Creative Think

Photo Finishes: Information Rich

The World Track and Field Championships are currently taking place in Osaka, Japan. As you'd expect, there have been some close finishes and some runaway victories.

Since I was a kid, I've been fascinated by the photos showing the finishes in the running events. Produced by a special camera, these photos depict multiple images of the contestants as each reaches the finish line onto one master image with timing coordinates.

Thus, the composite photo-finish picture conveys a lot of information: it shows each participant at the finish line with his time and position. Plus, the overall picture shows top athletes competing to be the best, which in itself can be both dramatic and inspiring.

For example, above, China's Xiang Liu in the bottom lane wins the 110 m. High Hurdles. His time (12.95) can be determined by drawing a vertical line from the forward point of his torso (here his shoulder) down to the time scale. Second place went to Terrence Trammell (USA) in 12.99.

In the photo above, USA's Jeremy Wariner wins the 400 m. run going away with a very fast time of 43.45. Second is LaShawn Merritt over a half second behind in 43.96. The eighth place finisher (far left) crossed the line in 45.40. Thus, the photo shows multiple exposures over a two second period.

The closest race of the meet was the Women's 100 meters, shown below.

Notice how close the vertical lines are in the photo-finish. After five minutes of deliberation, it was determined that Veronica Campbell (Jamaica) in lane 7 won in a time of 11.01. Lauryn Williams (USA), lane 4, was second also in 11.01.

How you lay your body out — especially your torso — can make all the difference in the world!

Our Moon Has A Busy Night

One of the benefits of jet lag (11 time zones from Russia) is waking up fully refreshed at two in the morning.

Just in time for a total lunar eclipse! I took these photos from my deck (near Palo Alto) this morning from 2:15 am to 4:00 am. Total darkness (bottom middle) came at 2:45. It was a magnificent show.

This celestial display made me happy to be alive.

Heads-up hat tip to Alex von Oech.

"Are You Happy?"

Whenever I travel abroad, the first words I learn in the language of the country I'm visiting are:

Are You Happy?

I've found that when I say these words to complete strangers in their native tongue, they almost invariably open right up. Why?

First, they're surprised that an aging white guy is trying to talk to them in their own language.

Second, they're amazed that a foreigner is directly asking them such a personal question.

And third, they think it's really funny. And then it's possible to have a little dialog with them.

I do this wherever I go: Vietnam, Morocco, China, Egypt, Burma, Peru, and India.

For example, I was just in Russia. My magic words there were: "Tay shahs leaf" (my phonetic spelling). When the person would say, "Da," (yes), I'd follow that up with: "Ya oychen shas leaf." (I'm really happy). Then they try to teach me a few more words. It seemed to open a few doors.

I was also just in Sweden. It's a national law there that Swedes aren't allowed to say that they are really happy (their joke), so it was fun to tease that out of them: "Are du yetta glad?" (again, my phonetic spelling). Lots of fun all around!

For example, on a boat to Vaxholm, one man responded to my question with a discussion of his sex life since the birth of his first child ("my wife is now more interested in the result of the sex, i.e, the child, than in what created it"). What was curious was that he explained this (in English) to me as well as to the ten Swedish women standing around me, and they all laughed.

Question: What are your special words to connect with people when you travel?

Small World Swedish Swim Greetings

"Stanford Masters?" the man behind me asked.

I was standing at the entrance to the Eriksdalbadet pool in Stockholm this morning. I turned around and it was Tony Svensen, once and future Stanford Masters swimmer and tri-athlete.

Small world indeed! What fun. Tony's been on special assignment in Sweden for the past two years, but he looks forward to returning to Palo Alto and swimming with his Stanford Masters buddies.

Eriksdalbadet is a classic 50 meter outdoor community pool. We figured that (Stanford Masters teammate) Par Arvidson must have held all the pool records here in the late 1970s. (Par is from Sweden and won the 100 meter butterfly at the 1980 Olympics.)

