Portals and KM

Measuring the Full Impact of Digital Capital

I hope you are having a nice summer. This is McKinsey week on Portals and KM as I look back at what is happening in new technology. The first two posts this week covered Accelerating the digitization of business processes and Reinventing IT to support digitization.  In addition to meeting customer needs buy reinventing IT, companies also need to cover the topic of this third report, Measuring the full impact of digital capital.  Otherwise how are you going to measure all that is happening?

McKinsey noted that about a year ago the US Bureau of Economic Analysis released, for the first time, GDP figures categorizing research and development as fixed investment. It joined software in a new category called intellectual-property products. In our knowledge-based economy, this is a sensible move that brings GDP accounting closer to economic reality. It is sometimes that the knowledge management people have been talking about for over twenty years. I am amazed but not surprised that it took so long to recognize this.  

There is a broad mismatch between our digital economy and the way we account for it. The report notes that conventional accounting treats these most IT capabilities as expenses and not as company investments. This means that their funding isn’t reflected as capital. Since the amounts spent aren’t amortized, they take a large bite out of reported income. Spending on those capabilities sometimes should be treated as capital, though, since they can be long-lived. Viewing IT investments in the new digital world as assets rather than additional areas of spending requires a new set of management and financial lenses. It is time to move out of 19^th century industrial revolution and into 21^st century digital transformation. 

Reinventing IT to Support Digitization of Business Processes - McKinsey

Here is another McKinsey report that complements the one I discussed on Monday,  Accelerating the digitization of business processes. They recently discussed - Reinventing IT to support digitization.  They write that, “more connected consumers, automated processes, and sophisticated analytics place unprecedented demands on IT functions. Many companies are struggling to cope, and they seek to deliver on new demands by adding piecemeal elements to their existing operations. Yet what’s really required is the reinvention of IT entirely.” However, this is not an easy task. I have found that there is too usually much vested interest in maintaining the fiefdoms and processes that support current IT management.

The increased digitization of business processes more sophisticated technology, greater IT delivery efficiency, and, most importantly, “digitization means that IT must prepare for much greater business engagement and oversight from senior management.”  This last requirement is fundamental to any IT change but even more important when it comes to the transformation of business processes. Do not start with the technology.

McKinsey offers seven elements of a reinvented IT function. These include clear, central business leadership on digital business, agile development and rapid releases, rapid innovation architecture supported by stable services, and high-quality integrated data. To achieve these goals you need to combine a start-up mind-set with enterprise accountability and make IT a top business priority. There is much on the report on how to make this happen. 

Accelerating the Business Digitization Processes - McKinsey

McKinsey recently issued a useful report - Accelerating the digitization of business processes. The growth of efficient online businesses has raised the expectations of customers for service and product quality. McKinsey reports that, “many traditional organizations can’t meet these expectations. As a result, attackers born in the digital age can swoop in and disrupt the market through rapid delivery of digital products and services combined with advanced algorithms and full access to information.”

They go on to add that, “To meet these high customer expectations, companies must accelerate the digitization of their business processes. But they should go beyond simply automating an existing process. They must reinvent the entire business process, including cutting the number of steps required, reducing the number of documents, developing automated decision making, and dealing with regulatory and fraud issues. Operating models, skills, organizational structures, and roles need to be redesigned to match the reinvented processes. Data models should be adjusted and rebuilt to enable better decision making, performance tracking, and customer insights. Digitization often requires that old wisdom be combined with new skills, for example, by training a merchandising manager to program a pricing algorithm. New roles, such as data scientist and user-experience designer, may be needed.”

Sounds like a great opportunity for consultants. I hope that it goes beyond that to not only enrich the consultants but also help the consumer and employee. I have seen great successes and failures in the drive to improve business processes through technology. McKinsey offers some advice that I agree with. First, start at the end state and work back. Second, Tackle the end-to-end customer experience. I would also add to include the end-to-end employee experience and make sure it is aligned with customer needs.  The report goes on to offer some useful advice. 

New Study: Top Charities Master Visual and Social Media

Nora Ganim Barnes and The Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth recently conducted an in-depth study on the usage of social media by the top charities and nonprofit organizations in the United States. The study was conducted using the 2013 Philanthropy 400 list.

They found that 98% of the charities studied are using at least one form of social media. Most use several.  Eighty-one percent link their social media to their homepages, providing immediate access to all their outlets. For these successful nonprofits, YouTube, web video and video blogs are the tools of choice for communicating with their constituencies with 97% using some type of video to help inspire their audience.  Facebook enjoys popularity with 92% using it and Twitter is used by 86% of the charities studied.  While these three platforms have strong usage across many sectors, it is interesting that nearly 3 in 4 of these nonprofits have boards on Pinterest and half are posting on Instagram.  

In contrast, studies on social media in the business sector (Inc. 500 and Fortune 500) show much lower levels of usage of these particular tools even though their usage is increasing dramatically each year.

A common measure of effectiveness on Facebook is the number of Facebook Fans an organization has.  National Public Radio enjoys over 3.6 million fans on Facebook, over a million more than the second place US Olympic Committee.  The Humane Society, St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, the Wounded Warrior Project the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the others listed below, all enjoy over a million fans on Facebook.

A new metric was added to Facebook in October, 2012.  “People Talking About This” is the number of unique users who have created a “story” about a page in a seven-day period. On Facebook, stories are items that display in News Feeds.  People Talking About This is an important metric because it emphasizes interactions beyond an initial Facebook Like. Pages that create posts that fans enjoy will benefit. When people interact with pages in ways that generate stories, pages reach an audience beyond their existing fan base. Again, National Public Radio leads the way with over 500,000 engaging with the organization on Facebook.

I recently saw that three of the six most wealthiest men made most of their money through Facebook, Larry Page of Google tops that list. I hope these four men are putting some of their fortunes into these charities.

Twitter followers provide an important metric both internally and externally.  Of the organizations studied, the Metropolitan Opera Association and the Wounded Warrior Project have the most followers, both with over 96,000.  Charities and nonprofits were asked about all the different ways they provide content to their constituencies.  Eighty-nine percent of those studied write their own original content for their platforms.  Nearly half report gathering it from other sites.  Sixteen percent purchase content for their platforms.

Thanks to Nora Ganim Barnes and The Center for Marketing Research for providing more useful insights on the use of social media. 

The Digital Workplace in the Connected Organization – Part 2: New Features

Jane McConnell, Netstrategy/JMC, has recently published her excellent annual report, The Digital Workplace in the Connected Organization. Jane conducted her 8^th annual survey of organizations and had 314 respondents. Here are some of the highlights of the results. The full 198 page report goes into great detail on the findings and how they impact the organization. I was pleased to receive a review copy of this valuable document. The report can be purchased online at this site. This post covers some of the new features and my prior post summarized the highlights. There are three main new features this year.

The Digital Workplace Scorecard is based on nine dimensions of the digital workplace model Jane offers in the report. The three main categories are: capabilities, enablers, and mindset and each is further divided in three dimensions. The Scorecard provides a self-assessment tool that should prove essential to building a roadmap for establishing a digital workplace that plays an essential and strategic role in the organization. The scores are calculated based on several hundred data points from responses to online survey questions. All participants privately receive their own scorecard and can benchmark themselves to the rest of their industry. All industry scorecards are published in the report.

This year, the digital workplace is put into the context of the organization. It provides an understanding of how the digital workplace impacts and is, in turn, impacted by organizational processes, structures, leadership, culture and mindset. The survey covers these points in addition to traditional questions about people capabilities, mobile services, finding expertise, and sharing knowledge. 

There are twenty-three "In practice" cases that are developed in more detail than in previous years. Organizations included in these cases stood out during Jane’s data analysis process of the 314 organizations that responded to her survey. They were chosen as examples because of high scores or because their comments and examples are relevant to challenges many organizations face today. 

The case studies and other data show that the “digital workplace helps organizations enable their customer-facing workforce, helping them interact with customers in real-time with up-to-date information. An effective digital workplace facilitates fast reaction and proactive initiatives when an organization is faced with unexpected events such as environmental emergencies, challenges from competitors or global market shifts.”

I highly recommend this document to who wants to stay competitive in today’s market and who desires to attract and retain an intelligent workforce.  

 

 

The Digital Workplace in the Connected Organization – Part 1: Highlights

Jane McConnell, Netstrategy/JMC, has recently published her excellent annual report, The Digital Workplace in the Connected Organization. Jane conducted her 8^th annual survey of organizations and had 314 respondents. It was first done in 2006 and is a comprehensive and highly useful document for anyone working in digital media within the enterprise.  I was pleased to receive a review copy of this valuable document. The report can be purchased online at this site. The 198 page report goes into great detail on the findings and how they impact the organization.

Jane begins by pointing out that, “the digital workplace is much more than technology. It is a blend of Capabilities, Enablers and above all, Mindset - all essential perspectives in how organizations work.”  In organizations that are effectively using digital technology, there are new virtual structures such as communities. “Cross-organizational communities are playing a long-term strategic role as custodians of knowledge, thus complementing traditional hierarchical structures. “

In addition, new processes such as crowd-sourcing, “Internal crowd-sourcing is now deployed enterprise-wide in over half the Early Adopters who report “transformational” or “significant” impact on their organization.”

Successful early adopters are operating within an open and participatory leadership model. These early adopters report a much higher rate of top management as a “driving and active” force in their digital workplace initiatives. They also have organizational cultures that are more open and based on teamwork. Top managers, as well as Communication, IT and HR managers, are more “open and participatory” in their leadership styles and ways of working.

The vast increase in workforce mobile services is also transforming business processes. Jane found that, “Mobile services for the workforce will be deployed in 30 to 40 percent of organizations by the end of 2014.”

The top two strategic drivers overall for the digital workplace are “increasing organizational intelligence” and “gaining efficiency and cost-savings”. The first is number one for early adopters. It makes sense as these innovators are often attracted to initiatives that increase their effectiveness. The second is number one for the majority of organizations who more often wait to be attracted by bottom line results.

It is interesting to note that physical workplaces are slowly evolving toward more “non- territorial” workspaces, encouraging the flow of ideas and information among people.

I highly recommend this document to who wants to stay competitive in today’s market and who desires to attract and retain an intelligent workforce. This is the eighth year Jane has conducted new research and published her report on the findings and recommendations.  In my next post I will review some of the new features in this report. 

Improve Your SEO with Darwin Ecosystem’s Keyword Memes™ Drawn From Tweets

I remain very much a part of Darwin Ecosystem and excited about our latest offering, Keyword Memes™. The Darwin’s organic temporal curation engine improves Search Engine Optimization (SEO) ranking by including in real-time collections of correlated tags (Keyword Memes) from current tweets -- You have seen them in action on our tweetzup.com and TheEnergyPulse.com sites. Below is the Tweetzup site.

Here also is the Energy Pulse site as an industry focused example of the technology.

Our newly announced API harvests the correlated keywords associated with the movement of tweets to deliver Keyword Memes that can be added to your web pages’ meta data. These Keyword Memes provide clustered keywords that are representative of the crowd's current association with the keywords that best complement the topic of your web pages. 

Our API increases relevance based on emerging social expressions. Our temporal curation algorithm and engine allows us to produce these Keyword Memes on demand and without manual input and costly research.

Darwin Ecosystem now offers Keyword Memes for SEO solutions through our API subscription and integration services.  Companies interested in complementing and improving their search engine pages’ ranking can now be relevant to what matters based on people’s correlated expressions.

This is a strong contrast from today’s SEO spamming practices that only seek keywords that are highly ranked regardless of their relevance to your pages’ content. Search engines know this and seek to penalize pages using this misleading practice. Darwin’s approach combats this risk as our tags are automatically correlated, unbiased and truly relevant to the expressed interest of the moment.



For more information, please contact our CEO, Thierry Hubert, directly as we are seeking strategic clients and alliances to bring this next-generation SEO improvement innovation to the market. You can reach him at [email protected]. 

Darwin Ecosystems Moves Forward with Tweetzup

It has been almost a year since I reported on Darwin Ecosystems at the 2012 SF TechCrunch Disrupt where it won the 2012 SAP Big Data Start-up of the Year award for its Tweather offering. This latest achievement goes along with its win of the KM World Trend Setting Product in both 2011 and 2010 and the Most Promising Software award in 2010. Darwin was also named to the 100 companies that matter in 2010 by both KM World and eContent Magazine.

Since TechCrunch Disrupt Darwin has been hard at work and have dramatically improved on its new site, now called TweetZup, as well as its mission.  I am still connected to Darwin and excited about what is happening.

TweetZup’s real value is to give users the ability to discover content that is emerging.  What better source than Twitter to do that? In fact, Twitter has been great for self-promotion and pushing content out, but it lacks in offering a comprehensive discovery of what is emerging. No wonder why they are having a hard time with advertisement since they have not really developed user’s receptiveness to content. Instead brands and companies have been the real consumer of Twitter content, not the every day user.

 

Darwin has created www.tweetzup.com as a truly dedicated site to see what is emerging right now about topics that you may care about. Furthermore, you can create alerts for emerging themes of interest. These alerts can be pushed on your behalf to your twitter account, or be sent to you via email. Tweetzup also correlates the emerging twitter themes to find the most relevant videos. It is search without search offering true contextual discovery.  You can drill down to explore a topic, like art, with suggestions or determine your own preferences. 

 

We all know that search engines do a poor job at revealing what we don’t know, and therefore it is hard to know what you are missing.

The Tweetzup service is free and in Beta. But please feel free to play with it, create your own ZUPs (queries), set alerts, and share your finding.

Also know that Darwin is about to publish an API that will allow developers to tap into its temporal curation intervals, This capability is what allows the tag and clustering animation on the site, to performs tasks such as trend-based SEO, analytics, and predictive computing. A service/user can extract the metadata and improve their SEO by adding KW to their content that reflects the trending and associated keywords. See Thierry Hubert’s recent post, Announcing our new Emerging Organic Metadata Tags for SEO API for more details. 

In an effort to support the protection of our homeland, Darwin has created several pages where you can start to see what topics are emerging relating to terror threats.  You can also create your own alerts when keywords of interest are piping-up in significant numbers over different periods of time.  The URL is http://www.tweetzup.com/tw/home/home?filter=Terror%20Threat  or go to www.tweetzup.com and select the Terror Threat category.  You can also create your own topics to monitor by registration via a twitter account. It is a free and open website.

SAP and MindTouch Work Together to Enhance Customer Experience

This week I will be looking again at new technolgies. MindTouch now has a partnership with SAP so its offering is used to complement SAP cloud solutions, including SAP Cloud for Service and SAP Cloud for Social Engagement, to provide customers self-service with an integrated help system that offers the latest and most relevant product information. A major area of concern for companies with large customer bases is the consistency and quality of the information a company provides.

