Trial and Error is 'The New Normal': Happy New Decade 2010

I was having lunch earlier in the week with a partner in a management consulting firm here in Munich. His firm specializes in consulting to media companies including broadcast, newspaper and magazines. Conspicuously absent from his client mix were digital media companies. In asking him what kind of work his firm did with these traditional media companies, he spoke of restructuring and cost cutting measures, mentioning specifically that when a media company looses revenue, the first thing they do is cut marketing. "But you can only cut so far", I responded, "how much from expenses saved is put into R&D"? He had no answer for that, meaning probably that the answer was none.

We discussed the digital revolution for awhile and how it was gutting the publishing business. I explained that the problem most companies had with interactive mediums was that the solution was a process as opposed to a fixed answer - and what worked yesterday, won't necessarily work today. "It's trial and error I guess?", he said, with an almost bemused wonder of how-the-hell-could-anybody-ever-make-any-money-off-that? If I cut $10 from your budget you've got $10. You can see it in your hand. But if I invest that $10 into coming up with new ideas to keep your particular Titanic from sinking, can you see that? Not today. And the things you need to see, instead of cold hard cash and an office full of empty cubicles, are opportunities - opportunities to turn that leaky barge into a seaworthy vessel one day again on new and un-chartered seas. And precious few management consultants have the ability to see things like that, let alone newspaper companies or magazines. Things like opportunity not immediately quantifiable. But opportunity cost is - what it costs you when you fail to take advantage of an opportunity. You can measure that in your competitor's new BMW around here. And that's where Infinite Wisdom takes its cue. To look at a business' future as a qualifiable process and a willingness to embrace opportunities instead of wasting time and money over a lost quantifiable past.


Seth Godin supposed today in his blog that if we are unhappy with what we have accomplished in the last ten years that maybe we should spend the next ten years at least doing something proactive, that we won't look back on and say we missed something. Something fun. Something motivating. Something qualifiable. His book, Survival Is Not Enough, sums it up for me and all those management consulting firms and traditional media companies who should be spending their time on creating a new future instead of trying to manage their fading past.

2009 saw my parting with a partner over this idea exactly. She made decisions based on survival alone, and that wasn't enough for me. And now we journey apart, - she survives, alright, but at what cost? Not one I was willing to pay. And so I write my future, everyday. With trial and error as my guide. Trying and failing and trying and failing until the law of averages eventually rules in my favour. If that's my price of success, I'll happily pay and at least have fun in the making.

Happy New Decade, all. Welcome to 'The New Normal'.

For my New Year's post from last year in Vietnam, click here.

For more on digital marketing and social networking see:

Xing vs. LinkedIn: Round II
Trial and Error: The New Normal
What's Wrong With My Social Networking? Xing vs. LinkedIn I
Low Tech Germany. Who Knew?
Advertising People and Blogs
How to Write the Best Blog in the World
What If Gutenberg Had a Blog?
If Blogs Are Free Does That Make Them Worthless?
Detri-Viral Marketing II: The Top 10 Social Media Blunders
Bright Lights, Big Internet and the WWED
Saigon Digital Marketing Conference Successfully Avoids Plumbers Convention
A Tale of Many Marketing Conferences
Detri-Viral Marketing I: How Web 2.0 Can Go Against A Brand
Marketing Predictions for 2009
Barcamp Saigon 2008
"Ignore Everybody" is Born: A Plug for Hugh MacLeod
Are the Bloggerati Missing the Market? Asia has Risen,
Into the Gapinvoid - Web 2.0 Social Networking Born 20 Years Ago

White House party crashers board plane for Yemen with champagne strapped to their underwear. Homeland security says the system works!

Homeland Security Czar Janet Napolitano shrugged off security lapses on ABC this week defending the work of her agency and associated law enforcement agencies with the statement, "The system worked". Never the less noted White House party crashers Michaele and Tariq Salahi were able to board a flight to Yemen with little tiny airline sized bottles of Corbel stuffed into their underwear this week with nary a peep from security personnel at the airport. "She's one hot biotch", said a security guard who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "I wanted to get a peek down her panties, but we just used that magnetometer instead. I was way disappointed, for sure.", he added.

