Midnight Train to Los Angeles

This year AMTRAK turned 40! So when I realized that I would be able to attend Blog World Expo 2011 in downtown Los Angeles, I decided to travel by train from Tucson, AZ to Los Angeles Union Station.  Round trip ticket (1000 miles) for a reserved coach class seat (which totally reclines like a La-z-Boy), sans meals, was $70.

Leaving Tucson

Have you ever traveled a long distance by AMTRAK? I have. Every trip is slightly different. This trip I was traveling solo, so I didn't have children to wrangle or a mother-in-law to assist or a husband to convince that he should not opt to disembark from the train three states early!  It was just me and a few hundred other travelers who were taking the Sunset Limited / Texas Eagle from Tucson to Los Angeles.  The train was to leave Tucson at 10:30PM, but on November 3, 2011, it really was the midnight train to Los Angeles!

Palm Springs Wind Farm

The funny thing is it really didn't matter to me that we left Tucson late. I knew we would be traveling through the night and if sleep escaped me there was a Club Car complete with a snack bar and an observation car to visit. As it turned out, I slept comfortably and awoke around 6:50AM as we approached Palm Springs. The view from my window (captured with my RAZR phone) was the "wind farm".  Pretty eerie, don't you think?

For the next two hours I experienced a trip down memory lane. You see I lived a good many years in California's San Gabriel Valley - Pasadena, South Pasadena, Alhambra, West Covina...my oldest son was born in San Dimas, I finished college at Cal State Los Angeles (East LA), externed at LA County Hospital and Los Angeles Juvenile Hall and worked in downtown Los Angeles from 1974- 1981. I felt comfortable both on AMTRAK and in Los Angeles.

Arriving Los Angeles Union Station

Los Angeles Union Station

It had been 17 years since I was in Los Angeles Union Station.  Then my family and I were about to go across country First Class to New York's Pennsylvania Station. So again I felt at home and quickly found my way to the Taxi stand to take a short ride to the Los Angeles Sheraton Hotel. Union Station is still quite busy, people coming and going from all over the world.

As I said earlier, I was in Los Angeles to attend Blog World Expo 2011 (you can see a link to my review below).  Downtown Los Angeles still looks good. It was my first time in the Los Angeles Convention Center on the same campus as the Staples Center.

Los Angeles to Tucson

LA Convention Center / Staples Center

My few days in Los Angeles passed quickly. I met a lot of nice people and enjoyed downtown. By Sunday afternoon I was returning to Union Station and believe it or not I was boarding AMTRAK's 3:10PM train to Yuma, AZ and then on to Tucson. I arrived safely in Tucson at 1:30AM, after enjoying dinner with three strangers in the Dining CAR and a five hour nap in my recliner. All in all not a bad way to travel.

I hope you will think about traveling via AMTRAK. Many people complain about train travel, but I find it totally enchanting. Over the years AMTRAK has had a number of tag lines...

"All Aboard - AMTRAK"
"There's something about a train that's magic."
"Enjoy the journey."

In closing, please enjoy this video of vintage AMTRAK television ads.  If you listen carefully you'll hear Richie Havens singing "All Aboard"

By the way, have you ever traveled by train in the USA?  Would love your comments.

Related articles

• Amtrak adds trains for Thanksgiving travel (thenewstribune.com)
• BWELA 2011: 7 Key Takeaways from BlogWorld Expo 2011 (businesswire.com)
• Cheers To Blog World Expo Los Angeles 2011 (webconsuls.com)

I Walked Out On Frank Sinatra!

Image via Wikipedia

I once walked out of a Frank Sinatra performance. 

It was July 30, 1982. Mr. Sinatra was the headliner for the New Universal Amphitheatre. This was an opening night benefit performance, complete with Hollywood legends being interviewed on the red carpet, 6200 guests in total including my husband and me - compliments of my husband’s employer Atlantic Richfield (ARCO). The comedian Charlie Callas opened for Frank Sinatra. He was his usual entertaining self. And then suddenly Mr. Sinatra strolled on to the stage and was welcomed with a standing ovation.


