Web2.0 Technology Marketing

Tech blogs not just talk? a technology marketers' worry

2008-12-07T07:00:00.012+02:00

Abbot Laboratory's Omnilink Biliari Stent, does it belong in a blog?

A technology marketer in a medical device start-up just gave me his opinion about blogs: "they are just talk, and if you are going to talk, you need someone really good to do it." He gets about an offer every two weeks to get a blog started. But his company does not see potential for professionally written articles from a 23 year old blogger that cut his teeth on commenting in political or Internet gambling blogs. His web design and SEO provider has made a pitch for blogging, the result was disappointing at best. The image of the blogger simply does not fit the serious business of selling medical devices to doctors. In his words "doctors over the age of 50 do not read blogs". I wanted to say: "executives in fortune 500 do read Clayton Christensen's and Jakob Nielsen's blogs" and they take them seriously. Imitating Bill Clinotn's famous political election slogan: "it's the topic stupid" was on my lips. But I didn't say anything at that point. I wanted to go back to my office and gather examples to "prove him wrong".

Once I started gathering lists of "serious blogs" I realized that it's not going to be useful, not to me or to him. Not only to this potential client, but also to anyone in his company. There are two ways of looking at communication. These are more basic than marketing communication as a whole. The failure in the image of blogs falls into these two categories:

The media itself: contextual association in what the medium itself represents. This is what Marshal McLuhan defined as: "the medium is the massage". TV is for entertainment, you didn't put medical ads on TV in the US in the 1950's, you didn't do it even in the 1970's. You don't put serious professional communication on blogs, it's a waste of time.
The content: what Bill Clinton's campaign adviser James Carville coined "it's the economy stupid". You focus on what you want to say not where the message runs. On TV for Americans presidents never talked about serious subjects, but Carville made Clinton do it!

Who is "right"? If you are a start-up medical company you worry about your effectiveness. If you don't get it "right" the company will suffer, maybe even get hit so hard that you will not be able to recover. But why focus on small medical start-ups? This issue is global. Big medical companies, technology companies, consumer companies, they all have to worry about their communication effort. What about independent consultants, with even more at stake, much smaller budget?

Marshal McLuhan still echo after all the years, history of medium repeats?

If you are going to communicate and market effectively you need BOTH! YES BOTH! The medium has to be right to be effective at all, this is what everyone who starts out thinks. The medium is definitely stereotyped, which is what Marshal McLuhan observed in the 1960's. Does this put blogs in the world of "just talk"? Just political commenting and deep technical conversations? This seems to be the case in the mind of traditional corporate marketers*. But if it's just talk, why do serious thinkers use such trivial medium? Well, here comes Carville's observation in the serious political arena of presidential elections: the message itself is MORE important. Why is this the case? Because you need to get your message out PERIOD! Even on TV news that has the image of entertainment more than information you need to use it as if it was "serious medium". Carville and more and more media experts understand that there is no substitute to getting the listener's ear and eye. Even if you don't fit into the medium's stereotyped mold.

This leads us to the message itself. If you want to communicate a message, if you want to make sure someone clearly understands you, how do you go about doing it? In the days of Marshal McLuhan you had to do it on TV and pages of magazines. Today it's the Internet. Obviously there is attention paid to messages on the Internet, specially the big company's messages about technology and business. I am not going to convince anyone that Ariana Huffington will get serious about the economy or unemployment, or that bloggers will stop writing about spiders, socks and Lego construction. But that does not matter, if you ignore the medium's stereotyped image (blogs are for just talk). That's what I call 'falling into the stereotype trap'.

The stereotype trap is what Carville clearly saw in the early Clinton presidential campaign. The TV reporter asks you a question about anything, and you answer it. You have to, you are on TV! That's what TV viewers want, that reporter knows what will get ON TV! -- When I write it here it sounds a little sarcastic and maybe silly. But this is exactly what small medical equipment marketers are doing with blogs. But they are in good company, take a look at Microsoft's blogs.

Microsoft has a "community Blogs" page with introduction: " Blogs are Web pages which are updated frequently, written from the point of view of an individual, written in an informal tone, and usually expose an RSS feed for syndication. Use the directory below to find blogs about Microsoft technologies written by Microsoft employees. These blogs will provide you insights and opinions about using Microsoft technologies and software. " Sure enough reading through the blogs they are very technical "insider" articles by individuals. They probably replaced newsletters and articles with blogs. But you will not find "serious business" information here.

Microsoft BI (Business Intelligence) department has a blog. The landing page needs a formatting fix but once you go to an article the blog takes a traditional look with Tag cloud, archives, blog roll on the right sidebar. So here you will find a bit of serious talk about Microsoft's business. Maybe Microsoft is not a good example of blogs for business.

Let's look at what the software industry calls a more "progressive" company. Red Hat is the company which popularized open source software. They essentially "packages" open source and made it useful to the common technology geek. Get a Red Hat Linux "distribution" and Linux works just like windows. Here there are few sections of their web site which are essentially blogs. Red Hat Magazine is a blog. Red Hat press section is a blog and they call it "News Blog" at the home page.

Taking a look at Adobe's blogs, they seem to be much like Microsoft's. Lots of technical blogs for each product and a many personal blogs. Some blogs I would say are more "strategic" or high level. Take a look at the security blog, here is technical information but not just for the pure technologist. But than again Adobe can be considered an old stogy institution in comparison to real Web2.0 companies.

So, let's look at Google! Sure enough google has a blog section with directory for lots of blogs. Just an an example take a look at an article Helping Healthcare Providers Become More Efficient. Maybe this is not useful for the big 50+ medical professional but it is certainly useful to the people who look for solutions. Maybe in the medical profession the solutions come from the bottom not the top. But how are you going to get to the top? I think that google's official blog answers this question. Google's main blog is a mix of news and business articles. I am not sure that this will sway a serious business user but probably 1/3 of the articles could fit into a serious business blog for google.

I should probably do a series of blog surveys to see who is "in" and who is "out". Or more accurately who is "serious about business" and who is "just a tech talker". Sorry for the sarcasm but I do not have a way to categorize this better. If you do, just drop me a line.

The moral of the story? Blogs are not just for "marketing light" - Blogging falls into the category of what content will deliver your message. If you look at the Internet as the medium of today's business, blogs are just one channel (or format).

__________
* There is another view of traditional corporate marketers which comes from their traditional suppliers. A big web design, SEO, or even hosting company is not going to offer blogging if they do not have strong writers, strategist, and researchers to support this service.

How, Why, and What about bringing old sk00l to blogging

2008-12-03T09:39:00.004+02:00

One of the questions that I hear all the time is how to "educate" or "convert" an old marketer into a Web2.0 model (as if people were cars or computers). It is similar to the question of "when is business going to get back to the good old days when technology ruled high and every company was growing? (i.e. making money)". To me it seems that these questions avoid the simple observation that things change. They change all the time and not always for the better (i.e. for everyone). Blogging platforms like blogger and WordPress were suppose to make writing content on the web easier and reading it much much easier. Well it did and it DID NOT! Which is what happens with every technology change. (I did not say "technology innovation" or "improvement" on purpose)

The idea behind blogging was: just find a blog platform you like and start publishing what you want. You got freedom from the traditional publishers, no cost of publishing and distribution, no censorship... hey this is great!!! As an isolated vague idea in space (before we actually had massive amount of blogs) this sounded too good to be true. (so did nuclear power - free energy for everyone) But this is not exactly what happened, not because people didn't know how to write, edit, research, promote... not because people didn't have something to say, opinion to voice, ideas to float... all the things that newspapers and trade magazines do very well. Whatever your profession, from technologist to business, from scientist to retailer, from car mechanic to pen collector, you may know how to do your work but you usually don't know how to explain it. Most professionals also do not have the experience to write well, write consistently and to do it week after week, year after year. Most professionals are not interested in writing that much or in that much detail. So for the most part, even though we have the "technology" for blogging, that is just one aspect of a blog that makes it useful. Blogging and wikis can be just about the writing. Essentially if you write well and have something important to say people will eventually read it. But all the functions which publishers of newspapers have invented, from soliciting good writing, editing, design, and eventual promotion and advertising; end up to be just as crucial for bloggers and wikis. So in the end a good writer with something to say still needs help editing, still need motivation to get out the articles in a steady flow, still has to have a decent design... all these things. Even promotion and advertising and "distribution" (RSS, index sites) is crucial.

The other technologies of what O'Reilly observed as Web2.0 are even more foreign and remote to people (just today, this will change and quickly). While Wikipedia has revolutionized organization and gathering of information on a large scale, wikis are very hard to run well and even harder to edit and attract content. This is what has made encyclopedias of the past so expensive and fairly rare in people's homes. Encyclopedia is something libraries pride themselves of having. If you look carefully at encyclopedias of the past notice that they actually are not too prolific. While they gather a great deal of information they are hard to publish, took a very long time, and in the end did not catch as a popular format. Let's not forget their cost, when the format did not "catch" they essentially became expensive. I think this will be true for the web as well. That does not mean that wikis are immediately limited in use. Actually, just like other forms of digital technology wikis will probably become more popular in other forms not necessarily encyclopedias.

New Internet technologies make certain things very easy "technically". This is essentially true with all technologies. This is what many business executives see immediately, the "new way to make money". But the next step in the use of a new technology is the real life application. Technologists know this very well. A base technology without applications and users which benefit from them is not going to be profitable. Business people do not always build in the cost of developing applications or managing outside companies to build them. These two factors: slow momentum of usage and ideas for new uses of a technology are both "good and bad". The good side is opportunities which blogging, wikis, and social networking has given us. The bad side is the people left behind. Essentially we can not change these qualities. The interesting observation which a few of us asking that question AGAIN and AGAIN and... "when are people going to upgrade themselves to Web2.0" and again avoids the change factor.

But what do some of us see that the others don't? After all, some "older folks" blog and some "young guns" still design brochures to be distributed by the old mail system? Besides the ability to "imagine the future" here are a few observations of what make some people understand Web2.0 and some don't:

Seeing the full picture of how an interactive site works, either over time or over a series of articles not in time.

Seeing good examples of content, design, subject matter, or organization (editing, arrangement) - essentially anything that is complete and already been used by people.

Seeing examples that are understood and clearly relevant. If you are a business professional only new business blogs will help you understand how this could help YOU.

Direct involvement in a blog site, writing, editing, use, definition, review, specification for a project.

Pressure, explanation, challenge, need or anything that will make you think and imagine a blog (this usually comes from peer pressure, a friend or respected personality, competitive examples).

Think carefully on what made you use the first computer, the first real professional tool, the first time you ordered a book or a gift on the Internet. These seem small but changes in people specially when it comes to something that will change beliefs and understanding comes small steps. So I do not ask any more "how are people going to be upgraded to Web2.0" and I usually don't answer it... now I will just send them to this article... uuuffff... one step forward... :-)

Simplified Traditional Technical Marketing

2008-10-10T08:39:00.012+02:00

Apple's iPod used dancing silhouettes which is a big campaign. This is a product that needs marketing as much as anything...

