In the land of radical transparency and social media, leaks and speculations happen all the time. Rumors about Apple and future product launches happen daily, becoming almost a sport unto itself. Proctor and Gamble announced some layoffs this past week as it transfers some of its marketing online, and in the same news release, they discussed new Tide Pods, and their delayed launch.

Then I ran into a problem using Nestle’s Skinny Cow app on Facebook, where they are running a promotional contest for their new Skinny Cow Candy.  The app has been doing a loop and not letting people enter their information or play the game, and as you can see below, on Day Three-Four, people are getting seriously annoyed.

I think these recent examples show how tricky product launches are becoming. Once any information about your product leaks, any variation from the rumor or speculation will get negative press.  If you don’t exceed expectations which build with or without your help you are opening up the product and your company for public discussion and getting taken out to the woodshed.  Add on what such speculation can do to a stock price as such rumors propagate, and you have a really crazy world with expectations I’m not sure very many people can match.

In some ways, the new Kickstarter model has an interesting spin on product launches.  Entrepreneurs help get funding from other folks online, and then in turn, offer early models of the product or other bonuses, or nothing but thanks, to investors.  But because it is investment in possibilities, and investors are kept in the loop through emails and blogs, it’s more like a joint venture where everyone is rooting for the entrepreneur to succeed.

Larger companies have a disadvantage here, but could they possibly change their product launches to be more interactive in earlier stages?  Could they invite people in to see the sausage beng made?  And would that be better or worse for larger market competitive advantage, if other people know what you’re up to in advance?

The online world is a tough place.  You open yourself up to lots of criticism, only some of which is fair.  Take the Skinny Cow problem.  They are trying something new, for a new product that people love, myself included.  The customers want to engage further, but between the evolving nature of Facebook and a demanding audience, you get a lot of unhappy customers that like the product but start to see you as disconnected and not delivering on the promises you made with the contest.  This tends to have the opposite effect a promotion is supposed to have, making people more unhappy with you and your product than inclined to engage and spread the word.

Product launches are going to get trickier, whether it’s physical products or services, and I think we’re all going to have to watch, learn and evolve in a rapidly changing online environment where small glitches can lead to big headaches for a company.

[As an aside, I think this drives home a lesson many of us including my friends over at Marketing Over Coffee, Chris Penn and John Wall say frequently, keep your information and data analysis stuff on your own website rather than a third party site like Facebook.  This contest probably could have run just as well on the Skinny Cow Website and avoided issues with having a "like gate" on Facebook, and just had a link driving Facebook folks over to your main website to play- equally effective with none of the headaches.

I also went to the effort of looking up the company that was the Agency for Skinny Cow.  As someone who plays in this online space, I figured I would give them a heads up that the app was broken and things were starting to get ugly, as I started to feel for whatever poor soul is trying to manage and respond to the fallout on the page itself.  I looked at it as being a good internet citizen.  That's a story in and of itself for my next post, but suffice it to say, finding and following up on the digital trail finds that the more cooks who contribute, the less control any one person has to fix things when they go bad.

As of this morning, when I tried to log in to Skinny Cow again, I got this message:

At least it's a sign they are trying to fix this, and hopefully figure out how to handle the unhappy customers left in the wake.  I do worry that every time something like this happens, companies will become a little more wary before running contests and other promotions on Facebook, and what kind of effect that will have on the digital space overall.  Time will tell.]

For those of us who’ve been blogging for years,the reasons seem obvious and almost not worth thinking about anymore. For those who are just considering it, it can seem like a project they’re just not so sure about. We all know anyone who is REALLY into something can make a case for it, and justify why they’ve decided to do it, even if it seems crazy to everyone else. Setting out a pro/con case for blogging for local businesspeople means trying to give them objective reasons as well as personal experience, and hearing it from people other than me, and from people well respected in the marketing, business and PR field, is important. For all of you veteran bloggers, these videos are great as re-inspiration and will help you respect what you;ve worked hard to create over time.

An interesting set of blogging advice from a British expert Penny Power:

Chris Brogan on Blogging and small business:

From HubSpot- it gives great facts and does advertise their services, which are super:

Chris Pirillo, a well-known geek and live-streaming blogger, gives blogging tips.

Don’t forget to checkout Blogs in Plan English by the Common Craft Show. You can see this video by clicking here.

