Digital Dregs

I’ve been in Beijing teaching classes on social media and social strategies. A new acquaintance of mine, Sam Flemming, politely reminded me that it had been awhile since I last updated Digital Dregs. I must admit that its been a while indeed, but I’ve been more diligently updating my Facebook and Twitter accounts at the expense of this blog.

Check out Sam’s blog as he is one of the premier experts on social and new media in China. He’s got the impressive history of being a social media entrepreneur in China for the past 12 years, advocating these new communications techniques far before live blogging of the Super Bowl or twittering what movies you saw over the weekend. His company CIC pionered the concept of IWOM in China and are the leaders in social analysis over here… including the publishing of the excellently researched reports on the Sichuan earthquake disaster and the 2008 games and how digital and social communications help to communicate these events innever seem before means.

Olympic excitement has hit the city and I’m actually witnessing the sun for the first time through the smog as I type. As you know, smog and pollution pose serious problems to the 2008 Summer games, but this sunlight is potentially some indication that their pollution control initiatives are having some effect.

My plane out from SFO was loaded w/ the US Olympic rowing, sailing and weightlifting teams, including to what appears to have been the entire team from Guatemala. There was a respectful sign wishing the hopefulls “Good Luck” at the airport and everyone was very excited to be going on what will surely be a lifelong found memory. I was amazed at how completely in tune and focused these athletes were about their training. Each seemed to be consuming copius amounts of water and eating CONSTANTLY in order to preserve their training regiments and high metabolisms.

The city is spotless as it can be. I was here a year ago and see noticeable differences today, including more Westerners than you can shake a stick at. I didn’t see too many westerners on my last trek and frankly considered any sightings to be a complete rarity. So much so that when another Westerner would exchange glances with myself or when we’d catch each others’ eyes.. there was a mutual exhange of “holy crap” as there are so many many locals in this massive metropolis. I mean… they seem to have 2 million people walking around constantly wiping things down, the crome, washing the sidewalks, watering the umpteem zillion flowers, etc. Last time around, I bought a bike and blogged the experience with my colleage Byron of Bikehugger fame… this time was much more heads down unfortunately focusing on the business of the day.

Heading home tomorrow. Miss the family. Got a crink in my neck. I’ll miss the games, but that is OK as the craziness seems to grow w/ each day.

Thanks for the inspiration to blog Sam.

Best /bgr

P.S. - The rumor at the hotel is that Victoria Beckham will be checking in later in the week… i.e. I travel in “poshe” circles.

Well… it’s been a while. First, we launched PC.com back in late Feb. ‘08. So far so good.

Secondly… here’s a clip from Austin at SxSW that we shot with Podtech:

And lastly… I need to get some shots up here of Truman and Holland, especially as Truman is turning 1 in the next few weeks.

- bgr

Blogging with my Q1 Ultra from Samsung… is slow typing with these tiny keys.

We took an Intel Core 2 silicon core to the Vegas Strip:

Nevada means “covered in snow” or “snowcapped”. The mountains around Las Vegas are surprisingly breathtaking as I blog from seat 8F on a flight back to Portland.

There is a very colorful ridge of mountains just to the west of the city w/ beautiful red and orange strata, demonstrating the powerful tectonic forces at work on the North American plate below. Snow has fallen on some of the higher peaks.

I’m beaming. What a fantastic show. The energy and excitement in and around town was physically felt. I’m so proud of our bloggers who covered this event. Everyone demonstrated and personified why social media is so critical at large events like CES. It extends our booth and our technology offerings virtually to customers and users all around the planet. It becomes a chronicle of events; an archive of time and place.

It’s inclusive, it’s open and it’s colorful… like the mountains below.

I hope you’ve found or find value in this blog. I hope that the passion we have for technology, the zeal and enthusiasm we have for our jobs at Intel comes across through our entries.