Learning a bit of traditional marketing is useful for technologists. From the side it's not always clear what marketing is all about. The traditional definition is: "definition and management of the Price, Place, and Promotion of a product". In the technical world this also means defining the product (essentially telling engineering what the "package" will contain). It also means defining the three P's by understanding the market and the competition. This is true with more traditional consumer products but in the technology world it turns out a little different and crucial to understand.

This sounds simple enough but as a famous advertising executive once said: "learning marketing takes a year, practicing marketing takes a lifetime". This is because our work is highly competitive and the market conditions shift daily. The most important function of practicing technology marketing is bridging between the internal world of the technologist and the external world of the consumer (or market). This is more of a role and an attitude than just skills and experience. Marketers need to play the "devil's advocate" in front of the technologist when making a case for a more user friendly design. In front of a customer the marketer plays the "technologist". This puts the technical marketer in the middle ground and he/she needs to know both worlds well enough to influence them both. A big part of the work is translating from the "use model" to the "technical model".

Technical marketing can be views as the "story" about the product. To tell a story about how a product works means building a model of some sort. It also means knowing who will hear the story (customers) and what other stories the audience hears (competition). I use the "story" analogy just to illustrate the more abstract ideas quickly. The story is actually called a few different names as the marketing "process" moves from before a product is designed all the way to end-of-life.

The first part of a product's marketing "story" is planning and definition. Here a marketer defines the product in enough detail for engineering to design and manufacture a product. Basic product definition starts out with the description from a user perspective than engineering adds their core technology functions. These are algorithms, data structures, physical components (such are hardware, circuits, etc.) At this point of a product definition there is still no customer or competing product information. Once the basic product definition is done and engineering buys into the product the marketing team starts a customer and competitive work. The definition bridges the core technical specification with the main uses of the product. One of the best ways to define a product is by using "mock ups" or "demos" in front of perspective customers. Software products start out as screen shots and demo screens. It is very hard to demonstrate a software product's functionality, but sometimes it may be useful to do some engineering and get a "dummy mock up" which actually shows some function. Hardware products like ICs (integrated circuits) are tested in front of customers mostly through preliminary specifications. A customer that sees a specification of the "next big thing" usually will give the marketer good information about how he/she would use the product in his own design. This also includes the drawbacks and missing functions which will make the product usable as it comes out the first time.

Blackberry personal communicator is marketed mostly through "channels", these are the carriers which provide the phone service.

Once the product is well designed and tested in front of customers the engineers can get to work. At this point the marketer needs to start preparing the "channels" and the "market" for the product's introduction. Channels are a sales term for the distributors, representatives, and direct sales force. I will talk more about the sales process in another article, but need to talk about marketing's role here. This is a combination of the "promotion" and "price" aspect of the work. Most technology products are not promoted with advertising and public display the way consumer products are marketed. They use channels of distribution to promote products. New products usually need extensive support and training to get users started. This is the role of the channel. Sometimes technology marketers will have technical people who are called "application engineers". These technical marketers develop demos and training material to help early adopters start out with the new product.

The final part of this article is an introduction to a product launch. This is about one third (1/3) of the way in the marketing process (of a technology product). In the "marketing mix: price, place, and promotion" an introduction of the product to the market all the pieces have to be ready. The price is usually set by a competing product's price, the ability of the market to sustain a price over time, and the need to recoup the engineering cost of development.
The place is the "channels" and means of getting the product out to the end customer. In traditional consumer marketing a place sometimes is the most crucial part of the marketing mix. In technology companies that usually means who the first and than the end target is. For example, Intuit the producer of Quicken (a personal accounting package) marketed their product heavily to stock brokers in the early stage of their promotion. The idea was to hook them and use them as a "reference" to get to the end consumer. Stock brokers were a relatively small market, but highly influential with their customers. Once the stock brokers started keeping their client's accounting on Quicken they could influence their customers to use the application as well.
Finally the promotion is how a new product will be introduced to the consumer. When you buy a new computer from HP or Dell you will get a bunch of "free trial" programs like virus protection, Quicken (personal accounting), and maybe a trial to Microsoft Office or a graphic processing program for your photos (Photoshop by Adobe). This is one form of promotion which is relatively low cost. The only cost to the marketer is the management of a relationship with Dell and HP. Microsoft does this with their higher end Office suites. When you buy a low end package they let you try more applications (like Access database and Visio charting).

This article used the traditional "marketing mix" model. For the most part, technology companies use this model initially to get started. Once I explore the other functions of the marketing "process" (I will also refer to this at the "marketing flow" ), we will go into more into specific areas of technical marketing which are unique to the field. But it's always good to know the very basic traditional techniques.

Think bigger: learning from Amazon to market with Web2.0

2008-10-07T06:23:00.009+02:00

Fring is a new service which gathers all your phone contacts and adds VoIP to your cell (with WiFi)

With all the talk about Web2.0 technology not many product developers have developed the "marketing side". It seems that in the new era of technology innovation, marketers are lagging behind (this is not new). By this I mean that the work on popularizing and dissemination Web2.0 technologies is far behind 'what the technology can do'. There are almost no examples, case studies, tutorials, possible use ideas... all the "stuff" that accelerates the use of new technology products in the world of Web2.0. This situation is actually a huge opportunity for us marketers. Not just in marketing, but in marketer's ability to move business forward (connecting products, vertical uses, corporate "behind the fire wall" use, etc.). This is what I see when speaking with technologists every week. They are extremely focused on the "bits and bytes" / "features and benefits" the stuff they read about in old marketing books. There are so many things to develop using new technologies that technicians must focus hard. But in the focus on 'how to do it' they miss 'what to do with it'! This is not a new phenomena, this happens every time we get a technology shift which changes all the rules. Lots of people see the big picture, this is what Tim O'Reilly called Web2.0.

As marketer I first zoom in to look at the technology. Than I try to develop very specific product ideas and figure out what to do next. The first step is "who is wants this? How are they going to use this?" O'Reilly's Web2.0 covers too many specific technologies to use as examples. Let's look just at the popularizing of user contribution. The most common technology which is changing the way we work is called by the developers "user content". This is contributed articles, comments, links, video and audio clips, and now even chat and phone conversations (see the
Fring service and Google phone service). Blogging started this whole trend when 'Blogger' became a hot application. At about the same time, Amazon has started to develop reader's reviews in a big way. The page for a book became more than a catalog, now readers have newspaper and magazine reviews, comments from readers, comments from people in the area of interest. Eventually Amazon even created a forum for discussion about books which did not exist in a popular form on the Internet. Today this does not seem like such an innovation, this phenomena of innovation which quickly become part of the daily convention. If you look carefully at your expertise and the markets you know, you could probably see similar opportunities of turning old services into Internet services.

A translation of The Koran on Amazon, an example of user contributed content.

In explaining the ability of use of user comments take a look at Amazon. One of the best ways to see how technology is used is by picking a simple example. Search for 'the Koran' on Amazon. While this might be a slightly charged topic it is a simple example of what information one will find on Amazon. Go half way down to the 'Most Helpful Customer Reviews' section. Today (October 12, 2008) the following was displayed: "144 of 153 people found the following review helpful: // An Important Read, July 14, 2003 // By Benjamin (USA) - See all my reviews..." with a 6 paragraph review. Than there was another review "97 of 121 people found the following review helpful: // Not Bad, but there are Better, October 4, 2001" with suggestion to go to another translation. Finally there was a third customer review. Notice that Amazon did not participate and seemingly did not even pick the reviews. They seem to come via popularity "voting" by readers. Here is excellent information which would take a great deal of editorial writing to gather and would not be as wide audience. Also notice that Amazon let's anyone "vote" on the review which makes it easier to put the most popular review right at the first page. If you want to see all 77 reviews there is a link at the end of the three on the main page. Here you will find lots of people who write in detail about the differences in translation and even sources where you can get more information. Also, lots of opinions. This is even better than a newspaper's op-ed section. It gives a potential reader the ability to see what readers think about the book. I would suggest the you dig further into how Amazon organizes reviews and ratings of reviews and think about ways to make your own information useful to your audience. While selling books is not what most technology marketers do, we need to be just as good in our own information organization and presentation. We don't have any more excuses when a site like Amazon is so good at it.

Not to beat a dead horse, take a look at a different book all together: Ernest Hemingway's 'To Whom The Bell's Toll'. Here there is an additional section with 'Editorial Reviews'. This is pure marketing and even in this classic book comes directly from sources who are simply interested in selling you the book. But, this is also a bridge to the pre-Internet (certainly pre-Web2.0) days where newspaper and magazine reviews were the source of information about a book. Amazon at least takes the position of showing just a small part of the editorial review on the main page. If you go to the page dedicated for the editorial review there is much more information and even the first chapter of the book. I don't think that Amazon needs to work that hard selling Hemingway to Americans, but still this is an excellent resource for readers. Finally at the bottom are the three "Most Helpful Customer Reviews" which one is from an author with some background on how this story affected him during the Vietnam era. The other reviews are also good and I presume that American high school students could use these reviews to develop their own ideas on how to describe the book and the ideas in the story. In this book you will find 263 reviews. Imagine as a technology marketer if you can get 263 opinions or reviews for anything you market. OK, this is Hemingway's most monumental piece of work, but I would still put this as an example of what we can strive for in our own work. No piece of software needs 263 reviews but a dozen would be great. No chip needs even a dozen but five would be excellent.

Well, I hope Amazon can help you and many others understand that simple function of user contribution. In the case of books its reviews. There are other excellent examples like Red Hat's knowledge base. But that will have to wait for a future article.

Do it now - or kiss it good bye... learning from crashes

2008-09-28T23:45:00.016+03:00

Osborne 1 "luggable" PC - crashed before takeoff to the IBM (DOS) wave [circa 1981]

I was reminded of a few personal crashes in life from the recent Wall Street crash (the one started by the Lehman Brothers closure). This phenomena of a sudden surprise from "nowhere" is not something unique to the tech business. But for us it is something that happens more often. The financial crash in US banks seem to happen every decade or so. Someone thinks of some scheme to sell you something. Someone tries it out and it works. Everyone else copies the first guy, and the party begins. A few months or years later, some wise guy suddenly notices that this is a scheme. Then some event causes a crash and it all ends in tears.

My first crash in the tech world was the Atari EPROM game event. I was at GI Micro in NY and you would not believe how quickly the place emptied out. But I was young and thought that this was "just this place". That gives away my age. I also remember the PC hardware crash. That was not fun to watch. There was a mini crash with printers, the dot impact kind which ended up with Epson taking the market and dominating it for a few years. When the laser printers came out you should have seen the dot impact printer crash. These technology waves are going to be with us and are pretty much the modus operandi. Just like a stock price will plummet when investors fear is stirred into a frenzy, technologists need to figure out what to do before and after the crash. It does not matter if the crash is due to financial, technology, market, or a combination of other factors. Once we crash the landscape changes radically and the nimble to change will survive.

