The Post Money Value

Infoworld & Credit Card Fraud

As one of the last few still reading the print edition of Infoworld (I don't have a splash proof laptop for the little room), I've noticed the blow in cards for subscribing to the magazine allow people to simply fill them out with credit card information.

All the required account information plus your mailing address on a post card.

Hmm.. Big Shot IT mag, specialized IT coverage for C level types, etc, etc. Credit card information on post card. Hmm...

Let's see: US magazine. Not big shot IT trade rag. Blow in cards with "bill me later" on post card.

I know!

It's actually a service by the world famous Infoworld Test Labs.

Anybody who actually does put all this information on a post card has said post card sent to boss of said person getting said person fired for being lax in security (personal or otherwise) thus proving the value of Infoworld to high end C level types in corporations who then sign up for paid lifetime subscriptions to Infoworld.

Shezzz... Where's Spencer Katt when you need em.

Best Buy - A Seth Godin Story

Buying a new laptop for the world's newly minted 18 year old was the highlight of the weekend. I admit to a certain sense of uber geek walking the aisles with Michelle, pointing out all the features, discussing the pro/con of this or that.  We ended up at the Best Buy store located in Newmarket, Ontario.

This is a Seth Godin inspired story because events happened which track against the interesting things you can learn in his books; the latest one being "All Marketers are Liars".  His blogs are great as is the new book. This post, for example, covers first impressions while this one covers fancy fish and makes some great marketing points.

Back to Best Buy.

The store is new, less 8 months old. When you enter it, you will find a bright, clean, 'friendly' store. Things are laid out nicely and they've done the right thing with being able to see where things are, etc.

We head back to the laptop area. Nicely laid out. All of them running the geek squad thing that Best Buy is hawking. More about that in a minute.

A nice first person comes over and asks if I need any help. Yeah, me, a guy, asking for help on a laptop, right. When hell freezes over and I'm faced with chewing my leg off for food, maybe I'll ask for a sandwich.

I'm slightly more polite then that and the friendly person says "No problem, if I can help, please ask anything, I'm not on commission, I'm here to help."

Not bad. She manages to say that line without it coming off as being canned or forced. Points for the training people. Well done.

After pouring over every laptop there was at least 4 times and risking my daughter's eternal wrath, we settle on (I settle on!) a nice Toshiba Satellite decked out with the usual stuff. Nice machine, good price.

I grab my wandering sales person and let her know that I'd like to purchase the Toshiba. She wants to know if I need her to explain anything about the machine. Uh, nope, bring it out and let's make the sale.

As we are walking to the counter, I notice the 'no interest/no payments' sign. It applies to all laptops.  Cool, how do I sign up for this. No problem, sir, just give me your Drivers License and a major credit card, takes 5 minutes.

Presto, I'm using Best Buy's money for free.

Not exactly.

Lie number one (Yeah, took a while to get to the Godin part, sorry):

There is a fee to set this purchase up. Its an "adminstration fee." It works out to about a 5% interest charge so it's not free. But, sir, they doth protest, it's cheaper then 18% interest and its not paid over time and and and, well, sir, it's still a great deal. Whatever, relax, I'm not going to go postal, I'm unarmed.

The point is that the "story" of buy now/pay later works but it is not a true story, it is a marketing lie.

Next up: Set up.

Best Buy performs a check of the laptop before they give it to you. This is a free service but for an extra $129 bux, they will do a whole laundry list of things including downloading the latest patches from Microsoft, registering Norton, turning on firewall stuff and a bunch of other things.

[Macho alert!] Now, the kid, err new adult, is standing right there looking up to me -n- all. I start to say, that's okay, I've got it folks, I'll handle it but smart sales person says:

"Getting a Windows machine current and properly set up, as you know sir, takes about 3 hours. It's a royal pain in the ass. We figure the $129 is the deal of the century given that we are saving you the three hours and you're worth more then 43 bux an hour."

Bingo, sign me up.

Oh, and put that on the 12 month no interest plan along with this and this.

The point here is that I think maybe, just maybe, Best Buy finally got it right with this Geek Squad thing. I watched three other people buy computers and three different sales people sold em on letting the geek squad do the complete set up.

The summary pitch? The story?

When you take this baby home, your single task will be turn it on.

They also offer a service where they will come by and set everything up at your house, including wireless routers, dsl modems, firewalls, etc, for a flat rate.

[Side note: Each pitch I watched involved telling the customer what a complicated mess setting up Windows, a Network, etc, can be. It's a fear tactic but, unfortunately, grounded in more reality then the industry will admit. I'm not particularly proud of this.]

Best Buy, at least in the computer department, has done a great job of telling the story of come on by, we make it easy, we'll get you rolling.  A few twists on words like "no interest" but, all in all, somebody has got the story right.

It was a great experience and my daughter is rockin on her new laptop.

Coras - Hold the Sesame Networks

Driving into Toronto at 5:30a is a very low stress thing to do. I've got a little hang out in Aurora called Cora's that I enjoy for an early morning breakfast and a little catching up on email/Blogs, etc.

I found out that Cora's has a location in downtown Toronto (Wellington/Peter) which opens up at 6a. Perfect.

This morning I zip into Cora's and am greeted by the friendly morning crew. I'm pleasantly surprised at a sign proclaiming free Wi-Fi. Excellent. 

Order up some healthy breakfast and crank up the ol Tablet PC.

The service is provided by Sesame Networks, a Canadian company founded by Tom Hope. 

Ah, would life be as easy as point -n- click.

First up, the network isn't there. I ask the manager if the network is running. Should be, he says. Sorry, the network is not showing up here where it should be, I say. He goes for the phone and places a call to the tech support guys. Tech support appears to tell the manager what tech support tells everybody round one: Power down, wait 90 seconds, and turn it back on. The manager comes over to my table, phone in hand and utters those immortal words: Try it now.

Presto, the network shows up, connection, life is good.  Well, sortta.

Like most hosted/supported access points, you fire up a browser and get a log in screen. Normal and simple. 

Well, not simple enough for the fine folks at Sesame Networks, hows this for overhead. After getting to the sign in screen, you type in your cell phone number and then click the request a password button. It sends you, via SMS, a password. 

There is some tiny fine print at the bottom of the web page saying some phone providers might charge you for the SMS message.  Then, there is the issue of only getting one hour of service before having to re-authenticate.

Shezzz..

Okay. Let's deconstruct this one. 

First, we can assume some of the parameters are Cora's request. The service is only available Mon - Fri likely due to the line ups for tables on the weekends. And the one hour is probably Cora's item as well, again, probably for table turns.

Leaving those business issues aside, let's turn our attention to pissing off customers.  Shocking but true, here in North America there are a ton of people, business and otherwise, who don't know what an SMS message is.  So, telling people to check their cell phone when they want to get on-line is, well, it isn't smooth shall we say.  Some business people actually have the phones turned off.  Some people don't like typing their cell phone numbers into web pages for no reasonable reason.

But the topper is the free Internet access might cost the customer 50 cents. Yeah, big deal, 50 phreaking cents. Like most things, its not about the money. the issue is seeing a charge you don't know about on your phone bill, logging your cell phone into a system that now has the possibility to SMS you with other offers, notices, etc.  There is, according to the manager of Cora's, no way for him to just give you a password that's Sesame Networks gig/job.

The tech in me is just embarrassed that Sesame Networks, with something like 50+ years of combined network/wireless/telco experience could put this type of a sign up system in place.

