1. Don’t do too much.
2. Take it a little easy at first.
3. Don’t sweat the small stuff.
4. Don’t worry. Be happy.
5. Stay hydrated.
6. Only see people you don’t have to.
7. Put off for tomorrow what you should do today.
8. Have a nice piece of fruit.
9. Knock off early.
10.
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As you may have guessed from yesterday’s post, I am at this very moment trying to tear myself away from life as I know it and suspend operations for a while.
True, the world will not stop while I do. Ned and Ted and Len and Edna and Clarissa and Elizabeth and Otto will still need things immediately. The Flute Reamer Division will still have those transition issues. Bob may need a speech or two. The IR department will still worry about its upcoming presentation in Bophutswana. But all that will have to go on without me, I most dearly hope.
Yes, I will have my BlackBerry. I will do my best to look at it only twice a day. The rest of the time it will be in a drawer. I find this better than imagining the thousands of idiotic e-mails and perhaps 10 important ones that will be piling up during the interregnum.
And yes, a few people will know where I am, my assistant Beverly being the most important. It will be up to her to figure out what’s worth bothering me for. She is aware of Bing’s Law, which, as you may remember, states that every minute of work on a vacation requires one full hour for the re-establishment of proper mental equilibrium. Thus, a ten minute conference call demands a full 10 hours of recovery time. Longer than that? You do the math.
I will, of course, have my little laptop with me, so who knows. Maybe I’ll drop you a line now and then. In any event, I’ll see you all after the 4th. Don’t work too hard while I’m away, okay?
]]>1. Send a memo to Bob, asking him if it’s okay for you to take two whole weeks together, and informing him of the date and perhaps asking whether it fits with his vacation plans. This will not only serve the function of informing him of your potential non-presence and coordinating it with his own, but also remind him that he, too, will be taking some time off and that others might be entitled to some also.
2. Inform your colleagues and, if you are a manager of some sort, your reportees that you will be away, telling them when, and making sure that your functions are covered during your absence. If any important subordinates were planning to take the same time, and it would destroy your peace of mind while you are away if they did so, simply tell them that they’re out of luck. Establishing a bona fide vacation is a war. There are going to be casualties, one of which should not be your vacation.
3. Make sure you have your passport up to date, if you are traveling abroad. Once you ascertain that all is in order, make sure to drop the fact that you have done so to Bob, employing a breezy and informative style that let’s him know that your vacation is proceeding according to plan and that you’re happy about it and hope he shares that happiness, seeing how he’s so tuned in to other people’s feelings and all.
4. Make sure that your electronics work at the location to which you are going. Cell phones are not as important as BlackBerrys. This is not because you will be doing e-mails all the time or that you wish to be reachable 24-7, but because by doing half an hour of messaging first thing in the morning and at the end of the day, you will be avoiding the nightmare of returning to 8,756 e-mails in your inbox, some of which were marked URGENT! even though you put up an away message. After you have done this, by the way, you may observe to Bob in an offhand way how incredible it is that BlackBerrys work in the mountains of Wyoming.
5. Get any shots that you require if you are going to places like Belize, which has bugs as big as footballs, and jungles that sport diseases that haven’t been invented in humans yet. Don’t forget to complain that those inoculations hurt within earshot of Bob.
6. One week before your vacation, take a look at your schedule. People will have stuffed it with things to do for the two weeks you are planning to be away. There is no logical reason why this happens, but it does. “What’s this meeting with Beanie and Cecil doing on my calendar?” you may ask the person who put it there. “I’m going to be away, as I told you sixteen times already.” To which they will reply, “You’re going away? Really?” In all cases, set about clearing your time and delegating the important stuff to other people.
7. If you are a manager, a few days before your departure call in each of your key people and once again inquire what they are planning to do during your absence. At least one will mention that he or she was planning to be away, in spite of the fact that you have ensured that nobody was going to be doing so. There is no logical reason why this happens, but it does. Be kind to this person, because they are likely to be a future boss and you have to be careful how you treat people when they’re on the way up, because they may be the ones who are treating you on the way down. But do make sure that your ducks are in order for your time away, which means that they are all present and accounted for. Don’t forget to complain to Bob about how hard it is to do this.
8. Wednesday before your last Friday, Bob will inform you of an important meeting/project that will have to be done “next week.” This is a critical moment. Fools and wimps will in a trembling voice remind Bob of their vacation plans, but promise to be “reachable” when necessary. Do not do this. Executive amnesia is a form of authoritarian terrorism that must be fought. “Bob,” you may say as calmly and inoffensively as possible, “As I told you several times, I’m out next week and the week after.” Bob will look confused and hurt. He may even lightly question your loyalty or dedication. That’s all right. A display of spine is seldom out of place in what we do. Of course, if the corporation is being sold, or you are about to be named to a big new position, all bets may be off. Organizations can spoil the best of plans and often do. But 99.99% of the time, the ability to disregard other people’s needs is pure executive brain flatulence. Manage it.
9. On Friday morning, as you begin the process of packing up to leave, a host, a myriad, a phalanx of problems, challenges and effluvia will fly up and hit you in the face. In some cases, this will be just bad luck and you will have to work your head off to get rid of them. Sometimes it will be other people’s anxieties surfacing in the knowledge that you are actually not going to be there, a notion that is making them freak out. You may soothe them by telling them quietly that you will be on BlackBerry now and then, but that if they bother you with little stuff you will rip off their noses when you return. Make sure your desk is clear. Leave an away message on your e-mail. Say goodbye to your colleagues and thank them for covering your butt while you’re away. Then wait for the inevitable phone call.
