Andy Boyer

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No Runner Left Behind Vs “The Bridge”

May 18, 2010 /

I’ll admit, going into this year’s Beat the Bridge race, I was worried.  A groin injury, back issues, too much work, not enough exercise, and a diet in which banana peppers were considered a vegetable, all pointed towards an uphill climb.

This year, Team No Runner Left Behind got some late momentum, and by race day we were up to 20 runners.  Our oldest runner was pushing 40 and our youngest not even 10.  We supported Team Livestrong, and clad ourselves in Lance Yellow.  

With 20 runners, a strict buddy system was implemented.  Our goal was to reach “The Bridge” and wait, crossing in one uniform mass of yellow joy.

We all got off to a good start in a front wave.  The announcer yelled, over a loudspeaker, “Don’t worry folks, we won’t start the 20:00 until the second wave gets going.  We had at least a 2:00 head start, so no one would have to worry.

Team NRLB slowly separated from each other, but we all stayed close to a buddy.  Our pace was good and strong.  Kevin and I reached the halfway point at 8:45.  Surely, we wouldn’t be the fastest guys in the group, so it looked good for everyone.

At the 1.8 mile mark, Kevin and I were in solid shape, under 17:00.  3 minutes to go and smooth sailing.  We reached the Bridge and saw two teammates, and we all stopped.  Slowly a few others assembled, one blew right by in some sort of adrenalin induced trance.  We still had at least a minute, possibly more to get everyone across, and so we looked for our remaining teammates.

Then the Bridge cheated.

The Bridge decided it wanted to go up early.  And suddenly bells, whistles, lights and moving parts were among us.  A sudden thought – maybe our teammates crossed already.  We should get to the other side and check it out.

But sadly, there were no more runners on the other side.  And as the Bridge stretched itself to the sky, announcing its presence with authority to the throngs stranded on its south shore, we realized that Team No Runner Left Behind had indeed, left runners behind. 

Going into 2010, Team NRLB had only left 2 folks back in 5 years.  This year, we left 8.  One one hand – success.  We got 12 people across.  On the other – failure.  8 broken souls.  Heartbreak city.

Regardless, the champagne brunch afterwards erased all tears of shame.  Let’s focus on the fact that NRLB surpassed 20 folks, which makes a 30 person goal in 2011 completely reasonable.  

If we start training now, then it doesn’t matter how much the Bridge tries to cheat, we’ll get there in time.  

See you all next year.

Is Old the New New?

May 13, 2010 /

People who haven’t watched Saturday Night Live for years are raving about last weekend’s Betty White episode.  The masses took control.  They created a Facebook page demanding she get to host.  They promoted the show with reckless abandon through blogs and Twitter.  And then they watched, either live, on Hulu or YouTube.  The reviews were outstanding.  SNL had it’s highest rated show in 18 months.  All thanks to someone’s devotion to an 88 year old TV legend.

So that made me think about some other articles I’ve read recently.  SI had a nice piece on Hank Aaron.  The death of Ernie Harwell brought tributes from across the land.  CNBC continues to replay a great interview with Warren Buffet.  All of a sudden, being old is cool again.  

So what caused this?

It wasn’t long ago when old was synonymous with being almost dead.  An entire generation of new voters rushed to the polls to stop John Mc Cain from getting the keys to the White House.  Bob Dole looked impotent in his race vs Bill Clinton in 1996.  And we all have sheepishly wished bands like Kiss, The Eagles and other legends from the 60’s and 70’s would just stayed retired.

But look what happened when we put all our faith in the “young” generation.  We had a President busted for an affair with an intern.  Another President running around starting wars on a giant credit card.  Our young movie stars are dying of drug overdoses or ending up in jail.  All those hot shot 25 year old CEO’s in 2000 brought the economy to collapse, thanks in part to the 40 year old VC’s.  Then in 2008, the hot shot 35 year old Finance folks brought the economy back to its knees with a derivative debacle.  We put our faith in the young, and have learned the young are a lot like us.  And if we wanted someone like us running the show, well maybe we’d run the show ourselves.

So maybe there’s a new appreciation for the old.  Not ALL the old, but the old who have passed through the past decade with grace and aplomb.  Betty White never went on Celebrity Apprentice.  Hank Aaron didn’t try to regain spotlight during Barry Bonds’ Home Run chase.  Ernie Harwell never hosted Best Damn Sports Show, Cabo Edition.  The kept being classy, and now maybe, the mainstream is leaning back towards classy.

