SWDuncan

(re)Learning Guitar

swduncan — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:51:28 +0000

i first learned guitar when I was in high school. I didn't so much learn guitar as learn that there is a big difference between wanting to be a rock star and wanting to become a rock star, but some of it did stick.

It's been kind of a love hate thing over the years, as expectations consistently outpaced my devotion to practice, but every so often I'd get back into it with renewed interest, relearn some old licks, maybe a few new ones, and then put the guitar back in the case until next time.

But having kids changes things, and now I've got little girls who like to dance and sing - why not learn some folk tunes for them to enjoy? Plus it would be nice to get them more exposure to music.

So I back at the guitar again, and this time it's been a lot more fruitful. First, when I'm not trying to emulate some guitar hero's best work the results are more satisfying and easier to come by. Second, I've put a lot more time into learning the fundimentals, which has really paid off.

The resources for learning guitar have changed a lot since the last time I did this, and there are some really good ones:

The iPractice iPhone app is good for practicing chord changes. I haven't messed with using it for scales yet. It has a nice built-in metronome, and is adjustable for speed and number of repeats. I wish I could add my own chord progressions to practice as the library is limited. All the same, it's a good app.

The Guitar Toolkit app is expensive compared to most iPhone apps, but it is worth every penny. The tuner alone is awesome, but the chord library and metronome make it a must have.

The Skeptical Guitarist books are really, really good. I learned more from them in a few minutes about music in general than I have in any other book I've picked up. Bruce's Christmas song books are also really nice. I wish he'd make a book of simple family entertainment/campfire songs in the same style.

Susan Palmer at LeadCat Press has put out the Guitar Lesson Companion. It's the prototypical guitar lesson book - that is, it has exercises. While the Skeptical Guitarist goes a great job of explaining things, it doesn't really have any exercises. It also doesn't really push you to learn to read music, which Susan's book does. I'm finding the two complement each other nicely.

Last but not least, the NoteBrainer iPhone app has made learning to read music easier. In fact, I had the trebel clef pretty much nailed within a day or so of playing the app.

Between all of these I've made decent progress, and I'm looking forward to carols at Christmas time.

Export data - useful for estimating market size

swduncan — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:28:09 +0000

In my recent article about estimating market size, I mentioned that one tip is to determine if you really need to know an exact market size, or whether you just need to know if it is big enough.

This was exactly the situation when a member called asking about a particular equipment category. They were considering a new product effort, but needed to know whether the market was large enough. While he started out asking for exact numbers, once I provided some useful export data relative to the product cateogry he was able to make his decision quickly - the numbers were an order of magnitude above the minimums he needed, so it was a go.

You can get this data from the government for free at some level, but if you want to go to specific harmonized system codes you will probably need to pay. If you belong to a trade association, they may be able to provide it for you as AEM does for its members.

The data may or may not be very specific. Some harmonized codes, the system of codes for identifying different items, are quite specific, and some are quite broad. Usually there will be total dollar value, and then a supplemental unit. This is often weight, but for equipment it is often units. This is usually the more useful number.

However, if only dollars or weight is available, and average price or weight can be used to get an estimated number of items. You don't need to be terribly accurate to get within an order of magnitude, and in this context that should be accurate enough.

New data available: Construction, Agriculture Equipment Export Data

swduncan — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 15:59:53 +0000

We've now put a few new products on the AEM store - namely our Global Markets Export reports.These cover construction equipment exports and agricultural equipment exports

Construction Global Markets Report $59/quarter – This report contains US export data for a number of construction related items, including:

Top 5 countries receiving US exports
Emerging markets
Total exports & imports by region
Top 10 countries US Imports equipment from
Total exports, and units & export value for the top 25 countries for:

Lifting Equipment
Air compressors
Backhoes
Bulldozers
Concrete mixers
Cranes
Crushing & Screening Equipment
Ditchers & Trenchers
Dumpers, Off-highway
Earthmoving Equipment
Excavators
Aggregate Bituminous, Concrete & Compaction Equipment
Graders & Levelers
Wheel Loaders
Light Equipment
Pavers/Finishers/Spreaders
Scrapers
Concrete Saws
Aerial Work Platforms
Compactors
Tampers
Generator Sets

Agriculture Global Markets Report $59/quarter – This report contains US export data for a number of construction related items, including:

Combines
Tractors & Parts
Sprayers & Irrigation Equipment
New Tractors
Harvesting Machinery
Dairy/Milking Machinery
Cultivating Machinery
Components

This is in addition to the equipment industry wage and benefit survey data, along with our industry conditions survey data.

