Nearly Home

I just got back from a quick trip up to Vancouver to meet with the British Columbia Automobile Association (BCAA) and Vancity. This was a great trip - not only had they turned on the snow for me (for the 3 days I was there the temperature never made it past 0 celcius), and both organisations had a tonne of inspiration for RAC.

BCAA is really similar to RAC in many ways, they have just short of 800k members, 1000 staff and have a philosophically similar view on the world to RAC. They have been investing in becoming more nimble through more integrated systems and through aligning staff behind a common cause. This has lead to a culture that thrives on innovation - at least within the area that I met with. For example they have just implemented a "radical" change to the way they price for roadside assistance - they have introduced a no-use discount on the core product. At this point in time the only complaints they have received have been from members renewed on the old approach wishing to be put onto the revised structure earlier - a very good sign it will be a successful change. Maybe an option for RAC to consider?

Vancouver for the most part is a city with a deep social conscience (for example there is no Zoo as the residents did not want caged animals), so it is not surprising that BCAA is also very socially aware and considerate. They have a dedicated Customer Management team, which is similar in many regards to Insights, but have more of a customer evangelist function - similar to that served by Membership Strategy in the RAC. This team at BCAA has representation on the Executive Leadership Team, which demonstrated how critical BCAA sees this function. 

Another social leader, Vancity were also kind enough to give me two hours with several of their key people (kindly arranged by BCAA). This is a profitable business that is built from being a socially aware community leader. They have rafts of first, including being the first financial institution in Canada to lend to women without needed a man to co-sign and have programs in place specifically to reduce homelessness. The also started a website recently called change everything - designed to empower the entire community to do better things. I am sure the RAC could be a champion of a similar initiative in Western Australia. They have a wonderful way of describing how to mix profit and social activism, in their words: "We make profits so we can do good things, not do good things to make profits". 

In all it was a really fantastic couple of days. Today I was meant to be off to Washington, DC to meet with the American Association of Retired Person (AARP). Unfortunately the unusual weather that gave me snow in Vancouver also caused snow in Las Vegas (a connection for my flight to Washington) and closed the airport, also causing my flights to get cancelled with no alternative routes available. Hopefully we can still hookup over the phone.

In any case it is pretty obvious that I have now finished with AAA Northern California, Nevada and Utah. For a going away party I put on an AFL Grand Final show with all sorts of Australian food - including some Lammingtons that I made (well Deb made the cake and I made the chocolate sauce and put them together). After about 30 minutes I gave up trying to explain the game - it really needs to be done one-on-one. It is much harder to explain to 10 people at once!

It has been a great experience, but I am definitely super keen to get back to Australia. Not long now!

Time is slipping away

This photograph is of my girls in front of an Andy Goldworthy installation. He is an UK artist known for his environmental art, which my wife uses often as inspiration in her job as a primary school teacher. We were extremely lucky that he has just done this work in the Presidio (an ex military base in San Francisco). This is made of 37 Cyprus Pines that were all about to die, as they had reached the end of their natural life of 125 years. When this forest was first planted, it was done on mass to protect against wind, but as it was all done at the same time, the entire forest is now dying at the same time. The park forester is now working to stagger the growth of the forest so it can self sustain.

We are really starting to get close to the end of this assignment, with a little over a month before my family and I get on a plane to head back to Australia.  Ironically we are really starting to just get truly settled into the routine. My wife, Deb, and I were discussing today how we had really built a mini life here, with a regular Monday night japanese, where we are now know by name (and we don't even need to tell them 90% of the order).  We know our way around the city and have begun to understand how everything flows. Bottom line the city is now far more inviting than intimidating - which it definitely was (in parts) when we first got here.

That said we are definitely excited about getting back closer to family, video talking on skype is great, but it is no substitute for being in the same space.