We settled back into our seats, the orchestra started to play and HE began to sing. He sang all the familiar songs, but something didn’t seem right. And then we realized that he was reading the words, not from a teleprompter, but from sheet music that was propped up on his music stand. He fumbled lyrics and really didn’t seem to engage with the audience of his peers and fans. Finally, as he reached the end of the first set he started to sing “New York, New York” --the crowd got to their feet -- but still he had to read the lyrics.  And as he finished, my husband and I looked at each other and we knew we were leaving.  Yep...we got up and left. The “professional” was not prepared!


Are you wondering why I am telling you this story?  Well, there are some on-line discussions, maybe more than a few, going on regarding last week’s Closing Keynote at Blog World New York.  I wasn’t there. I wanted to attend Blog World New York; however, prior commitments made it impossible. But I am familiar with the Closing Keynote Talk Show format having attended Blog World 2009 and Blog World 2010. I was very impressed with the 2010 Closing Keynote Talk Show “New Media Live” hosted by Rob Barnett, who interviewed Adam Corolla, Penn Jillette, Jeffrey Hayzlett and Cali Lewis. It was informative, interesting, entertaining and sometimes very funny.

But I am not here to talk about 2010, I want to offer what might be some simple observations about what many are calling a cringe -provoking event and what one tweet summed up like this: 

"Grateful to those of you who hung out at #bweny for the closing keynote. Enjoy your party! I'm flying home. :)"

1.  I don’t think the problem had much to do with the presenters, the subject matter, the content, but more about the presentation itself.  When you “book” a keynote “act” (and don’t kid yourself - a keynote is an “act”), you are paying for a professional performance. The lighting needs to be programmed, the sound system needs to be tested, the orchestra needs to be rehearsed, and someone needs to “call” the show. To invite five “professionals” to a stage who may never have presented together in the past and expect it to just work is playing with fire. This is live theatre and anything can happen, but your preparation has to be spot on. 
2. I might be wrong, but I suspect most people in the audience would have been just fine with the adult language (edgy content), if they were watching a polished show with context. Do you really think people walk out on Lewis Black or Bill Maher or Sarah Silverman or Chris Rock or Dennis Miller? What would make people walk out is that they don’t want to watch a train wreck...it is just too painful. Not unlike me watching Frank Sinatra 29 years ago.
3. People commenting on this topic have talked about how they are professionals attending a conference of bloggers, professionals, and business owners. Can we look-up the definition for “professional?”  It does not necessarily imply educational status, advanced degrees. A professional is anyone who conforms to the technical and ethical standards of a profession. More importantly, if you are being paid you have moved from amateur status to professional status. It is about showing up on time, prepared and performing the task that you are being paid to do. It is less about what you do for a living, and more about how well you do it and how effortlessly you “seem” to do it.

This on-line conversation will probably continue for a few more days. I know that Rick Calvert, Dave Cynkin, Deb Ng and the entire Blog World team will learn from Blog World New York. Every year they fine-tune their product. They are observant and sensitive to what they see and hear.  I, for one, look forward to meeting up with the whole crew this November when the curtain goes up on Blog World LA!

Your thoughts...you think about it.  I would love your input.

Related articles

• Barbara Sinatra tells it her way in her new memoir (csmonitor.com)
• Frank Sinatra at Universal Benefit Concert
• Charlie Callas Dies at 83

Social Media TRUST Is Like Wearing A Lapel Pin

Last Friday Jay Baer published a post "Speak No Evil - Why Trust Isn't a 4 Letter Word in Social Media." I came across his piece as I have "social" friends that follow Jay; I saw a Tweet and took a break to read the post. Maybe you read it, maybe you commented -- I will say this, the conversation got pretty interesting. If you have ever been an employer or employee you might want to add your two cents. Here is mine!

