Introduction

This is the second post that looks at how managers can harness analytics for business advantage, and maximise their chances of making such a programme a success.

It’s something I will be learning about in more detail soon – I’ve got Analytics at Work: Smarter Decisions, Better Results and ‘Moneyball’ being delivered from Amazon. The latter is book by Michael Lewis, and now a movie about using analytics to successfully compete against other sports teams who have deeper pockets.

This post, therefore, looks more at the ‘how to’ of harnessing analytics – with a section some of Tom Davenport’s key points, and another about my trip to watch Moneyball and associated learnings.

Analytics at Work – learnings

Key take-aways

The following two images are from the presentation below. I think Tom’s spot-on about the goal being better decisions.

Recent slides from Tom

Useful as a summary of his key thoughts, and check-lists that you can use for yourself.

Moneyball

I was lucky enough to read this bbc article about the movie in time to go watch it last week. I was glad I went, as I really enjoyed it. Maybe I need to watch it again to appreciate Brad Pitt’s performance, as actually I thought Philip Seymour Hoffman was terrific as the Oakland A’s on-field team manager.

My learnings

Key learnings for me were:

• How Brad Pitt’s management team operate, and the amount of confrontation involved.
  • For me, I would be wanting to pro-actively manage the change, but perhaps baseball has a different culture!
  • Perhaps also the lack of confrontation when players get traded
• The courage that his character, Billy Beane, shows in following through with the statistical methods in the face of opposition from his immediate colleagues, and actually doubling-down on the bet
• The fact that these methods are like an arms race, in that you’re striving to keep ahead of the competition, as they learn from what works for you
• That you don’t make your decisions on players because “they’ve got an ugly girlfriend”!

Tom Davenport’s take

Tom Davenport’s post “Six Things Your Company Has in Common with the Oakland A’s” has the following summary points:

1. Analytics can provide you with a competitive edge
2. Analytics can help you recruit your best team
3. The change to an emphasis on analytics will require strong leadership
4. Getting an edge requires special skills—and sufficient attention
5. You can count on opposition
6. Analytics alone can’t carry the day

This brings us to the question of where your resemblance to the Oakland A’s of a decade ago ends. Depending on the industry you’re in, it may be too late to use analytics to best competitors with deeper pockets. (Safe to say you’ve definitely missed your chance to have Brad Pitt will play you in a film about your heroic analytical leadership.) That doesn’t mean you should ignore the great story of what Beane achieved with the A’s. The power of competing on analytics doesn’t remain a secret for long, but your team can always play the game better.

Film trailer

Conclusion

Watching the movie brought alive the power of analytics – when used effectively – to power successful decision making. Stats can be dry, and need to be viewed in context with more subjective factors; used well, they can make the difference between winning and losing.

Now, with data from internal systems and the explosion of it the showing customer preferences (through monitoring social media content), combined with massive processing power from cloud computing, this is a trend which is only going to grow. How are you going to approach this?

[Regarding copyright, the articles I’ve embedded are in the public domain, so I believe that actually there’s benefit to Tom and HBR in driving interest to these topics, their reprints and books.]

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Introduction

Following on from my recent posts about a) the IBM CMO study, and b) the McKinsey Quarterly articles on big data, I was reminded of a podcast (reproduced below) I’d listened to several months ago, which featured Tom Davenport – pictured right.

That listening sparked me to look into more of Tom’s recent work.The aim of posting is to bring together related materials that Tom has created, and thus equip those managing such programmes to maximise their chances of success.

There’s plenty of material to showcase, so I’ve split it between two posts.

Investigations

I’ve done some investigating, and this post is aimed to frame the ‘how to’ question in more detail. I’ve named the post after Tom’s January 2006 article in Harvard Business Review.

I realise that for most businesses, this is pretty ambitious and far-reaching stuff. Most will be keen to sort out what systems and data they’ve got already. For organisations (business, sports, etc.) that are already on this path, I believe there are useful guidelines in Tom’s material, and they’re worthwhile reading to increase the likelihood of success in this emerging area of competition.

