Great Data Visualization Example

Here's an interesting mashup brought to you by O'Reilly's Radar blog. It's called wikipediavision. This mashup enables you to watch Wikipedia edits in (near) real time.

While this isn't something that the average Joe will do for hours on end, it is a powerful example of data visualization - something that every business should be experimenting with.

Want to reinforce your image as a Global company? Why not show an interactive map demonstrating each realtime sale around the world? Are you a locally based company trying to build a local business? You could do the same thing to help reinforce the message that lots of local customers trust your products or services.

Want to visually demonstrate how a cross-selling campaign is working? Show companies that are purchasing (for the first time) from multiple product lines. Flag telemarketing sales as they occur and show them to your internal call center.

There are thousands of ways data visualization (in the form of mashups) could impact your business.

The Perfect (Geek) Storm

Last night my son returned from work just as a Boston Red Sox player had stolen second base. In case you weren't aware, Taco Bell promised America a free taco should anyone steal a base in the World Series. (You can collect on Oct 30th from 2pm to 5pm).

When he heard the news, my son, who is a picky eater and seems to exist on Taco Bell (how's that for an oxymoron?) declared "This is the best day ever!" A free Taco from Taco Bell and tomorrow Leopard (Apple's new O/S) is released!

I guess for a geek - it's a perfect storm.

Told You So.

Back in July I wrote a post called Color Me Cynical about how we were going to start seeing nature's colors used by the world's biggest polluters, in an effort to market themselves as environmentalists. Isn't the logo pretty? Doesn't it remind you of daisies?

Today BBC reported that BP has been fined $373 million for fraud and environmental transgressions.

Doing the Right Thing for the Wrong Reason

If people like Seth Godin can't convince you that permission marketing is the path to take to grow your business in the 21st Century, you may be persuaded by Catalog Choice.

As reported in Guy Kawaski's blog, Catalog Choice is an organization funded by environmental groups to help reduce the tremendous waste and environmental impact caused by the printing and distributing of 9 Billion (that's with a "B") catalogs per year.

The service is free.

It acts as a slightly more cumbersome "unsubscribe" button - for paper catalogs. The website handles the communications with the catalog publisher. You simply sign up for the service and list the catalogs you no longer want to receive. After about 10 weeks, the catalogs should stop - or you can report "abuse".

I hope the service is effective in forcing those "old school" Direct Mail Marketers to begin to really embrace Web2.0 "permission marketing" - even if they're doing it because they have no choice.

The Bullshit Poll

A couple of days ago, I wrote how Chris matthews is Joan Rivers, complaining about how the political pundits are talking about everything BUT the issues.

Thanks to Jeff, who provided me a link to a video from the Onion News Network, who feel the same way.


Poll: Bullshit Is Most Important Issue For 2008 Voters

eWeek's Subscription Blunder

I'm not sure which genius developed the subscription process for eWeek, but I do know that they should be shot.

Today I received an email from eWeek, offering me a free subscription. Of course, the fee for subscribing is divulging information about your position, buying influence, industry and I.T. budgetary information. It takes a minute or two to complete all the questions.

I'm fine with that.

But don't position your publication as a trusted source for I.T. decision making - a source that will help me be more successful in my career, and then, within seconds of my subscription, undermine that sales pitch with a poor cross-sell.

Case in point.

No sooner had I signed up for eWeek, when I received a confirmation email and an offer to subscribe (for free) to CIO Insight and Baseline magazines, from the same publisher.

Less than 60 seconds earlier, I had just completed their subscription application and when I clicked on the subscribe button, they were asking me to provide the same information again!

With processes like these, I don't know you're going to help ME be more successful.

Any thought to a one click subsciption for other Ziff-Davis publications after I've completed the application? Or a chance to subscribe to other Z-D publications within the original subscription process?

Note to Z-D: If you're wondering why the cross-selling efforts aren't yielding the desired results, put yourself in your customers' shoes and try out the subscription process for yourself.

Chris Matthews IS Joan Rivers

I used to be a fan of the Sunday morning political talk shows. I watched MSNBC nightly to see Chris Matthews and his guests dissect the political landscape.

