In the September 21, 2008 edition of the Boston Sunday Globe Magazine there is an article on Ace Tickets, a Boston-area sports and entertainment ticket broker. Towards the end of the story is a quote by me! I was contacted by the writer of the story, Dan McGinn, and asked questions about myself and my thoughts on ticket brokers. You can read the full article here.

In my very own paragraph, GoPats.com gets a link and my work and hobby are identified. I talked with McGinn for probably 15-20 minutes. The reference to paying a premium for Sox tickets was when my friend AJ visited from Australia and I wanted to take him to a game. The game I was shut out of was Super Bowl XXXVIII - I went to Houston, but the price of over US$2,000.00 per ticket was way out of our range. The ellipsis between the 2 lines in the end was my explanation to the author about how I, as an entrepreneur, understand the ticket broker business, but at the same time can't swallow the high ticket prices.

This "love and hate" relationship comes out throughout the article. Where brokers buy up tickets that may go unsold, teams don't reap the premiums themselves for the tickets. Many years ago I asked a question to the former president of the Boston Garden, Larry Moulter, about his thoughts on ticket scalpers on Garden property selling tickets. Needless to say, he did not directly answer my question. Though the business has come a long way with the likes of StubHub and Ace themselves being a Red Sox sponsor, there isn't even a consensus among Boston team owners.

McGinn's article is a good piece on the state of the tickets today, and it will be interesting to reread it a year or more in the future to see how it has evolved.

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The next likemind coffee will be this Friday, September 19, 2008 in dozens of cities around the world. In Chicago, it will be at Gallery 37 Cafe, 66 E. Randolph, at the corner of Wabash in the Loop in the Gallery 37 building. Note the cafe opens right at 8.

I call likemind a gathering of creative-minded people, from various disciplines including Internet, advertising, art, et. al.

No RSVP is required but is always welcome, and you can by commenting to this post or at the likemind Chicago Facebook group.

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The Nokia OpenLab event has just wrapped up in Helsinki, Finland. This is the event I was invited to, and previously referred to as the WOM World Nokia Workshop. For the last couple of days, about 35 people from all over the world gathered at the Klauk K Hotel in the Finnish capital, all guests of the mobile phone giant. This was the first time Nokia has brought together such a group of people, and they have indicated they plan on similar events in the future.

Most everybody in attendance is involved in social media to some extent, as this was how they were found and invited by Nokia. Where that was the case, there was no common profile of any attendee, except for everyone was eager to participate and had a great respect for one another.

It was an amazing couple of days with some thoughtful and exciting people with great conversations all around. I will write more on this upon my return, and will probably start on the flight home.

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As a new Dad, there is plenty to read out there. A book that is a “must read” is called “What To Expect When You're Expecting” or simply referred to as “the book.” If you saw the movie “Knocked Up” this is the book they were referring to. The idea behind these books is to inform you as much as possible before your baby arrives, and when it does, you will be prepared with information to take on any situation.

Have you seen how many baby books are out there? And what they cover you won’t possibly remember at 3:00 a.m. when your baby is screaming for a bottle. One day I put down “the book” when I got to the chapter of all the deadly diseases a baby can have. Not that I can do anything about any of them, of course.

These information-overload books are screaming for a different approach – a book that covers the basics, but with a sarcastic sense of humor. Ok, that last part is my personal preference. I found such a book in Sippy Cups Are Not For Chardonnay, by Stefanie Wilder Taylor, a comedy writer and Mom. There were many takeaways from this for me, not only as a new parent but for life in general.

My greatest takeaway is that you can study, but nothing beats on the job training. Other than babysitting someone’s kid, there is no internship for being a parent. But there are internships available for just about every career option out there. Experience of some form beats none at all in most cases, providing the people involved have somewhat similar capacity.

Another takeaway is to budget for unplanned changes. In the case of a baby, this hit me most when I was tested with the functionality of some baby clothes, especially at late hours or when the kid wanted to take advantage of being outside of the womb and kick like crazy. An example that occurs for me quite often is with Web site design and development. Even though the delivered solution may be exactly to spec, once it is out there and in use, there may be desired changes to make it that much better, or fix something never originally considered. I would also apply this to home ownership.

A final takeaway on advice – consider yourself an employer and someone gives you a resume; file it as you never know when you need it. As a new parent, I get tons of advice daily. Some of it just does not resonate until you are in the moment when that advice applies. Keeping some of these things in the back of your mind and shuffling through them on occasion helps, whether it’s a screaming baby or screaming client.

Sippy Cups Are Not For Chardonnay is certainly not a reference for everything that could possibly happen to your baby, and as extensive as it is the book "What to Expect" is still a must-read. But "Sippy Cups" is a great story tightly woven with humor and sarcasm and real life that I recommend to any first-time parents, or anyone that knows any first-time parents.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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Book Take-Aways • Diversions • (1) Comments • Permalink