NGC Communications

Thanks to Spam!

We at NGC must first apologize to all our wonderful readers and visitors to this site.

Over the last month or so, NGC’s Blog has been inundated with spam and bogus comments that has flooded our inboxes with annoying spam. We thought we could get away with not using anti-spam filtering and anti-pingbacks, but we were wrong.

So, in order for us to keep writing more, we have to spend less time moderating and deleting these fake comments. With that being said, we have installed ReCaptcha protection on all of our comment pages for each post in order to prevent spambots and other intruders from messing up a good thing.

I know this additional step can be annoying and that reading the little crooked letters in the ReCaptcha box can be annoying. We hope our loyal readers and contributors understand this necessary step and this doesn’t prevent you from providing all your wonderful feedback.

We would love to hear from you and maybe a good story regarding spam. Lately, we have a few as well.

Take care,

NGC Team

Buzzwords, waffles and spaghetti

We are month into a new year, full of new terminologies, new strategies and new thinking. What will be disruptive this year? What will be the next innovative idea or visionary product that will change our lives in 2010? If you haven’t noticed, there are three, perhaps four, overused buzzwords in this first paragraph alone.

Have you seen the IBM commercial with Innovation Man? If you haven’t, look out for it, because it is fantastic. The main protagonist in the spot is dressed up like a superhero and all he talks about is innovation (a big buzzword for 2009). At the end of the commercial, he asks an employee in drill sergeant fashion what innovation means, and the worker exclaims, “I don’t know.”

Stop talking and start doing – the commercial concludes. It really sums up where we are at right now in business.

The secret to success in 2010 is collaboration. Building relationships and working together is critical to increased profit margins and market share. If you are one of the millions right now exclaiming, “I don’t know” when it comes to innovation, take a look around you and see where you can plug in with someone else and solve the problem together.

Don’t be a waffle! Waffles are square and have little boxes throughout the favorite breakfast treat. Don’t live in your little squares trying to fix each individual problem. Thinking like a spaghetti noodle will be more beneficial. One individual spaghetti noodle touches so much on the plate. It works with all the other noodles to make a complete and balanced meal. Some noodles are shorter and some are longer, but as a whole – as a team – they make a delicious treat at dinner time. Don’t forget the sauce.

The point today is to use buzzwords to your advantage and to work as a team. Although waffles are delicious, spaghetti is much healthier to your success in 2010.

Hot pink is not pretty, but inspires economic epiphany

Have you ever made a mistake?  Of course, we all have. But, have you ever done something so terrible that you wanted to cry?

This weekend I took upon myself to do some home improvements – or should I say un-improvements.

Normally, I’m pretty talented in this capacity as honey-do dude and capable of fixing and building just about anything around the house.

My wife and I recently had some ceramic tile installed in our bathrooms. It looks awesome and is a huge improvement to the space. The expert who assisted in the project recommended putting down sealant to prevent the tile and grout from cracking over time. I agreed and went to the store to pick up the necessary product to make it happen.

Apparently, I picked up the wrong product.

When I put down the sealant, nothing on the instructions indicated that it would dry hot pink. Yes, hot pink.

Our beautiful new bathroom floor looked like someone threw up Pepto Bismal all over it.

Now, I consider myself a pretty tough dude, but I was so upset that little tears trickled down my face.  All I could do was stand there and sulk over what I had done. My wife, on the other hand, was fantastic. She was more focused on fixing the problem instead of worrying about the actual problem or what it would mean to the future of our home.

Her reaction is what prompted my economic epiphany.

I thought about the challenges we all currently face with our economy as well as the problems associated with the pink nightmare that used to be my bathroom.  Metaphorically speaking, our economic struggles are very similar.

I managed to create a serious problem in less than 30 minutes without breaking a sweat. It took almost 10 hours to fix it. But, you know what; I fixed it – complete with sore knees, aching back and a slight buzz from the fumes of the sealant remover.

My point is that everyone who wants to succeed in this country will need to stop being in such a huff about the situation we are in and start using a little elbow grease (and maybe some hydrochloric acid) to help clean it up.

I am not standing on the soapbox or trying to be insensitive about the hard times many of you face, because I ‘m right there with you.  However, if we can look at our economic woes as a problem that can be fixed with hard work instead of just talking about it all the time, maybe the light at the end of the tunnel becomes more visible. Maybe we start sleeping better at night. Maybe our children have a brighter future.

The clock is ticking. And, based on my new experience, the longer the problem sits, the worse it gets and the harder it is to correct it. And, no one wants to see our beloved red, white and blue stained pink.