What should SCIP do?

swduncan — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 21:43:19 +0000

A while back Ellen asked me to suggest what scip should do.

I've thought about this for quite a while, and until I read SCIP's mission and goals, I really couldn't articulate what was wrong. Having read them, now I can.

When I read SCIP's mission and goals, it's clear to me that there's not much focus on increasing value for members or their employers. Instead the focus is on increasing recognition for SCIP and CI. The problem is that without value there isn't anything to recognize. I left SCIP because it stopped adding value to me and my employer and became impossible to justify.

Things like certification, codes of ethics, and having a Body of Knowledge sound good, but they don't help members or their employers thrive or even survive.

Consider what SCIP stands for: Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals. The emphasis is on the professional, not the profession. Compare that with ASQ, or AMA, or BMA.

When I used to work for a ~100 million company, I was asked to create a CI function. It was in conjunction with pricing, not a dedicated position. A sensible move. Based on the reactions I got from others, and observations, I think it's pretty odd to have a formal CI effort in a company that small, let alone a dedicated person. But for the sake of argument let's say that $100 million is the minimum company size to have a dedicated CI professional. $100 million companies and larger account for about .2% of the total number of companies out there - an unneccessary limit on market size, and a huge loss in potential value to bring.

Focus on the value created by the profession, not the recognition of the profession.

Let's look at a few graphs. First, competitive intelligence's popularity as a search string in google: A decline. Not usually the sign of something that is increasing in value.

Let's compare with business intelligence (red line):

Ouch! A nice reality check. I tend to think of business intelligence folk as IT report writers, but really it's understanding your business and companies are interested in that.

Then let's add market research: Ok, no wonder when you say competitive intelligence most people say 'Huh?' Competition is only part of one's market so we shouldn't be surprised. Also notice the downward trend, even in market research.

Google trends is not the final word, but I think the data are useful because they help put things in perspective. CI can be useful, but it's not a solution. It's part of the solution, and a part that needs to earn its keep.

The most valuable stuff I ever did in CI fed middle managers who used to make profitable decisions almost immediately. It was also some of the cheapest & easiest stuff I did. It wasn't glamorous, and it didn't even brush against the c-suite, but it didn't need to. There needs to be a strong focus on creating value whereever possible. If the value's there, the recognition will follow.

The value needs to be accessible. Real world stuff that non-PhD, non-ex-CIA people can do and it needs to address the needs of companies that exist in large numbers. This means small companies who will NEVER have someone do CI full time. Pharma, insurance, aerospace and giant consumer products companies have a strong interest in CI, but the CI approaches & budgets of those companies are irrelevant to 99% of the companies out there. They're not a useful example to anyone but their peers.

So what to do?

How about this mission and these goals:

Mission: SCIP will show companies how to enable better decisions through competitive intelligence by educating their staff, providing guidance in ethics, and enabling them to learn from the community they form through SCIP.

Goal 1: Make CI accessible to more companies

Increase the usage of CI by smaller companies through education and outreach.
Create membership opportunities aimed at the part-time practitioner.

Goal 2: Increase the value CI brings

Education practioners on how to identify and communicate the value intelligence brings to decision making.
Educate practioners on how to identifiy and anticipate situations where intelligence can bring value.
Educate practioners on how to obtain the intelligence they need to bring value.

Yep, blogging will make a comeback

swduncan — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 09:41:23 +0000

Via Rick Klau I learned that Don Loeb thinks that blogging will make a comeback. I agree, for more reasons than Don cites. Yes Twitter will spawn some new bloggers, but I think we will also see a researgance of old bloggers.

I, like many I suspect, was caught up in the social media fervor and ditched a lot of blogging time to play with facebook and spend more time on linkedin. Now I look back and think I might have put that effort to better use.

I'm going refocusing on blogging more.

