unstruc chitchatting

Enter the Zebra

2017-05-07T17:54:00.000-07:00

Yesterday's trip to the San Francisco Zoo, reminded me of the beauty of the Zebra and got me thinking why the Zebra is not as celebrated as other animals. Perhaps it is because it is not the most graceful of all equines, but to me they are certainly the most interesting.
Keeping with the Zebra theme, this morning's tweet by Esther Dyson, gave me some hope that some founders in Silicon Valley are still working on "companies that create a more just and responsible society" that will "hear, help, and heal the customers and communities they serve".

“Zebras Fix What Unicorns Break” by @sexandstartups https://t.co/uczYXdidLi
— Esther Dyson (@edyson) May 7, 2017

Why zebras?

To state the obvious: unlike unicorns, zebras are real.
Zebra companies are both black and white: they are profitable and improve society. They won’t sacrifice one for the other.
Zebras are also mutualistic: by banding together in groups, they protect and preserve one another. Their individual input results in stronger collective output.
Zebra companies are built with peerless stamina and capital efficiency, as long as conditions allow them to survive.

Did you know that a group of Zebras is called a Dazzle?

Enter the Zebra, time to dazzle.

Anita Borg Institute Women of Vision Awards Banquet - Watch these Videos!

2013-06-06T08:08:00.000-07:00

Last month I was lucky enough to get an invite to the Anita Borg Institute Women of Vision Awards Banquet, thanks to my boss Penny Herscher who is on the Anita Borg board. Wow. What a great evening, great attendees and inspiring speakers.

I have been sending around the links to the video to many of my friends (especially those with daughters! - highly recommend taking the time to watch these inspiring videos:

Keynote: Diane M. Bryant, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Datacenter and Connected Systems Group (DCSG) for Intel Corporation:

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Women of Vision Award Winner for Leadership:Genevieve Bell, Director, Interaction and Experience Research, Intel Labs at Intel Corporation

Women of Vision Award Winner for Innovation: Maja Matarić, Professor and Chan Soon-Shiong Chair in Computer Science, Neuroscience and Pediatrics, Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California
Women of Vision Award Winner for Social Impact:Vicki Hanson, Professor of Inclusive Technologies at the University of Dundee, and Research Staff Member Emeritus from IBM Research

Wow Touching in The Enterprise IS OK

2013-03-12T10:30:00.002-07:00

At last year's Dreamforce the FirstRain team had a blast filming a "Sh**T Dreamforcers Say" video, and my favorite bit was the opening clip that had me asking: "Touch the Enterprise? I thought touching was NOT work appropriate?". It took me a couple of takes to get that one right because we kept cracking up (watch the video through the end to see some of the out-takes).

We lead with that clip in the video because, not only was it funny, but we knew that salesforce.com was going to be aggressively pushing their Touch Platform at Dreamforce. After Dreamforce, I diligently read the book they were readily passing out to developers "Salesforce Touch Platform – Mobile Development Guide" (here's the free download). I totally got what they were working on, and since I had been tracking Enterprise Mobile App development in the marketplace for a while—and seeing it myself with our customers—I knew we wanted to package something up alongside their Touch Platform.

In addition to our well-loved, FirstRain enterprise iPad App, FirstRain had already delivered some pretty strategic mobile applications using standard technologies that salesforce.com was smartly pushing within their Touch Platform.

Now fast-forward to today, and we are pleased to announce that we have released FirstRain for Touch, an Enterprise Customer Intelligence Solution for the Salesforce Touch Platform. Go over to our blog MarketMine to read our blog post with the details on why this is so exciting for enterprise customers who want to quickly build and deploy enterprise-grade mobile apps.

Oh yeah, and "touching" in the enterprise—it's obviously not only acceptable, but is now expected from your employees ...

Photo| Flickr | lulutoo

A Drawer Full of Good Fortune and Harmony

2013-01-01T16:09:00.001-08:00

Every culture has their own traditions and New Year's (Eve or Day) tends to be one of those celebration days that many of them come out in full force as everyone looks forward to the new year ahead of them.

Me? Well there are many Portuguese New Year's traditions that my family has celebrated all my life. What have I carried on?

Wear brand new blue underwear to attract good fortune and harmony.

Every year, usually on the 31st of December, i run around checking stores for blue underwear for the three of us- not only wearing them on the 1st but shopping for single pairs of blue underwear (not an easy task since many blue ones are typically in packages) the day or two before has become a tradition for me.

And with that i hope for good fortune and harmony for all.

Girly Geeks in Force at Dreamforce

2012-09-07T16:35:00.000-07:00

Note: This post was orginally published on the FirstRain MarketMine Blog

I can't think of a better way to start a major conference then attending a conference sponsored networking event. From day one you are able to network and make connections with others, who can heavily influence the value you ultimately get from the conference.

On the eve of Dreamforce, Monday September 17th there will be a 'Women in Tech' event hosted by GirlyGeeks and the Salesforce.com's Women's Network (open to all Dreamforce attendees and Salesforce.com employees). This networking event is sure to rally in many passionate, energetic and career driven women and certainly all the Girly Geeks at FirstRain are looking forward to meeting them all, as we kick off Dreamforce 2012. Events like these are great opportunities to come together to network, share your own personal experiences, and hear some of the challenges and experiences women have faced in order to build their careers. In addition to networking and 'cocktailing' time, attendees will hear from:

Hilarie Koplow-McAdams, President, Commercial/SMB Business Unit, Salesforce.com
Geraldine Gray, Senior Consultant, Appirio & Founder of the GirlyGeeks

Plus a special panel session moderated by Jill Rowley, Director of Key Accounts, Eloqua. The panelists will share their career stories and take questions from the audience. Panelists include:

Rachel Thornton, Vice President, Dreamforce, Salesforce.com
Penny Herscher, CEO, FirstRain
Sarah Friar, CFO, Square
Deepa Patel, President, Halak Consulting

We are very happy that Penny was invited to be part of the panel, because as a FirstRain Girly Geek, I know the benefit of her daily dose of inspiration, guidance and fortitude, that I am sure will come across in the panel. As many of you know, Penny is very passionate about the opportunities and challenges that women in technology encounter on a daily basis. She actively shares her thoughts on her personal blog as well as on the Huffington Post. Earlier this year Penny participated on a panel at Yahoo! on the myth of the work-life balance and spoke at TEDx Gunn High School on how coding is the new literacy.

