There’s a lot of belt tightening going on over here

After a month on weight watchers, I’m now down nearly 5 lbs.  So exciting!  My pants fit comfortably again.

I also check our finances and found that this past January was our lowest spending month since we started tracking it early last year.

I still think there’s a lot more fat to trim (from me and my spending habits) but I love it when things are headed in the right direction.

5 Reasons I Love Chow

1. Chow is both a fun, casual restaurant in my neighborhood and a breed of fluffly dog.
2. The Grilled Prawn Louis.  I have a fairly major addiction to this dish.  Plump, succulent, perfectly grilled jumbo shrimp on a bed of iceberg lettuce surrounded by briny olives, a tiny hard-boiled organic egg, creamy avocado slices and wedges of tomato.  The Louis dressing is fresh and tangy with lots of lemon and herbs.
3. Most of their dished come in different sizes!  I LOVE this.  Salads come in small (appetizer), medium, and large (entree platter) sizes.  The pasta and meat dishes come in small and entree sizes.  Not only does it help me practice much-needed portion control, but I can mix and match a small salad and small entree for a full meal when I’m not so hungry – and still have room to share a dessert.
4. Quality.  They make an effort to serve as many organic, free-range and locally farmed ingredients as they can.  I know I’m getting responsibly raised meat and pesticide-free veggies.
5. Great beer list.  They have a small but interesting list of beers on tap and in bottles.  The wine list isn’t too shabby either – and pretty affordable.  In the spirit of #3, they will also serve you half-glasses of wine – just ask!

Why, yes, my life *could* be more exciting!

I have moments, sure, of excitement throughout the day, but Twitter and Facebook sometimes just put so much pressure on me to be doing something really cool. I fantasized about updating my status to say “Paragliding in Paraguay”

Do Brands Belong on Twitter? Sure!

Just want to jump into the debate about whether brands are appropriate entities on social media such as Twitter.  Dave Knox sums up the sides of the issue nicely here. The crux of Mark Drapeau’s argument for banning brands from Twitter seems to be that Twitter is for people and brands are not in the spirit of sharing information and connecting people that is so central to Twitter’s success.

Like many others, I must disagree.  As a personal tweeter and as someone who tweets as a brand – Web 2.0 Summit – I think there is absolutely room in the twitterverse for brands.  Here’s why:

1. Our humans already Twitter.  As for my particular brand (my marketing team supports also several other branded Twitter accounts), the obvious candidates for human representatives would be John Battelle or Tim O’Reilly, who are already prolific personal twitterers.  Having a brand allows us to retweet their relevant tweets, disseminate conference specific information and converse one on one with our customers, while allowing them to continue to do their own thing on Twitter.
2. I want to do my thing on Twitter!  I do not want to give up my account and dedicate it to my brand.  And I don’t think my brand would be served well by 90% of the random life stuff I tweet about (ok, maybe my brand “me” is well served, but that’s my point – people are brands and brands are brands but they can be different).
3. Unintended consequences.  I absolutely think that the immediate result of limiting Twitter accounts to one per person would be the creation of dozens of fake users created just as proxies for the brands.  For example, when you talk to “Brad” at Dell,  that’s often a fake name used by several reps, similarly, you could create “Lois” at Coke or whatever and have several employees dispensing Tweets as her.  What could be more antithetical to the spirit of Twitter?  At least with a brand you have real people talking about relevant things.
4. Engagement.  As anyone following over 1000 people knows, you are going to miss some tweets.  We maximize coverage of our brand accounts by giving everyone on the marketing team access and assigning one person as “owner” of each account.  This way we can all chime in and tweet or re-tweet or answer a question in case someone else misses it.  It’s the best way for us all to stay responsive and engaged with our customers – and it would be impossible if we had to do it alone.
5. It’s easier for customers to find us.  They may not know (or care) who takes care of what at our conferences, but if they need a projector set up in a room onsite, they know they can direct message us and get an instant response.  It makes a lot more sense for me to route that message to the appropriate team member than for them to try to find someone through Twittersearch or just throw a tweet out and hope we’ll hear it.  We probably will, but it might take longer – and that’s not good for customers.