As a result of up coming end of the assignment we are really pushing to fit as many experiences in as possible before we go back. On the weekend we trouped up to Napa Valley, which is the San Francisco equivalent to Margaret River, just on a much larger scale - think of nearly all of the wineries being on the scale of Palandri or Voyager. Wonderful place and we had great weather again.

these two photos are of the family and I in a cable car going up to Stirling Winery, which is the only way for the public to reach it. This is because the operations of the winery are gravity fed, so it is built on top of a hill to make this process more efficient. Fortunately for Deb and I it was about 3am Perth time, which made it OK for us to test the wines (even though in Napa it was 10am in the morning....).

We all really enjoyed it and finished the weekend at a great little restaurant called Redds. you can see what Millie thought of her dessert - Redds were really lucky to get the plate back undamaged! 

Similarly there is an urgency in the office where I am working to meet as many people as I can before I finish up. It is such a large organisation and complex structure that it has taken much more time that I expected to work my way through all of the functions.

Over the coming weeks I am spending some time with the team responsible for NCNU's relocation to a new head office. The RAC team are helping to put together an information pack, to share all that we learned from our own move. I will also be getting out to Sacramento (which I only learnt was the capital of California once I got here) to meet with the lobbying team and also to visit one of NCNUs Car Care Plus sites (think AutoServices).

Lots more excitement to come! 

Onboarding with AAA

I spent today with AAA University (the training and development team at the AAA) at their first trial run of a new employee onboarding training session (ie employee induction) . The session was attended by a mix of  long term employees and new starters, who were being asked to participate and provide critical feedback on the effectiveness of the program.

The session started with a look at what makes a brand great, which they explored by looking at some of the best know brands in the US. After looking at the adjectives that described these strong brands they then looked at the descriptors which also held true for AAA, and from there they looked at the descriptors which were unique to AAA. Very quickly the participants started to explore what made AAA great and how they contribute to that strength. Throughout the day they revisited how the brand was linked to each module, including values of employees, the history of AAA and the partnership structure of the ACA. Like the RAC, the AAA recognises that maintaining and building on the underlying brand strength is critical for the long term future of the clubs - and most importantly indoctrinates this into the employees as soon as possible.

The big advance of this program was to shift the content to be far more participatory (versus the previous model which was of the "sage on the stage" type). In effect the participants spent nearly 80% of the time self directed. Many of the exercises required the "new employees" to search on the intranet for the information to complete the exercises - as a result participants were being taught how to help themselves - and at the same time making the intranet far more relevant.

One other addition was the setting of teams at the start of the day - they did this on a diversity basis (participants were asked to create their own teams guided by a few simple rules) - these teams then stay together for the full two days of induction.  This appealed to me as I think it allows the teams to learn better, as you are not needing to constantly adjust your learning style with ever changing teams. I have personally experienced this style of cohort & sydnicate learning in the past and personally think it creates stronger long term bonds in each learning group.

One more day of onboarding to go, I think I may even pass! Until next time.

Wow! what I time to be in the US

This week has been seriously cool. The election of Obama is one of the best things that has happened in the world - it is not that anything has changed - it is only the promise of what is possible. I really hope some of this promise is realised. Being in San Francisco for this event was amazing. There was partying on the streets, it was like New Years in 1999. 

I loved this visualisation of the magnitude of this change.  Thanks to Patrick Moberg for this great image.

I also love this way of showing how America voted, with Blue being Democrat and red being Republican, with all the shades in between showing the bias either way.

Look here for all of the maps produced by Mark Newman, the author of this map.

What is really incredible is that while there was tremendous energy around Obama leading up to the election, I don't think the many people truly believed it was going to happen. It was such a release for everyone when he was successful. Today Paula Downey, the President of AAA NCNU, presented the strategy statement of the AAA NCNU and while delivering the statement pointed to Obamas election as a source of renewed inspiration and spirit for the company. Patriotic America is awesome to see in action. It is the ultimate in true belief.

