Year: 2005

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Liveblogging Logan: Boston March Blizzard

9:40pm Boston just got smacked with another blizzard. MassPort has closed the airport “indefinitely;” it may open sometime after 3:00am EST. Inbound international flights being diverted to Montreal and points beyond.

9:42pm Pleas coming over the intercom now: “Anybody in the boarding area speak Greek? Any Greek? A little Greek?” No takers.

10:32pm JetBlue has pulled the snack carts off the planes into the lounge area. They’ve been ravaged. Ditto the pillows and blankets. Does not bode well.

1:08am Weds In line at the ticket counter with several dozen new friends. Next flight out is Thursday, unless Our Lady of the Standby comes through. Commencing vigorous tithing.

*nods off. inexplicably, dreams of bacon. *

4:51am JetBlue ticket counter opens.

5:23am Put on standby for today’s flights. Tithing continues. I’m #5 on the standby list. There appears to be a couple of dozen other folks who are also trying to get on the list.

8:20am The flight boards. They only clear the first four standbys. Crap. Looks like another day here doing the Tom Hanks thing.

8:23am Sweeeeeet! They did a physical check of the flight, and there’s one seat open. Thanking graces, etc. Hopefully the other folks will get on the evening flight.

12:15pm PST IFR touchdown at Oakland.

Overall, have to give the JetBlue gate folks pretty solid marks for dealing with a great many number of rude, tired, short-tempered customers (demands to have JetBlue materialize a $50MM plane in the middle of a snowstorm, etc.). The place where they fell down a little was on the communications aspects of the evolving situation. At one point in the evening, we were assured that since the inbound plane had arrived, everyone waiting at the gate would be able to get out when the airport opened, since “the plane is here and ready.” However, when the flight was cancelled around midnight (how can it be cancelled…the plane is right there?), it was not communicated as clearly as possible that an entire new set of rules were in place,requiring a completely different set of actions other than “just wait” which was the M.O. of the first couple of hours of the saga. Suggestion for them would be to have in place a FAQ, or decision tree, or the like clearly stating the different things that need to be done in each situation.

Glad to be home. Feeling for the folks who are still stuck, some apparently until Friday.

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Timeshifting, Placeshifting Everything

Speed: 533mph
Altitude: 34313ft
Out the window: Valentine, South Dakota

You can take it with you.

Sounds: Brian Ibbott’s Coverville is on the headphones. (I had no idea that R.E.M.’s “Superman” was a cover tune…this version, the original, is much trippier than R.E.M.’s version. I like it.)

Reading: A couple of weeks ago, I moved all my subscriptions to Bloglines, and I love the access to everything regardless of what machine I’m using. Last week I installed Feeddemon on my laptop, and the automatic offline synching with Bloglines seems to work like a charm. Had the laptop synch feeds before running out the door. Perfect.

Related: A plea for full RSS feeds. Jay, yours is one of the blogs that requires undivided time to digest. Any chance of seeing the full feeds up via RSS, not just an excerpt? When do I have undivided time? On the airplane! When am I not connected to the network and unable to click through to read the full post? You guessed it…

Email on the fly: (Elisa, I got your note, by the way…a considered response is under construction.) About the same time I moved all my feeds over the Bloglines, I started routing email through Gmail (thanks again, Neville). It’s a great service, and I just figured out a way to make it one better.

Having just picked up an email-enabled phone (one of the Sprint PCS ones), I tried to get POP working with Gmail from the phone. No dice. However, the native Sprint email works great on the phone. Easy fix…when heading out for a couple of days, have Gmail forward copies of the email to the phone. Again, piece of cake. Since the phone is using Sprint’s tuned / designed email app, everything looks great on the device, easy to read, etc. (This is definitely not the device of choice for replying to emails, obviously, but having a quick way to know what’s going on, regardless of location, is outstanding.) When I get back home, two more clicks within Gmail turns off the forwarding.

The unifying meme: The “systems of record” are somewhere in the cloud. That’s where “everything” lives, be it a podcast, or a feed, or an email message. A killer app for mobility, and more importantly, for focus, is being able to chisel off just the parts you need and take them with you.

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Boston Beverages

Heading to Boston tomorrow for client meetings for a couple of days…time for a get-together!

When: Monday evening, 7Mar2005
Where: Boston Beer Works on Brookline Avenue (across from Fenway)
When: 8:30
Details: Location details

Who’ll be there: Chris Selland, Michael Sikillian, myself, a host of others, and you, hopefully. Email me if you need more details…ccarfi (at) cerado (dot) com

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More Customer Remixes

Jeff Jarvis with another great example of a customer remix:

“The ultimate consumers are the ones who design your products for you — so you know they will like it and buy it. In this new world, consumers will also market for you and handle customer service for you but the ultimate is when they go to the effort to tell you exactly what they want in the hopes you will give it to them, if you’re listening.”

