Is Palin Competent to Be President?

Healthcare-Associated Infection AKA Hospital-Acquired Infection AKA HAI

cabraham — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:36:19 +0000

When someone develops an infection at a hospital or other patient care facility that they did not have prior to treatment, this is referred to as a healthcare-associated (sometimes hospital-acquired) infection (HAI).

Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) are a global crisis affecting both patients and healthcare workers.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), at any point in time, 1.4 million people worldwide suffer from infections acquired in hospitals.

A Centers for Disease Control (CDC) report published in March-April 2007 estimated the number of U.S. deaths from healthcare asociated infections in 2002 at 98,987.

The risk of acquiring healthcare-associated infections in developing countries is 2-20 times higher than in developed countries.

Afflicting thousands of patients every year, HAI often leads to lengthening hospitalization, increasing the likelihood of readmission, and adding sizably to the cost of care per patient.

Financially, HAIs represent an estimated annual impact of $6.7 billion to healthcare facilities, but the human cost is even higher.

Until recently, a lack of HAI reporting requirements for healthcare facilities has contributed to less-than-optimal emphasis being placed on eliminating the sources of healthcare associated infections. However, growing public anxiety regarding the issue and resulting legislation on state and local levels demanding accountability is serving to accelerate initiatives to combat HAIs.

To learn more about the impact of healthcare-associated infections for both medical professionals and patients, please visit www.haiwatch.com.

About Not on My Watch Prevention Campaign

To protect patients by reducing the risk of HAI, healthcare professionals must continually update their knowledge of infection management.

As part of an ongoing commitment to quality care and infection prevention, nationwide doctors and hospitals are partnering with Kimberly-Clark to deliver continuing education programs on healthcare-associated infection (HAI) prevention to staff and management. As simple as education sounds, busy doctors and nurses on the front lines of delivering care can find it difficult to find the time to take advantage of scheduled programs within their hospitals.

The HAI Education Program is part of a national infection awareness campaign for healthcare professionals called “Not on My Watch” and will provide the facility with a toolkit that contains informational flyers, patient safety tips and posters.

The “Not on My Watch” campaign provides accredited continuing education (CE) programs based on best practices and guidelines as well as research available on reducing the incidence of healthcare-associated infections.

For details about the “Not On My Watch” campaign, and the HAI Education Bus please visit www.HAIwatch.com.

HAI Education Bus

At Kimberly-Clark, it’s our mission to find innovative ways to develop and maintain a variety of accredited education, equipping healthcare providers with critical insights and information on today’s important clinical issues. That’s why we’re proud to introduce the HAI Education Bus, an impressive new one-of-a-kind mobile classroom that brings accredited CE education right to your door.

Look for this tour bus as it makes its way across the country, delivering education about healthcare-associated infections and other critical healthcare issues from the plains of Texas to the California coast to New York City and places in between.

Types of Healthcare-Associated Infections

Ventilator – Associated Pneumonia (VAP)

VAP is the source of the highest morbidity and mortality of all Healthcare Associated Infections.

Read More About VAP

Surgical Site Infections (SSIs)

Any breach of patient skin can lead to a surgical site infection.

Read More About SSIs

Cross Contamination (Contact Transfer)

Contact transfer (touch contamination) is the number one source of Healthcare Associated Infections.

Read More About Contact Transfer

About HAI Watch

HAI Watch is your resource for collateral and supplies to help keep your organization aware of the importance of healthcare associated infection prevention. The following guidelines on hand hygiene in healthcare settings and other tips are available now, but keep checking back. New HAI awareness tools will be added on an ongoing basis.

About Kimberly-Clark Health Care

At Kimberly-Clark Health Care, we deliver innovative healthcare solutions that you can depend on to meet the demands of your fast-paced world, supported by in-service training, clinical research and accredited education.

Our solutions help you prevent, diagnose, and manage major issues in these clinical areas: Infection Prevention (Protection & Infection Control, Ventilator-Associated Pneumonia and Surgical Site Infections), Digestive Health and Pain Management.

About Kimberly-Clark Corporation

Kimberly-Clark and its well-known global brands are an indispensable part of life for people in more than 150 countries.

Every day, 1.3 billion people – nearly a quarter of the world’s population – trust K-C brands and the solutions they provide to enhance their health, hygiene and well-being.

