Bears Win! $810 Million Productivity Loss… January 22, 2007
Posted by Steve in : Chicago, The Cultural Conversation , add a commentWow! The Bears win and we are off to the Super Bowl after a 21-year drought! Good news for all Bear fans but bad news for employers, or so says a human reource consulting firm. According to consulting firm Challenger Gray & Christmas Inc., football fans pondering the matchup between the Chicago Bears and Indianapolis Colts, or planning Super Bowl XLI parties, or deciding their picks in the office pool, may reduce productivity by $16 million per minute! (that a lot of Tostito’s and dip!).
Chicago could be hit especially hard, the report said. The Super Bowl will be played in Miami on Sunday evening, Feb. 4 and Challenger estimated that 90 million people will tune in to the game. Using figures about the national employment rate and average pay, the analysts calculated that employers around the nation will pay football fans $162 million for every 10 unproductive minutes they spend discussing the game or reading about it online. Multiplied by the five work days between next Monday and the game, that amounts to $810 million — $73 million paid to 3.9 million people in the Windy City alone. And that’s not taking the current week into account.
However, this productivity loss is less than the 16 day run of the NCAA “March Madness” basketball tournament, which annually costs the nation’s employers about $3.8 billion, while they were focused on last year’s tournament instead of their jobs. Read the article here.
Olympic Flame January 16, 2007
Posted by Steve in : The City, Chicago, The Arts in the City, Olympics , add a comment(Crain’s) — Chicago’s 2016 Olympic bid has a new visual component, 
as officials unveiled a logo that features a torch with a flame representing the city’s skyline. The orange flame, with a Sears Tower-like look, is meant to represent the city’s style of architecture while evoking “a city that rose from the ashes” in the wake of the Great Fire of 1871, according to a statement from the Chicago 2016 Committee, the local group leading the bid. The torch’s body is colored blue, in a nod to Lake Michigan, and green, to represent the city’s park system.
Even if the games don’t wind up here, the city hopes to reap a little cash from its Olympic bid. Merchandise featuring the logo will go on sale “soon,” the statement said.
The logo was created by VSA Partners Inc., a Chicago-based design studio.
Today’s Tech Tip: Tables in Word January 12, 2007
Posted by Steve in : Technology, Tech Tips , add a commentDo you have to create tables in Microsoft Word but not sure how to do it? Well, Microsoft has made it quite easy with a simple WYSIWYG command, using Word’s automated formatting and its very helpful ability to create tables from plus signs and hyphens. Here is all you need to do when you want to add a table to your Word document.
Type a plus sign, then a few hyphens, then a plus sign, then a few more hyphens, then a plus sign, and press Enter. The result is a table with the cell borders where the plus signs were. As with any Word table, you can then add a row to the table by going to the right-hand cell and pressing the Tab key.
Today’s Tech Tip: Organizing Your Outlook January 10, 2007
Posted by Steve in : Technology, Tech Tips , add a commentDid you know that you can read an email, then change the subject line to better organize your emails? This little trick has helped me greatly over the years.
Let me give you an example. Let’s say I receive an email from someone that has a subject line that reads “re: your last request” and that email contains detailed plumbing costs from my plumbing sub-contractor for the construction project we are working on with our new church building at 1001 N. Crosby.
To store this email with a better subject line, I change the RE: line to say “BUILDING: New Plumbing Costs” and then file the email in my building folder. Then I click the X in the upper right corner. Outlook responds with “this email has changed, do you want to save the changes.” Click “Yes” and the subject line has been changed!
This way, when I open my building email folder, I see right away that this email deals with the plumbing costs versus it just showing “re: your last request”. This has helped me quickly scan my emails and see what I am looking for. Also, I have found another quick tip is to start the subject line with a capitalized word for one of my main 2007 objectives (like BUILDING, PERSONNEL, MULTI-SITE, COMMUNICATIONS, WEBSITE, TECHNOLOGY, STRATEGY, etc). This lets me group my emails in my inbox without creating a ton of folders. Try it out and let me know what you think.
Olympics - Chicago Style? January 9, 2007
Posted by Steve in : The City, Chicago , add a commentCome on Chicago — Here is our chance to host the Olympics! At Park Community Church, we are committed to encouraging and enabling people stay in this world-class, global city, to establishing and nurturing families within the city, being role models to our neighbors, and passing on the Gospel to future generations —thus impacting the city of Chicago: one life, one family, one block and one neighborhood at a time. One of the new aspects of Chicago is its asporation to host the 2016 Olympics.