The more I use it, the more passionate I am about Twitter.  The more you build your community, the more you learn and the more you can share.  With so many of our core customers on Twitter (being in the very business of Web 2.0-related education), it makes sense for us to have a branded public presence.  And while we were once accused of being a robot, I assure you the humans behind @web2summit are real people who want to talk to you.

Kinky Canadian Inventor Builds Creepy Robot Woman-Replacement

Check out Project Aiko (thanks, Salon’s Broadsheet!).  Now, while I have to give this guy credit for doing more with his basement and spare time than I will ever do, I have to start to wonder about his relationships with women.  Why is poor Aiko programmed to immediately start asking people to stop touching her at the slightest provocation?  “Whoa, I just inadvertently molested this creepy robot!”.  And while I myself have often wished for a “Rosie” robot maid, she could probably do other stuff too – maybe tour guide, cashier, blackjack dealer?  Why does he only see her as a replacement for receptionists and maids?  Is he sexist or am I sexist for calling these out as female-dominated jobs? I’m all for progress but I’d rather we not set women back 60 years to advance technology.

I’m going to assume Aiko’s programming and job description say more about the state of mind of the inventor, Le Trung, than anything else. Certainly, like real women, she’s probably capable of much more than he can envision.

How green is my valley?

Purely for my own record keeping, here is a list of steps I’ve taken to save energy and reduce my carbon footprint this year.  I still need to do some research on biodegradable/compostable items vs. energy spent to clean reusable versions.  And I would like to do even better in 2009!

• Brought re-usable dishes to work.  Instead of using paper bowls and plates and plastic flatware, I brought my own mug, bowl, fork, spoon and knife to work.  Added bonus:  my knife actually cuts stuff!
• Turn off the faucet while I brush my teeth.  Duh.
• Unplug my charger when it’s not in use.
• Turn off the lights when I leave a room or leave the house.
• Bring re-usable shopping bags to the grocery store.  These are my favorites – the shoulder strap makes it easy to carry a heavy load and it rolls up into it’s own little ball that fits easily in my purse so I always have on hand.  Love the color selection too!  I’m going to give these out as Christmas gifts.
• Take public transportation.  I am pretty good about this but I’d like to cut down driving to work to once a week max – just enough for me to cart my gym clothes and snacks to the office.

Things to work on for 2009:

• Remembering to turn off my monitor and speakers when I leave work.
• Turning my macbook off when I’m not using it – or do I save more power by leaving it on?  I forget, so I’d better figure that one out.
• Be more efficient with the dishwasher – don’t run it as often.
• Start composting.  My building has a convenient compost bucket and everything.

Advertising gone horribly wrong

I have long been fascinated with advertising.  I used to read about Faith Popcorn and dream of growing up to be some brand visionary/ad person.  I remember watching some people Jump and Jive and having to go buy some Gap khakis like that very day even though I am not really a khaki pants kind of gal.  The neuroscience part is fascinating too – how our brains light up when shown something we want to buy.

But sometimes the ad people get it wrong.  Really, really wrong.  And that cracks me up.

Case in point: the huge billboard down the street from my office showing four young women laughing as they stroll down the street or a mall or something.  In huge letters it says “Visit Israel” and then below “It’s not like what you see in the news”.  Great caption there, ad people.  “Hey, visit Israel! It’s not all suicide bombing and kids with guns!  It’s women skipping down the street hand in hand!”.  Compounding the crappiness of this campaign is that the URL is printed in super tiny writing in a color that blends into the street scene.

Another good one is this insane Humana health insurance TV spot that is somehow trying to sell health insurance with the creepy story of some old dude stalking his wife.  The reanimated corpse of hume cronyn is sitting next to his wife saying “I waited three years for her to marry me”.  Wife says “I said no twice!” and he says “third time was the charm.  you wait long enough and good things happen”.  Ok, that’s sort of cute in a stalker-y way.  And they tie it into a “the wait is over” for comprehensive insurance message.

