9/11 Seven Years On…

WTC Tribute Lights

Originally uploaded by brandonj74

Ronald Keith Milstein, 54; Alejandro Castano, 35; John Doe, 59; Jane Doe, 52 (both names not released).

Know them? Probably not and neither do I. These four 9/11 World Trade Center victims’ remains were finally identified just this past April — almost seven years after the attack. I just wanted you to know that even now, more than 40% of the victim’s have yet to have their remains identified, leaving those families with only the WTC site — now a gaping construction pit — as the only place for them to gather to remember those lost on that day.

As I travel around the country, especially away from the big population centers of NY, Boston, D.C. and even L.A., it strikes me that those of us who live in the areas that were attacked are still hurting whereas most of the country has moved on.

And so, as we remember those who died on that day and (for some of us) as we continue to hear the screaming voices buried deep within our souls, let’s renew our resolve as a country to prevent this from happening again.

I originally planned to post this yesterday, on the 7th anniversary, but came to realize that this date still affects me more than I’d care to admit.

P.S. – As we dicsuss the billion$ in overruns in the planning and construction of a 9/11 memorial here in New York City, aren’t the two beams of light reaching towards heaven the ultimate memorial?

Business Exchange: Trilogy of Entries Ends

At the risk of losing you by posting a 3rd entry in a row about the new project I am working on, I’d like to point out the good side: trilogies have a habit of working, quadrilogies (is that a word?) don’t, and so this is the last one you’ll have to endure (at least for a while).

Check me out at Business Exchange

(the items in the widget below are clickable)

We’re open! Today is the day the curtain gets lifted, the veils get parted, the fog dissipates (etc., etc.) on the Business Exchange (if I had a soundfile of Also Sprach Zarathustra, I’d insert it here).

So, come on in — it’s easy! Just self-register here (insert your info, including your e-mail address and the password you wish to use when signing-in), and a completion link will be sent to you within the hour. Click the link, create your profile (a neat feature allows you to load your profile from your existing LinkedIn one) and then go to this page to sign-in: Business Exchange.

Pay No Attention to The App Behind the Curtain

Slowly, the veil is being lifted on the ‘Business Exchange’, the new project I am working on at BusinessWeek. We’re now almost in open beta and at this point have taken the product out from behind the firewall and have invited some industry types in to take a peek.

Welcome to the Business Exchange

And so far, the reaction has been pretty positive. We’ve been written up in the New York Times (“Topic Pages to Be Hub of New BusinessWeek Site” free reg required), as well as this article in Wired.Com (“BusinessWeek Goes Geek, Nixes Silicon Valley for Inside Job“) a personal favorite of mine.

Keeping in mind that this is still in early beta, I’d love to hear your comments.

So, Ron, What Are You Working On Now?

Here’s what I’m working on right now:

My new project

After 10+ years at AOL, people have been asking me that question, and it’s not always an easy question to answer. I’m Director of User Participation at BusinessWeek.com — which means I’m the lead curator of Community among our users. We’ve been hard at work on a new Web 2.0 product that’ll roll out after Labor Day (want a sneak peek? E-mail me or ask in a comment) and I’ve been unable to speak about it publicly.

The word cloud above, created with Wordle (thank you, Nancie), gives a clue to what we’re developing. Stay tuned for more…

All the World’s a Stage (My New York #2)

I don’t think the bard was thinking about New York City when he wrote those words, but if not he should’ve been. Certainly, working in New York City gives me front row seats to see actors and audience mingling together on the streets by day, and theater at night. L.A. can have its movies, New York, where one of my favorite T-Shirts reads, “So you’re an actor… What restaurant?”, is the home of the Great White Way — Broadway, where there’s a light for every broken heart who tried to make it here.

OK, enough of the Jerry Orbach impression. Here’s some things about NY theater in general and some theater festivals in particular.

When it comes to theater, there’s Broadway, Off-Broadway, and Off-Off Broadway. Now, here’s the skinny — those categories have nothing to do with geography. You can have an Off-Broadway theater on Broadway; a Broadway theater not on Broadway; and so on.

What determines the difference? Say it with me, ladies, “size matters.”

Broadway theaters have 500 or more seats, Off-Broadway 100-499 and Off-Off Broadway under 100. I am lucky enough to have seen many Broadway shows — more on them at another time — but this is the time of year I overdose on Off-Off Broadway shows.  They’re ususally fun, sometimes odd, generally well staged and acted — and cheap!