I'm sure there is a laundry list of reasons why this was done but the free access in Maple Leaf lounges can handle name/password.  The hot spots run by T-Mobile don't seem to invite users to combine multiple devices in order to check email. In short, this just makes it harder for customers.

If on the way off chance Cora's actually thought this goofy sign on process up, the years of experience at Sesame Networks should have prevented this self-inflicted wound.

And about Cora's. Hmm.. I'm not sure if the Toronto store is a Cora's corporate store but the Aurora location is a franchise and the owner dropped a hot spot in on his own. The log in process? Turn your computer on and go. Nothing, zero, zip, nadda. Wide open. 

My partner Stu thinks public hot spots are a passing fancy with no real long term business model.  He thinks once 3G networks are in place and devices are just always connected to the network, your Laptop, PDA, etc, will just be on and the notion of needing a hot spot will just go away.

After this experience, I'm off to hunt down an Sierra Wireless Card and get signed up to a data plan.

Lesson for you: Keep it simple.

How to interview a VC

With all the advice being given what to do in order to get in front of a VC, I thought it might be interesting to offer up some checklist items on how the VC should be interviewed by you.

Seems fair and you should take the selection just as serious as we take the investment.  These are in no particular order and this list is not complete.

1. Ask for a some founders/CEOs of companies that didn't get funding from the firm. I keep a list of folks that we didn't finance for whatever reasons. Those on the list were asked by me if it would be okay if I could use them as a reference with respect to how they were treated. We didn't get the Inrix deal but believe Bryan will tell you my firm treated him nicely/professionally.  Being professional, regardless of the outcome, is critical.

2. Talk to CEOs of the currently funded companies. This seems like a simple no brainer thing but people don't do it.  You need to do this because you will get a sense of how the partner will work with you and your plan.

3. Talk to independent board members of boards where the partner serves. This is a twist on talking to CEOs. If there are two VC firms on a board, shoot for the independents, you will get better data; we VCs cover for each other. <insert evil grin here>

4. Read the VC's blog. They don't have one? Quick, call our firm, we do and operators are standing by.  More seriously, think about the partner and how they feel about technology, what they use, etc.  Simple example: If you are doing the next generation interactive content for TV and the partner/firm doesn't believe in TV, well, you get the point.  There is more to an alignment of interests then just a couple of meetings with everybody doing the VC love dance. You need to take the a broader view of the partner and the firm. Many firms are, how shall I say this, risk adverse despite being in risk capital.

5. Ask different questions. The purpose, like the above, is to get insight into who you are dealing with so, go down a list of things like:

A. What's your favorite blog?

B. What kind of laptop do you have?

C. Which cell phone do you favor?

D. Do your kids do the SMS thing?

E. What do you hate about serving on boards?

6. See if they read their own email. I learned this one while getting hundreds of emails a day while working at Microsoft.  Answer your own email and always answer the first one from somebody you've never heard of. It goes beyond courtesy in my view. People who have email typed out by an assistant or people who hand write responses and have somebody else type it in are, sorry, scary. I know, I know, lots of arguments for productivity, etc; just my opinion.

7. Show up unannounced to the firm just to drop by. See what kind of reaction you get.  Think about it. We are family, working close together, long term relationship, blaah blaah. Right. Show up unannounced, ask to use an office, the phone, grab a free pop, whatever, but note the vibe, it will be telling.

Take the extra time to push a bit on the VC firm as it will be in your best interest. The good ones and the right one for you will rise to the top.

>R<

Empower em: Starbucks

Here's a good example of giving tools to the front line.  I dropped by the local Starbucks in Aurora to grab a latte.  I ordered a decaf and got it straight away.  Hmm. This decaf is for the birds.

I walk back up and say, ya know, decaf isn't really very good, my fault, I should stick to the real thing.  Person says, so sorry sir and goes immediately into making a new one. I say, twice, really not your fault, never had decaf, ain't doing that again. Yucking it right up.

In addition to my new drink, she hands me a coupon for free one.

Umm, it wasn't your fault, I ordered wrong thing. No worries, sir, we want people to have a great experience.

Now, you can write up a zillion smart remarks about coffee margins, Starbucks being yet another giant Wal-Mart/Microsoft like evil corporation, but they empowered this (very) young lady to make sure the customers have a great experience.

I asked one of the managers what the policy was regarding the coupons. Are they worried about abuse? Tracking?  Nope. No policy, just common sense and a target of keeping the customer happy. She didn't think abuse would be ever be bad enough to warrant policies or other overhead.

And the bonus question: Did she, as the manager, think giving me a coupon was the right thing to do given the store didn't do anything wrong and the customer was perfectly happy.

The best answer possible: Wasn't her call, it was the call of the employee/team member.

Perfect.

What tools do your employees have? Is it their call?

>R<

Employees - There're everywhere!

My previous post was about about unleashing employees, full potential, etc, using my friend Matt's cross country trek and counter fun with Independence Air as an example.  I thought I had said it really wasn't about Independence Air rather really shaking things up and that this story was just a reference to make my point.

My other continuing point to start up/young/new CEOs was that your employees are even more important to your company given blogs, transparent communications, etc.  My blog is to get you to think about your own company, practices, etc.

I'm also not sure people actually read comments in blogs, especially after the topic dies away. That's too bad because the comments are usually a source of continuing information and exposure to more smart people.

As for Independence Air, meet Chris.  Chris appears to be an employee of Independence Air who responded to my post. Rather then doing a link to his comments, I'm putting them in here because I'd like to further make some observations about shaking things up and employees getting some power.

Please note that Chris put his full name and email address in the right places, but for his privacy I'm not publishing them here.

His comments:

"Are you kidding me, your bashing my employer because you could not get what you wanted, a rediculuously cheap fare!?!?!

Lets play the devils advocate here. So let's say what you suggest was allowed and people knew about it, how long would it take for people to stop buying tickets on us. Instead they would buy fully refundable tickets on other airlines and just start showing up to the gate in hopes of getting a cheap ticket? Come on man, be real! We get last minute travelers like you were all the time. They ask the price and decide if it's worth it, often it is, and they buy a ticket (over the phone with a credit card) and go home. They usually come from United after being stranded, and often become loyal customers. In your case it appears a last minute Seattle flight would have been about $300, thats very reasonable for one way last minute.

Try flying Independence Air next time and see what you think. I think you'll be pleasantly suprised."

Excellent, eh? As I said, I assume Chris is legit because of the name/email address I have. So, let's think about this one.

First, I'm not delusional (yet) and figure Chris and most of the world is not hanging on every word I type.  Chris probably saw the original posting because of some bot/search/alert on Independence Air he has set up. 

Lesson One: Everybody can track your company and what the 'public' is saying. If an employee does it, they care about something, right? They care about where they work, at a minimum and, at the max, they feel about the place the same way you the founder do.

Chris jumped to a couple of conclusions. First, it wasn't me, it really was my friend Matt. I live in Aurora, Ontario Canada.  So, while a nit, this is about me passing on somebody elses experience.

Lesson two: Blogs and everybody being connected means word of mouth issues are really, REALLY amplified. Instead of me talking about Matt's plane fun with two friends before I just forget about it, we have a written record being bounced all over the world, pretty much forever. It changes the speed of news, good and bad, as well as making everybody's stories potentially national news.

Chris believes I'm bashing his employer. I disagree with him. I thought I made it clear but Chris doesn't think so.  And that's okay because an opportunity has presented itself.

