Over the years, I have used various digital platforms. It started when I was in the business and speaking at conferences. Many I needed to become familiar with to learn what the user experience was, some I needed to understand the revenue models, and others were experimenting with technology. After a quarter century, I found I have websites hosted by multiple companies, blogs on two different platforms, and email addresses and digital assets all over the place. I decided.

THE WAITING PLACE by Dr. Seuss Waiting for a train to go or a bus to come,
or a plane to go or the mail to come,
or the rain to go or the phone to ring,
or the snow to snow or waiting around for a Yes or No
or waiting for their hair to grow. Everyone is just waiting. Waiting for the fish to bite
or waiting for wind to fly a kite
or waiting around for Friday night or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake
or a pot to boil, or a Better Break
or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants
or a wig with curls, or Another Chance. Everyone is just waiting. ### Excerpt from Oh, The Places You’ll Go! by Dr. Seuss The Waiting Place by Dr. Seuss #waitingplace #TheWaitingPlace #DrSeuss #TheodorSeussGeisel #waitingplaceTheWaitingPlaceDrSeussTheodorSeussGeisel

It is amazing how many companies spend millions building a brand on advertising and hiring great employees, but fail miserably in customer care. United is my poster child of the week for bad customer service. I have been flying several times a month. Used to use Continental Air almost exclusively, but since the merger with United, I have not been so loyal. In fact, every time there is a problem, I have to go through hell to get something fixed or fees waived. Earlier this week, I was flying to Reno for an art installation we are working on. I received an email at 8:45 saying flight onetime so I left for SFO for an important meeting with a supporter of the Life Cube. As we get close the the airport less than 15 minuted later, I receive an email your flight is cancelled. This was not weather related, it was because of a problem with the crew. Costs? Let’s see – 1 – Aggravation and Panic; 2 – Car to SFO; 3 – Missed meeting; 4 – Waking wife in NY to try and help (I do not have a smart phone and so at midnight had to get her online to help); 5 – Car to San Jose to get a different flight; 6 – sleepless night getting in to Reno late; 7 – long next day when I was booked back to back speaking with kids. But I digress. The fact is companies spend so much building brands and fail to realize how quick customer loyalty impacts that brand. How many people do I share that story with – The next time I am given a choice, what do I think about United? If you are going to outsource – have a way to escalate a problem. Do not let your customers feel like you do not care — and get t=rid of the script that says — I can only charge you — but you can email customer care. #unitedair #callcenters #customerservice #badcustomerservice #outsourcing #continentalair #customerexperience #callcenters #continentalair #customerservice #ManillaCallCenters #PhilippinesCallcenter #outsourcing #customerservice #unitedairlines #airlinemergers #badcustomerservice #badcustomerexperience #callcenters #unitedair

During my first trip to Burning Man over ten years ago, I imagined an art installation that would incorporate my belief that if people wrote down their goals, dreams, wishes, and aspirations, the probability of it happening would be much, much higher. It took me until 2010 to devote the time and energy to design and draft my first Life Cube proposal to the Burning Man Arts Grant committee.  Each successive year, we worked hard on to create and propose what we thought would be fun, engaging, interactive and experiential art, seeking their partial funding and support.  And each year, after a lot of effort, we received an email that started with something like: “…on behalf of Burning Man’s Art Grant Committee, I would like to thank you for applying for an art grant. This year we received the largest number of applications…” and ending with “it was a very tough decision, but unfortunately, we decided not to fund your project.” For three successive years, I overcame my disappointment, and “with a little help from my friends,” came back to Black Rock City to create a Life Cube that was bigger and better and more interactive than the one before. This could only happen with the support of hundreds of volunteers and people who donated to help this dream become reality.  Every year, the project grew in size and scope, rising along with the number of burners who interacted with the Life Cube.  So when we decided to write a proposal for Black Rock Arts Honoraria in 2015, we worked hard to manage expectations — in fact, if you asked me a month ago, I was pretty pessimistic about the process and didn’t expect to hear anything other than “thanks, but…” Imagine my surprise, excitement and exuberance when after five years of trying, we received an email that began with “congratulations!  We are thrilled…” More to come when I finish jumping up and down (smile) Love, skeeter Life Cube Burn at Burning Man in 2013. Photo by Tom Oniel FACEBOOK:  http://www.facebook.com/thelifecube TWITTER:  @THELIFECUBE WEB:  http://www.lifecubeproject.com #jackrabbitspeaks #burningman #blackrockcity #burningmanhonorarium #lifecube #lifecubeproject #Burningman #blackrockcityhonorarium #lifecubeproject #brc2015 #burningmanart2015 #BurningManArts #blackrockcity #bm2015 #lifecube