It’s festival time here in the Big Apple, and so far this year I’ve seen:

Bad Musicals Festival ‘08 Jul-Aug Went to three, I liked these two:

• Stranded — three men stranded on a deserted island find a genie bottle; guy #3’s wish really pisses off Guy 1 and Guy 2. I thought it was amusing.
• The Plastic Surgeon of Oz – Dorothy, Scarecrow, Tin Man and Crab Louse (yes, crab louse) seek the talents of the Plastic Surgeon of Oz in order to get into a career in porn (yes, porn). Always funny, this was, at times, LOL hilarious.

Fringe NYC Festival: Aug-Sep The odd, the irreverant, and occasionally the breeding ground for future Broadway shows (“Urinetown’)

• Becoming Britney – Britney’s last few years as set in Promises-Promises, a rehab center for the marginally talented but Very Beautiful. Saw this last night. Molly Bell is great as the pop tart.
• Tim Gunn’s Podcast (a reality chamber opera) – Using Tim Gunn’s words from ‘Project Runway’ to describe the behind the scenes battles. Seeing this Sunday.
• The Deciders – Haven’t seen this yet but I’m betting they don’t have kind words fro the current president.

New York Musical Festival: Sept-Oct Fun, lyrical, and also occasionally the breeding ground for Broadway shows (‘[title of show]‘ <– yes, that’s the name) Here’s what I am scheduled to see (with official descriptions plus my notes):

• The Bubble: A Musical Dot-Comedy The rise and fall of the dotcom decade — in a single day.
• College:The Musical They sing. They dance. They sometimes go to class. (Or, why wasn’t my college years filled with spontaneous dance and song?)
• Wood A sexy musical romp that will have you tapping your toes all the way to the public restroom stall!  (Based upon a Mid-summer night’s dream
• Bedbugs!!! A hell-bent exterminator must save NYC from killer mutant bedbug Hair Metal Rock Gods… of her own creation. (Sci-fi musicals — gotta love ‘em)

And the best thing about all of these? Typical ticket price – $15!

So, the next time you think NY Theater is aloof or too expensive, get yourself off — Off-Off Broadway, that is.

Opening Ceremonies, Open Wounds

You gotta hand it to the Chinese. When it comes to spectacle, they’re the best in the world.

The Games of the XXIX Olympiad opened at 08:08:08 on 08/08/08 (did I mention that the number 8 is considered to be lucky in Asian cultures?) and it was the most interesting and visually stimulating opening ceremonies ever.

I can still see the 2,008 drummers all moving, yelling and striking their drums with the precision of a synchronized swim team. It was stirring entertainment.

And yes, you can fault the Chinese government for their controlling policies, their human rights deficiencies, and their virtual strangulation of Tibet.

But sometimes you’ve even got to give the devil its due for staging a spectacle that should have the organizers of the 2010 Winter  Olympics in Vancouver wondering what they can do for an encore.

Take my advice, Canucks, don’t even try. Go the complete opposite way — Neil Young, solo, on acoustic guitar.

My New York #1 (first in a continuing series)

We all have our own New York. The New York of our youth, or the one we’ve adopted. The one we love or the one we hate. You’re welcome to yours, but my New York is the real New York (note the New York attitude). From time to time I’ll deign to share some of my New York with you.

My New York #1: The Egg Cream

Also known as the Chocolate Egg Cream, it contains neither egg nor cream (“tawk amongst yerselves”), and is proffered as the quintessential NYC beverage. It is also the one whose simple recipe is most often passed along as gospel — incorrectly.

The ingredients are simple: milk, chocolate syrup (more on that later) and seltzer (ditto). The trick is in the construction.

First up, the ingredients:

• Milk (whole milk, please, like the kind the milk man used to deliver to our doorstep left in those utilitarian metal boxes)
• Chocolate syrup: You want a real NY Egg Cream? Fox’s U-Bet syrup is what you need. No, it’s not the best on the market, it’s a bit runny and and has an inconsistent texture at times, but we’re talkin’ real Lower East Side Egg Creams here — not some fancy white-bread suburban version.
• Seltzer. Yes, Seltzer. No, not Club Soda. No, not Perrier or Pellegrino =:o Seltzer (preferably in the fountain-head bottle)

The big mistake most people make (and others swear by) is in the order of the ingredients. They typically say (yes, even the “experts”): Milk, syrup, seltzer and then stir. No. No, no, no, no! This does not produce an egg cream! It produces a chocolate soda with milk – blech!

The correct method:

Milk (about an 1/2 inch of the glass

Seltzer, until about an inch from the top of the glass

The carbonation will cause a white creamy head to rise to the top (leave the spoon in the glass!)

Then, carefully, slowly, with precision, pour the Fox’s U-Bet into the glass – pour it just inside the edge of the glass; do not disturb the creamy white head!

Slowly stir the syrup in the milk, causing the bottom section of the drink to be brown, maintaining the creamy white foamy head on top.

