Thank goodness the Hockey Season is back

OK, I may be a new American, but I'm still going to be a big hockey fan (and a band-wagon-jumping Rockies fan).  With my Colorado Avalanche now 2-0, with our young guns Duchene, Wolski and Stasny looking VERY good so far, I am really excited.  I just need to figure out how to find the time to watch the games (probably via TIVO at midnight, like last year.)

The big test of American Citizenship for me will come in February during the Olympics, when I'll find out if I jump up & down when Team Canada scores, or when Team USA scores.

I'm pretty sure I'll be cheering for Stasny...man I hope he gets 100 points this season.

A Canadian weighs in on the HealthCare debate in the US

Normal 0 EN-US

Tonight the rhetoric in Obama-land is focused on healthcare. This is probably because the President wants to change the subject AWAY from the Cash-for-Clunkers = "Why am I buying new cars for my neighbors". So I thought I'd weigh in on the subject.

I have a lot of personal experience with Government-run healthcare. As many of you know, I grew up in Canada (Edmonton) until age 24. My family is still there.

Here are some of my personal glimpses of what happens when a government runs healthcare:

* My father waiting for 9 months for bypass surgery, hoping he wouldn’t die

* Me waiting 2.5 years for elective knee reconstruction surgery, which ruined my leg permanently. A US doctor who saw the scar said “I haven’t seen that technique since the 70’s”. I had the surgery in 1991.

* I flew my mother down to the US for shoulder reconstruction and paid $20K in cash (list price, not the $7K insurance companies typically pay). Otherwise she would have had to wait over a year, at which time the reconstruction would not be possible and an active 70 year old woman would have been crippled.

* Yesterday, my sister-in-law waited hours in an emergency to have her 6 week old newborn admitted. It turns out, the hospital she entered does not have the equipment required to treat the baby, but the baby is too sick to move – so they wait.

Americans need to know that the only reason the Canadian system survives is that when people get really sick, they come to America and pay for it. Without that release valve, the Canadian political consensus for government-provided healthcare would quickly unravel as people were unnecessarily reduced to infirmity due to rationing.

People who say health-care is different from other products and the market won't work simply aren't looking at the facts. Lasik surgery, and to some extent dentistry, are excellent examples of ubiquitous, cheap care that is continuously improving and getting cheaper.

What the US needs is LESS government intrusion in healthcare. Healthcare reform should mean:

1. The elimination of the absurd tax subsidy for employer-provided care. Healthcare should be independent from your job. What makes the President think small business owners such as auto-shops and florists are good administrators of health programs? D-uh.

2. The elimination of state-restrictions of offering any kind of health insurance program they want. Let competition decide what plans are popular - not some bureaucrat that thinks "homoepaethic vegan meal advice" is a mandatory coverage item. (I'm Vegan, so I'm allowed to make fun here)

3. Consumer led pricing & shopping. Let us shop for the best doctors & care. Let ME decide if I want to pay per procedure, or sign up for a fixed $10K per year or $5K wellness-based program.

4. Vouchers for the poor. If you REALLY need to have a socialist component, give everyone in America below a certain income & wealth limit a $15K voucher for healthcare which they can use as they please each year. Heck, let'em spend it on Big Macs for all I care. The government should write checks only, and back off to let competition work out how the care is delivered.

I'm happy to respond to your comments. Obama is a great guy, a great orator and a great Dad. But his ideas on how to micromanage complex systems are simply scary.

North Americans have Huge advantage over Europeans in Facebook Vanity URL landgrab

As many of you know, tonight at Midnight ET, Facebook users can grab a "vanity URL" for themselves. The big competition for www.facebook.com/darrenkelly is myself , the former college basketball star, and an Irish footballer.

I just realized that the Irish guy will have to be up at 5am local time in order to try to grab his name. An from what I know of Irish footballers, I bet he'll be at the pub late tonight and in no shape to log on in the morning. Ha ha!!!!

