I am a veteran of the QuickTime VR wars, having created my first set of panoramas, 6 years ago.

This morning I thought I’d try and whip up a quick panorama of my new office. Here’s what I ended up with:

Obviously something went horribly, horribly wrong. And yet perhaps the image above does more to capture the essence of the new space than a photorealistic immersive panorama would.

Every company needs a “what we do” line. It’s the sentence that starts “Blahblah Incorporated makes…” or “ToodleDoodle Corp. designs…” under the “About Us” link on the company web page.

I visited a selection of Prince Edward Island web development company websites, and pulled off the “what we do” sentence of each. Here they are, cloaked in anonymity:

• …blends traditional marketing strategies and the latest technologies to strategically build your online presence
• …helps organizations understand and take advantage of the business opportunities presented by the Internet.
• …develop[s] or redesign[s] sites for small organizations with an emphasis on professional quality content, accessibile layout, usable functions and affordability
• …creates a variety of print and online media solutions, including custom web sites, e-commerce applications and other internet tools, and corporate brochures and other related marketing materials.
• …is a dynamic information technology company that provides its clients with complete Internet solutions.
• …is an Information Technology (IT) consulting company committed to providing quality, value-added services and solutions that meet clients’ needs in an evolving, competitive business environment.
• …we build powerful websites that are easy to manage for our clients and easy for their clients to use.
• … is an innovative web site design company that creates imagery and internet solutions.

Without in any way claiming that I have come close to cracking this nut myself, I am struck by the fact that these “what we do” statements are, almost without exception:

• generic
• undistinguishable from each other (can you match each of the above to the company they describe with any accuracy?)
• ultimately meaningless

I’m neither a business nor a marketing expert, but common sense would suggest that if you can’t communicate what you do, how you do it, and why you do it better than anyone else in a compelling, novel, unique fashion, you will get less business than those who can.

Just a thought.

The radio piece that Matthew posted about yesterday, that I later commented on, aired this afternoon: here’s an MP3 of the audio [2.1MB - Copyright CBC 2003].

Having a new office is like starting a new relationship. Everything is fresh and new. You haven’t revealed your dark secrets yet, all the baggage is still unexplored, and you stand together at the precipice of endless possibility.

My office-until-yesterday was one of the rooms in our house on Prince Street. Because we moved into the house all in a flurry — Catherine was seven months pregnant with Oliver — I never really properly moved into that office. As a result, it was (and still is) littered with endless piles of detritus from my various projects and interests. Things like a large-format laserdisc of Heaven Can Wait, a PEI Visitors Guide from 1994, and my bank statements from the 1970s.

There are boxes, and old gloves, and a tripod. Unfiled papers, about $50 worth of loose change, and a pair of slippers.

Here in the virginal new office, there is only me, the desk, the iMac and the chair. That’s it.

Perhaps I’m naive, but I hope to never sully this new office with paper.

Those who have worked with me will know that handing me reams of paper about anything is second only to leaving me a voicemail in assuring a position on the “I probably will forget about you” scale (hint: send me email). I simply have never developed an effective system for dealing with paper, especially uncategorizable paper, other than “making big piles on the chair.”

Even as I write this, I am realizing the depths of my naivety in this regard: paper will, inevitably, worm its way in. There will be piles of it. I will shuffle them around. And I will ignore them.

But right now, for this brief honeymoon of pleasant, echoy emptiness, my office is a vast expanse of possibility.

In reaction to Aliant Mobility Consumer Panel: Are you interested?, Aliant Mobility has kindly made arrangements to send a represntative from Saint John over for a meeting on Thursday, December 11, 2003 at 1:00 p.m. to meet.

Our intent is to engage in active discussion about our use of Aliant Mobility’s products and services, and to let them know what we like, what we don’t like, and where we’d like them to go in the future.

This isn’t intended to be a sales session, and the only reason we’re inviting Aliant specifically is that we’re Aliant customers now, and have some frustrations.

If you’re an active Aliant Mobility cell phone user, and you’d like to participate, please RSVP by commenting on this post. All are welcome. The meeting will be held in the Board Room at 84 Fitzroy Street in Charlottetown (the new silverorange/Reinvented “information superhighway way station”).

Matthew Rainnie, in a recent post, reminded me, indirectly, of New Games, a book published in 1976 that was, for a time, the bible for the leaders at the YMCA I grew up with.

