Survival Strategies for Techies

United We Stand... Or Fall

2009-07-10T17:55:00.000-07:00

It used to be that a company's worst PR nightmare was a parent dishing at a little league game or to be prominently featured on the 6 o'clock news in a negative light. Not anymore. Now a company's worst customer service nightmare is to reap what they sow in terms of suffering at the hands of someone who truly understands how to use social media to make a point.

Hint: musicians love their instruments and rely on them to make a living. Do NOT - repeat, DO NOT - mistreat a professional musician's instrument.

It doesn't matter if it's David Carroll or the previously-better-known Louden Wainwright III.

In the matter of just a couple of days, hundreds of thousands of people have watched, commented on, and retweeted Carroll's music video, United Breaks Guitars (last check, one version showed more than 1.5M views). Tough spot for United to be in at this point, but they're doing the best they can, having completely botched all earlier opportunities to handle the matter differently or avoid the trouble altogether. Sure, the fine print reads that luggage might get damaged along the way, but presumably not through gross negligence.

Lest anyone feel inclined to blame any one individual (such as the poor Ms. Irlweg named in the song), note that more than one baggage handler was involved and Carroll dealt with multiple United employees. This was a systemic failure, all the way from the lack of caring on the part of various employees to the policies that hand-cuffed those who may have wished to handle the matter otherwise.

And it's not just Carroll who has experienced such horrible customer service at the hands of an airline. You don't rack up a million views of a video just because it's clever and well-done (though that certainly helps) - this song strikes a chord with people because they've all had similar experiences. When something resonates this strongly, social media just acts like an amplifier.

Not surprisingly, Carroll doesn't want compensation at this late date. That opportunity is long gone. If United really does use the video for training, it could go a long ways toward improving future customer experience, but no matter what, they have a long haul ahead of them to get out of the hole they've dug for themselves.

If the best way to handle such situations is to avoid them in the first place, let's take a look at what it takes to deliver stellar customer service.

First, the front-line employees themselves have to care. They are the ones who are handling bags, food, repairs, whatever it is that you're selling to or doing for customers. Front-line employees are also the customer service agents, wait staff, front desk people, flight attendants, etc who are interacting directly with customers. If they don't care about customers or their role in keeping customers satisfied, nothing else matters.

So what makes employees care or not care? Each business is a bit different but making them feel treated fairly, including fair compensation, comes to mind. If the business exhibits no loyalty or caring for their employees, it is rare they will show any loyalty toward the business or caring for their customers.

It doesn't mean that you have to throw money at the employees, but in an era when there still exists a larger-than-before pay gap between executives and line employees, and businesses like airlines regularly demand (and get) concessions from employees only to renege on promises later or fail to share the wealth when more profitable times come along, it's wise to think about the impact that has on employee morale. Argue all you want about who creates the most value for the company but just remember that the effectiveness of your customer service initiative is only as strong as your weakest link.

And there are other ways besides financial rewards to motivate employees. Give the middle managers (and their managers) the training needed to find out what is meaningful to each of their employees and the power to act on that information.

Fostering a culture of caring about customers and using that sentiment to guide everyday decisions and actions is another key. This culture of customer service has to spread throughout the organization and not be limited to front-line customer service agents reading from some script. So often we talk about empowering employees to do what's right without really delving into what that's supposed to mean and ensuring it looks, acts and sounds like the ideal of ensuring happy customers satisfied with your product or service.

When it comes right down to it, whatever the excuses are for not doing the things that result in happy customers, it just means you (as a business first, as an employee second) don't care about the customer enough to find a cost-effective way to deliver what they want. Where you might have survived a little league game or a negatively-slanted news story in the past, your chances of surviving a social media body blow today are a lot slimmer.

Now is the time to fully re-commit to your customers on a company-wide basis, starting with re-committing to your employees, fostering a culture centered around satisfying customers, and providing the training needed to make satisfied customers a reality. If you don't, you're just a social media-savvy clever songwriter away from ultimate disaster.

How have you helped foster a culture of service in your organization?

Pay Attention or Pay the Piper

2009-05-21T08:33:00.000-07:00

Some people don't take the time to pay attention, and it can really cost them. Don't be one of those people, especially when it comes to social media and networking.

I feel genuinely fortunate to have had a long and varied career. Even more fortunate that I've now lived a long enough life to make it seem possible that I've done all the things that I have. And that I've gotten over worrying whether I seem 'scattered', but that's beside the point.

The point is, that with so much past life experience and a genuine desire to help people out, I regularly contribute to conversations about a wide variety of topics when I feel like I have something worthwhile to offer. In an era of social media as business development platform, this has yielded some interesting if, in my opinion, rather moronic, results.

Although it's been nearly 20 years since I last worked in television, where I used to be a reporter and a weather anchor, I figure my experience in the TV industry and my expertise as a career management coach is occasionally useful to people. When a recent college graduate wanted some ideas from other LinkedIn professionals for how to land her first TV gig, I joined in with some thoughts of my own.

Sadly, someone else in the group apparently uses it primarily to harvest contact information with little to no thought about whether the individuals attached to that information are in any way her target market. The fact that we're part of the group is apparently qualification enough.

Because of that, soon after my contribution to the job search discussion, I received an email that claimed not to be a pitch (then later allowed that it might indeed be that) and then went on to pitch me on some product or technology for which I have zero use or interest personally. Because I no longer work in television, and haven't for nearly 20 years.

What's really too bad about this, though, is that if she'd paid any attention at all, it needn't have been a waste of her time or mine. Although truthfully, my 90-second investment did lead to this post and it probably took all of 10 seconds for her to launch her automated pre-written email, so maybe that's why she doesn't care. Again, however, I digress.

The point is that had she taken a bit more time and approached me as an individual and customized her message to target me, not some generic me from 20 years ago who still would have felt slimed, I could perhaps have helped her out. Because I genuinely like helping people out and because I still have a number of contacts in the industry. And I probably could have given her some advice about how to better pitch her whateveritis (I immediate sent the message to the bit bucket, so I don't even know anymore what it was). Some of the advice might even have been useful.

But because of not paying attention and the fact that one of the things for which I have very little tolerance is acting stupider than you are, I don't really feel like helping her out anymore. Should she happen to discover this post and realize it's about her, the advice here should be at least as worthwhile as anything else I could have done. And look, the rest of you get it for free! You don't have to have made the mistake to learn from it!

Paying attention to where people are, what they really want, and looking to see whether and how you fit is important. Paying attention to your own mistakes (and others) and learning from them is important. If you don't pay attention, you'll pay the price.

If you're lucky, the Piper's fee will only be 30 lashes with a wet noodle. Sometimes, though, it's worse. Sometimes it's not just a pitch that didn't land; sometimes it's a whole host of missed opportunities - or more disastrously, several potential clients or markets entirely closed to you if you happen to annoy the wrong person. Just hope they don't mention you by name if they're going to go public with their annoyance!

If you've been slimed via social media, do share. If you want help figuring out how not to slime people but still get your point across, I might be able to help. Frankly, though, Havi (with her duck, Selma) and Pistachio can probably help you out even more. I highly recommend them.

What new things have you noticed lately?

Staying on Top of Tasks

2009-05-11T14:14:00.000-07:00

I come off as hugely process-oriented at times, but really I'm not. I've simply learned that trying to work without any kind of structure yields very bad results. I can be pretty organized when I set my mind to it; it's when I fall off the wagon that the trouble starts.

Over the years, I've come across and experimented with a variety of tools, both for myself and for clients and I've learned a couple of very important things.

First, whatever tool you use simply must be a good fit for your individual personality, taking advantage of your strengths and mitigating your weaknesses. Just because it works for someone else doesn't mean it's the best tool or structure for you.

Second, find a tool that will survive having you abandon it from time to time and develop a strategy for getting back into the game of being organized. A structure you don't use isn't nearly as helpful as one that you do.

To that purpose, I actually use two different tools myself, concentrating on whichever works best for me at the time. Ordinarily, I prefer electronic management of my task list because it gives me the most flexibility in terms of availability and in adapting to the fluid nature of my life and work. My favorite electronic task management system is still LifeBalance by Llamagraphics.

Unfortunately, my handheld device and my Vista 64 laptop aren't terribly compatible at the moment, so no synchronization these days. That's where my second tool comes in.

I've discovered that in times of great stress (or non-synchronizing electronic tools), it really helps to be more tactile about managing my tasks. Good list hygiene is important to me - I can't find what still is yet to be done if all of the other nearby items are crossed out - and I like to be able to re-order tasks as priorities shift, so putting my tasks onto sticky notes and managing them in a partitioned folder works better for me than a standard list.