In my last blog I mentioned the great things happening at AAA in there People area. One thing that really stood is the great employee volunteer program they run - check out the website www.aaavolunteers.org. They provide all staff 24 hours paid time to attend volunteering events, and if the employee is emergency trained, up to two week paid time to help with major calamities. Over the past couple of years they have helped with several major hurricane disasters, including Katrina. There is a team of two that run the program, which was recognised recently with a national award (presented by ex-president George Bush Senior), and they achieve a participation rate of 65% per annum. What is most impressive about this program is that only one third of the volunteering is done during work hours - so for the most part staff are volunteering there own time, rather than using the paid hour available.

They are also doing some great work on mapping of competencies, including looking at an all of business approach to talent management. Like RAC the biggest challenge is getting the business used to a new way of doing things. We are certainly on the same path here.

Also over the last week I spent some time East Bay, in Walnut Creek, with this regions' Market Executive, Andrea Kastner. This is too be the new site of AAA head office, which they move to in 18 months. Andrea and here team have been working on a concept for a new style of district office, which has strong parallels with the Kiosk theme that was raised at the RAC Summit in August. Great design, and I am absolutely taking what I can from this to share with RAC - and Andrea is kindly sharing freely.

Finding some really great things, but are beginning to sense that my time here is coming to a close, with only six weeks to run. 

Until next time. BTW my wife Deb has gone to bed, so no spelling or grammar checking for this post....

Back to blogging

I have been a very bad blogger, breaking the most basic rule of blogging - regular updates. If you do read this, then thanks for checking-in even though this well has been dry for the last two weeks. I will try to make amends with an action packed blog...

Lets start with a sunrise photo, taken from our balcony, beautiful colours - reminded me a little of sunrise in Perth. As I sit at the window now and look out on the same spot all I see is white - it has been raining constantly all day - a halloween gift from San Francisco? Anyway back to the blog.

It has been a really interesting couple of weeks.  I have met with the Jim Pouliot the clubs CEO, had dinner with Paula Downey, the clubs President, spent a couple of days out in the district office network, talked at length with the people team (recognised as industry leaders in many sectors) and to top it off drove up to Yosemite with my family last weekend just gone.

It was really great to meet Jim, as I personally found it so invaluable to get the deep strategic insight which helped me better understand the AAA NCNU. We talked about organisation structure and culture, including the role that the current head office (a 28 floor tower) played - and how that would evolve with a move to the east bay Walnut Creek district in about 18months time (about 30 miles east of the current head office). Like the move RAC made three years ago, there is no doubt this will be a key milestone in the history of the club, leading to new changes at all levels. We also talked extensively about the holdings structure Jim helped to pioneer with partner clubs, which has paved the way for much greater collaboration between the many of the AAA Federation clubs.

I was then lucky enough to have a Saturday evening out several other guests, hosted by Paula Downey and her husband Michael. We met at her house for a pre-dinner get together at Paula's family home in San Raefel, it was an amazing shingled house - that is all of the cladding on the external walls was shingles and it was high in the hill bordering on forest. While we sat outside, with me trying to explain how you play cricket - and trying to justify why it can be a 5 day game, there were wild deer walking past and scores of hummingbirds whizzing through the garden - just incredible. Dinner was down the road at a brewery restaurant - they know how to keep an Australian happy! We didn't stray on to work talk too much, with the one exception were we talked about AAA NCNU moving to include products per household in the core metrics of the organisation. Like RAC they recognised the long term future of the club will only be secured by deepening the relationships they already have.

The on the Monday I was invited to spend a couple of days with Kent Evans, the Area Business Manager for San Francisco. Here he is showing me around the original San Francisco district office - which AAA sold and moved out of early this year. It at one stage had 90 staff! They have now all been relocated to one of 6 new district offices spread around San Francisco city. The original head office district office is a beautiful architectural design, which was built 80+ years ago for AAA, but the building owner at the time had it designed like a hotel lobby in the case the upstart AAA club failed and they could easily repurpose it!!! I only hope the new owners seek to restore some of it's former glory, rather than just reclaim the land for new development.

