Buffalo to setup ethanol shop

Buffalo, NY, once booming with its massive steel plants and grain elevators, will now finally do something with that infrastructure.

With Lake Erie at the mouth of Buffalo and the Buffalo River (which has access in/out of Lake Erie), to feed ships into the plants, the plants have the railroads right out of their back doors…it’s a scene out of the early 1900s.

The grain elevators, they are plentiful in Buffalo, sitting empty and likely full of rats for the last 30 years, will finally be put to use. They are so expensive to haul down, because they are nothing but feet thick of concrete and steel, they have remained in the city landscape for years. However, the elevators on the old ConAgra plant will soon be put to use.

That site is nothing short of perfect for this. It will receive corn from the west via Lake Erie…the corn will come into the elevators via the Buffalo River…it will be stored, processed and the final product loaded up into the rail cars sitting right outside the plant doors.

This is good move for Buffalo & the guys behind it. It will work.

You can read the story from the Buffalo News here.

China, it’s a small world

Last week while in Beijing, I had a couple of meetings with WorkSoft, one of the leading IT outsourcing companies in China. A couple of big names they support… IBM & Microsoft.

One of the guys I met with, Owen Peng, WorkSoft’s VP of Sales & Marketing, used to be the assistant to Lenovo’s founder, Liu Chuanzhi, in the mid-90s. Liu Chuanzhi is now the President of Legend Holdings Ltd. Legend Holdings is a major investor in Lenovo & has also recently provided funding to WorkSoft.

Interesting how connected the IT world in China is seeming to be, I’m sure I’ll find it more connected over the next year.

Priority Club is STILL pissing me off

A couple days ago I wrote about my recent Priority Club experience. Well, still not much progress.

I did go to their website yesterday, with the goal of finding a feedback form or survey of some sort. All I could find was a website survey, so I used it to complain about their customer support.

What did I get back? This…

“Thank you for contacting us. In order to better assist you with your inquiry, I have forwarded your e-mail to our Priority Club service center. Please allow additional time for a response. They can be reached directly at:

PriorityClub@ichotelsgroup.com

For immediate assistance, please contact the Priority Club Service Center at:
http://www.ichotelsgroup.com/h/d/6c/1/en/c/2/content/dec/6c/1/en/cs/center.html

If you need further assistance, please feel free to contact us.

Best regards,

Anne “
The Priority Club service center is who I initially contacted, it’s now been seven days since my first contact. I have not heard back from them in two days.

So…it will now be one email a day to them until I get a satisfactory resolution.

Priority Club is pissing me off

Priority Club is the rewards program for Crowne Plaze (Holiday Inn). I joined the program just into my trip to Beijing, because I forgot to join prior to leaving. I also failed to give them my membership # while there, so didn’t get any points for my three week stay.

Well, I figured the solution would be easy enough, have done it before with airlines…I’d just go online & submit a form to collect points for a previous stay. HA

After four emails so far, no dice. The first two consisted of me validating various pieces of information such as address & phone number. Now they are telling me I have two accounts…hmm, do I?

Well, I thought maybe I could have opened one up a while ago. Or maybe, they were confusing me with my father (also named Michael Mann, but has a different middle name). So, tried explaining that one via email – of course they didn’t understand that one, why would they?

They have come back and told me that I have an account with a Beijing address and phone number. I know for a fact I never opened an account with Beijing info, couldn’t have…unless I used my work address OR, maybe I used the Crowne Plaza address? jack asses.

The issue still remains in the email pipes. I guess I could call them, but I don’t want to deal with that frustration too. Why? Because I guarantee the call center doesn’t have access to the email. They also likely don’t keep a central log for a customer. On top of that, since I supposedly have two accounts, they probably wouldn’t even know who I am!

This is where it would be nice for them to do one of three things…

1) Just trust me with all of the information I have already provided & validated and give me my points!

2) CALL ME – the person (or someone who has access to the email chain) should pick up the phone and call me … phone # is a mandatory field when registering, use it!

3) On-line chat – do you have it? For issues like this, they should send you a url that will trigger an on-line chat session (again, with someone who has access to the email chain).

I just want my 36,000 points!

How retail works

So, I've been learning a little bit about retail through a friend. An interesting thing I learned about was how they schedule people to work. They have an automated system that analyzes store traffic patterns, high selling times & the individual performance of their employees based on that data … they schedule their highest performing employees to work at the peak times…makes sense.

So, on the web … analyze peak traffic times…crossed with peak sales times … then "schedule" your best performing promotions/merchandising tactics for those times. Can this process be automated with a web metrics solution…integrated with CMS??

In speaking with Hazen last week, this seems to be the direction web analytics solutions are going in. There is certainly the opportunity for a lot of content automation based on rules. Rather than investing in the "middle men" – resources who have to "code" the content and push the content, manually…invest in analysts to create the rules & content creators to close the deals.

Open communication or secrets?

I was watching 60 minutes this evening (I typically never watch it), but there was a topic on that I wanted to hear about. NASA’s top climate scientist, James Hansen, was on discussing the state of global warming, telling us what the US government doesn’t want him to. The segment was called “Rewriting the Science”. Hansen says the government censors him, even their written reports have to go through the White House for “editing.” Why does the government do this? Well, who knows…maybe to ensure there isn’t a panic? Well, a panic is very unlikely, since the global warming issues are years off. However, Hansen says if we don’t act within the next 10 years, there’s no hope for it to get better, can only get worse.

I would think the government would allow this information through, maybe to spike some more interest in the public to act now, in any way they can. Surely this wouldn’t cause a panic, maybe just some change for the good?

This happens in all parts of life … families, businesses, friendships … In a family, a serious illness of one family member may be hidden from another. In business, a new project may be hidden from certain employees. In friendships, when a friend witnesses someone cheating (on their husband/wife or boyfriend/girlfriend), it may be hidden from the person who was cheated on. Are these scenarios bad? Is it better to hide these truths or just let them out? I guess it does depend on each situation, but, my view is…let them out! I’m not the best communicator in the world (though, I am working on it), but I think more openness is needed these days. Just as companies such as IBM are “opening up their patent portfolio”, people need to open up and communicate more…the good and the bad. The potential good likely outweighs the harm more information may cause, that’s my view.

Pressure vs. Stress

Both can be brought on by oneself, but is there a difference? I think so. I put pressure on myself for various things, mostly for work. I don’t think I ever stress myself out, but I know I have been stressed out. Some people put undue pressure and stress on themselves…why, no clue. I cannot imagine why someone would do that to themselves. Maybe to feel busy? to feel important? to feel…?

Pressure is a good thing, in my view. Without pressure, I think we’d have a lot more slackers in the world than we already do. Everyone likes a good challenge, right? How do you balance putting pressure on someone to get the job done, with the potential stress it may cause that person to put on themself?

Certainty, direction & decisons

The opposite of those three words causes soooo many problems in an organization. CEOs, Sr executives & line executives wonder why they see poor results…take a look at those three words again. When you can’t get clear direction, with some level of certainty & an executive who is willing to make a decision and stick with it (for at least a little while!), NOTHING WORTH ANYTHING GETS ACCOMPLISHED.

This is a problem at all levels in any type of organization…what’s the fix? Is there one?