10. At 5:45 in the evening of the day you are leaving the office for the last time in the next couple of weeks, Bob will call. It will be about nothing. You will laugh and scratch for a while. He will mention that he’s looking forward to the weekend. You will say NOTHING about your vacation, but allow how you can’t wait to get out of the office either. Then, as you are wrapping up this pleasant conversation, Bob will say, “So, I’ll see you Monday, then.” Breathe. Let the silence grow between you on the phone line. “Bob,” you may then say, but that is all. Nine times out of ten, that will be enough. “Oh, right,” Bob will reply after some time, very sad, very hurt, a tiny puppy being abandoned by its owner, “You’re flaking out for a couple of weeks.” To which you may say, “Right.” He will then wish you bon voyage, and probably tell you all about his vacation plans. The one time out of ten that he gives you a hard time? What can I say. Do what you have to do. The guy’s a madman. But even madmen need limits, maybe more than other people, even.
Now… breaking your desire to stay in touch while you’re away? That’s another story.
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There have been several kerfluffles around my office recently, all revolving around the same issue: What do you tell your boss and when? This would seem to be a simple question, but it’s not. First, it depends on the boss. Some guys (and in that category I, as always, include women guys) want to know nothing until it rears up and bites them in the butt, and then you should have told them. Others want to know what color tie or scarf you’re planning to wear next Thursday. And the target moves. On Monday, Chet may want to know everything. On Tuesday, you can’t rouse him from his slumber.
So what’s a poor employee to do? Take this quiz and see how sensitive you are. How you score may determine whether or not you have a future.
1. You have a big party coming up and you’re trying to decide what canapes to serve. Do you tell the boss?
a. No, that’s ridiculous.
b. Of course! She likes to know every little detail!
c. Not really, except I make sure to have those little empanadas she likes so much.
2. You’re going on vacation next month. Do you tell the boss?
a. No. My life is my own!
b. Of course. He likes to know every detail.
c. I’m going to check the dates to make sure it coincides with his vacation as much as possible, but in the end I’m going to do what I have to do, making sure that he and his assistant know what my plans are.
3. You’re going to have a meeting with a bunch of people about something that may or may not happen sometime in the future. Do you tell the boss?
a. No! I’ll tell him about it when he needs to know.
b. Of course. I don’t floss without telling him everything.
c. Yeah, I’ll shoot him an e-mail, just an FYI. Some people are attending who may mention it to him and then he’ll feel like he’s out of the loop. He hates that.
4. Your division is about to make a big deal with another company. It’s going to be announced next Tuesday. Do you tell the boss?
a. I’ll tell her Tuesday morning. You know, give her a “heads-up.”
b. I’ll tell her about the whole thing right now, before we even talk to Law and Public Relations. She’s going to want to go over this thing from top to bottom!
c. I’ll get all the moving pieces started, and then dial her in, probably on Friday. That will give her the weekend to go over the paper and think about what we might have missed.
5. You’re getting a divorce. Your life is a shambles. Do you tell the boss?
a. Definitely! He’ll feel really sorry for me!
b. I’ll mope around until he asks me what’s wrong. Then I’ll tell him everything. For a LONG time.
c. I’ll mention it. Since it’s not about him, he’ll have limited interest in it, but he ought to know in case I flake out a little bit in the coming months.
SCORING: Score yourself 1 point for every a. answer, which is a low score because you’re a really stinky communicator and a bad employee. Score yourself 2 points for every b. answer, because while you’re a suckup, you’re erring on the right side by reaching out and trying to make your boss aware of things. You’re likely to be a pretty big pain in the a**, though. Keep that in mind. Score yourself 3 points for every c. answer, because you’re clearly trying to address the issue with subtlety and modulation. You may not get it right every time, but you’re trying to play it a situation at a time and neither tell too much or too little. So good for you.
As always, the higher you score, the higher your score. Give yourself a point for trying. Trying counts.
]]>My Friday post about the digital transition seems to have flushed a bunch of anti-TV folks out of their weedy, book-lined dens. This has stimulated my urge to defend perhaps the oldest friend I have in the world. This isn’t the first time. I live in a community where people at parties talk about how much they like that new program that’s on the air now: Friends. “Did you see Friends the other night?” they will inquire. To which I reply, “No, I’ve been awake for the last couple of years.” Equally daunting is the type who admits shamefacedly, “I do catch an episode of Antique Road Show now and then. Can’t help it. Guilty pleasure.” Worst of all, in my opinion, are the people who strip their children of social awareness and all chance of popularity by denying them the American right to watch the programming of their choice. “We do allow little Tiffany the occasional Sesame Street. But only when I’m hyperstressed,” one mother told me not long ago.