We brought some smart folks to the table. Our goal was to simply provide perspective on technology and consumer electronics for those not in attendance. To contribute our unique voices to the widening social web. (The picture is a shot of the “Blog Central” room upstairs in the Intel booth w/ a few of the crew).

Please let me know if you think this goal was met and thanks for coming along.

best,

Bryan Rhoads

(P.S - Intel just won “Best Booth” from Gizmodo for CES 2008 - Way to go Victor and team!!!)

Reblogged from Intel@CES:

I’m off to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. We’ve built the Intel@CES blog and I’ll be blogging from the show floor w/ colleagues from Intel, Ogilvy and Textura Design.

And… Happy New Year. Back at Intel obviously after a wonderful sabbatical.

Since I posted on my “3 Days” perspective before my 10-week sabbitical… I should follow w/ perspective at the end of my sabbitical as well.

In short. Life changing. Without a doubt. There is a growing trend and theory in “micro-retirements”, i.e. that one should try and have several extended periods of “retirement” throughout life to refresh/grow and simply not save up everything until you’re 65… I couldn’t agree more.

Status and final goals analysis:

• Initial Goal: Family - spend copious amounts of time w/ Shannon, Holland and Truman
• Result - 24/7 with family created a new routine where the kids, mama and papa had day after day of local adventures, famers markets, pumpkin patches, coast excurtions, parks and plain old quite time. The best.
• Initial Goal: Fitness - hire and train w/ a personal trainer
• Result - Done. Today is my last day w/ my trainer Johnny over sabbatical. He’s been fantastic. After 14 sessions w/ still 2 sessions post-sabbitcal, I’ve dropped 4 to 5 percentage points of body fat, and inch plus around my mid section and lost weight in general. I’m the fittest I’ve been during my entire adult life. I feel fantastic, strong and ready physically and mentally for new challenges.
• Initial Goal: Cooking - hone my culinary skills around sauces and the chemistry of food
• Result - Fitness is 80% diet. Exercise alone will get you no where. I also come from a very artistic family, yet I’ve never really really found my medium of strength… Yet, I’ve come to realize that cooking, the melding of the fives tastes, bringing acids and bases in or out of balance, introducing heat, etc. is my medium and outlet for creative expression. Now… with the introduction of healthier preparation, low-fat/high-protein foods, copiuos amounts of veges and culinary techniques from France to Indonesia - food is a wonderful and necessary part of life.
• Initial Goal: Read - get to all those books piled on the side of my bed
• Books:
  Omnivore’s Dilemma- Michael Pollan - modern and industrial food production and farming, where modern food comes from - amazing.
  The Looming Tower: Road to 9/11 - Lawrence Wright - the best book I’ve read on the growth of Islamic Fundamentalism
  Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut (thanks Kolby for the re-introduction)
  The Places In Between - Rory Stewart - a walk across Afghanistan in 2002.
  Critical Mass: How one thing leads to another - Pkilip Ball - From Hobbes to Adam Smith - the impact of thousands or millions of individual decisions.
  A History of God - Karen Armstrong - A classic - 4ooo years of how a tribal semetic war-god became the omnipresent and monotheistic diety for Judaism, Christianity and Islam… Its amazing what a little good marketing and PR can accomplish…

So… to recap. I couldn’t be happier with the results and growth in almost all areas of my life.

My only regret is that I didn’t have a goal around my “Civic” side of life. Maybe more to come in 2008 arounf that.

- bgr

Sabbatical is going well:

Wobble

Zulutime LLC is a new technology start-up that offers unique location awareness over wireless networks (LBS). Think turning your network and its nodes into a mini GPS network that works in urban environments and INSIDE.

Very Cool stuff - Check out the Demo and the ZuluTime Blog.

Wow… almost here.

Intel employees qualify for a sabbatical after every seven years of employment. I hit my seven year anniversary at Intel this year… can’t believe its been that long.