Competing on Analytics

This is Tom’s original article from HBR, which was expanded into Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning. Key points are:

• Champion Analytics from the Top
• Create a Single Analytics Initiative
• Focus Your Analytics Effort
• Establish an Analytics Culture
• Hire the Right People
• Use the Right Technology

HBR Competing on Analytics R0601Hp2

Analytics at Work

A more recent book, Analytics at Work: Smarter Decisions, Better Results, aims to provide practical how-to useful information to business managers. This section contains a summary of the book, a podcast interview with Tom Davenport, a hierarchy of maturity for organisations pursuing greater success through analytics.The pyramid shown below, along with a useful matrix to understand what progress you’re making.

Book summary

Analytics at Work – how to make better decision and get better results

HBR IdeaCast podcast

For you fans of audio out there (I’m one), I hope you enjoy this interview.

Better Decisions Through Analytics – “Featured Guest: Tom Davenport, Babson College professor and coauthor of Analytics at Work: Smarter Decisions, Better Results.”

Stages of development

The graphic below is taken from an Accenture article, “Winning with Analytics” by Jeanne G. Harris, one of Tom Davenport’s book co-authors. Cross-check with the table at the back of the embedded article above, in this section.

Initial wash-up

A key point to bear in mind is to always sense-check what the stats appear to be telling you. This BBC Radio review of Moneyball, and this comment about stats in football, provide useful balance to the narrative.

I’d love to get comments, and get other people’s take on this – please pitch in below. Second and final post is scheduled to go live tomorrow.

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Intro

The article below is the second article that I wrote for Old School Vs New School. A fuller introduction is provided in the first of this series of two posts.

Ways To Engage And Expand Your Network

My text:

If you’ve been to any networking events recently, and met new business connections, you may well be asking, how should I follow up and stay in contact? May I suggest that you use the details on the business cards you’ve collected to send them an invite to your network on LinkedIn? Build the network before you need it! Instead of having a pile of dusty cards on your desk, consider turning them into something that actively works for you – encourage serendipity! How about turning your existing rolodex into an online one via LinkedIn: perhaps get them scanned in bulk (e.g. CloudContacts ) or use a mobile phone app?

Once you’re underway, share topical and relevant information with your network. Ask questions, participate in groups – be a good ‘online citizen’. Keep in mind that reciprocation is key, and it’s wise to "create more than you capture" – i.e. give more to other people than you take in return.

After a while, you should reach a tipping point: if you’ve got lots of people in your network, then it becomes a valuable resource. The ‘power of weak connections’ principle is that you will then know someone who knows someone else etc. And the great thing about online networks is that your efforts can be massively amplified – if you’ve built up a trustworthy and valuable network online, people will be happy to help you.

For many of us, however, the challenge is what to communicate and when, how often, what’s appropriate – and what’s not? Updates are a key way of keeping yourself in people’s minds, so my advice is to start small and share pertinent information, and be sure to ask for feedback – that way it becomes a dialogue. Tweak as necessary. Ask people what they think when you meet them in person, and adjust accordingly! Social media is effective in both B2B and B2C, just remember to fish where the fishes are.

In summary, online and offline work together – it’s both, in case you’re asking. But how can you feel comfortable using online tools and fit them into your existing busy schedule? Answer – when you’re getting traction and business results, then the balance will shift!

Facebook and Twitter can be effective, but maybe consider keeping things simple to begin with, if you’re new to all this. If you’re really adventurous, explore other professional social networks, including Viadeo, which originated in France, and XING (from Germany).

So, imagine you’re booking yourself on a future event (e.g. The Bridge Club). Look it up online, and in advance find the people who are going to be there: are they in a market segment I’m interested in? Take your list and mark sure to connect with them in person, and then carry on the conversation online. Resist the temptation to have one more glass of wine and hob-nob with people you know – at least until you’ve connected with those on your list.

Meet new people, advance your business, and enjoy yourself. Simples!

Take-away

I hope you found this article useful, and it will encourage you to read the companion piece.

Please feel free to contact me on LinkedIn and connect on Old School vs New School, but be please aware I tend only to accept connection invites from people I already know.

