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I did get the opportunity to synch with Chris on Scanaroo and get his insights around the app.  This iPhone app isn’t his first one, the Ventana platform continues to grow for a consolidated mobile view into social information.  There is no doubt that mobile platforms are going to be central to innovation and Chris and the Cerado team has been focusing on improving folks experience via mobile information management for at least the last 3 years.

So here is a little insight to what’s going on with Scanaroo.

You have been involved with VRM for a real long time, did Scanaroo pop out from those activities?
Absolutely.  One of the ongoing conversations within the VRM community centers around individual control of one’s own data/information.  At the West Coast VRM Summit in the spring of 2009, there was a confluence of factors that sparked the idea of Scanaroo.  In particular, the question of “what are the pieces of information that sit between a customer and a vendor that the customer should be able to better manage?”  From there, the discussion turned to loyalty cards, insurance cards, membership cards and the like, which spurred the development of Scanaroo.

How would you characterize the ideal user for your app?
Anyone who carries more than, say, two or three of these types of cards with her or him is an idea candidate for using Scanaroo.

I have a bunch of cards in my wallet, can you share cards with Scanaroo? Like giving the dental insurance card to your kids or something?
That would be a perfect use case.  It is exceedingly easy to get cards into Scanaroo, so if your kids are also carrying iPhones, the easiest path would be to have each child import his or her card(s).

Where are you thinking this will go over time?
This is really the first step; the initial foray into an industry change where customers both create and control their own information much more actively.  Another great example is what we are starting to see in the area of personal informatics, for example, where individuals choose to track information such as their exercise activities (e.g. “how far did I run today?”) or other items of interest, such as electricity/energy consumption in their homes.  Over time, we believe that smartphones will be the enabling technology for transforming the retail industry in the same way that blogs changed news and media in the 90s, or the MP3 changed music in the 80s, or even the way the personal computer changed computing in the 80s.  These are all cases where a disruptive enabling technology moved an entire industry from centralized control to one that is highly networked.

I’d love a feature where I could put in my ticket master eDelivery ticket on my phone and have it scanned.   I really don’t like the whole 8.5×11 paper getting all soggy when I’m at a show.
We are already starting to see this in some industries.  For example, a number of airlines now enable e-delivery of boarding passes right to your smartphone.  As William Gibson said, the future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed. 

Competitive intelligence continues to get easier with social networking, everyone’s got a piece of content to share and concept to improve upon. This presentation speaks to brand and IP monitoring, but you can use the concepts and monitoring ideas for competitive intelligence.

Might not be a bad idea to watch your products and company as well.  Thanks to agentOxO for creating the preso, since we all need to be aware of the trends and how to leverage them to our advantage, although I’m not sure that is why he created the presentation, but we all view things a little differently.

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I can see the retort when question on the top line estimate:

Even after negotiations it is still a $600M pay day.  Add in some contingency legal fees and the net is like $400 or like a gabillion times more than current revenues.

So while ZL clearly admits a short coming in marketing, which is the reason they aren’t leaders, thus the law suite, they might want to spend some time reflecting on the Ability to Execute concept when this is all over.

Below is a simple overview how marketing and branding just might influence a given organization’s placement in any given magic quadrant.

Many thanks to Hub Spot Marketing for their grader tools.

Take a look at these two geography slide sets – which lecture would you rather listen to? I think you could tell the same story with both slide sets, you may need to move the order around a little in the photo version though.

or this text filled one?

I especially liked a piece by Editor in Chief Maryfran Johnson about how poor use of PowerPoint can kill an otherwise promising presentation.  She tells the story of a conference where a CIO strolled on stage, told a humorous anecdote that caught the audience’s attention, and then “picked up the clicker, lashed himself to the mast of an absolutely stupefying, bullet-point-ridden PowerPoint deck and sank like a stone.”  Who hasn’t seen this happen? You begin squirming in your seat, start checking your email, and finally duck out to see if another presentation is any better.

As an executive coach notes later in the story, PowerPoint has become a crutch for people who need to give a presentation and don’t know the material that well.

While I think that’s true, I also think people just find it too easy to simply list bullet points on a page and read them off to the audience. New rule:  if the audience can read it, you don’t need to.  I try to elaborate on what’s on the screen, not repeat it.

Here are some other tips in the article:

• “Storyboard” or brainstorm your presentation on paper first. I find my ideas flow better when they’re written by hand, and I’m not caught up in the mechanics of banging things out on a keyboard.

• Use striking images to illustrate your themes.  Lots of low-cost photos and illustrtions are available at istockphoto.com.