My strategy is to continue using a system for as long as I can, then when it gets difficult for me to keep up, I switch to the other system - sometimes just a change in scenery is all it takes to stay organized. If I fall off both systems and have trouble getting back into either one, then I give myself a short break of a week or two and hope that I don't miss anything too important. I practice being kind to myself when errors occur and use whatever problems arise as motivation to get me back into becoming process-driven again. What doesn't seem to work (for me, anyway), is guilt.

I find it also helps to work higher-priority tasks first, but have been known to shift to focus on easier tasks from time to time when I just need to get myself unstuck. Getting stuck, however, is more likely an indicator of tasks that are too big. What works then is to break the larger tasks down into smaller component tasks.

When I do abandon my systems or get hopelessly stuck, I look for reasons for why. More often I find it is the failure of a system to accommodate my needs than it is a general system failure or something I did wrong. If I can discover the source of the incompatibility, I work on addressing that for the next iteration and then I get back to using some (new and improved) system as soon as possible.

As with anything else, it's a mistake to believe that one will become 'organized' and then have nothing else to do to remain in that state. It's even a mistake to believe that one can become more organized and simply remain in that state even with a huge amount of effort.

The truth is that we capture the state of organization only periodically and then the pendulum swings through or back the the other way and we must start the process all over again of regaining a lock on organization. The best we can hope for is to stretch out the time we spend being 'organized' and reduce how wildly the pendulum swings away from it.

If you've experienced problems or successes with organizing your to-do list, I hope you'll share by making a comment. Perhaps we can help each other.

What keeps you on task?

Reasons to be on Twitter

2009-05-07T08:57:00.001-07:00

I started to write up recommendations for how to make the most out of LinkedIn and other social media and then felt compelled first to start with Twitter - Twitter has had that effect on a lot of people the past several months. Every time I turn around, Twitter is causing us to rethink a lot of what we do and how we do it.

Let's just start though with a stab at answering the question - why should I be on Twitter? What can it do for me - especially what can it do for me that something else can't do as well or better?

Whether you're job hunting or building a business, consider the following advantages of Twitter. Many of them apply to other types of social media as well, so it's a two-fer that way.

Become known as a helpful resource
Develop relationships that may be or become mutually beneficial
Reach an audience you might not otherwise have
"Meet" people you might not otherwise meet
Lay the groundwork for future relationships
Keep up with your (personal or business) brand
(what people are saying about you)
Keep up with your industry
(what people are saying about the topics you care about)
Influence your brand perception
Educate and inform people in your area(s) of expertise
Let people know more about you as a person
(increase your know/like/trust factor)
Build community around the topics important to you
Remind people you're there

I don't pretend to have a complete list of answers to those questions, but then no one else I've seen does either, which is why I felt so driven to put out a list of my own. Make a comment or tweet me @geekcoach and let me know if I've left anything out. I don't feel a need to have a lock on right but I do like finding 'right', however that happens.

Whether it's Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook or any other social media, I have thoughts too about how to do it right and not put your digital foot into your online mouth. Some of those thoughts are likely to come out in an upcoming SHRM magazine article for which I was interviewed recently. I'll also write up something of my own to share with you here.

If you could choose anyone at all to discuss any topic - who and what would those be?

Advice for the Jobless

2009-05-05T08:52:00.000-07:00

More news today about Microsoft job cuts so I figure it's a good time to remind everyone of some resources that might make facing job loss easier.

For anyone who's just lost a job, I've got a decent Top Ten list of how to successfully deal with a layoff.

If you're still waiting for the other shoe to drop, preparing for a layoff involves additional important skills and advice, aptly outlined by friend and colleague, Sylvia Taylor.

I have a different Top Ten list for what to do if you survive a layoff.

Many of the suggestions I offered about using LinkedIn for job hunting in a television interview earlier this year are just as applicable to Twitter and Facebook too so well worth reviewing and incorporating into your strategy.

And now there is also a website called Lay-Off Move On that helps support people getting back on their feet again post-layoff. Check it out and maybe you'll find some gems there to get you back into the work-force again and keep you sane till you get there.

If you have other tips, suggestions, or resources, post them here in a comment. The best way I know to deal with a layoff is to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and find a way to keep putting one foot in front of another. If I can help with that process, I'm happy to do so.

What helps you keep your chin up when times get tough?

Customer Service and Twitter

2009-03-03T18:02:00.000-08:00

I am a major advocate of Twitter these days, now that we're beginning to see some more mature uses of the medium beyond sharing the sort of latte the person in line in front of you is ordering. Reputation and brand management is one such emerging use that makes a great deal of sense to me. Breaking news is another - I do hope 'real' journalists and citizen journalists figure out how to play nicely together in a way that drives the sort of revenue that keeps trained journalists employed. We still need them just as much as we need citizen journalists.

Customer service and technical support, the role in organizations that is most near and dear to my own heart is a bit more complicated than the brand management element and may be looking at a reinvention of its own.

At this point, there are two things that I know. Firstly, Twitter (or something like it) will be involved. Secondly, we don't yet have a serious clue exactly how that will look when it's done right.

Twitter will play an important role in customer service because that's where so many customers are and there are more and more of them on Twitter all the time. To ignore customers in the Twitterverse is to sign your own death warrant.

On the other hand, to engage in brand management efforts devoid of any response that is truly meaningful to the customer is to make only empty promises. Customers figure out pretty quickly (even more so when they're talking with one another) that empty promises are just a way of pretending you're not ignoring them.

Fine - so we'll engage with our customers via Twitter and that's customer service on Twitter.

Not so fast.

To be effective and to provide value, customer service functions and technical support even more so, must be scalable and must provide more than one-off responses that are then subsequently lost. Logging customer interactions and tracking reported incidents and making this data searchable - which ultimately evolved into customer relationship management and knowledge management initiatives - are important elements to efficiently providing effective, valuable, and scalable customer service.

Simply responding to customer complaints that show up on Twitter doesn't take that into account so while it might work for a short time - and look good while it's working - it can't last. And then what you've got is a PR nightmare that no amount of brand management effort on Twitter or anywhere else can save.

That means we've got to figure out the why, the how and the detailed logistics of how to make it work. I believe this is a much bigger conversation, and some companies are clearly beginning both the discussion and the experimentation needed to move it forward. And that is truly just the beginning.

There is a great deal of work to be done on this front, which is rather exciting to me even though I'm reasonably certain it's a bit frightening to those organizations figuring out this train is already running much faster than they feel like they can catch up.

Hint - if you don't feel even a bit concerned about that, then chances are pretty good you don't even realize there is a train to catch, which means you run the risk of being run over by that train outright.

But I digress...

Before we can make much progress, we have to identify what customer service needs Twitter satisfies - and also what needs it creates. We have to identify tools and create process that help fully integrate Twitter into existing "best practices" and create new "best practices that are possible within this new paradigm we're creating. True, Twitter is just another communication method, but I've long held (about 24 years, actually) that the mode of communication actually influences the communication process itself. That too is another digression.

One "for instance" on the tool side, Socialtext might provide a solution for some needs; other tools probably exist as well and there are more needed to be built once we better understand the requirements.

On the process side, it's important to work out how best to handle the matter when a customer captures the attention of the CEO instead of a technical support agent as well as how to drive conversations toward customer service rather than away from them to someone else seen as more effective.

This is an old issue writ even larger by the existence of Twitter. Most customer service professionals dread this happening. Not because CEO's shouldn't talk to customers - they absolutely should - but that they should know enough about their inner workings of their own organizations to make the problems better, not worse, and in so doing, still follow established processes so that someone doesn't jump the line just because they know the right @ name to use.

What it really comes down to is that it's probably no less true of organizations than it is of individuals that the increased attention that comes with something like Twitter doesn't change you so much as expose you for who you really are.

In the meantime, I have some thoughts of my own about what it will take to pull this off and make customer service and support work in a world that seems inclined to tip more and more toward Twitter. First though, I'd like to hear what you think, what your questions and concerns happen to be at this point, and what you've seen and heard that works for you.

What do the people depending on me really need?

Measuring True Performance

2009-02-23T17:51:00.000-08:00

When I first wrote about productivity and performance, I wasn't sure what other measures might be worth tracking besides standard productivity numbers. I only knew that I've seen instances where individuals contribute to a team's overall performance without necessarily having numbers to prove it.

While I still don't have a concrete suggestion for metrics worth tracking, the Houston Rockets and Shane Battier may provide a clue. If nothing else, their story is an excellent illustration of what I'm talking about. And I believe it validates my original assertion.