Circa 1979 Crocker National Bank AVP

Two years ago I touched on my corporate career, writing a piece for my company's blog. If you read this blog with any regularity, then you might know about other jobs I have held since 1968! I once wrote a whole post about my adventures of being a Sears' employee.  OK, suffice it to say I have been in the work force for 43 years. I have seen a lot. That is why I was taken aback when Jay said: "The belief in decentralized social media and every employee being in marketing is taking root in America." I believe that for decades, maybe even approaching a century + companies have known that every employee is part of marketing. This is not NEW!

Companies may take a different approach now that we have "social media," but it is really not very different than the days of lapel pins and/or uniforms.

Weren't we always social? I think so. 40 plus years ago the banking industry dreamed of eliminating tellers by introducing Automatic Teller Machines (ATMs), but they soon discovered that customers still like and need to go into a bank office and interact with bank employees and why not have that be a teller, as opposed to a marketer or Vice President. According to Wikipedia: "Tellers are considered a "front line" in the banking business. This is because they are the first people that a customer sees at the bank and are also the people most likely to detect and stop fraudulent transactions in order to prevent losses at a bank." Given this definition you'd think it was a pretty high paying job...but the median income for tellers is about $22,000.

Jay is correct when he concludes that "common sense and good judgment is not the sole property of a department" such as marketing, but I disagree with Jay when he says that "it's just that social media missteps are public," as if news media has not always been public.  Jay suggests (I am sure tongue-in-cheek) that companies might consider reading employees' emails or listen in on their phone calls. These two activities have been part of the corporate world for a long time. And when the corporate world was less technically mature, we had mimeograph machines, steno pads, the Recordak machine, microfilm, multi-line phones and employees' memories.  I think what Jay might have meant to say is that today's social media missteps are immediate. They were always PUBLIC.

Ernest Hemingway once said: "The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them." Trust is a two way street and it doesn't take long for an employee or employer to know whether they can trust each other. Think about the lapel pin. Recognizable logos! As soon as the employee is seen in PUBLIC wearing the company pin they are part of the Social Media department. When a company hands the employee the pin or supplies a uniform or logo embroidered polo shirt they have broadened the employee's role to include marketing. The employee's social audience has broadened further than one might imagine.

Last year at BWE10 I heard Jeffrey Hayzlett remark that the "customer owns the brand;" today's board rooms and senior management would do well to remember that every employee really is and always has been part of marketing. I have some great lapel pins to prove it!

Go ahead click the photo. How many of these companies can you identify?

Do you have any lapel pins? How about polo shirts? I would love to know what you think...

Witnessing Egypt 2011

Witnessing Egypt 2011 is remarkable. I know most of us have been following the events on the streets of Cairo for the past few weeks. Obviously social media has allowed us to have 24 hour access to the events. Today, 02/11/2011, will now be a date that we will call to mind for ever so many years. On January 28, 2011, my friend, Allison Boyer, who owns After Graduation and also writes for Blog World, wrote this post Social Media's Role in the Egyptian Protests.

Alli Boyer

It caught my attention. I hope you will read it. It occurred to me that Alli's perspective as a young woman (she is younger than Mubarak's regime) was interesting and hopeful. It made me recall my feelings from some 32 years ago when I was Alli's age and the news about Egypt also brought hope.

Here is my OP-ED...
January 29, 2011

Hi Alli,
I just want you to know that I appreciate you writing about this world event as it unfolds or doesn’t unfold (due to a black-out) in the social media. As you say we can “listen”. And maybe by listening we will take the time to read and learn about the most recent history that has brought Egypt to this point. 

I remember distinctly watching as the Camp David Accord was signed by Carter, Sadat and Begin…one week before my wedding in September 1978. While we watched on television, this was before the days that you would run to your phone and call your friends long-distance. Afterall…long distance calling was still a luxury. But we did write letters and I remember receiving one letter from a good friend marveling at the miracle of the Camp David Accord. The actual Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty took affect March 26, 1979, the day stays in my mind as my father passed away the next day.