These general observations of drastic change or a real crash are nice to talk about, but what is more useful is specific examples to what we could do about it. Crashes come to technology as financial changes, as see today with Lehman Brothers, Merill Lynch, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Lehman Brothers was one of the largest technology deal underwriting and negotiation firms on wall street. They have been doing it for a long time. Lehman was also a big Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) firm, which is one of the most used form of selling start-up companies. We will have to get used to smaller, newer firms, and maybe a smaller end market for new company stock. This will also affect spin-offs and acquisitions. But that is not the end of the world. Technologists are not going to stop inventing and creating new products.

Lehman Brothers' web site description of their technology financing expertise

In the mean time, the financial markets which "feeds" the technology sector will have to recover. Just like the Dot-Com bubble, it will take a little time for investors to gather back their trust in speculative technology investments. This will not take long, there is another Google and Facebook lurking somewhere, maybe not even in the US, but the money and know-how are still in New York's Wall Street and California's Silicon Valley. We technologists need first of all to take a good look of what it would take to ride out a period of financial drought. That does not mean stop developing, actually the opposite. Just figure out how to do things with less outside money. Maybe smaller steps which enable technologists to bring in revenue while they develop. Maybe more deals with larger partners, even outside the technology sector. Maybe even other ways to work. Remember, the Osbornes, Compaqs, and Apples of the early 1980's didn't have the big financial infrastructure that existed in the 1990's. Maybe that is a better way to start. Maybe without the eager speculators with "easy money" we will do things better and smarter. What do you think?

The business of technology: marketing, sales, support, promotion

2008-09-24T19:39:00.007+03:00

Yahoo, a one time technology giant, is going through changes...

The business of technology is not discussed enough in terms of a "profession". Actually discussing business people in technology is not the problem, it's the work itself as a technology business professional that seem to be the culprit here. The technical aspect of technology has simply outpaced and ran over the business issues. There is not enough respect and balance to the none purely technical aspects. Because technology companies do not emphasize the areas which are not purely technical. When the business starts failing or simply starts slipping the technologists put in more effort and push the business people aside. This occurs even more in the planning and early stages of a product's market life. My observation over the years is that technology-business needs more professionalism. This means more training, more visibility, more tools, more standard processes, and more management. We simply do not know how to do things well enough and we are not able to convince anyone to give us the resources to develop our profession. So we need to do it ourselves "in our spare time".

You may want to disagree with me and say that there is plenty of "stuff" out there. There is plenty of material on finances (profits, investment), strategies (product position), and use of general business practices in the technology sector. But for all that technology business has done to our world there is very little specific work in writing, analysis, theories, practices, etc. JUST FOR TECHNOLOGY BUSINESS! Some of this can be attributed to the newness of the technology sector. But that could be said in other areas as well, such as international trade, travel, and leisure. The financial world has expanded for the most part due to the technological advanced in communication, data management, promotion, yet you can find many times more publications in that area than in the technology business world. I don't know why technologists do not want to invest in better business, but it seems to me that we simply need to sit down and roll up our sleeves. We know some things that are missing but we need to deeply study what has been done (both right and wrong), analyze what is going on today, and plan for the future. This is true on the micro scale with companies and trade organizations which represent a single product or a core technology. But more so in the macro scale in the way technology is influencing and shaping our social behavior, the economic state of our countries and regions, and finally the human experience both of the technology workers and the general population which uses technology.

I want to clarify a few things about my observation and the point I am making. There are many business fields which affect technology (specially in management). There are many books and theories about business and trends which are related to the technology world. The attention to change and the speed of diffusion of new ideas has interested business researchers and analysts for a long time. The same is true in project management and a new area of management of time and resources in small projects which is different from product management. There are many areas in finance which deal with resources and how to manage investments. But very few have researchers and practitioners have researched the actual work of technologists as "investors". Technologists control investments in product development, basic and applied technology research, marketing and promotion, and many other areas related to the product or service they product.

Let's get right to the issue. If we need to get business practices and tools developed for technology it will take resources and most of all time. Once we figure out what needs to be done and what can be done someone will have to put in some free time to get started. I am going to look at areas related to technology and see what we can buy, borrow, and steal. I also have interest in taking some technology management tools and practices and molding them to the business side. What has been done recently in project management is interesting. There is also a great deal of material in product management from recent work. Some material from what I have seen can be used as-is, maybe a few changes in terminology. But most material and tools I have seen needs to include more specific technology material.

Well, I hope this makes sense to some of you. Also, I hope some of you who are not as familiar with the great business starvation in the tech sector will come and read about it in the future.

Develop a good presentation with blog and Web2.0 (digg, reddit)

2008-09-24T07:21:00.008+03:00

Digg results for "DSP"

A good presenter needs a good presentation. There is no way of getting aroud the subject. If you don't have an exciting presentation you are going to give a boring one.

Yesterday I saw a bland presentation. We all know that a great presenter can spice-up any topic. But in the technical world this is not enough. I noticed the the most important aspect is how the presentation fits the topic. This means, if you set the topic as an "application examples" people are going to be expecting and interested in that topic, doing anything else will throw off the audience. This means give a presentation that has good content, has a good flow, gives new information (remember this is tech!) AND is exciting.

One of the best way to do this is by searching on blogs, wikis, and web sites. Than take a look at Digg.com, Stumbleupon.com, reddit, Technorati.com and other "social bookmarking and sharing" sites. Here you will find top stories and sites which have at least gotten votes. If you are doing something complicated remember that it's VERY HARD to keep people's attention without doing something that involves them. In the talk I went to see software demos which worked but did not show anything beyond symbol boxes, dialog boxes, and menus put people to sleep. The truth is, most engineers are not excited about watching someone plopping boxes on a blank page, no matter how good the program works.

Thinking about this issue on the way back I would suggest to any presenter to do the following:

Highlight clearly what is new and exciting about your presentation.
In marketing and sales they use to talk about "features and benefits". This is not enough in today's world. Show someting that is interesting to the audience. If you show a design, show how it is done, assume a wide range of knoledge and ask what people know and what they want to see.
Do not go into a "script" that is longer than 5 minutes. If you are going to show a "how to" imagine that you are on a TV cooking show. When the chef is done kneeding the doug he "magically" pulls out a fully finished cake. They don't do it on TV just because it's TV, they have lost lots of audiences on shows and they know how to make thigs "move along".
Pick one, ONLY ONE, main message. Don't try to show 5 things. Even if you have all day, leave one impression. Even if what you want to say is not super exciting. Three "messages" are too confusing to people who are not familiar with the topic.
Put in something "sexy" that is not 100% related to the technical topic. Show a new product (iPhone, digital camera, etc.)
Finally, be flexible, if you hear snoring from the back of the room, move to the next section.

Once you got a presentation, if you are going to make it to an audience of 50 people, test it! Make it better and TEST IT AGAIN! if you don't have time, go over it yourself and let someone else go over it. You will never think that your material is boring or trivial. Nobody does. So you need to figure out how solicit crituque on your material. Remember, this is not your presentation ability, it is the MATERIAL! Anyone can sit in front of your slides and talk to you on the phone. Good luck and make your presentaitons count.

A super inpirational [TECHY] talk - Randy Pausch on life

2008-09-07T09:01:00.008+03:00

An opportunity like this only comes once in a few years, maybe even once in a few decades. An example of a really inspirational talk by a G E E K ! NOT A MARKETER! not a salesman! A real technologists and in addition a college professor. If you are a technologists or an engineer turned marketer here is a great example of how to talk and get not just interest but respect and admiration.

See on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo

Summary: Randy Pausch was a VR (virtual reality) professor at Carnegie Mellon. This puts him in the Uber-Geek category in my book. In 2007 he was diagnosed with terminal cancer and as the tradition in academia goes he was asked to give "the last lecture". This is a tradition of retiring professors imparting their last bit of wisdom to their students. But this is the last bit of tradition and sentimentality in this story.

Randy Pausch although an accomplished technologist talked more about his life than what he has done in life technically. The sub-title to his talk is "Achieving your childhood dreams". He does mention quite a bit of history about his career mostly in personal terms. If you are a technologists and you give talks this is one of the best examples of how to "sneak in" personal and emotional material to technical subjects. I will not mention more about the talk, see it for yourself.
Next time I will look at some of the techniques and observations about the lecture and some of the other talks from people mentioned so far. Please e-Mail me if you have a favorite speaker or a lecture about technology or marketing of technology. Thanks...

Big picture: quality vs. speed in product management

2008-09-04T06:44:00.011+03:00

Summary: open source and proprietary software products are used as example for quality vs. speed in product management. Every manager and professional has a choice to "get something out - quick and dirty" or "we don't ship it until it's good". In the history of technology business you can find many examples of both cases. Even ones that you can use to compare between speed and quality. You better think about this before you start. AND KEEP IT IN MIND WHILE YOU WORK - do you need to change tactics??

Full moon over old TV antennas - Ramat Gan, Israel
I recently got a new customer who needs to raise money. When I first started with him it was described as research and write a business plan, target investors, make presentations, and negotiate the terms. A year ago I had another customer that wanted to redesign his business to make more money. He had an open source product which was used to sell services and customization. Both companies are small and both somewhat profitable. Both understood that they didn't manage their products well enough to become really profitable. Like most small technology company managers, both CEOS knew that they needed help and they had lots of ideas. One actually started writing a document with observations, ideas, plans, and alike. But with his erratic schedule he could not take the time to really organize a plan. The other had lots of little notes on everything from Post-It Notes to back of utility bill envelopes (no kidding here!). The big difference was the actual product. The first was an industrial-commercial service CRM system. It was small in comparison to the large scale enterprise systems, runs on PCS, written in Microsoft Visual Basic, and is very reliable (this application requires reliability). The open source application was medium size and was written by a loose group of dedicated programmers. The company selling the service had done some development and debug work but overall was mostly a support organization (installation and configuration, training, maintenance, etc.)
The difference between open source and proprietary product is what I want to talk about. I do not mean the business model or technology methodology (shared open development vs. close back room secrecy), but the way companies behave because of their products. Most people seem to think that if you have a certain product you also have to run your company in the way other do. Or worst, they think that once a methodology has been established you can't change it. This is a recipe for disaster in the business of technology product management. We can't get stuck just in one mode. Open source companies tend to rely on the technological capability. They also tend to think in terms of how to use technology for features and capabilities. The proprietary side of software development seem to think more in terms of a complete solution. Maybe there is a shift in thinking once in a while but I think that looking at the way the two sides work can help most managers make better decisions. Actually, open source companies are starting to see how stitching together complete solutions with support, training, and even hosted operation can make good business sense. (I need to write about this next, this is something that very few people take into account and they are leaving lots of money on the table).
One of the advantages a consultant (they call us coaches now - the sports analogies never stop) is an fresh outside perspective. We come in and do not have the mindset of someone on the inside. This is one of the most powerful tool a CEO can have. While going about "regular business" fundamental changes are not going to be made. Sometimes this is what can bring a product and a company down. One very noticeable difference between these two organizations was the speed vs. quality. In everything that small proprietary company was doing -- QUALITY is JOB 1 (remember the Ford tag line?). The open source company was speed -- fix it and get it out. Figure out what is wrong and get the customer the solution -- e-Mail a response before he even needs it. But life unfortunately can not be run in a single mode. Actually, every product manager needs to modulate and decide what needs time and polish and what needs fast response. This is certainly true in software development and hardware design. This is even more true in product planning and marketing. There are way too many confusing strategies, missing features, and minor revision releases.
The point is: don't make your work totally uniform in methodology. If you need help deciding how to do things, get help from the outside. Otherwise you will end up somewhere between a "rut" and "unchanging" modus operandi. The "rut" is doing things but the same way as if you were on a train going only where the tracks take you. While trains are nice way to travel, there is much more to life than train stations and big cities. The "train" (your way of working) will get you just close but not where you need to go. People who do not appreciate American country music hear every song as a mini soap opera with a cheating wife (or husband), a dog, and a pickup truck.

