Portals and KM

Images of New Orleans Neighborhoods 2010 Part Two: Lower French Quarter

This is the second in an 18 part series over the next few months of images of New Orleans neighborhoods taken in February 2010 the weekend before the Super Bowl victory and two weeks for Mardi Gras. I certainly did not have time to cover them all but this series will provide a glimpse of the city that I hope you will want to visit.

This is the quieter and more residential part of the French Quarter. It includes Dauphine and Burgundy, the streets on the lake side of Bourdon, as well as the part of the Quarter away from Canal Street and by Esplanade.  There are some clubs and eating places that are less tourist oriented than what you find in the upper French Quarter including my favorite bakery, Crossiant  D' Or. I could easily live here. I start with a map of the area.  You can click on any images to expand it. The last eight are from a trip in April 2006. They include the courtyard fountain at the Soniat House. 

                       

              
 
 
 
 
  

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Painting of American Breakfast - Version Five

Here is a 18" x 24" acrylic painting of an American breakfast. It includes an egg over easy, bacon, and a roll. It is the sixth in a series on breakfast in various countries. This is the first one that I cooked. I ate all of them except a few that my friend Don Lesser ate with me in Ashfield, MA

 

 

Visit My Artsetter Online Gallery

Artsetter is a Paris based online art gallery. I have now been accepted as one of their artists. I had to go through a voting process and I appreciate those of you who voted for me.  Now I put up an initial gallery of 24 paintings. I will add more and perhaps some drawings and photos.

I encourage you to visit the Artsetter site and comment on my work as feedback is really appreciated. When you get to the site you can find my gallery under the gallery tab. For now it is listed in new galleries but that may evolve.

 Here is what I wrote in my profile. I paint with acrylics and also do simple line drawings. My focus is directly painting what I see. The goal is not photo realism but an integration of painting and seeing. I primarily do still life or painting from a model at the moment. I have experimented with landscapes from direct observation. I recently did a series on breakfast. These were done from photos. I do not go beyond what I see as I have always imagined paintings as I look at the world. Now I am having fun creating some of these images. I live and work in the Boston area (US) but also paint from my travels. I grew up in New Orleans and it remains a favorite place. I would like to paint there.

Here is a sampling of the initial works in the gallery. You can click on the images to enlarge them. 

                      
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

KM World 2010 Moves to Washington DC and Enterprise Search Summit 2010 Comes to NYC

This year's KM World Conference & Exhibition has moved to Washington, D.C. It will be November 16 - 18, 2010 at Marriott Renaissance, The Enterprise Search Summit 2010 will be at the New York Hilton on May 11-12. It is nice to see these two conferences on the East Coast. I went last year in the November to the combined conference in San Jose.

I will be presenting at the Enterprise Search Summit 2010 with my Darwin Colleague, Thierry Hubert. We are presenting on Deriving Order From Chaos Through Discovery and Awareness. Our session is on Wednesday May 12 at 1PM. The Enterprise Search Summit says that the “emphasis for Enterprise Search Summit is on how enterprise search enables Information Access. Search can no longer be viewed as a stand-alone application. It is increasingly part of everything we do and has become the de facto gateway to information in the enterprise.” I would certainly agree.

The KM World announcement said that this year's theme is KnowHow: the Knowledge-Driven Enterprise. “The knowledge of how to do something smoothly and efficiently with technical skill and expertise -- also known as "knowhow" -- drives every enterprise, agency, and organization. Creating knowledge bases, sharing them effectively, using them for decision-making and innovation.”

This sounds familiar but it is great that it is still very relevant. The session shave a 2.0 flavor like last year. I hope to be able to attend. Deadline for speaker submissions is March 1. Here are my notes from the combined event KM World and Enterprise Search Summit last year.

My KM World and Enterprise Search Summit Notes: Resetting the Enterprise With 2.0 Collaborative Tools

My KM World and Enterprise Search Summit Notes: The Role of Social Techniques in Search & How It Impacts Your Organization

My KM World and Enterprise Search Summit Notes: Evolve From a Tactical E-Discovery Approach to Search and E-Discovery

My KM World and Enterprise Search Summit Notes: Enterprise Search Technologies

My KM World and Enterprise Search Summit Notes: Fundamentals of Enterprise Search

My KM World and Enterprise Search Summit Notes: From Birth to Billions: The Life Story of Google Enterprise Search

My KM World and Enterprise Search Summit Notes: Is Semantic Technology Real?

2009 Global Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises (MAKE) Winners

This brings back memories. The Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises (MAKE) award has been around for some time. Back when I was with a large consulting company and involved in our knowledge management practice, I spoke at the awards meetings in London several times.  These were the days of better travel funding and the relatively early days of KM. I am pleased that this award is still around and still relevant.

For the first time, Apple was named the overall Global MAKE Winner. North America took top honors with 7 Winners, followed by Asia (5 Winners) and Europe (3 Winners). Teleos in association with The KNOW Network conducts this award. There were also 5 'Global' Winners whose organizational structures reflect the 21st global knowledge economy.

A panel of experts made the picks based on these criteria:

- creating an enterprise knowledge-driven culture

- developing knowledge workers through senior management leadership

- developing and delivering knowledge-based products/services/solutions

- maximizing enterprise intellectual capital

- creating an environment for collaborative knowledge sharing

- creating a learning organization

- delivering value based on stakeholder knowledge

- transforming enterprise knowledge into shareholder/stakeholder value

The 2009 winners include some long time winners and some major companies that you would not associate wit KM in the 90s. 

Smartphone Surge in 2010

Here are more 2010 predictions. Forrester has issued a report, Collaboration Needs Will Fuel A Smartphone Surge, by Ted Schadler with Matthew Brown, Brownlee Thomas, Michele Pelino, and Peter Schmidt, with the subtitle: The Surge Can Be Funded Through A Bring-Your-Own Smartphone Strategy.  I appreciate receiving a review copy.  It predicts that 2010 will be the year of the smartphone surge.

The Forrester team surveyed 3,904 information workers nad found great excitement about about smartphones, “attracted by the ability to email, collaborate, and work with documents from anywhere.” While only 14% percent of information workers across the US, Canada, and UK already use smartphones, another 64% would like to. This compares with general consumers usage at 78% with mobile phones and 11% with smart phones. That yet to be fulfilled demand in information workers, along with some employers’ willingness to share monthly mobile costs, sets the stage for the surge. This calls for KM and other information professionals to determine a strategy for effective and coordinated usage. There is also the numbers to pressure mobile carriers to cut costs across plans.

I imagine that most smart users also use a fraction of the capability of their devices. I know I do. I see my colleagues using much more capability.  The report provides along list of potential capabilities and their current usage from email (92%) to enterprise apps (7%). Some others include: personal contacts (84%), work calendar (83%), IM (48%), emergency response (17%), and team collaboration (12%). The last one should go up dramatically if the report is correct it its predictions.

Location flexibility is the top reason (60%) for using a smartphone over a laptop. The increased reach will provide the ROI for smartphone, according to Forrester report. While this seems obvious, there seem to be two reasons here: the portability of the device and the extended access, and these will continue to evolve. Having greater wifi access will mitigate one difference and such devices as the tablet might go into the other.  However, I think the convergence of capabilities into a single type of device that takes two forms will balance that out.

In other words, content that used to come through many channels such as music, TV, Web, phone now comes through one device (see for example,  TV Moving Closer to Mobile Phones and the Web and Who Will Win TV Sets or Computers? I now have all my music and photos on my iPhone, as well as my laptop and have stopped using separate devices for them. However, this device will take two forms, one that sits on a desk and perhaps even connects to a larger monitor and one that fits in your pocket.  There will be an increased need to synch these devices and that needs to be part of the smartphone strategy.

There is much more in the report including suggestions on how to start your smartphone strategy. 

Take the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey 2010

Toby Ward of Prescient Digital Media is running an Intranet 2.0 Global Survey. The more participants, the better the results. If you participate you can get a free copy so there is a double benefit. The survey will remain open until the end of March preliminary results will be available in April. The final report will be available in late April or May.

Some of the early indications are available on Toby’s Intranet Blog. More organizations are rolling out internal blogs. Preliminary results from the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey 2010 reveal that nearly 60% of organizations have blogs on the intranet. This is a good news However, Toby also indicates that more needs to be done to encourage participation on these blogs. He offers some good suggestions. First, ask employees what they want.

Here are some useful results from last year’s survey. There was one dominate player and a fragmented field behind it as 47% of organizations with 2.0 tools are using Microsoft SharePoint (MOSS 2007). Vendors (“others”) that have less than 4% market share are present in 38% of organizations. At the same time, Facebook is being used by employees in 20% of organizations. It will be interesting to see how this has evolved in 2010.  Take the survey to contribute to the results and find out. 

Images of New Orleans Neighborhoods 2010 Part One: Upper French Quarter

This begins an 18 part series over the next few months of images of New Orleans neighborhoods taken in February 2010 the weekend before the Super Bowl victory and two weeks for Mardi Gras. I certainly did not have time to cover them all but this series will provide a glimpse of the city that I hope you will want to visit.

