Monthly Archive for May, 2008

Another Blog … Another Road Trip Plan

Published
by
Ehren
on May 27, 2008
in Aspirations, Interests, Ponderings and travel
. 0 Comments

This post came into mind because I had been speaking with a co-worker about my blog and we seemed to both come to the conclusion that everything that I talk about is connected to work. Sad. Sad. Sad. I know!

I could talk about other people and their lives, but honestly — that’s rather dull in my opinion. Can you already tell that I don’t read biographies? I like talking about ideas or actions. Ideas and actions that you, myself, and any other person can take on.

So let’s talk about road trips. I’m planning another road trip for this summer. The question is … where?

The funny thing about this trip is that it started off as a mere trip that would be about a week (okay, more like 10 days) but because it costs me just as much to rent a car for two weeks, I’m now re-thinking the road trip.

Road Trip in California by Ehren Cheung

Funny… I can’t remember taking this photo as I was entering San Francisco…

Last year, my friends and I went to New Hampshire hoping to hike across the White Mountains over a period of three days. Unfortunately stormy weather prevented us from getting to our destination for day 2 and we were forced to descend from the mountains. We however attempted an alternate trail — only to run into plenty of boulders and in my case — a hiking pole that snapped which resulted in me getting wedged between a tree and a rock. For your enjoyment, I’ve outlined our original plan (blue) and what really happened (red). Despite the setback, we went back the way we came and descended down the mountain. Of course, that was not before I decided to take another tumble down the rather steep hiking trail.


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So this year, I figure there are a couple of places in mind. I haven’t really discussed the ideas with friends that may want to come along yet, but perhaps someone out there may have a suggestion or two for me.

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. A beautiful place — I haven’t been there since the late summer of 2000. Apparently the National Park Service even has a webcam of Old Faithful now. Spiffy. Ideally I’d like to visit the little town of Cody and along the way from Toronto, check out many other touristy and off-beat phenomenons as I refer to them.


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While I’ve visited a large number of different states, I have yet to visit the state of Colorado, home of the Quebec Nordiques, now the Colorado Avalanche (I know I will get flak for that…). Definitely would like to check out the US-550: the Million Dollar Highway and drop by the Royal Gorge.


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Ideally, I’d like to do some hiking in both states but I don’t mind just purely checking out a wide variety of must-see sites and some off-beat stuff that I stumble across.

IF not going down to travel around the United States, then I am pondering driving east to Newfoundland and Labrador, also referred to fondly as the “Rock” by many Newfoundlanders. It’s the only province in Canada I have yet to visit so I feel it’s somewhat of my duty as a Canadian to at least journey over there.

More details to come. In the meanwhile, feel free to fire suggestions my way in the comments. I’ll be one happy camper once I’m able to put together a list of recommendations from people who have been there, done that, and firmly believe that certain places are worth stopping for.

the curve by Ehren Cheung

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Every Author’s Challenge

Published
by
Ehren
on May 24, 2008
in Mentions, books, marketing and work
. 2 Comments

I’m really supposed to be focusing on programming a website but I felt it was necessary to share this after @nejsnave posted this link to this video(below) over twitter.  This’ll be a quick post.  The video is by a HarperCollins author, Dennis Cass.

 

This is the problem that every marketing department is facing in the book publishing industry.  It is wrong for a marketing or publicity department to throw everything at the author.  Promotion on the web does not require an author to throw themselves into every social medium — rather the idea is to ensure that there is a way for people to connect with an author and vice versa.  Marketing departments should be working with the author to develop what I refer to as a connection point. I’ll get into that another day but I think it’s pretty self-explanatory.

That said, authors still need a blog and they still need to blog on a not necessarily frequent but consistent basis.  I’d rather authors have a blog than a purely promotional website.  It is pretty much the same except the fact that a blog is the old classic homepage on Geocities that has evolved into a social and communication medium that is way more versatile.

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On the Open Road Trip

Published
by
Ehren
on May 17, 2008
in Aspirations, Mentions, Ponderings, marketing and travel
. 0 Comments

Thanks to Ellen Ewart who pointed out today’s article in the Toronto Star on road trips — I just wanted to make an official statement that was most likely very obvious:

I love road trips.

