John McCain insulted everyone Democrat and Republican in chosing Gov Palin as his VP choice. I wonder if in flying a mission over Viet Nam he would have chosen a deck hand as navigator?
Friday, September 12, 2008
Publishing Trends Survey
Publishing Trends informed me they have started their annual publishing survey. If you follow the link make sure you vote for PND as your favorite blog.
Welcome to the second annual Publishing Trends Industry Survey! You’re receiving this e-mail because we want to know your thoughts on your job and on the publishing industry in general. What’s your favorite thing about working in publishing? What’s the last book you read? And what drink do you unwind with at the end of the day? Results will appear in the October 2008 issue of Publishing Trends and on our Web site.
Please take the survey here:The survey is open through Friday, September 19. It’s completely anonymous and should only take a few minutes (and we think it’s fun, too!). At the end of the survey, you’ll have the option of receiving a free 3-month trial subscription to Publishing Trends (or extending your subscription if you are a current subscriber).
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Watery Death
Rail Cars on their way to off-shore New Jersey where they will become artificial reefs.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
DOT Project Development Process
It may be a sad reflection perhaps of my work interests that over beers last night with some ex-PWC collegues, we giggled over this process map. What a f'ing mess. The sad thing is someone (or a department) had to spend the hours and hours necessary to putting this down on paper. Humm, I wonder if there is any connection between this and our transportation infrastructure falling apart.And what's with the stupid little pictures? My favorite is the three people huddled over an IBM XT like they're trying to understand Lotus123. I bet they still use interoffice mail envelopes.
From New York Magazine.
Meet Me at Michael's
Long the favourite lunch spot for media types, Michael's has the reputation for media executive sightseeing par-excellence. If anyone wants to announce some new alliance or potential hire whether officially or not all they need to do is have lunch together at Michael's and the pr work is done. It is expensive as you might expect and contrary to expectation it is apparently not the place for consistently good food. From Frank Bruni in the NYTimes:
He notes the excellent Cobb salad which I agree is worth ordering although over breakfast I have had (inadvertently) some $12 orange juice.
Then I had this restaurant’s jumbo shrimp appetizer. The shrimp were entombed in a dense, soggy beer batter and interred in an almost monochromatic landscape of goat cheese, puddles of dark miso aioli and shavings of summer truffle that might have been shavings of summer rubber for all the flavor they had. California cuisine? More like gloppy, affected pub grub, for which Michael’s charges $25. That’s what happens when a restaurant starts throwing truffles around, and that’s probably one reason this restaurant does it. Until that dinner I thought Michael’s prided itself on produce. Then I had its appetizer of peekytoe crab with spears of white asparagus, which might as well have been spears of white wax for all the flavor they had.
He notes the excellent Cobb salad which I agree is worth ordering although over breakfast I have had (inadvertently) some $12 orange juice.
Monday, September 08, 2008
Facebook: Who's Your Friend?
A few weeks ago I did some house cleaning. I looked over both my Facebook friends and Linked contacts and deleted many. Don't worry it wasn't personal, but while the deletions in Linkedin were relatively minor I reduced my Facebook friends by more than half. I am not completely sure I was brutal enough.
Most of those I deleted were also Linkedin contacts which is sort of the point. I am not so sure I want my business associates to know I was listening to The Sex Pistols yesterday or someone from high school noted some particularly debauched evening back in 1980 on my 'wall'. My brother might be tempted to say something even worse and as a consequence the whole mystique would be ruined. I jest somewhat.
I see two separate constellations of friends and business associates and it is not that they are always mutually exclusive but for me I believe that any overlap is an exception rather than the rule. Of the two social networks I am more interested in Linkedin. I have found Facebook to be useful in finding old friends from high school (mainly) and thus placate my curiosity but I remain skeptical that it will ever be a true communication platform for me. I may be different - and many have said so - but I also see in Facebook the potential to be a huge time drain. And I have more interesting things to do. From a professional perspective, it is important to maintain awareness and contact with social networks like Facebook which is why I won't shut it down. But I do get tired of the "cocktails" and other pointless prods.
Linkedin on the other hand is useful although I think it is still a blunt tool. Searching for 'publishing consultant' returns way too many to be useful and I often wonder how my profile has come up in any search. The site needs more effective taxonomy/ontology but also more opportunities to create micro-sites around either industry or competence (or both). The 'group' function doesn't seem to work so well and these seem to be more ad-hoc than particularly useful.
One other thing in my experience with respect to both networks is the level of penetration. In the case of Linkedin I still have more than 40% of my contacts who do not have a profile or don't appear to actively use the site. Ignoring my house-cleaning in Facebook, I would estimate that could be more than 5x as many friends I could add if they had a Facebook page. My survey of one seems to tell me that in both cases they can still grow their networks by significant amounts regardless of their aggressive growth paths.
Join me on linkedin (or facebook if you dare). Michael.Cairns @ infomediapartners.com.
Most of those I deleted were also Linkedin contacts which is sort of the point. I am not so sure I want my business associates to know I was listening to The Sex Pistols yesterday or someone from high school noted some particularly debauched evening back in 1980 on my 'wall'. My brother might be tempted to say something even worse and as a consequence the whole mystique would be ruined. I jest somewhat.
I see two separate constellations of friends and business associates and it is not that they are always mutually exclusive but for me I believe that any overlap is an exception rather than the rule. Of the two social networks I am more interested in Linkedin. I have found Facebook to be useful in finding old friends from high school (mainly) and thus placate my curiosity but I remain skeptical that it will ever be a true communication platform for me. I may be different - and many have said so - but I also see in Facebook the potential to be a huge time drain. And I have more interesting things to do. From a professional perspective, it is important to maintain awareness and contact with social networks like Facebook which is why I won't shut it down. But I do get tired of the "cocktails" and other pointless prods.
Linkedin on the other hand is useful although I think it is still a blunt tool. Searching for 'publishing consultant' returns way too many to be useful and I often wonder how my profile has come up in any search. The site needs more effective taxonomy/ontology but also more opportunities to create micro-sites around either industry or competence (or both). The 'group' function doesn't seem to work so well and these seem to be more ad-hoc than particularly useful.
One other thing in my experience with respect to both networks is the level of penetration. In the case of Linkedin I still have more than 40% of my contacts who do not have a profile or don't appear to actively use the site. Ignoring my house-cleaning in Facebook, I would estimate that could be more than 5x as many friends I could add if they had a Facebook page. My survey of one seems to tell me that in both cases they can still grow their networks by significant amounts regardless of their aggressive growth paths.
Join me on linkedin (or facebook if you dare). Michael.Cairns @ infomediapartners.com.
Sunday, September 07, 2008
Tennis
Saturday' s tennis was memorable for one thing the weather wrought. That was the shriek of jet engines over Queens which other than the lack of a green court and quick camera views of Mayor Dinkins reminded us of how far the US Open has come. Federer is vulnerable but Nolo offered only passable resistance. In the booth during Federer's quarter final, Boris Becker and John McEnroe conversed in some of the best tennis analytics I have ever heard. Discussing how Federer is less confident, is playing several feet back from the base line and far less confident he can overwhelm his opponents. Far better discussion than the tedious repetition about about Uncle Tony, rankings, and Andy Murray's muscles.
Oh, by the way GB (o.k. Scotland) has a tennis player in the finals of the US Open. I feel very sorry for Rafa: given his year I would have loved to see him take the US Open as well. Que Lastima.
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