Bobby Rozzell’s Blog

I make no secret of the fact I find the movie Die Hard entertaining and intellectually stimulating. Even in the days when I tried to be the “good person” all the time I was not afraid to profess my love for this movie, Yippiee kiy yi yay and all.

Now I find out that the source of the movie’s coolness is not only well placed profanity and ridicule of euro-trash terrorists but genetic as well. Like all good pedigrees its a bit convoluted but leads back to a deep well of talent.

Die Hard is based on the novel, Nothing Lasts Forever by Roderick Thorpe. It was a sequel to The Detective. That book was made into a movie, of the same name, with the central character played by Frank Sinatra.

Imagine Frank in Die Hard. He would’ve changed the tagline (who would’ve stopped him?) in a hat tip to his buddy Dean and told Hans, “That’s Amore mo***er f****r”.

Worshippers of cool everywhere would’ve wept with delight.

Lesson emphasized today: Good writing is the foundation of every great movie.

The Barack Obama campaign announced that you could be the first to know who he will name as the Democratic Party’s nominee for Vice President. All you had to do was give them the number you wanted the text message sent to, then wait for the big news.

A great social media marketing idea. It built buzz. People kept checking their phones for the big announcement. The text message medium screamed “forward thinking” and “engaged with technology”. Its subtext, to me, was that Barack was a man of the people who wanted to bypass the old way and get the information directly to the people. But then reality reared it’s humdrum head.

The news leaked. The message came late. Really late. Like 2:30 a.m., “who the crap is messaging at this hour?”  kinda late.

What it means for the election I have no idea. I am not a politics guy. I think it shows the campaign organization is divided. Not in a “death dealing blow” kinda way but in the way many political and non-profit groups are about social media.

One side looks at social media as just another marketing tool. From that perspective this event did its job. It caused people to talk about the campaign and it collected a huge number of phone numbers that can be used in the future.

Another side believes social media is about relationships. For them, and I am one of them, this was a bad event that needs to be dealt with quickly.

They should apologize and make amends. Send a message to every one of those phone numbers about the screw up and promise to never use that phone number again.

Bwwhahahaha. I know. Crazy idea but I had to get it out or it would jam up the neurons all night.

They do need to admit they screwed up. Loudly. Clearly. The more excuses they make, the less they sound like someone you want to have your phone number, or run your country.

The risk of using social media is this: if you seek to be part of a conversation in a community and you are not going to treat the members of that community with respect you will not be liked. Or listened to. Or responded to.

Will this seriously hurt Obama? Again, I have no idea. There is plenty of goodwill to overcome it. But it has the potential to chip away at that goodwill and become part of a narrative in a person’s mind of why they don’t trust him anymore.

This post is too long so if I were you I would stop reading. But being me I have something else I need to get out to free up more neurons.

First? What possessed the campaign to promote the text message idea by claiming that thousands to millions of people would be first? I went to a baseball game the other day and they had four people throw out the “first” pitch. What the crap does first mean?

I am at the end of the third week of producing “Douglas and Main“. It takes away from my therapy here, but I really enjoy it. I love keeping up with the people who blog. Some of them are wicked smart. Some are creative. Some are honest and some are funny. Everyone of them has something to say and I am glad I read them. Everyone of them.

Preliminary observations in these first three weeks (keeping in mind I have much to learn and many bloggers to discover)–

1. Mommy bloggers dominate. All other topics together probably come in second. I try to post the best (and that is my subjective opinion) or I would have an unending stream of pictures of cute kids and updates on their cuteness.

2. Some really smart people blog. University professors. Media professionals. Advertising and design people.And just everyday, commonsense smart people.

3. Some professions are under-represented. Because there are so many that blog across the U.S., I am surprised at the lack of local lawyers who blog. I wish a few medical professionals chimed in. One judge started a blog but its been dormant for weeks now.

4. Some smart local leader is going to figure out that social media (blogging and such) has the potential for building relationships with a large number of citizens. A number that would be impossible if it was attempted physically. This smart local leader will start a blog and will be respected for their transparency and willingness to engage in a conversation rather than post a few pronouncements every so often. This smart local leader will be the beginning of something good.

5. Many not-so-smart wannabe leaders will try to copy the smart leader by blogging. They will be thin-skinned, rude and arrogant. They will declare blogging a waste of time. They will be the continuation of the same ole same ole.

6. Bloggers can maintain their own identity and message and yet be part of a bigger conversation. At least that is what I believe and why I started Douglas and Main.

7. Readers and commentators should be encouraged and cultivated. Comments keep us on our toes and extend the conversation. I don’t allow comments on Douglas and Main because i want to drive readers to blogs so they will comment on them. It’s why I allow comments here.

8. I am glad I am not Mark McCormick! He writes a column for the Eagle, not a blog, and he gets the nastiest comments of all the local writers I have seen. No blogger around here comes close. Of course bloggers can filter out commenters that get nasty. I understand, and appreciate, the Eagle’s hesitation to weed out the trolls but I think they should at least talk back in thier own comments. I don’t read the comments any more, just his artices, because the lack of reasonableness makes it a walk down the loony aisle.

