Anyone who reads this blog with any regularity at all knows I hate to fly. Mostly, I hate to fly because I am afraid of dying. More specifically, I am afraid of burning to death in a steel-encased coffin, while sitting next to some bimbo wearing a “Team Jennifer” T-shirt, indicating that she thinks Brad What’s His Name should have stuck with Jennifer What’s Her Name, instead of dumping her to shack up with that weird lady, Angie What’s Her Name.

And yes, those shirts really exist. I saw one in the airport the other day.

But cowardice is not the only reason I hate flying. I actually hate it for three reasons.

1. Fear. But I can usually beat back the fear with the right combination of Xanax and Martinis. So that’s manageable. Until my liver ups and quits on me, anyway.

2. Boredom. I can’t stand sitting on planes and in airports. But again, a little bit of Xanax and a couple of martinis can take care of this, too. Because with the right combination of drugs and liquor, even airports can be interesting.

3. The people. Yes, the people. The people who want to talk to you. The people you have to listen to when they talk loudly to other people, or on their cell phone. I hate airport people. And I think I just met the worst airport person of all.

I was flying to Washington, DC, to do my two-day Master Class seminar there (what a great group, with tons of good stories; more on that later).

I had reached what we here at Crescenzo Communications call Peak Flying Period (PFP), that brief window of opportunity when I have leveraged the core competencies of both the Xanax and the gin, and have kicked the holy living hell out of the fear of flying paradigm.

So I was happily ambling down the aisle of the plane during boarding, smiling at everyone like an idiot, looking for my aisle seat. Because I fly so much, I am on some kind of frequent flier program where I always get an aisle seat. I need an aisle seat, because I can’t stand to be penned in by the window or, God forbid, the middle seat.

So I was floating along, looking for my seat number, when it happened. It was a middle seat. A mistake had been made. I frantically looked for a flight attendant. There were none. The line was piling up behind me.

I had no choice. I had to go in. So I politely said to the woman on the aisle:

“Excuse me, I have to get in there,” and pointed to the middle seat, where she had piled up all her carry-on junk.

And this is where everything went to hell.

I know you’re not supposed to write in all caps online . . . but to accurately portray the sound of this woman’s voice, I have to. When she spoke, the entire plane could hear her.

“YOU’RE IN THE MIDDLE?” she said in a loud, booming voice, looking me up and down, as half the plane looked up from their magazines to watch the show.

“Yes, I’m afraid so,” I said, as quietly as I could.

“YOU SAD SON OF A BITCH. THE MIDDLE, HUH?”

“Yes,” I said, as the other half of the plane started watching, and I could feel the precious xanax/gin potion seep out of my pores all at once, and the heavy lead blanket of sobriety settle on top of me.

To lighten things up, I said:

“I know, I know. And I’m a big fat guy, too.”

“YOU’RE NOT KIDDING,” the woman screamed in her big man voice. “ALL RIGHT TINY, SQUEEZE ON IN THERE.”

I swear I am not making this up. She called me Tiny and the entire plane laughed. I felt like I was in the schoolyard again, with patches of my hair falling out, and the other kids calling me cue ball and Kojak.

If you can believe it, things actually got worse from there. I squeezed into my seat, and put my iPod headphones on immediately and shut my eyes. I can tell a talker right away, and this woman was a talker. A LOUD TALKER.

So I’m sitting there, eyes shut, listening to Cat Stevens, and I crack my eyes a little to see what Big Mouth is up to. And I see her taking all the magazines out of my seat pocket. She was stealing my magazines! I shut my eyes even tighter.

Then, because the plane was delayed, they started a movie. I immediately put the movie headphones on and pretended to watch.

And this woman . . . this horrible, mean, bully of a woman, started watching the movie—but she wouldn’t put the headphones on! She would just watch the picture . . . and ask me questions.

“OH, IS THAT THE GIRL’S FATHER?” She would boom, trying to guess what was happening.

“No, I would whisper, after taking my headphones off. “That is her uncle. Her father is dead.”

Then, two minutes later.

“UH OH, THAT DOESN’T LOOK GOOD,” she would say, nudging me in the ribs. “LOOKS LIKE SHE’S IN DEEP SHIT NOW.”

