This week I sat through a very exciting 7 minute presentation - my company's new corporate video. This prompted me to think of a great project for the marketing/communications department: the un-corporate video. Just as the corporate video attempts to put a positive spin on every facet of the company, this version would call a spade a spade. First of all, it would be longer than 7 minutes -

(fade in) - (unattractive man narrates) - Let's get one thing straight - the glory days are over. Most of our products have been turned into commodities, and our major customers now have so much bargaining power that we routinely take it on the chin. Sure, we'd love to sell our business units that have stalled, but they are about as appealing to potential buyers as an '80 Citation w/flood damage.

(cut to R&D center) - we tell investors that we spend $100's of millions on R&D every year, but most of that is just technical support. True R&D investments are shunned by executives bent on reaching this year's profit numbers. Most of our R&D centers have parking lots that are half empty (or is it half-full?)

(cut to HR person) - In HR, we have very little experience in real business, but have become the ultimate power brokers. It's like that scene in the nature shows where all the little baby turtles hatch on the beach and make a mad dash for the water. We're the birds that swoop down and pluck the tasty morsels from the sand. Those lucky enough to survive will have their annual compensation decided via Ouija Board.

(cut to the plant) "Could someone please call Haz-mat. Asbestos is leaking out of the drains AGAIN"

(tag-line) - (insert company name here) we don't make the products you buy, but we used to.
(fade away and cut music)

Another random thought - This week I have had an ear infection. After being a nuisance since last Saturday, it kicked in for real yesterday, and I have been popping Advil ever since. Yesterday I bought "earache relief ear drops" but didn't notice on the label that this was a "homeopathic" product. I have since learned that this a fancy way of saying the product has no hope of affecting much of anything. I feel a better label for this particular medicine is "quack juice". After putting the drops in and expecting instant relief, nothing. Today I arranged to go hometeaching to one of my families where the dad is an ENT doc. He took a look in after I had shared a spiritual message, and said that the external canal is infected. We both know but do not say that the infection was probably caused by my addiction to Q-tips. He called in a prescription for REAL eardrops, which I will pick up and religiously use beginning tomorrow.

Lastly, any player who cries on his final play as a Coug is ok in my book. Scroll down most of the way and read about Trandon Harvey. A beautiful game, a perfect ending. Viva la Cougs.

Ok, that wasn't the last thing, but this is: a "hi" from the kids.

Ok - so looking more like the pumpkin, but as long as we call it the pumpkin, there is some hope that it will turn out ok. Actually, just a few random thoughts this week.

First - why is it that hammering out a coherent power point presentation as a group is such an unbelievably hard task? It's as if when one says "I think we need to rework slide 16", the person who slapped the presentation together in the first place hears "I can't say you have any worth as an individual, and this slide is just another example of a general lack of intelligence" (I've been on both sides of this before). In such happy meetings, there are many roles to play:

Hyper-defensive author - must begin each response to a suggestion with "the reason that I put that in is that..."

Time nazi - persistently insists that there is no way that a person can cram 45 slides into 60 minutes (incidentally, this person is usually right)

Pithy nazi - has a pre-determined limit for bullet points or words, and exceeding these values will cause irreparable harm to innocent audience members. Ideal slide has heading like "Competitors" with 3 nondescript bullet points like "Distribution, Value Chain, Cannibalization"

Chart guru - Pushes group members to use more charts than Ross Perot. Everything has to be shown in chats with upward trending lines.

Audience advocate - Usually begins sentences with: "sure know what you're saying, because we're here, but put yourself in the shoes of the audience". Very similar to the Executive Advocate, who insists that all executives have the attention span of 3 year olds, and must be spoon-fed data in 10-second sound bytes, with the entire meeting lasting no longer than 5 minutes. Incidentally, these people are frequently right, too.

Techno-wizards - are aware of obscure and puzzling powerpoint functions, frequently relating to multimedia applications. This person would know, for example, how to patch 1/4 page-size video conference session into slide 33 ("Live Goals") so Anthony Robbins can conduct a live Q&A.

The Realist - points out after a grueling 2-hour smackdown, after which most group members feel insulted, that the power point is just a small part of a great presentation, and that Microsoft has tricked us into thinking we don't need a good story if we've got slides with cool features like "wipe" animated bullet points.

Enough on that. Random thought 2: while handwriting a really long word, like "differentiation" it is frustrating to realize that the first few letters are too ambiguous to support an abbreviation, and that I will just have to write the whole thing.

Random thought 3: the best thing we've bought at Costco in the last 2 months is le petit francais. WOW - this is really good bread, and now they don't sell it anymore. As you can see from the web site, you can get it shipped to you, but it costs roughly 200% more than it would at Costco.

That's all for now.

Billy has again inspired us. After seeing the unprecedented fame achieved by http://www.oneinagillian.blogspot.com, we had to give it a try,too. This may as well be called the wannabilly blog, but as you can see, it's not.

This opening post gives me the chance to ponder the future of the fledgling campbelloki blog. It could turn out to be like yesterday's trip to Blueberry Park, when we finally convinced the ever-cautious Jerome (who is 6, after all) that he should try to ride his bike without training wheels. This took some doing, and we fielded numerous questions on the way to the park about whether we had remembered to bring his "safety gear". Even after he was on the bike, he was reluctant to give it a shot (I could tell because he kept on repeating "Dad, don't let go").

In spite of his trepidation, I gave him a shove and let go. Lo and behold, his inner ear appears to be functioning adquately, and he just rode off across the vast field. It may have been harder than it looked (Marie heard him muttering "concentrate, concentrate, concentrate..." as he rolled by her), but he was doin' it. Our blog could turn out to be like this - a genuine "why didn't we do this a long time ago?" type thing.

Or our blog could turn out to be like the unloved pumpkin that has been kicking around our house for 3 weeks now. Marie bought it, thinking that we could make a jack-o-lantern for Halloween. This was fine, except that we really didn't have much time before Halloween to carve jack-o-lanterns, and it mostly just absorbed abuse from the kids. Come the evening of the 31st, I got home from work and decided that we should at least set something out that would let the kids know that they could trick-or-treat here. I tried to quickly carve the pumpkin, but it was not to be. The pumpkin isn't the hollow kind, and with a very sharp, expensive, German knife that Aunt T gave us, I can penetrate 1/16" into its surface. Now, our little pumpkin has missed its shot at the big time. Marie is thinking of alternative uses, but mostly it just gets kicked around, and every once in a while Asha posts some graffiti on its surface (where did Asha get the sharpie? Why can Asha always find a sharpie when she wants one? Didn't we throw all the sharpies away after the keyboard incident?). So you see, our blog could turn out to be one of those "well, it was a nice thought, but it really didn't enrich our lives or the lives of our friends and family members" kind of things. Only time will tell - for now, though -
Thanks, Billy!