I don't spend a lot of time watching TV but I find the subtle evolution of commercials fascinating...an evolution that tracks my own gut reactions pretty well. I should document more of these because these subtle corrections happen all the time...not unlike how things worked in Orwell's 1984. We don't notice most of the time...but the subtle changes alter our perceptions of the brand.

An early ad for Sprint was almost giddy with the idea that people would pay for access to the wonders of technology--like the ability to update your Facebook status from your phone.

But then, the economy soured and Sprint tried to acknowledge that with this ad in Central Park.

Now it's about giving everyone access to the network so you can save money.

But I felt (and probably others did too) that CEO Dan Hesse in his fancy long coat and expensive scarf, and filmed in a highly stopped-down aperture made it seem like he was almost blue-screened into the shot with those "ordinary people."

So Sprint decided to roll up Dan's sleeves and put him in a limo with a laptop, riding across a bridge. I could not find this precise version of the commercial online...it was quickly updated by placing some stickers on the window of the car to make it obvious he is in a taxi...

Now Dan is one of us, a guy you could bump into hopping out of a cab. At the the end, he says "I'm workin from the road today!"

Maybe I'm imagining things...but I think the marketing folks at Sprint have been listening and fine-tuning these ads all along. Partly, it's just different campaigns, different seasons, etc. But the change from limo to taxi was subtle and effectively erased from anywhere I could find online.

Fans of Battlestar Gallactica certainly noticed a more blunt mid-course campaign correction in the evolution of KFC's promotion recently. Originally dubbed the "Frak Pack Sweepstakes" it quickly turned into the "Can't say that word on TV Sweepstakes." But if you look closely, while the ad has been sanitized in most places, one of the prizes remains the "Big Frakkin' Bag." If the humor is not obvious click the links above for a more explicit discussion of "Frak."

Update:
You can now view:

• Dave Atkins interview with Tory Johnson on ABC NOW
• Susan Kang Nam talks about Salty Legs Job Club with Tory Johnson
• Madeline Laurano talks about finding her new job

Staring into a television camera for a remote interview was a surreal experience. I felt spontaneity and improvisation that is challenging to describe. I suspect, for celebrities, the feeling changes, and it becomes like just another conversation. Those who have never done it probably think it sounds terrifying. There is fear, but not terror. For me, I felt the sensation of being completely and utterly "on," with no safety net, no ability to control or plan, and an almost detached sense of hearing myself respond in the moment.

In that moment, I found my instinct and preparation ruled the day. There is not time to consider 5 seconds ago and no time to plan the next 5 seconds. There is faith that who I am will show and hope that what I've told myself is truth will reveal. But there is no analysis, there is only the moment...a moment that goes on for several minutes and then is gone.

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This economic downturn is different from 2002, especially in the tech/internet space because of how people are responding to it. I was speaking with a reporter from TheStreet.com yesterday who was interviewing me about my layoff situation, and it struck me that perhaps my outlook is not uniquely optimistic, but shared by many others. I'm sure there is plenty of negativity to come and that we are only beginning to experience the disruption, but I know my response has been fundamentally different.

In 2002, the website everyone I knew was following was F*ckedCompany.com. Every day, that website published "insider stories" about the unbelievably idiotic things that were going on in companies. It also served as a bellwether of discontent and early warning of impending layoffs. Companies lived in fear: "I hope we don't end up on that site!" Employees could not wait to post their stories of incompetent managers, wasteful company largess, and the doom and gloom stories of dotcom bust and failure.

I visited that site just now and, "Pud" reports, the site is "sorta [F'd]." Good. Who's got time for that kind of self-pitying crap now? I'm sure it's out there, but it is not what I'm seeing.

In 2008 I see people of all ages networking like crazy, emphasizing their positive aspects, working together to help each other, and being optimistic about the future. Maybe it is driven by Millennial enthusiasm and entrepreneurship, but I see it from my generation (X) as well as we go to networking events, join career clubs, and use social media to connect and learn.

It is early in my own quest and I'm still finishing out my time at work until the official layoff happens. But it feels like a much better world than the last time around. I tell people I see massive disruption...whole industries may be lost and millions will lose the jobs they have today. But this is the moment of change. Books like Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat described how things were going to change and Nicolas Taleb's The Black Swan warned us that the future would be unpredictable. There will not be a gradual change, an evolution in the way we live and work...instead change is coming in waves we cannot control, but must struggle to navigate as best we can. There is no time to spend worrying or wishing about what might have been. We must embrace the future and make it ours. That is what I see happening.