 I am starting with the most well known tourist area, the part of the French Quarter near Canal Street and the river.  It includes the party sections of Bourbon Street, the upscale shopping areas of Royal and Chartres, and the mix of shopping and eating on Decatur. Well known places seen below include Arnaud's, Pat O'Brien's, Galatorie's, Acme Oyster House, and Johnny's Po-Boys. These were mostly taken on a Sunday afternoon. There are street musicians, restaurants, stores, and much more I did not record. On the same day I also recorded the Men in Dresses Celebrate the New Orleans Saints Going to the Super Bowl which occurred in the upper French Quarter, the most public part of town. That series will give you more of a sense of the partying crowds on Bourbon Street.  The last eight are from an earlier trip in April 2006.

When I was a kid, my parents would take out-of-towners to  Valenti's Paddock Lounge for live jazz. It has been a while since it was open for jazz. I usually got to go and there was a circular bar with the band in the middle. Octave Crosby and Ogden an Clem Tervalon played in the 1950's and the shows went all night so it was a favorite after hours bar. It was changed to a burlesque by new owner Lulu White in the 1980s. 

                                             
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Painting of American Breakfast - Version Four - Omelette

Here is a 18" x 24" acrylic painting of an omelette with home fries. It is the fifth in a series of English and American breakfasts. I interrupted the series to cover some of my New Orleans trip. It will now pick up with a one new one for several weekends. Like many of my works, it is available for sale at Artsetter.com. 

 
 

US Military Enterprise 2.0 Platform is Helping Coordinate Haiti Relief

This post combines two FastForward posts as I wanted to continue to share this story with a broader audience. The US military is using an enterprise 2.0 style collaborative network to help coordinate its relief efforts in Haiti.  As reported by David Pierce in Wired in Pentagon’s Social Network Becomes Hub for Haiti Relief:

“TISC (”the Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation”) is a new iteration of APAN, the All Partners Access Network, which was developed by the Defense Department a few years ago. Initially, the military was using APAN to communicate across borders, particularly in countries without sophisticated communication technology. Even in third-world countries, Internet connection seemed to be frequently accessible, so the APAN system was built to work over the Internet, to facilitate the sharing of classified files, as well as things like coordinating calendars.

The system is designed to be as simple as possible, and is as easy to use as a site like Facebook, says Ty Wooldridge of the U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii. It uses file-sharing applications, wikis, blogs, and calendaring tools, among other things, to coordinate information and action among people, no matter where they are. Though there are obvious military implications to that kind of network, its first battlefield test is ongoing, on the ground in Haiti.”

I recently spoke with Walton Smith from Booz Allen who was involved in the development of APAN to get the details (see my series on how Booz Allen, itself, uses enterprise 2.0 within the firm). First, I will cover how it works and then cover how it came into being and then its use in Haiti.

We have been reading about the logistics troubles in Haiti but they might be even worse without the TISC. Haiti is the first activity of scale to use the system. When you are determining ROI based on number of hospital beds filled and people who receive much needed food, the benefits take on a different meaning. The TISC concept is to help the US military better coordinate with NGOs and other countries when disaster strikes. The objective is to a create system that not only helps with particular disasters but also builds an archive of best practices, key people/organizations and useful information to better handle future needs, as well as a platform for efficient cooperation.

There are several main components of the system: forums, wikis, chat and blogs. In the forums, people are able to ask questions (how to find experts, etc.) and make requests (can you help with this issue, etc.), as well as offer help or point out resources that others can draw on (e.g., available hospital beds or safe landing areas). The forum tags content and sets up a treaded dialog on the specific issues.  The chat tool allows for real time secure communications.  Then the content is organized and placed in a wiki for ease of retrieval. Finally, the best practices are abstracted and put into blogs to attract comments and be available for use in future disaster relief efforts.  In the future, there will be expert locators and profiles. 

This version of APAN began two years ago when the US Pacific Command (PACOM) wanted to develop an online community for the free flow of information between validated people from the US military, NGOs and other countries.  Ty Wooldrige and Jerry Giles led the effort for PACOM. Booz Allen was asked to create the system with PACOM, and James Kaina and Tim Gramp are the Booz Allen leads.

The system was first tested on some small efforts. The support for mobile devices was strengthened. The US Southern Command asked the PACOM to provide an operational demonstration of the system. The PACOM team was in Miami for this demo when the Haiti earthquake struck. The Southern Command said to forget simply doing a demo and decided to put the system into real use to help with Haiti. Now APAN is providing real-time help, validating the concept and vision, gathering useful content, and the Haiti effort is providing a significant test of the system to make further improvements.

The US military was one of the early leaders in knowledge management and the use of after action reviews and lessons learned. It is nice to see it acting as one of the leaders in the use of Enterprise 2.0 concepts that take the vision of knowledge management significantly forward with new tools, transparency, and capabilities.

The Defense News also reported on how on APAN has evolved into a broader communications and coordination tool that's proving vital to those who want to help and those who need it. Governments, companies and private citizens are using it to post what they are offering, allowing disaster relief officials to pick and choose what they need.  Defense News also pointed out the usefulness of Web social media such as Twitter and Facebook, as well as geospatial systems such as Open Street that was been used to create detailed maps of damaged areas.

I remember how a very basic use of wikis helped with the Katrina efforts (see: Katrina PeopleFinder Project). In this case a call for virtual volunteers to help populate a centralized missing person database was meet over 20,000 people within a day. It is great to see social media and its users helping out again and the evolution of its capabilities. However, the basic human drive to help others in need continues to drive these efforts. Social media just allows a much greater way to productivity channel this human drive. 

My Favorite Tweets for February 1- 14 2010

Here is the tenth in a new series of posts that provide access to my favorite tweets that contain links to useful information.  Some of these I did to link to things I found useful and others are RTs that I want to save for the same reason. Since Twitter archiving is an oxymoron, I am now going to post my favorite links for the month so they can be easily accessed later. I will repeat this once or twice a month depending on volume.

I spot tested the reduced shortened urls and they all should work. I hope this is also useful for you.  Let me know your favorite tweets for the month.

Also see the Darwineco favorite tweets.

Wi-Fi Turns Rowdy Bus Into Rolling Study Hall NYT http://nyti.ms/9QMA3i >great use of Web 2:15 PM Feb 12th

 Why Brands are Becoming Media on Mashable http://bit.ly/aqpnio via SBoSM 1:53 PM Feb 12th

  RT @GeorgeDearing: "Social Layer" coming To Outlook // http://tcrn.ch/buOk0D [TechCrunch

The Science Behind Online Sharing NYT http://bit.ly/9ZiJ0C via @psfk Feb 12

Work Design Issues for HR in Enterprise 2.0 Context by @jonhusband http://bit.ly/ajNoV4 raises good questions Feb 12

 2009 social networking stats Facebook grows Twitter grows 10 times faster http://bit.ly/8Y1xxF via @SBoSM Feb 12

 RT @michellemanafy: Missed this news somehow: Yahoo Tech to Close http://bit.ly/d5sddj 7:20 AM Feb 11th

 RT @lbenitez: New demo of Lotus Connections on the iPhone: http://bit.ly/bm7e1f 2:02 PM Feb 10th

Tech Crunch If Google Wave Is The Future, Google Buzz Is The Present http://tcrn.ch/an4zAW 1:04 PM Feb 10th

 RT @bizcom: RT @mparent77772: Twitter on your intranet: 17 microblogging tools for business http://bit.ly/9I8av9 3:00 PM Feb 9th f

 Are Blog Comments Worth It? http://bit.ly/cGF70l > strong Yes IMO 8:47 AM Feb 8th

 RT @socialmedia2day: The Roles of Facebook and Twitter in Social Media Marketing http://bit.ly/9Qjw0y #socialmedia 10:27 PM Feb 5th

How IBM Uses Social Media to Spur Employee Innovation http://bit.ly/b0K0gs 3:10 PM Feb 4th

Using Crowdsourcing to Control Inventory http://bit.ly/8UMawa nice example via @SBoSM 1:46 PM Feb 3rd

10 Apps To Schedule Future Tweets on Twitter http://www.rotorblog.com/2010/02/02/10-apps-to-schedule-future-tweets-on-twitter/ 7:15 PM Feb 2nd

RT @CommunispaceCEO: 20% of Twitter accts have no followers, 40% haven't tweeted. http://bit.ly/atxMkg like early blogs days 5:17 PM Feb 2nd

Twitter, Facebook use rising among crooks police use it to catch them http://bit.ly/adtgoq via @SBoSM 2:14 PM Feb 2nd

RT @socialmedia2day: 5 Social Selling Success Stories, Target, K-Mart, Bloomies, and more... http://su.pr/2AKHQ3 10:03 AM Feb 2nd 

Vote for My Artsetter Gallery - Thanks

I am interrupting the usual business oriented weekday posts to ask you a favor.  Artsetter is a Paris based online art gallery. I like their approach as they take the risk out for the buyer and the seller. When you purchase an art work, Artsetter holds the money through a French bank. Then the artist ships to the buyer. Once the buyer receives the art work, Art Setter releases the money to the artist taking what is a very modest commission for the industry. They allow each artist to set up their own gallery. Art Setter is creating a community as each member can vote on others and create favorites. Any one can apply to join.