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Introduction & context

I know Fiona Birkbeck, Creative Director of Multiminded through networking events on Tyneside, and so was intrigued when she invited me to write an article which looks at tools for business networking. The following quote is from Fiona’s e-mail to me on the subject:

I think when I last saw you I mentioned to you that an idea of mine, Old School vs New School was the main winner of Northern Film and Media‘s Big Society Big Ideas competition. We’re now at the stage of looking for additional partners and sponsors and some really interesting organisations are coming on board.

As well as connecting generations we celebrate the best of old school and new school business techniques on our platform and we’ve got some great content providers. However, Di Gates and I talked about having an article on the different ways to network.

So, I was pleased to be able to recount some of my learnings in two articles for the site, and also reflect on Miss Geeky’s talk of three years ago! This is the first of two posts, with the first article.

Ways To Build A Network

This is the text of the first article:

Social media can be used for a number of uses in a business context, and this article looks at social networking for business development – and uses the example of LinkedIn.

LinkedIn seems to be a lower-impact way of connecting, less ‘disruptive’ than say, an e-mail – and you stay connected. It’s appropriate for business, and more straightforward than Facebook or Twitter – so a good place to start.

The point of all this is to drive new business and improve your business, so first things first – write down a list of what are you trying to achieve – (e.g name / brand recognition to begin with). This frames your use of social media / networking in terms of business benefits.

My suggested steps at a high level are to:

1. Build your network online – i.e. connect with people!

2. Build your reputation within your network – do things that make people think well of you

3. Continue to create value for your network, and ask them for your assistance in an proportionate way

4. Use tools like LinkedIn to bring people together; , start conversations; earn right to be connected with key prospects; and employ your ‘social capital’ to request introductions to these prospects from your online connections

Networking is a key part of doing business – people do business with people. Online, it’s still about people – you’re simply using technology to bring you together. I encourage you to approach technology no differently than you would any other part of your business; it’s not a special case!

So, what are the benefits of using online tools?

• Democratises networking – it’s always been about ‘who you know’, but at least now you can see the outline of those networks!
• You and your connections can harness these stepping stones to help each other achieve greater things
• It’s persistent – and there is more control because you can opt in and out of being connected with other people
• Because it is more deliberative, it can be helpful for those of us still developing our interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence!
• That said, it has a multiplier effect for all the face-to-face networking you do – they reinforce one another.

There’s always a ‘but’:

• Just be aware that although entry-level accounts are free, someone is paying – i.e. businesses pay to learn about target communities and related trends; and for recruiters, LinkedIn is a rich source of talent!
• What you share can quite often be public forever, and “can and will be used against you”. Sensitive communications should probably be kept to channels you’re familiar with and are trusted already.
• Because they lack the immediate feedback of meeting in person, slightly different rules of thumb apply.

Take-away

I hope you found this article useful, and it will encourage you to read the companion piece [I’ll update this page with the link when the second article goes live].

Please feel free to contact me on LinkedIn and connect on Old School vs New School, but please be aware I tend only to accept connection invites from people I already know.

UPDATED: slight tweaks to clarify whose text was whose!

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Introduction

Second in a series of two posts about big data and social media. First post is here. This particular post draws upon three articles published in the McKinsey Quarterly.

Getting to grips with ‘big data’

Here, I’m concentrating on ‘big data’ which, I think, is rather eloquently captured in this vignette by Brad Brown, Michael Chui, and James Manyika:

The top marketing executive at a sizable US retailer recently found herself perplexed by the sales reports she was getting. A major competitor was steadily gaining market share across a range of profitable segments. Despite a counterpunch that combined online promotions with merchandizing improvements, her company kept losing ground.

When the executive convened a group of senior leaders to dig into the competitor’s practices, they found that the challenge ran deeper than they had imagined. The competitor had made massive investments in its ability to collect, integrate, and analyze data from each store and every sales unit and had used this ability to run myriad real-world experiments. At the same time, it had linked this information to suppliers’ databases, making it possible to adjust prices in real time, to reorder hot-selling items automatically, and to shift items from store to store easily. By constantly testing, bundling, synthesizing, and making information instantly available across the organization—from the store floor to the CFO’s office—the rival company had become a different, far nimbler type of business.

[Quote from the first article highlighted below]

Aim of this post

The aim of this post is to help you get your head round this fast-emerging topic, and start building the connections both mentally and practically you need to help your business compete in this area.