MindTouch solutions aggregate product data from different information silos to distribute the most relevant, accurate and up-to-date product information to a wide spectrum of users, ranging from employees to customer support agents to end-user customers. For example, it can use content from Facebook, Twitter, CRM agents, websites and other communities to create a comprehensive profile of the customer’s product history. MindTouch then delivers this information through a variety of channels, including call centers, the Web and mobile devices.

This aggregation helps companies gain a deeper understanding of their customers’ needs so they are able to provide a delightful service experience while reducing response times and minimizing ticket generation. Service agents are also able to help customers take advantage of up-sell and cross-sell opportunities at the right time.

We have come a long way since I first got started in call center support work. In the 1980s, call center agents said they often learned about their companies latest offers form the customer who called after seeing them on TV or in the newspaper. Providing more effective call center support can offer significant financial benefits. In the late 1990s telecom looked at the ROI on its upgraded call center agent knowledge system. This that used it had three times the cross-sell rate, greatly reduced call escalations to managers, fewer repeat call son the same issues, and other improvements.

 

Now solutions like MindTouch’s offer multi-channel distribution of relevant and up-to-date product and customer information to both agents and customers. It also provides enhanced customer intelligence gleaned from MindTouch tools and analytics, which helps drive marketing, product and customer experience initiatives to better serve customers. This would have seemed like “Star Wars” in the 20^th century. Now we have these capabilities thanks to partnerships like the one with MindTouch and SAP.  

Social Business Has More Work to Gain Real Satisfaction

Prescient Digital Media has released its latest useful report, Social Intranet Study. They interviewed participants in 651 organizations. Social media is becoming widely adopted as they found that most organizations (71%) have at least one social media tool available to some or all employees. The most popular social media tools are instant messaging, blogs, discussion forums, wikis, and user commenting. Here is my post on their excellent 2011 study.

However, the average respondent organization gives their internal social media efforts a failing grade.  This can be a result of insufficient investments in both tools and adoption efforts. Prescient Digital Media found that failing grades show a direct correlation to investment where the average company spends about $10,000 or less on their internal social media (intranet 2.0).

To be specific, the five most popular social media tools are instant messaging, blogs, discussion forums, wikis, and user commenting:

• 76% of organizations have instant messaging.
• 75% of organizations have blogs.
• 70% of organizations have discussion forums.
• 67% of organizations have wikis.
• 67% of organizations have user commenting.

The investments have been very modest. Most organizations spend little or nothing on their enterprise social media tools. This may explain the lack of satisfaction. Many organizations that implement social media tools spend less than US$10,000:

• 47% have spent less than US$10,000.
• 30% have spent between US$10,000 and US$99,999.
• 23% have spent US$100,000 or more.

Prescient Digital Media found that executives and employees alike are less than thrilled with their enterprise social media. To be specific:

• The average rating of internal social media by their host organization is 4.5 out of 10
• Only 22% of organizations rate employees' satisfaction with Intranet 2.0 tools as good or very good.
• Only 17% of organizations rate executives' satisfaction with Intranet 2.0 tools as good or very good.

I do not see this as an failing of social business but a failure in how it has been used in most organizations. As I have written many times, for social business to succeed it need to be integrated into work processes (see for example: Putting Social Media to Work and Giving Social Media a Good Job. That is not going to happen on these limited budgets.

 

Google Offers a Person Finder for Boston Tragedy

Google is providing a useful service by setting up a person finder for people either looking to check on the status of someone or to offer information.  Here is the link to the Google Person Finder: Boston Marathon Explosions. The site also mentions two important numbers: the Boston Mayor's Hotline for families of victims: 617-635-4500 and the Boston Police line for witnesses who may have information: 800-494-8477.  

I appreciate this service and have used it to check on some friends in my former town. Fortunately, everyone I know was not at the site and is fine. My thoughts are with those not so fortunate.

This reminds me of the people finder set up after Katrina. We could have used Google’s help then and the Katrina locator was much more of an effort. The Katrina PeopleFinder Project was set up by some people at the Berkman Center at Harvard after it was discovered that there was no center clearing house. After Katrina hundreds of Web sites were gathering hundreds, and probably thousands, of entries about missing persons or persons who wanted to let others know they were okay. The problem was: the data on these sites had no particular form or structure. So it was almost impossible for people to search or match things up. Plus there were dozens of sites - making it hard for a person seeking lost loved ones to search them all.

The Berkman Center volunteers set up this central database in a few days to simplify the search. It was a great service.  However, they needed massive help to transfer the data into it. There was a call on the Web for volunteers and thousands responded within the first day.

I did some work on this. It seemed a bit complicated at first but there were good instructions and a non-technical person like me could do it. You took data from one of many separate databases and added it into a central one. There appeared to be several benefits in addition to a single source to find people. You were taking databases with different formats and putting them into a common format so searches and sorts can work better. Also, many entries were multiple people and you were creating separate records for each individual. Your work gave a closer personal look at the displaced people. It let you see who was looking for who and the status of this search. Some of the individual stories emerged.

Google, in its usual way have simplified the interface and process. The more personal connection achieved by volunteers was lost but, more importantly, it has made it easier for those who need to find or share information. 

eXo Announces Plans for eXo Release 4.0 and Codenvy

I have written about eXo, the user experience platform-as-a-service (UXPaaS) company that supports developers, several times before (for example see: Benjamin Mestrallet, eXo CEO, Looks at the Social Enterprise and eXo Expands its Cloud IDE Cloud-based Development Platform).  Recently I spoke with Patrice, Lamarque, VP of Products, to catch up on their latest moves. We discussed two main things: the release of Codenvy and eXo 4.0.

We started with eXo 4.0. It is an open source, enterprise-class, social collaboration platform. There are several goals with this release. First, eXo want sot make social collaboration a utility so IT can easily embrace all collaboration within a single platform. They want it to be simple and affordable, as well as business centric. These means there are application connectors in place through APIs to make it enterprise ready so the total cost of ownership remains low. Standard APIs such as JCR or CMIS are complemented by a set of APIs to program against your organization model, spaces, activity streams, polls, posts, wikis and more. For example, you can access Sugar CRM content within eXo. In addition, Sugar CRM activity can show up in the eXo activity stream and acted upon without leaving eXo.. Finally, they want it to be user oriented with an intuitive interface to foster engagement and adoption. The home page is seen below.

Features include: document management, portal, calendar, mobile capability, forums, answers, dashboards, wiki, spaces, tasks, and social networks in a cloud-based offering. The social features include: user profiles, connections, and activity streams. The Spaces feature allows you to create collaboration workspaces for teams or projects where you can share documents, tasks, events, wikis and more. Spaces can be open or closed, private or public and space administrators can manage members and the applications that are available. You can see a sample Spaces screen below.

The Dashboard feature allows each user to create their own customizable dashboard. Gadgets help to track metrics, feeds, status and analytics. The product has a large set of gadgets but you can also install any open social gadget. A large set of gadgets are also available online. The dashboard is available through the mobile applications. The Tasks feature allows you to capture work items super easily as tasks. Tasks can be created from anywhere, anytime. They can be scheduled in your calendar and reminders will be sent to you. You can also track other people’s tasks via activity streams. You can develop gadgets and REST services and deploy them in the platform.

With the Documents feature you can upload files easily, preview them, share them and edit them remotely via WEBDAV. Advanced document management capabilities are available such as versioning, metadata, advanced search and digital asset management. You can also build accessible websites with different content types and site structure. A powerful back office lets you classify, search and publish content very easily. A sample document management screen is seen below.

 

Based on the open source GateIn portal framework, eXo Platform has all the flexibility of an enterprise portal framework: portlets (JSR 286, WSRP), gadgets (OpenSocial) and content can be aggregated in a secured and customizable way.  A powerful graphical user interface composer that requires no technical skills allows you to compose portal pages by picking up a layout and pulling in apps and content.

There is also Unified Search coming soon. It will allow you to search any type of content using a single interface, including documents, events, tasks, posts and articles. Any content can be found with the clear and powerful search application. A quick search-ahead helper field shows the most relevant results and a more advanced search with advanced filtering lets you go further.

If you already manage user accounts in an enterprise directory such as Active Directory or Open LDAP, eXo Platform can integrate with it for authentication or user profile attributes. Advanced capabilities even let you use groups in eXo or leverage several directories at the same time. The eXo Platform works with your single sign-on system thank to its support of solutions like CAS, JOSSO and OpenSSO, and its support of standards like SAML. The eXo Platform is built using enterprise-standard tools such as Java EE, WEBDAV, CalDAV, JCR and CMIS to maximize its interoperability within the applications already available within the information system.

There is strong mobility support with native iPhone, iPad, and Android apps integrate easily and securely with your eXo instance. Below are some sample mobile interfaces.

 

There are a variety of pricing options including a freemium option. I think that eXo has put together a compelling offering for enterprises of all sizes to engagement in social business. The eXo 4.0 platform will be released at the end of April.

We also discussed Codenvy, a spin off from eXo that has received $9M in funding. Codenvy was announced on February 26 and it is the business now handling their eXo Cloud IDE offering. It was started with the objective to make developers more productive in building and deploying cloud-based apps. It targeted the Java environment and has support for a wide range of PaaS environments, including Red Hat OpenShift, Salesforce Heroku, CloudBees, and VMware Cloud Foundry. eXo Cloud IDE has exceeded their expectations so they created this new business unit to handle its growth.

FileMaker Offers Database Development for iPad, iPhone, and More

FileMaker is a wholly owned subsidiary of Apple, Inc. It provides a comprehensive Platform used to design, build, deploy and manage data-driven business solutions for Mac, Windows, iPad and iPhone and the web. I spoke with Ryan Rosenberg, VP of Marketing, to get a better understanding of the FileMaker Platform. We also discussed how companies are using the Platform to create custom business solutions for iPad and iPhone and Ryan demonstrated some of the ease of use features of the environment.

Ryan said that FileMaker Pro is the number one database on the Mac OS and number two on Windows behind Access. They have shipped over 18 million copies of FileMaker Pro. In fact, the Windows market is their largest. FileMaker apps can be expanded to thousands of users. It is designed for business apps. FileMaker Go for iPad and FileMaker Go for iPhone, the leading iOS databases, are both free on the iTunes App store

They also develop Bento, an entry-level personal database software for solo businesses owners, which is available on the Apple App store and Bento 4 for iPad and Bento 4 for iPhone available in the productivity section of the iTunes App store.

Ryan said that over 500,000 copies of FileMaker Go have been downloaded so far and that most of these deployments are found within small, medium and large organizations. He gave the example of the Austin Texas Convention Center that I know well from last year’s SXSW. The crews that set up booths can make adjustments on their iPads by drawing the modifications and these changes are communicated automatically to the central admin people. I can see the benefit of this. Now they need to help with the registration process as it took several hours and long lines at the 2012 SXSW. Ryan also mentioned another great use case, the Benetton stores. Here clerks carry iPads running FileMaker Go for iPad and can check inventory without having to go to a backroom. I imagine this is a common use case inn many stores, or will become one.

Ryan showed me a coffee shop solution that allows you to create custom coffee grinds through a visual interface. He also showed me a driving test sample solution that allows the tester to check off an applicants progress and diagram incidents on a traffic grid. This latter one eliminates a lot of paper and makes record keeping much more efficient.

You can also integrate mobile solutions into existing enterprise and departmental systems and then make updates. Ryan showed me how you can make changes in the desktop version and have it immediately appear in the iPad version. Data updates can go in both directions back and forth from field sales people and the home office, for example. You can also manage and secure solutions using
 industry-standard authentication. There is no coding required for solution development so the business users can do self-service and not rely on programmers.

FileMaker is a complete Platform for creating, deploying, and managing data-driven business apps. Design is key for iPad and iPhone solutions, as the expectations are high. FileMaker includes flexible design tools that let developers take total control of the screen. You can create an attractive product configuration display, an inviting registration screen for an event, a useful executive dashboard, or a comprehensive facilities management App. FileMaker also features native iPad and iPhone clients so you can deliver the full native iOS experience.

On the business side, FileMaker has a powerful framework based on a full-featured relational database model, with integrated workflow, business logic, searching, sorting and data validation. The framework includes many features to take advantage of the iPad and iPhone such as on-device charting, report generation, PDF generation, email integration, printing support, signature capture, location support, camera support and more. Ryan showed me how to make an update where sales over a certain profit level appear in red. It was done in seconds and communicated to all connected devices immediately. You can see the process in the two screens below.

 

Ryan also showed me how to set up a signature capture field within an app. You can see the process in the two screens below.

If you need help, an extensive third party ecosystem has evolved with more than 1,100 consulting firms worldwide in FileMaker’s Business Alliance of independent FileMaker database developers offering customized database development and  training.  The company offers developers certified training. There are also hundreds of 3rd party tools and frameworks for the FileMaker Platform providing integration such as with popular accounting packages, enabling point-of-sale credit card transactions, delivering vertical application frameworks and more.

There is also the FileMaker Technical Network, with over 30,000 active members.

FileMaker products are available in 17 languages

I was very impressed with the capabilities, ease of use and support. I can see why FileMaker is so popular.

 

 

Meltwater Enables Effective Media Listening, Outreach, and Management

Meltwater is dedicated to helping you find relevant media contacts, manage outreach campaigns, monitor and analyze what is being said in the traditional press, and help engage and drive campaigns in social media. It was founded in Norway and is now a global company headquartered in San Francisco.  I am currently using one of their products, Meltwater Press. I recently spoke with Pauliina Rauhamaa about their two public relations solutions, Meltwater Press and Meltwater News.

Meltwater Press offers a media contact database, a Natural Language Processing (NLP) search engine to locate relevant press contacts, and a press release distribution and management system. I have used it to easily create a number of media contact lists on relevant topics to my work. Meltewater Press is organized around finding relevant reporters, both in traditional media and key bloggers, rather than around general topics or beats that can be incorrect or out of date.

You build your media lists by first picking key terms. The NLP search engine returns relevant journalists and bloggers who have written articles discussing those topics, ranked by their relevance. You can then see either all of their work or the work relevant to your topic and select the time period to cover. You can click through to see the actual articles. Here is sample set of returns below.

Once you find a relevant reporter, it is easy to add them to an existing list or create a new one. The reporters are described and contact information is usually available. You can then contact them through Meltwater individually or as a group. There are useful tools within Meltwater to manage this process. You can also export the lists to other applications such as Excel. Below is a sample media list.

