Archive for the ‘Living in the World Today’ Category
At least for now. Only two years ago a friend of mine was completely joking when he was asked about his favorite pro basketball team (and mine) – the New York Knickerbockers when he said – you mean ‘America’s team?’ It was pretty funny at the time considering the Knicks of 2009-2010 were woeful and nearly unwatchable.
Unless you’ve been living under that proverbial rock you are no doubt somewhat aware of the NBA’s newest sensation Jeremy Lin (who is also on the cover of Sports Illustrated this week – no not the swimsuit issue although I imagine Mr. Lin would have been happy to pose with Kate Upton). The accolades are deserved and the story is irresistible (just ask anyone). However underneath it all is a very interesting development when you consider the dramatic change in the Knicks from being a bunch of guys who were on the court together at the same time, into a team that plays for each other and gives supreme effort all the time. And they play in a city that has fully and completely embraced them. Of course if they lose three in a row….the boo-birds shall return just as quickly.
New Yorkers are a hard-to-please and cynical bunch. And when it comes to basketball they know their stuff. I don’t recall ever seeing another crowd cheer defense the way they do in New York nor cheer when a point guard decides to run time off the clock by not penetrating or shooting near the end of a game rather than throw up an ill-advised shot or make a bad pass.
But it’s not only in New York that Jeremy Lin and the Knicks are causing people to pay attention. The Knicks are not only fun to watch (for the moment) and winning (seven wins in a row for a team that was languishing at 7 games under .500) they are playing with a spirit and intensity that have not been seen from them in a long time. Even more interesting is the all-for-one and one-for-all spirit that has been imbued. Lin’s teammates genuinely seem thrilled for him and are enjoying the ride nearly as much as Lin and the fans. The Asian community both in New York and around the world is nearly apoplectic in a way that was never quite the case with recently retired NBA star Yao Ming.
Boxer Floyd Mayweather’s tweet this week on Jeremy Lin – “Jeremy Lin is a good player but all the hype is because he’s Asian. Black players do what he does every night and don’t get the same praise.” was just so off base it makes him sound stupid and jealous. If Lin was black, had gone to Harvard, been undrafted, cut by two teams and then sat on the bench for over a month as a 12th man, then come into a game and turned an entire team (and city) around he would be every bit the hero he has become -not to the Asian-American community necessarily – but just about everyone else.
Lin’s humility and bemusement at the sudden turn of events over the past two weeks is endearing and genuine. That plays both in New York as well as on the national and international stage. Let’s see, an American-born Taiwanese playing in the nation’s biggest media market in the ‘World’s most famous arena’ with a team of guys both black and white that are united and (for now) indefatigable and unbeaten with a host of new fans as well as old who cannot wait to watch or listen to the next game so they can root for their newest heroes. And they seem to be having fun by working together and giving it all they’ve got.
Sounds like America’s team to me. Hey as a huge Knick fan let me dream a little longer and I hope I never wake up from this one.
If you have 4 minutes you can watch a video that outlines Lin’s development from college into a pro basketball star. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFCZ01Hiv8o&feature=player_embedded
Today (Valentine’s Day 2012) a company called Aereo announced (Barry Diller of IAC did the announcing) in the NY Times Media Decoder blog from Brian Stelter http://nyti.ms/y5uJfZ it will begin offering a new television service that will stream local television stations to internet users. It will cost $12/month. Many people already have ditched their cable television service so it’s not exactly ground-breaking. In fact what I found most interesting were the comments from readers.
Here are samples of a few and I found them to be extremely interesting and indicative of an audience that has a both a good understanding of the landscape as well as some interesting alternative solutions.:
“This could work in Manhattan. Antenna’s do not pull in hardly any channels for many of us in the city. I would happily pay $12/month for network television only.”
“I own a television machine, but I haven’t used it in years (I do dust it occasionally). But I do have basic cable through Time Warner only because I need to have that in order to get my high speed Internet service (talk about lousy deals).“
“On those very rare occasions I might feel compelled to watch a broadcast, I have Windows Media Center on my computer, which is hooked up to a $5 antenna (I bought that at the dollar store in my neighborhood and it works quite well). I pick up all the broadcast networks, their sub-networks, and several radio stations. Seems like a much better deal than yet another service like Aereo.”