I don't want to turn this into a Justice Potter Stewart "I know it when I see it" moment, so let's talk about what measures might be useful. The Rockets are changing how we see and understand basketball for the better. Let's do the same in business where it can make an even bigger difference.

We can start by analyzing what you've done or seen other people to that helps improve performance and talk about how to measure that.

What difference are you making today?

When a Major Delay = Fabulous Service

2009-02-17T22:47:00.000-08:00

Have I told you my Hertz story yet? No? Then you might not believe it's possible to equate a 3-hour delay in a car rental with the most excellent customer service on the face of the planet but I'll swear till my dying day that it's true.

Although I've told this customer service story lots of times to anyone who will listen - that's what people do when they are ecstatic, incredulous even, over the amazing service they've received - it's been a while since I've shared the whole thing and I haven't mentioned it here. It's time I fixed that.

I was reminded of my Hertz experience twice in as many weeks when members of my LinkedIn network asked related questions about service - what constitutes 5-Star Service and a request for examples of Moments of Truth in Service. Although my answers differed slightly in focus, both brought to mind the vacation that almost wasn't.

First, it helps to know how much this mini-vacation meant to me. While everyone else recently has been ridiculing the passenger who missed her flight, I have some ideas how she might have reached that state of collapse. There but for fortune...

In my case nearly ten years ago, our company had gone through yet another in a series of sizable layoffs a couple of weeks earlier. I hadn't had to let go many people myself, but this was one of the few times the line managers had not had much input into the process and that lack of involvement had resulted in some mistakes that made things messier.

Much of that didn't impact me directly but layoffs are never an enjoyable aspect of a manager's job and this was still even more emotional than normal. Helping people cope - on my team and others - and mitigating the hit on productivity was taking its toll.

Then there was the house that we were supposed to be building. The time that wasn't already spent on coaching employees or caring for a 3-yr-old all went to packing up moving boxes so we could tear down our existing home to the dirt. The packing up was happening but uncertainty and delays over the tearing down part meant we had to cancel our midwest baseball stadium tour. After having enjoyed our northeast baseball stadium tour so much the year before, this was a major league disappointment.

In the midst of it all, Tall Person learned of a family wedding and decided it would be important for him to attend. A weekend alone with a toddler for me when I was already feeling stretched - how fun. I started to feel envious of my sister's planned trip to Telluride that same weekend with her infant son.

When my father caught on, he quickly suggested that I fly into Salt Lake City with Small Person. It would be a bit of a drive from there, but certainly manageable. We'd spend a long weekend together as a sort of mini-family reunion. It gave me something to look forward to and I kept myself focused on that ray of hope the way I've focused at other times on the finish line of a long and brutal race.

When departure day arrived, Tall Person drove us to the airport, then went to work for a few hours before leaving for the airport himself. The flight itself was non-eventful, but when I went to the car rental, Hertz had not yet installed the car seat I'd requested. The attendants wrestled with the installation while the agent stood there with my paperwork and driver's license, waiting to hand it over to me when the car was ready.

Still they struggled with the carseat, so being more experienced with that operation, I jumped in to help. The agent tried to stay out of the way and idly looked over the paperwork in his hands. Doing so, he came to a realization and called me over.

"There is a problem with your license. It's expired."

My heart sunk. Immediately I realized the truth of what he was saying. In the midst of everything else that had been going on in my life, I'd managed to overlook that important detail just long enough to have forgotten about it altogether during the intervening months. And just as quickly, I realized the enormity of the situation, even before he spelled it out for me.

"Without a valid license, we can't rent you the car."

There have been very few times when I have come up against truly irreversible mistakes but when it happens, it has always resulted in the same hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach - no, no, no... it can't be true. In that moment, I may not have become the woman in that video, but I understood how she felt.

Not generally one to allow emotions take control (crying at movies doesn't count!), I was suddenly unable to prevent months worth of pent-up tears as they began to slide down my face. I tried valiantly to keep my composure and found I just couldn't. It seemed there was nothing to do but go back inside and re-book myself on a return flight. I wasn't even sure how I would get home from the airport.

As unwanted as they were on my part, the tears were too much for the Hertz agent. He started casting about for solutions. Could my family come get me? No - they were too far away. Did I know someone else in the area who could take me? No, I could think of no one who lived in the area. I had flown all this way for nothing. I was going back home to an empty house, both literally and figuratively.

Still, the agent kept looking for answers. Still, none of them were workable. He went to make some phone calls to see if there might be other solutions he hadn't considered. I collapsed into the chair near the car I wouldn't be driving, my son trying to offer hugs for tears he didn't understand. I called both my husband and my father to share the bad news.

Ultimately, the Hertz agent returned. The very last thread of hope he'd been following showed some promise. Maybe, just maybe, I could get a driver's license in the state of Utah. It had seemed like a slim chance at first, but he'd called around and he was reasonably sure it could work if I thought I could pass a written test. He'd have one of the attendants drive me.

It seemed like a lot to go through, but I don't struggle too much with multiple choice exams and anything seemed preferable at that point to cutting my trip short. I regained control of my emotions, keeping tight rein on hope as well as distress, and Ahmed drove me over to the nearest Department of Licensing office. I called Tall Person to share the shred of hope I was clinging to.

We arrived at the DOL office just before noon, with lunchtime crowds building. I stood in line forever, filling out the license application form while Ahmed, the Hertz attendant, entertained Small Person with paper cranes he folded from forms others had discarded. Finally, I reached the head of the line and explained my plight. The woman was sympathetic but we hit a road block when she realized I could not supply a local address.

"Don't you know anyone in Utah? Anyone at all whose address you could use?"

I tried to search my brain but it was quickly becoming addled with all the stress and the knowledge that the line was building behind me just compounded the problem. No, no family or friends in Utah came to mind. I could think of women with children my son's age all across the US - Indiana, Texas, California, Massachusetts, Georgia - but none of them in Utah. No work contacts either. I started to feel dizzy. The line continued to build behind me. I was sure I was about to become so much bureaucratic roadkill.

Instead, the woman encouraged me, "I'm sure you can think of someone. Just step aside right over there and when you've come up with a local address, come straight back to me so that you don't have to stand in line all over again." I found it easier to breathe again; the tunnel vision that had been encroaching began to recede. I thanked her profusely then pulled out my PDA and set to work looking through my address book for a clue to a local contact.

Finally, I hit on one. A work colleague of my husband's... I didn't know his wife well, but hadn't she mentioned her family was from Provo? I called Tall Person for a third time. He was at lunch with the colleague in question and they had already guessed what I needed.

"I bet you're calling for Jennifer's parent's address, aren't you? Here it is..."

Two major roadblocks down, one more yet to go. Ahmed the Hertz attendant still patiently entertaining my son, I began working on the open book multiple choice exam. The only tough part was locating the information in the pamphlet they provided. I had to will myself to slow down and not panic, and even to remember to breathe. Finally, I had just two more questions to answer. I kept flipping through the pamphlet and could not seem to find the right sections containing the answers.

Then, with the worst possible timing... "Mommy! I have to go!" For that matter, so did I, which was not helping me think. And we were both hungry, having had very little to eat all day. But just two questions to go... I looked pleadingly at Ahmed. He was kind enough to come escort Small Person to the bathroom while I finished my exam. Clearly that was way above and beyond the call of duty; I knew it and was beyond thankful.

Turning in my exam was an exercise in torture. The man responsible for validating my responses pulled out the correction key and started checking. The first couple responses marked wrong didn't surprise me, given the situation. The next few concerned me; how many could I miss and still pass? Then as his pen bled red all over the paper, I stopped breathing again. Feeling dizzy once more, it barely occurred to me that this couldn't possibly be right. No matter how stressed I was, there was simply no way that I could have gotten every single answer wrong. No way.

It seemed odd to him also and he took a second look even before I thought to ask. "Oh, wrong key!" I nearly collapsed with relief.

Validated against the appropriate key, he reassured me that I had indeed passed. I went through the motions of having a photo taken and scheduling the driving portion of the exam I knew I wouldn't be taking and then rushed back to Ahmed and my son, full of smiles and a temporary Utah driver's license in my hand.

Three and a half hours from when I first stepped into the Hertz office, I dropped off Ahmed at the airport again and headed south and west to Telluride, arriving just an hour after my sister and in plenty of time for a late dinner.

When I returned to Seattle at the end of the weekend, I wrote an extensive thank you to Hertz and set about getting a new Washington State driver's license which, given that I was beyond six months overdue, would have been much more difficult had it not been for the Utah license I had in my possession at that point. Meanwhile, somewhere in Provo is a family who has never even met me, receiving junk mail in my name.

