Last Sunday was an incredible Spring day in northern Virginia with plenty of sun and mild temps in the 60's. To take advantage of the weather I took my son Michael, who is now seven, over to a soccer field near our house to work on his soccer dribbling and shooting skills. With Michael, forty-five minutes of soccer drills without playing an actual game is plenty.
On the way home we saw a school mate of Michael's and his father playing basketball on one of the outdoor courts near the field. The father, Bill, told me that he was attempting to do what Pres. George H. W. Bush (Bush 41) challenged Americans to do back during his presidency - try to play seven sports in one day.
I don't remember that particular challenge made by Pres. Bush but I do remember he was fond of horseshoes, so I'm sure that was one of his sports. I haven't been able to find reference to it using Google or Yahoo. But the idea seems great regardless of where it came from. So I decided we'd give it a try too.
Now I should mention that if the choice were totally up to Michael, he probably would have opted to play inside or watch TV. But you can't let kids stay inside on a nice day, right? Lisa and I make it our job to keep the boys outside playing.
So when we got home we shot hoops in our cul de sac (2). Then Michael wanted to ride bikes so we rode around our street for a while and went on a ride around the neighborhood (3). I joked that next we would go swimming, but Michael called me out on that one. So we put on roller blades and went up and down the side walk. Only for a few minutes though - neither of us are strong bladers (4). Tee-ball and catch with the baseball in the back yard were next (5). We also played catch with the football and a little two-hand touch (6). Finally we took turns on our neighbors' trampoline (7). I think I'm a little heavy for it so I didn't stay on it too long. But it is more of a workout than I remembered.
The point of this is that it was easy to find at least seven sports/activities to do with my son. Kickball, badminton, tag, capture the flag, swinging, and monkey bars are other activities that are often taking place in our neighborhood. I should mention that my ten-year-old, Brett, was outside the whole time too. He prefers basketball right now because it's in season.
Which brings me to another point. While we were outside we missed the Florida vs. Oregon basketball game on TV. We did catch the last ten minutes and overtime of the Georgetown vs. UNC game while we prepared dinner. But in five years, or even in one year, I think our time spent outside together will be remembered more than who played in the NCAA tournament.
I'm looking forward to more days like last Sunday. I've been warned that some day in the not too distant future, it will be hard keep the boys around home long enough to play seven sports.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Love gadgets, but not keeping up with them...
Somewhere along the line in the last seven years or so I fell out-of-step with keeping up with the latest technology tools and toys. Long ago I had one of the first programmable universal remotes and I set it up to automatically turn on my entertainment center, stereo, CD player, adjust volumes, and turn off all at a given time. I used it to its full extent. I'd like to say that I had the very latest in home entertainment equipment as well. And a constantly growing library of CDs. Today, not so much.
Today I have an even better universal remote - the Logitech Harmony 890 - and I haven't finished setting it up to manage all my devices. Worse yet, it's easier than ever to set this thing up. You just go to the Logitech website and select all of your components and the remote will be configured over a USB cable. I did define the devices, but when I tested the "boot up" process I ran into a sequencing problem and I just haven't taken the time to go back and fix it.
I'm also one of the last people in the US who doesn't own an iPod. It must be a sign of my age, but I just don't feel the need to listen to music everywhere I go. I don't have XM or Sirius sat radio either. You've probably guessed it but I listen to talk radio and books on CD during my commute.
PlayStation, XBox, PS3, Wii? Never got bit by the gaming bug. I know it could easily have happend to me. A timing issue. If the sudden rise in my discretionary income had crossed paths with gaming boom several years ago, I'd be as addicted as anyone. I think I just missed that wave. Not to mention that I've been busy with my two sons. Playing and teaching without electronic devices was intentional for us. But now they are 10 and 7 years old and the pressure to keep up with their friends' video toys is mounting. (BTW, I can't believe how many of my neighbors let their kids play "M"-rated video games. I just don't want my boys exposed to that world yet. Am I that far out-of-touch?)
So I do what probably most people in their mid-forties do and let the majority of tech devices go unnoticed, and give only the most highly acclaimed products a second look. DVR, for example, is something I was slow to adopt. Now I strongly believe that DVR is the greatest invention since the remote control.
