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FCF07 – My Leather Jacket is Missing

Let’s experiment to see if the power of Social Media can bring my jacket back to me at the Forrester Consumer Forum!!!

Yesterday after keynote speaker Robert J. Bach from Microsoft spoke, I lost/had stolen one of my most valuable possessions, a rather expensive size 46 leather jacket that I bought a few years back. I *loved* this jacket. It didn’t have that motorcycle look, it didn’t look like it cost 8 zillion dollars. It just look professional and nice – always – and was appropriate in any type of social gathering whether upscale or downscale. That’s how you know something is perfect, you feel comfortable in it anywhere. It took me a long time to find that coat and to say that I feel like my better half is missing this morning is not an understatement.

It all happened as I was reading this awesome summary blog post by Jeremiah and I was talking to Mellissa Stock from Yahoo!. All of the sudden, Sean McDonald from Dell interrupted us and asked to inspect my laptop based on an earlier conversation in the day. As Melissa grew a bit tired of that conversation and started to get up, I asked Sean if we could finish the conversation later. I then walked out with her and didn’t notice I was missing the jacket until I was giving Karl Long a giant hug on Ustream for the world to see. I went back to the location, only about 15 minutes or so after I had left and the jacket was gone. 50 feet away was a jacket that was ready for the trash – it’s my gut feeling that someone ditched that jacket and walked off with mine. But in a crowd of people at a Forrester Consumer Forum? I would expect people to do the right thing and I’m hopeful that they still will.

I then retraced my steps in the hotel just to be doubly sure I didn’t leave it somewhere else. Then I had a talk with security who informed me that there are multiple video cameras in the Grand Ballroom and if someone did walk off with it’s highly likely that they would be able to pinpoint the person especially since the room was 3/4 empty at that point. So if it doesn’t turn up by Noon today at the Forrester coat check or hotel security, I will be filing a police report and hotel security will start the investigation.

I then took my cold trip home, I’m sure Jeff Jarvis might blog about how “Dell Hell froze over today”, but the combination of the flurry of activity, being interrupted and the fact that it’s been warm here for the past week and I wasn’t in “jacket mode” is more likely the cause. Irregardless, if it doesn’t turn up, theft is theft and it’s majorly uncool.

If anyone knows anything about this situation, please email me. My cell phone charger for my Nokia N73 was in the bag and my phone has very little juice left!

Based on the video cameras, it would be wise for whomever has this to do the right thing and turn it in – no questions asked.

Thanks in advance for everyone’s help in this manner. But hey who knows, maybe it’s a sign from a higher power that I’m about to move to a warmer climate where jackets aren’t necessary.

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Sexy Social Media Revolutions Emerging – Forrester Consumer Internet Conference 2007

There were a few critical points in Charlene Li’s speech and then Christie Hefner’s speech that I want to get to. But before I do an overview of Charlene’s speech.

New term POST

People

Objectives

Strategy

Technology (notice how this is listed last? Charlene pointed out that this is on purpose! In other words don’t execute until you have things thought through!)

Mantra: Embrace your customer to turn revolt into reformation

Ask yourself: How do you turn (customer) revolt into revolution?

Hopefully both speeches will be online later.

What was the high point of the speech for me that told me that a revolution was taking place at Forrester?

It was when Charlene pointed to a technology adoption benchmarking slide and then put a red X through it saying “don’t pay attention to that”!!!!

What does this mean to me? It means that benchmarking it starting to die due to the increased cycle times and shorter shelf life of information. I’ve long felt that you can’t benchmark your way to the top. You have to lead and take risks. To lead and take risks you must have the top generalist thought leaders of our times on your team. People who understand things like search engine optimization as a strategic tool, social media, bottom up communities and cultures, defining a defensible data model from the start and who practice customer listening for their innovation.

After Charlene, Christie Hefner gave an amazing speech about the history of Playboy’s brand and demonstrated how it’s always been customer focused dating back decades and how it’s embracing the demise of the one to many media model. I hadn’t been aware of this but Playboy has had a mobile presence since 2002! Wow.

She also talked about the brands usage in search and have it’s a frequent search term. In fact a quick check of Google trends indicates a large lead in search volume for Playboy over the New York Times.

