Category: Brain Buster

Categories
Brain Buster Daily Life The Marketeer

Breaking Rocks

My first “pure” marketing job was with a company called DCI, they ran a number of very successful tech trade shows such as Data Warehouse World, and one of the biggest SFA (Sales Force Automation) shows out there. It was a good business model, young people came in at entry level pay grades and followed a proven system to develop, promote and run the conferences.

Everyone started with some time over in customer service and then moved to a show team where you worked on the marketing and then handed off to the operations team at showtime. I learned about graphic design, direct mail and printing. There are 3 people in my life that taught me how to write, and the third one, Carol Meinhart, worked there. The first two taught me how to get everything out of my head and on the page, she showed me how to trim away all the excess garbage to become persuasive.

This was around ’98 when there was some hot new technology called email which a few crazy people thought might be good to market with. Even though I majored in Economics by then I was a hardcore geek, and had even gone through Microsoft’s network admin program. The geek pen was on the same floor as the CEO and I’d get called over once and a while if there was some kind of stubborn tech problem (usually something really funky because he was very tech savvy, especially compared to previous execs I had dealt with prior to crossing over into tech).

So here’s the punchline – the company was eventually sold after I left (after a life-altering session with Christopher Lochhead, but that’s another story), and then a few years later the IRS was on the place like stink on a monkey. The investigation and trials went on for a long time, and it looks like it may come to an end (although I would imagine now the appeals could begin). The former CEO was sentenced for conspiracy and tax evasion. I would have to believe that almost everyone in an executive position gets the night sweats about this now and then, but for most I’d think that driving $8 million through Bermuda is not the kind of thing that sneaks up on you.

Categories
Brain Buster Graphic Design Lead Generation Productivity Booster

The next level in gaming

With the holiday next week I was setting up my calendar for the week after that and found that the next WebInno meeting is coming up that Monday, July 9th. If you want to see what’s going on at the cutting edge of internet technology in Boston these meetups are required viewing. Just sign up on the wiki and show up to watch the presenters give a short demo, and check out the other presenters around the room and mingle at one of the better Tech who’s-who in Boston. I’ll be there and have managed to convince some other Boston bloggers and podcasters to show up so swing by if you’d like to grab a drink.

One of the presenters for next week – Digitalbrix has an interesting value prop – a SaaS offering that allows users to build simple games with out writing code like javascript, flash, etc. I’m very interested in checking this out some more, anyone that has done any web marketing has had a point where someone on high gets the itch to try and create a Flash based game.

David Beisel (the webinno organizer) connected me to Naveena Swamy, a founder at Digitalbrix and I had a chance to chat with her for a few minutes about what they are working on. Casual gaming is a huge market so there weren’t many surprises about the growth potential there, but there were two things that stretched my brain a bit. One was that I mentioned that this would be a powerful tool, and she said that a more important point was that it allowed greater collaboration. With a more powerful tool there’s now less friction between the artist, game concept designer etc. This can be expanded to include everyone playing the games which then generates an entire community.

The thing that resonated even more with me was the ability to use a system like this for prototyping. I can see this as a huge value in designing marketing campaigns. Rather than pick a vendor out of a hat and throw them $10,000 for one campaign, put together 4 or 5 concepts to test before making a final decision. That changes the game completely. Now where am I going to find some free time to play around with this myself?

Categories
Brain Buster

America Online – but in Spanish

So I have this AOL email address that I’ve had since 1996. Since about 2000 I had an AOL Visa card so I didn’t have to pay any monthly fees, and now in the past year it’s gone free.

As a side note, I have to give Chase acknowledgment for great customer service. I had cashed in about 30,000 points for a year of free AOL only about a month or so before the AOL card switched over to chase when that program was dropped. I didn’t worry too much about it, but then got a letter saying that since I never got the benefit of those points they refunded them to me under the new Chase program. As a result I was able to trade those points for $375 at Best Buy. One AppleTV and Wireless N router later I am charging everything over a buck on my Chase card.

Back to the story – in the past month or so I’ve noticed that a bunch of the banners on their new mail client have switched to spanish. Uhhh, No habla espanol… I don’t really know what to think of this. Then again, it could be North and South America online, it’s not USA online (or white guy online for that matter). On the other hand I guess I feel like I’ve been kicked out of the community, granted a community I haven’t given a damn about since Gmail showed up, but a community nonetheless.

The other thing is that I’ve always thought that we are probably only 5 years away from some major improvements in automated translation so it shocks me that this is actually a slide backwards. Think about it – it’s quite possible that the web could be used to move everyone in the world to a unified language. Every day you get one new word via your email or newsreader, after a week this word replaces a “non-global” word and you barely notice the transition. 10 years later you’re speaking “Earth”. Who’ll run this? I have no idea. Why? Well, wouldn’t it be great to talk to everyone? Wouldn’t it be great if the word for soda world wide was Pepsi? Is this Google’s master plan? Your adwords being seen by 6 billion?

