www.andrewmackay.net:

I think that everyone has something that they love that other people have a hard time understanding. Case in point: my wife and I had a discussion recently as I was getting ready to spend roughly 13 hours babysitting a pork roast on the grill. She didn’t understand the sense of doing it that way. She’s right, too, there are easier ways to roast a pork shoulder.

But, I love the process. I love the science of it, I love the challenge, I love the pay off of having spent hours on something and having it turn out well.

It did, too. It was delicious. Well worth waking up every couple of hours through the night, and then checking it every couple of hours through the day until it was ready. Sometimes you do things, I guess, just because you love the process, not because it’s the most expedient or easiest.

Some days the internet puts things together for you. Not often, because, it’s mostly an inanimate object or something. But, sometimes, you read a story and then read another one, and think… hey, weren’t those connected?

This very thing happened to me the other day. I was reading about TechDirt’s CwF+RtB=$$$ (connect with fans + reason to buy = cash). It’s essentially their attempt to show the music industry (or the movie industry, or the book industry, or the news industry) how to develop a sustainable business model in an era where access to your content pretty much has to be free (and if it’s not, consumers will find a way to make it so).

Pretty neat idea. It makes sense too.

• Fans get content without a forced package.
• Pay for premium content / special access / special gifts
• Fans pay because they like you or the site — not because they have to
• Fans are more likely to return (and potentially spend more dollars)
• Business model doesn’t predicate itself upon your ability to turn every transaction into a billable event.

That’s good for you and good for everybody.(Sidenote: like TechDirt, I’d be willing to take down my website and not contribute to a blog for a year in exchange for $100,000,000.00. My email address is in the sidebar. Contact me there. Check must be given time to clear. Sultan Whomever from Arganistan, I still haven’t received the first check you promised me in exchange for access to my bank account so you could clear those funds, so don’t even offer this time. Whatever.)

So, I finish reading about TechDirt’s plan, and I get an e-mail from a google alert I’ve set up. It e-mails me items about electronic publishing. CBS had published an article on its website entitled, “Will Readers Ever Pay for Online News.”

The article talked about various platforms for charging for online access to news. It talked about how they just needed to come up with something that would work like the old model (advertising + subscription) because the new model (online advertising) isn’t working.

The whole time I read, I thought back to TechDirt, and they way they’re giving their readers ownership and options instead of alienation and coercion.

The people who are getting ready to make a push for pay-for-access online news remind me of something a bank president once said to me… “As long as one bank in this market has their staff still wearing ties, we’ll all still wear ties.” As long as one news outlet is giving away content, the others will struggle to charge for the same content.

Why? There are just so many different (and free) sources of news out there that these news providers have provided us with no real reason to want to buy their content.

They’re going to have to start thinking differently. They’re going to have to give us, the consumers (you know, the ones with the wallets they want to stick their hands in) a reason to let them have our money.

They’re going to have to think like TechDirt… because, until they connect with their fans, and give us a reason to buy, there will be no $$$ for them.

Hockey’s about to start! Whoo hoo. You’ll remember that at the end of last season, I was doing a terrible job of trying to explain the game a little. As an exercise in patience for you and learning how to write instructively for me, I’m going to continue! (Party hats and whistles will be handed out on your way out the door. Please no confetti… it freezes in the ice, eh?)

So, the most exciting thing about the 2009-10 NHL Season has little to do with NHL — except that many NHL players will be involved… that’s right… the 2010 Winter Olympics will take place somewhat in the middle of the 09-10 NHL Season. Exciting? Absolutely… especially since this time around, the Olympics will be held in Canada.

Now, we Canadians take our hockey pretty seriously. It’s never more serious than on the Global stage… we like it when a Canadian team wins Lord Stanley’s cup, but we love it when our boys (and girls) win gold.

