Planning Ahead. Again.

I'm spearheading our company's efforts at our 2011 Australasian Expo this year, from the USA perspective. Honestly, the heavy lifting is being done by our experts in Australia, my role this year is to mesh what the corporate team needs to see happen with what's really occurring on the ground in Australia.  I love doing these events, I consider it like a chess match. My job is to keep a few moves ahead of the attendees and their conference experience, a few moves ahead of our USA team who will arrive and expect everything to be just right, and a few moves in front of any potential pitfalls or goof ups that could arise. Challenges include: 

• Budgeting, forecasting and paying for the event.
• Arranging the education to match with what our franchisees consider valuable.
• Putting suppliers and attendees (our customers!) needs and wants in persepective.
• Learning about the venue and possibilities from 12,000 miles away. Once I arrive, I'll have maybe a day to make changes if necessary, then it's showtime.
• Filling the event with levity and fun. I fear if I wasn't involved, it would swing to "all work, no play," not what our franchisees are looking for. Allow me to add the sugar.
• Putting together a presentation on social, mobile and trends for our attendees.
• Getting mentor shirts for everyone in our mentor program before the event. And have them arrive in Australia on time.
• Bringing all the proper goodies to make the event smooth: projectors, converters, passport, winter clothes!
• Taking too many pictures, as I'm known to do at these things.
• Arranging pertinent and fun coffee break and intro music.
• Organizing some kind of start up - launch for the event.
• Dinner with our mentor chairpersons once in Melbourne.

These things are not really all challenges, they are things I have to consider, arrange and conquer before the end of the month. Plan Ahead Events is one of our franchise brands, I'm back doing what started this concept in the first place. And I love the prospects of getting it all right.

The power of a secret.

"Yes Virginia... There is a Santa Claus."

Be honest, since learning the truth about childhood "heros" that bring gifts in December, furry critters that deliver eggs and sweets each spring and still more that delve beneath your pillow for ejected deciduous teeth, we haven't had many surprises as adults. Too many people (in my opinion) find out the sex of their babies before birth, the last true mystery we as grown-ups can experience. Unless you're a techie. Unless we visit the mall often and shop in those stores decorated in predominately white. If we look west, to the Northern California suburb of Cupertino, there's still a magical place where secrets are kept. Adult-grade secrets. They are kept so well not even our best guesses turn up the truth. So well that rumors swirl through the Internet as published by our most trusted sources alleging to know what will happen, when it will happen, and what it might entail. Really?

This churn, usually twice a year, eminates from Apple. It comes through their labs, their leader(s) and their product offerings. The level at which Apple goes to in keeping secrets about its product line and features is amazing.  It captivates not just techies, but millions of worldwide users - all waiting and watching to see what their future will be like a year or two from now. We clamor to see what's coming, but inside, we yearn for the surprise. The secrets make for good press, good standup comedy, good speculation and criticism from competitors, it is a wonderful thing we are experiencing. And it's happening now, when we think we know everything, when "google" is a noun and a verb, ten years into the new millenium. How can they seemingly do what so few other entities anywhere else can accomplish? Foreign governments are pressed to keep good secrets from our intelligence agencies. Our government can't readily keep good secrets from the public, but Apple can clamp down in so many ways to keep their gems hidden until they're ready to show them off. It's fantastic, I LOVE THE HYPE!

Here's where we stand... If the media needs to find a prototype in a bar or have a former Vice President blurt out a launch date in a speech to get its info, Apple is masterfully dominating the secret-keeping. I can wait until the next release, I'm anxious to upgrade my iPhone 3Gs to the iPhone 5. I am an adult, and they have me excited like a child. I'm thankful that someone has put together all the pieces necessary to cloak research, muffle the facts about production, disguise delivery and specifics until the launch day arrives. Heck, even the store employees are in the dark until the products are in the back room ready to be displayed. In this age of Twitter, blogs, text messaging and everyone having a camera nearby, kudos to Apple for being smarter that the experts. Thanks to the folks in Cupertino for giving us ideas to follow, products to long for, and a cottage industry of people that can't unlock the secrets, which makes this adult laugh.

I'm excited!

So much happening so quickly, I had better write this stuff down.  This list consists of things I hear about or read about that capture my interest and imagination. You may not know what each item on the list pertains to, but I do. If you have a question, ask. I'm not shy, I'll elaborate and it may make for a future post that is interesting to many!

• iPhone 5 or whatever gets released next month from Apple.
• Paper.li feeds for franchisee's blogs.
• Running my first 50 mi race in October.
• Changes are still being made to EMeBOSS.
• Australasian Expo in Melbourne.
• New features and profile changes on Linkedin.
• Klout.
• Legs of Las Vegas relay running team.
• Microsoft Windows 8 and Metro.
• Getting new mentor shirts for every mentor in the world for 2011.
• Being registered for Boston marathon early.
• Lululemon Athletica.
• Plan Ahead Events.
• IMEX America.
• Nathan sports endurance packs.
• Using iPads in our training center.
• Social Media Primer classes with new franchisees.

I'll have more, it's a list that is always changing...  Comment or reply with questions about any of the above topics and I'll make sesne of it.

-dm

Change is good. Dilution? Not so much.

