnic backround has its own underworld element, with its own style and relationship to the rest of the community.  We always see this mafia thing as "protective" as oppossed to parasitic, but you never know whether or not that's the media spin.  I think that would be an interesting study.

As for the movie?  That's an interesting study in itself.  But remember, leave the gun.  Take the canoli.

I am mentoring a Fordham freshman and she just started a blog to keep track of her career development and organize her thoughts.  I think its a great experiment and I, for one, am very excited to see where this leads.  I'd appreciate if you could pop over and leave a word or two of encouragement or advice for Christina--either about blogging or about finding her niche in the business world in general.

I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't see it with my own eyes.

Gabe Morris wrote this on my last post:

LinkedIn annoys people to the extent that it connects you without relevance. The basis for LinkedIn and Friendster’s automatic relevance is degrees of separation. But this has weaknesses – there are second degree contacts who I have very little in common with, while I am sure there are hundreds of people in the sixth degree and beyond that I would have plenty in common with.

Excellent point.  If you're going to build a relevent social network, the glue should be something more than connection itself. 

Got video?   Try Vimeo.  I uploaded a clip of my parent's dog, Joy.

A couple of rounds of pool with Fred, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

And yes, he did win...



..one game...by one ball. :)

This is my car..., originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Well...its exactly the kind of car I want to order anyway...and I checked...its an automatic. :)

I'm sitting right here...

Its a Starbucks not to far from the Bay.  I stopped here because there's a photo op right around here that I think I'm going to get some cool pics of in a few minutes.   Plus, I was hungry, so I had a rasberry almond scone and a green tea.  :)

So, my friend Carrie loves me enough to open her apartment to me for me to stay, but doesn't love me enough to take any time off for me, so I'm playing by myself today.  It should be interesting, because, to be honest, I don't usually do too much by myself... ever.  I could never sit in a restaurant or movie theater by myself.  I'm just a feedback guy and I like bouncing ideas off of other people while I'm experiencing things.

So here are some other pics that I took...

I'm waiting for the train to the rental car.  I got a convertible...  and of course, its raining and only about 55. 

I know I'm not a good photographer.  I'll admit it now.  But, I'm a good driver, which allows me to take pictures like this safely.  :)

New York does't have land formations like this...  I just think the landscape here is fascinating.  I know, its boring stuff, but for me, its different.

Oh, and I took these pictures on Tuesday...  I thought maybe you'd be curious what my work environment looks like.  I think it goes a long way to explaining why I needed a little vacation.  Not my Fordham banner, nametags from various conferences and annual meetings I've been to, and my thank you letters.  Each time I get a thank you letter for a student for the various mentoring activities I do or for running the internship program, I post it up on my desk.  I think I also have a little note up there from Bob Hellman and Nancy Katz from McCown DeLeeuw.  They're good people.   The chair behind me is where Jeff the Intern sits, but he only works Mondays and Tuesdays.

And finally, here are some Walnut Creek pictures from this morning on my way out...  its really quite quaint.  I can't figure California out...  its like the town council voted one day and decided to put up a state.  Nothing here just "happened" like New York... it was decided upon and planned and it all looks like it fits together nicely.  New York, which is visually more interesting, developed and grew and overgrew and now we're all living in Jenga.  More to come...    I'm going to lunch later with Valarie from CM Capital in Palo Alto.

Its beginning to look a lot like..., originally uploaded by ceonyc.

November 7th??

We'll vote on Coat Idol next week...   I have too  much to do for now.

But, to update, I became a new kind of "cave man".

I caved on the clothing thing.  Why?

Because we were arguing about something really stupid... clothing.  And, its the fact that I think clothing is stupid that was the reason why I didn't want anyone putting any special effort into it in the first place.  Therefore, when I saw that it was all we were talking about, I just pulled the plug in it and quit.

Its just not worth it.

I haven't really talked too much about Adrianna here before, and to be honest, its been part of my unofficial blog policy not to talk about someone that I'm dating.  For a little while, I just kind of let her appear gradually.  Obviously, though, its pretty serious to me and I'm trying to look at the bigger picture.  I shouldn't let something like pleated pants cause an issue with someone if, in fact, I'm serious about the idea that I'm trying to foster a relationship to build something on.

I guess I'm maturing, "temper tantrum" blog posts aside.

Fishy Headgear, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

That's a whale of a hat.

Right now, small is the new big.  Small and nimble, solve small problems, small teams.

How do you make a big difference then?  Because, after all, we're not in this to put in all this hard work to make a small impact.

You want your smallness to be "big-enabled".  And the last thing you want to do is to over-small any of your big ideas.

A CEO is tasked with 1, 3, and 5 year goals for a company.  Big.

To reach those goals he needs to create an action plan that includes things like improving customer service, hiring some key individuals, adjusting the advertising message maybe...  Lots and lots of little things that require detailed examination of every aspect of the company.  Small.