And also, I've reserved it already. I have friends in high social media places. Sorry boys.

-DK

The 2012 Pelosi GTxi SS/RT Sport Edition

Thank goodness this is only costing us $50 billion!
DK

My old Boss is now Ambassdor to South Africa

Don Gips has moved from Obama bag-man to Ambassador of South Africa. Good for him, he will be perfect in that role.

Congrats to Don.

Google vs. Yahoo Search Monkey vs. Bing

Grant Simmons, the Search Guru at TSA, came up with a fantastic analysis of Microsoft's new Bing search results.

"Searchers appreciate the simplicity of Google interface - the results don't look like they've been manipulated. Yahoo's Search Monkey looks like Google, but also includes structured data to present more within the simple, familiar interface. Bing gives the perception of providing filtered results with pretty ‘flash & sizzle’ that makes you feel like big brother is deciding what you should see. Thus:

Google: Raw search results that you can choose. (Results = All-you-can-eat buffet)

Yahoo: Better-than-Raw search results that you can choose (Results = Buffet with shrimp)

Bing: (Results = daily specials only)"

-DK

Seriously, I think drinking coffee is making me thinner

I'm putting this question out there for the crowd to consider. In the past 4 or 5 months, I've been drinking a bit more coffee than I used to. Perhaps 2 or 3 cups in the morning instead of the usual one cup. Since then, I've lost 10 or 15 pounds - and it wasn't like I was really fat before. And I've never ever dieted in my life. What the hell? Is there some genetic secret I've unlocked for my genotype? Wait a minute, I sat beside Kirstie Alley on a plane just after her Oprah appearance a couple of weeks ago - I hope I didn't catch the yo-yo syndrome. Btw, Kirstie is very nice, and very funny, for the record. She held my baby daughter for me as I searched for formula...

Anyway, please comment if you know anything about the relationship between coffee and weight.

NHL highlights from Hulu

God I love the Internet. I can embed these highlights and the 7 people who read my blog get notification about it. Hi Mom!

Anna Kournikova is not a dummy. Her parents ditched her into Tennis School

From my friends at KSwiss. If this code doesn't work, try this link.

Mildy embarrassing video from HBS reunion

I was doing a little SEO checking using Microsoft's live.com search (down to 6.6% marketshare vs Google's 72% as of Feb 2009) and discovered an obscure video of me telling stories about being Canadian and being in a rock band for the Harvard Business School archive.

What is with the hair? Somebody give that guy a comb.

-DK

Cool "Media Library" functionality with Amazon let's you Share your purchases

I just noticed that Amazon allows you to share items that you have purchased (or any other item) in a "Media Library" area. You can embed code that allows you to put the box into a blog post or widget very easily.

This is a very cool way to drive traffic to a specific product.

And for the record that Vampire book is my WIFE's purchase.
-DK

Obama's Presidential #44 Coffee Blend in Canada

Hey everyone - I'm happy to report that Canadians have embraced Obama's visit to Ottawa today: From The Record: "Presidential Blend No. 44 from Timothy's World Coffee. Named for the 44th U.S. commander-in-chief, the blend is being touted as a tribute to Obama's own mixed heritage: "a medium to strong body of Sumatra, with the distinctiveness of Kenyan and the smoothness of Hawaiian Kona."

I tried the coffee today and can personally report that it is a great blend.

-DK

Important Canadian vs. American debate: Decal vs. Deecal

There is a big give-away in my hometown of Edmonton of special 30th Anniversary Oiler decals by Subway Restaurants. This is a project of a friend of mine. I'm happy to help out, but whenever I say the word "decal" down in the US, people look at me like I'm nuts. You see, Americans pronounce it "DEEcal", which is very very odd. This exposes one of the many imporant differences between Canadians and Americans. I invite you to share any other important differences here.

NHL Haiku

Just finished watching my Colorado Avalanche beat the team I hate second most (Dallas I hate most), the Calgary Flames.

