Baseball and Business

Poor Alex decided he really was after the ring more than the dollars after all. I wonder if his timing is off? He jumped ship for the Yankees only to find the Rangers picking up the pace (they're solidly above .500 now; we won't mention that it was at the expense of the Mariners) while the Yanks are looking for a beer in which to drown their sorrows. The good thing about the sport - both for Alex and the Mariners (okay, the Yankees too) - is that in baseball, anything can happen. I'm sure they'll all turn things around... maybe even the Mariners. You've still got a ballgame, even when you're down to your very last out. How can you NOT like baseball?

Well, certainly I've known a few in my day who didn't. What I found was that most of them weren't engaged enough. I suppose that's true of just about any sport. What is surprising is how much of the human element is involved in the process of getting involved in a sport.

Go ahead, try this little game... you've got tickets to your favorite sport and your drinking buddy backs out at the last minute. You've got to find a replacement so you grab someone else, someone you don't hate, a date, maybe your brother... and it turns out this person doesn't know a thing about baseball (if you don't know a thing about baseball, think of another sport or try this on yourself; it's just a game for crying out loud). So now you're faced with the likelihood of having to leave before the seventh inning stretch because they drove and they're bored. Here's what you do - point out something unusual or interesting (to your seat partner, right? That's the person you want to be more involved in the game) about a player - they share a birthday, a hometown, he and his wife do charity work for kids with serious illnesses (works best on the women), you get the idea.

Now that your seatmate is focused on a particular player, mention whenever that person does anything noteworthy like getting a hit or making a play. You can also explain other little things this player might be doing (- See there, it looks like he's talking to the second baseman about strategy but really, they've already got that part all figured out and they're just talking about some hot babe in the stands over there. - Really?) or explain what they need to be thinking about next. What you're doing here is personalizing the game and that makes it more engaging. Go ahead and try it; see if it doesn't change someone's outlook on the sport.

This same principle is why people like to vote folks into elected office that they've met, even if there may be big differences in how they approach matters. We tend to trust those we know more than those we don't.

It's also the same principle that makes us more inclined to give somebody we know the benefit of the doubt when things don't go well as opposed to assuming they're an idiot or they're intentionally trying to make our lives miserable.

This last one is particularly helpful in the business world so think about getting to know your co-workers, especially those who work in other departments that historically don't get along so well with your own. Find out what they do when they're not working; look for interests you might share in common. You might be surprised at the kind of social capital that builds for you both and how much easier it is to get work done.

Send your baseball predictions and any tips you have on building social capital to me at techsurvivor@soaringmountain.com. I prefer good news about the Mariners though I appreciate the truth and helping others succeed even more.

How would building social capital at work help you?

Lawyerpalooza Tickets On Sale

Tickets to Lawyerpalooza 2 in Seattle are now on sale.

There, I promised I would let you know when that happened.

Now I'm going to go to a baseball game because while I believe in being responsible, life's too short to not have some fun once in a while and it's a nice day out.

Find something to enjoy in each day.

Somebody Oughta Do Something!

"Somebody oughta do something about that!"

How many times have you heard something like this? Maybe you've even said it yourself. We keep thinking someone else has more time, is more qualified or has more drive or commitment than we have to get something done so we walk right on past, never realizing that maybe we could be the ones to make some kind of a difference in the world. Maybe all it takes is deciding to get involved.

If that seems too hard or you simply don't know where to begin, start thinking in terms of what really floats your boat. What are you interested in - what really lights you up? When you get engaged in causes you believe in and do it in a way that's fun, it makes for much easier going.

I find these days that I'm starting to have a lot to live up to in this regard. People all around me are starting to do the kinds of things some folks only dream about doing... and somehow they make it seem easy.

Just one timely example is a bunch of lawyers who decided that since they all had played (or wished they had played) in bands in their younger years and it would be fun to form a band of their own just to have a reason to get together and jam.

When word got out that they played some fun rockin' dance music, they started picking up gigs, first for minor social events for their firm and then for various fundraisers. Somehow that all evolved into the notion of showcasing the talent and fun side of the legal community while raising money for a good cause... and thus, Lawyerpalooza (TM) was born.

Keep in mind, the guys who got this thing off the ground are attorneys who have plenty of work to do on their day jobs - jobs that quite regularly take up a lot of evening and weekend hours too. Most of them also have families. Once they stuck a stake in the ground, though and said, "Hey, let's do it!" they ended up generating a lot of excitement amongst themselves and their co-workers. Ultimately, that led to getting other volunteers involved, other law-firm-related bands, and plenty of publicity in both the Seattle Times and in the Seattle P-I along with various publications in the legal community locally and elsewhere. They even had an interview on a local rock radio station, KZOK, since one of their morning DJ's (Spike) was on slate to help judge the event.

That's what's called creating buzz.

Even better, they raised more than $20,000 (net!) for local school music programs during that first event and have generated interest for lawyers in other communities to follow in their footsteps. What makes this example of finding fun ways to get involved so timely is they're about ready to do it again.

This second Lawyerpalooza (TM) event is scheduled for May 10, 2004 at the Fairmont Olympic in Seattle so pass the word. I'll let you know when tickets go on sale, which should be happening very soon.

Time Travel Oddities

I've gone back in time.

At first I didn't notice. I was just randomly doing Google searches because it's something I do for fun once in a while. We won't talk about what members of my family think about that.

Anyway, I tried again to locate my pal, Rod Simons, having heard that he is, in fact, working with KSTP in Minnesota. Must be he's there part-time still because he doesn't show up in their list of Sports Reporters. What was strange, though (probably because I'm still figuring my way around this whole blogging thing, 'kay?) is that running a search on his name again resulted in finding my post. Actually, that wasn't the strange part; I sort of expected that. The strange part was it was my post as part of an RSS feed on someone else's blog. I've been quoted.

