The more I think about it, the more it makes sense.  We are moving from an old system based on a feudalistic top to bottom hierarchy to a more collaborative one.

No wonder we have so many people who are fretting, so many corporations having a hard time grasping this transition and desperately clinging on to a business model loosing steam every day.

First there the Open Source Movement and Unix was opened to anyone for free. The only thing required is that you had to give back any modifications to the community.  this way, you benefited from the OS and what you improved would benefit the entire community.  Everyone wins.

But who makes money this way?  And that is the biggest problem companies are facing right now.  How do we make money? Maybe it is time to redefine how money is made, who makes it and how much is allocated.  Obviously, having CEO, Presidents and Chairman making more money than small countries is taxing this society.  As consumers are feeling the pinch of ever-higher prices, gas has shot up 30% in a year, groceries followed.  Everything seems to go up in prices, including salaries of the people who sell goods to consumers who in turn make their positions possible.  I see the ridicule in it.  They are the service and need consumers.

A few decades ago, we saw the loss of innovations.  As companies became bigger and more complex to operate, funds were diverted from research to advertising.  Take a company as Xerox was which had a culture to innovate and grow.  Then, take a company as Microsoft became these last ten years.  I know it's fashionable to bash them, but there are reasons.  Microsoft took Xerox's ideas and sold them.  It's nothing too moral but not the end of the world either.  What happened later was a hunt to acquire any companies that innovated and competed.  Once bought, they were either incorporated or if not possible, shut down.  Eventually, less and less innovations made their ways to the public and those who did had to face bigger, slower corporations that squashed them down in order to maintain their stranglehold.  But anything that you strangle eventually lacks air.  And this is where we are.

The automobile industry went the same way, acquiring each other, buying technology and patents, keeping them tightly under drawer.  And now we have a bloated industry having an incredible hard time negotiating an oil-free future, dragging its feet.

Next on the list, governments and politicians.  Talk about status quo in this department.  Politicians are great a speeches but pale when it comes to changing anything.  Promises are made but once in office, we are told things are not that easy to change.  After 4 or 5 decades of seeing this, it's obvious these people are operating from an old model that clearly doesn't work in this day and age of change people clamor for.  And things are happening, albeit slowly here to.  Newer candidates appear with a glimmer of hope.  Older ones don't want to be left behind and jump on the bandwagon but they look awkward, unfit as modern gymnastics.

Even the music and entertainment industry is under pressure to change.  The old business model of making money by holding the reigns so tightly it suffocated its artists is seeing a flock of people turn to independent movies and music.  Case in point, Radio Head delivering its own album personally on their website and do away with the cash-cow industry middle man.  Ever since the 70s, the music industry has killed most artists that would have probably blossomed to be amazing by now. 

Things are changing, have changed and will continue to change.  For once, I am happy to see that change and be part of it.  I used to dream of being alive in the mid-60s experiencing Woodstock or well ahead into the Star Trek years in order to not have to deal with this awkward society clearly wanting a better future but constantly being held back by a ferocious greed that infected almost every companies. 

Things change.  Things always have to change.  Only those who try to freeze time get stuck in celluloid.  In time, they have to move on also.

One of the reasons why I have been absent these last few days is that Virginia took me to Las Vegas to witness the last days of the Star Trek experience at the Hilton.

A few thoughts.  You know how it is when you want to do something but think you have plenty of time?  Well, that was the idea behind one day doing the Star Trek experience.  Plenty of time… that was until I found out it was shutting down before the end of the year.  Virginia thought we would go up there for a well earned, at least for her, R&R for Labor Day weekend.  It turned out that was the last weekend.

My impressions on it was interesting.  First I got to see three actors, no four.  Suzie Plakson was there, as well as your favorite Dabo girl, Chase Masterson, and a special wonderful appearance by Beverly Washburn and Voyager's helmsman Garrett Wang.

Plakson is as zesty as she appears on TV.  She is full of life, quick witted and seems very bright.  Chase is as attractive as I remembered her in Deep Space 9 and there was something about the way she would look at you that stopped me in my tracks.  He stare seemed gentle and it had a longing for something I didn't grasp.  Beverly was simply beautiful and aged so well.  Her smile light up the room.

Being amongst other Star Trek fans made me realize that there are fans and trekkies.  I'm a fan.  I don't have a uniform in my closet… or maybe yet   Some of the costumed made by trekkies were incredible and very realistic.  One trekkie even had a Roddenberry company  "tricorder" with blinking lights and as real as the tv series.  It was impressive.