Nearly ten years later, I still love to tell people how out of the way the Hertz people went, both personally and professionally, to help. They didn't just provide excellent customer service; they helped me deal with a problem that was entirely of my own making. And while I have no idea which licensing office I visited, I am equally thankful to every agent there who helped me, encouraged me, reassured me, and in every way possible, made it easier for me to accomplish what I needed when just behaving as we've come to expect bureaucrats to behave would have made it tougher - or even impossible.

Some people talk about delighting the customer or excellence in service. Instead, I believe it comes down to just caring enough to do whatever is in your power to have a positive impact on the customer's experience with your brand. Every customer interaction is a tangible exercise in brand management.

That day so many years ago, every individual I encountered provided me with a brand experience that has stuck with me all this time because of how superbly positive it was in the face of utter hopelessness. Who wouldn't want that kind of customer service? The beauty of it is that it doesn't have to cost the company extra.

Sure, not having Ahmed around for a couple of hours had to have been a bit of a stretch for the Hertz guys. But it's not like someone shows up every day with an expired driver's license, so going to such extremes is probably not needed often enough to drive up costs significantly. And I like to think that my continued raving over my experience with them is worth more than enough to cover whatever costs they did incur. The long-term gains for great brand management in the form of great customer service can be huge.

How is your customer service influencing your brand?

Lessons from Startup Weekend Seattle 2

2009-02-10T18:28:00.000-08:00

My family doesn't really understand why spending a whole weekend with a bunch of geeks would be so important to me but at least they didn't begrudge me the time. Having participated twice now, I find Startup Weekend is a bit like a real-life reality show, a laboratory environment for controlled experiments dealing with real-world issues.

It's fun - lots of fun - but I probably wouldn't take so much time away from the rest of my life just to have a good time. These weekends are also really valuable.

For one thing, I find it so much easier to connect with people - get to know them and really bond with them - when we're working together for a common purpose. It's so much better than standing around at some networking event trying to figure out what to say to one another. It's even better than most ice-breaker activities or events billed as 'team-building' because of how fully engaged people are in what they're doing.

Plus, as Marina Martin points out on Nathan Kaiser's nPost blog about Startup Weekend, working together in close quarters like this also provides a great opportunity to see how people work - together, under pressure, with and without direction, and when faced with seemingly insurmountable obstacles. After a weekend like this, I have a growing list of people I'd love to work with on real world jobs and projects and probably a few I'd have to think a bit more carefully about first.

Beyond experiencing the power of the event for yourself, here are a few of the lessons coming out of Startup Weekend that I thought were rather universally portable into other situations...

Step Up
Things happen because you make them happen. If it matters to you, take matters into your own hands; don't wait for someone else to do it.

Be a Leader
Leadership is often more about helping the group define their vision and about removing obstacles in the way of that vision than it is about dictating who should do what and how. All it really takes is wanting to be of service.

Assume You Know Enough
You may not feel like you know everything you need to know but that doesn't necessarily mean that someone else knows more than you do. Dive in and figure it out; learn as you go along if you have to.

Get Passionate
The work can be tough enough without making it tougher, trying to work on something that you have to push yourself to do. Work on what pulls you in, propels you, compels you to be involved.

Work With People Who Share Your Passion
You don't have to agree - in fact diversity of opinion helps - but look for and stick with people who feel as driven as you do to succeed in your chosen direction.

Accept Some Ambiguity
Any creative endeavor involves a certain amount of uncertainty. If you already know everything you're doing, it's an assembly line that robots could be doing instead, Certainty is not creative and definitely does not produce anything new. Embrace the ambiguity and harness the chaos to bring about real innovation and change.

Work Through Challenges
Whether you steer around obstacles, stay persistent in the face of challenges, seek out new solutions, or accept workarounds when you have to, it takes dedication to keep moving forward - and moving forward should always be your goal, no matter what setbacks you might encounter.

Use Available Resources
You never know what you need or what you might be missing. Look for and be wiling to accept help and information from a variety of sources.

Pace Yourself
Whether it's a sprint or a marathon, managing time, energy, and other resources is an important aspect of success. Know what sort of race you're running and plan accordingly.

Slow Down
Understand what you're really trying to build, for whom, and why. Listen to feedback. Make paper prototypes before committing to code. In the end, you'll actually be saving yourself time and headaches by spending some time thinking and planning before jumping straight into the actual work.

Have Fun
When all is said and done, work and life are both a lot better when we can remember to laugh, enjoy ourselves, take some time to play, and (in general) just not take things too seriously.

Look For Opportunities
When challenges arise, there are very nearly always gifts and opportunities - but only if you're looking for them instead of focusing on what's going wrong. Consider it a matter of choosing the approach most likely to produce the best outcomes.

Celebrate Success
The results may look exactly as you'd imagined... or, more likely, like something different, less or more. Whatever it is, celebrate whatever is right, whatever you have learned or accomplished.

Say Thank You
Someone has helped you get where you are, has helped make things easier. Show your appreciation.

I know there are a number of people I'd like to thank for making Startup Weekend such a memorable event.

Thank you John Smilgin for taking the ball and running with it and for joining forces with Rob Eickmann, Nathan Post, Ilene Little, and Marina Martin in doing such an amazing job with planning and execution and for bringing in so many great sponsors.

Thank you to Whitney Keyes for getting us such great media coverage and to George Junginger for his assistance and insights in running the event.

Thank you to Google for hosting the space and especially to Jessica Einfeld and Wesley Chan for their persistence and determination in resolving various issues and to Bob and Justin for taking such good care of us throughout the weekend.

Thanks also to all of the terrific sponsors who made the Startup Weekend possible - Perkins Coie, nPost, Microsoft, Blue Box Group, Type As, Inc for meals, Peets for coffee throughout the weekend, and Big Al's for very affordable, very good beer. Thank you Aviel Ginzburg for creating the cool t-shirt logo.

And of course - a huge 'thank you' to everyone who participated. Thank you to everyone who came out and joined in, worked hard, spent time on projects, helped keep things tidy, laughed, and had fun. Thank you to everyone who followed our activities and shared in spirit.

Thank you to those of you who spoke up about what you needed and helped participate in finding solutions. Thank you to everyone who helped create some buzz about this and future events and to everyone who shared ideas about how it can be even better next time. Startup Weekend just wouldn't be the fabulous event that it is without you. Thank you for being part of it.

What can you do to make your next gathering worth repeating?

LinkedIn Job-hunting Tips

2009-02-03T23:31:00.001-08:00

For those of you who caught the KCTS show, About the Money, tonight with a story on using LinkedIn to improve your job-hunting chances, I sure hope you got something useful out of it. If you didn't see the show, you can already find the story online so you can still pick up some quick tips if you're so inclined.

Even in 4 1/2 minutes (a lifetime by TV journalism standards) you can't really get all the information squeezed in that you might want, so my thought is to expand the list here on Survival Strategies for Techies and provide some additional detail as a companion to the story that aired.

If you've got some questions about using LinkedIn (or other social networking sites) for job-hunting, let me know and I'll make sure I address them in that post. Questions you hear from other people, or things you notice other people don't do right (even me!) on LinkedIn count too.

As another thought - if you think there might be some folks who would find a short class helpful, I'd certainly consider that as well.

In the meantime, I want to make sure to thank Krista Canfield from LinkedIn for connecting me with the KCTS crew, to Terry Murphy, the producer of the story, to Greg Davis, one of the videographers and to Tim Griffis, the other videographer and the editor for making us look and sound so good.

I also want to thank Jeanne Cost for agreeing to be a much more involved interview subject than was originally explained and to each and every one of my friends and neighbors (and their friends) who were kind enough to take my calls and return them when I was in the challenging position of having to seek someone out at the last minute. There's nothing like saying "I understand you can't help, thanks so much for considering it - do you know anyone else who could?" to make me feel like a reporter again!

For that matter, there's nothing like saying a heartfelt, "Thanks!" for making you feel pretty good about life.

Who can you thank for helping you?

Twitter - Jumping the Gap

2009-01-15T13:28:00.000-08:00

Perhaps it's because I'm more involved in Twitter these days but I'm finding more and more evidence that Twitter is jumping the gap - beginning to cross the chasm between early adopters and going mainstream.

Of course, for some, this is about as welcome as jumping the shark but this is the stage of maturation I really love. I love the discovery of something new, figuring out how it can be useful, and then sharing that vision with others until they get it themselves. My first experience with this whole World Wide Web aspect of the internet was like that and now with Twitter, I'm actually melding that with a return to a comfort zone distinctly reminiscent of the early days of BITNet.

Near daily, we're finding new uses for Twitter. Now that it's not just about what sort of coffee drink the person in front of you is ordering, it's not just about marketing either. During the snow storms last month in Seattle, finding out weather and road status were invaluable tools for coping with all the disruption.

