THE GREAT AMERICAN STARTUP

Barbara Kraus Fund at the Massey Cancer Center

2011-11-28T18:45:00.001-08:00

Good Pump of Social Learning from HR Tech

2011-10-17T08:16:00.000-07:00

Good Blog post from HR Tech by Kyle Lagunas...

http://blog.softwareadvice.com/articles/hr/the-bees-knees-of-hrtechconf-2011/

vizualize.me - David 's profile

2011-09-20T10:47:00.000-07:00

vizualize.me - David 's profile

Saba Related Blog Posts: An Index

2011-08-12T11:43:00.000-07:00

* Using Social Learning to Create Top Sales Performers:

http://www.saba.com/blogs/2011/08/18/using-social-learning-to-create-top-sales-performers/

* The Saba People Cloud Transformative Workplace: Social Learning & Mobile [Video]:

http://www.tmcnet.com/tmc/videos/default.aspx?vid=4946

* Chief Learning Officer Highlights Saba’s Gold Award Winning LMS:

http://www.saba.com/blogs/2011/06/06/chief-learning-officer-highlights-sabas-gold-award-winning-lms/

* Clients of Saba Learning Win the Day at CLO Symposium with 25% of client awards:

http://www.saba.com/blogs/2010/10/25/clients-of-saba-learning-win-the-day-at-clo-symposium-with-25-of-client-awards/

* Enabling the Always On, Always Available Enterprise with Saba Mobile:

http://www.saba.com/blogs/2011/08/11/enabling-the-always-on-always-available-enterprise-with-saba-mobile/

* Kicking Off Our Saba Social Learning Beta Program:

http://www.saba.com/blogs/2011/05/18/kicking-off-our-saba-social-learning-beta-program/

* The Value of In-Context Learning:

http://www.saba.com/blogs/2010/10/19/the-value-of-in-context-learning/

* Ignite Your People Knowhow: Learning Anywhere, Everywhere [Recorded Webinar]:

http://sabaex.centra.com/main/saba/m/Registrar/NewRegistration.jsp?event_id=0000003fe4efad012a03fd87da00790a&locale=en_US&source=sabacom

* Saba Product Roadmap Review April 2011 RUGs DC:

http://vimeo.com/24548659

Building on Strengths Rather than Focusing on Weakness

2011-06-11T20:01:00.000-07:00

I recently took the www.strengthsfinder.com online assessment. The assessment was associated with the Strengths Finder 2.0 book. The system presented by the book gave me a lexicon to name my strengths. By giving my strengths names I can see them as tools rather than as amorphous capabilities that I innately exercise.

The easiest way for me to think about my strengths is that they are behaviors I do without hesitation, naturally, everyday, with near-perfect execution. The Strengths Finder model asserts that all people have such strengths.

By understanding what my strengths are I can refelect on when it is best to use one or another of my strengths with intention. Purposeful exercise of personal strengths is a personal goal of mine--I don't think the strengths finder model necessarily prescribes such mindfulness.

The quick version of the history is as follows:

"Based on a 40-year study of human strengths, Gallup created a language of the 34 most common talents and developed the Clifton StrengthsFinder assessment to help people discover and describe these talents. "

My next step was to review the report provide by the assessment and seek out a coach who could guide me in applying the results of the assessment. I learned my combination of strengths is a 1 in 33 million result. There are probably more common combinations as there are probably more rare combinations.

In the assessment my top 5 strengths in order from 1-5 are as follows:

Strategic
Futuristic
Self-Assurance
Ideation
Activator

In the end, what I like most about the process is that the very obvious premise is deeply appealing. Why try and improve people's weaknesses rather than improve their strengths? Isn't every moment spent investing in a person's strengths a greater return on outcome for them than the hard slog to make gains in an area out of tune with the individual?

With my coworkers, with my family, my strengths or theirs--aren't these worth spending more time on than weaknesses?

An excerpt from Wireless, Inc. by Craig Settles c2002... a retro mlearning snippet

2011-02-22T14:09:00.000-08:00

Below is an excerpt from Wireless, Inc. by Craig Settles c2002. A decade ago Craig was documenting what we were doing in the mLearning space. What is interesting to me is that while the technology has changed the principles, for the most part, have not.

Note the mention of the “iPaq” and things like “dynamic syndication server” – archaic right?

Also note the applications of mobile learning as appropriate for "sales" and other field services. Also as part of “continuing education" and mobile learners accessing the “collective experience of others.”

Some of the technology references and context may be a decade old, but the problem space remains today much as it was characterized a decade ago.

“Internal Education Tactics

Education of the troops is an ongoing process that happens at many levels. When a person begins employment, they have to learn about the organization’s policies, procedures, key people in the organizational chart, employee benefits, and so on. Then they have to learn procedures and other information specific to their respective departments. This may include learning how to use office equipment, plant machinery, etc.

Once employees complete their “entry-level” learning, they require ongoing education to keep abreast of new developments within their industry, market, and profession, as well as new projects and activities within their organizations. Also a part of continuing education is the type of learning that comes from tapping into the collective experience of others within the department or organization.

There is often general information that people only access occasionally, such as policies and procedures manuals, directions for completing travel and medical expense reimbursement forms, or lists of the retailers carrying your products. Since mobile workers don’t need to get to these materials all the time, it may be all right to just provide simple access to an intranet with the materials via their wireless devices.

For information and skills that are critical for employees to do their jobs, such as customer support procedures, or product assembly processes, spend time with your mobile workers to carefully plan both what content to make accessible and how to deliver it. If you provide extensive conventional training of mobile workers or inter-facility roamers before they are sent into the field, then your wireless content might include refresher materials that serve to reinforce what workers learn. But, if you hire people one day and put them on the road or into plant vehicles the next day, you might want to consider creating a full-featured training program that you can deliver wirelessly.

Of course, you may have decided when you were evaluating the fourth strategic dimension that you want to use wireless to reduce the cost of training. In that case, you should do a review of all of your training programs to determine the particular tactics you will use.

David Koehn, AvantGo’s director of educational services, helps customers develop extensive wireless-enabled training courses. He also managed the development of a course that AvantGo staff use to train third-party developers who write applications using the company’s technology. (It’s always reassuring to know that vendors use their own technology).

Koehn made several good recommendations that can contribute to the success of your efforts, whether you plan to create traditional training courses, or you are developing content to facilitate the distribution of policies, procedures, and general information.

Effective Design and Deployment Mean a Lot

Here are some of Koehn’s recommendations:

· Mobile learning is a blend of a product (a knowledge application) and a service (knowledge transfer). Because of this blend, m-learning needs conception, graphic and/or layout design, application development, and deployment planning. Whenever possible, use those with mobile expertise to manage your mobile learning implementation.

· Use whatever you can from existing courses or materials. Don’t forget the m-learning mode is an extension of existing learning systems, whether online courses accessed on PCs or instructor-led classes, and not a separate pool of information. Use whatever you can from existing web materials such as page design, navigation, and search features, but modify these for the mobile user. The search feature is especially useful for reference materials like a Peterson Guide, though your material may not be that extensive.

· Make your mobile courseware cross-platform so it works on all types of devices. Students may want courseware on their iPAQ one day and on their RIM BlackBerry the next.

· Give a lot of thought to the design choices that you make. For example, decide if you are going to provide images for high-end mobile devices that you hope will work on low-end devices, or if you are going to use images that work well on low-end devices, but don’t use all of the capacity of the high-end device. Because the people receiving training may be using devices with different graphics capabilities, there will always be trade-offs on what looks good, what is needed, and what is practical. You have to find the right balance without sacrificing the main objective, which is to deliver effective training.

· Stick to HTML and JavaScript for creating your courseware. This will make it easy to develop, easy to deploy, and easier all around for the people who have to use it. Your courseware should be interactive on mobile devices, even when the users aren’t wirelessly connected.

· Publish the lessons from a dynamic syndication server rather than manually writing all of the pages. This is a publishing tool that allows you to create training modules in a SCORM-compliant (standardized) format and publish them to the Web in an automated way that does not require hours and hours of hand-coding.

· As users input data into a particular course or interact with a trainer, be sure they can reconcile the data between their desktops and mobile devices using the devices’ sync feature, web surfing, or having it pushed from your servers. Students do not want the progress of training on the handheld version of their course to differ from that of their desktop course.

· Make certain your m-learning course creates value. And, in turn, make certain you look to charge an employee’s department for an m-learning product, even thought the application is for internal use. People will take these more seriously if there is a price tag attached, even if the money is primarily a paper transaction between departments.

· Always be aware of the context in which people will use your courseware. Mobile learning is a “point of activity” application, meaning people likely will be doing whatever the course material is trying to teach them while they are taking the course. If users will be outside when learning or reviewing materials on horse breeding, it may not be a good idea to use fonts and font sizes that are hard to read on PDA screens in outdoor lighting. You also want to use a lot of diagrams because users won’t have a lot of time for reading when they’re working with a couple of frisky equines.

· The situation and conditions under which people will use the courseware should also determine your hardware selection. Brad, a friend of mine who drives heavy construction equipment, is shopping for a PDA. He’s very conscious of the hardware design because the sand, dirt, and moisture in the areas where he works can ruin the internal components if the outer casing is flimsy or allows particles to slip in.

· Don’t use fill-in-the-blank text fields. Use select lists and drop-down answer menus or buttons so a pen tap or a click can make the lesson interactive. Someone who’s brushing up on a couple of product features while sitting in the customer’s lobby before a repair visit doesn’t have a lot of time to etch long essays.

· Your courseware should have occasional “e-mail for help” and “phone for help” features. This is especially valuable if people will be in locations where access to online help may not be available.

· Create pages that require as little up and down scrolling as possible. Never expect students to scroll left and right.

When you finish developing your courseware, make sure that everyone who will use it gets hands-on experience guided by an instructor during the class or at some time before they go into the field. This is to ensure people use the application. If you just hand people a PDA and send them on their way, or let them download the application on their own, it’s likely that people won’t use the courseware.

Remember that m-learning, the same as in many other uses of mobile devices, often changes the behavior of the people using it in the organization and thus affects the behavior of the organization itself. If employees are learning on mobile devices, try to determine how this will impact instructors and managers, since the technology can increase the pace at which people learn, the type of questions that they ask, or even the way they perform their duties. These may all be positive changes, but to maximize the value of this new way of doing business you can’t have these people caught off guard.

When Does It Make Sense to Use m-Learning?

You can use these guidelines to develop mobile courseware that teach people to do all sorts of things including teaching people how to assemble, use, maintain, and/or repair equipment, depending on the person’s actual job. You may have employees hired to specifically do these things, but your mobile workers might be able to fix some things that break faster than it will take for support staff to arrive.

You may also need to train people how to use software applications, complete complex business operations that occur in the field (i.e., processing customer’s loan or insurance forms), or promote key features and benefits of your products. Mobile learning can be effective if your organization markets services or products from several companies and it’s hard to remember all the details about each one, or for your resellers and sales reps who also carry your competitors’ products.

Wireless training programs also make sense for mobile workers who have to keep track of a broad range of procedures and processes, such as doctors, lawyers, and financial services professionals. It’s not so much that you want these people to be learning on the job, but there are times when someone needs a quick refresher course for procedures they haven’t done in a while.

Some organizations have six-figure (or more) budgets to create “knowledge bases” on servers to store details on best practices, selling tactics for large accounts, documents that are designed for certain proposals, or negotiations. Your mobile workers may not need training programs for these, but they probably can benefit by having wireless access to this intellectual capital.

As a closing thought, I recommend that you explore ways to use your training and other employee education tactics for your external audiences as well. The design and implementation expertise you learn from these applications for your employees can be applied to training for customers, possibly without a lot of modifications. Subsequently your investment will produce greater returns. And conversely, some of your tactics for educating external audiences will work for employees as well. In fact, self-help and professional development may produce more immediate financial returns among employees than customers and prospects."

--finis--

Sales Training and Social Learning

2011-02-07T19:24:00.000-08:00

I read a great post at: http://sales20network.com/blog/?p=1024

As I read the article on changing the name of "Sales Training" I liked the focus on change management. Shifting behavior from what it was to a new effective behavior.

Many training organizations provide oodles of “Sales Training.” And these learning organizations work hard to make this experience as unlike formal training as possible because Sales requires true knowledge transfer that converts into a change in behavior that results in more sales effectiveness i.e. more profit or revenue.

Because the problem of changing sales behavior is “real” and not theoretical. i.e. Will the sales increase or not — vs. — Can the learner solve for the square root of Pi.

Sales Training organizations focus on:

1. Adoption — can EVERYONE use and understand and achieve excellence?
2. True mastery — can everyone demonstrate to the greatest level possible real-world in-deal behavior that produces results
3. Guidance — can everyone at all times get access to the best coaching possible to achieve their numbers.

For this reason Social Learning has shot off among many training groups with a bullet.

Adoption:

The simplicity and ease-of-everything in Social Learning focuses on getting the Sales folk in, getting them going, and getting them engaged because the experience is fun and intrinsically valuable. For example I use Facebook because I intrinsically value my relationships. I feel (and "feel" is the key word) compelled to connect with my friends and family. In Sales groups that use Social Learning sales folks are compelled to participate because they intrisically “know” they will make more money by getting their questions answered by the “folksonomy” i.e. their group of rainmakers. They know the formal knowledge objects inside and out but it is all of the “connotative” i.e. emotional and deal-focused aspects of the selling they seek out in Social Learning for sales organizations.

True Mastery:

In Social Learning for Sales there is no theory. There is data and technique that has proven success–this means for every aspect of a formal sales training, the sales folks can provide real-world examples of how the deals reacted to the behaviors they were asked to display.

This means absolute validation via the sales folk of what is and is not working. This means gold star sales folk can accelerate their game to new levels from just “great” to truly “excellent.” Their fine tuning from the nuance provided by the community can double their numbers. This means the average sales folk have access to the information and cultural know-how to become top performers.

Most sales orgs struggle because new sales hires take too long to “get” all of the 360 degree aspects of how to make deals happen. With Social Learning that time is radically compressed.

Guidance:

The conversational nature of Social Learning wraps the formal knowledge in the discussions of the rainmakers who point out what aspects of the training actually = more deals. Rainmakers can show learners how to frame and pitch what was learned. Rainmakers describe how to overcome obstacles and objections that an “objection handling” document can’t.

We did an informal poll at http://sabasociallearning.com and found that the overwhelming data suggested companies see onboarding occur more quickly when some form of mentoring is involved.

Whether formally assigning a local salesperson to nurture a new sales hire,
-or-
whether assigning a virtual coach who coaches many,
-or-
whether informally accessing knowhow of rainmakers on an as needed basis:
social learning accelerates sales folks in ways previously only dreamed.

Sales training (or whatever it is best called) and social learning are a match made in sales management heaven!

Debunking the Cliché: The Marketing Makes the Product

2011-01-23T00:05:00.000-08:00

"The raven chides blackness." Troilus and Cressida, Shakespeare

This post is a quick post on debunking the cliché that the marketing makes the product. I'll also address the cliché that the critic is the source of truth.

Oddly enough this is a paradox. A fun one to consider, but a paradox nonetheless.

Software companies have a new challenge, but it is the same challenge as any business still adopting old school thinking.

The old school marketer believes that a message ABOUT a product experience makes the difference.

All marketers have to face that products are the marketing. Any product that can't deliver on the needs of the user will likely fail.

Conversely, in the social age, products that deliver on the needs of their user will likely succeed.

The age when a marketer or a critic can stamp a product, a movie, a restaurant a failure (or "not up to snuff") is gone. The masses decide...

The zeitgeist is that the adopters decide--not the marketer, nor the expert. News spreads fast, and unfounded criticism i.e. contempt before examination surfaces quickly.

In regards to critics, many examples are in the restaurant industry where a food critic (after one meal and sometimes without one) grinds a personal axe to express dislike for a restaurant. The restaurant's "fans" create such backlash the restaurant's business shoots through the roof AND the critic's reputation as a capable food critic is permanently lost.

I do feel bad that the paid local food critic role has largely gone away. The convention was quaint. Yelp has proven that what the masses and what one's friends think of the food is WAY more important than what the pundits say.

Unmeasured criticism expressed without a full data set (nor any direct experience) doesn't work anymore. Everything eventually gets washed through the filter of the crowd. The crowd adopts the product, the crowd assesses the product, the crowd recommends or doesn't recommend the product.

The product is the marketing.

The raven chides blackness... and the proof is in the pudding.

Homo Ludens: Games and Authentic Play

2010-12-20T14:47:00.000-08:00

Back in the olden days when I was in college, a professor of mine asked me to read Johan Huizinga's Homo Ludens.

For those who have known me throughout my life as academic, teacher, writer, entrepreneur, technologist, strategist--you have seen me surface and re-surface this text.

I used Home Ludens in multiple college papers, my master's thesis, the first post of the now defunct Great American Pinup team blog, as a frame for team building...it's power over me for the last 20 or so years has not diminished.

"Let my playing be my learning, and my learning be my playing." has become a core tenet of my thinking.

Currently I am re-using the tenets in how I frame product strategy.

The gamification of the Web for me is a symptom of this core human need to be "lost in it." This means we aspire to be engrossed, engaged, freed to feel free with the activity of the moment.

Oddly enough games and their rules provide microcosms where the feeling of total immersion, a sense of total freedom, a sense of transformation unbounded by fear, can be possible.

Sometimes games create but a flash of this feeling. But that flash may be rich enough to engage and re-engage its players. The lottery, tic-tac-toe, Go, rewards programs for credit cards, progress bars, all are game elements that displace the reality of the task with a game that compels me to participate.

Teachers have long sought games that reinforce their learning objectives. This is how teachers have created successful students at many levels. To get the student "playing" is to get them learning.

So why does this matter? The gamification of the Web is happening...and no where is this more important than in learning.

For the Kauffman Foundation I presented with Eric Ries to a group of learning start-ups. One myth I asked them to dispel, that was ripe for opportunity, is that games and video games in particular have negative learning impact. This is false, tremendous learning can be achieved through games, gaming, and video games in particular.

Challenges, points, badges, connections, Farmville, Sims, Kongregate, Scvngr, Gamesville, how it will all manifest, who knows?