With brands such as Kleenex, Scott, Huggies, Pull-Ups, Kotex and Depend, Kimberly-Clark holds No. 1 or No. 2 share positions in more than 80 countries. To keep up with the latest K-C news and to learn more about the company’s 137-year history of innovation, visit www.kimberly-clark.com

Fuad El-Hibri on Wikipedia

cabraham — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 16:57:33 +0000

Fuad El-Hibri (born March 2, 1958) is an American businessman, and CEO of Emergent BioSolutions. // Fuad El-Hibri (born March 2, 1958) in Hildesheim, Germany spent his childhood equally in Europe and the Middle East before coming to the USA to get an economics degree from Stanford and an MBA from Yale.

Mr.El-Hibri earned a Masters Degree in Public and Private Management from Yale University and a Bachelors Degree with Honors in Economics from Stanford University.

Fuad El-Hibri served as president of Digicel from August 2000 to February 2005. Mr. El-Hibri served as the president of East West Resources Corporation from September 1990 to January 2004.

Mr. El-Hibri was a member of the senior management team of Speywood, LTD., in the United Kingdom. and organized and directed the management buyout of Porton Products Ltd. El-Hibri reorganized Porton, and was advisor to the senior management team involved in the oversight of operations and served as a senior associate and resident project manager at Booz Allen Hamilton and as a manager of Citicorp in New York (Mergers and Acquisitions), and in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (Operations and Credit).

Mr. El-Hibri has been chairman of East West Resources Corporation, a venture capital and financial consulting firm, since June 1990. He served as the chairman of Digicel Holdings from August 2000 to October 2006. He serves as director of Emergent BioDefense Operations Lansing Inc.El-Hibri has been Director and CEO of Emergent BioSolutions since 2004 and He serves as Chairman and Treasurer of El-Hibri Charitable Foundation.

Mr.El-Hibri serves as a member of the board of trustees of American University. He is a member of the board of directors of the International Biomedical Research Alliance (an academic joint venture among the National Institutes of Health, Oxford University and Cambridge University). Mr El-Hibri is also a member of the board of trustees of the National Health Museum.

The Profiles of Fuad El-Hibri

cabraham — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 21:28:05 +0000

: Image via CrunchBase

Fuad El-Hibri Named Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2009

cabraham — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 20:33:59 +0000

Emergent BioSolutions Chairman and CEO, Mr. Fuad El-Hibri, Named Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2009 Award Winner in Greater Washington

ROCKVILLE, MD, June 18, 2009 – Emergent BioSolutions Inc. (NYSE:EBS) announced today that Fuad El-Hibri, its chairman and chief executive officer, received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year® 2009 Award in the Technology category in Greater Washington. According to Ernst & Young LLP, the award recognizes outstanding entrepreneurs who are building and leading dynamic, growing businesses. Mr. El-Hibri was selected by an independent panel of judges and the award was presented at a special gala event on June 18 at the Ritz-Carlton, Tysons Corner in Virginia.

“It is a tremendous honor to receive this award considering the many biopharmaceutical and life sciences companies in the greater Washington region,” said Mr. El-Hibri. “I am proud of Emergent BioSolutions’ continuous growth and financial strength. These successes are firmly anchored on the entrepreneurial spirit and commitment of our employees. All their contributions, in pursuit of our company mission to protect life, have made this award possible.”

Under Mr. El-Hibri’s leadership, Emergent BioSolutions has expanded its capabilities in the development and manufacture of vaccines and immune-related therapeutics. By strengthening its core biodefense portfolio, which includes the only FDA-licensed vaccine against anthrax disease, Emergent has become the premier biodefense supplier of medical countermeasures to the U.S. government.

The Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year awards program celebrates its 23rd anniversary this year and continues to honor entrepreneurs who have demonstrated excellence in such areas as innovation, financial performance, and personal commitment to their businesses and communities. The program has expanded to recognize business leaders in over 135 cities in 50 countries throughout the world.

As a Greater Washington award winner, Mr. El-Hibri is now eligible for consideration for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2009 national program. Award winners in several national categories, as well as the overall national Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award winner, will be announced at the annual awards gala in Palm Springs, California on November 14, 2009. The awards are the culminating event of the Ernst & Young Strategic Growth Forum, the nation’s most prestigious gathering of high-growth, market-leading companies.

About Emergent BioSolutions Inc.
Emergent BioSolutions Inc. is a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development, manufacture and commercialization of vaccines and therapeutics that assist the body’s immune system to prevent or treat disease. Emergent’s marketed product, BioThrax® (Anthrax Vaccine Adsorbed), is the only vaccine licensed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the prevention of anthrax. Emergent’s development pipeline includes programs focused on anthrax, botulism, tuberculosis, typhoid, hepatitis B and chlamydia. Additional information may be found at www.emergentbiosolutions.com.

About Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year® Awards Program
Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year® Award is the world’s most prestigious business award for entrepreneurs. The award makes a difference through the way it encourages entrepreneurial activity among those with potential and recognizes the contribution of people who inspire others with their vision, leadership and achievement. As the first and only truly global award of its kind, the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year® award celebrates those who are building and leading successful, growing and dynamic businesses, recognizing them through regional, national and global awards programs in more than 135 cities in 50 countries.

Sponsors
Founded and produced by Ernst & Young LLP, the Entrepreneur of the Year awards are pleased to have the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and SAP America as national sponsors.

In Greater Washington, sponsors include HSBC Bank, Pillsbury Law, Reznick Group, Lockton Companies and the Washington Business Journal.

Fuad El-Hibri Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2009 Award Finalist

cabraham — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 15:32:44 +0000

Emergent BioSolutions Chairman and CEO, Mr. Fuad El-Hibri, Named Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2009 Award Finalist in Greater Washington

ROCKVILLE, Md.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Emergent BioSolutions Inc. (NYSE:EBS) announced today that its chairman and chief executive officer, Mr. Fuad El-Hibri, is a finalist for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year® 2009 Award in the Greater Washington region. According to Ernst & Young LLP, the awards program recognizes entrepreneurs who demonstrate extraordinary success in the areas of innovation, financial performance and personal commitment to their businesses and communities. Mr. El-Hibri was selected as a finalist from nearly 100 nominations by a panel of independent judges. Award winners will be announced at a special gala event on June 18 at the Ritz-Carlton, Tysons Corner in Virginia.

“It is an honor to be chosen as a finalist for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award,” said Mr. Fuad El-Hibri. “I am proud of the entrepreneurial spirit, commitment, and collaboration that prevail at Emergent, which are key factors to our company’s success. This recognition represents the contributions of each and every member of the Emergent Team as we work together in pursuit of our company mission – to protect life.”

Mr. El-Hibri was also a finalist for the Greater Washington region in 2007. The Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year awards program celebrates its 23rd anniversary this year. The program has expanded to recognize business leaders in over 135 cities in 50 countries throughout the world.

Sponsors
Founded and produced by Ernst & Young LLP, the Entrepreneur of the Year awards are pleased to have the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and SAP America as national sponsors.

In Greater Washington, sponsors include HSBC Bank, Pillsbury Law, Reznick Group, Lockton Companies and the Washington Business Journal.

cabraham — Mon, 25 May 2009 14:51:28 +0000

Updated WordPress.com – Step-by-Step Tutorial on How to Blog

Chris Abraham walks you through how to join the fastest-growing and most elegant free blogging services, WordPress.com.

Go from the simple acts of joining all the way through set up and administration.

Become a blogger in less than and hour. Most folks only need the first 15 minutes to get you started.

Chris is a professional blogging instructor. Enjoy!

All of you have been asking me to update my step-by-step tutorial on how to use WordPress.com as a blogging platform — please check it out and please let me know what I have missed.

Online Reputation Management Defense Services

cabraham — Sat, 02 May 2009 01:22:51 +0000

You are not helpless in the face of negative search results. A directed, well-executed, diligent campaign will place your desired results high in the list, pushing undesirable results down to irrelevant pages where the majority of Internet users do not bother to look. 90% of searchers never look past the first page — i.e. the first 10 results. 99% of searchers never look beyond the second page. We will work to get the undesirable results as far from those first two pages as possible.

At Abraham Harrison, LLC, our proven and well-refined methods as well as our long-established credibility gives us particular efficacy in influencing top search results. We don’t engage the negative results, as this actually makes them more attractive to the search engines. We employ an assortment of tactics to chaff and flare, to draw the search engines‘ attention to positive and neutral results, and away from the problematic negative results .

It is not possible to make information on the Internet disappear unless the people who put the information online in the first place take it back down again — even then, the data is often mirrored elsewhere or cached and re-served by the likes of Google and The Wayback Machine. The method is to make the undesirable results needles in haystacks — it can be there, but only people really intent on finding it will come across it.

