eROI Days Email Agency » obama

Haiku Monday – Mobile Devices

Ryan Buchanan — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 15:39:22 +0000

Haiku Monday is back like a hurricaine, like a Super Bowl ad that had you laughing and crying in the same 30-second spot. I was in the backcountry skiing at Mt. Hood this past Saturday and my skiing buddy informed me that he just made the switch from his Blackberry (avid evangelist for 9+ years) to an iPhone a month ago. Here’s a very technical guy who travels domestically and internationally a whole lot and has a love affair with Blackberry – he survives on his mobile device. If he made the switch to an iPhone and several others in my office have made the switch, then what’s going to happen to RIM (Blackberry manufacturer). Well, they’ve got the most powerful man on Earth publicly admitting his addiction to his Blackberry and most lawmakers haven’t switched. The best thing to do to settle this debate is begin a haiku dialogue. So, let it begin:

I still love email
on my Blackberry, but the
web + apps on iPhone are crazy sexy

The above haiku did not follow the haiku rules, I apologize. Don’t use that as an example for your own haiku, but you must express yourself in the comments below.

How much Patience do Americans have?

Ryan Buchanan — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 23:28:49 +0000

I have an admission to make – last night, I had a shocking thing happen. I momentarily lapsed into non-optimistic thoughts. It had nothing to do with politics or business. It had to do entirely with an Act of God.

In Portland, we’ve had huge windstorms. During dinner at a friend’s house, a massive tree branch came crashing through my Prius back window. I love nature, but this time, my love affair was tainted for a night and the next morning.

So, after having seriously f@*#ked up dreams all night, I went for a long run in the morning and began processing my thoughts. Before, my run I glanced at the NY Times front page article titled “Poll Finds Faith in Obama, Mixed with Patience.” In many of my blog posts, I’ve talked about 2009 being the year of optimism and it has been an optimistic year until the bloody tree limb incident last night. But, I knew I could mentally power thru these dreaded pessimistic thoughts.

The sub-header in the NY Times article was “Most say they expect progress to require at least 2 years”, but I think we as a people in the technology age of immediacy have much less patience than 2 years. My belief is that the Obama administration needs to make significant traction on at least 1 issue and 1 industry within his first 3 months. If not, I think more and more people will become jaded and let their proverbial f#%*king tree limb, pessimistic feelings last longer than 12 hours. So, I put the question out there to 400 followers on Twitter and Dylan Boyd replied immediately with a 1 year horizon to make real changes happen. Mark Kelly, an online marketer from Seattle, replied “@ryanbuch re: obama I think we will give him the typical 2-3 mos because of our extreme short term focus. Dems will be more patient.”

Whatever the timeline is, you gotta give Obama credit for his ability to inspire. I’ve been listening on NPR to today’s 750,000 person celebration, speeches, musical performances. Yes, there are huge expectations on our new President, but let’s give him some credit for jumping into the trenches with us on economic issues and global political issues 2 1/2 months before his job starts. As an entrepreneur, I have a lot of self-motivation. But sometimes, it helps to know that we are part of a larger effort to make a hugely positive impact on the world and create some amazing jobs and opportunities in the process.

Obamaween – eROI NYC style

Ryan Buchanan — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:51:06 +0000

Our NYC Director, Chris Masagatani, has creating, editing, mixing, and mashing video with a very urban, creative flair. He posted his video to the blog he contributes most to – CrossPixelNYC, however, I couldn’t resist embedding the video in this blog post here. Enjoy!

Obamaween from Christopher Masagatani on Vimeo.

A World Inspired

Ryan Buchanan — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 14:59:43 +0000

Last Tuesday, an articulate, inspiring man was voted into office and people all over the world celebrated. In my own neighborhood, fireworks went off and a group of 25 college and high school students were banging pots and pans and stopping traffic on Hawthorne Street to jubilant honks in passing cars. My family of four walked thru the misty evening and soaked in the positive energy that had our girls jumping up and down gleefully shouting “Obama.” After my wife and I put our girls down to bed, I headed over to a sports bar, OnDeck, for drinks with some close friends – the place was packed and rowdy with 50+ huge TV screens monitoring all of the events of the evening. The bar became immediately silent when President-elect Obama gave his acceptance speech at Grant Park in Chicago. We hung on every word.

Since then, it’s been an adjustment. The party only lasted one night and reality set in the next day with the stock market down and life moving at warp speed. Every newspaper and magazine has blitzed us with this momentous, historic event and Obama has lived up to the expectation, for now. Expectations are so high, that at some point, there will be cracks in his armour. But, hopefully, as a human race that values inspiration, innovation, and progress over fear, we will support him when he stumbles. As an exercise of documenting a few of the videos and articles that mattered most to me, I am showing them below:

Transcript of Obama’s speech >>

Video of celebrations around the world >>

Thomas Friedman’s Op Ed article from the NY Times >>