Did you know that in spite of the Internet, in spite of Hulu, in spite of YouTube and ITunes and all that jazz, the average time spent watching television in this nation is slightly on the rise? Horrors?! No way. Television is our common language, our history, our heritage. Of course most of it stinks. It always has. You think that when the common groundling went to the theater in Shakespeare’s day all that was on the stage was Shakespeare? Do most books remind you of Hemmingway or Sedaris? How about music? Lots of Mozarts and Mathers around? A medium can’t be defined by its worst examples. You have to look to the best. And during my lifetime, the great unifying cultural events have always taken place inand around the television set. Let’s look at them briefly. I’m afraid it has to be brief, because the TV has destroyed my attention span. What were we talking about again? Oh, yes. Shows that have rocked my world. You may remember some or none:
That’s just a very short list. These days I catch most of the shows I’ve liked whenever I can. I also love House, which is one of the best television programs not only of our day but of any other, and do admit to catching the reality make-over program, What Not To Wear, whenever I fly on JetBlue. I don’t watch Gossip Girl, of course, which is only an indication of how out of it I’m starting to get. And I will always decline to give a flying photon about Jon & Kate, even if he did cheat on her on her birthday.
I also read books, by the way, and do a number of non-digital activities. Personally, I think blogs rot your brain a whole lot worse than anything else, except perhaps for aggregators.
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Today we all become digital. Thanks to Congress, which passed a law mandating this transition a few years ago, all analog life in these United States will cease and everything will be transformed from waves and particles into bits and bytes. Anybody who doesn’t have a converter to make him or herself into a digital entity will simply disappear off the face of the earth.
We’ve had plenty of warning time on this. In fact, the transition was supposed to take place over the winter, but it was clear that millions of Luddites, the clueless elderly and the occasional disassociated feeb had failed to heed the clarion call of progress and were in danger of fritzing out when the moment arrived. Mr. Obama quite rightly put off the moment until today, when fewer people are necessary to keep things running, this being the summer.
The move to digital was considered necessary by the massive Internet and telecommunications powerhouses like Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Verizon (VZ) and even Yahoo (YHOO), which wants to take all the bandwidth associated with formerly analog commerce and exploit it in some way they have yet to explain. Their lobbies were bigger than anybody else’s, and better furnished, too. So the eventual outcome of the debate was never in doubt.
For most Americans, the transition will go smoothly. Those who have heeded Klaatu will have either already purchased a personal digital converter to be implanted in the soft tissue behind their ears or made some arrangement with their local cable company to rent one. Those who have not? It’s been nice knowing you.
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I got a real start this morning when I turned on my BlackBerry and glanced down my daily bloggery. The third headline at PaidContent.org made my heart seize up in my chest. “Google’s Schmidt rips Bing,” it said.
“Good Lord,” I said. “What have I done now.”
The idea that Mr. Schmidt was mad at me curdled my blood. You don’t tug on Superman’s cape. You don’t spit into the wind. You don’t pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger. And you don’t mess around with Goog (GOOG).
I haven’t read the story yet, so I’m still in the dark about what I might have done to get ripped in this fashion. I’m a faithful Googler. I spend hours a night cruising YouTube for tiny tidbits of video arcana. Some of my friends even work for the place. And I’ve never said a bad thing about Sergey, Larry or Eric. I’ve heard they’re all very nice guys, and that Google is a terrific place in which to work. They let you bring your dogs to the office, I think. And some significant percentage of your time can be spent investigating your own mental vapors. I like that. Of course, I’ve been doing that for years, but it’s nice to see it’s been institutionalized someplace finally.
So I fail to see why Google is mad at me. Perhaps you can enlighten me. As far as I’m concerned, they’re okay. I’m okay. Can’t we all just get along?
]]>Comscore, which measures these things, put out a press release today that indicates that my brother, Bing the Search Engine, is off to a pretty good start. This, I have to feel, is at least in part due to the tremendous public relations push that I gave Baby Bing on the day it was born. Here’s what Comscore had to say, in part:
Bing Off to a Good Start in First Week of Search Activity…
RESTON, VA, June 9, 2009 – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released a preliminary study of the performance of Bing, Microsoft’s new search engine, during the first week of its public launch. The results of the analysis show a substantial improvement in Microsoft’s position in the search market in the days following Bing’s introduction…
The data shows that last year, average daily Microsoft (MSFT) searcher penetration (!) was 13.8% of the home/work/university marketplace. This year it was up to 15.5%, a 1.7 point change. Similarly, last year the Company’s share of search results pages was 9.1%; this year, after my little buddy reared its bald little head, it was up to 11.1% market share. That’s two points of growth, however you do the math.
“These initial data suggest that Microsoft Bing has generated early interest, resulting in a spike in search engagement and an immediate term improvement to Microsoft’s position in the search market,” said Mike Hurt, comScore senior vice president. “… it appears that it is off to a good start.”
I am also happy to report that I, Bing, have also shown gratifying results too, as reported by Bingscore, which I operate to generate data of use to me. In my executive summary of June information, I note that fully 2.4% of those now on the site are new visitors who arrived here out of confusion with the Other Bing. That’s okay. They are welcome here bigtime. We Bings take growth where we can find it.
I’m still waiting for that box of stogies, though. I wonder if Microsoft sent them UPS Ground. That’s as slow as dial up, you know.
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A lot of you were pretty tough on Ryan, the trader who will probably work like a galley slave until either retires at the age of 40 or keels over at 50. I may have even jumped to some conclusions myself. It’s amazing, on the other hand, what a little knowledge about the reality of a situation can do to moderate the whole judgmental thing. This most wise and tough-minded comment on the subject comes from Cliff Tan of Sarasota, Florida. “I can’t speak for “Ryan” because I have never been a trader,” he writes, “but I’ve worked around enough of them that perhaps this post will reduce some of the heat and shed a little more light.”
