Todd Sattersten :: Astronaut Projects

Fed up.

I think I am a little fed up with the whole blogging scene right now.

The cover article in BusinessWeek did nothing for me. The cute blogging format, the same stories we all know, Rubel's first step to blogging sainthood. If I see Stoneyfield Farms get mainstream media ink for their incredible blogs one more time, I am going to scream.

Then you have Scoble deciding to take on Ballmer. Please. Why would he put his employer in a position like that? Either he should have waited 24 hours to see if he still felt strongly or the power of his pulpit has gone to his head.

It may be a little quiet here over the next week as I clear my head.

Don't worry. I still love blogging. I think it is an incredible tool for businesses. And RSS rocks.

I just need less hype.

Milwaukee looks good in the Fortune 500

OnMilwaukee.com looked through the recent Fortune 500 issue and found the Milwaukee and Wisconsin fared pretty well.

• Wisconsin has 25 Fortune 1000 companies
• The big names are Northwestern Mutual, Johnson Controls, Manpower, Kohl's, Harley-Davison, Rockwell, and Wisconsin Energy Corporation.
• Johnson Controls is the top ranked Wisconsin company at #71
• In looking at metro Milwaukee, the area ranked #5 when you consider population and number of ranked companies.

Maiden Flight for A380

I forgot to get this up yesterday.

The Airbus A380 made is maiden flight yesterday. Airbus continues to hog the spotlight in the duel between them and Boeing. And there is not much Boeing can do about it.

As an engineer, I am in awe this amazing machine.

Be Careful What You Wish For

I got my hair cut last week. I was telling my stylist Donna about Steve Hartman (60 Minutes) and his visits to some New York salons. He paid $180 for his first visit and after a lukewarm response to the new 'do, went to a different salon for a $250 haircut. Donna told me the top end stylists in Milwaukee can make anywhere from $100 to $150.

I was struck by the next thing she said, "The only trouble when you are making that much is your clientele changes." One of those pieces of often quoted business advice is that as you become in more demand, you should charge more. I met a consultant recently who accomplished his goal of doubling his billable rate and cutting in half the hours he worked. I wonder how his client list changed.

It seems there are some pitfalls you should consider before jacking up your rate. The companies are going to be bigger. The expectations are going to be larger. You may get demands from the newly acquired customers that you are not used to seeing.

As they say, be careful what you wish for...

Back from a little trip

We made a trip to the Twin Cities this weekend.

We headed up there to attend a surprise birthday party for my brother. The reason for all the quiet here is that I didn't want to give it away. My brother was definitely surprised.

Besides the party, we did some shopping, strolled through the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, and put up drywall in my brother's basement.

Yesterday, Edward Tufte was in Minneapolis doing one of his lectures. I decided to take the chance to see him. I really enjoyed it. I will share my thoughts over the next couple of days both here and at the 800-CEO-READ blog.

Comments Up

Because of the system problems I had last week, comments are not up and working. Sorry about that. We are working on it. Feel free to drop me a note.

It seems they are working. I updated to MT3.16, so bear with some possible growing pains

Milwaukee Companies Taking a Beating

It has been a rough couple of weeks for Milwaukee-based companies.

Things started with Harley-Davidson. On April 13th, the motorcycle maker announced earnings were up 11% but that sales were flat. They lower 2005 earnings expectations and said they would cut production. The stock has dropped 22% since the announcement.

Yesterday, the highly recognized Midwest Airlines announced losses of 91 cents per share for the first quarter. They said fuel prices are up 36% over last year. On a positive note, they saw revenues grow almost 11%. Midwest's stock is down almost 10% since the announcement.

Harley got hit because people didn't expect the flat sales. They'll be fine.

Midwest on the other hand I am worried about. They lost $15.9 million dollars this quarter. The company is only worth $31 million at this point. I am not sure how they can survive in this environment of high fuel costs and no ability to raise prices. I am flying with them in both June and July to do my little bit. There is improved quality of life here by having a local airline that flies direct to big cities. There is nothing that beats their Signature service. I wish them luck in the months ahead.

An announcement

Here is some photos that were taken today.

We are going to be adding another boy to our family in August. As you can imagine, we are pretty excited.

You can check out a slideshow at Flickr with some added notes on the pictures.