You can embed images in your outreach. The media distribution tools include the ability to see who does and doesn’t read your email or press release. You can use graphic analysis to get an overview of journalist memes, users; and identify and understand trends.

We next looked at Meltwater News, a real-time media intelligence platform designed to enable you to monitor your brands presence across online media, as well as follow relevant topics. While Meltwater Press is organized around reporters, Meltwater News is organized around topics. They monitor over 200,000 online news sources worldwide, including several blogs that I write for.

You can set up searches based on keywords and use Boolean logic to refine these searches. You can also select what types of news sources you want to include such as top tier journalists, news from relevant countries, or even drill down to track a specific list of outlets you are particularly interested in. The searches can be on your brand. For example, I was able to see spikes in mentions of my topics and then drill down to see what sources and content caused these spikes.  

The reports can also be on relevant topics. For example, Pauliina showed me how to set up daily reports on topics of current interest. If the results are too broad, you can add filters to narrow them down. There is an intelligence dashboard that gives you a multidimensional overview of the latest trends. Automated sentiment analysis gives you an overview of media tone.

In addition to traditional media, Meltwater News looks at social media conversations on more than 200 million blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other sources.  The volume of content on the Web is ever increasing with more content generated every few years than in the entire prior history. Tools with the capabilities of Meltwater are essential for keeping up with what is relevant and taking advantage of it for both business intelligence and media outreach.

They also offer Meltwater Buzz specifically targeted to social media and social media marketing. My experience with Melwater Press suggests that this entire suite of products is both easy to use and comprehensive. 

 

 

 

My IBM Connect 2013 Session Notes: Complete Listing

Here is the complete listing of my notes on IBM Connect 2013. I was very pleased to be back again after the last two years thanks to IBM’s support. Here are my notes from 2011 and 2012 

 IBM Connect 2013 Notes: Opening Session

IBM Connect 2013 Notes: Monday Morning Press Q&A

IBM Connect 2013 Notes: Four Major Trends Shaping Social Business in 2013

IBM Connect 2013 Notes: Creating a Smarter Workforce – Panel

IBM Connect 2013 Notes: Tuesday Opening Session

IBM Connect 2013 Notes: Reinventing the Inbox – Ed Brill

IBM Connect 2013 Notes: Wednesday Opening Session

IBM Connect 2013 Notes: Getting Social in the Cloud – Rebecca Bulsan

IBM Connect 2013 Notes: Social Business Goes to School

IBM Connect 2013 Notes: Innovation Lab

Here also are several recent posts on IBM.

IBM Global CMO Study: Highlights

Social Business – What Works and How: Highlights of IBM 2012 Social Technologies Study

IBM Connections 4.0 Expands Its Social, Integration, and Analytic Capabilities

 

IBM Connect 2013: Ed Brill on Reinventing the Inbox

This is another in a series of my notes on IBM Connect 2013. I am very pleased to be back again after the last two years thanks to IBM’s support. Here is a summary of my notes for 2012 and 2011. These notes cover the Monday Press Session: Reinventing the Inbox with Ed Brill, Director, Social Business & Collaboration, IBM.

I first meet Ed Brill in person at the 2011 Lotusphere. He remembered our phone interview six year earlier when I was collecting cases for blog book. Here is that interview: Blog Cases from 2005: Ed Brill on IBM, Collaboration, and More. Ed said he liked the case as it showed that he was talking about social before the term was commonly used. I would certainly agree that he was ahead of most people in using social apps.

Before I get into the session I want to mention, Ed’s excellent new book, Opting In: Lessons in Social Business from a Fortune 500 Product Manager. I had a chance to preview the first few chapters. As I wrote in response to this preview: Opting In is an important book that takes social business beyond external marketing to provide practical guidance on how to drive significant business value through enhancing human interactions within the enterprise. McKinsey's research has demonstrated many quantified benefits here and Ed shows you how to realize them. I look forward to reading the rest of the book.

Ed runs product management for messaging, collaboration, and unification. The two big new things this year are improvements to existing apps through Social Notes 9.0 and IBM docs.  Ed said that email has become dysfunctional and needs to be transformed. Adding social capabilities will greatly increase its efficiency and I would certainly agree. Some of the content that used to be in broadcast emails has already moved to social apps for good reason. But there needs to be changes to email itself. This is happening in several ways.

There is embedded experience so that email alerts can come into other apps you are working on. You can respond to the email without leaving the other app. Another major change that is coming is to use analytics to prioritize your mail so the most relevant messages come to the top of the email inbox, replacing the simple chronological order that has been standard for some time. There could be several different types of filters for this prioritization such as skills, team membership, location, or relevance to a project you are working on. Ed said that one challenge will be getting people to trust the prioritization.

Within IBM as an organization, Connections has replaced the portal as the first place people go. Now you can have mail within Connections so you do not have to leave it. There is also a discovery engine that teaches people how to use the new features. One capability I really like, is the ability to act on a message directly. For example, you might get a request from HR in an email that requires using an HR app. You can respond to the request directly in the email without having to go to the app.

We talked a bit about activity streams as they also have this embedded ability to respond to requests from apps. Email and activity streams are now two parallel communication channels. Activity streams are for public information, as many people can see them. Ed said they can be useful for discovering new information. Email remains the channel for private communication. It is still necessary but some of its uses have moved to better tools. Here is a list of features for Notes 9.0 from the IBM product page.

• Provides an easy-to-use, single point of access to everything you need to get your work done quickly, including business applications, email, calendars, feeds, and more.
• Lets you tailor your work environment with widgets that bring social communities that are important to your job, both within the enterprise and across the Internet, right into your peripheral view.
• Enables you to work with people right at the point of context with social tools weaved into the work experience, allowing you to pivot to the tool you need, such as business cards, presence awareness, instant messaging, and more.
• Helps you quickly locate the people and content you need through integrated access to social tools from IBM Connections and IBM Lotus Quickr® software, including profiles, activities, team places, and content libraries.
• Offers advanced replication technology to enable you to work with email and applications even when disconnected from the network.

Sometimes changes to becoming more social can have unintended consequences. For example, Ed mentioned a CEO who started a blog to more directly communicate with his workforce and allow for two-way exchanges that email messages did not promote.  Employees were so pleased to have a communication channel with the CEO that many comment threads got pushed into topics unrelated to his post. So he set up a second app, called the Speaker’s Corner, to allow for these comments. This allowed his first blog to stay more on topic.

Ed said that Notes use remains very active. In fact, many clients who let their Notes licenses expire are coming back. The added social features are one driver of this re-engagement.

IBM Docs also has integrated social features. You can open a document and invite others to collaborate on it in real time. In traditional word processing you designate a file name and place it in a file structure. It is document oriented. IBM Docs is more people oriented. You open a document and place in a location such as a team workspace within Connections, not an abstract file structure. Then others can be invited into this workspace. I see this people orientation as a great improvement and one of the shortcomings of MS Word and SharePoint. IBM Docs can work in the cloud as IBM SmartCloud Docs is a cloud-based office productivity suite, which allows users to simultaneously collaborate on word processing, spreadsheet and presentation documents. Here is a sample screen.

Notes can also be in the cloud. IBM recently did a study on the cloud and found that organizations – both big and small, across geographies and in virtually every industry – are embracing cloud as a way to reduce the complexity and costs associated with traditional IT approaches. Almost three-fourths of the leaders in their survey indicated their companies had piloted, adopted or substantially implemented cloud in their organizations – and 90 percent expect to have done so in three years. And the number of respondents whose companies have substantially implemented cloud is expected to grow from 13 percent today to 41 percent in three years.

There is also extensive mobile support including client and clientless (HTTP, browser based) access options and seamless network connectivity as you roam. There is optimized network utilization to reduce data transmission and connection costs. Notes Mobile Connect also supports a wide range of device types - mobile, desktop, laptop - for security-rich connection into business infrastructure. It is nice to see that Notes in alive and well and entering the social age. This move should ensure its longevity. 

IBM Connect 2013: Tuesday Opening Session Notes

This is another in a series of my notes on IBM Connect 2013. I am very pleased to be back again after the last two years. Here are my notes from 2011 and 2012. Bob Piccano, IBM General Manager led the opening session. The theme was the rise of social business - moving from liking to leading. These notes are real time so please forgive any typos. 

    
Bob Piccano opened the session. He mentioned that this was the 20^th year of this conference.   He has moved to a new post leading the big data efforts across IBM.  He introduced Adam Klaber, Managing Partner, New Markets, who is working on big data among other things. IBM is moving from systems of transaction to systems of engagement. This has major transformation implications. I have written about this concept a bit (see for example, Integrating the Interactions with the Transactions and Integrating Transactions and Interactions: A Fable).

Adam said that customers are leading the conversations that define brands. Partners are interacting to accelerate business value. Employees are using social media in all aspects of the their lives, including work. Organizations are crowdsourcing ideas to bring better solutions.

Adam mentioned the four Is: Interact, inform, integrate, and innovate. Each builds on the other. This shift is enabled by technology supported social interactions. They are releasing a study on how companies are moving forward in social. Over half of the organizations are shifting their investments to social technology. They are also looking at the cultural change. IBM is doing more than technology but also helping with the social change.

They have formed a cross-disciplinary group on front office transformation and a center of competence in this space. He moved to client examples in healthcare, retail, and government. He began with healthcare,

Dan Pelino came out to discuss healthcare. There is now a huge increase of people getting healthcare benefits in the US.  Thirty million new people are coming into the system. It is the largest single change for any industry. It will change everything including the use of technology.

Dan began with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts. I was a subscriber of this Blue Cross for years when I lived in Cambridge until I recently moved back to New Orleans. Bill Fandrich the CIO of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts spoke. They have been dealing with universal coverage since 2006 when Massachusetts passed the first laws in this area. When they started today’s smart phones were not in the market, yet these devices are now the primary ways members access their benefits.

There is now a new paradigm, out pacing Moore’s law on change with growth of over 45% per year. The real question is whether they are getting insights from the massive amounts of data or is this just an expense. There was now coverage for 411,000 uninsured residents and only 1.9% remain uninsured. They are the glue that connects members and providers. They look at all the touch points in the process.  They keep a 360 view of their members to provide better care at less cost. They want to provide more personalized health care. I have received calls on some of the issues he raised.

Next, Maree Foti, HR manager at David Jones, a department store in Australia, They have 36 stores with 8,000 employees. They are the older department store still on their original name.  They started a working group to have more two way communication with employees. They need a platform with two-communication, anywhere, anytime while complimenting existing infrastructure. They have started a pilot of IBM Connections with 1,000 employees. They have 65% take up in three months. There are also behavioral changes.

Usage is strong with 64% access the system several times a week. More than 55% believe it will enhance two-way communication. The top three benefits; Increased knowledge of the firm, more direct link to leadership team, and a greater sense of community and collaboration. Her three top tips: bring the platform to life for users, focus on content, content, content; and engage champions at all levels of the business.  Moving forward their focus in changing to find ways to obtain business benefits. They want to create platform for social business.

Dan next introduced the government example. Municipalities affect how we live so better participation in good for everyone. Jeff Rhoda, General Manager, IBM. We are all touched by government. The issues that have been discussed all apply to government: big data, collaboration, analytics, cloud, and mobile. For example, police can use analytics to predict where crimes will occur to prevent them before they happen. I have seen the TV commercial about this.

Dan introduced Mike Van Milligen from the city of Dubuque to discuss how they engaged citizens to help with local challenges. They have come back from population loss to create a growing community that is sustainable. They use smarter technologies to give new information to citizens and business to save money. If you give people the right information, they will make smarter decisions. Water was the first example. Thee hundred volunteer households were given a portal looking at water use. It resulted in a 7% reduction in water use and 800% increase in water leak detection. The also did a smarter electricity study with over 1,000 participants. They received a 4 - 7% cost savings in electricity. Over 70% took actions to converse electricity. The state officials in Iowa to look for sate wide use. Next they are wrapped a smarter travel study. They are developing better bus routes.

Mike said the lessons include:

• Incremental change is best
• Synthesize and analyze large amounts of data from unrelated and unstructured sources
• Reach people on through multiple channels

They are focused in creating sustainable model for cites under 200,000 where 40% of the US population lives. They revamped their riverfront. They have a population of 60,000 but 3 million live within a 100 miles.

Dan concluded the three part case examples and Bob came back to wrap up the morning session. He began an architectural discussion with systems of record. There are now machine-to-machine interactions. At the top end of the stack you have systems of engagement.  A big data platform links the two. Content is curated and made useful for analytics and subsequent decisions. They are releasing a new version of IBM social analytics, formerly known as Cognos. It will be available on a SaaS model. The platform allows big data can be used at the point of impact.  There is interaction data, attitudinal data, behavioral data, and more.  An airline manufacturer saved 36 million in shorter service calls, another client process 17 billion bits of data on a daily basis. They have now 300 business partners in this space and have released their Stored IQ product. 

The Growth of Personal Cloud Storage

I keep reading about more uses of the cloud and it all makes sense.  Now it is moving from the business world to the consumer world.  Although aspects of the cloud have long been in the consumer world also.  As Brandon Butler writes in Network World, Gartner predicts that 1/3 of consumer data will be stored in the cloud by '16. Social media sites like Facebook are the near-term repositories for cloud-based data storage, but other vendors will have opportunities to grab consumer market share, Gartner predicts

Now only about 7% of personal data is stored in the cloud. However, Gartner researchers note that the ability for consumers to capture data on their smartphones and tablets, using cameras and video recording devices, will drive the data storage requirements beyond the capacity of a personal computer hard drive or an external hard drive. In addition, the arrival of technology allowing data to be automatically uploaded to the cloud, supports their predict that 36% of consumer data will be stored in the cloud within four years.

Brandon quotes Gartner principal research analyst Shalini Verma, "Cloud storage will grow with the emergence of the personal cloud, which in turn will simplify the direct-to-cloud model, allowing users to directly store user-generated content in the cloud. As storage becomes a part of the personal cloud, it will become further commoditized. Therefore, online storage and sync companies need to have a strategic rethink about their future approach."

One vendor to take advantage of this trend in Carbonite. Carbonite provides online backups for your personal computer. It works in the background when you are connected to the Web but not using a Web application so as to not reduce performance. I spoke with David Friend, CEO of Boston-based Carbonite in 2008. He got the idea when a series of mishaps occurred in 2005. David looked into the market research and found that for consumers and small businesses only 3% do a good job of backing up files. When people have to actively do something like export files to an external hard drive, they generally do not do it. So he and his partner, Jeff Flowers, designed an online backup service that works in the background with the price point of $50 a year for unlimited storage.