I am trying to set up an online gallery for my art on the site. I have applied and now need 50 votes over the next 30 days. Can you vote for me? You have to first register at their site but it is quick and there is nice art by a number of artists. Here is the home page of the site.

My five paintings have been cropped by the site to fit a square format. This is one They are all rectangles. However, once I set up my gallery I will be able to display the full painting. You can see the complete images of five I submitted below. You can click on any image to make it large.

Once you get to the site go to the candidates tab. Be patient it takes a few moments for the first one to appear. I have been coming up first as I was the last one when I last looked but someone may have come in after me.  In the case I do not come up first, scroll through the others to find my application.

There are quite a few excellent painters and photographers. I voted for a number of them myself.  This Is not a competition. You can vote for as many as you want.  Thanks for your consideration.  Let me know what you think. 

        
 
 
 
 
 

2010: Social Media Removes Gutenberg-Google Content Dam

Here is an interesting post that I can certainly agree with. Aaron Kahlow writes about the information curation potential of social media in his post, 2010: Social Media Removes the Dam of Gutenberg-Google.

Aaron begins with the effect of the printing press. It certainly opened up content distribution way beyond what the monks doing hand written work could accomplish. However, it established new controls over what content got out. You still needed to have the resources to set up a printing press, print and distribute works.

Now there is the Web and you might think the dam is broken. In one sense it has, as there are very few barriers to getting content out on the Web. In 2008 there was more content created than in the entire prior history.  The trick is finding this content, especially the quality stuff. This is where Google has both helped and created a new bottleneck. As Aaron writes, “With only 10+ organic results and a similar number of paid results, consumers will only find content they seek in those 20 places -- with less than 20 percent being relevant as it relates to information they seek.” For example a search on “green card” will get you a lot of services that want to charge you money for what the US government does for free.

Aaron goes on to comment that social media can help break this new dam. Now we can “get good information through tweets of those we follow, Facebook Sharing, and from others within our networks who are usually connected online. We have a new discovery outlet and a new way to find stories, whether mainstream or from an unknown blogger. We find things based on recommendations of trusted colleagues, friends, etc.”  This is how I found Aaron’s post.

Peter Cashmore raises a similar point in his predictions for 2010 than I commented on earlier (see Reflecting on Peter Cashmore's Web Trends to Watch in 2010). Peter wrote that, “The Web's biggest challenge of recent years is that content creation is outpacing our ability to consume it: "Information overload" has become an increasingly common complaint… In 2008, the answer revealed itself: Your friends are your filter… Increasingly, your friends are becoming the curators of your consumption.”  I certainly agree here and Twitter has served this role for me.  Much of what I write about on my blogs comes from my Twitter friends, including the link to Peter Cashmore’s predictions.

Aaron offers some good points to make effective use fo social media to get your content out. Instead of having to contact a prominent journalist to write a story about your company, you can use your own channels such as blogs to consistently write good content worth tweeting and sharing.
 You can also leverage your own social networks to start sharing content. 
These are all reasons that we write this blog and participate in Twitter and other social media.

Darwin Ecosystem Awareness Engine™ is designed to address this issue of finding relevant quality content without having to go through the filter of Google or other search engines. Unlike Google, it does not decide what content is most relevant but rather lays out the content related to your topic of interest in clusters of themes and lets you explore what themes interest you. (see: A Comparison of Google Web Search and the Darwin Awareness Engine™). 

Darwin allows you to become your own curator for topics of your interest. You can also go beyond this to act as a curator for friend or colleagues You can set attractors on your topics of interest: people, places, concepts, and more. Then you can see what emerges. This can be especially valuable for niche areas. You can create your own online magazine. It can cover a much greater array of source than Google News and it will show the relationships between news items that emerge rather than simply displaying them. You can adjust your filters to further focus you’re your curation efforts. We see content curation as one of the major applications for the Darwin Awareness Engine™.

Painting of Four Apples on a Blue Cloth

It is a holiday in the US - President's Day - so I am reverting to my weekend topics. Here is a 16" x 20" acrylic painting of four apples. It is a quick sketch I did in a few hours. Be sure to polish your apples today.

 
  

  
 

Brief Explorations in New Orleans Live Music 2010

I was recently in New Orleans for Webtrends Engage  just prior to the Super Bowl and at the start of the Mardi Gras season.  I had a chance explore a few of the many music venues and hear a few of the many great groups there.  First I went to the Cajun Fais Do Do featuring Bruce Daigrepont that happens every Sunday late afternoon into the evening at Tipitina’s (501 Napoleon Avenue). I have been there many times. There is a regular group of dancers and I saw many of the same people who were there in 2007 when I last went. Here is the exterior of Tipitina’s and an image of the frenzy in which Bruce and his group plays. Clicking on any picture will make it larger. 

   

 I made a brief stop at Maple Leaf (8316 Oak Street - Uptown) and then went to Sweet Lorraine’s to catch the Rebirth Brass band, a NOLA headliner. Sweet Lorrain’s is located at 1931 Saint Claude Avenue. I had never been before and it is a nice venue. You can see the Maple Leaf to the left.  I just to live nearby and went to the Saturday matinee as a kid just down the street. I have been there many times but got there hours before the music so moved on.

The next two nights were occupied with the excellent Webtrends Engage event but on my last night I went to Frenchman Street just outside the Quarter where there are many good clubs. I did window shopping to find good sounds and started at the Blue Nile (532 Frenchmen Street) to listen to the United Postal Project.  You can see the exterior and interior of the club below. I was not able to get a picture of the band because of the light. The group had tow guitars, a sax, and drums. They played some nice driving rock infused jazz.

    
 Next was the Café Negril (606 Frenchmen Street) to hear Shamarr Allen & the Underdawgs. Shamarr had on a tee shirt that said the next Satchmo but he played moved like Miles Davis in his fusion stage wit a little Grover Washington thrown in. I mean these as compliments as the band of two guitars, keyboards, drums, and Sharmarr on trumpet really rocked.
  

The last stop was planned, as I wanted to see Walter “Wolfman” Washington and the Road Masters at d.b.a (618 Frenchman Street). I have heard him before and he plays great New Orleans style funk.  His band started as they said that Walter was out participating in the NOLA political process with the mayor’s primary on Saturday.  The band had a trumpet, sax, guitar, and drums and they played some nice driving jazzy instrumentals. Then Walter came and they band moved to wonderful funk with Walter on guitar and vocals, bringing out the dancers.  I only wish I could come more often. Le bon temps roule.

       
It is important to not forget the great street music often available in the French Quarter. Here is a group in Jackson Square and another on Royal Street on a Sunday afternoon. 

  
 
 
 
 
 

 

 
  
 

 
 

New Orleans Restaurant Update Winter 2010

I was recently in New Orleans for Webtrends Engage and prior to going made all these plans (see Going to New Orleans 2010 - You Should Go Too) but then my dog broke his leg and I had to shorten the trip. He is recovering nicely now. You can see this planning post for some good ideas but I only went to one. Here was actually happen as I discovered some great new places and went to a few known ones. You can click on any picture to enlarge it.

I got to New Orleans on Sunday and stopped by Mr. B’s for a bowl of gumbo at the bar. The full service was not open but this was all I wanted at the time anyway and was a nice welcome back to the city. Mr B’s is an old favorite that was under re-construction for a while. It is in the French Quarter at 201 Royal Street (504) 523-2078.

  
 
After going to Tipitina’s for Cajun Fais Do Do with Bruce Daigrepont (see post tomorrow for my music explorations) I went to the nearby Franky and Johnny’s. It is a neighborhood tavern that provides wonderful Cajun food. I had their gumbo, a crawfish pie, and a soft shell crab po-boy. They did not disappoint.  I noticed that there were two Red Sox pennants over the bar, along with Saints stuff. I asked the bar tender about this. He said that he did not put those up by he is a big Red Sox fan and his aspiration is to go to Fenway Park. I felt very welcomed. I also read later that a Red Sox bar sports bar in Boston has adopted the saints for the Super Bowl, as has much of the rest of the country. Franky and Johnny’s is located at 321 Arabella Street (504) 899-9146.

    
The next morning I went to Surrey’s Juice Bar.  Now it does have good juice but the rest is not low cal. I had a wonderful shrimp and grits after being tempted by the sausage gravy and biscuits.  The dish was exceptional and a great way to start the day if you are looking to put on a few pounds. It is located at 1418 Magazine Street (504) 524-3828.

  
Lunch was simpler as I had a shrimp po-boy at Domilise’s Po-Boys. It I described by many as one of the best places for po-boys and I am addicted to the shrimp ones. It is located at 5240 Annunciation St., 504-899-9126. Roadfood gives it a 95% rating and says it is a must eat place. I would agree.