And lastly, from Chris Brogan- Social Media as a Serendipity Engine

Interestingly enough, the more I use the networks as a way to share what’s of most interest to me, and engage with friends and colleagues without any concern for their rank or alleged influence, the more satisfied I am with my engagement with social media.  And as it turns out, this less prolific method of using social media has had beneficial effects.

At one point, it looked like many of the influence measures were taking volume into consideration more than any other factor in rating your ‘importance” online.  But now that I am overall, less prolific through channels, picking which channels to share things out on, and varying the channels, the greater the increase in my measures.  My first thought seeing this, was “weird.”

Now, I’m thinking that the measures may actually be starting to look more at quality over quantity, spread of the information, but also cross-channel participation.  Measuring influence is a tricky business at any level, and even harder when the data points you look at are your own and subject to internal bias.  The message I feel comfortable in sharing at this point is that authentic engagement seems to carry more value than volume.  I think all of us with a lot of experience on digital channels have known this at our core for a long time, but it seems as if the “rating agencies” are starting to pick this up as well, and that may be a good thing for the space as a whole.

What do you think?  Do you see any value in these “rating agencies”?  Why?  What do you get out of it?  Do you care what your klout or peer index are?  Or is it truly just a side benefit of what you do already?

So this year, I told my husband and kids I wanted to celebrate, instead, on the arbitrary day I chose as my online or social media birthday, February 2.  My husband was rather happy, because he bought himself some time, and we did a lot of travelling over Christmas, making it pretty exhausting, coupled with his holiday call schedule.  The kids thought I was a bit weird, but that was fine.

So yesterday, when I got up, I received all sorts of lovely good wishes on Facebook.  I explained, for my long time friends what I was doing and why, and everyone seemed to be okay with it.  I promised I would report the results, so here they are:

It was a fantastic day.

It was simply great.  I had lunch with a friend I hadn’t seen in a long time, and was totally surprised when another friend stopped by (I had checked in on Foursquare) and dropped off a birthday gift! My family took me out to a fantastic dinner and my kids actually tried and enjoyed what I would term “grownup” food.  We came home, did cupcake cakes (keeping things reasonable) and they got me a thoughtful and fantastic present that I will really treasure.

My social media friends were fantastic and kind.  I felt like I had a lot of friends and a really caring community.  A couple of businesses reached out through Facebook with a couple of offers for discounts, etc. clearly based on the marketing data provided by the “adopted” birthday.  And best of all, I had a birthday that really felt special and celebratory,  rather than perfunctory.

Thanks to each and every one of you who read this blog, who connect with me on various networks, and for letting me experiment.

While I wonder whether switching this demographic piece of data both for security and convenience purposes will effect online identification from time to time, I think it’s mostly a harmless vanity of sorts.  Kind of like celebrating President’s Day instead of Washington and Lincoln’s Birthday separately.  It’s a small switch for convenience, but the intent remains the same.

And it really rocked.  Thanks.

That said, what you say matters.  When Mitt Romney said “I like to fire people”, it sounds bad alone, and even in context, it’s a bit odd.  Today he added “I’m not concerned about the very poor” to the list.  In context, and even when asked about whether that’s what he meant to say, he said the very poor have a safety net, and if there’s holes, he’ll fix them, but he’s really only concerned about the middle class (ie. most likely voters).

I want to like Mitt.  But he’s been so busy trying to please everyone, he’s sounding more and more like an empty suit every day.  He sounds like a guy who hasn’t had to do hard work for a long time, lives in a world where he pretty much gets what he wants, when he wants it, and I’m just not sure he’s concerned about much more than the math.  I’m sure he’s a great business guy.  I’m sure he can smell opportunity.  I’m even pretty sure he’s a decent enough guy, and that he loves his family and all the rest.  But I think he lacks an understanding and compassion that I’d like our president to have.

The job of President is like being the nation’s dad.  You have to get out there and deliver the discipline when it’s needed.  You have to make tough decisions about the direction of the family (with ample input from the Congress, which I’ll say plays the role of the Wife in this tortured analogy.)  You have to be able to go down and hug people who are at their lowest after a disaster, and we have to know that you mean it and feel their pain.  You have to make us feel like a community, a whole unit, working towards the same important goals.

Bill Clinton was great at this role. Obama is pretty good as well, although he’s a little more stand-offish, like when your dad reviews your report card.  I worry Romney is like the Dad who gets the kids paraded around a few times a year but other than that, is not very hands on.  He doesn’t look like the guy who’s out there coaching his kid’s team and showing a kid how to make a birdhouse.  He’s not your boy scout troop leader type.

