MoPR

MoPR's Gotta Brand New Blog

2006-07-09T20:32:00.000-07:00

Incredibly, this two week old blog has become very popular. We've started getting lots of emails from people, which piqued our curiosity. So we started measuring our traffic and found we had 5 or more unique visitors per hour! That’s after only two weeks with no promotion.

We think our "success" must be attributed to Blogger, which gave us an exceptional platform to start keeping a record of our thoughts on mobility and public relations (and, of course, Mobility Public Relations). Despite the fact that we love Blogger (we raise our glasses and toast you Blogger!) and recommend it to every new blogger without reservation, it was time to take our little blog to the next level.

We’ve moved our location to themoprblog.com. Please update your link. Our RSS feed URL has been updated to http://themoprblog.com/feed/. If you’re using our FeedBurner feed, we updated that for you (and thus you should not be reading this post).

Let us know what you think of the new look and feel. We’re still working to get things completely updated and we’re tweaking all the bells and whistles of the new site. But we also have a day job, so please be patient.

We’ll be seeing you on TheMoPRBlog.com!

TAXI !!!

2006-07-06T14:47:00.000-07:00

Beyond the ability to stay connected and productive from wherever you happen to be on a given day; business travelers and road warriors also yearn for a means of travel that will get them from A-to-B in the shortest amount of time and with the least amount of hassle.

While we don’t yet have the ability to call our own personal transporter chief and say “Beam me up Scotty,” so called Air-Taxis (or Air-Limos) have been generating a whole lot of interest of late, and might be just what the mobile businessman (or woman) is looking for.

According to interviews I’ve heard, there are more than 19,000 airports in the United States, but only some 400 offer scheduled commercial flights. That leaves several thousand smaller airports out of reach to the average business traveler. Often times these smaller airports are a lot closer to where we want to be for business and sales calls. The idea of an Air-Taxi is a smaller, lighter, more affordable alternative to a private jet; but with the same on-demand kind of availability.

For more information on some of the players in this hot space, check out the websites of Air-Taxi operators DayJet, Linear Air, and POGO.

Technology guru Esther Dyson recently covered the air taxi trend in the June issue of her Release 1.0 Newsletter. In this issue, titled, “Visible Demand: The New Air-Taxi Market,” Ether writes:

“The air-taxi market is not about luxury travel or vacation getaways. It's about productivity: more time on the ground to make that extra sales call before getting home for dinner, instead of getting caught in the productivity-sapping hub-and-spokes commercial flight system that takes all day (not to mention a hotel stay), leaving room for only one sales call.”

Esther also produced an interesting video on the subject, including an interview with Vern Raburn, CEO of Eclipse Aviation (a company manufacturing the jets that are making this trend a reality).

Business 2.0’s Saheli S.R. Datta also put together a thorough review of the Air-Taxi trend in an article this month titled, “Hailing The Air Taxi.”

I’d love to hear from some frequent business travelers about the kind of impact you expect this could have on you personally (So post your comments here). How many of you have already thought about building Air-Taxis into your corporate travel strategy? Are you seeing Air-Taxis as a viable alternative to driving from small city to city and losing time on the road? How much value do you find in the ability to potentially set your own air travel schedule? This is a trend that Mobility Public Relations will be watching as it will undoubtedly have a big impact on the way business travelers think about mobility.

Into the Blogosphere

2006-07-05T18:47:00.000-07:00

The Blogosphere...

Our blog is not even two weeks old, but we're already getting lots of e-mail from people we don't even know. We sent all our friends links to our blog when we first started it. Glenn Fleishman included a link to it on his Wi-Fi Net News blog. I guess word of the MoPR blog is spreading.

Knowing that other people are reading and enjoying -- dare I say, even learning -- from our blog is pretty cool, and we're enjoying creating the posts.

Taking the blog to the next Web 2.0 level is going to be fun. The next level is full of interactivity between you and us... between your search for knowledge and our wisdom; between our wisdom and the wisdom stored on the Internet; between the wisdom stored on the Internet and your personal pages.

It will take a lot of work to find the right harmonic between our posts and our audience, but no one is more committed than the creative people of Mobility Public Relations.

More to come.

John S

LinkedIn: John Sidline
Wireless World Forum: John Sidline
MySpace: Dr. Johnny Spin
Yahoo 360: Dr. Johnny Spin

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Mainstream Mobility: "Dreams of a Truly Mobile Web"

2006-07-03T09:50:00.000-07:00

Net Needs to Escape Its Computer Cage, But Best of Luck Freeing It in the U.S.

It's a longstanding maxim of this column that the future generally doesn't arrive with a lot of flash and noise -- instead, it sneaks up on you. One day you notice you're reading your news online, banking via PC and downloading stuff from eMusic, and try to remember the last time you flipped through the physical newspaper, wrote a paper check or bought a CD.

