Playing with Feeds

This is a test post to add some fresh content to the blog's RSS feed.

Jason Reser - Asset to the community and superhero?

Client/Friend Jason Reser, proprietor of Reser Bicycle Outfitters, had quite an adventure yesterday. Here's the story in his own words:

"So we get an email first thing in the morning about a Trek hybrid stolen from Team Cycling in Colerain. I read it and knew it would show up at some point in the next six months. About lunchtime I'm making a sammich in the basement workshop (grease and all) and Sarai tells me to come upstairs "immediately". Turns out someone just left on a bike matching the description of said hybrid. I grab the quickest bike we have and go looking, asking people at the coffee shop, etc. I rode around the main streets in Newport and across the Purple Bridge where I ran into Officer Long on bike patrol who gave me his cell phone number."

"I rode back across the southgate bridge andback to the shop and then back down Monmouth Street-- Lo and behold there he is putting the bike on the front of a bus at the Levee, so I ride up and stop in front of the bus and he pops out and starts yelling about how he owns the lock. I check the serial number on the bike and it's a match, so I call back the officer and tell him where I am. Then begins an adventure the wrong way through traffic stopping in front of cars so he can yell at me for following him. So we end up in Victoria Square while the police are at the Levee. We stay still just long enough for the cops to catch up just as he punches me. All recorded on 911.
There are some even funnier details to the story that are, like the story, to long for facebook."

"They said his burglary rap-sheet was four pages long and that he might be finding a more permanent cell since he was caught in the commonwealth."

Adobe Max 2008 - Live Blog - Day 2

10: 45 Ryan Stewart - Formally announcing/demoing Flash Catalyst. Flash Cataylst is going to change the landscape of RIA's. The barriers between Designer and Developer will finally come down. A lot of people have stated that Flash Catalyst will 'finally' allow designers to make applications. Although this may be true, that really isn't the true power of the tool. Flash Catalyst will allow UI designers create truly rich RIA's and not simply try and 'skin' Flex components.

11:00 - Digital Alchemy is demoing their C++ to Actionscript converter. Allows Flash Player 10 to play formats not native to Flash, i.e, Orbis audio format and camera RAW. Quake and Super Mario Bros in Flash Player 10 and AIR 1.5.

11:05 - Flex Builder 4 (Gumbo) and ColdFusion demo - ColdFusion Centaur and Bolt. A lot of automated features to reduce redundant work. With Flex 4 and ColdFusion 9 there is a shift from Bindable data objects to managed data objects. This allows true reliable drag and drop connectivity and functionality between ColdFusion data sources and Flex components. This functionality is huge. Without getting into a ton of techy speak, this will speed up Flex and ColdFusion development about 10 fold.

11:20 Ben Forta quickly demoed a project they are working on that would connect Flex front ends to C# backends. This will allow .NET developers to easily make RIA's.

11:30 - Demoing Flash Google Search API. The Flash Search Player acts like a virtual user and clicks through every page and parses out 'text' so that Google can index Flash and dynamic content.

11:35 Flash Media Server 3.5 - Dynamic streaming feature - streamflashhd.com - monitors network bandwidth and switches the bitrate on the fly to display the best video for the throughput - totally seamless experience.
RTMFP - Flash player to Flash player live streaming with no server in the middle.

Adobe Max 2008 - Live blog

Adobe Max is the yearly gathering for Adobe designers and developers to gather and see the future technologies and solutions that the Adobe platform is offering. this year proves to be the largest and most ground breaking to date. 9:35 - Codename Thermo is announced as Flash Catalyst. Flash Catalyst and Flex 4 preview builds will be available for all Max attendees. 9:50 - Major initiatives: Client + Cloud Computing, Social Networking, Devices + Desktops

Client + Cloud Computing

9:51- Flash Realtime dynamic audio and multitrack processing

9:55 - 64 bit Flash is coming out today

9:56 Bud Albers from Disney Interactive group is up

10:04 - Flash Player 10 is downloaded and installed over 10 million times per day

10:06 AIR 1.5 is announced. Coming out today. Supports encrypted databases

10:07 New York Times will be using Adobe AIR 1.5 as a new aggregator. Works on any screen size. It really leverages the new Flash text engine.

10:25 - Tour de Flex. Cloud APIs included - Amazon, Twitter, Salesforce, etc. Code views and component examples included.

Social Computing
10:38 - Adobe Cocomo - Social applications in Flex - Realtime data collaboration. Webcam, VOIP, data/screen sharing - co-navigation. Free public beta available on adobe.labs.com

10:48 - Adobe Wave - social networking aagregator

Devices + Desktops
10:49 - 1 billion Flash enabled phones by 2009.

10:50 Focus on a consistent experience across all devices and desktops.

10:51 Flash Player 10 for smartphones is in development. Not Flash Lite, but full Flash Player. This is a huge shift. Developing content for mobile phones is currently an uphill battle. Since there are no standards, each cell phone manufacturer has their own way to deploy apps and view web content. With Flash Player 10 across all smartphones, developers can create content once for the web and it will 'port' seamlessly to the web. This is a real a game changer.

10:55 Flash player for iPhone is definitely in development. Flash player 10 for Android OS (Google mobile phone) is also in development.

Looking to the future

11:05 - Multi device, multi screen awareness. Devices are aware of other devices and allow for wireless collaboration. Just point your handheld at an enabled screen and simply "flick" your photos, mp3s, and games from one device to another.