    
Before a night hearing music on Frenchman Street (see post tomorrow) I had dinner at Coop’s Place in the Quarter.  Coop’s is in the quieter part of the Quarter away from the tourist traps of Bourbon Street and has the feel of a neighborhood bar, with a more punk rock crowd, that reflects the neighborhood, than Franky and Johnny’s but the concept is the same, good Cajun (country vs the city Creole food). I sat next to a chef from another restaurant who said he often come here on his night off and most of the people are local. I had a sample of gumbo, rabbit and sausage jambalaya., shrimp Creole, red bans and rice, and fried chicken for only $12.99 and I could not finish it. It was new to me but I have often had the amazing fried chicken at Firoella’s located across the street (1136 Decatur Street) and this rivals it. The visiting chef said that the two places are known as the two of the best chicken places. Coop Place is located at 1109 Decatur Street (504) 525-9053.  It is also a bar and is open late.

  
The next day was pouring rain and I made it to Croissant D’Or in the far and quieter end of the Quarter by going from the protection of one the many balconies to another. I was still very wet when I got to this wonderful bakery that I have gone to many times. I had one of their croissants and a slice of French King Cake. Unlike the NOLA King Cake that is a frosted white cake, this one is layers of pastry around almond paste and is very good.  I dried out and warmed up.  It is located at 617 Ursulines Avenue (504) 524-4663.  Unfortunately I had to leave before I could do much more.

    
At the airport I did get a shrimp po-boy from the Acme Oyster House outpost here and ate it on the plane.    I used to go to their main place in the Quarter (724 Iberville Street (504) 522-5973) but now it has long lines so I cannot vouch for the food anymore. Acme was the place to go for oysters in the 1950s but it has become very commercial. However, they do have some of the best airport food anywhere and it sure beats the free snacks on Jetblue.  

More on Webtrends Openness Moves

I recently came back from New Orleans where I attended the Webtrends Engage event and watched the city anticipate the Super Bowl. See this weekend for my reports on eating and live music in New Orleans. While there I spoke again with Jascha Kaykas-Wolff.  We continued the topic I started with Alex Yoder, their CEO (see yesterday's post). Jascha gave me some concrete examples of how this openness is being put into practice.

Spirit Airlines is a new Webtrends customer. They use the target capabilities in the Optimize suite to provide individualized offers to customers. The Webtrends Visitor Data Mart allows this to occur as it can take data from several sources to provide a complete picture of customer activities. Webtrends can give a company both aggregated customer data and data on specific individuals across all channels.

In the case of Spirit Air, the company can look at a customer’s prior activity and provide special fares and seating to reward their most active customers. This data scanning through the Visitor Data Mart and the special offers through Optimize happens on the fly because of the open architecture implemented by Webtrends. The ability to combine these tools on the fly also provides a useful feedback loop to conduct tests of offers and other Web site components.

Cabelas is another client. It is a large retail sporting goods outfitter that uses Webtrends Analytics 9. They can collect customer data online and bring it into their enterprise data mining tools. Traditionally, Web data was not integrated with offline data but the open architecture within Webtrends allows for this combination. This allows for the combination of online and in-store transactions so they can better reward customers in their frequent purchasing program.

It goes beyond this to allow Cabelas to better infer customer intensions and respond appropriately. For example, a customer might start to buy some camping gear online but back out. Then they might get some of the purchases at the store the next day. Now Cabelas can make a special offer to them to complete the purchase of related items for their upcoming camping trip.

If the population within Facebook was a country it would be the fourth largest in the World. This makes Facebook an emerging frontier for online marketing. It uses its own technology that does not allow for Javascript so this makes data collection more difficult. Webtrends is working to provide more access to Facebook data for its customers.

With their data collection APIs Webtrends has found a way to connect some portions of Facebook data.  A brand can set up a Facebook fan page and provide an application connected to this fan page. Using Webtrends they can access all of the data connected with the Facebook application.

To promote this Facebook related capability, Webtrends has launched a Great Data Giveaway Contest for customer intelligence analysts.  To enter, a person has to register on the Webtrends fan page, give Webtrends some information about themselves and state what they would do with the data. They also have to share this activity with their friends.  There has been a great response so far. Webtrends will now be able to look at the data from the contest entries and decide which ones to involve in sales activities.

Jascha said the use of traditional standalone micro-sites that brands set up for their customers and prospects have been hurt by Facebook. While you lose a lot of control over data collection with Facebook it brings a ready-made audience. Now Webtrends is working to provide further access to Facebook related data to support this trend. This move is part of the larger Webtrends effort to extend the reach of customer data collection beyond traditional online sources to both reach back into more old school offline sources and the many new school social media sources that keep emerging.

 

Webtrends Moves Toward Greater Openness for Products and Company

Last week I attended the Webtrends Engage 2010 event in New Orleans. See this weekend for my reports on eating and live music in New Orleans. I covered some of the sessions on this blog. While there I had a chance to speak with their CEO, Alex Yoder, on an individual basis.  We went over some of the major directions for the company.  Alex started by saying their core principle was openness.  They are culturally open as a company. They provide direct access to everyone, including himself.

As part of this directive of openness they recently provided access to their knowledge base to the general public. This included how-to-dos for their products, bugs, fixes and other company information that had been behind a firewall and only previously accessible to customers. Now it is available to anyone on the Webtrends site.

They are also sharing the lessons that they have learned inside their company. Alex said that they deal with many of the same issues that their clients face so they can learn from each other. This sharing also helps to build a stronger sense of community with their clients.

On the technology side they partner with a number of providers to round out their capabilities. These include Radian 6 on the front end and Teradata on the back end. Alex said that things are moving too fast for one firm to say that they can do everything. It is often better to partner than to build.

They are also open from a technology perspective. They provide open APIs for both data extraction and data collection, one of the few firms to do both. On the data extraction side they allow for integration of their data into other tools within the enterprise. This helps Web analytics to get out of silos and into executive dashboards for greater visibility. Their data on customer activity can also go into CRM systems to allow for more complete customer records. Their findings can also trigger action-based emails to employees to promote proper responses.

On the data collection side Webtrends can incorporate data where Javascript cannot go. They can look at anything that is digital, such as the records of in-store transactions, to provide a complete record of customer activity.  They can also work with certain mobile devices.

Looking in the future Alex said that Webtrends will continue to further optimize customer interactions. There is a lot of marketing money flowing from traditional media into social media. Webtrends wants to expand its support in this growing space. Mobile devices is another growth area where they are working to enhance their offerings. As marketing people need to work across a broader array of channels, Webtrends wants to provide for better campaign management and coordination across all of these channels.

Alex brought up gaming consoles as another device where there is both marketing and analytic possibilities. He recently received a Playstation3 for Christmas. It has a large hard drive and an Internet browser. He can do email and chat and play games remotely with others. Communities are developing around these games and these communities will be fruitful targets for related marketing activities.

Alex said that his gaming console has also taken away the need for cable TV as he can get what he wants online. I have many friends who have also dropped cable and use their laptop for TV through services such as Hulu.  When people watch TV through an online device there is much greater opportunity to collect data and interact with viewers than the traditional TV set. Alex said that the gaming console will likely become a channel for direct response ads in the near future. It already has some ads and related product information.

The same injection of intelligence is occurring as people switch to Kindles and other online readers such as the new Apple iPad. When you drop a print newspaper on a front door you have no way of tracking what people do with it. With online readers there is a whole range of data collection opportunities.

Alex closed by saying that Webtrends is defined by its relationships. These include customer relationships, relationships with the broader community, and the relationships that its customers establish with their customers. Having grown up in New Orleans I added that people here really appreciate the help that comes through bringing events like Engage to their city. Alex said that this event is also part of their plan to better support communities.  They have moved a number of the Engage activities out of the hotel and into the city. 

My FastForward Posts for January 2010

Here is the monthly listing of my Fast Forward blog posts. I find it helps me with an archive and hopefully is also useful to you. There is a separate category for these summaries in my right side column on this blog. There will be more in February.

Implementing Enterprise 2.0 at Booz Allen: Part Six – Plans for Enhancements

Enterprise Content Management Projected to Remain Strong in 2010 Through Collaboration, Search, and Compliance Efforts

Text Analytics Becomes More Valuable within Enterprise 2.0

Social and Mobile Lead in Nielsen Annual Intranet Report

Enterprise 2.0 and Web Social Media in Operation in Haiti Relief

Social Media Revolution as Shown on YouTube

 

 

 

 

Images from the New Orleans Saints Victory Parade

I have been watching the parade via streaming video form the NOLA.com site. In the first one you can see Drew Brees (number 9) holding the Lombardi trophy at the top of the float. Various Mardi Krewes donated floats to help with the effort. I was recently there just before the Super Bowl and saw some of the spirit. Here is more. You can click on an image to make it larger. 

      
 
 
 
 

Unlike Newspapers, TV Rises in Popularity, While Mobile Devices Also Move Up

Television does not seem to be suffering the same way as newspapers, its older mainstream media cousin. Deloitte’s 2009 “State of the Media Democracy” survey reports a 26 percent increase in the Americans choosing TV as their favorite type of media compared to the previous year. This is likely influenced by the recession. More than 70 percent of those surveyed rank watching TV in their top three favorite media activities. When ranked alongside activities such as surfing the Web, listening to music or reading, 34 percent of consumers place it at the top. This is a substantial increase from last year and more than double those selecting the number two choice, the Web, which came in at 14 percent. 