Above is a photo of Tony and me. We swam in the "Bana for snabbsim" (or fast lane). It was a lot of fun!

Postcard from St. Petersburg (and a Joke!)

Wendy and I have spent the past four days in St. Petersburg, the "Venice of the North." Petersburg is many things: Czar Peter the Great's capital and "Baltic Window to the West," "Cradle of Lenin's October 1917 Revolution," and site of the 900 day siege in WWII by the Nazis. For us, Petersburg is a delightful place to stroll along its many canals and Neva River waterfront.

Petersburg feels more European than Moscow. And for me, at least, there is a lot less of the lingering "Soviet Era" feeling than in Moscow. Shown above is a Petersburg Pickle Peddler showing off her goods in a local market. Notice the pickled garlic. Yummmm! We bought some and also some cabbage and salmon pierogis at a bakery around the corner and had a very satisfying lunch.

We were also fortunate to attend a performance of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake ballet in the intimate Hermitage theater (250 seats). The dancers were truly wonderful, and I will always remember that evening.

Of course we spent a day touring the magnificent Hermitage. There was room after room of eighteenth and nineteenth century art. There were also several rooms of Monets, Renoirs, Cezannes, and Van Goghs. (Our time in the Hermitage was made more enjoyable by our having seen the film "The Russian Ark" which is a 90 minute tracking shot through the Hermitage.)

The one souvenir I bought in Petersburg was a 4" high metal action figure of the religious monk Grigori Rasputin, who was an advisor to the Czarina Alexandra. We visited the Yusupov Palace where Rasputin was murdered by Felix Yusupov (and others) in December, 1916. We had an appointment to see the actual basement dining room where he was poisoned and shot. Real history! I took this photograph of my Rasputin figure overlooking the canal just in front of the site where he was murdered.

Other Petersburg highlights were the Amber Room (it glows) at the Catherine Palace and the interior mosaics at the Church on Spilled Blood (they seem to glow as well).

I'll conclude with a Soviet era joke our guide Tatiana told us:

An American, a Frenchman, and a Russian were trying to determine the nationality of Adam and Eve.

The American said, "Adam and Eve were clearly Americans. They had abundant material wealth all around them. For them, it was paradise."

The Frenchman said, "Adam and Eve were French. They were beautiful and had a passionate, loving relationship."

The Russian said, "Adam and Eve were clearly Russians. They were naked, cold, and had only an apple between them to eat. Only a true Soviet would call this paradise!"

A few final thoughts:

1) These are boom times in Russia (at least in the larger cities). About anything you want is available (and expensive).

2) There are lots and lots of white people in Moscow and Petersburg; neither city would be confused with any American city.

3) We enjoyed our time here, and we also enjoyed preparing for this trip: we watched a number of Russian films (see here), viewed the Czar, Lenin, and Stalin documentaries from the History Channel, and benefited from Irwin Weil's Teaching Company 36-part series on Russian Literature. We also read various books, and highly recommend David Remnick's history Lenin's Tomb (winner of the Pulitzer Prize), and Sergei Lukyanenko's sci-fi novel Nightwatch.

Postcard from Moscow

For the past four days, Wendy and I have been in Moscow. The ghosts of the recent past are still very much alive here as evidenced by our photo (taken just off Red Square) with Lenin and Czar Nicholas II.

We've enjoyed touring such sites as Red Square, the Kremlin, the Armory, Stalin's Bunker, Izmailovsky Market, Tretyakov Art Gallery, and various churches and convents. As a child of the Cold War (see my previous post), I've long been curious to see these places.

My favorite site on Red Square is St. Basil's Cathedral (shown at left) with its delightful array of swirling colors and onion domes. The cathedral was commissioned by Ivan the Terrible and built in the 16th century. To make sure the cathedral's architect never built anything as nice, Ivan had the architect blinded after the work was completed.

