Archive for June, 2008

NYT reports on the Tim Russert incident… “Long before Mr. Russert’s death was reported on air, however, it was flashing across the Internet via the text-messaging service Twitter and the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.”

I would argue that news is news. Would they have held the news for, say, a CEO, sports figure or public official? I doubt it.

Maybe we should just skip press releases going forward and update Wikipedia 🙂

Now this has to hurt…

As a much maligned All Blacks fan I can’t help but wonder what the English must be thinking after another drubbing down under.

I’m guessing that nobody that reads this blog actually watched the game so here is a summary – England looked pathetic. The All Blacks looked barely mediocre. One hack suggested the English were exposed as frauds. If that is the case, the All Blacks were exposed as not much better. Good in parts, mediocre for the main, poor primarily. A team riding on a brand and a bizarre coaching system that was exposed for what it is – a fraud – in the last Rugby World Cup.

As we head into the tri-nations tournament NZ will have to lots to not place second – or even third. With “Dingo Deans” coaching the Aussies they will no doubt look better than last year. Sth Africa are looking damn good.

The English deserve better from their team. Spiros says it all…

It’s time for the British rugby media to start calling for blood among the pompous rulers of English rugby… It is a blight on rugby as world game that the country with the most rugby players, a king’s ransom in sponsor money – and the inventor of the game to boot – offers such a pathetic pretence of a national team on tour after tour (with the exception of 2003) to southern hemisphere rugby.

The England team not only need help with Rugby, they also need some serious PR counsel… get this…

Get the drift. It was somehow the fault of New Zealanders that England had no idea about how to run the ball or scrum or do anything more skilful than flopping over the ball for ruck after ruck. And, presumably, it was the fault of New Zealanders that a quartet of players enjoyed group sex with an 18-year-old girl.

Now get this from Stevens: “The events of the past week have pulled us together as a squad … Of course, another heavy defeat was not the way we wanted to end the season. One of the reasons we are looking forward to getting back to England is that we hope we will get a little bit more support from the media, and the England rugby supporters, than we have had out here.’

Oh dear. How can improvements and necessary changes be made at all levels of English rugby when rubbish like this is trundled out, seemingly with impunity, by a senior player?

You watch their club sides and it is a different game all together. But they really deserve better from their administration. Get rid of Rob Andrews. Hire a world-class coach. And get motoring.

This is one sticky subject – Lynn Tyson and Rob Williams, colleagues of mine at Dell have done an amazing job of blazing new frontiers in this area. This post has an interesting POV on blogging and IR, along with a comment from Rob…

“I agree that one of the important implications of IR blogs is democratizing publicly available information and making IR more accessible for ALL investors. And, while there are some constraints around “corporate positions” www.dell.com/dellshares is working to build our voice and bring an investor perspective and point of view to various aspects of the business. Over time, I believe dellshares will develop a strong individual voice that is based on listening to investors and engaging with them, making us a little more human, a lot more accessible and little less bureaucratic.”

Read this, while not in a meeting…

Then again, perhaps we will simply adjust and come to accept what James called “acquired inattention.” E-mails pouring in, cell phones ringing, televisions blaring, podcasts streaming—all this may become background noise, like the “din of a foundry or factory” that James observed workers could scarcely avoid at first, but which eventually became just another part of their daily routine. For the younger generation of multitaskers, the great electronic din is an expected part of everyday life. And given what neuroscience and anecdotal evidence have shown us, this state of constant intentional self-distraction could well be of profound detriment to individual and cultural well-being. When people do their work only in the “interstices of their mind-wandering,” with crumbs of attention rationed out among many competing tasks, their culture may gain in information, but it will surely weaken in wisdom.