Entries from April 2007 ↓

links for 2007-04-12

April 11th, 2007 — Daily NetTrek

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Hotel Valets with a special gift

April 10th, 2007 — Travel

Shannon and I are standing in line outside the hotel last night waiting for a cab to our restaurant when the Valet suddenly suggests that another guest can give us a ride, because “he’s headed to the same place you guys are.” We assumed the other hotel guest must have heard our request for a taxi and volunteered to drive us in his car. But, as we saw the expression on our fellow guest’s face a short time later, it became apparent that this little favor was an idea all the valet’s own. Shannon and I wondered later how often he connects guests with rides???

We all quickly recognized the comedy in the situation and started to tell travel stories and joke about serial killers. Yup. The best part was that Gary, as our new friend told us his name, is a VP in the travel industry. He’s been all over the world many times over and has the typical traveler’s spirit about him that makes events like these something you begin to look for – not shy away from. We ended up having a great conversation with him over the drink we offered to buy him in return for his kindness.

That valet had better instincts that we initially game him credit for. We got into a conversation with Gary about the travel company he works for (Adelman Travel Group) and among many items discussed were his work for the family run business with over 300 employees. My favorite? That the company founder, Ollie Adelman, still comes to the office every day, which at first doesn’t strike you as unusual until you hear that Mr. Adelman is 92. Gary lavished praise on Mr. Adelman and his family who are all highly involved in the day-to-day operations. Unlike many kids of successful parents there’s surprisingly no talk of silver spoon behavior with Adelman’s kids. In fact, they go out of their way apparently to act like all the other employees – receiving no special treatment. Gary spoke with true affection and pride for their culture.

Being students of business we were not surprised to hear some of the ingredients of Mr. Adelman’s success. Trusting in your employees, and giving them the autonomy to make their own decisions have been central to all but eliminating employee turnover. Treating people like humans has created fiercely loyal staff. During the terrible times in the travel industry post 9/11, when most travel companies were laying people off in droves, Adelman refused to do so. Instead, they asked employees who could afford to take unpaid vacation to do so and let others of lesser means continue to work full time. All voluntarily mind you.

With all that Shannon and I work on and write about with the recruiting (or talent acquisition) industry it was refreshing to hear a real-world example of not just one person, but a whole family, and group of 300+ people doing great things. Ollie Adelman even wrote a book about it called All Things Are Possible that we plan to read.

What a great adventure!

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Dreams fulfilled

April 10th, 2007 — Travel

Shannon and I fulfilled an important dream this week when I started work on a contract for her boss, thereby giving us the opportunity to work together again. It’s been six years since Shannon and I met through our work and worked at the same company. Even then, we only had a very short while of being able to work together, hearing each other’s voice on group conference calls over the miles that separated San Francisco and Miami. Even the little bit we experienced was enough to know that we wanted a lot more.

I flew up to Atlanta Monday, arrived at her corporate offices there in the afternoon, and had the pleasure of meeting many people on her team. Today I enjoyed a good meeting with Shannon and her boss as we discussed the ins-and-outs of our project and I cruised around their offices taking in all the corporate sights and sounds that I’ve grown to actually miss. Well, not that much, but it was still good to be in a real board room again around smart people.

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links for 2007-04-09

April 8th, 2007 — Daily NetTrek

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links for 2007-04-08

April 7th, 2007 — Daily NetTrek

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links for 2007-04-07

April 6th, 2007 — Daily NetTrek

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links for 2007-04-06

April 5th, 2007 — Daily NetTrek

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links for 2007-04-05

April 4th, 2007 — Daily NetTrek

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The feel of a newspaper

April 3rd, 2007 — Technology

I was on an overnight to Orlando this weekend with Shannon and the kids and I had occasion to read a real life, dead-tree Newspaper. It reminded me of how nice it is to just hold a newspaper, bend it any way you want, flip through the pages soaking up the ads and articles. It reminded me of how computers are still feel inhibiting to me from a visual and kinesthetic perspective. Newspapers feel expansive – the Internet and a monitor feel claustrophobic by comparison.

The biggest takeaway though was one of it being easier to digest. I thought about that for a long while since I do so much writing on the superiority of the Internet. I came to the conclusion that the natural limiting of a newspaper’s total content – that it is just so big (both the sections and overall paper) was far less daunting than being online where the possibilities to disappear down rabbit holes are so much greater. The Internet is superior in terms of its utility for quickly perusing vast amounts of information, and specifically for doing deep-dives down in to specific content areas. But from a time management perspective, my newspaper read made me feel like I had a good sense of what was going on – that I had checked off a to-do, and had done so efficiently. Yes, I could have done the same thing on the NYT web site. Yes, I could have digested or scanned RSS headlines. But I didn’t and I’m glad for it. It just made me realize that just as we’ve been beating up print newspapers for their weaknesses, we have done so because we have tried to compare them against T.V., Radio, and the Internet. And it’s fair to do so because it is a mass media.  But when only used in its area of strength, each media serves a highly valuable purpose and therein lies the roots of the media’s future.

Yes, newspaper will die, but only from the perspective of them trying to be everything to everyone. Yes they will die when the kids of today make up the majority of the audience. But even so, you have to wonder if they’ll rediscover the inherit value of this and other media as their lives continue to evolve online.  Truth be told, I think the Internet is the only media that has a chance to do a really good job in each area, but even still, the way we interact and experience a computer will hold us back from reaching the potential of the Internet for a while to come. I’m talking about output and input devices now.  Like the smallish monitors that most computer and Internet users employ, or the low speed Internet connections, and what seemingly are either arcane input devices like keyboards.

I would have to say that if you were to just use a newspaper for its strengths, and stop trying to make it everything to everyone, it would find a purchases on the cliff precipice it holds on to today, one that it might eventually be able to use to carve out a whole village into the side of that mountain. And lets get serious about making computer input/output tools with ways to get the content in and out in a more natural way.  Cheap, bendable, throw away screens that come in magazine, newspaper and other sizes would be nice. How about speech recognition software that was super fast and accurate. It seems like even the best offerings today in these areas are still decades away from truly practical appeal.

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links for 2007-04-02

April 1st, 2007 — Daily NetTrek

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