The game-changing play for Learning (and the Web at large) will be the embrace of games and gaming as a wave of engagement that will re-invigorate the Web.

5 Ways the iPad Changes the Learning Marketplace

2010-09-02T11:41:00.000-07:00

The iPad will accelerate many changes in the learning space. I think there are specific capabilities on the iPad that will dramatically impact the production of learning applications and learning content going forward.

-----

1. "Occasionally connected computing" comes of age making any learning environment viable for computer use whether bandwidth is huge, weak, or non-existent.

The iPad fulfills on the promise of the uber-rich client that draws what it needs from the Web and renders it in the most optimal way for the user.

The sci-fi images of the user moving their hands side-to-side through holograms to manipulate a user interface is not far off.

2. Price. User's receive the richest available interface at the same price level as a smart phone.

The beef with tablets and handhelds and phones has always been the nature of their usable interface. Built to be small. Modeled after a keyboard/mouse interface.

The rocket science here is that the pricepoint is right AND the interface provides the ultimate user experience (not the least appealing experience). The expectation that the laptop/desktop experience is the ideal or preferred experience is gone!

3. Trust of the experience from Enterprise users.

The iPad is inheriting the best of the iPhone experience and it is seeing a universal groundswell in demand from the Enterprise user.

Large enterprise organizations, e.g. entire sales forces, are demanding the experience because it not only works as a hi-fi experience for training themselves but training (or demoing to) a customer by just holding up the iPad has real impact.

Who expected that the Enterprise would so rabidly (correct spelling) adopt the device?

4. Content and apps catalogs assumed as a default behavior of coursework.

iTunes tamed music and the iPad will tame coursework. The music labels used to control all the production and distribution of music.

With digitization, followed by stores like iTunes, the democratization of music production and consumption shifted radically.

Edu content will feel the same shift. Major providers of content will feel the shift of production of content into the hands of the distributed marketplace. Expect the aggregation of content from major providers and others into agnostic catalogs. Much of the content will be authored by indie providers. Much of the content will be consumed in short snippets (a single song rather than a entire album).

Expect "Kayak" for "Coursework" to make the iPad an even more powerful learning tool.

5. Collaboration as an experience will be assumed.

Like an OS, the features that accelerate collaboration will become assumed as part of the learning experience.

a. Location: I will understand who and what is nearby that is relevant to my learning and interests.
b. Opinion: I will see what others think of what I am learning. I will see what they think, how they classify my learning, and how they advise me and others to proceed. I will trust these people because either I know them or others I trust have ranked them as ideal sources.
c. Presence: I will be able to connect in real time with people interested in or knowledgeable about the same things I am interested in. Live voice, video, chat, and sharing will become instantaneous and easy in all of my learning on the iPad.

------

Undoubtedly the iPad is cool. What is really exciting is that the learning marketplace, including the corporate learning marketplace, appears to have adopted the iPad in a way that is unique and lends itself to becoming the tool of choice for transforming the learning space.

10 myths 10 Minutes 10 tweets for Opening Night of #SWSF Learning

2010-08-31T14:29:00.001-07:00

This presentation was delivered at Startup Weekend San Francisco #SWSF just after Eric Ries's. No talk track or audio on this Slideshare. But do ask if you want to hear what I said.

10 myths 10 Minutes 10 tweets

View more presentations from dkoehn68.

Ignite Your People Knowhow: Learning Anywhere, Everywhere

2010-08-22T20:49:00.000-07:00

http://bit.ly/bDpJgL

Tuesday, 24 August 2010, 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM (GMT -04:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)

As your organization seeks new ways to outperform the status quo, ensure you're harnessing and multiplying the knowhow and performance of your people. Traditional work styles have given way to today's networked way of working, where the norm is highly “connected” people operating in a fluid environment and fast changing pace. Today's new work style means that learning needs to happen as part of work rather than as a separate, formal event. This means enabling learning where people work, where they travel, outside of work, connected, disconnected, practically anywhere and everywhere. Now more than ever, your organization needs to embrace all the ways in which you can give people and teams the knowhow necessary to effectively compete and succeed.

Register for this web seminar on Igniting People Knowhow to explore:

• How learning processes have evolved to incorporate formal, informal and social aspects

• How new approaches in learning delivery can transform the user experience

• How your corporate portal can become a one-stop solution for critical learning and process support

• How to assemble the experience of your choice with embeddable business processes

• How to deliver learning to individuals across the globe in offline and mobile situations

• How your learning initiatives can directly impact your company's revenue, profits and business agility

Join David Koehn, head of Saba's Learning Strategy group, and learn how organizations of all sizes are redefining the learning experience to accommodate the new way of working, thereby multiplying the productivity and knowhow of their people and improving their business agility.

Register here: http://bit.ly/bDpJgL

Untitled

2010-05-03T15:01:00.001-07:00

Google Ventures http://ping.fm/BuQBG

via Ping.fm

Posted via web from davidkoehn's posterous

Pay to Perform vs. Pay to Fail

2010-05-03T11:23:00.001-07:00

Pay to Perform vs. Pay to Fail http://tinyurl.com/2blqseq #SabaSoftware

Posted via email from davidkoehn's posterous

Using Twitter in Face-2-face Learning

2010-05-02T14:04:00.001-07:00

Using Twitter in face-2-face learning, http://janeknight.typepad.com/socialmedia/2010/05/using-twitter-in-a-facetoface-workshop.html

Posted via email from davidkoehn's posterous

Untitled

2010-04-30T16:48:00.001-07:00

Odijoo 6 Reasons to Adopt Odijoo for your Organization's Corporate Training | http://bit.ly/aGoCxH | #elearning #corporatetraining #training

Posted via web from davidkoehn's posterous

Untitled

2010-04-29T22:18:00.001-07:00

Public Sector Organizations Around the World Turn to SabaSoftware for Strategic People Management http://tinyurl.com/25a9dyo

via Ping.fm

Posted via web from davidkoehn's posterous

Untitled

2010-04-27T08:16:00.001-07:00

SabaSoftware Collaborates with US Army on Technology for Training Delivery http://tinyurl.com/2cbu6hz

via Ping.fm

Posted via web from davidkoehn's posterous

The Barbara Kraus Foundation 2010 Letter

2010-02-06T21:23:00.000-08:00

Sidewiki Pop: Wish I Had a Side Wiki that Could Handle Everything

2009-12-20T11:46:00.001-08:00

Yeah, Sidewiki is cool. But not nearly as powerful of a tool as I need. I worked on a product called Webster that was shitcanned in its time that did everything I need.

What I need...or at least what I wish I had is a side-wiki that could highlight an area of a page, in different colors if need be, allow me to comment on sections of the page, and even store off each and every entry in hierarchical bookmarking. Further I wish it worked across the Web, and my outlook, pdf, .xls, .doc. and all image type filess too! Give me that (or let me build that) and I'll be impressed.

in reference to: Google Sidewiki (view on Google Sidewiki)

Healthcare Professionals Homepage HCPlive | Blogs | Nurses' Blogs | One in Seven Pages is Sent to the Wrong Physician

2009-11-23T10:49:00.000-08:00

Healthcare Professionals Homepage HCPlive | Blogs | Nurses' Blogs | One in Seven Pages is Sent to the Wrong Physician

The Next Gold Rush: Environmental Finance

2009-10-30T14:15:00.000-07:00

What started as "Whole Earth Catalog" rhetoric is now economic truth.

Through a series of regulatory initiatives rooted in the Kyoto treaty and emerging with the pending Waxman legislation, the market's next new billionaires will be innovators who understands how to trade in the emerging economics of environmental finance.

Realities:

* in short order water will be 3x more valuable than oil
* the value of a wind field's offset will exceed the value of the power it produces
* companies will lose value in the marketplace when the offset they buy impacts shareholder value (stock prices will fall when companies don't have sustainable business models)

I won't re-hash all of the evidence of these marketplaces as provided by Tom Lewis or available in environmental finance courses from the likes of Johns Hopkins--but the marketplace for carbon offset and the related products may not sound sexy but these trillion dollar marketplaces have many high powered folks putting much effort into capitalizing on their emergence.

The Green Exchange

Tom Lewis was recently named the CEO of Green Exchange Holdings. The NYMEX Green Exchange has the backing of Constellation Energy, Credit Suisse, Evolution Markets, Goldman Sachs, ICAP, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, RNK Capital, Spectron, Vitol, TFS Energy, & Tudor. Essentially the Who's of Who of classic capital markets paired with the biggest players in global environmental markets.

Some Articles:

Key Players Quietly Building Carbon Market Infrastructure...

Environmental Finance - Emissions Trading | Socially...

Carbon Market? Build It And They Will Invest

Private Capital Looks To Cash In On Carbon Trading -...

Carbon Regulation Creating Rifts Within American Business...

Making Sense And Money Out Of Carbon - Carbon Challenge...

Is It All Beyond Me?

At some level, this high-flying finance backers and the associated economic products give us the impression they are so beyond us.

As usual, the makes of these markets create confidence by asserting knowledge (and Capital) unavailable to the rest of us. The picture might see like this new world of finance is not for the common man--in fact this new world of finance is not even for the brightest and even richest amongst us.

These new markets have the appearance of having the requirements of the esoterica of the derivative and futures wonks in the depths of the financial markets combined with the need for Ph.D in physics. But it ain't so!

The world has never been so flat and the NYMEX will find that the future of green futures will not emerge as a unified market the way Wall Street emerged. Many markets will be made, many by people who appear to have no business "doing the business."

My Favorite Example

My favorite example is Terrapass. A group of students and their professor 4 years ago put together the layman's version of what the Green Exchange will become. What's impressive is that Terrapass may "steal" the business of making millions form offsetting the footprint of their local cement factory from the NYMEX. Offset is offset, whether the market maker is Constellation energy or Terrapass.

Watch out! Its like the gold rush in the wild, wild west. Stake your claim!

Standards rivals' collaboration could have major impact - Modern Healthcare

2009-10-27T09:01:00.000-07:00

The Medical Health Record:

The medical record is not the first standard to grow up with competing standards that have ground their way down into collaboration and consolidation. This industry like so many others will have data variablity compressed out of their wick by the needs of the people, services, and systems they serve. On a simple scale consider the radical retro-fit of the eLearning space from wild variablity, to competing standards, to the unifies standards for content today. This will happen in healthcare as well--its inevitable, Darwinian if you will.

Good article on Standards:

Standards rivals' collaboration could have major impact - Modern Healthcare

As interested as I am in re-thinking the modern "community" bank, I am even more interested in seeing the emergence of a unified medical record for patients that helps the doctor's practice inherit the history of the patient enabling the doctor to treat, manage, and bill that patient more effectively.

In the future, and this future is inevitable, (though the time frame is variable), the patient, doctor, and insurer will all win from the efficiencies created by the interoperable patient medical record.

Patient:

Patient's will move through their lives with a medical record as convenient as an email account. We will lve with our medical records as transparently as our Amazon shopping history.

Doctor:

Doctors will be able to handle patient histories with the ease of a blog post and bill patients with the ease of tagging. Through video, voice, phone, stylus, or keypad the doc will have every option for encapsulating diagnoses in the patient's lifelong record: from birth to death we will be anthologized in our medical record.

Insurer:

The insurer's will be pulling needed data from a cloud of data optimized for satisfying the criteria of that insurer's coverage. The insurer won't do any work to accomplish this--like IMS data --there will be a subscription to the patient's permission-based feed and every piece of form data that the doctor's office and the patient typically have to enter, and re-enter, and re-enter again will be automatically, securely, fulfilled.

Timeline?

This future is inevitable. The question now becomes are we 5, 10 or 50 years away from the seamless management of our health records?

Banks, banking... Do we love our banks? Hate them? Are we indifferent?

2009-10-07T18:25:00.000-07:00

Banks, banking, the business model at the very heart of the current financial crisis.

Do we love our banks? Hate them? Are we indifferent?

If we could customize a bank to serve us as we saw fit, what would we ask of the institution?

Me? I'd like my bank to be:

* a "community"

* a place where I knew the people who handled my money

* a place where I knew the people who banked there

I'd like my bank to offer me:

* a micro-loan function that I could participate in both as lender and/or borrower

* state-of-the art technologies: for example, I'd like my bank to enable me to pay for my bills with cell phone number.

* better credit/debt service--proactively

* ways to optimize my financial services and options.

This is just a getting started list...

What else could I ask of my bank if I had my druthers?

Taproot Project #3: The Volunteer Center site goes live

2009-07-29T09:14:00.001-07:00

Yippee!! Taproot project #3 (for me) goes live: new "Volunteer Center" of San Francisco web site is up! http://thevolunteercenter.net/

So Taproot, http://www.taprootfoundation.org/, has expanded into 10 different metros on the past 9 years or so. The "do-it-pro-bono" model has proven the most effective way to create immediate impact and lasting change within the non-profit community of any respective metro.

I couldn't be more proud of the teams that have executed on the Taproot grants. I was fortunate to be part of these crack teams as an account director.

These are the sites that have been taken live by grants executed by Taproot teams I have been part of:

Launched February 2007:
Blog post: http://greatamericanpinup.blogspot.com/2007/02/some-notes-on-year-in-trenches-building.html
Slide Ranch:
http://slideranch.org

Launched August 2008:
Blog post: http://greatamericanstartup.blogspot.com/2008/08/taproot-launches-friends-of-san.html
Friends of the San Francisco Public Library:
http://www.friendssfpl.org/

Launched July 2009:
The Volunteer Center:
http://thevolunteercenter.net/

Team is everything!

If I was not working with incredible teams these projects would not have happened. I consider myself "lucky." All I did was put together "pros" who knew what to do and got it done. I wish I could say that I had more to do with the success of the projects...but the reality is that the teams that built these sites did so despite their account director not because of him. :-)

Charlie Collins of Victory Farms

2009-01-28T15:48:00.001-08:00

Charlie Collins of Victory Farms, our family farmer, has been nominated to be the White House Farmer!

Please vote for Charlie Collins at http://tinyurl.com/bguwt2

Thank you!

New PhlooQ Stuff For Your Consideration

2008-11-10T09:10:00.000-08:00

We've done more work on PhlooQ and we're excited to share progress. To the left, you'll see the new PhlooQ widget (now available with green accents and the new logo.)

We've also tweaked the logos a bit and come up with a new phlooq.com page.

PhlooQ: Widget Winner

2008-10-23T09:30:00.001-07:00

After weighing in all of the pros and cons, a finalist has been selected. The PhlooQ team and the web community really gravitated towards the open, approachable look and feel of the widget above. Everyone found the "maybe state" a welcomed addition and also emphasized a strong desire for natural looking hands in lieu digital versions. We're happy with the overall direction. Next on the agenda, redesigning the website.

PhlooQ Widgets: Round 1

2008-10-13T11:19:00.000-07:00

Our first iteration of the PhlooQ widget is here and we'd love you to comment. In general, we'd attempted to translate the users' commitment to the event into a binary yes or no answer - but we're not clear if that's the right approach - perhaps we need to introduce a 'maybe' state?

View the widgets over at liftagency

Geek And Poke: Location Based Social Networking

2008-10-09T16:38:00.000-07:00

Geek And Poke: Location Based Social Networking

This is exactly what does NOT happen with PhlooQ.

PhlooQ: How The Widget Works Part II

2008-10-08T17:00:00.000-07:00

From a publisher standpoint, the PhlooQ widget works as illustrated above. The event publisher sends updates through PhlooQ to the attendees who can view it via one of the three PhlooQ widgets: the mobile widget, the web-based widget or through Facebook.

From the widget, the user can update their status, invite and chat with members or their social graph and register their interest in the event. From a PhlooQ system standpoint an update is sent to Facebook with links back to the event publisher's site.

Facebook interaction with PhlooQ happens at three levels; Updates in which PhlooQ updates Facebook with your status or comments, notifications sent through Facebook to your social graph (even to those who aren't PhlooQ users) and as an interface to the PhlooQ system.

PhlooQ: How It Works

2008-10-04T16:23:00.001-07:00

It's time for another PhlooQ update, and this time we're focusing on what makes PhlooQ work. We've got three illustrations that capture, at a high level, what the widget is comprised of, how the user interacts with it and what the widget does in response to the user interaction.

At its core PhlooQ is quite simple (from a user interaction standpoint) but there is complexity which comes in what makes it tick and what it does below the surface.

Two more illustrations over at liftagency.com

PhlooQ Identity

2008-10-02T13:41:00.000-07:00

Part of PlhooQ's coming out might be a new (or updated) Identity.. Or maybe not.. We've put together two options in addition to the original, and if you've got any ideas, please let us know - this should be a collaborative process.

So here's what we were thinking

We asked a few friends and family what they thought of the existing PhlooQ logo (the gray and orange one) and while no one had anything overly negative to say about it just about everyone thought the company was pronounced "Floo Cue" not "Fluke". We thought de-emphasizing the Q might be the correct approach.

We spoke with David about this and he explained why there was a large "Q" there in the first place; it looks a bit like a magnifying glass - the now universally accepted symbol for 'search' and 'explore' so we played with making the "Q" a more literal magnifying glass.

So What Do you Think?

So, do you think we're heading down a good path here? Even if these new logo concepts aren't perfect, are they an improvement, and what could we do to evolve them even more?

Next Up: The new PhlooQ widget - stay tuned!

FROM TARA HUNT: 2 SETS OF 10 COMMANDMENTS TO BECOME A BEACON IN THE MARKETPLACE (Plus 7 ways to embrace the chaos)

2008-10-02T10:31:00.000-07:00

Loved Tara Hunt's talk. Trying to embrace her thinking at PhlooQ and elsewhere. I did not catch all 5 of her larger messages but she did provide lists along the way that supported her talk. I captured a few of these lists here: 2 SETS OF 10 COMMANDMENTS TO BECOME A BEACON IN THE MARKETPLACE (Plus 7 ways to embrace the chaos...)

The ten commandments of listening to a social network conversation:

1. Listen to experts but design for novices...
2. What people want and what they say they want is very different...know the difference.
3. Thou shalt respond to feedback even when you need to say "No thanks."
4. Don't take negative feedback personally.
5. Give credit to people whose ideas you use or integrate.
6. Flag even small changes you make to alert your users...
7. Make small incremental iterative changes rather than hold off for big ones.
8. Realize simplest improvements make biggest improvements: button shape change, color change. A 10 pixel change can make all the difference.
9. Remove the corporate ego--its about them and their needs not you.
10. Avoid consensus. It guarantees mediocrity.