When watching their favorite TV shows, 86 percent of respondents prefer watching on their television set, either live, via their DVR/TiVo, or using an “On Demand” feature.  While less than 10 percent of Americans say they prefer watching the same content online, a growing number of consumers are using online platforms to watch their favorite TV shows. 

Consumers are watching close to 18 hours of television programming on their home TV in a typical seven day week — up notably from less than 16 hours last year. Looking at the interest in TV – Web convergence, 65 percent of respondents would like to be able to easily connect their home TV to the Internet so that they can view videos or downloaded content. This is a significant trend that has gained strength over the last three years. Of course, the reverse could occur with more TV on computers.  A move in this direction would allow for more search and data mining capabilities.

The study also looked at mobile device use. One-third of surveyed consumers use their mobile phone as an entertainment device and 47 percent of smart phone owners identify the device as one of their three most valuable media and entertainment products — a significant increase from 20 percent last year. I certainly use my iPhone as an entertainment device as much as a mobile phone.

The Deloitte survey also indicates that mobile phone use is rapidly separating the Internet experience from the desktop for almost half of the population.  Forty-eight percent of those surveyed have data plans for their mobile phones and 42 percent are using their phones to access the Internet. The report suggests that this decoupling is expected to facilitate new consumer behavior including mobile search, social networking and purchasing.

The most popular mobile activities, according to the survey include: text messaging (72 percent), accessing the Internet (42 percent), online search (30 percent), downloading applications (27 percent) and using GPS (26 percent).

The report also looked at advertising. TV still holds strong here with 83 percent of consumers identifying TV advertising as one of the top three media with the most impact on their buying decisions.  In the online world, over half of all U.S. consumers believe that online customer reviews and ratings influence their buying decisions more than any other type of online advertising, and 51 percent have purchased products based on an online recommendation. In addition, 24 percent of U.S. consumers would like to have an online service that recommends a product based on other consumers’ preferences.

Social networking continues to rise. According to the survey, one-quarter of U.S. consumers are socializing online almost every day and nearly 60 percent currently maintain a social networking site, up from 48 percent last year. The connections maintained over social networks provide powerful sources for trusted recommendations.  The content generated through social networking provides a rich source for understanding the collective mindset of consumers. A tool such as Darwin’s Awareness Engine (TM) can help understand the themes emerging from these conversations and discover the unexpected. 

My AppGap Posts for January 2010

Here are my App Gap posts for January. In addition to the Fast Forward blog (see side bar for links), I am writing in another Corante blog, the App Gap, The posts began toward the end of January 2008.  In this case, I am primarily doing product commentaries with a few other things thrown in. Below are the ones for January 2010. There will be more in February.

Clienteq Provides Collaboration Platform for Professional Services Firms

Alterian Upgrades SM2 to Enhance Social Media Monitoring Performance and Capabilities with Release 4.3

Webtrends Provides Comprehensive Customer Intelligence Data Collection, Integration, Analysis, Optimization and Visualization

Monster.com Employs Semantic Search to Speed and Enhance the Job-Candidate Matching Process

Alpha Five v10 Now Provides AJAX Development Without Having to Code

Alterian Study Finds Increasing Focus on Social Media Marketing

Images of Support for the New Orleans Saints in the Super Bowl Today

This is the day of the Super Bowl and I want to wish the best to a very remarkable team that has lifted a wonderful city. When I was in New Orleans this week at Webtrends Engage I saw many signs of support and excitement for the Saints. Win or lose the city will sponsor a parade for the team on Tuesday, the one night that there is no Mardi Gras parade. Below are a few of the signs of excitement I saw as I went around the city. This support has been extended all around the country and even beyond. If you click on an image it will pop up to full size. 

                
 
       
 Post script: Congratulations to the Saints on a great victory and to the city of New Orleans. I wish I was there to join in the celebration and take some more photos. Le bon temp roule! Here is an image from NOLA.com of the initial celebration. 

 
 Here are two images from ESPN on TV.

  
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Men in Dresses Celebrate the New Orleans Saints Going to the Super Bowl

When I first arrived in New Orleans last weekend for the Webtrends Engage event I walked around the French Quarter a bit. There were a few bands in the street.  In addition there were a lot of men wearing dresses. Now this happens form time to time in New Orleans, often around Mardi Gras time but the volume was exceptionally high and they were generally accompanied by women. 

The next day I got the story through the local paper.  A very famous and out spoken New Orleans sports reporter, Buddy Diliberto, said if the Saints ever went to the Super Bowl he would parade around town in a dress. Sadly, he died in 2005 and did not see this year’s trip. A number of New Orleans men decided to honor his pledge and a movement occurred. Below are some of the scenes of the celebration. This was a nice time to be in New Orleans. Tomorrow is the Super Bowl and I will be routing for the Saints, America's new team.  Le bon temps roule.

              
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

My Favorite Tweets January 16 - 31 2010

Here is the ninth in a new series of posts that provide access to my favorite tweets that contain links to useful information.  Some of these I did to link to things I found useful and others are RTs that I want to save for the same reason. Since Twitter archiving is an oxymoron, I am now going to post my favorite links for the month so they can be easily accessed later. I will repeat this once or twice a month depending on volume.

I spot tested the reduced shortened urls and they all should work. I hope this is also useful for you.  Let me know your favorite tweets for the month.

Also see the Darwineco favorite tweets.

80%+ Twitter accounts inactive, but core users more committed http://bit.ly/cXHVdo > reminds me of blogs Jan 30

 RT @socialmedia2day: Twitter Style Guide http://retwt.me/1vxE5 via @socialmedia2day Jan 28th

3 Reasons why Twitter is better than Facebook http://bit.ly/aLNd5n > agree + focus + fast action Jan 28th

 Exploring the HR Management Framework for Enterprise 2.0 from @jonhusband http://bit.ly/9Z3eFJan 28th

The iPad and the Chasm between Work and Home Computing from @robpatrob http://bit.ly/dmh76z 5:30 PM Jan 28th

Elevator Pitch for Enterprise 2.0 http://bit.ly/6OwMP6 via @ITSinsider Jan 28th

Great post on the need to be able say NO at the right time from @swiertz http://bit.ly/7lmy2b Jan 25th

  RT @newsgator: Just blogged: "Nine Enterprise 2.0 Predictions for 2010" -- http://bit.ly/58ef0D Jan 25th

Facebook introduces new analytics for business users: http://bit.ly/5UXOGv #SocialMedia Jan 25th

The End of Anarchy in Social Media http://bit.ly/5V0mF8 6:03 PM Jan 21st

Why the retweet is a powerful engagement tool http://bit.ly/5EDxiY via @SBoSM > agree  Jan 21st

Will New York Times meter kill traffic from social media? http://bit.ly/5aOe2V IMO yes - bad move Jan 21st

IT budgets still uncertain as CIOs weigh 2010 technology spending http://bit.ly/92w0aE  Jan 21st

RT @humancapleague Complexity, the Web and the business of information by Harold Jarche #hr #workplace #e2adoption http://su.pr/1iLgkS 10:46 AM Jan 21st

RT @slmader: 4 challenges to wiki adoption in organizations: #1 high-level resistance http://bit.ly/50EC7t Jan 20th

some good blog tips http://bit.ly/7gVvaT via @SBoSM 1:58 PM Jan 20th

Social Media Week 2010 http://bit.ly/5Nhyk2 2/1-5 via @psfk 9:32 AM Jan 20th

RT @20Community: Does Knowledge Management matter?by Steve Ellwood #e2adoption http://su.pr/2avnPX  Jan 19th

Skype at the Tipping Point? http://bit.ly/7eBzxn from @robpatrob  Jan 19th

RT @stangarfield: Book review of Enterprise 2.0 by Andrew McAfee http://bit.ly/897uzV :Jan 19th

RT @webtechman: 7 Lessons for Better Networking w Social Media http://bit.ly/8OiJYA on @mashableJan 18th

RT @DougCornelius: New Blog Post- Social Networking is Serious Business http://bit.ly/8oP3IZ Jan 18th

5 Tiwtter rating tools from CIO Mag http://bit.ly/8bYG7z  Jan 18th

Tabasco Backs Social-Media Experiment at #NOLA Mardi Gras http://bit.ly/7CZusn  Jan 18th 

Post Script - there is some thing weird going on with Typepad comments today and I have tried twice to respond to the comments below and they do not take so here is my response. Herkens - you raise some good points. I tend to use twitter much more as it is faster and takes much less time (good for quick break) but, I agree it does not provide the same depth as Facebook. JWilfong - Thanks for your suggestion and I am glad you liked that series of posts. I use these lists to link to stuff other people wrote rather than my own posts. I do this so I can find them later. I am also glad you find the lists useful. Bill

Trends in Social Media Sales and Marketing from Webtrends Engage

 I am attending the Webtrends Engage 2010 event in New Orleans. This city is Saints crazy and even the airport checkin screen display Saints signs when not in use for flight status as you can see on the right. Yesterday afternoon I sat in on a session on How to Turn Blogs and Other Social Media into Revenue Builders. Here is an excerpt form the session description: This session will examine the ways that companies are converting social interactions into dollars, the future opportunities for weaving social media and commerce, and the secret ingredient that makes it possible (i.e. analytics).

