Big Mac Index

A week or so ago, a USB report charted an alternative to The Economist Magazine’s Burgernomics by indexing the number of minutes on average spread over 12 professions that a person needs to work to buy a McDonald’s Big Mac (just less than 40 minutes is the global average.)

This is the type of alternative communication tool destination marketing organizations need to adapt to help convey and make relevant to public officials the tax-generation role of community marketing.

Source: The Economists Magazine's Video on Burgernomics, Fast Company Newsletter, USB

Town Gown Relations

I’ve always wondered where the stigma comes from that Duke and Durham relations are “strained.” It just isn’t supported by any facts I can find. Never has been in my 20+ years here, nor in what I’ve read historically. It is quite the opposite.

But I can think of 5 conditions that may perpetuate the misperceptions picked up in news media or the Princeton Review:

• Outspokenness and Activism: Part of Durham’s overarching community brand is activism, and activists are outspoken and a bit “rough and tumble.” So when Duke, as one of the largest employers in the state, blinks an eye, there is bound to be debate. That’s just Durham. Members of the Duke community are part of this activism. But that doesn’t equate to strained relations. On the contrary, it means there is trust enough to be open and direct.
  


• UNC Alums: Duke’s archrival is a public university, many times larger in student body located in Chapel Hill, a close neighbor of Durham’s. Surveys show, about 20% of Durham residents are UNC fans and 5.4% of Durham’s adult population are graduates of UNC. The racket made when some carry these athletic rivalries and “put-downs” into other conversations can create the illusion that Durham isn’t true (dark) blue.
  
  
• Non-Residents Working in Durham: Three out of every five jobs in Durham are held by non-residents. Only about a third of these non-residents are negative about Durham, but one in ten are virulently negative. To those unfamiliar, these comments appear to reflect a rift between Durham and Duke.
  
  
• Contrasts: Durham is at or near the top as a place where Duke graduates settle. Durham is very socio-economically diverse. Not all Durham residents are poor and not all Duke students are rich. But to some, including the news media in particular, exaggerating the contrasts is irresistible. Add to that a good deal of envy from other parts of the state because Duke and Research Triangle Park are based in Durham, and there’s a little tension, not infrequently misattributed as tension between Duke and Durham.
  

There just aren’t many facts that support that there is strain between Duke and Durham nor are these the only reasons for the illusion there is.

But in my opinion, I see no other community where officials and neighborhoods and a major world-class university work so closely together. I see no other where the students are more likely to be involved in community service. I see no other where the university makes such huge investments to support community initiatives.

I’ve looked for this so-called town-gown strain and it just doesn’t amount to much. But we all know stigmas die hard.

Importance of Getting Off To A Great Start

I think of him whenever I see or hear about young children without daily interaction with adults during formative years, especially young boys with no male influence and how that can impact society. I think of how extraordinarily blessed I was.

He was only in his 50’s then and to me, he resembled General, then-President Eisenhower.

He wore khaki, head to toe and a Stetson and he always smelled like coffee. He had homesteaded, raised cattle, loved and trained horses but from my birth through grade school, my Grandfather was my constant companion. I mean every hour of every waking day, except Sunday.

Watching him train horses, I could tell he was a gentle man but I learned as an adult that my paternal Grandfather, Mel Bowman had homesteaded his 160 acres, just after the turn of the last century and then assembled a ranch of more than a thousand Idaho acres of both cattle and horse ranch and related farmland needed to generate feed for these animals along Sand and Snow Creeks (pronounced Cricks.)

Somebody else owns that land now but it is still tucked up in that corner of Idaho, framed on the North and East by the mountains of the Continental Divide, Yellowstone Park and the Grand Tetons and straddling the Henry’s Fork of the Snake River as it carves a weave through the mile-high plateau that is actually the crater and flow of a huge super-volcano.

I don’t remember Mel talking much about himself but thanks to Grandma Adah, each of them gave the gift of four to five page, insightful personal histories, covering from their youth up until my Dad returned from Europe.

They are compelling stories of unpretentious people who were incredibly hard workers under rugged conditions. Mel ran into health problems and while still in High School, my Dad took up the slack when the doctors asked Grandpa to back off the rigors of day-to-day ranching.

But that made him my perfect companion too. He still worked but at a pace perfect for a pre-schooler. We stacked hay, dug post holes, mended fence, groomed animals and even went into town for a beer now and then (Doctors orders,) of course, actually I was across the street in the Five and Dime, probably buying such priceless artifacts as a plastic Davey Crockett wallet.

When my Dad went off to training at Camp Roberts and then Europe and WWII, my Grandparents had to let the ranch and farmland go idle with the exception of a smaller herd of cattle they fed with contracted feed and Grandpa’s prize team of draft horses including those who became my buddies, Duke, Bally, Dude and Dolly, etc., and some saddle horses of course including Gypsy my Dad’s pure black, Quarter Horse-Morgan which eventually once I was conceived and born and 5 years old, would become my first horse.

When the War ended and Dad returned (he and Mom, wedded just before he left) he took over the cattle ranch and associated farm land and my Grandparents moved one of the other homestead homes on land they had acquired to St. Anthony, a few miles away and the “big city” in Fremont County, about 2000 people then out of a county of 10,000 people in a land area 6 times the size of Durham. (The ranch and farmland is actually closer to Ashton, the second largest town at just less than 1,000.)

