This is not a blog.

Customer Satisfaction - The Pillar of Good Marketing: @Doxie Style

Thu, 16 May 2013 04:45:00 -0400

One of the most underrated pillars of good marketing is customer satisfaction.

As a person who lives in a country where this concept doesn’t even exist, I know how to appreciate customer service at its best.

Being on maternity leave, I recently decided that I’d like to finally take on a project I’d been hoping to do for a long time - digitize all of my pictures. I have boxes of old pictures that are completely wasted in their print format, and wanted to remedy the situation.

I pull out my Doxie scanner - an awesome little portable scanner - (that I haven’t used for months mind you) to discover that it’s having some issues.

I decided to be a B**** and call them out about it on Twitter, instead of being a mensch and writing them an email.

And despite my obnoxiousness, they were really nice about it, and told me they have excellent customer service, and to reach out by email. Which I did.

After telling my story, and initially asking for a replacement accessory kit that is received with Doxie so I could clean and recalibrate it (which being the responsible people that we are - we lost at some point) - they, no questions asked, said it was going out in the mail immediately (even though I’m in Israel). After a couple of hours, their customer service rep (who deserves a shout out herself) - Sue - of her own initiative contacted me and told me they’ve decided to replace the scanner altogether - and that we can just recycle the faulty one. I was so pleased, I actually wanted to ask if I could add $50 and get the more advanced version (but thought that would be a little too greedy on my part). I already wanted to consume more of their products, being so happy with their customer support.

I like companies that:

1) Stand behind their products

2) Treat the customer with respect and trust

3) Are quick to respond to an issue.

This builds my trust in and respect for THEIR brand.

Thank you Doxie - you have been wonderful - I will be sure to purchase your products again.

Tools I Like: Springpad

Thu, 02 May 2013 07:09:00 -0400

I may be way behind the eight ball with this one, but I just discovered Springpad - which to me replaces about 100 different apps I used to use, and aggregates everything in one place pretty conveniently.

I’m not kidding - for me it’s Evernote meets Pocket meets Pinterest meets Favorite Tweets meets Amazon + eBay Wishlists meets Astrid meets Asana meets Gmail (certain functionality) meets Tripit meets Noteshelf… You get my drift. Of course, this all depends on how you consume apps & their purpose for you, but in terms of functionality for me, this is one super app to replace them all it looks like.

The devs of this app have done something simply brilliant. Aside from having a really functional cross platform app that also has a desktop version (apropos my previous post about why this is important) - they also catered to aesthetic appeal with this app. It’s really beautiful.

This app enables you to create notebooks in an Evernote/Noteshelf fashion - share them publicly or privately (for more personal things), and makes it super easy to save stuff to said notebooks - you can send emails to be filed in your notebooks, you can save virtually any link at the click of a button on any platform - via the Chrome plugin you can do this on a desktop too, otherwise you “spring” them on mobile devices, take pics and spring them, scan barcodes etc. etc.

You can take virtually any kind of note - see screenshot below - AND you can share individual notes or entire notebooks.

Some of the stuff I’ve used it for:

Replaced my recipe label in Gmail - where I send myself awesome recipes - I’ve made this notebook public. Happy to have contributors there - whoever’s interested.

I’ve saved all my bookmarks from Pocket & favorite tweets.

Aggregated my wishlists from all of my favorite eCommerce sites.

Saved my notes to self for awesome marketing ideas.

Created a grocery shopping notebook - which allows me to create a page in the notebook for my weekly shopping - and actually look back to see what was bought and what wasn’t, without necessarily deleting items or without it all being under one list (Astrid or Asana-esque).

And plenty more.

What’s more - while you could feasibly do this with Evernote - it doesn’t give you the beautiful look and feel (and there are limitations due to premium features), whereas Springpad actually takes the pictures from the links so it has a nice visual experience and makes it easier to find things - Pinterest style, and allows you to file more easily.

Plus you can have followers like Twitter or Tumblr for those who like your public notebooks and want to see more.

I like that they took everything from a UX perspective into consideration:

Privacy - Check

Sharing - Check (Whatever floats your boat)

Social Interaction - Check

UI - Check

Price - FREE! (The best part about my favorite tools)

While they currently don’t have any premo schemes like other apps (as far as I can tell) - I’m sure they’ll find a brilliant way to monetize, since it looks like they have a pretty awesome team.

Find me (and Springpad) here: http://springpad.com/#!/Shar1z

The @Samsung @Dropbox Foileshtick (Shenanigan)

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 04:29:00 -0400

This is a two part commentary on brilliant positioning versus less stellar marketing.

Allow me to start with Samsung.

I think the way in which Samsung have positioned themselves as Apple’s leading competitor these days, independent of Google (whose OS is just a means to an end); and the numbers speak for themselves (sales-wise & Apple attack-wise - just emphasizing the fear factor) - deserves serious respect.

If you had asked me who would be in this position a few years ago, I likely would have answered HTC.

But lo and behold, Samsung have made all the right moves with their Galaxy line, releasing topnotch mobile devices that are gaining serious market share, all while undertaking brilliant marketing campaigns (Superbowl commercial anyone?), but they didn’t stop there to make sure they stand out in the competitive Android arena.

