I’m procrastinating
I confess, I’m supposed to be working on a report for a client but instead I am in full procrastination mode.
What better way to avoid some work than reading the newspaper - well, my three daily newspapers actually: the Regina Leader Post, the Globe and Mail and the National Post .
Is anyone else out there sick of the year-end ritual of listing the top ten of everything from soup to nuts? Frankly, I’m listed out. Each paper today was filled with top 10 lists for music, movies, weather events, best lines of the year, best and worst business ideas in 2005, blah, blah, blah. What is it with this incessant need to categorize and judge? And why should I care? Bottom line is I don’t much. I know, I know, I should be more open to the hours of work and deep thought that went into creating the lists - not to mention grateful for the time, energy and huge amounts of email traffic generated by marketing and promotions folks working overtime to make sure their client’s product gets mentioned in a top ten list. Oops, is my cynicism showing again? Sorry. Of course, my own top ten list does not count. Hey, who said I had to be consistent?
Why do these lists bother me? I don’t know about you, but after reading them I feel like I’m living in some sort bubble. Yes, I’m a suburban guy but I have older teens and twenty-somethings living in my home, I hear many types of music, I read, I travel, I follow the news (like a junkie, I might add), and I think I’m generally well tuned in to the world around me. But, if that’s the case, why have I never seen (or even heard of) many of the movies or heard most of the CDs (let alone recognize the artists)? Is there some kind of “hipster” conspiracy out there keeping these gems from me? Truth be told, it probably has more to do with time famine than a sophisticated conspiracy - although the conspiracy theories are always more entertaining.
A couple of interesting things stood out in the Globe’s best and worst business ideas of 2005 . First, a thumbs down for marketing podcasts. I won’t comment on the podcast thing as I am certainly no expert, having made the decision earlier this year to hold off on diving into the world of podcasting due to a bad case of “life overload”. (We’ll leave the easily addicted portion of this confession for another time.) My apologies to Neville, Shel and other star podcasters. You’ll at least be happy to know that I regularly review the content of your podcasts via my FeedDemon.
What I can tell you is my observations from speaking to communicators during my travels. I always get a similar response to the question, “How many in the room regularly review blogs or listen to podcasts?” Few hands go up. Of course, I make everyone promise to go back to their office, go to Technorati and enter a key word related to their industry - just to get an idea of the activity that is ‘out there’. I’m not sure how many actually do this but I have had emails from folks who thanked me for pushing them into the blogosphere. You’re welcome. I don’t know how many have taken up the podcast challenge but I hope there are at least a few. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to start listening to podcasts. Let me know your favourites so I’ll know where to begin.
The second interesting listing singled out the LA Times Wikitorial experiment - as the dumbest wiki of 2005. Short story. LA Times decides to establish wikitorials - citizen journalism and all that. Wackos soon take over and said wikitorial becomes dumping ground for naughty words. Wikitorial experiment comes to abrupt end. Pundits talk about it for weeks. Google “LA Times wikitorial” and you can read all about it - for days.
I’m afraid this bold experiment was doomed from the start - which is, frankly, a sad commentary on the state of society these days. Which reminds me, I am half way through Lynne Truss’s latest rant - Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door. Here’s a hint to any of you who have responsibility for or work with front line employees: read this book.
Finally, I was pleased to learn, thanks to researchers from the Universities of London and Warwick, that I am 4% more likely to vote for a left-of-centre party - an important piece of information considering that Canada will be going to the polls on January 23, 2006 for an election that was unnecessary - but that’s another story. Count up your daughters and read more here.
Well, I guess I better get back to that report. Oh, what’s that? More filing I can do. Whoopee!
December 31st, 2005 at 6:30 am
I think the Globe is dismissing business podcasts for the wrong reasons. It seems like a knee-jerk response to the latest trend.
Good to see some links in your posting, Warren. Makes it easier to follow your train of thought.
December 31st, 2005 at 8:17 pm
I too read the Globe and Mail today. Maybe twenty minutes instead of the several hours that it usually takes on a Saturday. There was some interesting coverage of a crime, but all those lists were a bore. Where was the upcoming year?
What’s going to happen in business news, as related to communications professionals, in 2006?
1/ depth of management will become more important. Less emphasis on the CEO as king, or at least more attention to the princes.
