Blog | Jason Cardillo

I Don’t Follow My Own Advice!

01.13.10 Posted in Bright Ideas, Wednesday Wisdom, communications, website by jasonc

The original concept behind this series of posts is that each week, you would benefit from lessons learned from mymistakes, so that you don’t have to make your own. I went off that plan for a bit by criticizing other people’s mistakes, but after my sporadic holiday posting, I’m back on the original concept. At least for now.

You see, over the holidays, things got hectic chez Cardillo. There was a trip back to O-H-I-O (cold!), roomates moving out (surprise!), my own move (double surprise!), and of course client projects (no surprise there!). All of this meant I got behind on writing these posts, and couldn’t even keep up with my normal weekly schedule. Not even one post per week – weak!

It’s not that I didn’t have ideas for posts. It’s not really even that I got too busy. No, the real reason is that I didn’t execute the part of my plan that involved creating a quiver. A quiver, for a writer, is a set of posts that are pre-created and require little-to-no additional work to post. The kind of content that’s in there ready to go when you only have 5 minutes before you board your flight, or you’re laying sick in bed and can’t summon your creative juices. They are best when they are time-independent thoughts on your topic. Above all, they are useful.

They are not posts that you wrote and didn’t like. They are not posts that you never finished and need to wrap up and edit extensively. They are not time-sensitive topics you never got around to (my gut reaction to Tiger’s “indiscretions” is not a post in the quiver for May 2010). They are definitely not topics that you haven’t written about, but can put together a half-assed post on in 5 minutes.

So, I drained my quiver and never filled it back up. Instead of researching for inspiration in free time and knocking out some posts, I kicked back with a few beers instead of one. I went for a 4 hour ride when only 2.5 was in the works. I tried to find the partners to the single socks that appear after I do laundry. Anything but doing my bloody job.

So, dear reader, I’m back on it. Even though it’s a hectic time of year, I’m only having one beer, keeping the rides short, and leaving those single socks lonely – all to make sure there’s a full quiver of lessons from my mistakes. If I do it right, you’ll never know when I’m too busy to write.

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Airline Bike Fees

12.30.09 Posted in Wednesday Wisdom, bikes by admin

Sitting around over the holidays with a cold has given me time to do some random things. One of them is prepping for my own trip to the Giro d’Italia next year, and with airline bike fees skyrocketing, they can completely change the calculus of which flight is the cheapest. So, sitting in SFO and waiting, and waiting, and waiting, I scoured the intertubes to find out what the bike bag fees are. Rather than keep the info to myself, I’ll share it here.

The following list includes a few assumptions; you’re not an elite in any frequent flyer program (that can lower some fees), you’re flying discounted coach (full-fare & business can lower fees), you are flying from the US to Europe (other regions have their own fee structures), and your flight handles baggage on the “piece concept” (meaning you get 2 bags with a max weight, not a max weight with unlimited bags). It is true as of 12/24/09 to the best of my knowledge. As we all know, the airlines can be fickle and change their policies on a whim. Check the included links for more info and call the airlines to be sure. This is only a rough guide; if you don’t check and get hit with an unexpected fee, don’t come crying to me!

Airline	Fee	Weight Limit
Air Canada	$50	20kgs
Air France	$200¹	20kgs
Alitalia	$215	20kgs
American	$150	32kgs
Austrian	$200	32kgs
British Air	$50	32kgs
Continental	$100	32kgs
Delta	$300²	23kgs(?)
Iberia	$105	23kgs
KLM	$0(!)	23kgs
Lufthansa(PDF)	$200	32kgs
Swiss	$200	30kgs
United	$200	23kgs
US Air	$100	23kgs

¹$200 in US, 200euro from Europe
²$300 in US, 300euro from Europe

A couple of other notes. The fees have been converted to US$ (if necessary) from Euro, and weights converted to kgs. If you are travelling on a code-share (e.g. Lufthansa ticket but United planes), it’s best to assume the most restrictive fees and weight limits will apply. The weight limits are often the most difficult to figure out, so definitely double-check these before heading to the airport. If there is a standard checked bag fee, that has been added in already (e.g. American is $50 + $100 bike fee).

