It's all going on.
Still busy as heck, but loving it.
Lots of real work, for the first time in way too long. Our new best friends at AOL keeping me very busy, plus we're still chest deep in the Air Canada mess; working closely with the ALPA union representing the AC Jazz pilots.
New biz, RFPs and referrals coming in like crazy - a welcome flood after so long a drought. Some terrific early discussions with these guys - who deserve to be very, very big in the not too distant future. And we've just put to bed a really worthy pro bono project, working with Globalegacy (nothing quite so powerful as an idea whose time has come...)
Oh, and today marked the official launch of McD Wireless in Canada - a very cool extension of McDonald's existing WiFi initiative in the U.S. Only involved on the fringes of this - it's running through our core McD's team - but I'm hugely excited about it all the same. Nicely written up in the Globe by Jack Kapica earlier today. (Jack, btw, edited the terrific "Shocked and Appalled: a Century of Letters to the Globe and Mail" - an excellent night table standby. Out of print, alas, but available here).
One part of my excitement over the McD's news is knowing that they're working with my blog buddy Brent Ashley on the implementation. Brent (also known as co-author of the world's first in-blog chat client, BlogChat) is a great, safe pair of hands for them to have chosen. You can be sure it will work, and work well.
So much going on. And tomorrow will be even busier, I know.
All this adds up to my almost inappropriate level of excitement about our first trip up north this year. We're going deep into the land of the quarter million lakes this weekend (really - "Ontario" is Iroquois for "beautiful, shining waters" and there genuinely are something like 250,000 lakes, that's not a typo).
We're heading off for a much-needed break, enjoying the kind hospitality of friends, up on Baptiste Lake, near Bancroft, somewhere around here:
Which, while I'm in synaptic-chaining, word-association-football mode, has me thinking about how I ended up in this strange PR game in the first place...
That shot shows the narrows out of the main Baptiste Lake leading into Lavallee Bay. Which immediately reminds me of my old friend Wendy Lavallee, co-founder of LNS Communications in Boston.
Wendy was our lead PR advisor way back in '96-'97, when we lifted our little 10-man company off the City Road in London, relocated and relaunched in Canada as LAVA Systems, and set off on the path to IPO insanity and all that.
Wendy was also my main inspiration when I decided to move across into the agency world (even though she tried to talk me out of it). Simply one of the best PR pros I've ever come across. Looks like she's no longer at LNS. Wonder where she went off to...
Enough. To bed.
Lots of real work, for the first time in way too long. Our new best friends at AOL keeping me very busy, plus we're still chest deep in the Air Canada mess; working closely with the ALPA union representing the AC Jazz pilots.
New biz, RFPs and referrals coming in like crazy - a welcome flood after so long a drought. Some terrific early discussions with these guys - who deserve to be very, very big in the not too distant future. And we've just put to bed a really worthy pro bono project, working with Globalegacy (nothing quite so powerful as an idea whose time has come...)
Oh, and today marked the official launch of McD Wireless in Canada - a very cool extension of McDonald's existing WiFi initiative in the U.S. Only involved on the fringes of this - it's running through our core McD's team - but I'm hugely excited about it all the same. Nicely written up in the Globe by Jack Kapica earlier today. (Jack, btw, edited the terrific "Shocked and Appalled: a Century of Letters to the Globe and Mail" - an excellent night table standby. Out of print, alas, but available here).
One part of my excitement over the McD's news is knowing that they're working with my blog buddy Brent Ashley on the implementation. Brent (also known as co-author of the world's first in-blog chat client, BlogChat) is a great, safe pair of hands for them to have chosen. You can be sure it will work, and work well.
So much going on. And tomorrow will be even busier, I know.
All this adds up to my almost inappropriate level of excitement about our first trip up north this year. We're going deep into the land of the quarter million lakes this weekend (really - "Ontario" is Iroquois for "beautiful, shining waters" and there genuinely are something like 250,000 lakes, that's not a typo).
We're heading off for a much-needed break, enjoying the kind hospitality of friends, up on Baptiste Lake, near Bancroft, somewhere around here:
Which, while I'm in synaptic-chaining, word-association-football mode, has me thinking about how I ended up in this strange PR game in the first place...
That shot shows the narrows out of the main Baptiste Lake leading into Lavallee Bay. Which immediately reminds me of my old friend Wendy Lavallee, co-founder of LNS Communications in Boston.
Wendy was our lead PR advisor way back in '96-'97, when we lifted our little 10-man company off the City Road in London, relocated and relaunched in Canada as LAVA Systems, and set off on the path to IPO insanity and all that.
Wendy was also my main inspiration when I decided to move across into the agency world (even though she tried to talk me out of it). Simply one of the best PR pros I've ever come across. Looks like she's no longer at LNS. Wonder where she went off to...
Enough. To bed.
