The New American

How to Mount a 60" Sharp Aquos TV in a 47" Wall Alcove

2012-01-17T13:58:00.000-07:00

I bought a new Sharp 60" (ridiculously large, yes) Aquos LCD TV and wanted to mount it in the same spot where I had a rack mount for my old 47" Sony TV. Unfortunately, the wall mount was embedded in an alcove, so it seemed I need to do some serious construction to re-mount the rack so it was flush with the outside walls.

But, with a little ingenuity and a collision of high-tech electronics and good ol' fashioned carpentry, I got it mounted with $11 worth of materials from the hardware store and an hour of work.

HINT: You need a drill with a built-in level, or a drill-punch table-mounted drill, if you want to have any hope of drilling straight.

Good luck!

My Letter to my Congressman Jared Polis on the Debt Ceiling Debate

2011-07-27T21:47:00.000-06:00

I hope this helps! I wonder if they have time to read it?

-DK

_________________________________________________________

RE: Debt Limit Vote - let's do a "Grander" $10T Barga

Hi Jared,

We met a few years ago in a meeting with Don Springer & myself, talking about social media and your eduction initiatives. I'm happy to report that since then, I've become a US Citizen, one of the proudest moments of my life. As a former Canadian, this is weirdly a bigger deal than you think. 99% of Boulderites I know wax poetically about one day moving to Canada. I know better - the USA is the best country on earth because Americans are TRULY committed to freedom of speech, liberty, and the animal spirits that keep generations of entrepreneurs (like yourself!) looking for ways to better themselves, their families and the people around them. And if they make a buck along the way, that is not just OK, that is the American Dream.

I consider myself a "90% Libertarian". The government has an obligation to the bottom 5 or 10% of society who truly can't help themselves, and (in the word's of Pierre Trudeau, former Canadian Liberal Prime Minister) certainly "has no role in the nation's bedrooms". But I am fiscally conservative because of that same philosophy of liberty - the government should not be a vehicle for immense transfers of wealth from one part of society to another, except where we really need to help folks. Maybe this makes me a "compassionate conservative"?

So when I see the debate in Washington around the debt ceiling in the past couple of weeks, it feels like we have the chance to FINALLY make a grand bargain. I don't understand why we are talking about $2.8 or $3.3 Trillion in cuts over 10 years, and not seizing the moment to go for $10 Trillion. Or whatever the number is that puts on a path NEXT YEAR to spend within our means. My wife & I have have adopted some wonderful 60 year old long-time Boulder Democrats as parents here, and they are practical AARP types who are in favor of not passing a burden onto the next generation. I think we have a chance (Boehner seems to be willing to whip the Tea Party Republicans into line) to finally put some sacred cows out to pasture (I'm Vegan, so we can't shoot the cows). Let's do crazy things. Let's raise the social security age each year until we get to 72. Let's not pay for all drugs for seniors. Let's make social security more like a 401K, where people can choose their level of risk. Let's get rid of all corporate subsidies, Freddie-Mae & Mac (the Canadians achieved ~67% home ownership, higher than the US, without them - there are LOTS of private lenders who will step up to lend). Let's get rid of Mortgage deductions. Let's replace Corporate & capital taxes with a 10% VAT. Let's make the tax system have lower rates, and eliminate all the stupid, random, distorting, paper-work demanding deductions & credits. Let's get the government OUT of healthcare and let the technical innovators (like you!) get the price of a cardiac stent down to $800, so nobody need "health insurance" and can simply buy it. Let's unleash the power of the market and liberty to solve problems, but maintain a Government Department of Writing Checks to Do Things for the few areas where we truly need to take care of that small part of society that needs help.

It feels like a great "out" in this debate on the Hill is to make a grander deal.. Let's do $12 Trillion in cuts. Reform all the sacred cows. Let's get ourselves on a path for 8% growth for the next 10 years. If you do that, the Democrats will credit for it and be the party that finally "fixed" Washington. I'm a Republican, but I reward results, so if you guys can pull it off, you get my vote.

Keep up the good work representing us.

-Darren Kelly

Awesome new Filter Effect

2011-04-22T23:21:00.000-06:00

I call this one "DK time". It is a combo of 3 filters on my HTC incredible using a sneaky new app

2011-03-17T10:46:00.001-06:00

Jennifer Aniston Video "Virus"

2011-03-17T10:41:00.000-06:00

This starts slow, but is pretty funny by the end. And she is still really, really awesome. Is she a cougar yet?
-DK

Nice Work, Yahoo News

2011-01-11T11:50:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty sure that Jared Loughner had nothing to do with the MySpace layoffs. Although he is wearing the same beanie that many, now unemployed, MySpace staffers like to wear.