If you’ve had other experiences or better information, please let us know in the comments.

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The Flipside of Social Media

12.16.09 Posted in Social Media, Sponsorship, Wednesday Wisdom, communications by jasonc

Two weeks ago, I wrote a post that suggested you can put whatever you want on social media, damn the torpedoes. While there is a certain truth to that, one must always keep in mind that once it’s up there, you can’t take it back. Thanks to Google and services like the Wayback Machine, what you say stays available forever. Says Ryan Kennedy at The Hockey News about a particular NHL prospect,

The problem is pretty straightforward: Jokes that are funny when you’re in your mid-teens tend not to be funny to other groups – in this case women, or most adults in general. But with some very quick searching, I found this prospect was not alone; some of his peers also left an unseemly electronic breadcrumb trail that, I would have to expect, could illicit [sic] some pretty damning questions when the NHL draft combine comes up in the summer.

To further complicate matters, you not only have to worry about what you say, you also have to worry about what your friends say. This, of course, is more of a problem on services like Facebook where mutual consent is required than on Twitter, where you can’t possibly be expected to be held accountable for your followers. What this means is that, like the rest of your public communications, you need to have a process and strategy for establishing friend connections, creating and posting materials (text, photos, videos), curating what other people post to your wall, and managing your privacy settings.

My process and strategy for posting on the blog and/or Twitter is fairly simple – I call it the Mom Test. Basically, would my Mom be offended if she were to read this? Not “tut-tut-that’s-not-nice” but actually “can’t-look-her-in-the-eye” offended. If it fails that test, it doesn’t get posted, period. Same goes for things that get posted on my Facebook wall. Same goes for photos and videos (I’m lookin’ at you, Iinterbike!).

My Facebook friending strategy revolves around actual connections. Family obviously makes the cut, friends that I’ve known, and work connections that I have a more-than-professional relationship with. People that I ran into that one time at a race or bar don’t make the cut, nor do people I quickly did a project for (they end up on LinkedIn). If I actually had success in any of my sporting endeavors, all of those people’s friend requests would have been directed to a Facebook Fan Page with a polite note saying something like, “my friend list is confined to close, personal friends and family. I have a fan page, and look forward to connecting with you there!” Nice and polite.

The curation strategy goes back to the Mom Test. If it’s written on my wall and would offend Mom, it comes down. That goes for both the personal page as well as the fan page.

Finally there is the matter of privacy settings. My personal preference is to set everything to only be visible to Friends, and remove the ability for others to tag me in photos and videos. Especially because images can be taken out of context, you don’t want to be explaining away photo after photo. Make sure your settings notify you every time you’re tagged in a photo, and if it doesn’t pass the Mom Test, remove the tag and/or ask the poster to take the photo down.

That prescription might sound terribly restrictive, but it really is the best way to nip problems in the bud before an employer, team, or sponsor walks away from you.

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Skyter Sinks – Was it The Team’s Fault?

12.09.09 Posted in Sponsorship, Wednesday Wisdom by admin

This past week, we heard about the collapse of Skyter’s sponsorship of a top women’s cycling team, formerly Equipe Nürnberger Versicherung (which we’ll call The Team, for clarity’s sake in this post). I’m not surprised, and neither should you be. When I found out what Skyter was (I had to research this, since I’m not normally in the market for 30+ft. yachts), I had the sense that this was doomed from the start.

Back in the days when women’s cycling was developing, most, if not all, sponsorship was “in support of”. Meaning, there’s little-to-no business value, but someone at a company had influence over the budget and chose to spend it due to an interest in women’s cycling. We’ve moved beyond those days, and women’s cycling is now well past the point where sponsorships can justify themselves from a ROI standpoint. Cycling in general offers a great return for corporate sponsors used to multi-million dollar investments in Baseball, Soccer, or F1, and women’s cycling offers what is, IMHO, the best ROI value in all of sports.