And Twitter is great for breaking news. Tweets today started full of news and speculation about Steve Jobs and quickly moved on to subjects like the plane crashing in the Hudson River and other topics that regularly take a bit more time to reach mainstream media.

In fact, it was at least three days between when I heard about the pantsed Vail skier via Twitter and the first forwarded email in my inbox. News junkie that I am, I'm following news-oriented Twitter accounts as fast as I can discover them.

From these uses, it's not at all a big leap to thinking of using Twitter in emergency situations including using Twitter as an emergency broacast system and the possibility of having Twitter play a role in a larger technology solution for emergencies and disasters.

Twitter has been a great discovery mechanism as well - finding new people, finding blogs like the one published by Washington State Department of Transportation and finding lots of other great sites and interesting information.

It wasn't so very long ago when the notion of being rescued with Twitter was a big deal. Now that this seems an obvious go-to, I wonder where we'll head next with this technology. We like to make predictions this time of year - how do you see Twitter being used in the future and what would it take to get there?

In any case, the pattern I've noticed is technology is often used for fun before it's real usefulness is identified and put to work. It doesn't hurt to think about what's fun in our own lives and how that might be made useful.

How do I use technology to move me forward?

Fail Big - Count Me Out

2008-12-13T14:17:00.000-08:00

When startups are encouraged to fail big, I'm pretty sure no one had in mind the recent troubles with Count Me In, the same company Small Person's soccer and baseball teams have used over the years to handle registrations. I'm just glad now that I did not end up working with them as I'd imagined a year ago that I would. Sometimes there does seem to be some grand design in the universe.

At the very least, it's one more reason to believe the adage, "it's better to be lucky than good."

For those impacted and those associated with the company who I know to be good people, I wish the best. I'm sure this isn't an easy situation, but hopefully it can all be resolved with a minimum amount of damage all the way around.

For the rest of us, I'm sure we're just glad to be clear of the blast zone.

What are the potential long-term consequences of today's decisions?

Raising a Compassionate Geek

2008-12-05T19:22:00.000-08:00

Amidst the chaos of students readying their collection of engineering contraptions based on ancient Chinese technology, Kristen found me and put a copy of ParentMap into my hands. "The story on the Dalai Lama starts on 42," she said as I started to thumb through the pages.

The story wasn't about the more general relationship between the Dalai Lama and his native Tibet. She had read an article I'd written about Small Person's encounter with His Holiness last spring and wanted follow up on what sort of lasting effect he and I had noticed since then.

The educators at Seattle Country Day School get it - science and technology are important, but these are not the only keys to success. Learning how to collaborate with others and to see the world from more than one point of view are important too.

I see this pretty clearly when I'm coaching geeks. When technology professionals have more than sufficient technical skills but still aren't achieving all that they want, we often discover that the missing ingredient is further development of their (sometimes neglected) soft skills - collaboration, compassion, and building strong working relationships.

Small Person is most definitely well-rounded in that respect. As innovative as he is, and as good as he is at building things on his own, he also shows a talent for working well with others, listening to differing viewpoints and integrating them with his own ideas. I have no doubt he'll go far.

As a parent, I encourage that balance because I see how much it helps my clients. It is important to play to our strengths, and it can also be a good idea to take another look at areas we may have dismissed in the past as unimportant and consider the possibility that there may be some value there too.

What role does compassion play in your work and life?

News for the Pressure Prompted

2008-12-05T14:34:00.000-08:00

On balance, I'm not a procrastinator; I'm simply pressure prompted. Last night I finally registered for the PSCA coaching conference. If you are a leader, an educator, a coach, a parent, or anyone else who is interested in self-improvement, you'll want to register too, I'm sure of it. There's still time to get the Early Bird discount but time is running out, and that is the primary distinction between being pressure-prompted and procrastination.

Being pressure prompted (for real - not just a rationalization) means that the closer we get to a deadline, the more crystallized our thoughts become. Where earlier on, there seems like too much time and too much space, suddenly when it simply must be done, everything becomes clear.

Sometimes I let it go too far and I'm sure others do too. Too much pressure, and then my thoughts become muddied; I've gone past the point of clarity and I'm too stressed to think clearly anymore. In this stage, I begin to feel slightly panicked.

Being pressure-prompted is often a good thing but it's not without its problems. Sometimes in the midst of all that clarity, I realize I have a perfect idea or solution... but without enough time to execute. This puts me back smack in the middle of procrastination-land. Nothing is happening or plans have to be dramatically shifted to accommodate the issue of not enough time.

When it's a matter of being pressure-prompted, there is still action. Like a seed germinating, the activity is just all internal or underground, where you can't see it. Procrastination generally involves being stuck, with no real action, activity, or progress taking place at all.

Sometimes I perceive (rightly or wrongly) obstacles in the way of my goal that I have trouble seeing my way past. When I'm smart, I realize that I'm stuck and I get my coach on the phone. Usually a quick conversation is all I need to get myself back on the path of movement. This external viewpoint helps get past the blinders we each tend to have - yes, even those of us who are trained to know better.

You can benefit from some of that training too, even if you're not a coach. You're going to hear more about this upcoming conference in the next few days and I promise to make the rest of the information that I include worthwhile, even if you're not planning to attend the conference. Be sure to subscribe to the TechSurvivor blog to receive updates so that you don't miss anything.

In the meantime, be sure you check out the information about the conference, Creating Conscious Choice and Change - Learning and community-building for individuals and organizations to be held on February 5, 2009, in Seatac. Do it now, before time runs out.

What are you waiting for?

What To Do If Your Job Survives the Lay-off - Top Ten

2008-12-02T22:52:00.000-08:00

Today we've all just begun to absorb the news about the Washington Mutual layoffs yesterday, significant enough to necessitate early notification under the WARN Act. At 34,000 affected over the course of the next year or so, the actual number on the WaMu layoffs is huge. While that is a lot of people planning to be out of work, some people will be dealing with survivor guilt rather than dealing with losing a job.

For the people hititng the streets, it can seem like an enviable position, still going to work every day. The truth is that it doesn't always feel that way when you're the one wondering how you were spared when so many of your co-workers were let go and you're trying not to think about how you're likely to fare in the next round of layoffs that could come along later. Surviving a layoff can be just as stressful as getting a pink slip. Officially hearing what we've suspected for a while now, that we're in the midst of a recession, just makes it worse, wondering if and when the other shoe will drop.

Despite the downsides, there are clearly considerable upsides to surviving a layoff. Here are some tips to make the most out of the opportunity.

1) Take time to grieve - Grieving can seem counterintuitive when your job has been spared, but the significant changes involved when others around you lose their jobs means that your life and work will be different somehow. Those changes mean some kind of loss for you too, so take time to recognize that loss.

2) Take Stock - Take time in the midst of everything else to identify your strengths and your accomplishments and collect evidence of these while you still have easy access to that. Not only will it help you realize that you do indeed deserve (as much as anybody) to continue working, it will be helpful material in the event you too find yourself looking for work.

3) Identify top priorities - Figure out what work most needs doing now that there are so many fewer people to get it done. And decide what tops your personal priority list. You may have a lot more on your plate for a while, so it's more important than ever to plan on purpose how to spend your precious time and attention.

4) Sieze opportunities - Change generally means chaos and while that can be uncomfortable for a lot of people, it also can mean increased opportunities. Take advantage of being in the right place at the right time and step up to meet the new challenges with vigor.

5) Stay positive - You may be asked to do a lot more with a lot less and you may worry about your own job down the line, but for now, you can protect yourself best by keeping a positive outlook. If you do find it necessary to speak up about a problem, look for the most positive way to present it and make it clear you are willing and able to participate in finding and implementing a solution.

6) Start (or keep) networking - Network to help out-of-work friends. It will help them now and can help you in the future if you should find yourself pounding the pavement later on.

7) Save up - With the possibility of more uncertain times ahead, this is a good time to use the job you still have to set aside money as insurance against loss of income, even if it means cutting back expenses to do it.

8) Stay in touch - Go ahead and meet with ex-co-workers (or soon-to-be) for coffee, lunch, or drinks. They're your friends and you can help each other network. Try to keep it one-on-one, though to avoid large numbers of ex-employees who may still be in grief mode or to spare a handful of ex-employees the "business as usual" conversations likely to predominate amongst groups of people still employed.

9) Cultivate a new perspective - Take advantage of the changes going on around you to spend some time questioning assumptions and playing with new perspectives. You never know where these might lead.