Articles

There are three articles:

• Are you ready for the era of ‘big data’?
• Competing through data: Three experts offer their game plans
• Seizing the potential of ‘big data’

Are you ready for the era of ‘big data’?

“Radical customization, constant experimentation, and novel business models will be new hallmarks of competition as companies capture and analyze huge volumes of data. Here’s what you should know.” Useful introduction to the topic.

Are you ready for the era of ‘big data’

Competing through data: Three experts offer their game plans

“MIT professor Erik Brynjolfsson, Cloudera cofounder Jeff Hammerbacher, and Butler University men’s basketball coach Brad Stevens reflect on the power of data.” Practical tips about what strategies to pursue.

Competing Through Data — Three Experts Offer Their Game Plans

Seizing the potential of ‘big data’

“Companies are learning to use large-scale data gathering and analytics to shape strategy. Their experiences highlight the principles—and potential—of big data.” Looking forward…

Seizing the potential of ‘big data’

Conclusion

Arguably the rate of change in the business world is speeding up. Technology, and IT in particular, is giving rise to disruptive changes that organisations of all types [I would argue] must engage with to prepare for the future. Companies like IBM are tooling up to take advantage of the opportunity, and the effect is going to noticed throughout the business – e.g. marketing departments are encouraged to recruit for technology skills!

The upsides are incredible insights, competitive advantage, and empowerment. The downsides are lack of relevant skills, overwhelming technical change, and being out-innovated by more savvy competitors.

You could argue that this is the preserve of big business, but with the power of Software-as-a-Service, and the affordability of Cloud computing then – used wisely – big data could very well be effective for all sizes of organisation.

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Introduction

I had seen an advert for this study highlighted in the media, and investigated. You could argue that the IBM reports play to the strengths of IBM as a company – and you’d be right.

That said, it is a fascinating insight into the mindsets and priorities of Chief Marketing Officers, and so I’m sharing the copy on Scribd below along with related reports, and highlighting what I consider to be key passages.

This is number 1 of a two-part series – I’m planning another post on articles from The McKinsey Quarterly about ‘big data’.

Study

This is the introduction from the IBM microsite:

Hear from more than 1,700 Chief Marketing Officers

Today’s customers can shop around the globe, find out more than ever before about the organizations they’re dealing with, and share their views with hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of fellow customers. The expectations of consumers, citizens and business customers are soaring. And they can make or break brands overnight.

After face-to-face interviews with 1,734 CMOs, spanning 19 industries and 64 countries, we know CMOs are feeling stretched, but we also heard great excitement about the future of marketing. These conversations and our in-depth analysis of study findings underscore the need to respond to three new realities:

• The empowered customer is now in control of the business relationship
• Delivering customer value is paramount — and an organization’s behavior is as important as the products and services it provides
• The pressure to be accountable to the business is not just a symptom of hard times, but a permanent shift that requires new approaches, tools and skills.

Ibm Cmo Study

Other reports in the series are on Scribd.

Key points

This section has a number of quotes, and also graphics from the report (which are not necessarily related to the text they sit alongside!). Clicking on them will take you to the original graphic, so you can see them in better detail!

Excerpt from the Exec Summary:

Our interviews reveal that CMOs see four of these challenges as pervasive, universal game-changers: the data explosion, social media, proliferation of channels and devices, and shifting consumer demographics. Additionally, most CMOs are struggling in one vital respect — providing the numbers that demonstrate a return on investment (ROI) for marketing.

The most proactive CMOs are responding to these challenges by trying to understand individuals as well as markets.1 They are focusing on relationships, not just transactions. Outperformers are also committed to developing a clear “corporate character.”

In the course of our conversations with CMOs worldwide, an overwhelming consensus emerged. The vast majority of CMOs believe there are three key areas for improvement. They must understand and deliver value to empowered customers; create lasting relationships with those customers; and measure marketing’s contribution to the business in relevant, quantifiable terms.

Marketing and IT

However, CMOs who need to make decisions about technology investments may find themselves in unfamiliar territory. This would explain why worries about implementing new technologies loom so large. Four of the remaining eight obstacles CMOs cite are related to IT and marketing’s relationship with the IT function.