What struck me though was that all of these people seemed somewhat discontent with our society.  They wanted more and found the relief of Star Trek's better collaborative future more appealing than the harsh world of always more, more, more.  All of these people gather together and talk about Star Trek and that upcoming better tomorrow.

Paramount is apparently incapable of making money on a franchise like this.  Surprised?  I'm not.  Paramount is old school.  They need a lot of money, a cash cow and if the franchise doesn't returns millions, it will drop it for more juicy reality shows or whatever they can concoct with little money.  They cannot seem to grasp the importance of Star Trek nor that sometimes you need a flagship to create an image, even if it doesn't make as much money.  Need proof of this new era I'm talking about?  Look at Project Better Place where Shai Agassi dreams of a collaborative society where electric cars recharge smartly here and there.  Even his Better PLace company is a collaborative environment.  Want another example?  Look at the newer start ups in the electric car industry.  They work together.  How abuot Web 2.0?  Check out a blog I am involved with here.

Star Trek is about old versus new, the old way of doing business and today's more collaborative desire to work together.  Until new blood comes at Paramount, we will see Star Trek movies that are closer to Star Wars (right versus wrong) instead of a future knocking on our door where we work for the betterment of ourselves and society.  Maybe that's what you get when you bath in so much money, you are out of touch.

From the department of This Is How We Do Business!

It's been 4 months since I wrote Gerry Brown, California's Attorney General about Charter's incessant regular mail spam and we still receive every week fliers from the company about deals all better than the last ones.  Unfortunately, they are still the same deals, still the same bait and catch into a contract agreement, and I still can't fathom paying $60 a month for commercial breaks every 6mn.  It makes no sense, especially in light of the poor quality of TV entertainment.  If we could only chose our channels and only pay for them, but the cable industry is a monopoly.  And yes, I am working on my next letter to the Attorney General and this sending the same to Charter Communication's CEO.

Charter Communication still takes the cake with lame advertising and nothing new.  Just an annoying company.  Google them, and you will see I am but one voice in a sea of dissatisfied people.

The other new comer to the chart of spammer is InsiderBet.  Now that one came out of nowhere.  I don't follow football, in fact I know very little about it.  Calling them has been a mixed experience.  "Can I get unsubscribed?"… "Oh, just throw it out."  You've got to be kidding and the person hung up on me.  That gets me even more fired up, so I call back and this time, I keep my stand.  Impossible to get them to disclose who is selling them my name.  Ah freedom, how restricive you are.

In the end, it makes me wonder about companies like those two.  Independents, as myself build our reputation on client satisfaction for our lifeline.  Charter Communication, InsiderBet, and to some extent Verizon just don't care.  Though I have to be fair with Verizon, even though it is a monopoly, they are a little better at helping.

Will I ever trust Charter Communications again after lying to us?  A resounding no!  Will I ever have a favorable image of them despite corny commercials of smiling users?  Absolutely not.  Maybe those users are on some drugs I don't have in my diet.

Finally, its mediocrity that gets these company by on daily basis.  Locking clients in yearly contracts get them a steady flow of income without having to be innovative.  When I check prices in Europe and Japan, I can't believe they charge that little for so much more compared to here.  We are twice as expensive, twice as bad and twice as slow.  Go figure.

Thank goodness I have a coach to talk to…

The only problem is they go by so quickly!

It’s strange.  It’s like Christmas, Hanuka or whatever you celebrate.  You wait for it all year long.  It’s one entire day out of 365, or 4 or 6 or whatever year it is.  On July 29th, I made sure to look at my cell phone and see that date so that I would savor it more.  I promised myself to do the same on the 30th.  And I was aware of it a few times during that day.  But all the sudden, after a romantic gondola ride and a restaurant, I am in bed falling asleep.  What happened?

Gone, zip, zoosh, flew by, bye bye, thank you Mam!  And I have to look forward to next year and add another number.  Isn’t it funny how we psych ourselves up so much for events and have them race by quickly?  Maybe there is a knob to accelerate and decelerate time.  I think it has to do with quantum physics and science.

Something must have happened…

I  must have stepped into some alternative time slip vortex or a time warp machine without knowing.  It’s already July 1st!  My Birthday is at the end of the month.  Time really flies buy.