I can imagine fewer more terrifying social experiments than what I signed up for last night. Blitz Time is a service for "speed networking" that sets participants up in a series of short, one-on-one phone calls with other people. Surprisingly, once I began, it was not nearly as scary as it was fun. That is saying a lot for me, a guy who is afraid to order pizza on the phone...

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Update: The MBTA is constructing a temporary ramp to be completed this week.

Simple problems don't have simple solutions...in fact, the more obvious the solution, the less likely it is to be solved. I'm not talking about technical problems, but community problems--problems that are systemic in nature. Efforts to address one part of the issue upsets an underlying system and things quickly become complicated.

A specific case of this is the situation near where I live, at the Dedham Corporate Center commuter rail stop. This blog post at myDedham is a great illustration of a problem stated, information provided by the town, and the quick exposition of underlying complexities:

For several years now, train riders have been cutting through a chain link fence to reach Rustcraft Road across the tracks from the intended parking area. Promotional materials for the luxury apartments on Rustcraft Rd describe their location as only a "crosswalk away from the Dedham T Station."

There is no crosswalk. What happens every day is that pedestrians pass through a 2-foot wide break in a chain link fence and climb over a dirt embankment down to Rustcraft Road where they dart across to the apartments. It is a ridiculous situation.

For the problem-solver, this is easy. We need to open up the fence, add a sidewalk path from the train platform to the road, put in a crosswalk--ideally with a stop light, and put in sidewalks all along the apartment side of the road. Instead, the MBTA has recently begun to block off that 2-foot wide gap in the fence because they are now concerned about liability. So people just walk down the tracks to where the fence ends and cut through the woods there.

The problem here is not so simple. In technical fields--and in most business situations--we are taught to analyze the problem and find a solution. When emotional issues arise, we are told to "separate the people from the problem." Therein lies the root of why nothing has been done for so many years...

The people are the problem. Apparently, when Dedham Corporate Center was originally developed, the neighborhoods on the Rustcraft Road side were so concerned about traffic from people rushing to the train, that they demanded assurances that there would never be access to the train station from their neighborhoods. Now they are watching the construction of Legacy Place which landlocks them between Route 128/I95, the train tracks, and this new luxury living mall. Their backs are against the wall--quite literally, as the highway department just erected a sound barrier behind their homes.

When I say the people are the problem, I'm not saying that they should shut up and go away. What I am saying is that a series of decisions have been made where clearly the residents were considered an inconvenience and now they have been backed into a corner. There is not much left of a neighborhood--we are talking about 15-20 houses. But it illustrates an unfortunate outcome with "loose ends" manifested in this idiotic train situation.

If we were in China, those homes would have been bulldozed long ago. But this is America and we are supposed to do better by our neighbors than that. But the problem is that I think too often we focus on solving a problem, engineering a solution, creating something new--and disrespecting the community because we have separated the people from the problem. Planners, developers, architects--often yearn to paint a new canvas with their enlightened brushstrokes, then placate the abuttors, the objectors, the irrational folks who don't share their vision of progress.

We see a similar tempest in Westwood. Billions of dollars may (better check the markets today!) be spent to create a mini-city of Westwood Station that will grow the town of Westwood by multiples and secure our economic future...if all goes according to plan. But the project is self-contained. Residents and neighboring towns are concerned about traffic, so millions of dollars are spent to mollify the abutting residents with "traffic calming" measures while neighboring towns are negotiated with and dismissed--resulting in legislative maneuvering and political tricks designed to sabotage the project. When I suggested in a blog post that it would be nice to connect Westwood Station to the neighborhoods...it sounded crazy to the residents who want walls built and assurances that they will not get any spillover traffic...the same pattern repeats. Fundamentally conservative residents don't want their lives to change and don't want new development in their backyards because it will be bad.

So our elected officials play a tactical game of problem-solving. What do we need to do to make these people shut up or get around them? If traffic is the problem, OK, let's fix that and move on. But I believe the problem is always the people...it is about engaging the people in a respectful dialog and working with them--not just to mitigate damages, but to adapt the community to new opportunities. Maybe I am naive and optimistic, but I think many of these problems grow out of a failure of vision and the mistaken belief that if we just fix a few specific problems, then we can get on with things and the objectors will go away.