The ten commandments of creating great product experiences:

1. Pay close attention to details
2. Go above and beyond: Zappos looks at Virgin and goes beyond...
3. Appeal to emotion and nostalgia
4. Be a social catalyst: connect your customers to each other
5. Inject fun into your product
6. Experiment and be agile. Try little things all the time.
7. Turn banality into something fashionable: sexy toothpaste!
8. Design for flow! Think of "games" as a framing device.
9. Let people personalize. I am unique just like everyone else!
10. Make happiness your business model.

7 Ways to embrace the chaos:

1. Stop moving and look around until you see everything clearly
2. Transfer the knowledge: transparency produces better ideas from the marketplace
3. Every time you feel anxiety, acknowledge it
4. Define your own measure of success
5. Get outside of your personal circle
6. Realize that everything is out of your control
7. Have patience

Find your purpose: do well by doing good.

Some tips on where to look to find your purpose:
1. Try democratizing something...
2. Open it up...
3. Build bridges...
4. Spread love...
5. Value something bigger than yourself...

When I look ever these lists I can't help but I think PhlooQ can help others "maximize their social capital." Man, to be able to help people "listen," "create great experiences through engagement,"and to help people "build bridges & spread love"...now that would be going from (to twist an old term) "from good to great."

So now what?

LiftAgency + PhlooQ: Getting our bearings

2008-09-27T19:43:00.000-07:00

After about an hour's worth of discovery time, mostly spent hammering David with questions, we've sketched out how PhlooQ is going to function (and how we're going to communicate how it works visually). This is an important first step and one that often times is overlooked in the haste to bring a seemingly endless stream of web 2.0 products to market.

PhlooQ is deceptively simple.
Upon first glance PhlooQ may appear to be a bit uhhh.. complex. It features a mobile phone activation system, Facebook integration, phone call initiation as well as messaging directly from the widget screen and there is proposed future functionality that will extend even farther. Here's the thing though: at the end of the day PhlooQ actually simplifies event participation, network collaboration and communication through its unique approach. Interaction with the PhlooQ widget is seamless and requires little special instruction and that's why we think we're on to something here. It's simple and powerful and has the potential to make a real impact.

We're going to work on a sketch of the PhlooQ service offering and post it here soon, so stay tuned and tell us what you think.

SLIDE RANCH "Where the Bay Area Gets Down to Earth" NEEDS YOUR HELP

2008-09-26T13:33:00.000-07:00

Friends, family, colleagues, I am asking you to attend the Slide Ranch / Richard Louv Event as listed here at the Slide Ranch web site: http://www.slideranch.org/programs/events.html

Slide has pre-purchased 1000$ of tickets for this event that they need to sell in order to cover their costs.

They have not sold their quota and as a small non-profit even $1000 dollars can make a huge difference!

So, if you see this post, go to their events page and see the details of the Richard Louv event and "express interest" via the PhlooQ widget (the big Q) and this will spread the word to your social graph!

Or, just use this one:

Even better call them up and buy a ticket!

Richard Louv has written a great book and whether you have children or not the sentiment here is spot on for the moment. As the world seems to be in constant volatility around us: the financial mess, politics, the war, we forget that we are here on an earth that is infinitely beautiful and that our children need us to guide them to that beauty and connect them with it! This is core to the Slide Ranch mission and it is core to Richard Louv's book "Last Child in the Woods." Help Slide Ranch help children.

LIFT AGENCY TO BLOG ABOUT PHLOOQ WEB DESIGN PROJECT

2008-09-26T07:51:00.000-07:00

Lift Agency will be documenting their design project with PhlooQ. They have agreed to blog about their process, their progress, and the products they produce as they produce them.

You can see Lift Agency's first blog post about working with PhlooQ here: LiftAgency + PhlooQ: ...And We're Off!

This is pretty exciting! As we will be moving the site forward and sharing our progress in that regard as we go. This makes me giddy! To operate transparently is I think unusual--though likely not unique. I'll look to see how many other start-ups have put their process and progress out into the blogosphere.

This is an opportunity to engage partners, employees, customers and users in this movement forward. To engage with open ears as much as anything...sharing our trials and tribulations is really a desire to get the conversation started and keep the dialogue open!

I am so grateful for Lift Agency's desire to participate in this transparency with PhlooQ!

LiftAgency + PhlooQ: ...And We're Off!

2008-09-25T18:02:00.000-07:00

As David mentioned in his post yesterday, our design firm liftagency llc will be working with PhlooQ to do a new user interface and appearance, and we're taking the extra step of sharing the process with anyone who cares to participate.

A Bit About liftagency

We like to consider ourselves a different type of design firm and one that has firmly embraced the web 2.0 communication methodology of rapid access to information - even if it's not 100% perfect. We've worked on a number of interface projects and been involved with re-designs of all sizes and scales and we are excited to be working with PhlooQ. Onward and upward.

Our Process As It Pertains To PhlooQ

The first step in this, and any, successful design project is to completely understand the scope of the project and to this end we'll be doing a working session with the PhlooQ team in which we hope to build out some sketches of the final product - we'll call this 'step one', and once we've got something visual to share with the team, we'll post it for the world to see.

Next, we'll develop a series of interaction maps (wireframes) which will represent the components we'll be building out - this step will allow us to finalize the position of each interaction point (buttons, fields etc..)

The third step has us delivering fully realized graphical compositions which will form the basis for the new PhlooQ, and we're going to be excited to get your reactions.

Be sure to stop by this blog, and liftagency.com for further details as we document the entire process.

PRODUCT DESIGN BASED ON BUYER FEEDBACK: PHLOOQ TO IMPLEMENT GREENMOMS.COM UI SUGGESTIONS

2008-09-25T11:38:00.000-07:00

The smartest product builders in the world are not smarter than the marketplace. Sometimes the marketplace takes innovation and drives into places one would never expect. Sometimes the marketplace explains to you the small refinements that will make ALL the difference.

GREENMOMS.COM will be going live later this fall. We love the social responsibility, green, and community space. This sector of the Web publishing space is DYNAMIC. The publishers are going wild getting up sites and organizing events and announcing get togethers. For this reason we love that Janice Solimeno & Melinda MacNaughton the co-founders of GREENMOMS will be going live with PhlooQ's widget on their events page!

As she has worked toward implementation on her site we have been getting great product direction from her. So I wanted to share what a perfect customer behaves like! The kind of customer a start-up piloting its technology in the marketplace loves! We started our conversation when she was playing around with the widget. She had her own clear idea of how her user's are likely to react to the sign up and use model.

In the following section I am posting an edited transcript of our communication. Note how credible her commentary is because she has moved well beyond the "getting what PhlooQ" does stage. She is deep into how the value of PhlooQ needs to be pulled into alignment with how her audience will feel when they use it. She is making detailed refinements for her user base that will ultimately translate into a far superior experience for all PhlooQ users.

I publish the following with the permission of Janice Solimeno and Greenmoms.com in case you were wondering.

Begin edited transcript between PhlooQ and Greenmoms.com:
______________________

DAVID:

Okay so in the widget you don't like that we ask you for your cell number (and we don't indicate that its is optional -- though you feel we should). I get that. You also don't like the way the Add Facebook button looks because it doesn't say what you are adding Facebiook to. That makes sense to me.

You mentioned you had to "re-enter" the widget. This wll happen on occasion. The reason you have to re-enter could be one of many reasons: change of computer, change of browser, no use of a PhlooQ widget in a day or so between expressing interest, a cleared cache, etc...

While we are talking, how would you change the interface? How would you indicate the phone # is optional without making it too easy for people to skip? How would you implement the Add Facebook button so that it was clear you were Adding Facebook contacts to PhlooQ?

JANICE:

You got the main points just fine. As for what I'd address in the interface...

a. Easiest thing to do about the phone number (these are all and/or - do some or all):
1. just write "optional" in teeny letters to the right of the box or just under it, or "optional - may enter any 10 digit unique numerical ID"
2. add a "why my phone number" clickable text - open another small info window explaining all about how the ph # is used)
3. add in teeny letters near the box "to be used as your unique ID, not to share" or some such thing

b. For the Adding Facebook Button:
1. add a "what's this" clickable text - open another small info window explaining all about what's going to happen). In general I think you guys would benefit from having something on this popup screen where you could click and get more info about "What's "Q" or "What's PhlooQ" or "What's This?". The first exposure anyone might have to the service/function is a big Q near an event. That's it. The curious will click it. Then the reaction will likely be, "Huh? What is this and why are they asking for my phone number and getting me on Facebook"?

2. Change button label from ADD FACEBOOK - to something like CONNECT TO FACEBOOK or LINK FACEBOOK FRIENDS or (if you're eventually going to hook up to other piles of friends per your product roadmap) LINK TO YOUR FRIENDS or MEET UP WITH FRIENDS or HOOKUP WITH FRIENDS ... some kind of indication that this Q is going to associate events you're interested in with talking to your "friends" to see if they want to hookup at the place (I realize there is limited space for text...you could change the grammar: FRIENDS MEETUP, FRIENDS CONNECTION, FRIENDS HOOKUP...you get the idea).

DAVID:

Thanks so much for this. We will shuttle this over to Product and start looking at synthesizing these suggestions with the changes we already had in the pipe.

JANICE:

You are welcome. One last thought...

reading again about how the "Q" might be the only indicator of "do something with this event", you might want to consider naming the service and have that be identifiable under/near the Q - the Q itself may not be enough to get someone to click it. Like with "Share this", they have a visual identifier (the tinkertoy like icon or graph theory icon, depending upon your level of nerdiness) as well as text SHARE THIS. I got it immediately. I have no idea what the Q is for except once I know what your company's name is. But if you want to keep the Q maybe....

Q Q Q
Event Hookup Event Meetup Event Connection

Or some such...

DAVID:

Wow thanks again! Got it. Likely to just put rollover text on the Q but will see what the guys think about adding text beneath the Q. Recognition is a short term problem but until it is no longer a problem the text may very well be the right formula!
______________________

PHLOOQ CHOOSES LIFT AGENCY: LIFT BLOG

2008-09-24T09:09:00.000-07:00

After much deliberation (and drawing out my decision to wait for late-coming proposals): we have chosen Michael Baumert's Lift Agency as our Web design firm.

Lift will be blogging about their process as they engage with us in the transformation of our skeleton site into a Web site that fits the needs of Publishers who come to our page looking for a social engagement widget to massively increase the connection between their visitors and the site.

I'll be keeping an eye on: http://www.liftagency.com/lifthome/ and be cross-linking when it makes sense.

Also, we'll be looking for votes and commentary on what you like and don't like as we forge ahead.

Rock-and-Roll!

PHLOOQ :: EVALUATING DESIGN FIRMS :: THE FINAL 3

2008-09-22T19:21:00.000-07:00

I have spent the last week interviewing and soliciting proposals from design firms to design a Web site for PhlooQ (see http://phlooq.com).

The last few posts included some of the dimensions of what I am looking for in a design team for PhlooQ's web site. (A team that will ultimately drive the interfaces of the widgets, the ads we develop, and the brand identity in general.)

I may choose a firm and then decide to change creative direction but I'd prefer to find a design team that PhlooQ can grow with and keep as a partner over the long haul.

The dimensions that I talked about were:

1. Flexibility of mind

2. Ability to understand what we do, where we are, and where we are going

3. Demonstrated design capability

4. Affection for the team

5. Cost

6. Responsiveness

&

7. Risk taking

I called out #7 in my last post about "chickenshit." Everyone is a critic and these types will tell you what they don't like but they can't tell you what they would do instead. They won't risk putting their own ideas out there. My last post was focused on those folks who will tell you what they don't like but can't or won't tell you what they want to see.

These contributors fall into the people you hire to complain to you...they will tell you all that is wrong and wait around for you to give them another idea to complain about. They revel in the self-satisfaction of telling you that yet again another idea is bad or wrong. These folks wait around until you give them the safest, least common denominator idea: an idea so basic that they can't find a complaint about it. And then they encourage you to execute on that!

I want a design firm (and friends, and partners, and colleagues, and even customers) who will upgrade the quality of their complaints to constructive suggestions for improvement. I am interested in people who take the time to walk through the thought exercise of asking themselves, "I don't like this for this reason, okay so why is that? And now that I know why I don't like it, I can actually explain how this might be done better!"

I am looking for a design firm that is an endless fountain of ideas for improvement--I mean, I know when the UI sucks. I want you to create a solution that I didn't think of--I don't want to sit around and tell you all the ways it can be better and then watch you copy down my thinking and spit it back to me.

I've spent the last few days uncovering my own thinking about hiring a design firm. I have made transparent my flaws and my predispositions...I have narrowed the field down to three firms:

Skona
Kasman/Squillante
Lift

Skona: http://www.skona-advertising.com

Skona had the team I really felt akin to. There was something about their vibe that I bought into. Plus I love the demonstrated design skill from their Meyer Sound ad campaign. The "real" quality that is part of their Voice won me over. I was not so impressed with the Web sites they did. I felt like they had a decent idea of what we did though they did not request to connect with me on Facebook. That said the vibe was good and the way they talk about committing to an effort until a client is satisfied was great.

Kasman/Squllante: http://www.ksgraphic.com/

This pair probably had the highest pure design skill of any firm I looked at. Their minimalist approach was almost showy in how it made apparent their design skill. The way they think through the design problems they have solved is worth highlighting. I like these two very much! ...but felt like I would have to work on "connecting" with them. I also felt they were very deliberate and the kind of time pressure I might put on them could really squirrel the relationship.

Lift: http://liftagency.com

This group demonstrated the greatest flexibility of mind. The dynamic mind of the lead designer, Baumert, was impressive...as he seemed to think fast and react quickly. Every idea I tossed out he responded to and built on in a way I was hoping one might--with a twist or two I had not thought of! He is on Facebook and RSVP'd to the PhlooQ meetup event in Foster City (see http://phlooq.com). Also his demonstrated design skill is top notch. I liked the Dislocated Clothing part of his portfolio. Also, his proposal had cool surprises in it-- a risk taker!

Tomorrow? The winner!

CHICKENSHITS: MORE ABOUT MY THINKING WHEN IT COMES TO CHOOSING A DESIGN FIRM

2008-09-20T15:46:00.000-07:00

Generally speaking Silicon Valley has the rap of being a place where experimentation and innovation have deep roots. A place where we will try anything and have fun doing it.

Unfortunately in my experience over the last decade that is more of pleasant self-delusion than the real character of the place. Our true nature is that we behave according to smalltown backwater politics. We operate with cronyism and fear as our primary driver of our decisions.

Don't get me wrong, we love our own ideas (but hate everyone else's). We are great critics! But we are actually horrible early adopters. But this is what gives SV start-ups a Darwinian edge. If you can succeed in place where most people make themselves feel good by dissing other people's ideas (before they try and steal them for themselves) your edge is pretty sharp.

Consider that most start-ups face an environment where most of the investors, businesses, and pundits are so incredibly chickenshit that unless they are paid 10k and see their 5 closest friends doing it they are not going to touch a new idea with a ten foot pole.

The pleasant part of this is that great ideas and products will succeed in broader markets if they can succeed in our myopic subculture. And here I am, a deep part of our little backwater where we pretend to take risks. But most of us, really, are all huddled around the card table of our little ideas ever afraid the big bad wolf is going to come and blow our house down.

I have met dozens of entrepreneurs who have crushed their own ideas by locking them in a box under their beds, ever afraid this guy or that guy or this business or that investor is going to steal their oh so brilliant idea. They are chickenshit. Chickenshit of failure.

Chickenshit their idea wasn't really that good in the first place. Those other businesses the entrepreneur was afraid of? They are chickenshit too...and if they do steal your idea that behavior will come around and crush them in the end anyways. Those investors you are so afraid of that are going to take a struggling portfolio business and make them execute on your idea--they are chickenshit too.

So for better or worse as I push PhlooQ's engagement widget into the marketplace I have decided I will not act like a chickenshit nor will I do business with people who are chickenshit. This means that I am interested in people from the design firm I am choosing, to the investors we connect with, to the publishers we engage with, I will not operate as if the sky is falling.

I have gotten more email in the past few days from tire kickers than I care to deal with. If you really want to implement PhlooQ's widget I can turn a widget over to you in a few minutes but if all you want to do is talk, and talk, and talk some more--please move on.

At PhlooQ we are moving toward a self service model. In the next iteration, publishers will just login, push a few buttons and have customized PhlooQ code and widget for their site. In this way those who really want to implement PhlooQ's social engagement widget can do so quickly and on demand. Then chickenshits will have no reason to call me at all! Wahoo!

This does not mean PhlooQ does not want to provide every possible piece of information you need in order to implement. On the contrary, we want to be completely transparent in our process. So not only will we answer all the questions you need to feel comfortable with an implementation, but we will even implement for you on your behalf for free!

The implementation of a widget involves 2 steps. One placing a script source tag in the header of your pages and then dropping 75 characters or so of HTML into the place where you want the widget and you are done. Want a second widget for your site? Change one value of one parameter (and you can automate this) and you have a second widget...and so forth.

I have a self-image that I carry around that I fit this Serial Entrepreneur mold. Perhaps I am delusional but I am, for better or worse, typical ( if one can use that word ). I am a geek who graduated from one of the geekiest of schools: Carnegie Mellon. I watch Project Runway. I dive with great white sharks, love skiing and snowboarding and art. I buy in when the market is down. I watch the UFC. And I am constantly generating new ideas for products and helping other entrepreneurs execute on such ideas. I have spent alot of time around alot of people who take risk and make it work. And I have spent too much time around people who claim to be entrepreneurs and risk takers but have never actually taken any risks.

So how does this apply to choosing a design firm? I did not explicitly include "willingness to take risks" in the dimensions of my decision making in my last post. But I should have. I don't believe the willingness to take risk means be "flamboyant." Sometimes, the riskiest thing to do is be reserved and minimalist. That said if I perceive people I work with as assurance seekers, as people disinterested in really taking risk in a project,that will count against them.