Vice President Joe Biden was also quick to come to the Salahi's defense. "Look people", he said, "All they did at the White House was swipe a couple of ashtrays. I don't know why you all have to make a Federal case out of this stuff." But a Federal case it has become as it seemed that between the two Salahis, they were able to stuff a case exactly of the tiny bottles around and possibly in their respective private parts. (See skanky underwear photo.) "This crap has got to stop", said another unnamed security official. "Cabin pressure goes up and dem teeny corks start poppin - they coulda put somebody's eye out up there!"' Yemeni officials were quick to confiscate the champagne once the Salahis deplaned and were off to the back room for a big rippin' staff party.

Polo matches in Yemen, an extremely poor country described as a failed state', are rare but the Salahis pointed out that they were on a diplomatic mission from President Barack Obama and the Yemenis bought it. "Yeah, Obama, he's black, you can come in." was heard as the Salahis flashed their American Express cards and cruised right through customs.

For more in Political Satire and Satire see:

White House Party Crashers Board Plane Loaded!

Pope Prays For Embattled Putter's Promiscuous Pecker: Tiger Woods Pardoned

Obama Sends 30,000 Troops to Tiger Woods' House!

Obama's Puppy in Rehab After Just a Week

Recession Profit Stategies II

Recession Profit Strategies I

Bush Surveys Presidential Disaster Area

MENSA Endorses McCain/Palin

Putin Hot As Hell Over Palin

SNL Palin/Hillary Open

Cheney Delivers 1 Billion in Aid to Georgia

Obama Splits Ticket - Boots Biden

Belgian Prime Minister Quits Over Budweiser Purchase

Obama Brandishes a Bud for the Bubbas

American Foreign Policy Since WWII

America Overseas - Citizen Mekong to the Rescue

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish - Steve Jobs commencement address to the Stanford class of 2005

As we evolve out of a decade that the TV news services are lovingly replaying every fucking evening as, 'The Worst Decade Ever' and New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman has dubbed 'The Big Zero' I have finally stumbled on and come to revere a video that has been buzzing about the net for a few years. It is Steve Jobs giving the commencement address to the 2005 graduating class of Stanford University.

And as the naysayers would like to put the shit stamp on most of the last decade it bears reminding that during that time also, Steve Jobs resuscitated Apple, introduced the iPod, iPhone and iTunes and survived both Pancreatic cancer and a liver transplant. His simple telling of just three very personal stories here, in a scant 15 minutes, is a testament to both brevity and resilience. We can all learn from this.

His first story recants his exposure to calligraphy and typography in college and how that eventually found itself into the finesse with which the Macintosh renders type. It reminded me of one of my first loves, taught by Bill Hannon at Black Hawk college in Moline, Illinois. Bill taught calligraphy as taught to him by monks in Europe and although I was terrible at it personally, was privileged to visit a Gutenberg exhibition this year here in Munich. What goes around, comes around. I'm still fascinated by the transcription of the written word. What if Gutenberg had a blog?, I mused this year. Now I have one.

Job's second story is a familiar one to me but one that seems lost or forgotten on all those who are lost or somehow unhappy in their lives. He makes the point about being fortunate to have found something he loved to do very early in life - and I too share that fortunate beginning. From the early ages of my teens I began to combine the elements of words and pictures together into new ideas, first as a cartoonist and writer for school papers and later, after university, in the advertising business. "The only way to do great work, is to find something that you love to do", says Jobs. I wrote about it last year in a story called, "Do what you love, the money will follow" - and it's the only thing that has kept me from selling pipe or driving a truck or making a mess of another career because the love had gone but I still needed the paycheck. This last year my writing on this blog was criticized heavily by someone who said it had no value and was a waste of time. Now, six months later, that person has come to see its value because she has come to realize that the combination of art and commerce is the only way professions work for me. What people need to go through to realize that is sometimes phenomenally difficult. Better to find out as early as possible and just stick with the plan.

