Internet Broadcasting & Production
Eastern Michigan University is live streaming the 2024 Solar Eclipse from a Weather Balloon 80,000 feet about Earth.
Broadcast starts at 2p CT on the EMU APEx channel.
youtube.com/
EMU is among 70 other institutions selected to participate in this project sponsored by NASA.
If you're not going to a viewing site, you can watch the coverage from the EMU feed, weather permitting.
Congratulations to Roz Varon of ABC News Chicago. She retires after 35 years as the first TV Traffic Reporter for the Channel 7 morning news.
Shout out to ABC News Chicago for the features and packages throughout the week recognizing her work and contributions to the Chicagoland community.
The Columbia College graduate first auditioned for the job along side several other radio personalities in 1988.
'I bombed.' she said.
But she recorded a second audition tape, sent it to the General Manager and got the job.
Score one for persistence, and not taking 'no' for an answer. Congratulations, Roz, on an outstanding career in broadcasting.
Advice for Writers in the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Report
Writing for 3,000,000 by Writing for 1
Like Navin Johnson anticipates the new phone, I look forward to the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Report, because of the Annual Letter from Warren Buffett.
In his signature dressed-down style, Buffett is funny and insightful. And in this year’s report, Buffett talks about his approach to writing the letter, a letter that will be poured over and dissected by many for years to come.
Intention – Model – Goal
How does he approach this responsibility? He considers his audience and uses a mental model for what he intends to communicate.
Buffett says, "I am charged with writing a letter every year that will be useful to this diverse and ever-changing group of owners, many of whom wish to learn more about their investment."
Bertie Buffett – The Berkshire Audience Proxy
Buffett continues, and I'm paraphrasing, "Writers find it useful to picture the reader they seek. In visualizing the owners that Berkshire seeks. I am lucky to have the perfect mental model, my sister, Bertie. Every year Bertie will read what I have to say. My job is to anticipate her questions and give her honest answers."
I was delighted by this.
In bearing the responsibility of communicating to millions of people whose money he is responsible for, Buffett breaks down the scale and scope to one person, his sister Bertie.
It's the equivalent to giving a speech to thousands by delivering it to one person in the audience.
For Berkshire shareholders, the Annual Meeting will be held this year on May 4th at the CHI Health Center in Omaha.
But it is a true Hybrid Event, one of the best I can think of, in terms of the audience and brand engagement, for the on-site and on-line audience.
CNBC will again be the exclusive broadcast partner for the on-line portion of the event on its website. Becky Quick will lead the coverage live.
Brand to Watch - Caleb Williams - Chicago Bears QB1
A Future Brand Leader for Gen Z & People Who Don't Like Sportball
If you are interested in brands but don't super-follow sports, I would like to introduce you to Caleb Williams, future starting quarterback of the Chicago Bears.
He is a modern athlete, the first group of college players to earn money playing in the NCAA, players who will start their career having been both amateur and professional.
Williams has reportedly earned over $10M in NIL money playing three years in college at blue-chip programs Oklahoma and USC.
He is also a modern athlete in terms of his generation, the beginning wave of Gen Z players to go pro and will represent this generation in their unique way as the world transforms itself over the next 30-40 years.
This will be the generation of The Coming Wave...
The generation of AI, Synthetic Biology, Nano-computing, Space Travel, Autonomous Vehicles and Robotics. Williams and other athletes in his generation will be the brand ambassadors for the companies in those industries who will lead the way in solving the problems they inherited.
The differences between generations can often be polarizing, and Williams breaks the mold in terms of style, business acumen, and interests.
From Roberta Katz, Senior Research Scholar at Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences, Gen Z is...
‘The first generation never to know the world without the internet. They value diversity and finding their own unique identities. They are not coddled. They are highly collaborative, self-reliant, and pragmatic.’
And soon he will be the starting quarterback for the Chicago Bears, the founding member of the NFL, and #5 most valuable franchise according to Forbes.
The Bears will stand-up a new stadium in the next 4-5 years, and William will help build it, just like Peyton Manning did in Indianapolis with Lucas Oil Stadium.
From this platform, Williams will soon become the brand ambassador for his generation from the world of sports, like Jack and Arnie, like Tiger and MJ before him, especially if he brings a Super Bowl to Chicago and breaks the curse of Sid Luckman.
