So I went with the CEO and Founder of lead fusion for breakfast, oatmeal and grits – but a look at the menu of this chef/owner restaurant makes this a must go back. Randy Gruber has quite an interesting selection – some highlights include a salad with a fresh oregano lemon vinaigrette, grilled Portuguese spiced shrimp on fennel radish salad and diced avocado with lemon, pan seared calamari steak with crispy capers, garlic, lemon, parsley and baby grape tomatoes , rigatoni with broccoli rabe, Andoulle sausage, garlic, pine nuts, chili flakes, white wine, cram roasted tomatoes. Mains include a pesto grilled halibut over lemon thyme risotto with grilled aspergus and tomato basil salsa, pan seared sea scallops with red lentils, sauteed spinach and orange carrot ginger sauce, a seared duck breast and Israeli couscous with golden raisins, dried cranberries, pine nuts, sauteed string beans and fig sauce. And last, sides including polenta with vanilla clove honey and caramelized onion mashed potatoes. Ummmmm. Got go got to go back.

The clock is ticking to switch. Yes, me, one of the first 100,000 blackberry users will probably move to Apple someday in the future.

My good friend Steven C sent this to me and 2 others with a note about learning sales from us. He is one of the most terrific sale people I know…and let’s face it folks, I’ve said it before, I am just a sales guy. Anyway, good read and information. Harvard Business Review – HBR Blog Network Seven Personality Traits of Top Salespeople by Steve W. Martin June 27, 2011 If you ask an extremely successful salesperson, “What makes you different from the average sales rep?” you will most likely get a less-than-accurate answer, if any answer at all. Frankly, the person may not even know the real answer because most successful salespeople are simply doing what comes naturally. Over the past decade, I have had the privilege of interviewing thousands of top business-to-business salespeople who sell for some of the world’s leading companies. I’ve also administered personality tests to 1,000 of them. My goal was to measure their five main personality traits (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and negative emotionality) to better understand the characteristics that separate them their peers. The personality tests were given to high technology and business services salespeople as part of sales strategy workshops I was conducting. In addition, tests were administered at Presidents Club meetings (the incentive trip that top salespeople are awarded by their company for their outstanding performance). The responses were then categorized by percentage of annual quota attainment and classified into top performers, average performers, and below average performers categories. The test results from top performers were then compared against average and below average performers. The findings indicate that key personality traits directly influence top performers’ selling style and ultimately their success. Below, you will find the main key personality attributes of top salespeople and the impact of the trait on their selling style. 1. Modesty. Contrary to conventional stereotypes that successful salespeople are pushy and egotistical, 91 percent of top salespeople had medium to high scores of modesty and humility. Furthermore, the results suggest that ostentatious salespeople who are full of bravado alienate far more customers than they win over. Selling Style Impact: Team Orientation. As opposed to establishing themselves as the focal point of the purchase decision, top salespeople position the team (presales technical engineers, consulting, and management) that will help them win the account as the centerpiece. 2. Conscientiousness. Eighty-five percent of top salespeople had high levels of conscientiousness, whereby they could be described as having a strong sense of duty and being responsible and reliable. These salespeople take their jobs very seriously and feel deeply responsible for the results. Selling Style Impact: Account Control. The worst position for salespeople to be in is to have relinquished account control and to be operating at the direction of the customer, or worse yet, a competitor. Conversely, top salespeople take command of the sales cycle process in order to control their own destiny. 3. Achievement Orientation. Eighty-four percent of the top performers tested scored very high in achievement orientation. They are fixated on achieving goals and continuously measure their performance in comparison to their goals. Selling Style Impact: Political Orientation. During sales cycles, top sales, performers seek to understand the politics of customer decision-making. Their goal orientation instinctively drives them to meet with key decision-makers. Therefore, they strategize about the people they are selling to and how the products they’re selling fit into the organization instead of focusing on the functionality of the products themselves. 4. Curiosity. Curiosity can be described as a person’s hunger for knowledge and information. Eighty-two percent of top salespeople scored extremely high curiosity levels. Top salespeople are naturally more curious than their lesser performing counterparts. Selling Style Impact: Inquisitiveness. A high level of inquisitiveness correlates to an active presence during sales calls. An active presence drives the salesperson to ask customers difficult and uncomfortable questions in order to close gaps in information. Top salespeople want to know if they can win the business, and they want to know the truth as soon as possible. 