The speakers were Neil Lynch, Technology Manager for Alliances at ATG and Matthew Ball, Principal Consultant – Digital Marketing Optimization.

The session started with the observation that In 2010 1.4 Billion will be spent on social media marketing but most firms are not looking into ROI are really have a strategy to guide what they are doing. It is important to know why you are doing it, what is the social media spend versus your overall market budget. You also need to answer such questions as: is it for customer acquisition or retention.

Often social media marketing is given to the most junior person in the marketing department since they must know about Facebook. This is not a good idea. You need to have a consistent strategy and analytics across channels. You need to determine your time horizon. Often senior executives have a simplified expectation such as a certain number of followers by a certain date.  

Neil presented a number of models on how to use social media with examples.

The first was site centric – discussion boards. These have been for a long time and are used to build communities to interact with others of interests related to the product. Firms often do not know if these interactions lead to a transaction. It is best to try to document the transactions connections online by direct user input from customers.  Nike Plus is an example.

Next, Neil covered site centric – ratings and reviews.  Office Depot was given as an example. He said that this is one of the best social media approaches. It often works. People trust others more than the company, just be careful not to game it as this will be detected. One study found that just having a rating capability on a Web site increases revenue by 15%. Firms are also adding the adding the ability to broadcast ratings and reviews outside their sites through Facebook and other social networking sites.

The movement from social sites to commerce sites was covered next.  DSW was the example. You can share products on social networking sites like Facebook and then drive people to your commerce site. This is likely the most common way to tie these sites together. It is straight forward to manage and measure. Some one pointed out that you need to be careful if you have bloggers and Twitterers promoting your products as these activities are governed by the FTC ruling on disclosure of compensation. The challenge here is the notion of trust could be compromised if there is a compensation disclosure.

Inline purchasing was covered next. Neil said it is not quite social but related. Travelocity was given as one example. You can purchase something through an ad.  Facebook does not allow this but in other places the ad becomes a transaction point.

There is also inline purchasing where you make a purchase through a Facebook stream from a fan page without leaving fFacebook. This is expanding and The Limited was given as an example.

Sponsored game applications are also being used. The Lady Gag Karoke application was offered as an example. They have a recurring purchase model as they release new songs on a continuing basis and charge for the new songs. You can share your karoke efforts with others and this leads to ongoing use.

There is also mobile commerce. The Tommy Hilfinger iPhone app was shown.  This is trend is exploding. You can complete an entire purchase on your phone through an iPhone app. The Tommy Hilfinger app makes use of all the iPhone features. It is not just a Web app ported to the iPhone.   

I can imagine that this is just the beginning of social media sales and marketing.  Here is a post script. I want to thank Webtrends for putting on  a great event and for their choice of cities. I hear they have another good spot for next year. If you were not able to make it down, come to New orleans soon. The great food and music is flowing. here is a taste. On the left is shrimp and grits at Surrey's Juice Bar on Magazine Street and on the right is Walter Wolfman Washington at d.b.a on frenchman Street.

  
 
 

The Future of Publishing/Media Panel at Webtrends Engage

I attended the Future of Publishing/Media Panel at the Webtrends Engage event. The local newspaper, The Times Picayune, is running front page stories on the upcoming Supper Bowl everyday this week. On Monday the paper had a letter to the city of Miami to help them better prepare for Saints fans. The first point was to order more beer. Today they provided a very useful section on Mardi Gras. I wish I could stay.

 This panel on newspapers and other traditional media covers a topic that I have been writing about a good bit on this blog. Here is an excerpt from the panel description: “The 100 year plus industry has hemorrhaged profitability and good, talented people, and been forced to re-evaluate its entire business model. The Internet as a whole has started to progress beyond the two-way Web and into a real-time Web, and content producers no matter how big or small, must be ready to deploy measurement models to help make relevant content publishing decisions and in turn drive ad revenue.“

The speakers include: Sam Whitmore (moderator), Alan Citron (Buzzmetrics), Lewis Vorkin (Trueslant), and Paul Berry (Huffington Post).

Sam is the founder and editor of Sam Wittmore’s Media Survey.  He pointed out how the Web has made us all potential publishers.  The panel discussed the role of analytics in the publishing world.

Alan said that one of the things you have to master as a startup is analytics, You have to pick carefully with the budget of a startup. They primarily look at macrotrends. They have 40 sites and need to look over all of them. They cluster their sites where commonalities might apply.  They are now experimenting to make their middle pages like mini-home pages to keep people there and to attract ads placed there.  Mobile is important but determining how to monetize mobile is still an issue.

The Huffington Post recently passed the Washington Post, the LA Times and the Wall Street Journal in number of readers. When Pual started three years ago they only had Sitemetter – a free primitive tool I used to use for this blog They were underfunded at the time for their goals so they had to be careful. They built some tools themselves. Now they can see how they are doing on an hourly basis and everyone is addicted to these stats.  He said that tools need to be intuitive so everyone can use them and not just a few experts. 

Paul said they look at the stories and what people care about to support optimization.  They also constantly test features to see what headlines work better by putting up different combinations and making adjustments.  These efforts are improving their bounce rate.  This constant attention and adjustments of place and titles by editors stands in stark contrast to the print newspaper editors who decide once and day and throw stuff on your step with few ways to see what you do with the paper.

Paul said they are looking for brave brands for ads. They have applied sentiment analysis of their comments to give themselves and brands a better picture of what is happening and how engagement is working. To keep people on the site they have business in the front and party stuff in the back. The back pages get a lot of traffic. I know this myself as I have been tempted to go back for the party stuff after going to the front page for a more serious news story.

Paul said that people love thumbnails and good headlines. They try to use these to get people exploring their site. He also said that they believe in the scroll. You do not need to be above the fold on a Web page but rather in the story. Paul said they support mobile devices and the analytics with mobile is similar. They are spending a lot of time looking at how their stories look on mobile. This places a strain on the organization to be constantly checking this.

Lewis has over 300 member journalists on True Slant. He went from traditional media to AOL several years ago. At AOL data was important but they did not have the right data. Then he moved on to found Trueslant to support traditional journalists to move into digital publishing. These journalists did not know about the data possibilities in digital. You need to take advantage of the data that is now available They cannot build these analytics tools themselves although they did some of this at first. Lewis said that page views are not useful. The real metrics are more like time spent, comments, repeat commentors, Coming up with right metrics and seeing then constantly is the key,

Forbes Media is one of the investors in his firm and they can bring in CMOs for discussion sessions. At a recent event all the CMOs wanted to talk about was social media. Measuring social media is an important next step. Research into a viewer’s path is key but hard to do.  Mobile is the future of news but they have not gone there yet. Lewis agreed with Alan that there remain monetization issues with digital.

This was useful session. The Huffington Post example certainly shows the power of making good use of the data available with digital media. 

Real Time Data and the Power of Visualization at Webtrends Engage

 Ben Cerveny of Stamen Design spoke on Real Time Data and the Power of Visualization at the Webtrends Engage event in New Orleans. The city is very proud of their New Orleans Saints football team that is going to the Super Bowl for the first time in the 43 years of playing here. On the left is an American flag Saints style that I saw here in the Uptown area. It is a great visualization that I could resist adding before I start to cover the session.

Ben labeled his talk, Shapes in the Cloud. His company is a boutique design firm in San Franciso. He talked about how data visualization affects both the front and back end of data. Webtrends also actively supports innovation on both ends.

Ben went through a series of their projects, beginning with a virtual town hall for Moveon.org. in 2004.  Moveon.org wanted to invite guests to talk about the political issues in the 2004 US election. They wanted some visualization to support the audio on the web site. You logged into the site with your zip code. You would then see a map and see the participants by location. This gave you a sense of the audience. It was dynamic so you could bee to progression of attendees and see the growth.

Next, you could see results from polls related to the speakers. The data would change as the results rolled in, again in the map format so you continued to get a sense of community. This showed the dynamic aspects of data as a medium. Ben said that data can be a mirror and people and communities can use to see more about themselves.

Ben next talked about their work with Digg In 2006.  Digg is one of the top news aggregation sites. Ben’s firm formed a partner ship with Digg, to create a site called Digg Labs to show visualizations and the dynamics of interactions.  He showed a display where stories and their supporters are displayed. You can see the evolution of voting patterns. If people vote for more than one story you can see the connections. This visualization is still playing at digglabs.com. These and other visualization show the dynamics of the Digg community and the evolution of stories. You see the explosion of votes as popular stories break. Stack is another digglabs visualization that shows the pattern of story votes over time.

Ben’s firm also did a visual hurricane tracker for MSNBC. The visualization simultaneously shows the effects over time, as well as the present status.  You can drill down from the high level view to get details. There is the live version and the historic version. Both are still live at MSNBC.com./hurricanetracker  You can parse the data to see only level 5 hurricanes, for example. You can patterns of movement.