And on, and on, and on.

Finally, the flight was over. The Beast talked the entire time. She didn’t take a breath, as far as I could tell. At one point, I actually apologized to my son, and started praying for the plane to hit a mountain.

I got off the plane as fast as I could, got in a cab, got to the hotel, and went to check in.

And there she was. The Beast. The Mouth. At the hotel where I would be spending the next two days.

“HEY, IT’S MY BUDDY!” she said, so the entire lobby could hear her. “WE COULD HAVE SHARED A CAB! I GUESS I’LL BE SEEING YOU IN THE HOTEL BAR, HUH?”

I have never in my life canceled a seminar . . . but I came awful close last week. The thought of ever running into this woman again was almost enough to send me scurrying back to Chicago.

I stayed in DC, but I also came to a conclusion. I’m buying a big bus, like John Madden, and will be taking that around the country to teach seminars. Yes, it will be expensive . . . but when I think of the money I’ll save on airport martinis and Xanax, let alone a defense lawyer when I finally snap and kill a fellow passenger, it will be worth it.

Can we talk about the IT department?

I ask because I'm in the middle of a seminar series, and whenever I'm doing seminars, I hear dozens of horror stories about corporate IT departments. One woman in Chicago recently gave me a great quote:

"Every time I ask IT to do something, they act as if I've asked them to boil the ocean." I like that.

And, as the CEO of Crescenzo Communications, I can certainly relate to it. My one-man operation has a sprawling IT function. It consists of my two cats, Ella and Weezie, who spend most of their days sprawled all over my couch.

In many ways, they are the prototypical corporate IT department:

* They usually do not respond when I call them.

* When they do respond, they do so at their own leisurely pace.

* They can be nice one day and completely indifferent the next.

* They like to lick themselves.

Okay . . . I don't know if they have that last trait in common with IT people. But I have my suspicions.

Anyway, I hear all these horror stories, and I want to get to the bottom of them. In a recent seminar, I had one person tell me that an IT-related task took exactly one week. And a woman on the other side of the room stood up and said, “That exact same task took my IT department nine months.”

Are some IT departments really that bad? Or do we expect too much of them? Are people exaggerating? I’d like to hear from you folks about your experiences with IT. And, of course, I’d love to hear from IT people, too. Do you lick yourselves? No, seriously, why do you suck? No, seriously, come on out here and talk to us. Let’s see if we can work this out.

In the meantime, I think there are five possibilities as to why communicators have such problems with IT people:

1. IT people are busy. Once in a while, I’ll have an actual IT person in the seminar. And that person will share some horror stories of her own about the stupidity of the people she has to deal with. People who call up to ask for help loading paper into the printer. People who don’t realize that their computer isn’t plugged in, or that the screen isn’t turned on. This kind of rampant stupidity tends to chew up a lot of their time.

2. IT people are truly incompetent. You certainly can’t say this about all of them . . . but you certainly can say it about some. It seems some IT people went into “computers” because they couldn’t do anything else. But that doesn’t make them good at it. We tend to think that all IT people are automatically super qualified, because they know lots of words we don’t know. The truth is that, just as there are unqualified marketers and writers and managers, there are unqualified IT people. Lots of them, maybe.

3. IT people have lots of priorities that don’t include us. Oh, the cute little communicator wants to put a quiz on the intranet? Oh, that is so clever, but if you don’t mind, I’d rather finish up these online buying and e-travel initiatives, that are going to save the company 55 billion dollars.

4. IT people are mean. They don’t like dealing with people. They were nerds in high school. Bedwetters. The kind of kids who ate the paste, and walked around with mysterious stains on their pants. And now they’re getting back at all of us for the teasing they endured. (This certainly does not apply to Rebecca, the great and wonderful token IT person who reads this blog; Rebecca, no doubt, was a goddess in high school. Prom queen, probably. Voted most likely to not be an IT person).

5. They act the way they do because they can get away with it. They know that a) We know nothing about what they actually do; and b) We’re not about to try and find out. They are the modern-day corporate wizards, and they know it. When they say, as they often do, “Can’t do it. Bandwidth issues.” They know Goddamn well we’re not going to go check into the bandwidth to see if they’re telling the truth. We wouldn't know a bandwidth from a bandshell. And they know that.