Lesson three: Every employee should have the tools to try and 'fix' problems. If you assume, for a moment, I am a pissed customer/bashing IA, what tools does Chris have in his bag. One, he clearly is free to jump up and defend his company, which he did. But wouldn't it be cooler/smarter/shaking things up a bit, for Chris to have a company program called, "convert the complainer" at his fingertips? He could jump on this blog, or any blog, and simply say the exact same things he did, but add a 50 buck coupon or free drink or whatever to the post. A simple, email me, call this number, etc.  Even if I was truly a pissed off customer (potential customer), everybody else is watching and maybe everybody else bombards him for the offer, thus getting you to my point: Unleash your employees.

As for the details in the comments, Chris misses a few points. First, 'everyone' is a relative term.  As any student of marketing knows, nobody takes up offers 100%.  It is highly unlikely everybody would stop buying tickets and just show up. Business people, for sure, couldn't live with that uncertainty. And, Chris, for the record, most, if not all the shuttle airlines run exactly like that, just show up and if there is a seat, buy it. Shuttle meaning Boston/NY or DC/NY. 

But again, do not get hung up in the details, that's missing the point. The point was the person at the gate had an opportunity to sell a seat. The 100 bux isn't even the point. She had an opportunity.

Maybe offer Matt the $300 seat with a coupon for half off the next trip or whatever.  Again, most people never use coupons so she could have filled that seat with a fairly good chance the company wouldn't even have to make good on the coupon.

Don't get hung up in the details, rather ask yourself: What did the gate agent have available to get this person into that empty seat.

If it's just buy a ticket, sorry Chris, Independence Air may be an excellent airline but, in the end, it's just that and not really shaking things up or getting innovative, or any of the other words that typically get a bit over used.

The key point I'm trying to make is that if you are going to really shake things up and claim it, then do it. Shaking things up, these days, requires serious shaking before anybody is going to notice or care.

An Airline CEO greeting customers is yesterday's news, its done all the time, IA's PR machine notwithstanding.  But empowering the employees to 'cut deals?' To risk some chaos in order to shake things up a bit?  That's stepping up, Chris, that's the larger point. 

Remember, in my opinion, it's not about cheap fares, it's about taking advantage of a company's ultimate weapon, the people.

People matter and people will almost always do the right thing. Empower your team, expect some glitches but enjoy the results.

Thanks for stopping by Chris, who knows, you could be the next Robert Scoble except for Independence Air. :-)

>R<

Independence Air - Not so Independent

[True Story, just adding color]

It was a long day for Matt. In the interest of saving his new company's travel budget from taking a big hit, he was going to Washington DC from Seattle, two stops via Houston.  Now, after some really long meetings, it was time to make this ugly trek home.

Through security, dragging thy tired butt down the terminal, he spots Independence Air. Hmmm, who they? Whoa! A direct flight to Seattle leaving in 15 minutes, who's yer daddy!! No checked baggage, whoo hoo!

Matt zips over to the gate. Looks around to a empty area, everybody is on the plane.

Matt - "Is this plane full?"

Nice person - "Nope"

"Tell you what. I'm on Continental to Seattle via Houston in the back of the bus, cramped and tired. See, here's my ticket. I'll pay you a hundred bucks, cash, if you sell me a seat on the plane. You get 100 bucks and a new and loyal customer."

"I'm sorry, sir, I can't do that."

"But the plane's leaving with empty seats, yer a discount airline, and, well, the seats are going empty"

[Blank Stare]

"I'm sorry sir, I can't do that, it's not company policy, sorry."

Now, at this point, there are a million different ways to debate this, but before you conclude anything, let's take a quick look at what the corporation says about itself. What it thinks it stands for.

First, we can look at the standard about page. It's nicely done, history, etc.

But what stands out are these employee values:

i am about the customer first

i am genuine

i am about integrity

i am about operational excellence

i am innovative

i am enthusiastic

Hmm.. File these, we'll be coming back to them.

Next, let's run over and take a look at the management of Independence Air. They have the standard page full of the management and there is a good write up about the Chairman and CEO, Kerry Skeen.

Now this is one dedicated guy. Been there from day one, etc, etc.  In fact, the PR/Marketing people who wrote this up, want you to know this is about changing the status quo. You can read the whole thing on the link above but check out some of these tidbits about Kerry Skeen.

"When’s the last time you sat on an aircraft waiting to take off and the CEO of the airline got onboard, grabbed the microphone and greeted passengers? That’s typical at Independence Air."

"One thing you’ll consistently hear about from Independence Air employees is Skeen’s commitment to safety.  An annual letter is sent to all employees, ordering them to immediately halt any operation they feel is unsafe, and promising no adverse consequences as a result. On this letter, signed by every operational executive, Skeen’s is always the first signature listed."

"Independence Air is about being unique, moving in a fresh, new direction by challenging the status quo and pursuing rewards that can only be achieved when one is willing to take risks."

Now before you think this is a rant about having to schlep to Houston or this is a rant on anything, don't go there as this is really not at all about anything other then walking the talk.

Go back and take a quick look at the employee values. Two of them should stand out. Customer first and Innovation. Then check out the challenging the status quo stuff. And the commitment to telling his employees, do what's right, you won't get fired.

Hmmm.. Maybe. Seems to me we still don't get it. We still don't create companies where people can simply do what's right and make independent calls on anything reasonable that gets the mission of changing the status quo, loving customers, and really shaking things up to a level nobody could even react to.

Can you imagine hearing the following announcement:

Ladies and Gentlemen, over here at gate 50, we're fixin to leave for Denver and we've got 6 empty seats. If you got crappy connections and would like a nice leather seat with a brewski, come on over to gate 50. The first 6 people, with no checked luggage and a crispy twenty can hop on the plane. That's only at gate 50, only on Independence Air and only for the next 10 minutes.

That's shaking up the status quo and that's buzz, Mr. Skeen. 

And before I get a zillion emails/comments on all the security, accounting, people who paid more, issues, don't dumpster dive into the details, this is a higher level thing about unleashing the power of the people that work for you.

Think about it. Think about all those people who could make the company a buck or two, create some buzz, take a few risks, and crank it up a notch. Are they thinking with independence on the brain or it's just a job in a company with really good marketing and pr.  It's not about what I think, it's truly about what your team thinks.

Good ahead, take a chance, unleash em.

Checkbook rounding up: Patent!

STOP! Don't touch that checkbook. You do remember what a checkbook is, right?

Okay. Many of you can relate or are probably doing this.

Way (way) long time ago when my lovely bride and I were living together, I had this habit of writing a check for $18.26 and putting 20 bucks in the register. After years of living together and locking in a date to tie the knot, Teresa took up the task of merging the money.  She found a couple of thousand dollars from my rounding game and, presto, instant nest egg.

Many of you might be doing the very same thing. Rounding up.

It recently got a patent awarded. No, really.

The patent was awarded for the rounding up and the business model is to approach Visa/MasterCard, Amex, etc, and offer people a process to self-save.

Here's how it works:

You tell the credit card company to round up your payments. If it is 18.55, you round up to 20, pay the 18.55 and toss the rest into a savings account. Presto, forced savings.

Patent awarded.

If you've wanted to have a knock down, drag out fight regarding the patent process, regardless of what side of the aisle you are on, I suspect this one will spark the debate juices.

The pro people will start with !#$%&! Brilliant and the Anti folks will go, that's it, kill that department.

Anyway, there you go, the debate floor is now open.

