Author: Brian Lee

Small Business Saturday

Posted on by Brian Lee

I like the idea of Small Business Saturday. For those unfamiliar, it was started two years ago by American Express to support small businesses between Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

When you make a purchase from a small business, it helps their bottom line by a much greater percentage than a big box retailer’s. Same in my industry. When we land a contract, it has a larger positive effect on our company than for a large agency.

Of course, I’m not advocating a total avoidance on big box retailers–after all, they were small businesses at some point. But when you can, buy something from a local merchant.

Good apology by Yahoo! Fantasy Football

Posted on by Brian Lee

Just after 11 a.m. CT Sunday, Nov. 11, I went to the Yahoo! Fantasy Football page to double-check my line-up for any injuries, as I and many others always do. To my surprise, the page didn’t load, and wouldn’t load after many retries. I even tried my mobile app, but that didn’t work either, so I gave up in frustration.

Ken Fuchs, head of Yahoo! Sports, apologized the next day in an email sent to all users. I thought it was well-written: he owned up to the mistake, identified correctly the victims (fantasy football players, NOT Yahoo), didn’t say anything contradictory (e.g. “our servers never fail”) and aligned himself with the victims (“as a Yahoo! Sports fantasy player myself …”).

Two days later, Ken sent another email detailing the problem (new configuration of hardware failed) and offering some compensation (free access to the “Scouting Report” and 20 percent discount to Yahoo! Sports Store).

I was fortunate that the outage didn’t affect me, though I can see how angry some people would be if they didn’t get to set their line-ups prior to the outage. The compensation can’t make up for a lost game, but it can move Yahoo! slowly back in the public’s trust.

My only disappointment was that Yahoo! waited until Monday to say anything. Even some kind of note on Sunday acknowledging that the site was down and was being worked on would have been helpful.

Still, kudos to Yahoo! for how it handled a very tough situation.

FEED Kitchens Selects Northgate for New Location

Posted on by Brian Lee

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 5, 2012

Contact: Ellen Barnard
(608) 576-3734

FEED Kitchens Selects Northgate for New Location

(MADISON, Wis.) – Citing higher visibility and a decrease in fundraising needs, Food Enterprise and Economic Development (FEED) Kitchens selected the Northgate Shopping Center for the new location of its food business incubator, the organization announced today.

“The Northgate location has a lot of advantages, such as easy access by bus and the support of local businesses such as Food Fight Restaurant Group,” FEED Kitchens Chair Ellen Barnard said. “We are excited to begin supporting local food entrepreneurs in the upcoming year.”

Groundbreaking for the new location, which will take just under a half-acre of space in the shopping center’s parking lot, is slated for March 1, 2013, and the anticipated opening of the facility is August 2013, just in time to process next season’s harvest. Pankratz Road near the airport was the original site.

As previously announced, the FEED facility will include five commercial kitchens, with specialized equipment for baking; produce preparation and processing; and deli prep and meat processing. The space will be available for non-profit and for-profit use, with Madison College, REAP Food Group, local caterers and food cart vendors among the first groups to sign up to use FEED Kitchens.

The Food Enterprise and Economic Development (FEED) Kitchens will provide tools to help youth and adults who are disadvantaged, unemployed or underemployed develop skills that move them toward self-sufficiency. FEED will reduce hunger and increase the availability of healthy local food by providing organizations serving the hungry, gardeners and farmers a place to process excess produce that would otherwise end up in a landfill or compost pile. For more information, please visit www.feedkitchens.org.

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