Want to learn more or attend the Women In Tech Event? If you are a Dreamforce attendee or Salesforce.com employee, visit the Girly Geeks Dreamforce Chatter Group and then RSVP here (email me if you need a code: dbarbosa@firstrain.com).

And don't forget, Dreamforce is only 10 days away and all of FirstRain is working hard to get #DF12ready! Most of the team will be present, whether they are at our booth (#1626!), wandering the expo and hosting meetups (interested in meeting up with us? Email us at DF@firstrain.com) or checking out the GE Capital Session--we are gearing up for a fun week!

Image|Flickr| Elizabeth Thomsen

You Had Me At Hello. Smiling That Is.

2012-08-27T14:58:00.000-07:00

Note: This post was orginally posted on the FirstRain MarketMine Blog.

Dreamforce season is upon us! Attendees and Salesforce.com employees are talking about what they are wearing and not wearing (I really hope not!) to the event, the Dreamforce party app is hopping, SaaSy videos are going viral, animated gifs are turning up everywhere, sessions are filling up fast and rumors are flying around. So what are we doing in preparation? Well, some hard work of course as we coordinate our booth (#1626), our customer session [360° of Excellence: How GE Capital Drives ROI Through Customer Intelligence], our team schedules and our client appointments---but also some fun, because that is how we roll here @FirstRain ... If you've been following @FirstRain or Penny, Ryan or myself on Twitter, you may have noticed we've been tweeting out about our new customer intelligence Tumblr: "You Had Me At Hello, Letters to Marc Benioff", with a couple new posts a day. So what exactly is it? You Had Me At Hello are letters directly from Penny to Marc Benioff, Salesforce.com's CEO. They are 'penned' in Penny's own voice—no marketing content editor behind the scenes—and are what our COO, YY Lee, recently called "like passing hallway notes between two CEOs". We have had a lot of positive feedback from our customers (including many who are mutual customers with Salesforce.com), along with many "thanks for making me smile." This ticks off our #1 objective as we all continue to be manically busy trying to prep for Dreamforce, deliver our updated AppExchange offering, work on a couple of new client SFDC implementations and continue to drive value to our customers rolling out tools like Sales Cloud. Here are some highlighted posts from the Tumblr in the last week that might also make you smile:

Why Crash Diets Don't Work: Diets don't work for losing weight, and they don't work for making sales quota.
Collaboration is the mot du jour and without it, you won't be successful. We like “speed and agility” without the artificial steroids.
FedEx, flexibility and yoga: this one got a lot of play, I think the sexy photo of the tattoo guy stirred up some interest. I wonder if people thought it was a buff Marc?
Coach Needs you and we all need new hand bags (yes they have man purses for the savy dressed Salesforce.com male staff)
Shout Outs to Salesforce.com: we work, we play but we all must give back and Salesforce.com leads the way with its non-profit work, Penny's talking about young girls and STEM
Awkward, Choke, China and Will.I.Am and how SFDC can help them react, stay on top of the brand and coke drinkers everywhere.

To read the rest of the posts go to #UHadMeAtHello! Read it, Tweet it, and Submit Your own Letter to Marc if you are so inclined. View the full archive here.

Harvesting Big Data for Social Business

2012-08-07T08:00:00.000-07:00

Note: This post was orginally posted on the FirstRain MarketMine Blog.

Have you ever thought about how, when you are in a specific situation or have something very important on your mind, you begin to see it all around you? For example if you have ever been pregnant—ALL you see around you are other pregnant women, as if it were a global pregnancy epidemic! Last week Steven Feinberg visited our office and I learned about our brain's reticular activating system (RAS), the part of the brain that recognizes patterns and "makes sense" of your experience. Your brain does this by looking for evidence to prove your beliefs—yes, the part of your brain that spots all those other pregnant women, or all the Mini Coopers on the road!

So maybe it is my reticular activating system acting up because it was another BIG Monday morning for Social Business Big Data in my content streams. Here are some highlights:

"Why Big Data Will Deliver ROI For Social Business" If you are at all interested or affected by social business, then you have probably heard of Dion Hinchcliffe, whose focus has been social business and next-gen enterprises working with some of the biggest companies out there. In this post in InformationWeek, he talks about driving forward very real business outcomes by harvesting the missing social business intelligence capability within most organizations. You can follow @dhinchcliffe for daily knowledge of social business.

"Business Intelligence (BI) Trends Go Beyond Analytics" on Forbes.com by SiliconANGLE’s Editor Kristen Nicole. This popped up on my radar because it mentioned what we are doing at FirstRain, by adding context to the data FirstRain finds and packaging it up for business use so a sales professional can immediately understand their customers.

"Why Context Matters—Forget Real-Time, Achieve Right-Time" this one goes back a couple of weeks but I just found it and, although it is B2C focused, had a key point that addresses the B2B Social Business harvesting of Big Data:

"Customers and employees only want engagement aligned with self interest. Relevancy of information is required for customers and employees to respond. Real-time interactions quickly evolve into noise. Signal to noise ratios must be improved as garbage in will lead to massive garbage out. In some cases, customers don’t want engagement. They just want the experience."

"Can Data Science Save the US Economy?" Saroj Kar, takes a slightly different take on the importance of Big Data by focusing in on the data scientists:

"In recent months in the U.S. alone, large organizations, from staffing companies to universities, have seen a growing interest in a new professional class around data. A curious mix of business expertise, analysis and information technology, this new title is underway in various vertical markets such as energy, commerce, healthcare and financial services. And if experts are right, this is just the beginning."

I found this article because it mentioned our CEO Penny Herscher's recent TEDx talk on how "Coding is the New Literacy ". It not only highlights what we see in the marketplace as a real need for business skills but how FirstRain delivers (in doing the 'heavy-lifting' of data analysis for business users) such value to our customers—of course we have a team full of data scientists ourselves!

