Thanks Alfred E.

There was a time in Australian aviation history when we had a two airline duopoly and airfares were heading into the stratosphere with no sign of ever coming down. It was a time when $500 dollars would hardly get you interstate let alone returned. It was a time when Greyhound in its halcyon days, had people changing into pyjamas to take overnight trips interstate. It was a time when only the largest corporations afforded corporate travel and you knew most of the people in the Qantas lounge.

Today we fly in unregulated skies where competition rules and you have the choice of where you spend your money and where you risk your life. Those unregulated skies are a tribute to Alfred E Kahn who passed away recently, aged 93. It was Alfred E working under the Carter administration who courageously tackled the Civil Aeronautics Board in 1978 to deregulate the US airline industry and bring in a competitive open sky environment that eventually made its way to Australia. Under protection of the old US board, airlines were guaranteed a 12% return on flights that were 55% full. Even the worst run airlines and there were a lot, could make money under those circumstances.

The eventual deregulation in 1978 made it possible for new carriers to fly the skies and Southwest, Jetblue and much later our own LCCs Virgin Blue and Jetstar were born. Competition increased and along with providing lower fares and the birth of the budget traveller it also created financial woes for the legacy carriers operating in the open sky policy. Some airlines disappeared and many were cut down to size once the dollar ruled. Alfred E had most of them pegged right when he saw planes as "marginal costs with wings" and the shake out continues today with many legacy carriers still looking for partners to survive, as witnessed by mergers like the recent United, Continental pairing.

When carriers like Southwest and our own Compass (mark 1 & 2) decided to fly the deregulated skies they not only went after the legacy carrier passengers but also after the bus and car passengers who could not believe they could now fly interstate, for the price of a tank of petrol. The halcyon days of bus travel were over and a new niche market of traveller came into their own. Pyjamas and pillows were eventually left behind as bus passengers realised how much time they had spent sitting next to the toilet in abject darkness on long trips and that Melbourne was now only an hour away.

Without Alfred E we would still be saving up for that interstate trip or worse packing the PJs for that long overnighter.

Thanks Alfred E.

The Good Old Days.

Over the Christmas period, talk often heads in the direction of "the good old days" referring to a range of things that have been embellished with time and story telling. Eyes glaze over for anyone under 20 years for as far as they are concerned every day is a "good old day".

With everything available to everyone all the time it's hard to wonder what the "good old days" actually looked like. Things that caused problems revolved around communication and information and people feeling left in the dark and anxious about their future.

If you arrived on earth from space today, you would wonder what they were talking about as communication has exploded while information is available everywhere, all the time, on everything. So no one should feel like they are in the dark and anxious about the future, or should they?

Will the Y's and the I's talk about the good old days 20 years from now? What will they talk about? Will it be the fact that there were still mysteries to be solved and everything about everything was not known, will it be about still having privacy and not having the world know everything about you or will they just talk about what libraries used to be for? The speed of innovation and immersion in information today makes two decades equivalent to a century.

So will the next great super group pass by in 6 months and not have the decades long influence of the Beatles? Will the TV season be 4 weeks and every episode of your favorite show is streamed to your smartphone (what will that look like) every 10 minutes because your attention span has withered to 5 minutes max? Will you finally be able to teleport to London and not worry about Heathrow snow spoiling your travel plans?

No matter what era, people will always be talking and telling stories about "good old days". Details will vary but as long as the story telling doesn't stop we will retain the humanity that keeps us coming together for many Christmas' to come and that is the joy of the season.

For those interested, the research labs from Google, IBM and the world congress of libraries, along with historians and linguists have now pinpointed a specific weekend in 1962 as THE "good old days".

It was a temperate 25 degrees, Elvis was alive and the Beatles were just coming into their own, the future contained hope and people were rewarded for a hard days work. Strangers greeted you on the street, men were men and women were women and there were only four TV stations to choose from. Until 11.55pm the study also confirmed the radio was keeping us fit twisting to Chubby Checker during these two "good old days".

Messages on Hold.

I catch the Manly ferry to and from work and the trip is a wonder on one of the most beautiful harbours in the world. Recently the Sydney Ferries authority decided to put in large screen TVs to entertain the travellers. I'm a TV watcher from my early days but I have come to appreciate the times away from the box and the commercial advertising that runs rampant throughout the programming. So I'm not sure I really need to watch one more commercial while the harboor vista goes unnoticed.