I think the opportunity to develop on a massive scale is almost a gift for the community...most of the time, there is no money to do anything...adding sidewalks, just fixing the potholes is a challenge. So when a developer shows up ready to spend millions of dollars we should figure out how to make that investment benefit our community--not just cover mitigation of the presumed damages that come from growth. Can we trust the developer? Probably not. But just like politics, you've got to be in the game from the beginning...we need to be constructively engaged from planning, through build-out, management, and even the end of life of these projects.

It may be too much to ask of our government. I don't know what the structure would be but it seems to me we need to find a way to connect our communities with development not just negotiate a set of costs and benefits for a project. Circumstances change constantly...so what seemed a good idea 10 years ago might not be so good now. But when we break the bonds of community, good luck getting any cooperation down the road when the residents have watched their neighborhood being turned into a ghetto by the policies of the town and commercial motivations of the developer.

We have a set of magnetic toys my kids play with--animals with interchangeable torsos, heads, and legs. Today we could not find the legs to the giraffe. Before I could begin searching for the missing pieces, my daughter simply placed the existing pieces on the train table in the "water" area and said, "the giraffe is standing in the water."

Later, I searched all over the room for the missing pieces, only to learn from my wife that they had been missing for a year, so my search was doomed to failure from the start.

How often in our work do we fail to see the 4-year old solution? How often do we bang our heads against the wall in an effort to solve the problem as we have defined it, when perhaps, that is not the problem at all?

The problem is not about how to fix the giraffe; it is how to have fun. And if something is missing or not perfect, we can worry and fret and try to change things...or we can find a different way to have fun. Now, if I could just get her to teach that to my 2-year old.

Blog experts say not to post things like "what you do want me to blog about?" because it's gutless and demonstrates you don't have a clue what you're writing about. Well, I'm going to go one step further than that and start a thread here on what could be a business plan for this site.

Thing is, there is nothing new; it's not like my idea here will be so revolutionary that potential competitors will find my blog and steal the idea. I think a more likely outcome is that similar-minded people will find this idea, realize how they could contribute to it, and join me.

I want to create a resource site, a social resource for people who are and want to live creative, innovative lives. The topic is broad, but it is driven by two realizations:

1) The goal--in addition to helping people, being interesting and relevant, and perhaps helping to change the world--is to make money. To make money, I need a site that can attract a significant, well-defined audience. So, while a blog or site about tools for becoming involved in your community might be a good idea, it would have such narrow appeal that it would not be marketable. In order to be successful--in a way that the founders can monetize it--the site must attract and capture a large audience that advertisers want to reach.

2) The quality of the writing is part of the value proposition. Penelope Trunk did a great job of hitting goal #1 above with her startup BrazenCareerist. It's a site that clearly attracts the Generation Y professional--young people starting their careers who blend work and life to achieve their still-idealistic goals. But it is not necessary or even desirable for such a site to be 100% valuable content--bits and bits of factoids and advice nuggets. Part of the value of any media is that is enjoyable to experience.

Consider home improvement television. It is theoretically possible to record a show on how to build a deck, then play it back while you work on your deck. But hardly anyone does that. Most consumers passively watch these shows because they like the people telling the stories. They relate to what those other homeowners are doing in renovating their homes and they watch the show not only to gather ideas, but to live vicariously.

A resource for creative and innovative living must be more than tips and tricks, best practices, etc. You can get stuff like that from Lifehacker or many, many other blogs that cater to a specific interest.

The purpose of the site should not be to have the best tips or information you cannot find elsewhere. That's a very difficult challenge and hard to stay on top of. I think a successful site will present quality in a personal and engaging manner to stimulate good commentary. Often useful, usually relevant, always interesting.

To be continued...

I'm an inherently disorganized person, but I manage to get a lot of things done. It really is as simple--and challenging--as finding time.

There is no balance to be had in life. We cannot plan, predict, or organize our lives so that we create the time we need, when we need it. Something always interrupts us; there is always a need to shift priorities, or things just take a lot longer than we planned. So I've come to think of all time as precious opportunity and to ask myself, what can I do with this moment I have now?