“I use Remote Potato (an iOS app) with Windows Media Center to do this and it cost me the price of an antenna, digital tuner, and the app.”
“Good-bye TWC!”
“This is going to completely change the way cable service providers do business. NYC today, nationwide tomorrow. It will be interesting to watch how cable companies change the way they engage with their existing/ new customer base in order to remain relevant.”
“TWC doesn’t advertise it, or make it easy to use, but if you ask they will sell you basic broadcast channels only for around $18 a month. I’ve been using it for a few years, connected to a dedicated computer which I use as a DVR, netflix streaming box and blu-ray player. I tried an antenna but it didn’t work for me because I’m on the wrong side of the building. My total cable/internet bill is $53 a month. “
“TV service for $12 a month? That will soon double. Still, every cable TV outfit around will try to destroy these guys immediately. And I wonder how they plan to keep it only in NYC. Of course they will feature the same low quality programming and the same “all or nothing” menu that is the norm today. Let’s see what happens!?
“I don’t understand – they’re “offering” to make me pay for channels I can get over the air for free?”
“Bravo. Living in an area without cable. Satellite is the only available service. The monthly cost is too high for a very light TV user. This service is an answer to my prayers. “
“Add this to the list of streaming services that choke my cable broadband connection. Let’s take OTA HD programming (which is free and which already has its own spectrum) and stream it needlessly over the internet, doubling the overall bandwidth that it takes to watch TV and increasing the costs. Great idea!”
I actually learned a few things just from reading the comments and that’s the most interesting thing about the article itself. A $5 antenna? And who refers to their set as a ‘television machine’? Reader comments are not always that interesting but often are don’t you think?
Like Yogi Berra says – you can observe a lot by watching.
But it hasn’t quite worked out that way.
Last week’s news from Pepsi-Cola CEO Indra Nooyi that the company was planning to cut (for a change they did not use the word ‘layoff’ so these folks are not coming back) 8,700 workers http://www.investorplace.com/2012/02/pepsico-to-cut-8700-workers/ was greeted with little surprise. The total number will be achieved over several years and represents roughly 3% of Pepsi’s global workforce.
Companies reducing their workforces are in no short supply since the ‘Great Recession’ began in 2008. For the people that manage to hang onto their jobs, the constant cutbacks only mean they will continue to be required to do more with less – people that is. Longer hours, more responsibility await for those that remain.
Worker productivity as a result of technology (starting with computers) here in the United States as well as around the globe has enabled the jobs of many to be inherited by the fewer. This too should not be met with much surprise but for whatever reasons befuddle both economists and politicians.
Why would a company want to grow from a total employee standpoint? Everyone who’s anyone in business knows that employees are expensive. The industrial revolution was the beginning of less relevance for employees.
Think about accounting and bookkeeping today versus forty years ago? Bookkeeping was a laborious process of physically entering data into a ledger with a good old-fashioned writing utensil like a pen or pencil which today has been replaced by electronic spreadsheets and computer applications. How much faster and more accurate (well, not always more accurate) is today’s bookkeeper versus one from 1972? Three times faster? Four or five times faster? Do you need more or fewer employees to perform the tasks? The ability to use fewer people to do the same or more work goes straight to the company bottom line.
Why hasn’t the explosion in productivity resulted in the creation of more new ‘new’ jobs? After all eight years ago who would have thought there would be a job such as social media community managers? And that the need for them would become so important? The problem is that the rate of old ‘old’ job loss is far greater than the creation of new ‘new’ jobs. Entrepreneurs like Mark Zuckerberg and even Groupon’s CEO Andrew Mason have helped create thousands of new ‘new’ jobs.
Groupon in fact is a very labor intensive business at present with salespeople all over the U.S. as well as other countries. You can bet the folks at Groupon are desperately looking for ways to automate the sales process so that they can dispense with the sales employees who are really nothing more than a necessary evil.