For those not familiar with Caleb Williams, if you are interested in brands, I encourage you to follow his trajectory in his career in sports and business, even if you don't like Sportball.
Resilience is the Practice of Making Things Fun-Bad
If you work in the event business, you are an expert in making the best out of bad situations.
It’s problem solving, it’s the art of figuring it out.
The term psychological term for it is resilience.
Last weekend, I was moving things out of the garage into a new shed because the old shed was torn down by a utility company because it had been installed originally on their easement (not by us).
So, all the shed-stuff went into the garage next to it’s siblings the garage-stuff, so we had too much stuff in too little space and it was not great. Everyone should have these problems.
Boo-hoo, Poor Me
While we’re doing that my son lets me know that the basement is flooding. A cracked pipe water pipe from the winter leaked water into the basement while we were power washing outdoor furniture.
I really didn’t want to be dealing with this. This time was targeted for doing the garage/shed thing so we could get ready to host and now we’re flooded.
My attitude wasn’t great. I caught myself getting angry at the situation instead of working on solving the problem - angry at myself, the expense, the time wasted, everything that needed to be done. Boo-hoo. Poor me.
My son looked at me and said, ‘This is awful. Let’s make it fun-bad.’
Within a few minutes we were crawling around the soaked carpet, tearing it up and getting it out. It was fun-bad.
Fun-Bad
In the event business, I’m used to figuring things out and making the best of bad situations, but in this case, my thoughts slipped into a less than helpful mindset.
After my son prompted me out, the work went by quickly. In live events, you have to deal with situations all the time, so falling into an unproduction mindset stood out to me.
Resilience
This wasn’t a life-or-death problem.
Why did I react negatively initially instead of getting on with it?
What is the name of the mindset that figures things out?
The word is resilience.
That’s it! Go figure. I thought it’d be something fancy, but it’s not.
Just plain ol’ resilience. 'Get on with it.' as my Brit friend would say.
Make the best of a bad situation.
Make it fun-bad.
Selling Principles 101 - Freelancing in the Event Industry & Describing Your Business to Aunt Joan
This is my Aunt Joan, my Godmother.
She sends me handwritten letters every month with clipped newspaper stories, crossword puzzles and colored pencil drawings. She’s lovely.
But when I stepped down from my staff job recently, and went into business for myself, she was worried.
‘What are you going to do for money!?’ she asked.
I went on and on about the corporate event business and how a lot of work is done by freelancers for different roles especially for the jobs I do like project managing, supporting breakout rooms, on-site encoding, video switching, producing, and managing hybrid events and webcasts…
She cut me off. She said…
‘Look, I don’t know what any of that means. I just need you to tell me what you are going to do clearly, so I know what to pray for.’
I understood. She needed the elevator speech.
There was an extended benefit. For my own clarity, or for business copy on a webpage, or in talking to future customers, I had to be able to explain it clearly (and quickly) to Aunt Joan.
So, I worked on the language, and made it a mouthful, not a platter full of word salad.
Here’s what v1 looked like…
I am an on-site encoding engineer for hybrid and virtual events, I manage projects and support breakouts, and I develop business for the corporate event industry.
She liked that.
The super distilled version, v2, was…
I tech, manage and sell for the corporate event business…but that was too lean.
It’s hard enough to explain what we do in the corporate event business, but I workshopped the Aunt Joan Model – v1, this past weekend at a family get-together, and it played well - lots of head nodding and non-verbal affirmations, which was good. I needed people to get it enough.
I had anticipated this, and prepared my story as best I could before getting started, but when I was asked by Aunt Joan, I was caught off and fell a little short.
If you are considering going on your own, or updating your product and service mix, I would encourage thinking of explaining your business to Aunt Joan, a variation of the elevator speech, as a useful mental model for communicating your business clearly and getting closer to the sale.
Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting - CNBC Produced Hybrid Event with Virtual Presenters
The Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting is just over 45 days away - May 4, 930a ET
It's quite the event with over 40,000 people expected to attend on-site. But it's quite the event online as well with CNBC providing exclusive coverage on it's website. The hybrid event is a great production by CNBC.
Produced like a sports broadcast, they open with set produced content with live and virtual interviews before cutting live to stage. Here's a highlight from the 2023 broadcast with a virtual interview with the late Jimmy Buffett.