June was good and looking back, I am on track with my expectation for my practice as I greet yet another big client.  I am happy.

I’ll have more to say on the epiphanies my little 18 month old niece shoved into my life, as well as more coaching related things and obviously, cars.

My 1974 Alfa Romeo Spider has new suspensions, shocks absorbers and tires.  What a difference!

Now, have to bring in the family to LAX…

Darn, silly TypePad swallowed up my post.  I wrote about what happened that time between Blue Cross, my doctor and a seedy Beverly Hills scanning company…  That makes me mad!  It was there yesterday!

Keeps the fun going. Or at least for people like me.

I got great feedback about the color scheme of the blog and green over brown is not the best color combination for reading. Thanks Claude. I hope this blue starry night scheme will be better. One quick last word, the green and brown were the closest colors back for my local famed Robert Weil Associates period.

Enough said, a little bit about this past weekend. We had a fabulous three day weekend where we took our spider and rolled up to San Luis Obispo then Cambria. There is something about that part of California we both love. Maybe it’s the wide open space!

We met a dear friend of ours who lives in SLO on Friday night with her parents. It was nice to see her and get a feel of the wonderful pace of this fun yet gentle city. Saturday, we met our Alfa club fellow members for breakfast and off to wine country. It was fun.

Californian wines.
Hum, some good, some not so good for this palate. Maybe it’s because I was raised on different wines but some Californian wines and just too oaky and thick for my taste. I like my wine to be subtle, that also means under 14 degrees. It’s just me. There were great surprises along the way, Harmony and J. Paul Rosilez. Great wines and after talking to them, I felt relieved I wasn’t the only one with weird taste buds. One thing though, any bottles over $10 or 20 is out of control. And I guess here my background betrays the choice and quality of wines I could have for $2 to 5.

I feel it is one thing to pay a nice sum for a Chateuneuf-du-Pape or Nuits St-George but the trend for any wines out in the Paso Roble area is $25 on an average. At that price I expect something different and aged more than 10 years. And what is going with the lack of Merlots? Does everything need to be Pinot Noir now since “the movie” as it was referred to? Are people so trendish they don’t trust their own taste buds? You see the secret is that there are great wines and there is what you like. That’s it. But I digress as usual.

We met some new friends in the club, Claude and his wonderful wife (darn memory!) and his son Brian and wonderful wife (again, darn memory!) It was great speaking French to this Belgium born car guy who spent most of his life in the south of France. You see one of the best part about our club is that it is not snobbish and very welcoming. We even have members who don’t own an Alfa. Claude graced me with some very nice stories accompanied with many beers. It was too hot for wine

It was a fun weekend. Wish we had more like these.

I’ve always had a creative imagination.

I was born with a very vivid imagination. As a kid, I was half convinced I was an alien trapped in a foreign world where scientists observed me. I even felt my own parents were cleverly crafted robots whose main function was to observe me. They would thoughroughly be replaced and reconditioned every night. I was also especially good at escaping clever aliens plots to capture me. I wouldn’t sleep too long in the same position for fear they had devised a scanning system that would get my body’s imprint and beam me out of this planet. And yes, this was way before I had ever seen Star Trek. And yes, I never much for blind authority.

For as far as I can remember, I have always loved expressing myself. I have always been vocal about what I sensed and felt, to the smiles of indulging adults around me. For years, I have loved writing, ideas, impressions, etc. I have nursed the romantic notion to write a book one day. I have actually done some work on it. It will be called Fighting the Invisible Enemy. It’s a pretty straightforward look into how we spend so much time fighting ourselves to eventually embracing our true nature. It’s the story of how we fight against ourselves and finally embrace who we are.

So why am I writing this at 11:30 pm while I can’t sleep? I am reading Gene Roddenberry’s biography and it strikes me how much he loved writing. It just reminded me why I have been so attracted to arts, whether in form of music, writing lyrics, photography or anything with an artistic creative aspect to it.

So I will continue doing what I love doing most, writing, communicating. Even if sometimes it isn’t always easy finding things to write about in this blog, it is fun and very satisfying. I feel I am stretching a muscle, or maybe more like developing one, that writing skill.

Ultimately, I feel life is a huge sandbox where you are given free reigns to do whatever you wish. The Source of all things gives you the primal energy and you decide what you want to do and create. And as such, you must deal with the responsibilities, good or bad. It’s your choice ultimately. Can’t wait to see the dreams I have tonight.