Have you seen more articles on the subject that we should highlight? Tweet them to me @danielabarbosa

Image| Flickr| adopted raebrune

Only the Strongest Professions have the Strongest Associations

2012-07-26T12:23:00.003-07:00

"Only the strongest professions have the strongest associations" - 2012 SLA Hall of Fame inductee Susan Fifer Canby

Chicago in July is hot, even with the lake breeze you can't escape the concrete jungle heat. So the key to my personal success in attending the annual SLA (Special Library Asociation) conference was:

#1 was keep hydrated
#2 pick the right sessions to go to (hard when so many are going on at the same time!)
#3 when taking a break from sessions and sitting down with other attendees, choose a shady cool spot (learned that the hard way!)

This year, I attended SLA 2012 (Special Library Association) #SLAChicago conference as an attendee, not as a vendor staff person as I have for many many years. Although in the past I was always able to get to some sessions that I really wanted to go to- often negotiating booth time slots with my coworkers!- This year, my focus was on attending as many sessions I could that interested me and to meet as many information professionals as i could that had similar interests.

Here are some high level themes i came back with:

- Throughout 2011 I kept an eye on the SLA Future Ready Project, a project that Cindy Romaine, SLA President 2011 had lead with the goal of finding and sharing information about how information professionals where or had to get 'Future Ready'- many of the sessions and conversations I was in where focused on what and where the profession of 'Special Librarians' was going. Many conversations on value (perceived and measurable), extension of roles (where else in the organization to embed oneself) and identity (what is a special librarian, what is the role of information in the enterprise, etc.). The general consensus i heard was that as a profession, information professionals feel that they are or are on the way to being 'Future Ready'.

- I attended a session on Collaborative Insights that highlighted some new information professional roles to embrace that i thought were great role descriptions for the skils and experiences that come with being an information professional in an enterprise including:

Cross-Pollinators
Connectors at Critical Intersections
Innovation Facilitators

- In more then one session and conversation, the topic of 'delivering information to users where they are' came up. Mobile and etablet delivery of content and what Mary Ellen Bates in one panel, made the association that it is not only about giving users the ability to 'Search' but being able to proactively 'alert' within context of what they are doing, regardless of what device they are in.

- The Rise of Internal Enterprise App stores and the opportunity for Information Resource Centers/Corporate Libraries to become front and center to that new enterprise ecosystem. Being first in line to delivering valuable enterprise applications within these new platforms would raise awareness of the services provided and direct value to the enterprise.

- Types of collaboration skills to develop as an Information Professional includes 'Horizontal Collaboration' within organization - IT, HR, and very importantly Rainmaking with C level executives.

- In regards to Collaboration, I really liked this reminder from Mary Talley : "Collaboration Requires Intimacy"

- The shift to Self Service and Self Curation and the changes in how end-users use and consume information was another topic heard in the sessions in discussions with attendees- unlike the 'clients' of the past the skills AND the tools available to end-users enable self access (and success with it). Information Professionals MUST understand and become champions of these tools

- Very Popular sessions - Like 60 Apps in 60 minutes conducted by Scott Brown of the Social Information Group and Joe Murphy highlighted the need for Information Professionals to have a good grasp of tools that are out there so that they can make recommendations, compete effectively and become part of the App culture that the corporate enterprise is embracing.

- Guy Kawasaki- gave the keynote, focused on Enchantment (that is the name of his newest book). Although I wish Guy has focused a bit more on addressing the actual audience of information professionals (something he talks about being a requirement to enchant!)- his core message can be applied to pretty much any profession that is responsible for providing services and products: Enchant people and build something DICEE - Deep, Intelligent, Complete, Empowering & Elegant

- Last but not least on my list, Lee Ann Benkert (pictured above)- @LRBenkert spontaneously organized an 'un-conference' session during lunch, asking people to join in the social media lounge and self-organize into small groups to talk about topics that were top of mind to them. It was a new thing for many of the attendees and it was great to see their excitement. I have been to many unconference events, and honestly the group session i was in was just ok (about identity as a special librarian- what should the title really be, etc.)- but the classy part was that Lee Ann managed to include the expo vendors who might have complained that this was taking people away from the expo floor booths during the time when attendees had free time to visit- by coordinating a 'flash-mob' visit to the vendor that best included themselves in the process of the unconference organization- well done!

There were many other sessions which you can view here, many have slide-decks as well (click through the session title) and there is also an Eventifier conference overview that has aggregated images, tweets, slides etc.

Thank you SLA for another excellent conference and thank you to all my old and new friends that i got to spend time with- see you next year in San Diego!

Heading to SLA in Chicago- Let's Brainstorm about Info Pros and Enterprise Social Business Projects

2012-07-13T10:28:00.000-07:00

Next week SLA (Special Library Association) is hosting their annual conference in Chicago and i look forward to meeting up with many of my old friends and clients in the library world!

SLA is always a great conference-unfortunately i missed the last two years, so i am really looking forward to attending this year- as an attendee because there are some great sounding sessions.

One of the core purposes of SLA is for attendees to learn about new trends and how information professionals are ensuring that they are “'future ready' by exchanging ideas and connecting with thousands of fellow information professionals". In addition to the sessions and general networking, I am also looking to meet up with information professionals who are currently working or are trying to get involved in Enterprise Social Business projects incorporating social enterprise software like Salesforce.com/Chatter, Yammer, SharePoint, Jive, IBM Connections, Tibco, Cisco Webex Social and others.

If you know me, you know i have been advocating this for years: The role of the information professional is a very important one that should be leveraged in enterprise social projects projects- in today's Social Portals, ESNs (Enterprise Social Networks), Collaboration chat platforms, SCRM,. etc. The core skills that Info Pros have can lead to greater adoption and ultimately greator ROI.

In my new role at FirstRain as Director of Business Development i have a chance to spread the word that Info Pros- should and NEED to be brought into these projects- so if you going to SLA and feel the same (or perhaps you disagree)- i would love to talk to you!

Oh Yeah- here is what i look like now a days (hair is a bit longer but dimpled smile is the same :-)

If you are interested in touching base with me here is my email dbarbosa@firstrain.com or via twitter @danielabarbosa.

See you in Chicago!

Will Your Children Inherit Your E-Books?

2012-06-25T19:34:00.004-07:00

Amanda Katz a commentator for NPR Books, recently published an article that caught my attention through my twitter stream. Titled Will Your Children Inherit Your E-Books, it tells of her personal story in discovering a book with a personal family story that was found in a box of books her grandmother left behind. That story in itself is interesting and a reminder that those books that our parents and grandparents and even ourselves have on the shelf- are more then the book itself but can include a collective memory of their past readers.

