Looking For Work?

I've learned of a few jobs that are available in the multichannel catalog circulation world --- if you're an experienced practitioner looking for a new challenge, send me an e-mail.

"Either Get On The Train, Or Get Out Of The Way"

Those were the words of noted blogger Jeremiah Owyang, a very bright and intelligent individual, when talking about a journalist feeling frustration over the conflict between journalism and blogging. Jeremiah's advice is to "either get on the train, or get out of the way".

In multichannel retailing, a similar phenomenon is occurring to the one Jeremiah references. A generation of employees who developed their skills in the world of catalogs are being phased out by Google and the magic of online retailing. No longer is it necessary to send a 148 page catalog to a customer, when you can simply intercept the customer at her time of need by allowing Google to broker a fair competition between online retailers.

The catalog expert is in a similar situation to the journalist that Jeremiah describes. Over the past decade, her profession was consumed by an economic version of Darwinian evolution. Her skills, once so important, must evolve for her to remain relevant.

If you have the battle scars of an individual who went through the type of economic transition that Jeremiah describes, what did you do to make the transition occur? Did you get on the train, did you get out of the way, or did you allow the train to run you over?

Let's hope that the current generation of online marketers, social media experts, and online strategists are ready to make the same type of transition when the next version of the internet consumes the very industries they currently promote. Since everything is happening faster and faster, the lights on the next train are already approaching.

... like it's 1999

On December 5, 1999, I was learning about all those little computer programs that were going to fail on 1/1/2000, causing the end of the world as we knew it. Meanwhile, a veritable plethora of COBOL programmers were busy writing the necessary code to fend off the apocalypse. I had the opportunity to get tickets to Wisconsin's trip to the Rose Bowl. I chose to stay home, just in case the world ended. My bad.

Anyway, as I was looking through my contacts, trying to track down a co-worker from 1999, I noticed that a bomb literally went off during the past seven years. Few of my contacts continue to work at the companies they worked at in 1999. What the heck happened during the past seven years?

If you used to work with me in some capacity, use the comment section, or e-mail, to let me know where you landed. If you didn't work with me (that's most of you), use the comment section to tell me if this has also been your experience. What happened to you and your co-workers, during the past seven years? How did your career evolve? How did your company evolve? How did your industry evolve? How did you stay in touch with people? Please share your thoughts.