10) Get help - Find a helpful and supportive online group or form your own mini-support group to get through some of the biggest changes, If you feel like it's worthwhile, you can also hire a coach to help you strategize your next move. Just don't think that you have to figure it out and deal with it by yourself.

If you are in the more awkward position of being in a job that's on life support, do the prudent thing and take advantage of being able to work for as long as you can, look to Sylvia's list for how to prepare for not having a job later on, and plan ahead for what to do if you're not working for a while.

How can my friends and I help each other right now?

Customer Service Fiasco at Seattle City Light

2008-11-18T09:41:00.000-08:00

Remember Lily Tomlin from the days when there was a monopoly on phone service? "We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company." Apparently, the same has been mostly true for at least one power company the past few days. The good news is that with a spotlight on the story, and enough public outrage, apparently Seattle City Light discovered they do have a heart after all - or at least found one they could borrow, under pressure from the mayor's office.

In what surely must have been a PR nightmare, a 13-yr-old boy who is well-known in his neighborhood for fundraising for good causes lost his cat up a 40-ft utility pole when it was chased by a dog. When KING aired the story in their news broadcast last night, I wasn't the only one shocked and bothered by the stupidity of SCL in claiming the cat could come down on its own from that high up a pole (as opposed to a tree), surrounded by buzzing electrical wires.

While plenty of trolls began advocating rocks and BB guns, there is something about the plight of an animal that finds itself in trouble through no fault of its own that tends to get people motivated to take action. Eventually SCL was talked down out of their own tree and apparently rescued Kitty from the pole. Hurray for angry customers.

Why do I bother to speak out about this in public? I regularly comment on customer service issues because it's not just about technology for me. It's technology AND interacting well with other human beings with an eye toward making the combination personally and professionally profitable whenever possible. In this instance, Seattle City Light shot themselves in the foot though with any luck, their efforts this morning may have redirected the shot so that they'll only have suffered a glancing blow.

Telling strangers motivated only by their own sense of justice to call in support of rescuing a cat on top of a utility pole that (as reported by one such caller) that the owner should have kept better watch on the cat is not good customer service. Some of these people were even in the neighborhood expected to be impacted by a brief power outage, were it to be necessary to rescue the cat and if they are willing to go dark for a bit, then that ought to have been a good indicator of public sentiment.

As a customer service agent with no power to actually change policy, what could these folks who were receiving phone calls have done? Tough call, but here's my best guess from the sidelines...

First, once you realize that you're dealing with more than one call, get more information and take the time to check out the story yourself. It should not be a surprise, even to people who don't care that much about cats, that this issue isn't going to just go away on its own.

Next, notify a supervisor immediately of the issue, just like you would report a power outage or any other big event that is likely to result in a lot of calls. Then begin collecting data on the calls and let each caller know that they are not alone in their outrage and that their comments are being collected and forwarded on for further review of the situation so that they truly feel heard and that some sort of action will result.

For those callers who tried to reach supervisors and were denied, my recommendation is the agents should have put them through. This is not the sort of thing you should try to deal with on your own. If the supervisor already on the line with another outraged caller, then say as much and ask if the individual would like to hold or to have their comments added to the others.

Ultimately, it may be necessary to point out that there is such an extensive response on the matter that supervisors can't talk to callers and take action but worded correctly, this should be taken as good news by the callers.

If they were really smart (and it's probably not too late for this), SCL would begin posting cat rescue updates on their website. I realize that might sound like poor resource management, but really it's not, when you consider the importance of call avoidance. Now that the cat is no longer up the pole without a way down, you don't really want to keep fielding more calls from irate pet lovers. Plus, if you have some good photos and a good story to talk about how you came to realize the situation was a much bigger deal than you originally figured it to be, yada yada yada, you might even be able to turn a PR nightmare into something else that makes you look a lot better.

Whether you're an employee (of any kind), a politician, or a power company, it's as much about perception as anything else. SCL has stopped the bleeding in that area but could really benefit from a blood transfusion now after the fact. Openly pointing out what they did right along with an appropriate amount of humility over what they did wrong will go a long way to improving their public image.

How do you recover from personal PR nightmares?

Before the Lay-off

2008-11-18T07:49:00.000-08:00

My post about dealing with a lay-off seems to have struck a nerve with some, so I'm glad I put the information out there where it can be useful to people. It was very much written from the perspective of dealing with the shock of going home from work early one day and not going back for the rest of the week - or the week after that.

There is another perspective - when you know (or suspect) the shoe is about to drop - and my friend and colleague, Sylvia Taylor, has excellent suggestions for facing a lay-off. In five important points she details how to prepare for getting laid off and begin moving on from there.

I agree wholeheartedly with Sylvia's suggestions, believe they dovetail nicely with my own that apply a bit more after the fact, and I totally love her writing. Regardless of whether you might foresee a potential lay-off in your future, you should check it out. It's good information to keep in your back pocket, if nothing else, and chances are good that in this economy you will know someone who needs it, even if you don't need it for yourself.

In the meantime, I encourage everyone to hang tough together and help each other out as best you can. That's what makes the ride worthwhile.

What moves now will prepare you for greater success later?

Some Off-the-Grid Internet Scenarios

2008-11-13T08:46:00.000-08:00

A while back, I mentioned the possibility of a future where we might have internet off the grid. Based on comments I've received and ongoing search statistics, this seems to be a popular topic these days, so maybe it's time to elaborate further.

First, let me make extremely clear - while mostly knowledgeable in most of the areas I delve into here, I am far from expert. I would, however, love to get a dialogue going on the subject, as I believe it's a useful converation to have. At the very least, there are enough different implications here for multiple science fiction stories. There may be some business opportunities too.

Scenario - Commercial power available but in limited quantities
If society has access to some but somewhat limited amounts of commercial power, then obviously there would have to be some kind of prioritization or auctioning to decide who has access to that power. Think television/radio spectrum frequency distribution. Under such a set of circumstances, I can imagine that at least some server farms might have access to at least some commercial power but it might not be 24x7. Average businesses and individuals would likely not have access to commercial power - if they did, we wouldn't need this conversation.

If this scenario were to come about, then much of the internet might look from the outside like it does today, except that businesses and individuals would need individual power supplies such as from solar, wind, or geothermal sources in order to connect to it. You'd have access to the internet pretty much as you're used to now, just not all the time like we have today.

Since others would be in similar circumstances, you might be able to access static data (such as website pages) right away but something like an email response to a question (especially involving other individuals and smaller businesses) would be somewhat delayed. Solar-powered wi-fi routers mentioned in my previous post would be an important element in keeping such a system working.

Scenario - Little or no commercial power available
In a more post-apocalyptic scenario, there might not even be enough commercially-available power to run server farms but that doesn't mean the internet has to go away altogether. We've gotten used to the near-instantaneous nature of data transmission across the internet but those of us who remember the days of Store and Forward know that data can still move even when it gets held up for a while.

In my imagination, it would look a lot like the ham radio National Traffic System which uses local traffic nets to help move information. Ad hoc peer-to-peer connections would come up and down according to each individual's access to power and like a bucket brigade, or BitTorrent sharing, we'd pass along each other's traffic while accessing what we want for ourselves the same way.

Quite possibly, the data requests we make ultimately will be delivered to servers that aren't themselves up 24x7. The result would be request, delay, fulfillment - or, a lot like how cross-oceanic calls used to be placed where the request would be made of an operator who would make the connection while you're off-line and then ring you back when it was available. If that's too challenging for modern minds to fathom, think instead of holding for a call from the President.

In such a situation where data must regularly travel multiple intermittently-available routes, it may be that some additional protocols must be developed to optimize transmission but it's surely possible, even if it means falling back to simpler data types. Error correction would be the biggest problem. If a packet gets dropped along the way, it could take days to put it all back together again, depending on the severity of power accessibility. We're definitely talking about a different sort of animal than what we've become used to.

The solar-powered wi-fi routers would be a virtual necessity to make such a system very workable and almost certainly some social engineering would be required too along the lines of scheduling uptime so that data requests could be made and forwarded in a "timely" fashion.

Each scenario would have its own impact on what everyday life might look like but some commonalities exist. With a shortage of fuel, it's likely we'd be living in smaller communities oriented around food production. But instead of the near-isolation of frontier towns or the relative lack of communication between older European villages, we could still communicate and share with one another digitally.

If there is enough commercially-available power, we may even be able to continue with much of what we've come to expect is normal in terms of information-age business and commerce except that working in remote virtualized groups would be more common than larger groups housed together in cities.

Of course, if cities get better about their own food production, that would be another game-changer and there are some interesting possibilities around that as well. For that one, you'd have to talk to my brother-in-law - he's got some great ideas. If it's something that interests you, let me know and I'll put you in touch.