2010-10-21T16:57:00.001-06:00

Miller High Life - Champagne of Beers

2010-07-01T23:50:00.000-06:00

This video pretty much speaks for itself. Joel Brown, this is for you.
-DK

NHL Playoffs in the Tivo Era

2010-05-18T17:29:00.000-06:00

On Sunday I returned from Winter Park, San Francisco & Seattle. I was away from my Tivo for 6 days, and made Herculean efforts to NOT find out anything about the playoffs. Which meant last night, beginning at 9:30pm with the family safely tucked into their cribs, I watched, in order:

- Game 6 Habs/Penguins
- Game 6... Boston/Philly
- Game 6 Chicago/Vancouver (Vancouver really really sucks)
- Game 7 Habs/Penguins (I need to buy a Cammeleri jersey)
- Game 7 Boston/Philly (what a game).

Without commercials and intermissions, this took 4 hours, but was totally worth it.

Holy Crap, this Blog still has SEO juice

2010-05-18T14:40:00.000-06:00

I heard on NPR that "you used to only Google yourself as a vanity thing, now you need to do it every week just to make sure crazy things aren't showing up about you". So I just Googled "Darren Kelly", and lo-and-behold my very underloved blog is front and center, ranked #1. That Irish footballer (and that NBA hopeful (#9 must be slowly fading out of the limelight. However, some OTHER guy's facebook profile is #2, meaning that my Facebook vanity URL is doing me no good whatsoever, apparently).

Sadly, my time at Photobucket hasn't helped any of my images crack the #5 Universal search photos that Google associates to Darren Kelly. Oddly, the ultrasound picture of a baby submitted by Photobucket's founder is attached to "Darren Kelly", and has more photo SEO juice than my actual photos, appearing in the 5th row.

All this is simply an effort to make sure I have some fresh content in the New American Blog, just in case anyone is searching. Cheers.

Caucus night in Colorado

2010-03-16T09:54:00.002-06:00

Big Caucus night tonight in Colorado! As a New American, I'm going to try to make it out. Call me a nerd, but I'm pretty excited about the caucus part of the American political process. Step 1: "Get together and talk, perhaps in someone's living room". Gotta love democracy. Stay tuned for results!
-DK

Thank goodness the Hockey Season is back

2009-10-06T17:18:00.000-06:00

OK, I may be a new American, but I'm still going to be a big hockey fan (and a band-wagon-jumping Rockies fan). With my Colorado Avalanche now 2-0, with our young guns Duchene, Wolski and Stasny looking VERY good so far, I am really excited. I just need to figure out how to find the time to watch the games (probably via TIVO at midnight, like last year.)

The big test of American Citizenship for me will come in February during the Olympics, when I'll find out if I jump up & down when Team Canada scores, or when Team USA scores.

I'm pretty sure I'll be cheering for Stasny...man I hope he gets 100 points this season.

A Canadian weighs in on the HealthCare debate in the US

2009-09-09T13:07:00.002-06:00

Normal 0 EN-US

Tonight the rhetoric in Obama-land is focused on healthcare. This is probably because the President wants to change the subject AWAY from the Cash-for-Clunkers = "Why am I buying new cars for my neighbors". So I thought I'd weigh in on the subject.

I have a lot of personal experience with Government-run healthcare. As many of you know, I grew up in Canada (Edmonton) until age 24. My family is still there.

Here are some of my personal glimpses of what happens when a government runs healthcare:

* My father waiting for 9 months for bypass surgery, hoping he wouldn’t die

* Me waiting 2.5 years for elective knee reconstruction surgery, which ruined my leg permanently. A US doctor who saw the scar said “I haven’t seen that technique since the 70’s”. I had the surgery in 1991.

* I flew my mother down to the US for shoulder reconstruction and paid $20K in cash (list price, not the $7K insurance companies typically pay). Otherwise she would have had to wait over a year, at which time the reconstruction would not be possible and an active 70 year old woman would have been crippled.

* Yesterday, my sister-in-law waited hours in an emergency to have her 6 week old newborn admitted. It turns out, the hospital she entered does not have the equipment required to treat the baby, but the baby is too sick to move – so they wait.