‘It’s easy to see the potential of many new tools, but it’s rarely simple to integrate them with the organisation’s existing systems,’ a food, beverage and tobacco CMO in the United Kingdom warned. ‘The complexity of integrating [a new system] with other systems too often destroys the ROI of the new system,’ she added.

Concerns about the level of skill and lack of technology ownership within the marketing function also suggest CMOs will have to work much more closely with CIOs in the future. An industrial products CMO in the United States spoke for many when she said: ‘I don’t see how we can go forward without embedding IT into marketing.’

How to earn customer loyalty

‘We need to take measures that improve the customer’s points of contact and customer loyalty and enlarge our fan base,’ a telecommunications CMO in Japan told us. ‘Loyalty and customer satisfaction are critical because advocates online provide you with immeasurably valuable free marketing,’ a banking CMO in the United States elaborated.

The question is: how do you earn that loyalty? More than half of all CMOs think social media is a key channel for engaging with customers, as Figure 9 indicates. Yet, an earlier study by IBM shows that many executives don’t understand what triggers customers to ‘follow’ their organisations. Nearly 70 percent assume that customers interact with them via social media to get information, express an opinion and feel connected to their brand – whereas, in reality, customers are most interested in receiving tangible value. Indeed, when asked why they choose to follow a company, the top reasons consumers cite are ‘getting discounts’ (61 percent) and ‘making purchases’ (55 percent). Only 33 percent seek out companies to ‘feel connected.’

Moreover, engaging with customers is not just about communicating with them. It’s also about helping them enjoy the products and services they’ve bought and collaborating with them to co-create new products and services. But our research shows less than half of the organisations surveyed currently use social media to perform these activities.

Plenty of food for thought there!

Conclusion

I’m conscious there is a lot of material in the four documents, but if you’re thinking of how does the era of social media and big data affect the role of a CMO, then this is a tremendous place to start – the material comes across as well-written, well-researched, and an actionable set of insights.

In summary – fascinating to see how social media has changed the dynamics of mainstream businesses – who arguably need to adopt the mindset and practices of ‘social business’.

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Intro

[this is crossed-posted from my personal blog]

Pretty much a ‘Ronseal‘ post – does what it says in the title!

This post gives you some of the background to Movember, explains how things work (and my twist on the theme), and then encourages you to donate your hard-earned cash to a very worthy cause. Vamos!

The Details

About

From the Movember website:

ABOUT THE CAMPAIGN

During November each year, Movember is responsible for the sprouting of moustaches on thousands of men’s faces in the UK and around the world. The aim of which is to raise vital funds and awareness for men’s health, specifically prostate cancer and other cancers that affect men.

On Movember 1st, guys register at Movember.com with a clean-shaven face and then for the rest of the month, these selfless and generous men, known as Mo Bros, groom, trim and wax their way into the annals of fine moustachery. Supported by the women in their lives, Mo Sistas, Movember Mo Bros raise funds by seeking out sponsorship for their Mo-growing efforts.

Mo Bros effectively become walking, talking billboards for the 30 days of November and through their actions and words raise awareness by prompting private and public conversation around the often ignored issue of men’s health.

At the end of the month, Mo Bros and Mo Sistas celebrate their gallantry and valor by either throwing their own Movember party or attending one of the infamous Gala Partés held around the world by Movember, for Movember.

Docs for more info

Fill your metaphorical boots with the docs presented in the widget at the bottom of this post.

How it’s going to work

Team

I have signed up and joined the team from Lady Grey’s bar. More information about us on the Movember website – please join us. Thanks to Michael Walsh who I bumped into when he was distributing promo flyers – and I became aware of the team :-)

I thought it’d be more fun and hopefully I can raise more money as a result of doing this other people :-)

Shave-down

From the LGB website:

SHAVE DOWN PARTY: 31st of October – 7.00pm

Hosted by our Mo Bro’s at The Boiler House Barbers, Jesmond, this party marks the start of Movember. Every member of our team can get a free shave from a team of professional barbers and once everyone is clean shaven we’ll be taking photos to capture the ‘before’ shot and you can meet your fellow Lady Greys Mo Bro’s.

Mo Sista’s are encouraged to come and we’ll have lots of Movember Merchandise for you to wear proudly to show your support for the cause. You can also sign up to the team on the night so bring as many Bro’s as you can find, the mo’ the merrier.