Trulia Hindsight shows historic views of home construction. Trulia has access to data from tax assessments in the US. You can se the patterns of development as a city emerges. He showed parts of San Francisco from 1848 to 2003 so you can see how the city grew. The process of creating the visualization helped the Trulia data people to better understand what was within their data.

Ben next talked about Crimespotting in Oakland. This project shows where crimes occur in Oakland. They took data form the city web site and then rebuild how it is visualized to make it more understandable. They did this as test case. You can see when crimes happen, as well as where. You can parse the data by different dimensions such as time of day.

The last project is SFMOMA ArtScope to provide immersive art browsing. For the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, they put the entire catalog from the museum into a site. They made it into a slippery map format (like Google Maps) that allows you to move over images. You can see paintings as they were acquired over time. You can the patterns of collection. I wish the Boston MFA had this application.

Ben and his firm do some very creative work that does demonstrate the power of good visualizations. 

Web Analytics Best Practices from Webtrends Engage 2010 New Orleans

 I am attending the Webtrends Engage 2010 event in New Orleans. It is a city celebrating two main events at the same time; Mardi Gras (or Carnival as it more often called here) and the Saints trip to the Super Bowl. Mardi Gras itself is Feb 16 but the Carnival celebration starts several weeks earlier and the Super Bowl on Feb 7 falls right in the middle. The City has set aside Feb 9 to have a parade for the Saints, win or lose. It was one of the few nights without Mardi Gras parades. This is great time to be placed into this celebrating city via the Webtrends Engage event. This event also has a lot to offer and is sold out.

Here is an interesting session: Hidden Gems & Top 10 Reports of Webtrends Analytics, It covers better ways to use Webtrends but many of the issues are not simply tool specific. Here is an excerpt from the description: “Modern web analytics inundate us with a flood of information. But how do you know where to start? And how do you separate the actionable insights from the “nice to know”? This session will focus on ways to use Webtrends to uncover some of the most actionable insights for your online marketing efforts.”

The speakers include: Derek Fine, Product Manager at Webtrends, Chris Grant, web analytics team at Enlighten, and Tami Dalley, Director of User Experience Optimization at Acronym Media. Derek opened the session and said it offer what are features in Webtrends Analytics that do not often get discussed but are very useful.  Chris first discussed some new features in Webtrends Analytics.  They have a new geolocation provider: NetAcuity Edge. Webtrends rolled out this new relationship at the start of 2010 and made sure labels are consistent.  Analytics Insight Localization was deployed on Jan 22 with French, Italian and Spanish, as well as UK and American English. The Webtrends iPhone app was released on Jan 14.  It was approved by Apple on 2/2 so should be in iPhone store today. Analytics added notes and alerts in fall of 09. You can syndicate them and subscribe to them. Also, you can add notes and alerts into Outlook.

Tami Dailey took over and talked about what to look at in Webtrends if you only have an hour or so (Lunch date with Webtrends).  Her firm does a lot of keyword marketing.  Web analytics is not just the tool. It is about the “so what?’ or what are the actions that need to be done based on the data. Now people use analytics to shape marketing campaigns, but just measure them.

You want to identify trends early. You want to be the first to notice things so do not simply look at high volume items.  Also use the compare calendar feature to see percentage changes but put in some thresholds so you are not cluttering things with moves from 2 to 4 sold for example. Next, analyze on-site search.  Look at the onsite search terms report to see what people are looking for.  Look at both high volume items and the biggest percent movers.  Look at average revenue by connected orders to these searches. What is the value related to these searches? Based on the report, you can better understand customers, promote popular products, and improve navigation to reduce the need to search.

Next analyze conversion funnels. Why are people dropping out of the sales process? When does this abandonment occur?  Attraction, engagement, conversion are the three steps in online conversion. How can you get people to move through these stages?  For example, in a hotel site, a lot of people dropped out at the guest room selection process. So give them more reason on this page to stay. Also, if people are dropping out at shipping options in a retail site, provide more and better options.  To get this data export the entry pages report and the single page visits to get bounce rates. Use the v-lookup in Excel to do this. Once you find pages that are causing problems, test them through A/B testing first to weed out stuff and then do multivariate testing for refinement.  Test different headlines, images, calls to action, text, etc. to see their impact of changes.

Measure your PPC (pay per click) messaging. Test different offers to see the return on ad spending to see actual revenue impacts.  You can put in reference to ad copy in the url around the link. Then create and export a custom report on these urls. Get the ad performance report form Google. Look at costs to see ROI on different ad copy.  

Do GEO targeting. If are not doing this you are wasting money.  To go beyond what seems like the obvious (e.g, selling skis in Montana might be better than in Florida) you can get a products by state report to see conversion rates.  Target areas with high conversions rates. After all, people in Florida might need skis for their upcoming trip while those in Montana might already have them.

Chris Grant took over.  She works for Enlighten and writes the blog, Webtrendsoutsider to talk about Webtrends features.  Chris does a lot of Webtrends training. She often finds that people are not using some good stuff.  For example, there is a Related Reports button to see other reports that have the same dimension as the one you are looking at.  If you hover over an item you can also use a button to go to the same item in other related reports.  Bookmarks allow you to easily return to things you like and share with others.  There are also preferences to change parameters and see longer and shorter lists in your reports.

The calendar compare feature allows you to compare different time periods. You can quickly see the changes in different factors such as page views or revenue. There is a tear out sheets feature that allows you to save sections of reports. It is almost like a screen shot and it is saved on your desktop.  You can add your own help card to custom reports for your memory and for your end users.  You can sort reports by where the customer is on the site.  You can also visualize your geotrends and that makes trends and results easier to see than lists. You can do this by moving data into Mapviewer software, a third party product.  You can look at the map based reports in terms of raw numbers or in terms of proportion of population.

Path analysis can be useful but you need to have a business reason mind to get value.  Webtrends has five different path analysis types. For example, for one bank site 25% of people went back and forth between mortgages and loans so there must be confusion in labeling.  

All of the features sound useful and the actions make sense. People often only use a fraction of the capability they are paying for. I know I am guilty of this. Much of this is not tool specific and/or describes features that should be on all tools.

 

Engage 2010 Opening Session Notes

After hosting New Orleans’ first Ignite session on Monday night, Webtrends Engage began on Tuesday morning with a series of Ignite-style presentations – or sprints – replacing the traditional hour-long keynotes. Presenters had 10 minutes to share their most valuable insights on a wide range of topics important to digital marketers and analysts. Participants included:

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff, VP of Marketing at Webtrends

Jennifer Zeszut, CEO at ScoutLabs 


Sean Power, Co-founder at Watching Websites 


Christian Howes, Director of Solution Engineering at Webtrends 


Amber Naslund, Director of Community at Radian6 


Inga Broerman, VP of Marketing at Vocus 


Douglas Karr, CEO at DK New Media 


Casey Carey, VP of Products at Webtrends

The big screen behind the stage ran the event’s Twitter tagged messages #wtengage during the warm up including my post on last night’s session: Ignite NOLA Kicks Off Webtrends Engage 2010. I also liked their taste in music.  The event sold out and I was glad I came early to this session to get a seat.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff, VP of Marketing at Webtrends kicked off the session. He suggested that we leave with connections and I have already benefited from this.  Jascha said there has been continuous upheaval in the past two years but the need for connections has not. Mobile apps have taken off. The largest grossing movie had 10% of tickets bought through mobile apps. One to one connections can now be optimized on a global basis. He challenged us to think about new ways to connect with our customers. This event is, in part, modeled on Ignite - be brilliant and but be quick.  Webtrends has started a Facebook space facebook.com/webstrends and there is a related conference.

Reeves was next. He is Web 2.0 poet and comic and started with stories from his childhood. He was very close to sister and they had their own language that their grandfather taught them.  He would have fit in well last night.

Jennifer Zeszut, CEO at ScoutLabs, spoke on the future of natural language processing.  NLP is the science of humans and computers working together. It is having computers help us structure unstructured data. Often you need to teach the computer how to do this. It can be used to poll the market on your products.  The future is real time focus groups of millions of participants.

In the past humans wrote the rules for the computers. Not now. NLP today involves humans labeling spam and the computers create the rules.  For example, people are to able to decide what is spam and what is not. This is relatively easy. It can be hard to define what something like spam or porn is but you can know it when you see it and computers can figure out the patterns used by humans.

Sentiment is harder than spam to determine for both computers and humans. ScoutLabs works on these issues.  Words have different sentiments depending on subtle changes in spelling - she gave the example of different interpretations of motherfucka. Looking for people’s wishes is especially helpful in product research. I like this but… I wish products did… 

Sean Power, co-founder at Watching Websites, spoke on communilytics. It describes how to apply metrics to communities.  Communilytics givers you the data but you still need to determine how to react. Louis Armstrong is a role model for him on how to react. He would change set lists on the fly. He would respond to audience moods. He was a partner with his band, not the boss. This is what you need to do with your community. Today’s challenges include how to relate Twitter to your business model. How do you find the numbers that matter and support your business model?