Wine Time in the UK

Hugh over at the gapingvoid is doing some interesting things with a Winery. That's winery, not wino, don't speed read. Basically, they've asked him to help with marketing, blog a bit, etc. You can read about it here.  Some interesting things for you to watch/think about.

There have been lots of hot debates on this kind of product marketing, placement, etc.  I can't imagine it being any more straight up then the way Hugh has written it up.  Here's what I'd be watching.

First, can he pull it off without people saying bad/evil things about him?

Some will likely say, there you go, another marketing schlep just doing some interesting things but in the end product hawker. Others will disagree and point to trust factors, his rankings in Technorati, etc. 

It's a debate worth watching because it's all about the style and delivery, in my opinion.   Can you pass out your product/service for free and get people to talk about it? Is this an old idea using new media? Does any of this matter? It's all evolving, that's for sure.

Even the debate itself will get the wine some PR and that's okay, probably. All in all, this 'trend', if I can call it that, is likely to grow and Hugh is a good study to watch.  A software company, Marqui, did the paid blogger thing and you can read about it on the Marqui web site. Just so you know, I'm looking at the company.

Hugh and Marqui are different, for sure, with the approaches being different, etc.  The larger issue for you is the macro trend of product placement, blogs as a PR/Marketing tool, etc.  I make no judgments, rather suggest paying attention for your own products/services.

The second thing I hope we can all learn from is what happens when we all get tons and tons of data coming at us. In the quest toward keeping up, how much is getting missed, confused, lost, etc. How many people do oops, didn't read it, and screw up by sending mail.

Hugh's first requirement for the free hooch is you have to live in the UK. I wonder how many people will hit the mail to: and not actually see that pesky detail. 

Hopefully, Hugh will keep track and report the numbers. I can confirm one goof already. From Canada. From an American living in Canada.

Have a good weekend, everybody, I'm on the red eye home to my Daugther's 18th birthday. She wants a new laptop. Does my tech heart proud.

>R<

Travelocity Update

Back on May 18th, I wrote an entry regarding Travelocity as an exercise to you about customer service and follow up. The full post is here, but my general point was true customer service involves complete follow up, especially if you fix the original problem.

In the comments section, a nice fellow, Gary Potter, left a note saying I would be contacted and even went one step further by posting his own blog entry which you can read here.  He basically said, he bets on the customer service team, not your humble VC.

Yup, you know where this is going. No call, no email, shoulda placed a big bet with Gary.  That's not, however, the big message and critical lesson for you to learn. 

This is a text book case of why, in my opinion, the jury is out on corporate blogging from the perspective of overall long term impact.

We know Robert Scoble is dives on problems/issues virtually immediately and does a pretty good job of, well, diving in.  Gary Potter, Sabre Holdings, wants to be like Scoble from the perspective of being proud of his company and wanting make some change happen.

Gary got up in public, proclaimed to his large audience of readers and the four of us over here on my blog, "this will get addressed" in the same way Scoble does it for Microsoft.

Microsoft doesn't leave uber-blogger hanging but it looks like Sabre/Travelocity is going to leave Gary hanging out here in cyberspace.

And who ends up getting hurt? The company, not me. The company wins an employee who may (don't know Gary) just may care a little less, get frustrated a little more and take it on down the road thus costing Sabre holdings the total investment in Gary not to mention replacement costs, etc.

Forget me. I've spent, since the original post, $22,500 in travel not on Travelocity. Travelocity used to be 100% for me, now it's zero but forget me, I'm not that big of a deal revenue wise and I haven't painted "I hate Travelocity" on my car or body.

Worry about Gary and all the Gary types out there that care about where they work, are sitting right on the front lines, diving on problems and being left out in the cold because some "old school" team just doesn't get where communications are going.

My advice:

Prohibit your employees from getting on-line and doing anything or saying anything about the company. Make it a firing offense.

Keep this policy in place until you and your management team clearly understand that yesterday is done. The line between all of your people and all of your customers (live and potential) is direct and unfiltered.  You must have a process (and commitment) in place to deal with the new world as it can make or break you.

Then go check out Gary Potter. Seems like a senior/smart guy and one who gets it. He might be in the mood to make a change! Memo to Travelocity HR/Legal: I'm just kidding, please don't flame or sue me.

[Side note: It dawned on me that in making the point about not having "I hate Travelocity" on my car or body and pointing out that I don't really have an issue with Travelocity, I've created the possibility that when the inevitable Google check of "I hate Travelocity" gets done, this post might show up even though, I don't hate em. Them search bots can be a bitch, eh? Off to Seattle]

EverNote: Optional but Required

I am the owner of a fair amount of technology. I currently have a number of Tablet PCs including a Toshiba R15 and the Motion 1400. Both are amazingly great machines. Having a Tablet is an interesting experience. If you are a person that runs around with a pad of paper or notebook to meetings, it really can improve your personal work flow.

The Motion is a true slate with the keyboard as a real afterthought vs. the Toshiba which is a laptop first.

In the quest for more software, I ran across a company called EverNote. They make a number of products to enhance the Tablet PC. Very smart group of people with a long history (back to the Newton) when it comes to pen technology.

One of the newer products is called EverNote. Yeah, I know. They called the company EverNote, came out with ritePen and a bunch of other products, it appears, first; go figure.

A smart company, as I said. On the home page is the link to download the free beta of EverNote. Excellent. Click.

The download starts, cool, and the pages says that your download is beginning without registration but they'd appreciate it if you'd give up your name and email. 

That's well done. Polite, don't get in the way, keep things rolling along.

Uh oh, looks like we're coughing up ye ol fur ball.

The fields for registration are required. Huh?  People, people, people.

If you make it voluntary and you're all friendly like, then give up the red asterisks and just assume if I'm going to fill it out, I'm going to fill it out.

Okay, I know I'm one of 3 people on the planet who would care or catch this and the other two are dead.

I'm pointing this out because I'm almost willing to bet some form of the following happened.

1. A smart marketing person said, don't get in the way of the customer, let's get the product out there and get some feedback. The customers who are going to use it and care enough to tell us about it, will contact us or register so don't make this a problem for the customers.

2. The rest of the management team high fives the marketing person for being smart and tells uber-geek and webmaster: code it up, dude.

3. Said wonk codes it up and, asking all of nobody, makes the fields required so that the fields in the database would have data and not allow me to just fill in my first name and email address or just my email address or any other combo.

4. Everybody in the company takes a quick look at the site, a few whoo hoos all around and, presto, push that baby into production.

No, it's not fatal nor a major error but it's one of those very subtle lessons you can learn from. Watch the process. Make it easy for customers and be consistent in your tone/approach.

Somebody in marketing got it exactly right, get the beta out there and somebody put some code in the way. That shouldn't happen.

One talk - two perspectives - you decide

The fact that everybody has an agenda is not news.  Today, we are being told about the new world of transparent communications. Hmm..

Bill Gates was interviewed at Tech Show by Walt Mossberg (of WSJ fame).  Two people blogged what they heard.

Dan Gillmor and Tim O'Reilly.

Dan's entry can be found here.

Tim's can be found here.

I suggest you bring up both entries, side by side, and scroll through them. It's an interesting exercise.  Assume you know nothing about either of these gentlemen.  You can certainly draw some interesting conclusions about one person's opinion versus the other.

I happen to catch Dan's first. He posted the entry, it appears, three times before he was done. It was interesting to watch, via my RSS reader's fetching style (NewsGator) what changed, what was added, etc.  I learned something about his style and got to watch his entry evolve to where it is.