9. Some area bloggers are brave in opening their hearts. Sometimes I hesitate to link to things I have read that reveal anguish and pain. A few times I chose to not link to a particularly emotional post. I struggle, with not wanting to censor someone who wishes to share their life. I also don’t want to contribute to their pain. A few people have asked me not to list their blog because they didn’t intend for it to be widely read. I will always respect a request like that.

10. I am surprised that sports is underrepresented. I love The Nuthouse because its inside stuff. The same goes for the Varsity Blog. But that’s it. The shocker blog is ok but not much raw meat. We need some passionate fans who love to share their opinions! Where are the Friend’s Falcons Fans??

If you follow Heroes (and if you don’t why not?) then you will be pleased to learn that the Patriarch Petrelli lives!

I have committed to blog on this blog at least one bloggety blog blog time a day. For some reason its a struggle. Thoughts flee my head. Important stuff seems too trivial. Trivial stuff seems too important. Rationality seems so silly. Anyway, you get the idea. I have no ideas.

Then it happens. Lightning strikes. I have found something of life-changing importance that must be passed on….

Behold!

Chocolate Covered Bacon

See that fleck at the peak of the ice cream? Candied bacon. Hell yeah!

If lovi’n this is wrong…. I don’t wanna be right.

If your one of those cynical types that doubt goodness like this actually exists I have proof.

The actual flickr photo

Documented proof at Amazon.com

For my birthday it would go well with the…

Chocolate Covered Bacon Cake

This too came from Amazon’s Al Dente

the Flikr address for this  good-news/bad-news joke Atkin’s style

And as all bloggers must do.. a hat tip the Blogfather who set meaning in my heart with this discovery.

Wichita State University does not have a football program. As Randy Brown is fond of saying, “What’s up with that?”

It has a stadium. It has a beautiful campus just made for fall afternoons. But no football team.

There are eight junior, err community, colleges in the state of Kansas that have a football team. McPherson College (500 students) has a football team. Tabor College (500 students) has a football team. If you add up the total enrollment for all the schools in the Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference you have about 2,000 more students and 10 more football teams than Wichita State. And all 10 teams have their own pads and helmets.

It is obvious that all these schools have more money than Wichita State. Thats why they have ten stadiums and WSU only has one. And it would cost WSU a whole lot more money to have a squad of 100 than the KCAC’s 600 or so. So what is WSU to do?

Outsource the only collegiate football team in Wichita; Friends University.

They have a team, we have a need. WSU could pay them to play at Cessna Stadium, wear black and gold and call themselves the FU Shockers. They would still play in the KCAC and if any athletes get into off-field trouble they would be identified as a “student at Friends University.” I am sure the local media would cooperate. They willingly pretended the WSU basketball team was Division 1 for a number of years. A little known fact is that the Mike Cohen era was actually an early attempt at outsourcing using players from the local middle schools.

Besides, outsourcing isn’t about quality, its about value. Ask any aerospace employee in Wichita.
What would Friends get out of this? Money. Compared to the cost of a D-1 or D-2 (or whatever that division is called now) program; making it worthwhile for Friends would be a bargain.  The administration would get people on campus, and off their back, during the fall. ESPN would cover at least the first game, although they would probably send Kenny Mayne. The small crowds would appeal to those nostalgic for the total WSU football experience.

One last hurdle. Title IX.

Did you know Friends has a women’s soccer team?

What kind of information would make Wichita better if the citizens of Wichita had access to it?

What role can the digital world of social networking play in delivering that information.

Even more intriguing, what role can the digital world of social networking play in identifying the information that needs to be provided?

Since we are playing “what if”

What if the needed “information” is not a set of facts or instructions that is already available but can only be constructed or discovered by the collaboration of a wide variety of Wichita’s citizens? How would we discover it?

In the book The Black Swan the author posits that there are “known knowns” (the things we know we know), “known unknowns” (the things we know we don’t know) and “unknown unknowns” (the things we don’t know that we don’t know). Big catastrophes are often things we didn’t see coming (hijacked planes as weapons?) but so are wonderful discoveries (social networking for one).

Is it possible that the information that is most important for us has not been identified yet? Or that it is misunderstood or lightly regarded or even ignored while less important information is given too much emphasis?

I don’t know. But it is worth considering that the when I am dreaming of delivery systems for information that I must be careful not too assume that I know what is the really important information.

I opened my Twitter account some time last fall. It’s easy to tell when I opened it because the only message I have posted on it says, “Watching Cincinnati and Southern Mississippi”. One of my goals for the summer was to learn to utilize Twitter. So here I am. I found an article that may help, “Ten Awesome Tools That’ll Make You an Expert Twitter User”. This faze of my Communication education begins this evening. Hopefully I will have some hands on experience  before the social networking meeting Thursday night. More on this fascinating development as the story breaks.