The third story related by Jobs is about death, but more importantly about the value of life, inspired most definitely by his own brushes with death, but should ring true to us all before we ever get to a vision of the other side. "Your time is limited", he says, "So don't waste it by living somebody else's life". And this is something I will never need to apologize to anyone for. Whomever I am, whatever I do. It is me. And for those who are comfortable with that, I can gain a friend. And for those who are not, I can put my time towards much more productive use. Here's hoping we can all focus on the positive as this decade turns. Cheers. Stay hungry. Stay foolish. They are the only things in life, and love, that really make any sense.

Last chance for our 2009 reader survey!

As we near the end of what the news services are calling "The Worst Decade Ever" please take a minute to fill out our quick reader survey and help us all get a start on making the next decade, "The Best Decade Ever". Should you have any trouble using the form on this page, just click here and go directly to the survey site. And if you are truly a Friend of the Wild Wild East Dailies, consider joining FOWWED on FaceBook by clicking the link. Cheers all. I'll be reporting results as the New Year rolls around.

Merry Christmas 2009: Nothing much happened (XVII) in Munich today

Ask anyone what is their ideal Christmas and you will get a hundred different ideas. That's certainly what I found when I moved to Korea in 1995. There, even with Christianity being the predominant religion, you were not to have found even the commercialism of the event to have been even remotely close to anything one would have understood from America. The photo to the left is of course not Korea, but Japan, but to me at the time they were both just as foreign. It's just not jolly olde St. Nick or even an image of a baby being born in a manger. It's another world entirely.

And strangely you might think, exactly how I have felt this year spending my first Christmas in Germany. Foreign. Isolated by language and culture, but most of all, without family or friends. I had felt this my first year in Asia as well, but hadn't felt that for the succeeding 14 years. Even in Vietnam there was always the expats get together at an Irish pub of some sort for a big Holiday feed. But here in Germany, the expat community is largely families and the town, at least Munich from what I've seen, just rolls itself up for the holiday. Rows and rows of darkened shop windows roll by as I take the tram home from my holiday food shopping, midday on Christmas Eve. There wasn't going to be even any 'go to the pub and hoist a few brews with your other single mates' on the night before. The Catholicism here is awfully serious. Too serious for me - and I'm Catholic - but maybe not a very good one. This was going to be a solitary Christmas with me and my friendly TV. CNN, BBC, Bloomberg and CNBC only in English. You can forget the traditional holiday films as well. If anything is on, it's in German.

The following story comes from my book Wild Wild East. What I know now is that it was the beginning of the end for my marriage at the time. You find out maybe something you never knew before about a person when they see a holiday differently than you.

Excerpt from Wild Wild East:

By December of 2005 I was not of the opinion that Korea nor my transferring company had been particularly kind to me. Real estate shown to my wife and I was substandard by any estimation and Korea was not exactly a developing country at that point (#18 on the global GDP list as I recall) but it was being sold as such. Wondering why the other two managing partners were driving brand new cars while I was being offered the company president's six year old black sedan never produced any meaningful answers until I queried them on Korean terms. "Who's the president of this company?", I inquired. "Well, Mr. Kwon is of course", replied the company accountant. "And what kind of car does he get?" I queried again. "Well, a Grandeur of course", was the response. Grandeur was the top of the line Hyundai at the time. "And who is the Vice President of this company", I then asked. "You are, sir", said he. "And what kind of car do I get?" "A Grandeur sir, but not as good a one as Mr. Kwon's." And that was it. Battle won. I got a new car. But rather than approach it on logical western terms I had to take it to Korean level. In Korea, your car says who you are and what level you are. I knew that. I just needed to let them know that I knew that. Their insistance that I take a pretty beat 6 year old car wasn't about the money at all. It was about them trying to put me in a lower position than they would have put a countryman. The silly games people play.

After nearly 5 months of bowing at meetings and wrangling over the smallest of details, like the extra $15 a month it cost to put another phone line in for my Internet connection I had about had it with the cultural niceties I was expected to extend to these people. They had been fucking me around entirely and it took a day on a street corner to get my head around that and decide I was mad as hell and just wasn't going to take it any more. I got tired of being the new guy. The new American guy. Now was time to get even. And a little cowboy spirit is just what I needed.

