Simplifying the Complex - A different Approach
January 31, 2008
In yesterday’s post I wrote about a tele-seminar that I attended that ultimately fell short of its goal. I didn’t learn anything about the subject matter, I don’t remember the speaker’s name, and without looking up my email correspondence I can’t recollect what the company was.
And, because a free tele-seminar is, at its heart, marketing - yesterday’s presentation was marketing at its absolute worst.
Today I attended another remote seminar. The main speaker of this one, Jeremiah Owyang, was clearly spoken, informative, and extremely helpful. His information wasn’t the type of drivel you expect from a free seminar and I felt as if I had learned a lot by the end of it.
That’s really the best part, but when combined with the technology that was used, it made the experience much more bearable than yesterday’s.
The seminar was a webinar in essence but also offered the ability to telephone in. The presentation was included in the online player as well as downloadable. I’m not sure if it was recorded, and if so whether or not the audio is downloadable, but I can’t imagine that it wasn’t.
The only real problem I had with the presentation was that it required you to have or download realplayer (which is a big issue). But, it avoided all of the problems of the seminar from yesterday, and ultimately it made an excellent impression on me.
Lesson: Always impress.
Luddites and Tech - How to Complicate simplicity
January 30, 2008
I just listened to a tele-seminar based around landing pages and marketing. I’ve never really had to sit through one before so it was a completely new experience to me.
The program was free and I was subscribed to it through my CFO. He sent me instructions to listen to it with the explicit intention of taking notes on how it was run as much as the material itself.
You might have listened to one of these things before, so I won’t go into too much detail.
Basically:
- I called a phone number
- Dialed a code
- waited for the conference to begin.
The entire thing was run like a presentation and the speech, which I couldn’t respond to, was based around a PDF that had been sent out with the confirmation email.
As I sat listening to the program, I realized that it could be run much more efficiently, and probably much more cheaply if it were simply run like a podcast instead of being handled over the telephone.
The podcast route would have made all of the same features available, but it wouldn’t have cost telephone fees, and it would have made a downloadable version available after the fact!
But, instead of making the program a simple audio file online, they went out of their way to make it more difficult. The question is why.
Why would they have gone through one of the most difficult routes?
The answer varies between monetization and ignorance and all points in between.
If you look at it in the context of a conventional business environment, you can imagine that it would be more difficult to explain to some attendees how to get to the audio file online and hit the play button than it would be to walk them through the much more complex steps on the telephone.
Also, I’m sure that the producers of the program might be considering making some money of the presentation in the future, and they think it would be harder to make it unavailable after it was easily available.
Both of these excuses are just that, excuses for doing something in a way that may be more complex and costly but is, ultimately, on familiar ground.
That’s a lot of the difficulty with introducing technology into business environments I think. It’s not that people want to make their job harder, it’s that they are already comfortable using the old way.
So, when I find a new easier way to do something, I no longer tell people about it. Because the reaction is always the same, their eyes glaze over a bit, they stop listening, nod their head, and say something like, “That’s great.” Then they never use the advice.
That’s what’s so confounding to the rest of us. But, how do you beat that? Any ideas would be worth gold to me.
Meet the New boss… Same as the old boss?
January 23, 2008
Rohit Bhargava wrote an interesting post today on Microsharing. The premise is fairly straight forward and is based around the concept of democratization of media.
Democratization of media is a new buzz word that I’m sure will soon become a fresh new description for upper and middle class executives looking for a promotion, but that aside it’s a fairly interesting concept - though, by no means, a new one. The idea is that anyone can get their content to anyone else in the world.
The past often held models with a judgemental middleman, a stop gap that could, and more than likely would, prevent you from contacting the people that might have had a use for your content. Producers, recording label executives, publishers, etc.
The idea is that today, with instant access internet, we’re doing away with those old modes of business and communication and moving into one in which everyone has a fair shot. Anyone can compete with Wal-Mart or the New York Times on their own turf and keep their content within their own control.
And the democratization of media is the keystone holding all new media in place. From blogs, vlogs, microblogs, news-sharing sites, to the mom and pop store in Arizona selling tumble weeds online for a premium, everyone has the potential to benefit from instant access to potential customers.
