Rothacker Reviews

The Who & the Super Bowl

"Hey Mom! These old dudes are singing the song from CSI Las Vegas!"

The Rise of the Real Mom & How Dads Can Help

So easy, even a caveman can do it.

The Rise of the Real Mom is a white paper published by Advertising Age, written by Marissa Miley and Ann Mack. I found this paper and an excellent summary of it at Michele Miller's site Wonder Branding. I discovered Michele at Roy Williams' site the Wizard of Ads when Roy began to partner with talented marketing folks like Michele a few years back. Michele's review and link to a free download of The Rise of the Real Mom.

When I was a manager and needed to learn more about Gen Y & Gen X, I studied websites like Brazen Careerist. Penelope Trunk and her crew teach the younger gens how to build and nurture a network of trusted peers. And, they teach these folks how to optimize their experiences with older people like myself. So in essence, I went undercover to learn.

To become a better hiring manager I studied Richard Nelson Bolles' book What Color is Your Parachute? Richard gives job seekers advice on career building and how to get jobs. I went undercover again.

Married dads with kids, consider going undercover to learn more about your wives...

Married dads with children, would you like to better understand your significant other? Take a break from the relationship gurus. Listening to a relationship guru is like Bear Grylls telling you that you can be just like him. You know Bear Grylls from Man vs. Wild, right? You could do what Bear does, if you had his gear, right? Riiiight! Just like you could be the head hunk author in a book titled, How I conquered 20,000 Women by 20, right? Yeah riiiiight! So, put the guru on hold and think about what you can learn, looking at it from a different point of view.

The survey and author's aim is to focus on how marketers can change their strategies to more effectively communicate with women, particularly those between the ages of 18-44. (Don't be distracted by just this age group, common sense will tell you it's applicable to most moms). The data is the result of more pragmatic, business-like questions and less emotional ones. As you read through this business-like report, you can't help but feel the cold, harsh realities that women are up against. If you care about your wife, the answers for how to better communicate with her and how to make her life easier, will permeate your conscious.

Sure a caveman can do it. Now how about you!?

btw, I love the Brazen Careerist web site and still visit often and I am now on my third edition of What Color is Your Parachute? (bought first in 1981).

A Place of Great Significance That Needs to be Seen

Kyle Cassidy is a photographer. One day he had the opportunity to step inside author Michael Swanick's home office. Kyle thought, "this is a place of great significance and it needs to be seen. It was like I'd cracked open his skull and seen the gears of genius." Kyle's glimpse into genius spurred on his project Where I Write: Fantasy & Science Fiction Authors in their Creative Spaces.

Kyle spends a lot of time thinking about people's environments. Where I Write is a project designed to explore whether or not there is a connection between where writers work and the work itself. Wow! If you're a writer and that last sentence doesn't cause a pause for introspection.

Is your writing a product of the environment where it is written? Is there a connection?

I am including a snapshot of my lair below. At first I thought, "OMG, I better clean it up before I invite ya'll in." Then I reconsidered. It is what it is. I'm going to have to think about that connection, but there is a gravitational pull towards what flies off my fingertips and a sense of place...

One other thing that struck me in regards to Kyle's "...a place of great significance...needs to be seen" is my own reaction to stuff I see and my need to write about it.

Btw, the books you see here are the ones that I refer back to most often, pretty much my babies. The rest are scattered on shelves throughout our house and garage.

It is Knowledge

It can enrich your life, it can make your life more interesting and it can save your life. On a December morning in 2004, ten year-old Tilly Smith used it. She saved countless lives that day.

The idea for today's topic comes from an article written in the Chicago Tribune by way of the Tampa Tribune. It's a quick read, go check it out.

Here's the part that jumped off the page into my head: "....the United Nations...asked anthropologists...to collect and record the kind of indigenous knowledge that was key to...islander's survival."

