Observations

Ideas in the Social Media Era: I’ll Get It Right the 5th Time

By Bill Freedman

I love this chart. Not only is it funny, it gets to the core of how the social media era is disrupting creativity.

The chart puts its focus on article length (and perhaps the quantity of postings and/or impressions). The chart is silent on quality.

Great ideas have always been distilled to their essence through pity catchphrases. With social media, any idea, even before it’s refined (let alone great) is distilled for social network impact. The network for disseminating ideas is becoming more powerful than ideas themselves.

This is a new challenge for the creator and innovator. When is an idea ready to be published? What are readers’ expectations for quality and accuracy of new ideas? Does it help or hurt your reputation to publish many unrefined ideas? Is your idea sharing risk tolerance dependent on the size and nature of your social network? Are facts and accuracy destined to become endangered species during the social media era?

I don’t know, but I’m going to publish this now and refine it later. My sense of optimism suggests that we’ll muddle through.

It’s a Great Time to Be a Professional Marketer

By Bill Freedman

I just read an inspiring blog post by Megan Heuer at Sirius Decisions called Five B2B Marketing Surprises From 2009. It inspired me to reflect on what I learned in 2009.

The biggest take-away for me is how great the marketing tools and techniques are today compared to just a few years ago. Consider:

  • Twitter (free) to quickly inform and inspire your network
  • WordPress (free) to quickly publish blogs and websites. Additional shout-outs to the vibrant community of WordPress developers contributing plug-ins and themes.
  • Marketo (pricey, but valuable) which teases out the marketing automation functions and processes from general CRM/sales force automation
  • Salesforce.com (pricey, but valuable) for providing an easy to deploy, easy to manage and sales-rep-friendly tool for automating corporate processes for managing customer relationships and the sales process.
  • Microsoft Office (not free), especially Word and Excel, for creating content and managing campaigns. I certainly enjoy using many of the newer tools, but, let’s face it, most of us document the bulk of our original thinking and planning using these tools.
  • Google Analytics (free) to measure and analyze your web traffic and visitor trends.

Not as neat as the tools listed above is the emergence of multi-media publishing. The web is no longer just a medium of the written word. Podcasts, videos, photos, illustrations–even animations and web apps are increasing in popularity among prospects and customers. More on this topic at a later date…

Improved tools are important, but only when combined with a solid foundation of marketing professionalism. Great results are equally dependent on your sound (and stable) strategy, enduring processes and measurements.

The bottleneck in marketing continues to be the pace of creation of relevant, timely and persuasive content. I guess this means that the pace of marketing is limited by the imagination and creativity of the marketing team….a very nice thought.

Google: the Local Business that Permeates My Life

By Bill Freedman

Many of you know that I’m a big supporter of local businesses. Recently I’ve noticed I’m doing a lot of business with a company that is fifteen miles from my home. That company is Google.

Google has a number of great products and employs many of my neighbors. They are also a pre-eminent global business with users and customers in every corner of cyberspace and the globe.

As I upgraded my Grand Central account to Google Voice, I took inventory of the Google Products I use every day. They include:

  • Google Adsensegoogle_logo
  • Google AdWords
  • Google Alerts
  • Google Analytics
  • Google Chrome
  • Google Mail
  • Google Maps
  • Google Reader
  • Google Search
  • Google Talk
  • Google Toolbar
  • Google Voice
  • Google Webmaster Tools
  • 800-GOOG-411

The interesting thing about my relationship with Google is that I pay them for one product (Google AdWords) they pay me for one product (Google Adsense). Everything else is no charge. Privacy advocates point out that I’m “paying” for these services by disclosing personal information about myself. My position is a bit different. I’ve accepted that there is no meaningful privacy on the Internet.  Everything we do on the Internet is closely monitored and analyzed so that someone can make an incremental buck.

In most parts of America and the world, Google is not a local business. It is a global competitor that is out-competing local institutions from newspapers to software companies with a unique business model. I’m able to reconcile my buy local bias with heavy usage of Google technology. Their products are good, they feed the local economy and they inspire innovation and excellence. I guess I’m comfortable living in a very competitive neighborhood.

Creating (Healthy) Workplace Conflict

By Bill Freedman

A recent study by Psychometrics Canada of 350 human resources professionals confirms that workplace conflict is ubiquitous. The study reports that the “most common causes of conflict are warring egos and personality clashes (86%), poor leadership (73%), lack of honesty (67%), stress (64%), and clashing values (59%).”

Violations of norms of civility and respect are negative forms of conflict that beg for immediate corrective action. The report suggests that leaders should quickly address toxic behavior by increasing supervision of problem personnel, providing additional clarity about expectations and modeling appropriate behavior. These findings are obvious but not always given sufficient management attention.

Healthy Workplace Conflicts Contributes to Improved Outcomes

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Even more interesting was that 87% of survey respondents believe that conflict can lead to positive outcomes such as

  • Better understanding of others
  • Better solutions to problems
  • Improved working relationships
  • Higher performance in teams
  • Increased motivation
  • Major innovations

I can’t agree more. When there is clear evidence to multiple people in the organization that things are off course or sub-optimal, conflict is a powerful tool to focus collective attention on the root cause and inspire improvements. The key is to focus on the evidence and potential solutions, not the personalities or behaviors.