She goes on to question, whether in today’s world, the inheritance of those memories can be replicated through ebooks, highlights some “genuine superiorities” of ebooks (e.g. Annotations in the cloud) and what is slipping away with digital consumption. A good read that gets you thinking.

Image| Flickr | Rochelle

#hashtagged

2012-06-11T11:07:00.003-07:00

Last night, the TV was on- only the dog was watching, but as i walked by i noticed this:

On Dateline NBC, the ubiquitous peacock on the left side of the screen and #DATELINE the Twitter hashtag on the other. I have seen #hashtags on many a commercial, news show etc. and often even within TV shows, the Tweet this with #hashtag bla bla bla - but haven't really seen it being used as part of the brand name of a show so blatanly (ok i admit i don't watch much real-time TV, so correct me if i am wrong!).

It reminded me of a blog post I read a while ago about Facebook, where the author made what i thought at the time was a very astute point about the following URL- www.facebook.com/nike . Why would Nike who has one of the most recognized brands in the world be willing to supersede their branding with facebook's? Had facebook ubiquitously become the brand identifier for big brands? I couldn't find that post or the author as i wrote this, but i think it went on to talk about how Facebook was going to be the defacto platform.

Now, most of us when we think about hashtags think about Twitter- no doubt #hashtag adoption started becoming mainstream with Twitter. The # symbol, called a hashtag, is typically used to mark a keyword or topic in a Tweet. Any user can categorize or create hashtags or follow and search topics using Twitter or various services built on top of Twitter. I remember seeing #hashtags start in August 2007 and becoming excited about the power they could have in information delivery and consumption.

But hashtags are used in many other applications, take for example Enterprise Social Networks (ESNs) like Yammer or Salesforce's Chatter- that encourage the use of the #hashtags for classification, to find other people talking about specific topics, to display the 'categorized' content within one view etc.

If you have been reading my blog for a while, then you know i have been talking about 'tagging' for a while and even wrote a very popular ebook on the subject. Hashtags are just an extension of tagging, but the conversations that occur around them make them way more valuable then traditional tags- that were mostly consumed by search engines.

So this morning, i was reading this TechCrunch article on Twitter's new Brand pages, that launched with #NASCAR. Since #hashtags were on my brain with the #DATELINE revelation i had last night- i thought it was very timely since i have had a #hashtag post coming anyway.

From the Twitter Blog, you can learn a bit more about how these Brand pages are created. In describing how the Pocono 400 race was covered through #NASCAR it states "Throughout the weekend – but especially during the race – a combination of algorithms and curation will surface the most interesting Tweets to bring you closer to all of the action happening around the track, from the garage to the victory lane." -

It will be interesting to learn more about how Twitter is creating these Brand pages, what control will the brands themselves will have (are they the curators or is Twitter??), how will the algorithms work? Are they automatically removing tweets that would be brand offensive?, how valuable it will be to consumers, how long before people start to 'game' the system and how will Twitter combat that- and ultimately how else will #HASHTAGS create new consumption and interaction models for content inside and outside of Twitter?

Sometimes the Best Use Case for Social Media May Not Require Any Posting

2012-06-06T10:12:00.000-07:00

This post was orginally published on FirstRain's Market Mine Blog.

John Stepper a blogger whose job is to "change how people work" using collaboration platforms, communities of practice, and public social media channels at Deutsche Bank, recently blogged how your best use of social media may not require a single post. The focus of his post (and most of his blogging on the subject) is on regulated firms, including both financial service firms like Deutsche Bank and other industries that deal with similar requirements such as pharmaceuticals, energy etc. Over the years, I have spent a lot of time talking to people about the use of social media in a B2B environment, regulated or not. There is, of course, the very well established and vendor-serviced market of social media monitoring and measurement from a PR/Communications/Brand perspective. But increasingly, companies are seeing the value of social media within other functions in their enterprise, and as Stepper points out in his post, value from Social Media can come without the need to actually create and post content by every employee. I think it goes beyond embracing the 90-9-1 rule that "1% of people create content, 9% edit or modify that content, and 90% view the content without contributing.” This is now a given and as Stepper says, it should be embraced not fought against. Many organizations just can't afford to have everyone—especially revenue producing functions—creating social media content and listening and learning using either consumer-oriented or professional PR tools. I, however, do encourage every single enterprise employee to use social media to build themselves a brand and engage with their customers and markets—just leave the 'heavy 'lifting' to others.

The conversation about Social Media is very often focused on what I would call the outbound: building the brand, supporting and connecting with consumers, monitoring and measuring marketing campaigns, etc. But there is certainly a shift afloat about using Social Media to get a deeper understanding of customers and markets—especially in the B2B space. Here at FirstRain, we are seeing how our customers who have been early supporters and leaders in 'outbound' and 'customer listening'-focused social media are now looking for targeted and useful ways to provide highly relevant 'read' views for specific job functions. International Data Corporation (IDC) analyst Sue Feldman has pointed out that the sheer volume of what users receive sometimes obscures what's important and relevant, especially as their 'day-job' is not to monitor and engage in social media. Our launch of FirstTweets™, where we are extracting business intelligence from the full Twitter feed was driven by these specific needs. Take, for example, common use cases we are seeing among enterprise sales account managers who are finding daily value in FirstTweets. The typical territory and market intelligence needs for a major accounts sales rep in this kind of role can include:

Intelligence on a targeted list of key customers and prospects (averages about 10-20 companies for enterprise sales reps, but can be much larger for other sales teams).
The need to look at very specific business lines and end-markets (For example: Backhaul Technology, Blood Glucose Monitoring Devices, Agro-Chemical Industry Trends)
The desire to be alerted to event topics that drive opportunity and change (For example: plant openings, product launches, management changes)
A need to collaborate with an internal sales and marketing support team on strategies, pitches, proposals, etc.
Integration into the systems they already use such as CRM or social platforms, and live mobile access that is consistent across multiple platforms (mobile, iPad, laptop).