Thinking back over the past 30 years…Sadat was assassinated by fundamentalists in October 1981, shortly after Mubarak took office and he has remained ever since. Begin’s life history is one that is most interesting. Leaving office in 1983…well time goes on.

I guess what I am trying to say is this: For half of my life, the Camp David Accord and the subsequent treaty helped to keep things just a bit calmer. But it seems that what passed for calm to those of us so far away and wrapped up in our own worlds was not really calm, but simmering, and now we all need to take the lid off of the pot and dare to look inside!

So much to learn…listening is a good beginning.
Judy

___________________________________________
It would be great to hear your thoughts about Egypt now and even then....

Related articles

• Foreign Policy: Why You Should Care About Egypt (npr.org)
• Cairo: Finding the city behind the headlines (cnn.com)

Too Busy to Write? My September 2010 Review

As usual, today Chris Brogan's post "The Discipline to Write Daily" was thought provoking and it reminded me that during the month of September 2010 I did not publish one single post here on my OP-ED page. This is not to say that I was on total radio silence for the last month, but just active writing for Webconsuls, working with our clients, commenting on others' interesting posts...

Today I thought it might be fun to point you to some of my favorite September reads. If you read these posts, you will see I left a comment, so take a few minutes and scroll through the comments, you will learn a lot about people.

• September 1, Chris Brogan wrote about "Selling Wool or Yarn" ---I have done both!
• September 8, Ridgely Johnson talked about "My Kindle, My BFF" --- I don't have a Kindle.
• September 16, I published "Rose Knows What to Do When Novelty Wears Off"  --- A lot of people enjoyed meeting Rose!
• September 17, Allison Boyer writing for Blog World chatted about "Twitter Chats: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly"  --- for those who join in chats this is a great primer.
• September 22, John McLachlan asked "Why Blog?" --- Why indeed?
• September 22, Jorja White talked about "Empathy 101 and Adam Braverman" --- Jorja is busy with family and writing an e-Book, but on September 29 she did a follow-up  "Misunderstanding and Adam Braverman"
• September 22, Julien Smith wrote  "Your Happiness is Not Your Own"
• September 23, Lisa Petrilli talked about "How I am Measuring My Blog's Summer Harvest" --- I was honored to be mentioned by Lisa.
• September 29, Chris Brogan started an interesting discussion "How Not to Have Mind Numbing Office Meetings" --- to which I commented...

Chris,

I have known some employees/workers who just love meetings. You know why? You can easily fill up your whole "workday" with meetings and not open your brain or your mouth. I promised on Twitter that I would give you a couple of funny meeting anecdotes, so here you go.

I was a banker for many years. In the old days, many banks were required to have standing committee meetings for things like commercial loan applications, directors and officers, etc. One day I realized that I was going to be in three consecutive meetings with just a 30 minute lunch break. It was a cold winter day in northern New Hampshire (Littleton). The meeting room was cold and uncomfortable. So during the break I walked across Main St into a wonderful store and purchased a Lanz of Salzburg flannel nightgown. I went back to the bank, put the nightgown on over my wool business suit, walked into the empty room and waited. The rest of the "committee" arrived and it took 20 minutes before the bank President looked at me and started to crack up with laughter. I told him I was preparing for a long cold day into night. The meeting was wrapped up quickly.

Many years later I was working as a Senior Business Analyst on a high profile project for a casualty and property insurance company. The CTO was directly in charge of this project, even though there was a "project manager." The CTO had a habit of answering many direct questions by saying: "We'll see." I must add that when we had our weekly project meeting on Friday mornings we each had name cards, so one day I created a name card with the name "Will Cee" and placed it at the chair next to mine. The meeting started and about 15 minutes into the "agenda" the CTO asked if Will was coming to the meeting, to which I responded "We'll see!"

