Shirley de Rose's Weblog

I hadn’t really thought very much about Buckminster Fuller in a few years. I was busy with my ordinary life, worrying about election rhetoric, bills, my current clients, and other assorted things. But there he was, just behind my right shoulder, whispering to me like an old friend.

“Uh-huh.” he said. “Systems thinking again. Now isn’t that just what I was talking about?! And here they are, all talking about ‘Sustainability’ like it was a new concept!” he said derisively.

Startled, I turned to see who was talking and then realized it was just the ghost of Bucky Fuller reminding me that there is nothing new under the sun, just a recycled idea or two.

I laughed at the reminder. I needed that!

Bucky played a pivotal role in my development as a thinker. It felt strangely familiar when I found myself saying to someone lately, “Just picture the thing or event completely finished and work backward – break down the parts backwards and it builds itself forward to the completed picture. It makes it easy to do anything that way.” I wasn’t sure where I got that, but then I discovered again that Bucky called himself a “comprehensive anticipatory design scientist” because he used the backwards process I had just described. To him, and then to me, looking at the big picture first isn’t backwards. It’s the only way to go forward!

So I would encourage you to become familiar with one of the original backward-forward thinkers and see if his way of looking at Earth and Sustainability don’t make sense in your life. After all, what’s at stake is your future… and your kid’s future.

Read about Bucky at
http://bfi.org/

If you live in Portland, Oregon, go “meet” Bucky now thru Dec 7 at the Armory.
It may change your life forever, especially if you go to the other public events listed.
http://www.pcs.org/bucky/

Well, you’d think we all know what sustainability is, but it turns out there are hundreds of definitions.
That’s kind like the word “green” – what kinda green? Kelly green, seafoam green, moss green, etc.
I spent most of the day studying sustainability and then put something up on the Sustainable Catering Association site that I think you’ll like. Take a look.

It’s too late to write more tonight. Stay tuned though. We’re just getting started!

Once again, Portland is the greenest city in the United States.

Crowdsourcing is a new buzzzzword you might want to be aware of. This is because you may become part of an undefined, generally large group of people which participates soon in crowdsourcing.

Author of the new book “Crowdsourcing, Jeff Howe says, ”I like to use two definitions for crowdsourcing:

The White Paper Version: Crowdsourcing is the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.

The Soundbyte Version: The application of Open Source principles to fields outside of software.”

Wisdom of crowds has long been debated. And we have to remember that democracy, pure democracy, is the wisdom of crowds. And then, because of human nature, it eventually becomes something very different, along the lines of “I am more equal than you.” Amazing how the human race has no collective memory and repeats the mistakes of the past over and over.

Using the internet, it turns out, doesn’t change human behavior. It just makes it more evident – quickly.

If you live in Oregon you are really lucky because you have access to Dutch Brothers coffee. It is the only(!) coffee that I have found that tastes good and doesn’t give me a stomach ache. After my son-in-law kept raving about the coffee he drinks I decided to try it. I was hooked after just one drink of their Swiss water processed decaf.

Anyway, at every opening Dutch Brothers gives away free coffee all day. Of course this results in traffic jams as the word spreads of a new location. This Friday’s opening was no exception as you can see from the pictures.

If you are in Portland (Oregon) be sure to stop by. 514 SE Belmont (and Grand). Try an Annihilator , if you dare. See ya there!

“Rapidly increasing food prices are impacting the world’s poorest people. The standard of living for many people in developing countries has been halved as the cost of rice, the staple diet of so many, has doubled within a year. Between 2005 and 2007 the cost of corn rose 21%, rice 74%, Soya 87% and wheat 130%. This global food crisis has been driven predominantly by the burgeoning middle-classes in Asia and also a growing demand for biofuels… ” states the Sustainable Business Practices organization located in Australia.

Not only poor people are being effected, however. People in all countries of all economic levels are feeling the effects of higher prices of food.

In March, 2008 Reuters released a report that stated, “Food prices are soaring, a wealthier Asia is demanding better food and farmers cannot keep up. In short, the world faces a food crisis and in some places it is already boiling over.” They gave examples of protests, riots, and an overabundance of counterproductive legislation that aim to help overcome the problems.