Reframing the Sale of Hybrid Events Using $10 Words
I don’t know how it’s been with you, but my experience is that most clients approach the online part of a hybrid event like brushing teeth…it’s something they have to do.
There can be good reason for this.
Sometimes it’s cost prohibitive, or it can be technical challenges.
Whether that’s been your experience or not, there’s good reason to reframe a client’s approach to hybrid events because of the way our brains learn and take action.
The client’s dog-whistle for learning and taking action is called engagement, they want the audience to be engaged or feel excited. It makes sense.
According to Jayatri Dad, Chief Bioscientist at The Franklin Institute…
‘Excitement can enhance memory and attention, leading to more effective learning. It can make us more motivated to act on something we want or seek.’
What client doesn’t want that? But what is engagement and how do we frame that for our clients in a sales pitch for hybrid events?
Our emotions or our engagement or out excitement are measured along two variables - valence and arousal.
Valence is whether an emotion is pleasant or unpleasant.
Arousal is whether an emotion is activating or deactivating.
It’s not going to be the same for everybody.
For example, finding a premiere parking spot at Costco on a Saturday morning is going to be a high valance, high arousal for me. I imagine I’m in the minority on that one.
At the same time, I walk away from slot machines - low valance, low arousal, but obviously they're around because others have a different experience.
By using these values, we can guide our clients into better decisions for hybrid events.
Instead of rolling our eyes when we hear, ‘oh, we’ll just send them a Zoom link…’we can help the client qualify the value of their decision related to engagement which is excitement which is learning and action, using these variables.
I wouldn’t use the words valence and arousal in a pitch. The sounds like $10 words as my mom used to call them, so I’ll reframe those words too.
But the underlying qualification of these words provides a good framework for us in talking to our clients who rely on us to make their events serve business results.
Back where it all started...
Managing a small event for Elmhurst CUSD 205 - Movie on the Field
Here's what's interesting about Unit School Districts like Elmhurst 205,
The size of the organization as a whole...
With 8000+ students, 700+ certified staff, and a budget of $180M, it reflects the size of company you'd find in the Russell 2000.
Delighted to be contracting with 205, and continuing our relationship after having spent 15 years on staff managing events for the Tech/Media department.
Thank you Elmhurst District 205 Public Schools!
Problem Solving through Inversion - Win by Not Losing
In looking for a quote about reading oft-attributed to Charlie Munger yesterday, I came across an article from Time magazine, adapted from Munger's book - Poor Charlie's Almanack.
Munger references one of the mental models he uses to solve problems by inverting it. The problem, I mean.
Says Munger, "For instance, if you want to help India, the question you should consider asking is not “How can I help India?” Instead, you should ask, “How can I hurt India?” You find what will do the worst damage, and then try to avoid it."
This reminds me of the sports adage...
You can do a lot of winning by not losing.
A little more context here if interested...
Nine days ago, I started the process of documenting how I’m going to attempt to solve a significant problem in my life.
Something Spooky for Halloween...
Courtesy of Bob Iger in Ride of a Lifetime.
'Innovate or die, and there is no innovation if you operate our of fear of the new or untested.'
If you want to update your output,
you have to update your input...
Buy Mickey Mantle’s Home for $7.00
Interesting news in the collectibles market from fractional asset ownership company Rally.
Rally will IPO shares of Mickey Mantle's childhood home next week.
Shares are priced at $7/share for a total offering of $329,000.
What's more interesting is...this could be a collectible that produces cash flow.
Unlike a 1940 DC Batman #1 or a 1979 Topps Rookie Gretzky, this hard asset could be a museum, an Airbnb, or sit on top of the next Number One McBeth over the Big Oil Creek Sands.
I don't know anything about Rally or their investments, but as a baseball fan, I found this fun.
*Photo Courtesy of Green Country Tourism*
Throwback Thursday - The Minard Map
In the Event Business, everyone appreciates a captivating graphic.
Turning a complex set of data into a simple image is as good as it gets.
On the anniversary of Napoleon's retreat from Russia,
I'm re-sharing what is regarded as the greatest statistical graphic ever drawn.
The context is horrible but the summary of data is remarkable.
Gary Vaynerchuk & Abraham Lincoln
One quote from Gary V. that sticks in my head is...
Nothing happens without someone knowing about it.