They release their devices with strategic alliances to really create that tipping point. They did this with the Galaxy S3 & Flipboard, a much coveted mobile app, and then continued this trend by offering 50 GBs of Dropbox storage to Galaxy S3, S4 & Note 2 users - to provide a holistic Apple iCloud-like experience, and for me that was a major selling point. Very well played. They recognized that technical specs are becoming less and less distinguishable - and it’s no longer just about the device, but the entire experience - something Apple has known from the get-go.

On the less brilliant marketing side - I’m actually going to point my finger at Dropbox.

I don’t like Indian givers.

There’s always a catch. Well most of the time.

I remember when Box first came out with their Android app they offered a promotion of 50 GBs for lifefor those that downloaded the app in the first week. I did that. I hear it was so successful that they’re even doing it again now, as I write this. And even the manner in which they initially intended to monetize (add-ins such as desktop sync), they eventually did away with and offered for free (since they realized this was a major breaker for many users). I actually now use Box as my primary cloud storage, and have chosen to offer Box storage for marketing campaigns and such, since I liked their attitude.

Then there was Dropbox.

Dropbox on the other hand have decided to offer the 50 GBs of storage that come bundled with Galaxy devices for 24 months alone. I don’t like that. What’s the point of it? Kind of like Microsoft reneging on the 25 GBs of Skydrive storage if you didn’t “claim it” (not quite sure how I was supposed to do this still). I get that you need to monetize, but really if you chose to go into this alliance - go in wholeheartedly. This is totally half-assed, and means I will never use that 50 GBs of storage - since I can’t just up and move 50 GBs of storage after 24 months, and I think their pricing is a bit excessive. Take Box’s 1 TB of storage for a fraction of the price. This is so off-putting it reeks of Apple with their vendor lock-in ploys.

Other options could have been to take back unused storage after 24 months, or to enable the storage only while owning a Galaxy device.

The alliance was smart, but the execution was poor.

Postless

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 12:30:46 -0400

So I’m guessing you’re wondering where I’ve disappeared to…

I have a 1000 posts that are in partial draft mode - but I’m guessing I won’t be able to get to them in the next 18 years or so, since I have officially deployed my first human project.

Stuff to look forward to then (and I’m sure it’ll be pretty relevant and cutting edge stuff) -

“I’m back on Facebook - and hating every minute of it”

“CM 10.1 vs. Stock Jellybean”

“Tools I like: RabbitSEO”

“Organizing a meetup group”

Some more tool comparisons - and maybe some thoughts on the false advertising of parenthood, or something on the lines of that.

Until then… Thanks for the patience.

Tools I like: Qualaroo

Fri, 08 Feb 2013 15:01:44 -0500

This one is actually one of my favorites. It’s free, unless you need the premo features, and it is such a useful tool.

Qualaroo provides quick surveys and nudges at the corner of your web page that are unintrusive, and really provide valuable feedback.

I use it to know whether a wiki help section was useful, why people haven’t downloaded our product, and to opt-in to our newsletter (a list which you can easily export as well), and I have received a lot of actionable feedback, and grown our user-base quite nicely.

I really hope they’ll be able to provide more analytics-based features, or integrations with existing analytics tools, since that’s really the only thing I feel the tool is missing right now.

And like all of my favorite tools - it’s free.

Check it out: http://www.qualaroo.com.

Impressions from DevOps Con 2013

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 09:18:21 -0500

I had the honor to be a part of an incredible initiative that came to its culmination yesterday - the first ever DevOps conference in Israel, organized together with the brilliant Nati Shalom, Uri Cohen, Ran Tavory, and Avner Algom.

Nati Shalom, summarizes quite nicely everything that went into making DevOps Con possible, but following the actual event itself I would like to just present some of the highlights and takeaways, as I see them.

It apparently is all about the content.

While there were some cynical tweets about how the presenters are from the organizations that sponsored the event - this unlike other events - actually happened the other way around, which just goes to show the real, and genuine desire to contribute to this cultural and organizational change among these organizations.

What I mean by this, is that the content visionaries - Uri, Ran, and Nati - made sure to closely moderate the content and put together a really useful lineup of content that would start with setting the DevOps atmosphere, and then split into tracks that would concentrate on Continuous Delivery and Real Life Case Studies and DevOps Tools. After this was completed, we realized that putting together an event isn’t only a matter of good ideas and great content, you do need funding. So we turned to our speakers, who clearly had a huge passion for DevOps and understood the importance of holding such an event - and nearly each and everyone stepped up to the plate to contribute from a funding perspective as well, to make sure we could actually make this not-for-profit event happen.

So I would like to say a huge thank you again to the sponsors - those who were onstage, and those who contributed to the cause, just for the sake of being a part of something important.

And on this note, I would like to address some of the comments about the size of the rooms. The only people at fault here are the event organizers (and I say this in a good way) - because we just had NO IDEA how much interest there would be in such an event.

If you build it - they will come.