In closing, I will be pretty busy over the next few weeks. Don't worry, I will take plenty of photos. And, don't forget I will be meeting some of you in person at Blog World Expo 2010.

In the meantime, you can enjoy my wedding photo album that covers family weddings from 1901 through 1978.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Why You Should Come To BlogWorld If You Are A Content Creator (blogworld.com)

Blog World's Allison Boyer Shares Easy Bake Oven Ideas

BlogWorld introduced us this week to Allison Boyer. Allison is their new staff blogger.  On June 10th Allison posted "Are You an Easy-Bake-Oven Blogger?"  Lucky Allison, she caught my eye with Easy-Bake-Oven and I knew I would read her blog and have a story to tell her.  I hope you will take a few minutes to read Allison's post. She has some really valid ideas about blogging and e-commerce.



Here is my OP-ED...
June 10th, 2010 at 7:22 pm

Hi Allison,

I stopped by here today, as I saw the announcement the other day regarding your new position with Blog World. Then much to my surprise your title today referenced the Kenner Easy Bake Oven. I totally understand what you mean when you talk about "Why shouldn't we get something for free? We don't want to risk our hard-earned money on an item that we know nothing about. The more we enjoy the free product, the more likely we are to make a purchase."

If we step back to the days prior to e-commerce, etc, what you are suggesting is like the old days of window shopping. Do you see what I mean? The free part was being able to take yourself or your whole family to a store…like Macys or much later to a mall and walk around and touch the items, try on the items, dream a little, put something on lay-away…and maybe, just maybe be so pleased by the user experience we would eventually make a purchase.

And that brings me to my Easy Bake Oven story: In November 1968 (yes I said 1968) I was living in San Francisco and I was hired by SEARS to be what they referred to as a Christmas extra (read temporary full-time employee). This was a very large store on Geary, took up an entire city block. At the time it was one of three unionized Sears stores in the US. They hired me to be a sales clerk, I was just 19. I had no idea how to sell anything and I didn't really like sales people. So I would spend my time on the floor making things look nice and because I was unassuming the customers liked me and would ask for help. I made a lot of sales!

But, because I was a Xmas extra I was an uncommissioned sales person and therefore not only were the regular employees mad at me for my high sales, they were even more mad that they didn't earn the commission on my sales. Since I didn't really understand any of this and how it worked, I told the other sales people that I would ring my sales in on their cash register key if it would make them happy. Oh! Boy, they were happy, but HR was furious. So they moved me to the next department, office furniture. I made a $1000+ sale the first day and the next day I was transferred to baby clothes. And so it went for about a month. Keep in mind I was earning $2.25 per hour!

About week four, they put me in the toy department: A mad house of a department during the holiday season. On my first day in the toy department a man came to me and said he needed help buying toys for his four children. $700 later every regular toys' sales person was complaining about me. The next morning HR came to me and said: "We have a proposal for you. Kenner Toys needs a toy demonstrator and if you demonstrate the toys for 8 hours per day and take inventory of Kenner toys in the morning and evening to see how much has sold, KENNER will pay you a commission at the end of the season." Problem solved…or so you might think.

Here are the toys I was to demonstrate: A record player – with one record "Hey, Jude" by the Beatles; a race car track; and a Kenner Easy Bake Oven. To make matters more interesting, unlike today, back then parents would arrive at the toy department and say to their children "stay here and play while I shop!" So I became the caregiver, playing with the kids, baking cakes and listening to "Hey, Jude" for three very long weeks.

Sales…you are right, Allison, somehow you have to let your customers get to know you and "touch" your product.

Good luck with your new position.
______________________________________________________
Here is Allison's reply:
June 11th, 2010 at 12:04 am

Thanks for sharing your story, Judy (and for the well wishes)! I totally agree, what I’m suggesting in this post can be compared to window-shopping and store demos. With an information-based product, like an ebook or video course, free content is the demo, and if your free content stinks, so will your sales.
______________________________________________________

What are your thoughts? I hope you will visit often and share your story.