Blog moving to http://robgray.org

I finally sorted out my WordPress hosting, so I’m now moving it across to my domain http://robgray.org where I will continue…

cheers,

Rob Gray

 

Enterprise 2.0 Webcast with AIIM

On Friday we did a webcast with AIIM about Enterprise 2.0

The slides are on slideshare

We did a quick poll half way through on which web tools people use (just from a sample)… the pic below shows the result:

We covered web 2.0 and some of the differences to Enterprise 2.0 and how to lay the foundation for a successful implementation. There was some really good interaction and some great questions that I’ve paraphrased:

• “email is like crack cocaine in some organisations”… how do you get people to stop overusing it?
• participation needs reward as an incentive, not always monetary… in the world of web 2.0 (consumer technologies) this could be with ‘kudos’ and reputation. Do you think that works within the Enterprise, maybe there needs to be a combination of financial and “social capital”
• What about some individuals that monopolise the social network? Does this “drown out” other people that also want to be heard?

I’ll give my opinion but I’m really interested in the opinions of others…

email addiction

On the email front,  I think that people need a compelling alternative to email. If the tool that you are trying to get them to use is more difficult than using email then they’ll still use email. If the tool that they use helps them to reduce their email overload, and it’s easier than email, maybe that’s a good start to weaning people off email. I don’t think email should be eliminated… but BAD use of email should be eliminated. In my work at blueKiwi I never use email to send information to multiple people, only 1:1 when it’s appropriate (like forwarding an external mail to someone internally). This has reduced my email to less than 15 per day.

Reward

Inside an enterprise, I think that reward could be linked to objectives, but could be getting into dangerous territory if there is a direct $$$ incentive such as $$$ bonus for x% contribution. It also needs to be as “ungameable” as possible (which is why manual voting/ranking doesn’t work inside orgs even if it works quite well on the web.)

The monopolisers

even though there is a danger of someone becoming “overactive” in a social network, this is a great problem to have. The value of the content needs to be implicit rather than explicit for this to not be a problem. For example, a persons contribution is interesting if other people bookmark it and share it with others, rather than rely on a 5-star manual rating.

In general, I think enterprise social networks provide the less rowdy employees to actually have a voice and have their contributions valued, because of the transparency that a social network offers. This also stops people’s ideas from being “stolen” because they are out in the open from the beginning… so everyone contributes to that idea rather than tries to claim it as their own.

Let me know what you think… have you got some good ideas on how these issues can be tackled?

 

Virgin America’s Guerilla Marketing

I attended the Fuel conference on Friday 13th June… I’m not really their target audience but it was interesting to see some of the innovative ways that people are using “web 2.0″ tools to connect better with customers. One of the great examples of the day was delivered by Alex Hunter from Virgin America.

Branson was not an option

I didn’t realise that the US regulations on foreign ownership of airlines, meant that Virgin could not use Richard Branson to run the company, or promote it in any way. For a brand that is so dependent on a very public figurehead, this is a big issue. Branson himself embodies much of the virgin brand himself, and I have often wondered how it would impact the Virgin brand if he were not there. Well this situation was a good test of that!

So it was up to the rest of them to make a success of Virgin America. There is quite a long story to their success, but what I want to highlight here is their innovative and very successful use of low cost marketing technique.

Watching Paint Dry

They had a camera filming the painting of their planes, so they decided to put a video of this on YouTube… literally enabling people to watch paint dry… but very cleverly getting the general public involved by asking them to name a plane.

This also led to increased publicity when they invited BoingBoing (very popular blog) to name a plane, as well as fans of the Spice Girls to name the plane that would take them on their world tour. hmmm… I didn’t know the spice girls had any fans…

This also led to the idea of letting the Digg folks on board to film an episode of Diggnation… this is mass publicity and no real cost to Virgin, except using what they already had (a plane with an upperclass cabin).