Her speech was fascinating from the historical side, yet the brand of Playboy is softening as it’s constantly evolving, Charlene’s conversation was far more disruptive and unnerving to many of the people seated around me. Yet it became clear to me that Playboy is a company that has lived many of today’s social media principles long before they were fashionable.

In in the end, it’s all about building a bottom up culture that has the executive support to constantly innovate. Most people don’t get that yet and if they do it’s even more unlikely that they view customers and other stakeholders as critical to success. We are just starting this journey and I can’t wait to participate fully in the fun parts of this revolution to come!

fcf07

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HR Technology Conference : Lehman Brothers Leverages Recruiting Beyond Talent Acquisition

Heather Redderson, VP, Global Talent Technologies, Lehman Brothers
Derek Mercer, CEO, Vurv Technologies

When I saw this description I knew I had to attend this session…

The HR systems at Lehman Brothers, the fourth-largest investment bank in the world, have traditionally been siloed, probably just like yours. But, competing with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, VP Heather Redderson knew she had to integrate them all so her 27,000 employees could collaborate around their careers and new opportunities for internal mobility. She’ll tell you how she aligns and compensates them and tries to leverage best practices, and fill you in on the internal community she’s created for employees with new tools and competitive intelligence on those other, bigger guys.

When Heather arrived, Lehman Brothers systems appeared disorganized. How disorganized? A Summer intern gets to give a presentation to a C-level team during the first month she is there. The intern’s presentation? Two slides. One basically system mapped out the systems Lehman has. The second with all demonstrating how many don’t talk to each other. The intern stated that “this was a problem that needed to be fixed” and then sat down.

I don’t know if the intern got a full time job at Lehman upon graduation. If they didn’t I’d love to hire this person at the next company I work at. Why? People who can point out the root cause of problems and say this is what needs to be fixed are all too rare. The intern likely created the vital executive sponsorship for the magnitude of the changes that Heather is now making.

In reference to internal mobility, internal employees were frustrated as they were applying and never got hired. Hiring managers were frustrated with volumes of people applying for roles at the wrong level. Employees were frustrated with lack of execution.

Using Vurv and Congos there is now rule driven reports and drivers. They now focus on the relevancy of resumes and are trying to add other data elements to the mix.

$12 million dollar savings in just four months by reducing outside contingency recruiter fees! Put all new initiatives for 2008 on hold and reallocated budget money. Focused on utilizing what we have better.

Discovered that there were many people in roles with job descriptions that didn’t match. Fixing that through transparent conversations is occurring at a rapid rate.

Lehman HR mantra:
To recruit talent
To protect our employees
To gage our landscape

They are also creating an alumni site. (I wish that BlackRock would create an Alumni site, it would bring me joy in so many ways.

It’s clear that Heather’s efforts are not only transforming HR, they are transforming the process and way the whole organization operates. That’s what it’s all about effective execution with what you have. Develop a data strategy and process then iterate and improvement. I’ve always loved Lehman Brothers scrappy style when I worked on Wall Street, it’s good to see them laying a foundation for future transformation and differentiation.

More on this when I have time to elaborate on an element I saw that fascinates me. Soon.

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Chicago’s 2016 Olympic Dream Takes Dagger From Disorganized Marathon

Apparently the City of Chicago can’t even execute the simple task of providing water, amazingly Chicago’s most abundant resource from Lake Michigan, to a group of marathon runners. I’m both terribly saddened and civicly embarrassed by this event, yet almost nobody seems to see a need for significant change in Chicago government leadership to people who can actually execute.

Rob’s Run To Remember stated it very clearly:

Mist stations? Stations? There was ONE…at about 25.5. Anything else was an opened hydrant or a caring spectator who had a hose spraying out onto the runners. Mist stations, my ass. I mentioned mist stations to one of the organizers at the Expo on Friday and he kinda looked at me as if to say “I wish…”

Based on this, I can’t see how Chicago can host the 2016 Olympics. If marathon organizers can’t supply enough water and gatorade, or at least try to ensure that there is some backup plan…

Many, many blog entries of others more closely involved than myself:

Second City Cop

Paul R Smith Dot Com

The Dogwood Report

Canada, Eh?

