This is pretty much purely my speculation…

Fact: Out of 16 people on the Seattle City and King County Councils, Richard Conlin was one of 2 people to oppose the proposed arena. From Wikipedia:

On October 15, 2012, both the King County Council and Seattle City Council approved a financing plan for a $490 million sports arena in the Seattle’s Sodo neighborhood, backed by venture capitalist Chris Hansen. The King County Council vote was 9-0, while the City Council vote was 7-2, with Conlin and Nick Licata as the only opposition.^[16] The new arena was intended to host the NBASeattle SuperSonics professional basketball team as well as a potential NHL ice hockey team.

Opinion: I voted against Conlin solely because of this.  Didn’t even look to see who the opposition was. (Of course, the joke’s on me – the opposition is a Socialist and I’m stuck with THAT for 4 years, but anyway.)

Conlin’s only colleague in his failed anti-arena effort was Nick Licata, who keeps getting elected under the same Seattle-specific psuedo-common sense that says people should wear socks with birkenstocks, refuse to use umbrellas in the rain and improve traffic by getting rid of car lanes for bike lanes. It appears Licata was at least lucky enough to be able to wait for the election to be over before having to launch his failed initiative to derail $151,000 from funding a more formalized Seattle Startup Initiative. I breathe a little thanks that Licata has lost enough pull that he can’t completely derail common sense in the Council anymore. Still, I can’t help think that as a city, we get what we deserve as long as we continue to elect that crackpot. But it’s worth noting that he waited until his paycheck for the next 4 years was secure before trying his latest effort to hold Seattle back.

But back to the point of the story. Richard Conlin is forced out of his job of guiding a city, and headed back to a job of writing policy for non-profits, thanks in part to his refusing to help bring a privately-funded arena to life.  He could have used common sense and kept his job. But he didn’t. And by refusing, he forced voters to go against common sense and elect a Socialist. All in all a wash for the voters, and a loss for him.

Relax… this isn’t going to become a food blog.  But ’tis the season for candy and jack-o-lanterns. And I took the guts and remains of my small little pumpkin the other day and turned them into something worth sharing.

So here’s the recipe for the best pumpkin seeds you’ll ever eat.  They are so good that people who don’t like pumpkin seeds will like them.

Prep:

1. Wash pumpkin seeds
2. Lay seeds on a slightly tilted cookie sheet to drain and dry them overnight for 24 hours.
3. When you get grief from impatient people about the 24 hour drying process, ignore the impatient people and go to sleep.

After 24 hours:

1. Melt a few tablespoons of butter in a bowl.
2. Mix in salt (just a little to start).
3. Mix in cayenne pepper (about the same amount as salt).
4. Mix in white pepper (little less than the cayenne).
5. Mix in black pepper (little less than the white pepper).
6. Mix in brown sugar (your choice).
7. Stir the seeds around the melted butter and spices, and give the mixture a taste. It should be sweet, then bring a little kick about 3-5 seconds later.
8. Reseason to taste. More sugar and heat.
9. Stick in the pre-heated oven at 300 degrees for 30 minutes.
10. Take out the seeds and shake them around to wake them up.
11. Put them back in for another 15 minutes.
12. Take them out and put them in a bowl.

Trust me. These are the best seeds you’ll eat. And the best part is that you are able to take the healthiest part of this candy-gasmic holiday and turn it into a sugary butter bomb.

Happy Halloween.

Happy Fall 2013.  This summer sure got busy, as you may have figured out from my lack of writing.  And things look to only get busier as we head into the autumn season.  So, here are a few things and events I’ll be participating in.

October 1 – Dec 3:  Teaching Marketing 555 (Entrepreneurial Marketing) in the UW MBA Program.  If you have a start-up and would like to get some in class recognition, feel free to drop me a note. I’m always on the look-out for people and business to put in front of the class.

October 18: NWEN Entrepreneur University – I’ll be moderating a panel entitled, “From student to serial entrepreneur: The lifecycle of startups.” My experts will include Andre Dumont, Director of Business Development at Moz,  Mariah Gentry, CEO at Joey Bra and Kelly Smith, CEO at Curious Office. Should be a great panel.

November 6 and 7: I’m really looking forward to teaching a short section on Social Media Strategies to a group of MBA students from Lucerne University in Switzerland. They’ll be at the UW for a week or so, soaking up knowledge on a number of topics that thrive here int he Northwest.

November 20: It’s been a while since I have been back at the Seattle School of Visual Concepts, but right around Thanksgiving I’ll be leading a workshop on Content Marketing Strategies.  Feel free to come check it out.

I think that’s it for now.

Hat tip to the Snohomish bureau of AndyBoyer.com for digging up this little article from Dominic Lanza at http://itsaboutthemoney.net. The premise  is simple, even though the work was grueling and tedious. Lanza answers the question, “What would every MLB team look like if it was only made up of players it drafted?”

