We wonder why summer goes by so fast in Western New York. Well, it’s because we only get about 13 weeks of truly summer-like weather. Memorial Day weekend kicks it off, and before you know it we’re into Labor Day. It all becomes a blur. I try to spend more time outside and far less in front of the computer blogging. So, here we are in the weekend after Memorial Day and I haven’t even talked about what fun we had.

Wii Skied on Friday
Friday night we had our friends the Krolczyk’s over to our house for a nice little barbecue. Afterward we all huddled around the Wii Fit and had some laughs learning how to ski jump. Tricia has been honing her Wii Fit skillz for her training biz, so she was the expert teacher.

Tricia shows Mia how to Ski Jump in Wii Fit

Lake House Chillaxin’
On Saturday we headed down to my parents’ lake house and got our first taste of decent weather. While the adults had some fun drinking Dirty Water (Brandy, Sprite, lime), the kids met all of their lake buddies. Anna was particularly menacing as Batgirl with her friend Olivia.

Anna is a Batgirl Bada$$

Sunday morning we started the day with one of our favorite summer pastimes; a visit to the East Avon Flea Market. It’s held at the Vintage Drive-In Theater. We always walk away with at least one bargain, and usually at least one thing we didn’t need. That day I got a fishing rod holder for my garage and a ‘crowd-pleaser’ fishing lure for my upcoming trip to Canada.

Celebrating Uncle Adam’s Entry into the World
Sunday afternoon we headed over to Nana and Poppy’s house where they were throwing a party for Adam’s 25th birthday. Uncle Matt, Aunt Ali, and a deep fried turkey all showed up for the party.

Poppy deep-fries the bird

For dessert, Adam requested brownies not chocolate cake. The kids were very happy with his decision.

The way to the kids’ heart is through brownies

Monday Memorial Parade
Mason got to stay by himself with Nana and Poppy on Sunday night and into Monday. While Mason was fishing, playing mini-golf and having a jolly good time, Tricia, Anna and I went to the Webster Memorial Day parade. I haven’t been to a parade in a long time, so it was awesome on such a beautiful day to take in Webster’s offering. It was only 20 minutes long, but we got to see everything from Boy Scouts, to marching bands, to decorated veterans. It was a great way to cap off a very relaxing Memorial Day weekend.

Troops in the Webster Memorial Day Parade

For the few of you who might be wondering why the frequency of my posts is way down, I can blame a wide variety of things. My best explanation right now is that I’ve taken on a side project for my wife to get her personal training endeavors off the ground. Every night I pound out a little copywriting, web design, blog consulting, PHP programming, HTML wizardry, photography, Photoshopping, to get this honey-do item off the list. You are welcome to follow along as I build it and contribute any 2 cents you may have. Nope. I’m not doing this in private. This thing is getting built before your eyes with Google fully indexing every piece of greek text still in there, every bad copy idea, every unfinished page. Enjoy Training With Tricia – a work in progress.

This is on top of some extremely stressful family goings-on as I pray for my parents, aunts and uncles while they search for the right answer in putting my grandfather and grandmother into permanent care.

A London Business Trip Stream of Consciousness
Here I am in Chicago for my 4th straight week of business travel. My mind is mush, and my body is losing muscle-mass by the minute. Nonetheless, I thought I’d recount last week’s trip to London for our Global Marketing Summit, stream-of-consciousness style. Aided by my tweets and augmented by a few pics, I should be able to recall the highlights as the jet lag clears.

Tuesday May 6: The Long Voyage to London
It’s 3:45am, I just woke up for the flight. I didn’t sleep well last “night”. I never do when I need to go international. My iPod hard drive died last night for some unexplained reason. The replacement is my wife’s retired Dell Axim that I quick-loaded with a few MP3’s.

The Rochester Airport wasn’t crowded this morning for some reason so I breezed through check-in and security. The UAL flight to Washington was great aboard a CRJ 700 – one of the only regional jets that have comfortable, wide seats, stand-up height, and enough legroom. Wendy’s for breakfast at IAD. What possessed me to order a “Frescuit“? I can’t even pronounce it. It was flat awful.