• Use bullet points as the exception, not the rule.

• Know your story and supporting details enough that you don’t need to look at the slides.

For more help, pick up Garr Reynolds’ Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery.

Drop me a line with your tips for a good presentation.

“1. Ms. Strategy

This capable, driven, articulate young lady will meet any requests for tactical execution with a discussion of strategy.   In a start up, everyone is close to both the strategy and the supporting tactics.  Some people can’t help themselves from knowing better about either or both.  Plus, talking is a lot easier than doing.

2. Mr. Big, Hollow, Pipeline

He made $300k at Cisco before taking this job.  Now he has a huge sales pipeline of brand name companies with massive revenue potential and no disciplined approach to characterizing possibility of closing them.  Ask him how a 30% likelihood of close defers from a 70% likelihood of close and he will talk about people and conversations rather than steps and actions.  I now assume that Cisco pays all failing salespeople $300k.

3. Goldilocks

The ever changing roles and challenges of a growing start up provide an endless set of opportunities to try new jobs and responsibilities.  Most people love being stretched and many discover or develop new skills or interests.  Not Goldilocks, however, as this individual tends to be too heavy for light work and too light for heavy work.

4. The Big Time Scaler

No sense building any system today that won’t scale to size of General Motors.  Yes, every start up organization has plans and dreams but sometimes you need to sell one house to get another, larger one rather than live in a mostly empty, expensive one along the way.

5. Mr. Artiste – the programmer

He is creating software (sometimes the company’s core product/hope of future success) and he isn’t limited by the contents of the requirements document.  He isn’t limited by it because he isn’t reading it.  He is creating, damn it, and brings his own vision.

6. The Holiday Maker/Union Rights Leader/Salary Surveyor

Yes, a long title, but its a big job.  First, this person will seek the addition of incremental holidays to the company calendar.  What no Veteran’s Day?  We don’t get off the week between Christmas and New Year’s?   Friday before Easter or the Monday after?  Well, you get the idea. . . .This contributor will also “represent” the feelings of employees to management without consulting many of them first.   There’s no who in this group, its a group of “everybody”. . . Finally, this person usually investigates and shares salary data for the purpose of fomenting general dissension within the company.

7. The Angry Support Person

I can never figure out what makes them, or keeps them angry, but they can be the Energizer Bunny of anger.   Maybe the line of work, or being the starting point of a feedback loop for whatever is going wrong with the product or customers, but in any case, the Angry Support Person can create a special kind of crisis

8. The IT Support Guy/ Flannel Bob

He’s busy but he is working?  Does every computer need to be taken apart?  And how come you can never make a point that he doesn’t already know about like “Did you see the next version of this has that? or “I saw they’re coming out with ….”  Answer is always, “Yeah, I saw that.”

9. The New Marcom Manager/ Captain MoonRocket

He is much cooler than you. He dresses better.  And he has come up with a new campaign to re-position the product and company.   You just don’t know how a picture of a rock in a bed of sand does that.  It makes sense to him.   Just not to you.  Or anyone else.  But boy he is convinced and it is as if he needs to reach across the time/space dimensions to reach you.  He can really talk with his hands and his framing gestures are intended to create breakthroughs in your understanding.  Where did he get those glasses?

10. Joan of Accounting/ Defender of the Realm

New customers and, worse troublesome accounts receivable, just make more work for her.  If good accounts don’t make it through her screen, it is just less work. Since the collection of bad debt will inevitably fall to her, she sees her primary job as the prevention of bad accounts that will become work for her later.

11. The Time Traveling Middle Manager

Always ready to visit in your office and spend some time, he is ready with insightful commentary, nay advice, related to everything that HAS BEEN done by you or anyone else.  If you had that advice AND a time machine, you would really have something

12. The Triathlete Production Assistant

She arrives at the Monday morning staff meeting to describe an extreme fitness weekend which included a 48 hour race with running, swimming and cycling.   She got almost no sleep at all.  She looks ok.  And she will be fine for the next couple of hours.  Then she begins to fade.  Completely fade.

13. The Project Manager

It can be dis-spiriting to create fabulous GANTT charts for unfabulous goals. All the start up organization’s dysfunction in a walking, talking person.  He is characterized by his unanswerable questions –”How can the developers lose more than one week in their completion date, when only one week has passed?” or “Couldn’t we have known that people will take off work on Christmas day? or “Why does our one and only Q.A. staff need a month notice when they’re going to test the company’s only product?”

John Mecke is the Managing Director of DevelopmentCorporate, an Atlanta based corporate development advisory firm.  He blogs regularly at www.developmentcorporate.com.

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