With the Sequester upon us, I think this is probably the best analysis of the challenges of reducing government spending.  This is NOT a democrat or republican thing – this is a how do you change the way elected officials act, how departments and agencies re-act, and why it is so difficult.  Comments welcome. The Culture of Bureaucracy Firemen First or How to Beat a Budget Cut by Charles Peters Charles Peters is editor-in-chief of The Washington Monthly. Since parsimony is becoming almost as fashionable among politicians today as patriotism was in the 1940s, a wave of budget-cutting seems likely at all levels of government. The results could be salutary, but might be disastrous. To avoid the latter possibility, it is essential to understand how the Clever Bureaucrat reacts to the threat of fiscal deprivation. The very first thing C. B. does, Charles Peters is editor-in-chief of The Washington Monthly when threatened with a budget reduction, is to translate it into specific bad news for congressmen powerful enough to restore his budget to its usual plenitude. Thus Amtrak, recently threatened with a budget cut, immediately announced, according to Stephen Aug of The Washington Star, that it would be compelled to drop the following routes: San Francisco Bakersfield, running through Stockton, the home town of Rep. John J. Mcraucnman the House Appropriations transportation subcommittee. St. Louis-Laredo, running through Little Rock, Arkansas, the home of Senator John McClellan, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Commit tee. Chicago-Seattle, running through the homes of Senator Mike Mansfield, Senate Majority Leader, and Senator Warren Magnuson, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee. And in a triumphant stroke that netted four birds with one roadbed, Norfolk-Chicago, running through the home states of Senator Birch Bayh, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Transportation subcommittee, Senator Vance Hartke, chairman of the Commerce Surface Transportation. Subcommittee, Rep. Harley Staggers, chairman of the House Commerce Committee, and Senator Robert Byrd, Senate Majority Whip. The effectiveness of this device is suggested by a story that appeared in the Charleston (West Virginia) Gazette a few days after Amtrak’s announcement: Continued Rail Service Byrds Aim “Senator Robert C. Byrd, D-WVa, has announced that he intends to make an effort today to assure continued rail passenger service for West Virginia. “Byrd, a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said he will ‘either introduce an amendment providing sufficient funds to continue the West Virginia route or try to get language adopted which would guarantee funding for the route for Amtrak.’ ” In the Amtrak case, C.B.’s budget cutting enemy was President Ford. Sometimes it is a frugal superior in his own department. C. B.’s initial response is much the same. If, for example, a Secretary of Defense from Massachusetts insists upon eliminating useless and outmoded bases, the Navy’s C. B. will promptly respond with a list of recommended base closings, led by the Boston Navy Yard. Another Bay of Pigs An irate constituency is, of course, a threat to all elected officials and to every other official who dreams of converting his appointive status into one blessed by the voting public. Even a small irritation can suffice. Thus, Mike Causey of The Washington Post tells of a National Park Service C. B. who, confronted with a budget cut, quickly restored congressmen to their senses by eliminating elevator service to the top of the Washington Monument. Every constituent whose children insisted on his walking all the way up was sure to place an outraged call to his congressman’s office. Similarly, a Social Security Administration C. B. faced with a budget cut is certain to announce that the result will be substantial delays in the mailing of social security checks. Whenever possible, a C. B. will assert that the budget cut is certain to result in the loss of jobs. The threatened employees are sure to write emotional protests to their congressmen. And, as the National Rifle Association has proven, even a tiny minority, if sufficiently vigorous in its expression of opinion-vigorous meaning that they make clear they will vote against you if you fail to help them can move a legislator to take the desired action in the absence of an equally energetic lobby on the other side. C. B. concern about loss of others’ jobs is a deeply personal one. He knows you can’t be a commander unless you have troops to command. Not long ago Jack Anderson dis covered that the Navy, trying to ad just to less money than it had requested, was depriving the fleet of essential maintenance, while continuing to waste billions on useless super-carriers and transforming small Polaris submarines into giant Tridents. The reason of course is that the more big ships with big crews we have, the more admirals we need. Rank in the civil service is also determined in part by the number of employees one super vises. Thus a threat to reduce