“Ryan’s” workday is not really a matter of individual choice for him, as many respondents seem to think. As a trader he simply must be at his desk early enough to prepare for the trading day ahead and will finish whenever the market finishes. He sounds like he’s on the mortgage desk so maybe the first deals in New York get started around 7am and is really going by 8am. Getting there by 6:30am might actually be cutting it close. In other markets (e.g., foreign exchange) I knew traders who were at their desk by the time “Ryan” boarded his train.
And you need to get a couple of hours’ jump on the markets because there’s a lot to read. All the overnight news/events that might affect trading that day, of course. But also – if you’re part of a global book that gets passed into your timezone – you need to know any special events that occurred as part of overnight trading. Your salespeople might have some special deals that need to be done that day, and you need to think about how to execute that. Your investment bankers might have a new structure for which you are expected to provide trading support, and you need to have a razor-sharp idea of how much this stuff they’re peddling is really worth.
And once the trading day really gets started, how are you going to leave? Because usually except for lunch you are on the “dealer” (interactive chat) with your counterparts at other banks, your salespeople call over with new stuff they need to do for their clients (either they’re told or they’ve cajoled somebody to trade an existing position for some reason), you’re on the phone with some of the bigger clients talking about the markets and giving them your thoughts about what they want to do, you need to read the news and events that occur during your day, you might be talking to the “quants” who maintain the pricing models which help determine the right values (you think) of the various credit tranches you’re trading, you might even have a model or two of your own you need to tweak, occasionally you will read some research coming out of your own credit research team or from another bank which someone has forwarded to you. Oh, and you need to make sure you pass the right information to the middle and back offices so your trades are recorded correctly (which determines your P/L, profit/loss, which determines your year-end bonus), and that you pass your book onto the next timezone accurately…
I’m with Bing in that there seems to be quite a bit of Jerry-Springer like quality in some of the posts here. I’m reasonably certain work-life balance has come up before in the “Ryan” household and while I can certainly understand how some fathers throw away their families in the name of work, I think the ethos and common sense of an earlier generation – that you don’t snap to judgment about how another man is raising his children, e.g. – might be far more appropriate.
Good stuff, huh? Thanks, Cliff. Although it’s pretty depressing, frankly. Thank goodness that there’s a ton of work going on in the Human Resources profession on what’s called work life initiatives. If you Bing! (or of course Google (GOOG)) the phrase “work life initiatives,” all kinds of gooey stuff about workshops and seminars and white papers pops up, exploring the upside of, say, a mandatory four day work week, or how a person can be at their post for twelve or fourteen hours a day and, you know, still have a family, friends, and non work-related bad habits. How? By establishing a proper work life balance, of course.
For executives, this can be a godsend, as is made clear by a really funny post from Tim, who is in Tokyo, which is only fitting. Japan invented this problem. Perhaps they’ll be on the cutting edge of solving it, at least for the very top salarymen. Tim writes:
I used to work for Merrill (MER) in Tokyo and they had the fabled work life balance initiative, which means that us grunts got to continue working weekends and sometimes 24 hours straight, while the managers flew around to run marathons or take care of their soccer clubs or other pursuits like taking university courses. Overall there was work life balance but somewhat skewed, we worked like dogs and the mangers had a nice life. No wonder the place self destructed.
Personally, I kind of like that balance. As a manager, I mean. You work. I have a life. Nothing wrong with that.
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It’s clear I’m in the wrong business. With everything else that’s going on in the world, any stroll past a magazine stand will tell you that the majority of public interest continues to focus on Jon & Kate. Why to any of bother to focus on anything else? That’s where the money is, clearly.
Yet one day, as impossible as it may seem, the fascinating situation surrounding two of television’s hottest reality stars will be over. Jon & Kate will have exploded into a ball of flaming chicken fat. Their kids will, I am sure, all be tabloid material of their own. And the great, suppurating maw of popular entertainment will be in need of new heros willing to let it all hang out for Mother.
I mean to get into the action next time around. So I’ve studied the situation, both as a professional and as a consumer of anything that will engage my dwindling attention span. And having looked deeply into the landscape, I believe I have come up with the quintessential next steps in the march of time. Two programs I think could really make it and push the envelope until it squeals. I’m looking for investors. Tell me which one you want to get in on.
1. Married Until We Got To Them picks up where Jon & Kate leaves off, takes what was wildly popular about that program and jettisons the rest. Gone are the kids. Gone is everything but the weekly update on how two people are going about the business of tearing their marriage apart with infidelity, betrayal, violence, drunkeness and, if it’s on cable, as much nudity as possible, all financed by the willing couple’s weekly stipend from the production company. In later weeks, an added element could be introduced — other miscreant pairs prepared to strip themselves bare (sometimes literally) for the notoriety and money. Couples could compete for a prize awarded to the one that can fall apart fastest. Or possibly even engage in interesting new configurations, depending on the daypart in which the program airs.
To date, all reality programs have provided a framework for the display of human frailty, a plot contrivance of some sort. This program completely dispenses with that and simply cuts to the chase. Cheap to produce. Almost writes itself. Hard to see how it could fail.