Now imagine, as an end user, trying to cast a net wide enough using keywords to capture relevant information that would cover the requirements above across all the standard social media channels. Without tools like FirstRain—which filters out the non-business content and categorizes it into targeted business topics—it's effectively impossible, yields a huge amount of additional noise, and just wouldn't be practical for the sales reps who would benefit from such intelligence. I think we still are in the very early stages of B2B sales organizations using social media content like Twitter to improve their sales processes by truly understanding their customers and markets. And companies will quickly figure out that, sometimes, the best use case for social media may not require any posting for the majority of their employees—just the right tools to help uncover the highly relevant, contextual information their employees need to accomplish their most important goals, which in case of sales is closing deals!

Note: If you are interested in learning more about Collaboration and Social Media in enterprise especially in regulated companies, I highly suggest you spend some time on John Steppers blog.

Image|Flickr|michal_hadassah

Penny Herscher on Why Coding is the New Literacy

2012-06-04T10:49:00.000-07:00

When Penny came back to the office after her TEDx talk and told me that she had been "surrounded by teenage girls thrilled to have their interest in software and technology endorsed and confirmed" by her talk it actually gave me goose bumps.

Mission accomplished. See for yourself:

Delivering Unique Business-Relevant Tweets: Facebook IPO

2012-05-21T09:08:00.001-07:00

Note: This post was originally published on the FirstRain Market Mine Blog on Friday, May 18th 2012, the day Facebook went IPO.

Today's Facebook's IPO although a more consumer focused interest story then what most of our customers are interested in, brought a huge amount of tweets on the subject as expected. (I would even venture to say that it was more then a 'consumer interest story' but rather a 'human interest story'). None the less, being that FirstRain is a Silicon Valley based company, the buzz is also being felt strongly outside the digital world for those of us that live here and have friends and acquaintances that are being directly impacted by facebook's IPO. Exciting times.

Yesterday, prior to Facebook's IPO we ran some stats using our FirstTweets™ technology and then redid the same exercise at the close of the market today. FirstTweets™ uses our patented FirstRain technology to uncover and deliver only high-quality, business-relevant tweets to sales and marketing professionals across the enterprise. Our analysis shows that less than 0.1% of daily tweets contain quality, business-related content, yet this still represents more than 200,000 tweets per day of business-focused intelligence.

The picture painted by the stats that we captured, aren't surprising but are interesting and illustrative on why our customers are seeing value in our FirstTweets- as YY Lee our COO tweeted this morning allowing them to "cut through the frenzied roar to net out the actual business discussion...".

On the day before Facebook's IPO:

At the close of Market on the day of Facebooks IPO:

Take me to the River, in the Octopus

2012-05-08T10:31:00.000-07:00

The Octopus is Microsoft Co-Founder Paul Allen's Super Yacht, it doesn't even rank in the top ten of super yachts - but it is pretty darn nice (ok it is # 11). like super nice. If i got an invite, i would go on a ride and i would ask Paul to play Al Green's 'Take Me to the River' (Paul is a huge music fan so i would probably let him go through his own collection as well).

Last night, Doc Searls posted a reaction to Dave Winer who posted a reaction (and plea) to Jason Pontin's post 'Why Publishers Don't Like Apps' that i had read earlier in the day. Pontin the Editor in Chief and Publisher at The Technology Review tells a tale of woe of how the Technology Review decided to move away from creating their own News Apps.

Their main points?

KISS it Publishers. ((Keep it Simple))

Winer has been the 'Champion of Champions' for RSS and for what he has coined the River of News. In Searls' post 'Take Us to the Rivers' he provides a historical outline of what is known as a 'river of news'- essentially a scrolling list of headlines as it happens and begs publishers to listen to Winer.

The reading experience is quite different, visit the nytimesriver and then the front page of the New York Times website . Scanning each which one did you just get the most value from if your aim is to get a quick overview of what is happening in aggregate and not what the NYT editors deem as most important?

There are of course successful media publishers like the WSJ who's digital App strategy i think has brought them together unlike what it did to the Technology Review team, but these are the big brands with targeted audiences. They can afford diversification of delivery methods and their audiences will pay for immersive experiences, whether they are behind premium pay walls and/or through Apps.

Consumers of news content of course will have different wants, consumption habits and needs. You can (and should) even break down these consumers into at least two buckets- personal news consumers and enterprise news consumers (there are certainly others that publishers target- political junkies, sport fanatics, etc.). By keeping their content Kissable, most publishers can benefit by focusing on the content and the editorial value and leave the ultimate consumption experience to the user and the tool/aps/experience experts.

I personally like "sitting on the bank of a river, watching the boats go by" and today's sexy speed boats like Flipboard are a news consumer dreamboat where the fellow passengers are handpicked by the captain (that would be you of course), but when i am trying to keep up with content (news, blogs, social whatever) for work trying to deeply understand the diverse business needs of my partners, clients and competitors- i want to be a passenger on the Octopus.

Perhaps Winer, Searls, Pontin and myself will get an invite to take a trip on the Octopus so we can come up with some strategies to get publishers to listen. @PaulGAllen drop me a DM to let me know when the Octopus ports in San Francsico.

Disclaimer: i know absolutely nothing about Yacht's and can't vouch for the # of rivers the Octopus can sail down ;-).

Image | Flickr | andraspfaff

FirstRain's FirstTweets Weren't Built for Me (But I Benefit)

2012-04-18T09:10:00.002-07:00

Note: I recently joined FirstRain as Director of Business Development after 12 years at Dow Jones/Factiva working with Enterprise customers on information delivery and consumption solutions- my focus and passion is to find, deliver and insure adoption of enterprise B2B business intelligence information solutions. As always, the opinions expressed on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my past, future or present employer or any organizations i might belong to unless explicitly stated that is the case.

This week's FirstRain's announcement of FirstTweets a solution for B2B users delivering "business-quality Twitter intelligence on thousands of global companies, industries and topics relevant to the specific business lines of your customers, industry and competitors"- was an exciting one for our team and our customers.

I have been on a couple of client calls where we previewed this new content stream and across the board the enthusiasm and spark of ideas around FirstTweets from them has been very inspiring. These are companies of all sizes across various industries- some that have been extremely active supporters of using Social Media as part of their strategies (e.g. Customer Care centers, tech support, brand monitoring etc) and others that are just starting out.

For example, some of these companies have tried to use their existing social media monitoring and measuring tools to 'push' relevant business content to their sales team, but none have been able to crack the code using their existing systems that are great for monitoring their own brands and customers using keywords- but can not deliver precise business focused content on thousands of companies and industries that their salesforce covers or their market intelligence teams needs to keep track of competitors and new business trends. Some have tried other 'sales intelligence' solutions that push social media buzz into their CRM systems- all based on keywords with low hit business relevancy results- turning off most users.