Easy CGI - RIP

We're developers. We make software. Hosting isn't our business and I never want it to be. Hosting is a thankless job where the margins are low, stress is high and computer glitches regularly cause major grief. Yet, reliable hosting and email is a must-have for businesses.

One of our hosting partners, EasyCGI, was recently sold to Endurance International Group, a consortium that has acquired quite a few hosting companies. We've been using EasyCGI for almost 3 years to provide hosting for a number of our clients who have basic hosting needs. We've been thrilled to have EasyCGI in our corner. The performance and reliability has been outstanding with only one outage of minor significance in over 2 years. Their online tools have been powerful, intuitive and convenient. When I have had to contact tech support it has been quick, courteous, competent and based in the US. All of which are rare when dealing with a shared hosting environment.

Unfortunately, the good times are over. The new conglomeration seems marginal at best. Despite the inconvenience of moving hosts, we've transitioned our clients to a new partner: Mosso. Mosso is a division of Rackspace, a hosting company we use for some of our more demanding applications and has been excellent. We'll be keeping a watchful eye on Mosso but if they're anything like their big brother we'll enjoy hosting and email service that may even eclipse what EasyCGI used to be.

Managed Web Applications

As a web 2.0 or web application developer, we've often been tasked with developing tools for organizations and businesses that have no internal IT department or have no experience with web applications. While we've always provided hosing and support of these online tools, we haven't given this aspect of our service a name. "Managed Web Applications" sounds a bit stuffy, but it does describe the process.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about:

• A client contacts us with a need or a problem that needs a web-based solution.
• We outline the details of the problem, the goals, the information that needs to be dealt with and determine how users will want to interact with the data.
• We design the back-end data source, specify the hosting requirements, design the user interface, and program the application
• We facilitate any necessary changes to the domain, the hosting, security and backup.
• After the application/website is launched, we remain on call to make adjustments, updates, or address any unforeseen issues.

Essentially this is a concept-to-completion-to-day-to-day-operations type of solution. "CTCTDTDO" is a bit awkward, so while "Managed Web Applications" isn't a particularly glamorous name, it will have to do for now. If you think you have a better name for this process, I want to hear about it. :)

Longest Rebranding Roll-Out Ever

Eclectic Studios has updated it's image.... finally. The re-branding of our company has been an initiative for some time. However, we feel that it is important to address the needs of our clients before we indulge in our own.

For several years now, Eclectic Studios has been evolving into a different company. We still provide graphic design services but these services have been an increasingly smaller portion of the work we do for our clients. The vast majority of our clients turn to us for web-based solutions, be they marketing, sales, management, or just technical issues. Symbolically, it was time to represent the company as what it has become.


Our new logo was designed to be super-clean and precise to reflect our technical precision. We kept yellow-orange as our primary corporate color as it has a friendliness that reflects our dedication to user-friendly design. As an homage to our old logo, which we affectionately call the "flying E" we have added dramatic wings to the "e" in "eclectic" that reflect both our company history and our outside the box thinking.

As far as the time to roll-out, this logo concept was initially created in mid-2005 and has been in use here on our blog for some time. If you have any questions about our company or how our offerings have changed over the years, please give us a call.

There Is No Box

Steve Coats and Tom Heuer, long time friends of Eclectic Studios, have recently published an amazing book on a subject near and dear to their hearts: Leadership. The book is truly exceptional. Far from being a cheerleader's guide to management, There Is No Box delves into the character traits of great leaders, how they achieve growth and ways to identify and overcome the psychological barriers many of us have that impede growth and our ability to lead.

While I've been exposed to many of these concepts over the years, this book presents them is such a fluid and contextual way that it practically guarantees inspiration. I highly recommend this book.

The Art of Exploding Gracefully

Modern web design is largely a house of cards. It is a series of hacks piled on top of one another to achieve an intended design or function. The limitations and inconsistencies of browsers are a huge part of this problem. The second part of the problem is lack of consistent adoption of tools that are secondary to HTML programming such as cookies, JavaScript, CSS, Flash, and Active X controls.

While using these tools works for the majority of visitors, they can’t be relied on exclusively. Websites need to have a plan B. This means taking the time to incorporate backups when the mainstream techniques fail. This isn’t as easy as it sounds. The “mainstream” techniques are elegant, or just plain sexy. The alternatives are messy, kludgy and generally not fun to build or use. But if you don’t have a backup plan, your website explodes and is completely dead to the users that don’t meet your exact specifications. Consciences developers don’t exclude large audiences just because they use a different browser or plug-in. They address minority audiences by providing alternative tools. Or better yet, they abandon the proprietary tools and create new standardized tools that work for larger portions of the web world.

A client recently came to us with a piece of software in hand, very excited about what we could accomplish with it. The problem was that it only worked in Internet Explorer… and only on PCs. You just can’t do that. Netscape may be dead but the “browser cold-war” is in full swing. FireFox is now used by more than a third of all web users. A few years ago, Firefox was barely a blip on the radar. Now it’s mainstream and there’s no going back to an IE-only world.