(Reuters) - The United States will bid to host the 2016
Plan
(Wikipedia) Typically opposed to Olympic bids in the past, Mayor Richard M. Daley is orchestrating the current campaign to bring the Olympics to Chicago. Success of the bid is heavily reliant on whether or not he continues to be mayor after the 2007 election.
Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley was officially welcomed in Beijing by the government of the People’s Republic of China during the week of May 15, 2006, when the mayor discussed Chicago’s venture; he is the only mayor of an American city vying for the 2016 Summer Olympics to have been welcomed to Beijing on official Olympic business.
Chicago’s chances for hosting the 2016 Summer Olympics are bolstered by preliminary commitments made by major corporations and wealthy Chicago philanthropists; promised participation in the planning process by community and government leaders (including the Chairman of the Illinois Republican Party, a political party usually opposed to Daley); and the enthusiasm of the citizenry. Opinion polls conducted by local newspapers in early 2006 suggested that public support for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Chicago could be as high as 80 to 85 percent. Most importantly, the city’s existing infrastructure and venue options are considerably more substantial than the offerings available in other interested cities. Bob Ctvrtlik, part of the initial assessment team, said, “It’s got all the amenities that would make this a wonderful experience for our athletes.” Ueberroth added, “Chicago is going in the right direction, and we are impressed by that.”[1]
Financing
Ueberroth and members of the national committee met with Daley on May 10, 2006 for the initial assessment. On the same day, with permission from Ueberroth, Daley appointed business executive Patrick G. Ryan of Aon Corporation and part-owner of the Chicago Bears to lead the city’s bid process, especially in areas of corporate participation in fundraising. In previous years, Daley opposed possible bids for the 2008 and 2012 Olympic Games owing to former international committee financial-guarantee requirements. Those requirements have been relaxed in favor of a new philosophy in which the Olympic Games would become smaller in terms of construction and related costs. [citation needed] Early cost estimates hover at $5 billion, with $1 billion needed for a new Olympic stadium in Chicago. [citation needed]
Historic venues like Wrigley Field are considered for field events.
Venues
Despite the need for an Olympic stadium, Chicago has dozens of existing sport venues: Soldier Field, United Center, U.S. Cellular Field, Wrigley Field, Allstate Arena in Rosemont and the new Toyota Park in Bridgeview. Venues at Loyola University Chicago, Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Illinois at Chicago among others are also available. Navy Pier and the lakefront could host all beach and water events. Other regional mayors have offered venues in Indiana and Wisconsin, including use of the University of Notre Dame or University of Wisconsin facilities.
Soldier Field will not serve as the main Olympic Stadium in Chicago. However, the sports venue will host a significant number of events and most gold medal matches.
Stadium
Chicago initially proposed building a temporary 80,000 seat stadium adjacent to Soldier Field to act as the main stadium, hosting the opening and closing ceremonies as well as the track and field events. [1] Previously, according to the Chicago Tribune, Mayor Daley had expressed a desire for an additional NFL franchise to come to Chicago in order to obtain the 80,000 seat stadium needed to host an Olympics. The plan has since been revised to include a 95,000-seat stadium inside Washington Park on the south side of the city. After the games, it would be converted to a 10,000-seat track and field venue that could also host other events.
Chicago’s reputation as a major convention hosting center will also help its cause. The main convention center, McCormick Place, is the largest convention center in the United States and is undergoing an expansion that will be completed in 2007. The city of Chicago has over 50,000 hotel rooms in the immediate downtown area and has the largest skilled-labor workforce in the U.S. catering to conventions and other large-scale media events.
Wireless: Chicago the “Second City”? January 8, 2007
Posted by Steve in : The City, Chicago, Technology , add a commentGoogle and Earthlink recently inked a deal to blanket San Francisco with free wireless. Can Chicago get on this technology train? Mayor Daley needs to show some leadership in this area to ensure that Chicago stays near the front of the pack in technology for its businesses and citizens.We’ll have to wait and see.
Google and EarthLink on Friday reached an agreement on the terms of the contract for the two companies to build a free, citywide wireless network in San Francisco. The agreement followed about eight months of negotiations. “The network ensures universal, affordable wireless broadband access for all San Franciscans, especially low-income and disadvantaged residents,” Donald Berryman, president of the Internet service provider’s municipal networks unit, said. The companies hope to begin construction this year. The joint Google-EarthLink proposal was chosen last April over five other bids to build a Wi-Fi network that would blanket the city. Mayor Gavin Newsom had launched the wireless broadband initiative in order to provide free Internet access to poorer residents.
