The End of History from BrewDog on Vimeo.
These entrepreneurial brewmasters have thrown down the gauntlet against the “German sausage-eaters” (their words, not mine) to produce the world’s strongest beer at 55% abv. They didn’t stop there. These guys embedded the bottle inside the body of a squirrel.
How’s that for fresh thinking?
Wherever a G8 lands, you are going to see protesters. You will see people against things. You will see people for things. Simply, you will see people making demands. When the G8 hits Muskoka June 28, make no mistake — you’ll see demands being made from every nook and cranny of our known Earth.
Nevermind that only the most high-level discussions take place at these meetings, they’ll be there. By the way, if you want more than faint sketches of policy, the place to make demands is the G7/8 Finance Ministers meeting.
But demands of the G8 are built for media, so naturally, a bunch of celebrities in the UK and a group of NGOs are backing a campaign called At the Table for this year’s conference. The demand they are making is the institution of a “Robbin Hood tax” of 0.05 per cent on banks for all institutional international transactions. They bill it as a “tiny tax” that would go toward the developing world and not be passed on to banking customers.
The campaign claims this tax will not affect banking clients — but where will the 0.05 per cent come from? If you’re not hurting customers, you’re hurting shareholders (I wonder how many pension funds are invested in financial institutions?). Make no mistake: this tax will be passed down to the consumer — whether it is in retail banking or institutional banking — in some shape or form. It’s a tax against success and prosperity for honest business men and women. Second, this campaign is based on an inherent mistrust of capitalism. It paints all bankers as bad. This concerns me. The only alternative to our existing system collapsed along with the Soviet Union. This begs the question: if capitalism is based on a “casino economy,” as the site claims, why trust it at all to fund the developing world?
My final point — and the reason I’m most sceptical — is that this tax is based on aid, not trade. Without systemic change towards democracy in the African continent and elsewhere in the developing world, no one will see meaningful or lasting improvements. Both socialist and neo-liberal institutions such as the IMF have contributed to problems in this respect, and for decades nothing has changed. Democratization must come first — but that’s easier said than done, isn’t it?
The one part of the campaign I think is interesting and creative is the “flat leader.” Inspired by Flat Stanley, the campaign encourages fans to print out and cut out the image of your Flat G8 Leader along with speech bubbles with phrases such as, “Help developing countries cope,” (a loaded statement in itself) and “Make the rules fair.” The campaign encourages participants to take pictures with their flat leader wherever they go.
While public opinion is certainly not on the side of banks and financial institutions, the simplistic portrayal of “evil bankers” is the stuff of an angst-fuelled undergraduate political science class. The campaigners have pulled out on the stops, using Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and I wonder if it will gain any mainstream attention. Canada’s banking system has easily weathered the economic storm of the past year-and-a-half, and it’s a system we can uphold as a success story for all the other G8 countries. Anyway, check it out, and throw your thoughts into the comments.
I just finished a back and legs + abs workout with P90X. I soaked my blue t-shirt all the way through. It’s an amazing workout; I’m only on week two, but I highly recommend it.
What pumps you up? For many people, it’s physical. It’s a hockey game (Olympics, anyone?), a jog by the beach or even a yoga session (I just tried yoga. That stuff is hard). But sometimes it’s mental or comes from a sense of accomplishment: finishing a killer proposal or putting the final touches on a wrap report from a stellar campaign for a client.
Whatever it is, you need it. If you’re not getting pumped, you’re missing out on life. Here are my tips to make sure you’re getting a pump, whether it’s physical — like a killer P90X workout — or mental — like job satisfaction.
One of the best tools I’ve learned is to switch out and change what you’re doing. If you’re in a routine, that’s fine, but getting too far into the groove breeds complacency and doesn’t give you a chance to grow. The principle of training for either muscle mass or physical endurance is to mix it up in your workouts. That means not sitting and doing the same 10 – 15 reps with the same weight for the same exercise or living 30 minutes at a time on the treadmill. The same goes for work — approach something a little differently, even if it means just standing up every time you answer the phone. Try a couple things on your own and don’t tell anybody. See if they notice an improvement.
Training at the gym, I’m like the lone hardboiled cop who lost his partner in a gun battle — I always go alone. It’s that kind of thinking that got me into a groove for so long. I stagnated. Then, I came across a DVD training series and thought, “what can a video teach me? I’ve been working out for 14 years. I’m fit.” The DVD provided a training partner. Granted, I have to push PLAY, but the trainer is always there to push harder. Let me tell you, I haven’t had such intense workouts in years.
In business, you still always have to push PLAY yourself. No one will do it for you, but only when you’re motivated to try will people want to step up and see you do better. Only good things can come when you’ve got a partner there to push you — someone who isn’t afraid to tell you where you went wrong or how to improve. I know, I know, it can take some getting used to, but when you’ve got someone like that, it puts you off balance and forces you to get better.