Is your strategic planning system a 3M product in 3" X 3" format?
The "unchanging" is not doing anything. Analyzing, researching, prototyping, testing... you do all the work to try to get as "good results" as you have now. Companies which are very successful tend to do this all the time. Microsoft is now being called a "has been". In the grand scheme of things, they still want to do Windows and Office as they have done for almost 20 years. The problem with this is worst than the "rut". Here you don't even "write more cheating wife, sad dog, and pickup truck" songs any more. Microsoft has not put out a decent big product in so long, nobody even expect it! Their last thing is probably the X-BOX. Compare this to Apple who was almost dead just a few years ago. Apple has taken a lesson from the old Microsoft. They get out a product and get it redesigned over and over again. Essentially the "cannibalize" their own products. But this is what Microsoft was doing all through the 1980's and 1990's. But don't just look at the big companies. Sometimes their business situation is too complex, so be careful here. I think that Microsoft is trying to do things in certain directions, essentially using their existing successful products as launching points for "bigger and better". In the windows world they are trying to integrate new ideas like the SharePoint server (essentially a combination of Web2.0 + Apache + Office + more). That was a great strategy in the days where Windows was a fairly new and dynamic product. Remember that Microsoft was sued by Netscape for putting Internet Explorer into a windows release? That was controversial!
The good thing about looking at others, like Microsoft and Apple, is learning to look, analyze, think, come to conclusions. So what if you can't do anything about it. BUT you can use the same techniques on your own work. Even if you have a bunch of Post-It notes for observation this is a good start. Take the time to look at what your competitors are doing (and NOT doing). Take the time to observe if you are a "quality" organization and if this is useful for different type of tasks. Look at how "quickly" things are done. Do you have to hold on to customer issues and analyze them? Can you just fire off an answer and get them going even 70% of the time? Well, I hope this has given you some ideas on how to look at your work and organizations.

Learning from other's blogs, content, and promotion

2008-08-20T18:17:00.006+03:00

A function description and example on the Mathworks blog (Loren)

I have looked at some blogs which seem to have a big message. But the big blogs are more of a promotion vehicle for industry leaders or kind of a newsletter specific to a very specialized topic. Business and technology also has the routine task of keeping users informed, spreading to a wide field ideas, and general communication. We are starting to see the corporate world using blogs for these tasks. Since this is such a new area of corporate communication things are changing every day. It seems like the more conservative corporate communicators are putting their "toe in the water". Which is to be expected. Oracle and Mathworks are a great example of this. Both companies use blogs for "less formal" communication. Basically they are letting out some internal info which was spread out in other ways in the past. The articles on the blogs look like white papers, reports, and application examples (sometimes called application notes). They also probably replace direct communication of internal developers and business managers with key customers and the sales channel (here I also include the technical support channel). That's all good and well, but for the most part these blogs are just a one way communication. I would almost say that corporate communication is not clear about the two way and even the community building aspects of blogs. But this is not a big problem.

You can read about the Saudi Arabian Oracle Users Group in one of their executive blogs
Eventually there will be areas in corporate communication that will fit community building. I was expecting technical area where engineers exchange tips and small snippets of code to be first, but I still don't see this. I think that the practice of soliciting articles from the user community is not pushed yet in the corporate world. But with time we will see what happens there.
There is one area of what I would call corporate communication which is screaming for a true full feature blog with lots of 'talk back' and articles from the field and tips... well you get the point. I just stumbled upon a really nice blog on the Roland web site. It's by a musician called Eugene “Man-Man” Roberts touring and using Roland equipment. The blog is a short snippets of his experience "on the road". I would have expected much more from a company which is so involved in the music business. although Roland is a high end instrument producer it still has to spread the word from endorsed musicians to the big universe of potential buyers. The music world is driven by information, specially very niche and very fresh. It is also a world of small communities living in larger ones. But there is still the problem of writing and managing a good blog. So maybe what Roland has done is enough for now. Which gives me the impression that there is lots of work to be done here. Good news for everyone: writers / reporters, blog managers, and promoters. Well, this is the small piece of my nosing around this week. It's still nice to see blogs of all kind doing all kind of tasks. It is starting to look like the technology evolution in the blogsphere is evolving in all kind of ways. To me that is a sign that the format will eventually mature. Thanks again for reading and let me know what you think, that always helps.

Oracle's blogs: Technology, Executive, Application: http://www.oracle.com/blogs/index.html

Roland on the road blog: Eugene “Man-Man” Roberts using Roland products http://www.rolandus.com/go/on_the_road_with/

Mathlab developers blog: "look under the hood" http://blogs.mathworks.com/

Eugene “Man-Man” Roberts on the Roland blog - a simple and elegant start!

Summer work: thinking, planning, starting - Start a blog, wiki, network

2008-08-10T09:15:00.013+03:00

You can think and plan while you surf...

Daniel, a friend just came back from a vacation in Turkey. The Mediterranean beaches in southern Turkey have become a big resort area. Isolated resorts like the Turkish coast and the central western coast of Mexico (Cancun, Puerto Vallarta, Cozumel, Mazatlan, Acapulco, Ixtapa) are a wonderful place to "get away". In business this is one of the best opportunity to think and plan. My friend didn't just vacation, he put together a whole plan for a blog and a new marketing strategy. His only rule for the vacation is not to take a laptop and not to check e-Mail (that was already taken care of). But he did take with him a few books and a list of ideas on blogs, wikis, social networking and other new interesting marketing technologies. I don't think that Daniel had a concrete idea of what he wanted to do with this material. For us techies it's a little scary to leave home without our laptop. But Daniel figured out, maybe there is a way to slow down the "doing" and "pushing forward" activities of daily work-life and think deeply about a new marketing project. If you look at the new web technologies, they tend to fall into a few categories. I would suggest to classify the technologies in terms of their format, uses, and relevancy to your needs first. This will help you put together a short outline or even a complete mock-up of the project. Here are the categories / applications:

Blog: the most popular form of Web2.0 technology. Format: linear chronology; Uses: related articles and divided long series of articles, progressive tracking of news and trends. Relevancy: in the tech world: "Learn 'something' in 21 days". Roll out a new product, a feature per day. Interview 10 of the top applications.
Wiki: the most popular form of organized information (WikiPedia). Format: flat organization of related information; Uses: encyclopedia, similar factual articles, division by area of interest. Relevancy: in the tech world: knowledge base with more structure than just searchable database.
Social network: a unique application to connect groups see Linked-In Format: personal profiles or pages with connections to individuals and groups. Uses: connect individuals with similar interest like user groups, product users, or technology developers. Relevancy: just emerging in the corporate and technology world as a method to connect individual with similar interests. Linked-In seem to be the business leader, MySpace and Facebook are on the consumer side.
File sharing, storage: deliver without sending or shipping Format: file storage with limited or open access. Uses: file and program distribution. Technical support / program upgrade. Distribution of marketing documentation without printing, shipping, and address management.

The next step Daniel started thinking of ways to use blogs, wikis, social networks, and other Web2.0 technologies in his marketing. Very quickly he realized that both blogs and social networks were a perfect use for many of his marketing material announcements. He also realized that many people in his organization wanted to contribute to running and writing on the blogs. This was also true for the social networks like MySpace and Facebook. When these applications first became popular it was not "proper" for high-tech companies to use them. Mostly because they seemed to attract more free spirit and non-business types. But Daniel realized that this is no longer true. Also he realized that there are so many serious business blogs out there that he was starting to show more of a follower attitude in the market. Already most of his small customers and many of his large customers had blogs, specially for the more customer centric tasks. The application examples, news publication and web reference stories, partner web stories including their blogs, customer blogs and other related stories could all go onto a blog and be easily maintained by the marketing staff. Actually, for the first time in a long time web publication work, design, and promotion did not have to be done by a "specialist". Some work was so specialized in the past, such as page design and database design and administration that it required outside experts to complete the work (at a very high price). Daniel realized that all these were issues that essentially STOPPED his marketing from going forward at full speed. For the first time, by not sitting in front of a keyboard or in a long meeting with all his staff he was able to gain perspective of what can be done right now and how to get started.

I hope this short story helps you in using the summer for some good thinking and planning. And don't let anyone keep you away from the surf!

Blogs of the influential - leading thinkers write

2008-07-15T14:58:00.014+03:00

There is an impression that blogs are just for entertainment or to "get your rants" out in public (so you will not need to go see a psychiatrist). If you look at sheer numbers, that could be true. But my search for for commercial and professional use of blogs started with three of the most influential people in technology. All three wrote books and gave keynote talks in conferences. So a blog from these authorities would be a good example of how someone with a theory could use blogs to support their traditional mainstream communication. The three people I am talking about are:

Tim O'Reilly: computer technology publisher and Web2.0 trend coiner
Jakob Nielsen: Usability expert - Alert Box newsletter.
Clayton Christensen: Harvard business school and "Innovator's Dilemma" coiner

Individuals usually have less resources and are more focused on a specific message. Their core idea is usually articulated in their "main book" - in some cases you can even find it in an article. Blogs are simple and linear. They don't need complex navigation or structure so if you have one core message they work fine. The three people I mentioned above each have one very clear message. Basically an idea that explain something specific. For some reason all three people that I picked seem to analyze a behavioral phenomena on the Internet. (But I think this is just coincidental). All these examples show that one idea and a small team of domain experts can create a great resource. They also show that in depth work can be done gradually and does not need to be revealed at "one time" the way books or articles in professional magazines have been doing. These blogs seem to be addressing broad subject areas, but blogs do not have to be limited by their focus (broad or narrow). Let's look a little at each of the blogs.

Tim O'Reilly with Richard Stallman the founder of "open source" (it was first called "free software".