You’d think that with the 10 years of email I’ve sent through them that they’d see that the only words I’ve used are burrito and sangria so banners in any other language besides english are probably a waste of time. Hell, I don’t think I’ve ever typed the word sombrero (who says I’m not breaking new ground daily?)

Now if AOL could get me a burrito like Super Burrito in Concord, California…

Categories
Brain Buster

A bit of music

Being an enthralled spectator is a fascinating thing – It bears no resemblance to the fear of the performer or speaker. I truly enjoyed this clip, courtesy of Seth Godin’s blog for his new book, The Dip (which has made my summer reading list, one of these days I’ll pick up a copy…).
[youtube]1k08yxu57NA[/youtube]

Categories
Brain Buster The Marketeer

Can you skip the chasm?

So yesterday I was saying that I thought the newest Palm hardware was a waste of time. Over on engadget a lot of people were saying the same type of thing. If you don’t have the backstory – they are selling a mini laptop, it connects to the phone and you get web, email and some other programs with the benefit of a big screen and keyboard.

All the card-carrying members of team propeller head took off our taped glasses and sneered at it (myself included). They had an interesting pitch though – “Geekboys, this is not for you, you must have your multimedia laptops, this is for the rest of the world.” I paused for a moment and had a flash of inspiration – you could give this to a salesperson and they would have a phone and access to Salesforce.com, all they really need. You could even include audio instructions since they usually don’t read too well (an old joke, not mine by the way).

This got me to thinking further – is it possible to skip the chasm? Crossing the Chasm is standard reading for anyone in the software industry, for the uninitiated – for all tech stuff you usually get acceptance from the geeks if it’s cool but then there’s a period of time where the geeks take it for granted but the rest of the world still hasn’t found out about it or figured it out. If you need more you should really get the book.

My gut is telling me no, it’s not possible. You need the geeks on your side because they are the evangelists, they help you further develop the product for the mainstream audience (basically by making it easier to use and error free). If you don’t get the geeks the product remains relatively unknown and never sees mainstream light of day. I’d be interested if anyone has any examples of skipping the chasm, or opinions as to whether it’s possible or not.

Categories
Brain Buster Geek Stuff

More Data than Ability

So I’m trying to put together my thoughts about a rampant problem. I keep running into situations where organizations have more data than they can possibly handle, and systems that are built to handle that data, but not the human capital to build and maintain the systems around them.

This started with my Mother’s day rant, where I asked why I couldn’t opt out of mother’s day mailings. You run into this all the time in airlines and financial institutions where you are forced to dial in your account or itinerary information, only having to read it off to a customer service representative later in the call.

Can anyone give me a good reason why I have to choose “English” every time I insert my ATM card into the machine? WTF? They know my address and account number, why not my chosen language?

I was complaining about United Airlines last week until Christopher Penn made me realize that there are far worse problems in air travel. A delayed flight is one thing, losing a passenger entirely is unconscionable.

For my entire career I had waited for tech to catch up to what I was doing, in the space of less than 10 years it’s gone from non-existant, to available, to being drowned in it.

On another note, I am loving Apple TV – digital photos (also buried under their own sheer volume) have been set free on the wide screen. It’s amazing how pictures that look ok at 4×6 look incredible on a big screen.

Categories
Brain Buster SEO and Paid Search

Advanced Kung-Fu Blog Techniques

Eric, Sam and Jason

Eric Schwartzman, Sam Whitmore and Jason Calacanis

Jason Calacanis delivered a great lunch keynote today. I enjoy the mix of straight talk mixed and the understanding of showmanship. I had a brain buster today when everything snapped into focus – he mentioned that you should keep watching his blog for something big regarding the death of SEO. If you read his stuff there’s been a ongoing thread about SEO being legitimate business or just another shady tactic like junk bond arbitrage and tax evasion. So perhaps something big is coming and guess who’s had a corner on the best SEO chatter (Google juice anyone?) for the past 3 months?

Categories
Brain Buster Productivity Booster The Marketeer

Widgetmania

Covering the dry technical stuff first. From everything I’ve seen over the past couple of days I’m boiling widgets down into three types:

Type 1: These are additions to web pages, most often tools over in the sidebar that provide some additional functionality, most often for a blog or (shudder) a MySpace page. A classic example would be a flickr widget, it grabs some photos from your account and makes a little slide show type thingy (technical definition, I know). See it in action, and grab your own if you want from here. Most of these are trying to enable a viral spread of the application.