Standing at a large boulevard corner on my walk home from work one day, I found my 5'10.5" frame towering over a throng of black haired, oriental rice-bowl coiffed individuals waiting for the light to change when I had my epihany. "I'ma Merican goddammit! And I want my Budweiser Beer, a Chevy truck and my friggin' home on the friggin' range goddammit!", I bellowed to the inside of my own cranium. Kicking my shoulders back and deciding not to take any shit anymore from these yokels who had so obviously been running me around the cultural Maypole, I found my real self. Tomorrow would be a different day I vowed. Tomorrow I would start to drive the bus the way I wanted to drive it. Straight and with the pedal to the metal.

Christmas was just around the corner and I had done my best to make arrangements with my wife back in the States via email but in 1995 the concept of email was still relatively new even in America and she was not entirely comfortable with using it at all. In fact, she almost never used it. I had asked via mail that she work with our building staff to get a Christmas tree delivered to the house and told her I would be home on Christmas Eve exactly. On the evening of Christmas Eve exactly. We had been involved in getting a McDonald's commercial off the boards and into production at the agency in Seoul and my Christmas preparations, save for buying presents, had been next to nil and I was so looking forward to going back home and dealing with things familiar, even if just for a week, to chill the sounds of chopsticks clacking and the smell of kimchi in office elevators after lunch on a normal day in Korea. I needed Frank Sinatra, the smell of a pine tree and a pot of potpourri simmering on the stove - and to just sit on my own sofa and see the walls of my own house with my own art. I had been living in the Westin Chosun hotel in Seoul for the past five months and whilst a 5-star affair had about zero charm after too many months on the company tab.

Home was needed. Home was missed. Home was where I needed to be for the holidays, in preparation for what would certainly be the next Korean war when I returned to Seoul in the new year and attempted to get a relatively simple storyboard on film without most of the agency or the client screwing it up.

The flight to Chicago from Seoul was never a pleasant one. 11 hours to LA or San Francisco and then the jaunt to Chi Town, or if I was extremely lucky, a nonstop on United directly to the windy city. I don't remember exactly what I got on this trip but what I do remember was that I was very tired when I arrived. My life had become a twenty-four-hour marathon of communication from the home office when I was in Korea and the reverse from Korea when I was in Chicago. Basically, I never knew when to sleep.

Arriving at 2300 Lincoln Park West was never much of a homecoming affair - what with my global traveling schedule becoming a routine thing, my wife and I had given up airport meetings years ago. If she had to come to the airport everytime I had a flight arriving she'd never have had much time at home. We had adopted the roles of respectable D.I.N.K.S. with both of our professional schedules taking up all the time that we would allow. Little did I know that my wife was to have allowed more time for her professional endeavors that year than even I had and I was just about to find out exactly how much that was, and what impact it would have on my perception of Christmas in 1995.

A hello to our top-hatted doorman at The Belden Stratford, a waltz past the never-played Steinway grand and it was up to 801 for my now ubiquitous international Hi-honey-I'm-home! "Hi honey, I'm home!" I chimed as I opened the front door to a house that looked suspiciously just like the one I had visited just months before. No tree. Not a Christmas decoration to be seen. No music and certainly no potpourri simmering on our stove. Oh, simmering is just what I was beginning to experience.

A hug and a kiss on the cheek from my seemingly preoccupied wife, she explained to me that she was working on the computer crunching out some design for the public relations firm she was working for. Burson Marsteller it was. Weren't we the successful couple? Me a globetrotting Vice President at Leo Burnett and she a senior designer with the largest PR firm in town. Fucking perfect we were. Fucking perfect yuppies we were. Disgustingly perfect. And that would turn out to be precisely the problem this Eve of Christmas.