Advertisers will tell you they have only the best interests of the public in mind and that they have relevant products to sell. The problem is, they believe this and thus continue to affront the public and add to the mountain of messages that overwhelm the senses. It is rare to stand out in this barrage of noise and no matter how loud they shout the analogy of the marketing people in a stadium of 100,000 people all screaming for their football team makes sure no one hears anything.

Research shows that the average person encounters about 1,000,000+ marketing messages per year, with some claiming even higher figures of up to 5,000 per day, making it 1,800,000 messages assaulting our senses. Thirty years ago Yankelovich, the company credited with coining the phrase "baby boomers", estimated that figure was below 2,000 a day, so we are probably getting the extra 3,000 before we get to work.

For people in large metropolis', according to Neilsen, this can equate to 6 hours of media attention daily and then the question is asked, how do we have time to do any work?

My golf game is not noteworthy and the enjoyment of taking the ball out of the hole should not be clouded by reading a marketing message in the cup. Nor should I be sold a product while at a bathroom stall. No one wants to annoy the customer, so it's a fine line between engagement and stalking.

So where do we draw the line? I don't think we have any idea as the channels for marketing and distribution increase daily, along with the technology to sell products to every niche market, no matter how small. The future will see interactive marketing where you will only need to touch the TV or an ad of sorts if you like the product and it will be sent to you, so I guess the ferry TV is the least of my worries. There is no marketing arena out of the question as the Pizza Hut logo attached to the Russian space craft attests.

So as I gaze out of the ferry window I'm hoping I don't see an ad sailing by because I'm full now and I have another 1000 to digest before I get to the office!

What's in a Name?

A one followed by a 1000 zeros. Single words that mean nothing. Fruit. Nouns that become verbs.

I grew up in the 70s and 80s and there were no shortages of hippy, rock star, celebrity children who couldn't wait to get to 18 and change their names by deed poll. As the world population explodes, original names must be harder to come by as witnesses by the spelling craze and the creativity people use to try and make their kids and themselves stand out from the crowd. My favourite at the moment, comes from New Zealand where parents named their child "Talula Does the Hula from Hawaii" but thankfully Judge Rob Murfitt deemed it inappropriate and thought it was setting her up for social disability and handicap and ordered the parents to reconsider.

The shortage of great business names also seems to bring out the creativity that sometimes works and sometimes set you up for failure. Sure the "Bologna Boutique", "Drain Surgeons" and "Dick Wood Hardware" may get you into the funny signs on the net but what does it do for your business?

The net has spawned a million names for a million sites but few make it into the vernacular and become verbs of recognition. What means something to you means nothing to the rest of the world, so how do you come up with that magical monicker to make you stand out? The noise can be incredible and just because you shout loudly doesn't mean you'll be heard. Do you remember Whooping Goldberg and flooz.com, DigiScent iSmell, Beenz, neither do I but they had millions spent on them and their names disappeared as quickly as their companies.

Business experts concentrate on the obvious and say your name should identify you and what you do and how you do it. That works for Sam's Deli but if you offer other services than making, baking or building, the search for that hook becomes more difficult. Other experts say names need to be memorable, easy to spell, have a visual element with a positive connotation along with information on the business.

Okay then what was Google, Virgin, Bing and Apple thinking?

Whenever a new company starts and decides on a business name, marketing campaigns to grow awareness are used so people try them out but if the product does not deliver, no amount of marketing will save you. To stand out from the crowd your product has to be singularly spectacular or swimming in a blue ocean where you are the only one offering that product or service. Both difficult to achieve but even harder if you can't find that special identifying monicker.

The last word from the experts Is to remain short, so I'm thinking of copyrighting "O" for any future business ventures that may come my way, what do you think? I wonder if I copyright it in every country, will they have to take the letter out of the alphabet or even better, I get paid every time it's used.

The last word should come from our friends across the Tasman where Judge Murfitt used common sense with "Talula" but the system was okay with naming kids "Midnight Chardonnay" or worse, "Number 16 Bus Shelter".

What happened in that shelter is nobody's business.

Show Off.

You remember the peacocks in school, the drama students, the high profile jocks and the "In" crowd all vying for attention from the general population? Those not included wished for the dizzying heights of attention but had nothing to offer and no avenue to market themselves, after all we were only 12 years old. Things change and today the plethora of marketing and social avenues available to highlight your personality and mega watt smile gives everyone the chance to stand out.

