Steve’s Blog

 I used to watch NBC’s Meet the Press religiously on Sunday morning largely because of Tim Russert. It has now been over a week since his death and I watched Brian Williams do the show this morning.  It really won’t quite be the same with Tim gone.  While Williams is a great journalist and a superb anchor, he just doesn’t quite bring the same flare to the program that Tim did.

I think one of the things that Tim and I shared was our love of sports and politics.  Part of the reason I love both (sports and politics) so much is that consequences and outcomes are “real”.  Everybody has something at stake. Everybody has “skin in the game”. It’s real.

I think it is this quality that Tim so frequently brought out in his guests and his co-hosts over the years.  I will truly miss him and his broadcasts.

Friday marked another school year in the books for my kids.  Olivia finished up 7th grade at Liberty Middle School and will attend next year as an 8th grader.  Zachary finished up as a 6th grader and will attend Liberty Middle school with his sister next year as a 7th grader.

We celebrated the passing of another year with a ritual we have done for several years now — a bonfire party for all the kids to burn their homework.  It has become quite a tradition with a large bonfire a barbeque, fireworks and of course boxes and boxes of old homework.

It’s amazing that Nintendo Wii has done what they have with clearly a lesser technical platform (compared to XBOX and Playstation 3). They continue to innovate with superior interaction with the release of Mario Kart for Wii.

The kids and I bought this new game on Saturday and spent a good deal of the weekend playing it with them. We had a blast!

It uses a steering wheel that embeds the Wii remote control into it. You hold the steering wheel in mid-air turning it to play the game. It is a very immersing experience to drive the carts or motorcycles in the game. Although the graphics are clearly not as good (since they are standard definition compared to the high definition capabilities of the XBOX or PS3) I still really enjoyed the feeling of competing and playing in that way with “real” people.

My wife, Phyllis, and I are both looking very foward to the Wii Fit title that comes out on May 21.

I am pleased to announce my new Blog on Wordpress 2.3.3. It was pretty easy to migrate my old posts and data over. I haven’t migrated my user base over yet but I am working with a plugin to see if that can be done. Please let me know if you have any comments on the new site.

Jason Kidd is my favorite player in the NBA and I was disappointed to read today that the Nets refuse to deal with him fairly. It is so sad to see a dispute like this force a great player to these lengths (sitting out with a fake Migraine headache reportedly).

Why can’t Rod Thorn (the owner of the NETS) just sit down and deal with Jason fairly? He’s a great player and all he wants to do is win. Just sit down at the bargaining table and negotiate with him to retain and hire a great supporting cast or trade him and forget about it and rebuild!

Why would Rod Thorn and the NETS organization seem to think that they can hold somebody like a slave. What makes employers like this think that this is a playable hand? One word — “lawyers”. Its bad advice but I think lawyers drive much of this kind of thinking.

My advice to Rod is to play the players hand and the fans hand (a so-called WIN WIN). Nobody is going to stay on the team without Jason. Nobody is going to watch a team without Jason. Period!

Steve (the scary spongebob) and Olivia (the scary pirate)

Originally uploaded by sl_morgan

Here’s our photos and video clips from the 2007 Oxygen Halloween Party that Phyllis and I hosted on October 26, 2007. It was great fun!

Here’s a link to the whole photo set on Flickr.com and a link to the slide show format. Please send me links to any of your photo sets from the party and I will list them here as well.

This video is on Youtube.com and is part of our traditional Karaoke contest. This one is Chiara, Jeanhee, Phyllis and Kathie.

This one is Meredith, Lissy, Zach, Olivia and Samantha

Colbert, what if you don't win?

Stephen Colbert appeared on Meet the Press today with Tim Russert talking about his run for President of the United States. I usually try to avoid politics on my blog but it was so hilarious that I have to link their video in honor of this spoof.

Given all the news this week its a good time for reflection about what I want in my next gig (aka job, work, assignment, etc.). Granted things are a bit up in the air right now so that could be with Oxygen Media, NBC Universal, or anywhere really.

First and foremost I want to be a part in a great team of people just like I am now. The most important quality here is that I want to work with professionals that are dedicated to getting A’s in their craft.

Second, I want to work on and build products that are consumer facing. While there are great jobs and careers to be had farther back in the supply chain, I have been awakened for the second time in my career about the excitement with consumer products.

Finally, I want a real “seat at the table” with the business to help reach a successful outcome with these products. The marketplace is tough. I recognize there aren’t easy answers to getting significant returns with the consumer. Nevertheless I want the challenge to help create this value and return.

All industries have their proven business models but these models are changing quickly due to technology advances. I don’t want to work for a place that doesn’t recognize this changing dynamic and has a bunch of sloganeering and jingoism about the “established business model”. The business model is where some of the most interesting innovation will need to come in order to be successful in the marketplace of the future.

I really like games of chance. I enjoy playing card games like Texas Hold’em with my wife Phyllis and my good friends Ilio and Keith. On occassion, I even enjoy going to a big time casino like in Atlantic City or Las Vegas and shooting some Craps or playing a little Black Jack. I play the lottery at home and with my good friend and colleague David M.

In all these games, I would of course love to win but I don’t expect to win. I don’t plan my budget around winning. I don’t pace my lifestyle like I am going to win. Why not?

It’s because of course none of these games of chance are predictable at all. I also am not an expert at any of these games either making it even less likely that I would plan or pace my life around doing such games. That would be absolutely insane.

How do I pace and plan my life? I do it just about like everybody else. I have a plan that I think is reasonable. I follow the plan based on my skills and needs and what I think is truly attainable. Of course there are set backs and I adjust as needed in an agile way.

Yesterday I had the pleasure to take my son Zachary and his best friend Michael to a really cool event. Nintendo and ToysRus had teamed up to do a nationwide Pokemon meet up event.

The idea was that kids come to the store armed with their Nintendo DS devices. When we arrived there were probably 200 kids in the store with their DS’s and pokemon games running. You walked up to counter and each kid was quickly given two sealed character cards with a special code attached. This code talked to a local wifi server they had staged in the store and allowed the kids to download two new super charged characters — Manaphy and Electivire.

So what was in it for both companies? For ToysRus obviously the hope is that you are in the store and buy more product (and indeed we did). For Nintendo obviously they can sell more product too but there were other beneficial behaviors that I observed.

Kids of all ages (6 to 18) were interacting not only with their new characters but several were making deals and exchanging other characters from their devices over the wifi connections in the store. Of course there were also many discussions about specific game strategy and tactics. Many of the kids were discussing how the DS system interfaced with their Wii systems at home and uploading and syncing characters on their devices to the home systems.

Overall the event felt like a bricks and mortar viral event that was truly authentic!