PR. Differently

You know all my CES and future blog posts are at shankman.com, right?

I'm blogging at shankman.com now. I'll probably sunset this site with a permalink to there eventually. But I'm blogging there now.

RSS?

Atom?

Read. Read. Read.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

shankman.com.

My email might be down today...

So I switched to a new host a few days ago - and because nothing ever goes 100% right, my email seems to be lagging behind in the changeover. So, if you're emailing peter <at> shankman <dot> com and it comes back as undelieverable, don't believe the hype: I haven't died in a massive skydiving accident, nor am I escaping my responsibilities by moving to an island where I'll fish and weave grass skirts to sell to tourists.

I'm sure my email will be back up shortly. If it's not, I know enough people to have the right people killed.

A year of changes...

Happy New Year, my friends.

May 2008 bring you happiness, friendship, love, prosperity, and joy.

May it finally bring all of us peace.

2008 will bring many, many changes - I promise you, no matter how prepared we think we are, we won't be. It's just the nature of change. If we were always prepared, it wouldn't be any fun, would it?

First change: Some major changes in this blog. Not in the content, obviously - but where it is, and what it is.

I speak about branding all the time - I'm finally doing something about it - lest I become the fable of the shoemaker's children. So stay tuned.

Happy New Year, everyone. May 2008 bring you everything you want.

Thanks for reading. In 2008, I look forward to continuing to amuse, anger, inspire, inform, and create, and most importantly, I look forward to continuing to make you smile.

-Peter

PS: I leave you with this: From December 26-30th, I was in Zephyrhills, Florida, at Skydive City, making as many jumps as possible. I consider each jump a "Control-alt-delete" on life. So by the time I came home, I was brand spanking new. My sectors had been reset, my disk drives recalibrated, the excess files dumped from my brain... I can't recommend this enough: Let's all find our Control-Alt-Delete buttons, whatever they might be, and make the resolution that in 2008, we'll hit them a little bit more. It's worth it. Believe me.

Credit where credit is due...

You know that I'm not a fan of the TSA.  The majority of things they do in no way, shape, or form, keep us safer in the slightest, and the fact that more planes haven't crashed into more buildings is simply a question of timing, not of giving Grandma an anal-probe.

But... I have to give credit where credit is due.

Today, some 60-hours to Christmas, I walked into DIA to head home, the last flight of my last business trip of 2007.  (A little over 150,000 actual miles flown, by the way. Ugh. But I'm not alone...)

Anyhow, I get to security, and there's a line.

Wow, is there a line. It then occurs to me how freaking STUPID I was for scheduling my flight home today of all days. But so be it, nothing I can do now.

Insert the "24" theme here.

I walk to the First Class/Elite line. I get on it. 8:50am

I show my ID and ticket to the ID checking woman. She looks, clears me, and wishes me a happy holidays. 8:54am.

I get to the magnetometer, take off my shoes, belt, and watch. Take my laptop out, as well as my roll-of-poker-chip-business-cards-that-look-like-C4. 8:55am.

I walk through the Magnetometer: 8:55:45am.

I pick up my stuff, put my shoes, belt, and watch back on. 8:56:34am.

I get on the Tram to the A Gates. 8:58:20am.

I get off the Tram at the A Gates. 9:01:22am.

I get to the door of the President's Club. 9:03:01am.

I'm sitting, drinking a bloody mary while my laptop boots up. 9:06am.

Wow. On one of the busiest holiday travel days of the year, with more than 65,000,000 people on the move, I got thru security in a little over six and a half minutes, and to the club, all checked in, in just under 17 minutes.

Credit where credit is due: The AVIS people had extra people working and shuttle busses to the terminals.

The TSA was polite, effective, had EVERY magnetometer working, and had enough people staffing. I actually went to the supervisor and congratulated him. I was amazed at how quick it went.

I wish, I wish, that EWR was as intelligent. Sadly, they are not. Perhaps it's the attitude - Everyone at DIA smiled, was cordial, was nice to me. At EWR, you get "If you don't like it, you can be callin' my supervisor an' shit." Which is really kind of sad... Attitude really does make all the difference, I guess.