David said they have now backed up over 3.5 billion files and are adding 32 million files a day and this was 2008. The company had double digit month over month revenue growth for the past 22 months at that time. I see their ads on TV now and I am sure they are continuing to grow. I still use an external drive for back up but I may add the cloud for redundacy. 

 

What Aristotle Offers Bloggers

This post is a bit of a change of pace looking back into history. Many bloggers, such as those in this space, write to generate conversations, as well as to convey ideas. Alexander Halavais referred to blogs as “discourse at the boundary between conversation and publication,” in his research paper, Tracking Ideas in the Blogosphere. I think this concept represents some of the tension and power of blogs. They are public conversation, hopefully more lively and personal than normal publication, and more permanent and accessible than normal conversation. So if blogs are closer to conversation than most forms of writing, what lessons can be taken from public speaking that might help bloggers?

Aristotle’s Rhetoric provides three classic requirements of good rhetoric that leads to persuasion: Logos (the logic and coherence of the words themselves), Pathos (the feeling or emotion that the speaker or writer is willing and able to convey), and Ethos (the credibility and trustworthiness of the speaker). These seem quite relevant to the personal nature of most blog writing and are certainly requirements for good blog writing.

As we craft posts that we hope will persuade people (as opposed to simply linking news items along) these three factors (logos, pathos, ethos) should be considered as we craft our words. Will we evoke in the reader a positive response to the logic of our argument? Will they perceive the passion that we hold for our ideas? Does our writing convey the credibility for them to consider issues from our perspective? This is especially important since, although the print industry has taken up blogging in a big way, they are still often produced by individuals, devoid of a credentialing institution like the New York Times. Even when written from within an institution, they often have the disclaimer that the blog simply represents the view of the writer and not the organization.

This individual perspective can be a good thing and is potentially seen with more credibility than the larger institution, itself, but this is more likely to happen if the writer follows Aristotle’s rules for good rhetoric.

 

 

Schema.org: Standardizing Tags for Web Content Managers

My friend, Geoff Bock, recently posted a very useful article, Schema.org site aims to standardize tags for Web content managers. As Geoff notes, federal agencies have charged with administering "discrete pieces of open data and content which can be tagged, shared, secured, mashed up and presented in the way that is most useful for the consumer of that information."  The concept is to eliminate silos between agency content and to make it more accessible to other agencies and citizens. This is a good thing.

In addition, government agencies are adding semantics and structure to the content they publish that will make the information more useful to everyone. Geoff describes a new group called Schema.org that is working toward HTML standards for tags to support this effort. As their site syas, Schema.org “provides a collection of schemas (i.e., html tags) that webmasters can use to markup their pages in ways recognized by major search providers.” This initiative can take advantage of the fact that “open standards for marking up information and for parsing all types of content have matured to deliver smart results.” This takes a step further toward the original vision of the Internet as "a web of data that can be processed directly and indirectly by machines."

The Schema.org website, started in 2011, includes a core set of almost 300 different item types, including familiar entities such as "event," "organization," "person" and "place," in an extensible hierarchy of related terms. These item types are continuing to grow. Geoff writes that Schema.org's open markup vocabulary is rapidly gaining popularity as the “underlying technical standard for enriching content with the descriptive tags that embed semantics within information streams.”

All of this is good news for people who want to be able to easily access content on the Web. Standards are one of the keys to taking advantage of what the Web and its younger cousin, social business, offer (see for example, Open Social Provides Standards to Help Put Social Software to Work). Geoff also provides advice for Web Content Managers outside the government on how to best take advantage of this effort and I recommend taking a look at his work. 

Spigit Provides ICON as a Free Crowdsourcing Platform

I have covered Spigit before (see Spigit Provides Version S3 as Market Matures for Idea and Innovation Management and Spigit – Enabling Enterprise 2.0 Innovation Through Market Games). I recently spoke with Shail Khiyara, Chief Marketing Officer, and Hutch Carpenter, VP of Product about the free ICON offering. Spigit’s overall company goal is to drive business growth and customer and employee engagement.  Spigit brings your community - employees, customers, vendors - together on a comprehensive social innovation platform, and connects people who have questions with people who have answers.

It is designed to make full use of the good ideas across an enterprise and help companies then implement those ideas by using traditional workflow to connect the right ideas to the right person at the right time. To do this it provides business context and relevance to the crowdsourcing concept.

This is an important concept as the value of companies is increasingly found in the good ideas of their employees. For example, in 1982 38% of the market value of S&P companies was within their intangible assets, the ideas of their people. By 1999 that number had grown to 84% and I am sure it is still growing. The key to creating wealth in today’s economy is tapping the expertise within enterprise, as well as getting ideas from partners and customers. This is the task that Spigit addresses and I have been a fan for several years.

Spigit allows companies to solve specific problems by tapping into the expertise of relevant groups in a focused manner. As Shail said, up to 70% of the cost of an organization is now its people. Organizations could maximize this investment and drive higher rates of engagement which would lead to business growth. At the same time much work needs to be done here as he also pointed out that up to 67% of employees are disengaged from their work. Engaging them in meaningful ways to contribute and become a part of the solution is an excellent way to improve engagement.  What once took managers and corporate hierarchy can now be done in the context of a community.

Spigit has launched ICON as a free service to promote the use of mass crowdsourcing with the purpose of innovation and growth. It combines best practices and knowledge gained from delivering Spigit’s solutions to the market. It lets employees connect with their entire organization by posing questions and challenges and getting immediate feedback from coworkers. They showed me a demo. Here is the home page.

Across the top of the screen is a serious of questions or challenges. You can decide which ones to take on. Contrary to typical voting mechanisms every idea in ICON gets equal assessment as coworkers and employees engage in a pair-wise comparison game of selecting this one or that one. The solutions the crowd finds valuable then bubble to the top of the leaderboard. There is room for comments and the forced choice method allows for more precise comparisons. Once you decide between one pair, a new one comes up to further refine your perspective. Over time you get a rank order of answers for an individual and for a group. Here is the question page.

There is also a gamification aspect as users can earn points and top leaderboard status by posting challenges, voting, commenting and “gifting.”  The screen also shows the top answers, the top experts (people most active), and the question activity. The latter is an activity stream for a question so you can track what is happening. The system is dynamic and is constantly being updated based on new input. As an idea moves to the top, an alert is sent to the activity stream. You can also see who is voting and when this occurs.

They have also announced a Yammer integration. For Yammer users looking to take advantage of ICON, Spigit utilized Yammer’s open APIs to build this integration, which publishes activity stories such as new ideas, challenges, votes and comments in Yammer’s Ticker in real-time. Yammer users can also log into ICON via the Yammer Connect button, using their Yammer credentials to bring their Yammer identity, profile information and corporate social graph with them. If a user has not yet created a Yammer account, it will prompt them to do so.

I think this is great idea to make crowdsourcing more accessible at a time when it is much needed. For now the free version is seen as a possible lead generator to their more comprehensive commercial offerings. They may add a premium version of ICON in the future. 

 

JackBe Expands Real-Time Operational Intelligence with its New Offering

I have covered JackBe several times and watched their evolution from a mashup provider to using their technology to support a new wave of business intelligence (see JackBe Presto Takes Self-Service Business Intelligence Mobile and JackBe’s Presto provides Real-Time Intelligence with a Focus on the Business User). I recently spoke with Elizabeth Edwards, CMO, and John Crupi, CTO on what they are seeing now as they continue down the path of providing Real-Time Operational Intelligence.

John said that customers continue to want to have real-time dashboards that collect operational intelligence from multiple sources and bring it together for increased efficiency and effectiveness. Data center monitoring is one area where they are seeing real growth in their offering. You can see a sample data center monitoring screen below.

Data centers have become more core to organizations and maximizing efficiency is key to getting the investment returns that the shift to the cloud offers. In the past, data center mangers never had a holistic view of what was happening as the data was often all over the place. Here is another data center sample.

Another growth area is remote monitoring. This can be monitoring turbines, large engines, smart grids, data center storage, and even Twitter feeds. They used the term; M2M or machine-to-machine monitoring. The goal in their efforts is to provide more self-service for business users. JackBe Presto allows a tech savvy business person to create and set up dashboards that aggregate data from multiple sources. The goal is to allow the business side to do 80% of the work and leave the 20% of real tough stuff to the IT guys. Below is another ruse case – cyber risk threat monitoring.

They see their offering as part of the third wave of BI. The first was traditional data warehouses followed by a focus on data analytics. Now there is growing interest in real-time and big data. I asked John about big data as it is one of the buzz words de jure. He said that customers think of it as going beyond traditional data warehousing to look at the massive amounts of unstructured data. JackBe sees it as another data source they can aggregate. Most big data tools operate in batch mode but soon these sources can be connected to real-time data feeds to see new discoveries. The aim is to add a layer on top of existing tools, applications and information sources to bring the data together in interactive dashboards and deliver it where the user needs it – in SharePoint, portals or mobile devices, not replace these tools. JackBe adds the real-time operational component to existing organizational BI portfolios.

There will be a new release in the Fall with more self-services capabilities, more KPI builders, more attractive dashboard layouts, and increased ability to handle social data. The barriers between operational data and KPIs need to be reduced and that will be part of the next release. They have three big areas of focus: SharePoint, portals, and mobile. I look forward to seeing their next release. 

 

Darwin Ecosystem's Technology Powers Tweather to Monitor Events Real-time Through Twitter

I have covered Darwin Ecosystem before (see Darwin Ecosystem Launches the Awareness Engine™ Edition Series and Darwin Ecosystem Brings Awareness Engine™ to Enterprise 2.0 eDiscovery). Its technology is now being used to power Tweather, a new company whose “mission is to reveal the movement of real-time information and make it entertaining, easy to observe and discover.” Tweather was created in the spring of 2012, from the frustration of being showered every second with the oppressive number of all-over-the-map tweets.   As a disclosure, I have a financial interest in Darwin Ecosystem but not directly in Tweather.

Similar to weather patterns revealing themselves through clouds, the cyclical and spontaneous waves of tweets reveal themselves though moving theme clusters through Tweather's innovation.  

Tweather offers a new way to: 

• show and consume tweets
• see emerging patterns and trends from twitter about any topic
• present a real-time and shareable crowd-sourced digest

You can discover and follow what is happening about what matters to you on Twitter without searches, or worries about what vital tweet you might be missing in that moment. They now deploying theme-specific sites, such as their dedicated site to the Olympics 2012 USA team, for universal viewing and sharing. The features on the Olympics site are read only but the user can select the keywords, see the correlated topics, and RT, Like and share the report or the tweets revealed on the query.  Below you can see the home page of the Tweather Olympics site.

 

The themes that are presented are based on emerging content and are not predetermined.  They could be a person or sport or other item connected with the topic, Olympics, in this case.  If you click on any of the themes, they will present the results connected with theme

Manteo Mitchell is a U.S. sprinter who broke his leg during the semi-final of the 1,600-meter relay — and kept on running anyway. He felt a pop in his left leg halfway into his 400-meter portion of the race, followed by searing pain. But he didn't want to let his teammates or country down, so kept on racing and helped secure Team U.S.A. a place in the final. Below is a series on Tweather screens that tracked the tweets connect to him on the afternoon of Saturday, August 11. Notice the time shifts cross the top of each screen as indicated by the shifting blue time indicator. You can see how the emerging pattern shifts and the value of observing movement over being exposed to the twitter fire-hose, especially about a hot topic.

If you click on any of these sub-themes, you will be taken to the tweets connected with the sub-theme during this time period. An example is displayed after the five screen shots showing the evolution over time. 

Below is a sample tweet in the revaled left column for the highlghted word - hope. 

 

Awareness Provides Social Marketing Automation

I covered Awareness a good bit (see Awareness Provides Social Media Command Center). Beginning as a community platform, they have transformed their offering to become a social media command center that allows you to properly manage all of you social media activity through a single source. In their latest initiative, they are now providing the Awareness’ Social Marketing Automation suite. It equips brands to identify, track and rank their existing social customers and new likely prospects from all the major social networks (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube) based on segmentation and prioritization criteria they define.

One of the major aspects is Social Prospecting. This helps brands identify new pipelines of prospects from the social web using their own defined set of social activity criteria (e.g. identifying users who are engaging with competitors’ brands, or those actively discussing specific topics). It is offered as an additional feature via the Awareness Social Marketing Hub.

Another is Social Scoring. This allows brands to analyze their social profiles (prospects and customers) and apply their own segmentation logic to address their specific business goals.  By applying weights to the social users’ activities, actions, and demographic information, marketers can generate prioritized, dynamically updated lists of social targets. These lists can be used for engagement in social channels or to augment nurturing activities by synching profiles and scores with CRM systems such as Salesforce.com, and Marketing Automation or Email Marketing platforms such as Marketo, Eloqua, and Silverpop. 

A third is Awareness’ Social CRM. It is an automated social profile database that provides a complete picture of social prospects and brand followers and fans. Customers following brands on social channels and new likely prospects harvested from the social web are placed within the Awareness’ Social CRM, with complete social profiles based on available demographic information, interests, and preferences.  This social profile data is augmented over time with users’ likes, posts, comments, and shares to create multi-dimensional user profiles.  Profile data and interactions across multiple social networks are merged into a single social profile record to offer a consolidated view of each user.

These are very useful capabilities as we awash in an ocean of unstructured data from social media. As they note, with over 30 billion pieces of content shared on Facebook each month, YouTube receiving more than 2 billion viewers per day, and Twitter handling 1.6 billion search queries per month, more than Bing and Yahoo combined, the potential for social marketing automation to accelerate user engagement and sales is profound. 

People often talk about Big Data but I also think there is Big Content which is another way to describe the unstructured data or content that we need to make sense of regardless of how much there is. See my post - “Big Data” vs. “Big Content” Complementary Sides of Information Overload). While big data is a challenge for many large organizations, big content is a challenge that all Web users face every day. How do you deal with the fire hose of content coming at you from the Web, especially from the all the user-generated content sites like Twitter or blogs? The Big Data tools do not really address this so l tools like the new Awareness capability are welcome. 

 

OpDemand Simplifies Cloud Management

OpDemand is a Colorado-based startup that aims to improve ease of use for cloud developers. They announced General Availability of their cloud infrastructure management platform in April, which allows software development teams to leverage raw cloud infrastructure without being overwhelmed by technical complexity. More recently, they announced an upgrade to the platform that allows developers to collaborate and share management capabilities within the cloud environment.

I spoke with Gabriel Monroy, CTO and Joshua Schnell, CEO to get more details on what they are doing.  I discovered right off that they and their third co-founder, Yoni Gorelov, are fellow Tufts graduates. We are just a few years apart.  They have picked a robust field, as I see new studies on the growth of the cloud almost daily.