The new offices all followed a slick design, which aimed to optimise the many customer interactions they have every day. You can see in this photo that the Membership Centre is at the back of the site - this is the area where the most transactions occur, including vehicle licencing dues being paid (which AAA does for its members). The greeters and membership service consultants then take the opportunity to encourage members to talk with an insurance agent or travel consultant on their way out of the office. Each office is now much smaller than the original office, but are still much larger than we are used to at RAC. There was much more to share on this visit including some really great self-service setups for maps and a very different approach to managing the insurance portfolio, by using individual agents (who manage their own portfolios).

From here I spent a bit of time with several of the people team, including those responsible for employee volunteering program, diversity, the employment brand, talent management, business unit support and change management. But in the interest of keeping this a little bit punchy I am going to keep that for the next blog update - this one already has plenty enough work stuff. Just a point to note - there is a lot of inspiration from the people team, so it will be worth the wait (I hope).

So on to Yosemite, we did the drive over a weekend (it is about 5 hours drive from San Francisco). First we drove over the Sierra Nevadas (the mountain range that is home to both Yosemite and Lake Tahoe) along a road called the Senora Pass (highway 108), which is only open for about 5 months of the year, as it is snowed in the remainder of the time. The pass is over 9,500 feet above sea level, so it gets quite sold, so much so that even though this is the end of summer there was snow on the mountain.

Once we came over the mountain we came down to Lake Mono, which is where this photo was taken. It is a salt lake that has dropped over 50 vertical feet in the last 50 years due to the redirecting of it's tributaries. The Californian state government has now corrected this, but it will be a long time before it is back to it's former glory. These strange formations, shown in the photo, are called Tufa and they are dried mud that were underwater and were caused by the constant bubbling of the mineral springs. 

We stayed overnight at Murpheys Motel in a really nice 3 street town called Lee Vining. In the morning we got up early to head back over the Sierra Nevadas into Yosemite by the Tioga Pass, which at just short of 10,000 feet is the highest pass in California - like Senora it is only open for a few select months every year. This photo is taken from Olmstead Point and is looking back into Yosemite Valley. 

It is very difficult to truly demonstrate the awesome scale of Yosemite in a photo, so all I can say is that if you are any where near then you must take the time to visit.

We really had wonderful weekend, and even saw a person who saw a bear.... oh well next time.

thanks for reading.

Retention, Retention, Retention (and Tow Trucks)

Not a large blog this week. Most of my work energy continues to go into the consolidation of retention strategies at AAA. The trick here is to change the perspective to understand the levers of retention in the eyes of the member. Another way of putting it is: what is it that a member sees that makes them choose to renew or not, and then what can you control for - then finally have you put in place the right initiatives to cover all of the points of decision making for the member. It is within this broad framework that I am trying to categorise the challenges and opportunities for AAA.

For those that were wondering, here is my desk at AAA - and I am managing to keep it a little tidier than is normal for me. I have my own printer at the desk, which is a real luxury, but I have needed to get used to being a little more downsized than my desk back at RAC.

I was lucky enough to get out onto the trucks yesterday. I spent the day with one of AAA top performing contractors, Mountain View Towing. This business started working for AAA 30 years ago and today is run by two sons, Michael and Danny, of the original founder. They were the 2005 and 2006 winners of the top contractor for AAA NCNU (based largely on member satisfaction). This is photo of one of their new truck, which I got to spend 3 hours in cruising with Carl (shown in the photo).

Mountain View uses AAA dispatch, contractors run their own territories and can choose to run their own dispatch or to use AAA. The dispatch for AAA is based in Arizona with their IT, however what I saw of it worked flawlessly (excluding the screen locking up at one point) it was hard to believe the dispatchers were so far away. The trucks all had screens in them called Rangers, which were also controlled from Arizona - they contained key call details and also GPS systems for the drivers to use. Carl had two tows while I was with him, but in general it was a really slow day - normally they would do at least 10 jobs a day.

