Blogs - Inactive

I’ve got some good news and some great news. I’ll start with the great news first: After a tenure of 51⁄2 years, Friday, April 25 will be my last day at Promo Marketing magazine. I’ve accepted a new position as a writer at an ad agency. So, herein is my final entry to my three-month stint as a PromoMarketing.com blogger (well, I suppose the part about the end of the blog might be the only bad news).

But, here’s the good news: Although I will no longer be a full-time staff editor at Promo Marketing, I will, however, continue writing for the magazine

If you’ve never taken anything I’ve blogged about to heart these three months or so, please don’t let this entry fall on deaf ears.
There is a small project I’ve been working on in the evenings, and, like most things these days, much of the correspondence with those involved has been through e-mail. Almost a month ago, I’d e-mailed the project’s financier with some specific questions related to the work. After the first week passed without receiving a response from him, I grew uneasy, but did not take action. An obvious next-step would have been to make a follow-up call, right?
It’s

The other day, at one of our staff meetings, our editorial director (Nikki Stella) was cheerfully humming several tunes from one of her favorite recording artists, none other than Mr. Lou Rawls. At that point, I couldn’t help but chime in with details of my recent purchase of a CD containing all the classic hits of the late, great Nat King Cole! Wooo-wee!
Admittedly, most people in my personal circle look at me kinda weird every time I talk about the CD. But, for those of you out there who really appreciate good music, you can understand why I like Nat King Cole: Consider

I was pleasantly surprised (and tickled) today when I received a “BREAKING NEWS” e-mail from the marketing department of an industry distributorship stating its president and CEO would be taking a leave of absence to represent the United States at the upcoming Olympics in China. Some of you may have received the e-mail.
I was so impressed (shocked, maybe) by what I was reading about the CEO’s athletic prowess in the first few paragraphs of the press release that I was compelled to holler across the cubicles to Charles Plyter (Promo Marketing’s managing online editor) to see if he’d gotten the release. After a

I recently came across a news article on Bill Gates’ testimony before the House Committee on Science and Technology, held on March 12. As part of the hearing, Gates requested the current 65,000 cap on H-1B visas—which allows that number of foreign workers to be legally employed at U.S. companies within a given year—be removed. He argued “the shortage of trained scientists and engineers had grown so severe [in the U.S.] that it required a dramatic increase in the number of highly skilled immigrants permitted to enter the country,” according to the www.artstechnia.com Web site. Gates contended that “despite the excellence of America’s institutions

I actually auditioned for “Oprah’s Big Give” reality show. For those of you who watched the first of eight installments of the show that aired on ABC last Sunday, obviously I did not make the cut ... but it was quite an experience!

Last April—that’s when auditions were held in NYC—my sister and I jumped on a Greyhound bus (around 1:00 a.m.) and arrived in The Big Apple at approximately 3:00 a.m. You know how you see those outrageous lines of people on TV winding around buildings, bundled in every sweatshirt and fleece blanket they own? Yup, that was us on that early