5. Lack of Gregariousness. One of the most surprising differences between top salespeople and those ranking in the bottom one-third of performance is their level of gregariousness (preference for being with people and friendliness). Overall, top performers averaged 30 percent lower gregariousness than below average performers. Selling Style Impact: Dominance. Dominance is the ability to gain the willing obedience of customers such that the salesperson’s recommendations and advice are followed. The results indicate that overly friendly salespeople are too close to their customers and have difficulty establishing dominance. 6. Lack of Discouragement. Less than 10 percent of top salespeople were classified as having high levels of discouragement and being frequently overwhelmed with sadness. Conversely, 90 percent were categorized as experiencing infrequent or only occasional sadness. Selling Style Impact: Competitiveness. In casual surveys I have conducted throughout the years, I have found that a very high percentage of top performers played organized sports in high school. There seems to be a correlation between sports and sales success as top performers are able to handle emotional disappointments, bounce back from losses, and mentally prepare themselves for the next opportunity to compete. 7. Lack of Self-Consciousness. Self-consciousness is the measurement of how easily someone is embarrassed. The byproduct of a high level of self-consciousness is bashfulness and inhibition. Less than five percent of top performers had high levels of self-consciousness. Selling Style Impact: Aggressiveness. Top salespeople are comfortable fighting for their cause and are not afraid of rankling customers in the process. They are action-oriented and unafraid to call high in their accounts or courageously cold call new prospects. Not all salespeople are successful. Given the same sales tools, level of education, and propensity to work, why do some salespeople succeed where others fail? Is one better suited to sell the product because of his or her background? Is one more charming or just luckier? The evidence suggests that the personalities of these truly great salespeople play a critical role in determining their success. Steve W. Martin teaches sales strategy at the USC Marshall School of Business. His latest book on sales linguistics is Heavy Hitter Sales Psychology: How to Penetrate the C-level Executive Suite and Convince Company Leaders to Buy. #Harvard #HBR #sales #topsalespeople

HEALTH JOURNAL APRIL 5, 2011 The Sleepless Elite Why Some People Can Run on Little Sleep and Get So Much Done By MELINDA BECK Melinda Beck explains why for a small number of people getting a full night of sleep is a waste of time and the reasons behind it. For a small group of people—perhaps just 1% to 3% of the population—sleep is a waste of time. Natural “short sleepers,” as they’re officially known, are night owls and early birds simultaneously. They typically turn in well after midnight, then get up just a few hours later and barrel through the day without needing to take naps or load up on caffeine. They are also energetic, outgoing, optimistic and ambitious, according to the few researchers who have studied them. The pattern sometimes starts in childhood and often runs in families. While it’s unclear if all short sleepers are high achievers, they do have more time in the day to do things, and keep finding more interesting things to do than sleep, often doing several things at once. Nobody knows how many natural short sleepers are out there. “There aren’t nearly as many as there are people who think they’re short sleepers,” says Daniel J. Buysse, a psychiatrist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and a past president of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, a professional group. Out of every 100 people who believe they only need five or six hours of sleep a night, only about five people really do, Dr. Buysse says. The rest end up chronically sleep deprived, part of the one-third of U.S. adults who get less than the recommended seven hours of sleep per night, according to a report last month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. To date, only a handful of small studies have looked at short sleepers—in part because they’re hard to find. They rarely go to sleep clinics and don’t think they have a disorder. A few studies have suggested that some short sleepers may have hypomania, a mild form of mania with racing thoughts and few inhibitions. “These people talk fast. They never stop. They’re always on the up side of life,” says Dr. Buysse. He was one of the authors of a 2001 study that had 12 confirmed short sleepers and 12 control subjects keep diaries and complete numerous questionnaires about their work, sleep and living habits.One survey dubbed “Attitude for Life” that was actually a test for hypomania. The natural short sleepers scored twice as high as the controls. There is currently no way people can teach themselves to be short sleepers. Still, scientists hope that by studying short sleepers, they can better understand how the body regulates sleep and why sleep needs vary so much in humans. View Full Image Matt Colins Normal Sleeper Most adults have normal sleep needs, functioning best with 7 to 9 hours of sleep, and about two-thirds of Americans regularly get it. Children fare better with 8 to 12 hours, and elderly people may need only 6 to 7. Wannabe Short Sleeper One-third of Americans are sleep-deprived, regularly getting less than 7 hours a night, which puts them at higher risk of diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure and other health problems. Short Sleeper Short sleepers, about 1% to 3% of the population, function well on less than 6 hours of sleep without being tired during