There’s some big things happening at Hudson. We are undergoing transformational change with a new CEO on board and new web platforms to take the company where we want it to go. Many of the initiatives will take place in the digital realm of which I am the leader in our North America operation. I’m very much looking forward to the process of bringing on a new team member in our Chicago office to help us to innovate with all of the tools that are at our disposal. Check out the job description for our Online Marketing Manager position in Chicago, IL.  

Here’s a little taste…

Help build a top professional services brand using your talents as an online marketing expert. Hudson North America is seeking a skilled and motivated digital marketer to work with our line-of-business marketing managers and our web development team to build programs that achieve business results.

Catch the market upswing as we re-position our websites onto DotNetNuke, reposition our brand as Trusted Advisors globally, and position your interactive abilities as a centerpiece of the digital marketing department of the future. If you know more about thought leadership than online shopping carts, please apply!

If you know that you can rock this job, or you can refer someone else who will, please have them Apply. I will see every resume that comes into the Job Posting.

My good friend Marc Krolczyk did a nice interview on the Official Kodak blog 1000 Words. He has been a fixture in the Rochester design scene for more than 10 years, dedicating his Masters in Communication Design from University of Buffalo to a long career at Xerox as a UI designer. Recently Kodak wooed him away to apply his talents on digital cameras and other new digital products. It will be great to see Marc’s touch on the Kodak Product User Experience. He has an endless supply of innovative ideas for how products and their interfaces should work in our everyday lives. I know he’s pumped for the new assignment, and I can tell his mates are pumped to have him there. Marc Krolczyk. Real American Designer.

Marc beta testing a new “Monthy Python” image quality setting on his camera

photo from Jackson Fish Market

I’ll be on vacation until Friday on a family fishing trip to Canada. We’re headed to Cabonga Reservoir, a tradtional spot for the Rzepkowski family. I’m hoping to land a few walleye and maybe a monster pike like 2 years ago. I’ll see you all next week.

A London Business Trip Stream of Consciousness
Here I am in Chicago for my 4th straight week of business travel. My mind is mush, and my body is losing muscle-mass by the minute. Nonetheless, I thought I’d recount last week’s trip to London for our Global Marketing Summit, stream-of-consciousness style. Aided by my tweets and augmented by a few pics, I should be able to recall the highlights as the jet lag clears.

Tuesday May 6: The Long Voyage to London
It’s 3:45am, I just woke up for the flight. I didn’t sleep well last “night”. I never do when I need to go international. My iPod hard drive died last night for some unexplained reason. The replacement is my wife’s retired Dell Axim that I quick-loaded with a few MP3’s.

The Rochester Airport wasn’t crowded this morning for some reason so I breezed through check-in and security. The UAL flight to Washington was great aboard a CRJ 700 – one of the only regional jets that have comfortable, wide seats, stand-up height, and enough legroom. Wendy’s for breakfast at IAD. What possessed me to order a “Frescuit“? I can’t even pronounce it. It was flat awful.

I head for my 9:30am London connection. Aboard the 777, I get a window seat jammed next to another guy with very wide shoulders. I’m always surprised that the meals aboard the long-haul planes are decent. I’ve seen Cloverfield and Jumper now plus I’ve written 2 blog entries for my work project. The batteries are dead on all of my portable electronic devices by the time I arrive. It’s now 12:30pm London time, a full 15 hours since I got up. The London cabbie is a cheerful woman who takes me to the Beauchamp Hotel. Apparently a new mayor was elected recently in London because I heard all about it. It takes me forever to wind down. I call Tricia and the kids (they are 5 hours behind) and fall asleep by 2am. Wake up call is 7:00am. Can’t wait!

Wednesday May 7: An English Breakfast and a Brown Finish
I pry open my eyes at 7am and go down for the complimentary breakfast. The waitress asked what I wanted, and I said “Everything”. God bless the English, because out came the following: Scrambled eggs, wheat toast, sausage, back bacon, and my favorite random English sides, baked beans, mushrooms and a tomato. I shotgunned the meal in under 10 minutes. I bet the natives let it rest a bit more than that. I meet the rest of our crew in the lobby, and we’re off to the office. My juvenile sense of humor finds many of the London sights funny. I’m not sure what to expect to drink at the Bung Hole for instance, but it conjures up images of Beavis and Butthead for sure.