Now Macs are a different story. The latest W3 Schools stats put Mac usage at less than 4% of the surfing population… regardless of whether their using Opera, Safari, IE or Firefox. While you cna't ignore the non-mainstream world, you also can't cater to the lowest common denominator. I know this won't make me popular (especially among creatives) but the simple truth is that this splintered sub-faction of the internet world really doesn’t matter from a practical standpoint. Yes, it’s important to make sure sites work on Macintosh platforms but it isn’t worth spending an inordinate amount of time making sure everything renders out to the exact pixel. Until Mac adoption becomes more widespread, a certain degree of "exploding" can bee seen as an acceptable loss… as long as it explodes gracefully.

Friendly Fire in the War on Spam – Part 3: The boy who cried SPAM

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

There are many people out there who run legitimate email newsletters. Newsletters provide useful information to subscribers and they are a great way for companies to stay in touch with their client base. Those who send newsletters have to be very careful about how they handle their mailing lists. Most people who send newsletters are careful and concerned about stopping spam. The CAN-SPAM act is a good starting point, but those who care about their customers agree that these are probably the most important "best practices" for sending email newsletters:

• Use a self-managing mailing list or service
• Include unsubscribe instructions with every email you send
• Require a double-opt-in for new subscribers (Double opt in refers to the process of signing up for a newsletter then requiring a confirmation response from the email address that was sent. This way an email address cannot be added by an imposter)

Even with all these precautions legitimate emailers get flogged as spammers. But these are skilled, tech-savvy people who seriously oppose spamming. How can they be accused of spamming when they've been so careful? The sad answer is that it happens when a legitimate newsletter is flagged as spam by one of their own subscribers.

The double-opt-in signup makes it impossible for an email address to be accidentally added to a mailing list. Someone has to choose to subscribe and then verify their wish to subscribe. But a month later, they may have forgotten all about it. They complain to an ISP about this spammer or hit the "Spam" button on their email client. Just like that, the emailer has been accused of spamming. The consequences of being accused of spamming can be drastic and swift, often resulting in non-delivered emails and blacklisting. The anti-spam movement is so strong right now that an ISP might immediately deny service to the newsletter sender. This happens without any crime being done, without any proof, and without any warning to the person managing the newsletter.

What's most alarming about this problem is that there really is no defense against it. This is a problem that is totally out of the control of people who use email legitimately. Email recipients have been empowered to take on spam. People have a lot of rage when it comes to spam and they have no qualms about practicing mob justice. Apparently the AOL email interface is particularly empowering when it comes to accusing spammers by providing a large spam button… that has serious consequences.

The only solution may be to abandon email newsletters all together. As RSS technology becomes a part of the daily lives of mainstream internet users we ca see an alternative to using email to deliver content. There can be no argument about who is subscribing to RSS information. The recipient requests the information only when they want to, or when their reader has been programmed to.

Interestingly this corresponds nicely with the advent of blogging. Blog content authoring tools can easily be directly liked to RSS feeds. By inviting site visitors to subscribe to your RSS feed, they get a much greater amount of anonymity and you get a huge drop in stress and no possible way of being accused of spamming. But for the moment, you can't reach the same audience with RSS that you can with email. But t writing is on the wall. RSS, or more precisely the idea of RSS as a means of people gathering up information that they like will likely replace the "pushed" architecture of the email newsletter in time.

Friendly Fire in the War on Spam – Part 2: Blacklists

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

There are several organizations that maintain blacklists of IP addresses that send out spam. Internet service providers (ISPs) subscribe to these lists to filter out email that comes from these sources. The idea being that this will keep spam from being delivered to their email users. There is no silver bullet for spam and this can be a heavy-handed practice. It works fine when email comes from a private IP address, but what if someone with a large ISP email address, like yahoo.com, starts sending out spam? Should the originating IP address be blocked? This could block every email that comes from a yahoo.com email address. There are plenty of legitimate non-spamming users who have @yahoo.com email addresses. I use yahoo as an example, but this could be applied to any ISP. Most blacklist managers are aware there are large numbers of legitimate users out there and generally do not blacklist larger service providers without good reason. An example of a good reason is when an email service provider shows a total inability to monitor and control spam that originates from their network. This is a real problem for email service providers. Naturally they want customers but at the same time they must monitor and deny service to customers who are spammers. They effectively have to look for customers to turn away. Never the less, no ISP should tolerate spamming in their network. It has serious repercussions on their legitimate users. If an ISP becomes blacklisted, legitimate customers don't get the service they pay for.

Legitimate email users should be aware of this. If your ISP harbors spammers or is soft on spam, there is a chance that your ISPs IP addresses will be added to a blacklist or has been added already. These may well be the same IP addresses that you use to send email. As a result, your email can be labeled as spam, regardless of the content. The best defense is to use an ISP that has a strong anti-spam policy and avoid working with the ISPs on this list.

Get out of there:
You should avoid ISPs that are "spam friendly" or "spam infested." There are plenty of ethical considerations but they should be avoided for tangible reasons. Spam exploited ISPs generally suffer from poor server performance and lost emails. You can also become associated with spammers just by your relative proximity to each other on the internet. This can lead to frustrating returned emails and long sessions arguing with blacklist managers and your ISP to get the common IP address you share with spammers released. The best bet is to avoid these ISPs all together.

Newsletter Problems:
Blacklists can be a major problem for those who send out email newsletters. One of the things many email newsletter management services don't talk about is their delivery rate. Because newsletter services send out so much email their IP addresses are constantly fighting a battle against being blacklisted. Most of the time newsletter services are in the right. It's usually a case of an email behaving like spam or one of their customers making a mistake that trips a flag. This can lead to the newsletter service provider having their IP address blacklisted.