Why?

I own the content. No spelunking through terms of service or worrying about who owns what, or when it will dissappear, or how to delete it.
I control the terms of use. If I want ads, I can have them. If I want to block a user, I can.
I get metrics. It's a joke to call linkedin a marketing platform when you have no metrics on how it's working for you, more importantly how it isn't.
It's all me. Good, bad, or otherwise I'm it. Blogging is an expression of ego, and I don't want to share the screen with others :-)
Less distractions. No hurling sheep or poking people, or another channel of distribution that calls for more content. No new applications to figure out, worry about, or maintain.

If social media hasn't jumped the shark already it is on the ramp. Facebook, Twitter, and linkedin will continue, but as folks learn the real value proposition for themselves their usage will diminish, and blogging's value will be rediscovered.

Book Review: The Truth About You: Your Secret to Success

swduncan — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 17:01:49 +0000

The Truth About You: Your Secret to Success , by Marcus Buckingham, is an interesting little book. It comes in a foil-wrapped slipcase containing the book, a DVD, and a small notebook for making observations. The book itself is short, as is the DVD, so there's not much fluff. For this alone I'm tempted to give the book an A, as far too many improvement books seem to be published to hit page targets rather than just communicate.

The premise of The Truth About You is that we all have strengths, and in order to live happy, productive lives we should play to those strengths.

The author debunks the idea that we must focus our efforts on our weaknesses - instead of trying to become good at things we hate and are naturally not good at, we should play to our strengths and capitalize on them.

I agree with this. I shudder to think about the gazillions of productive hours in corporations across America have been squandered by optimistic middle managers trying to act on annual review suggestions to address areas of improvement that will never really be improved. Instead of celebrating what each employee brings to the table, and encouraging them to hone those attributes, we instead focus on the impossible task of making them all equal in all areas. Stupid.

The process of discovering these strengths lies in making observations about what activities leave us feeling happy and satisfied. While I agree that it's important to play to one's strenghts, I'm not sure it's very useful to record what we're doing when we feel strong or empowered or happy. For me the observations just weren't very actionable.

For example, I was in my workshop making a woodworking project. I feel very good. I feel strong, and empowered, and all good things. What observation should I make? I enjoy woodworking precisely because I DON"T do it for a living, so I don't think it's useful to observe that woodworking makes me happy. Stepping back a bit, what makes me happy about woodworking is creating something new - that's good.

But "making something new" isn't very actionable. Or, perhaps because I'm in a job where my main goal is to create new things it doesn't seem actionable.

Regardless, the book will make you think.

It's a good book to give as a gift because it's attractive, and the case & DVD help make it more than just a book. It's not very long so the recipient won't feel like they've been handed some massive project. They can read the book in an evening, carry the notebook for several days, and have fulfilled the intent.

It's also a positive book, and I don't think anyone would take offense to it the way they might at receiving, say, a book on weight loss.

Lornitropia feed going away

swduncan — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 23:51:41 +0000

For a long time I've been redirecting the old Lornitropia.net RSS feed, but I've now ended up with two feeds and that isn't good.

So I'm deleting the Lornitropia.net feed. To make sure you keep getting my posts, please make sure your feed reader is set for http://www.swduncan.com/rss.xml.

Sorry for any inconvenience!

Tips for estimating market size

swduncan — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 16:52:17 +0000

I've spent a lot of time in my career ether looking for, or being asked for market size information. It's not surprising, as any company that makes new products or enters new markets wants to know what to expect. In my current job, about 9 out of 10 calls I get are folks asking for data on market size, for one market or another.

The problem is that in most markets and for most products such information is hard to obtain. Yes, there are products like cars, airplanes, battleships and houses that are tracked fairly well and have accurate data availble. But the oceans of smaller products, like the number of mailboxes, or tractor, or replacement steering pumps usually lack published data.

Sometimes it's hard to find just because it's not published. The total number of excavators sold per year, for example, isn't really published anywhere publicly.

Sometimes it's because it's hard to define. How many economic reports are sold? How many pieces of living room furniture?

Sometimes it's because so few companies make the item that publishing anything would cause disclosure issues.

