-Break for Starbucks

-Remember that Heathrow is the size of Singapore and arrive early

-Break for Starbucks

-BA flights to California leave from the terminal cabs don’t like to drive to

-Break for Starbucks

-There are two Christopher hotels in Windsor and you might as well get used to it, you will never escape the confusion

-Break for Red Bull

-Construction in the UK starts at about 7h45 in the morning, be prepared especially if your hotel is near a construction site

-Break for Red Bull

-Know what a starter is when ordering dinner in Windsor – you will get asked, you will get asked again, you will get asked again, and you may want to order one just to “get on with it.”

-Break for Red Bull

-If you want to test your physical abilities, take the stairs when exiting the tube from Covent Garden station, keep in mind it is only 200 stairs in total – piece of cake

-Break for Red Bull

-If you are walking near Green Park in London looking for food, forget it, lost cause

-Break for Red Bull

-If your hotel phone rings at 5h00 or 6h00 in the morning, just ignore it, there is no explanation, it was meant to be

-When purchasing train tickets in the UK at an automatic machine, you can only use your credit card once a day ─ do not try it more than once, the machine will get upset and will embarrass you in front of other passengers

/JW

Technorati Tags: humor, roadtrip, UK

“Lord of his own cottage”

“Cheekbone in London”

/JW

Technorati Tags: london, rich+cline

I recently flew to Windsor in the UK for some international partner planning meetings. Sitting there at the table with me were consultants from Asia and Europe discussing business planning, but also best practices in communications worldwide. I thought I would share some of the points our international friends raised for shared benefit. Hope you find it useful…

Consolidation - If we think there has been media consolidation in the USA, think again for Europe and Asia. Take Italy for example, you could easily find yourself out of luck promoting back-to-back news in that country, there just isn’t enough media to saturate. You have to choose the best and you have to focus…

Releases - Chop press releases, it is about local relevancy not translating a four page release, cut them if you can…

Hype - Marketing is American – leave it there, talk specifics and news, cut the word “leader”

HQ Executives - Just because a CEO is coming to Europe that does not mean a press tour should be arranged and perhaps even more important that local media should write about it — unless perhaps they are dressing up as Cher…

Budget - Bring some money, Europe and Asia are not free, without proper funds to spend on an international program and without goals to sustain a program, efforts can sometimes be futile…

Voce will be profiling some of these agency partners in the coming months in an effort to bring their unique perspectives to the Voce Nation.

/JW

Technorati Tags: asia, europe, international, press release, cher, unitedkingdom

In a cab to SFO I think I learned the meaning of life – sharing. With limited cabs available on a Friday afternoon, I shared a ride to the airport with a high level sales exec from IBM. I was running late for my flight to London and was a bit desperate to make it.

I seized the opportunity to ask some questions about IBM and learn about the future of Big Blue. After our long talk about the future of mainframe computing, he replied, “The future of IBM is about sharing.” He went on to share some examples about how IBM web software was created to help gamers interact online and how basically IBM is all about sharing business information. I figure if it is good enough for IBM it must be good enough for the rest of us, right?

Well I guess kindergarten was right – share. Shame on me for forgetting that…

I wonder if IBM will share the profits also? Maybe I can ask that on my cab ride home next week?

/JW

Technorati Tags: ibm, life+lessons, sharing

Many thanks to the friends of Voce who attended our CES shindig at Jet Nightclub in the Mirage Monday night. (It also was a birthday bash for New York Yankee Jason Giambi, but who knew!) We had a great crew of people – folks from Yahoo!, Fujitsu, Belkin, HP, TMZ.com, Sony Playstation, Dolby, WSJ, Barron’s, ZiffDavis and more. It was fun to hang out for a while and make some fruitful connections together off the show floor. The Merc’s coverage of this year’s CES party scene, which quoted Voce President Rich Cline, described it best! Jet was a mad-house (the photos say it all), but the music was great, the dance floor was hopping, and everyone had a good time. It echoed the same vibe and energy that CES brings to Las Vegas each year. Now, we just hope that everyone got some sleep, found their voice and made it to their early-morning meetings. Viva Las Vegas!

Technorati Tags: ces, jet nightclub, jet nightclub, party, voce communications

There are a few Vocians at CES in Vegas this week and I’m one of them!

We all know CES…150,000 people converge on Vegas to check out the hottest new consumer electronic devices the industry has to offer. It’s an absolute madhouse every year, and just getting into the Venetian and to the speech proved difficult and crowded. A good warm up for the show floor, no doubt.

I was able to score a ticket to Bill Gates’ keynote speech at the Venetian Sunday evening, compliments of a friend. The Wall Street Journal’s Rob Guth has a nice, neat summary of the speech here.

While I’ve attended numerous CES shows, this was my first keynote, so I was pretty excited…and curious to see if Mr. Gates would acknowledge the continued growth of open source technology as he did last year, or speak on broader issues that speak to him impending philanthropic adventures, such as the emergence of Green tech consumer companies, such as GreenPrint of Portland, Oregon. Or, would the man of the hour stick to more of the script and show us solely what Microsoft is doing? It was the latter. But still, exciting stuff.

The title and overall focus last night was “connected experiences.” The digital lifestyle was of particular interest to the crowd and looks as if that will be a theme this year for certain. But Gates really put an emphasis on the ‘connections’ needed to bring the digital lifestyle to the forefront of our lives. In the car, the home and living room, and from work, everybody wants to be able to connect to their cool stuff, and that’s what MSFT is trying to solve.

You can refer to Guth’s post in the link above for a synopsis of features that gained the most applause, but I thought as Gates showed off select pieces of Windows Vista, that their 3D Virtual Earth technology was very cool. This basically is MSFT’s version of Google and Yahoo maps but with a kick. You can connect an Xbox game controller and fly through the streets of unknown cities or destinations in 3D. It gives a video game feel to finding a local pizza place.

I also thought one very cool announcement Gates had, was with existing partner HP. For the connected home, the company will partner with HP to deliver the HP MediaSmart Server. More on the details here by ZDNet’s Tom Krazit. This gives you a place to store everything digital in the home. From your multi-media, music files and financial documents, to your kids’ past school work. The small server will be out in the second half of this year. I’m looking forward to adding ’server administrator’ to my resume.

The keynote lasted about 90 minutes Gates did acknowledge he will be back for CES 2007, despite his role at MSFT is changing as he readies for his departure in 2008. Hopefully I will get to see next year’s keynote as well, as maybe it will be his last.

/Colin Crook

Technorati Tags: ces, conferences, microsoft, pr, electronics