Well, we were blown away by how many people really came and wanted to take part, after we put it together. Being the first such event in Israel, we were wholly unprepared for the widespread interest, and really underestimated the turnout. The sponsors of the venue did everything in their capacity to accommodate the number of participants.

The DevOps Community in Israel is Thriving and Digitized

It was amazing to see how passionate and involved the DevOps community actually is.

From the awesome and funny #devopscon Twitter feed throughout the event

Through the post-event commentary received within the meetup group (just a small snippet below)

The buzz created was inspiring.

DevOps folks love memes (especially the Boromir kind).

We will be posting all of the presentations on the DevOps Con website (you can also find the ones supported on Speaker Deck and SlideShare), as well as the recorded sessions once they’re ready.

Already looking forward to the next event!

Google+ - 500 Million Strong...and Growing

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 08:57:47 -0500

I recently read that Google+, while perceived by many to be a failing enterprise, has actually passed the half a billion user mark.

I’m going to dive into why and how I think they got this right.

1. Google Hangouts. No one can dispute that Google is a great company from a technology perspective. And I think at first the value of this tool wasn’t so apparent, and I will dive in further to other tools like Google Hangout in a post I’m putting together (such as Join.me & others). I believe the ease in which you can start a group conversion - public or private, even ad hoc with screen sharing & even recording - has actually been a real game changer for Google+ & adoption catalyst for many users. It has drawn many people in, and has given Google+ a real fresh value vs. its competitors.

2. Mobile Apps. Google did a phenomenal job of launching both the site & mobile apps simultaneously, which links back to my previous post of mobile apps to support desktop apps. But they didn’t stop there. They worked hard behind the scenes to constantly improve those apps, and I can honestly say that from a UX perspective, my Google+ apps are probably my favorite apps (Android & iPad) today. They’re beautiful & fully featured, and with the caliber of users, I often find myself catching up on news & such via Google+ even over Flipboard (which provides a similar UX to me).

3. Communities, Pages & More. Combining features from other successful social networks, and while this doesn’t demonstrate much originality, it does demonstrate Google’s desire to really provide its users with the maximum. Taking the communities idea from Linkedin, and pages from Facebook, Google+ now enables companies to really leverage Google+ as a viable alternative to other tools.

4. Controlled Sharing. With many social sites these days, there is a real concern about loss of control, and privacy. I think from early on Google+ did a really good job of addressing this issue, especially when it comes to photos, and other sensitive material that it is often times quite difficult to understand how to limit visibility on with other sites. The circles and the quick settings, enable people to feel confident that their posts are being viewed by the people they’d like to have see them.

5. Seamless Integration & Instant Upload. Google+ definitely learned its lesson from the whole Google Buzz debacle. They learned that if people want to use your tool, they will, and you don’t have to shove it down their throat. While leveraging their massive Gmail user base, they unintrusively provide a quick link in the corner, next to the rest of the quick links, for those interested in quick access. Those who aren’t interested, can opt out. Another perk is the instant upload that comes built-in with the mobile app. Not sure if this is just for Android or all mobile devices, but this is probably one of my favorite features. In contrast to DropBox, that provides a similar option, but doesn’t provide you with more space to take advantage of this perk, Google+ doesn’t limit your upload (or hasn’t yet for me at least - so I’m guessing the capacity is pretty large).

I’m happy to see that Google have learned lessons from past mistakes, and are taking the user experience to heart. I think this tool definitely is a plus in their direction following previous flops such as Google Wave and Google Buzz (whose technology they definitely leveraged to make this tool a real success).

Brain Freeze - And Lanyrd of course.

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 21:57:00 -0500

So in my previous post - Bizzabo vs. Sched vs. Wix vs…Plain old Wordpress? - I had a total brain freeze, and completely forgot to mention probably one of my favorite tools in this space, Lanyrd.

It fell off my radar only because I use it for the most part to track events and almost like an event social network, and forgot that this viral factor that they have actually means that they have what others still need to garner - market share.

Virtually every leading event has a profile on Lanyrd, which creates exceptional visibility for your event.

Things you can do with it:

Create an event minisite, with speakers (you can even add their Twitter handles), sessions with dedicated URLs, tracks, link back to a larger site, and even embed your schedule easily. People can track your event via the tags you use, and you can likewise track events in the same manner.

It’s definitely worthwhile to remember Lanyrd as part of an event action plan, it is a great tool for awareness and exposure.

First Any.Do now Whatsapp...a change gonna come?

Sat, 29 Dec 2012 15:11:00 -0500

I used to love Any.Do - seriously, I thought it was a brilliant app, and was close to my heart being Israeli-made.

Same goes for Whatsapp (sans the Israeli made part). I just don’t understand technology companies that don’t recognize their competitive edge in time.

I constantly reached out to Any.Do to tell them - the app is beautiful, and stellar, but really missing a major feature - being able to share folders, making it virtually useless from a sharing perspective. I also told them they seriously need a desktop app.

I feel like there is so much focus on the mobile app these days, that it’s often overlooked that one of the major values of the mobile app is the enabling of desktop apps on the go. And that, for me, is where both Any.Do and Whatsapp failed to deliver - leaving the space wide open to be snatched up by competitors.