the day. They tend to be unusually energetic and outgoing. Geneticists who spotted a gene variation in short sleepers were able to replicate it in mice—which needed less sleep than usual, too. Related Sleep Videos What Is a Good Night’s Sleep Worth to You? Worth It?: Sleep Tracker Elite Using A Sleep Monitor To Track Healthy Sleep News Hub: Why Some Couples Sleep in Separate Beds “My long-term goal is to someday learn enough so we can manipulate the sleep pathways without damaging our health,” says human geneticist Ying-Hui Fu at the University of California-San Francisco. “Everybody can use more waking hours, even if you just watch movies.” Dr. Fu was part of a research team that discovered a gene variation, hDEC2, in a pair of short sleepers in 2009. They were studying extreme early birds when they noticed that two of their subjects, a mother and daughter, got up naturally about 4 a.m. but also went to bed past midnight. Genetic analyses spotted one gene variation common to them both. The scientists were able to replicate the gene variation in a strain of mice and found that the mice needed less sleep than usual, too. News of their finding spurred other people to write the team, saying they were natural short sleepers and volunteering to be studied. The researchers are recruiting more candidates and hope to find more gene variations they have in common. Potential candidates for the gene study are sent multiple questionnaires and undergo a long structured phone interview. Those who make the initial screening wear monitors to track their sleep patterns at home. Christopher Jones, a University of Utah neurologist and sleep scientist who oversees the recruiting, says there is one question that is more revealing than anything else: When people do have a chance to sleep longer, on weekends or vacation, do they still sleep only five or six hours a night? People who sleep more when they can are not true short sleepers, he says. That All-Nighter Feels Good—Temporarily Sleep deprivation makes most people grumpy. It’s sometimes used as a form of torture. Oddly enough, it can also bring on temporary euphoria, according to a study in the journal Neuroscience last month. Researchers had 14 healthy young adults stay up all night and all the next day and then compared their reactions with 13 subjects who had slept normally. In one test, sleepless subjects asked to rate a series of images uniformly saw them as more pleasant or positive. “We saw this strange lopsided shift,” says lead author Matthew Walker, an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of California-Berkeley. Brain scans also showed that the subjects who had pulled all-nighters had heightened activity in the mesolimbic pathway, a brain circuit driven by dopamine, a neurotransmitter that typically regulates feelings of pleasure, addiction and cravings. The boost of dopamine after an all-nighter may help explain why sleep deprivation can alleviate major depression in about 60% of patients, although the effect is only temporary. “As soon as they get recovery sleep, all that mood elevation is lost,” says Dr. Walker. Could the sleep-deprived brain be somehow compensating for the lack of downtime with a surge of dopamine to keep on going? Scientists don’t yet know. Earlier studies have also shown that sleep deprivation amplifies activity in the amygdala, the primitive emotional center of the brain, and reduces it the prefrontal cortex, where higher, more rational thought occurs. It may be that the brain reverts to a more basic mode of operating when it is sleep deprived, Dr. Walker speculates. Alternatively, he says, “we know that different parts of the brain are more sensitive than others to sleep deprivation. It may be that the prefrontal cortex just goes down first.” Although the feelings of euphoria sound great, Dr. Walker warns that operating more on emotion than reason can be very risky. “You are all gas pedal and no brake,” he says. That can be dangerous, indeed, if you are in a job that requires both long hours and difficult decision making To date, Dr. Jones says he has identified only about 20 true short sleepers, and he says they share some fascinating characteristics. Not only are their circadian rhythms different from most people, so are their moods (very upbeat) and their metabolism (they’re thinner than average, even though sleep deprivation usually raises the risk of obesity). They also seem to have a high tolerance for physical pain and psychological setbacks. “They encounter obstacles, they just pick themselves up and try again,” Dr. Jones says. Some short sleepers say their sleep patterns go back to childhood and some see the same patterns starting in their own kids, such as giving up naps by age 2. As adults, they gravitate to different fields, but whatever they do, they do full bore, Dr. Jones says. “Typically, at the end of a long, structured phone interview, they will admit that they’ve been texting and surfing the Internet and doing the crossword puzzle at the same time, all on less than six hours of sleep,” says Dr. Jones. “There is some sort of psychological and physiological energy to them that we don’t understand.” Drs. Jones and Fu stress that there is no genetic test for short sleeping. Ultimately, they expect to find that many different genes play a role, which may in turn reveal more about the complex systems that regulate sleep in humans. Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Leonardo da Vinci were too busy to sleep much, according to historical accounts. Winston Churchill and Thomas Edison came close but they were also fond of taking naps, which may disqualify them as true short sleepers. Nowadays, some short sleepers gravitate to fields like blogging, videogame design and social media, where their sleep habits come in handy. “If I could find a way to do it, I’d never sleep,” says Dave Hatter, a software developer in Fort Wright, Ky. He typically sleeps just four to five hours a night, up from two to three hours a few years ago. “It’s crazy, but it works for me,” says Eleanor Hoffman, an overnight administrator at Bellevue Hospital Center in New York who would rather spend afternoons playing mahjong with friends than sleep anymore than four hours. Sometimes she calls her cousin, Linda Cohen, in Pittsburgh about 4 a.m., since she knows she’ll be wide awake as well—just like they were as kids. “I come to life about 11 at night,” says Mrs. Cohen, who owns a chain of toy stores with her husband and gets up early in the morning with ease. “If I went to bed earlier, I’d feel like half my life was missing.” Are you a short sleeper? For more information on the genetic study, contact Dr. Jones at chris.jones@hsc.utah.edu Write to Melinda Beck at HealthJournal@wsj.com #sleep #sleepless #TheSleeplessElite

I often refer to this so thought it best to post on my Live Spaces Life is a Journey Blog – Enjoy, scotte cohen WEAR SUNSCREEN – (NOT) A COMMENCEMENT SPEECH, (NOT) BY KURT VONNEGUTIf I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they’ve faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine. Don’t worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.Do one thing every day that scares you.Sing.Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts. Don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.Floss.Don’t waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. The race is long and, in the end, it’s only with yourself.Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.Stretch.Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don’t.Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You’ll miss them when they’re gone.Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll have children, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else’s.Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them.Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.Get to know your parents. You never know when they’ll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They’re your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel.Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you’ll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.Respect your elders.Don’t expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you’ll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.Don’t mess too much with your hair or by the time you’re 40 it will look 85.Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.But trust me on the sunscreen. * * * * * The original column by Mary Schmich of The Chicago Tribune. June 1, 1997. Click here to read Mary Schmich’s version of how her article was miscredited to Kurt Vonnegut via e-mail and became hugely popular. The song, on the CD Something for Everybody by Baz Luhrmann, is properly credited to Schmich. The lyrics to Everybody’s Free to Wear Sunscreen, by Mary Schmich: * * * * * Dateline: 08/10/97 Don’t bother trying to look up Kurt Vonnegut’s email address on the Internet. He doesn’t have one. The reason is the 74-year-old author’s longstanding aversion to all things “cyber” – an aversion doubtless exacerbated by the events of last week. In case you’ve been living in a bomb shelter, here’s what happened: on or about Thursday, July 31, 1997, an email message began making the rounds featuring the text of a “commencement speech” purportedly given by Vonnegut at MIT. It was clever, poignant, full of the kind of arch-cynical humor Vonnegut is famous for. Unfortunately, Vonnegut never gave any such address. Nor did he write the words attributed to him. The actual address heard by MIT graduates this year – in which Vonnegut had no part whatsoever – was delivered by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan on June 5. According to an MIT spokesman, Annan’s speech was “a lot longer and maybe not as clever” as the text falsely attributed to Vonnegut. Annan’s words of wisdom have been publicly available on the Internet since the date of the commencement. But the phony Vonnegut speech had already funneled through thousands of modems before the hoax was discovered and the true source of the text identified – a newspaper column by Mary Schmich of the Chicago Tribune. In that column, published June 1, Schmich fantasized about giving a commencement address. “Ladies and gentlemen of the class of ’97,” the imaginary speech began. “Wear sunscreen.” It was funny and it was well-written. But it wasn’t Vonnegut. “I thought about it and said I didn’t think I gave any talk like that, but I wished I had.” The incident took everyone concerned by surprise. Recipients of the message who thought they’d recognized Vonnegut’s unique wit were embarrassed to find out they’d been duped. Supposedly even Vonnegut’s wife, Jill Krementz, fell victim to the hoax, gleefully forwarding the message to family and friends. In the aftermath of the hoax, Mary Schmich, who has taken to calling the Internet a “lawless swamp,” received hundreds of phone calls and email messages, some of them accusing her of plagiarism. She subsequently tried to track down the originator of the hoax, but could not. Vonnegut himself, bemused by the incident, says that cyberspace is “spooky,” populated by people who’ll believe anything they’re told. But there are deeper phenomena underlying what happened here than the lawlessness and gullibility of Internet users. What Marshall McLuhan said of television is no less true of