Now i have been an active user of Twitter for a bit over 5 years, just when the little twitter bird began chirping. i use Twitter outbound and to listen quite a bit. I would estimate that i have spent hundreds of hours, curating content, selecting people to follow (and unfollow!) , creating lists, monitoring client issues, company employees and general news. i am one of those 9% of digital news consumers that sees the news Break on Twitter.

I use Twitter effectively and teach others how to at any chance i get- but hundreds of hours of my time has been invested, and will continue to be since Twitter is not a set it and leave it information flow.

Is that the level of time investment that most companies want for their employees that are not responsible for monitoring and measuring social media??? Do companies want staff especially Sales who can benefit greatly from business intelligence found in Twitter- spending the same amount of time i have over the years??

I would venture to say no.

Now, i think that EVERY employee should consider using Twitter to engage with their peers in their industry, their customers and of course their friends and family- but i don't think the processes that i have developed over the years is sustainable for most sales and marketing people- especially as your markets become more competitive and the budget dollars to spend on the solutions you sell decrease.

And that is where i see the biggest promise for FirstTweets- delivering intelligence to better understand your customers' end-markets, strengthen relationships and improve overall sales strategy.

The customers i have talked to agree.

Note: Today April 18th is the official launch to existing FirstRain customers, i have been using FirstTweets in our Sandbox environment for about two weeks- and have found many gems that i would never have found using the various tools i use in my Twitter day to day use- so it wasn't built for "me"- but i sure will benefit from it!

Data Junkies: Straight to the Vein

2012-03-28T08:35:00.001-07:00

It seems that everyone is talking about #bigdata- I found the album cover for the Data Junkies haphazardly the other day and had to write a post that would make sense to use it with, so here it is.

I have been in the business of selling 'news' data for a long time, and often our customers come to us for big chunks of data from our news full text archive- all for a nice chunk of cash, so paying for data is nothing new for companies that have budgets for it. There have always been two types of clients that wanted the news archives, big companies with big budgets or students, with little to no budgets- lately there is a bunch of other companies small, medium, big, technology, finance, retail, social etc. that want access to news data for analytic/predicitive/trending proposes.

A couple weeks back i bookmarked this O'Reilly Radar article that looks at data market offerings from four providers- Infochimps, Factual, Windows Azure Data Marketplace, and DataMark. I spent some time looking at their datasets, the typical fees, the terms of use, etc. Below is a chart (which is clickable on the site) that compares the 4 providers they highlight.

There are a lot of companies working in this space, and the numbers - from the technology companies, to the data providers, to the service providers have ballooned over the last year. Even the WhiteHouse has gotten in front of the trend and this Thursday, "The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy will host a live webcast at 3 p.m. eastern time to outline how the government can “help big data” with its Big Data Research and Development Initiative" (Via GigaOM).

Technologists, data scientists, geek out on this stuff- but usability for general users that need data insights to make business decisions still needs to be addressed. Consumers can get excited but need tools to be able to do things with it- they need the tools and skills to make sense of the data- general skills for everyday business users (although there is also a big demand for data scientists). There are some companies working on that issue/opportunity usability. For example, ClearStory is interesting company in the space, trying to address the 'ease of consumption' for the regular user but also the IT department.

Image|Data Junkies Album Cover

Image| Local Market in Cuenca, Ecuador- picture by me

Information Overload Not Just About Productivity But Quality of Life

2012-03-22T07:28:00.010-07:00

Last month i was invited to attend an 'unconference' put together by the Information Overload Research Group. IORG, is a group of researchers, practitioners and technologists from academia, corporations, solution vendors and consultancies that are dedicated to reducing information overload, a problem that they believe "diminishes the productivity and quality of life of knowledge workers worldwide".

Charlie Davidson, CEO of Attensa who i have known for years via other industry events, sent me the invitation. Attensa is trying to solve the problem of Information Overload for businesses because "Overload not only hurts productivity, but also prevents people from using the information and knowledge that is critical to revenue generation, innovation and overall business results."

I had never heard of the Information Overload Research Group and upon Charlie's invitation i was immediately interested in having the opportunity to spend the day with academics and practitioners who are researching the issue of Information Overload.

It was a great day (and for me to say that because it was a Saturday, it was really worth my time, when i could have been running around with my toddler after a long week of work!)- i took many notes, and lately have been inspired to draw the concepts that are being discussed or that pop into my mind as the discussions happen- perhaps inspired by my two year old as she said ' mommy, so pretty' when i pulled the notes out to review recently.

I embedded them below as a flickr slideshow or you can click on the pages below for a bigger image. If anything doesn't make sense, or you need clarification on my 'wacky' imagery, drop me a comment!

Notes Page 6

I look forward to the next Information Overload Research Group Event, if you are interested in joining the group please visit their site.

RIP iPad 1 (Rest in Pieces)

2012-03-04T21:23:00.006-08:00

Oh iPad 1, you have been a true member of our family since the summer of 2010. But now it is time to say goodbye....

You have helped us navigate the streets of Rome, Paris, Luxembourg, Frankfurt, Lisbon and oh so many other little cities in far away places as well as close to home. Using 3G, or snapping screen shots of maps in preparation on the hotel WIFI- we always found the way with your help, bought the tickets before we got there, confirmed the open hours and the train schedules, read up on the collections and you told us exactly what we needed to enjoy ourselves.

And on those long flights to get to those faraway places, with an infant and then a toddler- you entertained and made the time 'fly' from your many kid Apps, to Angry Birds when the kid fell asleep. When we went out to eat and it was way past her dinner time, in the streets of some romantic town square- you entertained her so she could enjoy being with us, we with her and the other dinner guest with themselves.

You taught my 9 month old the swipe motion (and at 2 she swipes many a thing that just don't swipe because that is how she expects all electronics to work), you also taught her ABCs and all the animal sounds, her love of Toy Story , the Monster at the End of the Book, Monkey Pre-school lunchbox, Peekaboo Barn and on and on.