Two apps that are now competing for my tasking attention are Astrid and Asana. Both cross-platform for easy sharing with my iPhone carrying spouse (actually Any.Do wasn’t cross-platform till very recently), where you can share entire lists/projects, and can be integrated with your desktop. Astrid is less seamless - as you need to sync with Google Tasks. Asana has had a web app before it even had a mobile app. (And then I was complaining that it’s ridiculous that they don’t have a mobile app).

As for Whatsapp - while it has the reach and market penetration, it too failed to deliver a desktop app quickly enough. One of the only major envies I’ve always had for iOS has been the seamless way the messaging syncs with a desktop app - making it super easy to reply when at work. And Samsung have finally delivered with ChatOn.

While there have been workarounds like MightyText and other such apps for Android - these synced with your SMS (which aren’t free), and your Gmail (also annoying). And with Samsung’s incredible market share - exceeding Nokia and even iPhone - I predict that ChatOn will be a serious game changer in this space.

What’s more, with the Facebook/Whatsapp M&A rumors - this may pose a very attractive alternative for those who really want to get Facebook out of their lives.

Like me.

UPDATE: Any.Do reached out to me on Twitter to let me know that you can create a task & share it, and then all the “notes” you add to the task are then shared too. A little less intuitive - but gets the job done, I suppose. They are working on adding folder sharing functionality though. Now all they need is desktop integration & they’re covered. I decided to change the title of the post as a result.

Gimp vs. Paint.net vs. Photoshop...vs. plain old Microsoft Paint?

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 00:16:00 -0500

At my previous job, where they didn’t want to shell out the big $$$ for Adobe Creative Suite, I had to find myself alternate tools for basic graphic editing - and I came to love Gimp and Paint.net. Since then, and this is something that holds true for virtually the entire suite of Microsoft Live Tools - even Microsoft Paint has undergone quite a metamorphosis.

While I basically never use MS Paint - and often times even prefer to use PowerPoint to create simple images that don’t need to be very high-res - I can say that I’ve seen many people create pretty neat stuff with it. Obviously if I needed to rank the tools, I’d say for super-easy quick editing I’d go to Paint.net. If I need something a little more serious, but not too complex, Gimp, and if I need a fully featured graphic editing tool - Photoshop.

Paint.net - the perks.

It loads superfast, and has all of the basics you’d need to produce a pretty nice picture. No real filters and there are annoying little things like being unable to edit text once you move to a new layer, or having to move an entire layer, and not just the object itself (i.e. the full size of the canvas), after placing the object (and if you accidentally use the wrong selection tool - you’ll slice your image). But for being a freebie open source graphic editor - I can’t complain. It’s easy, it’s UI is clean, and you can export to plenty of formats.

Gimp - the perks.

There are certain things I still do in Gimp over Photoshop. One of my favorites is the stamp effect. It’s just so easy with Gimp, with its built-in brushes and options, I can make a stamp in virtually three steps, which makes me just opt for Gimp first. I also like using Gimp because I really do appreciate all the work that has gone into this stellar open source product - and am always a fan of opting for an open source product when possible.

I like to be sure that when the day comes and Adobe has priced their creative suite at $1M - I’ll have an alternate I’m comfortable with. These days - only because it’s easily accessible I usually opt for Photoshop (and even though I’m still on CS3 - it’s honestly good enough). I can honestly say though, that while we’ve become used to Photoshop (kind of like MS Word we can’t really fathom moving to alternate tools), but open source and free online tools are really giving them a run for their money. I find that that holds true for MS Office too. I have started using Google Docs way more - for the collaboration aspect and the easy cloud syncing, which makes it so convenient.

Other cools tools to check out include Aviary - for quick online editing. And apropos my previous post about MailChimp - they actually enable you to edit photos through an awesome Aviary plugin.

The fine line between enticing and pathetic

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 15:02:00 -0500

A truth I hold to be self-evident - people like getting stuff for free.

Many marketers have used this ploy endless times to entice sales.

No news here.

But I’m always wondering where to draw the line.

While you want to attract people (read: actual leads) into taking part in whatever activity it is you’re trying to promote, I have a real aversion with conditioning people into bad habits.

It’s like poor tech etiquette - once that gets ingrained, it’s really hard to undo.

And it’s become a real phenomenon - giveaways at events just for passing by my booth, iPads and gadgets galore for taking part in my survey, t-shirts and whatnot for any kind of engagement. We’re spoiling our prospects like grandparents on Christmas. I feel like engagements need to revert to the days of merit - on a technology basis. I know this sounds almost childish - like wanting to revert to the days when Facebook wasn’t annoying, or when the world wasn’t overheating, but I feel like there needs to be a new model.

But it’s kind of like industry events in general - everyone’s doing it - so you can’t be the only one not in the game.

If everyone is giving away toys just for the bat of an eyelash in their direction - how can I compete other than giving away stuff too? And then the whole “Keeping up with the Steins” saga of one upmanship begins. It’s over the top - I feel like we’ve crossed that line where enticing has become a pathetic and almost desperate attempt for attention.