There’s something basically sterile about Romney that makes you feel that he isn’t very empathetic with what a middle class family looks like or how they have to make choices and compromise on things, like if a vacation is even doable this year, or choosing whether they can afford to have kids enrolled in any activities.  I mean empathetic, because he might understand the money part, but I don’t think he knows what it feels like in his heart.  And I think that’s what comes across to all of us watching his every move on TV whether we like it or not.  He seems like he’s getting worn out and annoyed from this crazy, seemingly endless, job interview we call the presidential campaign.  It’s as if he’s only moments away from saying “Look- what more do you want from me?  I’ve told you everything I can.  Just hire me or not already, ok?  I’ve been working my whole life to win this prize, and I can’t believe you are still asking me questions.”

I believe Romney sincerely wants to be president.  But I don’t think it’s for the honor of representing our Country and for bringing us all together as a single unit.  I don’t think he looks at it as a fiduciary duty, where every dollar spent and every action taken is for and on the behalf of each and every citizen of this Country.  I think it’s about him, and what the Presidency will get him, not about being Dad.   And that’s what makes me the most disappointed about what I’ve heard from him so far.  It’s not about us.

As a result of what I would consider a “the jury’s still out” feeling, I decided to sit down and try to create something in the iBooks Author Software.  I sit on both the technology and professional development committees for our school district, so I figured putting together a book with iBooks Author served several purposes.  I would learn the tool by playing around with it, and I could make a book that could explain things like digital citizenship to teachers and parents.  The goal is to also have others help write the book as well, if they have time, and to customize it for our school district, making it a pretty decent “project-based learning” exercise for everyone involved.

It’s early on in the project, but I’ve found that iBooks author is pretty easy to use.  It works very much like the Pages application on the Mac, so getting started is pretty easy.  It took a little bit of fiddling and using the help feature to make sure I put hyperlinks in properly, and I could not find the footnoting feature, but I assume I’ll figure that out today.

It’s incredibly easy to add keynote presentations and videos into iBooks.  I had a one-step conversion process to take a YouTube Video and convert it so I could embed it in the text, and a Powerpoint presentation from the Pew Internet and American Life Foundation was easily converted into Keynote and included as a “figure” in a chapter. (They have their data available for use as open source with credit, so inclusion is not a copyright violation.)

My initial thoughts are that this could be a great tool for teachers and even people who regularly teach adult classes or trainings to put together interactive texts, aggregating resources and more.  For example, for folks in social media that are trying to teach folks how to use WordPress, it would be simple to put together a few slide shows, short how-to videos, and the like, and hook them together with text to create a much more useful and instructive guide.

The biggest problem I see with iBooks is making sure that IP rights are respected.  If you look in the back of any textbook, there are tons of footnotes, references and the like, because textbooks are, by their very nature, a conglomeration of expert advice from all over.  With iBooks Author, it’s very simple to cut and paste from all over the web to create a really terrific interactive book, yet determining whether anyone selling an iBooks Author text through the iBooks Store is “profiting” from work they did not actually create is going to be tricky.

The tools provided to create really terrific looking EPUB books are simple to use.  The application to sell your books in the iBooks store or distribute them for free is also pretty straightforward.  The aggregation of information and preserving intellectual property rights for a book format that relies on aggregation of information may be tricky.  But certainly for most teachers and educators who may be considering creating their own textbook or compendium of information they use for their lessons every year, this will be a terrific tool.

The only additional wrinkle is that so far, the epub multimedia format of the books produced will only be available for viewing on ipads.  I get that- adding video and slide presentations in an interactive format won’t work so wel on a Kindle or e-ink readers, especially when hot links to websites and secondary resources will require web access.  I’m not sure why the books should not be viewable in a reader on a Mac or PC, but I suppose if there’s enough demand, those problems will be solved as well.

iBooks and iBooks Author tools are an interesting business play for Apple, and provides a great way to let anyone, even children, create multimedia books and projects that are truly impressive.  We’ll have to wait and see how many people adopt it, but so far, it’s been a much more interesting way to put together a book than just using Microsoft Word.