How do you see the future?

What to Do When Your Job is Dead - Top Ten

2008-11-11T13:47:00.000-08:00

Starbucks, Zillow, Redfin and now Insight and Circuit City - these are just a few of the organizations who have recently had tech-related layoffs and it wouldn't be surprising in the current economic climate to see continued impact on the technology sector. Most notably in Seattle, it's likely a number of Washington Mutual tech workers could be on the streets soon with the redundancies in operations expected with the JP Morgan acquisition. The question of what to do if you find yourself caught up in the midst of a lay-off comes up regularly, so here are the top ten tried and true tips that I've used myself and passed on to others with some success.

1) Take time to grieve - There's no way around it, losing your job sucks. If you see it coming, you've had plenty of time to get anxious over the possibility that you'll be involved and if you don't, you'll be blind-sided. Either way, you'll be feeling bad about it for a while, so give yourself some time to deal with the emotional fall-out. The key is to make it a planned, limited amount of time so that you can quickly get on with the business of the rest of your life.

2) Take stock - What areas of your life are in need of critical attention and what tangible and intangible assets do you have? Where are you ahead in the game and where do you need to begin playing catch-up sooner rather than later? Whether you've got some pleasant surprises or some serious concerns, it's always better to know exactly what you're dealing with.

3) Schedule your priorities - To avoid devolving into a total pity party, make yourself a schedule that moves you forward and stick to it like you would stick to a job schedule. I like to establish a healthy mix of job hunting, skills development, networking and some fun - approximately in that order, but you decide what's important for you. Presumably, job hunting is your top priority, so make sure your actions back that up. But that doesn't mean it should be your only priority to the exclusion of everything else. Remember to have fun along the way and nurture your other needs in addition to keeping up your efforts to track down another source of income.

Part of keeping it a healthy mix means making what time you do spend job-hunting really count. Target the job boards (are you more likely to find work on Dice or LinkedIn? Monster or Yahoo?) that are most likely to carry your kind of postings and stay current with them. And whatever you do, don't forget to target specific companies that are appealing to you.

4) Learn something - Time spent unemployed is great for brushing up on your technical skills and these days, there are lots of low- (and even no-) cost options for doing so. I have spent time between jobs teaching myself skills such as JavaScript and XML. Back when I was working in television, I'd turn the sound down on the weather reports and practice the sort of on-air patter common for broadcast meteorologists. Make updating your marketable skills a priority - it will improve your resume and you'll have something to show for the time.

5) Stay positive - This one's a two-fer. Staying positive means avoiding both cynicism and pessimism. The best antidote for cynicism is to develop a philosophical attitutude. It may be someone else's fault you are where you are, or it may be your own but in the end, it doesn't really matter a whole heckuva lot. Blaming yourself or others won't help you find another job and in fact, could cost you opportunities if you come across in interviews as too negative. What you don't want to is to get stuck in the past and that's all that cynicism or dwelling on problems will do for you. Work hard at finding what's good in the situation and use that to propel you forward.

Pessimism is best dealt with by focusing on the possibilities, however unlikely they may seem at first. You may have legitimate reasons to be concerned about finding work or making ends meet in the meantime but it just keeps you stuck to spend your time thinking about it. Instead, keep your eye on what might be possible and do whatever you can to increase your chances that you'll be one of the few to buck the odds. Somebody out there is still hiring geeks and someone will get those jobs, even if they're far and few between. Do what you can to be one of them. For some geeks, that learning time mentioned in #4 might be better spent on developing soft skills like those used to develop good working interpersonal relationships than on learning Ruby on Rails.

6) Keep (or start) networking - Keep in touch with people you know from past jobs and other aspects of your life. If several of you find yourselves out of work at once, consider meeting for coffee on occasion to help each other through this tough time. You can look over each others' resumes, offer job hunting tips, and practice interview skills. Lunch 2.0 events help reduce your grocery bill and increase your networking opportunities; take advantage of them. If getting together in person doesn't work for you (and even if it does), you can and should also keep in touch electronically. Email and social networking sites like LinkedIn and Facebook can be great tools for staying in contact with people who might be able to help you land your next position.

7) Set goals - Whether it's networking contacts or job applications, make sure you identify interim objectives and track your progress. Not only will it keep you motivated to keep going, it will also keep you pointed in the right direction and you'll feel a sense of accomplishment along the way, even before all your shots on goal land you a new job.

8) Get involved - Use the skills you would bring to a job to help out some charitable organization. They benefit from your expertise, you stay current in your skills and have something worthwhile to show for the time you spend unemployed, and everyone wins. Or participate in events like Startup Weekend or 6-hour Startup as an alternative to drive-by carding-type networking events. Online, you can build credibility by offering your expertise on sites such as LinkedIn and Experts Exchange and other forums.Who knows, in getting involved, you may even meet and impress someone influential in your job search.

9) Reinvent yourself - Sometimes lay-offs are an opportunity to look at things from a new perspective and start fresh. If you're thinking that could be true for you, you owe it to yourself to set aside any fears you have and look at the situation with an objective eye. Do I really want to go in a new direction? What would it take to improve my chances of success? Books can be a huge help in figuring out your position on the matter. What Color Is Your Parachute is a perennial favorite of mine and if you like a bit more structure, you may appreciate my other favorite, Now What - 90 Days to a New Life Direction.

If you're thinking of starting a new business, know that it is likely to be tough but doesn't have to be impossible. Sometimes it's no more risky to go into business for yourself than it is to wait around for the next paycheck, especially if you've had some money set aside. If you're smart about budgeting and business plans, you may be able to turn chaos into opportunity. For those of you not in Boulder tomorrow, be on the watch for notes from the panel discussion, Crash Course - Growing a Startup Amid Uncertain Economic Times as a step toward being better prepared.

10) Get help - Geeks tend to operate in a meritocracy, which is all well and good until we get to the point where we think that means having to be able to do everything ourselves. Sometimes getting help is the best thing you can do for yourself. Another perspective on matters is often very beneficial and don't forget the additional value of making yourself more available for other pursuits more worthy of your direct involvement; sometimes you just can't know and do everything. Help can come in the form of a self-organized support group or an informal buddy system just as readily as from a coach. If what you really want is to work with a career transition coach though, find out about coaching rates and don't assume that it's out of your price range just because you're out of work. Perhaps you know others who are looking for similar services making it possible to band together for group coaching and share the costs.

You can also consider asking the coach to negotiate rates. I've found a lot of coaches and prospective clients really like the formula F = 0.1*(V-A) + A , where the coaching Fee is calculated using V for the Value of the engagement and A for the amount deemed by the client to be Affordable, as a way of preserving value in the coaching relationship while making the coaching services workable for the client.

The upshot is that we all know there are fluctuations in the tech sector - there have been for a lot of years now and some would argue that we never did fully recover from the bursting of the dot com bubble. Still, my sense is that technology is here to stay in one form or another, and that means there will always be tech jobs out there somewhere. If the work isn't going away entirely, it means that we have only to figure out how we fit into the new paradigm and do our best to adapt.

What adaptations will help you survive the downturn?

Tech Support of a Different Kind

2008-10-31T10:33:00.000-07:00

These days, we're often too busy to nurture relationships. Sometimes we don't even get to know our our own neighbors very well. The isolation and relative anonymity of the internet sometimes exacerbates this problem - but not always.

My friend, Mike, tells me today that his brother-in-law's house in Gig Harbor burned down earlier in the week - the kind of event that is always tragic and hugely impacts a family. Someone has already been kind enough to have posted a website with information and photos about the fire - started by a raccoon, most likely.

Best of all, the site also makes it easy for people to contribute to a fund supporting the family and it also lists various other kinds of contributions that would be helpful for them. Something like this makes it so much easier for friends and neighbors to support one another in times of need and I'm always impressed by the ingenuity and compassion involved.

More than once, I have seen friends and family support one another through grave illness via the CaringBridge website. Caring Bridge has been descibed as "social networking for sick people", providing "connection, love, and support when you need it most" by making it easy to post updates and photos to people who want to stay in the loop, with minimal impact on those immediately involved. Guest book entries where people can express their love and support work even better than filling up answering machines and keeping people notified of news is hugely helpful, whether it's a premature baby waiting to come home from the hospital or a loved one battling some disease process.

Network for Good helps us find charitable organizations looking for contributions - and makes it easy to give to them. I love using this site to handle all of my year-end donations all at once. They also make it easy to match volunteers and organizations needing help.

Sometimes the internet helps bring us together. Let's celebrate that capability and help it help us to be better humans.