Second, and possibly even more interesting, is a show I’m calling So You’re Too Fat To Dance? A mix of several genres, this one puts it all together for pure, guilty pleasure. Contestants join the show when still very adipose, pleasant people who really can’t dance very well at all. They try, but they for the most part fail to accomplish the complicated choreography outlined for them by the show’s panel of showbiz sadists. Over the 16 weeks, contestants are put through a grueling regime of diet and exercise in which they lose tons of weight very quickly, putting their health at risk while at the same time making themselves far more flexible, pliant and capable of graceful dives, sweeps and fancy footwork. By the end of the series, we have a few people who punished themselves enough to make the grade and dance off with the prize, and probably a lot more who fell by the wayside, panting. Part make-over, part weight loss, part exercise in pure humiliation, I think this show will have it all.
That’s only the first two that I’m currently working on, although a third is taking shape in my mind, something about a worldwide hunt for the money stolen by Bernie Madoff, kind of a cross between The Amazing Race and Treasure Hunt with Stubby Kaye.
Clearly, however, the upside here is huge. With the ascension of a couple who has nothing to offer but their misery, a new barrier has apparently been broken down. When a new door like that opens, it doesn’t take a genius to know that opportunity may well lie on the other side of the transom. Those interested in an investment that’s certainly as solid as any other may drop me a line.
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We all have to work for a living. The question is how much. On the short end of the scale there are immensely successful and wealthy business executives who consider being available by BlackBerry and cell to be work. “He’s traveling,” their assistants will say, or, if they’re on the west coast, “I don’t have him right now. Can he get back to you?” I think of Stan O’Neal, the former head of Merrill Lynch, out on the golf course jotting jocular notes to himself on his scorecard while Rome burned.
On the other end of the labor vector are the salarymen of Japan. They rise before dawn, squeeze themselves into their suits, train cars and subways, hit their tiny desks for whatever circumscribed thing it is they do for fourteen or fifteen hours, take the night train home, snoozing on the long ride back to their crowded suburb, grab some fish and noodles before hitting the hay, rise again a few hours later to start the whole thing over again. They live that way for decades, and then they retire, unless they die of karoshi, which mean “death from overwork.” It’s a word that exists only in Japanese. So far.
I was having a chat with this guy I know. I’ll call him Ryan. He’s a trader at a big financial institution. It was about 7:00 in the evening, and we found ourselves elbow-to-elbow at a local watering hole. We knew each other from someplace neither of us could remember. But that slight association required us to talk a little.
Ryan’s moving out to the suburbs this month after years in the City. His wife wants more room. His kids need a yard. There are two of them, which represents $50,000 per year in tuition, and that’s before they hit grade school. After that, it’s more. In Connecticut, the schools are free. Plus, when you own a house, all you pay is your mortgage, as opposed to his former co-op, where they tack on a monthly maintenance fee of nearly $2000 on top of your mortgage. So he’s moving. I asked him if he was looking forward to it.
“We have a lot more space,” he said. I noticed he was sort of unshaven and there were bags under his eyes. “That’s what I’ll be thinking about when I’m on the 4:30 train.”
“You get to leave work at 4:30?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “4:30 AM.” This kind of floored me. I pictured Ryan pulling on his socks in the dead of night, his two kids placidly drooling into their pillows, his wife trying to stay asleep while he rummaged about in the dark before dawn, day after day.
“What train do you take home?” I asked him.
“I don’t know,” he said. “The 6:20 usually.” I looked at him. I didn’t know what to say. “I’m a trader,” he said, as if it explained something to me. “I have to be at my desk at 6:30 AM. Also a few months ago they laid off a whole bunch of people during the big crunch. Then all the refinancing action started happening and we were short staffed. There are a lot of people around at my office at, like, 1:00 in the morning.”
In my mind’s eye, I saw Ryan, sleeping on the train going in, sleeping on the train going home. Dragging his butt to a late dinner when his kids had already gone to bed. Hauling his tired body up the stairs for five hours of sleep before the alarm rang again at 3:30, so early it woke the birds before their time.
“I’ve been doing something like this for years,” he added. Then he looked at his watch. “I gotta go,” he said. “I have six minutes to make my train.” And he went, rushing to sit with all the other busy business people. Among them these days are many Japanese, most of them, I believe, headed for Crestwood and Scarsdale. They remain in the States for a few years and then are shipped back to the home office, which wants to make sure they don’t get too soft over here.
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Silicon Alley Insider is reportingthat very soon Twitter will be able to deliver the precise geographical location of every twit who’s tweeting. It makes sense. Many people tweet from implements that have some GPS feature built in. It’s not hard to see how the right software could deliver precise whereabouts of each individual twitterer. This information might not be evident to recipients of the precious information that Lenny is about to take a shower. But Twitter Central will know.
I don’t know about you, but that seems to me to be one less reason to tweet. I think this places me well outside the digital mainstream. Most people on the leading edge of personal communications don’t appear to care. We already have cell phones that can tell anybody with the proper equipment where we are and we don’t think much of it. Now there will be a private company with high book value and absolutely no earnings that will be able to market our locations as well.
Proof of this attitudinal shift may be seen in the jolly tone of Dan Frommer’s report in the Alley. He writes:
Twitter has already built a great service to track what people are saying in real-time. But knowing where they’re saying it could be even more valuable. So as Twitter continues to build out its product, adding location data to tweets will be an important move.
The good news is that Twitter seems to be moving in that direction. For instance, the company has recently hired a new member for its platform team with a background in location services: Ryan Sarver, who most recently worked at Boston-based Skyhook Wireless. That’s the company whose wi-fi-based location service powers Apple’s iPod touch and helps out on the iPhone, among other gadgets.