By Jason Fry
July 3, 2006

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MoPR Mobility Minute: Highway Hi-Fi

2006-07-02T01:58:00.000-07:00

Because of the show Rock Star: INXS (soon to be a subject of another post), I started uploading lots of 80s music to my iPod. A friend asked me if I liked INXS back in the 80s, and I responded, “You bet I did! I had all their cassettes!”

Cassettes were awesome! You weren’t just restricted to listening to albums, but you could easily record your own playlists, like a real disk jockey! Most of these custom cassettes were recorded one at a time, painstakingly in the order of how we wanted to hear them – at least at the time we made the recording. Remember how cool it was when someone invented the fast-forward feature that could stop in the silence between the end of one song and the beginning of the next? That allowed us to fast-forward over the song we regretted accidentally putting on the tape.

But to enjoy my music collection in my car meant bringing with me something that resembled a suitcase, which I had keep stashed underneath the passenger seat whenever I parked the car. If you had a car in the 1980s, you also had that suitcase – don’t lie, of course you did. We all did. Anything smaller than that suitcase would limit you to some unsatisfyingly small number of cassettes (some older folks remember the steamer trunk sized container of 8-tracks they had to lug around to enjoy their music collection in their vans back in the 70s).

The advent of CDs reduced the suitcase to a “wallet” or even a smaller collection fanned across the back of a sun visor. When CDs became recordable, man that was revolutionary! We still painstakingly recorded songs one at a time to create our own playlists, but at least the music was digital.

The thing is, people have always wanted to bring the entertainment media they enjoy along for the ride. It’s all about having anything you want, anytime you want it, anyplace you are.

Chrysler Motors knew this, even way back when. In 1956 they teamed with CBS to create the “Highway Hi-Fi” – an under-dash phonograph that played vinyl records at a super-slow 16-2/3 revolutions per minute. The slow speed allowed a small disc to pack up to an hour of entertainment on each side. Special mechanical engineering reduced the number of times and distance the needle would skip across the disc as the car drove over bumps in the road.

Technology really didn’t catch up with Chrysler’s vision until the invention of the iPod. The iPod lets you carry with you virtually your entire multimedia library wherever you go.

Now cars come equipped with iPod-ready sound systems. You can control your iPod from the steering wheel as the device sits in the cradle getting charged. Of course satellite radio is there for those times when you grow tired of the 60 megabytes of music you have stored on your iPod. And just in case, the theater-quality surround sound works great with the built-in DVD player (with a cartridge to keep multiple DVDs ready to play).

If only there was a way to listen to INXS in the front while the kids watch Sponge Bob in the back…

Mark Your Calendars

2006-06-30T22:26:00.000-07:00

Being responsible for HR at MoPR, I feel I should alert everyone to upcoming holidays in the month of July.

To our Canadian friends, happy Canada Day (Saturday, July 1st). Of course Tuesday, July 4th is Independence Day in the USA. Our offices will be closed for both holidays.

July is also an important month for the public relations industry as we celebrate Public Opinion Day on July 24th, commerating the publication of the first public opinion poll in 1824.

There are many other holidays in July as well, so please mark your calendars:

July 5th is Workaholics Day, but at MoPR we'll also celebrate it with a 12-hour workday on July 3rd. July 9th is Rock and Roll Day. Those of you hiring interns this summer, please remember Intern Appreciation Day on July 10th. July 10th is a two-fer as it is also Don't Step on a Bee Day. It's okay to step on bees the rest of the year. The week of the 10th is very crowded with nationally-recognized holidays, but don't fret: Cheer Up Day is the 11th and Simplicity Day is the 12.

The 14th of July is the day which we acknowledge our friendship with France by celebrating National French Fries Day.

Mother's Day and Father's Day are behind us, but please remember the rest of your family. Cousin's Day is July 24th and Aunt and Uncle Day is on the 26th.

The last Sunday of July is Comedy Celebration Day, this year on July 25th. I would be remiss if I didn't point out that the 28th is Accountant's Day (we love you Matt!).

Please don't forget that the United States Congress has designated the month of July as National Baked Bean Month as well as National Ice Cream Month. Nothing against beans, but I'll be celebrating Ice Cream Month this year. That will be easy as the third Sunday this month (the 16th) is Sundae Sunday, also known as Ice Cream Cone Day.

Visit American Greetings and Activity Connection for more holidays in July.

Check back next month for the holiday schedule during National Brownies at Brunch Month.

On the road for nicknames...