I’m off from 27-Sept. to 03-Dec… and leaving for the beautiful Oregon Coast next Friday w/ the family. We’ve rented a wonderful old home in Manzanita Oregon that sleeps 10 (in fact used to be an Inn and B&B), so various friends and family are coming to stay… 2 days here and 1 night there. Its a regular boarding house on the Coast.

My goals for sabbatical:

• Family - spend copious amounts of time w/ Shannon, Holland and Truman
• Fitness - hire and train w/ a personal trainer
• Cooking - hone my culinary skills around sauces and the chemistry of food
• Read - get to all those books piled on the side of my bed

I’ll update on the progress…

Latest video of Truman:

Truman Graves Rhoads

So many exciting things going on at work, with family and other projects that I can’t talk about now… but will soon. Proposed a new MIT research project as well. More on all of this later.

Recent Podcast of myself and Intel’s Ken Kaplan. Ken and I were interviewed by a communications show talking about Intel’s Web 2.0 efforts and how Intel’s online strategy (1) (2) is changing with the times.

Going Inside of Intel

Jeremiah Owyang and Robert Scoble interviewed me at this year’s Executive Summit in dowtown Portland.

Here it is from Podtech:

Fantastic gathering of local bloggers last night at Jive Softare. Photos over on Jeremiah’s blog.

The Internet Strategy Forum’s annual conference is set for July 19th & 20th.

I’ll be sitting on the Web 2.0 panel… I’m really impressed w/ my co-panelists after having met them a few times now over the phone, should be a fun session.

* Cammie Dunaway, Chief Marketing Officer, Yahoo!, Inc.
* Tim Kopp, Chief Marketing Officer, WebTrends
* Mark Colombo, VP Electronic Channels and Strategic Marketing, FedEx
* Robert Scoble, VP Media Development, PodTech.net, co-author of Naked Conversations
* Rey Ramsey, CEO, One Economy Corp.
* Erik Kokkonen, VP, Global Publishing Services, CNET
* Mike Moran, Distinguished Engineer, IBM, author of Search Engine Marketing, Inc.
* Bryan Rhoads, Sr. Internet Strategist, Social Media, Intel
* Mark Erickson, Sr. Computer Scientist, Adobe
* Mary Alice Colvin, Senior Marketing Consultant, Allyis

More good progress on the Intel blog front:

Another week, another Intel blog… this week’s flavor is targeted to the technical community in spanish-speaking Latin America. Introducing Latin Insights@Intel.

Intel’s latest two international blogs are first to market vehicles… to my knowledge, very few other firms are addressing these markets w/ blog publishing and technical communications from local experts in their respective regions.

Who’s next?

Great work team…

We launched the first of many “Blogs@Intel Worldwide” on May 22nd. Our new log can be found at http://blogs.intel.com/china/

Intel is one of the first to launch a localized business blog based in Beijing/Shanghai and features some of Intel China’s best and brightest.

Truman was born on Saturday May 12th at 10:09 am pacific time… relatively quick labor, both Mama and baby are doing fine.

The “Graves” family name is one of many distant lineages we can trace back in my family. John graves was one of the first settlers of Concord, Mass in 1635. Sailing one of the earliest American-built sailing vessels, the Tryall.

Herbert Graves Rhoads (deceased) is Truman’s Great Grandfather… the John mentioned above would be around 7 or 8 “greats”.

Slides:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/Slideshow.jsp?mode=fromshare&Uc=11fnrbrp.blj5dyah&Uy=-a18esf&Ux=0

YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/bgrhoads
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91BxEW_p0DQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeCRbCcmZpI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeJRYAw8IPo

I was recently interviewed by Jeremiah Owyang on his Web Strategy by Jeremiah blog.

We had a follow-up discussion too on the Blog Business Summit blog as well.

Thanks all.

I personally think that “S-T-U-V” are overratted and unnecessary letters… and I applaud my daughter for enuring a more efficient English language

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=bgrhoads