SWCAMBORNE

Super Parade Opportunity

Simon — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 21:32:59 +0000

Most holidays have parades. People like parades. They like to be in parades. But Superbowl Sunday doesn’t have a parade even though it is close to being our countries biggest holiday. This oversight seems like a big opportunity for a sunbelt city like San Diego, Albuquerque, El Paso or Tucson.

How would it work. Bands, Floats and Sponsors followed by a chance for all the participants to watch the game on the Jumbotron in the local enclosed stadium. I imagine a Rose Parade type event without the flower theme. Floats with fashion, entertainment, commercial and technology based themes. More high tech than Macy’s balloons and definitely more TV friendly than the Rose Parade. Each float and band would have three minutes or so in the limelight. Half of the time the camera would be on the parade entry and half would be on their commercial. Some examples:

Victoria’s Secret no brainer
Waffle House Tasting float
Ace Hardware National band
Whatever the hot new movie is.
The State of Colorado Tourism bureau.
Emirates Air

The main attraction for the sponsors would be a chance to have an affordable ad near the Super Bowl. The TV Network would have a very low cost but potentially high profit product. The bands would be delighted to march and the sponsoring city would sell 100,000 hotel room nights at very little cost after the initial roll-out.

The only question in my mind is why hasn’t someone thought of this before.

So far this year I have had three football ideas and two parade ideas and it is only February. You can see all of the ideas here.

Business Class Interstate Travel

Simon — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 22:12:31 +0000

It would be great if you could stop and get great food when you are driving between big cities like Los Angeles to San Francisco or Chicago to St Louis. Right now the pickings at the half way stopping points are pretty much fast foods, the Waffle House and places like the Cracker Barrel. It takes too long and the food is barely above tolerable.

What if there was a small chain of specialty restaurants that catered to up-scale travelers. They are situated at the best stopping places between the major cities, they have great food, served quickly and courteously and while you are eating they gas up your car and wash the windshield. The restrooms are delightful and the decor is elegantly local.

The trick to make it successful would be to use the new GPS and cell phone technologies now available. A customer leaving LA would access the menu on her cellular phone and pre-order lunch. The restaurant would track the phone via GPS so that as they pulled into the driveway the meal would be ready and the table would be set. The food would be great. Terrific young chefs who are struggling to find a niche in the high cost cities would clamor to be able to master their craft and build their reputations out on the highway.

This idea came up because I was reading a book titled An Appetite For America by Stephen Freid at the same time that I was driving a lot of miles on the interstate. Even I get tired of Beef Jerky and Starbucks Coffee. The book is about the Fred Harvey Company that for almost a century fed train travelers in the same way I am proposing feeding interstate travelers.

People driving $50,000 cars shouldn’t have to eat fast food.

Egyptian Soccer Hooligans

Simon — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:48:02 +0000

In the UK soccer hooligans are a cultural phenomenon that have over the past few decades caused dozens of deaths and lots of social angst. Most of the news chatter that I heard seemed to hold society as a whole and the perpetrators individually responsible for the damage and mayhem.

Now consider the aftermath of the tragic soccer riot in Port Said, Egypt. The Egyptian press reports that the public is blaming not the individuals or the society but the army and the police. The quote I read was “there were no police there to stop us.” It is as if they are saying we are not responsible enough to attend sporting events without an authoritarian boot nearby. It doesn’t seem to bode well for their post Mubarak society.

But it get more complicated. In Los Angeles a Dodger fan beat a Giants fan nearly to death after a baseball game and the press and the public are holding Frank McCourt the team’s owner responsible for not having enough security.

Of these three approaches I think that the English one is probably the best but it has a danger. Saying something like “boys will be boys” or allowing the “social disease” excuse from West Side Story tend to over time exacerbate the problem because the “boys” start to think that they can get away with it.

A mix of competitiveness, alcohol, avid loyalty and the unhappiness of losing is sure to be volatile. So the potential of people rioting at sporting events is a condition that every society has to manage. How they manage this emotional mix is to some extent a measure of a societies maturity. Allowing the perpetrators a free pass by blaming the police is not an indicator of a mature society.

February 2, 2012 Maxim

Simon — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 13:04:57 +0000

“In the centuries following the Peloponnesian War, Athens became the first in a long line of senescent Western powers to suffer the ignominious transformation from world power to open-air theme park, famous only for its arts, its architecture, its schools and its past.”

William J Bernstein, Author

A Splendid Exchange

660 Miles

Simon — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:19:38 +0000

It is roughly 660 miles from Ashland, Oregon to Pasadena, California and I am proof that you can easily drive it in a day. Even on an overcast day driving pretty hard there is plenty to see.

Mt Shasta

Sunset over the San Joaquin Valley

and plenty of Starbucks

See more photos on Flickr

A special shout out to Miles one of the brilliant staff at Valley View Auto Repair in Ashland, Oregon who against all odds replaced the clutch in Rebecca’s car and made my drive both possible and necessary. Well done.

On the drive the mini went over 90,000 miles and this was its first new clutch. I took a picture.

Simon Says Postcards 1/31/2012

Simon — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:49:44 +0000

“To travel is to

discover that everyone

is wrong about other

places.”

Aldous Huxley

Simon on Travel

Winter in Pasadena

Simon — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 20:02:38 +0000

As Gordon C. said:

“The nicest Summer I ever spent was this Winter in Pasadena.”

I took some pictures that prove his point.

An Album on Flickr

Sorry Ohio, NY, Pennsylvania and the UK

World Football

Simon — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 13:57:50 +0000

The teams playing in the “Superbowl” this year are New England and New York. Which is hardly even a national game. Let alone an international game. Substantially all of American football is played in the USA. Which doesn’t sound like a problem until you start to think about the future of sports. Sustainable sports in the next fifty years will be ones that have a global span. The National Football League is trying a few things to grow the world audience mostly in Europe. The St Louis Rams are going to play a “home game” in London this next season. But their first attempt to have an NFL Europe league failed a few years ago and they have pretty much given up trying new things. But the Ideapreneur hasn’t. Following are three ideas for the NFL to create a world market for their product:

1. Go to the third world. Start children’s programs in India, China and Africa. Promote it as a way to get to emigrate to the USA. Use baseball in the Dominican Republic as the model.

2. Build Football programs at Universities in Latin America. Have a league. Bring the best teams to the USA for the final games each year.

3. Make every team in the current NFL do what the St Louis Rams are doing. Each team gets a sister stadium in another country and has to play five games there in say the next six years.

Football has many attributes that make it a better sport for mass consumption than soccer, cricket or baseball but it has to become worldwide. It is up to the NFL to make it happen by making real long term investment in building the sport internationally.

Sustainable Blog Entry

Simon — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:51:31 +0000

From XKCD.com

a very clever comic site

January 26, 2012, Maxim

Simon — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 13:52:56 +0000

“…anyone who believes that governments are in control of economies is living in cloud-cuckoo-land.”

John Gribben, Author

Deep Simplicity