End of the year thoughts

It's hard to believe that another year has come and gone. I am thankful for my friends and family, and for good health. I am also lucky that I have a job that challenges me and enables me to help small businesses around the country, as well as other places in the world. I recently was in the U.K. speaking at a conference connected to the office products industry. It was great to see long-standing business friends there as well as get a chance to meet new people. The problems and challenges that businesses have here in the U.S. are similar to that in the U.K. The resellers I met were very appreciative and were very eager to learn what they could about the marketing and other business best practices from here. The company Spicers, was holding their big customer customer event, and it was interesting to see how the manufacturers displayed their booths at the show. I learned some things that we can use at our shows here. I hope the economy improves and that we all have a more prosperous 2012!

Thanksgiving

I have so many good memories of Thanksgiving. It was one of my mom's favorite holidays because it was not commercial - of course she has been gone more than 20 years now and there was no Black Friday craziness back then. My mom and day often hosted Thanksgiving and one memorable one was when we had so many people that we had to eat in our basement - not in the dining room. And we ate on a ping pong table! But it was fun and boisterous.

This year, my cousin hosted it and after dinner we watched an old-fashioned slide show from the old days (1960s). Lots of old pictures of loved ones and not-so-loved ones! You all know what I mean - skeletons in the closet, bad things that happened, events that go unspoken. I focus on the good memories because the bad are often too dark to dwell upon.

There are so many things to be thankful for: family, friends, employment (!), good health. I am blessed and know it. I hope you all had a good Thanksgiving weekend with your loved ones, and hopefully some of them were your family, too!

Where were you on 9/11? Everybody has a story. Here is mine.

On Tuesday morning, September 11th, 2001, I left my house in Alpharetta, Georgia for Hartsfield airport about 6 a.m. I had an 8:15 am Delta flight to Chicago. My husband Ed  and I had  just returned to Atlanta from a weekend in Houston where we had helped to host a 50th wedding anniversary party for his parents the weekend before. I unpacked from that trip and repacked for my business trip. That was pretty much how I lived back then as a partner in a marketing services company. We had divisions in several sites east of the Mississippi and I traveled weekly.

So, I was flying back and forth between either Atlanta and Chicago or Atlanta and New York every week. This day was not eventful - I had taken the flight many times before. I left my house with my husband still snoozing upstairs in bed. My regular car service picked me up for the 45 minute ride to the airport. Everything went smoothly as I arrived at the airport and checked in. I learned I  was upgraded, which was also a plus. All went fine until I arrived at O'Hare airport in Chicago.

I was one of the first people off the the plane and immediately realized something was terribly wrong. There were no people in the terminal. No one from Delta to greet us or even open the door to the terminal. We had not been told anything unusual on the flight so this was very odd. O'Hare is always busy and this looked like something out of a movie. I turned on my cell phone and saw that lots of messages were registered, but the phone would not work to call out or retrieve the messages.

As my fellow passengers and I walked down the deserted hallway, we passed a bar where a TV set was on. I paused and saw on the monitor that a plane had crashed into the Pentagon. That was too bad, I thought, not registering that anything else had happened. I found a pay phone along the hallway and called my office in Atlanta.

Candy, our executive assistant, accepted my collect call (I hadn't used a pay phone in years) and immediately asked, "Where are you?" "In Chicago," I answered, "I just landed and my cell phone won't work." "Thank God you are OK. All the cell phones are jammed," she said in her  Southern accent, "Let me put Bill on." Bill was my boss, my business partner, and the CEO of the company. I had known Bill for years and worked for him in a previous corporate life. Bill was also a highly decorated Vietnam veteran who still carried himself with a military bearing.

"Laura, thank God you are OK. Do you know what is going on?" Bill asked me. "No," I answered, getting worried for the first time. Bill answered, "Terrorists are hijacking planes and crashing them into targets around the country. Get away from O'Hare airport as fast as you can." Bill was talking in his clipped military manner now. "Where should I go?" I asked. My mind was racing - I used to live in Chicago and had a lot of friends there. Could I get somewhere safe? "Can I go to the office? Is it safe there?" I asked. Our Chicagoland division was in a suburb. Bill said, "It should be far enough away and should be OK. I will send someone from the office to pick you up. In the meantime, Ed has been worried sick about you so we are going to patch you through to him at the house."