I bought my first HDTV last year, after waiting out most of the hype. I went with the Pioneer PDP-5060HD 50" plasma. Absolutely fantastic product. It's tough to watch sports without HD now.
My point is that I'm not as easily moved to action as I used to be. But I like to keep up with what's available. I'm just not an impulse shopper who buys gadgets just for the sake of having the latest. The Apple iPhone will need to come "way" down in price and it'll need to go through several software patches before I'll consider it.
I do have my cell phone, with a couple songs on it. And it has a camera that can take pictures and record short video. It also has Sprint's On Demand TV content, but I haven't used it yet. I also use an EVDO wireless broadband card in my laptop. That I use.
I recently heard about this trick you can do to open a locked car door with your cell phone signal. Say you've locked your keys in the car. If you call home where the other set of keys are, and that set has a keyless entry fob like most sets of keys do, your friend at home can press the "unlock" button while you hold your phone up near the car. The radio signal will unlock the car. Things like that make me wonder about all the Location Based Services that must be at our fingertips thanks to cell phones. Marketing over the air is a whole new world I want to learn more about. Those are the gadgets and services that can improve my life.
So I'm going to start visiting engadget.com, cnet.com (more often), Make.com, technorati.com, and other sites that are known for sharing the latest in the world of technology.
Fast to learn, slow to adopt. I'm sure I fall into a specific segmentation marketing category for most companies. With age comes pramatism, I guess.
Today I have an even better universal remote - the Logitech Harmony 890 - and I haven't finished setting it up to manage all my devices. Worse yet, it's easier than ever to set this thing up. You just go to the Logitech website and select all of your components and the remote will be configured over a USB cable. I did define the devices, but when I tested the "boot up" process I ran into a sequencing problem and I just haven't taken the time to go back and fix it.
I'm also one of the last people in the US who doesn't own an iPod. It must be a sign of my age, but I just don't feel the need to listen to music everywhere I go. I don't have XM or Sirius sat radio either. You've probably guessed it but I listen to talk radio and books on CD during my commute.
PlayStation, XBox, PS3, Wii? Never got bit by the gaming bug. I know it could easily have happend to me. A timing issue. If the sudden rise in my discretionary income had crossed paths with gaming boom several years ago, I'd be as addicted as anyone. I think I just missed that wave. Not to mention that I've been busy with my two sons. Playing and teaching without electronic devices was intentional for us. But now they are 10 and 7 years old and the pressure to keep up with their friends' video toys is mounting. (BTW, I can't believe how many of my neighbors let their kids play "M"-rated video games. I just don't want my boys exposed to that world yet. Am I that far out-of-touch?)
So I do what probably most people in their mid-forties do and let the majority of tech devices go unnoticed, and give only the most highly acclaimed products a second look. DVR, for example, is something I was slow to adopt. Now I strongly believe that DVR is the greatest invention since the remote control.
I bought my first HDTV last year, after waiting out most of the hype. I went with the Pioneer PDP-5060HD 50" plasma. Absolutely fantastic product. It's tough to watch sports without HD now.
My point is that I'm not as easily moved to action as I used to be. But I like to keep up with what's available. I'm just not an impulse shopper who buys gadgets just for the sake of having the latest. The Apple iPhone will need to come "way" down in price and it'll need to go through several software patches before I'll consider it.
I do have my cell phone, with a couple songs on it. And it has a camera that can take pictures and record short video. It also has Sprint's On Demand TV content, but I haven't used it yet. I also use an EVDO wireless broadband card in my laptop. That I use.
I recently heard about this trick you can do to open a locked car door with your cell phone signal. Say you've locked your keys in the car. If you call home where the other set of keys are, and that set has a keyless entry fob like most sets of keys do, your friend at home can press the "unlock" button while you hold your phone up near the car. The radio signal will unlock the car. Things like that make me wonder about all the Location Based Services that must be at our fingertips thanks to cell phones. Marketing over the air is a whole new world I want to learn more about. Those are the gadgets and services that can improve my life.
So I'm going to start visiting engadget.com, cnet.com (more often), Make.com, technorati.com, and other sites that are known for sharing the latest in the world of technology.