Having done martial arts for a number of years (and now trying yoga), I know that form is very important for success. Your abs will be screaming and your arms will feel like they’re going to drop off, but you’ve got to keep calm and go slow. At work, it’s easy to breeze through something you think you’ve mastered, but if you’ve got the right partner, he or she will be bound to point out the corners you’re cutting. So, pause if you need to. Take a moment to asses, then continue. You’ll catch the details. And as they say, ladies and gents, that is where the devil is.
My shirt is drying — not quite there yet — but I’ve got a fresh one ready, because tomorrow I’m going to try to get up at 5:45 in the morning for a Kenpo session.
Bring it!
Turn down the lights, crank the HD and put on a pair of headphones. This is where I live:
If you can’t see the video, click here.
Gizmodo described this ad as “whimsical.” I agree. It is Google’s new ad for its browser, Chrome.
Not a computer in sight.
I am happily using Firefox, but it makes me want to switch to Chrome right now.
(watch the Ad on YouTube if you can’t see the video)
A Google Analytics search for “IPO” (Initial Public Offering) is showing increased activity from July onward. While the IPO market has been frozen during the economic crisis, I hope this is a sign of better times to come.
I was encouraged to search for this after seeing a health supplement company on Twitter announce they were to be the first retail IPO since 2007.
Here’s to new business and less fear in 2010!
by bogenfreund
“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be.
Now put foundations under them.” -Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau, 1817 – 1862, was an American author, poet, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, philosopher, and leading transcendentalist. He is well-known for his treatise Civil Disobedience in which he espouses much-quoted libertarian values. The smaller the government, the better and all that. From the existing state of affairs in America, his ideals failed miserably. That didn’t mean his work went to waste. The concept of civil disobedience carried on and lived in the practices of Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. They built the foundations, and the result is clear today.
Which brings me to my next quote:
“The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.” -Nelson Henderson
What will you do today affecting tomorrow?
A Tealeaf survey indicates that 74% of online adults said negative comments read online have an influence on whether they will do business with a company. That’s huge! It means 1. companies aren’t doing enough to provide excellent customer service and 2. companies need to do a better job at dealing with customer complains and resolving them before they get posted, and 3. businesses need to be online managing customer expectations, complaints and making things better.
Check this out: The survey results also show that online adults are increasingly turning to social media to share their online experiences with others, while simultaneously becoming less likely to alert a company directly – a shift in consumer behavior which extends the business impact of customer experience issues beyond any single transaction.
Will it change? I don’t know. It’s up to the companies who want to step up and get involved in the space. I know a bunch of companies who have, and they’re great at it. Keep an eye on this study in years to come for an indication if things are changing or not.
After much anticipation, Google Street View for Google Maps has come to Canada. Google likes to think of Street View as being the last zoom layer on the map – when you’ve zoomed all the way in you find yourself virtually standing on the street. So far, Street View has been rolled out for Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa and Halifax.
Such a feature can help promote your business. For instance, if people looking for directions want to take a look at your building’s facade, they can. I’d like to see how Vancouver Realtors (like Kye and Ian) take advantage of this for promoting listings.
As traditional news media is evolves, journalists can link to the site of a story on Google Street view, showing where an event occurred. I like this idea as it would provide an experiential element to the news.
One of the biggest concerns with Street View is privacy. While Street View contains imagery that is no different from what you might see driving or walking down the street, Google has developed face and license plate blurring technology that is applied to all Street View images, and anyone can request the removal of an image.
I was caught by Street View a couple of times canvassing during the B.C. Provincial election:
The man driving the Google Car with the camera on top was very nice. He even stopped to allow me to take a Twitpic of him and would wave to enthusiastic pedestrians every time he passed.
What do you think?
When you think of Canada, what do you think of? Well, right now you’re probably thinking of the Canucks. Maple syrup and snow? Toboggans and touques? Maybe. What about video? I argue that being a V-logger is Canadian. That’s right, along with profuse apologies, socialized medicine and poutine, vlogging is Canadian.
Here’s why: Last month, a digital marketing intelligence company, ComScore did a study of online viewing habits. Guess who sits at the top of that viewership? That’s right, Canada. Weighing in at 605 minutes of video per viewer for the month of February – that’s over 10 hours– Canadians beat out all other countries.
Some more numbers: 21 million Canadians viewed more than 3.1 billion videos – and there are only 33 million of us.
So, why not start a video log? If anyone is going to watch you, it’ll be a Canadian. Why not take pride in your country and pick up a flip cam and try it out?
Hi, I'm Michael (of Vancouver, B.C.). Welcome to my blog. Read more about me.