I did not appreciate the fear that had been going through my husband and my colleagues while I was in the air. No one knew what planes were being hijacked or where they were going. I soon learned I was on one of the last planes allowed to land at O'Hare and that the airport had already been evacuated, which was why it was deserted. Airline operations were being halted and planes were in the process of being grounded all over the country.

Candy put me through to Ed and I could hear the relief in his voice. He had awakened after I left and put on Good Morning America. He saw the World Trade Center being hit and knew my flight had taken off at 8:15, the same time as the hijacked planes. He feared the worst. He had tried to reach me, unsuccessfully, and had been constantly on the phone with my office or with family. The enormity of what was happening was beginning to sink in for me. We reassured each other, told each other I love you, and I told him that I would get home as fast as I could.

I left the terminal to go outside to meet the colleague who was picking me up. I assumed he would be in the usual passenger pick-up area and I was right. People were milling around outside O'Hare yet it was eerily quiet. No plane noise. We drove to the office, speculating on what was going on in the world. When I arrived, people hugged me and told me how worried they had been. We had several TVs in various places and gathered around to watch what was happening. Some people tried to maintain a regular work day, but it was increasingly difficult after the WTC towers collapsed. That was beyond belief and was one of the scariest things I have ever seen.

One of my best friends lived in Chicago, and I managed to reach her to see if I could stay with her that night. It was clear that O'Hare was closed indefinitely. I needed to be around people I loved, and I felt horrible that Ed was down in Atlanta by himself during this national crisis. I had to get there, because that was home......where he was. That night, watching TV with my friends, was really when the enormity hit me. I felt blessed that I was not on a plane that was hijacked. I prayed for those who were killed and their families, and our country. There but for the grace of God......as they say. I felt very fortunate but was still concerned.

At this same time, a big printing trade show was happening at McCormick Place in Chicago. I was supposed to host a Japanese delegation for a meeting and tour at our facility, and there were many people I knew in town for the show. We were all stranded now. I contacted my Japanese contact and canceled the tour - there was no way I could conduct business as usual. I needed to get home.

A company that makes printing presses, Heidelberg, has its North American headquarters in Atlanta. A guy I know there contacted me and asked if I wanted a ride back. They had rented a coach bus and were going to head out later in the week. Heidelberg had a large contingent of employees in Chicago for the trade show, but they could fit me and another Atlanta-based colleague of mine on the bus. No one was sure when air travel would resume, and everyone was in a state of uncertainty and rallying around one another.

My Atlanta-based colleague and good friend, Mark, had arrived in Chicago on Sept. 10, and he had gotten a rental car. Little did we know how scarce rental cars would be after Tuesday but since he had a car, another option was to drive back ourselves. I called Avis to ask if we could take the car to Atlanta, and they said, "It's your rental car, so you can drive it wherever you want." Although I thought the bus might be a better alternative, Mark was going to drive himself no matter what. After all, he wouldn't be able to smoke on the bus and since he is a heavy smoker and this was a stressful situation, he needed his nicotine. I did not want him to drive by himself - there was still a lot of uncertainty around - and I decided I would rather drive back with a friend than a bus full of strangers. So we left to drive back to Atlanta on September 13.

It was a strange journey. Not many cars on the road, including the interstates. We listened to the news, Mark smoked and drank his diet cokes, and I didn't care. The weather was glorious and we could roll down the windows. We needed to get home. We talked about how this event would be one of the more memorable our lives, and it has been. Mark wouldn't let me spell him at the wheel ("you'll only slow us down.....") but we did stop at a Waffle House along the way. That was my one and only time at that chain, despite all my time in Atlanta. Funny how I recall that clearly.

I arranged to have Ed pick me up at a restaurant that was between our house and Mark's  so Mark didn't have to go further out of the way. I was so happy to see Ed and give him a big hug. I was home.

Postscript: 1) To this day, Ed insists we have a land line phone in the house. It is purely for the reason that cell service jams during national emergencies. 2) I had to go back to work in NYC shortly after 9/11. At that time I stayed at a hotel in midtown every week, and my room often had a balcony. I was in NY when the blue lights shot up into the night sky from where the WTC stood and I could see the lights clearly from my room. I will never forget them, and I get very emotional when I really think about 9/11. 3) I get mad at terrorists when I watch movies such as "Working Girl" that show clear images of the WTC.