Despite a top women’s team offering great sponsorship value, I don’t think anyone in their right mind could assume that The Team would help Skyter move more 30+ ft. yachts. There is one cyclist in the world that runs in that kind of crowd, and he’s not on The Team. That means this sponsorship likely came about due to the old boys network being activated, and since even a team of that stature is a tiny percentage of Skyter’s budget, a contract was agreed. But in an economy like this, when big yachts don’t sell/lease quite as quickly as they used to, even small percentages all over the budget get analyzed. Somone at Skyter figured out that this was not a good use of a few hundred-thousand euros and the deal was called off.

But was that really the company’s fault? Of course they bear responsibility for entering into a contract, but contracts are modified and canceled all the time. I place a significant amount of blame at the feet of The Team. When you have a squad of that caliber, you owe it to the riders to create a sponsor relationship that makes the best use of their incredible value. The demo- and psycho-graphics of women’s cycling open up a variety of valuable markets and market niches that companies struggle to reach. Cyclists’ early adoption of social media (they are probably the most active of any pro sport) gives potential sponsors a low-cost and easy way to figure out that landscape. It is, in short, valuable well beyond the “support the sport” stage.

The Team would have been much better off using their Skyter connection to be introduced to customers that would receive a much bigger benefit from sponsoring a women’s team than Skyter itself. Until teams (and events and riders) stop looking for people to “support the sport”, they will always pigeonhole themselves into that corner. And that corner lends itself to small prize lists, poor support, and low salaries, not to mention easily canceled deals.

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The Real Point of Social Media

12.03.09 Posted in Social Media, Wednesday Wisdom, communications by admin

Have you ever had so much to say that you couldn’t get anything out? That, combined with a busy schedule, is my lame excuse for my Wednesday Wisdom coming out on Thursday. The truth is that I’m quite opinionated about a lot of things, but some things, the jury’s still out. And that makes it hard for me to quickly form a coherent opinion, and blog post, on something and have it provide value to you. Hopefully my indecision will prove useful though.

Will everyone stop criticizing social media please! Not only is my jury out on this one, but I think all of your juries should be. A) It’s just a tool. B) It’s in its infancy. It’s a good thing the early adopters of the car or bicycle didn’t listen to their detractors and hop off at the first signs of criticism, no matter how valid.

The history of the bicycle is littered with what are, in retrospect, poor designs. Clunky, awkward, impractical, or otherwise a pain-in-the-ass designs abounded. But this was an early stage where innovative ideas were being explored, and has eventually led to a wide variety of adaptations that are useful in their own specific space.

Of course, they have always been, and always will be, used by dumb people to do dumb or useless things. From tight-jeaned skidding through red lights to lycra-clad snobbery, there will always be someone doing something that somebody else doesn’t like. Who cares! Run with it. If you want to tweet about your morning coffee, go ahead. Own it! If people don’t want to listen, that’s their business. Just like failed bike designs, the market will determine if you succeed or fail in your chosen endeavour, but even “failing” doesn’t mean your time has been useless.

Social media to you might be a way to “hang out” with friends and family spread around the world. Maybe these people are interested in what you have for breakfast because it helps foster that banal connection that is part of being proximate to friends and family. Less than 5% of Twitter users have more than 100 followers, meaning that 95% of you are connecting with a close, intimate group. That’s cool. Write whatever you want. Hell, Lance has >1,000,000 followers and he still tweets about useless stuff.

My rambling point is this. Neither I, nor anyone else, knows which structure and use is going to become the diamond frame design of social media. So go ahead and play. See what works, what doesn’t, what’s interesting to you, and what isn’t. But remember it’s just a tool; it’s just another way to communicate. Just like the bicycle, I’m sure after 100 years of social media, there will still be people annoying the crap out of us. That doesn’t mean it’s useless, but it doesn’t mean you deserve to make a living from it either.

I Don’t Follow My Own Advice!

Airline Bike Fees

Skyter Sinks – Was it The Team’s Fault?

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