What you need to know is whether or not the IP addresses of your newsletter service provider have been blacklisted. Some services never make any claims to their delivery rate, only how many emails you're allowed to send… with no assurances that your email will ever arrive. One service provider that does speak about this issue is Constant Contact who takes managing the reputation of their IP addresses quite seriously.

Friendly Fire in the War on Spam – Part 1: Filters

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Not only is spam incredibly frustrating, it continues to hamper legitimate business in new ways. Sending out honest email newsletters is becoming increasingly difficult for a number of reasons. Most of these are the direct result of entanglements with tools and protocols that are in place to protect users from spam.

A big problem with spam prevention today is that most anti-spam software can report "false positives" where legitimate email is labeled and treated like spam. The spam filtering software looks over an email message if it fits the profile of spam. This can be done at the server level, an IT department's Exchange server, or at the client level, a copy of Outlook or Eudora on a desktop. The problem is that determining what is spam and what isn't spam is a very delicate job. Unfortunately most anti-spam software just isn't up to it. You run the risk of either tossing legitimate email in the trash without seeing it or only eliminating a small fraction of incoming spam. Granted that cutting out half of the spam you receive is a positive step but it's hardly an ideal solution especially when you loose real email in the process.

Dealing with incoming spam:
In my experience, most anti-spam software causes as much hassle as it prevents. This is especially true for people like me who depend on email for new business leads. Those of us in this situation simply cannot afford a false positive because that costs us business. For a long time my solution was to run a spam filter on my email client at a low level. Set this way it would flag obvious spam and let the rest through to my inbox for me to deal with. I still had a ton of spam coming into my inbox but it wasn't quite as bad. Even with a low grade filter I had to skim through my spam folder once per day to look at hundreds of emails to avoid throwing out something important.

The problem with these types of filters is that the software is making a guess. Emails that have blank subjects or subjects like "hello" or "hey" look a lot like spam. Heaven help you if you actually happen to be in the mortgage business or work for Pfizer.

Better than filters:
Since software isn't up to the task of determining what is spam and what isn't spam what can we do? Cloudmark has developed a unique and quite brilliant solution to the problem. Rather than rely on software to make judgment calls on what is or isn't spam, Cloudmark leverages the opinions of millions of email users. Here's the process in a nutshell: The vast majority of spam is a basic message that gets sent to a large number of people. Everyone with Cloudmark's software has the option to mark an email as spam. When a message gets marked, Cloudmark reads this as a "vote" to label a message as spam. When a message gets enough "votes" Cloudmark's software gets updated and removes future occurrences of that message from everyone's mailbox. The genius of this is that Cloudmark only marks something as spam if several people have marked it. If you get a new business lead from an individual, there is no way that email can be flagged as spam by Cloudmark because it is a unique message. No one else has received the email other than you, so no one else could have marked it as spam. No more false positives!

Rules of Engagement - Part 4

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

4) No one thinks they are jerk. I want to write a book called “The extreme effort the human mind will put forth to deny wrongdoing” or “Hitler didn’t think he was an ass.” No one thinks they are an ass. No one thinks they are shifty or wrong. Sure maybe we’ll admit we’re wrong on small matters and the catch-all “nobody is perfect” clause, but we are very slow to admit our wrong doing on larger matters or matters of personal interest. It takes a lot of soul searching to honestly look at ourselves and bring our faults to the surface. We as humans will go to great lengths to justify our actions. We will do amazing mental acrobatics to justify our actions that we know are not right. Hitler thought mass genocide was a good thing. He never thought, hehehe, I’m an evil bastard bent on killing innocent men, women, and children. Obviously, we are not dealing with such large issues day to day...at least I hope not. But it’s the little things. It’s the way we come up with justifications for why “Bill” sucks at his job, when in actuality, it’s just that we don’t like him, we are jealous of him, or we don’t like something he believes in. We can’t fool ourselves into thinking we don’t do this. WE DO. Be aware of it. Just be honest with yourself. Just understand that you can fall into the trap of mental acrobatics to justify your stance or reasoning behind a decision. Just know that the truth may be that you are simply covering your butt and justifying your poor decision or poor conduct by projecting the problem onto someone else.

The flip side is to use this knowledge as a tool. There’s a reason behind everything. Here’s the scenario:
You and your coworker Bob have always been on good terms. It’s not like you hang out after work or anything, but he’s a good guy and you two get along fine. Then one day, Bob isn’t so nice. He short with you, calls out your mistakes at every opportunity, and generally makes the mood far from ideal. Why the change? It’s not because Bob picked up the “How to be an Evil Guy in 5 Easy Steps” book at Barnes and Noble the other day. The truth may be that you got the promotion that Bob secretly thought he should have had and now he treats you poorly. It’s not your fault. You didn’t know and you didn’t do anything to “take it” from Bob. Just know that there may be more going on than you are aware of and if you approach a personal problem from the standpoint of no one thinks they are a jerk, you will be more effective at getting to the heart of the problem. Put yourself in their shoes, try to “think like they do,” and know that no one thinks they are a jerk and you can often figure out why someone is behaving a certain way. You may not agree with it. It may not be “right.” But at least you are closer to the truth – or at least their “truth”. Once your have that understanding and insight, you don’t waste your time and energy on why is Bob suddenly being a jerk and how can I get back at him. You can get on to solving the problem and moving past interoffice misunderstandings. More importantly, you can honestly look at yourself and make sure you don’t become the one doing mental acrobatics to justify some poor actions.