Of course, I am inspired to write haiku:

Bertuzzi still a bum, Boo Boo Boo
Iginla needs a centerman, Maybe it is you?
21 Albertans but yet a Finn is the glue

Sad, really.
-DK

Multi-Tasking Canadians

The folks at Ipsos Reid have confirmed what all parents of teenagers already know - when you are online, you are probably watching TV and listening to the radio also.

In fact, 44% of Canadians (and presumably, a similar number of multi-tasking Americans) say they are consuming other traditional forms of media while scouring the latest that the Internet has to offer. Further, a lot of folks don't bother with traditional media at all, especially quick-to-be-out-of-date categories such as magazine (40% don't bother with them).

Multi-tasking is only part of this story - the other part is that media with interactive & real-time characteristics is where the audience is. The more one-way and out-of-date the message, the less an entire generation of consumers is interested.

Recently, a lot of bleeding-edge folks have been getting their news from emerging micro-blogging sites, such as Twitter. Over here at com.motion we follow one particular Twitter-er who seems to beat CNN regularly. Hold on to your hats, folks, media is changing.

What it takes to help start businesses in Africa

This post is NOT about social media, it is about helping people in Africa get off their reliance on kerosene lamps and instead use solar panels.

My friend Nick Sowden sent this report from the front lines of Madagascar over the weekend. Until he gets back to a spot with better Internet access and blogs on it, I'm putting it up because it is just so damn inspiring. Nick's group, ToughStuff, is hoping to enable small businessmen around Africa with clean technologies that provide real benefits and real profits - which is the only way these types of programs actually work, IMHO:

_________

So Adriaan, the other founder, one of his employees and I just got back from the bush (which I think just means the countryside) . We stayed in in this tiny 10 or 15 home village about half an hour from the capital. They had no electricity, no running water and slept with about 10 people to each mud house. They seemed pretty freaking poor, but I think they had enough food generally (50 different types of rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner). The surrounding scenery was spectacular - I'll send pictures when I get back and have good internet.

I've been spending lots of time working on a project we call Business in a Box (BIAB), where a village entrepreneur (VE) gets a box of solar panels, lamps, radio connectors and cables to charge cell phones. He then charges the products all day and rents them out to the other villagers each night. If things go well he could make 2-4 dollars a day, which is a ton for them.

So we took 4 panels, 3 lamps, 2 batteries and a radio connector set (it was all we had). We gave them all to William, one of the villagers the founder knew and explained how everything worked, hoping to have him rent out the products that night.

William and the other ToughStuff employee (who speaks Malagasy) explained the tools to basically the whole village who came to see them. Everyone was pretty excited and seemed to understand it right away. We wanted the villagers to rent the products, so we told them to buy a solar panel and a lamp. Two of the villagers said okay, we'll buy them. We spent the next 30 minutes explaining that they couldn't buy them because we only had a few, lol. We said that they would have to rent from William. That was a good sign.

A few minutes later a villager paid 500 ariary (25 cents) to use the panel each night for the next 5 nights! William's first customer! 100 ariary/night is almost exactly what we've been predicting.

We went on to rent out all the lamps so we had to use this tiny kerosene lamp, which is, ironically, what we're trying to save these people from. And it sucked. After an hour we went back and bought the lamp back from one of the people so we could see if our food was cooked or not (I know, I know).

Also, the founder took me paragliding. The wind wasn't very good so I only got about 10 or 20 feet off the ground - but he jumped off this big hill and landed a few hundred yards down the hill. Bad ass.

Social Media Not just a Marketing Gig

I pulled together some quick thoughts on how social media programs can become the hubs of information for many parts of the organization - check it out on the com.motion blog. An excerpt:

"if you are a brand manager and sprinkle a little $$$ behind engaging in social media, you need to be prepared to play a new kind of corporate quarterback. You are going to get feedback that is relevant for your brand far beyond the walls of marketing and PR. Your VP of Customer Service, your VP of Product Development, your VP of R&D, your SVP of Investor Relations and your head of Operations are all going to be interested in the nuggets you uncover as you start to talk with and get to know your social media influencers."