An online search results sanitization campaign is a long-term commitment, much like treating a cancer. It begins with a period of intense assault on the problem to beat the negatives down followed by a on-going low-level maintenance regime to keep them down. A campaign is heavily front-loaded with the ongoing maintenance being very low cost — we can also turn those maintenance operations over to you, together with any infrastructure, content, and domain names we may have set up during the campaign.

Unlike many other companies in this field, we have no interest in holding you hostage over the years by keeping control of the mechanisms of the treatment. We are happy to turn that over to you once we get you in the clear, or if you prefer, provide you the service of keeping up the defense, however you prefer.

An online search results sanitization campaign requires subtlety convincing the search engines that what they previously believed — i.e. that the currently highly-ranked negative results are indeed some of the most valuable and relevant results — is no longer true, and that the neutral and positive content that we identify or create is far more valuable and relevant and therefore should rank highly, pushing the negative results down into the obscurity of lower rankings.

This requires a bit of time, 6-8 weeks of concerted effort generally, to get results moving away from where the search engines have long believed them legitimately to stand, toward the new state that we desire, with those negative results far below the neutral and positive ones.

Once we get the results moving and out of stasis, we keep them moving until we are happy with the results, then maintain them in place, so that the negative results (which naturally have their own legitimacy in the eyes of the search engines) do not move back up again. It is a bit like braces on a child’s teeth which are then followed by a retainer that keeps them straight and prevents them from slipping back to their original crooked state.

Even the largest, well-known companies have used defensive SEO tactics in the face of crisis and unfavorable publicity. It works for them, and it will work for you. Negative search results are a controllable problem that can be solved with diligence and know-how. Unlike other common types of crises, negative search results will not disappear without action. However, unfavorable publicity that you may have received years ago that is still affecting perceptions about your brand can be dealt with and have its negative impact neutralized.

We have resolved difficult SEO solutions — probably far worse than yours – in the past and come out on top. With our vast network and effective systems, we are able to provide an viable, permanent solution to most online reputation problems, and we will help with yours as well.

Generally, campaigns run a year, with the bulk of the effort in the first 4 months. After the first five to six months have passed and we have achieved a stable new order with the negative results well-buried, we will be happy to turn the maintenance over to you, if you wish, or we can continue to maintain the defensive systems for you until the end of the year. After the first year, we’re happy to continue monitoring your online reputation and maintaining your defensive systems for as long as you choose to retain our services.

That said, all of the work, all the domain names, and all the IP we generate for you is yours and we’re happy to turn it over to you if you like, after the year-long contract is completed.

Abraham Harrison, LLC, bills on a retainer basis, i.e. at the beginning of the month before beginning operations. As mentioned, the effort, and the billing is front-loaded to allow an aggressive attack to beat down the negative results soundly, then backing off over time focusing over more on the lower-resource work of stabilizing the results in order to allow you to save money.

If you are interested in an online reputation management, defensive SEO, reputation defense campaign, please call us at +1 202-657-4769 or email us at info@abrahamharrison.com, and we’ll be more than happy to help you!

OLX is Online Classifieds, Evolved

cabraham — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 16:30:30 +0000

I heard about OLX when I got on the phone with co-CEO and co-founder, Fabrice Grinda. He laughed and admitted that OLX is the largest free classifieds site no one’s ever heard of. He was right, no-one else I know have ever heard of OLX. Until now, OLX has played the back end to other sites. OLX was the engine behind the Friendster classifieds, for example, amongst many other. OLX is now ready for prime time as it moves boldly into the United States in direct contest with monsters like Craigslist and EBay. This is a burgeoning David and Goliath story.

And, they’re rocking out abroad, with a presence in over 80 countries and over 30 languages. Until now, OLX has been a lot like David Hasselhoff, post-Baywatch and pre-America’s Got Talent: the Hoff is huge in Europe and so is OLX. And also in Brazil, China, Argentina, Chile, Russia, India, Poland, and others.

While we spoke, I farted around with the OLX site and quickly realized that OLX allowed me to search as geographically widely or as targeted as I wanted, based on city or zip code.

It was simple to search narrowly or broadly, by keyword or category, using check boxes and sliders. If there were too many results, I could slide it down to narrow the results; if there were too few, I could open increase the radius included in the search.

Craigslist limits its searches to cities and tight metro areas. Cities like Washington, DC, include Maryland and Northern Virginia, but not Baltimore or Richmond, although Baltimore is only 45-minutes away via the freeway.