The ups and downs of Flash

Even if you're on the web for a few minutes a week, you have undoubtedly seen a website (or part of a website) developed in flash. Adobe Flash is a very important part of a developer's toolkit these days. However, it's important to note its limitations.

One main limitation that Flash is that it is notorious for is updateability. Many Flash developers in the early days created a website that was strictly Flash, and many of them had to tell their clients how everything was now going to take twice as long and cost twice as much to make changes. And don't even think about having the client update the site themselves. Flash's development environment is more complex than a traditional HTML development environment (for example Adobe Dreamweaver). In Dreamweaver it takes about 4 clicks to insert a photo. With Flash it takes many more, and you also have to deal with organizational aspects of that image within the development environment itself. In short, there's just more you have to deal with when you insert a photo in Flash, not to mention every other aspect of development.

Another limitation (although I use the term "limitation" looser here) is programming. Flash uses a language called Actionscript. Actionscript is very powerful and also easy for a developer to learn since is similar to other languages. You can use Flash to connect to and update databases, and you can create some very powerful web applications with it. However, the Flash environment is based on a timeline. It gets very difficult and confusing to put pieces of code all over a timeline, and Flash can have many timelines in one file. This issue has been addressed in more recent versions of Flash, and it has helped. But it is still a persistant issue. I'm sure Adobe will work on this more in future versions.

So for now, what can you do with Flash? Currently, many developers treat Flash like a "component" in a website. It isn't the whole website, but a few pieces of it. Games, video, and animations, Flash when used correctly can add a lot of "punch" to a website.

Rules of Engagement - Part 3

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

3) Play to people’s strengths and minimize their weaknesses. It’s obvious to say that we are better at some things than others. That goes for personalities and the way people approach a problem or devise a solution. Just because it’s not the way you would do it, does not mean it’s wrong. For instance, some people are very analytical and like to evaluate the entire problem and come up with a definitive solution before they make a move. That’s a good thing, right? Yes and no. They are very prepared. They have accounted for almost any situation. No time was wasted once things are set in motion. Sounds good. However, by the time they have all their ducks in a row, quite often it’s too late. In the time it takes to account for all the variables, the variables will have changed. You never have all the information. At best, you’re lucky to have 80% of the information you need to make a good decision. If you spend all your time trying to gather that other 20%, the project will never get done. And then there’s the X-factor. You may account for every scenario you can think of…and then X happens. The analytical personality has a hard time dealing with this. They want to stop everything and re-evaluate. But when the X-factor hits, you don’t have that kind of time. You’ve got roll with the punches and make a call. You’ve got to take a risk and go with your gut. Analytical people HATE that.

Then there are the divers. People who just dive in with both feet and make changes, retool, and retweak as they go. This too, is both good and bad. These people are very “organic”. They can roll with the punches and flow through the problem. They adapt quickly. However, they run the risk of making poor decisions based on too little information. They also run the risk of changing directions many times in a process. They may end up in the same place as the analytical, but the team is worn out by the time they get there from all the direction changes. The team with the analytical is often frustrated, because they reach a point where they just want to stop planning and do something. The answer is somewhere in the middle. You need both and you need to at least acknowledge the “other side”. Understand their value. Focus on the good aspects and not the bad. Know that there is a time and a place for both and be willing, as hard as it might be to hand it off to the “other side” when the time is right. Who decides when the time is right? You both do. You are not going to change the way people think, feel or act. You may change their opinions on things, but you are not going to re-hardwire the way people think. Don’t try. Its takes along time, and even then, many would submit that it’s not possible. So don’t try. You sure aren’t going to do it in the span of a meeting. You are not getting paid to change the way someone’s mind works. So accept the difference and play to their strengths and downplay their weaknesses. Put analyticals in analytical roles and divers in diver roles. It sounds obvious, but people have a tendency to try and convert people to their way of working/thinking rather than playing to their strengths. It’s hard to admit, subconscious or not that someone else is better at something than you. And that’s what’s happening here. Many would say it’s not a case of someone being better. They would argue that the opposing way is wrong. Analyticals are too slow to move and scared to take a risk. Divers are random and have a short attention span. Both of these things are true. But if you let everyone play to their strengths you end up with this scenario:

• Divers explore new directions and ideas
• The divers hand off their ideas to the analyticals to add logistical concerns to the ideas
• Then get the divers come back in and help the anaylticals with X-factor scenarios
• The analyticals chew on those for a while and lay out a process for project completion
• The Divers, now armed with the guidelines for the project, implement the plan – rolling with the punches as they come.

The whole process is all about checks and balances, but there must be mutual respect. When the ball is in the divers court, the analyticals are quietly there to make sure the divers stay on track. The analyticals are not there shoot down the divers’ ideas. The analyticals are there to make sure the divers stay on track with the predefined goals of the project. When the ball is in the analyticals court, the divers are there to say “are you ready?, are you ready?, are you ready?” Not in an aggressive way, but with an excited push. The divers are also there to help the analyticals with the “outside the box” ideas (Lordy, I hate that overused term) and solutions to the analyticals logistical problems.