the Internet: “the medium is the message.” New technologies are not simply changing the way information is transmitted; they are changing our perception of reality. Or befuddling it * * * * * Claim: In 1997, Kurt Vonnegut gave an unusual commencement address at MIT. Status: False. Legend: According to a text circulating all over the Internet, Kurt Vonnegut was the 1997 commencement speaker at MIT. His speech supposedly began as follows: Ladies and gentlemen of the class of ’97: Wear sunscreen. If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now. Origins: Kurt Vonnegut was not the 1997 commencement speaker at MIT. That honor went to Kofi Annan, secretary-general of the United Nations. The speech attributed to Vonnegut was actually a 1 June 1997 column by Chicago Tribune writer Mary Schmich. As with many other good bits of writing and speech, the attachment of a famous name to the works brings them to the public’s attention in a way they could otherwise not have achieved. (Echoes within echoes: Georgia State University graduates may remember Ted Turner’s speech at their graduation in 1994. Turner, facing a skin cancer operation, told them: “The one piece of advice I can give you is put on sunscreen and wear a hat.”) In 1998, the text of the Mary Schmich piece was turned into a “spoken voice” recording featuring the voice of Australian actor Lee Perry. Titled “Everybody’s Free to Wear Sunscreen,” the piece immediately became a cult hit in Australia, and by early 1999 the “song” was taking America by storm. 2002 saw the “Vonnegut/MIT commencement speech” tale circulated anew, that time identified as the speech given to the graduating class of 2002. Last updated: 23 July 2002 * * * * * Vonnegut? Schmich? Who can tell in cyberspace? by Mary Schmich, Chicago Tribune I am Kurt Vonnegut. Oh, Kurt Vonnegut may appear to be a brilliant, revered male novelist. I may appear to be a mediocre and virtually unknown female newspaper columnist. We may appear to have nothing in common but unruly hair. But out in the lawless swamp of cyberspace, Mr. Vonnegut and I are one. Out there, where any snake can masquerade as king, both of us are the author of a graduation speech that began with the immortal words, “Wear sunscreen.” I was alerted to my bond with Mr. Vonnegut Friday morning by several callers and e-mail correspondents who reported that the sunscreen speech was rocketing through the cyberswamp, from L.A. to New York to Scotland, in a vast e-mail chain letter. Friends had e-mailed it to friends, who e-mailed it to more friends, all of whom were told it was the commencement address given to the graduating class at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The speaker was allegedly Kurt Vonnegut. Imagine Mr. Vonnegut’s surprise. He was not, and never has been, MIT’s commencement speaker. Imagine my surprise. I recall composing that little speech one Friday afternoon while high on coffee and M&M’s. It appeared in this space on June 1. It included such deep thoughts as “Sing,” “Floss,” and “Don’t mess too much with your hair.” It was not art. But out in the cyberswamp, truth is whatever you say it is, and my simple thoughts on floss and sunscreen were being passed around as Kurt Vonnegut’s eternal wisdom. Poor man. He didn’t deserve to have his reputation sullied in this way. So I called a Los Angles book reviewer, with whom I’d never spoken, hoping he could help me find Mr. Vonnegut. “You mean that thing about sunscreen?” he said when I explained the situation. “I got that. It was brilliant. He didn’t write that?” He didn’t know how to find Mr. Vonnegut. I tried MIT. “You wrote that?” said Lisa Damtoft in the news office. She said MIT had received many calls and e-mails on this year’s “sunscreen” commencement speech. But not everyone was sure: Who had been the speaker? The speaker on June 6 was Kofi Annan, secretary general of the United Nations, who did not, as Mr. Vonnegut and I did in our speech, urge his graduates to “dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.” He didn’t mention sunscreen. As I continued my quest for Mr. Vonnegut — his publisher had taken the afternoon off, his agent didn’t answer — reports of his “sunscreen” speech kept pouring in. A friend called from Michigan. He’d read my column several weeks ago. Friday morning he received it again — in an e-mail from his boss. This time it was not an ordinary column by an ordinary columnist. Now it was literature by Kurt Vonnegut. Fortunately, not everyone who read the speech believed it was Mr. Vonnegut’s. “The voice wasn’t quite his,” sniffed one doubting contributor to a Vonnegut chat group on the Internet. “It was slightly off — a little too jokey, a little too cute . . . a little too `Seinfeld.’ ” Hoping to find the source of this prank, I traced one e-mail backward from its last recipient, Hank De Zutter, a professor at Malcolm X College in Chicago. He received it from a relative in New York, who received it from a film producer in New York, who received it from a TV producer in Denver, who received it from his sister, who received it. . . . I realized the pursuit of culprit zero would be endless. I gave up. I did, however, finally track down Mr. Vonnegut. He picked up his own phone. He’d heard about the sunscreen speech from his lawyer, from friends, from a women’s magazine that wanted to reprint it until he denied he wrote it. “It was very witty, but it wasn’t my wittiness,” he generously said. Reams could be written on the lessons in this episode. Space confines me to two. One: I should put Kurt Vonnegut’s name on my column. It would be like sticking a Calvin Klein label on a pair of K-Mart jeans. Two: Cyberspace, in Mr. Vonnegut’s word, is “spooky.” by Mary Schmich, Chicago Tribune #MarySchmich #LiveSpaces #ScottCohenBlog #KurtVonnegut #LifeJourney #bestcommencementspeech #MITcommencementspeech #WearSunscreen #commencementspeech

