Bob's Blog

Anything and Whatever

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 09:25:23 -0400

No matter how luxurious business class is, long flights always take it out of me. The recent flight to Singapore was no exception. What started as a leisurely trip from San Diego to Singapore became a crazy mad dash from the hotel to the airport after Tiger’s amazing playoff performance at Torrey Pines.

Garmin's Nuviphone

I had planned on staying in San Diego through the weekend and catch a flight to Communicasia, the Singapore Tech Expo. Garmin was rolling out new device which is supposed to rival Apple’s iPhone, and Garmin’s co-founder and dear friend, Gary Burrell, asked me to come speak to his sales team about the future mobile landscape.

Everything changed once Tiger made the tying putt at the U.S. Open on Sunday afternoon. On 14, I sent a note to my assistant to begin planning alternatives if there was going to be a playoff round on Monday. Two minutes after Tiger’s putt went into the cup, I received a new itinerary to Singapore. (Right after that I received another email with a photo from my friend at Getty who saw me in the background of one of Tiger’s shots. If you look over Tiger’s left shoulder, that was me with the yellow shirt!)
Me in awe of Tiger

The long round Monday had me hustling through the airport to make the flight. I fell right asleep and apparently missed a great meal on the flight. Once we landed, I needed to get something to drink so I sought out the nearest soda machine. I was stunned with a soda machine unlike any other and had to take a photo. Talk about creative delivery.

The soda’s were even more unusual. My only two options were ‘Whatever’ and ‘Anything.’ Whatever is flavored tea and Anything is carbonated soda, but both come in a range of flavors that you wont know until you taste it.

While the soda machine was memorable, it also reminded me of something else. I sent a note to my assistant to be sure and reschedule my doctor’s appointment later this week!

A Hoagiefestivus for the rest-of-us

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 16:40:29 -0400

Greetings from Beantown!

Doc Rivers, head coach of the Celtics invited me up to sit courtside for Game 2. We go back to his days as a basketball analyst on NBC with Al Michaels. Al introduced us at a end of season party in LA and we connected ever since.

I tried to not bother Doc during his team warm ups, so I sat in the team’s locker room with my laptop to get some work done. While Doc’s team, the Celtics, were putting the finishing touches on their game plan, my team, The Archer Group, was putting the finishing touches on another effort, called Hoagiefest. Hoagiefest is a summer promotional campaign for Wawa that everyone looks forward to each year.

We had some catchy songs created for the website, which I kept playing on my laptop in the locker room. As players would come in, they would be drawn to the music and soon a crowd formed behind me as I gave everything a final once over.

Hoagiefest!

Pretty soon, Doc came in to figure out where his players went. Seeing that I was the cause of the distraction, Doc bounce passed a basketball right onto my laptop, shutting it with a bang. The crowd immediately dispersed and poured back on to the court. He gave me a smirk and turned without saying anything.

The guys must have sensed my anxiety. As they sat on the chairs in front of me on the floor, the team began humming the Hoagiefest theme song in unison. Doc finally looked at them and then back to me. I shrugged my shoulders, and he finally broke down laughing.

Thankfully, his team did a great job and won the game. My team did a great job as well, and Hoagiefest is live!

Connecting on the highway

Wed, 21 May 2008 23:05:19 -0400

Greetings from California

Springtime may be my favorite time of year. We have just shaken off the winter blues, the flowers are all blooming, and the weather is warm and sunny, but not too humid. My annual Pebble Beach golf classic is always in the spring to take advantage of the beautiful spring weather.

I always play with my dear friend and golf champion Johnny Miller at Pebble Beach. We met at 94 Pebble Beach Pro-Am. I won a spot at the pro-am in a charity auction and was very excited. I gave Johnny my golf towel after he left his in his car, and played a terrific round. Thinking that the towel had something to do with his round, he asked ot hang on to it. He ended up winning the entire Pro-Am and felt that the towel had something to do with it. We traded phone numbers and stayed in touch ever since.

Johnny met me at the airport in his new Mercedes and took me to the hotel. We wanted to try this new restaurant in Napa. We fired up Yahoo maps and got the directions. Johnny moved me aside from the laptop and said, “Bob, I think you will love this.” He proceeded to pull down the ‘send’ menu and select an option that I hadn’t noticed before titled ‘send to car’. He entered a number and then said “Let’s go!”

We sit in his Mercedes and he presses a button up top. Then after a few seconds, a map with directions to the restaurant appear on the display. His car has a new service called Search & Send, which allows drivers to stop printing out directions and instead load them directly into the navigation systems.

This connectivity between the web and the car is a great sign of things to come. The future of the internet will increasingly include devices in interesting ways.