You Think You Know, But You Don't

Monday's WSJ had an interesting piece on Blockbuster [sub. needed]. The main story is Carl Icahn buying up a bunch of shares and his trying to get Blockbuster to pay out a bunch of cash to shareholders. CEO John Antioco thinks the cash would be helpful to build new parts to the business.

Inside the story is a more interesting story for me. From the article:

In his search for a new business for Blockbuster, Mr. Antioco has embraced some idea--like the mail-order DVD service--that he initially derided. When Netflix first started, Mr. Antioco argued its business was only a niche market because he didn't think consumers would want to think days ahead about what movies they want to order. But Netflix has signed up so many subscribers--three million as of last month, including many former Blockbuster customers--that he had no choice but to follow suit. Last summer he launched Blockbuster Online. So far it has grown quickly. Blockbuster initially expected it could sign up 250,000 customers by year-end. Instead within seven months, Blockbuster had signed up 750,000. Mr. Antioco's target is up to two million subscribers by early 2006.

This is a clear tale of the importance of listening to your customers. Mr. Antioco was thinking for them. "Why would they do that?" This sort of thinking gets companies into a lot of trouble. In this case, it allowed a new competitor to enter Blockbuster's market and steal lots of customers. As a matter of fact, Netflix stole us about a month ago.

Wisconsin Architecture

I am not sure you would think of Wisconsin as a destination for great architecture, but you would be amazed.

There is an amazing number of buildings by Wisconsin native Frank Lloyd Wright located here. Wright's home Taliesin is located in Spring Green. The Annunciation Church can be found in Wauwatosa. Wingspread is located in Racine along with SC Johnson Wax Building. The Monona Terrace in Madison is a building designed by Wright that took 40 years to build. The Greenberg House in Ottawa currently for sale if you are in the market.

What got me on the Wright track was a piece I saw at OnMilwaukee.com today. It is a synopsis of a longer series that ran in the Arizona Republic. It seems the foundation that runs Taliesin and Taliesin West in Scottsdale, AZ needs money -- $100 million or so. It seems the foundation itself has all sorts of the problems too. We toured Taliesin a few year ago and found the architecture amazing. We will be a real shame if things can't get worked out.

I want to end on a happy architecture note. The April issue of Smithsonian Magazine recommends seeing the the Calatrava addition at the Milwaukee Art Musuem. I highly recommend it also.

Milwaukee Photos

Here are the winning entries from a local contest for photos of Milwaukee.

[via OnMilwaukee.com]

Online Accounting Course

I haven't run across many online resources for accounting. I came across this site from West Virgina University and thought I would pass it along. There are 23 lessons. Each lesson contains content and questions to test your new knowledge.

These are the rules for keeping score. Best you know them.

Yahoo! Offers Free Site to all U.S. Small Business

Yahoo! is offering every small business in America a free website through their Yahoo! Local service. They say half of American businesses don't have a web presence.

I would say this is a win-win. Late adopters get a easy way to get online and Yahoo! can offer better search results to its users.

Seth Godin on BBBT#9

The next Business Blog Book Tour will take place May 23rd - May 27th.

We will again have Seth Godin joining us. He will be taking about his new book All Marketers Are Liars.

In the meantime, check out his book blog and check out the schedule here.

More MKE Blog Voting

Dana is up for blog of the week now. Go vote.

BTW, I didn't win.

Weekend Music: Backstreet Boys on tour?

OnMilwaukee.com tells me today the Backstreet Boys are on tour and at the Pabst Theatre in Milwaukee tonight.

What?!

Let's say they aren't getting the press they use to because I had no idea they were on the road. It seems there new single is Incomplete.

In 1995, Amy and I went to Poland and the Czech Republic for two weeks on vacation. I remember being in Gdansk and hearing nothing but Robbie Williams and this other band I had never heard of called the Backstreet Boys. BSB started in Europe to get their act down and six months later burst on to the scene in the U.S.

If you need a hit, here are links to As Long As You Love Me, I Want It That Way, and Larger Than Life.

I promise I won't tell anyone you clicked through.

Do Your Own Thing

I like this post on being an indie at Joe Indie.

I feel like a lot of the projects I am taking on fall in the indie category. A Penny For... started that way and developed into something more. More Space is definitely indie (don't know where that is going to go). I have some other ideas I am throwing around.

There is also a second post on the being indie that starts with a heavy game developer focus, but has lessons for all.