So, prepare yourself for fever-pitched hype. I’m prepared to trash talk every country’s team in advance of the olympics. Okay, not really… but I may take aim at a couple. Like the Czech Republic. You think you’re tough? You don’t know what tough means! In your face!

No, not on vacation… but about vacations. My friend Sam just got back from a vacation with his family, and his post about it was beautiful.

Seems like some revelation of wisdom should be fired off at this point starting with “On vacation God taught me that…” but really I just feel  gratitude and am aiming to direct that gratitude (and help lead my family to do the same) in a Godward direction.

A good reminder there that sometimes the most important things don’t seem the most over-the-top. Gratitude toward our Maker ought to be the most immediate of our responses to His great mercy to us; I’m thankful for the reminder this morning.

Have you ever noticed how one person being completely, totally enthusiastic about something can infect a whole group of people? I mean, one person… one person who’s really into it, who throws themselves behind an idea, who believes in it with their whole heart, and who loves it… that person can change the way a whole city of people feels about it.

Well, it’s up to me to do that, but for the whole internet. You heard me. The whole internet. Why? What could be so important?

12 days until preseason hockey begins.

28 days until the season begins… Toronto and Montreal.

I’m practically hyperventilating with excitement already.

There’s only one way you’re not in trouble with the law… and that’s if you’re in trouble with… gravity?

Supposedly from Pericles,

“What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.”

Lots of changes taking place for me; proves that this statement is true.

Email is a challenge. You get any number of messages every day, requiring at minimum a delete… possibly a response or maybe even a research project. As a writer, your time is at a premium, even the time you spend on email.

So, Tim Sanders is this guy… he’s a believer and an author who writes and speaks about the way love can impact your business. His first book, Love is the Killer App is a great read. I thoroughly enjoyed it — it helped me to understand that you don’t have to be a shark to be effective in business.

Anyway, Tim is also an email / time management consultant. You can find some great tips over at www.emailatoz.com.

The most recently posted tip follows… it’s a life changer:

every Friday by end of day, he addresses every email he has in his inbox before the end of the day. So going into the weekend, he has zero email in his Inbox.

I love the idea of going into a weekend with no issues hanging about that aren’t on my calendar. I’ve tried a few different ways of managing email, and while I’m getting close to becoming an advocate of having an empty, managed inbox daily, sometimes its just not practical.

This tip, on the other hand, might take you an extra 15-30 minutes on Friday, but think of how great it would be to have an empty, issue free inbox as you walk out of your office on Friday. Magic!

Aristotle supposedly said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

I don’t know if that’s entirely true, but it feels like it is. I do know that I desire a life characterized by excellence. It’s easy to look at life — even in one week chunks — and to think, Well, it’s just another week. Ho Hum. I guess I’ll put in what’s required of me, make it to Friday, and then… Weekend!

That’s lame. Entirely not what I want for my life this week, that’s for sure. No matter the task, whether it’s cleaning a toilet bowl (likelyhood: 15%), changing a diaper (likelyhood: 100%) or resolving a customer’s problem (likelyhood: 100%… I almost did 110%, but I realize that 110% is not a real number. It’s like saying I’m one and one-tenths of a human being. Just unrealistic), I want to be excellent at it. I want to condition myself to the point that my responses aren’t just excellent, my entire behavior is excellent.

A more profound quote (not) “Be excellent to each other”… said by these guys:

Me, that is… I had a great time listening to Jeff Bezos talk about customer service… I saw it posted over at The Mystery and the Magic. Jeff Bezos is the founder of Amazon.com, and he essentially gives away some business advice over the course of an 8 minute video.

He talks about the most important things he knows, like obsessing over customers, inventing on the behalf of customers and how it informs their culture at Amazon, and also… he uses a flip chart. Is there a slight irony in the founder of a huge technology company using a flip chart? Perhaps. But, flip charts are innovative too… it takes very little time to alter your presentation… just discard the existing page and create a new one.

Anyway, highly recommended. It’s a good little learning experience.