Rohit posits a pretty good theory. In essence it appears that the stop-gap, the middle man between your content and its consumers is still there. He appears invisible because he is among your consumers, but he has taken the place of your producer/publisher.
Here’s how Rohit breaks it down:
- Content Creator
- Content Sharer/Microsharer
- Content Consumer
The group is also a triangle with the creator at the top and the consumer at the bottom, with the size of divisions representing the size of the groups:
So, is this a good thing or a bad thing for content creators and consumers?It would appear that there is a lot of potential for abuse. My first thought is that you’re trading one filtering mechanism for another. One person is capable of being just as elitist as another, and if the producers and publishers of the old model had a few bad traits, it’s just as likely that the new ones will. But, on the other hand, there are more sharers than there were producers/distributors, which opens up a wider world with more distributed tastes.
For examples of negativity in the new model you might point to sites like digg. Digg is an interesting phenomenon in this model, because it is a site dedicated to sharers working together, and it’s rife with bad deeds. People using their rank on the site to trample others and to stop their content from being shared.
On the more positive side you can look at twitter and Susan Reynolds’ pea movement, where the sharers enabled a message to spread faster than any other method could.
In the end, I think we’re moving toward a more democratic model that will only further refine itself. There are problems with the new media model and its democratization, but i think the tendency is toward better communication and less power in the hands of the sharers. And, in the end, all of this just further refines and clarifies the final product that ends up in the hands of most consumers.
My new position in Social Media
January 22, 2008
So, I’ve been promoted to a new position at work: Interactive Marketing Manager. It’s perfect, and it’s exactly the position I’ve been hoping to attain. I’m the internet and social media marketing manager, which puts me in the unique position of being the branding expert for my company.
The upside is the fact that I’m now being paid to do what I love to do: internet marketing, writing blogs, website optimization, reading and commenting on other blogs, etc.
The downside is the education factor. How do you move a company from old school techniques to new school ones?
Teaching an old dog new tricks and all that.
Convincing the management that your work will take time to show significant results, when they’re the type that have to see immediate ones to know that something is in fact working. It’s scary and exciting all at the same time, and a great time to be doing it.
My first step will be to get the website optimized to best take advantage of the search engines, etc. The second one, which is the one I’ve been working most on, because it’s difficult to get to the point where I am completely in control of the website, is to get the company’s name out there and to start generating traffic. And, as you may or may not know, reading and commenting on blogs is the best way to build awareness and to develop traffic patterns.
As, I’m out there doing this, I realized that it would be great to have the whole company doing the same thing. Staying in touch and developing relationships with industry blogs, but there are a few problems.
1. Many of the team members here don’t understand the dynamics of blogs. They don’t know what they are or how they work or that you can subscribe to them.
2. The education factor might be too much. How do you teach a group of people that a bunch of name dropping and comment spamming is going to be worse for our image and online presence than nothing at all?
At this point, I’m caught in a holding pattern. I’m waiting for the website to come into my control, so I can start tracking my progress, and I’m developing relationships within the industry, and hoping that a stroke of brilliance will hit me regarding the rest of the company.
NewsGator’s Free Offering
January 10, 2008
I guess by now we all know that NewsGator’s products are all now free. There has been a lot of talk on this subject and Web Worker Daily asked yesterday if it changes anything.
The problem is a preference one for the most part. Most people are used to and prefer using one or the other.
Compound that with the fact that there are so many converts to Google’s Reader, and I just can’t see that this makes much of a difference.
I’ve always used web based readers, and about a month ago, I decided to give a desktop one (FeedDemon at work, NetNewsWire at home and the mobile web app for my iPhone) a try. The problems were surpassable - i was able to synch everything through NewsGator Online and the keyboard shortcuts were customizable.
The problem was more a problem of preference. I was used to using Google Reader: I was used to the way it looked, the way it worked, and used to how easy it was to subscribe to new feeds. The desktop apps just couldn’t compare, as hard as they tried, with my online reader.
And that’s really the issue isn’t it? To get a desktop reader to perform like an online one we have to jump through synchronization hoops and go through the trouble of changing settings. The online ones are set, the way we want them, the minute we upload our feeds.
NewsGator’s move to free was a good idea, but I think it’s too late to really change the fact that online readers have not only caught up with desktop ones, they’ve surpassed them in usability.