However, each of the items on that action plan, and this is where I think many companies drop the ball tend to get oversmalled.  The person put in charge of them doesn't think big enough with each of these little tasks.  A lot of times its because either the people on the ground don't have the incentives to think big with their small, microchunked tasks, or the culture is such that people thing its only to CEO's job to think big, and their job not to get in the way.

Are your departments and staff big-enabled?

So, for example, General Motors knew it needed to overhaul its car offering.  They had successfully done it with trucks, but now their car line needed a lot of work.  Big.

One area they tackled was the retro muscle car market.  GM decided it wanted to bring back enthusiasm for a powerful sedan that was sporty, but not sleek like a sportscar... Their GTO.  In the grand scheme of things, it was on model out of 77.  It wasn't going to make or break the company.  Small.

The implementation, however, was unfortunately small as well.  They took an existing model from an Australian affiliate, the Monero, and just stuck some Pontiac nameplates on it.  While they did sell, it certainly hasn't generated the kind of enthusiasm that the totally redesigned Mustang is, or the Dodge Charger.  They got a two year head start on the Charger, but I'll bet you anything that Dodge sells more Chargers next year than Pontiac sells GTOs.  Whoever is behind the Charger was thinking big.  One model in a big company, but they put had the goal of making as big an impact as they could with their small piece of the overall Daimler Chrysler pie.  If ever single person at Daimler Chrysler or Ford started thinking the same way the product manager of the Mustang or the Charger thought, those companies would be in much better competitive positions.

Sometimes, its not just about incentives, though.  Its about creating an environment where even the small people feel empowered to take a risk here and there to shoot for something big. 

I had the same personal experience when I helped Fordham start its alumni mentoring program.  When I first pitched the idea of launching a program that matches young alumni with younger students for three months of mentoring, I pitched it straight to the top.  The people at the top encouraged me to seek out the people below them who would help implement it, and their mindset was to figure out how we could start small...  with, let's say, a "networking night" to test it out.  I had a bad reaction to that and pushed harder to go for broke and try a whole program.  We did both.

The results?

The networking night didn't quite work out so well... not enough students showed up.  There was little follow up. 

The mentoring program, on the other hand, quickly grew in interest from 25 pairs, to 35 pairs, to 52 in our first year.  With the career office and the alumni office's help, it was a huge success.  Now its part of the career office's regular offering. 

But how is that possible?  The smaller, "toe in the water" thing didn't work, but the larger "shoot for the sky" thing did.  Isn't that counterintuitive, and, doesn't that pose a real problem for a manager?  If a "test" effort isn't predictive, then how in the world are people supposed to figure out where to take risks?

I think it has to do with building an atmosphere of committment.  You want all of the people on the ground to act as if they, and their company, are committed to executing all the small tasks and making them as big a success as they can possibily be.  If they act like they just don't want to make a lot of waves inside the company or that they don't carry the weight and support of the company behind them, their projects will be doomed to failure.  Your customers take something more seriously when they see you're more serious about it--no matter how small this one thing is in the grand scheme of the big vision.  They know when you're just repackaging versus just redesigning and they'll pay their attention accordingly.  Otherwise, its all just blowing smoke. 

Sometimes, that's going to mean that you might break a few eggs... that your company will put its weight behind something that has so-so results.  Fine, but at least you know that you're giving every one of your efforts a full opportunity to be successful, and, moreover to be game changing--to ultimately enable you to leap over your competition.

This is fascinating and I really hope Six Apart publishes their findings.

They just sent a note to Typepad users asking them to select what type of discount they would like to receive based on the service issues they've been having over the last month.  What's amazing is that they're basically asking people how much of a discount they should get... and depending on the honor system.

I only noticed an issue once or twice, so I'm going to stick with the default.   

Here's the note:

By default, you will receive a credit for 15 free days of TypePad service. To get this credit you don't have to do anything; we will just credit your account.

That said, we recognize that customers have had different experiences with the service, so we want to give you the opportunity to choose more, or even less compensation. If you click the link below, you'll get a screen that offers you the following choices:

•                    

  While the performance issues caused me some inconvenience ; I mainly found the service acceptable last month.
  Give ; me 15 free days of TypePad.

                     
•                    

  The performance issues made it very difficult for me to use the service on multiple occasions during the month.
  Give me 30 free days of TypePad.

                     
•                    

  The performance issues affected me greatly, making my experience unacceptable for most of the month.
  Give me 45 free days of TypePad.

                     
•                    

  I really wasn't affected and feel I got the great service I paid for last month.
  Thank you for the offer, but please don't credit my account.

Apparently, they don't sell Newsday on the Upper East Side.  I may have to trek to Penn Station to get it.  If anyone knows a place on the UES that has copies, please let me know.   My mom said that I'm like the whole front page of the money and career section, but I haven't seen it yet.  So frustrating! 

  Misery 
  Originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Temporary art installment on the Upper East Side...until the garbagemen come.