"Honey, where's the Christmas tree?" I inquired. A stream of I've-been-so-busy-at-work drivel hit the air and I was like, "huh?". Did I just get off a plane from the other side of the world and was I being told that she didn't have the time to get a Christmas tree up here by a few minutes at the front desk of our more than tenant friendly apartment building? Fuck that. Complete crap. I couldn't believe it. Didn't she have any idea just how cold and foreign my surroundings had been for the past few months and how much it meant for me to be welcomed home with at least what I thought was the familiar and traditional feeling of Christmas during the holiday? Apparently not.

"What was she thinking?", I was thinking. And the answer to that was simple. She was not thinking. At least not of the value of our holiday in relation to whatever corporate assignment had been keeping her busy. Bollocks.

I dropped my gear, donned a pair of jeans and stormed out the front door in a huff. Jezziz. I have to travel half way around the friggin' globe just to get a Christmas tree in this joint? Yes, I did. And so I did. I was down to the corner lot and after shelling out a pack of twenties , dragging my own Christmas tree back to my needing to be, happier home. This was not James Stewart going home to Donna Reed. This was no Wonderful Life. I was pretty pissed off, but dragging a Christmas tree home will help you burn off quite a bit of steam and I know I was fine by the time I returned. We decorated the tree that night but that was to be the beginning of the end of that marriage. Conflicting priorities. Dual working couple pressures and international timezone mismatches would take their toll in the months to follow, but what had become abundantly clear by this time is that I had been growing a different skin while in Korea and she had kept the same old one. I had been taking in massive amounts of new information and she had simply stayed in the same place and was doing more and more of the same thing. Instead of growing together, we were growing apart and in the end, that's what will inevitably write an end for itself. You don't even need to do the writing. It's on the wall after awhile. All you need to do is read it.

This year in Germany had a similar flavor to that past time but in this case the reason's and personal circumstances were completely different. What began as two of us working towards a common goal in our travels away from Vietnam, has become two people working on their individual pursuits with little or no accommodation for the other in daily life. I would very much like to see that be different again but my partner of past has a lot of understanding of her own about her own self to accomplish before she can allow much thinking for another in her life. At one point she complained that I complained about not being able to spend Christmas together. "You know, I hardly ever had a Christmas where I got to spend it with my mom and dad", she said, "and I never complained". How do you teach a person about a warm Christmas together with the people close to you, if they've never experienced one? The only thing one can wish for is a chance to do it someday. That one will have to be left in God's hands this year - as well it should. That's what Christmas is really all about. The hand of God.

Today's solo meal of Braised Lamb Chops with Balsamic Reduction was complimented by Grilled Eggplant topped with a Spicy Avocado Relish Coulis that was slightly chunky and crunchy as opposed to pureed. Yummy. The only thing that would have made it better would have been sharing it. Merry Christmas all. Bon appetite. Time for me to do the dishes.

Tiger Woods Pardoned: Pope Prays for Promiscuous Pussy Pandering Putter

In a surprise announcement, Pope Benedict XVI has issued a global edict for prayer for Tiger Woods and has pardoned the embattled putter for his pandering promiscuous behaviour with his pecker in a gesture of forgiveness this Christmas season.

The Pope's love of golf and the beloved Papal golf cart seemed to be at the heart of his appeal. "Oh, Lord spare the Woods. Oh Lord spare the irons. Oh Lord spare the putter with a plan to sink every hole all over this land!", invoked the Pontiff. "Amen". Calls to the Woods' camp were not immediately returned but getting a pardon from the Pope at this more than prickly juncture in his career is certainly a sign of props being lauded on possibly the most successful fleece flocker since Jesus.

"Shit, the Lord hisself couldn't even get Nike sponsorship", said the Vatican's chief black PR guy. "We've been jealous of that prick since he showed up. Maybe by giving him a get-out-of-jail free card he'll invite us to a soiree or two with some of dem hot blonde ho's he's got". "I got Cardinals all over my ass for this dammit", he continued. The Catholic Church has endured strong criticism of late for pardoning priests involved in questionable sexual activities, namely the passing over of pedophile pastors accused of playing with pre-pubescent parishioners for personal gain.