Future of input devices
January 8, 2008
Okay, so I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately and have only just now started thinking about it in depth. Technology seems to be racing along faster than our ability to fully comprehend it and it’s interesting to become the prognosticator.
I try to predict ahead like this whenever I get the chance, and although I haven’t developed a graph on which to chart my results, I like to consider myself fairly accurate.
The stories that kicked this off can be found here and here.
Multiple level parallel-processing meets brain wave input. Sounds pretty damn amazing doesn’t it?
Keyboards and mice have always annoyed me on some level. We’re still using what has become an archaic input format to interact with machines that have become more and more powerful. The machines themselves are capable of so much more than we can use them for because our only methods for communicating with them are simplistic and weak.
The problem for coming up with a new method are two-fold as I see it.
One is education. It took decades for a large proportion of the public to become proficient on keyboards, and as late as the 1980’s people were still hiring clerks and typists based on their ability to “touch-type.” And, finally, after years and years, and the introduction of typing classes in schools, this has become a skill that is less and less important to screen for. But, it took a lot of time to get where we are with our input devices, and introducing a new one (especially one that is more complex - as anything that is based on the old model is sure to be) is likely to be met with disapproval.
The second problem is one of wide-spread adoption. This problem has its roots in a number of other problems. With our culture of ownership the new input device is sure to be proprietary and therefore available on a smaller basis; and if it isn’t owned and patented it will suffer from diversion (meaning that each iteration of it will be different - some subtle and others complete).
So, here we have sat for years, waiting for something else to make itself clear. I’ve always known that the input method that might supplant the keyboard and mouse duo would have to be something revolutionary. It would have to be something that was completely different from what we were used to, and it would have to be easier to use. Which, by the way, is a third problem…
Into the picture walks NeuroSky who, if you read the link above you’ll know, has developed what appears to be one of the first input methods based on brainwaves. The device scans your brainwave patterns and makes inferences based on your frame of mind.
Which means a lot of things. Mostly, for the free market, it seems to mean some interesting video games in the future. For the government, it represents a better lie detector. And for computer users everywhere it might signal the first step to a better input method.
I’m not sure of the logistics of shaping your brain waves so that the computer you’re working on knows to highlight a word in a document you’re working on, delete it and replace it with another, but imagine that office. People sitting in front of monitors at a desk, with no keyboard or mouse, switching quickly between applications and doing their work without even bothering to move.
A conversation with AT&T
January 8, 2008
In August, my wonderful fiancee bought me an iphone and I rejoiced. It was the Jesus phone and the only thing that I really wanted for my birthday, and she had managed to scrape together the money.
The phone has been wonderful in all respects, and I’ve been constantly amazed at how it continues to improve my life in little ways. I know how that sounds, but it’s the truth.
Apple had done something great, they had created a device that I wasn’t bored with one week after laying my grubby paws on it. Apple had managed the unthinkable. AT&T on the other hand…
Well, to be honest, AT&T hasn’t been horrible, but they’ve been bad enough that I’m now writing a blog about them.
The first problem was when I exchanged the phone 1 week after getting it (I think we all remember the price change debacle - well, I was one of the lucky ones that was still within the exchange period time line, and I exchanged my 4 gig for the 8 gig model). On the phone with AT&T, after telling me to pull out the sim card (all the while I sat there thinking “They’re not supposed to make me take out the sim card”) and jumping me through a bunch of hoops, they bluntly informed me that because I had switched phones I was going to lose the phone number that I had had for 6 years, and that they could redirect my call to Apple customer service.
Predictably, I told them they were crazy. I had to go out of town that weekend, and because my iPhone was inactive, I left it at home, all the while resenting the loss of my phone number.
Here’s the twist ending: When I got home and plugged it into my computer, it activated… with my phone number. I never got an explanation, and to be honest, I didn’t care - I got to keep my number, and sometimes that’s enough for me.
I’ve had to call them a couple of times since then (An overcharge that resulted in an AT&T credit, and to double-check what services I’m subscribed to) and every time I call, the “customer care” representative goes through the same routine, as soon as they hear that I have an iPhone, they immediately redirect my call to Apple customer service.
And the Apple customer service representative sighs and tells me that they have no control over AT&T features, which I already knew - but stuck with it on the off chance that they could perform a miracle.