Couldn't we all be anthropologists? Couldn't we all collect and record knowledge? Maybe even the kind of knowledge that could save ours or someone else's life? And how much fun could we have doing it? And how much value could we instill in an other's life when we ask them questions and listen attentively to their answers? 

Okay, the kind of knowledge that Tilly used produced dramatic results and captured global attention. The odds that you would ever be in this position are slim. I wonder however,  if you could be an anthropologist of your profession? Or an anthropologist of your kitchen? Or an anthropologist of your garden? Or an anthropologist of your muscle car?

It's about seeking out people who know and asking them who, what, how, why and when. It's about connecting with an other's human side to learn. It's about cultivating your mind. It's about life. It is knowledge.

Recently Lost Your Job?

What does a creative person do when they lose their job? Why make lemonade, of course! As I am still experimenting with a concoction that I can live with, you can bet I will take glassfills of inspiration from these guys!

Lemonade Movie Site

Who are you voting for?

"Hello, I am Frank from USA Today. What is your name? Who are you voting for today?"

"I am voting for candidate X."

"Why are you voting for candidate X David?"

I was approached by the above USA reporter as I went to vote in last year's presidential election. Five minutes before he asked me who I was voting for, I learned who I was going to vote for. It was the same person who Rosemary was voting for. Why? Because it was who she was voting for. Fortunately I had asked Rosemary why she was voting for this candidate. I simply repeated verbatim to Frank, Rosemary's answer.

I have never felt like a bigger idiot in my entire life.

It's a darn good thing Frank didn't ask me who the vice-president of the United States was on that day. I read over one-hundred non-fiction books per year. I read two to three newspapers per day, subscribe to ten magazines per month (down from an average of twenty for twenty years), and spend more time than I care to admit reading on the Internet. And that doesn't include the roughly four-hundred hours per year that I invested in career education - for twenty-five years.

I tuned politics and government out however, like a TV commercial. Years ago I had put both down to an over-infested, insincere lot of lier's and cheats. To me, these people smiled, shook your hand, told you what you wanted to hear and then did whatever was in their best interest. 

I lost my job nine weeks after the election and in doing so, stepped off of the hamster wheel. Suddenly, life began to come into my face again. I read a political article in the newspaper and remembered back to that embarrassing day in November. I thought, "dude, there's a reason that you can vote, speak in public and bear arms - matter of fact, there's hundreds of thousands and they are dead now. And there are tens of thousands more over seas right now, all fighting for and protecting our freedom"

So I decided to tune in. The first thing that came to mind was President Obama and how he got elected. I've always had this habit of noticing something like this, and then backing out for a wider view. So before I even had time to contemplate Obama's platform and viewpoints, I became infatuated with the circumstances that drove a cause to rally people online and then move them to vote.

I made a mental note that it didn't necessarily have to be a political cause for people to rally around and take action. But this was really about my lack of civic knowledge and I needed to do something about that. I am now on that journey. My goal is to be more educated on a civic level and to be a more responsible citizen. In case you are interested, here are a few resources that I'm beginning to use:

Learning About the United States

Center for Civic Education

America the Owner's Manual by Bob Graham. A quick note on Bob's book here. Although I've just begun to read it, I have a really good feeling about it. At this time it's just a gut perception, but it seems to be chipping away at my stone cold armor, the one that says,  "What's the use? I can't make a difference."

On this Thanksgiving Day in the year of 2009, I am thankful for my family and the privileges that we enjoy because of the men and women of our country who have sacrificed their lives and those who continue to fight for our honor and our freedom.

Stevie Nicks

She's magical and mystical and at the five minute mark of this video, Stevie Nicks transforms style and smoothness into pure, raw power and soul. Soak in the emotion as Stevie's presence visually sears into your eyeballs and explodes a landscape of goose bumps all over your body. How unbelievable would it be for your writing to connect on such a powerful level?