But, no. I have to pop in, and then pop out. There have been attempts that 3rd party online services have made to allow federated search, but Craigslist keeps on shutting it down — because that’s what Craig Newmark of Craigslist does: makes arbitrary decisions that indulge his belief of what is right instead of what people might want and need. Like federated search, for example.

When I have some commerce to do, I have generally pointed by browser to one of three: Amazon, EBay, and Craigslist. When I need something new, I’ll grab it on Amazon, but check EBay first. When I am looking for something used, I will check EBay and Craigslist. I will use Craigslist especially to grab something used if that thing is big, like furniture or a bike.

Sadly, there are too many limitations on all of these things and it really depends.

If I want a casual bike for weekend use spent with friends, that’s one thing, but if I am looking for a classic Kestrel carbon fiber criterion racer, it is much better to go further afield. To me, Craigslist is best for people who are looking for deals or things that have become commoditized, such as refrigerators, mattresses, and couches.

If you’re looking for a replacement piece for a patter of china or if you’re looking for that 80s-era Porsche 911 you wanted in Highschool, you’ll need to go somewhere else, such as EBay.

OLX is flexible and easy-to-use, offering users — me — the sort of simple tools required to be able to fine-tune searches using check boxes, price limiters (high- and low-end), and sliders. I can use it the way I want to, not the way the founders envision.

Same thing goes when it comes to mobile access. In a world of mobile phones and mobile access, it is surprising that most online classifieds and auctioning sites limit their mobile access to just a couple of smart phones like the iPhone. Well, I live on my Blackberry, my Nokia N95, and my soon-to-arrive Android G1, and there’s no way to buy and sell via mobile and Craigslist, EBay, and Amazon do not offer non phone-specific, non app-based, mobile WAP interfaces. OLX offers access to all of its services via mobile, accessed via m.olx.com.

Mobile OLX doesn’t require an expensive iPhone to access the web interface or download an application, it can be accessed by any phone that can access the web at all, even lower-end phones that can only support very basical browsers. Not only that, but I can easily continue my browsing and searching and listing from my mobile interface with a very similar experience to when I am at my desktop.

Also, there are lots of hidden fees, especially listing fees, hidden in real estate and jobs listings in Craigslist and, of course, listing fees on EBay — fees that have been growing for the last decade — the the point where loads of Power Sellers are getting skittish, wanting to pull their listings and find something else, something better. OLX is completely free. I dug further and there are premium listings available for a fee in the English/American market, but this isn’t restrictive, this is value-added. The premium listing fee is in addition, not a barrier to listing.

And, admit it, in the world of social media, social networks, and web2.0, Amazon, EBay, and Craigslist haven’t changed much in the last decade.

Then there’s the obvious and very annoying — and intentional — limitations that man and ego, instead of service to customers, have implemented.

On the buyer’s side, on one hand, one of the most frustrating things about Craiglist is that each city is insulated from the other — you just can’t search for the stuff you want country-wide; on the other hand, while EBay does allow you to search for stuff anywhere, it is an auction site so you need to be willing to bid or to Buy Now, which doesn’t lend itself to the sort of creativity and playfulness that Craigslist tends to produce.

To be honest, if I am searching for listing for things like cars and motorcycles, I want to expand my search to neighboring cities and states. Hell, if I finally decide to buy that 1989 BMW R100GS Adventure Tourer, I am willing to search the entire country for one. The perfect thing of my dreams does not want to necessarily be limited by geography or proximity.

For the perfect thing, I am sure I would go on a road trip or take a flight. A buddy of mine always wanted to own a Ferrari. When he ultimately found the car he wanted to buy, it was almost three-thousand miles away in a barn, well-taken care of and just waiting for him, like a faerie tale.

Even searching for the perfect apartment can be taken to the perfect space, the perfect price, instead of just the perfect place. How could that be, you ask? Well, since I am a virtual worker, working for a virtual company, the quality of my home and the price of the rent or purchase could well be more important to me than whether the car is near the metro or bus line or is necessarily in metro Washington at all.

When I reread the above, I see a trend. OLX seems to be a next-generation online classifieds site because it not only takes Craigslist into the 21st century but it also rolls in some of the great things about Ebay as well, such as the sophisticated tools that allow Ebay’s users to limit and expand searches, based on proximity and search terms, and whatnot.

Long story short, OLX isn’t revolutionary, it is evolutionary. Craigslist and its cousin Ebay are seriously stunted, unwilling to respond to the needs of its users. “They don’t need that — they don’t even know what they need — why would they need to look outside of their city, this is about community, and I encourage community so I intent to block federated search from my classifieds site,” I can hear Craig Newmark saying to his board of directors. Well, while Craig’s gloating, Fabrice is innovating, adjusting, evolving, and meeting the needs of his community.

