I’m excited about this, not only because I love robots, but because it is one of those compelling events that separates the pros from the amateurs.

This has been a long time coming in the industry.  Aaron Ross, and his book Predictable Revenue, has started this process by pushing the sales process to be more templatized and automated.  Applications like Tout and Cadence, take prospecting templates and allow a rep to send out impressional, but blasted messages, to hundreds of prospects.

In the near future, there will be no need to have BDR’s, these templates can be written by a strong writer who will upload them to one of these services for transactional deals.  They will go out automatically and the call to action will be to subscribe, or click through, or whatever will drive a purchase.  Many companies are already doing this.

What I love about Tim’s post is how more complex deals will continue to require a trusted advisor.  A person who can open doors and help get things facilitated.  This is real selling.  It will still be some time before this is outsourced to robots.

via Shipping an Empty Box – UX in the Enterprise | Teehan+Lax.

The companies purchased better lighting, invested in better machines (steam and electric conveyors), invested in better computers, better software, and better companies to implement the software.

These companies have continued to play the arms race game for the faster, better technology, outsourcing employees or just generally avoiding employee engagement.  Investment more often than not goes to technology, not to people.

via Technology Is No Longer A Competitive Advantage, Employee Behavior Is | Badgeville.

Sad times for the video game industry.

I realize it sounds preposterously ambitious for a startup to tryto become as big as Apple. But no more ambitious than it was forApple to become as big as Apple, and they did it. Plus a startuptaking on this problem now has an advantage the original Appledidn’t: the example of Apple. Steve Jobs has shown us what’spossible. That helps would-be successors both directly, as RogerBannister did, by showing how much better you can do than peopledid before, and indirectly, as Augustus did, by lodging the ideain users’ minds that a single person could unroll the future for them.

Excellent post by Paul Graham. What is really interesting about this is the comparison to Roger Bannister. It was one of those things that I never really thought of, but like many of Paul’s things kind of whacks you in the head.

My ideas:
– Choose Your Own Adventure films where the audience in the theater votes on the plot changes
– Embed a localized ad unit in the credits of movies to advertise to people waiting for the post roll at the end of Pixar / Marvel movies.

I thought that this was a great comic about the general pains of tech support.

I think that this showcases a much larger problem. When I was at Zappos a few weeks ago, they really stressed that their goal is not to get people off the phone faster, but to answer the phone faster. It is why every engagement with them is superb.

But the main reason we’re super excited about SOPA, is that your best and brightest entrepreneurs and developers – realising that your version of the Internet is now a sort of steam engine driven version controlled by Congress and unaccountable Corporations (steampunk!) – will now move to Europe to create their next global (“minus USA”, LOL!) Internet company.

Awesome post from TechCrunch Europe.

The machinist in me found this completely fascinating.

What are the first steps a healthcare organization should make when considering a gaming strategy?

An organization should start with their business goals.  Sometimes organizations want to dive straight into focusing on behaviors and less on the actual results.  This can become difficult when they need to have that practical conversation with the CFO to justify budget.  The guidance I give to new customers is to establish goals and understand the metrics that show we are on the right track with those goals; that’s the only way you will actually know that your gamification project is a true success.   Once these goals and metrics have been accessed, we then help clients identify the correct behaviors that need to be targeted and how to engage consumers around those behaviors.  For example, in the case of AviviaHealth.com, healthy employees are an asset for a company.  We came up with a gamified experience that helped those employees to become more healthful as a result.

I was interviewed recently by Melody Smith-Jones of the Perficient Health Care team. They do a really fantastic job of moderating and creating a lot of awareness for their Healthcare IT Practice.

Our customers have reported fantastic uptick in the types of behaviors that they are looking to drive.  Sometimes as much as 200% – 300% increases. Sometimes as “little” as 10%, but 10% adds up fast when you’re talking about growing paid conversions.

Via a blog post I wrote for the Badgeville Blog.