2006-06-30T10:54:00.000-07:00

One good turn deserves another (pun intended), and since Will Ferrell, in character as Gene Frankel, has already appeared on this blog - making him a regular - I thought it important to note that he has been signed by Sprint Nextel to star in a line-up of new commercials.

The series of commercials, which will be appearing starting this Saturday, will feature Ferrell as Nascar driver Ricky Bobby - - a fictitious character from the new movie Talledega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. According to BrandWeek, Ricky Bobby will be promoting the exclusive movie content available on Sprint phones. I wonder if Ricky will be recommending fans tune into Sprint's new FanScan service, where you can access live in-race communications from your Sprint phone, and listen to the pit crews, spotters, and even the owners communicating with the drivers during a race. A FanScan Race pass will run you $4.99. I imagine the PR team could do something really cool with FanScan for the launch of Talledega Nights (that was a freebie Sprint, call MobilityPR for further brainstorming).

The Talledega Nights Sony Web site is packed with cool features; including a spot where you can find out what your race car driver nickname is. Afterall, without a sweet nickname, you're nothing in this business.

Sidline's handle is : "The Supercharger"
Gidding's is: "The G0-Rilla" And mine is: "The Master Cylinder"
Find out what yours is here! (And then post a comment to this post to let us know how your Nickname suits you)

MoPR Mobility Minute: Portable Computers

2006-06-29T20:48:00.000-07:00

One of the advantages of growing up the son of an engineer is inheriting castoff computers. This benefit is particularly of value in college.

My friend Matt and I were two such lucky college kids. Not only did we get old computers, but they were portable! That meant we could bring our computers to the popular San Francisco coffee houses, libraries, even to classes to take notes.

Um... No, we couldn’t.

"Portable" simply meant that when we had to move out of our respective domiciles at the end of the school year, we had an easier time packing our computer than, say, our stereo.

The year was 1986, and Matt and I each had different portable computers. We frequently debated as to which one was better (nerd alert). Matt had the slightly older Osborne 1 while I had the Kaypro II. There were many similarities but the two computers were vastly different.

Matt’s Osborne 1, built in 1981, sported the Zilog Z80 microprocessor (the very same chip used in Radio Shack’s TRS-80 models II and III) with a super fast clock rate of 4.0 Mhz. It, of course, had 64 kilobytes of RAM. It packed 24.5 lbs of technology into its sleek plastic suitcase-shaped case (the top of which contained the keyboard).

My Kaypro II on the other hand, built in 1982, had a slower Z80 chip, only 2.5 Mhz. It also weighed a heavier 26 lbs and was in a squared off metal case (the top of which contained the keyboard). Fine, the Osborne 1 looked sportier. But drop the Osborne and you run the risk of damaging the inside, while the Kaypro was boxy but safe, just like a 1982 Volvo sedan.

But even more than that, the Kaypro II had dual 195 kb floppy disk drives (way back in the 1980s, computers had disk drives for “diskettes” that were 5 ¼ inches in diameter which were indeed floppy. These diskettes held more data and were far easier to manage than their 8 inch predecessor. Can you imagine carrying around 8 inch disks? No, 5 ¼ inch was the way to go). So my Kaypro II was able to put a program disk in Drive A with software that was up to 195 kilobytes in size. I could also put a second data disk in Drive B that could store up to 195 kilobytes of files.

Matt, on the other hand, had measly dual 91 kilobyte drives. That meant that the word processor he was using, for example, was as much as 100 kilobytes smaller and thus far less powerful than mine.

Matt’s display was also a paltry 5 inches wide and could only display 53 characters across! Whereas the Kaypro II had a 9 inch display that could display 80 beefier characters on the same line. And who says size doesn’t matter? Not only that, but the Kaypro II’s display was green (from electronically charged phosphorous) which, legend has it, was easier on the eyes.

Both computers sold for about $1,700 when they were new. They both used the CP/M operating system (a lot like MS-DOS, but without all the fancy bells and whistles). But I think you will agree with me that the Kaypro II was by far the superior machine.

Of course, the reason that we got these computers was that our fathers got new computers and no longer needed these. I don’t know what Matt’s dad got, but my father replaced the Kaypro II with the state-of-the art in mobile computing: the Compaq Portable II. Understand, that a lot had changed between 1982 when the Kaypro II was made and 1986 when the Compaq Portable II debuted.

The Compaq Portable II was simply a lot more computer that you could also carry around. It cost more too, with prices closing in on $5,000. But you got the latest Intel 80286 microprocessor that had a clock speed of at least 6 Mhz but maybe as much as 8 Mhz! You only got a single 5 ¼ inch double-sided floppy drive, but it held 360 kilobytes of data! It also came with 256K of memory (or as much as 640K!). It still had a 9 inch monitor for 80 character lines, but it had something else that neither the Osborne 1 nor the Kaypro II ever had: a hard drive. An actual drive that stayed inside the computer at all times where you could store all your programs.

