It’s not often that I am wow’d by a message on my phone, but today I got a voice mail from the guys that do the dry cleaning at Purple Tie. Basically, there’s a drop box here in the office. I pay for my dry cleaning, but don’t have to drive anywhere, which is really convenient for me. This is my first time using it, so I filled out a form and put the stuff in the bag and dropped it in the box. But, it’s in this voice mail that the real awesome customer service starts. Take a listen:

What amazes me is first, this guys delivery over the phone is awesome. I don’t know if they give the guys a script or what, but he completely sets me at ease. I don’t think I even get the same level of confidence from the day care I’ve dropped my kids at. Perfect. Second, Purple Tie has made it extremely easy for me to use them again. All I have to do is put my clothes in a bag and put that back in a box. That’s it. Why would I ever use another service? There are so many things service organizations and business could learn from this model.

And, it makes me wonder, how could this patern be used in education? Once we have a person in our learning system, how can we improve the learning engagement each time they interact with us?

It’s time to resurrect this blog.
I think its time to start reporting on some of the things I’m working on and sharing the stuff I’m learning. In the last six months I’ve changed jobs, moved across the country, and began new projects. Something that I find I’m enjoying right now is JavaScrip development. I’ve also been playing with After Effects more in video projects and want to share what I learn there. So, even though I’ve been quiet for a long time now, I hope to be more active in my posts here soon.
If you don’t hear another post soon, feel free to ping me in the comments and remind me that I need to make good on my promise.

I’m super excited for a new project coming to my department.  Not too long ago I moved into a new building at work that we renovated and probably the best thing to come out of it (beside getting my own office) is TechSmith decided to put a video and sound studio in.  So, with nice place to meet and some basic equipment, the TechSmith Evangilists, Trainers, Tech Support agents, and whoever else we can rope into the project are going to put on a show called The Forge.

Here’s the second promotional video that my boss, Matt Pierce, put on.  I’m not only impressed with his enthusiasm, but his ability to create a single take video that’s fun to watch:

So, look for episodes of The Forge to come out later in the Summer when we figure out how to turn the camera on.

Not too long ago I was looking through WordPress.org’s documentation and forums. There was a comment that stood out to me and it was probably because I was having the same thought…

You can see the idea and replies to this idea here. It’s such a good idea that it makes me wonder if someone hasn’t already rolled their own LMS based on WordPress? Have you heard of this? Got any ideas on how this could work?

David Pogue has an interesting article about copy protection on the Kindle and other eBook readers. He relates the current state of digital books to what the music industry went through a couple of years ago.  When music first went main-stream digital, it was locked down with DRM.  Then, as consumers complained, DRM went away.  Well, now we’re on the same ride with eBooks; the Kindle has these books locked down with DRM.  Not only does that restrict how you work with the file, Amazon can even remove your book from your library.  In all, same story, smaller market.  And this got me thinking about copy protection in general.
I work for a copy that makes digital stuff. All we do is code and edit little text files, compile them into an “application” and sell it on the web. So, there are 200 people that work and live by bytes of data being sold.  Nothing we make or do exists in the “real world”.  Do we have piracy issues? You bet! Doesn’t take a genius to find a copy of our product available on the web. Yet, we make money. In fact, you could argue we make more money than most successful musicians (it just takes a little more overhead for each release).
So, if piracy is real and our company still flourishes and grows and David Progue still sells books and Taylor Swift still sells CDs and MP3 downloads… what harm is piracy doing?
I think it would be interesting to do a psychological analysis on people that buy a digital product versus pirating it. And then, I’d like to see what happens to people as they use this digital copy over the next week, month, year. I have a hunch that there is a very real difference in how people interact with digital goods that have been purchased versus those that have been “acquired”. And, I think it all has to do with how people value objects.  This is a very meta-physical/philosophical/Kantian way of looking at piracy, but I am curious what people think of things that have been pirated.  Do they still have value?  They must have enough value you that people “want them”.  But, after you get something for free, does is still have the value assigned to it before you pirated it (e.g. $0.99 for music, $1000.00 for some software, etc.)?

Facebook started pushing a new feature a little while ago that let’s you share “you’re a fan” of something on a personal blog or website.  I think Facebook is doing a good job at trying to connect what you have in Facebook to what you might have outside of Facebook (i.e. a blog).

That’s not to say that I think that Facebook couldn’t do better, but I think the more that companies can connect their Facebook presence with the rest of the internet the greater their influence will be in social media.

And, speaking of benefiting, I think that SurveyGizmo is now one of my most favorite tools.  I’m excited to highlight what I’m doing with their tool in a later post (it’s kind of hush-hush right now).

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I really have an amazing wife.  Today we ran the St. George Marathon.  She started at 6:40 in her racing wheelchair and I started somewhere around 6:50 am.  I finished the race, but this isn’t about me, it’s about Emily.  She set a new course record for this marathon in the wheelchair division and qualified for the Boston marathon.  To qualify for Boston she had to finish in 2 hours and 25 minutes, she smoked that time by coming in at 1 hour and 57 minutes.  Do realize how fast that is?  A marathon is 26.2 miles; she kept an overall pace of 4 minutes and 28 seconds a mile!  I’ll say it for you, “holy crap!”

So, like I said, I have an amazing wife.  Pictures will come soon and there’s more to tell, but feel free to email Emily and tell her how great she is.  Her emails is emcqueen at gmail dot com.

Boys are crazy.  It’s a constant stream of noise and hustling.  The truth is, the poor things are probably bored, but I can’t keep up with them or keep them entertained.  So, sometimes I resort to just letting them go crazy.  And, this is what it usually looks like:

There really isn’t anything as stressful as changing blog platforms.  I thought I wouldn’t have a problem taking my last blog (built on BlogEngine.Net) and pulling the contents into this new WordPress blog, because there seemed to be enough information about using BlogML to make the switch.  But, it didn’t work.  So, I’m left with a completely clean slate.

So, I’ve decided to embrace this clean slate with a new clean theme.  (I love this design!)

If there is a post that you’re looking for and haven’t found yet, let me know.  I can probably resurrect individual posts from a backup I made of the site, but doing a complete transfer of all the old site’s content seems like a long and painful process.

So, with this clean slate, is there anything else you’d like changed in this blog?  More video?  More pictures?  More dramatic prose?  I know there’s only like three people that have ever ‘regularly’ comment (you know who you are Jethro, Gail, and Tom), so I don’t expect a lot of direction, but every little thing helps.