There are several ways to get involved in the cloud from SaaS on one hand, where you turn everything over to a provider to IaaS on the other side where you take a good bit of control and responsibility yourself. With IaaS you still use a cloud service provider like Amazon but you take control over the set up and management. This control offers more flexibility.. However, the responsibility part can be a challenge for many IT shops who do not have the skills to handle it. Gabe saw this first hand at his work and the three of them saw the business opportunity this gap presents. I would certainly agree that this is a smart move and a good place for a startup.

More specifically many IT organizations lack: a repeatable system for provisioning workloads, automated configuration management, tools to overcome cloud complexity, cloud optimized workloads, and processes for fully automated environments.  To address these issues, OpDemand provides proprietary orchestration technology that dynamically assembles and disassembles complex infrastructure blue prints. There is also automated configuration management with a simple and intuitive interface. I saw the interface in action and can attest to this.

They showed me how you can set up a Clojure application. With a few clicks it was ready in about 5 minutes. In the pre-cloud days, a similar set up would take 2 – 4 weeks including time to procure hardware. Even in the cloud days, an IaaS implementation without OpDemand would take 1 – 2 days of reading manuals, hoping they are accurate, and a strong set of related skills. OpDemand was so easy even I could do it. You can see the interface below.

There are other significant benefits. They have a Stop button. This feature can be very handy and save a lot of cost as many cloud instances are used to develop and test apps. They do not need to be running all the time racking up service costs.  However, the stop and re-start process without OpDemand is so complex that most, if not all, development teams simply leave the service and cost meter running all the time. With OpDemand, you just click the Stop button and it stops. Then you click start and it starts up again.  Below you can see a sample screen indicating which apps are running and which have been stopped.

There is also an activity steam, labeled Events, where you can see auto-generated status updates. You can also share environments to facilitate collaborative management among a team of developers. Josh said that sales have grown rapidly since their April launch and I can see why. They question to me for a development team is: why not?

 

Will Most People will Make Purchases via Phones by 2020?

The answer is yes according to some recent studies reported by Doug Gross on CNN, Experts: Most people will make purchases via phones by 2020. He reported that nearly two out of three respondents to a (65%) Pew Internet & American Life Project survey that most people will have fully adopted the "mobile wallet" as their day-to-day means of paying by 2020. This leaves 45% as doubters.  Doug added that, “in a December report from comScore, 38% of smart phone owners had used their phones to make a purchase of some kind.”

There are obvious security questions but the article that smart phone technology is no less secure than the current credit card technology. In some ways it might be more secure it does not leave a physical paper trail.  I was recently overseas for a while and turned off my smart phone so I would not getting any calls from the US that might be expensive. I missed the ability to play music and share pictures. I am sure there must be a way to use the phone for these non-telephone purposes while the telephone part is turned off.

I can see the utility of this as my smart phone has reduced the number of other device that I have to carry around. However, I do not think it will ever replace a wallet just as credit cards have not replaced cash. It will likely cut into credit card use but not replace it. Just as there are cash only signs at stores, there maybe cash and card only signs depending on how they handle the service fees to merchants. It will be interesting to see what happens. 2020 is not that far away.

 

harmon.ie Goes Mobile, Bringing SharePoint to the iPad

I have written about harmon.ie several times. See for example - Harmon.ie Provides Social Email to Help Drive Enterprise Collaboration Adoption. Their tools focus on increasing user adoption of collaboration tools include bringing central components of SharePoint into both Outlook and Lotus Notes. Now they have moved a step further gone mobile and unveiling the capbility to bring Microsoft SharePoint document collaboration and social interactions to the iPad – “harmon.ie for iPad, greatly extending then reach of collaboration capabilities for the enterprise. 

This makes a lot of sense as so far, more than 67 million iPads have been sold. According to Apple, 94 percent and 74 percent of Fortune 500 and global 500 companies are respectively testing or deploying iPads. For the iPad to realize its potential it must have the ability to bring in enterprise apps such as SharePoint. This is a good starting point as 78 percent of enterprises already use SharePoint, according to Forrester. To accomplish this harmon/ie has provided a secure, consistent enterprise iOS application for SharePoint users on-the-go.

Now business users can work on a presentation from their desktop, drag-and-drop it to SharePoint, and send a link to colleagues using harmon.ie in Microsoft Outlook or IBM Lotus Notes. Then, as they go on the road and can still see document updates from colleagues using their iPad. They can access the latest version of the document, edit it from wherever they are and share it with the team when they are back online. The team will receive a real-time update once the revised document is uploaded.

There is both a free version and low cost version with full features available through iTunes.  This is exactly they type of capability that is needed to make iPads a truly enterprise platform. 

 

AppFusions Integrates iRise® Visualization with Atlassian JIRA, Confluence

I have known about AppFusions for some time and respect the vision of their leader Ellen Feaheny. I spoke with Ellen at the most recent Lotusphere and they have been working on a number of integration tools. Recently AppFusions announced a partnership with iRise^®, a provider of enterprise visualization solutions to allow for simulations of Atlassian JIRA and Confluence to speed enterprise software development.

I have been familiar with the power of software visualizations for some time and have interviewed a number of venders in this space. It can be a transformative breakthrough for both software development and the creation of related training. iRise visualization gives users the ability to create visual prototypes of new software projects that look and act just like the real thing, before a single line of code is written. The technology lets stakeholders and target users “kick the tires” on new applications, including mobile apps, and give feedback while it’s still easy and less costly to make changes.

iRise Simulations for Confluence

With iRise for Confluence users can embed iRise visualizations directly within Confluence pages, enabling others to interact with and comment on live, working simulations without leaving the page. Through live simulations, vague textual use case descriptions are strengthened and quickly understood, saving endless hours of design time and confusion between engineering and product teams. Here Is a video on how it works.

iRise Simulations for JIRA

With iRise for Confluence users can easily link to and preview working iRise visualizations from any JIRA issue. Associating JIRA tasks with simulations naturally speeds development. There is no faster way to understand an “agile story” or use case than through a live simulation. Here is a video on this integration.

The demands that stem from the exploding use of such mobile platforms such as the iPhone and the iPad in business—often referred to as "the consumerization of IT" have put many organizations under intense pressure to create business applications for stakeholders who expect to take their apps with them wherever they go, and who are quickly irritated by even small usability flaws. iRise’s patented software visualization technology helps companies and government agencies meet these raised expectations of elegant design and ease of use. I think that this type or visualization or simulation is a capability that has come at the right time to help unlock what might have been a huge cost and time bottleneck for IT.

 

 

Awareness Report on Understanding and Leveraging Social Capital

Awareness has released an interesting free report, 3 Keys to Influence: Understanding and Leveraging Social Capital. It began with some useful statistics:

• 90 percent of all purchases are subject to social influence.
• 90 percent of consumers trust recommendations from people they know.
• 67 percent of shoppers spend more money online after seeing recommendations from friends.
• 75 percent of Facebook users have “Liked” a brand, and 53 percent of Twitter users have recommended companies or products.
• Fans of brands are 51 percent more likely to buy.
• Sharing features can increase the spread of awareness by 246 percent with “Likes” and 98 percent with “Send to a friend.”

We are in a social world. When LinkedIn added social features, their use and market value went up. Even the Weather channel is adding social features. It is happening inside and outside the enterprise.  The Awareness report provides three keys to gaining great influence in this new online social world. They define influence as “a brand’s ability to affect or prompt action among its key constituents.”

The first key is growing social capital by leveraging external and internal influence. I like this use of both internal and external. This is why I like the term social business rather than enterprise 2.0. The internal and external social media strategies and practices need to be aligned, and where appropriate, the technology needs to be integrated. I remember the old call center days in 90s when call center reps said they would learn about their company’s latest offers from people calling in. This cannot happen today and should not have happened then.

In the section on leveraging external influence they look at a number of tools, including one of my favorites, Traackr. I have written about them many times (see Appopedia). Here is their enterprise social media list of key influencers. They also mentioned, PeekYou, Kred by PeopleBrowsr, mBlast and PeerIndex. The Awareness report provides an eight step approach to maximizing this influence.  You can also find my posts on Awareness in the Appopedia. 

In the leveraging internal influence section they offer a four step approach that begins with benchmarking your firm’s social capital and concludes with fostering brand advocacy over time.   This is a very useful report for marketers and others who want to expand their organizations’ influence through social media. Here is the way to download it.

 

 

Information Overload Can be a Misleading Term

It have been a while since I wrote about the Darwin Awareness Engine™ but it is alive and doing well gaining new customers. Nicholas Herold makes a nice point in the post, Information Overload? Or Is it just noise?  The Darwin Awareness engine does not help with those simply overwhelmed with too much information. Instead it organizes information into patterns that help the knowledgeable person make sense of what is happening in their area of interest.

The concept of massive amounts of information does come into play but it is not too much information if you can sort it into groups that make sense and then efficiently explore those groups to find the outliers that offer meaningful insights. In this sense having massive amounts of information is a good thing if you can process it effectively. That is what the Awareness Engine is designed to do.

Content becomes overwhelming if you do not know what to do with it. But if you know you subject, the more content the better if you have the right tool to quickly go through it to find content of value.

 

 

Moxie Spaces Enhances Customer Engagement

I have written Moxie before see (Moxie Provides a Social Workspace Through Employees Spaces). Recently I spoke with their CEO, Tom Kelly, about their latest offering. Spaces converges customer communications with employee collaboration into a single offering that I think is a great idea. I have always preferred the term social business to enterprise 2.0 as it conveys both an internal focus and the need to align them. Moxie has taken this a step further with an integration of these domains.

We began with a discussion of enhancements to their customer support capabilities. They can provide call centers with multiple online channel options to regular and expensive phone calls. These include email, chat, communities, and a knowledge base. This will help as firms migrate away from live phone contact to online options for customer support and engagement. These capabilities are not designed to totally replace phone calls, as new communication channels seldom replace old ones. The TV did not replace the radio, simply put it where it was most effective. The same principal operates here.

There are many things now done on the phone can be better handled online, reserving the direct phone contact for when it is really needed and reducing overall operations costs. Recent Harris poll has indicated that more people actually prefer to interact with companies online (60%) than on the phone (53%). I imagine that these numbers will only grow.

The second major effort is the introduction of an internal product fro the enterprise. But this is a product that is integrated with the externally facing one. It offers a way to set up collaborative spaces in a simple manner for a variety of uses. Tom said that they have seen very diverse sets of markets adopt this tool and approach. It is very customer centric. In many cases a customer will call with a question the contact center person cannot answer. Now Moxie offers a variety of ways to get the right answer.

Expert Connect™ enables cross-departmental collaboration for Customer Service and Support, IT, HR and Sales and Marketing to ensure accurate and efficient customer communications across channels – e-mail, community, chat, Knowledgebase and social media. Here is a sample Expert Connect screen.

There is also an Activity Stream App to integrate activity streams into communication channels for faster knowledge sharing and collaboration. Real-time Insight is another feature that enables real-time visibility into issues in the field for faster resolution. The Virtual Response Team automates the creation of Web 2.0 tools (activity feeds, wikis, projects and groups) that bring resources together quickly to collaborate. Finally Click-to-Publish seamlessly publishes content to the Knowledgebase portal reducing the time spent finding the right answer. Here is a sample activity stream screen

It is critical for the success of any social business platform to connect with enterprise apps and Moxie does this with Spaces Connect™, a comprehensive integration framework with secure APIs and pre-built connectors, integrating Spaces by Moxie with applications such as CRM, ERP, Content Management, HR and other 3^rd party applications.

This approach puts intelligence, workflow, and integration into the crowdsourcing the answers to customer questions and makes them accessible through the knowledge base for future use.  I wish had tools like these when I did a lot of contact center works in the late 90s and early 2000s. 

 

Social Media Marketing May Need to Adjust Measurement

Adobe has released second Adobe® Digital Index report, which provides marketing, e-commerce and retail executives with digital marketing data. The research looked at how marketers measure the impact of website traffic from major social media sites. The most common measure of impact is the last-click attribution. However, this may cause marketers to undervalue social media’s website impact by up to 94 percent. The report argues that first-click attribution models more accurately capture the benefits of social media in engaging customers earlier in the buying process. It concludes that the significant differences in the results of first-click vs. last-click attribution data for various social media sites may cause marketers to change how they allocate the budgets across social and other digital channels.

They go to explain their rationale for using first click attribution. “Last-click attribution assumes that the marketing channel most responsible for a consumer’s behavior is the channel the consumer last touched before a visit or purchase. First-click places responsibility on the channel the consumer first touched. Social media creates an environment in which brands can build awareness and engage with prospective and existing customers early in the purchase process. By ignoring the value of these earlier interactions, last-click attribution gives disproportionate credit to the marketing channels customers use late in the purchase process, potentially undervaluing the role of other channels in building awareness, engagement, and ongoing relationships between customers and brands. In contrast, first-click attribution gives social media more credit for these earlier interactions. The difference between last-click and first-click is significant and has the potential to change the way companies allocate social media budgets.”

This makes a lot of sense to me. The report looked at sites like Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr, Blogger, YouTube, and Yelp. These are often used as pointers to other sites. For example, I often use Twitter to drive traffic to my blog or to a company Web site. So you need to measure this pointer impact to really determine success. This is one thing we examine at Darwin. It is why tools such as HubSpot, Google Analytics, and Typepad give you referring sites

 

Live Streaming of Music Online: Coming Full Circle

I am on a Greek island today but can listen to such great live music shows for South Louisiana online (Great Louisiana Radio for Zydeco, Blues, and Cajun Available Online). It is a common accepted practice now but a few years ago it was not possible. Now you can even do it from your smart phone. Well, for some in the 1890s it was possible then.

In the late 1890s my great aunt liked to listen to music but the only place that you could hear music was the saloon in her newly-organized town in the Oklahoma Territory. In her day, this place was not appropriate for young single women. Fortunately, she was the first telephone operator in the town. So she called the saloon and left the line open, getting “piped in” background music, while she worked, whenever the band played.

There was an added benefit to this technology. She was able to also hear whenever a fight broke out in the saloon, a frequent activity, and notify the local police. These features, piped-in music and location monitoring, have taken on new forms and become disaggregated from her primitive phone lines. But now the smart phone is bring these capabilities and much more back to the phone.

 

 

Badgeville Offers Cloud- based Gamification Platform and Expertise

Badgeville provides the Behavior Platform™ a cloud-based gamification platform that allows organizations to build custom gamification programs for their employees, business partners, and customers. I recently spoke with Kevin Akeroryd, SVP Field Operations of Badgeville, about their offering.