Tim's was next up and, as you will see for yourself, there are some notable differences in perceptions. For example, there was a film spoofing Bill. It's the first thing both guys mention.  Interesting what they wrote.

Two other interesting points to look carefully at.

There is a comment about Brazil the choice of desktop operating systems. The difference in what they each wrote is, to me, pretty striking, but take a look and decide.

Finally, the Q&A as documented by both.

I point all this out for a couple of reasons.

First, training. The Internet, blogging, etc, is giving everyone an amazing amount training in a number of places MBA schools can only dream about.  After reading both of these entries, you can start adding on individual agendas.  Tim O'Reilly and Dan Gillmor are both pretty well known so you can add what you know, what you've seen, etc, and layer it on as you decide what's accurate, what's bias, what's whatever. It's not for me to tell you, it's an exercise for the reader.

In my opinion, being able to read this kind of material with a critical eye, being fully aware of styles, history, agendas, etc, affords you training to make better decisions with data that is coming at you from all sides.

The second item is your own public persona. Everybody is blogging everything and while the jury is out on where the 'norm' will be, train yourself now to expect your spoken word to be heard and filtered through a thousand different people with agendas, bias, etc.  Try to remember this as you make off the cuff remarks or comments about competition. 

Years ago, odds were good it would stay in the room unless is was over the top outrageous. Today, odds are excellent the boring snooze-fest will hit the blogging airwaves seconds after you open your mouth.

Worth thinking about.

VC Depression (almost)

The New York Times ran a story today about the VC business.  Showed three really smart people bombing out of the biz and drew some pretty interesting conclusions. One of them was that the gods of the business have been making at least 100 million bucks on a deal to get that status.

Yowsa, was I depressed. I'm not even in the city, let alone the neighborhood, let alone the ball park.

Fred Wilson, a VC in NYC, has a great post in a kind of a response that I hope speaks for the rest of us, especially the newbies like yours truly.

I agree with everything he says.

I actually love this gig. My office has 6 other people that are my second family. I have true partners. Partners that know what that word, partner, means.  Every day is awesome. Every single day and it had been that way for 5 years.

To mean, the key to success is never wanting to turn it off. I hate it when I'm tired because while I'm sleeping somebody in a garage somewhere is cooking up the next hot thing.  I want to be there first. I want to work with amazing people doing amazing things. I just love this stuff.

The top gigs in my life:

1. The U.S. Air Force. Call me old fashion (or old school, eh Robert!) but that's where I learned the meaning of team and crew. Flight crew on the AWACS aircraft taught me more about partners on a mission then anything else I've ever done.

2. Microsoft. Yeah, flame away, but I'm telling you folks, from 1992 to 1997 there was no better place to be then being at Microsoft as a technical evangelist working with some of the greatest software companies on the planet. I got to see everything, meet everybody, and just soak up technology from every direction.  You know who is working that beat today, but the Developer Relations Group of those years, wow, amazing people.

3. Chapters. I got an amazing opportunity to work with a team of people that decided walking through walls on a daily basis was normal, ho hum, behavior. The Internet bubble may have gone bust but the people and the experiences combine to make today's Internet all that it can be and more.

Each of those gigs, I believe, allows me to bring talents to the table when looking at companies to fund. I hope it shows and I hope, over time, I will deliver the financial returns, for sure, but also be able to point to lots of amazing companies and say, 'yup, I was on that rocket.'

Come by the office and share your ideas. Who knows, we could change the world together.

It's a great gig!

Okay, I'm done being depressed, thanks Fred.

Dozing Dogs = Pricing Done Right

One of the more interesting but somewhat unsung hero jobs is that of an actuary. Don't go to sleep just yet.  Actuarys are best known as the people figure out the odds on who is going to die when and then build insurance rate tables.  When I worked for AEtna many years ago, I learned they are used in many other fields.

Rebates, for example. One of the network gear makers was charging a good price for a wireless router with a 100% mail in rebate, making the product free (excluding tax and the stamp to mail in the rebate certificate). There is a consulting group of actuary types that help figure out the breakage (those that won't send in the coupons vs. those that will) in order to model the price to charge and then rebate back.  They know, within a few percentage points, how many people will buy, won't send in the coupon and thus pay for those that do.

I bring all this up because I happen to be building a pricing model for one of my portfolio companies. While doing that, somebody sent me a note suggesting a look at a content management software package from Dozing Dogs.

Upon zipping over to the site, I was impressed with a couple of things that you should consider for your software/services company.

Reviewers Copy

Very smart. James Shaw, the Founder, simply says if you've got a user group, call em up for a free reviewers copy. No strings attached, no limit, write that it sucks, whatever, free.

60 Day Money Back Guarantee

Even better. The list of software companies offering up 30 money back guarantees is pretty small. The list with 60 day money back? Probably count on one hand with room left over, as they say.

James is playing the odds. Based just on the tone of his website and my 90 second review of several pages (about, the money back, etc), I get the sense you have a straight up friendly guy with a great piece of software using some good marketing skills.

James could have gotten an actuary to probably help him draw the same conclusion, i.e. people generally don't ask for refunds unless it's fraud or health related and even then the request percentages are lower than you think. It looks like James just applied some smart brain cells to what makes good sense.

In any event, Dozing Dogs is on the my list of very smart companies with very smart policies you should consider for your corner of the world.

You Software remains my favorite home page (immediate download of trial, phone/email address, all on the home page)

Dozing Dogs is my current reference for pricing and sales policies, well done James.

Funding: You're Pre-Approved

On Tuesday, I'm headed to Boston for a meeting.  Tech simple enough, right?

Basics:

Off to AirCanada.com to grab a flight. The new simple fares are on display. Executive class is cheaper then coach. Okay, this is a good sign. Book it, Dano..

[Note to AirCanda: please don't change your pricing engine, this is the 3rd time I've had this happen. Thank you, Robert Milton]

Flight booked, seats picked, etc. Nothing to it.

Over to google maps to see where this guy's office is (out in Waltham). Hmm.. Commuter Rail line is running through town. Google up MBTA, find station, map station to guy's office, look up schedules, use google local to figure out taxis, figure out blue line to orange line, to commuter rail. Copy all this and slap it into my appointment in Outlook which wirelessly will sync with my blackberry.

Whew!

All that to save the pain in the butt (and expense) of renting a car.

Here's what I need:

1. Put in address of where I'm going.

2. Give me a complete set of options on how to get there with details like the above. Complete. I'm in Toronto so, heck yeah, point out the bus schedules, the train schedules as well as planes, subways, taxis, etc. I'll choose to narrow it to flying to major location, with/without rental cars, etc, but the key: Complete Package in a simple choice format.

[Note: All the data exists and with everybody talking XML/RSS/Ant etc, this can be done.]

3. Pump this stuff onto my schedule once I pick the trip plan.

4. Create an alert (RSS feed, whatever) for the guy that I'm meeting with that automatically updates his outlook schedule if my plane is late, traffic is bad, train is off schedule, etc. Again, all this data is there. All of it. Traffic? Check out Inrix. Trains, planes, etc, they all have schedule advisory information.  I don't have to call em if the plane is late, his schedule gets updated, he will know. And if he has a hard stop and I'm at the gate with a broken plane, I'd like to know it so I don't have to haul to Boston to here, sorry, I've only got ten minutes.

Business model? Ads, placement fees for providers, affiliate fees, and fees from people like me who would pay for this service.

Build it and I'll fund you.