The hard drive on my dad's Compaq Portable II was a whopping 10 Megs! To put that in perspective, you would need just over 51 of the 195 kilobyte floppy disks to store all the software you could on just one 10 megabyte hard drive. Can you imagine carting around 51 diskettes? (Actually, you could, because in order to back up the hard drive, you had to save all the data on 28 diskettes, but that’s beside the point).

You no longer had to use CP/M. It was replaced with MS-DOS (a lot like CP/M, but with fancy bells and whistles).

By the way, the Compaq Portable II weighed 26 lbs, the same as the Kaypro II. But as you can see from this picture, the Compaq Portable II was a quantum leap in mobile computing from the Osborne and Kaypro dinasours it replaced.

How far has mobile computing come in the 20 years since the Compaq Portable II hit the market? The Dell notebooks used by Mobility Public Relations weigh less than 5 lbs and have Intel’s Core Duo T2400 microprocessors with a clock speed of 1.83 Ghz (somewhere in the neighborhood of 230 times faster than the Compaq’s chip, but the chip actually processes data far faster than that), comes with 2.0G of memory (roughly 3,125 times the amount of memory the Compaq could max; but the Dell can go to 4.0G), and has an 80GB hard drive (which holds 8,000 times more data than the Compaq’s). That's important because Microsoft Word is 11.5 megabytes (that's 1.5 megabytes larger than the Compaq's hard drive and about the size of 60 floppy disks on the Kaypro II).

The display on the Dell is a 14.1 inch wide-screen set at 1280 by 1024 pixels with four bazillian colors or something like that (as compared the two colors of the Compaq) which means the Dell can do one more important thing that the Compaq, Osborne and Kaypro never could: play video games!

Mainstream Mobility: "Square Feet. Oh, How Square! "

2006-06-29T09:13:00.000-07:00

The rise of mobile workers has companies unloading space and rethinking what's left

Chances are that on any given day up to 40% of your colleagues are not in the office. Instead they are working in rumpled T-shirts on their sofas, long-hauling it to Asia for client meetings, or mooching Wi-Fi and power in some café. The professional class is going bedouin, as some in Silicon Valley say.

By Michelle Conlin
July 3, 2006

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The MoPR Blog Cam

2006-06-29T00:00:00.000-07:00

Battle tested in the most challenging of environments (the MoPR road trip), the Cingular 8125 is the MoPR camera phone of choice. It has a 1.3 megapixel camera that was able to capture almost all the important moments of our lives, three seconds after they took place.

Melissa's takes pictures only in sepia now (on purpose).

This phone rocks! It has Windows Mobile 5.0 with Outlook, so we get all our email right off our server. Synchs our calendars and contacts. It has Word, Excel and Powerpoint. It even has Adobe Acrobat! I read my efaxes right off my email on my phone! (Yeah, they're all spam faxes, but that's not the point... I can read them on my phone!).

We used the speaker phone on mine for a conference call in Vancouver.

The best feature, besides the camera of course, is Bubble Breaker. Bubble Breaker is Tetris on acid. We're all competing now for high scores.

The Cingular 8125 is made by Taiwanese handset manufacturer HTC under the name "the Wizard." (If anyone from HTC marketing is reading this blog, we love your phone and want to represent you in North America.) T-Mobile sells a version, and I've seen this phone all over Europe. There is a web community dedicated to it, too.

When you see pictures on this blog of any of the MoPR gang, chances are it was taken by "The Blog Cam" -- our much beloved Cingular 8125 mobile phone.

That's Gold Jerry!

2006-06-28T23:52:00.000-07:00

Our excellent photo shoot in Seattle took advantage of the seriously groovy architecture of the Experience Music Project, and despite Rodan’s laser-guided dooty, I’m sure we’ll have a bunch of fine pix to share with you soon.

So I’m just standing there at one point watching the proceedings and before you can say “that’s gold Jerry!” I realize fate has put me in this place and at this time for a reason: I must photograph John S snapping a pic of uber-photog Jeff who is photographing my MoPR comrades Melissa and Stacy. Now I know how that photographer felt when those Marines raised the flag on Iwo Jima.

MoPR Mobility Minute: US Patent 2,292,387

2006-06-28T23:01:00.000-07:00

The patent for "Secret Communications System" was granted August 11, 1942 to H.K. Markey, et al. The patent is often referred to as the “Markey-Antheil” patent for the two principal inventors.

The primary purpose of the invention was for the remote control of torpedoes from aircraft. The problem it solved was the jamming of radio frequencies that could disrupt communication between an aircraft and the dirigible craft (torpedo) it was guiding.