That was it. Of course … I have more to say.

Photography by Ehren Cheung

Almost everyone I know enjoys a road trip — but there are differences between those who merely enjoy the experience and those like myself who thrive. What type of road tripper are you? I’m the type who starts the engine, crank up the music (not to a deafening level), and I am one very content human being — then take my car on a road trip and I am bursting with energy, ready to seek out new and unexplored places — stuff unknown to me. Example: bouldering in New Hampshire (see short video from my trip last year)

I don’t necessarily care where I’m going — as long as I’m going in the right direction. What’s the right direction? Well I guess it can be anything! This can be a city that we really want to visit or a lemonade stand that we happen to stop off at along the way to the state of Oregon. Anything we consider as a positive influence or experience on ourselves.

Photograph by Ehren Cheung

Do you plan ahead or do you just like to hit the road with a goal in mind? The amusing thing is that I have a feeling that most people would love to just hit the road with a goal in mind and take in whatever hits them (figuratively speaking…) — only to be hindered by our own fears and limitations imposed by our own mind and lifestyle. When we travel with others, we add to that struggle with the fears and limitations imposed by those we decide to travel with. What do we do then? We impose a schedule, create an extraordinary itinerary, and make reservations at hotels and motels with the hope that this route or path will lead us to a higher level of satisfaction — or in other words, happiness!

But how do we become more satisfied? When we plan and plan and plan for all of our destinations and stop offs, do we really get the best experience? Is this making the best use of the tiny bit of time we can get from our vacation time? From my own journeys, I’ve enjoyed a tremendous amount of satisfaction by noting the goals (i.e. must-see points) but mainly enjoying the road as it is — stopping whenever I or someone I travel with wants to stop to check something out. It can be anything from a long-deserted drive-in theatre, dilapidated barn or rustic-looking shed to the flowers growing along the road, and in some cases some random billboard that has a brilliant message.

Photograph by Ehren Cheung

Sometimes you find yourself in the middle of nowhere. And sometimes, in the middle of nowhere, you find yourself.

So what am I really trying to say? The point is NOT that we need to go out there and find ourselves. I think the way we travel is a reflection on how we treat ourselves or take in new experiences. We can choose to place the utmost importance on the destination or we can choose to balance the importance of the destination or goal with what’s between point A and B. We could also even forget the destination and just merely keep a goal in mind and just go from there. Let’s flip this over to businesses, particularly those that are trying to increase their presence on the internet — the travel industry is a good one to keep an eye on as there are so many puzzle pieces to the big picture, small and large.

Similar to the travel, people are on the road and on the web, taking their own paths and weaving their own experiences in a manner of speaking. Along the way, people stop and take photos of anything they find really interesting which they then share — similarly people on the web share links to content and video that they find interesting. So let me pose a question — what are you doing for your business or website that makes it worth sharing? I’m not talking just about your product that needs to be what I refer to as share worthy — I am pointing to everything about you and your website/business.

So when I’m travelling down the road enjoying my experience towards my destination; between point A and B; or just wandering — what’s going to make me stop? Will it be you? Will it be someone you’re travelling with? Or will it be this magnificent tree?

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Marketing to You

Published
by
Ehren
on May 11, 2008
in Mentions and marketing
. 0 Comments

Stuck at home with a cold (or some other bug) this weekend, I thought I’d do some thinking — especially after seeing Seth Godin’s marketing manifesto. I don’t necessarily agree with all of his points but there are some that I feel strongly about. Here are my top five:

1. Anticipated, personal and relevant advertising always does better than unsolicited junk.

2. Marketing is the way your people answer the phone, the typesetting on your bills and your returns policy.

3. One disappointed customer is worth ten delighted ones.

4. Organizations that manage to deal directly with their end users have an asset for the future.

5. Blogging makes you a better marketer because it teaches you humility in your writing.

Looking at my top five — I’d say I’m very focused on customer service and satisfaction.

customer service and satisfaction = marketing

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It Was All Bland Until…

Published
by
Ehren
on May 7, 2008
in Interests, fun and video
. 0 Comments

I saw the trailer for the Animation Show 4 had arrived! Thank you for making my day that much better.