I head for my 9:30am London connection. Aboard the 777, I get a window seat jammed next to another guy with very wide shoulders. I’m always surprised that the meals aboard the long-haul planes are decent. I’ve seen Cloverfield and Jumper now plus I’ve written 2 blog entries for my work project. The batteries are dead on all of my portable electronic devices by the time I arrive. It’s now 12:30pm London time, a full 15 hours since I got up. The London cabbie is a cheerful woman who takes me to the Beauchamp Hotel. Apparently a new mayor was elected recently in London because I heard all about it. It takes me forever to wind down. I call Tricia and the kids (they are 5 hours behind) and fall asleep by 2am. Wake up call is 7:00am. Can’t wait!

Wednesday May 7: An English Breakfast and a Brown Finish
I pry open my eyes at 7am and go down for the complimentary breakfast. The waitress asked what I wanted, and I said “Everything”. God bless the English, because out came the following: Scrambled eggs, wheat toast, sausage, back bacon, and my favorite random English sides, baked beans, mushrooms and a tomato. I shotgunned the meal in under 10 minutes. I bet the natives let it rest a bit more than that. I meet the rest of our crew in the lobby, and we’re off to the office. My juvenile sense of humor finds many of the London sights funny. I’m not sure what to expect to drink at the Bung Hole for instance, but it conjures up images of Beavis and Butthead for sure.

The names of some London establishments leave something to be desired

The morning is full of meet and greets and business strategy updates. We’re hearing a lot about Corporate Social Responsibility these days. There is a great update to our corporate capabilities brochure that is sure to please everyone looking for fresh images and an updated showpiece to share with clients and candidates. It strikes me how hard it is to coordinate a global marketing effort in a regionally structured company. I’m chomping at the bit to share our web video launch with the global team, and get some feedback on the creative for our upcoming blog release. The team responds to both with enthusiasm and constructive input.

The meeting is done and the fatigue is setting in by 5:00pm. I sneak in a shower and a 10 minute catnap at the hotel. After a quick check-in with the family I’m off to Browns London for our evening dinner meeting. I’m having Steak, Mushroom and Guinness Pie – how English!

Kris and Ronel: the Interactive Marketing Squad for Hudson

At 11pm the first day is complete. I’m heading back to the hotel to catch up on the work of the day. I’m asleep by 2am because it feels like 9pm.

Thursday May 8: Global Updates and a Speed Boat Ride
I’m still not yet coherent from lack of sleep, but it’s time to head off to the office at Chancery Lane at 8am. Today every global marketing manager is sharing the successes from their region and their upcoming plans. My takeaway is this: It’s an exciting time to be a marketer in Asia, rebuilding time for Australia, maturing time in EU, and experimental time in the US. It is refreshing to know that we share VERY similar challenges aligning marketing to business process, and pushing business process to align with a marketing vision. We’re ending the day by looking forward to our team outing: a speed boat ride on the Thames and dinner at Floridita.

It is clear that we all need some fresh air after being cooped up inside all day. The walk to the boats right beneath the London Eye puts a smile on our faces. We’ve gotten shockingly good weather all week and tonight is no exception. 70 degrees and sunny. We’re talking about London, not Florida.

From Left: Carrie, Denise and Rick walking to the boats

We make it to the docks with time to catch a few pictures of the iconic sites. Then we find out what were really getting into. Apparently the “boats” we’ll be riding in are little dinghies with twin 225hp rocket engines attached to them. We are all very reassured as we don our life jackets and pack ourselves into the raft.

Hop aboard the raft. Keep your hands and feet in the ride at all times

I’m a speed (the rate of movement, not the drug) junkie. When the boats hit top speed there is nothing I can do but smile and take in the breathtaking scenery along the banks of the Thames. We pass Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, the London Bridge, Tower Bridge, and the Royal Observatory (keeper of Greenwich Meantime) to name a few of the sites. Just as fun, though is fearing for your life as the boats probably reaches 60 MPH bobbing and weaving through the huge wakes caused by all of the boat traffic in the river. We are definitely airborne more than once.

