“Life After Radio”

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Bill Page says he’s packing it in after 20 years of radio. Got a job as a police dispatcher. I’ll bet I know a dozen radio guys that became dispatchers after leaving radio. There must be a Association of Police Dispatchers Who Were Formerly Radio Guys.

Bill would email me from time to time with updates from Kennett and the local station, which was my first and last radio home. Doesn’t sound like he was having much fun near the end.

“Anytime you have to vomit before you go to work guess that’s a warning sign that you need a change.”

Yes. Yes it is. My guess is, Bill will post for a few days and then, as he gets on with his life, he’ll let it slide. But who knows.

Blogging Ohio FFA Convention

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BARNA couple of months ago I posted on the idea that blogging might be the best way to cover some events. Andy Vance (Buckeye Ag Radio Network) makes the case nicely with his recent posts from the Ohio FFA Convention. Check out his posts on May 5 and 6. Sounds like he had some wifi and was blogging away in real time.

“The anticipation is finally over! The 2006-2007 State Officer Team is taking the stage at this very moment!”

I wish he had created a category tag for this series of posts, and maybe a few images and a sound bite or two. But those are nitpicks. All the meat is there. I still have trouble understanding why the event organizers, in this case the Ohio FFA, don’t have an “official blogger” to do this as well. I could find nothing of the sort on their website. At the very least, check to see if someone like Andy is blogging and provide a link. Call it the “unofficial” blog.

I’m sure the thinking is: “No, no… we can’t do that. We have no idea what this Andy person might say about our convention.” Well, guess what? He said it anyway. And I found it and read it. And it was all positive. Well done, Andy.

Are your campers happy?

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I seem to recall reading that JetBlue is one of those companies whose customers have good things to say about them. The MIT Advertising Lab blog posted a photo of a JetBlue booth at Rockefeller Center in NYC, where people can record their experiences and thoughts about the company. Perhaps for use in TV commercials or podcasts? One would think that JetBlue is expecting to get more positive stories than negative. This is what all companies and organizations should strive for, right? Loyal, happy customers. So I gotta ask myself, what would our clients (advertisers for the most part) say about their experiences with our company? Are we even willing to ask? The JetBlue booth offers a degree of anonymity. A less-than-satisfied advertiser probably wouln’t say so to the sales rep that sold the schedule.

My point is, if we really believe our product or service is good (great?) and it really works? Why wouldn’t we ask our clients? Now it’s starting to sound like a customer satisfaction survey and those are almost always bullshit. But if I were walking down the street and saw booth where I could go in and record my experiences with (Toyota, HBO, XM Radio, and now Mac)… I’d do it. I’d take the time. I want people to know I like these companies. And really shitty companies (and you know who you are) don’t even think about building little booths. Bottom line, it’s probably pretty easy to find out if your customers love you or hate you. Anything between is tougher. And I’m betting most companies really don’t want to know.

Video chat on the Mac

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iChatTwenty years of DOS and Windows has conditioned me to expect new things to be difficult. As I fired up the Mac in preparation for this evening’s attempt to have a video chat with Bass, I was mentally girding myself for a long, frustrating evening. Bass was already online and waiting for me so the first thing I saw was a little window asking me if I would accept a video chat? Uh, yeah, sure. And there was Bass, in all of his video glory (video).

We played with the lighting a little and he offered a few tips for good video chatting. But there was none of the futzing and fiddling and tweaking and rebooting. We were…chatting. A few more experiences like this I’ll be handing out Mac flyers on street corners. Now all I need are some folks to chat with. My .mac user name is smays.com. I look forward to hearing from you.

BTW, the video clip about (:30) was shot with my little Casio. George tells me about a handy little app that records iChat sessions. Stay tuned.