The “new” in “New Games” meant post-competitive. There were a lot of parachutes and giant “earth balls.” The emphasis was on cooperation rather than competition. And somehow this all existed without the taint of ice breakers: New Games were actually fun, for everyone. It was a Good Idea.

Matthew writes about a family that’s traveling across the country because, as Matthew paraphrases the father, “society is so work-obsessed these days he wanted a year to play with his kids and experience things with them.”

When I read that, I was shocked to realize how seldom we hear people say things like this: he wanted a year to play with his kids and experience things with them.

We have come, more and more, to regard childhood as a protracted entrepreneurship training progam. Even when things that are supposed to be fun, there can be other forces at work; witness this primer for parents from the Arizona Daily Star:

Sure, competition is important. We do live in a competitive society, and it’s good that young athletes get exposed to it early on. With a sensible dose, competition can motivate kids to work hard at improving their skills. Competition is a teacher; it unveils your weaknesses and shows you what you need to work on and where you stand among your peers. But when the drive is to win at all costs, the value of competition is lost.

In other words, competition is important because it helps us learn how to get ahead, beat our neighbours for the plumb job, find our place in the pecking order.

New Games wasn’t about winning, or getting ready for the competitive society, or improving skills. It was about having fun: kids, adults, short, tall, male, female.

Perhaps it’s so surprising that a man would want a year to play with his kids and experience things with them because we’ve become so used to the notion of all time have a goal-oriented, career-directed, purpose, that the idea of just experiencing things, of playing, has become foreign.

That’s too bad.

So, Bravo! traveling family: enjoy your year of play, and here’s hoping you can stretch it into a full life.

The following happened in rapid succession this evening:

• Brother Mike phoned Brother Johnny (using a regular old telephone).
• I tried to get Brother Johnny on the iChat but was rebuffed.
• Catherine and Oliver and my Mother had an video iChat.
• I tried to get Catherine on the iChat but was rebuffed.
• Mike and Johnny finished on the phone, Mike called Catherine.
• Johnny and I talked on the iChat, then on the phone, then on the iChat
• Catherine and Oliver and I had an audio iChat.
• Johnny and I talked on the iChat.

This ain’t your father’s communication.

The first movie I ever saw that didn’t have a happy ending was the 1981 film Gas, starring Donald Sutherland, Howie Mandel, Helen Shaver and Sterling Hayden. I’ve forgotten all of the details of the plot but that Donald Sutherland played a deranged helicopter pilot, and that a gas station blew up at some point.

But I do remember that it didn’t have a happy ending, which was then and still is unusual for a Hollywood movie: about the only time you hear of movies not having a happy ending is when the version with no happy ending returns from the focus groups to get retooled with a new ending.

Tonight, after walking 6 blocks through a blizzard, I saw another one: Beyond Borders, the Angelina Jolie picture described as “an epic tale of the turbulent romance between two star-crossed lovers set against the backdrop of the world’s most dangerous hot spots.”

The movie has some gripping scenes (of “the world’s hot spots”), a sometimes interesting but mostly over-acted performance from Clive Owen, and a performance from Angelina Jolie that is either brilliantly ironic, or utterly embarassing. Mostly, though, it lacks any sort of character development (i.e. we are left with little understanding of why the “turbulent romance between two star-crossed lovers” like each other, and when (or whether) they actually got to spend any time together to find out), a plot the integrity of which didn’t survive the edit process, and a powerful, emotional social message that is all but completely diluted by movie’s end.

But it doesn’t have a happy ending, which, if nothing else, is brave. And probably explains why the film was playing at City Cinema and not the popcornoplex up the road.

Take the $10 you would spend on the tickets and send it to Oxfam instead. Then go home and have your own turbulent romance. The world will be a better place than if you saw the movie.

There’s no foolin’ around here when it comes to getting the snow off the streets:

Sunday, December 7, 2003 at 2:18 p.m. on Prince St., Charlottetown, looking up towards Grafton Street. Visibility: 0km; temperature: 1 degree C; pressure: 100.4 kPa; wind: NE57 km/h gusting to 74km/h.

Current forecast: Snow at times heavy occasionally mixed with ice pellets. Local blowing snow. Amount 15 cm. Wind increasing to northeast 50 km/h gusting to 90. Temperature steady near plus 1.