How I plan to raise more £££ :-D

Ok, so I realise I’m going off-piste with this, and big thanks to Nathan of LGB for his willingness to go along with my idea. I’ve been growing my normal stubble into a rather itchy mass. The plan is to go to the Boiler House and have them craft something evil on my face – i.e. I figure I’ll raise more money my wearing something amusing for the whole month!

I will report in this week!

Please Donate

I would be very grateful if you could please sponsor me – click on the images on this post, or on this link. I’ve led by example :-)

My profile is http://mobro.co/justingsouter – the donate button is at the top right.

Many thanks! It’s for a tremendous cause :-D

Docs

Movember docs if you’d like further details!

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Intro

For regular readers of the blog, you will recall a previous post, Introducing Pinevio. I was therefore massively stoked to be contacted yesterday by Daumantas, to say that he and Mindaugas had presented the Pinevio concept at DEMO in Silicon Valley:

The DEMO Experience

Conference Format
The feel you get when you enter the ballroom at DEMO is unlike any other conference. Each company is given just six minutes on the DEMO stage to truly demonstrate how their product will change the world. No PowerPoint or flashy corporate presentations allowed. Just the founders and the technologies many are staking their careers on… it doesn’t get any more straightforward and fast paced than that.

This video gives an intro to the DEMO experience:

This post therefore is a chance to give them a bit more air play, and big them up! [Great to see the guys from Screenreach in this trailer] :-D

Video

Great to see the guys doing their thing, with Mindaugas on vocals, and Daumantas on keyboards MacBook. Apparently the demo went down really well. You can see for yourself below:

Profile blurb from DEMO

This information is culled from Pinevio’s profile page on DEMO, to give you a better idea about what the company is all about:

Profile information

Conference – DEMO Fall 2011

Market Segment – Social & Media

Funding Amount – $0-$100,000

Funding Round – Angel

Funding Details – 14,600 pounds – The Difference Engine business acceleration program, UK. 10,000 euros – co-founders investment.

Competitors – No direct competitors. Indirect: Digg, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, Quora, Gravity.

Product Description

Pinevio is a social content discovery platform enabling users to discover relevant content from people with shared interests. In an age of information overload Pinevio adds structure to our users’ social streams categorizing them by interests and building individuals link libraries, which are then discoverable by people with similar interests. Pinevio is a synergy of automated social-bookmarking, content curation and discovery.

Market Opportunity

Pinevio will map and monitor social consumers’ interests and how they change over time.According to Pivot Conference 2010, 82% would adopt new marketing platforms in order to reach the social consumer. Total annual Social Media Marketing budget of surveyed organisations is $2.8B and is projected to triple.

Wash up

This is probably the first time I’ve seen the platform working in anger, and looks like a fascinating way to connect with people of similar interests. Onwards!

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Intro

This post follows on from last Autumn’s Podcasts = genius and the immediately previous Podcasting discoveries. It does what it says on the tin in the title!

The first section sets out how I’ve been listening to digital content; the second describes how I have been involving in creating some podcasts myself.

Listening tools

Bulleted sections describing digital media players I’ve been using:

• Having used a Sony MP3 player to listen to digital music and talking books, I was looking for the ability to play MP3 / digital audio files in the car
• My earlier post describes fitting the new Aldi car radio – only glitches are getting the audio to play properly in the right-hand speakers…! ;-)
• However, the method of downloading files from RSS feeds or individual web pages (to memory sticks) is unwieldy and inefficient
• Being someone who has typically used PCs, my search for a software tool to aggregate podcasts led me to try Juice, which didn’t really cut it
• I’ve been fortunate in my role at happiest[more anon], to have the use of an iPhone
  • This led me to install iTunes, which has been a revelation for podcast subscribing, downloading and synch’ing with the iPhone
  • Now that I’ve got a cable to connect the iPhone to the radio, I can now play podcasts from my iPhone
  • I’m now investigating software for the iPhone which will
    • Have bigger buttons
    • Suspend the phone lock up after a couple of minutes
    • Or else work using the buttons on the Aldi radio

I’ve really benefitted from using the time in the car to listen to some amazing stuff!

