Category: Uncategorized

Nancy White: "Guys With Big Huge Skewers of Beef"

Nice piece from Wired: Slap in the Facebook: It’s Time For Social Networks To Open Up

The key part of the article, and one that seems to be the focus of a number of other recent writings, such as Brad Fitzpatrick and David Recordon’s "Thoughts on the Social Graph," is the explicit exposition of the relationships between the individuals in the network. 

In the Wired article, Scott Gilbertson writes:

"The web still lacks a generalized way to convey relationships between
people’s identities on the internet. The absence of this secret sauce
— an underlying framework that connects "friends" and establishes
trust relationships between peers — is what gave rise to social
networks in the first place. While we’ve largely outgrown the
limitations of closed platforms (take e-mail or the web itself), no one
has stepped forward with an open solution to managing your friends on
the internet at large."

I agree with Gilbertson’s statement, as well as Fitzpatrick’s call to "make the social graph [ed. – in other words, the information on relationship connections and their types] a community asset." This means that there is a call for an open, interoperable infrastructure to communicate "friend" relationships for public statements of connection.

This is another piece of the puzzle that is being put together with respect to managing one’s own information, for example in the case of the "red dot" personal data store in the VRM discussion.  Just like all other pieces of our personal information as customers / individuals, we should be able to manage this relationship information as we see fit, and not have it be yet another asset of ours that is wrested from us and stored in vendor silos.

The conversations linked above are a good start.  But they only go part of the way. (Yes, we do need to crawl before we can walk before we can run, but we also need to keep an eye on the longer view.)  Three other key questions that need to be kept in mind are the following:

1) How do we separate "public" statements of relationship, from those we wish to keep private, or only share with certain classes of other contacts?

2) More importantly, how do we universally store not only information about our relationships, but also that profile information about ourselves?

3) Similar to (1), how do we also share our personal information on a trusted basis?

These are the early, pioneering days of these discussions.  Looking forward to connecting with lots of folks on this, and continuing to work on creating answers that work for everyone – both customers and vendors.

N.B. Cerado Haystack is committed to openness on many levels

A small part of the two-day Social Media Workshop (encompassing business blogging, podcasting and business social networking) that we do from Cerado is The Business Blogging Field Guide.  This is the most-requested presentation I’ve been giving over the past year or so, and it’s gratifying that it’s held the test of time and still holds relevant as business blogging is moving squarely from the early adopters and into the mainstream. 

Bonus link:  Just got this great comment from Kevin Bright, who attended the CIO workshop last week.

"Chris,
thanks for the great presentation and the follow-up materials. You
really got my sparks flying. I’ve decide to go live with a "lab" to
experience blogging as a form of social media. I need to experience
before I can evangelize at work. If you have a moment, check out www.thedigitalkeyboard.com . It’s early but let me know what you think.

Thanks again."

Check out his blog and let him know what you think?

Off to Pittsburgh today to speak to the Greater Pittsburgh CIO Group on the topics of social networking for business, business blogging and social media.  Interestingly, was in Pittsburgh last week as well visiting a client.  (That trip was made particularly interesting by the tornado drill in the middle of a meeting that required us to high-tail it down to the basement until the all-clear was sounded about 15min later; that was the same storm that Doc writes so eloquently about here.)  I love visiting the City of Bridges.

So, off to another one of my old stomping grounds for a couple of days. (I went to grad school in the ‘Burgh in the ealy 90’s.)  Seeya there.

The iconic SiliconView billboard on Highway 101 in Redwood City goes down, hard. Shot just a couple of minutes ago.

(iTunes) (MP3) (click here to subscribe)

Today’s Topics:

•     The role of food in customer relationships
   
•     Food Service Storys: Portillos in Chicago
   
  •       The Varsity in Atlanta
       
  •       Dicks Drive-In in Seattle
       
  •       Texas De Brazil in Dallas
       
  •       Dick’s Last Resort
       
•     Focus on Food for Events
   
•     Satisfaction Scores Based on Food
   
•     Food as Cross-Cultural Connector
   
•     Multiple Channels of Online Communities
   
•     Remembering Names as Customer Service
   
•     Phoning it in Vs. Doing the Right Thing
   

Related Links:

Blogher
in Chicago
Elise
Bauer Simply Recipes
Wired:
Mike Arrington BBQs
Hugh Mcleod
Blogger Dinner
Menuism.com –
Social Networking and Dining Reviews
Menuism’s
Gut Check – Twitter as Food
Devil
Wears Prada
Elizabeth
Edwards at Blogher Chicago
Tech
President
Personal
Democracy Forum

(iTunes) (MP3) (click here to subscribe)

Today’s Topics:

•     What is VRM?
   
•     Will businesses get it?
   
•     What are the mechanics of the system?
   
•     Microformats?
   
•     The employee experience
   

Related Links:

VRM
– Vendor Relationship Management
Berkman
Center at Harvard
Internet
Identity Workshops
Attention
Trust
Open ID
Consortium
for Service Innovation
Chris’
X-Drive Experiment
The
Enterprise Immune System
Microformats
and VRM
Get
Satisfaction
Cooptition
Kwik-E-Mart
7-11

On the heels of this year’s Blogher conference, I am spending a week in the Chicago area catching up with customers and family alike.  (I grew up here, way back in the early Pleistocene.) 

Was driving to the airport yesterday, and on the way pulled into Portillo’s for a good ol’ Chicago style hot dog.  However, upon pulling into the lot, I realized that there was a line of about 10 cars in the drive-thru ahead of us.  Yet, undeterred, I pulled into line.  Yes, we might miss a flight, but there is research to do here!

The first thing I noticed pulling into the line was that they had turned off the automatic squawk-box ordering system, and instead had put three human beings into the line, all with headsets and walkie-talkies.  As we pulled up to the first gentleman, he asked us for our order.  Having not seen the menu yet, I didn’t know the answer, and said so.  He deftly handed me a paper menu, and said, "No problem, just tell the next person."

We pulled up to the next person, a woman, who was about three car lengths up in the queue.  She took our order, radioed it in, and handed us a claim check.  (Number 87, to be precise.)  We then pulled ahead to the third person, who was taking cash, wearing one of those old-style coin belts with which one can clink out coin change with ridiculous efficiency.  She told us our total, took our money, made the change, and sent us rolling up to the window, where our food was already waiting.

Total time in line:  MAYBE four minutes.  Tops.

As we were pulling up to the cashier, I asked her if they always used this seemingly "inefficient" 3-person lineup during rush times.  She said yes.

Even though it appears inefficient at first blush, the process was absolutely flawless and unbelievably fast.  I would wager they do a substantially greater amount of business in their drive-thru than, say, the nearby large fast-food chain, with the standard one- or two-person drive-thru configuration.

Portillo’s website says their motto is: "The best food and the best service!"  I can concur, they are two-for-two.  Pass the mustard.

Related: By, the way, never, never, never order ketchup on a Chicago style hot dog, lest they say "Behold, this creature that walks like a man. It wants ketchup on its hot dog!"

image: city of buena park

Amy Gahran displays characteristic understatement upon learning she won a trip to SXSW 2008.

Over the next couple of days, I’ll be doing a little bit of photoblogging as well – great conference, and unbelievable venue here at Navy Pier in Chicago. I just walked outside the conference area to find this blues stage with band doing a screaming cover of Red House.

It’s good to be home. 🙂

By the way, if you want to subscribe to just the photo feed over the next couple of days, I’ll be posting the pics directly to Flickr and the photo feed is here.