Complete Fulfillment

We recently took our girls Katelyn (4) and Addison(2) to Lisa Cornell over at Light and Shadow Photography.  This is the second time that we have taken our girls to Lisa and both times she has done an amazing job.  Her studio is at her house and she has an amazing way with our girls. 

 

As you can see in the pictures the girls have a great experience and that comes out in the pictures.  In the past we have done pictures at lots of places – the first year of Katelyn’s life she had photos every month.  We don’t get around to that as much any more but there is no question that if you want to end up with great pictures that bring your kids to life you should go see Lisa over at Light and Shadow. 

I have yet to meet Lisa as my wife has taken them both times but I have always been impressed with the variety of pictures she produces.  Many of the poses are what I call real life pictures.  The girls are playing and don’t always seemed posed – these end up some of the best picture.

 

Professional pictures can tend to be expensive but we get a ton of pictures for the price.  One of the best things is that she will sell you a CD with all the pictures taken and you have the rights to them.  She also has the small things nailed.  She gives you a small leather book with all the pictures and the CD is in a beautifully designed box. 

The true test of business is would you recommend them to your friends?  For our family that is an easy and emphatic YES.

The original video of this was eye opening enough. I don't know that this is the official version of this as many versions have been done. This one is very up to date and is even more amazing. If you have never seen this take 5 minutes to watch - it will be educational. I think all Americans should watch this. The current economy has been fairly eye opening for most Americans but many have never been through true hard times and they are use to America being on top. This video should tell those people to get off your butt and start working for what you want. Although Americans work many don't know there can be anything any different.

I came across this video interview of Tim O'Reilly by Robert Scoble.  I have been watching both of these people on Twitter recently.  They both are very connected and are looked at as leaders in social media.  Tim O'Reilly is the person that coined the term Web 2.0.  This is part one of a two part series.  For me this gets interesting about 17 minutes in where they start talking social media.  There are many other great interviews on ScobleizerTV.

I cam across this great new app for the iphone that allows you to voice dial, search (google & yahoo), map and status update for twitter and facebook. One of the best things for viral marketing is that I am writting this blog post in the video player of their demo.

I read an interesting article in outside magazine that put the nation (and world's) energy needs in perspective. Now I have no idea if these estimates are correct but I trust that this is a very smart guy at MIT that is respected by the energy community. His name is Daniel Nocera and he thinks that he may have found the solution to the nation and world's energy problems.

Here is some sound advice and why anyone jumping on Greg Oden's case should take a flying leap.

I found a great artcile by Jack and Suzy Welch today in Business Week.  I like the approach it takes.  It may not be the right solution overall but it doesn't involve just giving them money.  It requires them to fight through bankruptcy and emerge a better more competitive merged company.  As the US moves forward they are going to have to realize that the global landscape is requiring change and competition in new ways.  The auto industry is finally having to face this fact.  This is a good article and worth the read.

Technorati has published a State of the Blogosphere 2008 Report on their website. It is worth a read. The graphic below is one of the most interesting stats. You always hear about how many blogs are out there which is true but only a fraction are active. Blogs are so easy and free to create it should not be surprising.

 

 

 

The report breaks down into the following sections.

• Day 1: Who Are the Bloggers?
  
• Day 2: The What And Why of Blogging
  
• Day 3: The How of Blogging
  
• Day 4: Blogging For Profit
• Day 5: Brands Enter The Blogosphere

Lesson to us is to keep it active to keep it real - otherwise we are just part of the noise.

 

Living here in Portland there are a ton of expectations on Greg Oden. People jump on the band wagon really quick and they jump off really quick only to jump on the dog pile. It is really annoying. People just need to give him time to get into the NBA. Tonight was really his second game. He is a number one pick who was the pick of the decade to most people. Then he was hurt for all of last year then in the first 2 minutes of his first game he gets hurt again. He came back to play for the first time in Miami a few days ago and played tonight in New Orleans. He is now coming off the bench which is great in my opinion. In the Miami game he looked OK but still not in sync.

Tonight he looked great. He was a major defensive presence - patrolling the paint. He looked good running the floor - which he had not to this point. He was aggressive on the offensive end even though he did not get his number called much. He had a monster dunk off an inbounds play that was good to see. The main thing in my mind is that he seemed to feel comfortable for the first time ever on the court in the NBA. He was into the game and there was no center on New Orleans that could keep up with him. Here is what we have to look forward to in the future - a sky high block - this was awesome.