The technology applied to overcome radio jamming is called signal hopping. Both the remote craft and the guiding craft had radios that were synchronized using a paper roll, not dissimilar from the paper rolls used in player pianos such as the Pianola. Eight different frequencies were coded onto the paper roll, and as it turned it caused the radio signal to switch frequencies simultaneously at both ends of the transmission.

This particular patent was never built into a product, and the patent eventually expired in 1959. However, the technological concepts of the patent continued to inspire engineers. In 1957, engineers in Sylvania’s laboratories replaced the paper roll with electronics and created a more advanced means of transmitting signals over multiple radio frequencies. This time, the technology was used for secret communications, utilized on US Navy ships during the Cuban Missile Crisis as just one example.

Today, more than 1200 patents refer to this original patent, all based on “signal hopping” or, as it is better known today, “spread spectrum.” The technology originally meant for military application to send a single data stream over multiple radio frequencies is now used to break data up into small packets that can travel on multiple frequencies or even multiple networks. US Patent 2,292,387 contains the basic technology for such everyday modern mobility technologies as digital cellular phone systems like CDMA (code division multiple access) and Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11) wireless Internet.

Who was H.K. Markey? Markey was her married name (one of her six married names). The inventor of spread spectrum technology was actress Hedy Lamarr (1913 – 2000). Co-inventor George Antheil (1900 - 1959) was a concert pianist and composer; hence the paper roll resembling one in a Pianola and eight different frequencies like the eight notes in an octave.

MoPR Mobility Minute: Walkie Talkies

2006-06-28T21:07:00.000-07:00

Three names are associated with Walkie Talkies. Alfred J. Gross (1918 - 2000), Donald Hings (1907 - 2004) and Paul Galvin (1895 - 1959). But it appears that Canadian-born/American-raised inventor Alfred Gross built the first portable radio device in 1938 (Canadian Hings built his portable radio for the Canadian military in 1942).

Gross, who has a number of US patents for mobile radio technology, once demonstrated his invention to a secret classified meeting of the FCC in 1944. The demonstration inspired FCC Commissioner E. K. Jett to write an article, "Phone Me By Air," published in the Saturday Evening Post in July, 1945:

"Now, for good or evil, comes the Walkie-Talkie for civilians. Just radio, 'Bring home an extra lamb chop,' or, 'I want to report a strange man' - You can keep quiet, if you wish - but you probably won't."

The era of mass mobile communications predicted by Jett was still decades away, however.

Paul Galvin's company, The Galvin Manufacturing Company (later renamed Motorola), mass produced the Walkie Talkie for the US Military in the lead up to and during World War II.

The journeyman Walkie Talkie was the SCR-300 made by Galvin's company, which delivered nearly 50,000 for Allied Forces in both the European and Pacific war theaters. When we think about Walkie Talkies today, we think about small handheld devices. But in the late 1930s and early 1940s, Walkie Talkie equipment was fitted into backpacks and weighed approximately 35 pounds.

By 1942 the first handheld radios -- or Handy-Talkies -- were deployed.

Communications devices were becoming more portable. But these devices used radio frequencies in the same way radio stations do. A broadcast of signals from the transmitting device to any receiver within range. Not exactly private or secure. And not without other problems, too. For example, military radios were often jammed by the enemy to disrupt communications. Network-based communications was still to come.

More information on Walkie-Talkies and Handy-Talkies can be found on the US Army Signal Center online museum of Fort Gordon, GA.

Order Yours Now

2006-06-28T18:29:00.000-07:00

The official poster of the 2006 MoPR Pacific Northwest Offsite

Mizaru, Kikazaru, Iwazaru

2006-06-28T18:00:00.000-07:00

It can't be Friday afternoon already? Can it?

Our trip together is nearing an end.

Wireless industry event? Check.
Planning meetings? Check.
Lunch at Harvey's? 3/4 check.
Shopping? Check.
Client meeting? Check.
Pitch meeting? Check.
Celebration dinner? Check.
Headshots? Check.

A tremendously packed week, but a tremendously great week. We're definitely a solid team. We could probably beat Ghana in soccer if the chance ever arose. We're definitely the team a mobility technology company wants running their PR, that's for sure.

So many fun memories… how John S, recovering from a bout of bronchitis the week before, couldn't stop coughing… how John G left behind his sun glasses and had to squint in the bright sunlight... how we listened to just one song on Melissa’s iPod before deciding to entirely forego music in the car…

Making it even greater, the mobility technology t-shirt we found in a souvenir shop in Vancouver and Stacy’s prize winning photograph to capture the moment.