I am not a one issue voter--so if I sense a design firm is risk averse this will not eliminate them from contention. But it won't help.

A little self-examination: do you "think" you are a risk taker or are you really a risk taker?

PHLOOQ AND THE LATE ENTRANTS INTO THE DESIGN FRAY

2008-09-19T16:21:00.000-07:00

My intention for today's post was to layout the dimensions of my decision-making criteria for choosing a design firm for PhlooQ's Web site and to then announce my decision.

PhlooQ will be taking its social engagement widget (see phlooq.com for an example) out to market with a group of publishers over the next 30-60 days. Before we do this we need to create a Web site that represents to publishers the value of what we do, how we do it, and even issue them a dare to see how far they can take PhlooQ's widget.

The widget and the basic metrics service behind the widget are free...so publishers are welcome to make a request for a widget for as wide ranging of a purpose as they can imagine. Quite frankly, the crazier the implementation the better!

Anyways, as I was laying out the dimensions for evaluating Skona, BayCreative, and Kasman/Squillante I received three additional requests to submit a proposal from firms that want to take a crack at the site. Lift Agency and Square2 have now entered the fray. And there is one more firm that looks like they may submit a proposal as well.

I've given all of these design firms our value proposition, one page summary, and backgrounder material. I've also run them through the Widget experience and other demos. So they all know what we are up to...

But no decision will get made today...

That does not stop me from laying out my thinking. In my decision making process I will be looking at in order the following dimensions:

1. My belief in the flexibility and dexterity of the mind's sitting across the table from me. Essentially I have to believe the group I am working with is smarter than me in as many ways as possible when it comes to developing our Web site.

2. My belief the people doing the work are capable of the creative thinking required to wrap a unique offering like PhlooQ into a design/offering that is both organic to PhlooQ and yet brings real eye-opening value to its brand, product, and experience.

3. My estimation of the record of demonstrated design skill and my affection for the design work of the group. If you rock, you rock! If I have to guess at what I might get or if I feel their is risk that what I might get will not sync with team, product, market, publishers and users then my estimation of capability in this dimension will be reduced. Think of this as the design team having a Voice I trust.

4. How I feel about the people...the vibe. This is #4 on my list...not a top priority because I can tell you that just because I like some one there is no guarantee they will perform. In fact often affinity with a contractor has led me astray. I cut people I "like" more slack and do not hold them to my typically high standards. Hiring a contract team is not the same as building an internal team. Building an internal team requires the highest of capability but also requires some dimension of camaraderie. Even then capability has to be there. Wow...what I mean is that I can't discount that I like some people more than others when I meet them. This will come into play when making a decision. Especially if this effort works out and I want t do more work with the firm.

5. What the cost of the project will be will come into play. While a difference on a proposal of a few grand here or there in most companies won't make difference, in the world of the start-up it always does. All things being equal or near equal...budget then becomes the driver. That said, no one wants to pay for an effort they don't believe in. So I will initially eliminate proposals based on higher priority criteria and then, of course, it comes down to price.

6. Speed...baby...baby speed. How fast, without compromising quality do I believe this firm will figure out what we do and get us moving towards a completed site? If I sense a firm thinks of a 60 day window as "too short" then I get the heeby jeebies. I need high intensity responsiveness without compromising any of the dimensions I established in 1-5. Think of this as having the requisite fidelity for my needs at all the right times.

Okay so there you go...the 6 dimensions of decison making criteria I will use for engaging with a designer on the PhlooQ.com Web site.

A couple of questions:

What dimensions/criteria did miss?

What did I miss that are a part of these dimensions?

PHLOOQ IS VETTING DESIGN FIRMS (http://phlooq.com)

2008-09-18T16:23:00.000-07:00

As a start-up there is always a trade off between how much time and money you invest in your look and feel versus what you invest in honing your product, technology and the value of that technology to your market. At PhlooQ we invested all of our efforts into product and made no effort to hone the site or brand of the company.

So here we are signing up partners, rolling the product into the marketplace...and we have no Web presence.

As a backgrounder, PhlooQ offers online publishers a free service to massively increase the engagement between their Web site and their visitors through social engagement ads and social engagement widgets. (if you want to see it in action go to http://phlooq.com and click on the Q).

In short the PhlooQ service can draw a visitor's entire social graph to a web site. For a single visitor with a social graph of 100 people publishers should expect to have their site marketed to 1,000 new potential visitors.

Here is how it works, the publishers places the free widget aside an event, a venue, or location and when the visiting user clicks on the widget the user can see who they know that might be going to the same event, venue or location.

The system then sends a message to the visitor's entire social graph letting their social graph know that they are interested in the venue, event, or location. If anyone in their social graph clicks on the link in the message the link will bring them to the publisher's site. And once they engage with the widget, the cycle repeats itself.

The system also sends the widget with the list of people at or nearby your place, event, or venue of interest to your cell phone. This way you can just look down at your cell phone to see who is at or near the event you're attending.

The system both on the Web and on your phone lets you click to call people in your social graph, text them if they are fellow widget users, and send them a notification to their social network if they are not users of the PhlooQ widget.

Also of use to the user is the Widget's built in mechanism for broadening your view of your social graph. Sometimes no one you know will be going to the same exact event as you -- so the Widget lets you look for fellowship in the local neighborhood, community, zip code, city area, or region. This means you can send a quick note or even call someone to go with you to somewhere you want to go.

For the publisher PhlooQ provides engagement reports and analytics and also provides ways for them to reach out to Widget users to make them offers of goods and services that are hypertargeted to their specific venue or neighborhood.

The publisher's job used to be--"get the eyeballs to my site." Now with PhlooQ the game changes--as we enable publishers to bring a visitor's entire social graph to their sites, without being intrusive. In fact, this mechanism for being the semantic expression of the user's interests creates a natural flow of the user's social graph that makes the users thankful for the link back to the publisher.

In some ways this is the holy grail of advertisement: for a fan of the publisher to automatically recommend their interests from whatever they do across the Web and across the "real" world to their friends--and have their friends thankful for the recommendation!

Here is a quick narrative that might help:

The event promoter for the Rock-n-Roll Cafe adds the PhlooQ widget to his Web site where he lists his schedule of events. As people visit his site they click on the widget titled “See who's going?” Each individual as they add the widget in a one-click sign-up now messages all of their friends. For example if a user named Brian signs up, PhlooQ sends a feed to all 237 of Brian's friends that “Brian is going to the Rock-n-Roll Cafe.”

For Brian, as he signs into the Rock-n-Roll Cafe widget he sees a list of people from his social network who are going to the Cafe. From within the widget he can call them or text them. If he sees friends nearby he can invite those friends to the Rock-n-Roll Cafe as well.

Additionally PhlooQ aggregates all of his affinities in a widget in his social network's interface--the Rock-N-Roll Cafe gets listed with his other affinities. In this way he can have his interests aligned with people he is connected to so he can easily connect with them. Lastly right on time, every time, PhlooQ sends a link to his mobile phone or iPhone so he can see a list of people associated with the experience right there in place, in the moment.

Okay so I am currently talking with several design groups that have made the first cut. I interviewed a dozen or so folks I was interested in having build our Web presence and then solicited proposal from the following groups: Kasman/Squillante, Bay Creative, and Skona. There may be one or two more groups that end up getting a chance to submit a proposal, as I'm still vetting a few others.

What I can say is that I have a good feeling about the three design firms I am currently vetting. They are all so different in their personality but in different ways I am enamored with each of their approaches. In my next post I'll chat a bit about my experience vetting the proposals. The budget is tight, the need for quality is high and time is running out! We are going live with a dozen or so publishers in the next 30-60 days so the work has to be done one way or the other!

Social Media and Social Engagement Top of Mind for CMOs

2008-09-06T21:51:00.000-07:00

I recently attended the Aberdeen CMO conference to get a feel for where CMOs are at with regards social media at large and social engagement advertising in particular.

The event keynote was "Paul DePodesta, the former General Manager of the L.A. Dodgers and now Special Assistant for Baseball Operations for the San Diego Padres." He was profiled in the bestselling book "Moneyball" and celebrated as "a baseball operations wunderkind." My key takeaway from DePodesta was that bad process can get you good results -- and this is the worst case scenario because it misleads the future of the organization. Constant and never-ending evaluation improvement to process by asking the question "If we didn't have to do it the way we are doing it, if we could do it right, how would we be doing it?"

I was fortunate, the 600$ event came to me free compliments of Taproot (see: Taproot Foundation.org). Taproot is a volunteer-based organization many local techies like myself contribute time to in order to support local non-profits.

The speakers I listened to were:
* Cathy Halligan, CMO, Walmart.com
* Patrice Varni, VP of Marketing, Levi’s
* Sylvia Reynolds, CMO, Wells Fargo
* Scott Ballantyne, Vice President of Consumer Direct at Hewlett Packard
* Pablo Azar, VP Marketing Strategy and Consumer Insights ALLSTATE
* Stephan Chase, VP Customer Knowledge, Marriott
* Denise Shiffman, Marketing Strategist, Speaker and Author Engage Daily Blog

There were many memorable moments. There was Cathy Halligan's call out of The Share This with Friends button--she implied the smallest part of her site might be one of the most important. There was Patrice Varni's slide illustrating how the Project Runway integrated media marketing campaign in conjunction with Projekt 501 created a new marketplace for women and Levis--women went from buying 50$ jeans in low volume to buying stylized Levis jeans in high volume at 70$ a pair. This was an unanticipated result their Project 501--perhaps the most elaborate user generated content / social media play in all of the Fortune 5000.

There was Sylvia Reynold's assertion: "If you aren't in social media you are fooling yourself because your customers have already taken you there." The implication is that if you aren't interfacing your integrated marketing into the social marketing space your customers are already there talking about you, your products and your services--with you. So you might as well be part of the conversation.

There was Chase asserting that Aristotle not Web 2.0 invented CRM. Aristotle places the value of relationships in three strata. 1. I like you because I have use of you (lowest level) 2. I like you because it is a pleasure to be with you. 3. I like you because we have mutual regard for each other: I want what is best for you and you want what is best for me. An interesting frame within which to operate a customer experience management analytics group!

Then there was Azar who had boiled down the entire marketing department to a page actuarial function. Azar's modeling group had figured out how to frame every marketing effort into an actuarial summary that gave the Marketing Program's value to the organization in real dollars. In fact even non-metric and non-operationalized efforts such as social media can have their % budget allocation factored into the marketing mix.

Perhaps the highlight of the show was Ballantyne's Irish brogue rippling through the auditorium explaining how Buzz Works took the HP Dragon from a floundering flagship laptop to screaming success in the marketplace and in the CFO's office. Using a social media campaign focused on a series of conversation between bloggers in the PC blogging community Buzz Works helped Ballantyne double the sales of the flailing product line.

Denise Shiffman provide a ho hum but validating discussion of her book: "The Age of Engage." Her thesis is that the social marketing space is moving toward models of engagement. Every piece of the marketing mix has to engage with the customer in a conversation that feels like an authentic conversation about what the customer is interested in. The conversation needs to not be between you and your customer--the conversation needs to be between a customer and their friends or trusted advisors in the market place.

Surveys at the show and elsewhere have shown that we make our decisions: where to go, what to buy, who to connect with in well over 60% of the time based on what our friends, family, and social relationships say to us.

The highest level takeaway of social marketing from this CMO event is this:

If marketers want to be successful they have to find a way to remain authentic and become the topic of conversation in and amongst their customer's social graph without forcing their way in. Be trusted, be present but don't interrupt, be automatic but personal, be the topic of conversation but leave the conversation to others.

All of this adds up to opportunity for start-ups. Who can provide an organization a way to make use of their customers visits by accessing their social graph and then becoming a key conversation in and amongst that social graph. Who can then spiral from that one customer's social graph outward into the conversation of all the social graphs of all that customer's friends? Who can help marketers engage and re-engage with customers in an authentic way while at the same time exponentially expanding the marketplaces encounter with their customer's conversation? Who can convert word of mouth to word of net?

Start-ups are emerging in the engagement space--this space of engagement widgets, and engagement ads, semantic web and location sensitive conversations will bring the holy grail to the castle of the marketer. Start-ups will afford marketers to offer the right product, at the right time, to the right people, at the right place, in the right psychological, financial and behavioral context. This will be a space to watch this next year and half.

Taproot Launches Friends of the San Francisco Public Library Web Site...

2008-08-01T09:14:00.000-07:00

Health, wealth, excellence, abundance, and joy are the 5 key precepts that I remind myself to focus on every day.

Service to the community has always been a significant dimension of my life. What I disliked about service was that many service opportunities asked me to volunteer time doing tasks I was not good at or tasks that any one could do. I always felt like I could give more to my causes if I could give my causes the full value of my skills.

For example instead of donating a book to the local library wouldn't they be better served by me if I could help them raise awareness of their services and their programs by building them a new Web site or new Brand campaign?

But I didn't think there was any mechanism for me to volunteer my marketing, business, and technology acumen to such places. That was until I found Taproot, where we "do it pro bono."

Today, we launched the second Web grant project I have volunteered to guide. I am an account director/grant manager for Taproot and I lead the development, design, build and launch of Advanced Website grants for Taproot.

The first Taproot project I was involved with was the Slide Ranch web site: http://slideranch.org/news where I acted as Grant Manager / Account Director. At Taproot I acted as the Grant Manager/Account Director for the Slide Ranch Advanced Website Grant. Slide Ranch, “Where the Bay Area Gets Down to Earth,” provides outdoor education programs focused on re-connecting students to where food and clothing come from. For the Slide Ranch Advanced Website Grant I built a 7 person team consisting of a Marketing Manager, Copy Writer, Web Designer, Web Programmer, Account Director, Slide Ranch Liaison, and the Executive Director of Slide Ranch.

This team based on the pro-bono model developed an advanced Web site executing on the Taproot process. The Taproot process includes steps such as a project plan, time line, requirements docs, design directions, wire frames, beta site, and go live.

Live today, the second Taproot project is the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library web site: http://www.friendssfpl.org/ or http://www.friendsandfoundation.org/. The Friends of the San Francisco Public Library is a legendary local non-profit serving the Bay area's entire chain of local libraries. I felt it was a great honor to be of service to this incredible organization. For this project our team ebbed and flowed. We lost members of the team to disease, car accidents, pregnancy, and job changes. During the development of the site I saw two companies fold, my mother died, and I divorced my wife. But some how the remaining team of myself, Civiane Chung, David Balmer, and Natalie Thompson stuck it out and finished the project.

Here are the credits: http://www.friendsandfoundation.net/?Credits listing the team.

My joy at completing this second Taproot project is quite deep. The investment by the volunteers, in sum, by both current team members and by ex-team members is well over 400 hours of work. Considering the size of the Friends site and considering the variability in the project, I couldn't be more proud of this team's accomplishment.

Interested in donating your technical, business, or marketing skills to local non-profits in need? Check out http://taprootfoundation.org.

Interested in your local library and the programs they run? Check out http://www.friendssfpl.org/

Fighting the good fight....

2008-07-28T10:27:00.000-07:00

In a start-up we often get a diligent board and a passionate CEO. A less common situation is a passionate board and a diligent CEO. In both cases in start-ups the vision of the company is driven, necessarily, by people with blinders on. They essentially have tossed away any disbelief in their approach to their vision.

My question is in about how to amend such a vision when the team of a start-up realizes the board and CEO are barking up the wrong tree?

Whether you are the head of engineering or the head of sales or any other such team member -- if you begin to see that the direction of the start-up has not been set correctly how can you alert leadership and help them course correct without getting fired or being considered a drag on the business?

I've seen several attempts at this and the ability of the wheel house of the company to hear the sounds coming from the engine room is often lacking.

So how does a QA Director or a VP of Sales or such a team member open the ear of the board? In a team of ten or so people one would think this would never be an issue and yet I see time and time again the engine room conversation is never heard? Is this a structural defect in start-ups that can't afford to hear about their own potential flaws? Is it a necessary evil of the hard charging all steam ahead nature of a start-up? When is a course correction too late? Or is it never too late?

These are the kinds of questions I think teams in start-ups often face. Questions that usually don't or can't get answered.

The odds...

2008-07-14T18:01:00.001-07:00

Once upon a time when I was thinking about growing up to be a serial entrepreneur I heard the following:

"One in a 100 start-ups get to the seed funding stage. One in hundred of those get to a Series A. One in a hundred of those that get a Series A or a Seed round get a Series B or an exit..."

This was followed by "One in 10,000 start-ups get to a public offering..."

A sane person would say that these odds suck.

I, of course, said, I like those odds. I am not unlike many of the extreme skiing, surfing, shark-diving entrepreneurs who believe the long odds make ourselves the favorite. I am amongst a large crew of start-up guys who believe the world conspires in our favor when the odds are longest. I actually believe that the odds tilt in my favor because I am involved. If the typical odds for a "normal" entrepreneur are 1:100 then I believe the odds for ME are more like 1:5.

From my experience with others in the start-up arena this prospect of success despite the odds is a common thread. For some it is their belief in their intelligence, or their technical acumen...for others it is their belief in how they read the marketplace...for still others it is their belief that they can sell anything...and for still others they believe they can build great teams and great teams can do anything. Whatever it is that the serial entrepreneur brings to the table they think they bring it in spades.

Old Stuff that is cool that still hasn't been built...

2008-07-09T12:31:00.000-07:00

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6877137.html

One of the patents I worked on at a doomed start-up called Aurigin is now out there in the free patent universe. I believe alot of the ideas once "pending patent" are worthy of review. If I was in a sector and starting a new technology business I would at least window shop the world of expired and untended IP.

For example this piece of IP: System, method and computer program product for mediating notes and note sub-notes linked or otherwise associated with stored or networked web pages
is still a very interesting consumer service.

At the time we called it codename WEBSTER because you could surf anywhere annotate anything, share the links and annotations with anyone. Very fun, social browsing stuff...but in 1998...in an enterprise start-up focused on Pharma and Chemical the idea of a consumer service as a marketing function for the business was considered beyond stupid.

Of course in hindsight, WEBSTER was the future and the core business a dead end.

