The Robin Report – January 2014

So Much for the “King’s English” or Any Other Language
Try this new language: “EaterWire: last Fort Mason @otgsf tonight, @KronnerBurger at @TheMillSF tomorrow, @SpruceSF starts brunch Sunday: http://eater.cc/17jwNXR.”

If you can read this and even more importantly, understand it, then you are either a Millennial ‘master’ tweeter or re-tweeter, or you are what I’m calling a ‘loco-linguist,’ somebody nuts enough to spend their time learning this stuff, just ‘because you can.’

Here’s the translation of that gobbeldygook: “The last Off the Grid food truck gathering will be at Fort Mason on Friday, KronnerBurger will have a pop-up burger joint at the Mill Cafe on Saturday, the Spruce restaurant will begin a new brunch service on Sunday, and more information about all of that is available on Eater’s San Francisco restaurant news page.”

I recently mentioned to my friend, Nick Graham, a “Renaissance man,” brilliant creator and builder of the Joe Boxer brand; often stand-up or sit-down comedian; and now designer of his own Nick Graham menswear collection, that I might want to do a blog about him. He responded, “Can we change the name of blogging it sounds like a medical procedure from the 16th Century.” I said give me a little ‘color’ around that thought. He shoots an email back, and says: “Johnson could not be saved.

The Instagram had come back positive showing a history of random meals he had eaten. Neither leaching nor blogging would stop the inevitable course of his wounds. Though the doctors had blogged others in worse condition, Johnson was a special case of poor English and careless actions. As a last resort they tried to tweet him, but he passed without a response.”

All I can offer as advice is that if you are sure you have achieved some pinnacle in your career and/or are heading into retirement, during which you will not need these new languages, just ignore this crazy cacophony of bird chirps.

In the meantime, if you have nothing else to do and feel compelled to be ‘with it,’ or worse, feel that your career is in jeopardy, click on: http://www.webopedia.com/quick_ref/Twitter_Dictionary_Guide.asp and check out the Twitter Dictionary: A Guide to Understanding Twitter Lingo.

Better you than me.

Inside This Issue

• The Four Major Issues and Strategic Priorities for 2104 – and Beyond
  By Robin Lewis
• Down By the River… Amazon-Style
  By Warren Shoulberg
• People Improvement is a New Frontier of Growth
  By Toni Yacobian
• Does History hav e a future?
  By Robert Hocking
• The Meaning of Time
  By Paco Underhill
• Something New, in the Right Hue, That Fits, Too!
  By Anastasia Charbin
• Reaching the Chinese Consumer
  By Emily Thompson
• Sex Sells
  By Marie Driscoll
• 12 Re-urbanizing America
  By Len Lewis
• Growth by Foreign Expansion
  By David Merrefield
• FOMO and the Retail Experience
  By Judith Russel
• AMAZON “NAILED”
  By Robin Lewis