So where do we draw the line? And how do we find that one real concrete lead that we want to finesse a little with some kind of classy parting token of appreciation? (Which I don’t really have an issue with - kind of like giving gifts to friends just to say you appreciate them).

I’ve started thinking that the opposite might work these days. Take events for example. You get people passing by booths literally just to take some freebie home. And when it isn’t easily accessible - they may linger a little. Look for it…and to be inconspicuous they may read your collateral, and then maybe…an actual sale based on merit? Who knows.

Just a thought.

Tools I like: MailChimp

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 15:01:00 -0500

MailChimp just gets it. I’ve used other tools in my work - including the obvious Vertical Response, and I just can’t get over how much more user friendly MailChimp is, and on top of that - what a great sense of humor the company has.

Not only can you use Mailchimp for free if you have a small database, you can DOWNGRADE after you’ve gone premium - if you picked a bigger banana than you can stomach. (Yeah yeah - their banana references are funnier).

What’s more, their user tracking and analytics are by far superior to other tools, like Vertical Response. They also have an abundance of AWESOME templates to choose from, you can easily embed their forms on your websites, and much more.

Oh, and stuff to look forward to - if you’re a loyal customer - you might just get yourself a BANGIN’ t-shirt. (I love me a free t-shirt!)

http://mailchimp.com/

The Twitter Case Study: How to monetize intelligently

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 15:01:00 -0500

I remember a couple of years back how everyone was certain that Facebook had an ingenious business plan and secure future from a monetization standpoint, and were constantly saying things like “Twitter is great, but what’s their end game? They really have no way of monetizing”.

At the time, knowing that Twitter had a stellar lineup of great minds running the show - I told people to bide their time, I had faith in them, and I wasn’t disappointed when their business plan unraveled.

Twitter stayed pretty true to its product, eventually garnering a much more mature and larger usership within the higher socio-economic classes - where approximately 30% of Twitter users earn more than $100,000 salaries. The largest age groups on Facebook are 13-17 year olds and over 55s.

I can also say, just from my personal experience (and I know this is hardly concrete statistical data), but I’ve found that many of my friends who are people in the most valuable target group are daily leaving Facebook, due to its constant changes and noise.

This positions Twitter much better to take advantage of its userbase for monetization purposes. And in order not to squander this hard-earned trust, it looks like Twitter has really taken the time to research, and work out an exceptionally intelligent monetization system that is both unintrusive and provides real value for money, instead of just putting together patchwork and annoying ad-based monetization schemes like other social networks.

Leveraging brilliant in-house engineering they built a system called Storm to analyze large data sets, and extract real valuable information about their userbase.

What they found is that by analyzing a user’s tweets, people followed, and their own followership, they could put together an algorithm that enabled them to really target their promotional products.

The great part about this - is that you know that your paid promotions are going to relevant audiences, and even better, in order to ensure the value for money it’s also based on a CPE or CPC approach, so you know what you’re paying for. What’s more - because followership is only suggested to those who are in your target space, and promoted tweets are only shown to relevant users - online tools that measure “real” followership like statuspeople.com - show virtually no faker scores, because these are users who, had they known about you before, would likely have followed you.

They initially rolled this out exclusively to enterprises with a pretty hefty price tag of $5000/month (which they were quick to sell out on - it was so coveted), but their products are now publicly available for SMBs too.

Check it out at: http://ads.twitter.com

Just a quick note and thought about ROI from social media

While there is not enough information yet regarding the actual ROI in general from social media promotion (and I can say that from my experience the same goes for many traditional outbound marketing activities - from industry events through print and ads many times) - I think the big factor here, is that you need to be there, because sometimes you can’t afford NOT to be there. Social media - like the other outbound marketing activities mentioned, in my opinion, currently primarily serves the purpose of increasing awareness & exposure, as well as helps contribute to professional positioning, and for the most part just being in a person’s psyche for some future point in which they may reach out to you for a sales engagement - or providing an additional communication channel. I think it’s a bit harder to measure the direct ROI, but that said, I do believe it is a necessity not a luxury to be there (even if it’s just qualitative value).

Tools I like: Bambuser

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 09:49:00 -0500

I have the opportunity to play around with lots of tools as part of my very diverse marketing job, and feel the need to give props to those who provide you with something really useful for nothing. It’s the least I can give back. One tool I’ve been using quite often for the purpose of streaming meetups and events has been Bambuser. I’ve tried other similar tools like Justin.tv and such - but keep coming back to Bambuser - since it’s so easy to use, and is cross-platform.

Bambuser enables you to quickly and easily stream video from a PC or mobile phone, and even embed your dedicated player in any site. The reason I love this app so much is that there is no hassle, and it’s so easy to regroup - which makes you able to depend on it. I recently wanted to stream an event from my laptop using Bambuser, and was having trouble with my laptop recognizing my webcam - so I quickly regrouped opened my Android app - and was broadcasting within seconds.

Some caveats when broadcasting a serious event from your mobile:

1) Find a way to be close enough (otherwise the sound won’t be great…this is actually true for a webcam too - unless you use a dedicated mic).