"Change is omnipresent" ~ echoes the saying. I agree, but I'm mindful of the results of change, too. "Don't lose your soul to dine well for a week", is what I say.  Here's my example... The X Games. They didn't have those when I was young enough to compete, but if they did, I may be blogging about double backflips on bikes and the injuries I sustained in an effort to win an ESPN gold medal.  What a boom for action sports, a whole show in both winter and summer focusing on offbeat sports that look infinitely more appealing to youth than being the 10th man on a little league squad. A multi-day televised event and collection of sports where the chubby long-haired kid had just the same amount of chance at winning as the provebial quarterback au popular. Providing he or she did their training!

The X Games burst onto the scene with some sports you'd seen before. Maybe these were things you had tried and now wished you had stuck with, like skateboarding on wavy streets or BMX bike jumping. The best part about X Games is they always were fantastic at introducing new extreme sports to the masses... things like skysurfing (parachutists on snowboards doing tricks in freefall), barefoot waterski jumping and surfing.  These alternative sports brought plenty of viewers to the ESPN networks out of curiosity... like what the heck are these people doing and let's see some more crashes! Surfing, possibly the original extreme sport, shocks me with it's lack of presence in the last few years of the contest.  What about climbing? The race between two people up a rock wall? That was fun to watch!  I don't understand how the X Games brand has become so watered down, now we only have 4 disciplines of summer games (Moto, skateboarding, BMX and Rally cars, where'd they come from?) and 3 types of winter sports (skiing, snowboarding and snowmobile). The organizers seemed to have lost their teeth for the extreme and are now safely delivering what "most people" and big $$ advertisers want to see. These sports are very fun to watch, but I miss the crazier things you could only see on the X Games. Remember Street Luge? Let's take superfitted skateboards to winding paved hills, lie flat on them, and race to the bottom.  That's extreme! Can you believe X Games BMX jumping doesn't take place on dirt anymore? Or that Moto has a contest for "Best Whip?" Seriously, one trick and you get a medal? Something's gone wrong here.

For those who subscribe to the "change is constant" mantra, I get it.  The X Games today are not supposed to be the same as when they started in the 80s. Has ESPN left the action sports fan unsettled in making a few popular events the backbone of their efforts? I think so.  Have other businesses focused on the new and exciting only to leave their reason for existence behind? Yes. My thoughts here are simple. Innovate, yes. Change, improve, research, test, reconfigure, reissue, repeat, yes. All the while, keep grounded to your main cause, the thrust behind what got you where you are. Using that as a base, build and grow a business or a brand. If you make widgets, make more widgets, different kinds of widgets, make products that accompany widgets, make packaging for widgets, etc. But make widgets all the way through the growth process. You may develop into a company that used to make widgets and now make much more. At some point may widgets drop from the product lineup? My guess is, only when the soul of the business leaves or dies and a new regime is at the helm. The new skipper finds less connection to the reasons that spawned the idea, product or company perhaps. Change, but don't dilute the soul of what you're doing in your career, your business or your personal life. And keep a widget on your desk in plain sight to always remind you where your soul should be.

-dm

Linkedin grows in importance.

Wasn't it just a few months ago that Linkedin was the social media system everyone swore you had to be on, but you weren't really sure why?  It's an online resume, right? I'd tell people it was the 2011 version of your "little black book", the kind we used to keep our best, most reliable contact information in. Linkedin is growing in popularity, now it's grown  considerably to be more than just that.

On May 19th, Linkedin went public.  They must've had some new ideas waiting all warm in the pot because since mid March they've added new features that are very useful.  These features make using Linkedin more compelling than it was when it served as just an online resume.  I've grown to like the Advanced Search and the Linkedin Today News feeds.  Advanced Search is now very robust.  You can search for people by Industry, Groups, Relationship, Language, Job Function, and Company Size.  You can really drill down to locate experts and potential employees with the People Search tool. For our franchisees, it's help at their fingertips. Without having a tremendous amount of "connections" (friends or followers in Linkedin-speak) you can still gleen fantastic information from others if you share similar groups with them.  Advanced Search lets you look not only for people, but for Updates, Jobs, Companies, Answers and Groups.  Look for keywords in the answers that others have contributed to the groups or communities they've joined.  It works very well.

The Linkedin Today News feeds are even better in my opinion! You now have a Linkedin Today bar at the top of your Home page.  It contains news and postings from industries and subject matter that you've subscribed or shown interest in.  You select which subjects or sources you'd like to receive information regarding and Linkedin delivers content as recommended by other users with similar interests.  Each user that recommends a link or article shows up in a counter in the lower left corner of each article.  If you read an article you like, you can reach out and "connect" with many of the folks that also thought enough to post this article. It's very effective, and for me it has spurred me to post things I think are of interest that I don't think others have seen yet. To the readers that share my interests, sources and groups, I come across as informed and knowledgeable on these subjects. This allows me to potentially "link" to others for answers and to have them reply to my questions.  Always professional in nature, it puts the power of the Linkedin community to work on my issues. That I like. I'm guessing we'll see more improvements to Linkedin before 2012.  They've added job change features and other hiring/HR tools...  pretty neat for a free system!