I love time lapse photography, especially when it comes to nature. The beauty and mystic of a flower going from bud to bloom is exceptional, especially when put to music and some dramatic colors are in the background.
Frank Lloyd Wright isn’t my favorite architect, but he does rank up there in my top five. However, his Falling Water house is by far my favorite piece of architecture. Here’s a great look at Wright’s designing of it.
I learned about The High Line six months ago and have been a big fan since. More cities need to do things like this.
This video is easily the fascinating thing I’ve seen this week. The guy lives in a 96 square foot house, builds them for a living, and whether he believes in it or not, preaches simplicity. Simplifying my life and living a simpler life (yes, they are different) are two things I’ve worked on for many years now, so finding an example of doing so is always encouraging and I feel is worth sharing.
This past Sunday, the New York City Marathon took place, and what an exciting day it was. Both the men’s and women’s races were incredibly close, an American won the men’s race for the first time since 1982, and the American men placed six runners in the top ten.
One of the things that really stuck out to me was in women’s race, where Great Britain’s Paula Radcliffe dictated the pace of the field for about 18 miles, all her competitors looking scared to do anything but sit behind her and wait until she made her move. While Radcliffe faded a bit and finished fourth overall, her dominating presence made the race what it was and showed me that after years of hard work and big results, she could control her competitors even if she wasn’t 100% on her game.
I love taking running moments like this and translating them to business. Radcliffe proved to me that in order to be a true trendsetter in your industry, you need to plug away for years on end, having some successful moments along the way, which all lead to people following you. Your competitors will play a defensive strategy, while you continue to thrive by going on the attack, or changing your strategy, as you feel.
Running and business are two of my favorite things in this world. Studying both, observing both and taking away bits of information from both and applying it to my life has become a daily obsession of mine. Finding things like that in life, things that excite you, make the daily grind that much easier.
What excites you?
Three different scenes, six different characters, the same set of words, and in the end I guarantee you have a different reaction to each scene. Funny how someone’s physical presence can change you entire perception of simple words spoken.
CNN unveiled their new website yesterday. While there are a few areas of the new site that I am not a big fan of, the overall design is a big improvement over their past site design. Also, I am highly impressed with how interactive they want to make their site, giving it Facebook-like appeal. Users can set up their own accounts, pick and choose what news they want to receive, post their own I-Reports, and much more.
Over the past 16 months, I’ve studied many of the major media websites in the U.S. and feel CNN’s redesign puts them a leg up on everyone else. Look at MSNBC, not only is it unorganized and poorly designed, but there’s very little interaction that the consumer can take part in. Fox News is much the same.
Kudos to CNN for stepping it up a notch, realizing the potential their online presence can provide.
I saw this commercial last night, and even though I had seen it before, it really struck a cord. Any time a brand can make a statement like Audi does in this one, that everyone else is the exact same, and we’re going to give you something different, yet safe, is a great business move. I never was a big fan of Audi until the past year or two when the company has really distinguished themselves as something different in the automobile industry.
Last weekend I worked a booth at the Chicago Marathon expo, which allowed me to observe tens of thousands of runners and running fans. Every year, whether I am working a booth or not, I try to make it down to the expo simply for the fact that I can learn a lot by simply observing people and their passions.
The one observation I made over the weekend dealt with the Boston Marathon. The Boston Marathon is one of the largest marathons in the world. In the U.S., this marathon has become the most prestigious, mostly due to the fact that runners have to hit qualifying marks to gain entry into the event, they just can’t sign up and run.
I’ve always known that the Boston Marathon was special, but observing the runners at the expo, I saw at least double the amount of Boston Marathon gear being worn compared to Chicago Marathon gear. People wore their hats, jackets, shirts, backpacks, etc., with pride. They wanted to show off that they’d done the event before. The Boston Marathon gear was a status symbol in this case.
This got me thinking, events that need to cap their registrants (i.e. a marathon), and happen year in and year out, can really build their brand if they build prestige around it. While the Boston Marathon has standards one needs to meet, what are some other ways to build prestige? How can brands build prestige around what they offer? This is what I am thinking about this week.