So those are my five theories. Anybody else got any others? Any IT people want to start a dialogue? Let’s call this the Great IT/Communication Peace Summit of 2005. Maybe we can learn to work together.

I don’t read all that many blogs.

Mostly because I find too many blogs spend far too much time talking about . . . well, blogs. They’re constantly reaffirming the importance of blogs, and the blogosphere. They are forever quoting other bloggers who are reaffirming the importance of blogs and the blogosphere.

It gets boring, after a while. And it has a masturbation feel to it that I find makes me feel uncomfortable.

But one blog I do try to read on a somewhat regular basis is “Desirable Roasted Coffee,” by a communicator named Allan Jenkins. Jenkins is smart, witty, and can be very funny.

But something he wrote recently really got on my last nerve.

He was talking about how he doesn’t read anything in print anymore. Well, he actually says he reads two daily newspapers in print, but only because they are so “hopeless” in digital form. “But as soon as they wake up and provide RSS feeds to subscribers, I won’t touch their paper form,” he writes.

Jenkins has a thing about print. He can’t stand it.

“In fact, I find myself furious and disgusted every time IABC’s Communication World comes through the door. . . . Since I have written for CW, I know the article appears weeks or months after the blogosphere has thoroughly dissected the issue. Any day of the week, any IABC member can go into the blogosphere and find 50 better articles than CW publishes in a quarter. Note to IABC: Communication World is a benefit only for those who don’t use the Internet.”

What bullshit. What complete and utter bullshit. Allan, just because your idea of a good time is curling up in bed with your laptop and exploring the blogosphere, you think the rest of us do that, too? Just because you have your laptop in a speed holster, and spend most of your waking hours reading blogs means that’s how the rest of us have to get our news, too?

There are only two group of people who spend that much time online: bloggers and perverts. And I'm sure there is a pretty good crossover between the two groups.

Note to Jenkins: I use the Internet, and I like getting my print copy of Communication World. I think it's a great benefit. So don’t try to speak for me on this issue, okay?

And guess what else? Here’s a short list of the other print publications I also like getting, and that I also read all the time:
• Gourmet
• Time
• Newsweek
• Chicago Tribune
• Chicago Sun Times
• The New Yorker
• The Atlantic Monthly
• Bon Appetite
• Wine Spectator
• Food and Wine
• Cook’s Illustrated
• Crain’s Chicago Business
• Chicago Magazine

I could go on, but those are the ones I see on a regular basis. Most, if not all, of those publications probably have web sites. But I've never been to them.

See, Allan, while you are getting cozy with your laptop and enjoying the blogosphere, I’m probably curled up in front of the fire with the Sunday New York Times. Or I may be at my favorite Mexican restaurant, drinking margaritas and reading Time and Newsweek.

Or I could be reading the New Yorker in bed, or Food and Wine on the bus.

I like folding back the pages of recipes I want to make in Gourmet. I like circling restaurants that I want to try that are profiled in Chicago Magazine and handing the entire magazine to my wife when I’m finished with it.

I like being able to highlight an article or a cartoon in the New Yorker and handing it over the cubicle wall to a fellow editor at Ragan. (I usually do that with a “pencil,” Allan. You do remember pencils, don’t you? You might still use them to jot down blog addresses that you want to add to your RSS Feed Reader.)

In short, I like print!

I have nothing against the online world. Hell, I go online all the time. I like the immediacy of the online world, and my interaction with readers of this blog is one of the things I like most about my career these days.

But does it have to be one or the other?

Well . . . this has become quite the pathetic pissing match, hasn’t it?

In my post yesterday, I criticized Allan Jenkins, the blogger who writes Desirable Roasted Coffee (http://allanjenkins.typepad.com), for what I thought was an attack on print. It seemed to me that he was saying that he had no use for print whatsoever.

Allan is a prickly fellow, and he got real mad at me. He said I “grossly misquoted him” and implied that I took everything out of context, and that I manipulated his article to find something to attack him on.

He says he loves print. He has a library that Winston Churchill would envy. He is a print guy from way back. He just adores print, he said in a lengthy anti-Crescenzo post where he uses words and funny pictures to slam me.