6 Million Dollars Later...

2008-06-26T10:26:00.000-07:00

When I was at AvantGo some 8 years ago I worked for a VP of Services that always thought big. His mantra was "go big or go home."

I was struck by the boldness of the approach and seduced by its grandiosity. What promises of success and wealth were contained in the claim! Typically, as with this VP, the claim is laced with additional baggage that results in an organization trying to do too much at once in too little time.

There at AvantGo I think the the "too much" was the attempt to build out an application suite AND create an enterprise platform AND create a profitable consumer service as disconnected businesses--each with their own P&L.

The key lesson I have learned from the series of 5 or so start-ups that I have been involved with is that you can "go big" (in fact it is a requirement of the vision of any investor backed effort) but you must focus on a core proposition. If you have more than one core proposition when you are a Seed or Series A stage start-up then you have too many propositions and you are unfocused. I have actually found that it is impossible for a start-up to be too focused. Often people see two risks--being unfocused or being too focused. Yet 95% of the time the problem is being not focused enough. So are there really two equal risks?

At TailWind, a small company I founded, my engineering group thought it was a joke to refine the thinking of the business down to one value proposition. They dismissed the idea of the business having a culture of accountability and aligning around a core principle.

This is not uncommon. Most engineering groups get through the day on a steady diet of sarcasm and irony. The nature of most software engineers is to be skeptical, uncommitted and critical because these are easy attitudes to stay safe behind. When engineers feel a greater need to stay safe and cynical behind their critical eye this is a sure sign they are reluctant to commit to success. This is a sure sign the start-up is getting off on the wrong foot.

This attitude is often the result of bad experiences. So its manifestation is often not the individual engineer's dysfunction as too many leaders have insisted to them the business must "go big or go home" resulting in thrash of engineers, their teams, and their efforts. This especially happens when go big translates into a lack of focus that seems more like a call to action to "boil the ocean."

When I have been successful with the start-ups I have been involved with is when we have aligned the culture of our start-up team around some basic ideas.

The first is that all involved, everyone, no one excepted has to buy in to the shared vision of the business and the product that will start the business toward that vision.

The second is that all involved, no one excepted, has to buy into a way of going about the business with explicitly agreed to principles of how we treat each other and how we keep communication flowing through and organization. Some simple examples of this are a) the one up one down method of sending email (there are no 1 to 1 communications in a business of three or more people) b) ask don't tell (inquire rather than dictate).

Thirdly, is that all involved have to desire to make meaningful commitments, on a daily basis, to the vision of the business. That is to say ambiguity, noncommittal attitudes, ambivalence are attitudes that hurt a business as much or even worse than attitudes of spite or disdain. At least with spite and disdain everyone is aware of the position of the person who holds the attitude. With ambiguity, ambivalence and non-committal attitudes they appear to not do any harm and they whitewash the energy of the business.

Theses gray attitudes substitute wishy-washiness in place of clarity, insouciance in place of progress, ignorance in place of accountability. I am surprised at how high a % of my experiences at both start-ups and established businesses are populated with people that prefer lack of clarity and unrequested commitment. From my observations this preference happens unwittingly. Leaders and teams alike seem to agree they won't uncover what they really need to do. I always look to create or be part of a group that can make a commitment to a vision then commit to what they will do that day, that week, that month, that quarter--and then they make every effort to to get it done.

THE FOUR STEPS MY MOTHER'S RAMP WOULD ASCEND

2007-10-25T10:51:00.000-07:00

Some people might be thinking I am asking for some massive ramp ascending a giant hill...not so. Some people might think we are asking to remove Giant Oak Trees and Huge Retaining Walls. Take a look for yourself...

Below is the picture of the fours steps my mother's temporary ramp would ascend:

The ramp, to have the gentlest rise and not be a ski slope, needs to run from the far right up to the far left. This 28 feet allows for an ADA compliant slope that canot be achieved any other way.

Here are the drawings for the temporary ramp:

This all started with my post Tuesday, October 23, 2007 The Cruelest Community: Disabled Breast Cancer Victim Denied Access to her own Home by Reston Association

MY UNSENT RESPONSE TO THE RESTON ASSOCIATION'S REQUEST FOR ADDITIONAL MATERIALS

2007-10-25T10:35:00.000-07:00

Below are thye responses that I wanted to send to the request for additional materials from the Reston Association wackos...

Plat or site plan, drawn to scale, showing how the ramp will relate to the property lines.

I am now in California, my mother is in a hospital bed in Manor Care. I'm sure she will leap to her feet and rush back to her house that she can't get into and find those plats. Oh wait...aren't they on file at the county?

Let me know when you have gone down to the county offices and retrieved those plans and made them part of the proposal!
____________________________________
Elevation drawing of the front of the ramp including the front of the house.

Yea.Right.
____________________________________
Picture of the front right corner of the property where the proposed landing flush with the sidewalk will be located.

See picture 4. Or go see an optometrist.

____________________________________

Plan of removal of the front retaining wall.

Oh, that six inches? Dynamite. Heavy explosives. Most definitely.
____________________________________

Request for approval to remove the two trees in the front yard if the ramp will be installed in their place (our records show that there were two large trees in the front yard in 1997 that have since been removed without approval. I'm assuming that the two small maples are their replacement?)

I wasn't around ten years ago but it is my understanding they were both struck by lightning simultaneously and destroyed. The local cluster then asked that they be removed. But this is just what I was told by a neighbor.
____________________________________

Color of the railing: painted to match the siding? Left to weather naturally?

We will paint the railings alternatingly pink and neon orange. Randomly we plan on spraying the ramp with glitter.
____________________________________

JOLY VS. TOWN OF LAKE (http://www.hud.gov/offices/fheo/enforcement/joly.pdf)

2007-10-24T19:10:00.000-07:00

HUD says it is unlawful to refuse to permit:

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT
OFFICE OF ADMINISTRATIVE LAW JUDGES
The Secretary, United States )
Department of Housing and Urban )
Development, on behalf of )
Bill Joly and Gail Joly )
)
Charging Party, )
) HUDALJ No.
vs. ) FHEO Case No. 05-04-1291-8
)
The Town of Lake Hunting and Fishing )
Club, Corporation, )
)
Respondent. )
____________________________________)
CHARGE OF DISCRIMINATION
I. JURISDICTION

On or about September 9, 2004, Bill Joly and Gail Joly (“Complainants”), aggrieved persons, timely filed a verified complaint with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (“HUD”), alleging that Respondent, The Town of Lake Hunting and Fishing Club, Corporation (hereinafter the “Club”), discriminated against Complainants on the basis of disability and sex and retaliated against Complainants in violation of the Fair Housing Act as amended in 1988, 42 U.S.C. § 3601 et seq. (the “Act”).1
The Act authorizes the issuance of a Charge of Discrimination on behalf of an aggrieved person following an investigation and a determination that reasonable cause exists to believe that a discriminatory housing practice has occurred. 42 U.S.C. § 3610 (g)(1) and (2). The Secretary has delegated to the General Counsel (54 Fed.Reg. 13121), who has redelegated to the Regional Counsel (67 Fed.Reg. 44234), the authority to issue such a charge, following a determination of reasonable cause by the Assistant Secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity or his or her designee.
1 The Determination found reasonable cause to believe that Respondent discriminated against Complainants on the basis of disability in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 3604 (f)(1)(A), (f)(1)(C) and (f)(3)(A) and by retaliating against Complainants in violation of § 3617. The Determination found no reasonable cause to believe Respondent discriminated against Complainant Gail Joly on the basis of sex in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 3604 (b). Furthermore, the Determination found no reasonable cause to believe that Respondent discriminated against Complainants for failing to provide a fence as a reasonable accommodation in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 3604 (f)(3)(B).

The Director of HUD’s Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity for Region V, has determined that reasonable cause exists to believe that a discriminatory housing practice has occurred in this case based on disability, and has authorized the issuance of this Charge of Discrimination.
II. SUMMARY OF ALLEGATIONS IN SUPPORT OF THIS CHARGE
Based on HUD’s investigation of the allegations contained in the aforementioned Complaint and Determination of Reasonable Cause, Respondent Club is charged with discriminating against Complainants Bill Joly and Gail Joly, aggrieved persons, based on disability in violation of 42 U.S.C. §§ 3604 (f)(1)(A), (f)(1)(C), and (f)(3)(A) and with retaliating against Complainants in violation of § 3617 of the Act as follows:
1. It is unlawful to discriminate in the sale or rental, or to otherwise make unavailable or deny, a dwelling to any buyer or renter because of a disability of that buyer or renter, or any person associated with that buyer or renter. 42 U.S.C. § 3604 (f)(1)(A) and (f)(1)(C).
2. It is unlawful to refuse to permit, at the expense of the disabled person, reasonable modifications of existing premises occupied or to be occupied by such person if such modifications may be necessary to afford such person full enjoyment of the premises. 42 U.S.C. § 3604 (f)(3)(A).
3. It is unlawful to interfere with any person in the exercise or enjoyment of, or account of his having exercised or enjoyed any right granted or protected by §§ 3603 - 3606. 42 U.S.C. § 3617.
4. Respondent Club owns a parcel of property east of the City of Momence along the Kankakee River. The mission of Respondent Club is to facilitate hunting and fishing for its members and to promote sociability among its members. Members of Respondent Club own their own homes on Club grounds as personal property.
5. Respondent Club operates and implements its Constitution and By-Laws (“By-Laws”) through its Board of Directors. Respondent Club permits only one individual membership per assigned property. Members of a household cannot share a membership, even if they are spouses, but they can all reside in the home and can own property in common. Respondent Club considers a non-member resident as a “guest” of the member of Respondent Club.
6. In or around 1987, Complainants Bill and Gail Joly purchased a residence on Respondent Club’s grounds, located at 3193 N. 16780 E. Road, Momence, IL 60954, also referred to as Route 1, Box 430 (“Subject “Property”). Complainant Bill Joly became a member of Respondent Club in 1987. Complainants subsequently moved into the Subject Property in or around 1988.
7. The Subject Property is a single family home with stairs leading to the front and back entrances.

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8. In addition to owning the Subject Property, Complainants also own a three-bedroom home located in Bolingbrook, Illinois. At all relevant times, while Complainants resided at the Subject Property, they leased the Bolingbrook home to tenants, generating approximately $1,100 per month in rental income.
9. Complainant Gail Joly is an individual with a disability as defined by the Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. § 3602 (h). Complainant Gail Joly has osteoarthritis of the hips, heart disease, severe back pain, radicular symptomatology of the knees, myotonic dystrophy, spinal stenosis and depression. By 1998, Complainant Gail Joly was limited in her ability to ambulate with any comfort. She was therefore, at all times relevant, substantially limited in the major life activities of walking and ambulating.
10. In or around 1998, Complainant Gail Joly was using a cane or walker to aid in mobility. In or around March 2001, Complainant began using a manual wheelchair. On or about May 8, 2001, Complainant Gail Joly’s doctor, Dr. Michael N. Skaredoff, prescribed an at-home hospital bed for Complainant, due to the difficulty she was having using a standard bed at home. On or about October 27, 2001, Dr. Skaredoff prescribed a wheelchair for Complainant Gail Joly. In response, Complainant Gail Joly purchased a motorized wheelchair. Complainant Gail Joly is able to walk but with severe pain.
11. At all relevant times, Complainant Gail Joly was unable to ambulate without the use of a cane, walker, or wheelchair. Each time she wanted to leave and return to her dwelling, Complainant Gail Joly had to sit and scoot up the stairs leading to the front entrance doorway in order to gain access to her home.
12. From 2001 to 2003, Complainant Bill Joly presented, both informally and in writing, a reasonable modification request for the installation of the wheelchair ramps. Respondent denied his requests by “tabling” the requests based on insufficiency of documentation, namely, the lack of a detailed sketch of the ramps.
13. On or about October 30, 2003, Complainant Bill Joly applied for a building permit at the Kankakee County Planning Department Building Division (“Kankakee County”) to obtain approval of the construction of the ramp and building permit. Upon information and belief, on or about October 31, 2003, Kankakee County approved the permit for a wheelchair ramp and issued a permit, post-dated on November 3, 2003, because it was issued late in the afternoon on the last day of the month.
14. By letter dated October 31, 2003, Complainant Bill Joly again requested permission from Respondent Club to construct ramps to the front and rear entrance of the Subject Property. Complainant Bill Joly informed Respondent Club that this was necessary in order for him and his wife to move back to the Subject Property. Attached to his letter was a sketch of the wheelchair ramps, the building permit issued by Kankakee and a letter from Complainant Gail Joly’s doctor, Dr. Skaredoff, supporting Complainants’ request for a wheelchair ramp. On behalf of Respondent Club, member Jim Mottys dated the documents received on October 31, 2003.

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15. By letter dated November 14, 2003, Respondent Club denied Complainants’ request for modification to install wheelchair ramps, giving as a reason that Complainant Bill Joly was not considered a member in good standing.2 The letter also threatened that a lien would be placed against the Subject Property if Complainants did not pay Respondent Club’s legal fees related to the litigation over Complainants’ fence.
16. By letter dated December 2, 2003, addressed to Respondent Club’s attorney, Tina Olton, Complainants’ attorney, David Bergdahl, again requested that his clients be allowed to install wheelchair ramps needed for Complainant Gail Joly to access her home.
17. On or about December 7, 2003, Complainant Bill Joly and his attorney, David Bergdahl, attended the regular Club meeting to discuss the status of Complainant Bill Joly’s membership and the installation of the wheelchair ramps. At the meeting, Respondent Club advised Complainant Bill Joly and his attorney that Complainant Bill Joly was not in good standing. Respondent Club explained that no action would be taken on Complainant Bill Joly’s request for modifications to his property because Complainant Bill Joly’s membership was not in good standing. Respondent Club informed Complainant that once he became a member in good standing, Respondent Club would reconsider his request.
18. By letter dated April 15, 2004, Complainants’ new attorney, Daniel Loewenstein, informed Respondent Club that Complainants’ request for installation of wheelchair ramps should be granted in order to accommodate Complainant Gail Joly’s disability and that the claim for legal fees that formed the basis for the fines was disputed. Further, he informed Respondent Club that if the Club failed to grant Complainants’ request to install the ramp, Complainants would seek legal remedies.
19. On or about May 2, 2004, Respondent Club held a meeting where the above-mentioned letter from Attorney Loewenstein was discussed, and the type of action to be taken in response was decided. On or about June 6, 2004, Respondent Club voted to expel Complainant Bill Joly from the Club.
20. By letter dated June 9, 2004, Respondent Club notified Complainant Bill Joly that he was expelled from the Club and informed him that he had six months to dispose of the Subject Property.
21. Complainants allege that Respondent Club failed to grant their reasonable modification request, which was necessary to allow Complainant Gail Joly an equal opportunity to use and enjoy her dwelling.
22. Respondent Club was aware that Complainant Gail Joly was disabled and in need of a modification in order to use and enjoy the Subject Property. The lack of a ramp to make their home wheelchair accessible effectively denied Complainants an equal opportunity to

2 Over a period of approximately five years, the parties were engaged in litigation regarding Respondents removal of a fence enclosing Complainants’ yard. As a result of the litigation filed by Complainants, Respondent began to assess fines against Complainant Bill Joly in an attempt to recover the attorneys’ fees incurred by Respondents for defensive representation. Complainant disputes Respondents’ right to charge them for Respondents’ attorneys’ fees under the terms of the association’s declaration and By-Laws.
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use and enjoy their home. Without the ramp, Complainant Gail Joly was subjected to risk of injury and humiliation each time she wanted to leave and return to her dwelling as she was forced to sit and scoot up the stairs leading to the doorway in order to gain access to her home. Furthermore, Complainants were forced to leave the Subject Property as Complainant Gail Joly did not have adequate access to the home.
23. While it was reasonable for Respondent Club to have requested that Complainant Bill Joly provide sketches and dimensions of the proposed ramp in accordance to Respondent Club By-Laws, it is not reasonable to enforce a policy prohibiting structural improvements, regardless of whether a member is in bad standing, when the member is disabled and the modification relates to a disability.
24. Based on the investigation and findings of facts provided for in the Determination of Reasonable Cause, the Charge of Discrimination is limited to Respondent Club’s discriminatory refusal to grant Complainants' reasonable modification request of October 31, 2003, when Complainant Joly provided Respondent with a building permit and sketches, sufficient to satisfy Respondent Board's request for specifications on the ramp, in compliance with its By-Laws.
25. At all relevant times, while Complainants resided at the Subject Property, they leased the Bolingbrook home to tenants, generating approximately $1,100 per month in rental income.
26. Complainants have resided at their Bolingbrook home since 2001 and have been unable to generate a monthly rental income as the direct result of Respondent Club’s discrimination at least since their October 2003 reasonable modification request.
27. By requesting a wheelchair ramp since at least October 2003, Complainants sought a modification that was reasonable and necessary to afford Complainants an equal opportunity to use and enjoy their dwelling.
28. By refusing to grant Complainants’ reasonable modification request on October 31, 2003, Respondent constructively denied, or otherwise made unavailable the Subject Property because of Complainant Gail Joly’s disability in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 3604 (f)(1)(A) and (f)(1)(C).
29. By refusing to grant Complainants’ reasonable modification request on October 31, 2003, Respondent discriminated against Complainants in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 3604 (f)(3)(A).
30. Because of Respondent’s discriminatory conduct, Complainants Bill and Gail Joly have suffered damages, including but not limited to economic loss, humiliation, embarrassment, inconvenience, emotional distress and the loss of a housing opportunity.

III. PRAYER FOR RELIEF
WHEREFORE, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, through the Regional Counsel for the Midwest, Region V, and pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 3610(g)(2)(A) of the Act, hereby charges the Respondent with engaging in discriminatory housing practices in violation of
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42 U.S.C. § 3604 (f)(1)(A), (f)(1)(C), (f)(3)(A) and § 3617 of the Act and prays that an order be issued that:
1. Declares that the discriminatory housing practices of Respondent as set forth above violate the Fair Housing Act, as amended, 42 U.S.C. § 3601, et seq.;
2. Enjoins Respondent, its agents, employees, and successors, and all other persons in active concert or participation with Respondent from discriminating on the basis of disability against any person in any aspect of the purchase or rental of a dwelling;
3. Awards such damages as will fully compensate Complainants Bill Joly and Gail Joly, aggrieved persons, for their economic loss, emotional distress, inconvenience, humiliation, embarrassment and loss of housing opportunity caused by Respondent’s discriminatory conduct;
4. Awards a civil penalty of $8,000.00 against Respondent pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 3612(g)(3).

