Archive for May, 2010
radio silence
i’m currently in the middle of a very hectic 3 week period. Â 3 trips, 1350 miles, and an oil change later and i’ll be back to normal.
i’ll certainly try to get a post or two in, but i didn’t want anyone to be surprised if my posting schedule lags behind. your patience is appreciated in this time of radio silence.
thanks!
- dino
don’t forget to add the ‘fun’
image by Tony M...., flickr artist
i was just at the grocery store picking up supplies for the week.
when i got home, i took out the bottle of vitamin water i had purchased as part of those supplies and cracked the top.  the flavor was called “spark” and was one that i hadn’t tried before, so — being new to me — i held up the bottle to read the label.
to my amusement, the text was upside-down.  i turned the bottle to read it and, the label — the text i was reading — talked about the action which i had just performed (turning the bottle upside-down).  it closed with a clever joke, and it was at that point that i realized what just happened.
i was having fun!
fun from a plastic vitamin water bottle? Â yes. Â (well, more specifically it was the label itself.) Â so i started to ask myself a very simple question: why, when we create products, do we always leave out the fun factor? Â when did we all become mr. soggy pants?
how to eat like a professional
business lunches are not like normal lunches.  there’s still an agenda, even if there’s no official distribution of one.  when you meet with a client, a potential new hire, new teammates, etc. — you have certain things that you want to discuss, that you want to accomplish.
so why waste time ordering your food?
when you pick the restaurant, be sure to send a menu along with the meeting invite — and maybe even direct your guest(s) to a particular item that you’ve had before or that seems interesting to you.  by sharing the menu ahead of time, you can spend less time thumbing through appetizers and more time on accomplishing the goals of your agenda.  less time selling your favorite open-faced sandwich to your guest, and more time selling your organization.
there’s an art to the business lunch. Â if you can master it, your organization’s plate will always be full.
ideas do not occur in a bubble
image by Reini68, flickr artist
when was the last time you had a good idea? Â one of those eureka moments?
i remember back in college my roommate and i were discussing which of the honey bunches of oats ‘flavors’ we enjoyed the most. Â after trying pretty much all of them, i told him with conviction that hbo with strawberries was my favorite. Â i said: Â ”the thing i love about it is how your milk turns strawberry-flavored afterwards.”
immediately i thought, ‘hey — they actually make that stuff!’ and i shouted out with such joy, “dude!  what if i make strawberry milk, and then pour that into my hbo with strawberries?  it’s double the strawberry!  how awesome would that be?!”
the very next time we went to the grocery store i bought some strawberry nesquik mix and put my theory to the test.  naturally it ended up being horrendous, but it was still a good idea at the time.