I go to Educon every year because it’s always inspiring.  You hear what’s happening in other school districts, and realize both how much more you could be doing and how far along you are, as well as how common and universal certain problems seem to be. Resources, even in well off school districts or private schools, seems to be an issue, even the ones issuing kids laptops and ipads simultaneously.  People are nervous about making a decision and spending money that might look wrong headed three years from now, but also know in their hearts that if you wait for the perfect answer, or the most convincing data, the road to the future will be even more steep and unwieldy than it seems now.

Regardless of the uncertainty of it all, the people at Educon are optimists.  They’re optimists because they are betting on the kids they see every day,  betting on the kids’ creativity and promise, despite the obstacles that often leave them drained at the end of the day.  These are educators who realize that technology is a tool to open up the world to kids in ways we could only dream about a few years ago, while realizing that the most important thing that happens in a classroom doesn’t involve electricity at all.  The most important thing about school is community.

Inherent in the purpose of school is bringing a group of people together every day in the classroom to learn with and from each other.  It’s about creating small families that may meet for all or part of the day, and that learn, over time, to leverage their strengths and weaknesses so all boats rise.  It’s about seeing kids as individuals, not just within your classroom, but as whole people with worries and even troubles that can effect everyone.  It’s about trying to teach and model resilience- how you get through challenges and come out the other side better for it.  The best teachers are wizards at turning a group of kids into a learning community- one that has its own ups and downs, but centers around mutual respect and common goals.

This is something you can’t buy from any business or publisher.  It’s not for sale, but it’s probably the largest predictor of whether the education in your schools is working or not.  It’s the common thread that the folks at Educon share, and talk about with passion and feeling.  It’s what moves them and keeps them in teaching every day.  It’s the chance to care and effect kids and help them learn as much about life as about the subject matter at hand.  It’s mentoring and nurturing and caring, and from that core, all other decisions are fairly clear.

One principal shared a story of having one of those dreaded moments of imposing clear line discipline with a student that violated the fundamental rules and trusts.  As he returned to his office, he saw a group of students there waiting for him.  He expected they would be mad, need to talk, or otherwise have an “us vs. them” conversation, but instead, one of the students asked him “Are you all right?  What can we do for you?”  They knew imposing this penalty was a hard for the principal as if he was doing this for one of his own children, and it still brings tears to my eyes as it did to almost everyone in the room.  It demonstrated that when you show real caring and empathy for the folks you deal with, you are in turn, understood and treated the same way.  this is the way discipline and learning should happen everywhere.

Instead, I worry that in too many schools, the caring is slowly being beaten out of everyone, students and teachers alike.

We all know and say this- but the best things in life are free.  They don’t come out of a box and they are unscripted.  But they do require an awful lot of time invested into community, common purpose and mission, and caring about everyone as people first, and people that are imperfect, changing, developing, and doing their best every day.  If we can start to humanize our schools, to lead with empathy, caring and understanding, we’ll have truly transformed schools without spending a dime.  But it will take the biggest commitment of all- one that begins and ends in our hearts.

Compass Points

*Quick note- I accidentally published this piece before it was edited- a quirk from using the iPad to compose in the WordPress app and save in draft format, which I messed up. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Sometimes, we know we’re going to encounter a problem that needs to be solved. But when we choose to take on that task may be more open to discussion.

For example, if you know your car is beginning to hit that age where repair costs start to outweigh the value of the vehicle, you have at least two choices. The first involves starting to shop for cars and deciding to find a replacement before it dies on some back road in the middle of the night. The second is to wait for it to die completely, and then make a more urgent and forced decision on alternative transportation. There’s clearly middle ground between these two choices, but procrastination tends to box you in on choices and timing, where doing some advanced planning may give you a wider range of alternatives and cause less stress. (This, of course, leaves you with less dramatic stories to tell as well, so that is something to consider, I guess.)

Many people get stuck in the research loop. They start planning, but they are always looking for that one better option, the one elusive piece of data that will make the choice easy.  I know I get stuck there, sometimes, thinking I’ll find just that one thing that will be the tipping point on a decision.  often times, data can just be more data.

There’s actually a whole psychological syndrome about this called the Hamlet Complex or Hamlet Syndrome, where people get stuck in the “to be or not to be” loop, paralyzed by making a choice, and fear of making the wrong one.  It’s caused by over-thinking decisions and as a result, becoming paralyzed from just making a choice and getting on with it already.