From the Japanese “mizaru, kikazaru, iwazaru” meaning: see no jargon, hear no jargon, speak no jargon. Hmm... We’ll have to pitch that to influencers and see if there is any messaging pull-through.

Ready For Our Close-Up

2006-06-28T17:15:00.000-07:00

Because of the interesting colors and contours, the Experience Music Project in Seattle is a great backdrop for headshots of the non-avian variety.

It was kind of fun to be the center of attention. There we were dressed in suits, a photographer with a big camera, bigger lens and even bigger bag of equipment snapping shots of us from all kinds of angles. There were the single shots, then shots in pairs, then group shots.

Our photographer, Jeffrey LeBlanc, was awesome. Not only is he also in the mobility biz himself, he is enormously creative and fun to work with! If you need a photographer in Seattle, Jeff is your guy!

We used all kinds of mobility technology props, which was easy, because we normally carry all kinds of mobility technology. Melissa's pink iPod and Stacy's pink Razr no doubt will stand out.

Boatloads of tourists – and by that I mean tourists sitting in busses shaped like boats – passed by, gawking. Clearly we had to be local celebrities. Another photographer even joined in. We have no idea who she was.

Soon we’ll see the results. But getting our pictures taken was definitely one of the highlights of this trip.

Having a Bad Hair Day

2006-06-27T13:08:00.000-07:00

It was not the bluebird of happiness, but the result was just the same.

We had engaged the services of a local photographer to take our company headshots. And just seconds before the first picture was about to be taken, I got another headshot. I was putting my phone into my computer bag when I felt something smack me in the head.

"That did NOT just happen," I shouted, as my shocked colleagues stared in disbelief.

Seagulls… the rat bastards of the sky. One nailed me with... G-d only knows with what. These things are scavengers after all. It's enough to make one want to wretch.

Fortunately, there were, um, potty wipes around. And Stacy and Melissa wiped down my head so I did not have to return to the Quality Inn and wash my hair immediately.

I managed to get through the 2-hour photo shoot. When I got back to the hotel, I lathered, rinsed, repeated a bunch of times.

There were many memorable moments on this trip, but the one that brings Stacy to laughter with tears is the time the seagull shit on my head.

There is a certain amount of superstition that accompanies a pitch meeting. For example, I packed enough clothing for three trips, but somehow managed to forget the belt that goes with my suit. So John G is insisting that if we win the business from the pitch to which I went beltless, I can never where a belt to a pitch again.

There is a superstition that being shat upon by a flying bird brings good luck. Given the pitch meeting the day before, I am happy to take one for the team. Once.

The Champagne Is Not Korbel

2006-06-27T09:13:00.000-07:00

And then there were four. To complete the trip, our fourth partner, Stacy, arrived by train at 4:00 pm on Thursday. Our pitch meeting ended later that anticipated, but exactly at the right time to get to the train station and pick up Stacy. Of course, the directions to the train station were on John G's bed in the Quality Inn. Somehow, we managed to navigate without any wrong turns to Union Station where we circled and circled and circled looking for Stacy, who swore she was sitting on a bench right in front.

We finally dropped Melissa off so she can search for Stacy. She returned to the car with the same conclusion that John G and I had: Union Station is not a train station. That would explain the lack of train tracks. Stacy was in fact at King Street Station directly across the street. That would be the station where all the trains were sitting. The one with the very big clock tower.

With the four of us at long last finally assembled, it was time to begin the important work of this business trip/offsite: CELEBRATING!

"I have had a lot of great vintages of Dom Perignon, but I do not remember any as impressive as the 1996. Even richer than the brilliant 1990, the 1996 is still tightly wound, but reveals tremendous aromatic intensity, offering hints of bread dough, Wheat Thins, tropical fruits, and roasted hazelnuts. Medium to full-bodied, with crisp acidity buttressing the wines wealth of fruit and intensity, it comes across as extraordinarly zesty, well-delineated, and incredibly long on the palate. Moet-Chandon deserves considerable accolades for this prodigious example of Dom Perignon. Anticipated maturity: now-2020+"
-Wine Advocate

I had been saving a bottle of 1996 Dom Perignon I received from a good friend (and VP at Waggoner Edstrom) as a 40th birthday present for a very special occassion. What could be more special than celebrating the start of a great new PR agency? And so our night of celebration began with a toast (followed by more toasts) to our imminent success.

With a champagne buzz lifting our spirits very high, we headed off to the Dahlia Lounge for dinner. Melissa chose the Dahlia Lounge because it was the site of the first PR activity we conducted in Seattle. Of course, she attended the round-table that she put together. I fell ill and had to miss it. But the Dahlia Lounge has sentimental value, and was the perfect place to continue our celebration, especially since two former colleagues and good friends who now call Seattle their home would join us for dessert and drinks. Ellio and Patrick worked with Melissa and were part of the great iPass team at Hoffman in the glory days. The vibe of success was now all around us!