The Secretary of HUD further prays for additional relief as may be appropriate under 42 U.S.C. § 3612(g)(3).
Respectfully submitted,
___________________________
COURTNEY B. MINOR
Regional Counsel for the Midwest
Region V
____________________________
LISA M. DANNA-BRENNAN
Supervisory Attorney-Advisor for Fair Housing
________________________
BARBARA SLIWA
Trial Attorney
U.S. Department of Housing
and Urban Development
Office of the Regional Counsel
for the Midwest
77 West Jackson Boulevard, # 2617
Chicago, Illinois 60604-3507
(312) 353-6236, ex.2613 FAX: (312) 886-4944
Date: AUGUST 12, 2005
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The Cruelest Community: Disabled Breast Cancer Victim Denied Access to her own Home by Reston Association

2007-10-23T21:10:00.000-07:00

Could it really be true that the Reston Association and its penchant for trying to color code trims and paint schemes has become the cruelest community in the country?

Can you imagine any true southern town telling a respected elder they weren't allowed into their own house? Can you imagine some Yankee town taking away the rights of one of its individuals to get into their own home? Apparently Reston is neither genteel south nor the freedom-fighting North.

My mother's breast cancer recently metastized into her spine, liver and nodes and she is now wheelchair bound. This happened very suddenly and very recently. Two weeks ago she was walking and progressing toward greater mobility...and then came the steroid induced weakness, the Xeloda induced malnutrition, and the falls. The cancer is in her T7-T10 and her T10 is collapsed because of the radiation treatments.

She is but 60 years old and she is a loving mother and a very nice woman loved by her neighbors. This past week because of her health she had to go to the CCU at Reston Hospital. She was discharged today.

On Friday, 10/19, I went into the Reston Association and asked what it would take to get permission to build a temporary ramp. I was told of the types of pictures and drawings I would need and that evening I acquired those pictures and those drawings (from a professional building engineer) and submitted them to Sarah K. Marsden the Covenants Property Inspector and asked if what I provided were the right kind of drawings: a Plan View and a Site View. I also took 4 pictures of the front of the house from 4 different angles and I was told the pictures and the drawings were sufficient. I have an email to that effect.

I asked if I could petition to make special an opportunity to present the ramp to the Design Review Board on Tuesday 10/23. Remember all of the drawings were done and sent on 10/20. Also I had all of the neighbors sign off on the plan including the president of the Hunter Green Cluster.

So what had I done? I requested permission to put in a simple ADA compliant handicap ramp so my mother could get into her house (on Indian Ridge Road, in Reston VA) without requiring two people to lift her wheelchair into her own house. Also with her weakened spine if she were to be dropped it could mean immediate paralysis. Plus isn't it just wrong to deny a dying and disabled elderly woman access to her house?

Also, lets say she is carried with her wheelchair into her home and her caregiver has to leave for one reason or another. Then what if there is a fire? She would be incapable of getting down the stairs in front of her own house. She would die in that fire because the Reston Association denied her request to have a temporary wheelchair ramp placed in
front of her own house. She has six steps in front of her house. That is all...

I submitted all the required drawings and pictures, and was told that what I submitted was sufficient (and I have an email to that affect). I then balked when they suddenly came back and said in a voicemail that they needed 5 more items from me...that day on Tuesday 10/23, the day of the meeting, and that I had until noon the next day to get them all the materials to be considered for the Design Review Board--three weeks from that date.

I thought it obvious that any human being would want to help a dying and disabled woman have easy access to her house...I was wrong.

I could not give up so easily and so I called multiple people in my networks to find out if they had any experience working with the Reston Association. My favorite quote from a person who will remain anonymous was, "I have never dealt with them directly, but the horror stories are legendary!"

So I put as much pressure on the Design Review Board bureaucracy as I could to get onto the 10/23 agenda. I love my mother and want the best for her. I succeeded! I received an email from Sarah K. Marsden indicating that the Meeting Manager had allowed me (lucky me) to be on the agenda.

So I went...the result? Nine different people present. Then a tenth project that was going to be presented was not presented because it was cancelled. And then I piped up..."What about the Indian Ridge Road project? I received an email that I would be on the agenda?"

Oh, said the meeting manager, "that went to consultation." I said, "I don't know what that means but I am here because I received an email three or so hours ago that my mother's project was on the agenda." The meeting manager then said to the Design Review Board, "He was told." That is a lie...straight out, bald-faced lie--publicly spoken. No one ever
spoke to me. And no I did not receive an email that I was not on the agenda.

Then to add insult to injury the head of the Design Review Board decided to tell me how horrible it was of me to think I could get on his agenda in such a short time period. I simply reminded him that I was in attendance at that meeting because I was invited--by the people sitting next to him:

Brevetta Jordan Brevetta@reston.org
Barbara Ramey Bramey@reston.org.

Why would I show up if I wasn't invited? I was strongly discouraged by Sarah Marsden, though ''It is a public meeting so you are free too attend." But she added "there is really no reason for you to be there." Oh really? Fighting for permission to get my dying mother access to her own home must not be a good reason to be there.

If permission to build had been granted, I could have brought my mother home from Assisted Nursing in but a week. I had already started the bid process and engaged with Arundel Woodworks, Case Design, & Australian. Three different companies equally capable of getting the work done at the highest professional level.

In a week, I could have brought my mother home from the Assisted Nursing facility where she is trapped until the Ramp is completed. Now I can't...

I have to ask myself why Reston prided its process more than a dying woman's life and well being? This is not about the color of a door. This is about life and death...real people affected by horrible decisions made by people who prize their own fiefdoms more than they value human life.

Attached is a PowerPoint of the pictures of the front of the house and the design drawings that were submitted so you can be aware that I did my part to submit the requisite materials.

Can you place a call investigating this story? Can you tell others about this issue? Are there no cases involving treating people humanely that call for an expedited process? Can you ask the Reston Association if they believe their tactics to delay my request for approval of the ramp is unethical? Can you determine if denying a disabled homeowner access to their own is potentially illegal? I don't have answers...only questions...only concern for my mother's well being.

I noticed that several recent cases have gone to the supreme court of Virginia questioning the infallibility of Associations such as The Reston Association...isn't this a circumstance that would suggest the associations ability to control a dying persons access to their own home seems incongruous?

I've spoken to professionals who feel the best appeal to Reston is their perception in the populace rather than taking them to court--though I may have to do that--your thoughts?

Do you think they ask themselves how they would feel if their own mother or child was not allowed into their own home and had to live in some remote facility until the Reston Association decided it would be okay to build basic access?

Reston, in my limited view of the world, is now the cruelest community in the United States. When a civic process takes precedent over people's lives--I believe it is time to re-evaluate what the purpose of that civic function is doing. Am I emotional about this issue because it is my mother's life at risk? Probably.

But is it really wrong to fight for what our loved ones need in their time of need? My mother always believed that I knew what the right thing was. She never told me what to do...only to do the right thing, support just cause causes, she taught me to believe in decency and care. Well now it is my time to support her just cause, to advocate for decency on her behalf, to ask the Reston Association to honor the needs for her proper care. Is common decency too much to ask for anymore?

Kadoink Beta

2007-08-16T14:15:00.001-07:00

MAKING THE LEAP TO GMAIL AS A UNIVERSAL EMAIL CLIENT

2007-08-05T18:19:00.000-07:00

Okay so I have made the leap to using Gmail as my universal email account. And, while I do have my contacts in Gmail's contacts I am using the new Plaxo as my universal repsitory for my contacts. Plaxo syncs with Outlook, Yahoo, LinkedIn and others so--hopefully soon they will sync with Gmail as well--but with so many sync points Plaxo is the best solution for my universal contacts database...I have about 1000 contacts there as of today.

My transition to Gmail as a universal email had two leverage points.

1. I work with multiple companies on multiple computers across multiple email addresses and multiple knowledge sectors. So I needed a single interface wherein I can easily accept email from any of my email address and just as easily respond from the same (or a different) email address. I also needed that email tool to chunk across views across each email domain and chunk within the email domains people, subjects, events, topics, projects and themes--googles labels in conjunction with their filters allow me to do so.

2. I needed this singular interface to easily coalesce with a wide variety of services both online and mobile. So I integrated Jott, Callwave, Facebook ( i wish LinkedIn had a decent iGoogle widget), multiple blogs that I write for, GoogleTalk, multiple to do lists (one big picture / one day to day) and most importantly--the Google calendar with notifications into email. So now via Jott I can talk my email to you into my phone and have it sent to you (a copy is sent to me). So now I can read voicemail in my inbox because it is recorded and transcribed and sent to my email by Callwave. Callwave also lets me text you from my keyboard or call or with a click has your phone and my phone ring to reconnect us (handy for my admin who can get my phone and your phone to ring from her desktop). Also, I get notifications off all my meetings from my calndar in a txt message on my phone. I have my daily agenda from my calendar sent to my email. And via Mobile Gmail anything that shows up in my inbox also shows up on my phone.

Some of the cool aspects of this approach: It is 100% free. 2. It is truly universal as it will work with any email or any number of of emails and email systems ( I have email from yahoo, mywebcompany1, mywebcompany2, mycontract companyoutlookemail1, mycontractcompanyoutlookemail2, myalumniemail, mynameemail, mygamileamil, etc..) 3. It is universal across phones so it is not carrier dependednt as it all works with any phone with a Browser.

For those looking for some Kung Fu on using Gmail here are some tips I exported from my Google bookmarks about Gmail:

Add a "Gmail This" Bookmarklet to Your Browser ...
Create an Email Blacklist in Gmail
Email This! Bookmarklet Extension :: Firefox Ad...
Gmail Craze: 40 + Tools and Hacks for Gmail » M...
GMail Hacks/Tips - CyberKnowledge Blog
Gmail Shortcuts (printable cheatsheet)
Gmail Tips - The Complete Collection
Gmail Tips, Tricks and Secrets
Gmail: Grouped Email Addresses in GMail - Lifeh...
Google OneBox Results
GTDInbox - The Firefox Extension that Combines ...
Hack Attack: Become a Gmail master - Lifehacker
Hack Attack: Build advanced Gmail filters and p...
Mailplane, Gmail will replace your desktop emai...
Micro Persuasion: Turn Gmail Into Your Personal...
tLo : Gmail Manager
Top 10 Gmail tips and hacks - Download Squad
Top 10 GMail tweaks : TrendPlex
Using Gmail as Your Universal Email Account
www.daveswebsite.com - GSyncit

IT'S EASY BEING GREEN: HOW TO GET GREEN WHEN GOING GREEN (Originally published at Beyond the Pod Blog)

2007-07-10T20:27:00.000-07:00

Even Sesame Street’s Kermit the Frog getting in on the action! He now says, “I guess it is easy being green.”

The market trend to assist companies and consumers to go green has only just emerged as the most dominant consumer market force on the planet.
On the heels of the “Live Earth Internet” that set a new record for streaming as “MSN says there were more than 9 million streams of the environmental advocacy concert” I wanted to track down some resources that a company might use to be come or turn “green.” Consumers want to go green and they want the businesses they buy from to be green as well. To some degree, consumers want the help of their local multi-national in turning green.
Consider the rock-star status of the CEO of BP. Gordon Brown has spoken about Britain becoming a pioneer in this revolutionary sector of “green.” In fact The Guardian Unlimited has taken the lead form Gordon Brown and dominate the press in the breadth of scope of their coverage. If you haven’t seen the coverage, you should. You’ll see nothing like it in the states—at least not at the same press “status.”
But you don’t have to be British Petroleum to go green — especially not in the high growth area of responsible consumerism particularly green purchasing of electronics. Consider Earth 911, and their recent piece on Green Purchasing and Leasing.
The next obvious step it seems to me is that businesses will sprout up designed to help other businesses capture the green marketplace. Consumers have clearly taken the higher ground on the environment and other green issues—go green and you get our wallet share.
Lo and behold, with little effort, I’ve found a handful of organizations focused on this particular “green me” marketplace. Consider these resources from CNNMoney of all places:
Friends of the Earth Scotland: Their Online Audit is designed to answer office-related environmental questions and whether certain strategies are affordable for your business.
California Waste Management Board: Learn where and how to recycle your goods.
Co-op America: Founded in 1982, this not-for-profit membership organization’s mission is to harness economic power to create a socially just and environmentally sustainable society.
The Green Office: This online retailer offers recycled, environmentally friendly, and sustainable business products, school supplies, and paper.
Partnership for Advancing Technology in Housing (PATH) : Dedicated to accelerating the development and use of technologies that radically improve the quality, durability, energy efficiency, environmental performance, and affordability of America’s housing.
But also consider broader based product designers and business consultancies entering this marketplace:
Carbon Consulting
Climate Care
Futerra
Forum for the Future
Carbon Trust
My list has an EMEA lean because I used the Guardian to track down these resources so I am sure I missed at least one or two U.S. companies.
Though low value and not very beneficial to the average consumer, for the altruistic here are the EPA Approved “lease”and “end-of-life” trade-in programs.
Furthermore, take a look at what Staples is up to.
Which at long last brings me to my non-obvious point: retailers and manufacturers of electronics have difficulty making sense of this green effort. They have had some success, as I have shown above, in the “junk” business. But that is a low visibility and high cost service to the consumer.
Consider how a retailer could “help” their consumer feel good about their next purchase. The retailer could offer to “re-productize” the consumer’s old electronic device. The consumer receives an extremely high value of store credit in exchange for their device. With The Drop Spot, the consumer puts the device back into the marketplace at a lower price point for others and they reduce their own carbon footprint. In terms of biomass the purchase of a new device can be offset by offering an existing device to the secondhand marketplace.
The retailer, by offering The Drop Spot services, gets to ride the green trend upward in the marketplace — getting out of the trash bin and into the front window display: “Get Green! We pay top dollar for you to recycle your iPod and Game System.”
For the nostalgic, here’s a youtube clip of the pre-commercialized Frog Anthem:

WHY NMFN IS "MY" LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY

2007-07-03T12:58:00.000-07:00

..."During a period when the public's faith in business ethics has been rocked repeatedly by tales of greed, corruption, and outright thievery at the highest corporate levels, Northwestern Mutual has maintained the highest ratings from all four major rating agencies: Standard & Poor's, A.M. Best, Fitch Ratings, and Moody's. No wonder CEO Zore is pleased to point out, 'Everybody here is trying to do the right thing. We've got our moral compass in the right direction.'"
Loyalty Rules—Frederick F. Reichheld 2001

BUDDHA ON CUSTOMER LOYALTY

2007-07-01T09:11:00.001-07:00

"Who ranks as the highest? One who does not harm anything. One who never retaliates. One who is always at peace regardless of the other person's disposition." Buddha

THE LOYALTY PROGRAM AT J&R MUSIC WORLD AND CONSUMER LOYALTY TO THE iPOD (Originally posted at BeyondthePod.com)

2007-06-30T10:02:00.000-07:00

(Original post: http://blog.beyondthepod.com/2007/06/26/the-loyalty-program-at-jr-music-world-and-consumer-loyalty-to-the-ipod/)

So I was reading that back in 2006 J&R music was “testing a loyalty program developed with San Francisco-based services provider Loyalty Lab.” The full article is here.

I wonder how that worked out? When I think about such loyalty programs they seem to lack real punch. I mean J&R needs to drive customers to their specific online e-commerce site when most consumers drift to what J&R calls “aggregator” sites.

The interesting problem is that most consumer loyalty is to a brand such as the iPod. The consumer’s loyalty is not necessarily connected to J&R. How can J&R capitalize on the consumer’s loyalty to the iPod and drive consumers to their specific web site?

The loyalty program they ran at J&R looks like it spiffed the consumer gift card by 2% or so for navigating directly to their consumer site. The reward is just not significant. I’m sure on the corporate books the reward looks monumental to the VP of Finance — digging a massive gouge into the margin. But the actuarial perception of the incentive is exactly the opposite of the perception of the consumer.

The consumer’s perception of a 2% spiff is actually creating a negative impact in the marketplace. The consumer thinks, “Is that it?” or “Is that all that a supposedly great store like J&R con do for me?” Such a small incentive actually damages customer loyalty rather than growing it. This is the risk of low impact offers.

Now what if J&R offered a J&R gift card for a used iPod of used Gaming Console the consumer previously purchased at J&R (or anywhere else for that matter). Consider how many more purchasers of new iPods would go to J&R specifically if the knew they could get a near premium price in J&R store credit for their old iPod to put towards their new iPod.

GET IT TO ME BETTER, FASTER, AND CHEAPER: A DISCUSSION OF "REPRODUCTIZATION" (Originally posted at the BeyondthePod.com Blog)

2007-06-08T09:17:00.001-07:00

(Original post: http://blog.beyondthepod.com/2007/06/07/get-it-to-me-better-faster-and-cheaper-a-discussion-of-reproductization/)

Consider the business of cars. Consider the business of houses. Each in their own way have created reproductization economies around their manufacture, sale, lease, and re-purchase.

In many ways as the “usage period” of a product drops and the endurance of its materials persist beyond their usage and as maintenance and repairs are made easy and accessible—any product can become part of a “reproductization” cycle.

In fact, the faster a “usage period” for the purchasing consumer passes, the more likely the longer term viability of reproductizing a consumer good.

I find the “lease” of a car, instead of a purchase, an interesting economic model. Also, I like the idea of a business that helps me accelerate my ability to get into my next car quickly and easily.

For example, I would gladly pay $1000 a month to drive a different car every month—or if I chose to—the same car (but with the option at anytime to get into a different car).

I don’t mind if the car isn’t 100% new. For if it is “nearly new” or at least this years model that’s good enough.

The problem with treating cars in this fashion is that they lack “efficient transfer” models. When I’m done with my red Porsche in Riverside how does Jane in Eureka get it quickly and efficiently a few days after putting in her request?

While this model may not work for cars, wouldn’t it be cool to be able to move into different models of MP3 players each month?