Type 2: Freestanding tiny little applications. Folks over on the Mac side are very familiar with these, you activate the widget page and all these crappy little clocks and temperature gadges pop up. Like most cool features on the mac, they’ve showed up in the next edition of Windows (Vista). I’ve found these things to be of not much use since you can do most of the same stuff on web pages, but that’s probably the cranky geek in me shining through. If you have a personalized Google desktop you can run Google Gadgets, which are similar and supposedly if you have Google desktop installed you can run them in pre-Vista Windows. This is all heresay, I don’t have Google desktop installed.

Dr. Penn made a good recommedation in this week’s Marketing Over Coffee, there’s an app called Amnesty that allows you to transform widgets from one form to another, or promote them up to a Type 3.

I didn’t take good notes yesterday so I can’t find the name of the presenter that described Type 3, but it’s the most interesting category. He referred to them as BDAs – Branded Desktop Applications. These are full fledged apps that often reside in the tray on Windows and are running all the time allowing content to be pushed out to them. Some great examples are Southwest’s Ding, and a Disneyland’s Thing that I can’t find a link to. Both of these are full fledged apps, and in Ding’s case provide unique pricing that is available only through the app.

This category has a ton of potential as it elbows even the browser out of the picture. Thinking about it now, I realize that the best example of this is iTunes. I’ve had a mental block because I’ve always considered widgets to be small items, not apps capable of going full screen, but these are the most powerful. It’s also interesting to note that apps of this type have tried to get on to the desktop before, but were hammered down by the fear (and actual use) of spyware.

So, why would you build a widget? We can see from Ding and iTunes that if you have some exclusive content this can cement your relationship with your customer, and eliminate the allure of other web pages which is always a risk from within the browser. Another reason would be to encourage the viral spread of your application. You’ll also have to consider the impact widgets on your analytics and bandwidth. These aren’t going to be page views but will start requiring serious bandwidth (especially if you do go viral). Again, as cranky geek I don’t want to add more to my tray, but I think Joe Sixpack is looking for simple apps since he has some trouble with “the tubez on tha intranets”

Another interesting application would be using a flash widget as an alternative user interface – think of the mini player for itunes. There’s a lot of potential there to make things easier to use, and opening them up for content to be pushed to them (get a pop-up when your favorite artist has released a new tune, etc.).

All of this is pretty cool but not earth shattering, until you consider widgets for cellphones. This is an area that could explode. The fedex package tracker, or drop off box locater is not worth more as a widget vs. web page on my PC, but when I’m driving around looking for it a phone widget could be a killer app. As I think more about it – how about GPS enabled widgets? Your phone pings you when you are within 100yds of a Starbucks. Better yet, in your car the widget on your GPS starts telling you to drive there.

Ok, that’s it. Brain exploding…

Thanks again to David Beisel over at Venrock for hosting the event, and Christopher Penn for dropping some Widget Wisdom on me so I had some ammo at the session.

Addendum: My new Arch Enemy Mike Champion took much better notes than I did. *shaking fist*

Seriously though, if you are into live music check out his Tourb.us project.

Categories
Brain Buster

Earth-2

I felt like I slipped into an alternate universe this morning when Chris Pirillo had a post where he is seems to be channeling David Meerman Scott (who has a new book out this month).

If David announces Gnomedex East I’m going to have to grow an Evil Spock goatee.

Categories
Brain Buster Geek Stuff SalesForce.com The Marketeer

Widgets and Snippets

Tomorrow night some of the greatest minds in business and technology (and yours truly) will be talking about widgets. David Beisel (who just announced a move to Venrock) will preside. I have to admit that I’m old school and have been loathe to use widgets. I’m even not really comfortable with snippets, but do use them because the benefit is too great.

For those who don’t think web page structure is “wicked dope”: Widgets are little boxes on a web page that do things – calculators, Flickr photo slideshows, audio players, etc.

Snippets are chunks of web page code that you can’t see but they do things behind the scenes. Most common is a few lines of code that many add to their pages so that Google can give them site analytics.

I still fear the dark side, an both snippets and widgets are passing your site traffic data on to the party that provides the widget or snippet. Being raised in the age of dial-up there was also the issue of having to wait for a page to load until someone else’s snippet or whatever downloads. Broadband has made this no longer an serious counter argument for any but the curmudgeonly (ie – again, yours truly).

On the other side are widgets that can make you money, such as playing Revver videos or running Google Adsense. I’m all for making money.

More on this as I get it. Any favorite widgets or snippets out there? I currently nominate the Salesforce.com / Google Snippet as the greatest of all time (GOAT).