Perhaps, just perhaps, shows like Jersey Shore and the Hills have become tired.  Maybe we’ve grown weary of Lindsey Lohan, Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie types.  Could the Octomom and the crazy people from John and Kate plus 8 disgust us?  

So what does that leave us?  For the last 10 years we’ve shunned making stars of what would have been the “new” old to make stars of the young.  So with that void, what we have to fall back on now is the “old” old – at least those who are still alive.  Betty White, Carol Burnett, Dennis Hopper, Sir Alex Ferguson, Vin Scully, hell even Queen Elizabeth is back en vogue.

Anyway, while my data is arguable, my hypothesis is that Betty White on SNL is an indicator that “Old” has made a comeback.  In a world of confusion, we liek to look to those with historical knowledge – not theoretical suppositions – to show us the way.

Farewell Ernie Harwell

May 5, 2010 /

I was going to put some notes together on the passing of Detroit Tigers Broadcasting legend Ernie Harwell.  However, before I had a chance, the North Sound division of AndyBoyer.com but together this list which I’ll forward here:

  • Was born two years before the radio was invented.
  • Was a bat boy for the Atlanta Crackers (really) at age five.  He never had to buy a ticket for a baseball game since then.
  • Broadcast games for the Atlanta Crackers but was traded to the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1948 for catcher Cliff Dapper becasue Branch Rickey liked Ernie and Brooklyn needed a third guy to substitute for Red Barber who was sick with an ulcer.
  • Broadcasters were fired often because as the teams’ radio sponsors — mainly beer companies like Strohs, Gunther, Goebel — won contracts, the new sponsor often thought the broadcaster identified too much with the old sponsor.
  • Vin Scully replaced Ernie Harwell for the Dodgers
  • In Harwell’s first broadcast for the Tigers in 1960, there was not room for him or his color guy in the Cleveland press box so they had to do the broadcast from a table set up in the upper deck.  It was 35 degrees and windy.  The 15 inning game lasted almost five hours.
  • Rick Rizzs did the unthinkable by spending a year as Ernie’s “replacement” in 1992.  Bo Schembechler made this decision and resigned a year later.  Ernie was broadcasting for Detroit again in 1993.
  • In 2002 the Cleveland Indians named their visiting radio booth for Harwell
  • When he retired, he had twice outdone Cal Ripken’s consecutive games streak.  He missed two games in his career.  One for his brother’s funeral and the other for his Hall of Fame induction.
  • It’s Harwell’s call of the 1963 World Series you hear in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”
  • He and his wife Lulu were married for 68 years

Photo borrowed from http://rodgerdodgerowl.wordpress.com/2009/09/15/ernie-harwell/

Entrepreneurship Reigns at UW Business Plan Competition

May 3, 2010 /

For the last several years, I’ve had the distinct pleasure of being a judge at the UW Business Plan Competition.  I’ll admit, this year I was a little scared when 6 of the 7 plans I read in the screening stage failed to pass the Pets.com sniff test.

But last Wednesday, I was able to tour the 36 semi-finalists and talk with the teams in action.  It’s always an interesting exercise.  You see a few companies with ideas that you see every year, and you see some companies who are developing a cure for cancer.  But then there are those teams with ideas that are interesting enough that they just may work.

I gave “money” to a number of the teams, and while I won’t tell you who I tried to help make the next round, here are some ideas and companies I will try to keep an eye on:

Thanks SMC Folks

April 29, 2010 /

Just want to take a quick second to thank Shauna Causey, Joann Jen and the rest of the SMC crew for allowing me to grill three esteemed panelists for 45 minutes Tuesday night about Social Media topics.  I wish we had had more time for Q+A from the crowd, though I think the topic was so wide, we could have gone another hour and still not covered everything.  

A few follow-up notes for the record, in response to the #smcsea Tweetstream from last night. 

