Greetings from Cincinnati! A few observations for the folks back home.
The Muzak is playing in the lobby and most conference attendees have gone to bed or slipped away to a quite bar nearby.
We were entertained this afternoon by a guy from Starbucks who looked like Billy Crystal and whose first job was running the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland, where he told the same lame jokes every ten minutes. Still, he had some cool stuff to share about his current (and much better) corporate gig. For example, Starbucks has 145,000 employees, most of whom DO NOT have access to a computer at work. This fact creates some serious challenges for the internal communications staff.
Of those who do have a computer, how many e-mails do Starbucks employees receive each day? Would you believe 3000? And how many interruptions do they get an hour? Try 10. His point? Limit communications and limit the vehicles for delivering them.
A Peter Sellers look-alike led a session on “moving images” that covered the creative strategies behind three wildly different video projects. Some examples: he uses negative questions to solicit honest, unscripted answers; he uses B-Roll to punch up in the editing process; he asks the same questions of all interviewees so one can finish another’s point.
There’s lots more I’d like to share…but technical glitches are making this far more difficult than it ought to be.
More tomorrow.
Bob