"That's preposterous", claimed another Vatican spokesperson. "Our Priests like little boys. That golfer is pumping his putter into old ladies! It's like comparing green apples and red apples. They're not even the same." Claims that the church is in denial over their views on sexual promiscuity were quickly denied by sources close to the Pope.

Tiger, you got a pass from the big guy. Go for it.

For more in Political Satire and Satire see:

White House Party Crashers Board Plane Loaded!

Pope Prays For Embattled Putter's Promiscuous Pecker: Tiger Woods Pardoned

Obama Sends 30,000 Troops to Tiger Woods' House!

Obama's Puppy in Rehab After Just a Week

Recession Profit Stategies II

Recession Profit Strategies I

Bush Surveys Presidential Disaster Area

MENSA Endorses McCain/Palin

Putin Hot As Hell Over Palin

SNL Palin/Hillary Open

Cheney Delivers 1 Billion in Aid to Georgia

Obama Splits Ticket - Boots Biden

Belgian Prime Minister Quits Over Budweiser Purchase

Obama Brandishes a Bud for the Bubbas

American Foreign Policy Since WWII

America Overseas - Citizen Mekong to the Rescue

What's Wrong With My Social Networking? Nothing Much Happened (XVI) In München Today

I had gone through the day wandering between a headache and a toothache, a chicken and egg scenario possibly, but on further investigation the toothache has been more of a molar sensitivity that's come over the last couple of months and the headache I'm sure, was brought on with just a few glasses of truly wretched wine the night before procured at my local Tengleman's at a now understood why special Aktion! price. In Germany, the word Aktion! is used all over stores to denote 'on sale' items. Germans like Aktion! I could have used a little less Aktion! yesterday. But I nursed the alternating pains all day long in preparation for my first real networking foray into the Munich business community, a night sponsored by Xing, the social networking community I had not so favourably reviewed in my previous post.

Being new to Xing I had taken care the night before to have sent out 'hellos' to my measly 26 friends on the new service to let them know I would be attending the Christmas Party that night in hopes that I would meet a few real people and take myself out of the digital social network that has been my respite since winter set in a few weeks ago. Munich is now a snowy wonderland and that's only nice if you have a sled or cross country skis - otherwise it just makes you want to stay inside, stay warm and fret over the number of Twitter followers you've lost.

For those not familiar with Xing, Xing, founded in Hamburg and the largest social network in Europe, is the primary competitor to LinkedIn with 5-7 million subscribers vs. LinkedIn's 20 million or so but where Xing seems to shine particularly is in that they take great care to cultivate local networks and stage events that get the networking out of the computer and into a real context. This is particularly valuable to me having moved to a new country and needing real friends as opposed to just virtual ones and old college pals.

Sure, I have over 350 'friends' on Facebook and a similar number of 'contacts' on LinkedIn, but how often do I ever see any of those people? Almost never. Meeting just one of my 26 new Xing contacts would be better than not meeting anyone at all. The Christmas party was promoted to me by a few folks on Xing and came at a quite reasonable €10 price with a free drink and pizza. Why not?

I filled out the handy order form at home the night before and paid by PayPal. Confirmation happened in less than a minute and I printed out my e-ticket right there at the desk. Positively painless - quite unlike my tooth and my head would be the next day.

Ready to rock. Of to the party at P1, whatever P1 would turn out to be. P1 is located at Prinzregentenstrasse 1, which when you walk down the street, you won't find. What you will find is a huge building that is the Haus der Kunst museum, currently housing an Ai WeiWei exhibit and decorated in a hanging mural made of Chinese backpacks that spell out something in Chinese that sure looks nice but we have no idea what it means. It means it's an art museum, I suppose. Ai WeiWei is most well known for his inspiration for the main Olympic stadium in Beijing nicknamed 'the Birdsnest' and this collection seems to be piles of wood based on a similar thinking. So I enter the museum to figure out where I am. I am told that I am indeed at Prinzregentenstrasse 1 but need to go around back and down underneath the place. Which I do. The picture here is not P1 or the museum. It's just a picture of a nice building that typifies much of Munich.