the number of one’s employees is a threat not merely to one’s ego but to one’s income as well. In its first flush of victory after the 1960 election, the Kennedy Administration embarked on two ill-fated missions. One was the Bay of Pigs. The other was an effort to fire 150 AID employees, all of whom wrote their congressman, as did their fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, and in all probability their creditors and the creditors’ relatives. The 150 were, of course, reinstated. If a Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan does become President, he might also ponder the lesson of Gail Parker, who found that to keep Bennington College afloat she would have to deprive teachers of tenure and rehire them each year on the basis of their merit and of what the college could afford. The threatened faculty stirred up such a storm that the Board of Trustees, which had originally backed Gail Parker, deserted her and she had to resign. The tenured employee can even go to court. A recent decision by the U. S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia held that a college that fires a tenured professor because too few students are taking his course to pay for it must find another job for the professor, even if it requires dis missing other more competent but untenured professors. Firemen First On the other hand, there are the teachers we don’t want to fire-those in the public schools, for example, where teacher-pupil ratios of 1 to 40 are common. These are the ones C.B. always says he will have to fire when he is menaced with a budget cut. This tactic is based on .the principle that the public will support C. B.’s valiant fight against the budget reduction only if essential services are en dangered. Thus, C. B. always picks on teachers, policemen, firemen first. In the headquarters bureaucracies of the New York City and the Washington, D. C. school systems there are concentrated some of the most prodigious, do-nothing, time-servers of the modem era. No administrator threatens to fire them. If they are “the fat,” and if he is to fight the budget cut, it would of course damage his cause to admit their existence. He must concentrate on threatening a loss of muscle. Similarly, the Army, when faced with a budget cut, never points the finger at desk-bound lieutenant colonels. The victims are invariably combat troops. This is particularly unfortunate, since in government, as in human beings, fat tends to concentrate at the middle levels, where planning analysts and deputy assistant administrators spend their days at tending meetings, writing memoranda, and reading newspapers. Sometimes, however, the C.B. will be deliberately non-specific about the jobs that might be cut. When the City Council of the District of Columbia recently proposed a $67.2-million cut in the city’s budget, Mayor Washing ton responded with an announcement that he would have to fire 4,000 city employees, but with no indication of exactly where the axe would fall. This tactic is designed to arouse all city employees who don’t want to be among the 4,000-which of course means all city employees-to write the City Council protesting the outrageous cuts. Another approach, which might be called “How Can You Guys Be Such Scrooges,” was tried on the Council by Joseph Yeldell, the director of the city’s Human Resources Administration, who proclaimed that yes, he knew exactly what’ the budget cut would do to his department, it would mean the cancellation of the foster parents program for 2,000 orphans. But such appeals are guaranteed to work only during the Christmas season. The more reliable year-round tactic is to threaten the loss of essential services that affect almost all voters. John Lindsay was a master of this technique. Confronted, for example, with a 1971-72 budget of only $8.6 billion, he said he would have to fire 10,000 policemen, 2,500 firemen, 3,600 garbage workers, 12,000 hospital workers, and 10,800 teachers. In the end, he didn’t have to fire anyone. Abe Beame was not so lucky. He threatened to fire 67,000 similar ly essential employees, and-when the bastards actually cut his budget found that he really had to drop 35,000. There’s the rub. If we really cut the budget of the C.B. who has bluffed by saying that he will have to fire essential employees, he may-to preserve his credibility-actually have to fire them, instead of the middle level newspaper-readers who are the real fat. We could end up with a government of planning analysts, friends of congressmen, and trains running to Bakersfield via Stockton. Original article published in the The Washington MonthIy/March 1976 (credit to my friend J. Ellis for the original posting of this article — it appears that the only place on the Web that it appears was in a scanned format and very difficult to read, so I converted it here to share – please excuse any typos that may have occurred) #CharlesPeters #budgetcuts #sequester #TheWashingtonMonthly #governmentspending #TheCultureofBureaucracy #FiremenFirst #FiremenFirstorHowtoBeataBudgetCut