But recently I've come to the conclusion that Chris (and all the other pundits, liberal and conservative alike) are as relevant to the political scene as Joan Rivers is to the Oscars. They're all part of the same circus and their commentary has no affect on the outcome.

I think the final straw was when I saw comedian Steven Colbert make an appearance on Meet the Press and get treated like a serious Presidential candidate.

If you've watched recently, the pundits debate "issues" like "Is Obama Black Enough" and spend time talking about Hillary's "cackle" or her cleavage or John Edwards hair or whether Ann Coulter's vile remarks are helping or hurting a democratic candidate. They talk about which Republican can court the religious right or which candidate is most like Reagan.

High school stuff.

They aren't covering a United States presidential race. They're treating this like an election of the High School Prom Court. Now I ordinarily wouldn't have a problem with that, except that the High School Prom court won't be leading the country after they're elected.

The political pundits have the same informational impact on the 2008 Presidential race as Joan Rivers has on who wins Best Actor - none. It's all about style, swagger, who's hot and who's not. It's about who is buzzworthy. "Who are you wearing dahling?" It's a friggin' popularity contest instead of a contest of ideas.

I understand that to win, people need to vote for you. They need to like you.

Our parents used to vote for people who proposed ideas to make each of our lives a little better, healthier, safer, more prosperous, more free. It seems like our generation pulls the lever for they person they'd most like to have a beer with.

And it's a shame. Because I think that if the political pundits scratched below both parties talking points, they could help move the debate on the issues forward. They could help clarify where each candidate stands. They could help the nation actually decide on a candidate based on what they would DO when they got into office. They could hold people accountable for policy details and for action.

But that would be harder than commenting on style.

I want to know how any candidate can accept special interest donations and claim to be unaffected by them.

I want to know how any candidate who proposes that private health insurers are the answer to our health insurance crisis, will offer coverage to everyone, affordably - including people with pre-existing or chronic conditions.

I want to know how no-bid government contracts for services are in the best interest of the American people and why we have to out-source Iraq security to Blackwater or our port security to Dubai.

I want to know how we will transition from oil based energy to alternate fuels.

I want to know how we will address global warming, border security, illegal immigration, outsourcing of manufacturing jobs, the declining dollar, torture, trade deficits, the national debt, the future of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid.

And I want to know that before November 2008.

Chris Matthews et al, can continue to cover breaking news - like how many 9/11 references Rudy has made in a recent speech or whether Obama is wearing his lapel flag pin.

Or they can drive discussion and debate to help us elect an effective President.

Otherwise stop wasting my time.

Sneaky Buggers.....

This afternoon I happened to have my IM window open when I noticed a friend's IM record with a headphones icon and the name of a song listed. I thought he was trying to sell something using his IM profile.

When I IMed him, he was unaware that anything was going on. In fact, he had been listening to a song on his iTunes. But he was unaware that I knew that! He hadn't made any changes to his profile settings, the information had just appeared.


Not only that, but the artist and song was also an active link... to MSN Music, where you could purchase the song!


My friend had provided an unwitting endorsement of the music he happened to be playing. When we finally figured out what was going on, I think he felt his privacy had been invaded. Perhaps this "feature" has been around a long time. But we'd never noticed it before.

Microsoft you sneaky buggers.

The 2 Minute Drill

Football fans are very familiar with the term "2 minute drill". The term refers to the strategy employed by teams (usually playing from behind) to maximize effectiveness during the final 2 minutes of a football game.

They use a "no huddle" offense, signalling plays using gestures or audible calls. The entire team rushes to the line of scrimmage. They run plays designed to preserve time on the clock - running the ball out of bounds or passing sideline routes.

The pace of play is dramatically increased. The defense has little time to react to offensive formations and no time to substitite players.

An effective 2 minute drill can be a game saver or a game winning strategy.

And so teams practice the 2 minute drill all the time. You never know when you'll need it and you have to be ready, just in case.

The 2 minute drill shows you how well your players perform under pressure. They help distinguish the players who come through in the clutch. The practice takes performance to a higher level (just when you need it most).

