PRESENTATIONS

I’ll bet I’ve looked and/or reviewed over 1000 powerpoint or Symphony presentations by now. This has caused me to want the next great presentation tool that will retire these platforms, I’m not a fan of charts. We’ve had weekly content review meetings with some of the top strategists in SWG. It’s amazing that we do all the things that we do. Conversely, it is hard to get your arms around the breadth of our offerings. It’s no wonder that other companies are making acquisitions that cause them to resemble what IBM is doing.

It is is however overwhelming to keep up with the revisions, making sure that all groups are coordinated with the common messaging and the myriad details of what the actual products, new companies we acquired, strategies, competitors, customers and other details that I’ve learned since July.

ACCOMMODATIONS

When you serve one master, it’s easy to know what they want. When you have many, including over 100 analysts, it is a juggling act that would amaze an Ed Sullivan audience. Everyone has details to attend to. It’s amazing to me that our team is on top of every change.

Event planning is a job in itself, not to mention my day job in analyst relations. Working with everyone has been a lesson in getting people to work with you, work together and get to the common goal. We have 25 Breakouts, 18 Round Table discussions, demo’s, 1:1’s, Chat with the Experts and close to 100 speakers. Fortunately, I’m blessed to work with a team that is executing and working endless hours.

The best thing is that there is a deadline. That in itself drives results. The other good thing is a leader who is feared respected greatly and he drives results also.

WE WILL DELIVER INFORMATION

The analysts are going to walk out of the meeting with more notes and information than we’ve ever provided. Our leader knows what the analysts are talking to their customers about and we’re putting the meeting in that format…..so they can talk about our products, strategy and direction. He’s also a good businessman who understands the pressures our customers are under in this economy and what we need to do to help them succeed.
IT’S BEEN A GREAT EXPERIENCE

I’ve enjoyed this assignment, but I’ll happily turn the gavel over to the next person who runs it next year. I’ve lost a lot of sleep, and a few hunting days that I’ll want to get back.

For the record. The blog tag is connect09 and hastag is #connect09

I’ve thought about the history of our nation starting with the “Greatest Generation” who fought WWII and then sacrificed to make this country the best it could be for the next generation.

Then came the 60’s and Woodstock which created a generation of idiots who began flushing our legacy down the drain.

In this single event we see some of the worst aspects of a generation of twits, thieves, anti-Americans, fools, and ignoramuses all wrapped up with the arrogance that we’ve come to associate with those ……. who are our politicians and college professors in America today.

The actions of the next generation lead to the failure to protect our country, which emboldened the 9/11 terrorists to attack because they saw the lack of response to the embassy bombings, the USS Cole and the first WTC attack. We had Bin Laden 3 times in the 90’s and let him go. The cycle now starts again with redefining what the day is instead of embracing it’s true meaning.

It was an act of evil and a tragedy.

There is no doubt who was behind it either.

Next, we are letting recidivist terrorists out of Gitmo and instead investigating the CIA, that seems a little backwards from the view that the greatest generation would take, don’t you think? We should show strength instead of apologizing for protecting ourselves and handcuffing those who protect us.

Back to that day, War was declared on the US and we aren’t fighting back the way we decided these issues in the days of Patton and Churchill. They showed that you fight to victory then negotiate the terms of peace, exit strategy and how to help re-build the countries that the enemies have overrun. Instead, political correctness is handcuffing the proper response.

It is tough to watch this and think our country is not what it use to be. We can’t forget what made us great because we are worried about the polls of people who are negative to America anyway. I’ll fly the flag today and remember those who lost their lives both in the attack and defending our country, and pray we refocus our goals on what made our country great.

By any other name, it is still Patriot day as signed into law by President Bush in 2001.

Here is the attack in pictures

Here are some musical tributes to the actions of that day and afterwords.

Recently, a story came out from Harvard Business Publishing on Twitter users.

Here is the part of the story that stood out for me, in fact it hit me between the eyes like a 2×4:

Although men and women follow a similar number of Twitter users, men have 15% more followers than women. Men also have more reciprocated relationships, in which two users follow each other. This “follower split” suggests that women are driven less by followers than men, or have more stringent thresholds for reciprocating relationships. This is intriguing, especially given that females hold a slight majority on Twitter: we found that men comprise 45% of Twitter users, while women represent 55%. To get this figure, we cross-referenced users’ “real names” against a database of 40,000 strongly gendered names.

Even more interesting is who follows whom. We found that an average man is almost twice more likely to follow another man than a woman. Similarly, an average woman is 25% more likely to follow a man than a woman. Finally, an average man is 40% more likely to be followed by another man than by a woman. These results cannot be explained by different tweeting activity – both men and women tweet at the same rate.

These results are stunning given what previous research has found in the context of online social networks. On a typical online social network, most of the activity is focused around women – men follow content produced by women they do and do not know, and women follow content produced by women they knowⁱ. Generally, men receive comparatively little attention from other men or from women. We wonder to what extent this pattern of results arises because men and women find the content produced by other men on Twitter more compelling than on a typical social network, and men find the content produced by women less compelling (because of a lack of photo sharing, detailed biographies, etc.).

WHY MEN?

Here is what became very apparent to me.  Most studies agree that women talk through there problems to arrive at a solution.  Men think through a problem and talk when they’ve arrived at a solution.  140 characters is just not enough to talk your way through an issue, ergo better suited for men.

Also, Men know the above is true even if they haven’t read the study and  get into trouble with women by trying to solve the problem before their woman friends have talked their way through the issue.  The other way we get into trouble is to try to solve everything for a woman when just listening is what a woman wants.  Men don’t do that well, we try to fix things (that’s why your female friends are there for you, not us).  Also, we’re bottom line people.  We don’t need the details, just the result so 140 fits the bill.

That should give some inside to the following numbers issue.  We know that men have usually been through the thought process already rather than using it as a solution oriented process.

MEN DON’T WANT TO COMMUNICATE THEIR FEELINGS

Men don’t really want to communicate that much, at all. That is why 140 characters works so well.  We learn this at puberty when most sons answer their parents with a grunt which is good for yes, no, maybe and I don’t know.  We don’t really want to talk that much, to anyone unless it is about sports, conquests, the details of an engine, the shotgun formation or other testosterone based issues.   We really don’t want to talk about feelings or emotions either.

I think that 140 characters is limiting for effective communication by women by nature.  Most studies (and husbands, boyfriends) will back this up.  That is why twitter doesn’t match up to other social media platforms.  Facebook, MySpace and all the others offer unlimited characters, more picture capability and other tools that lend themselves to a more verbose and sharing atmosphere.

I’m good with a couple of grunts and rarely need 140 characters.  It works for me just fine and I rarely reach the character limit.