Last night I went to 2 very different events. Right after work, the head of Google’s Ann Arbor office, Grady Burnett, gave a presentation at the Lansing Center. From there, I stopped at home to pick-up Megan, then we went to a played called “Meeting in Munich” at St. Paul Lutheran Church.
Google Reveals Trade Secrets
Okay, so they didn’t really. Grady’s talk and slideshow were rather mundane, actually. The Ann Arbor office is Google’s headquarters for it’s online sales division, so he discussed AdWords and some fluffy stuff about why Google chose Michigan for its new location. The event was put on by the Lansing Ad Club, so it was definitely more geared towards marketing professionals than anything. And honestly, I think any marketer that was already using the AdWords product would have gained little, if anything, from the presentation.
At the same time, it was interesting to hear some about the inner workings of Google and how they keep an entrepreneurial spirit alive in such a large company. Apparently, their new office has been broken up to represent regions (by latitude) of Michigan and the conference rooms on each floor have been named after cities in the regions. He also shared some personal stories of current employees to show they are actually hiring people coming out of the state’s colleges. Then, he went into a more forward-looking segment, talking about connecting with those who have yet to experience 24/7 Internet. I wrote down a few of the numbers he shared in talking about user-proliferation, but I don’t feel liking digging up my sheet of notes. Suffice to say, they were rather impressive.
In summary, considering the $35 entrance fee, I personally didn’t really get my money’s worth out of the event. The one take-away idea I did get was that AdWords can be used to test the popularity of various search terms. The reports from those keywords can then be used to determine tweaks to you website, brochures and other marketing materials. That’s an excellent tactic I’ve already added to my arsenal. People say getting one useful notion out of such a presentation is a good thing, so I guess it was good I went.
Spring Arbor Drama Brings Holocaust Play to East Lansing
The second event of the evening was a play put on by the Spring Arbor University Drama Department. “Meeting in Munich” was written by an SAU professor, but I don’t remember his name now. The work begins with a condensed and translated speech by Adolph Hitler. The professor played Hitler and read the speech in a manner worthy of the original madman. It made all of the old films clips of Hitler’s speeches even more frightening to actually here the translated version spoken as opposed to subtitles. Not that this was the first I realized, but I was very much reminded of how deranged the man was.
The second half of the play was 6 years prior to the speech by Hitler. It depicted a scene the was likely prevalent throughout Germany. A split congregation in a Catholic church argued over allowing the integration of their youth groups into the Hitler Youth, a paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party. With stormtroopers marching in formation at the onset of the service, there was obvious support for Hitler amongst the church members. Others were greatly concerned that their children were being sucked into an ungodly and unsafe organization by a man who thought himself God of Deutschland. It ended with those speaking out against the Grand Chancellor being escorted from the church for questioning.
For a group of student thespians, this was a very powerful presentation of an extremely sensitive piece of history. There was a question/comment session after the performance, and one of the audience members said she found herself not breathing at times. There was a definite intensity to the acting.
Then, our pastor shared something that I can imagine stuck with quite a few people. He mentioned how the current state of the world (school shootings, wars, genocides, etc.) leaves him more and more seeking absolutes to restore order to all the chaos that surrounds us. But, the play showed him how Hitler and the Nazis used promise of absolutes and order to post-Word War I Germany to get the citizens to buy into his plans. That haunted Pastor, and it haunted me. What was even more frightening was that in trying to choke down the Tom Delay biography, he says something disturbingly similar:
There is a God and, because this is true, there is absolute moral truth.
That just sent chills up my spine. While I certainly could make an entirely different post on that subject alone, let me just say I was all the more thankful that man was eliminated from making any more substantial impacts in American politics. Let’s hope it stays that way.
So, that was my evening. Google and Nazis. Not a likely combination, but certainly thought provoking all the same.
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