2/ more and more journalists are going to reduce their function as stenographers and start doing more and more holding of feet to fires, but the vast majority will still not ask hard questions and not insist on good, honest, complete answers. In the holding feet department, what I mean is the kind of followup we in North America are seeing from Anderson Cooper in regard to Katrina, plus Kitty Pilgrim’s pressure-interviewing techniques.
“More and more journalists” does not mean very many, however.
3/ PR people will be even more torn about whether to offer their execs for media relations opportunities. A few reporters will be better, a few will be more challenging, and even more won’t have done their homework, and/or will get the story screwed up.
4/ communicators will continue to not understand photography. (see the IABC news release about the revised web site, and the IABC magazine guest editorial about communciators not being photographers, and the Ragan story insulting IABC over its treatment of photography, and the
vacation pictures feature, month after month, in Commie World.)
5/ Smart communicators will try to get their heads around digital television; the technology and the content. Warren is procrastinating in his own way; my son and I are watching episode after episode after episode of American Chopper, as I explain the values of the show to an 11 year old.
6/ Three or four really important professional issues will be just under the surfcae, but none will really emerge. Example? Who do we work for for? Our boss? His or her boss? The CEO? The management committee? The board, or the chair of some board committee? That legal entity that is “the company” or something else. It’s a complicated legal issue, but it has to do with who tells us what to do, and our repsonsibility to refuse, perhaps. See Lay and Skilling and the people who worked for them.
Another example? Where does communications stuff fit into E-discovery, which is the legal process of gathering info that is in electronic form, rather than typed on paper, for court cases.
7/ The continuiing world-wide distrust and disgust at the USA and / or its “leadership” will affect international communications, as will the growing (hard to believe it could get bigger) insularity of the “leader fo the free world.” Especially interesting for senior communicators at non-US branches of US-headed multinationals., and US communicators at branches in the US of non-US companies, like Chrysler.
…………..
It will be a very interesting year for those communicators who don’t decide to keep their heads down and try to stay out of the firing line.
It’s forty minutes until next year where I am. Most of the lobster in the North Atlantic are already in 2006.
Night all, and happy new year.
BAK
January 9th, 2006 at 12:42 pm
I read the Globe and Mail’s interview with Lynne Truss back in the fall 2005 and flipped through her (itty bitty) new book when standing in line at Indigo. So now it’s on my library request list. My organization actually researched the various business etiquette books available to hand out to our delegates at our June 2005 volunteer training weekend. From both a contents and cost-effective point of view, we determined that the Business Etiquette for Dummies best suited our needs (unfortunate title aside). This one is by Sue Fox, president of Etiquette Survival, LLC. I’ll be interested to see how the Truss book compares with this useful dummy reference.
Although they may be great contemporary experts, these women of etiquette are certainly not the first. Have you ever seen these rules before? (Maybe they could be adapted for the IABC Cafe.)
Rules for the Hermitage as determined by Catherine the Great
For the Behaviour of All Those Entering These Doors
1. All ranks shall be left outside the doors, similarly hats, and particularly swords.
2. Orders of precedence and haughtiness, and anything of such like which might result from them, shall be left at the doors.
3. Be merry, but neither spoil nor break anything, nor indeed gnaw at anything.
4. Be seated, stand or walk as it best pleases you, regardless of others.
5. Speak with moderation and not too loudly, so that others present have not an earache or headache.
6. Argue without anger or passion.
7. Do not sigh or yawn, neither bore nor fatigue others.
8. Agree to partake of any innocent entertainment suggested by others.
9. Eat well of good things, but drink with moderation so that each should be able always to find his legs on leaving these doors.
10. All disputes must stay behind closed doors; and what goes in one ear should go out the other before departing through the doors.
If any infringe the above, on the evidence of two witnesses, for any crime each guilty party shall drink a glass of cold water, ladies not excepted, and read a page from the *“Telemachida” out loud.
Who infringes three points on one evening, shall be sentenced to learn three lines from the *“Telemachida” by heart.
If any shall infringe the tenth point, he shall no longer be permitted entry.
[*The “Telemachida” was a contemporary Russian poem about the adventures of Telemachus, son of Odysseus, which most contemporaries found tedious and long-winded.]
January 9th, 2006 at 1:20 pm
I would be particularly partial to 3, 7 and 9 except I’d want to reserve the right to “gnaw at anything”.