Tim O'Reilly: He has been a book publisher, mostly for the "open source" community for a long time. Even before Linux became popular the O'Reilly books were known as good, accurate, and useful references for many programs and software technologies. As software evolved from open source to the web to what we call Web2.0, Tim O'Reilly has been observing, analyzing, and publishing trends. He is also still involved in the software technology itself, but has definitely noticed that someone has to write about the "big picture". Now that Web2.0 is somewhat of a core mainstream mantra, O'Reilly has created a much bigger blog of sorts with many contributors covering a wide range of topics. If you want to know this corner of the software / web world, his blog is a great place to keep up.

Jakob Nielsen is well know inside the Internet world. He started out at Sun Microsystems (in the days where: "the network is the computer"). With one of the most read usability books for the web, he has been "evangelizing" usability for a long time. He started a newsletter 13 years ago, long before "blog" was even around. But I consider his Alrtbox newsletter to be somewhat of a blog. Sometimes I wish he did update the presentation to the more current blog format. But that is a small price to pay for such great information and knowledge.

Rattling the technolgy "geeks" all the way from the Harvard Business School

Clayton Christiensen is not a technologist in the traditional sense. Actually, I don't think that he started out working on technology topics. As a Harvard Business School professor he tried to answer the old question "what is real innovation?" He has been doing this for a long time. His "Innovator's Dilemma" book has taken the technology world by storm. Not because it is controversial as much as it is well researched, analyzed, and presented. I chose him because he did not come from the core technology world. His blog started out as his own comments on companies and products which either innovate or fail to innovate. Now like O'Reilly and Nielsen he has a staff which write about many areas of expertise.

Well, this is the introduction to the three blogs. Like anything else, I could write about this forever, but we need to get to many more things. It would be interesting to look at group, domain, media, and corporate blogs. At this point in time these are not as developed as other forms of media. Certainly not as other forms of Internet technologies. Next, I will look at grass root blogs like slash-dot and media blogs like New York Times. Both are interesting since they say something new in terms of communication.

Tim O'Reilly: RADAR is his company blog center, other contributors. http://radar.oreilly.com/tim/

Jakob Nielsen's: Alertbox - http://www.useit.com/alertbox/

Clayton Christensen: The Innovator's Dilemma: http://www.innosight.com/blog/index.php

From presentation to the Web (2.0) - Get RRREEEEAAADDDYYY

2008-07-10T06:58:00.017+03:00

I only touched on presentations in the last few articles.* This was done to give a starting point to the core subject of the blog: marketing with Web2.0 techniques. One of the first steps is to take existing material, first I will start with a presentation, which will be cut and modified to fit Web2.0 format. Doing this in real life is probably the best way to get started. With Web2.0 most of the tools are easy to get started with. Blogs, wikis, social networking, personal pages, and resource linking is available in many shapes and flavors. The popular services and tools also have million of examples. If you are not familiar with these, I would suggest that you go and get familiar. The best way is to actually sign up for these services and get your own "page" or "listing" started. Writing a blog or developing a wiki takes lots of work. Writing the content may actually be the simplest of the parts. If you write and create presentations on a regular basis this is not going to be your hardest task. But even if you write regularly, you will find out quickly that Web2.0 is essentially an "infinite resource". You can write, draw, sing, play, link-to, communicate... as much as you want. This means that you need to focus on exactly what you need to communicate. Work out a strategy and tactics to develop an ongoing program. Than roll up your sleeves and make it happen.

Just Do IT: simply go to an application and start it up.
Learn and explore: pick one or more application, sign-up, but just look and learn.
Buy the book, take a class, do the tutorial: this helps for some who need that first push.
Get a tutor / guide: sit with someone and go through the basic steps: this always helps get over the "fear of starting"
Get into a group: start commenting on a blog before you have one, add a page to a wiki in an area of your expertise, get invited into Linked-In by a friend, etc.

Web2.0 Tag Cloud - already too many tools and services...

Whatever your "style" I would suggest a few things to get you organized. Simply start thinking as if you are already in the groove and going.

This means gather the material that you need, get your plan started, outline actual articles or even edit existing material to fit into the format you will need.
If you work with schedules: deadlines and milestones, start sketching out your work.
If you like organizing in a project format, make this an active project with all the related documentation and tasks involved.
If you are in a corporate or government environment and you need to do more formal planning, write a proposal, and solicit agreement to secure resources (funding, headcount, equipment) than go ahead and start there. Whatever method works for you, get started.

Web2.0 is not just an experiment or a technology fad. Actually, it is a huge trend in the use of the Internet. Tim O'Reilly actually coined the term by observing how things were developing in the real world and than crafting a theory around the "outside world" of core computer development world. This type of observation is not a common way of doing things in the computer/Internet world. Until now, ideas, uses, products, essentially "technology" always came from the technologist world. The proverbial "young gun" / "hot shot" isolated "genius" crafting a new product in the form of a site. Essentially, Tim O'Reilly noticed that the "new web" enables users to be the real "content creators". Internet developers has hoped for this since the very beginning of the Web. But the applications and the technology did not develop as quickly as expected. But now, we - the marketing professionals as individuals and leaders of small organizations**, have the means to do what only large teams of programmers, editors, and web-masters.

Thinking strategically about marketing with Web2.0

What that mean to technology marketers is the beginning of an opportunity to get in touch with a whole new market using new tools. First of all, since the technology and the behavior of the market is new we can track it and adjust our way of working as it is developed. Second, we can lead competitors and partners in innovating. Not the innovation that just comes from a new technology, but the innovation into areas which have stayed static. This includes: positioning, message, target market, packaging, and even pricing. Changing marketing strategy is not a strange concept when new form of marketing distribution channel. I call "marketing distribution channel" anything that is the method a marketing message connects a technologist to the market. The Internet has had at least two big innovations in "marketing distribution channels". The first came with e-Mail and early networking (pre-web era). This shift in general terms was not as visible as the next one, but in the technical world marketing with e-Mail, BBS, and News groups was nothing less than a revolution. Many companies gained a huge advantage over others with the early Internet technology. Just like the more popular Internet (i.e. web) technology change, the early technologies really separated the quick to adopt from the slow ones. The same happened with much bigger effect when the current Web technology hit. We all see how people buy books at Amazon, how Dell sells computers, and Yahoo provides e-Mail service. Web2.0 is just starting out, currently MySpace, Facebook, Linked-In, Blogger, WikiPedia, are getting lots of media attention. But in the business world, especially in technology marketing, these tools are not being used. But this will change, as these tools become more robust, reliable, and popular, their use will grow quickly. This is one good reason to think about Web2.0 as a strategic investment in marketing.

NEXT TIME: Industry examples from Web2.0 technology.

* If you need more information or training on creating and giving presentations take a look at blogs and books in this area. I believe that you can never give a "good enough" presentation. I also see that in the technical world, both technical and business people need more work in this area. This is specially true in creating presentation material. This area could use a whole blog series by itself.
** I call marketing small organizations because relatively to other corporate roles marketing is still mostly the smallest effort in MOST companies. Please excuse my generalization if this is not true for you or your organization.

How not to give a boring presentation...

2008-06-29T16:07:00.009+03:00

There were a few comments lately about my approach. Seems like being told what "not to do" is not as useful as being told what to do. I apologize, but it was easier to just start this way. It is true that for some, to be told what not to do, is not helpful, because they simply do not do it. Also, some people catch quickly and when they see someone who is doing something "wrong" they learn not to do it. But, I don't think that ignoring the "bad" and just focusing on the "good" is the solution either. So let's aim for a balance of positive and negative lessons.

Apple's Steve Jobs, arguable the best tech presenter today
One of the best way to learn from "the good" is to look at great presenters. Arguably, Apple's Steve Jobs is one of the best presenters in the technology world. There are plenty of people who follow and analyze Steve Jobs' presentations, not just for his ability to excite people, but also to learn from his style and skills. Let's look at an article from Business Week: How to Wow 'Em Like Steve Jobs(APRIL 6, 2006). It is one of many that talks about what Steve Jobs does in his presentations. They make five points:

Sell the Benefit - Steve Jobs does not sell bits of metal; he sells an experience.
Practice, Practice, and Practice Some More - Jobs takes nothing for granted during product launches.
Keep It Visual - Speaking of slides, there are very few bullet points in a Jobs presentation.
Exude Passion, Energy, and Enthusiasm - Jobs has an infectious enthusiasm.
"And One More Thing..." - At the end of each presentation Jobs adds to the drama by saying, "and one more thing."

Well, these are a few top level tips, but the article makes a good point in terms of comparing Jobs to most technology presenters. This is crucial for us technology (geeks) to understand. Not many of our C U S T O M E R S want to know that inside the box is a chip with software and
wires with display and buttons with insulation... you get the point. The same applies to the very technical of presentations. Even (or I should say ESPECIALLY) technical audience want to know the benefit to them. While it's nice that a new version of the software made the work for the developers easier, customers really do not care about that. But if the product's quality and reliability has been enhanced by 150% due to better software development processes, and there are 80% less bugs on the initial release, and the incremental releases are going to be faster and more predictable (the next one in in 8 weeks) -- that makes sense to customers. This speaks about Jobs' selling the "benefit" not the "bits of metal".
Now for the "bad" list. After all, we still have to watch out what NOT to do and I still see lots of bad presenters. These are my top list of not to do:

Do NOT put them to sleep: if you can't be enthusiastic, learn how to modulate your voice, move your body and hands, illustrate and point to the presentation, give short demos, etc.
Do NOT assume that they know: Explain basic terms, diagram processes, illustrate construction (circuits, flow charts)
Do NOT talk in generalities: Show demos, mock-ups, screen shots, output displays,
Don't talk about "strategy" to operational techies, don't show screen shots to strategic managers: tailor presentations or parts of them
Don't try to fake your way: don't be "a friend" if that is not you, don't be "the expert" if you are not: be yourself, be honest

Well, I think this is a start. Remember, there are many places today to find help on how to present, blogs with presentation articles, lots of books -- but the most important part if how you present yourself and how well you prepared the presentation. This is what was said about Steve Jobs as well. This includes the actual material but also your own ability to speak and feel confident in the material and your knowledge. The one thing that the Steve Jobs situation shows the result of lots of work and preparation. Steve Jobs goes on stage after Apple has done the work and has made a magnificent product. You may think that this puts you at a disadvantage. Maybe you don't see all the work that goes into your company's product. I would suggest that you do your homework and learn about how your product was designed, developed, tested, and packaged. Maybe even how it is supported and how customers are trained. Everything you do should prepare you to give a good presentation. And don't forget, test yourself in front of internal people or a few willing customers. This is the best way to really practice. Nothing is like the real thing, but standing up in front of people and giving the presentation over and over again is a good way to test yourself. OK, as they say... NOW IT'S YOUR TURN! G O O D L U C K !