The Call of the Wild and Personal Branding

Do you know what made the Cluetrain Manifesto so darn intriguing? The authors burned the bridge after writing it. In the lads' own words:

SO WHADDYA THINK? WILL CLUETRAIN BE THE NEXT BIG THING? Not if we can help it. Deep-six the bumper stickers. Forget the catchy slogans and funny hats. Let's not write the bylaws and pretend we did. Let's not start another frickin' club. The only decent thing to do with the CLUETRAIN  is to bury the sucker now while there's time, before it begins to smell of management philosophy.

Do you know what is starting to smell of bumper stickers? Personal Branding. I love everything about personal branding. But there are a whole lotta people jumping on the PB bandwagon and I am afraid we're already awash in a mudslide of frickin' clubs. 

What can we do? Deep-six the gurus and let Buck guide us.

In the book The Call of the Wild, Buck, a dog, journeys from a soft life in California to a demanding yet fulfilling life in the Yukon Territory. He transforms from a domesticated dog back to his ancestral roots, his authentic, wild self. Buck's wild self was always there. It was just buried under layers of domestication. At first when Buck tuned in, the wild side called to him in a faint whisper. The more he immersed himself in the wild, the louder the call became.

Buck didn't need a bunch of merchants selling him shovels and supplies to help him find gold, find his true self. He just needed to listen to his inner voice and follow its direction.

We too are capable of tapping into our inner voice for directions on how to be authentic. We truly do not have to wear a bunch of funny hats and draft up a bunch of bylaws. After all, do we really need to follow a prescribed method to discover who we really are?

Listen to the voice. Be true to who you are at all times. The secret is to be. For when you be, that's all the personal branding you need. Matter of fact, the gurus can write a bunch of catchy slogans and forge a management philosophy from your example of just being...and they probably will, will repackage it and sell it to others who are looking for their own pot of gold.

Just be.

Song of the Lake Biwa

...and Take Me Home Country Roads by John Denver, Kousetsu Minami San and an unknown female vocalist.

I was writing this morning while listening to a few tunes on Pandora Radio. There is something about beautiful music that penetrates deep inside and beckons or calls upon me to produce significance within my words. (doesn't mean it turns out this way, but it still calls none the less). I watched this video a handful of times and mulled over in my mind a way to express how I was feeling. I couldn't. I began to scroll through the comments when I came upon something that JOJIJoJI88 wrote. I feel humbled by the power of music. (comments page 5)

Yep, that pretty much does it for me too.

There were a few comments about Minami San's pronunciation of English and John's of Japanese. Another commenter said it isn't about the pronunciation so much as it is the heart that they put into their work. I think that is exactly why I feel humbled by the power of this music!

Clive Thompson: The Future of Reading

Clive Thompson writes an article in the June 2009, issue of Wired magazine titled, The Future of Reading.  It centers around publishing books online and letting readers take it from there.  I clipped Clive's article, marked it up a tad and provide a link to it and also to Wired's version below.

I cannot imagine that there is a greater book lover on the planet than me.  I love the feel, the smell, the ability to mark up and write in books.  I love the idea of placing books online to be read!  I believe it would enhance my ability to connect with relevant content.  That is, the commentary by others about what they believe to be relevant would greatly help me.

I am an Amazon.com boy.  I love this company!  But for all of the hundreds of books that I've bought from them (I've financed a six inch piece of teak in Jeff's boat), I don't think I've once bought a book based on a customer's review.  (I have been influenced by the "Customers who bought this item also bought...")  And, for one of the three reviews that I wrote, I got spanked by a commenter for preaching.  I have bought quite a few books based on reviews from my colleagues at JJL.  Why?  Because these are folks who I've come to know.  Authors of personal Web sites that I follow, would no doubt make notes on content extracted from online books.  This has the ability to provide a spark to dry Kindling and cause me to visit Amazon once again (you can use this copy Jeff, I'll just need to initial that next piece of teak...)

Good stuff Clive!

Clive clipped by Dave:  Download The_Future_of_Reading

Clive at Wired

Illustration: Michael Bierut/Pentagram; book: Istock Photo