A universal VC Posting

Seth Levine has an amazingly good posting about how to get into the VC business. It should be cross linked and posted on every VC blog out there as well as read by everybody wanting to get into this biz.

The post is here.

The first part begins with:

Step one: Assume you will not be able to land a job as a venture capitalist. This is the realistic outcome of trying to get a job as a VC. I imagine the market is a little bit better in places like Palo Alto, but here in Denver I can count on one hand the number of VC jobs that have opened up since I joined Mobius in 2001.

And Seth ends with:

Step five: Don’t get discouraged. If you remember back to step one, you weren’t going to be successful getting a job in VC in the first place, so all the progress you are making is gravy, right?!?

The whole post is worth reading.

PR in the modern world: Marqui

Rex Hammock has an interesting case study about what happens when the PR people are left at the gate as a story races around the world.  It's here.  Yeah, it's on the topic that is melting my hit counter but so what, there's a good quote in it:

"Lesson of the morning: In the conversational media age, shared values and relationships trump corporate hierarchy and complex communication processes."

Yup. I have a daughter studying Marketing/Communications. I have to wonder where she is getting more education about communications, school or watching Dad go one on one with various bloggers.

It seems to me that PR folks, the good ones, are going to morph in educators for the corporations as well as those armed with the tools that allow companies to get a handle on all of this stuff. I think there will be less and less time for people to pass it to PR for a response which means the PR machines will be training everybody and providing tools.

One such interesting company is Marqui.

The elevator pitch on Marqui:

They are the salesforce.com of marketing communications. They solve the problem of little/mid size companies needing a system to deal with all types of communications while being able scale up as the business grows. Consistent process, with speed, and outsource pricing.

A nice hosted service with some seriously smart people running the company.  It's a worth a look.

From Tom Peters

Excellent quote:

Enjoyment = Flow = Innovation

Next time your hear someone couching innovation in terms of complex processes, jargon, and esoteric management theories, challenge them with this simple question: how do you plan to enable people here to enjoy their work?

From Tom's new blog tpwireservice. I found about this link from Hugh's gapingvoid blog. He has a great post about "porn" which you should read.

I wish I could write/draw like this guy. Someday....

NetFlix gets Wal-Mart

Build a business, create value, solve a problem, win. Simple stuff that sometimes has good wins to show for it.

Netflix is taking over the online DVD rental biz for Wal-Mart.

An ap story is here. It's a weird link, sorry.

Good for them, good for customers, good for Wal-Mart.

Hugh, a clue, and blogging

I met a CEO two days ago who told me blogging was just as bad as email and web surfing from the perspective of wasting company time. He was thinking of putting out a policy on this stuff.  Yeah, I know...

I wanted to write something about this but Hugh has a cartoon which sums it up nicely.  He is referencing a "thoughtful post" that Steve Rubel wrote about blog bashing.

Hugh makes the point about people being wrong over and over again and it's a point not to be overlooked or understated.

Every time something fundamental to any status quo changes, there are always people that freak and dump on it, while another group of people fly way out in front testing every boundary and limit.

Eventually it balances out and the new/exciting becomes the norm/mainstream.  It used to be the wired/tired analogy but I think that's even old now.

Hugh is probably one of the better case studies you can find when it comes to 'new business' rules as it applies to blogging from a business perspective.

It requires a bit of time, but you should head over to gapingvoid and read everything, including the comments, TrackBacks, etc.

Here's what I think you might conclude and if you don't, I'd love to hear why.

1. Hugh is very customer centric.  He cares deeply about his products and product quality so much so that he can pull off two aspects of business that are keys to success: Pricing and Quality.  He charges a good price for a "t-shirt" and said "t-shirt" is off the scale on quality, I know, I've got one.  No discounting, no sales, no hype, just a solid quality product that is sold for a good price. And people are buying.

2. Hugh can speak his mind, disagree, bash, be obscene, be funny, whatever, and it totally fits him. His cartoons are excellent summaries of both his opinion on a topic and the collective thinking of many people.

3. It's not about him. This is important. He is very opinionated, widely read, and often quoted. When you read his material there is not much ego there. Pride of work? Totally, but not ego. I don't think Hugh drinks his own Kool-Aid which is a trait many others would do well to pick up. There's not much chest thumping or having to prove anything.

4. It's the real deal. I've never met the man. I've never had a phone call with the guy, never a private email message, but I believe he has established, for me anyway, a level of trust that's pretty good considering it's all based on a public persona and nothing more. 

All of that summed up, at least for me, is that here is a trusted source and somebody worth paying attention to.  He has an opinion that is carefully put out on topics that matter to him all the while remembering the simple stuff, i.e. saying thank you to customers; read his whole blog and draw your own conclusions.

He is able to get his message out, sell products, enjoy (I hope) a good living, and be successful. All from the comfort of his blog. Not bad. Not bad at all.

Remember, it's all about the conversation.

Being Mad - Blog vs. Website

Sometimes you want to make a point. Loudly. Forcefully. Some people will tell you that starting a blog about the issue is a great way to get the ball rolling. I agree.

But sometimes a good old fashion  websites might do the trick. If you are thinking about buying a Dodge Van, you might want to take a peek at this website.  (Thanks Rachel!)  Go take a look, I'll wait.

Amazing, eh?  That is a major chunk of work from one seriously pissed off customer.  I know there lots of example where customers are taking on companies; this is just one of the better example I've seen recently.

I have a couple of observations I'd like to share.

First, I wonder if blogging about this would have made a difference. If Brad had started a blog, had others link to it, and eventually enough people pounded on Dodge, would the customer have gotten satisfaction? This has been going on for quite some time. A few links, a newspaper mention, that's about it. 

So, a question: Would a blog about this incident have more staying power and be more effective? I'm not sure but given the all Scoble all the time stuff going on recently (not a shot, a compliment!), it got me thinking that if Dodge had an employee diving all over Dodge issues throughout the internet, would Brad have gotten action or a better response?  Can the corporate blogger actually change the culture, fix a problem?  Jury is out but I'd like to believe the answer is yes.  I think in these cases, having people who like to be up at 4am actually is a good thing.

If some senior VP of Dodge sees my post, reads the anti-Dodge website and then say, yowsa, fix the problem, the world of blogging scores one, right?  Well, the flip side is that given length of time Brad's Van problem has been going on, I'm not sure anything could help Dodge figure out customer service, but it is an interesting exercise to understand.

The second observation is the sheer noise factor. You create a website with a domain name called donotbuyadodge, you essentially protest in the dealership, you spray paint the url on you van, you hand out cards with the url on it, well, you are making some serious noise.

So far, no resolution. 

I have to believe Dodge has lost at least two potential customers and there are more then 10 people who know about this problem.  There is much larger message here. The old school of process and whatever Dodge thinks it's doing here is dead.

Lets assume the CEO of Dodge does care. What do you do to fix the overall culture that allows this incident to drag on.

Hire a scoble-clone and make them a protected agent, meaning they report directly to the CEO. Get somebody that is as rabid as Scoble that will call it as he sees it and get stuff like this raised to a level that basically allows the decent people wanting to do the right thing inside the company, to rise above the corporate idiots.

I think rather then 'open dialogs' and other PR inspired corporate-speak, there are clear cases where a really smart CEO who really does want to make the changes will grab some change agents, protect them, and let the smart stuff rise up.

Until then, I guess we all should use care in buying a Dodge product.

It's offical - Skype is mainstream

It's a quiet Saturday morning here in Aurora, Ontario (North of Toronto). 

