During a recent vacation, I had the opportunity to speak with a flight attendant about her experiences in the industry.  The conversation quickly turned to the economics of the industry.  In particular, the profit sharing and bonus structure with her particular employer.  It turns out that the profit sharing program and bonuses come out of the same pool of money and the metrics for determining the amount of the benefit for each employee is based primarily on things that are beyond the control of the flight attendants, staff, airline executives, airports and air traffic control.

The bonus structure is largely based on the door to the aircraft closing on schedule, the plane taking off on schedule and the plane landing on schedule.  So, if bad weather hits either the departure or arrival airport, the employees are immediately penalized in their profit sharing and bonuses.  If an unrelated emergency takes place in the air or on the ground (e.g. a runway closed due to a crash or disabled aircraft) causing a cascading effect on air traffic in the area, the employees are immediately penalized in their profit sharing and bonuses.  When her Christmas eve flight was canceled due to bad weather and she had to spend three days away from home (including her day off, Christmas Day), the airline added insult to injury by penalizing her bonus/profit sharing for the flight cancellation.  Measurement isn’t based on individual capabilities, execution of responsibilities or measured predominantly on one’s ability to deliver good customer service; it’s based on external factors over which noone has control.

It turns out that this is very bad for morale.  The airline that employs this flight attendant happily delivered a $76 cheque as her annual bonus.  That same airline delivered a $2.6M bonus to its president for his annual bonus.

How is your company’s bonus and profit share program structured?

[cross posted from PAB2009 website]

Award winning radio producer, writer and host, Jowi Taylor will be kicking off PAB2009.  This will be the first keynote presentation at Podcasters Across Borders since Shelagh Rogers opened our inaugural conference in 2006.

During his years with CBC Radio, Jowi hosted the long-running and multiple award-winning program “Global Village”. He was the host, writer, co-creator and co-producer of the incredible documentary series The Wire — which won the 2005 Peabody Award, the 2005 Prix Italia and the 2005 Director’s Choice Award at the Third Coast Audio Festival — and the follow-up series, The Nerve: Music & the Human Experience, which aired on CBC Radio’s Inside the Music

In addition to his radio work, Jowi is the force behind Six String Nation, a project in which a guitar was made using 63 pieces of history and heritage from every part of Canada representing many different cultures, communities and characters from across the country. The guitar has traveled the country, being played in homes, bars, concert halls and at festivals by everyone from guitar hacks to well-known musicians including Bruce Cockburn, Colin James, Feist, Jane Siberry and The Mighty Popo.  Our very own PABster, Sean McGaughey, has also had the privilege to play the 6SN guitar.

Click here to register for PAB2009 while space is still available.

Life is short.  It seems a shame to waste your twilight years in failed attempts to sabotage hard won happiness.  You’re only hurting and humiliating yourselves.

I refuse to engage in resolutions this year; I’m focusing, instead, on achieving goals.  To that end, I realize that I have to purge obsolete references, books, equipment and thought processes and think more clearly about ways in which to achieve my goals.

At the same time, I’m still producing content.  In fact, I spent a good part of the day completing the first pass edit of 4 hours of video content, which included lining up a separate audio source to the video recordings.  I’ve brought the primary pool down to about 90 minutes of content.  There will also be a smaller secondary project which has a pool of about 20 minutes of content.

It’s important to remember to enjoy both the product and the process!

I’m going to take ten days away from my my online activities.  The process will begin on Saturday, December 20.  I figure I’ll get over the DT’s after about three days.  I’ll turn my email and social media tools back on around December 30.  I expect I’ll be overwhelmed by the backlog and will take a few days to gear back up to my regular rhythm.

All the best to you and yours for a happy, healthy and safe holiday season!

Sincerely,
Mark

Photo sourced by Michael Ain

I received an email from the Barenaked Ladies about a holiday album offer they have with Amazon.com.  For $2.99, you can download the MP3 version of their album Barenaked for the Holidays.  Why not?  We enjoy BNL, you can’t beat the price and we don’t have the album, yet.

So, I followed the link, submitted the order, installed the Amazon downloader, clicked the link to download the album and then…

This seems like obvious front end messaging, doesn’t it?

I was interviewed by Nestor E. Arellano of itbusiness.ca last week about the recent decision by the Ontario government to back down from its plan to add further restrictions to the graduated licensing program for Ontario drivers (Facebook backlash over Ontario teen driver restrictions a “wake-up call” published today).  It’s likely the now more than 151,000 member Facebook group created by Jordan Sterling (Young Drivers Against New Ontario Laws) to raise awareness on the issue played a pivotal role in helping the government make its decision.

People shouldn’t get too excited about the government taking its cues directly from social media.  I believe the Facebook group served as a vehicle for information dissemination and the debate over approaches for students to plead their case to the government.  While there was the typical flaming and pontificating of uninformed opinion, I was impressed by the amount of informed discussion, productive debate and collaborating/strategizing.  In that respect, the Facebook community, made up largely of non-voting students, served a significant purpose and achieved an incredible victory.