At the restaurant, the hostess took us to our table and proceeded to sit me at a seat with an odd looking placemat. Johnny had given my legendary golf towel to the restaurant earlier that day and had them set up the return to me. We enjoyed the evening, and I proceeded to shoot my best round at Pebble with my lucky towel!

Just What is a Wawa?

Wed, 14 May 2008 14:58:54 -0400

While I travel the globe from meeting to meeting, I am always mindful of the team hard at work back in the States. Recently, they have all been ‘heads down’ finalizing the launch of our most recent website for the legendary Wawa food markets. While Wawa has a loyal following in the Northeast United States, many outside the area are struck by the unusual name and associated passion from its customers.

Ian ready to go!

I’m in Taiwan checking my mail when pictures begin rolling in from HQ. The team is deep in the throws of launching the new site, www.wawa.com. I try not to bother everyone, but I am anxiously awaiting. The team feeds me these pictures along with progress reports so I don’t call or email constantly with ‘so hows it going?’

Dennis get some 'advice' from Elvez Todd

The team went well into the night with final touches. As the night progressed, the pictures got more and more entertaining. I was having lunch with some old friends and kept handing the phone over to share. We were laughing quite a bit, and finally raised a toast to the team when it went live.

After a few more drinks, one of my friends leaned over to me and asked: “Bob, just what exactly is this Wawa that we have all been drinking to?” I’m not sure my use of terms like Sizzli and Shorti cleared things up, but we celebrated none the less.

The next day, the team sent me a shot from the front of our offices where they told the world about the launch.

Great job team!

Color me Scarlet

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 22:08:38 -0400

No matter how nice the airlines make business class, flying from Singapore to LA is a long time. I had received an invite to the opening night for what I thought was this new TV mini-series “Scarlet”. I was looking forward to it since it was supposedly directed by “Sopranos” director David Nutter.

I initially wasn’t going to make the flight, but during my business in Singapore, I saw a number of billboards for Scarlet. After seeing a trailer online, I asked to have my plans changed and RSVP’d the event. I couldn’t wait to see the new series.

So my assistant meets me at the hotel with my tux. After a quick change, we head over to the Pacific design center in LA. For the red carpet opening night. My assistant was head over heels for sitting next to Tila Tequila during the event.

So the lights go down, and the stage lights up. the curtain pulls back and a the show is about to start. But instead of the mini-series I flew in to see, I am watching a commercial for LGs new line of TVs named ‘Scarlet’.

The lights came up to reveal a bunch of flat panel TVs and LG’s North American point person. A collective sigh and then applause erupted from the packed house as they explained how the campaign promoting the mini-series was all just a hoax to promote the new line of LG tvs.

While I enjoyed the evening and didn't even mind the long flight for a hoax, I still really wanted to see the new Mini-series!

Are Mobile Phones the next Cigarette Lighter?

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:24:38 -0400

While many of you read about the American Airlines flight cancellations, I had the distinct pleasure of living it while connecting through DFW. Once I was able to get another flight established a few hours later, I was able to relax at the airport.

Airports are great places to people watch. During Grad School, I took a number of anthropology courses as a way to better understand how people live. This has proven extremely helpful during I found myself a seat at an airport pub, ordered a Makers and Coke and began my people watching. Drawing on my Anthropology classes, I like to try and build a story around the people and their situation. Occasionally, I’ll even get to talk to the person to validate (or invalidate) my conclusions.

One thing I noticed was how many people were on their phones. But they weren't talking on their phones, instead these people were checking email, texting, playing games and surfing the web. All valid tasks, but none involving the core purpose of a phone, which is to make and receive calls.

On my ride home, I plugged in my cell phone charger and started thinking about just how similar the phone and lighter were. My car is full of cigarette lighters, labelled as ‘power ports’. Their shape is defined by the legacy of the push lighter that every car had. That legacy form factor continues to this day, even though I would imagine that few are used for lighting cigarettes. In fact, my car doesn’t even have an ashtray!

Skiing without the Snow

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 17:30:41 -0400

Skiing is one of my great loves and something I try to do when my schedule allows. I was invited to visit Toronto to sit in on the shooting of Mark Wahlberg’s film, Max Payne. Figuring it was close enough to the mountains, I had my ski gear packed on the plane just in case.

The film set was impressive. I am always impressed with how many moving parts there are on the set of a movie, from the lighting to makeup to even catering. A collection of freelancers and small businesses all working together for a common goal of making a major motion picture. Sure it can be a bit like watching sausage being made, but it always amazes me.

I was invited up by my dear friend Tie Domi. While Tie earned a justifiable reputation as an enforcer on the ice, he is a lot of fun off the ice. We were introduced to each other during my quest to get some hockey questions answered. I was helping coordinate a financing drive to build the a new hockey arena and wanted to know what amenities were needed to make the arena first rate for players. We wanted to attract an NHL hockey team through the creation of this stadium. The plan fell through, but my friendship with Tie remained.