Love this effort by Dan Hosek. The Life Cube Project Friend created this logo for The Life Cube Project. View original post

Civil Air Patrol honors members at ceremony June 11, 2009 More than 130 area members of Civil Air Patrol gathered to congratulate New York state’s first General Carl A. Spaatz Award recipient since 2005. Cadet Natasha Cohen of Dobbs Ferry was honored in a ceremony at Wing Headquarters at the Westchester County Airport. Named for the first Air Force chief of staff, the award is Civil Air Patrol’s highest cadet honor. The evening also celebrated the lengthy career of White Plains resident Lt. Col. Johnnie Pantanelli as a local leader of influence in this volunteer organization. The evening culminated in the renaming of the North Castle Composite Squadron in her honor. The General Carl A. Spaatz Award is a rare national honor, presented to cadets who have demonstrated excellence in leadership, character, fitness and aerospace education. http://www.lohud.com/article/20090611/NEWS02/906110339/1216/NEWS0204

My friend Steven took me to Shopsin’s many years ago when it was located down end of Houston Street.  A wonderful article about one of those NY hide-a-ways. Source:  NYT Magazine The Way We Eat – Flipping the Bird by CHRISTINE MUHLKE Larry FinkPhoto:  Kenny Shopsin and his daughter Tamara on the brunch shift. Right: Counter culture. Published: October 9, 2008 AS THE LEGENDARY bon vivant Ludwig Bemelmans once noted of restaurateurs: “The most strenuous customer-versus-proprietor battles occur in the smart restaurants of Paris and New York. This kind of restaurant, as a rule, is small. It is benefited by a certain type of guest and injured by another, and the latter must be discouraged from coming. In a man confronted daily with the task of separating the wanted from the unwanted, a degree of arrogance is indispensable.” Add photos Lars Klove for The New York Times & A Shopsin’s specialty: Mac ‘n’ cheese pancakes. Confronted daily with the task of deciding who gets to eat at Shopsin’s General Store, his 20-seat restaurant in New York’s Essex Street Market, the cook and owner Kenny Shopsin separates the wanted from the unwanted with a degree of foulmouthed eloquence that makes Lenny Bruce look like Sirio Maccioni. This is food politics in its rawest form. “We have a really wonderful relationship with our customers for the most part,” he said. “We kick [expletive] out. Regularly.” Up to three times a day. Order off the menu? Out. Cellphone call? Beat it. Sometimes people don’t even make it into a seat, as in the case of the infamous no-parties-bigger-than-four rule. Or maybe Shopsin simply doesn’t like you. (Let’s just say that years ago, when I took Alain Ducasse to dinner at Shopsin’s — I ate there weekly for eight years, until I lost it in the divorce — I knew better than to introduce him to the cook whose food he was praising. I waited weeks to tell Shopsin, who softened and got borderline misty for a second before bellowing: “I’m glad you didn’t tell me. I would’ve kicked the” you-know-what “out.”) It’s not the most Danny Meyer-like approach to cultivating clientele, but after 28 years behind the stove, Shopsin wants only to cook for people he likes. “I’m not a very mature person,” he says after a lunch shift, his white hair kept at bay by an appropriately McEnroesque headband. “Sometimes my mind works a bit too fast, and I come to the conclusion of a relationship with customers faster than they get there. The abruptness of my understanding the essence of what’s happening is really upsetting to them and makes them vindictive and angry.” (One man, refused service at the original Bedford Street grocery-turned-restaurant, ripped a toilet out of the floor.) Shopsin’s menu is another ejector seat. With more than 900 items — including 300 soups — it sends the indecisive, the health-conscious and the humorless running. It’s a window-slash-rabbit-hole into the 66-year-old’s mind: 75 riffs on pancakes, from Post Modern to Lemon Ricotta; 100 made-to-order soups, from Cream of Any Vegetable to Cheeseburger; and countless other dishes, like the Nuclear Melt Down sandwich and burgers with mac-’n’-cheese sauce. “I dedicate myself to consuming all sorts of ideas,” says Shopsin, an avid reader and Internet crawler. “Eventually something inside me, probably skewed by my erotic feelings about breasts and things like that, assembles a product and just shoots it up.” For example, a recent item on the food blog Serious Eats about foods on a stick led to the State Fair combo plate: corn-dog sausage, s’mores pancakes and chicken-fried eggs. New dishes are printed on the menu the same day: “I spent almost $3,000 on toner in the last three months,” Shopsin says. Unlike other restaurateurs, Shopsin has refused publicity. (Whenever I tried to write about him, he would tell the fact checkers that Shopsin’s was a shoe store or out of business or insist that they do something uncheckable to themselves.) But two regulars, a Knopf editor and a literary agent, persuaded him to write a cookbook. “Eat Me: The Food and Philosophy of Kenny Shopsin” blends recipes with his uncensored thoughts on cooking (“The only explanation I can give for . . . how I came to this method of cooking is that it’s a product of a lot of psychotherapy, drugs and making chicken potpies”) and running a restaurant (“My approach . . . is the exact opposite of ‘the customer is always right’ ”). Like the restaurant, where three of his four children work, the book is a family affair, designed by his daughter Tamara and photographed by his son-in-law, Jason Fulford. Shopsin is dreading the attention “Eat Me” will attract, claiming it will draw the wrong people for the wrong reasons. “The brilliance of my restaurant is that the customer base is soooo special,” he says. “They do not hesitate to engage the stranger at the next table, as opposed to just observing the dwellers of the zoo.” They know that the real reason Shopsin’s has been successful for so long — despite the fact that the owner is a self-confessed “[expletive]” who serves mind-bending food in a very funky environment — is that it has such a huge heart. “I was thinking I could learn to be insincere,” he says in book mode. “But the first day I really go off, I’ll probably just close for a month.” A version of this article appeared in print on October 12, 2008, on page MM89 of the New York edition. Related Recipes: Lemon Ricotta Pancake (October 12, 2008) Recipes: Mac ’n’ Cheese Pancakes (October 12, 2008) Recipes: Pancake Batter (October 12, 2008) Recipes: Pumpkin Pancakes (October 12, 2008)