While many times there is no replacement for the exact number or value of items sold, I've found that most of the time people go looking for more information than they really need.

Usually the information can be obtained, either from a specialty publisher for a fee, or by hiring someone like me to dig it up. But before you commit yourself to needing expensive data, ask yourself the following:

Do you really need to know the size, or just whether or not it's 'big enough'?

When folks ask for information I always interrogate them a bit to find out why they need it, and what they're going to do with it. Very often the answers point to something like 'Well, we're thinking about going into this new market, but we need to sell X,000 products to break even, so we're looking for the size of the market.' It happens all the time. One question - whether or not we can sell X,000 products - turns into another - how many are sold?

The problem is that these are two different questions. The first is usually pretty cheap to answer. The second is usually expensive.

Many times a really good gut check can be to ask folks connected to the industry whether they think a newcomer could sell x,000 in their first year. The reactions to that question will not only point to feasibility, but also to potential roadblocks.

Many sources of data, such as export records, Department of Commerce, and Statistical Abstracts of the Census will give sales levels for past years that can be used to answer these questions.

What would you do if you had the answer?

This trick is hard to play on yourself, but it's useful with others. Suppose someone asks how many sewing machines are sold per year without the accessory table. You say 'suppose it's 2.6 million - what then?' They think for a minute, look at their spreadsheet and then ask how many of the people who bought those would buy an accessory table?

When people go on an info hunt they're often resitant to hearing that they're looking for the wrong data. It may sound silly, but the simple exercise of giving them some example data and asking what next will often prompt them to understand the gaps in their thinking.

Do you really need to know market size, or the number of opportunities?

Is it really the number of kids who like ice cream, or the number of kids we can reach via our marketing that matters? Response rates for various activities, like direct mail, surveys, etc. are published and can be used to create models in these instances. Your own company likely has enough data to estimate conversion rates as well.

Can you estimate by counting hosts?

Instead of counting windows, how about counting houses? Instead of estimating the number of road signs sold, how about the miles of highway that are constructed?

Methods like this usually don't yield precision, but they can usually be based on more available data because they are more broad. The nice thing about them is that by building the models that make the data useful, you gain a lot of insight on how the business will operate.

Are you chasing too much precision?

Market size estimations are imprecise. They will never be very accurate, and it doesn't really matter because business plans are also imprecise. The bottom line is that the distance between the estimated market size and the minimum market size for success of your project is best measured in orders of magnitude, not percent. If it's not that large, you're threading a needle.

In other words, it shouldn't really matter if the number of bulldozers sold in a year is 1.7 million or 2.1 million - it's over a million and less than 5-10 million. If the project works at 2.0 million and fails at 1.6 million, do you really have a viable project?

What to do when the boss expects more

Folks who are hunting down market size information usually tell the same tale. Their leadership is 'just sure it's out there somewhere' but no one can tell them where.

Folks, it may not be out there anywhere.If it was, and was easy to find, no one would hire anyone to go find it.

Measuring a market you have direct access to is hard. Very hard. Markets are dynamic things, and measuring takes time. It's like measuring the weight of a newborn baby using a scale that takes two weeks to take a reading.

Even estimating a market is expensive and time consuming, and very few people do it for free outside of the government. That someone needs it doesn't mean someone has gathered it, or even that it can be gathered in the way you expect.

The next time you're confronted with leadership that has unreasonable expectations, try this experiment. With two-four of them in a meeting, ask innocently about some stat - last months' sales, the cost of a product, the average income of a region, whatever. Just make sure it's not something with clearly published numbers.

You will get as many answers as experts, and then you'll hear the discussion about the various answers. Bill's number doesn't include direct labor...Sally's figure does the currency exchange differently...Frank didn't include shipping. Whatever the differences, the point is the same: If we can't accurately measure and define a number we have complete control over, how can we expect to accurately measure and define quantities we don't have control of?

Remember that the goal is to make a decision to do something. Data provides assurance not insurance

Linkedin Killer? I don't think so.

swduncan — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 15:16:24 +0000

Jason Alba posted that he thought examines whether the new WSJ Connect product might be a Linkedin Killer. I don't think so.