It's so obviously true, it's funny. That's why it sticks.
Many things get attributed to Abraham Lincoln. But above all, he was a shrewd politician.
He acted as his own campaign manager, even in 1860 for his 1st Presidency.
Lincoln and Vaynerchuk are like-minded in regards to campaigning.
Lincoln says...
With public sentiment, nothing can fail.
Without it, nothing can succeed.
Sometimes I get stuck uncertain which direction to go. The easiest way I've found to get unstuck is to pick something on the list and do it. Even something as simple as fixing something in the house or going out for a light workout can unlock the mind.
Business Lessons from Dolly Parton - Everybody's Going to Use You if They Can
Dolly Parton is the GOAT in music and business.
And the story of her stare-down with Elvis Presley's business manager Colonel Tom Parker over her song 'I Will Always Love You' is legend.
Parton had written the song in 1973 when she split with collaborator Porter Wagoner.
She released it 1974 and it reached #1 on the Country Charts.
Later that year, Elvis reached out to Parton and asked to record her song.
Parton was excited, 'I was desperate for Elvis to sing my song and I told everyone he was going to sing it.'
But night before Elvis was set to record, Colonel Parker pulled a fast one. Everything was set up.
He told Dolly, 'We don't record anything with Elvis unless we at least get half the publishing.'
In an interview with W magazine, Dolly shows her business instincts...
'I said, I’m sorry, but I can’t give you the publishing. I wanted to hear Elvis sing it, and it broke my heart I cried all night. But I had to keep that copyright in my pocket.
You have to take care of your business. Everybody’s going to use you if they can. These are my songs. They’re like my children. And I expect them to support me when I’m old.”
It's Never too Late to Repair a Good Relationship, or
How the Highest Selling Jazz Record was Sold for Babysitting Duties (no pun)
In 1959, The Dave Brubeck Quartet released the album Time Out.
From the album, Take Five would become the first jazz single from the album to sell 1M copies.
But the song, composed by saxophonist Paul Desmond, was almost never made.
Fall Out
After WWII, Desmond and band leader Dave Brubeck had fallen out.
Brubeck told his wife, Iola...
I never want to see him again. If he comes to our house, turn him away.
In the late 40's, a Desmond-led trio featuring Brubeck reformed as a quartet leaving Brubeck behind.
Brubeck re-established his career eventually signing with Fantasy Records.
Make Amends
Years later, recognizing his mistake, Desmond showed up at the Brubeck home to reconcile.
Iola would later tell jazz critic Gene Lees the story.
“But one day, Desmond came to the door.
Iola let him in. Dave was on the back porch pinning diapers to a clothesline.
He looked so forlorn, she went out back and told her husband ‘You just have to see him.’
Brubeck did, and Iola said ‘he was full of promises to Dave.
He said ‘if you just let me play with you, I’ll babysit, I’ll wash your car.’
Brubeck was unable to keep up his resistance."
Rise Up
The Dave Brubeck Quartet was formed, and the rest is history. Time Out has since been preserved by the US Library of Congress and was later inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
Building a Brand Can Sometimes Take a Minute
From Blue Ribbon to Nike
In 1962, Phil Knight launched his shoe company.
He called it Blue Ribbon Sports of Portland, Oregon.
Rings a bell, eh?
In 1971, Blue Ribbon rebranded itself as Nike - the goddess of victory.
A young artist from Portland State, Carolyn Davidson, produced mock-ups for the logo.
After two series of mock-ups, Davidson shared the now iconic swoosh.
Knight didn't love it at first. 'Maybe it'll grow on me,' he said.
Davidson received a check for $35.
Nike passed $140 million dollars in sales eight years later, in 1979.
And this year, 2023, Nike reported full-year revenues of $51.2B.
This outlier example reminds me that building a brand can sometimes take a minute.
The Global Event Industry is Expected to Grow Over the Next 10 Years, but...
Post test from TSVA...
Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Erik J Anderson LLC posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.
Throwback Thursday - The Minard Map In the Event Business, everyone appreciates a captivating graphic. Turning a complex set of data into a simple image is as good as it gets. On the anniversary of Napoleon's retreat from Russia, I'm re-sharing what is regarded as the greatest statistical graphic ever drawn. The context is horrible but the summary of data is remarkable.
Want your business to be the top-listed Media Company?
