Anyway

Betcha did­n’t know that small one-per­son con­sult­ing com­pan­ies in Canada play a vital role in keep­ing the US strong, didja? Makes you won­der why I moved to a big US-based com­pany, but I digress. 

I found out just how vital these small com­pan­ies are when an asso­ci­ate pro­du­cer from a TV pro­duc­tion com­pany cold called a few months ago to see wheth­er I’d be inter­ested in tak­ing part in their series called, yup, Keep­ing Amer­ica Strong. When I poin­ted out that I was in Canada and a one-per­son con­sult­ing com­pany, he respon­ded that keep­ing Canada strong would help the US bor­ders and that small com­pan­ies also play a vital role. And that the series was hos­ted by Wil­li­am Shat­ner, sup­por­ted by tele­vi­sion news anchors and a Navy Admiral.

I must admit, I was intrigued, although I might have been more temp­ted had it been Leonard Nimoy host­ing rather than Wil­li­am Shat­ner. Still, it was worth spend­ing anoth­er few minutes on the phone, explain­ing what XML does and how it is used by vari­ous US gov­ern­ment depart­ments such as Home­land Secur­ity. XML obvi­ously passed the test of being deemed worthy of the next step, which was to meet the field pro­du­cer who would write up the pro­pos­al for each “ente­pren­eur­i­al com­pany” (their words) that wanted to “move for­ward in these times” (their words). At about this stage I star­ted won­der­ing just how much this was going to cost, although I was enjoy­ing the pol­ished deliv­ery of the bene­fits of being on TV with the “Amer­ic­an icons” (their words). Even­tu­ally I got the answer. The major celebrit­ies were donat­ing their time and energy for this import­ant endeav­our, and the only costs were a con­tri­bu­tion to the pro­duc­tion costs of a mere $US 15,000. A tad pricey for a van­ity kick, I thought. So I declined with thanks, got a nice fol­low-up email, and still have the fax with the details of what I missed out on. Maybe I’ll keep that for pos­ter­ity; after all, paper does­n’t degrade the same way web sites do.

Then yes­ter­day I found an Invit­a­tion for Inter­view for “For­bes Radio” on Amer­ic­an Air­lines in my inbox. Yup, anoth­er invit­a­tion to prove I’m one of these “innov­at­ive industry and busi­ness lead­ers, who through effect­ive col­lab­or­a­tion, pro­gress­ive strategies, improved pro­ductiv­ity, and increased agil­ity, provide com­pan­ies and indi­vidu­als a com­pet­it­ive advant­age and bet­ter qual­ity of work and life”. This oppor­tun­ity is to take part in a 3‑minute inter­view to be played on Amer­ic­an Air­lines inf­light pro­gram, which has a “cap­tive audi­ence of 3.4 mil­lion exec­ut­ive trav­el­ers per month”, and offered at the dis­coun­ted rate of only $US 4,995! So make sure you remem­ber your iPod next time you fly on Amer­ic­an Airlines.