"Was it an attempt at gonzo'ism that led Steve to turn his big gun on the Coffee? Petulance issues? Flatulence? Bad hair day?" Jenkins wrote . . . obviously so upset that he couldn't help referring to himself in the third person, like a sports superstar or other dingbat celebrity.

The fact that he was so mad got me a tad nervous . . . because the first time around, I didn’t read his article all that carefully. I never read anything online all that carefully. Could I have misinterpreted what he said?

But then I went back and read his post carefully. About seven times.

And there is nothing in there to indicate that the guy has ever read a print publication. The only logical conclusion to come to is that the man has no use for print whatsoever.

He says he only reads two newspapers in print—and only reads those because the online versions aren’t good enough yet. When they are, bye bye print versions, he says.

And he says IABC is stupid to print Communication World, and that the printed version is “only a benefit to people who don’t use the Internet.”

Nowhere in the post does he start a sentence with, “Print is good for lots of things, but . . .”. Nowhere in there does he say, “I like print, but . . .”.

Maybe he was trying to say that he likes the online world for NEWS. That print is no good for reporting news anymore . . . but good for other stuff.

But he doesn't say that.

And, actually, he implies the opposite, because IABC’s Communication World isn’t a news vehicle. It’s exactly what a print publication should be. It comes out way after the fact, and tries to deliver analysis, different perspectives, and a deeper look at big-picture topics. They don’t try to deliver news with it. They know better than that.

So saying Communication World should only be online—with its longer stories, heavy graphics, sidebars, and all the other things that work so well only in print—sort of gave Allan away, I thought.

My original scanning of his post had it exactly right—based on what he wrote.

I don’t think Allan is lying. I think he probably does have a lot of books. He probably reads lots in print. Anyone who gets as upset as Allan got over this must be telling the truth, right?

But that’s not what you get out of his original post.

And that’s the problem with blogs, it seems to me. I think because there is a lot of pressure on bloggers to constantly update their sites, they tend to write very fast. And, unlike traditional media, there is no editing process. Bloggers often prize speed over accuracy. It’s more important to be first than to be accurate.

If this was a traditional column in a traditional media outlet, Allan would probably have an editor. And that editor would have handed the column back to him and said:

“Nice column, Allan, but it really seems as if you’re saying that you have no use for print in any way. I know you, and know that’s not true. You want to rework this a little, maybe add a line or two?”

But that doesn’t happen with blogs. It’s wake up, fire up the computer, scan the blogosphere for something to write about, and go! Because you’ve got eight more posts to do that day!

In my C.R.A.P. (Corporate Rhetoric Awards Program) Column for Ragan’s Corporate Writer and Editor this month, I asked readers to vote for the worst corporate headline of all time.

I offered my own Top Ten List, and asked readers to vote for one of those, or come up with their own. My criteria for a bad head: If you could take it word-for-word and put it in any employee publication in the land, it’s probably bad.

And it occurs to me that the folks who read this blog might want to vote, too. Here is my Top Ten. Anyone who submits one of their own will go into a drawing for a free pass to the Corporate Communicators Conference, which is going to be held this year in Chicago, on April 25-28. So have at it!

Building Leaders. I see this headline hundreds of times a year. But here’s the thing: You don’t build leaders. You build robots. You build cars. If you believe your IT person (and you should never, ever believe your IT person) you “build” Web sites, or intranets. But you don’t build leaders. You can develop leaders. You can train leaders. But you can’t build them.

Building the Future. Here we go again. What is it about corporate editors that they want to build stuff so badly? Is it because they were geeks in high school, working on the yearbook staff while all the macho guys were building engines in shop class? Face it: you’re a computer jockey. Leave the building of things to guys with crew cuts named Hank, Wally, and Stocky Joe.

Setting the Course for the New Fiscal Year. It seems that when we’re not busy building things, corporate editors are busy getting all nautical on people. We love to set courses, set sail, look over the horizon, and explore new worlds. You’ve heard of the Napoleon Complex? Corporate editors have a Magellan Complex.