After a lunch with Michael and Danny, I went out on a battery truck for three hours with Reggie. Reggie was a gun, he regularly sells 40 batteries a month, but from my personal experience can assure he only sells them when it is appropriate. It was great to watch these guys in action (there was not a lot of value I could add!).

Outside of work, I went across to Alcatraz on the weekend with my parents (who left us on Monday - everyone in my family was sad to see them go). It was a great experience, even though the self guided tour was a little slow (but maybe that was just the guide....). Over the weekend it was Fleet Week, which is when the military puts on a show for the public, including the Blue Angels - a troupe of F/A 18s that do airshows, primarily to support military recruitment. So we got to see a pretty cool show while waiting for the ferry. Here is one last photo - which I took late on Sunday night (walking home from dinner with my parents) - it is of the Bay Bridge, which connects San Francisco to the East Bay (Oakland, Berkeley and others). It is about 1 km from our condo.

Don't be shy - please keep in touch.

Business as usual in a new way

My family and I am really starting to settle into a routine way of life in San Francisco. I have developed all of the appropriate work habits, time to catch the train, number one choice of coffee place (with a backup option if I am running short of time), my news services to keep in touch with Australia (including watching with horror the collapse of global financial systems and the subsequent slide of the Australian dollar), where I get lunch, etc. My family have their own routine with school (home school with Mrs Hirte...) in the morning, and various activities in the afternoon from art classes at Fort Mason on Mondays, exploratorium on Tuesdays, Library on Thursday etc. On the weekend we are trying to get out and see as much of this wonderful city (and surrounding areas) as we can. 

Unlike Australia, I don't drive to work, I catch the San Francisco Municiple Railway (MUNI), on the outbound N line, which takes about 20 minutes. This has been great, as it is normally not too crowded and I get a seat, which in turn is giving me 40 minutes a day to catch up on reading. I have almost read two "work" books in the last couple of weeks (and one "hobbit" type fantasy book this week). 

The two work books were about understanding the psychology of customer service and customer engagement. The first "The Paradox of Choice" by Barry Schwartz was recommended to me by the CEO of British Columbia Automobile Association who incorporated some of the thinking in their latest roadside pricing strategy. It argues that American society has too much choice and that choice is potentially a contributing factor to an inability to make decisions leading to depression, as many people try to maximise decisions to make the best possible choice (and yet that is increasingly difficult due to the variety of options). It argues that solution lies in becoming more disciplined about making acceptable decisions, not perfect ones (or satisficing - a satisfactory sacrifice, ie not the best choice, but still an ok decision). I would not say I adopt all of the ideas, but I certainly enjoyed the read and I have also gained some new perspectives. The second book which I am only two chapters from finishing is called the Human Sigma, which is written by John Flemming of the Gallop research organisation - it has been used by AAA Arizona as a foundation for some work on a Member and Staff Engagement index. This book is all about the importance of customer service in the engagement of the customer to the brand, and endeavours to suggest approaches to how to objectively and proactively measure it. It has been a facinating, fact based read demonstrating the role that emotion plays in engagement. The only disappointment is there is clearly a commercial objective hanging from this book - buy the measure from gallop. I have already started talking to AAA Arizona on how they are using the thinking.

Most of my days involve meeting with new people and discussing similarities and differences of the RAC and AAA NCNU. Over the last week I have started to hone in on a deep dive review of retention. My first impressions are that there is really good coverage at AAA, but there is still some opportunities for greater collaboration - in that some of the initiatives appear (on the surface at least) to acting independent of each other. Next week I go out on some branch visits and also get a day in the trucks, I am pretty excited about this!

At night I have been watching presidential debates, financial crisis commentary and fantastic skits on Saturday Night Live of all of the key events and characters. Make sure you check out Tina Fey playing Sarah Palin.