In business, we don't have the equivalent of the 2 minute drill. We can't practice performing at a higher level for a short duration. There's no way to know in advance which employees will rise to a stressful challenge and who will fold under stress.

Or is there?

A couple of years back, we were faced with an ERP version upgrade. Typically these can take 6 months or more to complete. They require much of the same testing, documenting, training efforts of the original implementation. They are a tough challenge.

We couldn't stand the idea of spending the next 6 months of our lives going through that hell.

So we decided to do it in 8 weeks.

It was our version of the 2 minute drill.

I must confess, not everyone believed in the mission. A couple of very good functional analysts said it couldn't be done. But we started anyway.

The time constraints caused us to work much smarter, and much faster. But we couldn't sacrifice quality. The system had to work properly, documentation had to be completed and training materials updated. No shortcuts on the results.

This "crisis" forced us all to re-examine the standard processes. We looked for ways to shortcut the process - to do things in parallel. So we installed the new system in its own environment. We began unit testing while our application developers re-integrated customizations we had made. Original test scripts were used and slightly modified. We developed training materials simultaneously with testing. Because the entire team was focused on getting this done quickly we adapted.

We didn't make our 8 week deadline.

We took 12 weeks. But we did it in half the time a typical upgrade takes to do. And the results were spectacular.

We learned several things from the exercise. We discovered who worked smarter and who didn't. We discovered how individuals handled the self-imposed pressure. We saw people "watching each other's back" and helping out where it was required.

Most importantly, we learned that it could be done. We had done an upgrade in 12 weeks. Three months earlier, only a few thought it was possible.

Now I'm not advocating that this be done all the time.

No team can run a 2 minute drill throughout the game. The players would be exhausted, your team incapacitated.

But if you pick and choose the right task or project, and try your version of the 2 minute drill, you'll end up discovering who the star players really are. You'll know your team's true potential and show them what's possible, in the process.

And if your team begins to think that anything is possible. It is.

Ahead of their Time

Apparently Silicon Valley is rethinking the office cubicle. Funny, that's something my team did about 7 years ago.

We were moving into a new building. For the first time, all my local I.T. staff would be under the same roof. As part of the planning for the new building, we had to figure out where cubicles would be located and how they would be configured.

To keep everyone happy, I delegated the cubicle layout task to the various team managers (Helpdesk, Knowledge Management Team, Infrastructure & Networking Team, SAP Team and Application Development Team). The only constraint was that each group could only utilize 64 sq feet per employee.

While most teams stuck with the traditional rows of cubicles, our Knowledge Management group took a different approach.

Since they typically hired interns and teamed them up with full time developers, they chose an arrangement of side by side desks (no barrier in between). Where there were walls, they were only about 4 feet tall. Their space also included a common, open concept meeting area - conference table with whiteboard and network connections for impromptu meetings - only steps away from their desks.

The open "communal" concept fit their work style perfectly. Communication and interaction were maximized and no one seemed to suffer from a lack of privacy.

After about a year in the building, I heard laments from others outside this group that the KM area was far "cooler" than the standard cubicles everyone else was using.

They were ahead of their time. Seven years later, Silicon Valley is catching on.

Radiohead Needs a Lesson from Steve Jobs

Seth Godin blogs this morning about Radiohead's new album. He may have jumped the gun. While Radiohead is adopting a "new" marketing strategy with a "pay what you want" for the album download, it may be more a classic case of buyer beware.

As reported this week, many fans are disappointed with the quality of the .mp3 files. Apparently produced with low bitspeed, audiophiles are starting to report that they're feeling ripped off - that the quality of the art is suffering from it's digital production.

Cynics believe that is new marketing ploy is simply a way to get early adopters to buy the downloads, then be forced to purchase the higher quality physical CD at a later date - morphing a "pay what to want" campaign, to a "pay me twice" outcome.

If this is the case (fans would argue that this would be highly unusual for Radiohead to do), they had better take a lesson from Steve Jobs recent iPhone price slashing debacle, and figure out a way to make higher quality downloads available at no extra charge, or somehow generate an online coupon to allow download purchasers a shot at buying the physical CD at a discount.

