Sky's Blog

At the end of each year, I like to send a greeting to my friends. Over the last five years or so, it has become almost entirely electronic. And, just as it was with paper greeting cards sent through the mail, it’s almost always sent “late” — meaning some time after Christmas and around New Year’s. Christmas and New Year’s being the big holidays here in the US.

Over the last few years, it’s included one of the more dramatic or memorable photos I’ve taken during the year.

This year’s photo is of the Palais des Thermes de Cluny, visible from the rue St. Michel in Paris, in the Latin Quarter near the Sorbonne, where Kathryn and I had a chance to spend a week this summer. (She had been a Fulbright scholar at the Sorbonne in Paris after graduation from college.) Read more about this photo and the Palais des Thermes in my blog article. I spent two weeks in Paris this year, on two different occasions. The second was with the Traveling Geeks just a couple of weeks ago.

My photo (in the greeting) was taken by Olivier Ezratty in Paris in December, 2009. Olivier was one of our Paris Traveling Geeks, and our guide to the Paris Metro on a number of occasions.

This end-of-year time is a bit more relaxed than the rest of the year, since so many people take time off during one or the other of the weeks around Christmas and New Year’s, though this year there’s been a lot of client activity. And I have two new ventures (both based on technologies developed over the last few years here at Red7) that are launching in January. So I know there are new vistas ahead this year for me, and here’s hoping that you do indeed have new windows and new vistas open for you in the upcoming year!

(Click to view the photo greeting at full size.)

In my teens, on two different occasions, I spent a few months living in each of two countries (outside my native US), learning the predominant language and picking up the culture. Every once in a while it smacks me in the face that this makes me significantly different from many people in the US.^[1] And it often affects how I react in both business and personal situations.

In northern Mexico, as a teen, I learned first hand how teenage boys functioned in a society that was moving from poverty and religious conservatism to modern urban life. In Québec City (Canada) I studied at the largest French-speaking university outside of France, and learned the pride a community takes in its native language and culture.^[2] And I became aware of some of the movements working to preserve the language.^[3]

So when one of the Traveling Geeks became somewhat stuck to the tar baby of how the French are going about world brand-building all wrong^[4], I um kinda felt it in my gut more from the point of view of the French than the American. Robert might be right about what has to be done to build a world-wide brand, but maybe these companies weren’t about building world-brands, at least at this moment. (continue reading…)

I’ve been playing with electronic picture frames for almost two years. I started with a Ceiva frame two years ago, because it was capable of placing a phone call (modem) to pick up photos, and this frame was for a relative who doesn’t have access to any Internet services at all. It seemed like it would be perfect. It functioned well, held about a hundred photos (I bounced against its capacity, but it wasn’t annoying at all), and the only problem for me was the yearly fee for the dial-up service. But it meant that I could upload photos and within 24 hours they’d appear in the frame on the other side of the US. (If you’re like me, you write a paper letter once a year, to that rare relative who hasn’t yet gotten an email address—so sending photos electronically is a breeze compared to printing out those photos and writing a letter.) Continue reading to see what has happened in the last two years… (continue reading…)

I still like black. Dress mostly in black. (White hair, of course.) But I just got tired, this week, of how dark my blog theme was. So I put a nice photo from Paris behind the blog’s business area and I think it looks spiffier now. Also, this gave me a chance to customize the theme, which I do like, but eventually I had to “make it my own.”

The photo is of the Palais des Thermes de Cluny, (a Roman tepidarium and frigidarium) originally Roman baths, whose ruins are visible from the Rue St. Michel in the Latin Quarter of Paris. These baths were contained in perhaps the oldest brick building in Paris, built in the 2nd or 3rd century BCE and restored by Napoleon III. (continue reading…)