Did Twitter help?

So we had really bad storms in Chicago this past week. The power went out in my neighborhood, and we got no information from our service provider, ComEd, about when it would be restored. There was no information on their web site, and the people on the phone did not know.  My husband and I saved as much as we could from the fridge and freezer, but ended up having to dump a lot of expensive meat (we could only eat so much!). On Wednesday night, I thought about tweeting things about ComEd to get their attention. Lo and behold, within five minutes someone from ComEd was direct messaging with me. They asked the neighborhood where I lived, and commented about the crews in the area. First they said the power would not be restored until Friday night (it went out Tuesday night). However, it actually came back on overnight on Wednesday - after I exchanged twitter messages with the person at ComEd.

Did it help? I don't know but I would say it didn't hurt, and it made me feel like I contributed! Not too bad, all in all.

A most amazing week!

This has been a most amazing week! We held our customer conference, and it was awesome. Our management team was at its peak, our customers experienced great educational sessions and had a lot of fun, and our suppliers experienced a lot of good engagement all around.we had great parties, and Journey was awesome! Vision 2011 was an event that will be remembered for years to come.

Spring in Chicago

The woods are dull and brown,
The air is damp and chilled,
A robin sings,
It is spring in Chicago.

Vote early

I voted early in the Chicago election - we voted last Saturday. It is always interesting to think about the options......about who will win and who will lose. Who cares most about Chicago and who will help the city the most? Vote early!

Good luck to Egypt's people!

It is true that the souls in people yearn for freedom. What happened in Egypt this week is more than extraordinary. It shook up a lot of people and energized even more. The U.S. must support the people's efforts for democracy - I hope they will let us help. The fact that demographic changes played such an important role is amazing. Most of the protestors were younger than 30, and had known no other leader except Mubarak. The images of happiness, tears of joy, and the determination on the faces of the people have been seen around the world. It made me wonder what would have happened here in the U.S. if the Revolutionary war was influenced by immediate communication such as Facebook and Twitter. The fact that news traveled slowly then worked both to advantage and disadvantage for sure. Good luck to the people of Egypt. What a proud time for you,

Snow in Austin!

I'm writing this from the Red Cheetah Coalition Conference in Austin, Texas. This is a place where entrepreneurs from the business products industry get together to talk about the technology they use. It is a dynamic group of people and I really enjoy talking with the attendees. My team and I barely made it here due to the record-breaking snowfall in Chicago. We managed to get out of O'Hare somehow though. Now, however, it has snowed here in Texas. We are hoping it will all be gone before we have to get back to Chicago tomorrow. This group is so eager to get information and I delivered a keynote to them this morning on the value of adaptive marketing. They were thoughtful and asked great questions. It is good to get out of the office and talk to customers regularly. Sometimes I think I don't do it enough - that is a goal for the new year!

The Tourist

I saw The Tourist last month and while beautifully shot (hard to make Italy look bad) the movie was pretty dull. The acting was wooden and I was surprised at how flat Johnny Depp came across. Angelina Jolie was pretty and her clothes were gorgeous but she is so thin that it is distracting. You want someone to give her a sandwich or something. If you like these actors, I would wait until it comes out on DVD or HBO to see it.

True Grit

We saw the new version of True Grit over the holidays. It was really well done and Jeff Bridges especially did an outstanding job. Although I don't usually admit it, I like the original movie with John Wayne, too. I did not even think about it once while I viewed the new one....except once during the scene in which Rooster puts the reins in his teeth and goes after the bad guys with both guns blazing. I did not recognize Matt Damon at first - his LeBoeuf character was interesting, and the young actress portraying Maddie Ross was strangely engaging. If you like westerns, and if you like the original movie, you should see this movie. I recommend it.

Happy 2011!?

I haven't written in a while because so much has been going on. There is a lot happening at work and at home. One of the ultimate "brand stalwarts" - Starbucks - changed its logo today and created a lot of consternation in the marketing world. Even my company has pointed to Starbucks as the epitome of a great logo. The fact that they would change it unilaterally is somewhat startling. What brands do you respect?

It is hard to believe it is 2011 already. When I was little, I thought I would be pretty much dead by 2000. What a surprise that I am still here and feeling young in 2011!

Let's all have a good year, shall we?