Or wouldn’t it be cool to “lease” a PS3 and then, after a few months, send in the console and the games and get a Wii with a set of games. Perhaps a month or two later, I could revert to GameCube and its games! And then on to xbox 360, and the next generation of game consoles yet to be announced.

I can imagine all this easily viable for the price of about 15% of the cost of any one console. Why wouldn’t I pay 15% of the cost of a console and its games to “lease” it per month?

In this way reproductization is rapidly accelerated. Such a system, I contend, would reduce e-waste castoffs, increase the total number of consoles manufacturers would sell, and increase the rate at which new items could be brought to market.

One of the tricks of electronics is that great new products can’t meaningfully overlap because the market has to have time to saturate. Imagine a system of flowing new products into and out of the hands of consumers that massively increases the rate at which saturation for any one product and has built in efficiencies to flow “great new products” into the hands of consumers.

Today I might have a Zune and a Wii. Two days from now I could have an iPod and a GameCube…a month or so from now I could cycle into an iPhone and a PS3. All for $37.99 a month! Just a thought…

While not exact analogs for the model of reproductization I discussed, the following businesses are interesting in how they fit into the “reproductization” market:

Bag Borrow and Steal
Get a designer purse, get bored with it, send it back in and receive a different one of your choosing.

TicketsNow / StubHub
Sell your old tickets. Buy cut rate tickets for the latest shows.

Hewlett Packard
Trade in your old HP elctronics.

SUNFLOWERS FROM APPLES (Originally posted at the BeyondthePod.com Blog)

2007-06-02T00:20:00.001-07:00

(Original post: http://blog.beyondthepod.com/2007/06/01/sunflowers-from-apples/)

From CNN:

Materials company Pvaxx Research & Development, at the request of U.S.-based mobile phone maker Motorola (MOT.N), has come up with a polymer that looks like any other plastic, but which degrades into soil when discarded.

Researchers at the University of Warwick in Britain then helped to develop a phone cover that contains a sunflower seed, which will feed on the nitrates that are formed when the polyvinylalcohol polymer cover turns to waste.

As a consumer, I have begun to amass piles of secondhand electronics, my immediate reaction to this is denial. I don’t see the 10 cell phones in the shoebox in the garage. I ignore the three different game stations in the attic’s busted up cardboard boxes. I pretend I don’t have that third iPod in the basket on my bookshelf. I don’t acknowledge the problem until I am overwhelmed by the problem Until my secondhand electronics seem to be crawling out of the woodwork like ants—I will do nothing.

Well, my seams are at a breaking point and I am beginning to admit I am powerless over my own desires. I want the new iPhone, I want the Wii and I want to get rid of my old iPod and my GameCube. But because I am lazy, I will probably think of my existing iPod and GameCube as barriers to my purchase of the iPhone. But only so long as I can stand it. Then I will break down and buy a Wii and an iPhone. Probably on the same day.

To be honest I wish my iPod and GameCube had one of those Sunflower seeds in it as documented by CNN. CNN documented a cell phone case manufacturer that builds covers that bio-degrade and sprout into a sunflower. If I knew a sunflower would grow—I’d open my sliding glass door and bury my Game Cube in a big pot and hope for the best.

But, because my GameCube won’t grow a sunflower or even a dandelion for that matter, I’d like to do something with my GameCube other than pass along my personal garbage to the local landfill. What I’d like to do is have a small box from BFI or Waste Management that I could drop an item or two into. I want Waste Management to pick up my iPod or GameCube and then tell me they have given me $25 in credit toward my trash bill. Then I will feel good on 2 accounts: 1) I believe that they are “recycling” the device & 2) I like getting $25 for my conscientious act.

Am I dreaming? Maybe. But I see a near future where most “hot” electronics are re-productized and sold into the second hand marketplace to “first-time” buyers. I can see a future where a preponderance of first time buyers of Apple’s iPhone are buying one secondhand. I can see a world where the trade-in of the iPhone is as simple as dropping it in a locked recycle bin so it can be circulated back into the marketplace. I can imagine a market where a first-time buyer of an iPod is buying the re-furbed iPod with a bio-degradable cover (that will sprout into a sunflower or, hell, a green bean plant or a stalk of corn).

Around Northern California the trend toward “green” initiatives” has penetrated all walks of life and if this region is a barometer for the rest of the country then look out for the next 1000 Prius’ coming to your community soon. Speaking of cars: we accept that we can re-purpose cars, vend them in as an upgrade path, and that more efficient/greener cars are on our horizon. I believe a similar trend will overtake the electronics marketplace. For a starting point check out the guerilla marketers over at http://greenmyapple.com or http://www.greenpeace.org/apple/ !!!

FROM "LEADERSHIP AND SELF-DECEPTION: GETTING OUT OF THE BOX; COLLUSION"

2007-05-26T21:19:00.000-07:00

"Self Betrayal"
1. An act contrary to what I feel I should do for another is called an act of "self-betrayal."
2. When I betray myself, I begin to see the world in a way that justifies my self-betrayal.
3. When I see a self-justifying world, my view of reality becomes distorted.
4. So--when I betray myself, I enter the box.
5. So over time, certain boxes become characteristic of me, and I carry them with me.
6. By being in the box, I provoke others to be in the box.
7. In the box, we invite mutual mistreatment and obtain mutual justification. We collude in giving each other reason to stay in the box.
...

"When having a problem, I don't think I have one. I think other people are responsible." He paused for a moment, then said, "So here's the question: So what?"

...

As I find myself involved with more and more businesses and business opportunities--as the number of businesses I am contracted to help has grown--I repeatedly see a single fundamental difference between the companies that are capable of help from me (or anyone else for that matter) and those that are not.

The Arbinger Institute's explanation of the function of self-deception in leadership
is entertaining and an easy read...I read the entire 175 page book in but a few hours. But brevity is an art...and this book sticks to its charge and delivers.

Fundamentally we know when people are full of shit and when they are not. One o the reasons academics get such a bad rap in the business world is that there is an exceptional number of them that are dripping with the behaviors of self-betrayal: the way they speak, the way they self-justify, the way they rationalize. It all "sounds" good but astute business minds quickly boil down these perambulations to something like "Is this person full of shit or not?"

In many ways the book, Leadership and Self-Deception, might be the first ever business book about what fundamentally differentiates one leader from another, one business from another, one business deal from another. To what extent are the individuals involved willing to participate in self-deception.

I am thinking in particular about a recent business deal I was working on with Commercial Property Consultants (CPC). The basic premise of our Bay Area arm of CPC is that we can accelerate cash flow for commercial property owners. We do this through techniques that accelerates depreciation. We accelerate depreciation by producing a report for business owners and their CPAs called "engineering based cost segregation." Our CPC group has done 6000 of these studies...the benefits for property owners has been unbelievable. From Golf Courses, to Apartment Complexes, to Hotels, to Restaurants, to Supermarkets, to Office Buildings and Office Parks, CPC has benfitted owners from all walks.

Anyways, I was meeting with an influencer of a very large property management company. He'd expressed interest in a free estimate of his benefit (which we offer) but as we boiled it down and made clear we would need at least one depreciation schedule to provide the free estimate, the influencer began to back away from the opportunity. Dozens of reasons came flying across the table..." I don't get it." "Wait a second, the ROI is over the course off a year? I thought I'd get it all right away." "Pay for the service? Can't you just take it when we get the ROI?" "Look inside our buildings? That can't be arranged..." And so forth.

But what was really emerging was his inability to produce the depreciation schedules required. The truth was that he was afraid to ask his boss, the property owner, for the depreciation schedule. Fear was causing him to create problems where there were none. He was full of shit. So I went and visited the property owner myself. I never mentioned the influencer. I have no reason to discredit this person--if anything when the opportunity presents itself I would like to find a way to compensate and commend the individual influencer.

I explained what we do in as direct a fashion as I could as quickly as I could. I was very clear on the massive benefit to the property owner. But I was not full of shit and when I was done, I told him he could have his "free money" if he wanted it and if he didn't no problem. And I meant it. I was congruent. He opened up his cell phone and he called his CPA to get me a Depreciation Schedule for one of his buildings. Done.

I don't know if he will move forward with our services or not. We'll present a value to him and if thinks it worth his time he will follow through. If not, he won't. But that is not the point of this story. The point here is that the influencer is not the same type of business person as the property owner. I would even go so far as to say they are not the same type of people all together. The influencer lives inside the box. The property owner lives outside the box. Success in life between being an office clerk and office owner--it appears to me--might be just this very slight difference in a way of being.

This is way of moving through business engagements I am constantly trying to maintain--and rarely succeeding in doing. The constant vigilance required to look at every interaction as a function of how I can be of service to the human being I am looking at and speaking with is a tall order. My interaction with the property owner was a great learning opportunity for me to understand how and why success is directly correlated to living in a world focused on things as they truly are.

BOBBY KENNEDY FROM A SPEECH TO THE CLEVELAND CITY CLUB ON APRIL 5, 1968 ON DAY AFTER MARTIN LUTHER KING WAS ASSSASSINATED

2007-04-20T21:39:00.000-07:00

...from a speech delivered to the Cleveland City Club on April 5, 1968 one day after Martin Luther King was assassinated...

Mr Chairmen, Ladies And Gentlemen

This is a time of shame and sorrow. It is not a day for politics. I have saved this one opportunity, my only event of today, to speak briefly to you about the mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives.

It is not the concern of any one race. The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one - no matter where he lives or what he does - can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on and on in this country of ours.

Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr's cause has ever been stilled by an assassin's bullet.

No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of reason.

Whenever any American's life is taken by another American unnecessarily - whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of the law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence - whenever we tear at the fabric of the life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.

"Among free men," said Abraham Lincoln, "there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and those who take such appeal are sure to lost their cause and pay the costs."

Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far-off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire whatever weapons and ammunition they desire.

Too often we honor swagger and bluster and wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others. Some Americans who preach non-violence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them.

Some look for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear: violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.

For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is the slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter.

This is the breaking of a man's spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all.

I have not come here to propose a set of specific remedies nor is there a single set. For a broad and adequate outline we know what must be done. When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies, to be met not with cooperation but with conquest; to be subjugated and mastered.

We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community; men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear, only a common desire to retreat from each other, only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. For all this, there are no final answers.

Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is not what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of humane purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.

We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of others. We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge.

Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanquish it with a program, nor with a resolution.

But we can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.

Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men, and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again.

CASE STUDY OF FACEBOOK BY NISAN GABBAY

2007-04-14T09:51:00.000-07:00

Not only have I been fantasizing about the Veyron (see previous post), but I've also been digging into the nature of several Social Networks: most notably Facebook and LinkedIn. In this post I'm going to pop off about Facebook...

While I think the success of Facebook is a given, and many folks have their reasons for its success. The best of such discussions, I think, might be Nisan Gabbay's post about Facebook. Do check it out here.

But what Gabbay's analysis reveals is what we already know: colleges are communities and Facebook unified those communities by bringing online what was formerly dispersed offline. What I am interested in is what the users of LinkedIn and Facebook will be doing next. What will they be doing within their networks as well as within the context of related/partner services and/or completely separate services?

I'm not particularly interested in Facebook or Linked in as businesses. I'm more interested in what their user base thinks it needs, what the user base thinks it wants...both in the context of the social network experience and outside it. What I notice most about Gabbay's other analysis of consumer success is how little time is spent on what actually creates the success of LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook and so on... The consumers experience is the definitive parameter.

Some of what is discussed is necessary but not sufficient. There is only one requirement of a consumer business that is necessary and sufficient for success: consumer adoption. Many businesses well designed for a "niche" that easily make use of "viral" marketing, require friends or acquaintances for use, and sell well in "consumer PR" fail--in fact they fail miserably and often.

The magic of Facebook as Gabbay reveals in detail is that they provide an experience for their target users that "feels" right to them. Entrepreneurs can argue themselves blue in the face about what will make a "hit" but what invention consistently proves (in Film, in Music, in Quantum Physics, etc...) is that the next success is the one the expert overlooked.

Venture Hacks — An entrepreneur’s guide to hacking venture capital since Persian calendar year 1386

2007-04-02T23:05:00.000-07:00

Was forwarded this blog from a friend. The site is pretty interesting as start-up blogs go. I like the irreverence and the immediate relevance for start-up entrepreneurs. The "Term Sheet Hacks" topic is particularly lovely.

Venture Hacks — An entrepreneur’s guide to hacking venture capital since Persian calendar year 1386

Video of the Bugatti Veyron at Top Speed

2007-03-10T20:13:00.000-08:00

This would be a very useful and pleasurable afternoon drive:

Video Bugatti Veyron at top speed - bugatti, top, gear, 407, germany

If anyone ever needs me to take their million dollar leisure-mobile out for a spin, I'm your man!

GO UGLY EARLY? EARLY STAGE FUNDING: WHAT IS THE NEW UGLY?

2007-03-04T13:03:00.000-08:00

When I was starting my last company an experienced founder of several companies offered me the advice "go ugly early." He was applying it to the money raising process and extrapolated the "affect" to the rest of the early-stage business approaches.

In terms of business approaches he felt like you need one hyper-focused idea that represents the business and then super-rapid iteration on that focused "nut" until you get all the info you need to make the larger business "work."

I was thinking about how AvantGo was founded...(I was NOT a founder there)...when it was founded it was Bombardier software...and it was little but crossword puzzles on a Palm device. They rapidly iterated, failed quickly, and even got a cease and desist from the "Bombardier" company (http://www.brp.com/): the international recreational vehicle company. Oops...wrong name.

Of course AvantGo was on an early path to a half million bucks and 100,000 users by that time...so a re-name was fitting anyways...but they knew enough to know that at that level no one really cared about what they were doing until they were REALLY doing it.

The worse thing a start-up can do is pretty itself up for the world long before it is anything. There are many famous cases of the 100 user / 2$ dollar in revenue "branded" start-up. Yikes...that is a scary place to be for the founders: high expectations with low delivery of results.

Anyways, the "go ugly early" strategy for funding is a process that used to mean Angel money or a third tier small VC. But both of these types of funders are no longer "ugly" and here in the valley have built their own vogue. To be a super-angel here in the valley is now a calling card. Super-angels are rock stars...at least in the start-up community. I differentiate super-angels from traditional angels based on capacity and participation. Typical angels will do $50-200k a super angel will do $1-5 million.

To be funded by a seed fund or angel group carries HUGE value...

Consider the popularity of:

Band of Angels
Founder's Fund
Garage Ventures
Sand Hill Angels
The Angel Forum / Halo Fund

And lesser known but high value money such as:

Rembrandt Ventures
Bay Partners (Seed Program)
Nekei
Lightspeed (Gemini Fund)
Inspiration Ventures
Catamount Ventures
Leapfrog Ventures
Crosslink Capital
Rocket Ventures
Charles River (Quickstart)

I won't list super-angels for obvious reasons. But the classic example of a super-angel is a guy like Paul Allen, of course he may need a category all his own. But for the naive reader a quick seach on Allen wiill give you the gist.

In this listing I am thinking of very early stage money--either pre-revenue or micro-revenue stage start-up monies, and I exclude the big boy brands such as Sequoia, Menlo, Trinity, etc... They can do seed when the feel like it...but would hardly be considered, primarily, seed stage venture capitalists.

Of course all of the typical caveats apply...even if you are brilliant, and technical, and you have identified a market opportunity in a sufficiently large market space and you are loosely capable of communicating the investment opportunity to a seed investor--even then you probably won't get funded.

You probably won't get funded because the investor can't hear you for about 100 different reasons as varied as they don't like the way you dress to the state of their current fund to what they ate for breakfast.

If you are a skilled entrepreneur, you already know this: no investor's "no" means anything if YOU really understand the value of your business.

Here is what I mean by that:

When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind. It may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science.
Lord Kelvin
(Stolen from Peter Rip's site)

Since early stage seed is no longer 'ugly' but vogue, founders and entrepreneurs now must find even wider ranges of "funding" their start-ups. What are the new, low-profile ways to get a start-up funded? What is the new ugly?

SIMULTANEOUSLY THE BEST AND WORST OF THE PODCAST WORLD

2007-02-24T00:34:00.000-08:00

Consider the CEO of Go Daddy:

Rumsford's Podcast

Is he spot on or insane?

TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN: JAMAN'S CONSUMER iFILM SUBSCRIPTION SERVICE AND TAILWIND'S ENTERPRISE CLASS ENCRYPTION AND SUBSCRIPTION MODEL

2007-02-17T10:00:00.000-08:00

Jaman launched at Demo 2007 this year. Jaman is a system that allows users access to online film content for specific period of time. The trick of delivery and controlling online film is straight forward. This process of brokering and controlling digital content is not a new one. TailWind launched at Demo 2004. Same technology--different market (enterprise versus consumer) and different branding (traditional enterprise class software vs social network).

Consumer:
If I pay for access to a movie and my Internet access goes out am I screwed?

Well, no, you are allowed to download it to your machine so you have it whether you are offline or online.

Filmmaker:
You mean one person can pay to watch my film for a week and they can download it and share it with everyone else in the world? No one else would ever pay!

No. That is not the case. The download is on the user's machine but the download is encrypted and obfuscated so that the user cannot copy the raw files. In addition the encrypted files are encoded in such a way that they will only play back in Jaman or TailWind's player. Not only that but the player is so tightly wound around your movie that when the user's subscription has expired the movie is sizzled from memory: even if the PC is disconnected from the Internet.

Consumer:
You mean I can't copy the film to CD nor upload it to YouTube?

Correct. However you can share the movie with other people who have the proper permissions. In TailWind's system, if one user has downloaded the encrypted movie from a server in NYC to his machine in Brazil and his neighbor in Brazil has also subscribed to that movie...his neighbor can get it from him rather than from NYC. Again this is so long as the nieghbor is part of the TailWind network.

Also, in the TailWind system we can distribute CDs and USB devices that hold the movie but can only be played by users who have permsission from the TailWind network to playback that content/movie. The USB device is otherwise useless to anyone else.

Filmmaker:
Okay...so what you are telling me is that I can give my film to, let say, Krist Jake's Ocean Film Festival in San Francisco, and they will play it in their theaters and charge 10 bucks to the audience memebers. AND they will make it available for download from their web site? And they will charge for the access--say 10 bucks. And they will end access to my film when the film festival is over. They will end access to my film even if it has been downloaded and even if that computer is no longer connected to the Internet.

