Got swept up in the Oscars last night. Found myself a little teary over bits of human drama like Jeff Bridges’ tribute to his parents. Made me think about how movies and yes, sometimes even TV commercials, have the power to move us. Ultimately, as we seek to make the Web a more creative place, that’s the thing that’s still missing. We can interact and we can connect, but where is the emotion? Bodes well for the future of video, wherever and however it runs. And is this the true promise of the iPad? Portable, big-enough screen, entertainment-friendly technology?

Dinner with the folks from The Huffington Post. Got into a fun debate about healthy sleeping with Arianna Huffington and Robert Wrubel, SVP of Apollo Marketing. Huffington Post has grown like crazy, fueled by adding new sections (see the new College section, dialing into what’s happening on campus). Arianna said she’s thinking about adding a sleep section, it’s become such a hot topic. Robert said he makes it up on the weekends with quality naps and a good book. I’ve gone from being proud of getting by on five hours or less to reorganizing my life to get seven every night and wake up the same time every morning. Is anyone else paying attention to the science of sleep?

Flying across country this week I looked across the aisle and sitting there was one of my heroes, author and consultant Jim Collins, the guy who wrote Good to Great: Why some companies make the leap and others don't.

As we were getting off, I thanked him for the insight I've gained from his work, and told him that I could think of three things he's said that are part of why we are 50% bigger today than we were a year ago, despite the economy.

Even though he was impressed by our performance, I didn't bother him with what the three things are.  But worth sharing here:

The right people on the bus; the people on the bus in the right seats.  We've always taken hiring seriously.  But Jim is great at reminding you that great companies are little more than collections of great people, that even great people don't deliver their best if they aren't in the right roles, and that if you get the right people in the right roles, you can let them fly.  When you have someone who needs a lot of managing, you probably have the wrong person in the wrong seat.

Great companies manage to grow even during bad times.  Lots of companies perform well on a rising tide.  Great companies do as well or better when times are tough.

Good is the enemy of great.  It's worth quoting a whole paragraph of what he has to say on this topic:

Good is the mortal enemy of great.

And if you think about it, it's one of the main reasons why we have so few things that become truly great.

We by and large do not have great schools. Why?  Because we have good schools.

We by and large do not have great government, because we have good government and it works pretty well.

Most companies will never become great because most are really quite good.  And therein lies much of their problem.

And the truth be told in this great society of abundance that is the modern world, that most people will wake up at the end of their lives and need to look back and accept the horrifying truth that they did not have a great life, because it is oh so easy to settle for a good life.

Good is the enemy of great.

“Big Shots. Andy Warhol Polaroids” opened last night at Duke University’s Nasher Museum of Art, sponsored by McKinney. Aside from our interest in promoting culture and the arts in Durham and Chapel Hill, this exhibit was a perfect fit for us, given Warhol’s unique appreciation for the confluence of art and commerce.

In the gallery across from “Big Shots” is another great Nasher exhibit, “Picasso and the Allure of Language.” The juxtaposition of these two iconoclasts nicely punctuated the conversation we’ve been having around the work of our friends Dan Ariely and Baba Shiv. Dan is the James B. Duke Professor of Behavioral Psychology at Duke and author of best-seller Predictably Irrational. Baba is Professor of Marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and editor of the Journal of Consumer Research.

Both are exploring the psychological impact of such traditional marketing cues as pricing and positioning. One of the most startling things you see in studying their research is that when we, as marketers, do our jobs right, brands do more than differentiate one product from another. Done right, price, positioning, packaging and other marketing levers can trigger actual physical pleasure.

Which is the link back to Warhol, Picasso and art. It provokes, it challenges, it makes us feel something or see something in a new way, often bypassing those linear microprocessors we call our left brains for a direct, non-verbal attack on the right side of our brains. In the same way that the most powerful advertising tends to work.

Dylan, Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp dropped into Durham last night to play right across the street from McKinney at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park. They were all great, but the evening was curiously unmoving. Music at its best is either a very intimate experience or a spectacular event, and everything in the middle is likely to disappoint.

That got me thinking about how technology has changed our experience of music. We carry 5000 very high quality songs on our iPhones for immediate gratification. And we go home at night to watch 42 diagonal inches of re-mastered, first row quality HD video of the best performers in the world. That leaves us going to a stadium (albeit one designed for baseball games) to listen to overcranked amps from a band 400 yards away. No wonder it left me hungry for more.

The proof is in the difference between this concert and Willie Nelson’s solo concert at the Durham Performing Arts Center right next door just two months ago. As someone last night said, “When Willie walked on he looked every bit his 75 years, but as soon as he strapped his guitar over that old man’s paunch, he lost 40 years and you were transplanted back to a different time.” An intimate experience. Kinda cool to have the comparison side-by-side right in the neighborhood.

Our new mckinney.com is a crazy work of love, the result of a bunch of passionate McKinneyites turning “reinvention” and “conversation” from words into action. I watched from the sidelines as it grew and chipped in, when asked to help, long enough to know what it took to bring it to life. It took what it takes for anything that good.

I love the way the technology lives on the site, creating delight instead of getting in the way. I love the way the site loves our work. It’s hard to believe we could get HD quality at that level without having to suffer big loading times or hitches when you try to run a video.

I love the way the site’s set up to make itself smarter and more interesting. It’s what we do when we’re at our best: learn, do and learn some more, all in the service of more powerful, more extraordinary things.

I love that I see us, know us, and feel what sets us apart when I go there. And I love the doorway it opens to the 5 Words Blog, an experiment that I have to admit I’m finding far more engaging than I ever thought it could be.

I hope that you feel the same way.