An adjunct to this profile escalation has been the scope of perception about people who like to stand out, individually and in groups. Back in the school yard if someone thought of you as a show off and a drip you really only had to worry if that got into print in the school newspaper or it affected you getting a new girlfriend, as your circle of friends and influence was small. You could always move schools if the affects were too traumatic or hope that high school would give you a new opportunity to find your true self. Today that circle can easily be global without you thinking about it and perceptions of you quickly spread without you knowing about it.

So it was with interest that I read a recent survey on Facebook by research firm Mytype on perceptions of iPad users. The survey of over 20,000 Facebook users looked into the personality traits, values, demographics and interests that drive differences in opinion about the new wonder tablet.

The survey found owners to be "selfish, elitist and valuing power" and I'm wondering how I feel about that as I type this blog on my iPad? It did also go on to say they were highly educated and sophisticated so I feel somewhat vindicated about my choice of technology. The point being we have absolutely no control over what people do and don't think or say about us as a group member or individual on the net.

In other research Facebook users in general, came in for a drubbing as being self promoting narcissistic show offs who frequently update their profiles to get more friends and gain notoriety. How cool is it to finally be part of the "In" crowd?

So the school yard has gone global and shifted to online and we all get a chance to show off but the downside of negative perceptions that can result from this, don't give us the chance to change schools or hope for high school redemption because the net never forgets, so be careful what you wish for. It may affect more than getting a new girlfriend.

Oprah.

At a wedding on the weekend I overheard a conversation at the next table, where people were discussing Oprah's activities in Sydney and one girl interjected and asked whether Oprah was in the country? I looked over and she was serious and it got me wondering how it was possible the girl didn't know about the world's greatest sales woman being in Australia?

There hasn't been a media channel, no matter how trivial, that hasn't picked up on the Oprah cavalcade of stars and audience members in Australia, from watching koalas mate to climbing the bridge. Interestingly no one asked the girl but I suspect she was not interested in the daily minutiae of life, especially when it concerned the comings and goings of global celebrities. Who doesn't want to know about Oprah?

Hard to imagine not watching the news or picking up a paper, let alone surfing the web or tweeting you just saw Oprah at the corner store because we have been inundated with so many Oprah sightings that Elvis comes to mind. Oprah, still in the global top 10 of twitterers with over 4.5 million followers isn't too worried that the wedding girl didn't know about her but I was still fascinated.

The Wedding girl didn't look like a cliched hippy drop out not interested in society or its news cycle, the pearls and little black dress weren't exactly Nimbin wear, so it has to be a conscious effort to avoid either the news or gossip and sound bites. Either way it's an impressive effort on her part and I don't know if I'm not a little jealous because the detritous of the day's information cycle certainly gets in the way of real stuff like peace in the middle east and what the banks are charging for their latest fees.

So can you really avoid the media storm of information or is there special training we could take so as to listen and interact with only the most important facts, aimed at us as individuals? A colleague of mine recently had his hearing tested because he thought he was going deaf while listening to his girlfriend but not hearing everything. It turns out his hearing was perfect and his doctor suggested he just pay more attention when his girl was talking.

Maybe that was the wedding girl and she really only paid attention when it concerned her and her interests. That kind of attention span again, is impressive if you can harness it and make it work for you. At this moment in time we are probably at a global peak of media disruptions and interruptions causing us to look in every direction for what interests us the most. So if you could harness all your energy and concentration, imagine how much you could get done?

Did you hear Oprah's was just sighted on the harbour?

Now what was I just doing?

Where do you work best?

Likely the answer to that question isn't at work. Work doesn't always happen at work because we aren't tied to a manufacturing line or mindset. We have come a long way from the Ford production line, now staffed by robots, where people had to go to make things. A long time ago I worked in the steelworks in Port Kembla making steel ingots before heading off to University because I figured out real quick I wasn't suited to grime, heat and low wages, that was also the last time I made something at work. Work has changed so dramatically that it's hard to think of any friends or colleagues who make anything and that statement should tell you all you need to know about today's so called "work".

Work today is about thinking, creating, relationships and keeping the customer satisfied. The issue, not much of that occurs at work, as it's rare to find the uninterrupted time to accomplish your chosen tasks. Between meetings and management the hours in a "work" day are quickly whittled down to where you rarely get to finish that list you started in the morning.

If you ask people where they work, they will likely give you a range of locations, many away from work. Working with a morning coffee on the terrace or sailing to work on the ferry are two good options for me. Other colleagues love a laptop in the park, the time before their work doors open, the ubiquitous coffee shop and any transport that doesn't rattle them around to much. It's interesting to note how much gets done outside the so called "work" hours.