LinkedIn recently launched a new application called LinkedIn Events.  It is a cool concept but we will see if people use it.  So many people use LinkedIn but most of them - including myself - use it as a rolidex and not much more.  It will be interesting to see how they engage thier users to use some of these great applications that they are coming out with.  

As I said in my last post my job at work is heavily involved in social media. I find the subject very fasinating and I am learning as much as I can as fast as I can. I cam across a report early last week - FEED - The Razorfish Consumer Experience Report. It is a very cool report that you should check out even if you never read a page. The graphics and the experience of the report is very cool. Every page is very engaging and has some writing. It is not heavy on the text but very heavy on keeping your attention. It covers all sorts of subjects such as mobile devices, how to design a customer experience - not just a web page, twitter, widgets, games and business, wisdom of the crowd, visualizing data, and more. If these subjects or cool graphics are not your thing you should check out how they present the report online - this is nothing new but it is one of the better applications of it I have seen. Good stuff.

My current role at work could have me working 24/7 for quite some time. I love the work I am doing and it is very engaging but I have to be careful. Yesterday I was just not feeling very engaged with working - which should be OK since it was Saturday. Everyday that goes by I feel like I have missed some time to be productive. Yesterday I just could not get motivated to do much - so I didn't.  I rode my bike and did some errands but that was about it.  Looking back on it today it was the best thing I could have done because today I am ready to execute on some things. Lesson learned that sometimes you have to take some time off to regroup.

When I started working years ago it was for a Big 4 accounting firm where staff were usually just worked as hard as possible. It was just considered part of the job and on some engagements that meant lots of hours 7 days a week. A partner I was working for once said he would rather staff take 30 minutes to regroup if they needed to rather than working in a partially productive way - this was not the norm at the time. You are much more productive by taking some time off than just pounding through a task. Taking yesterday off has put me in a much better place today - bring on the week.

I finished up my MBA from the Oregon Executive MBA program (OEMBA) in June of this year and the class still has a mailing list. Lately there has some chatter on the mailing list with the main thing kicking it off is that three of my fellow Class 22 graduates appeared in the Portland Business Journal. The article was featuring some of Portland's recent Executive MBA's. I didn't read the article but most of the conversation within my class was about one person being misrepresented in the article and feeling that he sounded like he was unappreciative of the experience. The reality was that when he started the program he was in the corporate world and it was applicable to where he thought he was going. Not long into the program his path had changed from the corporate world and the value of his time and money changed. It really got me thinking about what I thought the value of my MBA was.

For a long time I have intended to make a review of the OEMBA so that others that are researching the program could get a view of it if they did not know someone. I will get to that at some point but in looking back on the value of my MBA I realize that it means something different for everyone. People who paid for it themselves have a different view than those that were paid for by the company. There were things that I learned in my MBA but I have to admit that I don't feel like I got much out of it until the 2nd year and even then it was hit and miss. The reality for me is that I have a business undergrad and have worked in Finance for years so much of the content was not new.

But my MBA has changed my career path. This is not because I have the degree but because of the opportunity it gave me to build relationships. Do not take this that there was nothing learned but no one has said - You have an MBA. Please take this job. This is only a piece to the puzzle, but during our first strategy class the assignments gave me a chance to work with one of our VP's that is a strong force in our strategy. This interaction gave me a chance to develop stronger relationships with him and let him see that I was capable of more than finance and accounting. This interaction over some of my projects let me expand that relationship beyond business as usual.

In May before graduation he asked me to come work for him in Business Development. I went over and quickly got involved in another project that I am now running. It is the first job that I can actually say that I enjoy in which I am a business owner for a very exciting part of the company with a fantastic team. After two years a lot of money it was the chance to further a relationship over some homework is how my MBA has helped me the most.

I knew they could play nicely together. They are both so graceful!!

This is a fake by the way for those of you that can't make that conclusion on your own. But it is funny for Democrats and Republicans alike.

I just got back from VMWorld. It was quite an experience. This was my first tradeshow and was some great learning for me. There were over 14,000 people there over the last 4 days. It was crazy the amount of infrastructure that was required to manage all of the logistics of this many people. They had this cartoon theme. I took some pictures of these ~30ft tall pictures that lined each of the hallways.



I will post some of the video I took of the lunch room. It was amazing.

This is the long version of the second commercial.



Here is the article that ran in Fast Company a few months ago about the firm that is developing these commercials.

This video is great. I don't know what it is with me blogging about videos lately but oh well. This has gotten awful reviews on YouTube but I think it is great. Microsoft recently engaged the same marketing firm that brought you the King - of Burger King. I think this will be the first in a series of strange but attention getting commercials.