Anyhow...

"Son," he said... "Grab your things, I've come to take you home."

I. Am. Outta here.

More from Z-Hills...

PS: Thanks so much to Disaboom for their wonderful holiday party last night, despite a veritable blizzard. The warmth in the hearts of all the employees melted any drama we might have had from the snow and resulting six hours round-trip in the limo-bus to the event.

Said the sheperd to the sheep... Let's get the Flock out of here!

Happy holidays, gang...

Your faithful scribe is heading to a client holiday party, then flying home. I'm sure I'll blog next week, but for now, I'm off.

I'll leave you with this, though: How to get some exercise at the airport.

May all your Lords be a'leaping!

-Peter

Gathering Of Useful Thinkers: San Francisco

A spectacular time was had by all at the Gathering Of Useful Thinkers: San Francisco event, held last night at the Redwood Room in the Clift Hotel. By far, the most well-attended GOUT I've thrown to date.

Photos can be found here.

Want in on where and when the next one will be held? Let me know.

Blueprint Ventures 07 Holiday Greeting

Blueprint Ventures did another great greeting this year, bringing back Gary Snoman. Thanks JF for the link.

What I loved most: The Israel conversation, and the cow in Sanjay's office. Ha! :)

Interview with me on That Marketing Show

Got a nice plug this week on That Marketing Show, an Internet Podcast all about gardening and home protection.

I'm joking. It's about Marketing. Duh.

I may or may not have called most publicists idiots. But I've done that on this blog, too. So no worries.

Listen here.

CyberAlert is offering their "Grants" again this year to PR Non-Profits...

Thanks to KS for the info...

I suppose they're "Grants," even though they're not "money," per se. Either way, nice thing for them to do.

Subject:  PR Grants for Not-for-Profits

CyberAlert, Inc. will again award annual PR Grants to not-for-profit organizations for 2008.  In the past four years, CyberAlert has awarded PR grants worth a total of $225,000 to 74 non-profit organizations.  The PR Grants consist of one year of media monitoring service at absolutely zero cost.    

A short PR Grant Application is available online at https://secure.cyberalert.com/grants.html The deadline for applications is December 31, 2007.  Grants will be awarded in January.

All non-profit organizations in the U.S. and Canada are eligible for the
2008 PR Grants except previous winners.

A list of previous PR Grant winners can be found at https://www.cyberalert.com/prgrants.html.

A detailed news release about the PR Grants is available at https://www.cyberalert.com/r_112607.html.

We're hoping to make as many not-for-profit organizations as possible aware of the PR Grants.  We would greatly appreciate if you would pass the word to your colleagues in the non-profit sector.

Kristin O'Connor or I would be happy to answer any questions you may have.

Bill

William J. Comcowich
President &amp; CEO
CyberAlert, Inc.
prgrants@cyberalert.com
800-461-7353

P.S.:  Corporations, government agencies and not-for-profit organizations can order a 14-Day No Risk Free Trial
(https://secure.cyberalert.com/ftorder.html) to test CyberAlert's news monitoring and consumer discussion monitoring services.  No credit card is required or requested for the trial.

About CyberAlert, Inc.

Founded in 1999, CyberAlert (https://www.cyberalert.com/) is a worldwide press clipping, media monitoring, broadcast monitoring and media measurement service.  Its CyberAlert® 4.0 worldwide news monitoring service monitors over 25,000 online news sources each day in 25+ languages. The company's TV broadcast monitoring service monitors the closed caption text of over 2,100 news programs on over 500 TV stations in the Top 100 markets in the United States.  To monitor consumer discussion (online word-of-mouth), its
NetPinions(tm) service monitors over 100,000 Web message boards and UseNet news groups for consumer insight about companies, products, key issues and trends and its BlogSquirrel(tm) service monitors over 5 million blog postings each day from a total of 25+ million blogs worldwide. CyberAlert VDO automatically monitors 200+ video sharing and news sites each day. ClipMetrics is CyberAlert's low-cost media measurement and analysis service.  CyberAlert EdCals is an editorial c!
alendars service covering over 6,000 publications with over 300,000 editorial opportunities.