A Man of Many Hats. Where did this stupid expression come from? And, more importantly, when was the last time you saw someone wearing a hat in Corporate America? Corporate Canada is a different story, because it’s so cold up there that everyone wears hats, even in the summer. But even up there, people don’t wear many hats. They wear one damned hat.

A Passion For People. I usually find this headline above stories about customer service people, along with a picture of the person pretending to talk into a phone. And when was the last time that you, personally, ran into a customer service person with a passion for people? Maybe . . . never? Most customer service people are flat out mean. If they have a passion for anything, they are passionate in their hatred for the morons they have to deal with every day.

Kudos to . . . anything. Anything at all. Anything with the word Kudos in it is a bad headline. I don’t care if it’s “Kudos to Mother Teresa.” Kudos is a stupid-ass word, and it should be forever banned from print. As I’ve said before in this space, whenever you are tempted to use it, Kudon’t do it.

Women: One of Our Strengths. We usually see this headline in companies where there are no women in the top levels of leadership. But the company editor gets a mandate from the Director of HR to profile women, so he twists himself in knots to profile women in fake, quasi-leadership positions, like the Director of HR. We find it odd that companies always single out women for these stories, and not any of the other “corporate minorities.” How come we have never once seen this headline: “Black People: One of our Strengths.”

Focus on the Future. Really, now, what else is there to focus on? Just once we’d like to see a headline that says the opposite of this: “Living In the Past! XYZ, Inc. Rests On Our Laurels.” You usually see this headline in publications where the company has put the employees through hell. It’s the editor’s secret way of saying, “We’re not allowed to talk about all that bad stuff anyway, so why not just set a new course and build a better future?”

Built to Last. Isn’t everything built to last? Does anyone in corporate America ever create a product or a system or a process or anything else and then say, “Well . . . that oughta hold until the holidays, anyway.” And if everything is built to last, is it worthy of being a headline?

Dedication = Success. Anything with an “=” sign in it is usually patronizing. (Lower costs = profitability; diversity = more market reach, etc.) And, in this case, it is also false. I know a guy who is very dedicated to his writing. He’s up every day at 5 a.m., and he writes for two hours, before his children get up. Every morning he does this. Yet he’s never had anything published. He is not a success. Nice guy, but a total, abject failure. So his dedication ≠ success. His dedication = failure. See, you need more than dedication. You need talent and a plan and luck and lots of other stuff.

Blog readers: Any generic corporate headlines you want to throw up here? Change is the only constant, maybe. Or Taking Advantage of Synergy!

Is anyone else out there a little wary of wikis? I seem to have developed a wikiphobia, and need to talk about it.

A wiki, as you probably know, is a collaborative web site where anyone can easily update the information, edit the content, add their own new stuff, etc. What makes wikis great is that you don’t have to know Front Page or Dreamweaver or html coding or anything else. Any idiot can add content.

Which is also the reason it’s so scary to me.

Don’t get me wrong: For things like project collaboration on firewall-protected intranets, where you know everyone who will be contributing, I can see where wikis would be awesome.

Got a new project? Throw up a wiki, and everyone can track the progress, ask questions, post updates, etc. I could see where wikis could make face to face meetings obsolete . . . at least for those people who have access to the intranet.

But for wikis on the Internet, where any pyscho can get in there and fiddle with the content . . . well, that’s seems a little crazy to me.

I have a perfect anecdote that illustrates why I’m leery of the whole wiki concept. It involves Wikipedia . . .the online encyclopedia where anyone can add to the entries.

But first, some background:

Many of you might look at the scary, Uncle Fester picture at the top of this blog and assume that I’m just another yuppie who decided to shave my head rather than watch my hair die a slow, agonizing death due to male pattern baldness.

But that’s not the case. I am actually an Alopecian. Which means I have alopecia totalis . . . a fairly rare disease that makes all the hair on your body fall out. Not just your head hair, either. I mean, all your hair, including your eyelashes, eyebrows, and even the hair in your nose. I have zero hair. When I get out of the shower, I look like a big, fat, slippery baby seal.

In fact, I’ve even been known to chase my wife around the apartment naked, slapping my hands together and making big, fat, slippery baby seal noises. I’ll pause for a second so you can enjoy the visual.