Our speedboat ride beneath the Tower Bridge

I’m thankful for dry land after all the speedboat excitement. We go back to the hotel to freshen up, then it’s time for dinner. Floridita is a Cuban cabaret with drag queens doing all sorts of crazy dancing, and killer pomegranate mojitos. A lot of the team from the London office is hanging out with us. We are having a great time talking American politics and testing our foreign accents. By midnight though most of us are turning into pumpkins, and we call it a trip.

Friday May 9: 22 Hours of Case Studies and International Travel
Friday morning, we buzz back to the office and have a morning agenda packed with case studies of marketing ROI in action. From Job Board tracking to integrated campaigns, our team is really working on measuring all of our efforts. We are taking advantage of our last minutes together by recapping the week and setting an action plan. At 1pm Carrie, and I are in a cab (the world’s best in my opinion) to Paddington station and on the Heathrow Express to the airport.

I have to connect to Rochester via Dulles again. This time I’m mesmerized by a Catherine Heigl chick flick, 27 Dresses. Does that surprise anyone who knows me? When I finally settle into bed at 12:30AM on Saturday morning, I’m realizing that I’ve been up 22 straight hours. Yes, that drive home from the airport was risky.

All in all, this was a great trip to London packed with great information and great sights. If you’d like to see more pictures, have a look at the London photo album.

Before you read this blog entry, have a look at part 1 of the video magazine at us.hudson.com. I’d love to know what you think of it. For curious interactive marketers and other onlookers I’m about to outline the rationale of the project, its background, challenges, triumphs, and next steps. First though, would you write down your unbiased answers to these questions?

Your First Impressions

• Did you have any problems viewing or hearing the video?
• Did you watch all of it, or did you bail out?
• What is the point of the video?
• Are you enticed to view the rest of the series?

I’d really appreciate it if you’d leave your answers in the comments on this post. This has been quite a learning experience for me personally, and your comments will just add to it.

Making the Case for Web Video
In April of last year, our global marketing team convened to discuss new media and the social web phenomena. At the time, recruitment on Second Life and MySpace was grabbing headlines, while YouTube and blogging were creeping into corporate communication strategy. The common themes were transparency, authenticity and audience control of the message.

On a limited budget we agreed to test one or two new media channels to begin to participate in this movement. While not ideal to choose a channel before defining goals, we knew that a certain amount of experimentation would be required to remain competitive. Over the next 6 months the case for web video became clear – instead of writing about the “professionalism” of our people we would let their stories demonstrate it.

Enter Cantaloupe.tv
After speaking with a few large agencies who wanted to charge high-end video prices to execute for the web, I was referred to Cantaloupe.tv. Jon DiGregory, one of Cantaloupe’s founders, pitched “disposable video stories” that would be compiled into an online video magazine. What Jon meant by disposable is that the relevance of web video only lasts for a short period of time similar to magazine articles. To attract viewers, the stories should be short and frequent. Jon advocates low budget, medium quality, documentary productions that revolve around the real story. After I looked at a few other client examples of reality shows, I knew we had our video partner. Taking a leap of faith, we decided to build a 12 part video magazine throughout the remainder of this year and into 2009.

Defining the Story
The first task was to define goals that we wanted viewers to take away from the videos. Cantaloupe facilitated a story building session with our marketing team and members from the business that revealed scenarios we could use to build episodes. We decided to focus on one line of business at a time starting with Hudson Legal. The result was a well defined story document that will drive the shooting of our first few episodes.

Shooting and Editing the Video
With a producer and one videographer we shot our first production at a meeting in Philadelphia in early March. As expected, the team being filmed was uncomfortable at first. After a while though the camera disappeared and they were able to function more naturally. The confessionals within the episode laid the groundwork for upcoming shoots and prepped the team for what’s to come.