2) Make sure to have a way to have the phone stand independently or your arm will be quite sore by the end.

3) Remove your SIM card, so you don’t have any glitches due to phone calls and SMS’ in the middle. (Only if you are broadcasting via Wifi - if not - please note this takes a lot of data, so only if you have an unlimited plan, consider doing this). Visit their website to check out all the features - including setting up events in advance and more. And the best part - it’s free. http://bambuser.com/

Making your digital footprint your own

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 11:11:40 -0500

As a person who works in tech, I find it’s often hard to draw the line between what you do on the job and your public digital persona. You take it for granted that if you have a digital footprint for your professional endeavors - that will translate over to your personal digital footprint. Not so. I decided to revive this blog, just for that reason. I found that all my personal wealth of experience and execution were being swallowed up in my company’s digital footprint, and decided that needed to be remedied.

Some suggestions to help make this happen:

1) Blog/[INSERT PREFERRED DIGITAL ACTIVITY HERE] for your own sake. I know this sounds pretty silly and obvious - but we get so sucked up in our work, that at the end of the day we sacrifice our own causes because we’re tired, or just can’t fathom doing more of that today. So take the power back - even if you blog, promote social media, or do any other online activity on the job - remember to invest in yourself too.

2) This is a two-part suggestion. A) Separate ‘em out + B) Own your name. Don’t ever assume that anyone has any idea that you are the face behind your company’s profile. Make sure to have your own digital profile - and here is where the second part comes in - that can easily be associated with you. While fluffydog417 is an adorable Twitter handle it doesn’t do you any justice from a digital footprint perspective, be proud of your name and own it - and state professional and personal convictions with pride. I learned this the hard way. It took me a very long time - and I’m still learning mind you - one example, of this is how long it took me to separate my company and personal Tumblr. You’ll notice that I have only recently been posting on my company’s Tumblr blog in my own name. Your work is yours to own - that’s why you’re paid for it - make sure the world knows to attribute it to you as well. If you need to blog on the job in a white label approach - make sure to maintain a digital portfolio of your work. It’s yours.

3) Don’t be afraid to have your own opinions. Once you’re speaking in your own name you’re allowed to be yourself. You don’t need to hide behind some corporate agenda that you may not be completely onboard with. That doesn’t mean trash your company publicly or publicly support their competitors, but you can have a completely objective opinion and take on things, and promote them in your own name. If you’re a staunch supporter of animal rights & worked for BP during their oil spill crisis - you can indeed continue to promote your cause if you believe in it. You’re a person too.

4) Moderation. While we all like to support and promote our companies - considering that’s basically what we’re measured on - don’t let this come at the expense of alienating your own followership. If there’s a perfect match between what your company does - and your own personal interests - that’s a major win. But for most of us, while we may enjoy what we do and even take pride in our company’s technology - we have other interests too, and our following is basically built on that trust - that your content will be based on the personal interests you flout. So even if you’d like to retweet work stuff - don’t do it so excessively that the people who follow you for other reasons will no longer want to do so.

5) Engage. While I know that most people just want to be heard - nobody likes people that just talk at you, social media formats these days are there to actually create a conversation. I have learned and grown immensely from some of the online relationships I’ve cultivated. Leverage these - you’ll never know what you may discover - and how it may serve you going forward.

I’ve found that not enough people these days - and I’ve been 100% guilty of this as well - have learned to exhibit their skills publicly. With head hunters using your digital profile to establish who you are - without even meeting you - you need to be sure to be happy with how you’re represented, or surprisingly NOT represented digitally.

Companies I Envy: SodaStream

Thu, 22 Nov 2012 02:03:00 -0500

Working for a company that is an underdog with superior technology - I can’t help but really respect a company that took on a giant, and succeeded, something I’m constantly trying to do.

While I can say that doing this with a consumer product is easier than complex technology (I’ve got to add some Jewish disdain -it’s almost illegal to just hand out compliments with no strings attached) - I just love me smart marketing that knows how to communicate a competitive edge, and is easily digestible. (I say this - not only because I’m familiar with people on the SodaStream marketing team).

So, yes - I would like to to publicly give massive props to the SodaStream marketing team for their brilliant “Cage Challenge” campaign that managed to even get under Coca Cola’s skin. I love the green angle they took, and the hot new media formats they went viral with.

Check out their Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/TheCageChallenge

Bizzabo vs. Sched vs. Wix vs...Plain old Wordpress?

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 15:01:00 -0500

Lately I’ve been facing the challenge of choosing the right tool for the job of putting together quick and dirty websites for events.

And every day I discover new and exciting tools, meant to make our lives easier.

I’ve had the opportunity to play around with quite a few tools lately, and wanted to share my experiences.

First and foremost - it depends who your audience is, and what you’re looking for out of your site. The tools I looked at (this, of course, doesn’t mean there aren’t others):

♠ Amiando
♠ Eventbrite
♠ Wix
♠ Sched
♠ Bizzabo
♠ Wordpress
♠ Meetup
♠ Github pages

Let’s start with…(in no particular order):

Amiando

Amiando enables you to build a simple website with a few tabs, is pretty customizable, and leverages social media nicely. The perk with Amiando is the registration. Like Eventbrite, it enables you to provide paid registration, in numerous currencies, with the added bonus of actually managing the bookkeeping side of this. Caveat - again, like Eventbrite, and even eBay - this comes at a price. You will pay for a percentage from each registration plus a nominal fee to Amiando.