Funny, isn’t it? One man’s paranoid nightmare is another man’s exciting new development.
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Yesterday I offered what I believe was a surprisingly mature, incredibly modulated response to the Microsoft (MSFT) announcement that it was appropriating my brand with its new search engine: Bing. In response to my moderate outrage, the internet lit up like a roman candle. Quite a few fine outlets either simply re-ran my news release or had their own thoughts on the subject. Here are some of my favorites:
The Big Money, which got picked up on Reuters…
… Wired
… and even the august Wall Street Journal.
If you read the comments that attend these postings, it’s clear that some people got it and some really didn’t. A bunch of technoids compared me with Spike Lee, who sued Spike TV when it changed its name from whatever it used to be. Others scolded me for forgetting to mention Bing Crosby, although they might have been kidding. One group that DID get it, I’m a little sorry to say, is the gang over at Microsoft Search. They replied to my polite onslaught as follows:
A Letter to Bing
Dear Bing (the Author),
We couldn’t help sit up and take notice of your offer of services from one Bing to another. We were moderately surprised and mildly excited. As you might have guessed, today is quite a big day for us. Even so, we dropped everything when we saw your press release this morning. After an emergency meeting (three people were invited, all declined), we’ve decided to take you up on your offer. We’re not certain what exactly this would involve. We’re not certain it would pay much (nothing, actually) but we look forward to starting a dialogue and hope we can work together soon. Let’s do lunch. In the meantime we are sending you a case of moderately priced cigars.
Your pals,
Bing.com
It’s clear I’ve got them on the ropes.
]]>Today Microsoft announced it would be launching a new search engine that will compete with Yahoo and Google in the vast hunt for search bucks. In an incredible act of branding sagacity, they announced that the name of the new search engine will be: Bing.
In response to this, today I have issued the following news release:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
BING VS. BING
LONG-TIME FORTUNE COLUMNIST AND BEST-SELLING AUTHOR STANLEY BING CONDEMNS “BRAND INTRUSION” BY NEW MICROSOFT SEARCH ENGINE, ALSO TO BE NAMED “BING”
OFFERS SERVICES TO NEW ENTITY FOR “ANY REASONABLE OFFER”
NEW YORK, MAY 28, 2009 – Stanley Bing, FORTUNE Magazine columnist and best-selling author, today expressed “moderate outrage” at the branding of the new search engine to be offered by Microsoft, also to be called Bing. At the same time, Bing the Author took the unusual step of offering an initial olive branch to Bing the Search Engine, proposing that the two powerful brands merge into one for which Mr. Bing could be the logo, corporate symbol and spokesman, to the extent that it fits in with his other duties.
“This is an unprecedented case of brand intrusion by one of the most powerful and wealthy corporations in the world,” said Bing the Author, as opposed to Bing the Search Engine, which, unlike Mr. Bing himself, cannot be called for comment because it is not a person. “At the same time, I believe I can propose a solution to this problem that with work to the benefit of both Bings, me and the other one,” he added.
Mr. Bing (the Author) issued these statements in reaction to the announcement, made today by Microsoft at the D: All Things Digital conference in Carlsbad, Calif, that the software giant is set to launch an $80 million to $100 million campaign for Bing, the search engine it hopes will help it grab a bigger slice of the online ad market. This huge campaign will be conducted by JWT, the massive advertising agency, and is viewed by many to be an attack on the market position of Google, long the search engine leader. Little notice has been taken to date, however, of the serious implications for Mr. Bing or, for that matter, any other Bings, which Mr. Bing made clear he doesn’t care about.
“For nearly 25 years, I have jealously guarded the value of my brand,” Bing (the original) continued. “For several years, it was threatened by the enormous reputation of Rudolf Bing, the fictional presence of Chandler Bing and the high-profile persona of Stephen Bing. This, however, is the worst challenge the Bing Brand has faced to date, particularly in regards to my search engine optimization positioning.”
In conjunction with these statements, Mr. Bing has offered to open discussions with Bing the Search Engine and its representatives to iron out differences and challenges to each respective brand. “I think we’re a lot more powerful together than we are apart,” he added. “At least I’m pretty sure I am.”
Bing (Stanley) indicated that the shape and specific nature of the merged branding opportunities have yet to be hammered out, but that he is available from the second week in June onward, for the most part, and would be willing to consider “any reasonable offer” for his services, or simply to provide no services, if that’s what seems best.
Mr. Bing began his column in FORTUNE in 1995. Prior to that, he was at Esquire Magazine for 11 years, where he built a considerable following. He is also the author of numerous books and is the host of a popular Web destination on CNNMoney.com and writes regularly for Huffingtonpost.com. He has been cultivating the Bing brand since 1983.
Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1975. It has been establishing the Bing brand for about seventeen minutes.
Contact: Stanley Bing
bingblog@gmail.com
I will only add that I absolutely no intention of initiating any form of legal action against Bing (the Search Engine) unless he/it feels it would be mutually beneficial for us to do so. And that I do look forward to being massively well-optimized on my new friend.
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Hi, David.
I read in a magazine someplace that you were interested in saving the New York Times. I think it’s a terrific idea. Something about setting up a non-profit foundation that would run it, so the pressures of the business would not impinge on Journalism being done there. I can’t think of a better idea. It’s clear the newspaper business is in some kind of trouble, with Craig’s List snatching all its classifieds and the citizen journalists getting things wrong so they don’t have to.