But then!  Cut back to the old couple and she – still smiling some sort of crazy mid-dementia smile – says “one night I found him singing outside my window until I made him stop”.  It’s unclear how long ago this happened.  Or what is has to do with health insurance.  There’s absolutely no tie-in with the insurance message at this point.  Just stalking.  Fascinating!

The Frugal Gourmet

So it’s been a while.  The reasons are two-fold: 1) I’ve been traveling a lot and working at a crazed pace on three events happening around the world between September and November and 2) it’s hard to talk about all the great restaurants I’ve been going to when the economy is in the toilet and my friends are losing their jobs.  So while I haven’t been to Michael Mina lately, I have participated in some interesting culinary experiments.

This particular story starts – as so many depression-era, penny-saving meals do – with the crock pot.  I decided one chilly fall evening that a nice stew was just the ticket.  I adapted a cooking light recipe for a french beef stew that called for cubed beef, finely chopped carrot and onion, and a good bit of dry red wine (the chef enjoyed the rest).  The result was a perfectly comforting, serviceable meal with about 2 lbs of beefy leftovers.  As usual, since most recipes, especially stews, don’t come portioned for 2, I packed the leftovers into containers for freezing.

What happened next was the interesting part.  Several weeks later I decided to see if I could convert my leftover stew into a homemade bolognese sauce.  My thinking was that bolognese is really just a long simmered meat-based sauce with aromatics – the same base as my stew.  So I defrosted my beefy goodness and set it on the stove to simmer with the addition of water, lots more wine, a can of tomato paste for texture and richness, and some more herbs and spices.

Over the next few hours I added more water when the sauce became to dry and continued to let it simmer.  The cubes of beef began to break down into succulent threads of meat, soaking up the thick tomato-wine-beef liquid.  In the end the sauce was quite thick and not unlike homemade ragus I’ve had in the past.  It was a wonderful Fall treat with some whole wheat penne and freshly grated pecorino romano cheese.  Next time I’ll have to try it on fresh made egg noodles.

I don’t know if I would have been as creative in repurposing my leftovers if not for the new drive to reduce waste and save money with which the wretched economy has endowed us.  But I think I like this idea of “recycling” my leftovers.

A San Francisco Classic and Emo German Theater

It’s been a while since I’ve posted.  I’ve been busy – entertaining friends, working on 2 upcoming events and stressing out about the election (maybe my next post should be about how this election has revealed my complete lack of faith in mankind and a pessimistic worldview I didn’t know I had).

However, I have had a notable meal recently when my husband took us out for our 1.5 year anniversary to Slanted Door followed by 5th row orchestra tickets to Spring Awakening.

We started our meal with cocktails – an elderflower syrup and prosecco concoction for me and a german dunkel for Jason.  The beer list at Slanted Door is extraordinary and goes so well with the food.  Slanted Door also always feels like such a quintessential San Francisco spot.  Nestled at the very back of the foodie-paradise ferry building, the huge windows that wrap the building allow you to look out on the bay and the bay bridge.  Watching the sky turn yellow and pink over the water, as commuters grab Acme bread and cowgirl creamery for the ferry home, it’s impossible not to fall in love with San Francisco all over again.

This was my third trip to Slanted Door – so enough times to know what to not pass up but to still have plenty of new menu items to explore.  I started with the galapagos shrimp cocktail with two sauces.  The three shrimp were HUGE, meaty, moist and not too chilled.  The cocktail sauce was traditional but very well done and the basil aioli was perfect with the delicate shrimp meat.  Lucky for me, Jason doesn’t like shrimp so I got these all to myself.

Next we shared Daikon Rice Cakes.  It’s hard to even describe this appetizer.  It’s almost like the texture of a polenta cake but with the moist, subtle taste of rice and a more smooth, starchy consistency.  The deck of cards size cakes were browned on one side and layered in a bowl and topped with a sweet, smoky soy sauce that gently coats the silky bites of rice cake.  I think this is the one dish I have every time I go to Slanted Door.  Jason loves it too but I’m not sure he knows Daikon is a kind of radish.