When to use it: If you’d like to charge for your event, don’t have the capacity in-house to actually deal with the administrative overhead of doing so, this is the tool for you, and if you only need a pretty simple template of a site to go with this.

Eventbrite

Eventbrite provides similar capabilities to Amiando, however is a bit more limited:

1) You can’t really build a website, more just an event registration page.

2) You can charge for your event in different currencies, however I am not certain they will deal with the backoffice of the event (I may not be familiar with this feature though - so please take with a grain of salt).

When to use it: If you’d like an easy registration backend for your event, don’t need a big site for this, and would like to embed it in another larger site - such as a Wordpress site. There are easy plugins and it has a larger audience than Amiando, and like Meetup they actually do a good job of helping you promote your events too.

Wix

I love Wix. I think the concept and execution are brilliant (I have a similar love for MailChimp). They have numerous templates to choose from, and the site editing is so simple, it really is a pleasure to work with. You can control a nice amount of the look and feel to be able to achieve something pretty original - the layout will be the same though.

When to use it: When you’d like to put up a website superfast - don’t mind that the site is fairly templatey, and you can use an external site for registration (i.e. Eventbrite or Meetup), since it doesn’t support plugins - just linking out. You can also add premium features and have a regular domain - and not just the Wix-hosted domain, which is nice.

Sched

I think Sched’s concept is great - unfortunately, it’s quite pricey for what it provides. While the UI is beautiful, and the way they leverage mobile, the community and social media is nice - I’m not sure there’s real value for money here. Sched and Bizzabo alike are very dev-oriented event sites, meant for people who like few frills. You can basically create a color-coded event agenda, add the speakers, and embed the code as is (it’s very limited in customizability for how to embed) in an existing website. Also note: you can’t link out for registration, everything is within the site - like Meetup.

When to use the site: When you’re targeting a developer community that really just want the basic info and to plan their event accordingly - agenda, tracks, speakers (part of the schtick is being able to share the agenda you’ve planned with friends and such). In order to launch the site and embed it - it’ll cost you ~$200. Sched provides a bit more customizability than Bizzabo - but I’m not sure these added features are worth the price tag.

Bizzabo

Bizzabo and Sched are built on a similar concept of providing just the core details about an event and very easily plugging into social media. Bizzabo does this even better, where it literally provides you with everything you need for your digital promotion - countdown tweets for 4, 3, 2, 1 weeks before, a QR code to embed, badges to use and more. Where Sched makes the speaker list very accessible and use this as a major part of what markets the event - this is not as readily available in Bizzabo. While you can add speakers to sessions and tracks, you can only really see them when you click on the session. You can link out to an external website for registration, which Sched does not provide. Bizzabo does not enable you to embed your mini-site though, and is looking to build their own community (which will take time -it’s not Meetup yet), limiting your audience.

When to use it: When you want a very simple straightforward site that provides the basic information about your event, with built in mobile and social media support, and if you aren’t looking to break the bank. This one’s basically completely free (unless you want to add some of the premium features), but you aren’t required to to launch the site, or use the basic package.

Good Ol’ Wordpress

Since Wordpress has such a thriving OS community and millions of users, it’s just so simple to use and figure out, and you can literally put up an completely original, and fully customizable site in hours - and at virtually no cost. We bought a canned theme for $45, which has so many customizations, that you can very easily make it your own. You can also control the CSS and backend, so you can really change it up as much as you want. You also have such a strong support system, that you can pretty much figure out how to tweak anything. This of course, is all regarding hosted Wordpress, and not their online SaaS version - you don’t have as much leeway there at all.

When to use it: Wordpress is a good idea if you’re looking to put up a really unique site, easily, that’s cost effective, and that needs more complex functionality than a simple SaaS site. Wordpress has such a strong ecosystem that you can find a plugin for virtually any third-party app you’d like to use with it - and with just a bit of research, you can do almost anything.

These last two are a bit different than the rest of the options, and I’m only presenting them, as alternate out-of-the-box options, but they require a bit more effort.

Meetup.com

I cannot stress this enough - only start a meetup group if you have the capacity and bandwidth to manage this group for the long-term. Otherwise - for a one-off engagement, I’d suggest you propose a topic for an existing meetup group that is in your area of interest, and leverage their existing membership, and avoid the hassle of needing to manage a group for the long-term.

Meetup is the ultimate social network for the planning of informal face-to-face events. This is in their terms and conditions, you literally have to commit to having face to face events - virtual events are not the idea. Since Meetup has a very large audience the perk here, is that they pretty much do all the hard work of promoting your event and meetup group for you. That said, it doesn’t mean you don’t have to promote your event at all - but they will help you spread the word quite nicely.