. . . Okay, sorry about that. Now, don’t get me wrong. I love having alopecia. I feel sorry for all you sad sons of bitches with hair. Hair is a nuisance. Hair is unnecessary. I can get ready to go out in 4 minutes, while all the rest of you apes with your hair take up to an hour to blow dry, gel, spray, and comb those messes on your heads.

I really don’t have a problem with being an Alopecian . . . but there is one disturbing thing about it: They really don’t know what causes it. So lately, I’ve been convincing myself that my Alopecia will lead to some other horrific ailment. This has resulted in a serious bout of hypochondria . . . including waking up in the middle of the night convinced that I am dying of sudden and total heart failure, brought on by my Alopecia.

So I did something I have never done before, believe it or not. I tried doing some research on alopecia. I typed “alopecia” into Google, and eventually ended up on Wikipedia.org, which bills itself as “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.”

Now, I should mention that I started doing this research after spending the day drinking with my pal and fellow RR editor David Murray. So I was in a tipsy state of mind as I researched.

“Hey,” I thought to myself when I landed on Wikipedia, “I can add information to an encyclopedia. I'll be an encyclopedia author! .Way cool!”

And after reading a bunch of very clinical, boring entries about alopecia, I thought it would be a good idea to enter in some realistic information that people new to the disease would appreciate. You know, the “real” side of living with Alopecia.

So I typed this entry up:

“New Alopecians should know that the hardest part of having this condition is the loss of your nose hair, because there is nothing to stop whatever is in your nose from leaking out onto your face and neck.

“During allergy season, in fact, it is not unusual for a steady stream of snot to flow out of your nose while you sleep, and collect in the base of your throat. Because of that, there’s a chance that you will wake up with what feels like a gigantic goiter on your throat. Don’t panic. It’s completely normal. Simply get in the shower, chisel the snot goiter off your neck, and begin your day from there.”

Now, after I sobered up I realized I probably shouldn’t post that. Or should I have? I don’t know. How many young Alopecians would I have helped with that post? How many would I have terrified?

The point is, this wiki would have let me post it! And, since it calls itself an “encyclopedia” my post would have received instant credibility . . . even though it was written after drinking Bloody Mary’s with Pabst Blue Ribbon chasers all afternoon.

I had no business contributing anything to an encyclopedia!

I guess when you get right down to it, it’s like the old Groucho Marx line about not joining any club that would have you as a member: I don’t trust any online reference tool that would let a goof like me contribute material to it.

Anyone else feel the same way?

Well, this has never happened before.

Last night, as I was packing for my sixth and final city in the whirlwind "Master Class" two-day seminar tour, I got a call from Cristin Clifford, the director of meeting planning at Ragan. (Cristin and I started at Ragan on almost the same exact day, 15 years ago; she is the true power behind Ragan Communications, and the most efficient person I know).

"We had to shut the doors," she told me.

"Are you drunk again?" I said. "What are you talking about?"

"We had to close out the San Francisco seminar," she said. "We got the biggest room available, which holds 90 people. Registrations right now are at 90 people. We had to cut off registrations."

Well . . . 90 people is a whole hell of a lot of people. And I couldn't be happier. I love the bigger crowds, for three reasons:

1. There is always a lot more energy in the room.

2. There are more chances for people to network and meet other people in their industry.

3. The odds are dramatically in my favor that someone will sponsor rounds of drinks in the bar after Day One.

BUT . . . as much as I like it, I wanted to put a message out here, because I know many of the people who attend the seminar might read this blog. And I wanted to tell you that even though the seminar starts at 9, get there a tad bit early to get a good seat. Not early like 8:00 a.m., God forbid. But 8:40, maybe, or 8:45. There will be bagels in the room, and a Bloody Mary bar.

Just kidding about the Bloody Mary bar. Which is a damn shame.

And if you do read this blog and are coming to the seminar, make sure you come up and introduce yourself. Especially if you work for a big company and you are bringing your big expense account with you to San Francisco! I know exactly what to do with a big expense account.

As a side note to seminar attendees: Ragan is just about finished posting all the seminar materials on a protected section of the web site. You should soon get an e-mail linking you directly to the site---which will have everything we talked about over the two days. Thanks for your patience.