I can't wait for this guy to join the Blazers next season. He is going to need some work but he is high energy. In the gold medal game last night he made some threes, some great passes, rebounded and this great dunk. He fouled out and Spain lost but you can tell that this guy will be an exciting add to an already great Blazers squad.

The Russian reaction is the best part.

Have you noticed that every swimming race in the China Olympics has been a world record? Some people might jump to the idea that all the swimmers are juiced. Given how many times that Michael Phelps was tested for drugs I find this highly unlikely - although it is just a matter of time until a French newspaper makes the claim.

Could there be something in the water? I'm not typically a conspiracy theorist but China is very motivated to show well in these games. Could they do something to the water that would allow the swimmers go faster? Could they reduce the friction or something? Just a random thought.

I opened the paper this morning to see that Brandon Roy was to have knee surgery this morning. It was a flash back to Oden last year. The good new is that he is going to be fine. He sure gets beat up but this is good news for the Blazers at this point. Here is some video of Pritchard talking about the procedure.

Kevin Pritchard on Brandon Roy's knee surgery

After the original Dream Team there the US went through a period of over confidence and eventually was not as dominant as they should have been, failing to win in the Greece Olympics. After the last embarrassment, it was great to see all of the great players who are now on the team. In watching the game today against China it was really amazing to realize the collection of players that was out there.

After the game there was an interview (click above for the video) with Lebron James who has seemed to become the vocal leader of the team. He was asked how this compared to the NBA finals or the NBA All-Star game. He said it was by far the biggest thing he had ever played in. Now it was estimated that 500 million Chinese watched the game and I would assume millions more around the world. It was said to be the most widely watched basketball game in the history of the sport.

It hit me as to the motivation of Lebron and possibly some of the other athletes. Lebron wants to be a global icon. He has made this claim in the past and it can be seen in his actions. Basketball is very much a global game and one of the largest passions of the Chinese people. Lebron would not have missed the chance to increase his global icon status on the largest stage on the planet.

Kobe has been said to be the best basketball player in the game and it shows the way he plays on this stage. Kobe wants to be famous but more than that he want to win and be one of the best players ever. If Lebron could ever get that killer instinct like Kobe or MJ there is no telling what he could do. Lebron becomes a free agent next summer and if he wanted to win he would consider Portland. With the players they have up and coming adding Lebron would be SCARY. But unfortunately Portland is not a big enough stage and the west coast is hard because of TV coverage. He will end up at the NY Knicks or the Brooklyn Nets. My bet is the Nets but we will see.

I have recently been using a tool called Evernote. At first I thought it was just another online tool but the more I use it the more I love it. It has four ways to get to it. I have a client installed on my PC, a client installed on my Mac, there is an iPhone application and a web tool.

It allows you to take notes in various notebooks - similar to OneNote - and it allows you tag those notes. You can also email those notes. Fairly basic features. The cool part to me is the iPhone app. It allows you to record voice memos, take pictures and make notes. All of these can be tagged and put into specific notebooks. All of this information syncs over the web and all of your clients can see the same thing. This gives me a way to compile data all in one place and see it where ever I am.

One of the other cool things is that it will index and search on text that is within pictures. This works fairly well but not perfectly. If it is typed it works pretty well and finds some hand written stuff.

This has become my main note taking tool in meetings and when a whiteboard is used I take a picture and sync it with Evernote. I also make notes to myself using the audio record function while I am in the car.

This is a beta and free right now. There is a premium version if you exceed their data limit each month which seems to be fairly large. I have not reached it. I would pay for the premium service at this point. They could take this to the next level by adding a task list and allowing you to share this with others. I would love to make this more GTD friendly. Still I am a big fan.

I recently needed to get a tent that could fit more than me. I have moved from my backpacking tent that fit me and some gear to something that could fit my wife and 2 kids. I wanted something that would fit everyone overly comfortably because we have another kid on the way and if you want to car camp go a size bigger than what you think - it is worth it.

I ended up settling on the Sierra Designs Bedouin Annex 4+2 I got from REI. I have bought Sierra Designs before and have never been disappointed in the quality or design. This tent is about $450 and my wife kept asking why not just by the Coleman at Costco for $120. I buy things with the thought that they are going to be around for a long time to come. Those tents would not hold up in the long run and I would not want to be in much rain in one. If you have ever done any camping in wet weather you know the value of a good rain fly and sealant.As I was looking to buy this there were a lot of pictures on manufactures sites but it was hard to get a true feel for what the tent was like. Because of that I thought I would post some of my pictures here. The tent has two sections. We put a queen blow up bed in each section. The front section was a little harder to do that but we made it work. The back there was plenty of room and a nice walkway. The ceiling was about 6ft which was perfect everyone involved.