Yes.

De rigeur, Doc jumps into the fray in the comments with his thoughts on the “c-word” (that’d be “consumers”):

“Why not ‘customer’ instead of ‘consumer?’

The problem for most manufacturers is that they still think of their customers as consumers, which Jerry Michalski defines as ‘gullets who live only to gulp products and crap cash.’

When customers had no choice but to behave as consumers, the difference between the two was academic. Now that customers can contribute real ideas to manufacturers, and not just cash for sales, the difference is much larger, and more important.”

Again, yes.

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Bloglines Adds New Functionality

Just noticing in my Bloglines feeds that each post now has a link to the trackbacks and comments associated with it. Cool…another good way to identify the “hotspots” of conversation that are taking place. These links jump outside of Bloglines to the places where the conversation is actually occuring on the source blogs.

Now, there are some folks who have had issues with Bloglines aggregation. The idea that an aggregator could do a comprehensive pull of an entire feed’s contents, and then repurpose that content (say, by potentially wrapping advertising around it) is an interesting issue. This discussion may get even thornier down the line if Bloglines decides to not only provide links to the comments and trackbacks, but spider them and pull them into their own environment as well. Stay tuned on this one.

Update:

It looks like this is actually a function of the Brandshift RSS feed, and not Bloglines. Still very cool.

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WSJ: “Blogs Keep Internet Customers Coming Back”

Nice article in the Wall Street Journal (and at least as of today it’s still not behind a pay wall). The salient quotes:

“…blogs with character are seen as more effective than some more traditional online-marketing strategies, such as static, brochurelike Web sites and electronic newsletters that may get blocked by spam filters.”

“Another strategy company blogs use is to engage in direct dialogue with customers by using a ‘comments’ feature that allows visitors to post remarks. While some companies post comments selectively or edit them first — typically to avoid embarrassment or having to write many responses — others let it all hang out.”

“If you slip into PR lingo, you will lose your visitors. They will know it’s not really you.”

“Blogging is one of a wide range of ways that we can connect with people [and] strengthen what I call our handshake with the consumer.”

and the kicker:

“Communication through a blog is ‘as intimate and personal as somebody sitting in your kitchen. It’s a great privilege to be able to have that kind of dialogue.'”

Good piece.

(hat tips: NevOn, Elisa, Scoble)

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Paternalistic Relations

ZDNet’s David Berlind gives some well-deserved credit to Scalix founder Julie Hanna Farris for her willingness to engage in “public conversation that includes all of her constituents (the press, potential customers, casual onlookers, and even competitors).” I’m in agreement with Berlind on this.

He goes on to say:

“Public relations personnel cringe at the idea of executives diving into the blogosphere and mixing it up with the press and end users. Maybe that’s because of how the blogosphere prevents them from interceding when an executive is about to say something that shouldn’t be said. Personally, I think it makes both the executives and the company seem more open and approachable. When a vendor executive lays it on the line like that, he or she knows that the blogosphere is probably going to respond with brutal honesty. Just that sort of open invitation says something about a person’s belief in what they are saying and willingess to engage–unfortunately, it’s a rarity in our business.” (emphasis his)

Right on.

And then, Berlind’s first sentence in the pull quote seems especially prescient after reading the followup from Steve, who writes

“Let your executives have fun if they want to, ok? But guide them on what works/doesn’t. That’s our role as PR professionals.”

Whoa. Did I misread that? Please tell me I misread that. Steve…”have fun?” As if this is some kind of game? If one was a cynic, one could interpret that as a wink and a nudge…”we’ll let those dotty executives go and play in the blog-box, but we’ll be there to hold their hands in case they get off-message and, heaven forbid, communicate what’s actually on their minds.”

:soapbox:

It’s not about the veneer.

It’s not about a sanitized, perfectly-crafted, and ultimately synthetic message.

It’s about reality, warts and all.

It’s about real people, interacting with other real people.

:soapbox:

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An Oscars / Customer Support Call Mashup

Charles Cooper, Executive Editor, CNET News.com spends two hours on hold with Symantec, and then is asked to pay for the call (and pay a price more than the original cost of the Norton Antivirus 2005 software). My favorite bit:

5:08 How long does it take to answer a telephone? If Clint wins best director, that would make my day.