Black velvet ropes and big bouncers decorate the opening and point around yet another corner to the special entrance for this event. My e-ticket is scanned and I am welcomed. No sloppy stamps on my hand, no hospital bracelets.

Once inside I realize that this place is huge. 380 people had confirmed attendance on the Xing invitation page and there seemed to be even more than that. Room #1 sported 2 bars, with the main room, 2 storeys high, housing a DJ and no less than 6 bars, all working. The third and fourth rooms turned out to be more intimate and the last one condusive to smoking. All nice, but thematically boring. Big, but I've been to more interesting clubs in Saigon and Seoul.

Nothing interesting here. Back to the main hall. 6 giant video screens show the Xing logo and no video whatsoever. The expansive lighting system hung far above our heads with the obligatory Gothic chandelier at one end seems to have the capability of launching missiles but it is not used - just the dead thud thud of house versions of some of the worst of what the eighties had to offer. Huh, the eighties? Yup complete with Sade segues to remixes of Eye of the Tiger and Footloose. I'm not shitting you. Sade was real, I do remember, but the rest of it was so horribly dated or forgettable that I think I needed to forget it just to get back to that headache that had a better beat than whatever they were playing.

Time for pizza. The pizza by Hugo's of Munich was nice but a bit thin with just a slathering of tomato sauce, cheese and a little prosciutto and arugula on top. I killed four pieces, easy.

Walking back to the lounge area 3 girls with the look and feel of the Andrew Sisters were setting up on the stage and it seemed worth the time to have a smoke in back and wait for their start. Have I mentioned that I was bored shitless and not meeting anybody at all? What's that all about? Well I suppose it's all about age. And that's something I had not really accounted for in moving to Europe from Asia at this point in time. Sure, I'm fifty three, but for the past 15 years I've been living in countries where the average age is 26 in Vietnam and 34 in Korea. Geez. It's 45 plus here in Germany. That means it's full of me. Icky. This crowd was forty to fifty something with thirtysomethings in the minority and white as the interior of the bar we were in. A white club? Yep. For white people. Lots and lots of old white people. Oh, impeccably dressed and not a person of colour in the place. Seriously. I saw three or four Asians but aside from that it was like a page from that wretched book 'Things White People Like' - all bad. And I'm white. The Andrew Sisters got going and whilst their harmonies were perfect and charming, watching old white people thrill to the sounds of It Came Upon A Midnight Clear and Silent Night was not exactly what I had had in mind for the evening.

Back in the club room, men of my age, but in much worse shape than I, were starting to shed their coats and pull out their shirttails. I knew it was just a matter of time before they started using their ties as bandanas.

Time for a drink. Using my free drink ticket I was handed a Vodka tonic that I must say was heavy on the Vodka. I was going to need to be completely plastered for any of this to have been any fun. But that was not to happen. Thank gawd. I spent the rest of my time looking for anybody who looked remotely like the photos they had posted on the Xing website but to no avail. They all looked the same. And they danced horribly. By 10:30 the light show had still not materialized and I had arrived around eight.

Time to go. One thing I had not been prepared for in this move from East to West was the sheer wall that the lack of German language would present to me. You might think that a wall like that is much higher in Asia, but I assure you it is not. Even Ai WeiWei writes in English on the museum's blog. So it works like this: In Asia I look western so nobody expects me to speak Vietnamese, Chinese or Korean - although I do stumble through a bit of Korean when I need to. But here in Germany I could just as well be German, so they expect that I speak German. And I don't. This has made me oddly shy in public situations. I never felt like this in Asia because I knew, that they knew, that I did not speak the language. Here I don't have that advantage - so I am at a disadvantage from the get-go. Yes, many Germans speak English, but this is not Berlin, this is Bavaria. You rarely hear much English on the street.

Going home I was almost relieved to be heading towards a social network that I could communicate with - my computer. Something sad about that, isn't there?

As far as Xing and their conspicuous lack of visual fun on the site or at the club, they would do well to take a look at P1's website, it's a whole lot more fun than I found the club itself and Xing could use a little zing on their site.