Of course, what you hope is that the team you have today is better than the team on this list. That would indicate you were able to sell the talent you had in your system for more than it was worth, and buy bargains along the way.  Unfortunately, in the Mariners case it looks like we are pretty good at drafting talent, and then selling it at bargain prices.

I added a (*) next to everyone no longer on the roster, meaning they were let go and contributing for someone else now.

Seattle Mariners

Starting Pitchers
• Doug Fister (*)
• Felix Hernandez
• Hisashi Iwakuma
• Brandon Morrow (*)
• Chris Tillman (*)

Bullpen
• Carter Capps
• Shawn Kelley (*)
• Yoervis Medina
• Eric O’Flaherty (*)
• J.J. Putz (*)
• Rafael Soriano (*)
• Matt Thornton (*)

Catchers
• Rene Rivera (*)
• Mike Zunino

Infielders
• Dustin Ackley
• Willie Bloomquist (*)
• Asdrubal Cabrera (*)
• Nick Franklin
• Brad Miller
• Kyle Seager

Outfielders
• Shin-Soo Choo (*)
• Raul Ibanez
• Adam Jones (*)
• Ichiro Suzuki (*)

Designated Hitter
• David Ortiz (*) (though this barely counts.)

More analysis on this report is here on Deadspin.

I had a ridiculous thought this morning that I’ll share for no particular reason.

We have thousands of Irish bands here in the U.S. I wonder if any of the ones like the ones I follow (Dropkick Murphy’s, Flogging Molly, the Blaggars, the Real McKenzies, etc…) ever actually make a tour of Ireland. And I wonder how well received they are when playing real Irish towns like Galway, Shannon, Rosscommon, etc…

I bet it would be a fun trip to journal and chronicle. What Irish Music fan wouldn’t want to read (and watch) the story of a U.S. based Irish band visiting the homeland for 7 days?

So if you have a Irish band and want to take me to Ireland with you to chronicle your tour, let me know.

(Image Source: http://merlinandrebecca.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-galway-music-scene.html)

I’m not breaking any new ground here, but I’m the latest convert to the importance of habits.

As I get older, I realize that my body and brain would like to spend more time on auto-pilot.  I tell them every morning what I want to do, and they respond with “Ok, sounds good” in that condescending way a teen-age responds when you ask them to run an errand. Then by the middle or end of the day, as I’m pleading with my brain and body to do the things we agreed upon, I discover they have taken the rest of the day off and I’m stuck in whatever pattern has been established for me after thousands of  hours or days of practice.

Thus, my renewed effort to create new habits. I find that the most successful people I know do things that make them better naturally – as if their body knows to do them. They don’t have to find time to get to the gym, they have to find time to meet you for a drink.  They don’t have to make a conscious decision to skip the fried chicken, they already have a turkey wrap sitting in front of them. It’s these little things that they do automatically that seem to give them the extra time and energy to do the really hard things.

So here are some habits that I’m going to spend July and August employing:

• Meeting people who want to brainstorm for walks around Greenlake or down on the Waterfront, rather than for coffee or beers.
• Getting to the gym every day.  Even if it’s for a 10 minute walk on a treadmill. Just getting there.
• Picking 4 hours a day of computer time in which the email and IM is turned off.
• Writing on the blog at least 100 words a day. Even if I only get those 100 words down, at least I’m 25% of the way to a 400 word essay.
• Throw away 10 things per day.  I know my friend Liz Pearce does 15 per day, but I need to start somewhere.

Now there is a difference between rituals and habits.  I think a ritual is something you do at the same time every day, like getting to the gym at 6:00am.  I just want to start with habits. Maybe I’ll evolve to ritual.

So if I seem like I’m blowing you off for coffee to suggest a walk up and down 2nd Ave instead, don’t take it the wrong way. All I’m trying to do is build in some habits that make me healthier and more efficient. And that doesn’t mean I’m not going to meet you for happy hour.  It just means I’ll do so if I make it to the gym earlier.  We’ll see how it works out.

I’m getting really bad at keeping this up to date. Here’s what you missed if you haven’t been following along with the 15 second blurbs on Facebook and Twitter. And yes I’m breaking bog rules by not including links or photos.  I’m just happy to have 10 free minutes on a sunny coffee shop deck to bang this out.