Creating

This section sets out how I came to be involved in creating some podcasts myself. Hopefully the embedded audio players work, but I’ve embedded direct links, which I hope should make a pop-up player appear when you mouse over the link.

Audioboo / happiest feedback

In my role as Community Manager at happiest, I was enjoying the Codeworks Connect Summer Net-together and spotted Laurie Cansfield in the crowd. I wanted to ask him what he thought about the happiest iPhone app, as he’d been working at happiest earlier in the year.

He was kind enough to spare his time, and this is the result – recorded from the AudioBoo app on my iPhone [mouse over the link].

It’s a great performance from Laurie, and a learning point for me as interviewer to ask the questions – and then let the interviewee respond! ;-)

Soundcloud / Service-ability

My friend Kevin Robson is finalising a book he’s written about Customer Service. He’s got a website, a Facebook page, and a Twitter account – but arguably they all need revving up!

He’s looking to build out his presence online to create buzz, and is an experienced musician, and keen creator of content using his iMac. He’s recently bought a Zoom H4n (photos look about right).

So, when we got to talking about creating more content, we discussed creating a podcast using his new gizmo. One of the tips that Donna Papacosta suggests is to not do the podcast in the process of doing the prep work, so once I’d realised this, we got the gear set up and got cracking!

Service-Ability Interview by Kevin Robson

If the embed code doesn’t work for your, try mousing over this

Kevin has done the editing and post-production, and my questioning was based on Kipling’s Six Serving Men (cited towards the bottom of this Wikipedia entry):

I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.

Hopefully I’ve learned from Donna Papacosta, and you find it reasonably intelligible / illuminating! :-D

Wash-up / Hire us!

I enjoy creating content, and I believe Kevin had a big role in creating this podcast – by wisely judging what to say, and no more! I’m sure we’d both welcome the opportunity to work on more content, so please get in touch either via the website form, or Twitter.

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Introduction

For those of you dedicated followers of this blog, you might recall my post Podcasts = genius. Over the summer I’ve been fine-tuning my podcast listening, and wanted to share what I’ve found.

I’m come to think that that podcasts are a significant and pretty vibrant source of knowledge, insight and news. The best thing is listening to them brings to life the people involved – e.g. you may have their written material, but having listened to them speaking, they become a more of person: you can almost hear them reading out their words.

Sources

In my previous post, I mentioned listening to:

• Harvard IdeaCast
• Cambridge Judge Business School
• For Immediate Release
  • Interviews
  • FIR Live
  • [usually] Book Reviews

It was after listening to the “FIR Book Review: The New Small by Phil Simon” by Donna Papacosta, I decided to find out more about Donna. I’m glad I did!

How-to

Donna’s profile on For Immediate Release states:

Donna Papacosta, owner of Trafalgar Communications, based in the Toronto area, works with clients all over the world, helping them to communicate with employees, customers and prospects. A former systems analyst and magazine journalist, Donna has combined her love of communications and technology into a thriving independent practice since 1985. Her roster of clients includes major manufacturers, leading organizations in healthcare and information technology, nonprofits, universities, government agencies, small- to mid-sized businesses and more.

I guess the reason I’m including this blurb is I’m really grateful to Donna for sharing her expertise (and those of others) about how to podcast:

Listen to our podcasts about podcasting

Many of the Trafcom News Podcasts are about podcasting. Feel free to download and listen right here. [my link]

I’ve listened to most of the podcast on the page linked to above, and have written a follow-up post to describe my recent results in creating audio materials. I’ll update this post when the second one goes live.

Interesting series

Here’s some more podcasts I’ve signed up to.

Business

These are focused around digital marketing.

• Six Pixels of Separation
• Trafcom News podcast
• On the Record … Online
• Others I’ve subscribed to, but yet to listen to:
• WordPress community podcast
• SEO 101
• Get-It-Done Guy’s quick and dirty tips to work less and do more

Home

• In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg
• Alain de Botton – A Point of View
• Which? Money
• TEDTalks audio podcasts (ok, so they’re the audio tracks from the TED talks)

Wash-up

I hope you have found this list of discoveries illuminating, and I’d be interested to hear your feedback and suggestions!

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