http://cultureby.com This Blog Sits At the Intersection of Anthropology and Economics Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:28:35 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en   I saw a dandy presentation in Boulder by Steve Clouthier. It had a strange structure. Steve began with one image and stayed with that image for the entire 40 minutes of his talk. When he wanted to make specific points, he would drop down on to one of the sections of this ... http://cultureby.com/2010/03/simultaneity-vs-seriality-what-to-do-now-that-we-have-no-attention-span.html   So I am in the United lounge at La Guardia (sp)  the other day.  And I hope to use the wireless system there.  And for a moment it works.   T-mobile at my disposal.   Not really.  I can't make contact.   And then, I can't get out. Mr. Impatient business man, I revert to ... http://cultureby.com/2010/03/t-mobile-ever-so-badly-behaved.html For one shining moment here in Boulder while walking down a side walk, I thought one of life's great secrets was about to be revealed to me. This reads: "There is no greater beauty than that of."  So close to illumination and then..new sidewalk! http://cultureby.com/2010/03/truth-beauty-and-doh.html Am in Scotland today. It is unforgettably beautiful...except that I failed to remember this beauty from my last trip 20 years ago. Staying at the Balmoral hotel and was reminded of the British struggle to do hotels well. I used to think this was due to the Britisl loathing of ... http://cultureby.com/2010/03/edinburgh-notes.html Picture yourself in the hinterland of British Columbia. You are many hundreds of miles from Vancouver.   You are in the middle of nowhere on a stretch of road so desolate it feels like something out of an X-Files episode. (Cue the X-Files orchestra for a few bars of that eerie theme ... http://cultureby.com/2010/02/rusting-buicks-and-the-destruction-of-wealth.html A friend of mine, a deeply observant and credentialed observer of human affairs, told me this morning that when Canada played the US in the Olympics a couple of days ago, the fans, the Canadian fans, were tepid.  (I missed the game.)  It was as if, he said, they were ... http://cultureby.com/2010/02/oh-canada.html Well, it worked I wasn't sure what would happen when I got 80 people in a room in NYC to talked culture, about being a Chief Culture Officer and showed them 320 slides over 6 hours. Dreary? Tedious? Just not very interesting? I am probably not the most credible source, but I think it went ... http://cultureby.com/2010/02/boot-camp-and-a-week-of-ethnographic-interviews.html We will have participants from Google, Coca-Cola, and Harvard Business School will be there.  We will have people from small marketing houses, big agencies, new brands and old, consulting giants, design houses (large and small), web aggregators, and new media shops.   The room will fill with cultural references: Quaker, Snapple, Facebook, Obama, ... http://cultureby.com/2010/02/boot-camp-saturday.html Let’s say we are a luxury car company.  We’re doing a year-end review of marketing.  We’re looking at everything, including person who supplies the “voice over” for our ads. The room is filled with around 25 people.  This room is mostly Boomers with 8 Gen Xers and 4 Gen Yers (aka ... http://cultureby.com/2010/02/the-john-boy-problem-boomer-managers-out-of-touch.html PBS has "must-see" viewing tonight.  (It's on at 11:00 on my PBS station in NYC.  Check the PBS Independent Lens website here for local listings and more details.)   It's a documentary called Herskovits at the Heart of Blackness.  Melville Herskovits (1895-1963) established the African Studies Center at Northwestern, the first ... http://cultureby.com/2010/02/herskovits-elvis-of-african-american-studies.html