PSP ESP

I guess this was right.

Power Company Customer Service

The power to our house was out for about an hour this afternoon. It makes working out of the house difficult.

I just got a automated call from We Energies apologizing for the outage and checking to make sure my power was now on.

"Press one if your power is on, press two if your power is not on, press three if you do not know."

Check on everyone and collect a little data.

I thought that was nice.

Great Thoughts

I was looking through the BizLinkBlog today and notice I have not posted two links from the same site. While there are only forty or so links, I find it pretty amazing, because it was not intentional in any way. It just proves there is alot of great stuff being written out there.

LexThink

I am in Chicago today for my third time in a week. Today it is to attend LexThink.

This is an event that was put together by Matt Homann and friends. The purpose of the event is pretty open ended. I would say one goal is to talk about what the perfect professional services firm looks like.

There is about 40 people here, which I think is pretty good.

The morning was a little slow. Everyone seemed to wallow in why things are the way they are. The after lunch session just finished and it was great. We talked about specific things can be done to improve client relationships.

Matt summarized the perfect firm:

Find your passion, talk to matching clients, and build your service around them.

Weekend Music - SXSW Favorites

I downloaded the SXSW Bit Torrent File a couple of weeks ago and have slowly been listening through the 750+ songs.

Here is the list of what I like so far with my iTunes rating:

• 33hz - Digital Lover ****
• Bio Ritmo - Atrevete ****
• Clare Burson - Where You Are ***
• The Heavy Blinkers - Try Telling That To My Baby ***
• The Honorary Title - Bridge and Tunnel ***
• Kings of Convenience - I'd Rather Dance With Your *****
• Tricia Mitchell - Bobby Joe Plays Violin ****
• Vallejo - 2053 ***
• Webb Wilder & The Nashvegaans - One Taste of the Bait ***
• Rex Hobart & the Misery Boys - Every Night I Leave You In My Dreams ***
• Eluvium - An Accidential Memory in the Ca... ****
• Jessie and Layla - Move On ***
• The Redwalls - Universal Blues ***
• Susan Cowsill - Palm of My Hand ***
• Julian Coryell - did you see the sun? ***
• Otis Taylor - Please Come Home Before It Rains ***
• Andi Hoffman & B-Goes - Riding to New Orleans ****
• The Resentments - Thirteen ***
• Visqueen - Blue ***
• Jane Bond - Idle Hands ***
• Communique - Perfect Weapon ***
• Nieminen & Litmanen - Leo Jokela ****
• Dolorean - Violence in the Snowy Field ***
• Brent Palmer - Asleep in the Back ***
• The Brilliant Mistakes - What Will They Write On Your Stone ***
• Something For Rockets - Look Around ***
• Cary Brothers - Blue Eyes ***
• Hot Buttered Rum String Band - Evolution ****
• Michael Martin Murphy - Wildfire ***
• Jupiter and Teardrop - Bring Me Down ***
• Amos Lee - Arms of a Woman ***

Nominee for MKE Blog of the Week

It seems A Penny For... has been nominated for Blog of the Week by MKEonline. There are nine others on the list for determining this week's best blog in Wisconsin. Voting running through April 7th.

The downside of voting is that you have to provide your email address. I am not thrilled about that.

I hope you'll still consider voting (Mom, that means you :) You can click here to vote.

P.S. They have a directory of Wisconsin blogs called 1000 Voices.

Great Minds Think Alike

It seems Wall Street Journal writers Kate Kelly and Brian Steinberg share some of the same thoughts I do on media brands.

Yesterday, they wrote a piece [pg B2, sub. needed] on the upcoming break-up of Miramax Films and Disney. They think that Miramax has developed a recognizable brand and that moviegoers went to theatres to see Miramax films. They called out Pixar and Dreamworks as other brands people are starting to recognize in the media realm.

I wrote about this a couple of weeks ago directly in reference to Pixar. I don't think Dreamworks fits the bill, because I am not sure what to expect from them. They make all different types of movies. The Speilberg connection definitely helps though.

Miramax might be a better example. I personally don't go running to see their films, but I do know they take more risks with their films. Here is a list of current and recent films from the studio:

• Sin City
• Hostage
• Finding Neverland
• The Aviator

Disney must think there is something to it. They are paying the Weinstein brothers $140 million to keep the name.