So I’m wondering if you are concerned.

If so, there are a few things you can do besides learning to shop more wisely.

I’d suggest becoming more conscious about the food crisis as a first step. You can do this easily with a quick search on Google. Or just look at the newspaper ads for the grocery store you usually shop in. How do prices compare to 1 year ago? If you don’t know, then you can search with Google to get some perspective.

OK. So now you are “aware.” What can you do next?

I’d suggest begin to learn about food values. What food do you eat that has the most to offer in terms of nutrition per dollar spent? Is it chicken or fish? Is it tomatoes vs cucumbers? Anything that you learn will help you use your dollar more wisely. And don’t be discouraged. Food study is a life-long pursuit. Especially in America where we have a huge variety of foods to choose from, discovering the “value” of particular foods can take a life-time. One of the things that can come from just small investigations is that you might add a particular food to your diet. Like nuts. Just spend a bit of time studying the benefits of adding a handful of almonds to your diet twice a week. I’m not going to tell you the answer, just encourage you to discover the answer for yourself. Then you can decide if nuts will be a great addition to your monthly diet and if you need to make a trade off for some other food (or portion of it…)

Now you are on the track to begin to help yourself with food prices. Remember it’s a process, and don’t be too surprised if you find that radishes that you can grow quickly yourself are a great addition to your diet. And that properly prepared (you can even cook them) the kids will love ‘em. Wow! Cheap, good food.

Now how’s that for an interesting few minutes trying to solve the problem of high food prices.

If you want more ideas about good eating, cheap, just comment and I’ll give you a garden full of interesting answers in future blog posts.

And by they way, almonds are a nutritional powerhouse, packed with calcium, fiber, folic acid, magnesium, potassium, riboflavin and vitamin E…

Some of you readers know that I travel quite a bit. It was a lifetime goal to experience many places in the USA first, then other countries. As a part of this I needed a profession that allowed, or required, travel. Well, writing, speaking, and internet marketing fit that description.

Lately I have been staying in hotels/motels in the Choice Hotels chain. The huge variety of experiences during the past few months has been astounding. And the level of customer service reminds me again of why many companies keep hounding on the Customer Service note. You’d think it would be obvious that good customer service is mandatory. But I can clearly say it isn’t in the hotel industry.

One particularly disturbing event is worthy of noting on a blog. The EconoLodge in downtown Hillsboro, Oregon, certainly needs a bit of refreshment on the customer service idea. Simply put, I paid cash-in-advance for a 7 day stay there. It was a good location, a newly remodeled hotel, and seemed to be all smiles and graciousness at check-in. By day 5 I knew I needed to be in a new location and notified the hotel I would be leaving the next day. On day 6 the car was packed by check-out time and I went to the office to get my final receipt and the cash back for day 7. No such luck. “You made a reservation for 7 days and you are going to pay for 7 days!” was all the desk clerk would say. “And you got a receipt when you checked in!” So when I asked for the manager she said she was the manager. When I asked for the owner’s name she said it was her brother. “And if you talk to him you’ll get the same answer,” she said. So what could I do then?

I left. That’s all I could do at the moment. However, we’re checking to see if there is a law about defrauding a guest, the same way there is a law about defrauding an innkeeper. Funny thing is, the filing fee for small claims is more than the amount of the 1 day stay, so, from a practical point, court is not the answer.
We’ll try a quick phone call to the Choices Hotel headquarters. If that isn’t successful we probably will just drop the whole thing because of the time involved to get a few dollars returned.

All this leaves me wondering how many other people have suffered at their hand. And besides, what’s with the “You made a reservation for 7 days and you are going to pay for 7 days!” ? I’ve never heard of such a tactic. I’m still too startled to be able to think about it clearly. Any suggestions?