Do you know of sites that help us help each other? Please do share. It's the time of year when it's that much more important to be thinking of how we can help one another in an economic climate that demands we do whatever we can. However badly we may each be hurting, someone else is hurting more. Even if it's just to reach out a hand or a thought, it's something that can make a difference.

How can you improve your connections with other people?

Pause. Think. React

2008-10-30T19:50:00.000-07:00

Just because we grow up doesn't mean we get that much better at behaving like adults. More than once as a manager, I've had to referee disputes between employees that would have been more fitting on a playground than in the workplace. It's worse though when we receive one-sided reports of poor behavior. When it's kids, we call it tattling, and there are good reasons to hold a bias for kids/employees to work it out amongst themselves.

Parents generally know something about getting dragged into the middle of such "Did!" "Did not!" arguments that managers often forget and voters hardly seem to know at all. Smart parents understand the importance of taking a moment to pause before reacting, to think about whether what's just been reported is actually true. They ask themselves first, "Does this even make sense?"

They also recognize that sometimes individuals providing their accounts of the matter often have their own agendas or biases that color their perceptions even when they are honestly trying to be truthful. The only sure-fire way to ascertain the truth is clear-eyed research using objective resources although sometimes getting both parties in front of you to respond to probing questions works too.

Then, when you have a better understanding of the truth, ask yourself what the potential impact is and how much it really matters. Only at this point is it safe to react, so it helps to practice your poker face for all the time in between.

I'm just glad I've already voted. Now I can ignore the rest of the crazy-making accusations flying around this last few days before election day. It will be like turning up the music in the front of the car while kids argue in the back.

What research do you need to do to make an informed decision based on objective fact?

Easy Money - Developer Focus Group Week of 11/3

2008-10-30T13:18:00.000-07:00

Why should you consider the focus group below? My personal experience is that focus groups

are almost always interesting - and are often fun
provide insights around what's next from companies
sometimes provide a forum for providing feedback that will actually be taken into account
are occasionally worthwhile financially
nearly always lead to more focus group opportunities

Extra exclamation marks aside, here is an interesting one aimed at Developers. Since I'm a very low-grade hack, I don't come anywhere near qualifying for this Gilmore Research focus group scheduled in Seattle for next week - but maybe you do...

Attention: Mobile Developers!

The Gilmore Research Group, a highly accredited marketing research company, is currently undertaking an especially interesting project which we hope you find fun and exciting! We are conducting an interesting study in our office the week of November 3rd, 2008

We are seeking Mobile Developer across various platforms for a developer study and if you qualify are participate you will be paid $225 for 1.5 hrs of your time!

If you are or know a mobile developer, we would like to hear from you!

All information is kept strictly confidential and we are in no way selling anything.
Data collected is for research purposes only.

In order to qualify, Please email the following answers. Based on your answers we will then give you a call.

1) Name:
Phone:
Best time to reach you:

2) What is the primary context you develop for?
Laptops/desktops 1
Cell phones 2
Handhelds (e.g., game boys, Palms) 3
Other (specify) 4

Again, Please email us your answers and based on your qualifications, we will call you.

If you have any questions about this please call 206-219-1942 and ask for the study about Mobile Development.

In advance, we thank you.
-The Gilmore Research Group

For further information about our organization, please visit our website at http://www.gilmore-research.com

If you qualify, I encourage you to contact them - they've always been pretty cool to work with in the past. And if you are accepted, post a comment about your experience (the parts you're allowed to share anyway) here for others to enjoy.

Have fun!

What do you want to know?

Some of the Best Marketing I've Seen

2008-10-29T22:46:00.001-07:00

Coming out of Top Pot this morning, I came across a smiling gentleman selling copies of Real Change newspaper. Ever since I learned that the paper is a vehicle for homeless to get back on their feet while educating the rest of us on the issues they face, I make it a point to try to buy a copy whenever I run across a vendor. Heading into the doughnut shop, however, I hadn't seen the guy, and I said as much while locating a dollar to give him.

"No ma'am," he responded, smiling even more broadly. "The new issue comes out on Wednesday, so I had to get down there and pick up my copies." He thanked me as he handed me my paper, then asked, still smiling, whether I had last week's issue.

Great question - I'm actually not downtown that often so in fact I had not seen the issue before the fresh one he'd just handed me, and I said so. He sealed the deal by pointing out an important article he thought I might appreciate. I handed him another dollar and he flipped over the stack of newspapers in his hand, pulling out a leftover from last week to give to me.

Smiling that charming grin of his, he thanked me again as I walked off, one delicious Top Pot doughnut and two Real Change newspapers richer - I felt certain that the 65 cents he just made on each copy will make some bit of difference for someone who is clearly working hard to stabilize his life. And while I'm unlikely to know the outcome for him, I can say for sure that he exhibited excellent marketing and customer service skills and truly made my day.

What makes you richer?

I'm Not There

2008-10-06T13:58:00.000-07:00

Too bad they haven't invented functional teleportation yet. If they had, perhaps I'd be in Great Falls this afternoon and evening celebrating the 50th Anniversary of KRTV. It was a pivotal time in my life (one of several, anyway) and I have some distinct memories of that time - the threads of which remain interwoven in the tapestry of my life even still.

Of course, I have special memories from each of the stations I worked throughout various western small markets. Today though, is a day set aside to remember forecasting and reporting around the Golden Triangle.

Some of my KRTV colleagues will remember the guy who would regularly drive all the way to Great Falls from Seattle just for a long weekend (and then arrange for me to receive a dozen roses there at work the day that he left). They might be pleased to know that three television stations and several years later, we finally married and settled here in the Seattle area.

One enduring memory from KRTV would be the struggles I always had trying to wear the battery belt for the light when out shooting news on my own. Being considerably smaller than the regular photographer, the belt was way loose, and with my hands full carrying the light stand, the camera, the deck, and the microphone bag, I always had a tough time keeping it from slipping off my waist.

I also remember one of the first times I edited a story on my own, it took me so long that I had just enough time to run it up to engineering and then sprint out onto the set (think Broadcast News) just as we were coming into the weather segment. I was so out of breath from running up the stairs that one woman called the station to inquire whether I was feeling okay. To say that I was mortified would be an understatement.

Professionally, I learned a great deal about broadcast journalism from the news director, Mack Berry, and everyone else there at KRTV that I was able to then take successfully into stations in El Paso and Omaha where I did health and science and environmental reporting in addition to weather.

As just one example, one day at the police station briefing, the only item of particular note was the theft of some 14 cases of diet bars from the weight loss clinic. Not sure how to make that newsworthy, Mack sat me down and taught me that anything can be written funny and so that’s how I wrote that story. That knowledge (along with some understanding of when to use it) has served me well for many years.

What I remember most, however, was how much everyone at KRTV and so many other people in and around Great Falls took me into their hearts and homes. One elderly couple even drove 75 miles one day just to come to the station and visit with me for a bit, showing me their book of family history in case we might be related. It touched me so much that I was making that kind of difference in people’s lives that I stayed working in television for 5 years until I finally came home to get married.

Thank you all for teaching me so much and for being such wonderful friends while we were together.

What memories of today will stay with you?

Pigsquatch, Whales & the Economy

2008-10-03T07:39:00.000-07:00

We love My Name is Earl at our house. Watching the final fate of Pigsquatch last night had us rolling on the floor, despite my not being that big a fan of gross. Then in the midst of gasping for air, Tall Person suddenly flashed on a news story he remembered from when he was at KOMO "way back when".

It seems a reporter at KATU, their sister station in Portland, wound up covering a strikingly similar situation in the early 70's. Sure enough, searching YouTube for Oregon whale, he immediately came up with exploding Oregon whale. Bingo!

Our other conversations of the evening turned to the economic crisis, understanding the innate problematic nature of sub-prime lending and how we got into the stinking mess in the first place of trying to decide to do a bail-out or just let nature run its course, and don't forget too the whole "money as debt" issue on top of it all (thanks to Brad for pointing that one out - when I find the exact post, I'll link to it).

We appreciate the dark humor in September Madness, but even so, the whole matter is definitely a stinking whale carcass on the beach and a giant hairy pig in the middle of a trailer park. Stinks to high heaven and no one wants to touch it.

It could be that just like with Pigsquatch and that whale in Oregon that there only seems to be one viable option because everything else is so much worse. If so, history would seem to indicate you do the best you can to avoid the most obvious problems, and then make sure everyone is as far out of the way as possible from the fallout. Of course, the other possibility may simply be that the cure really is far worse than the problem.

The trouble is, how do you ever know for sure? And how do you prevent that uncertainty from paralyzing you in your tracks?

What works best for addressing the stinky problems in your own life?