A coworker remarked this morning how she just didn't have time to get into facebook, twitter, blogging, etc. I had emailed everyone that they might like to follow me on twitter. And when people find this blog, or my other blog, WestwoodBlog, or they see the books I've read and reviewed, they are incredulous, especially given that I have 3 kids under 4 at home. But I find little bits of time here and there...

On the train to work--once I had an internet-capable phone, I found I could do so much in 20 minutes--checking twitter, facebook, sending some short emails on work related stuff, while I read a book or sketch out ideas for another project. WestwoodBlog was designed in about half an hour on the train. (Of course it took a lot longer than that to implement, but the core idea and commitment to make it happen was something I sketched out furiously in a notebook as the train sat delayed due to some problem.)

It is harder to do the big stuff. But the big stuff is made up of little stuff. I have a vision of what I want in my life and when I have extra time, I chip away at the broad parameters of the "next step."

There are limitations and compromises...to compare this to running, I know can't sign up for a marathon given my current schedule because I cannot commit 5 days a week to running. But I can do 10Ks and 7.5 milers and keep the joy of running alive until I'm able to prioritize that kind of training regime again.

My blog...I have some ideas of how to take it to the next level...but for now, it needs to be "what can I do today?" Lately I think what I can do is engage with twitter and let my network and knowledge continue to expand until I find the next incremental leap I can make...to have some patience and be ready for opportunity.

Another way to think about life these days is to compare it to working on a large document. I don't have the table of contents written, just a theme. And if I tried to write the outline out, I'd get lost in the details. So instead, I write short chapters and save often.

One of my challenges at work is to effectively utilize a company that manages our internet servers. In an ideal world, if there is a problem at 3am, they take care of it so I don't every have to carry a pager. But the ideal world is far from reality.

A couple of incidents this weekend illustrate the difference in motivation vs. expertise.

The first incident -- I received a phone call that our IT company thought our servers were slow. My phone had been turned off, so by the time I got the message, they had already called down the escalation matrix to someone else and the problem appeared to go away on its own. But I felt bad that I had missed the call and started watching my email a little more carefully until I heard a series of new emails come in indicating another problem. I logged on to the server, noticed it was a real problem this time, then reset the server. I emailed the IT company; they had noticed it too, but it seemed intermittent to them.

Tomorrow, we have our regularly scheduled monthly meeting and I'm sure we'll talk more about monitoring and troubleshooting, but I really wonder if we can ever expect a consultant to have that same feeling--the cold sweat that breaks out when the pager goes off and the sense of urgency--that you need to get on that server and get things working again before you start getting emails, pagers alerts, and phone calls from the CEO. I hate that feeling, but as long as the buck stops with me, I feel like I have to have that mindset.

Our IT company has tons more experience than I do. But I have been on the operational front lines of internet technology for almost 13 years now and became very resourceful out of necessity. I'm an intuitive person and when I sense a problem, it usually is real. Contractors just look at the data and don't see anything conclusive.

Part of the challenge in working with a consultant is to give them the tools they need and the authority to do what is necessary...and we are still working on that. They don't know how to restart the application. They don't know how to tell if there is an application problem happening and to them, if the cpu and memory are ok and the web page loads, it is fine. So we fine tune things...but it is very bureaucratic feeling. They have a complicated escalation matrix and all sorts of rules to standardize their approach and allow them to support us through a 24x7 Network Operations Center. But I think I'll still be getting that call at 3am.

A second incident was an email our tech team received late Friday night from our lead consultant developer (different company). He had noticed a problem on our testing site from a new build he delivered Friday afternoon, logged in, figured out the problem, wrote a fix, and deployed the fix then emailed us all with the resolution. Wow. That's the kind of contractor I want!

Now not to take anything away from Mike's technical ability--he is great--but what he did was so much better than just being an expert. He cared enough to anticipate that his help would be needed. He was motivated.

I think for a startup...and I hesitate to say this because it digs my own grave...the idea of outsourcing IT operations is not best for the company. If we are going to host a 24x7 service that is revenue generating, we need a person who not only sweats bullets when the pager goes off, but leaps into action to solve the problem and then figures out how to make sure it never happens again. We can't have monthly status checks and problems that go on for 60 minutes or more while someone calls down the chain of command to find someone who can do something.

On the other hand, our experience with our software developer consultants illustrates that it is possible to create that working relationship where motivation and pride pushes someone who is not a direct employee to go the extra mile. It is not too much to ask or expect. But I still have to figure out how to ask it effectively.