Years ago, I was awarded the honor of generating a pollyanna list of gift givers and receivers between me, my siblings and our spouses. The rules were simple: you are assigned one person to buy a gift for, you won’t get your spouse’s name, you won’t get the name of the person you bought for last year. I was still too lazy to think every year, so a friend and I wrote a pollyanna generator that stored lists from previous years and generated random lists to ensure absolute pollyanna integrity.
Sadly, I lost the source code. As more siblings got married the software grew confused with too many names. When my wife and I married I inherited the same responsibility with my new in-laws. Now I rely on a sophisticated system of spreadsheets, scratch paper and email. Every year I say to myself, “I should create a web site that does this for everyone. It could be a free service – linked to online shopping services. It’s not that complicated… I should do that before someone else gets the idea…” It’s no surprise that someone figured this out:
great idea, great name, great slogan... wish it was mine...
This is not sour grapes – an unfulfilled idea isn’t worth the brain cells it’s written on. Our friends at Elfster have done what I never bothered to do and they did it better than I ever would have. I played with the site this evening. It’s well designed, simple and free. A few highlights:
The organizer sets up a list of names & email addresses
It waits for all invitees to accept the invitations or waits for a deadline to pass before starting the gift exchange
All participants are anonymous – even the organizer
Participants are notified of their pollyanna through email
Participants create wish lists, but cannot view the status of gifts
All other participants can change the status of gifts (in case Santa bought you that tie and doesn’t want someone to duplicate it)
You can communicate anonymously with your pollyanna
There’s more, but you should play with it. Set up your office gift exchange on it. And the next time you hear me talk about an idea I have, give me a kick in the pants and tell me to do something about it…
It was a great night. A dream come true, really. Now that I’ve had a few days to reflect on it, the best way I can describe what happened on Friday night is to compare it to the birth of a child. OK, I know it sounds weird, but stick with me.
201 Fayette Street, Second Floor, Conshohocken PA
Last September we started Think Brownstone. Carl and I had a vision, some basic principles, and a few really great clients. Yet with just a placeholder web page, fake business cards and no real office space, Brownstone was still somewhat under wraps, hidden from view.
Collect all nine colors
Over the last 12 months our company developed. Several incredible people joined our team. We defined our brand with a logo and website. Business cards were printed. An office space was transformed into a Think Space. A date was set, invitations were mailed and anticipation grew.
Lots of great friends
Then on Friday November 7th, 2008, Think Brownstone was introduced to the world. A company was “born”. Thanks so much for coming out and making our First Anniversary Celebration and Open House truly a night to remember. Even more than that, thank you all for your support, passion and trust through the years. We are going to make you proud.
Don’t worry, this is not a political entry. For all of you who have ever made a presentation with PowerPoint using 60 slides riddled with bullets: We want you to watch this short clip from Meet the Press. This should be the future of business presentations:
See what’s going on here? This is an interactive presentation tool. It is not just ten bullets on a slide in 14-point text. This allows the presenter to do several things:
Get his initial point across
Demonstrate variations on his point
Not just answer questions, but SHOW the answer to questions
Involve his audience by letting them play “what if”
Think about this the next time you put together a presentation. We’re all guilty of putting our audiences to sleep with PowerPoint, it’s about time we started devising ways to involve our audiences.
You don’t need an expensive touch screen either. I remember staying up late during the 2000 election because I wanted to go to sleep knowing who our next president was going to be. The late, great Tim Russert got it, he sat at the news desk with a small white board and sketched out every possible scenario. A WHITE BOARD!
