Marc Sirkin's Mindnumbing Thoughts

Is anyone podcasting? What are you listening to? I've heard Adam Curry has some good stuff, but it's music oriented.. what else is out there? What are you listening to? I downloaded Doppler, an Podcasting "client" - they have a new release 2.0 out that is pretty neat. It has integrated search and I've pulled down the Engadget Podcast - my first ever Podcast listening experience as I type this. Phillip Torrone is talking about Nasa and other extremely geeky (re: cool!) things. Very neat. I hope there are some good pcasts out there.

Who knows about this guy? I found him through his blog and it turns out he's a pretty terrific writer. I downloaded his book Eastern Standard Tribes (halfway done, terrific read!!!). The intro however is the most interesting piece of this experience for me so far... The book was released under a creative commons license and has been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times. An excerpt of that intro: To that end, here is the book as a non-physical artifact. A file. A bunch of text, slithery bits that can cross the world in an instant, using the Internet, a tool designed to copy things very quickly from one place to another; and using personal computers, tools designed to slice, dice and rearrange collections of bits. These tools demand that their users copy and slice and dice—rip, mix and burn!—and that's what I'm hoping you will do with this. Not (just) because I'm a swell guy, a big-hearted slob. Not because Tor is run by addlepated dot-com r

I was best man at my brother's wedding this past weekend.. here's the speech... For those of you who don't know me, I'm the one who gave Dave his dog Jackson... Dave, you are welcome. As Dave's older brother, I often thought of him as a nuisance and a pest. We had very little in common. It turns out though, that we have more in common than anyone would have thought. And now, he adds two more things to that list; two things that I treasure, and that our dad adored - being a husband, and a father. When I look into his eyes, I can see how much he truly and deeply loves his new family. To Dave and Laurette, may all your days be as happy as this one. "Good things..."

I love Taco Bell. Really. Last night, I had an amazing Taco Bell experience. I went in and ordered a Ranchero Combo which was amazing. I mean, mixing avocado and sour cream is a neat idea, but who knew it would be so amazing pre-mixed like salad dressing! Something wonderful then happened... I took a bite of my Grande Soft Taco. Who is the genius who invented this beautiful thing? I had no idea that it had a layer of cheese in between the TWO tortillas! Brilliant, amazing and life altering. This thing is completely amazing. I remember when Pizza Hut came out with that pizza that had the cheese in the crust. Remember that? It was a great idea but wasn't executed well. Too sticky, too fattening, too greasy. The Grande Soft Taco with the cheese layer is perfectly melded (the cheese acts like a tasty kind of glue, holding the concotion together). Damn, I'm getting hungry again just thinking about it.

Understanding what a qualified sales lead is a difficult concept for some to grasp. When you are selling, if the lead isn't qualified on several levels (the right buyer, the buyer has money, the buyer has a problem they want to solve etc...) then the chances are, there isn't a sale to be made. Right? So, I'm in a discussion with my boss about our "active leads" list. On a conference call, we're going through our "best" leads. It turns out, that our "best" leads are unqualified, have no real buyer pain and we have no idea if they have money. I ask a simple question - "Boss man, do you REALLY think we have a chance in hell of closing these 3?" His answer is most obviously, "No." I politely ask him why then, are those 3 our "best" leads. What he says next will haunt me for a long time. His response was to clarify for me that there is a difference between "best" and "top." A lea

I love this... I made my own McDonald's banner

My 6 year old told my wife last week that she had to bring in money to school so she couold pay another kid for a Pony. Apparently, some little brat was trying to "scheist" my daughter and her friend out of some loot. After my wife told me about this I cautiously had a conversation with my little girl - who immediately clammed up and didn't say much at all. She sort of acknowledged that she knew better and that there was little or no chance that another 1st grader had access to a Pony. Besides, where would we keep a Pony! I was pretty satisfied that she wasn't going to go in and give up her money to some punk-ass kid. A few minutes later, just before we left for school, I found out that my daughter had an envelope with the kid's name on it - my wife and I looked at each other with huge eyes and I "felt" the envelope, thinking rapidly to myself that I needed to somehow TRUST that she was doing the smart thing and not lying to us about giving this ki

Spent the day in NYC yesterday with the family and experienced FIRST HAND what "the brand is the experience" means. First stop was American Girl - the store. These people have perfected experiential marketing and taken it to an entirely new level. You can not only buy a doll that "is" just like your kid, you can get clothes to match so your kid is wearing exactly what the doll is wearing. Sick, but apparently effective. Next up is the salon - no, not a salon like at Harrod's where your kid's hair gets styled, but a salon where your kid's doll's hair gets styled... yep, you read that correctly! They had 7 or 8 stylists lined up making those dolls beautiful. From there, we headed upstairs where they have a "cafe" where you can dine like an aristocrat. Complete with a high-chair for your doll, I couldn't actually believe what I was seeing. You can also buy dolls that are culturally appropriate and era-focused (Early American,