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Open Source Standards

Published March 22, 2008 Law , Marketing , Operations , Strategy , Technology 0 Comments

This past week I received an email from the ILTA listserv where someone was asking about SEO-vendors. In a way this is a shock: SEO doesn’t require any great degree of understanding or inside knowledge. A careful analysis of the market, an understanding of HTML and the ability to find search-optimizations on the marjor engines delivered a sustained 20% jump for skadden.com. This excludes a lot of the buzz about blogging and SEO (there are benefits, but don’t throw away your Web site for a blog).

I believe this information should be in an open source format. Why should we pay vendors, which may or may not have a complete or legit understanding of technology, to maintain ownership. Whereas user-generated content is becoming more important in communications, user-generated standards must be developed. Open-source standards enable us to become better marketers of our organizations and reach out to clients & customers. SEO and SEM are a critical part of business. Let’s take it back from vendors in a space that is free of vendor influence.

Who’s up for the challenge?

TechBreak: Wired’s Phone of the Future.

Published February 26, 2008 Technology 0 Comments

Technological progress seems to constantly overload us with new tricks and gadgets. One example: the WWAN modem built into my laptop. Instead of a separate card, the x61 from Lenovo has an AT&T device included, allowing me to go on the web at a pretty good clip far away from an available wi-fi node.

I find it necessary to take a step back from technology once in a while. No, this doesn’t involve a yurt or involve snaring small animals. Most of the time it’s a mental refresh, where I take the time to evaluate “is this truly important and how does it fit into the big picture.” One such example is a blog post from Wired on “Nokia’s Phone of the Future:” http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/02/10-uses-for-the.html

lol indeed. This reminds me of a skit on Conan O’brien for the iPhone. (Note: I would love to post a link to the video, but the NBC site seems to be down right now; there are a few bootlegs on YouTube, but I didn’t have the patience to watch a ten minute clip to see if it contained anything questionable.)

CodeHack: User Agent

Published February 20, 2008 Technology 0 Comments

In working on a mobile Web app, I needed to look at Google to see how they handled HTML formatting. You have to love google: they spend less time worrying about making things well designed (i.e. over-designed) and focus on delivering apps and properties that work very well.

So, instead of beating my blackberry into submission, I found a great hack for Firefox: http://chrispederick.com/work/user-agent-switcher/

A quick user-agent mod and I was able to see how they setup the page and quickly made a few changes on my own. Anyone that has a need to check out various formatting and display uses should check it out. As per my on-going thread, this includes managers and executives. Don’t rely on someone else: earn your paycheck and hack around.

Team Motivation

Published February 4, 2008 Operations , Technology 0 Comments
Tags: employee satisfaction, motivation

As I’m approaching the halfway point in my MBA prerequisite seminar, the focus is employee motivation. This week’s readings covered Hawthorne, Two-Factor Theory and a bit of Kano for good measure (my own idea).

While decompressing with Dirt — rally racing at its finest — the thought occurred to me to blog about this assignment and provide some reflection. As a recent agency, I would watch in dismay how a department head would avoid providing basic elements for his team. Should it have been any surprise when an incentive program fall flat on its face? The few people who performed well continued to do so, while the ambivilent majority continued to plod along.

I strongly believe that, as a leader, you need to connect with your subordinates. No, this does mean be their friend. I had a boss who would listen to my 10 second rant and would simply say “duely noted”. I eventually stopped. Listen to the chatter when you’re in the next room. Debrief after a major project. Setup something that they would find a nice distraction from a bad week. Most importantly, observe their actions (work product) and dealings with one another. Here you will discover goals and interests… looping in motivation features that bear some relevancy.

CMS Redefined

Published January 28, 2008 Strategy , Technology 0 Comments
Tags: blogging, CMS, conversation., evolution

I’ve been working on a hybrid concept at work — one that takes the next evolutionary step (or jump) from current accepted content management approaches. If you ask someone about a CMS, you’ll get a variety of responses:

“CMS? What’s that?” — Those users outside of normal management approach labels. The “beginner mind,” if you will. While it’s easy for experts to ridicule this group, I find the process of teaching to be beneficial to my own understanding of issues.
“Site Pages” — Typical of prepackaged CMS tools, this response looks at pages as a wide array of content with no commonality. Database experts cringe at the notion of “denormalized” information.
“Tools” or “Fixed Field Admins” — This is the model that governed most of my work. Each contnet area, including pages, are controlled by tools. My dynamic CMS is the highest expression of the fixed field approach as it allow for dynamic expansion on the fly. In other words, you can add a field in a tool, say “RSVP Date” without calling your Web vendor.

All of these approaches have merit under certain circumstances, but like the blinking HTML tag, may not be solid investments for the future. Many strategists (and vendors) view blogging as the next leading app, which may be true under certain situations. However, older CMS tools have a place in this model. Here’s why: we all have different ways of looking for information. The blogging approach is a great way to engage a community, but lists of deals, clients and publications work as well.