Editing of the video went through March and into April. The amount of editing between the marketing team, the business leaders, and Cantaloupe surprised me. Getting a video production that everyone is happy with was VERY time consuming, and one of the hidden gotchas of this project.

Framework Build-out
Once the heavy lifting of creating the web video was complete, we needed to integrate it into our websites. The online magazine framework provided by Cantaloupe would be right on our homepage where a static graphic billboard had previously resided. Our theory, of course is that its prominent location will drive the most views and entice users to interact with the rest of the site. We also will feature the videos on our microsite home pages for our different business units when they are featured within the video.

Post-Launch Activities
Now that the first episode is live, there is still plenty to do. In follow-up posts I will discuss our email marketing strategy and some of the reactions, questions that arise as we go down this path, and likely the ROI of all this effort. As we speak, we already have seven tapes worth of footage ‘in the can’ that will comprise episodes 2 and 3.

Check out more of the Poetic Prophet, m0serious on YouTube. He raps about the nuances of Search Engine Optimization, paid search, and link building and campaign conversion. I actually get more information out of listening to his raps than most “real” webinars. I think it’s because very few words must be chosen to get across big ideas. This is not a skill most public speakers have mastered.

Hat tip to Ann Handley of MarketingProfs.

At least that’s what I take away from Lauren’s latest post in Wired and Hired. When comparing her female candidate interactions with male counterparts, Lauren had this to say.

Unexpectedly, I find men are more difficult to deal with when it comes to the prospect of leaving their “homeland”…I have a male candidate telling me he can’t move because he needs to be around people who understand him and that he can’t go anywhere where he doesn’t have friends.

I’m not actually surprised that this is what she finds as a recruiter. I’ve seen plenty of guys who cling to friends as their source of identity and comfort. Similarly, with wanting to be near your family, hometown, favorite sports team – whatever, men often struggle with leaving the comfort zone to get ahead.

Lauren’s got some harsh words for us more sensitive types. Get a load of this riff:

…I don’t even want to send you to my agencies at this point because I get the feeling you are going to try and make them have cry circles after work where you discuss your feelings. Weird. You should have known when you got into this business that it would require moving at some point. However, don’t call me telling me you really want a job, anywhere, and then when the client is interested start pouting and giving me your stream of consciousness over the phone about all of your insecurities. I do not specialize in breathing exercises and co-dependency management. What I do specialize in is getting you a job that translates to a promotion and more money…

Wow Lauren! When it comes to being a recruiter, if you have to read a guy’s ‘feelings journal’ and get them to leave it on the night stand before an interview, you should do it. Good luck finding candidates that need no counsel when making a job change.

To the male job seeking masses, the tough love should be a point well taken. We are competing against strong candidates who will do whatever it takes to get ahead. So, take off your diapers and stop your whimpering when it comes to moving. If you’ve made the decision to change your life to get a new job, what’s the big deal about changing your location?

HELP! I’ve decided to open up my blog development inadequacies with posts that help me get little annoyances on my WordPress blog fixed. I’m not a web developer and never will be one. I like to tinker with a lot of things and I get backed into corners that I don’t know how to get out of. Sure I can Google with the best of them, but there are times when you just want answers.

So, I’m going to make posts that spell out the issues I’m having, then link back to the post from development forums so that potential helpers (be it smart marketers, developers, garage-bound computer nerds, whomever) can get all of the detail they need. I’ll be happy to post the solution to the issue and give the fixer link adoration.

Today’s Problem: No descriptions beneath my page listings on Google.
I’m using the All in One SEO plugin on WordPress. Currently the All In One SEO plugin is version 1.4.6.7 (just upgraded from 1.4.2, would that fix it?), and the WordPress install is 2.2.2. I don’t understand why there are no Google descriptions as they do show up in the meta description of blog entries and even the static homepage of my site (View Source on them to see what I mean). Is it that there is something messed up with my code, some kind of plugin conflict, or perhaps Google is not creating a description for some other reason? I know Google doesn’t rely just on the meta description.

