Making Lemonade

I have been on vacation and, um, not exactly blogging. You might call this a “transition” blog post… a way to get my mind from sun and chill … back onto work.

One place we stayed on our trip was a youth hostel in Lisbon– a funky (the good funky) spot that felt a bit more like a boutique hotel than a youth hostel. I have not been in a youth hostel in a loooong time. My wife pointed out it was a “look into the past for the parents and a look into the future for the kids”.

Anyway… the hostel is very tall.. and no elevator. And we were on the very tippy top floor. LOTS of steep stairs.

Instead of apologizing for this, the hostel turned it into a positive … using fun words to keep you going and feeling welcome.  For example:

calories per stair

encouraging

top floor (BTW, 1 Euro beers are a real positive too!)

The tallness is part of their identity … they seem to love it and make guests love it too.  The hostel, if you’re interested, is Good Night Hostel.

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Digital Threat #4: Shooting Yourself in the Foot

I gave a talk (link in Spanish) in Barcelona the other day in which one of my slides contained the following graphic.

My point was that while the digital era is bursting with opportunities (a number of which I outlined and which I will post here in video form once I get the files back), it’s also filled with THREATS. And that it’s quite possible to get f–ked by digital technology. I outlined three threats:

Threat #1:  There are so many more messages being put in front of customers now—and this is greatly accelerated by digital… so it’s just tougher, by the numbers, to be noticed.

Threat #2: Customers can get hold of a range of “tune-out” technologies so that they never even see your message.

Threat #3: Your competitors might well be getting savvy at leveraging digital to connect with customers … and as they get smarter and smarter at it, well you know where that leaves you

I just recently came across what you might call Threat #4: being kinda lame!

I’ve been loving the creative and competitive energy in the Mac vs. PC wars. Microsoft is really going for it with their strong Laptop Hunters campaign in which they ping Apple on price.

But here’s what I saw the other day when I tried to watch one of Microsoft’s ads online. Click the image for actual-size frustration.

I have a bit of sympathy for Microsoft. They have many competing goals … a number of which play out in this screenshot. One group wants you to buy PCs which means you buy more Microsoft Windows. Yet another group wants you to install their Silverlight software … so you must install it to see the ad. Then you have some third group that decides to conduct a survey on the site with another popup window!

The resultant experience is in NO WAY more than a sum of its parts.

Here are a couple of the videos in the Mac vs PC wars… you decide for yourself whether it’s worth the effort to watch the Microsoft ad: Lauren (Microsoft) vs. Megan (Apple).

BTW, some believe Microsoft shouldn’t be engaging Apple in this game at all. That they should stick to their software.

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The Quiet Conference… Less Content, MUCH More Communication

I just had a very interesting and valuable  four days on what is known as the “quiet” Balearic island of Menorca. It’s quiet compared Mallorca and Ibiza.

The conference is Menorca TechTalk and is hosted by tech entrepreneur Martin Varsavsky. He gathered a number of really smart, successful entrepreneurs and investors (and young and upcoming startuppers) from around Europe, Latin America (he’s originally from Buenos Aires and is now based in Madrid), Asia, the States.

techtalking

I prefer to network one-on-one… visit people at their offices, go to breakfast, take walks with people. I guess you could say I like the quiet approach. And that is why I liked this quiet conference. The ratio of organized content to total time was an astonishing 3 content hours to 48 total (waking) hours (with waking hours varying by person). Most people were in attendance for four days).

Slow and quiet is good for communicating. I really enjoyed experiencing the interactions and connections with people unfold over four days. I learned a lot. I was able to help people as well. Different small groups and interactions formed, then broke apart. Informal demos were given, ideas and advice explored…

My gut is that the relationships I made (or reinforced)  in Menorca will have a different quality to them more quickly than others made at louder, more content-heavy conferences. And the information I gathered and was able to impart was better too.

Quiet is good for relationships and information.