In terms of planning an event, it’s a very simple UI, and the event receives only one page where you enter the name of the event, the location, and provide an abstract - which can include a speaker bio or something of the sort. It’s not intended for a large scale event, with a complicated agenda and numerous speakers - although, I will say I have seen groups that do all of this in one simple WYSIWYG page.

When to use it: If you are looking to create a group for the long-term with numerous events, and would like to leverage an existing large network to spread the word - this is the platform for you. You can also integrate your social networks, and create a dedicated Twitter handle to update about your events - which can be included in the group’s profile. This is probably the best site for professional informal enrichment events.

GitHub Pages

GitHub Pages are a fairly new concept that enable you to create pages in static HTML and host them free of charge. If you know HTML/CSS well - and would like to have the ultimate flexibility and customizability - without the hassle of a heavy CMS platform, hosting and such - this is an awesome tool. What’s more it has lots of great tools you can leverage like Jekyll and Textile for simple markup language.

Bear in mind that since this will be hosted in GitHub, after you create the site - anyone can fork and copy your code (unless it’s a private repo - which I think defeats the whole GitHub purpose though) - so this is only if you’re looking to collaborate and be part of a Git community.

When to use it: If you have the HTML and design skills to put something quick and dirty together. You can even go so far as to build an entire site (our community site is built with GitHub Pages), since you can have libraries, and a CSS and everything you need for a full fledged site. There’s no backend, so you would need some kind of third-party integration for registration, but you can easily embed whatever you like, as long as it has an API. This is also a very dev-friendly format - so if that’s your target audience, this may be the way to go for you. What’s great is that like any dev project - you have a history of commits, can track changes, and can always roll back to the previous versions.

Tools I like: IFTTT

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 00:30:00 -0500

IFTTT has literally changed my life. I can’t believe that I initially couldn’t gauge the value in it - when my spouse (an early adopter of all things tech - or at least early “knowerabout” all things tech) came to me in his excitement to show me this amazing new tool.

Then I had the epiphany. The reason I initially couldn’t gauge the value in it - was because I was looking from a personal perspective, not a professional one.

IFTTT is my marketing dream tool.

While I hate the spammers who just multi-post the exact same tweet/share on every social network without targeting the message - IFTTT helps you do this a lot more gracefully. While I do use Hootsuite for sharing across websites like Twitter/Google+/Facebook/Linkedin for specific updates - I use IFTTT for more intelligent engagement - and to MOBILIZE my in-house cadre of social networkers.

I can send an RSS feed from a Stack Overflow tag to our tech team to make sure they respond (via Yammer or even email), I can choose the specific parameters of posts to share on which sites (so my cloud tagged blog posts go one place, and my scaling posts go to another), and bunch of other brilliant recipes with infinite capabilities.

One thing I’d like to note is Twitter’s raining on the parade. I don’t know what’s happened to Twitter lately, but they’ve become real party poopers. The fact that IFTTT can no longer use Twitter, is really sad and even pathetic on Twitter’s part. No one is impressed with a bully. Twitter - don’t forget you were a fledgling start-up once too. (Quick tip - use Hootsuite as a workaround for Twitter posts).

Caveats:

1) Make sure to intelligently choose your recipes so you don’t wind up double posting. (There will be some trial and error here).

2) I made the mistake of creating a recipe for a tag that literally spammed my inbox - so be careful with these too. You want the tool to be useful, not burdensome.

3) For now - you can’t connect multiple channels that are the same to the same account - i.e. a work YouTube and personal YouTube with the same username. It’s one channel per account. Hopefully they’ll change this soon.

Other than that - yet another freebie that will change your life.

For all the Apple fan-people of the world, who claim Apple...

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 16:15:58 -0500

For all the Apple fan-people of the world, who claim Apple flawlessness - this one’s for you.

Rooting/Unrooting - Put to the test

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 03:44:06 -0500

Since I can’t manage to get myself together enough to finish my marketing-related post, I’ll go with the easier Android post I’ve had in the works.

I never really understood why all the Apple fan-people of the world use words like flashing and modding like they’re expletives -when to me they’re synonymous with freedom.

So on the note of rooting and unrooting [this isn’t going to be some kind of a flashing guide for noobs - so fear not]…I just wanted to say that contrary to popular perception - one doesn’t NEED to do this for their “phone to work”, they do it for the fun of it, and the customizability of it - and it EFFING WORKS.

I recently fell flat on my face, quite gracefully mind you, with my rooted CM10 modded Galaxy SII in hand, and for the first time - had to send my phone in to be serviced with my mobile provider, due to a shattered speaker. Unfortunately no modding in the world can fix hardware.

I have to say the experience of unrooting and reflashing the stock ROM was so seamless and easy, I fell in love with Android yet again. What’s more - since I did a nandroid backup and a Titanium backup - it took me all of 15 minutes of config to get my phone back to its configuration from two days ago. I sent the phone to get fixed and got it back - no questions asked, and no warranty issues encountered.

I’m not some kind of tech wiz. My tech understanding comes down to basically being able to read - and knowing which forums to trust (yes XDA), and it was a no brainer.

So noobs of the world - do try rooting and unrooting at home, it’s virtually noob-proof. Just DO follow directions.