Also on Red Square is Lenin's Tomb where Lenin's embalmed body lies in state. Interestingly enough, this is the second embalmed body of a famous leader I've seen this year; the other was Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II which is in Cairo.

We waited in line for 45 minutes before being admitted to the tomb. We spent the time chatting with some Ukrainian construction workers who asked us how they could emigrate to the US. One of them, Victor, proudly wore a "The USSR Is My Homeland" t-shirt (in Russian) and told me his favorite Soviet leaders were Yuri Andropov and Leonid Brezhnev. He had little use for Gorbachev.
 

Once inside the tomb, it takes about two minutes to walk around the body. I thought Lenin looked small. Since 1924, it's estimated that over 15,000,000 people have viewed his body. Curiously, being embalmed and put on display for Soviet propaganda purposes was about the last thing Lenin wanted: he wanted to be buried next to his mother in St. Petersburg.

Once outside the tomb, we walked slowly past the graves of former Soviet leaders, including Stalin, who was the greatest mass murderer in history (estimated 40-60 million victims). For me, it was a weird experience. On the other hand, the Ukrainians we were with were deeply moved by it all. As were most of the other visitors.

Riding on the Moscow Metro is quite interesting. The stations are clean and deep underground (some 80 meters). Most were built in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s by slave laborers. Different stations have different themes and art. The Kiev station, for example, has many murals (such as the one shown at left) with agricultural and bucolic motifs. The trains come every 60 or 90 seconds and travel fast.

We got to spend some time with the Russian screen-writer Pavel Gelman (Pavel is a reader of this blog; that's how we met). Pavel's father is Alexander Gelman, the noted Soviet playwright. I enjoyed sharing creativity ideas with Pavel, and also hearing his thoughts about what it's like to write for Russian TV and movies. He feels free except for one constraint: he's found it wise not to show the Russian state security police in a negative light in his crime stories (it makes it more challenging to get financing).

All in all, we enjoyed Moscow. It's a bustling metropolis of 12 million people, and those ones we met and talked with were friendly. Also, we had great sunny weather in the high 80s (30+ C.) With the price of petroleum at or near record levels, these are boom times in Moscow.

"We Will Bury You!"

Wendy and I are in Moscow.

When I was growing up, one of the scariest people in the world (to me and many others) was Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the Soviet Union from 1955 to 1964. In 1962, he and JFK went eyeball-to-eyeball in the Cuban Missile Crisis and came close to starting World War III.

One of Khrushchev's most famous outbursts came in 1956 when he told a group of western diplomats: "We will bury you!" In the context of thermo-nuclear war, this outburst was chilling. But Khrushchev later said he meant that the Soviet Union and communism would outlast the West, and that "we would come to your funeral to put dirt on your grave." 

Today we visited the Novodevichy Cemetery where a number of Russian and Soviet notables are buried. I saw the graves and monuments of such people as: Boris Yelstin, composer Dmitri Shostakovich, cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, former first lady Raisa Gorbachev, foreign minister Andrei Gromyko, Olympic champion high jumper Valery Brumel, and playwright Anton Chekhov.

I also visited Khrushchev's grave (he died in 1971), and took great pleasure in placing the Ball of Whacks next to the monument head. For as much as he scared me when I was a kid, I thought I'd have a little fun now!

Actually, as I've read more and more about Soviet history, Khrushchev comes off as one of the "good guys," at least in the context of what came before him (Stalin) and after (Brezhnev). He pushed for market reforms in agriculture, and also had the courage to denounce one of the worst tyrants and murderers of the twentieth century (Stalin).

Design A New Calendar

It's time for another "What If of the Week!"

What if the world's authorities got together
and asked YOU to re-design the calendar?

What would you come up with? How many months would your design have? How many days in a month? How long would a week be? Would they vary by season? Would there be some weeks that weren't part of a month? Would you add special days? What would your reasons be? What's something really different?