My SkypeIn just rang. It was a telemarketer looking for the women of the house.  I need a wrong number and an obscene phone call to make it totally complete, but getting a telemarketer on my SkypeIn number that I've had for exactly 18 hours, that's pretty mainstream to me.

When you look at the options inside of Skype for dealing with this; fairly straight forward. The even better news is the API/development kit which allows you to do even more.  That, to me, is the real power behind VoIP apart from pricing.

As a VC, I ask the question: Assume everybody has a "VoIP" connection. What are the applications and services that you can now deliver that weren't possible/practical before.  That's where the next investments can be made. 

Lots of opportunities and lots of places for start ups to make some good coin. Come see me, we're open for business.

Noise study continued

If you take a look at the comments from my last noise post, you can see that Dave Winer makes some great points which shows why I said, super smart and all around nice guy that I do know. 

Robert Scoble drops by as well making a few comments, being concerned about a cheap shot he believes was taken at him. He then writes an entry over in his corner of the world.  The full read is here.

As I've mentioned previously, Scoble is one of the more well known corporate bloggers for a super large organization. As such, you get a great view of corporate blogging, good and bad.

Here are some follow up points worth thinking about.

Robert makes this observation:

"When there's a conversation going on we should try to participate WHEN THE CONVERSATION IS HAPPENING!"

My opinion:

I'd like to believe that when I say something, for the most part, it's respected and has some value to the listener. When a CEO tells another CEO, listen to Segal, he's smart or some such, that's what counts.  As a VC, it's all that counts.

To get there, I'm not sure that diving into a conversation while it is happening for speed's sake will always get me those results.  Being thoughtful, getting additional facts, and presenting good material for the conversation is, for me at least, the higher priority.

Secondly, the nature of communications, blogging, etc, as well as the volatility of these types of issues, tends keep em happening for quite some time.  Robert points out that all this action was happening at 4am and that he knew what the reactions would be, etc, etc, and felt the need to respond. That's fine. It's a function of style and purpose I suppose.  As I've gotten older, I've found that sleep is a pretty good thing to be doing at 4am. But you youngsters, turn the lights out when you're done.

My dad once told me that the most effective way to get your point across was simple; wait. When in the middle of raging debates, wait until you are asked. When all eyes turn on you and people are paying attention, make your points thoughtfully and, over time, people will start to say, what does he think and thus listen to you.  It was good advice when you're 15. In my case, is still being fully implemented 30+ years later. But I'm getting better.

In my previous post I said my three rules for corporate blogging are don't embarrass the customers, the company, or yourself.

Robert had a thought on that:

"By the way, what's wrong with embarrassing yourself? If you really are going to be transparent and react to a global conversation that happens within minutes you're bound to embarrass yourself.

It's what you do after you embarrass yourself that matters."

My point was about trying to keep rules away from blogging, rather stick to common sense which is what I thought my three items were.

And Mark Jeftovic, CEO of EasyDNS, gave me that rule first, sorry Mark, you should have gotten credit in the first point.

But, since Robert asked. I agree that if you dive into a rapidly changing and dynamic event, you are bound from time to time to get caught up in a mistake or two. If you are good about correcting it, no big deal.

The word of caution is, as it's often called, the signal to noise ratio. 

Robert, the preceding and the following are not shots at you, these are observations for new companies, the prime reason why I write all this stuff.

Here's what I tell young interns, virgin project managers and owners of new kittens when asked about being successful:

You can work your butt off, diving onto everything, helping everywhere, and probably end up doing a decent job with everything you touch.

People will typically say, she works really hard.

Or you can do fewer things, be ruthless about the quality of just those things and do them better then anyone else by a factor of 100.

People, in this case, will typically say, wow, she's the best at X, Y, and Z.

I'd go for option two myself and I think this applies to blogging.  I think having an opinion, reaction, comment, on 'everything' gets you the personal brand of, wow she is commenting everywhere.  I'd rather have the "wow, lucid thinking" or "excellent comments" as the personal brand, even if it meant not commenting on everything that flies by. 

Again, (and again) this isn't a shot at anybody, rather an observation about communications evolution and what it means for you, your employees and company.

Finally, there is a belief Robert had that I took a cheap shot at him.

He quoted me as saying this:

"I'd like to believe those humans will work hard be straight up."

He then gave a few paragraphs on why he works straight up. Okay, he does and is a good guy. Except, a few pesky details.

The full quote was this:

"That's part of balance and that's where I think many corporate blogs go a bit too far. Mis-quotes, bias, clips, unfair attacks, are all things we hate.  If corporate blogging is supposed to put a human face on a company, I'd like to believe those humans will work hard be straight up."

My comments, in context of what I write about, are the bigger picture. If you read the full blog entry, sorry it's long, you will see that I said a bunch of times, the entry wasn't a ding on anybody rather an observation a lesson for young start up companies and 'those humans' really applies to everybody, not just one person. In that particular entry, I called Dave Winer on the FUD comment in a fairly easy going way (I respect the man a lot) and you can see his response in the comments section. So, cheap shots aren't really my thing, I'm happy to call it as I see it.

But, here's the lesson for you and your company.  Look at all the parts. First, my blog entry, then Robert's comments, then his blog entry, then this blog entry.  I think Robert mis-quoted me and took something personal that wasn't personal. I think my blog entry made it clear the whole thing is training for others but Robert took offense with one line a bit out of context.

You read, you decide and then use what you learn to make what you read/say better. That's the point of all this.

This also somewhat makes my point about being careful with quoting, context, and jumping the gun a bit but that is an exercise for you the reader to figure out; my opinion doesn't count.

And, I might again point out, an important exercise.

It's really not important what Robert says or what I say. What's important is what you say about your company and your personal brand (Sorry, Seth Godin, I know you hate that word).

After your figure out what you think of Robert, Dave, and Moi, ask yourself what data you used to draw those conclusions and then figure out what would happen if people used that same data/process to draw conclusions about you/your company. 

That's the takeaway from all of this. Watch all of this and apply the lessons to yourself/your company.

See ya at Reboot, Robert.

The anatomy of "noise"

[WARNING: EXTREMELY LONG POST]

First, the standard disclaimer: I used to work for Microsoft so it's either former employee shill or ex-employee sour grapes, you pick but that's where I worked.

Second disclaimer: I present these types of 'case studies' as important learning experiences for you as you grow/manage your company, I'm not bashing/slamming anybody.  Plus it's entertaining.

Today, many people believe Blogs are solving lots of problems. One problem now believed solved is more transparent communications inside corporations with customers, partners, employees, and other shareholders.

Here's a good case study to look at as it winds its way through the blog sphere, etc, etc.

The summary:

Steve Ballmer is asked a question about RSS. He answers it. Microsoft uber Blogger Robert Scoble jumps on it, Dave Winer jumps on Steve Ballmer and we have ourselves an itsy bitty little controversy.

Let's now take this apart and see what we can learn from all of this.

It all started with a guy named Amit Malhotra doing up a blog entry on his talk/interview with Steve Ballmer. The full post is here but there a couple of things worth pointing out.

First, Amit says in plain english the interview was NOT VERBATIM.

Good for him, 10 points. More points in making it totally clear that he isn't a reporter, wasn't sure he was even getting into the event and, in general, it was really really clear (at least to me) this wasn't a recorded/formal transcript of an interview.  It's a key point, I'll come back to it.

