What no one tells us about China

Last night, my friend Allan and I had dinner at Barbuto, an Italian place in the West Village that I have been meaning to try for a year. Allan is going away for 6 months - off to Singapore for work. I'm a little jealous of Allan - part of me misses flying off to a new place every week. And then I remind myself that I should be careful what I wish for.

Allan is one of my dearest friends from business school. If you had to 5 people from your life who were cheering for you, you'd want Allan there. His loyalty to his friends is something to be admired. And his work ethic would leave any American student in disbelief. He got an MBA and a half out of Darden; he put the rest of us to shame. Usually Allan and I talk about books and work ad what every crazy little projects that are taking my time these days. But last night turned to the topic of romantic relationships. Allan is confused by women. I smiled. 

Allan explained to me that in China, things are not complicated. Love included. People live a simple and diligent life. In a planned economy, there isn't all this choice that we have here in the U.S. Nothing is really all that trying. An absence of angst.

And now when I reflect back on those Olympics Games and those inspiring, creative beyond measure, ceremonies that preceded and closed them, I understand how they came to be so precise, so perfect. They were singularly focused, the entire nation. They are unencumbered by a multitude of choices and complications. 

Now, I'm not advocating for a planned economy. I'm saying that we have more to learn from the Chinese people than we ever imagined. Their creativity and their passion is built around simplicity. And the question I'm left with is I wonder if we, as Americans, could get out of our own and get focused. It might be out only hope out of so many problems that are plaguing us.  

NBC's Olympics website

I've started to have discussions with some companies and non-profits about the possibility of integrating social media into their marketing plans. Originally when I considered this type of consulting work, I thought the issue would be content creation. What I'm finding is that it's about commitment and organization - the same two issues that companies struggle with in many aspects of their business. 

For the past week, I've been obsessed with watching the Olympics, and like so many people across the world, I am most keen on women's gymnastics and the U.S. men's swim team. I want to see Michael Phelps get his 8 gold medals in Beijing and I wanted to see Nastia Liukin win the all-around. Michael's got 7 and Nastia surprised everyone, including herself, with her win in the all-around. 

I was so excited to see that NBC had created so much incredible content and integrated so much functionality into their Olympics website. Sadly, the organization is so frustrating that after a few visits of endless clicking, I've all but given up on trying to figure out the televised schedule. And that's the trouble with an abundance of great content - all of a sudden the management and organization of it becomes just as critical as the information itself. 

I was surprised that NBC didn't think through the site design more thoroughly. NBC had so much time to plan out how they would cover these games that the expectations of fans skyrocketed, mine included. I wanted it to be a piece of cake to navigate the website and find exactly the content I was looking for with barely any effort on my part. If anything, I've had to spend much more time sorting through the site and rarely find what I am looking for. I guess the network doesn't hold simplicity in very high regard.

I take my hat off to the content creators of that Olympics website and to the many reporters who are contributing to the coverage; what the network really needed was a simplicity expert who actually understands how to use new media. With a once-in-a-lifetime event like these Beijing Games, it's a shame that the executives didn't see that for themselves.  It's not abut throwing as much information in there as possible - this isn't a flea market or a treasure hunt - and they certainly had enough money to do it right. Here's hoping that they'll learn from this error in time to make adjustments for their 2010 and 2012 coverage.