Risley Ranch

Jaydoc Rock

So here's a cause I knew nothing about until my colleague, Erica Wren, told me about it: Jaydoc.  It sounds very impressive:

"Jaydoc is a free clinic supported by The University of Kansas Medical School.  Its dual mission is to provide free healthcare to the medically underserved and to provide opportunities for KUMC medical students to broaden and enrich their clinical skills under the supervision of volunteer physicians."

This Friday, May 2, at The Mission Theater, they are hosting the 2nd Annual JayRock, a benefit concert for Jaydoc.  Some cool bands are on the bill: The New Amsterdams, Broken Stools, Dead Girls Ruin Everything and Fourth of July.

The concert is open to everyone, so get your tickets online.

More bragging

When you win a national championship, you get to talk a lot of smack, so please indulge the following:

Downtown Lawrence (during the parade to celebrate and congratulate the Jayhawks - 80,000 fans showed up):

Downtown Manhattan (home of K-State):

Thanks to my friends the Stineman's for the photos.

Technorati Tags: Kansas, Jayhawks, National Championship, Manhattan, Basketball

Get mobi

I'm no mobile expert -- that title belongs to guys like Mark and Dustin at our shop -- but I saw an online show today about Admob, and I was super impressed.

Fast Company magazine (one of my favorites) has launched Fast Company TV, and they have social media guru Robert Scoble hosting.  It's an awesome site.  And the first show I saw was an interview between Scoble and Admob founder and CEO Omar Hamoui.  You gotta watch this video, and make sure to watch the end where he runs a demo.  Too, too cool.  Maybe this is old news, but I was impressed.

I think the most prophetic thing Hamoui said was that we have yet to tap into the next phase of mobile advertising -- local targeting.  Although Admob can target in a variety of ways, it can't yet geo-target.  In the next two years, however, when devices are installed with GPS standard, look out.

Technorati Tags: advertising, marketing, mobile, mobile advertising, Fast Company

Tao makeover - Chapter 27

You would think I'd be overwhelmed by the presence of the Tao is China, the birthplace of Taoism more than 2500 years ago.  I wasn't.  Quite the opposite, actually.  The Tao was absent.  I guess it was the overwhelmingness of Shanghai with its millions of people, thousands of skyscrapers and billions of dollars in commerce.  I'd have to get out into the hinter-lands of China to find the Tao. 

So I haven't read the Tao Te Ching in some time, but I picked it up last night.  Chapter 27 is about the "effortless of true competence," as Dalton puts it.  Not necessarily what I wanted to read at the end of a stress-filled week -- how true sages make everything look easy.  But anyway...

"The greatest competence leaves no trace of its activity.  It uses all its resources to produce a perfect and economical result," is Dalton's explanation of this chapter.  Of course, that's easier to say than do.  I tend to live more like a bit of pop philosophy I read once:  "Be like a duck: calm on the surface, but paddling like hell underneath."

Technorati Tags: Taoism

This Rocks!

Rock Chalk, that is.

Planet Fresh

The power of a positive attitude, focused on getting something done, can really make a difference.  Barkley's new green initiative, Planet Fresh, is such an example.

Susan Shank, a veteran member of the PR team, started the Planet Fresh initiative several months ago because of her passion for the environment and our company.  She organized a group of like-minded folks, and before you know it, she had a movement.  Now it's institutionalized with its official launch today.  Some of the green things we're doing as a company are:

Giving each person a recycle bin and reusable shopping bag.

New kitchen-ware... The plates are made of a sugar-cane byproduct called bagasse that biodegrades within 30-90 days. The utensils are made from corn or potato starch and are compostable and biodegradable. And, the paper towels are made from recycled materials.

An electronics recycling program.

Server clean-up to reduce electricity use.

Toner cartridge recycling.

We use compact fluorescent bulbs in the building whenever possible.

Our cleaning company uses environmentally friendly cleaning paper and products.

The foam core and matte board we use for presentation boards is made from recyclable
materials.