I really believe that this is why social media campaigns are starting to emerge as the cornerstones of many marketing campaigns. They are the customer-information glue of the future.

6th Photo on the 6th Page Meme

Hey kids, time for a meme (thing "chain letter", but you do it using social media and you don't have to spend any money on stamps).

Tara at Lijit has challenged us to take the 6th picture from our 6th page of pictures on Flickr or Photobucket and blog about it. And then tag 6 others to do the same.

Here is mine. This is a picture of my kid Kaden with 2 of his favorite friends. That duck (aptly named "Ducky") used to be white, but now is a scary shade of grey. I fear that one day, that duck will cause an ebola outbreak, despite out efforts to wash it every week. Ducky no longer can go in the dryer, however, for fear of him losing his head.

I now tag Peter, Tim, Brenna, Geoff, Dell's customer service blog (what the heck - let's see if they are listening. perhaps they can put up a new Dell model photo) & Rohit.

Fun Fun Fun

Another Reason to Love the USA: An American Passport in 2 hours

I'm definitely an idiot because I should have known better. I was travelling back to Canada from the US for Christmas, and I called the US Immigration offices in Sweetgrass, Montana (they always pick up the phone there, not so much in the big city offices) to double check if I needed a US passport for my 3 month old daughter to travel. The guy on the phone was clear that a birth certificate was enough - even if we were travelling by plane. I pointed out that there was a lot of material on the web saying that I needed a passport - but he insisted that it was not required. This leads me to the rule became aware of in 1998 while immigrating to the States: NEVER TRUST A US IMMIGRATION OFFICIAL, BECAUSE THE RULES ARE COMPLETELY RANDOM.

So when we showed up for our United flight and they told us "sorry, no can do", I had visions of spending Christmas Eve here in Boulder with crying children and an extremely grumpy wife.

Happily, the folks at United gave us a tip that there is a secret Denver (Aurora, actually) immigration office that can make a passport in a couple of hours. They had an address and a phone number. The phone number didn't help, as it said only that the next appointment for a passport was Dec 29 (not helpful). But we decided to drive over there and see if a miracle could occur. The building didn't even have an address on the front of it. But if you make it up to the 6th floor there is a magic room with 3 bored security guards, 100 empty chairs and 3 busy passport-makers behind bullet-proof glass. $140 and 2 hours later - wa la! My daughter has a passport - we make the next flight and the family is saved. NOTE TO US IMMIGRATION: IF YOU GO TO THE TROUBLE OF HAVING AN OFFICE THAT DOES SAME DAY PASSPORTS ON CHRISTMAS EVE, YOU MIGHT WANT TO MARKET THAT FACT, ESPECIALLY ON YOUR PHONE GREETING. OR PERHAPS PUT AN ADDRESS ON THE BUILDING.

This is the kind of thing that can only happen in the good old USA. In most other countries, same day government services (whether it be a passport or cardiac resuscitation) is something that is simply not politically correct. If the government provides it, you should expect to wait a few days/months. And it is certainly too capitalist to allow folks to pay extra money to jump to the front of a line - it sounds too much like something that George Bush would come up with.

Hooray for the US. Although with this post I'm probably blacklisted and will never be able to cross a border again...

Chrysler's Travails Trickle down to Agencies - Do they Share the Blame?

The news is out that the downfall of Chrysler is squeezing the Omnicom agencies that support it - BBDO and phD in particular. This is expected.

But an interesting question is how much are these agencies to blame for their client's travails? Surely the union contracts which hamstring innovation and workrules which prevent tapping the ideas of the front-line folks making the cars are a big problem. Quality is a problem, but I can tell you from personal experience that Audi & BMW models have issues to.