My first question was why there is so much buzz today over a concept that has been around for decades. Like many others I was involved in creating incentive programs for employee participation in learning efforts in the 80s and knowledge management programs in the 90s. Kevin said that he sees four main reasons. First, the social games from companies like Zynga and Playdom, along with geolocation check-in applications such as Foursquare, have created awareness and high interest in behavior recognition and gaming activities on the Web.

Secondly, many thought leaders and pundits have begun to write about gamification and academics have started to research the topic. Third, there are new tools that make it easy to build such programs, especially those that work through the cloud. Badgeville is one of these. Fourth, there are more advanced analytics to track the results. This all makes sense to me.

The advent of social networking site and online communities has kicked this trend into high gear.  In the past companies invested in monetary incentives, usually in the form of free products. Now with the social Web, companies are finding that status and associated privileges are actually more effective that simply providing product rewards.

For example, getting to vote on the coffee of the month or some other status can be more rewarding to the customer and generate greater loyalty that a free cup of coffee. This trend has the dual benefit of costing less money and gathering customer intelligence on preferences.

As Kevin explained Badgeville is a SaaS platform, not an app. It is not an out-of-the-box solution. You customize it to fit the individual needs of your program and it enables your business to track behavior across all of your web and mobile properties. This is a good thing since every program has different audiences and different goals. Here is a sample Badegeville screen from Deloitte.

Badgeville also provides a team of experts in make your program more effective.  They can look at such issues as what motivates people, social mechanics and game design, how to build loyalty, and how to build effective analytics and make use of them to fine tune your program. Here is another Badgeville screen from Deloitte.

Badgeville can also be integrated with such applications as Salesforce.com and Jive. It has a partnership with Klout to help organizations identify and reward top influencers in their community. Badgeville also has a partnership with Bazaarvoice – through game mechanics – to provide reputation and social loyalty programs to Bazaarvoice’s network. Bazaarvoice’s solutions are now integrated with Badgeville’s Behavior Platform to increase contribution of customer-generated content and online social sharing.

Badgeville provides a Mobile Software Development Kit (SDK) for iOS and Android devices. Deloitte, Apontador, Menuism, George Mobile and BAMM.tv are among Badgeville’s global customers that have added gamified mobile experiences using Badgeville’s API and SDKs.

I have written about BAMM.tv and spoke with their CEO Chris Hansen. I like what they are doing to provide exposure and profit to emerging bands. He is quoted as saying, “BAMM.tv will be launching a new iPad application for discovering emerging bands that places users in a virtual venue with live performance HD videos and includes a gamification program built on top of Badgeville's Behavior Platform."

Founded in 2010, Badgeville is based in Menlo Park, Calif.  Clients include: Samsung, Recyclebank, Deloitte, Dell, eBay, Universal Music, The Active Network, and more.

 

 

NetBase Partners with SAP Expanding Social Media Analysis Across the Enterprise

Here is a useful idea for taking advantage of the transparency within social media. Why not move social media analysis beyond the marketing department to provide its benefits to other groups within the enterprise? This is exactly what NetBase is doing through its reseller relationship and collaboration with SAP.  NetBase reads and analyzes vast amounts of social media data in real time to help organizations understand what people are saying on the Web: what they love (and hate) about brands, categories, issues and trends. I have written about them before see NetBase Provides an Expanding Set of Social Media Monitoring Measures and NetBase Provides Next Generation Semantic Technology for Brand Monitoring and Understanding for more details about their offering.

Recently I spoke again with NetBase CMO, Lisa Joy Rosner, to catch up on the company’s latest moves. Lisa Joy mentioned that they now have a global partnership with SAP.  In this relationship SAP is repackaging NetBase in an SAP skin as SAP Social Media Analytics by NetBase. At the same time NetBase continues to directly market their analytic tools through its existing channels.  SAP has a traditional BI tool, Business Objects, which allows you to do analytics that uses transactional data ie looking at past business results. NetBase complements this as social media can help you see emerging trends and make predictions about the future. Here is an example of social and BI data NetBase metrics and Business Objects viewed on an iPad.

Lisa Joy said it has been an interesting expereince educating the vast SAP sales force on what NetBase adds to their set of offerings. Because of SAP’s broad reach throughout the organization this partnership has allowed NetBase to enter SAP workflows and opens up the new opportunity I started this post with. Now the predictive value of social media analysis can be applied to help with decisions through the enterprise and not simply be a marketing analysis tool.

Lisa Joy provided an excellent use case example of the benefits of this broader reach. A company produces a line of Greek yogurt, which is a very popular item today for its health benefits. Their BI tool tells them that Vanilla is the highest selling brand so if you followed that advice you would make more Vanilla and make sure it was widely distributed. However, the social media buzz picked up by NetBase said that everyone is talking about the Pineapple flavor as the most loved. At the moment Pineapple is produced in much lower volume and is offered through fewer stores. So when people hear about how great Pineapple is through social media and go their local store they often find it is not there and buy Vanilla instead, perhaps adding some Pineapple of their own, or worst case buy nothing or go for a competitor. Here is a word cloud showing pineapple as a top buzzed flavor.

This social media insight about Pineapple yogurt changes the game across the organization. Obviously the company wants to get more Pineapple in more stores to meet this demand. Now they have to look at supply chain issues. They have to deal with more distributors. The creative people need to develop some advertisements to expand on this viral popularity.  Even the call center people need to be advised on how to respond to people asking where they can get Pineapple and perhaps offer future coupons if it is not yet in a store near them. With this example you can see the power of looking beyond past results to anticipate customer demand going forward and how social media analysis addresses this need. Here also is a source pie chart to analyze where pineapple buzz is most prevalent.

 

The first benefit from social media was increased collaboration and connectivity throughout the organization as well documented by McKinsey. The transparency generated by social media opens up the next wave, analytics. NetBase is offering some creative ways to make the most of this second opportunity. 

 

Summary Listing of All My SXSW Notes Music and Interactive

I was pleased to attend SXSW for the first time. Except for the long lines, it exceeded expectations fo both the tech part and the music part. I am grateful for Adobe Acrobat for enabling me to attend. I did go to some of the Adobe sponsored sessions. Here are are my notes on the SXSW Music.

 Here are all my session notes from SXSW Interactive. 

20x2 at SXSW 2012

SXSW Notes: The Complexity Curve: How to Design for Simplicity

SXSW Notes: Design for Social Innovation and Public Good

SXSW Notes: The Curators and the Curated

SXSW Notes: Copy Matters: Content Strategy for the Interface

SXSW Notes: Ambient Location and the Future of the Interface

SXSW Notes: Boost your Mobile Workflow with Adobe’s Newest Product

SXSW Notes: Content As a Means for Social Change

SXSW Notes: No Brochures: Digital Storytelling for Nonprofits

SXSW Notes: Positively Inspired Change Campaigns

SXSW Notes: Coding the Next Chapter of American History

SXSW Notes: The Future of Music Consumption

Here are all my notes from SXSW Music.

SXSW Notes: BAMM.tv Offers a New Way to Serve and Showcase Artists

SXSW Notes: BAMM.tv River Cruise Part One

SXSW Notes: BAMM.tv River Cruise Part Two

SXSW Notes: The Music Scene Part One: March 13

SXSW Notes: The Music Scene Part Two: March 14

 

 

SXSW Notes: BAMM.tv River Cruise Part Two

Here are my notes and photos of the second of two lake cruises with BAMM.tv during SXSW 2012. In this case the bands are Lee Kock and Hollis Brown. BAMM.tv is a service that connects emerging artists with audiences through video. I wrote about BAMM.tv in an earlier post.

Lee Kock is an excellent solo singer songwriter. Both his voice and lyrics convey an experience beyond his apparent age. He is from the San Diego area and was a recent contestant on the TV show: the Voice. He was one his way to Nashville when he got this gig and now plans to try New Orleans and a few other places. I gave him some suggestions on where his sound might appeal in NOLA on Frenchman Street.  He did all his own songs, including “Same as Blood” about supporting a close friend. The one exception was an excellent cover of Van Morrison’s “Crazy Love.” He dedicated this to his wife who was on board and is a photographer who also mangers his web Site.

           

Hollis Brown was up next. They started with the singer and added a guitar player and finally the whole band joined in as they could on the boat format so there were no drums. They played great rock and as some one said, it is “music made for the road.”  They are a popular band with over 8 gigs at SXSW 2012. The singer commented on how you can hear the lyrics more with the reduced band. However, I got a CD and also enjoyed the full sound.  They are from Queens. They did a lot of their own work with a few things like the Velvet Underground thrown in. Their next CD, Nothing & the Famous No One has a release date of April 3, 2012. I think we will hear a lot more from them. In the last group photo Lee Kock joined them for a final number. 

               

 

SXSW Notes: BAMM.tv River Cruise Part One

Here are my notes and photos of the first of two lake cruises with BAMM.tv during SXSW 2012. In this case the bands are Soft Swells and Leah Siegal who fronts for Firehorse. BAMM.tv is a service that connects emerging artists with audiences through video. I wrote about them in my last post.

Soft Swells plays rock that sounds like its name. I say this in a positive way, as there are intelligent lyrics with a focus on quality music over volume. Soft Swells is billed as a duo out of Brooklyn and Los Angeles out of Brooklyn and Los Angeles but they had a third player on this set. The cruise format led to a more acoustic sound that you find on their videos. Their self-titled ‘Soft Swells’ LP goes beyond what you could do on a boat with full range of sounds, including stuttering and snapping drums, handclaps, a ringing xylophone, and subtle electronics. I especially liked “Every Little Thing.”  They got some buzz fromTime Entertainment for their SXSW work.

          

The second artist was Leah Siegal who fronts Firehorse. She sang solo on the cruise. Leah is the singer/songwriter/instrumentalist behind the Brooklyn group. As the band site mentions, she was a classical violinist from ages six to twelve then taught herself to play guitar and sing, resulting in her first songs at fifteen. Now she has a full band that has been with her for some time. With just her you could focus on the lyrics but I hope to hear the full band at some point, as their videos are great. They have been getting a lot of good press from places like NPR, the Wall Street Journal and the Paste magazine for their work at CMJ in New York. 

      

    

Leah also sings in the Citizens Band ("a ragtag cabaret collective that features musicians from the group Beirut"). I went to their performance later that night and you see pictures of it from my upcoming post on March 14 music. 

 

 

SXSW Notes: BAMM.tv Offers a New Way to Serve and Showcase Artists

I was fortunately to participate in two lake cruises with BAMM.tv during SXSW 2012. Each one featured two different bands and I will be covering these cruises in my following two posts.  In this post I want to cover BAMM.tv itself as I think it is offering a great service to emerging bands. I spoke with Chris Hansen, their co-founder and CEO on the cruise. He is the middle below. They are trying to help bands get paid for their work as it appears online which is currently difficult for emerging bands.

     

BAMM.tv connects these emerging artists with global audiences in several ways. Through a global content distribution network, the company offers music video content from new artists to the web, mobile devices and television. BAMM.tv gives device makers and service providers a differentiated music offering without going through traditional music licensing, while giving artists free HD music video content creation, an instant global audience, and 50 percent of the net profits from the music video distribution agreements. This seems like a good deal for all sides.

Samsung, Chungwa Telecom, Taiwan’s largest telco provider, and Fuugo-TV, an integrated TV and mobile platform based in Finland are among the companies partnered with BAMM.tv at their launch in 2011. Samsung features BAMM.tv’s mobile and tablet application for discovering and sharing new music videos on its Android-based devices including the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and Galaxy S2 smartphones. It already reaches 150 countries, and BAMM.tv will be on other mobile devices later this year. Other services already featuring BAMM.tv content include Select-TV, an IPTV provider servicing luxury hotels throughout Asia, and India’s MunduTV, a live TV app for PCs and mobile phones that has reached over four million downloads. BAMM.tv was also showing their new iOS app on the cruise. BAMM.tv will soon be in the Mozilla Marketplace where Mozilla is deploying HTML5 web apps.

It works like this. BAMM.tv curates top emerging artists across many genres including the four bands on the cruise, and produces high-quality HD performance videos in their San Francisco sound studios and at music festivals around the world, as well as interviews and behind-the-scenes video content. In return for the cost-free production and digital video editing, BAMM.tv receives a global license to distribute and monetize the content. The artist retains all of the copyrights, publishing and composition royalties associated with the underlying work. The video content is then fed into BAMM.tv’s growing content catalog which powers a suite of owned and partner applications (for mobile and tablet devices), TV services (pay-per-view content localized in many countries), ad-supported web streaming and more options.

This seems like a win-win and, if these four bands are representative, they have a great talent scout picking the artists. These bands are emerging candidates for the BAMM.tv: Soft Swells, Leah Siegal of Firehorse, Lee Kock, and Hollis Brown. Examples of current bands are Geographer, Wallpaper and The Soft White Sixties. My next two posts will cover the bands on the cruise.

 

 

Awareness Offers Its Social Media Command Center

I have covered Awareness, Inc. a number of times but it has been a while since we talked. The most recent was in 2008 - Awareness Summer 08 Release Brings Sharepoint Integration and New Features. In those days they provided a comprehensive community platform. Since then they have transformed their offering to become a social media command center that allows you to properly manage all of you social media activity through a single source.

With the increasing complexity of social media, this is a welcome capability. As Jeremiah Owyang recently pointed out in - A Strategy for Managing Social Media Proliferation - global corporations are trying to manage an average of 178 business-related social media accounts. He adds, “The genie is out of the social media bottle and he's creating new technologies and tools at dizzying speeds.” What we need are tools to manage this complexity and that is what Awareness is offering.

I recently spoke with Mike Lewis of Awareness about their capabilities. The Awareness Social Marketing Hub is built to address the challenges marketers face managing multiple social channels. It also allows for CRM integration so firms can record and track what is being said about them. For example, the US Major League Baseball (MLB) organization uses Awareness to track the social media activities of all its teams. This enhances their ability to sell tickets and merchandise through social media.

MLB can also monitor what is being said about all teams while each team sees only what is being said about their team. This allows each team to adopt their own social media strategy and policies. They can monitor and approve any messages before they go out. Each message has its own url for tracking purposes. You can segment your audience and add pictures and video. Workflow can be added for the approval process. You can track activity over time as shown below.

You can also immediately get data on those who are writing about you. See sample below.

Awareness can be used to support Facebook campaigns. You can control custom tabs in Facebook and add functionality. For example, you can allow a white paper to be downloaded from Facebook. You can get profile data from participants and have it automatically entered into your CRM system.  See a sample Facebook download screen below.