Almost 1000 people assembled yesterday in Portland (Oregon) for the Internet Strategy Forum. Organized by Steve Gehlen, the ISF featured such speakers as
# Geoffrey Ramsey, Co-founder & CEO, eMarketer
# Nancy Bhagat, VP of Sales and Marketing Group, Intel
# Daniel Stickel, new CEO, WebTrends (formerly with Google)
# Charlene Li, VP & Principal Analyst, Forrester Research
# Chris Shimojima, VP, Global Digital Commerce, Nike
# David Placier, VP, Consumer Insights, Disney Online
# Shane O’Neill, Chief Technology Officer, Fandango
# Mike Moran, Distinguished Engineer, IBM, author (highest-rated speaker at 2007 Summit)

Charlene Li from Forrester Research began the day by letting the audience know this was her last presentation during her association with Forrester. She didn’t say where she was headed and speculation was rampant. Forrester’s new book, Groundswell, was the basis of her topic as she adroitly went thru the main points that the book supports. For instance, there are researched customer profiles that can be used to categorize your customers. These include creators, critics, collectors, joiners, spectators, and inactives. Understanding the relationship with each of these will guide your interaction with each. She emphasized that the % of each group changes by the topic, so this is not a distribution that once examined will stay in place for your marketing campaigns. She gave a number of clear examples from an interesting variety of companies. I was particularly intrigued by the Ernst & Young example where their recruiter was finding college students by using Facebook.

Mike Moran, author of Do It Wrong Quickly, spoke of the difficulty of tracking social media statistics, saying that over 80% of what we do is hard to track. He urged the use of Direct Marketing knowledge be applied to websites. DM has refined the art of testing. Websites are just beginning to make headway in this arena. Simplistically stated: Cut out all the meetings and discussions and just do something and see what happens. Afterall, changes on a website can be made immediately. Now if only we could get layers of management to agree to fast changes…

Everybody’s favorite of the day was Geoffrey Ramsey (who wrote the forward to Mike Moran’s book.) His energy level was on top and his PowerPoint clearly showed he had read all the “Death By Powerpoint” essays. I particularly enjoyed the fact he understands that visual media means images, not text. I couldn’t find a hint of a smile when he offered to send a copy of his PP by request at the close of his keynote. It is mostly images – I’m sure without an audio track it might be a challenge to get any info from it that would have much meaning.

And so it went. A day full of pithy comments about the Internet and the strategies a company needs to consider when moving into the future.

If you weren’t at ISF, consider going next year. It’s worth the price of admission.

Here’s my comments sent to Guy about his new book:

Hey Guy,

Hope this is what you want…

Thanks for the privilege of commenting on your book. I think your intro says it all: [it] is a tweaked, updated, edited, and supplemented compilation of the best of my writing (blog and eight books) in one place.

And what a powerful compilation!

I began with the midpoint at Chap 45 (Effective Emailer) and read it thru. Yep. Yep. It was all I could do not to shout, “OMG! His book is a handbook for a real life! I can think of 10 people for this chapter alone.” But I couldn’t shout – my partner was asleep. So I kept reading, thinking about how I could comment on all this. But my analysis was the same for each chapter – it’s quick, instructional reading, bullet-pointed to be memorable and above all, useful. None of which is bed-time reading because it gets the motors revving and the brain whirling. It’s a better book for first-morning devotional, a devotional about business, a devotional to fire up the soul of the dedicated business person who is hungry for quick fixes that work in the long run.

Your book, Guy, is a true Vade Meacum, a “take with me” volume to read at lunch or in the bathroom. A book that you can read with new insights each time. A book that will ring true as long as there is business. And a book that gives the reader purified Kawasaki.

Reality Check will build your kingdom of fans, no doubt, and add many more.

Change anything in the book? Not a chance. It’s been edited already. What it’s ready for is the bites that people take and chew on for a while. It’s the chapter that can give new thought-life to a public speaker with presentation challenges. The kick in the butt for the guerilla marketer. The confidence builder for the newbie. The reminder that [a person's] contribution is what counts in the end.

This book is the dad and mom birthing or re-birthing a business using an epidural called Reality Check. And you can take that check to the bank.

Shirley de Rose