As companies increasingly ban social networking sites in general, and as Linkedin becomes fully Facebookified, making it even more bannable, I believe social networking will become less and less work oriented. The market will see consolidation, and it will consolidate around general-purpose social networking.

People are going to want something that has some of the social aspects of Facebook, but also a small amount of business flavor - like a spot to put one's resume, or a few tidbits about their accomplisments. Maybe an ability to identify connections as primarily social or business.

Jason points out that Linkedin has been slow to adopt new things. I believe that chasing new features has been their undoing. Linkedin was nice because you could maintain it easily and without spending a lot of time on it. As each new feature is added, more work and time can be soaked up by it, and companies see it as a distraction and ban it. Once these systems are banned, getting them unbanned is hard. How do you prove a business justification?

90% of the visible value from Linkedin seems to exist in finding freelance work or a new job - neither are viewed by empoloyers as a high priority for employees. It can be tremendously valuable for other things but it's hard to prove well enough to get it unbanned.

So, if people are doing most of their social networking at home, on their own time, they're not going to be focusing on business alone.

Given all this, along with the general saturation of social media sites in general, I think WSJ Connect is doomed.

SurveyGizmo vs. LimeSurvey

swduncan — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 16:07:59 +0000

We recently automated surveys at my employer. For many years we sent word documents out to our membership, who would edit them and either email or fax them back to us. With the current economy some positions were eliminated, including the person who did all of this survey work. This meant the time for automation was at hand, but how?

The first choice is a survey system that would be integrated into our other business systems. However this is a complex undertaking and will take some time to develop. In the mean time I still needed something that would get the job done.

After much searching, I settled on SurveyGizmo and Limesurvey. Both have similar features, but in the end I chose SurveyGizmo mainly because it was hosted, which avoided additional load on our IT staff. Limesurvey is open source, is web-based, and runs on Apache/PHP/MySQL. We don't have any servers able to provide this environment, so running Limesurvey entailed extra complexity.

I have spent quite a bit of time in SurveyGizmo, and while I'm mostly happy with my choice there are a few things that anyone else in the similar position should consider:

Email invitations don't do any good unless they reach their recipient. The first thing I learned about SurveyGizmo is that our email filters blocked their emails. We can unblock them for us, but what about our members? With this observation in mind I contacted SG to find out what could be done to ensure emails would get through. Their solution is to create an SPF record for our domain that would authorize their servers as senders of email on our behalf, but there are reasons why this isn't such a peachy idea.

The invitations sent from Limesurvey didn't have trouble getting through.

We actually send the invitations through a different system in practice, so it is less of an issue for us but that means losing a lot of neat functionality for doing reminders and tracking response.

With Limesurvey you have direct database access to the data, and this is awesome if you use the data to create custom reports, time series across many surveys, or combinations of survey results. SurveyGizmo doesn't allow this, and their data import is strictly in cross-tab format. That is, multiple columns for each question. This works if you don't intend to put the data into a database, but really, really sucks if you do. I'm working around it with a series of Excel macros to convert the data, but I don't want to do this long term. SurveyGizmo has quoted providing the data in a different format, but the fees involved exceed those for an integrated survey system. Not a reasonable choice!

The ability to enter a survey on behalf of an invitee - say one of the people who just loves to fax the results in - is much easier with Limesurvey. In SG you have to download the entire list of invitees to get the survey link, paste that into a browser, and then take the survey. Not a huge deal, but it could be a factor if you have a lot of manual returns.

It's not all bad though.

SurveyGizmo has phone support, a much nicer interface, much clearer documentation, and snazzier question styles. Ranking, in particular, is spiffy with little up/down arrows for each choice.

Piping survey questions or pages of questions from a single question, which allows parts to be repeated multiple times depending on previous answers, is easy to understand and implement.

Pages, which are analogous to groups in Limesurvey, are automatically defined which eliminates a layer of complexity.

Changing question order is drag & drop - even between pages.In Lime it's more laborious.

Overall I would probably choose SurveyGizmo again, in my current situation. If I had more time, and if we had other sites running on Apache/PHP/MySQL Limesurvey would be more attractive. We run mainly repeats of a given set of surveys. If we did more one-off kind of surveys, I think SurveyGizmo's better interface/design environment would carry more weight.