Americans need to know that the only reason the Canadian system survives is that when people get really sick, they come to America and pay for it. Without that release valve, the Canadian political consensus for government-provided healthcare would quickly unravel as people were unnecessarily reduced to infirmity due to rationing.

People who say health-care is different from other products and the market won't work simply aren't looking at the facts. Lasik surgery, and to some extent dentistry, are excellent examples of ubiquitous, cheap care that is continuously improving and getting cheaper.

What the US needs is LESS government intrusion in healthcare. Healthcare reform should mean:

1. The elimination of the absurd tax subsidy for employer-provided care. Healthcare should be independent from your job. What makes the President think small business owners such as auto-shops and florists are good administrators of health programs? D-uh.

2. The elimination of state-restrictions of offering any kind of health insurance program they want. Let competition decide what plans are popular - not some bureaucrat that thinks "homoepaethic vegan meal advice" is a mandatory coverage item. (I'm Vegan, so I'm allowed to make fun here)

3. Consumer led pricing & shopping. Let us shop for the best doctors & care. Let ME decide if I want to pay per procedure, or sign up for a fixed $10K per year or $5K wellness-based program.

4. Vouchers for the poor. If you REALLY need to have a socialist component, give everyone in America below a certain income & wealth limit a $15K voucher for healthcare which they can use as they please each year. Heck, let'em spend it on Big Macs for all I care. The government should write checks only, and back off to let competition work out how the care is delivered.

I'm happy to respond to your comments. Obama is a great guy, a great orator and a great Dad. But his ideas on how to micromanage complex systems are simply scary.

North Americans have Huge advantage over Europeans in Facebook Vanity URL landgrab

2009-06-12T11:25:00.003-06:00

As many of you know, tonight at Midnight ET, Facebook users can grab a "vanity URL" for themselves. The big competition for www.facebook.com/darrenkelly is myself , the former college basketball star, and an Irish footballer.

I just realized that the Irish guy will have to be up at 5am local time in order to try to grab his name. An from what I know of Irish footballers, I bet he'll be at the pub late tonight and in no shape to log on in the morning. Ha ha!!!!

And also, I've reserved it already. I have friends in high social media places. Sorry boys.

-DK

The 2012 Pelosi GTxi SS/RT Sport Edition

2009-06-05T15:18:00.001-06:00

Thank goodness this is only costing us $50 billion!
DK

My old Boss is now Ambassdor to South Africa

2009-06-05T14:55:00.003-06:00

Don Gips has moved from Obama bag-man to Ambassador of South Africa. Good for him, he will be perfect in that role.

Congrats to Don.

Google vs. Yahoo Search Monkey vs. Bing

2009-05-29T10:10:00.004-06:00

Grant Simmons, the Search Guru at TSA, came up with a fantastic analysis of Microsoft's new Bing search results.

"Searchers appreciate the simplicity of Google interface - the results don't look like they've been manipulated. Yahoo's Search Monkey looks like Google, but also includes structured data to present more within the simple, familiar interface. Bing gives the perception of providing filtered results with pretty ‘flash & sizzle’ that makes you feel like big brother is deciding what you should see. Thus:

Google: Raw search results that you can choose. (Results = All-you-can-eat buffet)

Yahoo: Better-than-Raw search results that you can choose (Results = Buffet with shrimp)

Bing: (Results = daily specials only)"

-DK

Seriously, I think drinking coffee is making me thinner

2009-05-27T09:29:00.003-06:00

I'm putting this question out there for the crowd to consider. In the past 4 or 5 months, I've been drinking a bit more coffee than I used to. Perhaps 2 or 3 cups in the morning instead of the usual one cup. Since then, I've lost 10 or 15 pounds - and it wasn't like I was really fat before. And I've never ever dieted in my life. What the hell? Is there some genetic secret I've unlocked for my genotype? Wait a minute, I sat beside Kirstie Alley on a plane just after her Oprah appearance a couple of weeks ago - I hope I didn't catch the yo-yo syndrome. Btw, Kirstie is very nice, and very funny, for the record. She held my baby daughter for me as I searched for formula...

Anyway, please comment if you know anything about the relationship between coffee and weight.

NHL highlights from Hulu

2009-04-21T23:33:00.001-06:00

God I love the Internet. I can embed these highlights and the 7 people who read my blog get notification about it. Hi Mom!

Anna Kournikova is not a dummy. Her parents ditched her into Tennis School

2009-04-21T14:45:00.006-06:00

From my friends at KSwiss. If this code doesn't work, try this link.