Lesson One: Be straight up. I can't tell you how refreshing it is when you get somebody to give this type of context before you have to draw conclusions.

The question he asked was about RSS and it's impact. The actual, direct, verbatim question isn't known or remembered by Amit but the point is he was asking Ballmer, basically, what do you think of RSS.

What Amit heard and/or remembers, he wrote in his blog.  He believes Steve said, interesting stuff, not gonna change the world, other technologies allow for more complex stuff, it will be around, lots of work and debate regarding RSS is going on inside Microsoft.

Even more points for Amit, he asked the PR people for transcripts and said he would post them.

Amit's blog entry was entitled, in part: "RSS not huge but important."

All in all, nicely done by Amit.

Enter Scoble, Microsoft's uber blogger, budding young book author, speaker, and all around nice guy (so I'm told, never met the man).

Robert tosses out a blog entry with the title: "Ballmer tries to cool the RSS hype a bit?" In that blog entry, we have a link to Amit's story with a summary line about what Steve said.  Scoble credits Steve Rubel for the link. Steve's post has the title: Ballmer to RSS Enthusiasts: Chill.

Scoble blogs that Ballmer said RSS is important but won't change the world while Steve Rubel blogs that Ballmer threw some water on the RSS party, according to Amit's posting.

Next up, we have Dave Winer, a long time industry dude, super smart, very forward thinking, and a super nice guy that I have met and would vouch for.

Dave offers up a blog entry with the title: Is Microsoft of two minds on RSS?  In this entry, Dave jumps on Ballmer for spreading FUD regarding RSS. Dave follows with his, agenda free, RSS will rule the world commentary. Just kidding, don't flame me, a little simple humor.

And back we go to Scoble with a blog entry entitled: "Dave Winer calls Ballmer out over RSS comments" In this installment, Scoble points out he is working with RSS teams in Microsoft and he believes that Ballmer "did seem to throw mud in the water" but everybody is checking with PR on what exactly was said.

And we round all this out with a post from another MSFT person named Dare Obasanjo. He blogs that "our CEO decided to downplay the importance of RSS this morning in favor of XML Web Services.

Whew!

Let's start with what should be the obvious. We don't know what Steve Ballmer said. Period. And that's important. The person who wrote the blog made that clear.

As of when I'm typing this, nobody including Scoble has posted a transcript of exactly what was said.

This, of course, means we have a raging rush to judgment (Johnny Cochran: RIP) before the facts are even know.

Lesson two: Find lots of these incidents and study them. You can get really really good at anticipating reactions by reading this stuff.

No amount of PR/Press briefings/training can prepare you. You have to get the gut instinct to understand how information is moving in today's world.

This topic of this episode is classic. There are always debates of technology, always people with agendas on what is better, what's coming around, what's old, etc. 

The CEO of Microsoft probably should get some credit for hiring smart people and letting those groups work out what makes sense for the company.

Lesson three: Corporate Blogging, jury continues to debate it.  I'm using Scoble as the poster boy for this lesson because he's out there doing his thing. It's not personal and it's not directed at him/Microsoft rather a lesson for everybody. 

When you study this adventure, you can't help but notice a clear sequence of events.

1. Somebody writes something they heard from CEO. Not verified yet.

2. Still unverified, employee comments and cranks it up a notch. That's strictly my opinion of Scoble's comments regarding what Ballmer knew, who he talked, and the witty 'come on channel 9' invite.  You have to read it and be your own judge of his style.

3. Others pile on with still no verification of the original comments.

4. After a few hours and multiple bloggers making entries and running commentary, the CEO's unverified comments have become fact and taken on a "mud in the water" meaning that nobody knows to be true.

5. Rinse and repeat.

I'm not going to pick apart Ballmer's words nor nit pick Scoble's words. I do think that Dave Winer calling Ballmer's comments "FUD" is unfair and wrong, but that's Dave.  Steve saying Firefox may have a problem with diabetics and those with flat feet, okay, that's FUD.

But what was reported he said, that we don't know for sure, in no way rises to FUD standards as Dave knows em. Dave's been around and has lived through standards FUD and, well, Dave should know better.

But, Dave jumped in, which is fine, he is still a good/smart guy.

And to be clear Ballmer didn't say anything about diabetics and people with flat feet.  Something about Firefox, loosing hair and not getting dates but I can't remember exactly what he said.

On Corporate blogging, here's what I think your company rules should be, in this order:

A. Don't embarrass our customers.

B. Don't embarrass us.

C. Don't embarrass yourself.

Again, since Robert Scoble is out in public and there is a good set of opinions/comments regarding his writings, I suggest you study his postings to get a sense of what can go right and wrong with corporate/employee blogging.

In his case, here are some things you can learn from.

Scoble is a tech geek of the highest order.  He is also, in my view, a reactionary. By that I mean, he has enough watch tags, alerts, and people tossing tips his way, that he is in that trap of wanting to jump on everything as fast as possible. I've got the same bad habit of ready, fire, aim but I'm getting much better as I get older.

In my opinion, Scoble could have sent the link he got to WagEd, asked if there was an actual record of (or witness to) what was said.

And waited.

It seems to me that if it turns out that Ballmer was making the same type of comments he's been making for 15+ years regarding technology, it's not news. For years (and years) Ballmer, when asked about MAPI, WOSA, XML, ASP, .NET, OLE, etc, he basically says exactly the same thing. It's interesting but that piece of technology, in and of itself, isn't the be all end all, it's about applications, usages, people, passion, etc, etc. 

In other words, Ballmer may make comments about Open Source vs. Windows or FireFox vs. IE but when it comes to the components that makes it all work, I don't think he is playing favorites, dissing one over the other, or pouring water on any geek party.

That's part of balance and that's where I think many corporate blogs go a bit too far. Mis-quotes, bias, clips, unfair attacks, are all things we hate.  If corporate blogging is supposed to put a human face on a company, I'd like to believe those humans will work hard be straight up. 

I'm not suggesting corporate blogs become shills for your company nor am I suggesting there is a free for all where people with agendas advance those agendas in a public forum. I know that sometimes change only happens when enough noise is being made, I just observe it can be a slippery slope.

Finally, on corporate blogging, there is a sense of fairness that should be put in place and it should be the cornerstone of every corporate blog. Heck, maybe every blog or everything, but I digress.

Remember, we have an unverified set of comments. And to those unverified set of comments, we had a smart industry player (Dave Winer) call these comments FUD.  We had a corporate blogger, Robert Scoble, point people to this FUD comment and drone on.

Fine, except, it isn't fair to Steve Ballmer, Scoble's fellow employees, or people trying to keep up with the Microsoft happenings.

It can't be FUD if the comments aren't confirmed to have been made by the speaker. Period.  Simple and, in my view, Scoble should have called Winer out vs. giving some defacto creditability to this unfair characterization of somebody's unverified commentary.

So, again, this isn't a rant on Scoble nor debate on RSS, rather my pointing out to you that these are the kinds of episodes that are just super valuable lessons you just can't get out of books. 

We live in an era of open and transparent communications.  That means all of us have more responsibility for what we write and say because the impact is far greater then ever before. 

Happy Victoria Day, folks, enjoy the weekend.

TV? Why?

I've got friends who claim they don't watch or own a TV.  They claim all kinds of reasons, quality of what's on being one of the more popular reasons. I've usually dismissed this as just nonsense. No TV, pluhlezz.

However, armed with a broadband connection, these people may be onto something.  With quality and educational programming like this on the internet, well, please excuse me while I cancel my big screen order.