On Saturday I was lucky enough to go to a College Football game between the Cal Bears and Arizona State Sun Devils at Berkeley University with my Dad (who was in the US for a mining conference), Paul Airoldi (from AAA) and Randy Lamont (an ex-AAA employee). The day and game was a stimulation overload. From start to finish something was always happening. There was 60,000 people at the game in a stadium that was built in 1920 and largely remains unchanged to today (including the bench seats). Cal Bears won 24 to 14, starting strong early but nearly fading to a loss towards the end. We saw the whole marching band thing, cheer leaders and an awesomely engaged crowd. It is a really fun show, with the crowd getting right into the tactics of the game, including screaming at the top of your lungs to make it hard for the opposition to hear the play - this is called the 12th man. The 12 man comes from the on field team only being 11, but amazingly there are typically 55 players in each team for the game!!! It is still amazing that a game that technically only goes for 1 hour takes over three hours to play - but I really didn't notice that three hours had passed until the end (kind of like a great movie - time doesn't matter).

On that note - time for me to go to bed ready for a new day. Please don't be afraid to leave your comments or ask any questions! On my final note - it is about 12:15am here and I am too tired to proof this, so please feel free to find my mistakes for me (there will be many!) - just leave comments so I know what to fix tomorrow!!!!

Getting to know the team

Over the last week my experience at AAA NCNU started really take shape. It was a great week for learning and also getting to know more of the team here. I was fortunate to join a leadership update conference call (which was directed at the top 40 or so leaders of AAA NCNU) and also spent two days with Market 5, in what is know as the Marketing Bootcamp - more about that later.

Let me start by introducing the team I am working with - this photo was taken for our Radiator magazine - it is almost all of the Enterprise Strategic Consulting (ESC - as in the key on your keyboard). As I have said before they have many similar functions to RAC Insights, including direct marketing activity and business analysis.

The team is far more advanced than we are in terms of their process disciplines and documentation, which includes a fantastic intranet site (using Sharepoint) as the hub of all project activity and report publication. What I particularly liked about their publication approach was the reuse element - as every project was outlined in detail and all of the correspondence about that project occurred via this intranet site and therefore remained available on the intranet site. Awesome approach to knowledge retention, it no doubt has some short term costs to develop, and even initially maintain, however the long term return will deliver many efficiencies for AAA. They also suffer the same challenges on data consolidation - and in fact are working through the challenges of building a better single view of the member for the front line - and just like RAC, are considering how this process should interact with the unique customer identification process used for their enterprise data warehouse. There is much common ground here - from debating the best definition of retention and products per household to MRM design.

As I mentioned above, I also joined their leadership update, which went through the key strategic priorities for AAA NCNU, and outlined in detail the financial performance of the group. Like many US companies, they are facing significant challenge due to the changing dynamics of the US economy. The thing that impressed me the most was the integrated approach to financial reporting, which deeply intertwined a financial reporting lesson (explaining the composition of profit/loss and balance sheet) and at the same time explained the implications of the results and the controllable and non-controllable contributions to performance - and this was done on a teleconference. Like the RAC, they work towards both an annual budget and longer term plans (in this case three year). As this is a "public forum"on the blog I won't go into details on their strategic challenges, but if you are interested just send me an email at my RAC address - jamin.hirte@rac.com.au.

I also made contact during the week with their VP of creative services. This is a team that is kind of like putting 2 dozen Jo Carson/Colin Daly blend's together and making them responsible for the majority of brand design work, including interior design. They are very interested in finding out more about our head office, with their up coming relocation mentioned below. As with everyone I show, they loved our advertising and brand positioning. I really do think that RAC is on a real winner here.