5:12 Bored beyond belief. Starting to impersonate the Numa Numa guy. My two cats keep their distance.

5:15 How many miles does a phone connection span from San Francisco to India? Mind wandering. I’m picking Hilary Swank for best actress, but Annette Bening was pretty damn great in “Being Julia…

Read the whole thing.

This is the third time in a week someone has posted their experience on a call like this. Instant business plan, for the taking:

1) Set up a call center to call customer support lines on behalf of customers
2) Each person in the call center can be on hold with multiple vendors
3) The call center reps timestamp / document / record the time they’ve been on hold
4) When a live customer support person answers the call, the call center rep connects them with the “actual” end customer
5) The actual end customer has access to the notes made in (3), and further documents the rest of the call
6) There’s something very post-modern about this
7) The revenue model? Competitors can put their ads next to the transcripts of the calls.

(via TechDirt)

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An Attempt To Demystify Podcasting (A Work In Progress)

Ok, I’m going to blaspheme here. For those with “delicate sensibilities,” cover your ears (or monitors, or whatever).

Here goes…podcasting is just a technology.

There, I said it.

The myth-hype-buzz around it has been dizzying. (And more buzz buzz buzz, and those are just from today.) Yes, I’m just as hooked as the next person. And I’m almost through my back-queue of DSCs and Covervilles and Hobson and Holtzs after being off the grid last week. But, like blogging, or wifi, or databases, or the inclined plane, it’s what the end-user does with it that matters.

A while back, there was a sketch put together of the different types of business blogs, from Fredrik, with further commentary here.

The “internal vs. external” distinction is going to be important in podcasting (especially business podcasting). What’s missing from the picture above is a podcast-relevant nod to the “consumer vs. business” implications of how the technology can be used.

Most of the podcasting uses that have gotten all the buzz so far have been the consumer-oriented ones. Here’s where we “kill radio,” etc. Why do people listen to podcasts? For the same reason they listen to radio today:

  • Humor
  • Entertainment
  • Information
  • Community

The great thing about the consumer-facing aspect of podcasting is that, due to its very nature, it’s outside the reach of these jokers. And, since there is a huge overlap between blogging and podcasting, the mores that have grown up around blogging…transparency, disclosure, timeliness, ease-of-creation (and a sometimes-refreshing lack of “polish”), etc…have spilled over into podcasting.

Transparency. Disclosure. Timeliness. Ease-of-creation. Those are all wonderful things. But let’s take podcasting back to first principles. What is podcasting, really? Podcasting is a simple way to (a) distribute and (b) time-shift ones and zeroes …those things that some folks call “content.” (To drive this point home, I know of at least one organization that is using podcasting as a software distribution mechanism. Who should be worried? Companies like Marimba.)

So, in addition to all the consumer-facing genres of podcasts listed here, perhaps we need to take a step back. Maybe something like this:

  • Podcasts
    • Consumer
      • Entertainment
      • Humor
      • Information
      • Community
      • etc.
    • Business
      • Internal
        • Executive Communications
        • Competitive Intelligence
        • Product Rollouts/Training
        • etc.
      • External
        • Branding/Awareness
        • Presentations
        • Product Update News (to existing customers)
        • etc.

(if anyone wants to play with this outline above, here is the OPML file)

Using the outline and context above, it becomes a bit more tangible as to the places where using podcasts may be appropriate. Also, now that there are so many podcast streaming services out there to put podcasts on, companies and individuals alike are climbing onto the podcast train and trying their hand at content creation. Moreover, plenty of companies, like Lower Street, are helping more people (and organizations) come up with their own podcasts, starting from strategy to content to production. While it can be said that podcasts are a great way of disseminating knowledge and information, whether they will catch on and stick for a while is yet to be seen. For now, everyone seems to have their earphones plugged in, listening to their favorite host ramble on about topics they find interesting.

Unfortunately, if past history is any judge, podcasting is going to follow the hype curve shown above. Like blogs, we’ll likely see many millions of abandoned podcasts in the upcoming couple of years. We’ll see a handful of “super podcasts” with huge followings. We’ll see an even greater number of niche, long tail podcasts with a handful of subscribers each. But those numbers are just for the consumer-facing ones. What will be hidden (just like blogs) will be the many millions of internal, business-oriented podcasts locked behind the firewall.

There is a lot of talk about the various business models for podcasts. Like blogs, the short-to-mid run will see the pans-and-pickaxe providers being the primary ones making money. And, also like blogs, I have a feeling that people will be far more likely to make money “because of” their podcasts, rather than “with” them.