The names of some London establishments leave something to be desired

The morning is full of meet and greets and business strategy updates. We’re hearing a lot about Corporate Social Responsibility these days. There is a great update to our corporate capabilities brochure that is sure to please everyone looking for fresh images and an updated showpiece to share with clients and candidates. It strikes me how hard it is to coordinate a global marketing effort in a regionally structured company. I’m chomping at the bit to share our web video launch with the global team, and get some feedback on the creative for our upcoming blog release. The team responds to both with enthusiasm and constructive input.

The meeting is done and the fatigue is setting in by 5:00pm. I sneak in a shower and a 10 minute catnap at the hotel. After a quick check-in with the family I’m off to Browns London for our evening dinner meeting. I’m having Steak, Mushroom and Guinness Pie – how English!

Kris and Ronel: the Interactive Marketing Squad for Hudson

At 11pm the first day is complete. I’m heading back to the hotel to catch up on the work of the day. I’m asleep by 2am because it feels like 9pm.

Thursday May 8: Global Updates and a Speed Boat Ride
I’m still not yet coherent from lack of sleep, but it’s time to head off to the office at Chancery Lane at 8am. Today every global marketing manager is sharing the successes from their region and their upcoming plans. My takeaway is this: It’s an exciting time to be a marketer in Asia, rebuilding time for Australia, maturing time in EU, and experimental time in the US. It is refreshing to know that we share VERY similar challenges aligning marketing to business process, and pushing business process to align with a marketing vision. We’re ending the day by looking forward to our team outing: a speed boat ride on the Thames and dinner at Floridita.

It is clear that we all need some fresh air after being cooped up inside all day. The walk to the boats right beneath the London Eye puts a smile on our faces. We’ve gotten shockingly good weather all week and tonight is no exception. 70 degrees and sunny. We’re talking about London, not Florida.

From Left: Carrie, Denise and Rick walking to the boats

We make it to the docks with time to catch a few pictures of the iconic sites. Then we find out what were really getting into. Apparently the “boats” we’ll be riding in are little dinghies with twin 225hp rocket engines attached to them. We are all very reassured as we don our life jackets and pack ourselves into the raft.

Hop aboard the raft. Keep your hands and feet in the ride at all times

I’m a speed (the rate of movement, not the drug) junkie. When the boats hit top speed there is nothing I can do but smile and take in the breathtaking scenery along the banks of the Thames. We pass Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, the London Bridge, Tower Bridge, and the Royal Observatory (keeper of Greenwich Meantime) to name a few of the sites. Just as fun, though is fearing for your life as the boats probably reaches 60 MPH bobbing and weaving through the huge wakes caused by all of the boat traffic in the river. We are definitely airborne more than once.

Our speedboat ride beneath the Tower Bridge

I’m thankful for dry land after all the speedboat excitement. We go back to the hotel to freshen up, then it’s time for dinner. Floridita is a Cuban cabaret with drag queens doing all sorts of crazy dancing, and killer pomegranate mojitos. A lot of the team from the London office is hanging out with us. We are having a great time talking American politics and testing our foreign accents. By midnight though most of us are turning into pumpkins, and we call it a trip.

Friday May 9: 22 Hours of Case Studies and International Travel
Friday morning, we buzz back to the office and have a morning agenda packed with case studies of marketing ROI in action. From Job Board tracking to integrated campaigns, our team is really working on measuring all of our efforts. We are taking advantage of our last minutes together by recapping the week and setting an action plan. At 1pm Carrie, and I are in a cab (the world’s best in my opinion) to Paddington station and on the Heathrow Express to the airport.

I have to connect to Rochester via Dulles again. This time I’m mesmerized by a Catherine Heigl chick flick, 27 Dresses. Does that surprise anyone who knows me? When I finally settle into bed at 12:30AM on Saturday morning, I’m realizing that I’ve been up 22 straight hours. Yes, that drive home from the airport was risky.

All in all, this was a great trip to London packed with great information and great sights. If you’d like to see more pictures, have a look at the London photo album.

This work-from-home guy’s birthday is coming up April 2nd. If anyone at Hudson actually reads this blog, you might want to watch this lovely vignette from our friends at CareerBuilder. My Workplace Worth suggests that I should ‘cut my losses’. Not that I want the stripper to bust out of a five layer cake with a gold plated watch, but c’mon people. Chocolate Fountain!

People work for bosses not companies. Today, that sentiment is more true for me than ever before. When the leadership team asked Rick Gray to emcee the annual Sales Awards conference I bet they thought he would have a humorous quip or two. Or maybe he would throw squishy balls with the Hudson logo into the audience (we are from the marketing department you know). I doubt that ANYONE would have expected this. Take a look at what someone caught on their camera phone.