BillyBob and Wall Street Trader fight it out for the flight route

They also used he Virgin website, to invite the public to choose the US flight routes… resulting in a online exchange between people living in different cities, arguing about whether Virgin should choose their city or not. In retrospect it seems obvious to ask customers what they want before giving it to them… traditionally we may use expensive market research techniques that rely on accurate sampling and take a long time. This is a great example of how web 2.0 (the participative web) techniques can have a great impact on a business decision, and don’t cost very much at all. What is the ROI (Return on Investment) for this activity? Well, the “I” is very, very low, and the “R” is that they could make an informed decision quite quickly, when combined with the traditional market analysis.

There is no need to try and do a long, difficult financial justification for this… just think about it with common sense. Would we want to make a better decision about flight routes, based on what customers actually want? YES. How much is it going to cost us to find out? Probably about the same as a nice team lunch. It also does contribute very specific calculation financial return, in that choosing the best routes has a direct impact on revenue.

Measuring the “stories in the cloud”

Virgin Eye is a tool that they developed, so that you can see what everyone in the world wide web is saying about Virgin, including the ability to filter out specific brands of theirs, so if you just want to see everything about Virgin Galactic, you can.

Has your business used web 2.0 tools in an interesting way?  I’d love to hear about it

 

Web 2.0 strategies event

Web 2.0 Strategies event
Good event on Thursday 12th June, here is my summary

Dion Hinchcliffe gave an intro – where we are and how people could formulate an enterprise 2.0 strategy. He talked about some of the issues facing organisations today including cultural and security issues. In my opinion, the cultural issue is the most important, even more important than the technology.
Next up was a panel discussion with Christophe Langlois (Lloyds TSB), Jeremy Gould, and PWC. The key takeaways from that were:
• It’s about cultural change, not technology
• It’s not only about ROI, and I enjoyed the Scotsmans approach to ROI as described by Euan Semple “keep the I really low and don’t worry too much about the R”!
• When seeking executive sponsorship for an enterprise 2.0 project, choose execs that have teenagers…. They are more likely to “get it”.
• Criticism can be a good thing – it shows that people are actually interested enough to criticize.
We had a break-out discussion on ROI.

The bottom line is that don’t focus on the tools, but what they do. For example, don’t look for the ROI on internal blogging, look for the ROI on what more effective communication or information sharing will bring. Examine how this improves some part of your organization, and whether this ultimately could result in reduced costs or additional revenue. It is short sighted to only invest in things with an immediate direct financial return. For example, increasing customer loyalty does not have an immediate financial benefit, but over the long term, satisfied customers continue to buy from you which does have a financial impact.
Bertrand Duperrin has a lot of good thoughts about this topic

 

My iPhone review – including buying a book in 30 seconds

With the looming announcement of the next iPhone… I thought I’d do a quick review of my current iPhone, my likes and dislikes… Apple is pretty secretive about the new one, but let’s hope they’ve solved some of the issues. I have used Windows mobile smartphones for many years now, so at first I didn’t see the big deal about having a phone with a browser, that you can play music on too – you’ve been able to do that for years. However, there are some really good things about the iPhone, and also some really bad things… here goes…

What I don’t like about it:

• The headphone jack is recessed, so I can’t even use the Bose QC3 headphones that I bought in the Apple store. Basically you need to use white iPod headphones. This is completely insane. People say that MSFT locks you in… Apple is 15 x worse. Oh by the way they are happy to sell you an adapter… how nice of them. As much as I like apple products, this sort of thing could be their downfall.
• No 3G… ok so apparently this is planned, but for now, EDGE just isn’t good enough for this to be a great internet phone.
• Cannot accept meeting invitations – if you get an iCal request you can’t accept or decline it, which is not really acceptable if you’re very mobile and seldom at your desk. There is also no Exchange support but this will be added very soon.
• Apple tie-in: I still need to get used to using iTunes as my interface for doing anything with my phone. I suppose you get used to it but I’d like a bit more openness.
• You cannot remove the battery, and sometimes the iPhone just freezes which means you’re without a phone until the battery runs out. This is bad, very bad.