Have a look at a nice example of a job ad that reflects very well on the staffing industry. Jim Durbin posted this ad on his blog and tweeted it out to his network.

VP Marketing Role In St Louis

The job ad has the following things that all staffing firm recruiters could do:

1. Admit right up front the relationship between the recruiter and the client. For seekers really naive about recruiters, it might even be good to link to a definition of contingent search.
2. Make a short statement about the company in your own words instead of some marketing boilerplate about ‘startup with IPO potential’. Jim really builds trust that he has a relationship with the client and has internalized it enough to boil it down to a meaningful synopsis for his candidate audience
3. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Jim doesn’t bother with what’s in it for the candidate. He goes right in to ‘What I’m Looking For’. It actually better reflects the fact that recruiters are acting as candidate agents with a responsibility to present the best/right fit for the job. You get the feeling that what he’s looking for isn’t from some internal job description that lists one hundred requirements and ‘desired skills’. He has crafted three profiles from his candidate research that he can effectively sell into the client.

Perhaps if Jim were working for a large staffing firm, or if this weren’t a VP level job, his approach may have been different. Maybe he wouldn’t have had as much knowledge of the client. Had this not been for a marketing job would he have taken the same approach? I’m not sure. It does strike me as a much stronger case for working with a recruiter than the majority of the schlock out there.

Tricia put on a great party for me the other night for my birthday, and I’m very thankful. It’s not very often that I get to hang out with 22 people who hold me in as high esteem as free booze and appetizers. We had a good old time with 2 Hold ‘Em poker tables and a craps table too. We passed out 50 chips at 8:00 and counted at 10:30pm giving people plenty of time to hit it big or go bust. The top 3 counts were 387, 338 and 226. Congratulations to the 3 winners who are not related Mr. Papagiorgio. For anyone not remembering National Lampoon’s Vegas Vacation, Rusty pretended to be a high-roller by that name and promptly won enough for a Lambourghini.

Kris runs the craps table

Dad explains the finer points of poker while losing his stack to the ladies

Tensions mount at the living room poker table as Christine builds her dynasty

All the fun took place 3 days after my real birth date (April 2nd) where my kids got me a professional waffle maker.

There were a few other new things I learned in the Bahamas beside what I’ve covered in parts 1 and 2. I’ll start with the ultimate undersea experience.

6. Seriously Could U Bring enough Air (SCUBA)
Dad decided he would surprise Mike and me with early birthday presents. Available at the resort was a PADI Discover Scuba Diving program. This was an intro course where we watched a video and took some pool instruction before going on a real dive with an instructor. The first day we got the video program out of the way which, for me was like watching an in-flight airline safety video. I figure when I really need the information they’ll probably remind me how to put the mask around my head in the event of cabin depressurization, so let’s not sweat all of the details. We then went to get our gear and head to the pool.

Scuba involves a few things that are strange to the uninitiated. Perhaps the most perplexing to me were the BC (Boyancy Compensator) and the Regulator. The BC is a vest that holds the air tank to your back and inflates/deflates to ascend and descend in the water. The regulator is the set of tubes hooked to the tank that you breathe from, the back-up breather, and the air gauge that tells you how much air is left. Of course you must also fiddle with fins, a mask, a wet suit, a weight belt, and the all-important air tank to complete the ensemble. We got instructed on how to put it all together and then we hopped into the pool.

Kris, Mike and Dick get schooled on their Scuba gear

Once in the pool we had to learn all of the worst case scenarios first. What happens if your mask fills with water. How do you signal that you are out of air? What if your regulator falls out? How do you prevent your ears and lungs from imploding? You know…the truly enjoyable parts of Scuba that make you hop up and say “Hooray, I’m so glad that man figured out how to fake being a fish without evolving some gills.” We learned a few hand signals and it was time for my first taste of underwater breathing. What a rush!