I highly recommend checking out this show in your neighbourhood theatre, or in some cases for people like myself — drive 2 hours to a city where it is showing. Last year it wasn’t showing in Toronto so we drove to Waterloo!

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Time to Reduce Consumption

Published
by
Ehren
on May 6, 2008
in Aspirations, Ponderings, Uncategorized, Unthinkables, fun and marketing
. 0 Comments

I’ve been thinking about how we spend our money. Especially after listening to the complaints from many friends about the lack of money they have to buy the things they want. My dad also pointed out long ago when I got my first pay cheque from delivering flyers door-to-door in the neighbourhood, that as soon as you receive your pay cheque, everyone including the government is after your hard-earned dollar. It’s all in the marketing you see — everyone is trying to tell you that their product is worth your dollar.

Photo Courtesy of Toni Verdú Carbó

The reasoning that often follows is to weigh the things that we want against the things that we need. Sometimes the two get mixed together. This may be followed by the reasoning that poses the question — how frequent will we make use of this thing that we purchase?

I propose that we look at things this way. How many hours of work do we put in, just so that we can afford to buy [insert product]?

The question becomes … if we do not use a dollar value, how can we determine the true value of a product? How do we define value? Value can be in this case (without referring back to the crazy economic theories) the net worth of how much we desire a product that we are willing to exchange the hours of work from which we earn a wage.

The reason why I remove the dollar value from this perspective because the dollar bill itself has a tendency to eliminate (or make us temporarily forget) our ability to reference in our mind how much work we really put in for those hours of labour (skilled or unskilled). Don’t get me wrong now — the dollar bill itself becomes a reference for how much of it we are willing to spend but many of us tend to let go of how many hours went into that dollar bill itself.

By using time as a reference, we can then truly extract value from products worth extracting from. And when we extract value from products worth extracting from — we as citizens, customers, and stakeholders — impose a new value on all the products out there — time.

Time is a finite value for all of us (unless you are immortal I guess…) and as I point out to many businesses, time can never be recovered, but you can recover money (or even earn more) over time.

To Summarize

1. When thinking of purchasing something, think of how many hours of work you must go through in order to afford purchasing that something. How many hours of pointless meetings did I have to go through?

2. If deciding to purchase a product, ask yourself how many hours of [insert value: emotional, secular, spiritual, etc.] would be associated with the outcome of purchasing that product. Will I thoroughly use and enjoy this new DVD player? How often do I even watch DVDs?

3. Demand greater value from products. Businesses should be providing or injecting more value into and around their products. Really, if a business cannot think of ways of (or is unwilling to) injecting greater value into their product, then I would suggest that the product be cancelled. Think of the transition from VHS to DVDs — all those bonus features!

4. Impose the value of time on everything. Associate the hours you put in with values [i.e. obstacles, bosses, etc.] Were my hours of slaving away at work worth the $20 dollars spent on lunch? or that book? or that CD? that DVD?

5. Calculate your annual time budget. See how much you time you put into material products vs. activities.

*****

I am of course really simplifying this process but the point behind this action is for both businesses and customers to strive for waste reduction. This not only benefits everyone but also customers and businesses alike because customers would have a better idea of what they want and businesses would have a better idea of what they should produce.

Just like marketers often like to summarize consumer actions within a formula, by measuring our consumption by the hour — we have an opportunity to hone in on our own equation and define what we want — not what the marketer suggests to us.

Let’s put it this way. Calculate the value of a book in hours and then calculate the value of an iPod in hours. I’m in no way implying that one is more valuable than another — merely that it is extremely subjective. In that case, the calculation of hours can be a much better determination of value to a customer as opposed to a dollar amount.

*****

It’s rather funny. The value of time is often used for commuting, employment, business productivity, weekends, vacations, and travel — yet we rarely make use of this measurement on the products we purchase.

More on the value of time (Wikipedia).

And generalised cost.

Feel free to debunk this idea — it’s still whirling around my head … but I think it is still worthwhile to think about.

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