During the evenings you let me read interesting content, from people i follow on twitter, facebook and other feeds with a fascinatingly beautiful interface in Flipboard that more and more is becoming a standard experience in consuming content as i predicted. There was no movie star that ever went unidentified or spoofs that we didn't keep an eye out for as we tuned into a movie.

You became my cookbook companion- never a recipe that couldn't be found and followed from the counter. Oops no butter in the house, no worry a substitute is a swipe away.

There was rarely a question that went unanswered when you were around.

But i failed you, i left you behind once and miraculously you were 'returned' to me and now i just committed the ultimate sin.

I left you on the roof of my car and drove away, at about 65mph you flew off. My husband saw something 'black that looked like a record' that the car behind us swerved to avoid, we had the sun roof opened, but the screen was on and the kid couldn't have thrown anything and we didn't think of you because you were supposed to be safely stored in my bag. Latter on when i was about to pull you out to keep the kid entertained as we ate, i shrugged it off and she didn't miss you- i must have left it at home . When i got home 5 hours later, i looked for you, i panicked- where did i leave you- and then snap- i asked- "you saw something that looked like a black record behind us on the highway as a car swerved???....."

He went out to find you on US1, risking life and limb so you could be put to rest. Lucky for me iPad3 is due next week, you my friend are not so lucky. Rest in Pieces.......

Grave Stone Image|Flickr|bknittle

Raising Arizona Image|Bill's Movie Emporium- if you don't get the reference you need to watch the movie!

iPad Images|Unfortunately my own...

This Ain't your Mother's Craft Fair

2011-12-18T21:17:00.000-08:00

This weekend i headed over to the Renegade Holiday Craft Fair in San Francisco. In general i love crafty gatherings, from the beloved summer street fairs to special events like the one i went to today, i always get inspired and of course find some scores that i would never fine anywhere else.

One thing that i noticed is that this wasn't your typical holiday craft fair of yesteryear. Here are some of the highlights:

- Many reclaimed items made from recycled materials- these crafters are reusing materials from drum symbols and skateboards (yes i got me one of those) to vintage chair upholstery and creating beautiful items

- Almost every vendor had a Square (or similar) credit card reader- no more 'i don't have enough cash'- a good thing because some things were quite high-end and costly

- and last , more and more i am becoming a fan of etsy- the craft fair was a in person etsy convention- the majority of the vendors i took a close look at had an etsy store.

So aside from some new things i bought, i am also feeling pretty crafty- with a stayaction coming up for the holidays i am looking forward to some creative time- now off to look around the house for items that i can reclaim and get started with.

The Dead of a Pair of Pumps and How Dreamforce has Become an Executive Conference

2011-09-01T09:45:00.000-07:00

I have been going to Salesforce.com's Dreamforce conference for about 7 years in one form or another- from a full conference attendee, to a expo vendor, a virtual attendee and a keynote/expo attendee which i did again this year. Moscone center is nearby the office and I find it extremely valuable to attend conferences- great for networking and for seeing and hearing first hand what the big vendors or technologies are coming up with.

Last night after putting the baby to sleep, I was catching up on my work after spending the majority of the day at dreamforce and was watching the tweet stream from #df11. It was late and the conference attendees where at the Metallica gala concert. Pretty entertaining tweets- from 'they handed out earplugs as we walked in' to the always entertaining @jowyang 's tweet:

But these funny observations was something I had noticed myself- a lot of suits and slick back hair. Now I am not against this (maybe the slick back hair I don't particularly like but whatever it's better then a mullet)- and I myself wear 'proper' business dress to all conferences since I am always running into clients. But I thought the conference looked like more business types then before (I refuse to believe that developers are wearing suits now a days- but they seem to have upgraded to the standard valley dress of khaki's and button downs).

My friend Kevin Marks, who is now at Salesforce and was wearing a snazy jacket, pointed out that Dreamforce11 had all the developer sessions in Moscone West while the business sessions where in Moscone North - we were chatting in the north area and I agreed - and there were a lot of suits there.

With 47,000 attendees, there was a different feeling- Dreamforce seems to me to be a growing must attend for top execs- from the hallway and expo floor conversations I observed . I am sure the developers sessions are still important but the "visionary" stuff that Marc Benioff (CEO) is pushing seems to be working on these guys (yes mostly guy- and yes it was nice to see Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts on stage and loved her talk on the Social Enterprise). All the keynotes are now available on YouTube.

Anyway- on the way from Moscone West to Moscone North through the massive crowds- a street grate got the best of my most beloved shoes- the ones I wear to every conference because they are the most comfortable- I would say that over the years (do I dare admit that these shoes at around 10yrs old?!!)- these shoes have seen hundreds of keynotes and strolled through miles and miles of expo halls- from the small intimate conferences like the beloved defrag to the biggie 'close out Disney World' Gartner conferences.

I will miss you dear shoes.

PS: for those lady friends of mine who we have discussed that the Shoe Mender is a girl's best friend and good shoes are worth fixing and over again. This pair has spent its share of time at the shoe repair shop- this morning as I walked past Jack's shoe repair on market street on the way to the office I suddenly almost had a change of heart- but no their time has come. (Sounds like a trip to DSW is called for!)

Notes from my 5 Minutes of Internal Twitter Fame

2011-08-12T09:25:00.000-07:00

I had five minutes to share some 'best practices' and 'real-life' twittering stories with my fellow co-workers on an internal Twitter 101 Session that our Social Media Marketing Manager put together. The attendees where mostly sales and marketing colleagues. It is a relatively new program we have in place, and i applaud them for taking this step. They went through general how-tos which would be useful for any new user.

My notes outline follows at the request of @tjsweeney to share some context of what i talked about.