The Life Cube V2 Construction Drawing #art #burningmanart #TheLifeCube #wishsticks #wishsticks #burningmanburningman #artatburningman #bm2012 #skeeter #BM2012 #burningman2012 #lifecube #artatburningman #BurningMan2011art #TheLifeCube #bm2011 #burningman2011 #BurningMan

Visit our new website at: http://www.lifecubeproject.com/ There’s info about the new installation, and a page to enlist as a volunteer. We’d love to have your help if you’re in the Las Vegas area – or if you know someone who might be interested and available, please share the link with them or post it on FB! We’re starting construction later this month, and will need lots of help building, painting, lighting, promoting, and participating artists for the tapestry wall and murals. The Installation & Burn Lastly, the Life Cube installation will be on site for a month and will burn in downtown Las Vegas on March 21st. If you’d like to visit during that time, or for the Burn weekend, make reservations early, as it’s March Madness and a busy season in LV! I am trying to arrange special rates at area hotels, so contact me if you’re planning to come. Thank you all for your ongoing interest and support of the project. It means more than you know! #lifecubelifecubeprojectlifecubelasvegaslifecubedtlvdtlvdowntownprojecteastfremontartburningmanartfireartscottcohenscottelifecube

I had the opportunity to represent The Life Cube Project at Together We Rise, a Burning Man NYC Benefit and Social event produced by BABËL New York on Wednesday, October 15, 2014. We set up a table with five beautiful photo prints created by LuxLab; a mini Life Cube for visitors to write and draw on; and many wish-sticks for people to put their hopes, wishes, and dreams on! Full of Burning Man folks and others interested in art, the event was such a wonderful opportunity to spread the Life Cube’s message and meet many interesting new people. For more photos, visit the Life Cube’s Facebook page. #art #thelifecubeproject #BABËLnewyork #babelnyc #TheLifeCube #wishstick #wishsticks #BABËLnewyork #wishsticks #togetherwerise #wishstick #burningman2014 #Burningman #babelnyc #luxlab #togetherwerise #thelifecubeproject #luxlab #lifecube #lifecube #burningman2014 #babel #TheLifeCube #BABËLny #BurningMan

I heard about this 1953 Harvard written goals study when I worked at Coopers & Lybrand back in 1988.  Over the years, I have shared it with people that I’ve mentored and some who I worked with.  The other night I was speaking with a new CEO of an International media and research company who I shared this.  I decided to follow-up with the specifics.  Apparently there is a lot of controversy about if this study was done, and if so, where and by who (or is it whom?). There was an article in Fast Company titled "If Your Goal Is Success, Don’t Consult These Gurus" by Lawrence Tabak in Dec 2007 (http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/06/cdu.html) that indicated his research it was probably a myth conjured up by consultants, motivational speakers, and success counselors.   There is also reference in  What They Don’t Teach You in the Harvard Business School, by Mark McCormack.  In any event, here are the results: Harvard MBA program. In that year, the students were asked, "Have you set clear, written goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them?" Only three percent of the graduates had written goals and plans; 13 percent had goals, but they were not in writing; and a whopping 84 percent had no specific goals at all. Ten years later, the members of the class were interviewed again, and the findings, while somewhat predictable, were nonetheless astonishing. The 13 percent of the class who had goals were earning, on average, twice as much as the 84 percent who had no goals at all. And what about the three percent who had clear, written goals? They were earning, on average, ten times as much as the other 97 percent put together. Based on my experience over the years, I think it is smart to have specific goals and write them down.  But then again,

skeeter, The Life Cube artist at Burning Man 2013 at end of playa build before festival This photo was sent to me by someone I did not even know. It captures a great moment right at the end of the playa build before the gate at the Burning Man Festival opened. #lifecubethelifecubeprojectlifecubeprojectburningmanthelifecubeburningmanbm2013brclifecubeskeeterscottcohenburningman #lifecubeproject #lifecubeproject #lifecube #lifecube

From Dave — another one to put in the file as we (re)build Ad-diction.com Companies increasingly turn to consumer-generated videos to push products – but only with great care. January 29, 2007 Issue By Wendy Tanaka An amateur video of Diet Coke and Mentos candies mixed together to produce shooting fountains of soda was one of the most-watched videos on the web last year; it also proved to be invaluable free advertising for Coca-Cola. To capitalize even more on the advertising windfall, the Atlanta-based beverage company hired the video makers—a professional juggler and a lawyer—to create another video of the soft drink and candy, and star in a 30-second Coke ad at the end. Coca-Cola is far from alone in embracing the advertising and marketing potential of consumer-generated videos, which exploded in popularity last year after video-hosting site YouTube became a cultural phenomenon. Videos uploaded to YouTube were viewed 100 million times daily in 2006. In recent months, hundreds of brands have been furiously trying