Christian Howes, Director of Solution Engineering at Webtrends spoke next.  He was the Brit who did the language jokes last night.  
He talked about cyborg technology, as well as the proliferation of devices. There needs to be a convergence of devices. I have written about this a bit on this blog.  He gave examples of how companies have adopted to the next technology. Vodaphone can give your data about where, such as a location in Paris, you are on your mobile phone.  There is now an iPhone apps that lets you agree or disagree with football (soccer) calls.

Amber Naslund, Director of Community at Radian6, was the next speaker. She said that social media is pervading the enterprise. Many people look at social media as a marketing tool. However, social media is now moving inside comapnies. I certainly agree.  
Marketeers need to be aware of this. They need to build bridges inside the enterprise to break down silos. All this needs to be aligned with the business strategy. There needs to be hubs to facilitate this. There also needs to be policies on this interaction.  People need to wear more hats to help with this bridging, as well as respond to today’s market. For example, sales people also need to be customer service people.  You need to react, not just measure. You need to get insights to the people who can act on them. These internal hubs can facilitate this.

Reeves came back and relate how he created a dialog with the Web.  He used Babblefish to translate one of his poems into Italian then back again into English. The results were really funny and much better than his original poems that were cheesy IMO.

Inga Broerman, VP of Marketing at Vocus was the next speaker. She talked about PR for lead generation and why PR needs to change. Media consumption is changing. People are bombarded with messages. People think it is too much and are getting rid of them. Click troughs are falling. TIVO takes out ads. Sources are so much broader. For PR it has gotten much more complex. The old channels are changing. In 2009 over 200 newspapers went out of print, over 2,000 magazines went under. Ten thousands people lost radio jobs. But many things have stepped in. This is an issue I cover a bit on this blog.

You need to go out more to find people to talk with to promote brands. You need to be everywhere and be social.  You need to enlist the entire organization to help with this efffort. Southwest Airlines does this. A baggage handler recently answered questions on Twitter without having to be asked to do this.  Everyone is a PR person now. It is not a specialty. But you need to be on top of this effort as the PRT lead. Monitor, engage, measure analyze.

Douglas Karr, CEO at DK New Media 
He talked about b2b blogging and how to increase convergence on your blog. He said he is from Indy and made a Super Bowl prediction that got little applause. He started with SEO. Google gets in the way of things and you have to figure Google out to reach people. I liked his dance routines as metaphors. You now have to get out on the dance floor through social media to be where your customers are. Get in front of everyone through the social networking tools.  For example, Ping.fm can put your status in many places. 

Second, you also need paths to action on your blog. Third, you need to feed the senses. Go beyond words. Many people do not read bodies of text.  Fourth ask for information and do not give any information for free such as white papers.  Fifth is to measure. Make sure you measure business results.

Casey Carey, VP of Products at Webtrends talked about the wave of optimization.  Experts can quickly narrow down the possibilities within content so they focus on the important.  The future is understanding customer behavior and points off customer interaction. Optimization is now about customer interaction, not simply getting on top of search engines.  Making use of the new channels is one key here. Webtrends has added targeting and personalization to its optimization capabilities. You can identify content, do segmentation, and define the business rules around these areas.  It is easy to do so marketing can do it without IT help.

This session was a great way to convey a variety of issues within an hour. 

Ignite NOLA Kicks Off Webtrends Engage 2010

 The Webtrends Engage 2010 opened with an NOLA Ignite session on Monday evening. The Ignite Series was started by Brady Forrest and Bree Pettis in 2006. The objective is for innovators to share their ideas with one another. The tag line: “Enlighten Us, But Make It Quick” can sum up the event for new comers. This was not an official part of Webtrends but an opening act. To the left is one of many street bands that are part of what makes New Orleans great. 

Speakers in the community come to talk about what they're most passionate about. The topic area can be about anything, but each speaker has only five minutes with only 20 slides that auto advance every 15 seconds. This gives the speaker a tight window for their presentation but it also gives the audience a way to digest all the great information that will come their way. This session also featured some great food and an open bar.  

The later can be a benefit in NOLA. The local paper had a letter to the city of Miami on the front page   today about getting ready for the Super Bowl. It said that they needed to prepare for the Saints fans. This first thing that Miami needs to do is to get more beer. The paper acknowledged that they probably had extra ordered but that was not enough. The fans found that beer tasted better with victories. The paper also pointed out that there is no need to be concerned about safety issues as the Saints fans just like a good time. There was no damage after the Saints won the right to go to the Super Bowl. It’s the Big Easy and it has seen too much destruction. Fans just want to have fun now.

Ignite is very fast paced to take notes but here are some personal highlights. First the audience was lively and loud. This is a good thing, sets the right tone, and is like the Saints fans. There were even some Who Dats. And the open bar had been in swing for over an hour before the speakers started. The room was packed.

The first speaker went over her mistakes as an entrepreneur. She did her list of failures and is now doing GetFitNola. She is an ex-Marine and started in DC but now is does health and fitness in NOLA. I guess there might be a need here with all the celebrations. She is a natural comedian and maybe should go there.  The applause meter went wild.

The next guy did video games. He continued the comic routine going over interface issues. I was not sure of his product but he was amusing.

Gumbo Labs was the next topic. It is defined as hacker space for tinkerers, not criminals. He said that hacker spaces are taking off. There is hackerspaces.org. Many are in Germany. They now have a physical space to geek out in here in NOLA. His team did work with DeeCours, an art exhibit in New Orleans, to do a tech-based art happening. They meet every Tuesday night and he wants you to come so Google them if you are in town.

The next guy was a really wired conspiracy theorist. Walmart and RFID and DOD are the largest investors in RFID.  He was the best comedian so far and got a standing ovation.

Smart Gird was the next topic. The current gird was designed in the 1870s and has 45 % efficiency. Only 3% of electricity comes form renewable resources.   We now need a two-way system.  The Feds have provided 4.5 billion in matching funds to help with research to make this happen.  The speaker is working on smart energy devices for the home.

The next guy was a funny Brit who evoked Led Zeppelin. He got into cultural differences in vocabulary such as fags, pissed, randy, jocks, bums, and bangers, Having lived in London for a year, I knew the punch lines and have seen this routine before. You can image where this went.  He forgot “on the job’ which relates to randy. This one was pure comedy. He topped off the applause meter before we broke for half time.

After half time, an artist led off talking about meetings and the Web. She was too serious and read her notes from cards. Being a painter I was more hopeful for something here.  

The next guy talked about people who get arrested doing stupid stuff.  Hope and fun is in sight. He clarified that this is party related stuff, not serious crime.  His premise was you should not feel guilty over these arrests, If you were a good person when you did this act, you are still good. He is the person to take care of your trash with a guilt free approach. However, if you do this all the time it is a problem.  The audience picked up.  He represents NOLA criminal law. The audience was re-engaged.  Who dat.

The next person started with some good disclaimers. She asks people for money and she is single. Then she when through the best practices in fund raising like finding out what the property values your targets have. There was a lot of detective stuff. What they do, where they work, what they love so you can figure out how to get their money. By @verarcoks.  This is way I prefer to give directly to charities and not to fund raisers.

The next speaker talked about how to stop doing things that do not matter.  He asked Twitter about the most random things he has done.  Backtype said he has left over 2000 comments on the Web. He also drove cross-country to meet real people and he wrote about it on the Web.  People applauded but they were likely his friends.

They next guy discussed Carebacks.  They will allow anyone to get anything to anyone at anytime.  You give to Carebacks and they make sure it does not go to crack dealers. Sounds like a scam to me like the credit card companies that charged processing fees for donations. He started funny and went down hill.

The session had some funny highlights. It was the first Ignite in New Orleans so I guess it will take a while to sort out the genre but I see its potential. Stand-up comics will do best. It helped to have a sense of humor and not take yourself too seriously. The NOLA criminal law presentation wins my prize as he was funny and also clearly conveyed the need for his business service. I look forward to the main act: Webstrends. 

Meanwhile some school kids in my old neighborhood showed some wonderful creativity as the city gets ready for the Super Bowl. 

 

The Buzz on the Apple iPad

My Darwin colleague, Thierry Hubert, shared his thoughts on Apple’s iPad on the Darwin blog today. As the tweets started to flow with the announcement with links to other reviews I saved some of the more interesting ones. There was certainly a lot of buzz. The tweets reached over 7,000 a minute during the actual announcement. It ranked close to the 9,000 a minute during President Obama’s State of the Union address.  Here are some useful reviews:

The iPad and the Chasm between Work and Home Computing (Rob Paterson)

With Its Tablet, Apple Blurs Line Between Devices (NY Times)

Apple iPad: The Best iPod Touch Available (Forrester)

Apple's iPad Mistakes (PC World)

Apple’s iPad: A New Category Of Device (PSFK)

Does the Apple iPad Make Strategic Sense? (HBR)

Will the iPad Help Media? Possibly. Save Media? No. – GigaOM It's the Costs! (Rob Paterson)