Conference season is upon us! It’s been a fun, relaxing summer, but welcome back to hell! With more conferences than ever before from which to choose (don’t these guys know we’re supposedly in a recession?) here are eight easy tips to help navigate the ones you do choose to attend. 1) Networking starts LONG before you get there. The second you register, use the beauty of social media to let the world know, and find new people who are going as well. Ask them if there’s a hashtag, then use it. You want to have at least ten new people you plan to meet over the course of the conference before you go to the conference. The rest of the [...]

Thanks to my assistant being on vacation, I managed to show up at the airport five hours early for my flight this morning. With time to kill, I started walking around, and came across a Wendy’s. Knowing my burger chain trivia, I knew that Wendy’s serves burgers at any time of the day, even at 5:20am. Ordering a single, as opposed to a triple, out of courtesy to my nutritionist, I waited for my order, and watched the three people after me order. Here’s what was said: “Gimmie a #2 with a Large Coke.” “You got any biscuits? Yeah? Gimmie 2.” “Large coffee, one egg and cheese.” What’s missing from all three transactions? Manners. When did we blatantly lose all [...]

This particular Twitter posting came back to bite the agency person from Ketchum (New York office) who made some unflattering remarks about Memphis this morning before he presented on digital media to the worldwide communications group at FedEx (150+) people. Not only did an employee find it, they were totally offended by it and responded to the agency person. The kicker is that they copied the FedEx Coporate Vice President, Vice President, Directors and all management of FedEx’s communication department AND the chain of command at Ketchum. Mr. Andrews, the Ketchum presenter, did not take into account that many FedExers are native Memphians and are feircely defensive of their city and their company. Mr. Andrews, If I interpret your post [...]

Use BOTH outlets at Starbucks, yet SLEEP in front of your hogging-both-plugs devices.

I put “downtime” into two different categories. Short-burst downtime, and long-burst downtime. Long-burst downtime, we all know, are the hours between the flight attendant saying  “Sir, the doors closed 15 minutes ago, Blackberry off, NOW,”  and that first “ka-thump” of the wheels hitting pavement, hundreds or even thousands of miles away. Then there’s short-burst downtime. If you’re connected via an electronic leash (or by more than one, for some of us), short-burst downtime is the 15 or so minutes from the time you enter the subway outside your apartment until you exit the subway outside your office, or the 20 or so minutes when you’re sitting in traffic in the valley without signal, or the “please turn off the transmitter” time [...]