I have one other idea for you. It came to me when I was reading the Thompson/Reuters news rundown this morning. Here is the item I read in its entirety:
According to the AP, Unions that represent mailers and printers at The Boston Globe have agreed to concessions they hope will keep the newspaper, owned by The New York Times, publishing. The Boston Mailers Union voted 107-95 to approve $5 million in cuts, while the Boston Printing Pressman’s Union accepted $2.2 million in concessions.
That was really interesting to me. The Boston Globe, which I believe is owned by the New York Times Co., can only stay in business if the working people who help to distribute the newspaper give back a total of $7.2 million. I know that’s a lot of money to a pressman or mailer, particularly when it’s expressed in personal terms. But in the vast scheme of things, I was honestly quite surprised at the small scale of the problem that could wreck the business system to the extent that the newspaper might go under if it wasn’t solved.
So, Mr. Geffen, I guess I’m just suggesting that as you contemplate laying down hundreds of millions of dollars to set up a foundation to save Journalism – a truly laudable goal that just might be necessary to the preservation of our democracy – is it possible that some little wafer of that largesse might be applied to what appears to be a very small part of the much larger problem?
And to my readers: Yeah, that’s right, you guys. I’m talking about NOT sticking it to the Unions. You wanna make something of it?
]]>It’s been a little while since I talked about the horrors of contemporary air travel. Either I’ve become so desensitized to the situation or it’s gotten better in the last year or so, I don’t know. Either way, my head hasn’t flown off my shoulders in quite some time. Which made my experience of JetBlue the other day all the more rich and surprising.
I’ll just tell it to you as it happened. You can judge whether I’m over-reacting. I do sometimes.
My wife and I were in the exit row of the 5:59 JetBlue flight out of JFK to San Francisco. Because I love her, I took the middle seat and she had the aisle. The flight was on time. Everything was moving very smoothly. The general air of JetBlue jolly, democratic collegiality prevailed. All our bags were neatly stowed. I had placed my wife’s wheely bag, which is perfectly sized to go into the overhead compartment wheels first, and my backpack, which contained my beloved MacBook, up there, and neatly inserted her folded topcoat and my favorite sport jacket on top of our stuff.
As always, there is always one butthead who appears just as the doors are closing and requires immediate assistance for seating and stowage. Indeed, here he came, and with him, following close by, a very neat, very tidy, very trim gate agent with the passenger’s wheely bag in tow. The late arrival went back to his seat in the rear of the plane. The flight attendant began to look for an overhead compartment to put his bag. He selected ours, which was already rather full not only with our possessions but those of several others. The flight attendant opened the compartment door and immedately began violently jamming the new bag into a space that he perceived existed somewhere in the interstitial zone between everybody’s luggage.
“Excuse me,” I said to him, as he repeatedly mashed the bag into the imaginary space, “are you squashing our coats up there?”
“It is company policy that rolling bags take precedence,” he snapped. “You can put your coats on the floor.” I thought this was rather severe. If I had wanted to put my coat on the floor I would have already done so. Also, I have a thing about officious people with a tiny bit of power being mean to me. Call it an occupational hazard.
“Also,” I said as he banged and slammed the new bag into our stuff, “I have a computer up there, so please be gentle.” By now he had taken our coats out and tossed them onto our laps. Then he removed my wife’s wheely bag, which was superbly positioned, in order to fit in his load. That done, he once again began jamming and cramming my wife’s bag into the space that now no longer really could accomodate it.
“This doesn’t fit,” he said. At that point he took out my bag and deposited it into my lap. So all our luggage and carry-ons were now out of the position we had established for them. My wife is a patient woman, a fact she has proven time and again by continuing to favor me with her presence.
“I’ve been on a hundred JetBlue flights with that bag,” she said calmly, “and it fits perfectly if you put it in wheels first.” He was now violently mashing it handle first into the spot. At that point, I believe he bumped my wife. She says no, because she is a non-violent type and likes to avoid confrontation, but I’m pretty sure I saw her leap a bit out of her seat and say, “Oh!”
Several things then happend simultaneously. She took out a little notebook and pen — as the increasingly desperate re-loading of the compartment continued — and I leaned forward in my seat in order to see his name badge. She then wrote down his name in block letters: PATRICK. And he, having finally completed his task, looked down and saw her do it.
“May I see your boarding pass, please?” he said, and it wasn’t a request.
“Of course,” said my wife. I wondered if she still had it. Sometimes we all toss our passes once we’re on the plane. She hunted about for it. For a while it looked like she was going to have to get her bag down again, but then yes, there it was, in her purse on her lap. “May I ask why you want to see my boarding pass?” she mildly inquired.
“Well!” said PATRICK, “you are writing down MY name and I would like to see the name of the person who is writing down MY name.” He then regarded the boarding pass closely and I thought rather ominously. He then reluctantly handed it back, and then went up to the cockpit, where he gave us the evil eye until the doors of the plane were closing, at which point he left. At some point, I got up and put my bag and our jackets back in the place that was left for them.
I still wonder what PATRICK would have done if my wife had been unable to unearth her boarding pass from our mass of scrambled belongings.
I will say that the on-board flight crew seemed especially nice to us for the entire flight. Perhaps they were afraid of these two obvious troublemakers. Or perhaps they knew this gate agent. Don’t you know the character of the people you work with every day, particularly the scary ones?
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I wish I could think of something to say about the recession right now.