Anyway, I’m walking through Toronto with Tie and Mark after the day’s shooting and our conversation turned to Skiing. All the years that Tie was in Canada, he was either contractually not allowed to ski or just not available to join me. I was pressing on him again, with Mark helping by telling Tie that he could find some snowboarders to fight with on the slopes.
Pray for Powder
As if on cue, we turn the corner to see an outstanding ad for skiing in Alberta. The took a park bench and dressed it up to make it look like a ski lift. There was a guy sitting on it that made it look perfect. I even asked him if he was part of the ad, which he wasnt.

Tie looked to me and said, “OK, you win, lets go.” I got the flight plan updated on the jet and started putting the plans together for Tie and I to head to Alberta for a few days of skiing!

Video at your fingertips that you actually want to watch

Tue, 1 Apr 2008 13:34:12 -0400

Greetings from UCLA!

Jack Green, er, Black

My good friend Jack Black invited me out as his guest at the Nickelodeon Kids Choice awards. Of all the awards shows that I have been lucky enough to attend, this was the first one with Green Slime. Jack was the host and seemed to be actually looking forward to getting slimed on stage. Despite the mess, it was a fun night nonetheless.

Afterwards, Jack and I went to have dinner at a nearby burger joint he knew about called the Apple Pan. The place looked like it had fallen out of the fifties, but had the best burgers. Jack refused to clean up after being slimed, so I got a few towels from the waitress to cover Jack’s booth.

Jack and I go way back to his days in the rock band, Tenacious D. One night while we were out in LA, Jack seemed excessively interested in my business and a new team member, Lee. A few weeks later I get this disc from Jack in the mail. All it said on the label was ‘Lee’. Little did I know that Jack wasn’t really interested in what I had to say, he was just writing a song. I chuckle now when I see the video:

Back to the Apple Pan - Jack and I were getting into a very heated argument about the 80s hit tv show, ‘The A Team’. Jack was convinced that there was a woman on the early A-Team. While I couldn’t recall every episode, I was pretty sure that Mr. T, was the only one wearing jewelry.

Jack made me go out to my car and get my laptop. I wouldn’t let him type with his slime fingers, so he started belting out a web address in song. Luckily the site was a short named one, Hulu.com, and he sat down after I keyed it in.

hulu.com

Hulu.com is a great video aggregation site of TV shows, movies and more. Run by NBC Universal, this site offers thousands of shows and movies, all sponsored with advertising. In a few short clicks, I had the first episode of the A Team on my screen. Jack sat on my lap, slime and all, and we watched opening of the pilot. Sure enough, Melinda Culea played a reporter who tagged along with Mr. T and team. After Jack took a bite of my burger, he moved back to his side of the table.

The internet coming to a nightstand near you

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 22:34:25 -0400

Well it feels great to have my computer again and be able to return to blogging. I almost did the same thing my friend Steven Levy did over at Newsweek. He got a loaner ultra-light MacBook Air from Apple for reviewing and proceeded to get it caught up with the Sunday Newspapers and thrown out. My experience was almost identical, except that I bought my MacBook Air and, after four hours in the recycling bin, I was able to find mine. Steven wasnt so lucky.

mArcher Madness

Steven and I are here in Washington coming back from a great afternoon of basketball for the NCAA tourney. There have been some great games, and I almost certainly lost my voice during the Duke-WVU game. The only negative was the fact that I had to miss a great event back at the office known as ‘mArcher Madness.’ From all the notes from the team, it sounds like they had a great event.

In between games Friday, we went out to grab a bite to eat in the city. Steven and I both had our MacBooks out to check email at the bar. Either the elegance of the machines or the constant joking we were doing to each other was causing quite a few heads to turn. That is until another friend sat down next to us with a cute new device, called a Chumby.

Chumby Wumby

The Chumby is a small, internet connected device that brings all the information and power of the internet to a well designed device. It connects wirelessly to the internet and displays information specially formatted for the small screen. Its simplicity is its elegance.

Steven and I plugged it in and immediately closed our MacBooks. You could have it display weather, traffic cams, or even David Letterman’s monologue from the night before. Its perfect for those who are tired of waking up to harsh alarms and bright red numbers.

We were so impressed with the Chumby, that we took it over to a corner of the bar to continue playing with it. That is until we both looked over at waitress cleaning up all our trash and almost sweeping our MacBook Air’s into the garbage can. I tossed the Chumby to Steven and made the fastest break ever to get back to the table and prevent another MacBook Air tragedy.

Bob Featured in the Wall Street Journal

Thu, 6 Mar 2008 12:43:45 -0500

Bob's travels go big time - read about in the Wall Street Journal!

Join in on the discussion about Bob on a business blog going on over at the Wall Street Journal