Then on the last two days of the week I was invited to join a "Marketing Bootcamp" with Market 5. There are six Markets in the AAA NCNU, all based on geographic areas, Market 5 is responsible for San Francisco and what is effectively the west bay areas. This is one of their most mature markets where their household penetration is the highest. The marketing bootcamps are an initiative designed provide the sales network (the "Markets") with a greater understanding of the services provided by the Brand and Marketing division for them. I can honestly say that these session are a really great collaboration that would certainly lead to improved returns for the network - and better understanding of the functions of some of the strategic business units.

Firstly, it is worth noting that at AAA insurance is a bureau business model - that is each branch runs their own book of insurance, which they are responsible for, both new business and retention. It is clear that this model creates strong passion and ownership by all of the sales team - in many ways it actually felt that I was attending a franchise owners meeting - not a meeting of sales managers.

So that this post is not too boring I am just going to provide a quick bullet point summary of some of the ideas I received from the session:

• Group Memberships - where they target employers to make membership part of the employment conditions. Might be a good approach to growing membership for RAC. Of particular note in my mind is the potential to target Show Your Card and Save partners - this would then also assist in bringing RAC top of mind - encouraging front line employees of these organisations to ask the question - "Are you with RAC?".
• The branches are very active for outbound calling - based on their own customer lists, but also using lists generated for them to assist in prospect marketing to their "highest potential" prospects.
• The AAA have developed a formula which is largely demographically based, which enables them to score the entire population as High, Medium or Low prospects - which does not consider profitability, only their propensity to buy from AAA. They then look at each area to see what % of that category they have captured. This allows then to very accurately predict market opportunity. They are working now on how this translates to products per household and then profit. Note they already do score profit at each household - it is only the forecasting they are working to integrate.
• They provide opportunity maps (showing retention, new business, cross sell by product, etc) down to the postcode level for all markets, and then do a case study with the Market sales managers on targeting and marketing funds allocation. This was a great exercise to cement in the understanding of the data analysis components - contact me if you would like to see the case study - excellent approach!

So please contact me if you would like to know more. Very impressed!

On a more social note - the AFL Grand Final night was great fun - largely due to the efforts of the local chapter of the Australian American Chamber of Commerce. It was at a night club called Mezzanine - reminded me a little of Metropolis Fremantle. They had Cooper's Pale Ale and meat pies (American made, but still the real thing) - so it felt a little like home. I took Paul Airoldi from AAA along for the experience - and it was a real compliment for him to say that he felt like he was on holidays - I think for a very small amount of time everyone there felt like they were back in Australia!

This weekend we caught the ferry across to Sausalito - which was really nice, super touristy, but hey thats what we are right now. It was a little like Margaret river + 20 years, lots of galleries (with nothing I can reasonably afford), restaurants and boutiques. The girls and I tried to walk around to a hands on museum, the bay area discovery musuem - which we did not make it to, as was too far away (I now look at the website with thanks, as I read it would have been closed - that would have been annoying after a 5km walk with children!!!!!). While the girls and I were walking to no where (that was open) - Deb went looking through the boutiques and I am please to report did not buy anything!!!

We discover the local temperature variations today. It was a beautiful 26 for SF today and we decided to venture across to the Presidio to Julius Khan Park. The park is the best we have found so far for children - really cool and very safe, but it was freezing. So while Mission Bay (where we live) was a toasty 26, he Presidio was 16 degrees at best. This is simply because this area was covered in fog - one lesson for the unwise.

The other thing about this area is that is super ritzy - a bit like Peppermint Grove in Perth. My wife would like to live here if she had a choice. I explained to her that she would first need to choose to upgrade her husband - as this one was not going to be buying real estate in this area (I checked afterwards and the going rate is about $10M US). Lucky for me she is not upgrading, at least that I know of.....

Last experience for the day was making a mistake on a short cut. I decided to cut across the city - down 9th, and then along Folsom. However little did I know that there was a festival on Folsom today - known as the Folsom Street Fair (I suspect RAC Websense may have issue with this link.... and not for the faint hearted) had blocked the street. As a result Deb and I have now seen grown men walking down the street with leather chaps and studded collars (and very little else).  It is good they have a place to express themselves (but as per the website - not suitable for pets or children....)!!!!