Kate’s English 304 blog

NPA Think Tank

Karen Got Wheels

Running Jayhawk

Montgomery’s in Manhattan

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eComXpo is October 9,10,11, 2007

Chicagoland’s very own eComXpo is October 9,10,11, 2007. You can join the fun and learning from anywhere in the world though!

eComXpo is the premier virtual Internet Marketing conference that is FREE to attend. I’ve also had the honor of speaking there previously. It’s a great resource for learning Internet marketing concepts and networking. Register now.

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SMXLOMO Denver – Day 2 – Show Me the Money!!!

Moderator:
Greg Sterling, Founding Principal, Sterling Market Intelligence

Marketing Speakers:
Ian White, CEO, Urban Mapping
Shawn Riegsecker, Chairman & CEO, Centro
Justin Sanger, CEO, LocalLaunch
Alfred Chow, Head, Yellowbook

Justin Sanger, Local Launch

I can’t help but get caught up in some of the hype. “Context galactic scale” – thanks Google. He then said, “Talking about local search in 10 minutes is like spitting into the grand canyon.” Then said a few words to get Greg Sterling to actually blush! Really funny stuff.

Tremendous opportunities in the IYPs. Local and vertical are merging. Social networking is also converging with local. What is the differentiation of these local search sites? Even within Yahoo! you have a multitude of options. SMEs are overwhelmed and confused. The mission of marketplace consolidations – our goal is to remove the complexity not only for our small businesses but for our sales forces as well. The traditional relationships

$                                             Cost of Traffic                     $$$
Content>>Proprietary>>Organic/SEO>>Paid Placement>>Paid Search / SEM

Silos and advertisers don/t mix in local search!!!

You need to be inventory agnostic…

Shawn Riegsecker, CEO, Centro

Brand marketing increases future clicks. Newspaper growth is slowing in terms of rates of growth, national advertisers are exploding this year. Next will be the regional advertisers, which now comprise less than 3% of advertising.

Ian White, CEO, Urbanmapping

? Where the hell is the money?

7FTE, San Francisco based, geo-spacial data to enable advertisers

Why and what?

Technical limitations

User behavior

Search Engine “Keyword Lockdown”

GEO IP lookup “geotargeting” SUCKS

99% accuracy country level

95% accuracy state level

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SMXLOMO – Day 2 – Introducing the Mobile Search Engines

Moderator:
Gary Price, Director of Online Information Resources, Ask.com, resourceshelf.com

Marketing Speakers:
Omar Tawakol, Chief Advertising Officer, Medio
Matthew Snyder, Header of Business Development, Nokia
Brendan Benzing, Vice President Mobile Search and Marketing, InfoSpace
Matt Tengler, Senior Product Manager, JumpTap

Gary Price, ask.com, resourceshelf.com
http://tinyurl.com/2fy249 (awesome resource his full presentation)

Omar Tawakol, Medio

Mobile is a new media and there is an assumption that Internet players will dominate, this does not make sense. People thought TV companies would dominate the Internet. None of them are. Top spenders in mobile will not be the same as TV or Internet.

Browse the mobile Internet – the searches are still early in nature – downloadables.

On handset, downloadables, information and off-portal

Search ads are perceived differently. Banners are not content. Sponsored links have the same relevancy as other engines.

Matthew Snyder, Nokia

Fragmentation of media consumption

Rise of Advertising and Mobile

Mobile as a cross-media local interactive medium is emerging

Shift to Multimedia Computer

Opportunities in mobile search

Mobile phones will have as many full browsers in 2010 as PCs!!!

Embedded experience – mobilesearch.nokia.com

Medio was in this but is not now…

Discussed “active idol” concept.

Mobile is the ultimate advertising platform
– Personal however, double-edge sword
– Always-on
– Always with you serendipity
– Billing and payment is possible

Nokia Platform – syndications, syndications

Brendan Benzing, Infospace

MCore – portals, storefront, search, messaging and managed web

Has a partnership with Infogen in Israel

Accessed through – downloadables, mobile sites, www sites, vertical apps

Recently launched – Infospace Search at Sprint

Matt Tengler, Jumptap

Products
– Mobile Search
– Mcommerce, operator storefront and operator, deck search solutions
– Full “off-deck” search capabilities across the mobile web and web

Deliver ALL content that is relevant to the user and capabilities of their handset

check out ppc.jumptap.com

Carrier intention platform

The iphone was never mentioned in this session – WOW!