  • No disrespect to Whrrl.  I usually say, “Foursquare, Gowalla and Whrrl.”  Not sure why I left them out yesterday.  
  • I do believe GeoLocation and hyper local are key.  However, I wanted to surface some issues with them past the hype, which is why I asked Matt to take a devil advocate’s role.  For example, I still don’t understand how a major advertiser can deploy a hyper local campaign as painlessly as buying a TV spot. 
  • I don’t think you need to have a Twitter account to have Social Media expertise.  Social Media is about connections, deep and shallow.  Choosing not to engage in thousands of shallow conversations, doesn’t mean you don’t have knowledge about particular aspects of this medium.  (Yes I know that is too many negatives in one sentence.)
  • Thanks @Chex_mix for dropping in and watching the stream via Ustream.  Good to have you be part of the conversation.
  • Thanks to anyone who said nice things about the panel and/or moderator.  No offense, I’m just not going to get around to sending @replies to everyone.  But I do appreciate the kind words.
  • Ustream archive link is here.  Panel starts about an hour in.

See everyone at the next event.

What Ethical Questions Can We Answer For You?

April 23, 2010 /

The good folks over at SMC Seattle invited me to moderate a panel next Tuesday on “Ethics, Money and New Ideas.”  I’m not sure if they think I have plenty of those things, or am lacking.  Either way, I was happy to accept.

The panelists that I’ll be trying to prod into healthy debate include Andru Edwards, the CEO of Gear Live Media.  Andru went from blog hobbyist to full-time paid blogger, and he’s a definitive source for technology, pop culture, and entertainment news.  We’ll also have Izabelle Gorczynski, a privacy attorney at Microsoft, who is going to speak to international data protection matters relating to product development, sales and marketing, social media and data security,  as well as HIPAA compliance and medical privacy issues.  Rounding out the on-site group will be Matt Haynes from Wunderman. Ad agencies and ethics are always good ingredients for a spicy conversation.  So we’ll have the Influencer, the Lawyer and the Mad Man – If I can’t lead that cast into interesting storylines, I should be banned from any future events.

But being that this is a social media event, I do want to include ideas from attendees or readers.  If you have a social media ethics question, let me know via email, Twitter or comment box below, and I’ll work it into the conversation.

Baseball Milestones

April 22, 2010 /

It’s not often I get content for this blog from my softball cronies.  But this article came across the kucklehead telegraph today and is full of great baseball trivia. My only question now is which one of these guys reads the Wall Street Journal.  Here are some highlights.

  • Marlins Jorge Cantu stared the season with at least one hit and one RBI in each of the Marlins first 9 games.- Never done before.
  • A-Rod: 13 seasons; 30 HRs and 100 RBIs in each one;  A-first

There have been 173,383 MLB games since 1903

  • No player has ever hit 3 grand slams in one game
  • No player has ever hit for the cycle in two consecutive games
  • A game has never had two players hitting for the cycle
  • In 49 years, the Mets have never had a no-hitter (Seaver for the Reds, Cone for the Yanks, Ryan for several, Gooden for the Yanks).  In 18 years, the Marlins have 4
  • 40 pitchers have throw the immaculate late inning (9 strikes to 3 consecutive batters).  But No pitcher has done it two innings in a row.
  • 26 batters have come to bat 3 times in 1 inning.  But none of them made all 3 outs in the inning.
  • Twice, not once, a game has ended with an unassisted triple play – Last year and 1927.

 

The Question No One is Asking About the iPad

April 6, 2010 /

I’m not writing a review of the iPad.  Since I’m not a tech blogger, I’ll leave that to JetCityDigital, Mashable, Jeff Jarvis, and AllThingsD.  (And yes, I did put Ron Schott in the same sentence as Walt Mossberg, so remember this post in 10 years people.)

I don’t want to debate if the iPad is a laptop killer, or simply the media companies’ attempt to put us all back in a walled garden.  I have a much simpler question.

In every publication I read, articles focus on 10% unemployment, a looming deficit, and the fact that we’re all doomed.  So why on earth do we need a laptop that’s not a laptop, or a phone that’s too big to be a phone, or a $500 way to read magazines that still cost $5 per issue to download?  The iPad seems like something we should have gotten in 1998, when we all used $100 bills as post-it notes.  But in a recession?  Who needs to drop that kind of coin on a device that serves a secondary function for all the functions we already have solutions for?

I got the iPod.  I got the iPhone.  I get Android.  I get the iPad in Tokyo or Shanghai.  I may even get the iPad in the U.S. in 2 years, or if the content was all free.  But I have to admit, I’m not sure how far “shiny” and “new” takes you in 2010 middle America…  I’m looking forward to being wrong on this…  

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