On that note, time to say goodbye.

Redwoods and Seals

Great day today with the family, after a traumatic day being dragged through shopping malls yesterday - I can certainly say I am not a good shopper!!! Back to today, on the suggestion of my new colleagues, the family and I headed up to Muir Woods, which is only about 25km north from the centre of San Francisco. Muir Woods is a secluded valley that is practically untouched, and is largely forested by giant Redwood trees, several of them that we saw were more than 4 metres across. The photo with the family is one tree, that was easily 6 metres from one side to the other.

We walked about 3km into the forest along the paths and boardwalks provided by the National Parks Service. On the walk we saw about 4 deer, including a reasonably mature buck, a river otter(which I unsuccessfully tried to label as a beaver - wrong apparently as they have the platypus like tail - one to Deb, none to me....) and a chipmunk (which was the favourite of the family) plus lots of birds, trees and banana slugs (not a family favourite). 

The forest floor was really cool and damp, to the extent that my wife's freshly straighten hair was curly again by the time we left. Truly a spectacular little part of the world - and so close to the city, we will definitely come here again. It was possibly the most peaceful time we have had since arriving in San Francisco, other than the occasional group of swedish tourists, fresh off the cruise ship loudly walking past sounding like a gaggle of mad chefs from the Muppets.

From here we drove back into the city and down to Fishingboat Habour to see the sea lions on pier 39. These guys are a comedy act, with all sorts of antics ranging from sleeping in the most uncomfortable looking ways possible (this accounts for about 95% of the seals), then the remainder fighting for their little space in the sun. We had a nice lunch looking over the bay, and then walked down the pier for an ice-cream and some trampolining by Grace.

In all it was a really nice way to finish the weekend. We are certainly starting to work our way around the city and are enjoying it very much. Back to work tomorrow!

Settling in

Before I get into how the whole work thing is going I need to share this little element of gold with you - you will probably need to pick it up at home as it is a link to youtube, but all I can say is I love the ninja cat. For the record I found this while logged on at home - no slacking in the office for me.

Well back to work. A couple of interesting snippets to start with:

1. AAA NCNU (and most of the US clubs) rely heavily on direct response advertising. Supporting this they have thousands of campaign numbers so they can track every promotion individually. As a result they can relatively easily identify the response rate of any promotion. I am going to investigate this one further as I would question how much wastage might occur due to the potential customer not having recognition of a common number - but then again would a prospect simple look up the phone directory anyway?

2. The team I am working with, Enterprise Strategic Consulting, does almost all list extraction for direct marketing - including all of the copy magazines (their primary magazine is called VIA), and all email contacts. Thats a lot of lists! Having said that one of the things we are going to be working on together is a more complete contact strategy. Like RAC there is much to be done to ensure the right customers are contacted for the right things at the right time. 

3. The club is right in the middle of planning a move to a new head office - which is expected to occur in about 18 months time. I will certainly be providing contacts to some of the people at RAC that made our big move three years ago so successful.

So that is the "work" things. Now onto practical matters, I have sourced great coffee just around the corner. This proved to be much harder to do than I first expected - they all drink "drip coffee" here, and for the most part like it sizzling hot. This place understand how to do a perfect rosetta, and as a bonus roast their over beans - check them out here Blue Bottle.

Also we made another important discovery - an Australian/NZ restaurant just around the corner (South Food and Wine Bar). The importance of this discovery is that they do a mean pavlova (and they also agree that the pavlova is categorically first made in Australia - so that argument is settled). My daughter Grace was in heaven, as she has truly been asking for pavlova since about day two.

On other matters I have been sent an invite to the American Australian Chamber of Commerce AFL Grand Final party. The time difference means that the final is on Friday night - but the game won't start until about 11pm, could be a problem....

More to come next week.