What all this goes to show is the adaption we have had to make for all the interruptions we encounter at work. The old management adage of "if I can't see you, then I don't know if you are working" has seen its day and management is slowly coming to grips with work practices for the next decade. You need your people to feel they have the freedom to create, innovate and provide solutions for your company wherever they feel the most comfortable and that may not be at "work".

A major bank building a new facility for its staff has decided it will hot desk the whole building to save on costs and because it has researched and realised that staff don't always do their best work at work. They have 6000 staff for the building but have decided to provide only 4000 hot desks knowing that one third of staff will always be away from the office doing their best work somewhere else.

Where are you working now?

Lentil Burgers.

In the 60s psychologist and LSD advocate Timothy Leary coined an oft used phrase that appealed to many trying to get away from a world moving too fast with too much innovation and change, " Turn on, Tune in, Drop out". Hippiedom became a solid movement and isolated sunny villages around the world found themselves the destination of choice for free love and children named Rainbow and Moonbeam. All those hippies eventually had to grow up and became lawyers and stock brokers but some stayed because the world kept moving at a pace they didn't want to keep up with.

It's a stretch but I think we are approaching a blip in the societal chart where once again we are moving so fast with innovation, expectations, privacy disruption and global disharmony that some people will tick the "hippy" box and opt out. Everyone talks about expectations around response, connectivity, always being available and not having any "me" time. World turmoil is encountered at every touch point with no escaping the technology steamroller chasing you.

Halcyon days of summer wine and long afternoons come to mind when people reminisce about the "good old days" before the treadmill was turned up to high speed. So is it any wonder the thought process still exists to find those places where you can open your mind and not have it filled by channels of change, disruption and people "poking" you at every opportunity.

The biggest problem to people wanting to drop out is where to go? All the good spots were taken up in the 60s and 70s and have now become established communities like Nimbin where Moonbeam is now the school principal and Rainbow is the local council member.

So if you had your choice, do you have that spot in mind where peace reigns and you can open yourself up to nature? Is it still achievable in a world expecting so much of you? Is it in your diary or in your 5 year plan? Like everything in life and business, if you don't have a plan then it won't come to fruition.

The issue being that even just dropping out requires deep thought on how to survive and live the life you dream of in that coastal shack. How do you do life's little errands like banking, communicating in case of emergency, paying for things, where do you get your smokes (yes those ones) and what else will you do for entertainment once the your friends go back to work?

Why not just take your phone? If the hippies had smart phones in the 60s they would no doubt still be happily living in the hills ordering over the phone and having the Fed Ex guy deliver. Now where is that old tie dye T shirt?

Airline bashing.

I have a late model car that works whenever I turn the key on. It has 4 tyres and lots of turning and spinning engine stuff. In fact it has so many moving parts I am in awe that it doesn't break down after every trip I take. I have become used to it's reliability but know deep down that one day not to far in the future, something will go wrong and the car won't go. Just like that, some little thing will bring it to it's knees and I won't be able to get to where I need to be. Certainly nothing unusual about that and it would be hard to find anyone who hasn't had car troubles in their lives.

I mention the above with the view that we expect things to go wrong when there are approximately 10,000 moving parts in a car all fighting each other to get you from A to B.

So why do airlines like Qantas, with who knows how many moving parts, get so much grief when they have engine or electrical troubles? Is it the 33,000 feet altitude? Is it the 500 back seat drivers? Do people really think nothing will ever break down? Or is it simply fun to poke at our national icons, especially when they are down? We are after all a country of so called larrikins making sure no one gets to the top without some hazing. Staying there is another matter altogether.

Certainly the safety aspect of pulling up on the roadside is preferable to plunging to your death at 700 kilometres an hour. Yet all the records show it is safer to fly than drive your car. So what is it that drives the emotional level so high when it comes to air safety? It's the same as rare shark attacks which are less common than death by bee stings because the sensational side of the story is more gripping than the truth.

So Qantas won't win the media war highlighting its mechanical hiccups. With over 5600 domestic and international flights a week Qantas makes my car trips insignificant and I know that my tyres at least would need replacing, not to mention having to fill the wiper fluid countless times.

To take those numbers into consideration and admit it's a staggering task keeping all that equipment running smoothly is all they ask, after all you don't write a letter of complaint to your car manufacturer every time the car has a mechanical issue. So stop the shark spotting and marvel at the accomplishment of getting those buses with wings to 33,000 feet and their final destinations.