It’s not a fight. It’s not a contest. The fight is with the rival company. Focus on that.

Internet Marketing Strategy - Tech vs. Creative

There is a traditional battle in web design between the technical people and the creatives.

Tech – "What good is a website if no one finds it?"
Creative – "What good is being found if no one does anything with it?"

I tend to think of myself as a "creative" (although my background might speak to the contrary) and I'm usually an advocate for the creative aspects of web design: supporting the brand message, dedicating resources to interface design, and refining usability. Getting my "creative way" has often meant headaches for the technical folks and vice versa.

Back in 1996, many were of the opinion (myself included) that SEO (search engine optimization) was a fool's errand. The eyeball economy had not yet started. There was so little traffic in niche markets that it didn't seem worth the effort to compete in search engines. Conventional thinking was that you'd be better off with a compelling "destination" website, some traditional, proven marketing techniques, and fundamental SEO tactics rather than spending exorbitant resources competing for search results with no guarantee of any ROI. However, the web has changed a lot since then and we need a new web-marketing paradigm.

The amount of information accessible online today is incomprehensibly large. While this makes the Internet a fantastic resource, finding information can be daunting and being found online is extremely difficult. Enter SEO. The arguments traditionally made by programmers and technically-minded web developers carry more weight today. The reality of the modern congested webscape is that being found is 90% of the battle… maybe more.

Even though Google provides 600 trillion results, we know most folks typically don't go more than about 3 pages deep. So why bother? Because of these two modern realities:

1. The cut-off really IS that abrupt. Back in the day you could count on a few people to power through the first 10 or so pages of results looking for your site. Today content is more abundant as there are more sites offering up information and search engines are getting smarter. Today the top 30 results are actually close to relevant! So instead of having to sift through the first 10 -20 pages of nonsense, search engine users can actually find good information on the first few pages of results.
   


2. The payoff is huge! There are so many people out there using search to find so many things every day that the number of searches preformed, and the resulting number of clicks, visits, and purchases is so high that if you manage to get into the top 10 results the amount of business that this yields will likely be enormous (provided you haven't made any other gigantic web design/marketing errors).
   

So what does this mean? It means that SEO is no longer trivial. It's still a risk, but making it to the top of results has a huge pay off.

In short, getting found through search has practically become an all-or-nothing prospect. And the "all" is so big that even a website with terrible design will do well because even the small percentage of visitors that make it through the poor design will still be a large number.

Now don't think that SEO is a silver bullet. There can only be 10 sites in the top 10 and all of your competitors the world over want to be there just as badly as you do. SEO is less about a marketing strategy and more about trench warfare… with about a million trenches. Know what you're getting into and don’t think of it as a single ad or even a single campaign. SEO is a long, process of modifying, tweaking and monitoring. Search engine rules change and content is always king. It's nearly impossible to stay ahead of the curve. The trick is to keep up with it enough to surf.

Rules of Engagement - Part 2

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

2) Be productive or be quiet. No armchair quarterbacking. It’s really easy to say what the problems are. It’s much harder to come up with solutions. 95% of the people in the world will be more than happy to tell you what is wrong with a situation. 2.8% will have some type of knee-jerk solution to offer up short term fix to the problem. These tend to be short sided and biased toward whatever department the person with the idea works in. 2% will actually be trying to think of the big picture, but not willing to put forth the effort to really fox the problem. “A” for effort, but that’s about it. It’s only about .2% who are willing to actually put forth the effort to solve the problem and follow through to make sure it was a success. You are that .2%, like it or not. Take it seriously. Make some real change. This involves the dreaded words in business – “Take a chance” and “Do the work.” GASP! Too many companies today have a corporate culture of cover your butt and tow the line. No great innovation EVER comes from this mentality. The key is to not necessarily make huge quantum shifts. That’s too risky and too much to ask of most people. But making incremental and measurable change toward a quantum shift is fine. In the end, it’ll take longer, but it will minimize risk, keep everyone motivated, and it just makes good business sense.

Rules of Engagement - Part 1

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Building off my last entry on Zen and the Art of Project Management, I got to thinking about meeting dynamics. Specifically - creative meetings. When I say creative meetings, I don’t just mean brainstorming sessions with the marketing department on the new ad campaign. I’m also talking about the kind of meetings where we evaluate the company’s past performance, latest progress, and forge a new business initiative. (You are doing that, right?) Some might wonder how this could be a “creative meeting.” It’s an analytical meeting where we evaluate hard metrics of past performance to spell out the future of the company. That is 100% true. However, if it’s a purely analytical venture, we end up simply repeating what we have done in the past to a greater or lesser degree. The conversation tends to stay in the realm of ‘sales were down last quarter, so we need to look at scaling back production for the short term and increasing sales initiatives in these key markets.’ This is not a bad thing. It makes good business sense. But it never innovates. If you include some creative types in the room, they tend to look at the data (in far less detail mind you) and come up with much bolder company moves. It was the creative thinkers in the conference room at Apple that brought that company back from the brink of bankruptcy. Why would a computer manufacturer make a high tech Walkman®?

“That’s not our core business.”

“We don’t do small consumer electronics.”

“It’ll dilute our brand.”

Now we have the iPod®. The best selling consumer electronic device on the planet.