to use the medium in hopes of reaching more customers, especially the coveted 18- to 34-year-old set, which is skeptical of slick, corporate advertising. “If you’re a brand, and you’re not experimenting with consumer-generated advertising at some level, marketers scratch their heads,” says Gartner analyst Andrew Frank. The trend is another example of how corporations are shifting advertising online, away from traditional print, radio, and television campaigns. Although online advertising generated just 6 percent of total U.S. ad revenues in 2005, it is expected to grow faster than traditional advertising in the coming years and make up nearly 9 percent of all U.S. ad dollars in 2011, according to JupiterResearch. In raw dollars, the research firm predicts total U.S. online ad revenues will double from $13 billion in 2005 to $26 billion in 2011. Revenues just from the fledgling video advertising sector—which includes both professionally produced and consumer-generated videos—are expected to soar five-fold in the United States from $251 million in 2005 to $1.3 billion in 2011. The new consumer-generated medium has helped spawn the creation of startups like UGENmedia and ViTrue that aim to help companies capitalize on consumer-generated content by providing technologies that let them host video, photo, and text submissions from consumers. Roger Jehenson, president of New York City-based UGENmedia, sums it up this way: “Last year was the year of user-generated content. This is the year of user-generated marketing. People aren’t passive spectators anymore.” To exploit the user-generated trend—which kicked into high gear last fall when Google put its stamp of approval on the space with its $1.65-billion acquisition of San Bruno, California-based YouTube—many companies are sponsoring contests in which ordinary people create video ads for their products. A few brands, such as Doritos, are airing their contest winners at the upcoming Super Bowl, the most-watched U.S. television event of the year—and the priciest for advertisers. Many brands pay upwards of $2 million to air a 30-second ad spot during the game. In its “Crash The Super Bowl” ad contest, Doritos asked people to make videos that expressed their love for the triangular corn chips. The winning video will be announced and broadcast during the game on February 4. Doritos spokesman Jared Dougherty says the brand, which is owned by Purchase, New York-based PepsiCo, received 1,080 user-generated videos and selected five that were uploaded to the site http://www.crashthesuperbowl.com, where consumers vote for the winner. The five finalists received $10,000 each, and Doritos will fly the winner to Miami, the location of this year’s Super Bowl. Mr. Dougherty notes that some consumers went to great lengths to make their Doritos video. “We’ve seen people post casting calls on Craig’s List for their video,” he says. “We’ve seen MySpace pages of grassroots campaigns to get people to vote for their ad.” Mr. Dougherty wouldn’t disclose how much Doritos spent to host the contest or how much it paid for an ad at the Super Bowl, but he says the snack maker definitely got its money’s worth. “The return on investment is engagement with the brand,” he says. MasterCard was also after greater “engagement” when it sponsored a write-in contest last spring for a new “Priceless” TV ad. The credit card giant, which supplied the video, received 100,000 text submissions from consumers. The winning text aired with the video on TV last fall. Also in the fall, MasterCard relaunched its Priceless.com site, just six months after the original site went live, to handle text, photo, and video submissions from consumers. Since the revamp, the company says traffic on the site, which is devoted to the “Priceless” campaign touting things and events that defy a monetary value, has doubled that of the main MasterCard site. The company wouldn’t disclose traffic figures, except to say that Priceless.com had 1 million visitors in both November and December. The site includes consumer-made videos of “Priceless” things, such as a U.S. bakery making croissants that are as good as those found in France, or riding a motorcycle through Mexico. And there’s some evidence that the revamped Priceless.com site is prompting people to sign up for MasterCard’s services. Consumers are “coming back to see the [consumer-generated] picks and clicking through on promotions and offers,” says Cheryl Guerin, vice president of promotions and interactive at MasterCard, based in Purchase, New York. “Their expectations have changed, and they’re expecting brands to interact with them.” Seeing Green? Experiments with consumer-generated video on corporate sites have so far mostly yielded more traffic, not driven sales in any appreciable way. But that could change in 2007. Deloitte & Touche managing partner Tony Kern, who specializes in media and entertainment, says it’s just a matter of time before companies start seeing green. In general, he says, user-generated content gives companies “better contact and more direct contact” to consumers, and “the better the customer experience, the better the buying patterns are.” The big guns of online video—YouTube, MySpace, Google, and Yahoo—are hardly immune to the fact that consumer-generated videos are morphing from home videos of cats and toddlers into slick advertising productions. These sites provide consulting and web-hosting services to companies that want to promote their brands via consumer-generated videos. Toyota, for instance, partnered with MySpace on a promotion for its new Yaris model. Doritos’ Super Bowl challenge is being “powered” by Yahoo Video and Jumpcut, the video-editing startup that the Sunnyvale, California-based Internet company acquired last year. The Coke-sponsored Diet Coke and Mentos video is hosted on Coca-Cola’s main site, as well as Google Video. Mountain View, California-based Google receives ad revenues from the Coke video. And YouTube hosted a contest with Cingular to select the best homemade videos of independent bands. Corporations and Internet giants aren’t the only ones cashing in on the consumer-generated video phenomenon. A cottage industry of startups has emerged to help big companies create and manage user-generated video contests. UGENmedia, which sprang up last year, has snagged a half-dozen contracts for such projects as consumer contests for the Sunlight Foundation and Skechers shoes. UGEN’s software platform helped Washington, D.C.