So a bit of a light-bulb went off for me when I saw Joe DiBello's comment on Adage. I'll quote him directly here:

"The bulk purchase of media with a "cheaper is better" mindset has resulted in millions being squandered on spots that ran in the wrong place and produced bad or no results. ...... Most agencies still have no innovative knowledge of or plan for effective Internet use, intelligent fulfillment of sports sponsorships, or locally-savvy consumer involvements. If they continue to cleave to the national, generic, institutional, branding tactics instead of an integrated, ground-level plan for connection with the people who buy (or don't buy) the product, the industry is doomed. "

I tend to agree with Joe. While there is clearly a role for national TV spots for major brands, for a product where 90% of potential buyers do their research online and Word-of-mouth is critical, it seems that the media mix should have long ago been skewed away from TV, print & radio and innovative social media relationships with potential customers should have been created.

At least it is not too late for electric car-maker Tesla Motors. They should be creating one-on-one relationships right now with people who have the potential to buy their cars. Heck, I'm one! I'll wait for one of their marketeers to comment on my blog post now and offer me a test drive......

Social Media Spending up, despite Economic Woes in Traditional Media

What all of us in the social media industry have felt in our gut for the last year has been quantiatively proven - despite the malaise in the economy, brands are going to increase their spending in social media in 2009.

This is the big take-away from a survey compiled by the folks at com.motion, a social media agency based in Toronto.

And the good news is that support from senior management for social media spending is at 78%. When the bosses start putting it on the radar, you know that it is no longer a fad.

Now yes this is a Canadian survey, but having lived 2/3 of my life in Canada and 1/3 in the US, I can say with authority that it is really hard to tell the difference between Johnny Canuck & Johnny Appleseed. Brand managers think alike in both places, although the Canadians think about hockey more.

DirecTV's 24-hour limit on PPV Movies sucks!

Time to use the power of social media as a test. You probably already know that Comcast has a regualar team of people who follow twitter and other online sources for grumpy Comcast customers and tries to proactively help them out. I want to see if DirecTV is just as savvy. DirecTV has a twitter stream, but you can't respond on it, which goes against every rule of social media. Nice try, DirecTV customer service. Close but no cigar.

I've been a loyal DirecTV customer for years, and have enough Tivo's in my house that I can't even really keep track of them. My bill is some ridiculous amount per month - and all I really watch are Colorado Avalanche hockey games on Fox Sports.

In the good old days, you could purchase a PPV movie, record it on your Tivo, and watch it whenever you wanted. You could even store them for months. Apparently, no longer. I'm not sure if DTV has been forced by movie studios, or it was simply a misplaced idea by a program manager, but they now remove the PPV in roughly 24 hours.

This is simply stupid. Any family with a couple of young kids knows that getting a consecutive 2 hour slot of open time requires an Act of God. You might get an hour here or an hour there, but only every few days. This is one of the rules of toddlers - "Keep Mom & Dad on their toes at all times to maintain the upperhand in all matters".

Anyway, DirecTV should give people a week - 8 days is better (so you can start it on one Friday night, and finish it the next). The current policy is simply not competitive. Video stores give you a few days, and NetFlix all the time you want. I'm pretty sure I can download them off of the Interent legally now - iTunes here we come.

Time to wake up and smell the social media revolt.

A Real Life "Bat in the Office"

Many of you who share my sense of humor (humour for you Canadians) will know about the television show The Office. What you may not know is that I eerily have real-life similarities to Michael Scott, the head of the Scranton branch of the Dunder Mifflen Paper Co on the show. You know, things like wearing plaid with stripes, making fun of people in the office and generally thinking that people are the most important part of sales.

But the twilight zone crept up a notch today when I walked into our new offices this morning (formerly Google's offices in Boulder) to find a team of Collective Intellect commando's attempting to capture a lost bat in one of our conference rooms. We have video coming.....

I'm happy to report that the raid would have made Columbian anti-FARC agents proud and the the little bugger was safely transported to our outdoor deck without any incidents involving getting the bat stuck in a ladies hair-doo.

Well done Nick & Ricardo!