The main courses were less successful.  We ordered the shaking beef, a dish we have both had before and loved.  It’s tender cubes of marinated filet mignon stir fried with heaps of red onion.  It’s served with a vinegary sauce and a pile of arugula.  In the past I recall this being one of the best beef dishes I’ve ever had but this time, while still tender and flavorful, some of my beef was more medium-well than medium rare and it just didn’t live up to expectations.

To try something new, my fish-averse husband and I decided to try the clay pot chicken.  The clay pot preparation seemed exciting and the ginger-soy-garlic sauce sounded great.  The appearance of the dish was not as appetizing as I’d hoped.  Presentation-wise, the chicken pieces in their glaze provided no contrast with the honey-colored pot.  While the sauce was quite flavorful, it lacked something special and I found the chicken pieces (supposedly dark and white meat) to have more fat globs clinging to them than I like.

I ordered a side of Japanese eggplant (my love of eggplant is well documented here) and it was fabulous.  Grilled to soft but not squishy and coated with a sweet ginger glaze, I had no problem finishing the whole portion.

And that is how we had no room left for dessert.  But it’s just as well since we needed to make our way over to the Curran Theater.

Spring Awakening was innovative and refreshing.  I can see why they say it’s reinventing the musical.  And the talent was amazing – any one of them could be stars.  However, I found the story trite and a bit too after school special-y.  I mean teen sex, pregnancy, botched abortion, suicide, physical abuse, sexual abuse, reform schools all in one play?  And while some of the rock songs were fun and catchy (“Totally Fucked!”) I found my attention wandering during the slower songs and I lost track of the story.  And I’m still not really sure how it ended – was that supposed to be a hopeful ending?

I am so glad I saw it though.  Although I’m glad I didn’t have to see it with my mom like so many teens in the audience!  The only thing more embarrassing would be making your dad take you to see Psycho Beach Party (but that’s another story).

Way too long post about nothing

From Gary Vaynerchuk insisting that there is no reason in 2008 for me to be doing shit I hate to Tim O’Reilly exhorting us to stop throwing sheep and do something that matters, Web 2.0 Expo NY encouraged a lot of self reflection.  Does what I do matter?  Do I hate it?  Well, no, I don’t hate it at all.  I often enjoy what I do, and more than that, the people I do it with.  Is it important?  That’s another story.  Yes and no.  We can’t all save babies and I’m really fine contributing to our general economic prosperity blah blah blah.  But I think (trying not to sound entirely like I’m mixing up and drinking the kool-aid and passing it around), our events bring together communities of people that make things happen.  Good things, bad things, but things that happen.  That might not happen the same way if our events didn’t exist to bring those people together.

But does what I do matter?  If our events didn’t exist, doubtless another event would be there to fill that void and make stuff happen.  And similarly, if I wasn’t doing marketing here, someone else would be.  How can we matter in those circumstances?

Well first, I’ve never been an entrepreneur.  I am not the person with big ideas that need realizing.  My superpower lies in problem solving.  I LOVE solving problems.  All problems.  Work problems, personal problems, company problems, world problems (well that one is kinda big), puzzles.  It’s often posited that women, faced with a problem, want to commiserate and be heard while men just want to solve the problem, leading to a lifetime of misunderstanding and frustration.  That’s total bullshit because then I am such a man.  I am a fixer.  I think the world needs fixers.  We all have our role to play.

I’d like to try to think more about what I would do if I didn’t need to work.  What cause would I support?  Certainly anything for animals is high on the list.  I love the urban gardening projects that have been popping up but I hate actually gardening.  Could I use my marketing skills and business school background to fundraise?  Sure.    I just need to find the time.

So I’m going to do a job I enjoy that matters a little.  And I’m going to adopt a dog.  And I’m really trying to stop using disposable coffee cups and leaving the tap on while I brush my teeth.  Maybe someday I’ll have a child.  Such a small start, but what is life but a set of small choices?

So thanks Gary for the spastic pep talk and Tim, for the wise words.