Our printers and copiers switch to power-save mode when not in use.

And besides looking beautiful, our roof-top garden helps moderate temperatures, improve air quality, reduce storm-water runoff and creates a habitat for birds and butterflies.

We may not be the greenest company on the planet, but we're doing our part.  And the Planet Fresh team will continue to crank-out ideas for us.  Nice job team.

Technorati Tags: Environment, Green, Barkley, Fresh

Inspiration for the day

Noted jazz musician Herbie Hancock wrote an article in United Way's Hemispheres magazine.  On a 15-hour flight across the Pacific Ocean, you'll read anything, so I picked it up.  I loved this paragraph:

"Reinvention is relishing the idea of looking for a new way of doing something, so you present something that's fresh.  Exercising your creative abilities is one of the most important aspects of a human being -- or organization.  The more you explore looking at things differently and creating another way to look at things, the more choices you'll have to invent a new framework, a new environment.  Consequently, you'll be able to do something others have not."

Blue Shanghai

Today is my last day in Shanghai.  I'm leaving this afternoon.  I took a little walk on the Pudong river walk this morning and snapped a couple of shots.  It was very sunny and warm -- a typical lazy Sunday feeling.  I miss Joe and Amy and am ready to be home.  But I've loved every minute of this adventure.  Goodbye Shanghai.

Technorati Tags: China, Pudong, Shanghai, IPREX, Haungpu River

"To be rich is glorious."

Our Friday session at IPREX was an outstanding education on the state of business in China.  Our Asia partners and hosts, Upstream Asia, arranged for a presentation from William Reinfeld, a management consultant, Asia expert and professor at the China Europe International Business School.

Here are the highlights from his presentation:

1.  China is modernizing, not Westernizing.  They don't want to be like America.  They do want to be rich and powerful.  Deng Xiaoping famously said, "To be rich is glorious," and the Chinese people are taking this to heart, albeit in their own way.

2.  Foreigners doing business in China must understand the Chinese philosophy of Confucianism, the way of thought that still drives Chinese to this day.

3.  China is not one market, but many markets, cultures, and ethnicities.

4.  China's businesses are built on two models: family businesses or state-owned entities.

5.  In China, the law of large numbers attracts foreign interest, such as:

A population of 1.3 billion people; 500 million in the urban centers.

25% of urban households are middle class; 75% will be by 2015.

500 million mobile subscribers and growing at 19% annually.

31 million credit-card holders

China accounts for 30% of global merchandise exports.

China has the second highest investment rate in R&D in the world (second to the US)

Approximately 200 million Internet users (second only to the US).

12 million private cars

Literacy rate (male) of more than 90%

Less than 10% of Chinese citizens are in the Communist Party.

There are 350 million Chinese who speak English; it's the largest English-speaking population in the world.

The other major point Reinfeld made I found so interesting, and relevant to us in the PR profession, is how important relationships are in doing business in China.  Reinfeld said, "Business here (in China) is not transaction based, it's relationship based."  Chinese look beyond the transaction.  In a business situation, the Chinese are looking for a person to show "Guanxi", which is ones true personal interest in a relationship.

What I love about this is that every business relationship should have Guanxi, and as PR Professionals, we should be trying to build Guanxi between our clients and their stakeholders.

Later in the day, we heard from Sam Flemming, CEO of CIC, a social-media monitoring firm that monitors only in Asia.  Sam was a wealth of information about social media use in China.  Some nuggets:

The Chinese use social-media tools to a higher degree than Americans; The net culture is very mainstream.

75 million Chinese are using social media

There are 50 million Chinese bloggers

The most popular blogger in the world (in terms of traffic) is Chinese

I'll be coming back from Shanghai with many new insights.  This trip has been incredible.

Technorati Tags: China, Pudong, Shanghai, IPREX, CIC

It's not all about China

I've still got time to share this kind of stuff with you (my source for this wishes to remain anonymous). :)