One thing is for certain. In a Web 2.0 world, they had better address the issue quickly, because the word is out - everywhere.

Four More Ideas - How to Create a great Website

Seth Godin has a quick read blog this morning on How to create a great Website.

Good ideas all. We (3 of us) just finished (for now) the 5Rules website, complete with Forum and company Blog. All 10 of Seth's principles rang true.

Here are a few more suggestions.

1. Steal ideas shamelessly. Don't copy! I mean take a look at your favorite websites and determine WHY they're your favorites (easy navigation, graphics design, simplicity, complexity, whatever...). Then morph those ideas into your own unique site. Our 5Rules site was inspired by 3 or 4 other sites in completely different businesses.

2. Buy/rent/Open Source vs. Build. For the sake of speed and cash, if your site requires things like a blog or a discussion forum, there are plenty of open source options for you out there. For 5Rules, we used Wordpress for our blog and are using Vanilla for our Product Forum. Our web development team (okay, it is one very talented guy) modified some designs we liked, to better brand our sites.

3. Give credit where it's due. If you're going to use someone's design and modify it, make sure you acknowledge the original designer. It's only right. Our modified blog design was based on Talian designed by VA4Business. And we say so in the blog footer.

4. With respect to Seth's idea #10 - Never Settle... Understand that websites grow, morph. You're never done. Make certain that the critical aspects work well, but perfect is not the launch criteria. Otherwise you'll stay in development forever.

Beware Renovators Remorse

After almost a lifetime in the Information Technology world, I've learned a few things. One of them is; Beware of Renovator's Remorse.

Renovator's Remorse is a condition that intrepid homeowners occasionally succumb to. A condition that has them saying "While we're at it, we might as well..... (insert unplanned improvement here)".

The temptation is almost unavoidable. Once you're tearing out a wall, you "might as well", upgrade the electrical or redo the plumbing... and in an instant your project goes from a room remodel to a major renovation. Your budget and timeline go out the window.

It's the same way with I.T. projects.

You begin with the mission to add some new functionality to a program. Once you're looking at the code, there's an almost irrestible temptation to fix it all. Rewrite code to make it more efficient. Clean up ugly or incoherant sections. Build better subroutines, take advantage of new technology, re-engineer the application...

And you do so at the peril of your project.

And your reputation.

It may make perfect sense to do all these things as long as you build them into your project estimates. After all, in the case of I.T. it's not YOUR money you're spending. And while you may be the beneficiary of more sustainable/supportable programs, the business may not be willing to pay the price or wait that long.

So be honest with your customer. If you sense a huge advantage in rewriting code instead of just adding it, explain it up front and get agreement before you dive in.

And next time, build in some time and expense into your job estimates to cover the "while we're at it" moments.

The "Truth" Is Out There

I hope that every business knows that the bar has been raised.

It used to be that if you had a dissatisfied customer they would tell ten people. With Web 2.0 tools, they can now tell ten thousand. Google shows 13,700 hits for the phrase "Best Buy sucks".

In my previous post, I complained about Best Buy's warranty return process. Just for fun, this morning I tried a search on Technorati. Here's what I found.

Companies had best be warned to pay attention to their process and performance more than ever. Because it's no longer possible to "control the message" or "contain the crisis", once it's out in the web world.

If you haven't yet aligned yourself around customer focus or choose to proactively address service or product issues, it'll be done for you.

And not in a way you'll like.

Your strategy will have to be better than buying up all the "yourcompaysucks.com" domains. You may actually have to search out these people, examine your processes, critique your staff.

Sometimes you'll have to "fire a customer".

Regardless, now would be a very good time to sit down and decide whether you need someone trolling the web, searching for naysayers - to ferret out the unsatisfied and proactively address their concerns.

Because you don't want your reputation to be placed in the hands of others.

Slow Learners

For the SECOND TIME in a year, our family is shipping another Xbox 360 back to the people who manage Best Buy's warranty program.

