Oh boy, I'm at the end of a very long week ...

... more on whatatop.

Some time ago the boss had asked me if I'd have the same vision as he does. Based on my positive response, he then mused about getting the right people on board. He had actually phrased it slightly different, but I'm sure what he meant was talking to the right influencers for getting them to agree upon a decision that was already made some time ago.

Now, in reality, the way decision making seems to work like depicted below by Scott Adams.

Boy, I'd love to have any artistic capabilities like Scott and wouldn't need to steel his cartoons all the time. And I'm slightly frightened, having the impression that Scott continuously is looking over my shoulder.

Help! Get me out of here.

While working on my blog today I ran into the following:

Hey! I don't even have Duet for Microsoft Office and SAP installed. Could somebody from the IBF team fix their error messages, instead of blaming somebody else?

At least they should use correct terminology.

And, btw: Who the hell is supposed to read the event log? Does anybody out there believe that I'm going to do that?

It may come to you as a surprise, but there are third-world regions and emerging countries - e. g. Germany - which are striving to offer a similar customer service. Most of the time it ends with a letter to your lawyer, stating "... When placing your order you had implicitly acknowledged your tickets to be auctioned to the highest bidder onsite at 7:00:01, in case you wouldn't show-up at 7 p. m., and you hadn't picked-up your tickets by 6:59:59:99 ... It was your responsibility to ... You failed to ... It is not our responsibility ... You were not entitled to .. It is forbidden to ..."

Ok, I'm exaggerating, but just a little, a very little :-).

Here's an example how to do it differently. This week I had received the second reminder, whereas the first one had already alerted me to consider changing the date of my 'appearance'. From my point of view, this is a cross-industry best practice showcase:

Dear Patron,

We are excited to present to you our second week of Roméo et Juliette in McCaw Hall. This email is a reminder that you have tickets for this week and we want to make sure that you don’t miss this fantastic program, which has been receiving rave reviews this week from audiences and critics alike.

If you are a subscriber, you know that one of the many benefits of subscribing is that you can exchange your tickets up to 24 hours prior to your ticketed show at no cost. You can view subscription exchange and missed performance procedures, as well as contact information here: http://www.pnb.org/season/subscription/ticketassist.html

You can read about the Roméo et Juliette program, as well as read reviews here: http://www.pnb.org/season/romeo.html

There is a concert at the Key Arena on Friday, the 8th, so be sure to plan for traffic especially on those nights. Up-to-the-minute traffic updates can be seen here: http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/traffic/seattle and you can view all Seattle Center events here: http://www.seattlecenter.com/
 
We look forward to seeing you at McCaw Hall, and hope you enjoy Roméo et Juliette.

Best,

John Tangeman
Pacific Northwest Ballet
Manager of Audience Services
301 Mercer Street
Seattle, WA 98109
206.441.2424
tickets@pnb.org

Wow, I don't get this: Would John (and his automated process) really consider me a customer? Somebody who's potentially interested in repetitive business? That would be great. Highly appreciated - thanks!

Wild, wild West. What an interesting series of events in just one week, actually more hours than weeks: Forrester industry analysts announce that the time for big M&A is over. Yahoo announces laying-off thousands of staff, obviously to stop cash bleeding from an ill-driven strategy. Internet powerhouse Google announces decelerating profit growth, causing stock analyst to fear that the ad-fueled monolith has passed his climax.

And Steve Ballmer throws a fortune, loaded with a 62% premium on the last trading stock price, at Yahoo (Microsoft PR-release). Wow, what a courageous move and what an excellent timing.

Obviously this move is primarily driven by the significantly positive synergies. Synergies to be yielded from the take over of the historic remains of a once successful Internet company. Oh, and then there's even a quantifiable benefit mentioned: At least $1 billion dollars of cost savings. Interest rate aside, this will speed-up break-even time of this deal to less then 45 years. Not bad for a 30 year old company.

But let's not be too sarcastic - time will show if either Google or Microsoft will be cited in front of the European Commission, accused for owning the Internet. Or, maybe in a few years, there's even another entrant that has the power and guts for entering this hottest of all markets.