While the song certainly has no chance for American Idol, it does show me a person willing to be creative, gutsy, and unafraid to shake things up. How could others in the crowd not be motivated by a fellow employee on fire for his company like that? That’s exactly the kind of person I like to work for. Nice job Rick!

This post also has me asking the inevitable question about whether or not to blog about my boss. This same question arose for Tiffany Monhollon in her post titled Is Your Boss Reading Your Blog?. She covered my sentiments very well:

I will also tell you that if I didn’t have a great relationship with my boss and know that he fully supports me as a person as well as the entirety of my career, I probably would have had a bit more pause in my decision. But in the end, it turned out to be the best move.

Learning about social media has been a good time for both of us. It has been one of the most challenging projects in my career. Why not blog my boss’s first public appearance on YouTube? We haven’t figured out the power of that medium yet, so we’re going to start now! If you like his song pass it on.

I aways thought that I might go blind from looking at a computer so much of my worklife, but this is absurd. I happen to like the warm laptop on my lap.

Change is the norm. I’m convinced. After spending my first 3 weeks at my 3rd job in 4 years, I’ve come to realize that I thrive on change. Come to find out, I’m not alone. Walt, one of my former mates at TMP has decided to take a new position at SixApart. This, after Rachelle relocated from NY to take over my old position at TMP Chicago. And before that was Mark moving on to R/GA.

First, I have to congratulate Walt on going to a place that truly has a great deal of meaning for him. For a true blogging innovator, going to work for the company that builds what he so passionately advocates, uses, and tweaks is a stroke of pure genius. I can already foresee exciting things coming down the way for Walt and for the blog community on the whole as a result of his upcoming work.

As for Rachelle, I have no worse feeling than that of leaving her just as she was coming in. But, the best part of it all is that she is going to have the world’s best experience at TMP. She is going to be thrown into design situations she may have only had a taste of before. And she is going to grow her skills so fast in the upcoming years. I think it is a blessing in disguise for her to have the kind of responsibility she now has in the best office in the company. Good Luck Rachelle!

And Mark already knows that I’m in awe of what he must be creating. Moving from advertising to a real design firm puts him in the top flight of designers. Already, the rigor that he has been going through in Architecture and Interaction Design makes creating Career websites look like childsplay. Mark, you’ve done well. Congrats!

After watching these 3 changers, my only regret from the TMP years is that we were well on our way to building an all-star user-experience team. Unfortunately we all just got very impatient, and the economy soured at a bad time. Now hopefully we’ll keep in touch at our separate companies and use each other’s knowledge for the betterment of users everywhere.

I fell off into the life-change abyss over the last few weeks. On February 2, I resigned from my beloved job at TMP Worldwide for an amazing opportunity at Hudson Highland Group. I’m now working as the Director of User Experience within the Human Capital Solutions Group. It’s the challenge to help build a business that really drove me. It feels like a startup again, and I love it.

In between jobs, Tricia and I took the 2 kids for a family vacation to San Diego. What an experience!

Pure genious. I promise, when I get a chip on my shoulder about something, I will make this blog into something that is more than my daily blitherings about my personal life. I really admire people that add value to Internet content. Tanya b at F*ckthatjob.com has spent her unemployed days rooting out the most demeaning, underpaying, slaveJobs for no money that are out there. I love how many of them are from the visual arts. And we all thought that by using Quark and Photoshop, we’d never be a starving artist. Here’s a sample: (And read the comments! Funny, funny, funny.)

Indentured Servitude
Mr. Lincoln can’t help us now. This almost seems too bad to be real. You think it’s just flame bait?
Well, let us know if you’ve interviewed for this exciting opportunity and what fabulous benefits they offer.

Reply to: job-9671437@craigslist.org (forwards to an @aol.com address)
Date: 2003-03-22, 11:38PM

Full time graphic/web designer wanted for design studio in lower manhattan. Two to three years experience, plus bachelor’s degree.
Must know HTML, Photoshop, Illustrator, Quark Xpress, Fireworks, Dreamweaver, and Flash.
Director, Premiere, PHP/SQL, Indesign, and 3D Studio Max a plus.

$6.50/hr to start. Mondays to Saturdays 8am to 6pm.

Send resume and cover letter in body of email, along with a link to your online portfolio (url) for consideration. all attachments will be deleted