How would your calendar affect business and commerce? What impact would it have on family life? On religious festivals and celebrations? Who would be threatened? What new features would you design into your calendar?

Have fun with this!

Note to CMO: Check out Stephen Denny

Today I had the pleasure of spending an hour in Palo Alto with one of my favorite marketing bloggers, Stephen Denny (shown at left).

Stephen writes the always perceptive Note to CMO (Tagline: "If you could send a memo to the marketing community and straighten everything out, what would you say? This is my "Note to the Chief Marketing Officer"). One of the delights of his blog is his wide diversity of examples: Seneca here, Kurosawa there, Goya to make this point, and Jet Blue to make a different one. Plus, he turns a phrase quite well.

If you haven't visited this site before, check out his series of marketing advice to a smaller company wishing to take out a larger competitor:

Killing Giants (Part I), Killing Giants (Part II), Killing Giants (Part III)

Stephen's got a lot of interesting marketing stories garnered from real-life experiences (good, bad, and crazy) with companies such as Sony, Iomega, and other channel favorites.

Who are Stephen's favorite blogs?

• Grant McCraken (This Blog Sits at the): "He's just about the best marketing writer out there."
• Valeria Maltoni (Conversation Agent): "I like the way she writes about people."
• Lewis Green (Business Solution Plus): "I like his friendly, social manner, and especially his Friday columns."
• Ann Handley (Marketing Profs): "She's good."

Currently, Stephen spends his time doing marketing consulting. He's also thinking about getting into the seminar business. In addition, he's carving out time to write his book ("Killing Giants"). I wish him success with the book endeavor: I think the market would respond well to his ideas!

Downside of Diversity

This is not a political blog, but I thought I'd share with you a recent article that has innovation and social networking implications as well as political and social policy ones.

"Downside of Diversity" by Boston Globe writer Michael Jonas is the most provocative piece I've read in a while. Here is the link and I encourage you to check it out. The study this article describes was done by Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam (shown at left). In the coming weeks, you will probably see it both praised and attacked.

Here is a short selection from Jonas' article:

IT HAS BECOME increasingly popular to speak of racial and ethnic diversity as a civic strength. From multicultural festivals to pronouncements from political leaders, the message is the same: our differences make us stronger.

But a massive new study, based on detailed interviews of nearly 30,000 people across America, has concluded just the opposite. Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam -- famous for "Bowling Alone," his 2000 book on declining civic engagement -- has found that the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogeneous settings. The study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings. . . .

Putnam claims the US has experienced a pronounced decline in "social capital," a term he helped popularize. Social capital refers to the social networks -- whether friendships or religious congregations or neighborhood associations -- that he says are key indicators of civic well-being. When social capital is high, says Putnam, communities are better places to live. Neighborhoods are safer; people are healthier; and more citizens vote. . . . But what emerged in more diverse communities was a bleak picture of civic desolation, affecting everything from political engagement to the state of social ties.

But there's a paradox here. Anyone (myself included) who has experience working with diverse teams knows that they tend to have more and varied insights. Thus, the upside of diversity can be found in problem-solving and innovation. Jonas continues:

Diversity, it shows, makes us uncomfortable -- but discomfort, it turns out, isn't always a bad thing. Unease with differences helps explain why teams of engineers from different cultures may be ideally suited to solve a vexing problem.

Culture clashes can produce a dynamic give-and-take, generating a solution that may have eluded a group of people with more similar backgrounds and approaches. At the same time, though, Putnam's work adds to a growing body of research indicating that more diverse populations seem to extend themselves less on behalf of collective needs and goals.

It looks like there's an interesting dynamic taking place here. The greater the amount of diversity in a society, then there's a greater possibility of innovation in that society (at least short term), but a greater likelihood of breakdown of social cohesion. I wonder if we'll ever return to the ethic of the "melting pot."

For more, read the entire article.

Any thoughts on the Putnam's findings? How about with respect to innovation and problem-solving? How about to social networking media?