Ever heard of the term? I just learned it this week.
A staycation is defined as a vacation but in or around your home. I’m so used to always having a planned vacation setup that I’m really excited about this week. I plan to just chill as much as possible, hang with my girls, and try to ‘fall off the grid’ as best I can, though, I still want to read news and blog some this week. With things picking up with Banktastic private networks I was really hesitant to leave but some perspective can’t hurt anybody, right?
Alright, I think we’re going to hit the lake today with some friends so let the staycation continue! Have a great week everybody.
It’s last night at about 9:30p and I pull up Apple’s website to see what the availability would be for my Apple store at Willow Bend mall to have an iPhone 3G tomorrow. The website says it would be available in my flavor (white, 16GB) tomorrow so I began wondering what time I had to get there in the morning to be one of the first? They opened at 9am so what? 8:30a? 7am? 5am?!?
I decided on 7am and if the lines were too long then I’d just leave and go to my appointment early. Well, I rolled in at about 6:50a and only one car was in the parking lot and I ended up being number 3 in line. YAY! I had a book, magazine, and my current iPhone to keep me busy. The time went by really quickly. Everyone else waiting were really nice and we chatted each other up while we waited.
The store opened at 8am for those with Genius Bar problems or training and all was looking good that I’d be getting my iPhone 3G today when the store officially opened at 9am. That was until at 8:30a the store manager came out and looked up and down the line (up to about 50 at that point) and announced that despite what the website said they had not received any iPhones yet. WHAT?! She said the website said they were in stock because they had two iPhones on hold for others and it was a glitch in the system. This didn’t make people happy. Some were down right pissed. Come on, guys, what is this little girl going to be able to do about that? “Sorry for the trouble, free iPhones for everyone!” Negative.
She said what she could do is check with FedEx to see if she could get a better indication on when it would arrive today. After about 10 minutes on the phone, she came back and stated with confidence that some would come today no later than 12pm but she didn’t know what kind or how many.
12pm?!? I had a BIG appointment at 10am that I couldn’t miss so that wasn’t going to work. So after that realization I tucked my tail between my legs and headed to work. The only time wasted was my own and it was all ’sleep time’ so not much lost in my book. But I’ll tell you this, I’m not trying that again. I will either wait until the phone is readily available anywhere or just order it from a AT&T store and go pick it up when it arrives. Fool me once, shame of you. Feel me twice, shame on me!
UPDATE: I walked into an AT&T store this evening, paid & ordered what I wanted, they will email when it arrives (10-21 days), done deal. 5 minutes tops.
UPDATE 2: Ordered it on Wednesday night, it’s Saturday morning and got this email from AT&T.
Looks like they maybe underpromising and hopefully over delivering!
UPDATE 3: Picked up my white 16GB iPhone on Monday, got it all setup and I’m rocking! My wife is loving her new/old iphone, too. Kudos to AT&T on under promising and over delivering.
I’m sure there are going to be anotherthousandreviews on the software but the beauty of the web is that people are also interested in my take. So I did three parts.
1) From a Apple fanboy perspective
2) From a financial services perspective
3) From a private ‘internal only’ to my guys at The Garland Group/Banktastic perspective
Enjoy and if you have any additional thoughts, let me hear from you, k?
Part 1 - Apple Fanboy Perspective
Part 2 - Financial Services Perspective
Part 3 - Private Video to my guys (you gotta be pretty special to get this link, )
Sliderocket is a service that I recently learned about through the FastcompanyTV stuff Robert Scoble is doing. He interviewed the founder of Sliderocket recently and I instantly was intrigued by the product. Since speaking is something I’ve been doing quite a bit of lately, having something that is entirely browser based and so much like Apple’s Keynote really got me excited. There are a ton of features under the hood that I don’t have time to go into but I ended up getting a private beta invite from their VP of Marketing (through Twitter no less) and I’ve been using the hell out of it.
Is it still buggy?
Hell yes, sometimes doesn’t do exactly what I want but it is close.
What do I like most about the product?
The response from the developers. I’ve submitted a handful of bug reports on things and get fairly prompt emails back from their team stating the issue and how they’ll go on to fix them. Kudos to their team.