The government can do things to help create jobs like the ones that would be part of repairing the nation’s infrastructure. Most of those would be new old jobs and many of those jobs would not necessarily be long-term sustainable. The government (it has been said), can also help create favorable conditions to attract entrepreneurial people who then would be inclined take a chance in starting a company with what could be a next great idea. However that is much easier said than done.
It’s also easy (and obvious) to say that education, training, and re-training are essential to preparing people to operate in the new economy with the new ‘new’ jobs. The old ‘old’ jobs are not coming back. Steve Jobs even said so.
Who out there these days is working fewer hours and is making more money at the same time?
I was doing dishes the other night (bad luck again), and was in the process of washing the nice Reidel http://www.reidel.com crystal wine glasses we have had for more than fifteen years. I remember when we received some as a gift and then because we liked them so much went out and bought a few more.
Reidel, Spiegelau and other premium crystal manufactured glasses are expensive, sometimes very expensive. These wine glasses can cost fifty dollars apiece and sometimes even over one hundred dollars (we do not have any of those). Because these fragile crystal glasses can break in the dishwasher (some of them are more prone to that than others) the advice is to wash them by hand. Of course that’s a pain and a reason to avoid using them in the first place. But we don’t do that.
I have a thing for nice wine glasses. We use the ‘good wine glasses’ several times a week (we have a glass of wine with nearly every dinner we have at home) and there’s a certain feeling of elegance in using a high-quality product as an everyday glass.
Do you have a place in your home where you keep the ‘good’ glasses and china that you only use on special occasions? How long have you been doing that? If you don’t use them they hardly ever will break and perhaps that’s your intention. But I am telling you that you should consider using the good stuff every day. So what if you break a glass or plate now and then. The idea of making every day a little bit special will have a much longer lasting positive effect on your attitude. It will have a far greater impact than bringing out ‘the good stuff’ out a couple of times of year for guests who probably not will not remember a dish from a glass twenty minutes after they leave your house.
These thoughts came to mind when I was unpacking boxes after a recent move and I saw some nice things we have that we never use. We have put them into everyday use and are enjoying dishes and glasses as if we had just gone out to the store and purchased them last week.
Why not make everyday a little more special by using that nice stemware or china all the time?
I have looked at many resumes over the years. Most of them are conventionally boring as if a resume writing service had advised the candidate to play it safe. Consequently most resumes are anything but memorable.
Your resume should supposedly be updated continuously. There are several reasons for this suggestion but my sense is that having an updated resume ready for anything saves you the anguish of having to update things from your career over the past however many years. And if you are anything like me you probably don’t have a resume at all. I’ve not had a resume updated or otherwise for more than two decades. But having an up to date LinkedIn profile (for me) suffices as a living and breathing version of my work history and interests – that’s pretty much what a resume does don’t you think?
I don’t necessarily regularly update content related to my work experience but even there I do change things periodically to update what I’ve been working on, new skills and projects etc. Since I am not currently looking for a job why do I keep my LinkedIn profile updated? The primary reason is that I want people have the ability to get a sense of what I have done (work experience and projects), like to do (groups I am in) and people with whom I associate. It also is a place where I consistently post content and comments on things that I find to be of interest. A traditional paper or email resume seems so limiting.
How about having a video of you talking about what you have done and can do on your LinkedIn profile? But be prepared to update that video from time to time to keep the content fresh! A LinkedIn profile is self-reported (at least most of them are) as is a resume. But as I have said many times, whenever I have a first business conversation or correspondence with someone I immediately check on their LinkedIn profile. Even if I cannot see all that much because I am not connected it does give me a sense of background, work history and schooling, not all that much less than a resume! In fact when I go to LinkedIn and see that someone does NOT have a LinkedIn profile I am both surprised and a bit aggravated.
I will admit my LinkedIn profile is far from exemplary and in no way should be taken as any kind of standard. But it has so much more about me than any resume ever would.
What do you think? Will resumes go the way of the fax machine?