That's when I noticed the date of the other blog is 1999. The interesting technology that retroactively determined my recent posting was somehow related to something that someone else posted more than five years ago is Waypath, where apparently my blog ID is 262899. It takes a while to find that out. Must be that time travel still has some bugs to be worked out.

The interesting thing (bordering on cool where cool = interesting + useful... maybe it's there already and I just haven't figured out the "useful" part yet; I can be a bit slow sometimes) is that Waypath has various tools available for use, including one for inserting abstracts from related posts into your blog (apparently that's what Fierce Poet used) and a Buzz-o-meter that graphs the recent "buzz" on the topic(s) of your choice. Could make for a fun game anyway.

Makes me sort of wonder if we were to create some buzz out there, what it is we'd want to be...

Do you have thoughts or cool web tools to share? Send them to me at techsurvivor@soaringmountain.com and we'll see where we go from there.

Fifty years from now, let's say there's a whole lotta buzz out there about you; what would you want it to say?

Is Life a Zero-Sum Game?

What if life is not a zero sum game? What if someone else doesn't have to lose so I can win?

Pondering on these questions and how we would choose to act if they could be true can lead us some really great places. Here's another one for you - how can I change the rules to make it a game I want to play?

In fact, changing the rules is exactly what Ghandi did when facing down the British.

It's easy to get suckered into believing the rules of the game are as presented; and yet what if there are other options, how would we choose to play then?

Send your thoughts to me at techsurvivor@soaringmountain.com - I'm interested in hearing what rules you think are "given" , non-negotiable.

What old assumptions can you ditch that would make your life better?

Laughing In All Seriousness

I had thought I'd want to expand on the conversation I started earlier about game theory, Prisoner's Dilemma, and the problem of suboptimization (what's good for the individual in the short run may be bad for the group both in the short run and in the long run; it may even be bad for the individual in the long run too if he's still around) ... and how these all relate to developing a personal code of ethics.

That's where I thought I was going to go with this today. And instead, I've changed my mind. I still may get back to game theory & ethics (so hold that thought!); till then, how about an April Fool's-ish theme.

In the past, I've usually been too serious to get much into April Fool's jokes or pranks. Occasionally I'd go to bed the night before or even wake up in the morning with the notion that it might be a good idea... in theory anyway and then that serious side would take over again and I'd conveniently forget about having any particular fun.

Now, I'm still the sort of person who would rather not cause anyone undue angst - I'd rather keep it all in "good fun". I'm not above yanking someone's chain, however. And I'm learning to recognize when I've got a chain of my own that's there to be yanked. That's a big step.

So I was faced with the question a few days ago - what's something serious you wish you could laugh at? It's a good question... and I should back up a bit (yes, I realize flashbacks are a particularly bad movie device - can't help it though; I just think that way sometimes) before sharing more about what it was I wanted to be able to laugh about.

The flashback (along with a bit of a frolic and detour) part is this. My first on-air job was meteorologist at KRTV in beautiful Great Falls, MT.

While I came to enjoy my time there, I did so only after coming face to face with the reality of why the abbreviation for Montana is Em-Tee. Anyway, it's not unusual for on-air meteorologists/weather anchors to do double-duty, especially in smaller markets. At KRTV, my second hat was to go to the "cop shop" every day before work, check the booking logs and get the daily briefing. Checking the logs is important because otherwise you only get the information they want you to have or (more likely) that they think you'll find interesting. Believe me, a police officer's idea of what the viewing public might find interesting is not all that accurate.

One day, both the booking logs and the briefing were pretty devoid of anything even closely resembling a news story. I made a few notes on a couple of things and left for the station, hoping they weren't counting anything from me to fill airtime beyond stretching the weather a bit. The hope turned out to be just that - wishful thinking. They needed me to write up something for the newscast and when I tried to explain that the best I could come up with was a burglary in a weight loss clinic, the news director was not phased a bit. His direction? Write it funny.

In Mack Berry's view (and I've since come to believe it myself), it's possible to write anything funny. Somehow, by the time I was done writing, fourteen cases of diet bars stolen from a weightloss clinic seemed a lot funnier than it started out.

That seems easy enough with a crime that belongs in News of the Weird or plenty of other more light-hearted-leaning things. What if it's something like having difficulties at work or home - or even having someone close to you be diagnosed with cancer (my answer to the "what do you wish could be funny" question)? That seems tougher.

I have a sister with a huge gift for finding the humor in anything. You should hear her story of rolling a car, getting hit on the back of the head in the process with the snowboard she had in the backseat, nearly killing her, and having the medics seeming to be more than passingly interested in the lingerie she was wearing as they were trying to treat her assumed-to-be-serious neck injury. We were rolling on the floor laughing so hard, no one thought to question her supposed attempts to avoid some constantly changing variety of rodent as her explanation for the rollover.

And if a life-threatening accident can be that funny, then you bet, cancer can be funny too, even when it's at its saddest. I found myself watching Julia Sweeney's one-woman-show, God Said, "Ha!" the other day. It was the answer to my request to be able to find real humor in having a family member diagnosed with cancer. If you want to see what even the most serious things look like when written funny - and still full of the compassion it takes to be fully human - this is a good movie to see.

And so, I"ll put the question to you - what would you like to be able to laugh about... and how could that happen? Try "writing it funny". Send it to me at techsurvivor@soaringmountain.com if you want. I like funny and sometimes even the darkest humor is right up my alley.

Life plays little tricks on us sometimes (okay, big ones too), checking to see if we can still laugh. In that sense, every day is April Fool's Day.