You see, it’s all about the (ahem) head. It needs to be fluffy and white — reminiscent of meringue created from beaten egg whites (hence the egg reference). If you are ever offered an egg cream and the head is an everything-mixed-together sticky-brown — throw it in the face of the one who committed the blasphemous act of giving it to you.

Tell ‘em Ron said “Hi”!

Dead ‘Running Man’ Walking

In 1994 I bought my first computer, a Compaq Presario running Windows 3.1 with 500K of storage, a tiny amount of RAM, and a ridiculously slow 4800 baud dial-up modem.

Thus, a second career in online media was born.

The PC came with free trial versions of several Internet portals (did we call them portals back then?) such as Prodigy, Genie, ImagiNation, Compuserve, and (of course) America Online. And so I joined them all. As each trial period drew to a close, I dropped them one-by-one until there was only one left — AOL. It was version 1.1 and it had about 350K members at the time. Why did I keep that one? In a word — Community.

I was amazed at being able to interact with people from all over the country from my house in New Jersey. I got hooked on ‘The Game Parlor’ — a chat area of AOL where we would play online trivia and word games. It became, for me, “appointment computing”, as I knew each Saturday night at midnight there would be a crazy TV Trivia game with my buddies Kitteridge, Zazz, GoldenChild, HalliesDad, Catberi, Luv2Shag and the rest. People who, had we met in real life, I may never have given a second glance — or them to me.

But online community was the great equalizer. I used to say (before the fancy text mod tools came out) that, “Online, we’re all black and white and 10 points tall.” AOL was the leader in Community, and while working there for over 10 years (another story for another entry) it was Community that differentiated us from the competition. The old rivals from the mid-90’s faded away. New attempts to do “community” online were made, but never equaled AOL’s presence. Even within the company, community was alternately embraced and rejected several times over.

Yesterday, the last of the Mohicans Community professionals were shown the door. Since I left last October, Jen, Chris, Kenny, Joe (2), Kelly , Nancie, Bill and many others moved on to other (better?) things. Suz, Erin (2) and the rest officially put an end to AOL Community as we knew it, and with it an end to online community done right. I am saddened by the waste of it all, the mismanagement by corporate ownership that caused a thriving force to wither and die on the vine cable.

Oh well, maybe now Keith Haring can stop spinning in his grave and get his running man back.

Thanks for the Meme-ories

My first meme (of this iteration!) I’d like to blame this on someone, perhaps fellow bloggers (“Ich bin ein blogger!”) Erin, Maria or Suzie, but the truth is I lifted it from them.

This mosaic of twelve photos represents me, or so says this meme:

1. My first name.
2. My favorite style of food.
3. My high school.
4. My favorite color.
5. My celebrity crush.
6. Favorite drink.
7. Dream vacation.
8. Favorite dessert.
9. What I want to be when I grow up.
10. What I love most in life.
11. One word to describe me.
12. My Grandmother’s first name.

For you graphically challenged, the answers are:

1. The sign the girl’s holding is a Weealeyian “I’m with Ron”; 2. Italian (of course); 3. Archbishop Molloy (that’s really it); 4. Gray (everything’s a shade of it); 5. Keira Knightley (and daily, too); 6. Rum & Coke; 7. Paris (France, not Texas); 8. Ice cream! (the chocolate souflee is a bonus); 9. A flawed superhero (I’m halfway there); 10. The fam, of course; 11. Crazy. (o/~…you know we’re never gonna survive… unles.. we get a little crazy…o/~); 12. May (maypole, get it?)

Your turn!

(From Erin)

• Enter your answers into Flickr search.
• Paste the URLs into this nifty mosaic maker.
• Discover thyself in images.

To Blog, or Not to Blog

So maybe you’re thinking, “Why is this guy starting up this blog again, here?” Good question. You see, I was part of the team that launched AOL Journals — AOL’s version of blogs — and so had an active one for a while. Like many of us, I kind of let it lapse, only jumping back in to mark the tragic passing of a former co-worker. And then I walked away once more.

But I didn’t really walk away from blogs — just blogging. Let me explain. So many of my friends had blogs (both on AOL and elsewhere) and I spent many hours reading them on a daily basis. Frequently, I left the clever comment behind in my wake. And that’s my second evolution of blogging — commenting. I used to joke that I was part of a new section of blogger — the blogmenter — the person who made you all feel good that somebody was out there, cared about what you had written, and helped the conversation along.

Then one day someone I followed asked the question, “Are you a blogger?” I felt that I was and so I explained my theory about the blogmenter and its value, and so I said that yeah, I’m a blogger.

“Myth!”, came the retort. “You are not a blogger if you don’t have your own active blog!”

And so here I am. Writing to right the wrongs so righteously flung my way.

“Ich bin ein blogger!”