What I DO like about it:

• The web browser (mobile safari) is the best mobile browser that I’ve used. There are 2 things that I like about the iPhone’s browser. Firstly, the zoom in and out by “finger pinching” the screen is very easy and intuitive – I use it all the time. Secondly, you have the concept of tabbed/multi-window browsing which is something that was always an issue for me on other phones (eg sites that pop up a new window for specific functionality don’t work on other phones that I’ve had in the past). The weather application is also useful if you travel a lot, and the stock app is useful for keeping up to date with your portfolio – and if you reach target price it’s a quick switch to call your broker and shout “SELL!, SELL!” from the comfort of your first class seat whilst watching the safety video.

• There are some great iPhone interfaces to mainstream websites, such as facebook and amazon, that offer a simplified, iPhone-specific view of the site. This helps you to do what you need to do quickly. To illustrate, I’ve included a video of me buying a book from amazon in about 30 seconds. For any online retailer this is quite important. I would never go an browse the amazon site while on a train, but having such a simple and easy interface means I buy stuff at times when I wouldn’t have before (like being bored on a train). It also means I can buy on impulse – I bought that book in my video this morning while reading a blog post that mentioned it. Sometime people buy stuff when they are bored, and they are usually bored when they can’t do anything else except do stuff on their phone. As an online store you want to capitalise on that. It actually raises a good point about accessibility, which is not just about developing a site for blind people and to be politically correct. By making a website more accessible, you increase the size of the potential audience that can be reached, and make it easier for anyone to buy from you.

• I like the google maps app that is included. It has a cool feature that enables you to find out where you are, which is very useful if trying to walk and navigate around a large, complex unfamiliar city, for example. However, the windows live mobile maps application (for windows mobile devices) actually offers a much more granular street view than the google maps, even if the google app is more intuitive. I was in London a few months ago, and I tried to find an obscure street, which the google map could not find but the microsoft one had no issue. In the usability dept, the google maps are very good, though.
• I like the visual voicemail capability – especially for those long messages when the person mumbles their number at warp speed, right near to the end. You can just drag the slider to the desired position and play it from there – very useful.

• As would expected the music playing is second-to-none, all very well designed and thought out. For example if you’re listening to your playlist and a call comes in, the music fades out and you can answer the call. Windows Mobile doesn’t offer quite as seamless an experience, even though you can play media on a windows device.

Overall, I think the iPhone is a good device but I hope that the next one makes some very necessary improvements…

 

blueKiwi UK: The KiwiCopter has arrived

Car allowances are so last year. At blueKiwi I get a corporate helicopter. So far I’ve managed to not damage my iPhone, but as you can see near the end of this video, there was a close call with the MacBook Pro…

make sure you turn the sound up…

 

What do you mean public transport rocks?

For those that know me, you’ll know that public transport is not anywhere near the top of my pile of favourite things. Having grown up in SA where there is no public transport, I can appreciate the fact that something is better than nothing, right?  Well in the UK, I am used to public transport being expensive, unreliable, and being forced into the close proximity of the annoying and smelly for relatively long periods of time.

I am currently on the way from Kings Cross to Newcastle for  Thinking Digital, and I wasn’t exactly overjoyed at the prospect of 3 hours on a train, except that it was probably better than 5 hours in a car, or 2 hours delayed at an airport. However, National Express has left me pleasantly surprised…

• the train left on time
• it’s been quiet all the way
• it was very economical (£11 for a standard advance ticket which is cheaper than Ascot to Waterloo)
• I have a power socket (standard seat)
• They offer free wifi

The free WiFi impressed me the most. If I had paid for 2 hours of wifi in an airport lounge, I would have spent more than the cost of my whole ticket.

I wish all public transport in the UK was like this. I’ve had a very relaxing and productive trip.

Rob Gray™