Dinner was fantastic. The conversation was lively. And it was really good to catch up with Ellie and Patrick (the use of "Ellio" previously is not a typo, but her name really is Ellie). It was also great to be in the company of all my partners, telling war stories, laughing and generally having a great time.

We had to end the night earlier than we would have preferred as we had to be looking sharp for our headshots Friday morning. But that, my friends, will be the subject of another post (at least one).

The Emerald City

2006-06-26T13:55:00.000-07:00

Our yellow brick road from Aldergrove to Seattle passes by Seattle Premium Outlets (which is nowhere near Seattle actually; it's in Tulalip next to a ginormous Indian casino and a Walmart... Tulalip has EVERYTHING!). It is tempting to believe that an alien abduction created the lost time in our road trip to Seattle (it didn't seem like nearly 7 hours), but in reality, it was Coach. Good thing we stopped there too. Nothing created a better impression for our young company than when Melissa took out her brown business card holder (the pink one was for the green purse) to offer her business cards to our prospects!

PR practioners of experience know that the use of certain adjectives to describe a product or business often means that the product or business lacks that certain attribute. Thus was the case with the Quality Inn in Seattle Center. Aside from the free parking, there were few other quality elements one could identify. Although, I do believe it is the closest "hotel" to the Starbucks on the corner of 99 and Denny. But I guess if one has to name a hotel, "quality" is a better word than "smelly," "skeazy," "loud" or "shaky" -- all apt adjectives for this particular "inn." We were by far the youngest guests and part of the few who did not stroll the halls with walkers or oxygen tanks.

Once we got to our rooms and unloaded our gear, we gathered in John G's room to make the final preparations for both our first-ever client meeting and our first-ever group pitch. Room service was provided by Zeeks Pizza. This may get lost in translation, but one of the funniest moments was watching Melissa order our pizza. We all figured the easiest thing was to order a combination pizza. Zeeks has two. One is called the Wood Butcher. We had the other one: the Puget Pounder. Melissa could not say "Puget Pounder" and was laughing so hard she was crying. BTW, the garlic in the Puget Pounder is omnipotent. Thankfully, it kept the vampires out of our rooms while we "slept" in the Quality Inn.

One nice aspect of our hotel was the view of the Space Needle from Melissa's room. From John G's room, the view was into the kitchen of an apartment unit across the narrow alleyway. The number of dirty dishes piled in the sink of that kitchen were matched only by the number of liquor bottles arranged on top of the fridge. Still, John G's view surpassed that of John S, whose room looked onto a highway.

Thursday morning began with a quick trip to Starbucks. Whereas Harvey's is located inside Home Depot, this Starbucks was located inside a Shell Station. Nevertheless, it had the right coffee prescription to rinse our breath from the garlic of the night before.

If you love coffee, and enjoy coffee houses, then we know the place in Seattle for the best cup. But that will be saved for another post.

Mo'Harvey's Dessert

2006-06-26T13:48:00.000-07:00

Just in case you needed it, more pictoral proof that Harvey's is inside Home Depot.

We're on the Road to Nowhere...

2006-06-26T11:45:00.000-07:00

Between John G and Melissa, our posts may end up a little out of sequence. But there is so much to write, we have to get stuff up on the MoPR blog!

This picture was taken in Vancouver moments before we headed back South to America.

Okay, not really. A couple quick differences between the three of us and the Dukes of Hazard County. First of all, no one wears belt buckles like these in Vancouver (although… we did see a nice “Prada” buckle about the same size as Jon Schneider’s in the lobby of the Hojo the day we checked in); second, typically I button my shirts (after all, isn’t that why manufacturers put holes opposite the buttons?); and third, our Daisy Duke's legs continue down beneath her knees (what the hell is going on in this picture??).

Perhaps the biggest difference is that the General Lee could make the trip from Vancouver to Seattle faster than the average time of 2-1/2 hours. We set a new record for our trip to Seattle. We officially hit the road for our trip out of town at 1:00 pm and made it to our hotel in Seattle by 9:45 pm.

Granted, from 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm we did important tourist things. First we went to Gastown to visit world-famous Angel, the boutique that sells hand-painted clothing. The clothing there is worn by Steven Tyler, Uma Thurman and John G’s girlfriend Gretchen. In addition to the clothing, we were treated to the history of Canada – particularly they post-war westward migration of Eastern Canadians into BC’s Frasier Valley – by Jackie’s (aka Angel) mother.