Yes. Correct, yes, yes, and yes. Exactly. The keys are the nature of the "policy" associated with the original download of the movie. The player enforces the subscription duration whether or not the computer is connected or not.

I should also add that, at least in a TailWind network, TailWind tracks how many times your movie was played on that user's machine. And for how long each time. In this way you know all the niggly details about how long they watch at each sitting. What parts they repeat. And so forth.

Consumer:

So Jaman and TailWind do the same thing?

No. TailWind's technology is actually a far more secure system, with more deeply developed tiers of tracking data and policy setting and vertical enterprise applications. Jaman has clearly cornered a niche where social networks of filmgoers crossect with online/offline viewing of films at film festivals. Clearly the Jaman consumer approach has groomed their use model to be user freindly and pleasing to the eye and they have integrated features that highlight human to human interaction in combination with their film delivery. I think of it like watching a movie in Webex.

Filmmaker:

So should I trust Jaman?

I don't see why not. I mean no system is perfect and if someone wants to set up a video recorder to record the screen as the movie plays back there is nothing you can do about that. In fact--how many pirated movies happen exactly that way in a movie theater? Quite a few. Of course doing so in the comfort of your own home and then downloading it to your iPod is one helluva alot easier than trying to set up a video camera in a public theater.

Also, most iFilm ain't got to worry about being pirated. Most indie films are just trying to get more people than their wife and mother to even sit through their project. At a slightly higher level, the films of the San Francisco International probably do need some level of security...most of these filmakers classify as independent but if they are in SFIFF they are probably "famous" by most indie filmmakers standards.

I wish Jaman the best of luck...I deeply understand their space and wish them well.

And TailWind? Will TailWind ever field a consumer-based model? Hard to say...depends on if we think we can make money at it. If we don't see money in it...we'll stick to the enterprise. Hoorah.

[For folks deeply interested in the technology behind the distribution of online film: from Revver, to YouTube, to CustomFlix and so forth do check out the CinemaTech blog: http://cinematech.blogspot.com/ & specifically, http://www.scottkirsner.com/webvid/gettingpaid.htm. Scott Kirsner has done alot of good work in this arena. I met Scott at the IIFF held San Francisco Townhall Meeting, (February 2007), Thursday, Feb 15, 2007. Scott is a repeat presenter there..and he was pretty much the only speaker of value at the event. The rest was fluff.]

Caught in the Slop: Mucking my way through the Affiliate Marketing Abyss: CJ, Shareasale, Turn, Linkshare, Clickbank, & Revcube as Step 1

2007-02-10T01:00:00.000-08:00

With the launch of BeyondthePod.com I've looked into the value of affiliate marketing. For a new site with a unique business proposition, the best advice I've heard yet is to scrap affiliate marketing entirely. Good advice...but advice that works well in the short term but cramps the business over the long term.

BeyondthePod (BTP) doesn't/can't spiff for purchases of merchandise, but they will spiff for every lead on a user that BTP might get the opportunity pay cash for their iPod. So how do you incent an affiliate to send people to your site that you want to buy from?

From what I can tell, the BTP model would work like lead generation system and spiff the affiliate that generates the lead accordingly. In high enough volume this can be 10 bucks or more. Though in lower volumes, the program spiffs at a much lower dollar value.

So I took a look at a wide variety of programs. CJ is the monster in the market and as far as I can tell, CJ thinks of sites like BTP as bad business, and CJ does pretty much everything they can to not do business with us. I guess in some ways it would be like BeyondthePod implementing SAP--the folks at CJ want accounts like Levis and Coke not start-up brands like BeyondthePod.com. A lower bar version of this type of system is RevCube, but even RevCube is too full service of a shop for my needs today.

So I looked at CPmil stuff at Clickbank and Linkshare. For BTP the model could provide eyeballs but these programs either required that BTP use their commerce system or they couldn't support a lead gen commission structure. Plus a wide variety of folks warned BTP away from the spoofing that happens in these programs when you expose your self via CPmil models.

I've since revisited this...CPmil is not all bad. I think the click through would at least create a marginal affect on page ranks...but the reality that you're paying for non-revenue clicks with little visibility to the desired outcome of lead gen clicks or revenue is a tough sell in a hardcore, move-fast-to-the-bottom-line start-up.

There are new value-add "logarithm" companies like Turn.com. I think they are a no lose proposition, at least while they are in Beta (read: free), to see if they can auto-generate valid value-add affiliate partners. My guess is that the matrixed affiliate-to-offer matching will have better effect than the random grab bag that tends to occur in most affilate systems...but I'll throw in the caveat that it won't be that much better, at least not for new, unique players. I say this, hoping beyond hope, that I am wrong. I also hope that I can implement Turn without its Javascript interfering with Adwords and my affiliate program of choice's cookie/script. I'd like the results it promises...I'm just skeptical.

Shareasale looks like the tightest fit between flexibility, usability, and price for BeyondthePod.com. Of course until BeyondthePod decides to land a series of affiliates that understand how to create conversions in conjunction with the offer at BeyondthePod.com's site, BTP is likely to leech along and bottom feed in low traction affiliates. My guess is that BTP and the high value affiliates will find each other--good business finds good business.

The offer at BTP is incredibly compelling--but how likely is it that the link-and hope-strategists of the more general affiliate marketing world will ever take any time to grock what's at work? Not likely...

My guess is that the key affiliates for BeyondthePod.com will be a tight fit between the iPod economy and the iPod ecosystem of products, services, and social events. Somwhere betwixt the Gizmodo's and the iLounge's and iSkin's and the Podcasters and the PodRippers of the iPod economy a viable opt-in BeyondthePod affilate system will generate serious dinero for the right affiliate or set of affiliates.

I have my own private list of sites i think are a fit...but if you know of a site whose readers that would want to know they could get cash for their used iPod? Let me know...drop me a note in a comment...

Soon to go live, the BTP affiliates program, at http://beyondthepod.com/affiliates/

Check out these Blogs versus iPods numbers across demographics from iMedia

2007-02-07T23:17:00.000-08:00

Check out these Blogs versus iPods numbers across demographics from iMedia

See the details here: http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/6105.asp

Any surprises?

My Ipod Economy Web Survey via Survey Monkey

2007-02-07T23:04:00.000-08:00

So I'm a Survey Monkey now. Ho hum...always said I would never be one...and here I am. The survey I've postyed is a quick 5-7 questions about iPods. Do drop in on it and take it if you have a minute:

Click here to take my iPod economy survey

CRAIGSLIST WOES: CAN ANYONE SOLVE MY PROBLEM?

2007-01-31T18:53:00.000-08:00

I went to Craigslist to test a market theory. I wanted to offer to buy used iPods to anyone williing to sell them to me. So I start an ad thingy and submit it to San Francisco. I let it run for awhile I see it appear. Okay cool, I think I get how this works. So I go to LA and say to myself. Maybe some people in LA want to sell me their used iPods as well. Literally, kind of like an academic research project, just trying to see how many people will do it. Except for real--I will send them money for their iPod--I'm not faking anything.

So I submit to LA and like two minutes later. My ad on SF's Craiglist is flagged and rejected. So I submit my LA ad, and I see a similar ad to my own except much more obtrusive and think, "hey I wonder why my ad had trouble that one is basically the same thing." Then I go back to Craigslist and post in their forum and I get all kinds of very useful information about categories and possible reasons. And then my LA ad is flagged and rejected. But never at any point is it explained to me why these other guys with massive ad campaigns get to keep their ads day after day on the site but mine gets whacked in a minute.

I think I wrote something like: "Sell me your secondhand iPod." In the body I said something like: "I'll pay cash for your used iPod, click here for details on the offer."

I go back to the Wanted section in LA and this guy has a giant image, like 1/4 of my screen with "Cash for your ipod" on it! And his ad has been running, apparently for many, many days, maybe weeks. His sticks, mine gets booted. So what gives?

YOU TUBE VIDEO OF MARKUS GIESLER ON iPOD CONSUMERISM

2007-01-30T21:45:00.000-08:00

MARKUS GIESLER: iPOD STORIES

2007-01-30T20:21:00.000-08:00

I was checking out Markus Giesler's research site at http://www.ipodstories.com/. Very impressive project! The ultimate 21st century consumer experience is and probably will be defined by the iPod experience. Understanding the iPod's susccess is like Ben Franklin's key on his kite. If you touch the chord of its power ZAP! The shock may fry you, but it may also give birth to quite an unexpected Eureka!

Giesler has some unique perspectives on how consumerism and planed obsolesence coincide. And he even suggests that consumers take action. The prime issue in summary is: What do you with an old iPod 1 year later after you've bought the new one? In an even worse case scenario, what if it breaks? What do you do? Well, off to the landfill it goes. But this non-sustainable business model as it applies to iPods is but the lightning rod for the larger issues faced by a tech trend consumerist market.

Why not send that old iPod to someone who will give you a couple of bucks for it? There is an emarging "sustainable growth" market around recycled and secondhand iPods. Even more interesting is that market is shifting from "the kid who couldn't afford it the first time around" to the "responsible consumer." I'd like to think of myself as a responsible consumer--so I'm putting into practice my preach!

I'm headed off to buy, yes, my very first iPod! And a second hand iPod it will be!

I bought mine here! http://stores.ebay.com/The-Drop-Spot

SATMETRIX, NET PROMOTER, AND EXPERIENCE MANAGEMENT

2007-01-30T13:25:00.000-08:00

The last book I read that deeply affected my approach to managing a business was Jim Collins' Good to Great. I've read many book since but few that resonated with me. Now I get to add a new one to the list: The One Number to Grow.

I know, I know, NetPromoter.com launched long ago. And Fred Reichheld's book has been out for seemingly forever now. But the impact of measuring business performance based on the golden rule: "treat others in the way you want to be treated." Is not a trivial insight. That paired with an effective methodology to measure the effect of that treatment on your customers is really mindblowing.

At the end of the day, what does loyalty measure? How trapped a customer is? And what does does satisfaction measure? How you performed on a task for a customer that they don't place any value on?

In business one learns quickly, you can never win an argument. Never. If you need to be reminded of why this is--go back and re-read Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. Nothing matters but how your customers feel about your business.

In my own companies it bears out as true that facts and even right and wrong are ultimately irrelevant. All the matters is how your customers feel about you...even more specifically do they feel strongly enough to consistently and repeatedly reccommend your business to others?

If you want to learn how to grow good profit and create a truly powerful customer base. Read Collins' Good to Great and then read, Reichheld's The One Number to Grow. His discussion of Net Promoter measurement is invaluable--I think especially invaluable to start-ups--where this measure is most easily lost in the chaos of getting to market.

For more info check out: NetPromoter.com

THE DROP SPOT TO LAUNCH HTTP://BEYONTHEPOD.COM

2007-01-30T12:41:00.000-08:00

So TailWind is off and running in its own direction. This has afforded me the time to work with many other companies over the the past year.

In particular, my current obsession is watching the emergence and re-visioning of The Drop Spot (TDS), as founded by its current CEO Derek Harp. Derek has built a pretty successful little business in the consumer end of the broader Trade In / Trade Up market. What is visionary is that he took all that data from all his transactions at The Drop Spot and decided to focus on the highest volume, highest margin part of his consumer Trade In / Trade Up Business.

TDS will be launching a super cool new site call BeyondthePod.com that looks ot become the ultimate destination for any and every consumer interested in getting cash for their old iPod. I mean there are a few iPods out there--like 60 million in the last 24 months! Not only that but well over 30% of iPod purchasers buy another within the first few years. So what happens to all of the second hand iPods? Well, I'd like to think, that long term, they will ALL get bought at BeyondthePod.com.

So Search Engine Optimization is one of the the strategies for finding its way into the marketplace. But there must be a million other ways to crack the code. The market is huge! But how accessible is that market with all the signal to noise ratio out there in the world?

If you've got an opinion, I'd like to hear it!!!

2,167 REASONS A START-UP SHOULD NOT DO BUSINESS WITH THE GOVERNMENT AND WHY TAILWIND CHOSE TO DO OTHERWISE

2005-08-29T17:52:00.000-07:00

TailWind recently struck a preliminary deal with the U.S. Navy. It is a deal we are very proud of, in that we get the privilege of delivering electronic education materials to Navy personnel in need.

TailWind has always taken a path few other start-ups take. We started the company based on a deal with Pfizer, the largest pharma company in the world. Most companies start with smaller fish.

Now, we have done what most VC investors and many business leaders have advised against--getting into business with the Navy. The reasons against are varied and too numerous to go into but the short list would be something like: pace of deal, size of deal, and not market driven. That said, we chose to pursue the deal as a away to ground our revenue stream in a market that will not behave as dynamically as the public sector.

We are building a balanced portfolio if you will. We pursue companies in the public sector and can respond to the dynamics of the market and we are balanced by the grind-it-out but longer term prospects of working with the likes of the U.S. Navy.

I suppose the last strategic approach we should take in order to completely buck all the trends and gossip in the market is to add a consumer business play to our repertoire and then sell the technology to Microsoft. Then our contrarian approach to the everyday advice of the Sand Hill economy would be complete!

Onward!

A GOOD ARTICLE ABOUT TAILWIND IN INSURANCE NETWORKING NEWS

2005-04-18T13:16:00.000-07:00

Improving The ROI On Claims Processing

With proper technologies, claims histories can be accessed faster, accurate claims information can be updated on the fly, and errors on new claims can be reduced.

By David Koehn

April 1, 2005 - Although computer technologies have been applied to improve productivity in vast arenas of the American economy, the insurance industry had-until now-limited access to technologies designed to improve the productivity of its highly mobile claims adjusters.
Legacy systems in this market are costly and require intense IT support. Even then, they do not address the unique needs of this mobile workforce. Adjusters are rarely stationary: They are in the field moving from site to site and do not have the leisure to write their reports comfortably.

The advent of laptop PCs and PDAs with WiFi and/or landline secure connectivity to corporate Web sites-along with new software technologies-enables insurers to improve the productivity of this workforce...

See the rest here.

FIELDSPACE IS A SIMPLE SOLUTION TO A HORRIBLE PROBLEM: CAL ISSUES ALERT ABOUT STOLEN LAPTOP COMPUTER

2005-03-29T06:58:00.000-08:00

Came across a news item in the Bay Area section of the San Francisco Chronicle. The problem is that people are downloading and moving data via systems that do not encrypt before and during transfer...and keep secure upon download. If this information had been downloaded and kept disconnected with FieldSpace this data would never have been exposed.

The news item:

BERKELEY Cal issues alert about stolen laptop computer It contains 98,000 Social Security numbers -- notifications to warn of identity-theft risk - Charles Burress, Chronicle Staff WriterTuesday, March 29, 2005
A laptop computer containing Social Security numbers of more than 98,000 graduate students, graduate school applicants and other individuals was stolen two weeks ago from an unlocked office at UC Berkeley, campus officials said Monday.
There is no evidence that the personal data was retrieved or misused, said UC Berkeley spokeswoman Marie Felde.
In line with a 2002 state law requiring public notification of large data leaks, the campus is attempting to notify all those whose personal information was in the computer. Also, to address the possibility of identity theft, Cal officials are suggesting that affected people consider placing a fraud alert on their credit-reporting accounts.
The incident is the third serious data breach at UC Berkeley within the past two years and the latest of several recent compromises of personal information across the country that are prompting calls for tougher data protections.

Blogs & Wikis: Technologies for Enterprise Applications?

2005-03-12T15:55:00.007-08:00

Found this at THE GILBANE REPORT.

Blogs & Wikis: Technologies for Enterprise Applications?

It would be difficult to find anyone who spends time on the Internet, or indeed who reads newspapers, who has not heard of blogs. Wikis are less well known, though Wikipedia, the free online collaborative encyclopedia is helping to change that. The vast majority of blogs are individual personal journals, many of which have some technical content, but most of which are made up of individual opinions about politics or hobbies. Most of the discussion about blogs is centered around their affect on mainstream journalism, their power as a new communication channel and voice of the people, and how this will impact society. All this is interesting, but what does it have to do with implementing content or knowledge management, or enterprise collaboration applications? IT, business managers, and even analysts can be forgiven for thinking not much. In fact, we have been skeptical ourselves. But, being dismissive of blogs and wikis because of how they are most often used, and talked about, today is a mistake (PCs and web...

TRAVEL BLOGS

2005-03-02T18:51:00.000-08:00

Found this great article at Forbes about Travel blogs.

http://www.forbes.com/technology/2003/10/02/cx_cv_1002blog.html

It seems that travelers might want a system by which they can download their blogs, create posts, and comment on posts while disconnected from the Web. And then when the traveler comes across a connection, the work they have done on their blog on their laptop would connect to their blogs and put up their posts and comments.

I'm looking for travelers who might want to try such a system. Post a comment here?

BLOGS GO ENTERPRISE

2005-02-21T19:50:00.000-08:00

No doubt there is a trend toward leveraging blogs in the enterprise. I have added a few links to THE GREAT AMERICAN STARTUP that illustrate this. In particular I like GM's Fast Lane Blog. It is a pure marketing function but it appears well done and is not overly gimmicky.

That said I am still looking for blogs in use at the enterprise that are more functional and less fluffy. Maybe that is all that blogs are good for, but what I am really looking for are blogs that have found their way into the value chain of the processes in the enterprise.

I'll keep looking...

NOT STEPHEN J. HAWKING'S BRIEF HISTORY OF TAILWIND

2005-02-14T13:25:00.000-08:00

October 2001--We want to start our own software company
August 2002--We incoporate as TailWind Solutions Inc.
October 2002--TailWind releases version 1.0 of FieldSpace for the Enterprise
January 2003--First Enterprise class customer, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals
August 2003--Raise first Angel monies
January 2004--TailWind secures Nokia investment
February 2004--TailWind reaches 1 Million in convertible investment
March 2004--Board of Directors created
November 2004--TailWind engages with the Army
December 2004--Pfizer renews subscription of TailWind's FieldSpace for 2 more years
February 2005--TailWind launches THE GREAT AMERICAN STARTUP