It takes the creatives to think outside the normal business model and test the waters of the unknown. It takes the support of the analyticals to quickly and efficiently ground the creatives, so they aren’t expending a lot of time and money down an ill fated road. The analyticals also keep the core business moving ahead at a safe and steady pace. This allows the creatives to run ahead and try new things.

I was talking to a friend who works for Toyota corporate. He was saying the biggest difference between Toyota and Nissan is that Nissan is always trying to push the envelop. Nissan’s sales figures show that as well. It’s up and down like the Rocky mountains. Nissan has too many creatives in the room. Toyota on the other hand tended to have too many analyticals in the room. Their sales were always steady and growing, but very few people would say they bought a Toyota because it was a “cool car.” The Camry doesn’t really stand out in the crowd.

However, it appears that Toyota got a couple more creatives in the room with the advent of hybrid cars and the Scion line especially. Toyota got wise to the balance and executed it perfectly. They saw an untapped market of young new car owners who wanted inexpensive, cool cars. So Scion was born. It doesn’t say Scion, a Toyota subsidiary. They were smarter than that. Toyota let their creatives develop a new brand, with a small lineup to test the waters and try something that was historically not Toyota. They created a brand of cool, hip cars that are customizable and stand out from the crowd.

Bottom line, if you team up analytical thinkers with creative folks, you end up with a winning combination. But they have to balance each other out. Swinging too far in either direction can make the whole thing crumble.

You’ve got to let each group “do their thing.” The kicker is that these two groups tend to go in seemingly opposite directions and have a tendency to trip each other up as they go. Here’s where the Rules of Engagement come into play. Each group MUST respect the other and have trust in the other. If you set ground rules from the beginning and give each group just enough understanding of the other that there is some level of mutual respect, things go very nicely. You don’t have to “like” how the other does things, or agree with the way they go about it. You just need to know that they are doing their job and more importantly, IT”S NOT YOUR JOB. You stay focused on your portion and they’ll stay focused on theirs. When they overlap, it needs to be clearly defined whose opinion carries more weight. The Rules of Engagement, at their core, are a clear code of conduct. That way, poor personal behavior (which truly affects company growth) is pulled out of the realm of inter-office politics and into the realm of the bottom line.

The funny part about the Rules of Engagement is that even if you don’t believe what you are saying, simply obiding by the Rules of Engagement works. Everyone may know that you are not saying what you really think, but it doesn’t matter. It keeps the peace and your point was made; Maybe not to the degree that you wanted, but it was still made and you didn’t grind the meeting to a halt over your personal point. I’m not suggesting anyone lie. I’m just saying there is a big difference between “Sue, that’s a horrible idea” and “Sue, I see a lot of challenges that we would need to overcome to make that work, but we’ll look into it. Even if we can’t do what you are suggesting to it’s fullest, I can see some aspects that would be of benefit to the company now.” It may be something you feel really strongly about. Sue’s idea may sink the company in two days if it’s implemented. If it’s that bad, there are ways to express that, without pointing it at Sue. Focus on the issue, not the person.

Rules of engagement:

1) Leave your personal feelings at the door. Be objective. Don’t take criticism personally. On the flip side, be aware that you are talking to and potentially critiquing a person. Be constructive, be objective, but NEVER make it personal. Leave baggage, history, and excuses at the door. We’re here to fix the problem and improve the organization, not point fingers about why it didn’t work in the past. If you make it personal, you will single handedly kill that initiative before it starts. You’ll suck all the energy out of the room and the whole meeting will be wasted. Someone will try to salvage the meeting and try to move on. It won’t work. You might as well stop now and try again in two weeks...and it’ll be awkward then too. You’ll also strain relationships outside the conference room. This is the single fastest way to become the office jerk and be the person who kept the company from expanding. DON’T GO THERE.

More to come.

Adopting Technology vs. Understanding Technology

A while back I wrote about the gap in technology use that separates children from their parents. There are the usual jokes about how it defines who can program a VCR and who can send a txt message. When you grow up around technology you adopt it more easily. But there's a big difference between understanding how to use an interface that someone built for you (cell phones and video games) and understanding how the underlying technology works (DOS Prompts and TTL(Transistor-Transistor Logic)).

It's the same thing that happened to automobiles. There's less and less reason to look under the hood and there's less and less reason to troubleshoot your MP3 player or cell phone. This is not a bad thing. Your phone shouldn't crash. But as a result we have fewer opportunities to really understand the technology that we've become dependent on. So what happens when the technology fails and we've never looked under the hood before? Without understanding how something works, what chance do we have of fixing it?

Today, kids are exposed to branded, packaged technology and they are far better at using it than I am. This is a great thing. They get all the benefits of the technology but don't have to spend all the time I did to get things to work. No one wants to take a computer programming class just to record a TV show or dial a phone. There's too much life to live and too many other pursuits we need to follow. But there is a downside. When something is all packaged up, you rarely get a chance to see the "naked technology" behind it. As we become more isolated from the "naked technology" that does the work, we become more dependent on those that package the technology for us.

I'm certainly not advocating that we do away with modern conveniences or start programming our own cell phones. This is just a word of caution to be aware that as technology becomes more "prepared" we give up control over what we want the technology to do.