And, when it all comes down to brass tacks, it is about making ends meet. And when it comes to ends meeting, having more choice is better. More in better when it comes to value. In one fell swoop, you can double and triple your reach into not only neighboring cities and states but further afield.

In fact, when you look at Craigslist and see how picked-over all of the listings are by the time I get to it, I should think that OLX is a competitive advantage since it is — for now, anyway — the largest free classifieds site no one’s ever heard of, OLX is an undiscovered gem. OLX is like discovering an undiscovered flea market, second-hand store, or consignment store.

All said and done, this is not about revolution or paradigm shifting but it is about bringing buyer to seller and seller to buyer. It is about community and commerce. It is about making connections as completely and as easily as possible in exactly the way that makes it easiest for everyone involved and I honestly believe that OLX fills that bill, be they my client or not.

Recent Articles on Abraham Harrison

cabraham — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 18:33:38 +0000

In “Poor But Sexy” Berlin, Brands Need to Understand Casual

cabraham — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 00:29:08 +0000

Please check out my first article as a writer for AdAge, In ‘Poor But Sexy’ Berlin, Brands Need to Understand Casual.

In ‘Poor But Sexy’ Berlin, Brands Need to Understand Casual: To market successfully, you need to understand college kids

This is my first post for the Global Idea Network and I am happy to be here. I aim to post once-a-week about my experience in Berlin and around Europe as an expat. Today, I want to talk a little bit about Berlin, the city its Mayor, Klaus Wowereit, called “poor but sexy.”

Berlin is sexy, poor, and the most casual city I can imagine. Everyone wears jeans, t-shirts, hoodies, and some sort of field jacket. At first I mistook this casualness as slovenliness or poverty. No. Berlin’s casualness is very intentional. In spite of limited cash, Berliners are slaves to fashion and remain current. The moment jeans went skinny, Berlin went skinny. When the world became obsessed with Chuck Taylors, Berliners sported them. Current, as long as the fashion palette keeps to caps, jeans, t-shirts, jackets, and sneakers. When my friend Mark wore the wrong sort of casual his friends staged an intervention: the jeans were all wrong, the jacket was uncool, and the shoes had to go.

It occurred to me that successful marketing in Berlin requires marketing to college kids, who are the epitome of poor but sexy, across the board and for everything. How would you sell a car, a cell phone, a pair of panties, a watch, some gum, a bank account, or a credit card to a teenager and you’ll probably get it right here in Berlin.

When it comes to purchases, Berliners judge each others’ fashion sense like they do at college, where how you were dressed had more to do with style and selection — how you wore it — and less to do with the total cost of purchase and where you bought it. Competition in the marketplace comes from flea markets, hand-me-downs, swap meets, and eBay as easily as it may your competitor. Lots of those skinny jeans and Chuck Taylors were scored used from the 80s. I learned from my friend Libia from Mexico City that Berlin is world famous for its used clothing and consignment stores. There is no stigma associated with getting stuff used and cheap — quite the opposite.

There are other concerns when marketing to Berliners: biking, weather, exposure, and the elements. Like college students, Berliners take public transport and ride bikes every day in all sorts of Central European weather. In fact, I have been told again and again that bicycles are neither recreational nor optional. They’re essential to daily life. Like students going to class in the morning, Berliners need to carry everything they need for the day with them. Necessity demands that Manolos are pretty impractical, as are skirts, heavily-styled hairdos, and exceptionally-delicate makeup rituals.

Berlin casual is not limited to kids in their teens and twenties, however. I am talking about my 39-year-old friend Frank, who pretty much dresses in hooded sweatshirts and jeans all the time (with a fierce family brand loyalty to the G-Star brand, universally popular in Berlin) and, coincidentally, dresses just like his two sons, 8 and 10, as you can see in the photo illustrations. Yes, Frank, who runs a production company called The Lime Machine, approved this post.

I have been invited to be a European correspondent to the AdAge Global Idea Network. I am a resident of Berlin, Germany, and will be mostly reporting my experience in Central and Eastern Europe; however, GIN is a moveable feast — it is global, after all. I hope you enjoy the post. Please consider subscribing to the blog. I plan to post at least once-a-week. Plus, there are a wide assortment of other great bloggers from around the world.