Did Facebook change the government’s mind?

In the end, I believe it was the letter-writing, emails and phone calls to MPs that made the difference.  A lot of that was clearly organized through the Facebook group.  Social media alone did not win the fight.  It was the balance between old and new, and speaking to the government on its terms.

Government and businesses, though, will have to learn this new way of interacting with their audiences.  The marketplaces, railway cars and town halls are now on the Internet and smart phones.  Commerce and policy are relocating and those that choose to ignore this move (or choose to fear it) are limiting their usefulness.

As part of the interview, I was asked to provide three-to-five steps for government and business to consider in their move to embrace social media.  I’ve adapted them slightly from the way in which they appear in the article:

1. Acknowledge social media– Just as organizations have used written and phone surveys to gather public sentiment and feedback, social networks – such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter – can be a very effective means of finding out what people think of policies and what they would like the organization to achieve.
2. Join various forums – Rather than trying to block access to social networks (which seems to be the blanket approach the days), an organization should research which online “gathering places” are appropriate for its operations and then develop policies and practices on how to use these sites.
3. Create your own “gathering place” – Adopt an existing social networking tool or develop your own social networking site to create a place where people can reach you and engage with you. Many companies bolster in-house communication between leaders and employees with the use of corporate wikis, podcasts or blogs. Special sites designed to cultivate online communities are also very useful in elevating an organization’s public profile.
4. Listen to the people – Any form of communication is no good if one of its participants turns a deaf ear to the other.  Social media amplifies this need to listen.  If your organization isn’t prepared to meet the needs of its target audience, why does it exist?
5. Engage/respond – When you receive feedback or gather data, you need to act accordingly. Realize that your “community” is vital and that it needs feedback and action from you as well. Provide people with the information they need at the time they need it and provide them with suggested actions that keep them engaged with you.

An all-encapsulating sentence that Andrea wrote as part of our review of the children’s book Sleeping Dragons All Around for our Just One More Book!! children’s book podcast (JOMB for short) will appear as one of four testimonials on the dust jacket of the 20th anniversary edition of the book.

We’ve become friendly with author Sheree Fitch since we interviewed her for JOMB episode 54, published on November 13, 2006, and we’ve always told her how disappointed we are that Sleeping Dragons and other children’s books she’s written, are no longer available.  For Sleeping Dragons, that ends when the 20th anniversary edition is released on January 25, 2009.

A two part series on the release is being featured on Just One More Book.  Part one was released earlier today and part two will be released on Monday (December 15).

This is the second time a JOMB testimonial has appeared on the dust jacket of a children’s book.  The first time was on Lee Edward Fodi’s book Kendra Kandlestar and the Door to Unger.

I’ve been one of the many voices expressing concern about the longevity of the PodPress, the incredible podcasting plugin many of us WordPress users have adopted because of its powerful features and ease of use.

It’s been easy to worry about the plugin.  Some time has past since the last update (code or even news of plans), and, more obviously, the disappearance of the support forums following a SPAM attack.

I spoke with PodPress creator Dan Kuykendall, yesterday.  Dan has been busy with work and his new dual-role as both a techie and CEO and hasn’t been able to attend to PodPress on a day-to-day basis.  He did say that he’s working on a new release and expects to put some time into the coding during the holidays later this month.

So, if you’re a PodPress user, hang in there!

A few days ago I called on my Twitter network to participate in a vote to help brothers Kyle and Brady Baldwin win $10,000 with which to buy and distribute 8,000 books to needy children through the My Own Book Foundation they set up when they were 14 and 16 years old (hear an interview with Kyle and Brady Baldwin, here).  The competition for the money is run by Ashoka’s Youth Venture and is apparently sponsored by Best Buy.  The voting procedures aren’t the simplest and the site is anything but user-friendly, but it was worth it to spread the word for a good cause and to help these two young and selfless Boy Scouts raise money to continue the amazing work they do.

I called on the goodwill of my own community and specifically asked influential people like Mitch Joel (3,500 followers), Chris Penn (3,500 followers) and Chris Brogan (25,000 followers) to help spread the word to their networks and they helped spread the word.  More people continued to retweet the appeal for voters.  It seemed exciting to me that there would be a chance at helping Kyle and Brady win their money.

Alas, Ashoka’s Youth Venture website is not ready for prime time.  The voting interface regularly fails or gets stuck when you submit your vote then tells you that you don’t have appropriate privileges to vote.  You’re supposed to be able to vote once each day (not so).  To make matters worse, the contact page doesn’t load so you can’t report any problems.  I found another route to report concerns, and after 48 hours have heard nothing.

I blew the call.  It would have been far better to appeal to everyone to donate $5 to the My Own Book Foundation.  Even if only 3,500 people donated $5 each, Kyle and Brady would raise $17,500 — much more than they stand to win through a site that for all, intents and purposes, doesn’t really exist.  Imagine if 25,000 people pitched in???