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Ideas Worth Spreading — to 4.5B More People

The smart people who put on the TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference — but who actually are also becoming a very interesting digital media brand —  announced something interesting today. It is now possible to either translate yourself or view translations of any of the many interesting videos (AKA “Ted Talks”) at TED.com. The idea: make the talks useful to the 4.5 billion or so people who don’t speak English. To quote head-TED Chris Anderson:

The TED Open Translation Project will enable thousands of volunteer translators to use subtitles to make TED available to their own communities. To do this the right way has taken a year of preparation. But now we’re ready.

The site is filling up with  what they call “interactive transcripts”. They allow you to click on any word in English or a translated language — and actually make the video of the given talk play from that word on.

This is all very good for making the site and videos people-friendly to many more people. But it’s also very good for TED.com’s search engine friendliness… talks are searchable and findable, increasing the site’s profile on Google and other engines.

BTW, here, per TED, are the languages with the most talks translated in them, as of this posting.

Source: TED.com

Smart. Or, if you like, inteligente, интелигентен, 智能, חָכָם, لبيب, วิทูร

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What Does a Tray Say?

Trays. Photo credit Pathfinder Linden via Creative Commons/Flickr

I was struck by this hook on the front page of nytimes.com today:

Schools are shelving the once-ubiquitous trays in the hopes of conserving water, cutting food waste, softening the ambience and saving money.

Everything communicates. Clearly trays say a lot — like “pile on more than you really need” and they also say “this is a cafeteria vs. perhaps some place a little more elegant”.

Here’s the article by Lisa Foderaro.

BTW.. while searching for a photo to illustrate this post I found some trays that literally say something.

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Hey, That’s Not Me

Here’s a nice example of a website doing something different to achieve their goals. Mixx is a news/info/photo/link  sharing site. Like most sites they know they will get better results if people SEE THEMSELVES in the site and if their friends and colleagues see them too.People are more likely to use the site, link to and from the site etc.. 

Most websites today that ask one to register and upload a photo are pretty humdrum in their appeal. They have a generic photo if you don’t upload your own, they might have a little bar telling you what percentage of your profile you’ve filled out, etc.

Mixx is mixing it up. Here’s how they’re gently encouraging me to fill out my profile. A smart underdog move.

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Editing Engineers

I had a frustrating meeting the other day with a very engineery startup. They are making some of the coolest stuff I have seen in a while. I just couldn’t convince them they need an editor to help make their technology more understandable… accessible… market-friendly.

I won’t say who they were… but I do run into this a lot. The way many companies describe themselves makes it really tough to go from seeing how cool their stuff is to figuring out what problems it will solve. Mostly because the examples they give are so incredibly technical and theoretical. Editing the examples will make a huge difference.

Sometimes it reminds me of my first job after college. I was a reporter for a community newspaper. I had an actual editor who taught me a lot. But perhaps my most important editor was the guy who ran IT. He was transitioning several newsrooms from an ancient publishing system to a new one using PCs and standard desktop publishing software. Because I had worked during college in the desktop publishing department at a Copymat (helping people format their resumes etc.) the IT head recruited me to help sell his new system internally. He asked me to create examples of the graphics that were possible with the software for a presentation he was to give to the board of directors. I excitedly created a slew of squiggly lines and shapes and patterns. No go. The IT head said “nice squiggly lines, but this will have no relevance to the board.. we need to show clear examples of how the technology can save the company money, make the company more nimble and efficient…” I was geeking out.

The IT guy (an engineer, BTW) was editing me.

One ironic thing about my recent frustrating meeting is that the CEO is a huge (gushing!) Apple fan. A fan of their technology.  He seems to miss that they are a great company ALSO because they are brilliant communicators.  Look at the picture of the Mac at the top of this post. An engineering-only company might have written what engineers are trained to write when they create a new program: “hello world”

Somebody edited the engineer.

Removing one word made the computer friendly, human, approachable.

BTW… here’s another post about how important one word can be. It also happens to be about Apple. And if you’re into the idea of editing, here are a couple more posts: Where Blood Tasted of Blood and Honey of Honey and Less is More.

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What Attention Looks Like

Here are some kids who have attention SURPLUS. Are you up for the job of being as compelling as what they’re engaged in. Here’s the video from the NYTimes.

pay attention

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