Presentations from tech-marketers: improve, recycle, learn

2008-06-26T20:01:00.013+03:00

Last post I noted a few things to make presentations easier to follow. There is one additional area which could help technologists create better presentations, simply improve on what is out there. The first step is improve your own creation. If you are a programmer you know that all new programs can use improvement, testing, user feedback, benchmarking with competing programs... you get the point: I M P R O V E M E N T. That goes without saying for hardware designs. No hardware designer will ever say that the first version of a product is "perfect". The same goes for any communication and especially of the technical nature. The early life of a technical presentation needs exposure and feedback. This is specially important if you are going to introduce a new concept or claim something unique. The main reason for testing and feedback is to see what was understood. New concepts are specially difficult to explain unless they are very simple. Most of our technology is not that simple to others. We live and breath it all they long so we need to think in terms of people who do not. Even if you are trying to show an improvement in a known parameter like speed, power, or size or a program or a device. Just showing the "before" and "after" is not enough, because most people want to see the "how" and "why" and simply will not believe you if you say: "trust me". So you need to explain how the technology improved or changed the current way of doing things. This is where the questions pop out, but not to worry, here is where you can start diving into the technical details and make your point. This is where you need to create a good way to communicate; and improve, test, get feedback - and loop back!

Metcalf's patent flow chart for Ethernet

The improvement of presentation is a good step for anyone and helps in getting you to present better. There are two areas which help a great deal in this area. The first is the use of other people's material. You may thing that this is a terrible piece of advice. For example, the flow chart I used here came from Robert Metcalf's original Ethernet patent (4,063,220). Patents are not read by many people, but by their very nature they are a good explanation of a technology or a basic technique. Trade publication papers, industry standard specifications, and academic publications are in a similar category. These are public domain documents, but more important they tend to become an industry reference. Even if most people don't read standard specs and patents, they are known and trusted as legitimate sources. The use of these "virtual standard" documents is not very popular and not always makes sense, but it does help when you want to build on top of a know concept.

Pentium Pro TAP processor, a small piece of technology in a big product. Intel (c) 1997
Another useful source is industry standard documents. If you are writing about computer architecture there is nothing wrong with using Intel's specification or presentation on the Pentium. If you are a competitor you may thing that this may cause a problem, or that it shows that you are not original and that you need to "do your own work". Well, in our world most of the work is evolutionary. We improve, support, and integrate on top of what was done before. Even though most people are not familiar with the previous work you don't need to ignore it "at all cost". In each technology there are many old presentations, papers, and references. Again, even if you are the competing product you can still make use of this material. I do not advise you to copy every single presentation or manual from Cisco or Intel. But there is plenty of material that is considered industry standard by default. In the case of the figure I used from Intel, the TAP processor is a test function. You could find it in many places including the original standard specification (take a look at the IEEE resources). In this case the TAP processor is not a significant technology component in the Pentium product. But if you are going to talk about testing of integrated circuits it is useful. Make sure you ask for permission if you are using an important component of some one's publication. If you were to use Intel's main architecture drawings or flow diagrams you probably need to see if they will give you publication rights. In most cases if you are using the "core" technology they will probably not give you the rights, so be careful. As it is, you should probably do your own work when it comes to the "core" ideas.
Well, this is another installment in our journey... stayed tuned to the giving of the presentation, or how not to put everyone to sleep on a fine sunny afternoon...

Practical tips for creating a presentation: keep in mind

2008-06-23T20:44:00.027+03:00

Editor's note: Why is a Web2.0 blogger writes about old fashion presentations? Because developing a message, a flow to present it, and strategy to convince, and a good presentation is crucial to any manager. If you can't do it with Power-Point slided you are not going to be very good with a blog, a wiki, a newsletter, or a site.

In the last article I described technical presentations made by field engineers. It is often seen that technical people give not so good presentations while less technical people, usually in marketing and business area give good ones. Why is that? After all the technical people know the "product", the "technology" and it's use (application). They can usually "run the machine"! But the emphases on good presentation: creation and delivery; is not there. It should be any technical presenter goal to give an E X C E L L E N T presentation. No ifs, ors, or buts. If you are finally going to get someone in a chair, and he is going to listen to you, you better leave an impression on him. Otherwise, you better go back to writing, debugging, and running programs. Just like learning to program you can learn to create a good presentation. Just like learning to run a program you can learn to deliver a good presentation. Just like learning how to support a user in trouble you can learn how to ask a question in a crowd and get a good answer. But all of this takes preparation and practice. Just like writing a program and debugging, it takes lots of preparation and trials to get this right.

Here are a few examples in recent presentations which could be improved. When we look at someone else failing it helps us learn to do better ourselves. With presentation this is one of the best way to learn. Don't worry about hurting someone else's feelings, they will do the same to you some day.

Slides:

Slide that does not make sense from one to the other. Links to the previous slides are confusing.

Slide that does not support the main subject or even distracts the audience from the key subject.

Slide that is not unique and duplicate the content from the previous or another slide.

A slide which is not clear or is confusing and the presenter does not explain.

Slide that explains something obvious or very simple. Fundamental knowledge should be assumed.

The complete presentation:

Topic is not relevant to the audience or not clearly defined. (subject)

Flow is interrupted, the presentation is made up of many segments without smooth progression. (flow)

No main point is made, the presentation is made up of many parts with not one being a key point. (subject)

Not enough supporting points for the “problem” or the “issue”. (detail)

No clear “solution” or “proposal” - the presentation is not strong in the “convincing argument”. (convince)

The way a presentation is given:

Speaker is boring and seem uninterested. (well, I will not go into this...)

Speaker is not interested in the audience. (you guys have never seen this before?)

Speaker is not knowledgeable and can not give clear explanations.

Speaker is not credible, it seems like he can not “talk the talk, and walk the walk”.

Presentation does not keep the audience's attention – no flow, no excitement, and no POINT!

A list which to “keep in mind” while creating the presentation:

Make a list of the following items:
1. Key topic of the presentation (ex. Computer security is a problem in the Internet age).
2. Key issue you are making (ex. Most IT managers do not know the severity of the problem).
3. Key point you are making (ex. We have a product that can help you with this).
4. Progression or flow (ex. Start with a problem/s, show how to detect, show how to fix).
5. Specific points and issues (ex. New clever attacks, complex networks, fast spread, etc.)
6. How I can help (ex. I am an expert with this technology, listen to me and I can help).
7. What you can do (before you believe me, go to these web sites, read this, etc.)
When creating the slide content:
1. a)How is the slide supporting the key issue, solution, or examples?
2. Make each slide cover a point, do not overwhelm the reader: F O C U S !
3. Keep the flow, look back one, two, even three slides – set up for the next one.
4. Make one of few points: state an issue, show a solution, make a point – but just O N E !
5. Get the audience involved: build in a question, ask for a comment, show a real example.
6. Go through your own list (the ones at the top) and review possible “failures”.

Checklists and tip pages are very helpful to keep you on track. Making a presentation powerful and useful to the audience is just the first step. In the world of Web2.0 you don't have a physical audience, so these basic techniques are even more important. If you can't get you message across effectively in a Power-Point presentation, than it is going to be even more difficult in a blog. While blogs, wikis, newsletters, and single web pages have many advantages, the content quality and how it fits with the rest of the information is crucial. For these who have not developed a wiki content, starting out with a good presentation is one simple technique. Taking a big presentation and cutting it up to a few blog articles with more explanations is one way to start.

Next time: how to improve, recycle, learn from others, and just keep on going when the road is rough and bumpy.

Next-Next: how to give a presentation that is not boring - what NOT to say!

Next-Next-Next time: how to convert a presentation to a few articles. (or maybe, how to structure a series of articles in a blog, newsletter, or a site section... or...)

Teach field engineers to present, work on your presentation

2008-06-17T07:55:00.005+03:00

Yesterday I attended another presentation by a distributor turned security ISV. The application market is hot with new products and what is reportedly new needs. I will go into the market situation in another article, this is an interesting situation which will remind us of the hype waves we are all so familiar with.

The interesting thing about company's product presentation is how the audience can tell you a great deal. How how your message came across, how clear is the presentation, how believable and credible the presenter, and finally what the overall impression. There are many aspects of a presentation which will get a certain message across and you can control. Some are easily developed or learned, some are more personality or environment related and we simply can't control. Either way, it will be helpful to any marketer to be aware of these and work on them. If you leave these to chance the result is certain to not be good. Maybe like the presentation I seen yesterday it could turn out to hurt your image.

Good technical presentation ability is crucial for marketing success

Let's start by 'mapping' qualitative audience parameters (message, clarity, believability, etc.) to marketer's activities. I will start with a short list of audience measures. You can have your own, which probably fit your situation better.

Message: audience should be able to understand one or two main issues.
Clarity: the presentation should be clear to anyone, explain if you are not sure.
Authority: are you (presenter, company, product) have authority to say and convince listeners?
Bottom line: what should the audience do with the presentation? (usually call you)
Information: new or useful information that the audience can use.
Personal & Individual: how is this presentation relevant to me (examples).

This is a short list but even in instances where the presentation is very specific or technical you can easily expand or modify any of these categories. Let's first look at the actual marketing activities and see if we need a different list. If you are going to create a presentation and present it break down the task into smaller activities.

Define all the parameters: message, audience, forum, desired outcome, outside needs, and other specific issues.
Gather all the information and research specific items.
Speak with everyone who will be involved in the presentation (or has interest in the outcome)
Outline and sketch the presentation
Create the presentation - Rev 1
Test present to everyone who is interested, get feedback.
Revise or create a new presentation
Present again to everyone who is interested, loop through the revision cycle if needed
Present to a trial crowd, should be 2 to 3 small groups
You are done: get the presentation out and make the main presentation

This process may seem a little tedious, in some cases you may do most of the steps together showing the work to people while you are developing material. Sometimes you may present to 'outside' groups even before the presentation is complete. But overall flow here is what I see with most presenters. I would say that most technology marketers make the mistake of not testing with 'everybody' enough. For the most part I also see that most presenters do not cover enough basic issues, which is the next list. An issue or 'keep in mind' list is helpful while you are doing your work, similar to what the first list - what the audience sees it will have the qualities you need in your activities. But for that, you will have to wait for the next article.

Ask your customers face to face, when you have them! or they will not tell you!!

2008-06-15T10:07:00.018+03:00

One of the key role in technology marketing is customer communication. This seems like a role which no other group in the organization would take as much serious responsibility as the marketing group. I think that this is true even when it comes to the sales organization and P/R group. I would suggest that you look at all the opportunities of talking with customers and potential customers and take full advantage of them. In this article I will cover face to face group meetings like seminars, trade shows, and even direct presentations in customer site.

When you have events like seminars, industry trade shows, and even participate in a customer meeting, make sure you ask them what they think. I would suggest making this a formal process with a printed questionnaire, contact info, and even a prize or a give-away. In a recent full day seminar for a big software ISV/OEM the organizers gave each participant questionnaires to fill. When the forms were turned in you received an MP3 player (similar to an Apple shuffle). This was a nice way (or trick?) to get people to fill a form, I think that essentially you got a name, phone number, and an e-Mail address. Any specific information on what someone needs is probably not going to be too deep. Without real face to face interviews the whole organization, from sales all the way to engineering is loosing a opportunity to understand customers.