• If you didn’t catch the US Soccer game vs Panama at Century Link on June 11, you really missed out on a great experience.  At least 40,000 fans made their way into the stadium.  You really have to wonder why the Mariners and Major League Baseball didn’t try to move the Astros/Mariners game up to 12:40 for a business person special. I mean, with all those out of towners visiting Seattle for the day, some percentage would have started their festivities at the baseball field.  You certainly would have drawn more than the estimated 3,500 fans you got trying to compete with a once every 40 year occurrence. I still haven’t sorted any of the 450 pics I took, but you can see them all here.
• Congrats to all of my former students who took home prizes in the UW Business Plan Competition in May (links to come.) ZGirls featured former MKTG 555 student Libby Ludlow, and iHome3D featured former student Nelson Huang.  Alvaro Jimenez and Dave Knight put in strong perfromance as well with Elemental Hotels and a host of the folks from the TMMBA class went on to the final 32 and 16. Big winner was Alan Luo from MKTG 555’s Team Happy Back, whose BPC team Pure Blue Technologies won the whole shibang.  Nice work guys.
• If you haven’t made it to a Seattle Tech Meetup yet, I would mix it into your networking event rotation. It has start-up flavor, but isn’t 100% focused on start-ups.  So there’s a nice mix of people. Red and Brett do a great job mixing in networking time, short presentations, good speakers, great sponsors and free food and drink.  Check the next one out.
• On a side note, the seat belt law is stupid.  I’ve never been in an accident, am stopped at a light, take off my seat belt to reach back to the back seat and grab something out of my bag, when all of a sudden State Patrol Officer Snoopy Brains drives by.  Forget the fact that he nearly causes his own traffic incident for parking his patrol car in the middle of the road waiting for the light to change, and forget the fact that by the time he pulls me over my seat belt is back on.  The guy still writes up a ticket.  Seriously WSP – 20 years and no accidents and like one speeding ticket 15 years ago. I have health insurance.  Is the state budget in such bad shape that you need to be searching for seat belt offenders, and not even let me explain the situation? He tried to give me a ticket for lack of insurance because I was pulling up the cards on my phone and he didn’t want to wait for me to find them.  Annoying.

More stuff is coming in the next few weeks. So come back soon.

Life was a little too busy in April, and I have a bunch of half-finished blog posts to show for it. Rather than try to finish them, here were my thoughts for the month, in no particular order.

• Thanks to Art Thiel of SportsPress Northwest for letting me write about my trip to the Colorado Rapids v Sounders game on 4/20. I didn’t think it was a very good article on my part so I didn’t promote it. But for any writer, being published is being published. So thanks, Art.
• Seriously – the construction on Aurora makes it impossible to get to work from Wallingford to Queen Anne. Just hopeless.
• I have a new irrational addiction to broccoli. Here are two awesome recipes that are super easy to make. Parmesan Roasted Broccoli and Brilliant Sauteed Broccoli.
• Poor Mariners. Man. What a shame. Is there any answer here?
• The fact that the Sounders have struggled mightily in the first two months of the season, and I still have no doubt that they’ll make the playoffs, shows there’s something wrong with the length of the MLS schedule.


Coors Field, Denver

• Denver is a great city. For that matter so is Boulder.
• I want to thank Brett Greene from Fresh Consulting for hooking me up with some great meetings I was in Boulder. Check out these companies did you get a chance: Metzger and Associates, Room 214, Sendgrid. Also check out check out Galvanize
• Did I mentioned the traffic yet? The one good thing is that a combination Siri and Aurora Bridge traffic gives me a lot of chance to write down – I mean talk down – blog posts.
• It was mentioned to me that our softball team is now in its 20th year of competition, in which I played 18 of those years. That has to be some sort of record for Seattle amateur sports.
• Right now I’m way past a month of no caffeine. All seems be going well, except for my new addiction to hot chocolate, which I fear is way more fattening than coffee.
• And the Beat the Bridge Run is a few weeks. I might give it another shot this year despite being desperately out of shape.  This could be the year my winning streak of getting across in time ends.
• If there is a logic to how the parking works in lower Queen Anne, I haven’t been able to figure it out. Block by Block it changes – Four hour meters, two hour meters, two hours free, one hours free, unlimited free, carpool, and anything else. It makes no sense.
• I’m an uncle again.  How about that.  Welcome to the world, Lyla Margaret Kline who was born May 1.
• And the cycle of life continues, as today marks the day that my mom passed away 13 years ago.  Hard to imagine it was that long ago.

Check the Top Right Corner…

So I’m getting this question a lot.

“I thought you were some sort of social media guy. In fact, I thought you were part of a start-up that helps bloggers. What’s with your blog with no updates?”

Excellent question. Easy answers.

There are a few different places where I’m publishing these days.

• For thoughts on start-ups and content marketing, I suggest you check out my posts over on the Relaborate blog.
• For some coomentary on social media and marketing, you can check out my occasional posts on the Social3i blog.
• For great insight to start-up marketing, I urge you to read the great content being produced by the UW MBA students in the Entrepreneurial Marketing class I teach.  They’re producing some great stuff on the blog there.

Sadly, AndyBoyer.com falls 4th on the list.  We’ll try to get some content up here, but feel free to check out the other sites as well.