I view the next CMS as a conversation management system. No longer limited to fixed fields or site pages, the next gen CMS looks to incorporate social media in a Web property while offering other resources to users. Social media sites are hot because of the ease of use. Applying the these measures to older CMS approaches helps build value and a competitive advantage at the same time. Instead of proclamations of the future, the Web community would be better served at generating best practices for maximizing use across platforms and developing value from existing content.

Now that I’m LinkedIn, what’s next?

Published January 22, 2008 Strategy , Technology 0 Comments
Tags: linkedIn

A few weeks my family and I were out on a walk when we ran into some friends. We were all heading in the same direction, so the husbands talked shop. It started off “I read your blog the other day.” I was happy and excited to say the least.

The topic of the conversation was linkedIn and how to get information from a network to answer questions or problems. In the early days of the web, 10 or so years ago, it was pretty easy. Experts in various technical disciplines were eager to volunteer their time to help someone figure things out. Over the course of a few short years, I was able to write effective SQL and know the benefits of the 3S-GTE engine (one of my car enthusiast periods, lol). As someone with a mixed educational background, this was great.

As the Web has matured, it’s become more difficult to find information effectively. With resources available via email, forums, blogs, social networks and Google, it sometimes is just plain luck.

Social networks offer a new resource for questions and problems. Instead of emailing or calling individual contacts, you can broadcast your question to an entire group. This is where the quality of your network is important. Build your network over the next twelve months, seeking out individuals that represent common interests or strategic value. I have contacts that range from Web developers to top executives.

As you build this resource, if the opportunity presents itself, start a conversation. Long-term: expect this information to extend beyond a single domain.

Review: The Myths of Innovation

Published January 16, 2008 Operations , Strategy , Technology 0 Comments

When I was in an agency role, I took a keen interest in reading up on the latest trends, approaches and best practices. Project management was one such field; I’ve held PM roles at various points of my career and enjoy the interaction with clients. One of my favorite reads, as mentioned before, is The Art of Project Management by Scott Berkun.

Scott has a new book out, The Myths of Innovation. Even with my MBA program taking many hours of my week, this book was on my short list. It was a surprise when I had won a signed copy of the book in a comment raffle on http://scottberkun.com/blog/. Note to self: nothing like a comment raffle to strike up a conversation.

I tore through the book in a few days. At ~150 pages, it was a nice read and touched on something I mentioned to developers at job(-1): We’re really building the Erie Canal. This usually gets funny looks. What? A canal? Are we going for a boat ride or something? No. Take a look at the early nineteenth century. Commerce was dominated by wind-driven ships and slow moving wagons. The Erie canal utilized a series of engineering wonders to accelerate the speed of commerce, linking New York with the Great Lakes. Sure enough, the rise of railroad outshined this accomplishment in due time.

Work that is being executed now by some of the most brilliant minds is the same. In 20 years, we’ll look back and think “how quaint.” So if we’re building something that will be a joke to our children, why bother? Because innovation is cumulative. A CMS or social network could spur the development of the next great platform. How we do our work is of utmost importance. As managers, are we instilling innovation and excellence?

As for the book, I would recommend it without reservation to anyone with an interest in business strategy or technology.

Kicking it out the Door

Published January 14, 2008 Operations , Technology 0 Comments

There’s nothing more exciting than a site launch. It’s a mix of elation and anxiety, amplified if you’re working on a highly visited site or application. Years of agency experience (starting in 1995, to be exact) has yielded one powerful tool when planning a site launch.

The tool: Plan carefully.

Planning has everything to do with a good (and flawless) site launch. I’m ask that you look beyond the obvious, the project documentation itself. Most pm’s worth their salt have extensive documentation (wireframes, functional briefs, project plans and diagrams from the usual suite of tools from Microsoft). If you need to buffer your skills in that arena, like most of the pm’s I’ve seen in recent years, read Scott Berkun’s book: The Art of Project Management. It’s actually one of the few books on my desk.

I’m referring to the technical architecture of a site or project. Most web operations, who make up a majority of the market, take this for granted. Maybe they even give it a cute name. Most of the time this offering is pasted together and offers no documentation or logic. If you really want a site to launch successfully, make sure the architecture is solid.

Some developers love to use the word “recursive,” as if it will help point out the flaws in recent work. Many times this testing is needed as the application itself is unstable or poorly coded. At least two vendors I’ve seen in the past 6 months write code or SQL so poorly that a site experienced visible response issues. Search executions that lasted seconds (rather then milliseconds).

Good development practices involve testing, but do it intelligently. Many a pm or developer fails to realize the inherent power in documenting their testing. Not only does this establish a rich source of data for pattern discovery, but it provides useful information to discover the problem.

As for the launch:

Give yourself a few weeks to kick the tires and deal with any issues. Do not make major changes in this time period.
If you are an agency, manage client expectations, particularly with timing. If necessary, tell them no.
Have DNS and any other issues resolved ahead of time. If possible, preposition your s and other assets.
Plan on a formal debrief with business and technical stakeholders.

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