-based Sunlight, an organization that disseminates information about the U.S. Congress via the Internet, create a site to host a contest for a consumer-made video that implores Congress to do a better job. For Manhattan Beach, California-based Skechers, UGEN created the site http://www.yourshoes.skechers.com. Consumers take pictures of their Skechers and post them on the site. Posters will receive a coupon for a discount on their next pair of Skechers. UGEN says it charges companies on average $75,000 to $125,000 to create and manage an online contest. UGEN was founded in January 2006 with $50,000 in personal money from co-founders Mr. Jehenson, a former senior vice president at Right Media, an online display advertising exchange that Yahoo acquired a 20 percent stake in last year, and Adam Benjamin, a former vice president at online advertiser DoubleClick. Mr. Jehenson says corporations were hesitant at first to experiment with consumer-generated content. But they changed their minds once they realized that it was the only way to reach young consumers. “When I talked to marketers in January 2006, there was a reluctance to give up control,” Mr. Jehenson says. “In July, I started to see a shift from, ‘Should I do this?’ to ‘How do I do this?’” So far, UGEN’s main competitor is ViTrue. Up and running only since May, the Atlanta-based startup has a dozen customers, and plans to add a dozen more by year’s end. Clients include Turner Broadcasting System, MTV, and the Cincinnati Bengals football team. Like UGEN, ViTrue helps companies and organizations create and manage sites for consumer contests and community input. For the Bengals, ViTrue created a site to accept consumer-made videos that profess a passion for the team. The Bengals pick a couple of videos to broadcast on a jumbotron at home games. Jason Subramaniam, ViTrue’s chief product officer, says the Bengals hope the videos will draw more home viewers, which will lure more advertisers and ad dollars to the team. ViTrue has also helped two clients—Moe’s Southwest Grill, a burrito chain in Atlanta, and Lance, a Charlotte, North Carolina-based cookie maker—host consumer-generated video contests that tout their brands. Mr. Subramaniam says the companies are thinking of using the winning videos as TV commercials. ViTrue charges companies $75,000 to $100,000 on average to set up a site for consumer-generated content. It also charges about $10,000 per month to maintain the site and monitor content. ViTrue got started with $6 million in funding from its CEO Reggie Bradford, a former chief marketing officer at WebMD, venture firm General Catalyst, Turner Broadcasting, and cable giant Comcast. Great Unknowns Of course, there are still many unknowns about the direction of user-generated videos in corporate advertising. Though most companies aren’t paying consumers for content yet, it’s still not an entirely free endeavor. Companies still have marketing, online hosting, and administrative costs associated with user-generated programs. Still, Mr. Jehenson says the average cost of a 30-second TV ad, including production and airtime costs, can run $500,000 to $1 million, and is a far greater expense to companies than consumer-generated campaigns, which can cost just a few thousand dollars. Other companies are starting to pay consumers directly for their work. Sony Electronics plans to unveil a revenue-sharing plan with consumer content makers this year. The company, which currently operates a site that accepts consumer submissions, such as wallpaper for the PlayStation 3, wouldn’t disclose details of its revenue-sharing plan. Spokesman Dave Karraker says the consumer-generated movement “is allowing consumers to create content, share content, and sell content using your platform. We’re taking a very close look into how we’ll do that.” All of this corporate attention has created a new avenue for budding video and filmmakers looking to get noticed online, rather than relying on the hard-to-crack Hollywood system of studios and agents. The five finalists in the Doritos Super Bowl ad contest, for example, were mostly aspiring or experienced moviemakers. Even movie executives have caught on to the consumer-generated phenomenon, and are now trawling YouTube and other sites for talent (see “Famous, Almost.” Vol. 3, No. 41, p. 28). It can be dangerous, however, for companies to give consumers too much free rein. MasterCard, for example, monitors all of the entries to Priceless.com and posts only the ones it deems suitable. “They don’t go up live, like on YouTube,” Ms. Guerin says. Gartner’s Mr. Frank says companies need to walk a fine line between letting their customers express themselves and carefully controlling their content. “If you sell an SUV, you can wind up being branded as a destroyer of the planet,” he says. “Any liabilities a brand has are going to get amplified in the user-generated environment.”