So for everyone interested I just finished off the Museum’s 15th Anniversary logo for next year’s event before heading off to the 14th Anniversary over Labor day weekend. I’ll be giving everyone a sneak peak of the logo once I’m 100% sure it’s been approved and they’ve started applying it merchandise.

Meanwhile, I hope you’ll enjoy some photos from this year’s festivities. Use the “info on” button to see the information about a picture.

I’ll be adding a panoramic image of the “3’s” display. There is only one 1983 in existence and it’s at the National Corvette Museum. This is the only place in the world that they can have the 1953, 1963, 1973, 1983, 1993, & 2003 side by side.

Also, the museum has purchased a piece of land that they’ll be building a roadcourse, dragstrip, and autocross/skidpad on: http://www.z06vette.com/forums/f29/update-ncm-dragstrip-112213/

I watched a few more videos. A few really weren’t worth watching (”WorkFast TV interviews Mark Bernstein of PARC”… too much talk of past tech and not upcoming or useful tech. “WorkFast interview ‘Mr. Office 2.0′” was just not enough useful info for me. I actually fast forwarded a bit through these because I was bored with them.) I do have notes on another one though.

How Analytics Are Changing Business

My notes:
Web analytics: an hour a day book by: Avinash Kaushik
google analytics
market motive
Wasp plugin
Occam’s Razor (Avinash Kaushik’s blog)
keywords are not always what you want or expect people to be searching for - harvest keywords from the words and phrases people are actually using by reviewing your webstatsGoogle insights for search
Get ahead of the curve
Google trends

Compete research tool
alexa
hitwise

2-5% of people don’t use cookies
There’s typically 1 blog comment to every 3 e-mails about a blog post

engaging websites
bounce rate
test and experiment
get customers involved in helping you evolve to the next level
multiple iterations of your site
make more money & create happier customers

1) use an analytics tool -things that don’t get measured don’t get improved
2) people ignore the power of surveys and usability on the web (iperceptions.com)
3) hire great analysts - if you have $100 to spend, spend $10 on the tool and $90 on the people. At the end of the day people make the difference.

yahoo index tools
wordpress - blog metrics plugin
when blogging, do something that is unique and has value
seo your blog posts

Recently I subscribed to the video podcast for Workfast.tv. These videos are great resources for productivity with a business and tech slant.

Today I watched “Managing Your Mind With the CEO of ActiveWords” and “The 10 Secrets of Highly Productive People”. Below are the videos as well as the notes I took while I was watching:

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Managing Your Mind With the CEO of ActiveWords

My notes:
Buzz Bruggeman, CEO of ActivewordsPrograms:
ActiveWords (mind mapping)
Xobni (e-mail plugin, helps you follow e-mail conversations and also has analytics)
Anagram (e-mail plugin, create contacts from text fast)
SpinVox (voice to text)
Jott (voice notes to text and tasks)
CallWave (now has voice to text)
EverNote (more mind mapping?)
Rescuetime (track where you’re spending time)
eyejot (video e-mails - make communication more personal even from a distance)Learn more about mind mapping. Figure out if Activewords will work with my mac/pc parallels setup or not.So far I use a lot of the programs listed above, I downloaded a few more that look excellent and a couple of others look like they may take an hour or two to learn so I’ve bookmarked them to come back to.

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The 10 Secrets of Highly Productive People

My notes:
Matt Rissell, CEO of TSheets.com, a web based time tracking tool that also has the added service of call-in time tracking (so people out in the field without a computer but who have access to a phone can track their time.)Top ten things the people he’s been interviewing have in common:

1. Passion
2. Surround yourself with excellent people
3. Create an environment where great people can succeed
4. Simplicity
5. Know your motivation
6. Secret Sauce (what gives you that competitive edge)
7. Make your decisions be great
8. Balance
9. Be able to Execute
10. Build your own system

These aren’t exact quotes … some are more like summaries of my POv of what was said some are partial quotes with a little added to them:
- Choose the things that make you productive.
- Success is growth in every area of your life - not just success at work.
- Don’t get distracted from your real goals.
- Don’t get paralyzed by indecision. Failures are lessons to learn from.
- Your business can be bigger than yourself - hire people that are smarter than you are.

WorkFast.tv aftershow with archives: http://www.kyte.tv/scobleizer

I actually want to do couch to 5k but I think I need to get back into daily walking first so I’m going to do 30 days of 4-5mile walking first.

I also want to do the 100 push-ups program.

This is from an e-mail that was sent to me.

“For weeks we have heard that CentrePointe is just the “shot in the arm” that downtown Lexington needs. With a promised investment of $250 million and the prospect of significant job creation and new high-end retail, office and residential spaces, the Webb Cos. have garnered the support of Mayor Newberry, some Council members and some segments of the business community.

With inflation rising dramatically, with credit markets tightening, with new downtown retail spaces sitting empty, with record office space vacancies and with new downtown condo sales anemic, it seems reasonable to ask how likely is it that CentrePointe will ever be built?

Before we demolish an entire block in the city’s center and before we earmark tens of millions of dollars in Tax Increment Financing, we believe our city leaders should ask the developer to provide the following basic information to demonstrate the viability of CentrePointe:

1) A letter of agreement or intent between CentrePointe and the Marriott Corporation.

2) Documentation demonstrating a binding committment to provide the financing necessary for the project.

3) Letters of commitment from the signature retailers and restaurants that the developer has touted.

4) Proof of the pre-sale of 27 or so of CentrePointe’s million-dollar condominiums.

5) Letters of intent from tenants of CentrePointe’s office space.

Absent the foregoing, the public might understandably wonder if CentrePointe will actually be built and if not, what will become of this block?

Will we be left, for years to come, with a vacant block in the heart of Lexington?

Will we end up with a dramatically scaled back project that fails to deliver on its promised economic impact?

Will the block be sold to the Federal Government for a much-rumored Federal Courthouse complex?

If these possibilities concern you, write a letter to the Lexington Herald Leader and ask that the developer provide the proof outlined above.

If these possibilities concern you, contact Mayor Jim Newberry and the Urban County Council and urge them to demand evidence of the financial viability of the CentrePointe project before irreperable harm is done to our downtown core.”

My comments and predictions:
I think this will be built. I think they are banking on making money from government funding due to the proposed uses and the 2010 Equestrian games. And they might even make money on the hotel rooms and leasing condos during the Equestrian games. After that though? My guess is it will be a giant empty monstrosity and that whoever is involved in building it will find a way to walk away from it all with money in their pockets and no responsibility for what happens next.

This would just be my QUICK guess. I haven’t been to the meetings, I haven’t talked to either side that’s involved. I do think it’s a shame that this is happening to one of the areas that had businesses renting when there are plenty of vacant buildings they could knock down instead.

Find out more - go to:

 http://www.preservelexington.org/