Once home, and back at the computer I did a little research into the club and found that I had just spent an evening at Munich's premier nightclub - the place where famous personalities and football players go. Paris Hilton has been there. And Princess Stephanie of Monaco, reportedly turned away. Who knew? And the rap on the place is that it's impossibly expensive (€15 for a Coke) and impossible to get into - the bouncers shooing away anybody who doesn't look like they belong on the cover of a magazine or in a porn video.

Yes, I do look like David Bowie, but that doesn't hardly get you into a club these days. now does it? Any self-respecting bouncer at a really hot club in Asia would say 'Who's David Bowie' and he'd be dead right. It got me into Spago once, Wolfgang Puck's infamous West Hollywood eatery that was perched above Sunset. They weren't sure so they let me in anyway when I replied, 'David' to the maitre d' in an English accent. when asked my name. I sat next to Timothy Hutton and two phenomenally hot Brazilian models. I ate something good.

Guess those days are over. Now I get into really old Xing parties in Munich with an e-ticket. Sometimes technology just takes all the fun out of things. I need more Aktion! Less Xing.

For more on digital marketing and social networking see:

Xing vs. LinkedIn: Round II
Trial and Error: The New Normal
What's Wrong With My Social Networking? Xing vs. LinkedIn I
Low Tech Germany. Who Knew?
Advertising People and Blogs
How to Write the Best Blog in the World
What If Gutenberg Had a Blog?
If Blogs Are Free Does That Make Them Worthless?
Detri-Viral Marketing II: The Top 10 Social Media Blunders
Bright Lights, Big Internet and the WWED
Saigon Digital Marketing Conference Successfully Avoids Plumbers Convention
A Tale of Many Marketing Conferences
Detri-Viral Marketing I: How Web 2.0 Can Go Against A Brand
Marketing Predictions for 2009
Barcamp Saigon 2008
"Ignore Everybody" is Born: A Plug for Hugh MacLeod
Are the Bloggerati Missing the Market? Asia has Risen,
Into the Gapinvoid - Web 2.0 Social Networking Born 20 Years Ago

Low Tech Germany? Who Knew? Xing vs. LinkedIn, round I

Let me get this straight? The most popular business website in Germany doesn't connect with LinkedIn, FaceBook, Twitter or twat-all? Yup. Welcome to Xing. Which is about like having a slingshot that slaps you back in the face every time you try to fire a social network pebble. Living in Asia will really fuck you over digitally. It just kicks the shit out of most of the west. Xing is positively low-tech and definitely not web 2.0. It's static, doesn't incorporate any of your other SN sites and basically just sits there. Trouble is, everyone else is on it. It has nothing for message boards, crap for groups and doesn't give me squat. Except parties. Tomorrow night I'm going to a party with 380 returned guests at €10 a pop. Just one free drink and pizza. But a ton of great looking (female) attendees. Low tech, for sure. But I've never been to a LinkedIn party. Cool. I can Xing. "Hi Wilma, can I chisel my name into a little business card stone for you?", sez Fred to the fetching wench?

For more on digital marketing and social networking see:

Xing vs. LinkedIn: Round II
Trial and Error: The New Normal
What's Wrong With My Social Networking? Xing vs. LinkedIn I
Low Tech Germany. Who Knew?
Advertising People and Blogs
How to Write the Best Blog in the World
What If Gutenberg Had a Blog?
If Blogs Are Free Does That Make Them Worthless?
Detri-Viral Marketing II: The Top 10 Social Media Blunders
Bright Lights, Big Internet and the WWED
Saigon Digital Marketing Conference Successfully Avoids Plumbers Convention
A Tale of Many Marketing Conferences
Detri-Viral Marketing I: How Web 2.0 Can Go Against A Brand
Marketing Predictions for 2009
Barcamp Saigon 2008
"Ignore Everybody" is Born: A Plug for Hugh MacLeod
Are the Bloggerati Missing the Market? Asia has Risen,
Into the Gapinvoid - Web 2.0 Social Networking Born 20 Years Ago