Besides the poor customer service we all talk about – long lines at security, planes sitting on runways, and delayed flights.  Let’s talk about their CRM.  I fly business class.  I have done it for business and personal travel.  I am a member of various airline frequent flyer programs at different levels of status.  I also have opted in to receive their special offers.  Why do they send me stuff i have no interest in?  If they want to do one to one instead of mass marketing (the power of interactive marketing)  we have all talked about, why are they mailing me offers if I fly out from cities other than in the NYC area?  Why do they send me offers to fly coach at some fabulous discount?  Can’t they look at my profile and email offers that I might really be interested in?  Please share your ideas, input, or experiences.

Below is the email sent to Redgee Capili, Sr. Director of Client Services and Chief Privacy Officer and Ben Golub, President and Chief Executive Officer at PLAXO.  Let’s see what type of response we get.  I think it may be worth contacting Linkin too. Gentleman – I have decided to tackle updating my contacts for the first time in almost 7 years.  The number of contacts in outlook is over x0,000.  In addition, I would like to search inbox and sent mail for additional contacts.  This includes over xx0,000 emails. The challenges are: 1. Large volume 2. Need to de-dup 3. Need to avoid Sp-am emails 4. Would like to notify all contacts of my current contact info 5. Prefer to export clean list and email BCC or send via a mail solution so we don’t overload my mailbox with bounced email addresses 6. Security – no hack-ing into my contacts 7. Prefer not to send via Plaxo first time through 8. Need to know what draw on my email service provider servers are 9. Other issues? I originally tried to deal with your Premier Support via online CHAT.  I also tried to call your Premium Tel Support – but these are both directing me to India call centers.  I would hope that based on the unusual size of the contacts and task at hand, you have someone that can assist in this process.  Please call or email me at ….

The Theodore Roosevelt quote The Man In The Arena is one of my favorites. It is from the speech “Citizenship In A Republic” delivered at the Sorbonne, in Paris, France on April 23, 1910. Cadillac just used this quote in an Academy Awards advertisement without attribution. #daregreatly is their twitter tag.  So not cool.  Let’s not even talk about why this quote is appropriate or not for Cadillac – but to use it without attribution is just plain wrong.  Advertising Agency: Publicis why did you do this?? “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” ~ Theodore Roosevelt Source: The Man In The Arena speech “Citizenship In a Republic” delivered at the Sorbonne, in Paris, France on April 23, 1910. The full speech can be found at http://www.theodore-roosevelt.com/images/research/speeches/maninthearena.pdf Cadillac Ad Dare Greatly is also video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_fm3O5h9Bg TAGS: #TheodoreRoosevelt #TeddyRoosevelt #TheodoreRooseveltquote #ManInTheArena #daregreatly #Cadillac #Advertising #caradvertising #cadillacad #cadillacroosevelt #rooseveltcadillac #Publicis #AcademyAwards #AcademyAwardsAdvertising #AcademyAwardsCadillac #Publicis #TeddyRoosevelt #TheodoreRooseveltTeddyRooseveltTheodoreRooseveltquoteManInTheArenadaregreatlyCadillacAdvertisingcaradvertisingcadillacadcadillacrooseveltrooseveltcadillacPublicisAcademyAward #ManInTheArena #TheodoreRooseveltquote #Cadillac #AcademyAwardsCadillac #TheodoreRoosevelt #cadillacad #rooseveltcadillac #AcademyAwardsAdvertising #daregreatly #caradvertising #advertising