Rare Bird Blog

Daring Greatly: Rare Bird at 10 Years

Monday, July 28, 2008

In a few days, we'll be celebrating the 10th anniversary of starting Rare Bird. I woke up this morning with the words of Teddy Roosevelt on my mind, which I first encountered years ago in "The Norman Shield," the pledge training manual of Sigma Chi.

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

President Theodore Roosevelt
"Citizenship in a Republic,"
Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

I'm not certain if "daring greatly" is entirely fitting, but I believe that we have experienced the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and we are spending ourselves in a worthy cause. It's been a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to the next ten!

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-Jim Cota

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The World is Flat (and Free)

Friday, July 25, 2008

"Oh, and I forgot to mention, we're trying to sell a lot of books."

How Jeff Seroy, Senior Vice President of marketing and publicity at Farrar, Straus and Giroux sounds in my head.
My latest "Change This!" update included a notice that the publishers of "The World is Flat" by Thomas Friedman are offering the audio version of the book for free. Why? Well, two reasons.
  1. They want you on their mailing list. But a free audio version of this recent classic is probably worth a few emails.
  2. They're trying to generate buzz about Friedman's new book, "Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need A Green Revolution And How It Can Renew America"

Jeff Seroy, Senior Vice President of marketing and publicity at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, said the purpose of this audio giveaway is to "celebrate Friedman's enormous influence on our lives and times. And in preparation for the release of his new book, a green manifesto and a continuation in many ways of his thinking in 'The World is Flat', we want to enable anyone who hasn't already read 'The World is Flat' to catch up with Friedman's argument and vision for the future."

"Oh, and I forgot to mention, we're trying to sell a lot of books." (He didn't actually say that last part, but you have to know he was thinking it.)

Still, it's a nice offer. So, from now until August 4, you can join their mailing list to get access to three "easy-to-download" sections (Why not just one, I wonder?) and, as an added bonus, shortly thereafter you'll be able to download a pre-release audio excerpt of the new book.

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-Jim Cota

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"I'm going to lunch. We're going to win this."

Monday, July 7, 2008

There has been much weeping and gnashing of teeth in the business community in recent years about the quality of the work force. I've read articles and seen reports detailing the habits of the "millennials," the generation that is exiting college and entering the workforce. Their lack of preparation has been blamed on all sorts of things, from helicopter parents to participating in sports where everyone gets a trophy for just showing up, but I've begin wondering about another possible cause.

There's a radio spot running now for JA Titan, an online business simulator that is part of Junior Achievement. The tool is designed to give students a feel for the fast-paced, constantly changing world of business. The spot is to recruit volunteers to help run the simulations.

The first part of the spot sets the stage of a fictitious company dealing with some of the hazards of business:

Voice 1: "I called this emergency staff meeting together because we need to kick this company into high gear."
Voice 2: "I thought our performance index was high?"
Voice 1: "It is, yes, but the competition is still way ahead in the market."
Voice 2: "Well, what can we do about it?"
Voice 3: "If we sink more money into marketing, these hollow generators will sell like crazy."
Voice 4: "But we can't keep up in production! It may be the year 2030 but our technology is not that sophisticated."
Voice 5: "If we put more money into R&D we could solve our production problems."
SFX: Echo-y Star Trek communicator sound
Voice on Communicator: "The board wants to know what you're going to do here. The news reports say we're slipping... Well?"
Voice of Boss: "Wendy, take another $20,000 this quarter for promotions. T.J., you get nine grand to find a way to make more of these. Warren, tell your line to get ready to triple production. Send out a press release. I'm going to lunch. We're going to win this."

"I'm going to lunch?!!?" There are so many things wrong with the first 35 seconds of this that I can't even begin to dissect it. For the sake of my own sanity, I'm working on convincing myself that the writer intentionally wrote this to be so hackneyed that business people would hear it and be moved to volunteer in order to provide an accurate, realistic view of life in the business world. Take a listen and let me know what you think.

[More about JA Titan]
[More about Millennials]

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-Jim Cota

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