We got going at 11:30am on day two by getting all of our gear and heading out to the excursion boat that would take us to the ocean reef. Our instructor told us we would be down for about 45 minutes. The air was cold that day with a 20 MPH wind whipping and some pretty good waves, but the water was warm. I was worried about remembering all that we had learned the day before and getting cold before our dive was over. Mike, on the other hand had his marriage to worry about. The cold weather made his fingers shrink and his wedding band loosened up. Rather than leave some booty at the the bottom of the ocean he decided to clip it to the boat. The good news was that if he encountered a mermaid she wouldn’t be scared away by the symbol of matrimony. hmmmm….

Mike’s wedding ring stayed aboard the boat

Despite our jitters we managed a smile in anticipation of warm water and a great reef view.

Kris and Dad ready to dive

The next thing we learned was how to jump off of the boat and into the water. Once we had all taken the plunge it was time to head down. As each of us went down, we equalized our ears. Mike had a little trouble getting equalized, and Dad seemed to be floating off to China after letting go of the rope. I felt pretty good as I went down, but all I wanted to do was stick close by the instructor. When we finally got comfortable, one of the instructors snapped this shot of us.

Kris, Dad and Mike make their first ocean Scuba dive

The dive itself was spectacular. It didn’t take long for us to feel at ease in 10-15 feet of water. The reef was breath taking with all sorts of plant and marine life. I took a few shots with the disposable underwater camera, but it can’t do the experience justice.

45 minutes went by in a heartbeat. When we got back on the boat we were all tired and happy. A few days later Dad and I were each battling a water-plugged ear which was a small price to pay for a great new experience.

7. Workouts in boat shoes are not advisable
Let’s get this out of the way first. Tricia did not pack my sneakers. There I said it. Therefore it is undeniable truth that it was her fault I had no suitable athletic footwear on vacation. So, after I let it be known how annoyed I was that I had no sneakers to work out in, I decided that I would pick from my remaining footwear to hit the gym. We were on vacation so technically I didn’t need to work out. However, my body was protesting my buffet addiction and was aching to burn off just a bit of it.

The choice I made was this lovely pair of loafers.

Even worse was the only socks I packed that would go above my ankle and protect my foot were black. I’m positive that I got dirty looks when I entered the gym because I looked like this guy I met on vacation a few years ago.

Kris with hid future self Legoland 2004

So I ran my usual 3 miles in the loafers and black socks on 3 separate occasions. I developed a large blister and a well deserved complex about what a Tool I looked like.

8. It does rain in the Bahamas
Here was the view from our airplane as we approached Freeport on March 22.

In the month of March Freeport is supposed to get a total of 1.57″ of rain. We had that much rain in the first 4 hours of our stay. By the time Monday night rolled around we at least doubled that rainfall estimate. The best part was that it beat the 25 degrees and snow we had left behind in Rochester. The rain really didn’t damper our fun, and by Friday we had enjoyed 3 perfect Caribbean days of sun and beach fun.

9. Non-umbrella drinks are not welcome here
It is common knowledge that you don’t go to the islands to drink dirty martinis. For me, the new experience was the volume of variants to be had. Here’s some of what I sampled:

• Sex on the Beach
• Rum Runner
• Bahama Mama
• Poison Ivy
• Green Monster
• Pina Colada
• Strawberry Daiquiri
• and my personal favorite…Dirty Water

Even more fun was ordering all of the above “Virgin” for the kids. One of the highlights of the trip they recite to every adult who asks is “We had lots of cool drinks like Sex on the Beach”. D’Oh! Why can’t they remember ‘Bahama Mama’?

10. I figured out how to use my Canon camera’s stitch function.
It works reasonably well. The photo below was composited from 8 stitch pics on the beach in front of the hotel. I had to do some blending between the photos to make one continuous scene, but it is still pretty cool. Click and Enjoy.

There you have it. A synopsis of our Bahamas Family vacation through the lens of 10 new things that I learned. Thanks again to my parents for inviting us on the trip and to Lindsey, Mike and Lily for some great memories. I can’t wait til we come up with our next vacation. The tour guide within me is ready for another round.