But Grandpa couldn’t stay away from the ranch and came up in his Jeep every day. Kind of got under my Mother’s feet, I’m sure, but was my constant companion day in and day out from birth and even after I started school Oh I did a fare amount of exploring on my own but I know now he was probably always a stone’s throw away without me knowing it.

He died as I was turning 16 but not before he and Grandma hand painted that old red Jeep and gave it to me. I mean hand painted with brush strokes and all. It was kind of a passing into adult-hood for me…he was gone a few months later but the memories that old Jeep had weren’t covered up with paint. Like the bar of Naptha soap still under the driver’s seat to cover the smell of a gas leak, or the manual windshield wiper for the passenger or the small bench seat he had created for me so I could sit next to him when he drove and which came in handy on dates.

He’s been gone now going on 45 years, but he’s never been far away from my thoughts. He was kind and patient and had the time to teach me a love of the land, of conservation, of horses, of opera arias and acceptance of people with different backgrounds (we often visited around campfires with Basque sheepherders who came through the ranch and with Shoshone Native Americans.)

He also taught me how to ride a horse, how to roundup, how to handle a rifle, how to ride a bike and how to drive tractors and old pickups around the ranch and the fulfillment of hard work. And never to take my health for granted, just as Grandma Adah taught me a love of books and history and eagerness for school and lifetime learning.

Mel could barely write his name and I don’t recall if or how much he could read but he was so proud of Grandma Adah for having made it through the 8th grade and my Dad for graduating from High School but he helped open and prepare me for the world as much as Adah taught me to learn about the world.

Both my Grandparents and Parents were disciples of “don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys” long before Willie and Waylon put it to song.

And when I hear the heartbreak of young kids with little or no interaction with adults during those formative years… I realize how blessed I was with day to day interaction in formative years with great parents and people like Grandpa Mel and Grandma Adah.

Maybe Technology Can Increase Conventions & Meetings

Domestic person-trips for Business/Convention/Seminar/Meeting Travel has fallen another 23% this decade. Conventions and meetings represent nearly 6 of every 10 business travel person-trips. Communities along with the facilities over-reliant on this segment of travel seem to fall into two groups, the largest of which is denial or those making fundamental changes in business models.

Some component of face to face business trips and conventions and meetings will continue to exist but in different proportions and it will be a paradigm shift. Just think of what email has done to traditional mail. (I love the term snail-mail but I can also see how it can be taken as a pejorative.)

According to a news report by David Wilkening at least two major lodging chains, Marriott and Starwood are moving to capitalize on one of the technologies replacing business/convention travel.

They are betting that while long haul business trips and larger conventions and meetings will decline, they may initially be replaced by smaller gatherings closer to home but still requiring a trip and overnight that are then linked with similar gatherings in other locations across state or in other parts of the nation or world.

Marriott has inked a deal with AT&T to install the Cisco Telepresence system in 25 hotels in places like San Francisco, New York, Shanghai, etc., operational in late October.

Starwood is doing the same with Tata Communications out of Singapore. Users will commute or travel to a nearby hotel, instead of across countries and continents and use a room with big hi-def screens around a table that gives the illusion of people from different locations being in the same room.

The limit currently will be 20 people but a full fifth of business meetings fall in this size range so you can see how it could expand in the future to convention-size groups. Surveys show over 3 in 10 corporate travel planners think that technologies like these may actually increase attendance for some meetings, but the travel distances will be shorter and the size of each group smaller.

For airlines the hauls will be shorter. For hotels with meeting facilities, it will mean much more technology and many smaller meeting rooms vs. large meeting room. For convention centers? Well we’ve already heard; we’ve seen the end of the mega-centers of 500,000 + but regardless of size they will need more and smaller rooms.

Cisco already has technology that can holograph people to a conference and another company has devised ways for holograms you can touch and feel. Right now it is the feel of wind or rain drops but shaking hands isn’t far behind.

As Mr. Dylan sings, “I feel a change coming on – and the fourth part of the day is already gone!”

Kudos to Marriott and Starwood.

Maybe News Commentators and Politicians Need A Rating System or Comic Book Bubbles?

Some “bumper sticker” slogans people are shouting to draw the media’s attention at the healthcare Q & A sessions are a hoot. Hopefully the decisions will be guided by facts, not bumper stickers, lies, distortions, and fear-mongering. But this crap has thwarted needed reform ever since the ‘60’s so I won’t be surprised that it works.

Not exactly what I believe the Founders envisioned from the virtue of freedom of speech.

When I saw this clip of a figure some call a conservative commentator, but who behaves more like an entertainer…at first I expected one of those John Stewart “looks”…signaling he had said something absurd.

But realizing he was dead serious, I then gave the commentator the benefit of the doubt…We all can utter some pretty stupid things…but my cynical side went right to motive…this guy wants “ratings” so he is deliberately pandering to people predisposed to think that way by saying anything that will yank their chain.

But the impact this can obviously have on people predisposed to racism cannot be dismissed regardless of the motive.

Maybe we make commentators and politicians subject to a rating system for utterances, like we do for movies, music and other things where the line blurs between fact and fiction, e.g. GS for Grandstanding or BS for the obvious or NR for Needs Ratings or WSA for Will Say Anything for Attention?

Or one of those little disclosures they do at the beginning of fictional TV shows that people might take literally or a bubble over their head with fact or fiction or already discredited?

The real answer though is we (individuals, news media, etc.) need to stop dumbing everything down as my friend Bill Geist laments in this blog about some groups now showing the words on a big screen to the Pledge of Allegiance at some events…or the videos now showing examples of the bills and coins required to make change at grocery check out.