Tonight I called AT&T because the Edge Network, which is an AT&T service, has been down all day. I just wanted to know why. You can probably guess the results.
After holding for 7 minutes
AT&T: Can you give me your information?
Me: Yes, here’s my information.
AT&T: How can I help you, Mr. Flowers?
Me:The Edge Network has been down all day, I just wanted to find out if there was an issue.
AT&T: No, there isn’t. I’m showing that we’re having voice outages in South Texas.
Me: I’m in North Texas, and it’s Edge not voice.
AT&T: What kind of phone do you have?
Me:(Pause)
Me:(Pause)
Me: An iPhone.
AT&T: I’m going to redirect you call to Apple, they’ll be able to help you with the problem.
Me: But the problem is through AT&T.
AT&T: But, I’m showing that there aren’t any problems with AT&T. And, the Apple Customer service will be able to help you with any iPhone issues.
Me: But, the problem is with Edge.
AT&T: Sir, I can’t help you, and Apple can. Would you like me to redirect your call?
Me: (Pause)
Me: Sure.Five Minute Hold
Apple: Hello?
Me: Hello.
Apple: Can I help you?
Me: Yes, I’ve been redirected here because the Edge network seems to be down.
Apple: What’s your name, sir?
Me: Justin Flowers.
Apple: Justin, we don’t have control over the Edge network, that’s through AT&T.
Me: I KNOW! It’s ridiculous, but I was hoping that you might be able to tell me something.
Apple: Edge has been on and off all day, Justin, they shouldn’t have redirected you here.
Me: Oh, so other people have had problems?
Apple: Yeah, you need to call AT&T back and tell them to reconfigure your Edge Settings.
Me: Tell them just like that?
Apple: Yeah.
Me: Cool, thanks man.
Apple: You bet.Recall AT&T
6 minute hold
AT&T: Can I have your information?
Me: Sure here it is.
AT&T: How can I help you, Mr. Flowers?
Me: Edge has been down all day - I was redirected to Apple, and told they couldn’t help - long story short I just need you to reconfigure my Edge Settings.
AT&T: Your settings?
Me: Yeah for the Edge Network.
AT&T: What’s that?
Me: Edge?
AT&T: Yes.
Me: (Pause)
Me: (Pause)
Me: The AT&T Edge network.
AT&T: Oh.
Me: It’s AT&T’s wireless internet.
AT&T: Oh.
Me: Can you reconfigure the settings?
AT&T: Just a moment, sir.
Me: You bet.2 minutes - She’s still on the line, obviously having trouble tracking down the right script on her computer.
AT&T: Have you been having this problem all day?
Me: Yes. Wifi works fine. I tried resetting but it didn’t work.
AT&T: Ok.
AT&T: And you have an iPhone?
Me: Yes, but I’ve already talked to apple.2 minute pause.
AT&T: And, it’s a problem with the internet?
Me: Yes, with the Edge network.
AT&T: Sir, you don’t have that, you have safari.
Me: (Breathing Slowly)
Me: (Pause)
Me: No ma’am, the internet connection is AT&T’s wireless network. The iPhone uses a browser called safari, but that is not the connection, it’s simply a browser.1 minute pause.
AT&T: Mr. Flowers, I have bad news and not so good news.
Me: What’s that?
AT&T: I can’t help you with the internet, you’ll have to call Apple about that, because it’s not through AT&T.
Me: And the not so good news.
(If this were a slap-stick movie or a burlesque show, this is the point at which the drumroll would start.)
AT&T: Well, sir, the AT&T internet has been down all day.
In one breath she told me that Apple handles the “internet” and that the AT&T wireless internet has been down all day. You gotta love a world where a retarded monkey can get a job answering customer service calls.
I told her that was fine, and to please have a nice evening. I didn’t see any reason to confuse her with stone-cold logic.
02/19/2008 UPDATE:
I had exactly the same problem, again. I called AT&T again, ready for a problem. The representative answered the phone, asked me for my information and what the problem was, I told her and she asked me to hold for a moment.
The cutesy hold music kicked in for a few minutes and when the phone was picked up again on the other end it was an Apple representative.
AT&T = Horrible customer service.
-
About
Justin Flowers
Mad Scientist
Zombie Expert
Fort Worth, TX -
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