While it’s easy to talk about the benefits of conflict, leading teams to embrace conflict, generate positive outcomes and avoid personal attacks is extremely difficult. The report concludes with several useful techniques for managing conflict such as understanding the situation in detail before acting and remaining positive amidst problems.

Thanks to the team at Psychometrics Canada for it’s insightful research on the beneficial aspects of conflict.

Volatility is the New Equilibrium

By Bill Freedman

Cognitive and biological science has demonstrated that our animal instincts replace human reasoning in the face of mortal threats. When individual survival is at stake, Charles Darwin trumps Adam Smith.

Instincts are powerful. They are put into practice without training or thought. But they aren’t always “right.” Those of us who’ve lived a little know that some threats are real while others are illusions of our imperfect ability to perceive the world around us. A noise in the dark will awaken a deep sleeper, even if it’s from the wind knocking over a trashcan rather than a lion preparing to pounce.

I started with a biology lesson because I believe that collectively, our imperfect instincts have distracted us from reality when it comes to the current economic crisis. Let me explain why.

The past twenty years of improving American prosperity have conditioned us that there is a single economic reality: consistent and predictable quarter-over-quarter growth. In the past year this perception has been challenged by sharp declines in prices for stocks, homes and labor. We’ve weathered other declines in financial markets, specifically in 1987 and 2001. The difference is that the current decline is broader-based and steeper than those other declines. No question about it, these changes are frightening.

With regard to the economy, I believe its time to turn decision-making back to human reasoning. The sense of mortal threat needs to be eliminated before reason can take over. Have you noticed:

  • The sun has come up every day
  • Your family still loves you
  • Police patrol our streets and teachers teach our children
  • Innovators are still looking for the next big idea
  • Entrepreneurs are still looking for the next opportunity
  • Lions didn’t pounce in my neighborhood last night

Volatility: It’s Not that Bad

The main lesson I’m learning from the crisis is that volatility is greater today then my comfort level allows. Yes, housing prices have fallen and markets are disorderly. Some individuals are facing “gambler’s ruin” which will severely impact their lives.

On the positive side, social services are available to soften the economic blow for many (though not all). I’m making the choice to accept the higher levels of volatility. Asset values will rise sometime in the future as certainly as the sun will rise tomorrow. Price volatility will remain high for some time and I need to deal with that.

Volatility is the new equilibrium. Purple is the new black. Democrat is the new Republican. Green energy is the new biotech. I’m ready to tackle volatility with my intellect and humanity.

Are you?

Open Source Products I Use for Fun and Profit

By Bill Freedman

I’ve devoted several years of my career to creating sustainable businesses around open source technology.

I’m not an open source zealot by any means. Rather, I’m an optimistic capitalist that believes there is money to be made from transforming the way enterprise software is conceived, developed, marketed, deployed, supported and enhanced. I have deep personal connections to the large and growing set of stakeholders that see value in the transparency, innovation, longevity and support systems emerging around open source solutions. Understanding that proprietary software vendors can’t match these advantages, I see an opportunity to transform the economics of enterprise software, create happy customers and make a buck for myself and others.

Open source is a great idea, but the fabulous products distributed via open source licenses are the real heroes. Below is a list of open source software that I actively use and directly support.

Product Description
7-zip I use this Open source Windows utility for manipulating archives everyday. Does what it says on the tin.
Filezilla Multi-platform ftp client that I use virtually every day.
Audacity An excellent Windows application for recording and editing sounds. I use it to edit podcasts.
LAME The best MP3 encoder I’ve found is free, compatible with every audio application I’ve used and improves with each new release.
Crimson Editor Small, fast, usable and feature rich text editor. While this product is no longer in active development, I continue to be a fan.
Java I’m not a programmer, but the number of Java-based applications I use is a testament to Sun’s powerful technology. Kudos to Sun for releasing Java with an open source license as a way to maximize profits from their investment.
XAMPP XAMPP saves me countless hours by providing a simply to install and administer web development environment that includes (among other things) Apache HTTP Server, multiple versions of PHP, MySQL and more.
Apache HTTP Server The first open source product I used way back in 1995 and the application that ushered open source software into enterprise data centers.
MySQL The world’s most popular open source database may not be the most feature rich, but it has more than enough power for my phpBB forum and WordPress blog. Easy to administer, small footprint, reliable.
PHP The server side scripting language and core component of XAMPP powers many of my recently deployed Web sites and Web applications. Zend Technologies employs the original developers and remains the catalyst for the language.
WordPress The power of community organization from the team at Automattic elevated Matt Mullenweg’s interesting code into a beacon of web usability and the promise of a plug-in architecture.
phpBB Easy to deploy and administer, phpBB defined the open source forum software category. It how has more competition than ever but continues to innovate.
Gallery My latest open source find, I use gallery to manage Internet photo albums. Perhaps a tad behind flickr and other photo sharing sites, but it gives me more control over privacy and intellectual property.
SquirrelMail I use and like SquirrelMail because its reliable and lightweight. Sadly its not a leader in innovation.
Postfix Even with sendmail available as open source and bundled in virtually every Linux distro, Postfix has become my favorite mail transfer agent thanks to rock solid reliability and ease of administration.

As part of the open source tradition of contributing back to the communities that make effective products, I’m sharing my endorsement along with links to the drivers of these products and communities. I wish all of the commercial interests, developers and customers driving these products a long and prosperous run.

Leave a comment with details about other great open source products.