Ritz Carlton is the epitome of superior customer experience (source)
Have you pampered yourself with a Ritz-Carlton experience? If you did, I’m sure the experience was unforgettable.
How did the world’s premiere hotel brand manage to achieve such lofty heights in customer service and experience? What is its secret formula?
Don’t just collect tonnes of digital crap! (source)
Beyond the curation of online information (text, photos, videos, games etc), social media strategists should also learn how to be judicious in the art and science of collection. However, just like working in a museum, collecting digital “treasures” need to be done purposefully.
Frequent online users collect (and consume) a lot of things.
The greatest literary works Like “War and Peace” are not puny (source)
As more and more people consume information in byte-sized pieces, and veer towards Twitter, Facebook and other social networking platforms, it appears that we are losing the benefits of length.
Wait, hang on a minute. Am I telling you to be verbose and long-winded while beating about the bush? Isn’t instant, real-time and succinct responses the beauty of the age of digitisation?
In the age of digital dominance and wicked widgets, one tends to lose the use of one’s primary senses. Lulled by the comforts of computers, one can become oblivious to one’s immediate surroundings and end up relying more on secondary rather than primary data.
By inadvertently shutting ourselves to the real world and gluing our eyes (and fingers) on our mobile computing devices, we may then rely on third party “gurus” and “experts”. We put our trust on the charts, trends, data, and analytics churned out by researchers who are often located half a world away.
At the Shanghai World Expo 2010, the country pavilions are especially significant as they are iconic representations of what each country has to offer. After visiting those from Europe and the Americas, as well as those closer to home in China, Australia and Southeast Asia, how does Singapore’s Pavilion compare?
Join me for an in-depth tour of the Singapore Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo.
Designed by architect Tan Kay Ngee, the Singapore Pavilion’s theme is Urban Symphony. Evoking images of a music box, it “forms an orchestra of elements and a symphony for the senses – from the choreography of the plaza’s water fountain, the rhythm of fenestrations on the façade, the interplay of sounds and visuals, to the mélange of flora on the roof garden.”
With courtesy from Starfleetyachts.com
Who should you pay the most attention to in your organisation?
A) The guy or girl who makes a purchase of your product or service.
Taylor Clark doesn’t like Starbucks. However, he does patronise its outlets. Apparently he is not alone, as there are many who publicly profess their distaste for Starbucks’ “almost burnt” brew while still swarming towards their outlet.
That in a nutshell is the premise behind the book “Starbucked” authored by Clark, a Portland-based journalist who appears to have more than a little caffeinated chip on his shoulder while appearing to be balanced in his authorship. Unlike the more glowing titles featuring the world’s most famous purveyor of coffee as experience, Clark squarely places both the pros and the cons of the cafe behemoth in his book.
After visiting the various country pavillions in the European and American zones of the Shanghai World Expo, we focused our attention on the regions closer to home. Due to the shortage of time, we could only enter the Singapore pavillion as the queues to most of the Asian pavillions were rather formidable. However, I did manage to take some quick external shots of the various Asian pavillions which captured my interest.
Here’s a brief photographic journey of some of the pavillions which we saw.
Indonesia’s pavillion looked pretty impressive in terms of size, albeit a little like a typical conference building with the flags and pillars and all.
Widely popularised by Disney, the concept of “imagineering” comes from its two words of origin:
Imagination, which is the act of dreaming and visualising a desired end-state;
Like any other geek, I love glimpses into the future that technology can bring. Social technologies and mobile devices like smart phones have now evolved to the stage of bringing networked information, intelligence and interactivity to the masses.
Against such a backdrop, it was a treat to listen to Piers Fawkes, CEO of PSFK and creator of the Good Ideas Salon. Speaking on “Intelligent Cities, Innovation and Sustainability”, Piers shared about the multiple ways that urban jurisdictions can embrace leveraging on the social and mobile web.