Zen and the Art of Project Management

After ten years in the design field, you learn a couple things. If I had to narrow down all my experience and pass on just one tidbit of knowledge, it would be the fact that in order for a project to succeed, you must focus more on the people involved than the timeline, budget, and project specifications. In order for a project to be successful, it takes everyone moving in the same direction. I know that sounds obvious. Everyone must be on the same page – have one voice – work as a unified group. We’ve heard it all before, but to say it is one thing; to do it is quite often a different matter. It’s often my job to bring together two things more opposite than oil and water. I have to make marketing and IT into chocolate and peanut butter. The two great tastes that taste great together. In order for a website to truly be successful, it needs good marketing to draw people in. It needs great content to keep them around and it needs great backend applications that allow the users to easily complete a transaction - be it purchasing an item, downloading content, or requesting more info. Whatever the end goal, that process must be seamless and intuitive to the user. That means that IT and marketing MUST work hand in hand. The user must not see where one department ends and another starts.

The reason it’s so difficult is because many people fail to understand the concept that other people think different than they do. Not “think differently” in regards to opinions on music or politics, but “think different.” Their brain is wired different. They approach a problem in a different manner. They bring a different set of life experiences to the table. They bring a different personality – which affects how they deal with a problem. All these things factored together spell out how a person’s brain functions.

The free spirited, live-life-as-it-comes person will approach a problem much differently than the calculating person who must have everything planned out. It seems obvious. But what people fail to realize is that not everyone thinks like they do. People today tend to view ‘different’ as a negative. We want everyone to be the same and the suggestion of ‘different’ is a slippery slope to ‘not equal’ which leads to ‘not as good as.’ Not true. It has nothing to do with talent which people often wrongly associate with self-worth. Well, we’re all different, so we are not equal and no, I’m not as good at some things as other people. So what. I’m no Tiger Woods on the golf course. Big deal. That doesn’t make less of a person. That doesn’t make me bad, I just suck at golf. But I can write code better than Tiger. This isn’t a case of who’s right and who’s wrong. Different can just be different. It’s just the understanding that people “think different” and therefore approach problems or challenged differently. One way may be better than another, but that does not negate all aspects of the lesser way.

If you ask a "creatively" inclined person what the name "Old El Paso Salsa" evokes emotionally, they'll easily give you an answer. It comes naturally to them. If you ask an "analytically" inclined person the same question, they'll simply blink at you in confusion (and probably think it's a foolish question). I'm not saying either group is better or worse. They are simply different. We need both. It's just a matter of recognizing the type of person and knowing what type of job to give them. Trying to force an analytical person into a creative role will only make them frustrated. Best case scenario, they "try and fix the problem" by applying methodologies that they understand to a foreign problem. You would end up with a micro managed brand name that explicitly and fully states what the product is in a very unimaginative and straightforward manner. You’d get "Farmers' Best International Fresh Mango Pineapple Salsa with Lime" and a tagline of "no preservatives". It says what the product is, but it doesn't evoke any reaction or emotion from the customer. You can’t blame the “analytical” thinker. They did their best. If you put someone in a role they are not suited for, they will fail. The person well suited for the job could have done it 5 times faster, cheaper, and easier. But we often do this in business. We plug people into roles they are not suited for and then wonder why the end product wasn’t so good. Put them in a role they are good at. Get them in there to ground everything the “creatives” are doing. They are there to make sure that the “creatives” are considering all the parameters of the project.

You need a combination of these things, but they must be balanced according to the criteria established by the project. There is a time and a place for each and the important thing is to know when and how much weight to put on everyone’s different role.

Put the “analytic” in the room during a “creative” brainstorm session and it’s a train wreck waiting to happen. The “creatives” are firing off ideas in the “safe” environment of a thought shower where no idea is a bad idea. If an “analytical” is there shooting down ideas as they come, the creativity will dry up faster than a noon-day sprinkle in the desert.

It’s simply a matter of knowing everyone’s strengths and what they bring to the table. Play to their strengths and know throughout the process how much weight to put on everyone’s opinion. In the brainstorming meeting the “analyticals'” opinion carries 2% weight. In the meeting where the “creatives’'” are presenting their ideas, the “analyticals'” opinion carries 85% weight. The conference room isn’t a missionary trip to convert the unfaithful to your way of thinking. So don’t try. It’s a mistake to think you can change the way someone thinks. You can change their opinion on a topic, but you can’t change how they think through a problem. Understand that and also have some insight into their approach, even if it doesn’t work for you. At least you know where they are coming from. It’s not about touchy-feely understanding how Bob really feels on the inside. It’s about getting the job done as saving some time. If you have a clue where Bob is coming from, you can disagree, but understand his thought process and move forward together to improve the idea – and no one feels insulted, disgruntled, or unmotivated.

The bottom line for success is to go with the flow. That is not to suggest being lax or flippant. But be open and patient. Understand that others have a different opinion and different way to solve a problem. Play to their strengths and don’t try and make them something they are not. We need to know when speak up and when to keep our mouths shut. We need to know our role in the company universe and know when our opinion matters and when it doesn’t. Yes, I said it. Sometimes our opinion doesn’t matter. Our point may be very valid – just not right now. It’s called a pen. Write it down and bring it up at the appropriate time. Because it’s truly about making the project a success and in order to do that, everyone must have ownership in it. To get respect, you have to give respect. To be heard, you must listen. Know you’re role and understand that sometimes it’s about you and sometimes it’s not…and that’s okay.