For these folks (and I think we can all go there sometimes), something that forces their hand, like a crisis, makes them feel better, because they can hardly be blamed, the rationalization goes, if they had to make a quick decision without a lot of information- it was an emergency! It wasn’t my fault! We paid too much, but we had no choice! The truth of the matter is that there were plenty of opportunities to do some advanced planning, or make a faster decision, and perhaps a better decision, but they just couldn’t find the trigger they wanted to pull.

I feel this sense of frustration often with some committee work I’m involved in. There’s general agreement of where we want to go. There’s general agreement of what the right thing to do is. But issues like time, money, logistics, etc. all seem to get in the way and give people an excuse against making a decision.

For example, let’s look at Apple’s new textbook initiative. We all have known since the Kindle came out that digital textbooks were coming.  Many of my kid’s classes have “at home” textbooks on cd, online portals to supplement the text, etc. because the current textbook purchase cycle is TEN years.    Is there anyone who REALLY thinks in the digital age, that text books purchased today are going to last TEN years in almost any subject? Do we really think kids won’t be reading digital textbooks within that time frame? Because if we know that’s going to be the case, why don’t we start the transition and planning for that process now?

There are lots of really good reasons why (or why not). Not every text is ready for digital right now. Committing to every child having a laptop or tablet scares the crap out of teachers, administrators and parents, who are themselves just getting used to these things. It will be expensive. It will require teaching teachers and students about digital citizenship and some of them will make mistakes.  Some of the mistakes will be more serious and have more consequences than merely doodling the margin of a school text or losing a book and having to pay for it at the end of the year.  Many teachers may not be comfortable adopting their lessons to an online world, or giving up top down control in the classroom. But I ask again, if we know that it’s coming, why aren’t we planning for that today?

It turns out if youset a firm goal and deadline you have to work towards, everyone can then start to make firm plans to meet those parameters. As long as a goal stays in the “some day”, or “wouldn’t it be nice if” range, it is as good as water through a sieve. It means very little without verbs in sentences and things to do behind the mission statements and platitudes.  Without nailing down what you want to do and when, it merely becomes another dream, ephemeral and unlikely to become reality.

So I ask you, as I ask everyone- what are you saying “Sure, but not now” to in your life? What excuses are holding you back? What are you afraid of? And what would happen if you just said- ” OK, so if not now, when?”   When will I finally commit to accomplishing this goal I know I need to accomplish?

If it isn’t tied to a date, or specific goal or course of action, you simply aren’t serious about committing to the goal, so take it off the table and forget about it. It’s worthless to you. It’s up there with my hopes I’ll finally get that extra two hours in a 24 hour day to accomplish so much more. Since Hermoine Granger isn’t showing up with a time turner, I have to deal with reality that there are only 24 and not 26 hours in a day, and make sure all those lists of some day tasks are put into a timeframe to be accomplished.

What will you move off your some day list, where your dreams are waiting for the stars and planets to align, and move it onto the front burner, where you have to work to make it happen?

It takes guts and commitment to go for your dreams.  It takes courage and conviction to face difficult decisions and take painful action now to make tomorrow better.  It’s not easy to pick a direction and go for it, especially when it’s a time of flux and change.  But I know waiting until the “right” moment means there will never be a perfect right moment and we’ll never achieve anything by waiting on the sidelines, hoping rather than doing.

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

We had a 1st generation iPod Nano laying around the house.  It had died and been replaced some time ago.  Around Thanksgiving, I saw a notice online that said Apple had found a defect in some of the original nanos, and if you still had yours and it was eligible, they would replace it for free.  So I dug out our Nano, went to the website, filled out all the applicable information, and sure enough, it was eligible for replacement.  So I sent it in, and figured we’d get a similar model back, which we could use if another iPod in the house broke or was lost.

Today, FedEx delivered the replacement.  Instead of a similar model, Apple sent a new iPod Nano- The “watch” variety- and I’m thrilled!  We basically got a new iPod or refurbished iPod from something we had basically written off.  Needless to say, while I was expecting something back, I was not expecting a touch screen nano as a replacement- quite an upgrade!

The trick to customer satisfaction is often simple.  Deliver on your promises, and if you manage to exceed them, delight and as Guy Kawasaki calls it- Enchantment- ensues. Greatly exceed expectations like in this case, and you’ll get people excited to spread the word as well.

Well done, Apple.  And thank you again so much for continuing to make me a happy customer and an even happier shareholder.