My first experience wasn't particularly enjoyable.

It was partially my fault. I was stupid enough to return the product to the store where I bought it. The salesperson thanked me for visiting, but told me that I had to return it to the 3rd party warranty claims provider - as stated in my extended warranty.

Okay - that's on me.

But then I went to their website to enter a claim. Pretty easy, except that as I was completing the claim, I was given the option of having a postage paid mailing label mailed to me or I could choose to get one via email. Since I was already online, which do you think I chose?

That's right -except the email never came that day. Or the day after. Or the day after that.

In all, it took 4 calls to finally receive a mailing label - by snail mail! Once I got over the hurdle of getting to the starting line....the rest of the process went pretty smoothly. About 2 weeks later, I received a Best Buy card, with the amount of my purchase loaded on it.

Needless to say, this time I was hoping for a better experience - after all I had spoken with BB's people four times on the last return - surely they have made some improvements in the process!

As it turns out, they have. And they haven't.

Once again, I submitted my warranty claim online. Good news! They knew who I was and what I had purchased. This time I was offered 3 options for receiving a mailing label.

I could print one out immediately or I could have one emailed to me (which I would have to print out later) or I could receive a mailing label by snail mail.

I chose to print a return mailing label immediately. Lo and behold, everything worked!

Sort of.

On my previous return, I had instructions to photocopy my receipt and my warranty registration brochure and to include them in the box with the defective goods. No such instructions this time. Just a mailing label. No instructions in the brochure. No instructions on the website.

Given my last experience, I thought I had better call - just to be sure.

I got through pretty quickly and was informed that there must have been some sort of "glitch" and that YES, they still required all the photocopied documentation to be returned with the damaged goods...

Does Best Buy ever test their processes? (or third party processes?) Since they seem to be such slow learners, here's a couple of suggestions.

1. If I'm submitting a claim online, give me two options - save the mailing label to my PC or print the mailing label. If I'm online, I'm not a candidate for snail mail.

2. Get rid of the requirement to photocopy or mail in copies of receipts. You already know how much I paid for the damn item and you've already accepted my warranty as being valid. Stop with the additional paperwork.

3. Give me two refund options - either send me a Best Buy card via snail mail or better yet, once you've received the damaged goods, setup a Best Buy certificate to be picked up at the local store (about 1 week faster than snail mail). Then you have me IN THE STORE with money in hand.

Oh, and tell Microsoft that they make crappy Xboxes...

Beating Expectations

My beloved Brewers closed out their season this past weekend, with a come from behind win against the Padres.

As a fan, it was an entertaining year. The Brewers had a winning season for the first time (in what seems like) forever. They set a new team record for home runs - 228. Fans showed up in droves, setting a new attendance record (2.876 million).

Our team featured the NL home run champ (Prince Fielder) who just might be the National League MVP and we witnessed the exceptional play of (hopefully) the Rookie of the Year, Ryan Braun.

The Milwaukee Brewers held onto first place for something like 131 days during the season.

Although we missed the playoffs (due to the dreaded Cubs), the Brewers put on a pretty entertaining show. This year, fans turned out in droves and stayed until the last pitch, because you never knew when the Brewers would pull one out.

Next year will be an entirely different story. They will face their toughest challenge yet.

Our expectations.

You see this year, no one could have predicted the success the Brewers would have. Sure, we knew Prince Fielder was going to be a star and that the team featured a very young and talented group.

But after 15 non-winning seasons, expectations at the start of the season were pretty low - perhaps non-existent. The Brewers are a young team - talented, but not seasoned. And so, all the Brewer's accomplishments came as a VERY pleasant surprise.

It's what made this year's second place finish almost bearable.

But in the wake of such tremendous success, they've created expectations - for their fans and for themselves.

For the first time in a quarter century, next year the fans will fill the seats - not with the hope that the Brewers will win, but with the expectation that they will win. Next year it won't be about setting personal records, success will be measured by team performance in October.

Next year won't just be about beating the Cubs. It'll be about beating everyone's expectations. Next year could be their toughest challenge yet.