There is sentiment analysis on people, content, and channels. You can see some results below. You can also put a widget on your Web site that displays comments from social media channels and you can filter these comments. I think this offering is great service and a much needed one.

Now Awareness helped with the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl host city of Indianapolis has introduced a new way to service fans during the world's biggest annual sporting event via its first-ever social media command center. Here is a sample tracking social media screen for the Super Bowl.

The Super Bowl XLVI Host Committee Social Media Command Center had 50 staff and volunteers working over the course of two weeks, in two shifts. There is a 2,800 sq ft. facility that seats up to 35 people. Within it is 9-screen monitor wall (over 100 sq feet) and 27² iMac Touch Down stations. See a portion if it below.

I see this happening for many major events going forward. 

 

Introduction to Google Analytics – Online Workshop

Google Analytics is a popular free tool from Google that provides a wealth of information about the visitors to your website. It can take a bit of time to uncover its full use. I want to alert you to a useful online workshop offered by my friends at Pioneer Training. As a disclosure I have no business connection with this firm except that I have been a close personal of the owner, Don Lesser, for years and have written about his food writing on this blog before. I normally do not offer such promotions but I see this as a real service for an important product. Readers of this blog please do not send me similar requests to promote your products.

This two-hour online workshop will introduce you to the benefits of Google Analytics. This online class uses GoToMeeting software.  You will be prompted to download a free guest copy prior to the class, if necessary. (Installation is quick and painless.)

Use Google Analytics to find out:

• Number of visitors
• Average time visitors spend on your site
• Types of traffic (direct, referral, search engine)
• Keywords used to find your site
• Most and least popular pages
• Geographic location of visitors
• Number of “socially engaged” visitors (Facebook, Twitter, Linked In)

Set Goals and Track Visitor Progress

• Measures conversions from visitors to customers (or donors, volunteers, etc.)
• Track visitor progress through your “funnel path” to a goal.
• Use data to improve site content and design.

Real-Time Data and Custom Reports

• Find out how many visitors are on your website now!
• Reveal the key words they used to get there.
• Show the pages currently being viewed and locations of current visitors.
• Customize reports for focused data analysis.

Regitser Online, by Phone or E-Mail

• Cost: $99.
• Go to their website: http://www.ptraining.com.com.  Click Register Now! on the home page.
• Call their office: (413) 387-1040
• Send them an email:  [email protected]
• PPrivate classes using your website or blog data also available.

Private SEO website analysis also available

• Learn how to optimize your website for search engines.
• Improve your SERP (Search Engine Results Pages) rankings.
• Avoid SEO mistakes and make maximum use of web page copy, titles and ALT tags.
• Design Google Analytics goal funnels to track visitor progress through your site.
• Create custom GA reports to retrieve the exact information you need

 

SXSW Notes: Content As a Means for Social Change

Here is another in my series on SXSW events. I am pleased to be attending SXSW for the first time. I am grateful for Adobe Acrobat for enabling me to attend. I will be attending some of the Adobe sponsored sessions. As I do with other events I will be posting my notes from most of the sessions I attend. This is the session on Content As a Means for Social Change led by Biz Stone, CCO/Co-founder, The Obvious Corporation and Brian Sirgutz, SVP, Social Impact, AOL/Huffington Post. Here is the session description.

“As social and Internet entrepreneurs search for ways to effect IRL social change by using online tools and platforms, the focus has been on social media. However, while social media has been the Internet's buzzword for some time now, research shows that content consumption actually represents 53% of all time spent online. Given that content takes up most consumers' time on the web, it's time to harness it as the most effective way to drive social change in the real world.”

Brian began the session by defining content. The definition is expanding to include many forms and is becoming richer.  There are new opportunities with this mass volume of content. Now there are personal curators, both at the Huffington Post and with individuals. His story began by being a 9/11 volunteer. He wondered how can you spread the stories? He found firefighters coming from Chicago to help find their brothers. His life has changed as a result on the need to impact social change.

Biz Stone was a co-founder of Twitter. In June of 2011 he co-founded an organization to help change the world. Biz is sure the next great thing is being launched here at this session. Biz said he is going to talk about 5 stories. One is the origin of Twitter and how it was helped by SXSW in 2007. He has not been back since to not jinx it. There is a lesson learned with each story that he did not realize at the time but shared with us today.  

The first story is Twitter’s origins. He quit Google and joined Evan Williams to make a start up around doing MP3s and linking to pod. Others were already doing it as podcasting. It did not work out as Apple put podcasting in iTunes. They were also not using their own content. You need good audio production. Evan had a plan to be kings of pod casting but they did not want to do this.

Instead all twelve paired up in twos to work on their new ideas. Biz’s partner did software for cabs and you can see the pulse of the city through it.  At this time text messaging was becoming popular. Biz wondered can we push text messaging with the idea of dispatch to make it more social. They got a luke warm reception from their colleagues. They said that text messaging was on all phones and not used much. One day when Biz was working hard, he got a text message from Evan about a cool thing he was doing. It brought Biz joy. Everyone still critiqued his idea of bringing joy as not useful. Evan said ice cream is also not useful should we ban it and all joy? People said Twitter was about nothing. But they were having fun doing it. It turned out to be useful for little things.

When they came to SXSW in 2007 it became a big deal. He was in an audience and he saw people get up and leaving. People were using Twitter to say that there was a better panel across the hall and so they were going there. This blew him away.  There were only 5,000 people on the system at the time and most were out at SXSW. This guy tweeted to go to a certain pub and 800 people converged there in 8 minutes. It reminded him of a flock of birds. It allows a group to act as one. He could not think of any service that allowed for this.

This was party but if it was a disaster. At the same time it showed the power of the service. Two days later they called it Twitter, Inc. and began to work hard on it. SXSW gave them a lot of press. Twitter stated to be part of all the major stories around the world. The top papers were asking him about his involvement in distant events like a student revolt in Muldolvia. It became very fulfilling. It helped Twitter to have a culture of doing good.

He learned that change is not a product of technology but of people but technology can help. Their role is to help build tools that enable people to do what they do best.

The next story comes from his childhood. He was enrolled in a program called boy rangers modeled after native Americans. He was voted him chief. They had to pay to join so he did chores at home. It took up many of his weekends as a little kid so he did not do sports like others. When he got to high school he wanted to get involved in sports and he was naturally athletic. He did not like most sports. He found that lacrosse that was not supported at his school. He asked if he found a coach and kids could he form a team. He was able to do this. He became captain and was high scorer and they won the majority of their games. The lesson was opportunities can be manufactured. You do not have to wait for the right thing to come along. We can create them yourself.

After high school Biz went to college as an artist but did not like it because he was being told want to do. He got a side job at Little Brown in Boston where he lived in the late 90s. He moved boxes around. At this time they were changing to desktop publishing and using Macs. He designed a book jacket while everyone at lunch. The art director liked it and asked him to be a book cover designer. He won some awards. He apprenticed with his manager for several years and learned a lot. This led him to becoming a Web designer and founding his first company. The lesson was creativity is a renewable resource. You can always try again if the first thing is not liked. This makes challenges into a game. How can you try a different thing or not do something that is assumed to be necessary? Restore yourself.

The next story is about someone else. It is from a movie in the 80s called Wings of Desire.  In the movie there are two angles who look over Berlin to help people. One angel falls in love with a human. This will cause him to lose his immortality. He falls to earth and becomes human. He meets up with the woman and it ends happily. The lesson applies to startups. You need to be willing to try it all the way. You have to put it all on the line. You cannot go half way

The next story has to do with empathy. When he was young he felt it was a good thing to contribute to things. But he never expected any feedback. Then he discovered a group that gives pills to HIV positive people that transforms them back to health and the ability to do things. They work in one region and stabilize it and they go on to other places. There is real impact. The lesson is that you do not have to be rich to contribute. If you start early there is compound effect. If you are jobless, volunteer someplace. You might get confidence, you are helping out and you might even get a job there. This has a big role for startups. Twitter had a social responsibility person before they had a salesperson.

Doing well by doing good is a real thing and the world needs it to survive. Ask questions of older people and take time to walk in other’s shoes. If we all do this we can change the world, make money, and have fun. You need all three to be successful. Great session. 

 

SXSW Notes: Boost your Mobile Workflow with Adobe’s Newest Product

Here is another in my series on SXSW events. I am pleased to be attending SXSW for the first time. I am grateful for Adobe Acrobat for enabling me to attend. I will be attending some other Adobe sponsored sessions. As I do with other events I will be posting my notes from most of the sessions I attend. This is the session is part of Adobe Creative Camp Event on March 12. It is the Boost your Mobile Workflow with Adobe’s Newest Product
 led by Bruce Bowman and Greg Rewis. Here is the session description.

“We are announcing something completely new – Adobe will be unveiling a new product for Web designers and developers to help with their mobile Web workflows.”

Here is another in my series on SXSW events. I am pleased to be attending SXSW for the first time. I am grateful for Adobe Acrobat for enabling me to attend. I will be attending some other Adobe sponsored sessions. As I do with other events I will be posting my notes from most of the sessions I attend. This is the session is part of Adobe Creative Camp Event on March 12. It is called “Boost your Mobile Workflow with Adobe’s Newest Product”
and is led by Bruce Bowman and Greg Rewis. Here is the session description.

“We are announcing something completely new – Adobe will be unveiling a new product for Web designers and developers to help with their mobile Web workflows.”

Bruce led off the session by asking if mobile Web development was easy. No one raised their hands. In the old days you could predict what you screen could look like. But not screens can be larger or smaller and this complicates what we can do as developers. We have to change our mind set beyond the desktop screen. Now one size fits all does not work anymore.  Even refrigerators and gas station pumps have screens and Web connections. In the future we will have more mobile devices than desktops. I think the future is already here.

We need a new mantra. All Web experiences do not have to be the same. – he said will not exactly – he said that “all Web experiences should not be the same.” It is okay to add or delete based on the device.  Browser sniffing is one way to handle this issue and then determine what are we running and make delivery changes.  But this has drawbacks. For one thing, it requires Javascript. Also your browser can deceive you. It also requires detection 24/7.

Another solution is responsive design. Allow the layout to look different based on the device. I saw some of this yesterday. He showed some good examples with a Van Gogh painting. The problem is that the browser can lie. They do not always report their true size. Now can ask the browser to not lie. But even if you make it the same thing, the text can be too small on the iPhone and you have to magnify to see the content details and lose the context.

Mobile development requires constant testing on the real devices and this can be complex. There are too many devices. This is the challenge they want to address.

Greg took over to explain their approach. It is now called Lab Release 1. They plan more releases. You can do remote inspection for devices simplifying the devices. There is an every changing world of devices and operating systems. Cross browser consistency is becoming harder and more important. They call their solution – Shadow – aka Lab Release 1. You can download and install it on your development machine and your target devices. It takes a few minutes but it is quick and free. Now you see across your devices. Seems like a good idea. In their SF office they had 35 devices connected together. He did a demo and it does work. You can have your device paired with your development machine. Shadow works with any Web browser. He showed a number of devices including iPhone, iPad, and Andriod and they were all in synch as he browsed. This was cool. You can make changes and fix things on the spot without a lot of complex testing. Once you do this you cannot go back.

You can do remote inspection. They showed a few more demos. There will be a commercial release by the end of the year as they fine tune Shadow but these early versions are free.  This looks like a great tool for mobile app developer, a field that will only grow in size and importance. 

 

 

SXSW Notes: The Complexity Curve: How to Design for Simplicity

Here is another in my series on SXSW events. I am pleased to be attending SXSW for the first time. I am grateful for Adobe Acrobat for enabling me to attend. I will be attending their all day Creative Camp Event on March 12, as well as some other Adobe sponsored sessions. As I do with other events I will be posting my notes from most of the sessions I attend. This is the session on The Complexity Curve: How to Design for Simplicity led by David Hogue VP of Experience Design Fluid Inc I was lucky to go early as there was a line outside by the time it stated. Please excuse typos as this is done near real time. Here is the session description:

“Interfaces and devices are providing more and more power and functionality to people, and in many cases this additional power is accompanied by increasing complexity. Although people have more experience and are more sophisticated, it still takes time to learn new interfaces, information, and interactions. Although we are able to learn and use these often difficult interfaces, we increasingly seek and appreciate simplicity.

The Complexity Curve describes how a project moves from boundless opportunity and wonderful ideas to requirements checklists and constraints then finally (but only rarely) to simplicity and elegance. Where many projects call themselves complete when the necessary features have been included, few push forward and strive to deliver the pleasing and delightful experiences that arise from simplicity, focus, and purpose.

In this session, David M. Hogue, Ph.D. - VP of Experience Design, applied psychologist, and adjunct faculty member at San Francisco State University - will introduce the Complexity Curve, discuss why our innovative ideas seem to fade over the course of a project, explain why "feature complete" is not the same as "optimal experience", and offer some methods for driving projects toward simplicity and elegance.”

David first made sure everyone had a seat. David is an applied psychologist and UI designer. Complexity is easier than simplicity. I agree and remember that Thelonius Monk said that simplicity was true genius. He sited the complexity of digital watches. I feel the pain here – I just remember for half the year my digital clocks like my car are an hour off as I do not know how to change them. My wrist watch is manual and I use my iPhone as a pocket watch.

David shared definitions of complexity. First he looked at designers. We hear words like: clean and simple, lots of negative speech, avoid noise. Also hierarchy is important. Then easy interactivity is key so you want to eliminate unnecessary content.  The goals are important. The IRS form is very complex. Structure is key. How are things connected and organized? The structure provides movements that make sense or confuse. The registration line at SXSW is a classic example of bad design.

Now he looked at the perspective people or users. This is very different than designers. People find that the Web often does not do what they do. The key tasks need to more upfront. People think of complexity in terms of relevance rather than visual design. The US Air Force has designed the controls of every plane in the same way. I wish cars did this, as every new rental car can be a challenge.

He moved on the chaos theory by Lorenz. This is the basis of Darwin Ecosystem, a content discovery tool I am connected with. He found the Lorenz attractor in a butterfly shape. Chaos has several characteristics. It is dynamic but it is deterministic but these are not predictable but it is not random. So you can find self–organizing systems. Darwin uses this to avoid SEO. So weather prediction is a bit better for few more days out but not long term. Some things are naturally complex. Lorenz equation had six variables.

Now David moved to the complexity curve for design. It seems simple at first but new features are raised, we come up with new ideas, reviewers want one more thing, and more and more. Then the system gets overloaded. Then go you get to point where all features are there but it is too complexity. How do you trim it down is hard? This is why there are many Flickr images on Web pages that suck.