No tour of Vancouver would be complete without seeing one of the city’s best known – and best loved – landmarks: Mr. Lube. Mr. Lube is famous for just one thing: Doing it right. Before your eyes. It took us three passes by Mr. Lube, the last one requiring us to park, in order to get this photograph, which we intend to submit to Conde Nast.

The final stop in Vancouver before our trip to Seattle was for lunch. Vancouverites are only recently learning what Eastern Canadians have known for a long time – where to get the best lunch. The secret is now finally out and the answer is, of course… Home Depot. For you see, it is only at Home Depot where people in Vancouver (and Victoria as well) can find Harvey’s!

There are some key difference between the Harvey’s in Vancouver and, say, Toronto. You can’t get the Big Harve (although they have a big ass Angus Burger). But you can still choose poutine! So I treated my partners (two of them anyway; the third one is still a bit miffed that she hasn’t yet been to Harvey’s) to the culinary delight that is Harvey’s.

From Harvey’s it was just a few more wrong turns before we ended up eastbound on the Trans-Canadian Highway and our exit to the United States. Our route took us to Aldergrove, past the Vancouver Zoo and the last supermarket before America.

We had to make the stop because what road trip from Canada would be complete without boxes of Smarties, Aero bars and bags of ketchup chips? Best moment: John S asks John G “Where did Melissa go?” immediately followed by the sound POP-CRASH… “Oh. There she is.” Clean up in aisle 3.

The Newest Members of "The Fabulous Ring Tones"

2006-06-26T10:13:00.000-07:00

The WINBC BBQ, which John mentioned earlier, was off-the-hook; largely due to the soothing sounds from the Nokia house band, The Fabulous Ring Tones.

Caroline Lewko, President and Founder of WINBC, was a gracious hostess, and to make the MoPR crew feel right at home in Canada she invited us to take the stage with the house band.

Not being particularly musically-inclined myself, I opted for the cowbell (Who could use a little more cowbell right about now?) And while I'm no Gene Frenkle I gave that cowbell the 'ol college try.

Despite my cowbelling, I was by no means the center of attention up there... That honor has to go to Sidline, who took hold of the bongos for two riveting songs and never looked back.

Here is the master in action.

We came, we saw, we rocked the house.

Actually, it's a good thing we are such excellent PR pros - because we have no future in the real rock-and-roll business.

Say Cheese!

2006-06-26T09:56:00.000-07:00

Here is the picture from our dinner in Vancouver as John predicted.

You see Sidline, easily excited by the excellent wine list, our enthusiastic waiter (who actually talked us out of ordering the house specialty - Oysters), and the tantalizing company of Giddings and myself, just couldn't keep his hands above the table... Say Cheese!

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

2006-06-23T22:42:00.000-07:00

The Howard Johnson's on Granville in Vancouver is really quite a nice hotel in a very sketchy neighborhood. The neighborhood really isn't that bad, if you don't mind the concentration of adult bookstores, peep show parlours, headshops and vagrants.

We arrived Monday night with just enough time to watch the 'Canes defeat the Oilers in the final game of the Stanley Cup (bummer if you're Canadian). After carting a TON of stuff up to our rooms, it was off to a nice dinner on Robson Street, the shopping capitol of Western Canada. We ate seafood and and toasted to our future success with a nice BC Chardonnay (Burrowing Owl, hoo knew?) at Joe Forte's. I'm not putting the picture of that toast up... but I'm sure John G or Melissa will.

The next day and night it was all prepping for Thursday's prospect pitch meeting in Seattle. Spending hours together in the "Home Office Suite" at Hojos was awesome. I could tell that as a team we were really clicking. It also confirmed what I already knew, that this venture of ours is going to be wildly successful because the three of us are REALLY good at what we do. We make an awesome team.

We took a break from planning to go to the WINBC barbeque at the really cool campus of Nokia in Burnaby (more on that later, I'm sure from John G or Melissa, or both), then it was back to it in the Home Office Suite, now littered with empty Starbucks cups, food wrappers and random notes. We worked until our brains couldn't work any further, but were back at it bright and early the next morning.

On the Road to Vancouver

2006-06-23T22:14:00.000-07:00

With the launch of MoPR official, the team heads on our first-ever team biz trip: offsite planning/industry event/client meeting/pitching tour of Vancouver BC and Seattle WA. John S filled up the Family Truckster and headed to PDX to pick up John G who landed at 12:30. From there it was a straight shot to SeaTac to pick Melissa. Traffic through Tacoma SUCKED and we were an hour late getting to the Seattle airport. But in a sign of things to come, Melissa's plane was also late making our arrival at the airport just minutes after Melissa got through baggage claim. She killed time hanging with a professional soccer team in the terminal.

Melissa got her brand new cell phone and took this self portrait. And thus is born the MoPR blog!