So I decided do to a little promo slideshow for Banktastic as a teaser to our service. Another cool feature? Embeddable slideshows, see below.
Keep up the good work Sliderocket and you are more than likely going to have a customer once you come out of beta.
As my two-year Kate would say after a meal, “All done.” The 1st BarCampBank in Dallas is officially done. Pictures here. Videos coming soon.
It seemed like a whirlwind weekend but I’m thinking that’s the status quo for these things. We ended up having 29 people show up to the event and the majority were at their very first Barcamp experience. After I kind of kicked things off and let everyone know how this experience worked it flowed pretty well. It was tough, being a person that naturally wants to teach and lead folks, to just stand back and let them mold the event that they wanted but it was worth it. I did get nervous at the very beginning when the 1st sessions didn’t start on time. I was afraid it wouldn’t ever start but finally, someone piped up and said “we’re starting in here” and everyone dispersed to the rooms of their choice and began. And the conversations were great!
I spent the first half of the day not participating at all and just letting the attendees get involved (per the ‘Open Space’ recommendation). I wanted to jump in there two or three times but held back and again, glad I did. There were so many smart people there and I love the fact the smaller the groups for the sessions, the better the conversations were. What was interesting, for me, was what happened at the end of the day. It seemed like the majority of the people were not going to be able to make it for the 2nd day. So I did a quick poll and asked if we should do the 2nd day at all? The ones interested said yeah but it didn’t make sense to do it in this space. So we decided on a brunch meet-up and afterwards, calling it a day. So the beauty of the unconference wins again. People voted with their feet and it worked out great.
Lastly, one of the best parts for me was the after Barcamp stuff. A group of us went out to eat together, laughed, drank beer, and just hung out. We all ended up at Mark’s for a while and had some REALLY great conversations that I wished got recorded (but maybe that’s what was supposed to happen). I’m just a sucker for some real good conversation I guess.
I definitely want to again thank everyone for attending. It wouldn’t have been as good without you all and I hope to see you again at a BarcampBank in your area.
I don’t golf.
I don’t golf because I know how I am with other things I love. 100%. Full bore. Entrenched. And I just fear the money and time drain that golf could add to my life. However, I love a good competition and this past Sunday and Monday I watched the U.S. Open as Tiger Woods and Rocco Mediate battled back and forth for the title. After an additional 18-hole playoff, played on Monday during the day, they finally claimed a winner. Tiger, despite a bad knee all week, pulled it off. (He’s amazing isn’t he?)
But what I noticed, was an interesting trend over the top of the golf was the amount of Twitter/blogosphere coverage it was getting. The playoff had to be played during the work day on Monday and my Twitter timeline had more about that than anything else. From people giving a hole-by-hole playback to links to where you can watch it stream live over the Web to people wishing they were home watching it. It was nuts.
So I began to think about the way we all consume television and how the ‘primetime’ shows are always shown in the evenings because the vast majority of people work during the day. Sure, we have Tivo/DVRs now but that’s mainly for skipping the commercials, right? And isn’t this mindset shifting anyway with increased usage of the Internet, flexible schedules, and virtual offices? Why do the shows have to come on at 7pm each evening? Does it still make sense to fit into that mold?
So what could we do to flip paradigm from how we have consumed TV media for the last 80 years? What would fast forward this mindset? Then, I got it…
Put American Idol on at 2pm on a Tuesday and watch what happens.
We knew the news for a couple of weeks now but wanted to hold off until after our 1st doctors appointment which was day and everything looks good. So Jenny is 5.5 weeks pregnant and is due around early February ‘09. We are very excited about it and I coaxed Jenny into doing a video to announce it to the world!
Brad Garland, host of The Burst on Banktastic TV, is CEO at The Garland Group in Dallas, TX. Brad's goal is to break down
the barriers of traditional banking and explore new, innovative ways of engaging with the next generation of customer. He...more
July 27, 2008 
Posted in Business, Crew News, Day in the Life, Fun Stuff 
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It’s last night at about 9:30p and I pull up 
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As my two-year Kate would say after a meal, “All done.” The 1st 
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