Category Archives: Personal History

Time Machine

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A few years ago, a sale rep for our company asked to have a commercial written and producted in a ridiculously short period of time. My advice was something along the lines of:

Go down to the basement where we keep the Time Machine. Set it for two weeks ago. When you get back there, submit this work order and it’ll be ready by tomorrow.

Since then it’s become something of a running joke for a few of us at the office. Yesterday it occurred to me how much fun it would be to have a Time Machine in the basement. It would be the highlight of every tour. I don’t have the skills to build such a device but I have some ideas on what it should include:

  • Computer and monitor
  • Headphones
  • Analog date display (more fun than the monitor)
  • Flashing lights
  • Siren and/or horn
  • Levers (lots of them)
  • Switches (lots of them)
  • Seat belt (shoulder harness would be better)
  • Helmet (women probably won’t wear this or headphones)

And I sort of see this on a platform sitting on some huge coil springs, so there would be the slightest movement as you climbed into the seat. Which should be either an old dentist chair, or one of the old metal tractor seats with the holes in it.

What started as a gag could be a great marketing tool. A fun way to review significant moments in the company’s history. But we could also look into the future. This would be huge. I predict we’d have so much word-of-mouth on this, customers would be calling us, asking if they could visit and take a ride in the Learfield Time Machine.

So who could build such a thing? I have no dought some artist or sculptor has already created exactly what I’m looking for. But it’s in a museum or art gallary and damned expensive. My childhood friend RP could have built this in his prime. Not sure about today. He has the imagination and technical skills.

Joe Browning could design it but I’m not sure he could build it. He’s an architect in Santa Fe so he probably knows someone that could make this real. If you know of someone that could pull this off, put me in touch. Hell, I might even be able to get the Grownups at our company to come up with some dough. If not, we’ll have a series of car washes or ham and bean dinners and raise the money.

Rock and Roll Fantasy

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So you have great singer/song writers like Paul Simon, Cat Stevens, Don Henley and Glen Frey who –as far as I know– aren’t making hit records any more. They’re rich, the royalties are coming in, they worked long and hard…so maybe they’re just taking it easy. Why should they bust their asses writing songs. Because they love writing songs. It was once their passion and I want to believe it still is. So where are the songs?

Let’s suppose in the hip-hop musical world of 2006, nobody wants to hear a song by these old farts. But that doesn’t sound right. I’m betting they’re still writing songs…and there are millions of fans who would love to buy/hear them.

Okay, here’s the fantasy part. Let’s say you’re one of these musical legends and you still noodle around in your home studio, writing and recording songs. Not necessarily ‘hit’ songs, just songs. Stuff you like. Why not put it up on a website, give your fans a little taste, and let us buy them?

I think Janis Ian (if you don’t know, it doesn’t matter) does something like this. And why not. If your music is no longer “commercially viable,” but you still love making it… put it up there. Let us buy it direct. Like I said, it’s a fantasy.

Speaking of music… I would love to hear Sheryl Crow do Me and Bobby McGee. Not the Joplin screamer. More of a ballad treatment maybe. Has she ever performed that song?

Still speaking of music… I kinda like the song Table for One by Liz Phair.

But reaching back it occurs to me
There will always be some kind of crisis for me

Not a good drinking song, but haunting.

If somebody has Doug Howard’s email address, he can probably answer the question above. Play the Kennett card.

You say you want a revolution

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A couple of weeks ago I mentioned I’d been invited to be on a panel titled, “Revolution in PR Technology,” at joint meeting of the Community Service Public Relations Council and the St. Louis chapters of both the International Association of Business Communicators and the Public Relations Society of America.

I think the idea is to explain “how blogs, podcasting, wikis, RSS, and audio streaming technologies are transforming the world of communications.” The luncheon/panel is tomorrow in St. Louis and my contact emailed they have 260 people attending. Last time I spoke before 260 people was our high school production of Music Man.

Should be fun although I’m not sure I can explain podcasting in 15 minutes. The technical aspects aren’t complicated, but explaining why this is such a (potentially) disruptive technology is like tryin’ to tell a stranger ’bout rock and roll.

David’s coming along and we’re gonna try to sneak Andy in, so maybe between the three of use we can triangulate the panel on our respective blogs.

Learfield Interactive

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I have three “pet projects” (for lack of a better description) at work. They make a little money but not much. One could make a good argument that these are things we shouldn’t be messing with. But I am quite proud of them and today seems like a good time to bench-mark them.

Legislature.com (how lucky were we to get that domain?) has to be one of the more expensive subscription services on the net. We charge $750 a year for a live stream of debate audio from the Missouri House and Senate. All the more amazing since those two bodies offer a live stream for free. In addition to the live stream, we archive each day’s debate. We’ve got it all going back to 2002. Don’t ask me “who cares?” because I don’t know. It’s a little bit of history and it seemed dumb to discard it.

UPDATE: We registered Legislature.com on September 16, 1999. Roger Gardner called me the day before and asked if the domain was available. I assured him someone had snapped it up but had our IT guy (Phil Atkinson) check. Lo and behold, it was available. Not many one-word domains still up for grabs in 1999.  Post-Dispatch story on Legislature.com 5/14/00 (PDF)

Supreme Court of Missouri Oral Arguments. Very dry stuff. We stream audio of the oral arguments before the court, and then we archive it. 637 cases, dating back to December 14, 1999. The service has been free until just recently, when we started charging an annual subscription of $99. [We started doing this in January of 2000.]

So we have the audio of the state legislature making the laws…and the audio of the state supreme court interpreting many of those laws. While I don’t care that much about the process, saving this audio record just seem very cool to me.

Last, but not least… Missouri State Highway Patrol Crash Reports. These are the initial reports filled out by the state troopers and radioed back to the dispatcher. He or she then enters the information into a computer and it gets distributed to various points around the state. Several years ago, Phil did a little hack that put the reports on a website which, today, easily generates 800,000 Page Views a month. There’s a free, “public” version of the site…and a “premium” subscription service which includes a searchable database of reports going back to the beginning of 2004. Two years of crash reports. God (and maybe Andy and Phil) know how many files that might be. Thousands. Hundreds of thousands? A shit load.

A good businessman would tell you these projects are “distractions” that “dilute” our efforts from our “core businesses.” Which, for the most part, is selling 30 and 60 second commercials on radio networks. I think it’s a credit to our company that they let me (and others) explore these murky, digital waters. But I wonder… if I went to that Big Blogging Convention in the sky tomorrow, would anyone keep these projects going?