There is no substitution for face to face conversation.

In a case of a large seminar or a trade show I would suggest marketing and sales people AND managers to pull off customers and potential customers one or two at a time and have a private conversation. This is perfectly acceptable during the formal 'presentations' and in the breaks for coffee or even lunch. Face to face interviews over specific topics such as: use, problems, additional needed functions and features, training, cost of operation and maintenance, and a host of other issues tend to be company specific. They may even be department and individual specific. So each person you speak with will be much more comfortable speaking in private. Most people will not tell you in writing that your product is too hard to learn or use. Which leads this person (let's assume a system administrator) not tell his boss that there are things he can do better and eventually will help users (but it will take time to learn, try, test, and implement). You get the point; and you clearly know that in face to face conversations a developer and marketer of complex products can negotiate the complex process of improving and selling this product. Fortunately, there are still many face to face opportunities to interview real people about real issues and real opportunities!

Most marketing professionals tend to look at aggregate customers and try to form an opinion based on one uniform market segment. But this is not always easy and in some respects needs to be done in depth and with a real individual customers. Going to customers directly when they are in front of you seems to be one of the best way to gather information and truly understand what customers need.

Next time: What do you ask? and HOW?

Planning and designing a production Web2.0 operation

2008-02-14T13:55:00.027+02:00

One of the most important ingredient of starting a new Web2.0 marketing project is planning and research. I can't stress this enough when speaking with people who have not written steadily for a living. This is specially true with generalist marketers. Product managers and product marketers who write or edit casually, mostly for internal consumption. While writing a steady stream of articles is not for everyone, I believe that many managers can write and gain a real advantage with blogging, newsletters, wikis, social networking, and other Web2.0 applications. Not only because they are going to be popular in the future, but also as simple tools which can evolve into a good systems of communication. I have some ideas which will help you in planning and justifying resources and effort to start a production Web2.0 operation.

Gather Existing Information, Data, Ideas...

First of all, make an effort to gather all the information available. The available resources, stories, content, individuals with writing and editing abilities, industry and user contact people, etc. Gather all material which has been published in an attempt to create a stream of messages. NOT press releases, but real business and technical information. Even parts of customer presentations, data sheets, and success stories. If you have seen a good blog, even one that is not exactly on topic (to yours), store and print some of the stories and explain how they could be used on your blog. If you receive industry and competitor newsletters, feeds from portals or publications, use these as well. It is a common technique to add industry news to original stories in a newsletter. If you can put this in a nice package, print and bind it, and distribute to a few people, you can start getting an idea who will help and how to deliver the message(s). People do much better when they see something resembling the final product. Seeing a package of related stories, is easy to get them going. Remember that seeing a final product and working on it are different. You will need both aspects to show people if they are going to be convinced.

Justify: Resources, Attention, Tools, Skills...

Next, you better have a very strong justification for the project. Anything well justified will get attention and resources. If you are totally new to this, you will definitely need the resources (not just budget and people). This includes the driving need for a blogging or newsletter program IN YOUR SPECIFIC OPERATION! While it is easy to see a blog that has been running for a while, some managers and VPS of marketing may not appreciate a part time writer added to their headcount. If you clearly show what the company will say, who will be involved, where the information will come from, this will help in the justification. In most cases this would be the need to keep current and potential customers informed. There are qualities of message streams which are totally new and unique. Newspaper writers and editors know this well, but the rest of us are not as familiar and experienced to them. I will eventually dedicate a few full articles to the justification, budgeting, start-up, and other aspects of operating a Web2.0 application.

Define A Real Strategy and Tactics

This step will help both you and the people who are connected with your work. Strategy in this case can be simply to use a tool or a format to communicate certain information. It could also be a way of managing information which already exists. It could be the introduction of tools to the organization (acquisition, training, operation). The clarification and delineation of tactics is very important. This goes for the clear plan on software tools and hosting as well as management of the story writing and researching or buying information. Strategies and tactics need to guide writers and editors. It also helps readers and managers who use the blog as a communication channel. The marketing managers who comment and suggest how the blog develops need to understand what are the goals and the means of getting there. Don't skimp here, if you do not have a strategy in the early stage you will need one later. In the mean time, you will duplicate ad-hock strategy sessions over and over again.

A Story About A Blog

Five months ago I started working on a blog / newsletter project. It started out as an experiment for a small Internet security company. The company wanted to target a small number of potential readers (approx. 1,000). The target reader attributes were well defined, at least that is what we thought. The idea was to write a blog or a newsletter and keep the posting frequency to once a week. The marketing manager did not think she can do it. But there was pressure from both the CEO and the sales organization for "a blog". At first we started planning the design, overall GUI (Graphical User Interface), and graphics (mostly free images). Different people in the organization wanted different looks based on what they have seen. This is not hard when looking at a blog, you just need to find examples and search for a similar template. Prototyping a design and layout is a great way to start. When it came to planning the writing and the topics things got a little strange. One camp wanted to have fresh relevant topics. In security market that means scanning the news feeds and writing about what is exciting NOW. This is sometimes a big virus or spam attack, what Microsoft is doing with the new Windows Vista release for security, what Mcaffee or Symantec are doing technically or marketing wise, or even a story about the politics of security. But there is another camp which says that the writing should be timeless and more marketing and technical in nature. This way the 'content' can be used and referenced as regular web site content (some people call this Web1.0 redone). All these voices from the corporate world are nice to know, but an editor, designer, writer is going to approach the task the way she sees most appropriate. Which for the these new Web2.0 'consumers' was difficult to accept. One thing to remember is that doing things differently will be hard to impossible for some. But that is the nature of this change.

This brought me to a discussion on how to coach product managers and general executives about what to do with regard to taking the first step in running or developing a blog. This is quite different from an individual or a group who simply want to start blogging. Most blogs out there seem to be a stream of articles which are not necessarily related to and one specific topic. But products which need to be explained also need to have the steady stream of information, examples, explanations, and other type of writing a blog or a newsletter can support.

solostream.com offers WordPress teams, there are many helpful technical services out there for blogging and newsletters
So I thought that it would be helpful to start searching for sources about writing for effective product marketing. There are good "old school" resources. There are mostly writing, editing, and publishing based. Without good writing, most readers are going to be turned off. But once a blog or newsletter writer has the formula for writing, the sources of information, either internal or external, and the flow of articles start to move, you have an operation.

My next step if to have some work books. I think that strategy, tactics, operation, planning, and other practical tasks can be put into a few pages of forms and examples. There are also great articles and resources for this work on the web, so send me your favorite and I will start posting it here.

Thaughts about Web2.0 - is it for marketing?

2007-12-30T07:20:00.001+02:00

In trying to explain to potential clients what "new" marketing can actually do, I find people asking me about "what is Web 2.0?" For these who feel like they are not successful enough with their web page and maybe their newsletter, what should they want to do with a blog or a more targeted newsletter with splits, or even a wiki? Or what is the content on the web site really for? One thing I wanted to do is discuss and even explain some of the ideas of the O'Reilly Web2.0 posting. It's somewhat of an introduction, maybe even the most talked about "post" you can think about. But unlike the other O'Reilly writing, it seemed to explained in simple terms the "ideas" which have been driving the changes in how information and usage of it affects business. Whie O'Reilly does not talk specifically about business or more appropriately marketing impact, the whole idea and changes O'Reilly observed, are actually a reflection of marketing more than anything else. But the observation here has not taken into account the the more detailed marketing "work" or what I would call "transition to 'new marketing'". Background to this discussion: O'Reilly has observed the rapid change in the "type" of software and applications on the Internet. As a technology observer and publisher of technology books, he is well equipped to notice the changes which we sometime miss. He noticed that the nature of "software" or "application" and their use was changing dramatically. Once he noticed the big change, it was easy to classify and define the change(s). Basically, what the Internet has become, is more of a participatory media to the typical user. The applications on the web has simplified the process of content creation and editing. In more plain terms, it is much easier for most people to "author" a web site. Well, not exactly a complex one, but a blog can actually be a web site if the content is interesting and somewhat decent. The same goes for newsletters, simple pages and u-tube clips. So now, like every media type up to now, let the writing, photographing and video editing begin, and then get posted and passed along until the "buzz" phenomena gets going and becomes a standard practice.

O'Reilly's Web2.0 post - Trend setter or trend observer? You be the judge.
This kind of analysis, or actually understanding of trends from people like O'Reilly, is something a marketer needs to do all the time. In the changes of old trends and emergence of new trends lies opportunity and trap. Not just for marketers, but for all the organization. For marketers the idea of opportunity and trap is more real than ever before. On one hand, the trends involve a set of tools which are useful to us, specially if we can use them to help "non-marketers" contribute written and photographic material. Contributory content has not been accepted in the mainstream corporate world but I think this is just a matter of time. A few commercial services has been offered but none has really succeeded. But this could change any day with the introduction of a more useful or a better user interface. Maybe a service with a feature someone needs and we can be faced with the new role of 'content editors'. Well, this is a quick introduction to something to start DOING!, not just thinking and watching. As I said to a recent customer: 'if McDonald's has a blog about healthy eating and how fries are fried, shouldn't a security company have a blog about viruses?' ~ I think so...

Mozilla SeaMonkey, comparing to Nvu and MS Web Authoring

2007-12-11T15:09:00.000+02:00

On the last post I looked at Nvu main product page. The idea was to look at a simple page for a simple product. The exercise was a little disappointing, mostly due to lack of continuity in the product's development. As I mentioned, by hunting a little on the web, it was clear how Nvu essentially was an independent development of Netscape's Composer. As Netscape products ended their high point, mostly due to competition from Microsoft, Macromedia and Adobe, the "code" was placed into an Open Source 'status'. Then, a group of independent developers started to take over and evolved the original product into the 'Mozilla' project you see today*.
The Mozilla project seem to be turning out nice products. As a matter of fact, these products are useful specially today if you are going to use them for editing simple documents or you have a need for bare-bone application. They are on par with the Sun's Open Office tools, I would call them rev 2.0 equivalent to a product from a commercial software supplier (i.e. Adobe, Intuit, Symantec, etc). Last post I wrote a footnote about why these products are used for research and analysis. I keep on coming to the conclusion, mostly by gut feeling, that many commercial products have holes in their marketing. Not just missing part of the main message, or confusion in the positioning, targeting and audience focus. But, truly missing pieces of a product description which to most users would be considered a basic information. The simple open source applications do an excellent job in describing the basic product. They also simplify the message, mostly assuming that users will not have a problem with the decision leading to try the product. For some commercial products this is a crucial lesson to learn. Simply having the user download, install and take a look at the product would be an excellent start and a useful expanding the user base.