It was extremely easy to put up. I have put up some tents where it was hard to know if you were doing it right but this was very straight forward. Lots of pockets on the inside which is great for any sort of extended trip.

Great tent that I would highly recommend to anyone - great job Sierra Designs.

If you say Africa there are many thoughts that come to people: AIDS, abuse, poverty, beauty, history and probably many others. If someone said Africa to me my thoughts would go to what I know – or think I know. My church supports a group in Kenya. We send a group there each year and do work on houses, churches, etc. We see pictures of cute appreciative kids and a lifestyle I can’t truly fathom. My other thoughts of Africa are the stories of massive AIDS on the continent and movies like Blood Diamonds. When I watched that movie I was sure that some of those things happen but there was also a good amount of Hollywood to the drama. I know there is war and abuse. I know that the United States gives a ton of support to the continent and we are pushing human rights issues but I am also not naive enough to think that we are not doing thing under the tables to get what we want.

All that said I recently read a very disturbing article in regards to China’s interactions with many of countries in Africa. This was special report in Fast Company magazine, China in Africa. The article profiles X countries and how China’s involvement in each country pillaging the countries to get the raw materials they need to fuel their economic growth. While the US is trying to improve the social conditions in the country and set a standard that we think should be upheld in Africa, the Chinese are doing just the opposite. They are investing billions of dollars on the continent to secure long term rights to resources. In return they are building soccer stadiums, government buildings, and infrastructure. These things keep the people in power happy and build the things they need to take what they need. The brutal facts are that there are war and extreme poverty conditions that need to change for life to improve for the people in that part of the world. This was a very eye opening article for me and something that all people should read so that they understand the reality Africa is inevitably going to get worse. If the future powers of the world are based on their access to the resources they need the US is going to be in trouble if they expect Africa to be a major source of that.

Mozambique, Zambia, Congo and Equatorial Guinea are the countries that are profiled in the article and only one point on each. The article is amazing and should read in its entirety.

A few of my favorite quotes from the article:

"Let China sleep for when it awakes, she will shake the world." - Napoleon

"The Chinese are building thins in exchange for mining rights, timber rights, fishing rights, and these are absolutely bad deals. We've lost an asset, and in exchange we got a ministry building, which is just an opportunity cost for China."
- Jim LaFleur

"China is like an elephant riding a bicycle. If it slows down, it could fall off, and the earth might quake." - bureaucrats in Beijing

It is amazing sometimes what will drive traffic on a blog. I originally put my post about this play structure up so that my dad could show pictures of what we did to friends back home. To my surprise this gets about 20 hits a day on the blog. So I thought I would give a few more tips and tricks to the assembly.

Tip #1

If you don’t have an air compressor and a impact wrench get one. If you have to rent one or just break down and buy one it is worth it. There are a lot of bolts that will make your arm fall off if you do it the old fashion way. We bought a small Porter Cable one with the wrench for about $200.

Tip #2

Have two people. This would be tough to get started by yourself. It is not impossible – I put tried putting some of the initial pieces together without my Dad and it sucked. It was very inefficient and hard. Once you get the basic framework up you can do a lot of it alone but two people is way more efficient.

Tip #3

Have 2 electric drills with at least 2 batteries. We used multiple drills. My trustworthy Black and Decker that I have had forever started smoking by the end. It was only 14v and was getting a workout. I used a neighbor’s Dewalt 18v drill and it was a champ. When my Black and Decker finally bites the dust that is what will be replacing it. Make sure you have at least 2 batteries for each drill. Having two drills lets both people be productive. Most of the holes are predrilled which is great. That made assembly easy. There are a zillion screws to this thing - easy but a lot.

Tip #4

Don’t stress out about anchoring it. When you get this whole thing together it is very solid. You should put it on as level of ground as you can but we had it on a slight slope and it was ok. We had to put some cement 1” blocks under the swing set side to level it but it is very steady and has been getting lots of play. When you are done it comes with a bunch of 18” rebarb with some big washers welded on the side. You pound that into the ground and drive some lag bolts into the structure and it really won’t move.

If you have any specific questions please feel free to ask - I will be happy to answer them if I know.

A friend of mine in Portland has a little record label that just released this album.  It got over to the folks at iTunes and now it is the free single of the week.  Everyone should check this out it is a great album.  You can download the entire album on iTunes now.   It is getting great reviews.  I purchased a copy today and concur it is some great stuff.