There are three components of models; the mental model, the conceptual model, and the system model. These models need to be consistent for simplicity to occur. If you shift attention from task to interface that means there is a mismatch in models.

Design patterns are also key. We tend to borrow patterns that were successful elsewhere that do not work in new situations. Password security is a good example and I would agree completely. There are also dark patterns that do things like link you to ads when you do not want to do. We have to be careful when you are creating patterns. He gave the example of the Edsel that had a good and bad patterns and was a failure.

Scope increase is a challenge here. New stakeholders can cause havoc. Technical and legal requirements can be a problem, as well as marketing requirements.

High cognitive load leads to sense of complexity. If you have to think about stuff too much and it diverts us from real task. Declarative knowledge moves to procedural knowledge to automatic link driving a car. When you get to the automatic level it seems simple. You need to get people there.

We also do not want over simple.  As Einstein said, “everything should be as simple as possible and no simpler.” So now David started on how to make things simpler and move down the complexity curve.

We need to look for advances in technology to make things simpler. The digital watch was inspired by inclusion as a prop in the movie 2001. It took four years to make it work.

People are the next factor. Learning is sometimes essential, as we cannot make it simpler. Look for similar things that can serve as models. This can be very effective.

Designers should leverage their ignorance before that get to embedded in the project. Write down the ideas that people said could not work. Try to make it happen in new ways. Always put the end user first. Design for motivation, behavior, emotion, and creativity. We want feel happy and play. Need to watch conceptual models and make sure they align. Mental models can over time. Look at Blackberry vs. iPhone. A Blackberry was like a tiny laptop. The iPhone changed everything in mobile apps.

Simplicity is not just about reduction. He quoted Einstein again (see above). Use iteration. Watch what people are doing. Make it easier for people to do what they are already. The key ingredient is critical thinking. Think about what you are doing, Then take a things a few steps further. Then question things. There is no checklist here.

Great session.

 

WebDAM and Box Collaborate to Streamline Digital Asset Management and File Sharing

WebDAM Solutions, the cloud-based digital asset management (DAM) provider, recently announced a technology collaboration with Box, the content-sharing platform, to provide streamlined digital asset management features to Box users. I have written about Box before (see Box.net Updates Interface and Becomes More Social).

I spoke with Ron Selvey, Marketing Manager at WebDaAM to get background on this move.  Ron said that Box has adopted a great strategy of integrating with best of breed complementary apps. They paired up with WebDAM to establish a two-way integration capability. This offers Box users even greater efficiency when managing rich media files. It gives them streamlined workflow and automates many steps. As more firms are using rich media, especially marketing communications companies, this is a good move.

Now you can send files into Box for collaboration and into WebDAM for workflow tasks, such as approvals. Box users can easily open, edit, share, and save collateral from WebDAM or send files to WebDAM for control over marketing assets, rights management, conduct batch conversions, quick browsing, search, and automated sharing of marketing collateral (brand assets, images, graphics, videos, sales collateral, presentations, and more). The integration also provides a path for WebDAM’s marketing users to send content for real-time collaboration with Box users despite different systems, applications, and departments.

Both Box and WebDAM offer user-friendly interfaces, simple-yet-comprehensive features, and anytime/anywhere access to content so this should be a benefit to the rich media process. This move is consistent with the larger trend of increased application integration, especially between systems of engagement and systems of record. The WebDAM App for Box is available to both WebDAM and Box users — starting today.

 

 

Discovering Emerging Patterns in Web Content for Better Business Decisions

My colleague at Darwineco System, Romain Goday, recently provided a nice discussion of the many areas where awareness of what is happening on the web is important. He writes that, “the immense volume of information on the Web in relation to almost any given topic requires the visualization of emerging patterns to understand what is going on.”

Romain goes on to add,” This process is analogous to meteorological forecasting. The Web is, like the data associated with the weather, extremely chaotic. When exploring unstructured data from the Web, the same principles can be applied to present Web events in understandable emerging patterns.”

This is why the Darwin Awareness Engine™ is built on the same mathematical concepts that are used to predict the weather. It lets the content self organize and thus is not subject to the influence of such practices as search optimization.  There are no external algorithms to attempt to game. I will not repeat Romain’s post and encourage you to check it out.

He makes a convincing argument for the need to for awareness in the following seven areas: marketing, PR & brand management, customer support & product management, business development, competitive intelligence, risk management, and HR & training.

These are all good choices. I would add strategic planning, supply chain management, and community management. The latter is growing area within organizations. Being aware of what is being discussed within the community, as well as what is being said on the Web about topics of interest to the community is critical for community success.

The Darwin Awareness Engine is not a replacement to search engines but a complement to them. It provides a new and missing perspective. The Darwin interface provides an intuitive, interactive ScanCloud (patent pending) that reveals correlated themes for contextual content filtering around users’ topics of interest, a BuzzTape that displays themes that have high content acceleration within the last 24 hours, and the ability to save your queries to monitor the evolution of favorite topics. 

 

Aligning Web Content Management with Digital Business Goals Inside and Outside the Enterprise

Web content management has way gone beyond the Web 1.0 role of publishing Web pages. My friend Geoff Bock recently wrote an interesting post, Web content management's new role: Fueling digitally driven businesses, that address ways to move your use of Web content management into this century. As he writes, “To compete in the digital economy, we actually need to use content to power useful applications for the enterprise. These are Web apps with a business purpose: They are designed to produce insights for decision-making and to deliver results.”

Geoff writes that we need to get more granular and away from a page orientation. I agree and it seems to be that increasing page views should no longer be the goal but rather increasing the number of actions you can do in a single page. Increasing page views has a bias toward increasing advertising revenue while increasing actions within a page has a bias toward increasing productivity for the company, rather it be providing customer services, gathering customer insights or improving employee productivity.

I have argued elsewhere that this is one of the differences between Web 2.0 and enterprise 2.0. It is ironic that taking Web 2.0 tools within the enterprise tended to make them more productivity oriented and less marketing driven. Now perhaps some of this productivity focus might moving out into the Web.  The smart companies are aligning their external Web and social media presence with their internal use of social business so this may be another source of the crossover. This alignment is one reason I like the term social business over enterprise 2.0

Geoff goes on to write about the importance of content mashups. Here is another place were alignment within the enterprise and a firm’s Web presence can bring both efficiency but also consistency of message. Moreover, mashing up data across the firewall can bring new insights. Geoff notes the need to define and maintain the various content types and “structure and manage the metadata for categorizing content types by mapping terms to controlled vocabularies, taxonomies and linked data elements wherever possible.” This can be the foundation for content alignment within and without the enterprise.

Geoff notes that some of the major vendors are getting into this game, certainly IBM with its social business focus and Microsoft with its continuing investments in SharePoint 2010 and openness to third part add-ons.  He concludes that companies “should identify the business-oriented content services required to fuel their digitally driven businesses and give their customers what they need.” I would simply add that these firms need to look both inside and outside the enterprise and then align these two views. 

 

Big Data Makes the Big Time and Opens Up New Areas of Potential Understanding

The New York Times recently had an extensive article on The Age of Big Data by Steve Lohr. Data is now growing at 50 percent a year, or more than doubling every two years according to IDC. This has created a big demand in the job market. According to McKinsey the, “United States needs 140,000 to 190,000 more workers with “deep analytical” expertise and 1.5 million more data-literate managers, whether retrained or hired.”

The World Economic Forum at Davos, issued a report, “Big Data, Big Impact,” that “declared data a new class of economic asset, like currency or gold.” The report summary notes that a large portion of big data comes from “the interactions over mobile devices being used by people in the developing world - people whose needs and habits have been poorly understood until now.” As the report adds the trick is channeling these torrents of data into actionable information.

This is a topic I have covered a bit here (see Gartner Reports that Big Data Challenges Go Beyond Managing Large Volumes of Data). This report made the same point as the Davos Forum about actionable content. In another post I wrote about two types of big data (“Big Data” vs. “Big Content” Complementary Sides of Information Overload). As I wrote then while big data is a challenge for many large organizations, big content is a challenge that all Web users face every day. How do you deal with the fire hose of content coming at you from the Web, especially from the all the user-generated content sites like Twitter or blogs? We all have to deal with the problem of too much content to absorb and understand. This is why I am adding the term big content so the focus is on the meaning and not the number of bytes. The two terms complement each other.

As the Davos reports points out there are now new areas to gain additional understanding. It is interesting that the New Times leaves off the second half of the title of the Davos report: Big Data, Big Impact: New Possibilities for International Development. They also do not pick up much on this important point. We have seen it in several uses cases of the Darwin Awareness Engine™.

I have covered Darwin a bit on this blog so here is a brief summary. The Awareness Engine creates content visualizations that allow you to quickly scan across the themes contained in the content within your topic of interest. To find what is meaningful to you. With the Scan Cloud, the top 100 themes within a set of content are displayed in a manner that allows for easy sorting and investigation. With Buzz tape, the topics of rising interest appear like a stock ticker and then you can make the ones of interest become the center of a Scan Cloud.

One of our clients has a data center is a developing country. They use Darwin to monitor what is happening in the area for both security and opportunity purposes. Another client is trying to expand their reach beyond the US. They use Darwin to monitor opportunities in other countries where the related reporting infrastructure is not in place. Instead they can see what is happening of relevance on the social Web. These are just some of the new opportunities to gain actionable content through the expansion of big data to the developing world.

There is much more about the Awareness Engine on the Darwin web site. Here is an overview.

 

Do You Have A Twitter Addiction? Do You Have A Connection Addiction?

Sameer Patel aka @sameerpatel pointed to an interesting article in the Guardian through Twitter. The title was: Twitter is harder to resist than cigarettes and alcohol, study finds. Now this is a topic I have covered before – see for example my 2009 post, Is Twitter Like Going Out for a Smoke? More on this older story later in this post but first the Guardian wrote, “Tweeting or checking emails may be harder to resist than cigarettes and alcohol, according to researchers who tried to measure how well people could resist their desires. They even claim that while sleep and sex may be stronger urges, people are more likely to give in to longings or cravings to use social and other media.” Powerful stuff this Twitter.

The research reported by the Guardian is not the first to tackle this issue. In 2009 I wrote about a Study of Social Media Addiction from Retrevo. It found that their sample used social media in the car (over 35 – 9%, under 35 – 40%), at work (over 35 – 29%, under 35  - 64%), on vacation (over 35 – 41%, under 35 - 65%), on a date (over 35 - 9%, under 35 - 34%), and after sex (over 35 - 8%,  under 35 - 36%). I am sure these numbers are increasing, especially if you include playing scrabble on your smart phone.

Twitter seems to be the most addictive. For respondents under age 35, 27% of those who use Facebook said they check it more than 10 times a day compared to 39% of Twitter users checking in on Twitter more than 10 times a day. Across all age groups, 56% say they check it between one and ten times a day. I certainly find Twitter more addictive than Facebook. The activity is very fast and real time so you want to stay connected and it is easy to make a quick check.

The biggest enablers of this new addiction seem to be smart phones and other mobile devices, especially if you are under 35. In a Gadgetology study only 19% of the 35+ group use a phone as the preferred device for social media services with 81% preferring instead a desktop or laptop computer. This is me as I never use a phone, even though I have an iPhone. Perhaps I will as I get more used to my iPhone. Over on the other side of the generation gap they found 46% of those younger than 35 indicating their preference for a mobile device for all things social media.

Returning to the first post I mentioned, Is Twitter Like Going Out for a Smoke?, I wrote about how smokers often formed informal networks as they had to go to designated spots for their habit. I added the following.

So if implemented right Twitter is more like the smoker’s group without the health risks. With Twitter there is also the timing factor as to whether your paths will cross which also applies to the water cooler. In both cases, the smart networker will know the patterns of his or her prey and look for the right times to engage. Since the smoker group is together for longer periods of time, there are also more likely to be established rules of contact than the newcomer needs to learn to be effective. Smoker’s groups might be more likely to meet at certain times. There are also patterns of high Twitter use to observe. I covered this combination of taking a break and informal networks in two other related posts:

Is Twitter Like Stopping at the Water Cooler? Is this Productive?

Is Twitter like Taking a Nap? But More Productive?

I do find Twitter to be a great way to stay connected and find out what is going on with people I like to stay connected to such as Sameer. In the month of April I will be working from a Greek Island but what made it possible for me to stay “away’ so long was the wifi connection in my temporary home so I will have Twitter, skype, this blog, etc. More on this later. Image from Hellblazer! Flickr creative commons. 

 

Remember When Social Media Was Simple and Mostly Blogs?

I was reading a blog post, Corporations at Risk From Social Media Adoption Issues, by Brett Greene, or maybe it is an online newspaper article since it is on the Huffington Post, with the tag line: the internet newspaper: news, blogs, video, community. So is news an article and commentary a blog? These questions are not my real point but just a symptom of it.

The real point is the proliferation of social media types and the growing complexity of dealing with them. Brett was commenting on a recent Altimeter report. A Strategy for Managing Social Media Proliferation, by Jeremiah Owyang. Their research found that global corporations are trying to manage an average of 178 business-related social media accounts. He adds, “The genie is out of the social media bottle and he's creating new technologies and tools at dizzying speeds.”  Now there are even tools to manage the tools and these tools are actually filling a real need. What have we done?

I also recently shared related research by Nora Ganim Barnes and her colleagues at the Center for Marketing Research as they looked  the usage of social media in fast-growing corporations. They found that the use of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, texting, downloadable mobile apps and Foursquare are increasing while there are reductions in the use of blogs, message boards, video blogs, podcasts and MySpace.

It makes sense that blog use is decreasing as they use to serve more functions that are how handled by an increasing variety of specialized tools. In 2004 I saw several examples of what later would be termed enterprise 2.0 or social business that were built with blogs since they were the main social media tool around.

For example, Al Essa, the CIO at MIT’s Sloan School of Management at time, had each project team in his group create a blog forum for every project. Managers now provided updates and everyone in the department could access all project blogs inside the firewall. The project blogs acted as true dashboards. Al could review each project’s status on line and drill down for more detail as needed. He could also point project teams to others who faced the same issues. These status reports were now available to everyone in his department, so cross-project communication was a simple matter, a by-product of the new blog reporting platform. The instant, secure, and constant accessibility, in searchable format, that blogs brought was a huge productivity improvement over swapping project reports and commentary through multiple emails.

Now there are a variety of tools to handle these same issues. Have we gotten better? Perhaps but I would argue that the improvement is only incremental over the transformative work that people like Al did simply using blogs. We are also in danger of going backward if we push the complexity too far. This is happening both on the Web and inside the enterprise. One of the great benefits of blogs remains their simplicity.  We need to maintain this simplicity as we add functionality.