SeaMonkey project main page, simple and complete for a open source product
The SeaMonkey project page is simple in design and content. It has only 9 entries on the right hand side menu (News, Downloads, Community, Documentation, etc.) The main section starts out with a download box. This is understandable since SeaMonkey is a very basic suite of Internet tools (Browser, e-Mail, chat and HTML editor). I presume the assumption is of a very familiar users who mostly come for the download function. The box has links for "features" and "release notes". Below the download section are sections for "project news" and "SeaMonkey suite". Unlike the Nvu page there are no specific features on the first page. Essentially the introduction to new users is on a higher level and less specific. This enable the design to be more simple and if a user is interested in more detail, there are links to a more verbose page. I think that in terms of a familiar user and a new user the content is sufficient. It seems to me that commercial applications tent to err on "more is better" and therefore highlight more "salesy" (some would call it "sexy") items as was seen in the Adobe Dreamweaver and Microsoft products pages. The categories they picked as main sub sections (on the menu) are self explanatory. The sub-sections also cover a broad range of user topics with only one section "Development" not related to end users. This is a good indication to a user that he is in the "right place". Since technology and products on the web cover a very broad range of abilities, some products while covering a broad range of user abilities tent to push for the "high-end" user. This is not a place to look at which user is targeted, but the analysis of what user is targeted and the intended message is a good place for a marketer to use in evaluating similar and competing products.

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* I do not claim to be a 'technology historian' by any means. The descriptions here are strictly a shortcut to explaining how these products evolve and get to a certain point in time. I would appreciate any explanations on some of the events, specially details on the product features and overall operation. Technology issues and organizations (i.e. corporate activities in how the products were run) are less important at this point in time. BUT, more information on a product, better off the marketer's knowledge and faster she/he can take appropriate actions. The study of recent product history and the technology market is sadly neglected in the race to get products out and win market share. This is another topic worth a little research and a few articles on the blog.

Nvu page, very basic marketing content

2007-12-06T11:28:00.000+02:00

In my review of the Microsoft FrontPage descendants' packages, I was going to review Nvu and Mozilla Composer (or Netscape equivalent). So finally, it's time to continue on that line of writing*. The Nvu page is quite old, and the program used a version of Mozilla Composer as a base. At the same time, it does show an attempt to market the product by listing "Features" at the center of the page. The first section of the page also gives a description of the Nvu as: "A complete web authoring system for Linux..." and a comparison statement: "... rival programs like FrontPage and Dreamweaver." These two sections constitute the very basic marketing content seen with small or simple programs.

Nvu main page, introduction, features and other info...

From the point of view of a developer, description and features seem to be the "starting point" of a marketing effort. Actually, it seems natural to tell a potential user these two basic facts.

In the case of Nvu, the developer seem to use the earlier Netscape / Mozilla product as a basis of user familiarization. He seem to assume that simple allusion to the other web authoring tools and the operating system is a good introduction. Basically they say: if you know what FrontPage and Dreamweaver is all about, we have it for Linux, Windows and Mac. On first look this seems like a simple way to get someone started. But in reality, this is a missed opportunity to differentiate or describe other features or capabilities. OS support is a very trivial user concern, but features for usage, tips, techniques, tools and final product output are much more productive and forceful. Features are also interesting as an introduction, but benefits and uses of a tool are also more productive. To the credit of the Nvu page, developing a forceful message and capturing the mind of a user quickly is not easy. Also, the formulation of strong benefit and application points takes time and thought. But I believe that specially for small products with little or no marketing resources, making the first impression strong is crucial. A first page of a small products is the one place where potential users can get information and download the program. As an exercise it would be interesting to see how small programs, utilities and programs given as demos describes themselves in a 'first look'. If you are a developer, technologist or a marketer of a small program or a utility, this kind of research and benchmarking is crucial to developing a meaningful message. This is specially true if you want attention and some type of user feedback or support. Open source and freeware / shareware programs have potential to become a useful piece of the ever growing technology puzzle. So take the time to develop an attractive and strong message. next, I will try to do a few more site evaluations and analysis, then go deeper into the content... so stay tuned and come back...

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* Background and explanation on the use of these products as examples for my analysis: Web authoring tools are well understood. There are many ways to get a web page built. Web authoring tools are like text editors and drawing programs which are used to create pages (to be printed). So extending the analysis from a Microsoft Word to Microsoft FrontPage is not a huge jump in thinking. The big difference between a web editor and a text editor is the output. One is designed to create pages for the printer, the other goes t a web 'server'. A web server essentially translate formatting instructions and maybe some embedded programs. Also, there are enough users who understand the web authoring task, even if they don't understand all the details of different technologies and web standards. Finally, these programs have a very small user base, so they don't seem to attract the big marketing effort. BUT, they have enough complexity to illustrate marketing points which could apply to many technology products.

Two measures for evaluating marketing content

2007-11-28T12:16:00.000+02:00

Crawl, Walk, Run, Race... ... LEARN, PRACTICE, PLAY, WIN!

In writing the first few entries of this blog, I was trying to think of what to actually accomplish. Blogs are a great way to start writing 'free form'. We don't need to even think about what comes out. But them two months later, we realize that maybe we should have thought about it. But getting started is sometimes a high enough hurdle, so 'just do it' Nike style maybe worth a few posts not related to anything in particular.
My view of marketing on the web comes from small organization product management. By that I mean, small product management or marketing teams in medium size technology companies. I have worked in a dozen or so companies with marketing staff of one to five on a product. This is very common in technology products where a product is new or started recently. These are products which from market introduction ($0) would sell up to about $10 million. When products grow beyond the "small" size, more marketing resources are invested. Engineering staff on small products ranged from three to ten core "designers". Sometimes a product would have some supporting staff such as an application engineer or a CAD tools engineer.

Small and medium product marketing is a necessary function in most companies. Start-ups and spin-off companies usually go through the phase of getting a product launched in the market. This is classically the case with new products. Small organizations have been the driving force behind innovation, specially in the technology world. This area has also been the most opportunistic of all, sometimes we forget this simple fact. Not because we get old and jaded, or we are in a small 'bubble' in a big industry. I think we loose perspective because we either forget what it was like to use something truly new, or we don't see anything truly new that can be done in our own little 'bubble'. There could be other reasons, we are all a little different in how we think of new ideas and we are very different in how we proceed to describe them and eventually give them life. Sorry about the wordy introduction, but this is truly going somewhere.

When I started looking for examples of how people describe products, I didn't have a framework. But I did have lots of ideas in my head. Mostly ideas of what I saw and what I discovered. Basically, the dimension of vitality and "freshness" - maybe it is excitement or wonder at a new product, feature or technology. This is a dimension that we do not take into account very often in defining a product. We don't describe this enough in marketing, specially to people who don't know or use a product. To old users, an added feature is just that, another small improvement. But to some people, the new feature could turn a product that was not useful into something very useful. Sometimes this change is not clearly seen by the marketer or the potential new user. The writing here helped me in understanding how to break down two new categories, or what I would define as "dimensions". By dimensions I mean a quantitative or qualitative measure that can be rated. This could be expressed in a rating system 1 to 10 or a ruler for display similar to Google's relevancy indicator. These two dimensions help not just in the marketing content but also in strategy.

Well, this is my instalment for today. It has been an exciting experiment to look at sites and rate their marketing content. It is even more exciting to think of what can be done next. If you have similar resources or want to contribute to writing about marketing content, please e-Mail me. Also if you have any ideas that I should be looking at, please don't hesistate to contact me. Finally, start thinking on a more strategic basis about what you say and how you say it. About what can be said and how to present to different audiance. The web has flexibility in format, presentation and SIZE that we had never had before. Marketing effectively can win big here, but it takes brain and lots of elbow grease. THANKS FOR READING and COME BACK!

They human factor: if you imagine it, will they build?

2007-11-14T09:15:00.001+02:00

As I write these stories and look at what is created, specially on the web. I tend to wonder off and think about who creates this. Who had the ideas? who wrote the content? who designed the page and edited the images? who runs the servers and maintains the software? who, who, who... there are lots of hands moving the product, marketing, customers... along. I don't know most of the people who work at Microsoft, Adobe or Netscape (or for that matter the 'open source' developers all over the world working for the most part anonymously). But I do know plenty of technology workers, some are friends, even close ones. As technology keeps on evolving and growing, it seems like more people "stay" where they are and a few move and evolve with the times. But the problem with changing technology, specially at a fast pace, is the people who are slowly dropped off and stay behind. But these people did not lose their skills or even their traits and abilities (creativity, hard work ethic, loyalty, social abilities...). For the most part they just "didn't learn that new language" (perl, java, xhtml) or "didn't use that new application" (photoshop, gimp, frontpage). So these people AND their specific specialization area, fall behind and slowly die off.

Listings for software QA jobs in the Boston MA area (Nov. '07)
So the "outsiders" of the field simply say: "train them" they simply need to learn new skills. They know how to program in 'C' so what should be so hard in learning 'Java'? After all, the people who designed Java "told everyone that the language was made to follow 'C' and even use the same concepts of 'C++'", who what's the problem? Well, do you remember the beginning of the Japanese car invasion in the US? When people were buying Toyotas, Hondas and Datsuns (the Nissan company was even afraid to use their own name in America!) instead of Chevys and Dodge? When politicians, economists, trade union leaders and management gurus were telling the US car companies: "just make the better, can't you just do that?"

Oh, if they could 'just do that!' wouldn't they? Well the same old "I will tell you how to fix your problem" pontificators are doing the same thing with 'US' (the techies, geeks, propeller heads, pick your label). All of a while, we go through the most wrenching "business cycle". So back to the things I see... at least five of my closest friends including me, have been under or unemployed. Mostly coming from serious real companies (Lucent, EMC, Digital, Avid Tech, Cypress Semi, Altera) with real careers (programmers, chip designers, software QA engineers, marketing managers). So what's going on here? Can't we figure it out and get on with it? Convince the new technology managers that we have skills, knowledge and desire to build the next 'Netscape browser'? or 'wireless router front end'? or appeal to corporate buyers to look at the new 'application'? Well, the transition to "new" is not as easy as it might seem. But on the other hand, even "new" businesses and technologies lose a huge deal when they don't use available "old" talented workers. Actually, when you take it all into account, pretty much the consensus will be on using more experienced workers than "fresh new ones".

Well, as we move into new technologies of self publishing, everything "really" online, and dominance of content over programming and application development, things are again changing for everyone. I seems like this is not going to change, but maybe we are more able to change things with the tools we are developing. Even a blog and a wiki is a better way to do things than previously. We had newsgroups for a long time, but the interface, operation and availability is much better with blogs. So, it seems like the 'old' guys who have used newsgroups can migrate to blogs... but maybe they don't want to? or just want to keep on going the old way... even if it means sitting around the basement for a while and playing on the self build machine instead of going off to work in a lab at DEC... or maybe not... anyway, hope this gets people thinking, seriously, about more steadiness, continuity and loyalty in our business. Maybe we can learn something from GM of the 1980's, and not have National Semiconductor ask for a loan guarantee from the next president, the way Lee Iaccoca did... or maybe not.