I wish I could find an observation to make about the realities of the new economy.
I wish I had the power to offer some interesting strategies for dealing with the difficult operating environment in which we find ourselves.
I wish I could impart some wisdom on current trends in the commercial marketplace.
But I can’t. Half my floor is empty today. A few minutes ago, I sent an e-mail to my department that generated a veritable forest of OUT OF OFFICE replies. In the executive wing, many seem to have wandered off into pleasant digital space. On the west coast, a lot of folks seem to be “working from home.” Here in New York, the sun is shining very brightly, and there is a heavy, humid heat in the air that whispers one delicious word, and that word is BEACH.
I have no plans to go to the beach. I have no plans to go to the shore. I have no plans to do much of anything except go home. I will not be reading interesting business analysis on the plane. I will not be thinking about excellence or debt or equity, except perhaps the sweat equity it will take to put my lawn to rights when I get there.
I am hereby shutting down the part of my brain that thinks about things more than three days out. I hope you have the power to do the same, whether you have the permission to do so or not. Go ahead. Switch it off.
Have a great long weekend, my friends. Sometime during that three days take a few moments to remember why we earned that extra lazy Monday. Go to a parade if you can find one. We don’t do enough parades.
I’ll talk with you Tuesday, God willing. Whatever we’ve all got going on will be waiting for us then, of that I am sure. Let it wait, okay?
]]>I just thought, on my out of the office again, that I would point out that now the Star has a cover on Jon & Kate, outlining their odd marriage, which I can’t tell you about, because I will not read it, and this for two reasons.
1. I have decided to read nothing about Jon & Kate.
2. I am too busy.
This week my company had its big sales presentation. We go out there about the same time each year and try to move a few billion dollars worth of product. It’s going pretty well. Two observations:
1. People are jamming the restaurants all around Manhattan. It’s very hard to get a table.
2. Everybody is just as drunk as they always were in the best of times.
I take this to be another sign of economic regeneration. And now I’ve got to take off again. Another day. Another presentation. Another couple hundred million dollars. Wish us luck, ladies and gentlemen. As we go, so goes the whole shooting match, I think.
]]>Look, I’m not that old. I’m certainly not out of touch. I watch TV. I read newspapers. I cruise the internet like a hungry shark, eating informational tidbits as I go, each and every day.
But sometimes when I go to the newsstand I look at the enormous rack of magazines and I think, “Who are these people?”
Both People and Us Weekly, for instance, feature dramatic developments into the lives of a couple named Jon and Kate. I have no idea who these people are.
In People, for instance, there’s a big picture of this blond woman with very professional hair staring dolefully out at us next to a huge headline, WE MIGHT SPLIT UP. “Jon & Kate, A Marriage In Crisis” says the box above it. Then there are a bunch of bullets below the headline. But who the frig ARE they? And why don’t I know?
In US Weekly, contrariwise, it turns out that Kate has her own bodyguard because Jon threatened to hire a P.I. when she got close to somebody named Steve Neild! Who is Steve Neild? Should I know? Why? Apparently, Kate is a mom of eight and she refused to touch her bleeding son during a press event? Really? Why would she do that? Did she do that? When? What kind of press event?
Have I been spending too much time with Madoff and Geithner and Bernanke and Thain and that whole crowd? Am I out of the culture? Have I lost my mojo? While I’m thinking about TARPs and bailouts and payoffs and pyramids and consumer confidence, have I lost sight of the important issues that are moving our society? Should I be watching more TV? A different kind of TV?
What else don’t I know about? Fill me in! Hurry!
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NEW YORK, May 18 – Stanley Bing said on Monday that he plans to sell an undesignated amount of stock in his formerly privately held BingCo., and also plans a note sale to help repay funds he has borrowed from various sources. He also announced that he was taking a $872 million charge against earnings. The notes are being designed by his friend Stu right now, according to Bing, and will be very attractive.
The charge reflects losses on quite a few assets, mostly due to bad investments made after consultation with the best advisors in the business world.
These losses have been a drag on BingCo.’s cash position, which has declined since June ‘08. The New York-based content company also announced the slashing of weekly dividends to children and pets, and an elimination of bonuses to all employees, of which there really aren’t any. At the same time, BingCo. management hopes the message will resound with Wall Street, which has shown virtually no interest in the Company since it went public some 18 months ago.
“We have no idea what it is the company does,” said Reed Barfinger of Barfinger & McGuffin, a firm that makes itself available for quotes to reporters who call it. “This lack of clarity used to be a huge asset, particularly in the online content world, but now people want at least an ounce or two of steak along with their sizzle.”
This could spell potential trouble for BingCo. In pre-market trading, the company’s shares fell about 2 percent to $0.14. Their 52-week high is $0.15, set last July 23.
BingCo. Executive Chairman and Chief Everything Officer Stanley Bing said in a statement that he will use the proceeds from the sale of shares and notes to pay back the $23,000 loan he received from CitiBank to finance the construction of a paved driveway at company headquarters.
Bing did not specify the size of the debt offering but said it would not be backed by the federal government, to which he also expects to owe some money very shortly in the form of a quarterly estimate.
Bing was among the institutions that recently underwent a “stress tests” of their ability to handle a deep recession, and was among those found to be quizzical.
BingCo. does not give guidance. The company did however indicate it expects to be alive at the end of the year, mostly by accumulating more debt in order to pay the debt that comes with responsibilities and consequences.
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