Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Great Wal of blogging

Marshall Manson e-mailed me this afternoon and let me know that a couple of bloggers, North Dakota blogger Rob Port of Say Anything, who I've corresponded with a few times, and Tom Forbes of Washington state, who writes for Palousitics, are at the annual Wal-Mart Media Conference in Bentonville, Arkansas.

(Man that was a long sentence.)

Rob has a detailed post about his first day at the conference, among the things that caught his attention was the unpretentiousness of Wal-Mart's headquarters, writing that "the headquarters looks like my high school."

Contrast that with Sears' headquarters in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, which I've seen. The nation's third-largest retailer's campus-style fortress exudes power. But so did the Maginot Line. Before Sears moved to Hoffman Estates, their HQ was in the Sears Tower, America's tallest building.

The lesson is clear: An impressive headquarters is not an essential element for a successful company.

Palousitics' Tom is live-blogging the conference and has a whole bunch of posts from today's events, including his coverage of a speech by Arkansas' Governor Mike Huckabee. Huckabee is considered a possible candidate for the 2008 Republican nomination, and like Tennessee's Bill Frist, he's a marathon runner too.

Both bloggers traveled to Arkansas at their own expense.

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