Fast to learn, slow to adopt. I'm sure I fall into a specific segmentation marketing category for most companies. With age comes pramatism, I guess.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Update from Omniture 2007
About one thousand people representing dozens of companies and "25% of the global online marketing budget" were on hand at the Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City last week to discuss Marketing 2.0 strategies and Omniture products.
Keynote speakers included Josh James, CEO and co-founder of Omniture, and Megan Burns who is a Senior Analyst at Forrester Research, Anne Holland, CEO of MarketingSherpa, and Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly Media.
Omniture is growing in leaps and bounds (customers and employees) and their recent acquisition of British Behavioral Targeting company - Touch Clarity - has made them a new global enterprise.
Products such as SiteCatalyst, Discover, and the new Genesis platform that use cutting edge technology to provide everything you need to know about every site visitor, and report on their usage make Omniture a favorite in the Web Analytics space.
All of the keynote speeches were excellent and geared to the topic of new trends in online marketing and web analytics. O'Reilly gave what was probably the most riveting presentation on the importance of online social networking in the future of internet applications. He's definitely seen everything over the last twenty years and I believe he is on the mark with his research on how much information is available about all of us on the web (and the wireless web) that we happily provide in the form of user created content. And the most successful websites will include such content to allow visitors to drive how the sites will serve the community of users. These networks that "get better the more people use them" are at the heart of Web 2.0. BTW, O'Reilly is credited for the term Web 2.0.
Read the Omniture Summit 2007 press release:
http://biz.yahoo.com/iw/070321/0229457.html
Visit O'Reilly Media:
http://radar.oreilly.com/tim/
Keynote speakers included Josh James, CEO and co-founder of Omniture, and Megan Burns who is a Senior Analyst at Forrester Research, Anne Holland, CEO of MarketingSherpa, and Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly Media.
Omniture is growing in leaps and bounds (customers and employees) and their recent acquisition of British Behavioral Targeting company - Touch Clarity - has made them a new global enterprise.
Products such as SiteCatalyst, Discover, and the new Genesis platform that use cutting edge technology to provide everything you need to know about every site visitor, and report on their usage make Omniture a favorite in the Web Analytics space.
All of the keynote speeches were excellent and geared to the topic of new trends in online marketing and web analytics. O'Reilly gave what was probably the most riveting presentation on the importance of online social networking in the future of internet applications. He's definitely seen everything over the last twenty years and I believe he is on the mark with his research on how much information is available about all of us on the web (and the wireless web) that we happily provide in the form of user created content. And the most successful websites will include such content to allow visitors to drive how the sites will serve the community of users. These networks that "get better the more people use them" are at the heart of Web 2.0. BTW, O'Reilly is credited for the term Web 2.0.
Read the Omniture Summit 2007 press release:
http://biz.yahoo.com/iw/070321/0229457.html
Visit O'Reilly Media:
http://radar.oreilly.com/tim/
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Omniture Summit - 3/13 -3/16
I'll be speaking at the Omniture Summit 2007 conference this week in Salt Lake City during one of the breakout sessions.We'll be presenting our Sprint Nextel Customer Satisfaction case study. We've partnered with ForeSee Results and Omniture to create "micro segmentation" of the visitors to Sprint.com to identify their click-through experiences and match them to the online survey results they've volunteered to provide.
More here: http://www.omniture.com/summit07/slc
A recurring theme you will see in this blog is about focusing on the customer experience. Frankly, I know, that's what everyone says. But I believe you will see that C-Sat surveys, combined with an open customer forum at http://www.buzzaboutwireless.com/, added to increasing the functionality of the self-service side of Sprint.com are all part of a "Path to Loyalty" that we're creating at Sprint.com.
More here: http://www.omniture.com/summit07/slc
A recurring theme you will see in this blog is about focusing on the customer experience. Frankly, I know, that's what everyone says. But I believe you will see that C-Sat surveys, combined with an open customer forum at http://www.buzzaboutwireless.com/, added to increasing the functionality of the self-service side of Sprint.com are all part of a "Path to Loyalty" that we're creating at Sprint.com.
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