I have been tweeting since March 2007, currently have 2,811 followers (since the presentation it has gone up to 2821) and have over 4,000 tweets (so tweeting for 1601 days so an average of 2.5 tweets a day)
I started tweeting during the famous 2007 SXSW Twitter tipping point- where Twitter hit 'mainstream' well the mainstream of Silicon valley that is. During that conference, tweets went from 20,000 tweets per day to 60,000 tweets per day. We all shook our heads and said how will i manage all this? Today there are over 200 million tweets per day. I still find value every day in my tweet stream.
I use Twitter to be smarter, hopefully provide some value to my followers and to help me build my personal 'brand'
How do i let people know i tweet? Beyond engaging with them if they are on Twitter, i link at bottom of my corporate and personal email (currently linking to my aboutme page) and also tie it into my LinkedIn account- when i tweet it gets posted there- provides a somewhat different follower list
I currently use Tweetdeck to manage my streams, Blackberry Twitter or Twitter Ipad when i am on the road. Flipboard i use mostly in the evenings to catch up on my evening 'tweets' and deeper reads
Have various saved searches on Tweetdeck (e.g. Competitive Intelligence, Librarians, Supply Chain, Enterprise Sales, semantic web) and follow companies and people who are prospects/clients or just plain smart peeps.
Lists are very helpful, and there are a lot of wonderfully curated lists or you can create your own and make them private or public
Hashtags- for example to follow a conference like #sla2011 , even if you are not there you can still 'attend' and interact
I use bit.ly to shorten my URLs and find their tracking data very valuable to see how many clicked on my link.
I have many Clients who follow me- i can see that they follow me but they also tell me- often before a meeting starts instead of talking about the weather we might talk about a certain tweet i made earlier in the day- and vice versa- i try not to get on the phone with a client without checking their 'output channel'
I have clients who Direct Message (DM) me and i might do the same to them i find the engagement and response rate to be much higher
To my last point, Twitter has a big vanity aurora around it. regardless of who you are you want to see who retweeted, @ed you, DMd you , favortied your tweet- instantaneously
I spend a lot of time finding (mostly through google search although i recently found the twitter advanced search feature) and listening to what prospects may be saying . One thing i try to do sometimes is wait for someone to tweet something - then i know they are in front of a device (laptop,mobile,table etc.)- per my previous vanity point, they want to see who replied. i might not reply through twitter because what i want to talk to them about is not a conversation to start there - but i might send an email or give them a ring because i can assume they are working on their 'device' and are connected

My last point and probably the most important for people in sales and marketing was to be authentic. For example, i follow our Twitter brand accounts , i retweet things from the Dow Jones twitter accounts that MY followers will find valuable not as an advertising . I have seen others do a dis-service to themselves and the company by blatantly retweeting or promoting product specific things and nothing else. It is ok for the brand twitter account to do that but your personal account needs a good mix of personal and business.

Tweet away my friends.

The Flipboard Experience Will Become a Regular Way to Consume Content

2010-10-25T14:07:00.000-07:00

Here is a prediction: It might not be called Flipboard- but the Flipboard experience will become a format for publishing content, just like today content producers publish content in PDF, Word documents, video embeds, etc.

This weekend here in the Bay area was nothing special thanks to all the rain. We certainly need it so the rain was welcomed and did stay away from most of the Neil Young Bridge School Benefit on Saturday which was nice since that was the only outside plans i had. So Sunday was a perfect day to sit on the couch (when the baby was napping) and spend some quality time with the iPad. Flipboard continues to be my favorite and most used App on my iPad (that is my own usage otherwise it is Angry Birds and Peek-a-boo Barn- you decided which one is addicted to what ;-)

I really enjoy the experience of using Flipboard- if you haven't had the pleasure i have embedded a well done video that will show you the general idea of how Flipboard works. The idea is that Flipboard becomes a living changing social magazine- of things that you are interested in and your network is pushing to you. The content of course is only as good as the 'feeds' you add/follow, and the network you currently follow on twitter and facebook- but the interaction with the content is just beautiful.

Aside from the interaction with the content being visually stimulating, i think it is the alignment with how i enjoy and productively consume content- yes many times i still print out things to read because on a flat screen i have troubles consuming it, the Flipboard experience i think changes that.

Now applications like CoverPad who has a new add-on for Wordpress are coming out with tools to make your content act like Flipboard which i think will lead to other tools that will easily allow content produces to provide a Flipboard like experience for their content consumers.

Imagine a user using a tablet with touch screen visits:

your corporate website, they quickly flip through your product offerings, customer stories etc.
your employees visit your corporate intranet and flip through articles from corporate (video included), HR announcements, sales wins, product brochures, proposals etc. (how cool would a SharePoint add-on be??)
your customers visit your retail store, (e.g. REI, Nordstroms) and flip through your catalogs.
Your daily newsletters (internal and external) are sent out and the content consumers interact with them by flipping through current and past 'issues'
Any many other ways....

Content creation will need to be richer on the production side so producers need to think about that, just like Instapaper and other "read it later" services i believe will change the way online content is written.

Some of you may say, hey Daniela isn't this something the Client Solutions group at Dow Jones can do? Well yes, i sent a note out to corporate a couple weeks back and heard crickets- but we have a lot going on so i need to re-ping. Plus the way we work best (and fast) is to have a client who wants/needs. So i need to find a good use case that we can test this on!

My ebooks now self 'published' on Scribd

2010-10-24T21:03:00.000-07:00

Finally got around to uploading my ebooks to Scribd which is a service that provides social reading and publishing that has a easy to use interface for users and content owners.

The following two ebooks i wrote while working at Dow Jones (where i am still currently). One is about Hybrid Approaches to taxonomies and folksonomies in the enterprise that came out in 2008 and the other one is about how social media is changing the enterprise which i co-wrote with Robert Scoble, Shel Israel and Greg Merkle in 2009.
~enjoy!
The Taxonomy Folksonomy Cookbook: Finding the Right Recipe for Organizing Metadata

You can also view the French Version of the Taxonomy Folksonomy ebook.

Conversational Corporation: How Social Media is Changing the Enterprise

You can also view the French version of the Conversational Corporation ebook.

More Twitterers Following then Getting their Fingers Dirty with Newspaper Print

2010-10-22T08:47:00.000-07:00

Currently the New York Times has fewer print readers than Twitter followers.

"The last set of figures released, on 31st March 2010, put the New York Times’ print circulation at 951,063 and reports this week say revenue from circulation is in decline. However, with 2.6 million followers, the paper’s Twitter account is a roaring success. Particularly when you compare it to its rivals."

Following on Twitter could be something pretty passive especially for people who follow many, while physically picking up a paper (and having to go to the store to buy even more) is definitely not passive. I think a more interesting statistic to compare to print readers would be what the referring traffic is from Twitter to the New York Times site and engagement time- how long does a consumer spend reading the physical paper and how long does a vistior that comes from Twitter spend on NYTimes.com?

Image|Flickr|Jarjan