Mildy embarrassing video from HBS reunion

2009-03-18T13:30:00.004-06:00

I was doing a little SEO checking using Microsoft's live.com search (down to 6.6% marketshare vs Google's 72% as of Feb 2009) and discovered an obscure video of me telling stories about being Canadian and being in a rock band for the Harvard Business School archive.

What is with the hair? Somebody give that guy a comb.

-DK

Cool "Media Library" functionality with Amazon let's you Share your purchases

2009-03-10T10:46:00.006-06:00

I just noticed that Amazon allows you to share items that you have purchased (or any other item) in a "Media Library" area. You can embed code that allows you to put the box into a blog post or widget very easily.

This is a very cool way to drive traffic to a specific product.

And for the record that Vampire book is my WIFE's purchase.
-DK

Obama's Presidential #44 Coffee Blend in Canada

2009-02-19T11:29:00.004-07:00

Hey everyone - I'm happy to report that Canadians have embraced Obama's visit to Ottawa today: From The Record: "Presidential Blend No. 44 from Timothy's World Coffee. Named for the 44th U.S. commander-in-chief, the blend is being touted as a tribute to Obama's own mixed heritage: "a medium to strong body of Sumatra, with the distinctiveness of Kenyan and the smoothness of Hawaiian Kona."

I tried the coffee today and can personally report that it is a great blend.

-DK

Important Canadian vs. American debate: Decal vs. Deecal

2009-02-04T13:15:00.004-07:00

There is a big give-away in my hometown of Edmonton of special 30th Anniversary Oiler decals by Subway Restaurants. This is a project of a friend of mine. I'm happy to help out, but whenever I say the word "decal" down in the US, people look at me like I'm nuts. You see, Americans pronounce it "DEEcal", which is very very odd. This exposes one of the many imporant differences between Canadians and Americans. I invite you to share any other important differences here.

NHL Haiku

2009-02-03T00:38:00.004-07:00

Just finished watching my Colorado Avalanche beat the team I hate second most (Dallas I hate most), the Calgary Flames.

Of course, I am inspired to write haiku:

Bertuzzi still a bum, Boo Boo Boo
Iginla needs a centerman, Maybe it is you?
21 Albertans but yet a Finn is the glue

Sad, really.
-DK

Multi-Tasking Canadians

2009-01-27T10:35:00.004-07:00

The folks at Ipsos Reid have confirmed what all parents of teenagers already know - when you are online, you are probably watching TV and listening to the radio also.

In fact, 44% of Canadians (and presumably, a similar number of multi-tasking Americans) say they are consuming other traditional forms of media while scouring the latest that the Internet has to offer. Further, a lot of folks don't bother with traditional media at all, especially quick-to-be-out-of-date categories such as magazine (40% don't bother with them).

Multi-tasking is only part of this story - the other part is that media with interactive & real-time characteristics is where the audience is. The more one-way and out-of-date the message, the less an entire generation of consumers is interested.

Recently, a lot of bleeding-edge folks have been getting their news from emerging micro-blogging sites, such as Twitter. Over here at com.motion we follow one particular Twitter-er who seems to beat CNN regularly. Hold on to your hats, folks, media is changing.

What it takes to help start businesses in Africa

2009-01-26T10:41:00.005-07:00

This post is NOT about social media, it is about helping people in Africa get off their reliance on kerosene lamps and instead use solar panels.

My friend Nick Sowden sent this report from the front lines of Madagascar over the weekend. Until he gets back to a spot with better Internet access and blogs on it, I'm putting it up because it is just so damn inspiring. Nick's group, ToughStuff, is hoping to enable small businessmen around Africa with clean technologies that provide real benefits and real profits - which is the only way these types of programs actually work, IMHO:

_________

So Adriaan, the other founder, one of his employees and I just got back from the bush (which I think just means the countryside) . We stayed in in this tiny 10 or 15 home village about half an hour from the capital. They had no electricity, no running water and slept with about 10 people to each mud house. They seemed pretty freaking poor, but I think they had enough food generally (50 different types of rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner). The surrounding scenery was spectacular - I'll send pictures when I get back and have good internet.

I've been spending lots of time working on a project we call Business in a Box (BIAB), where a village entrepreneur (VE) gets a box of solar panels, lamps, radio connectors and cables to charge cell phones. He then charges the products all day and rents them out to the other villagers each night. If things go well he could make 2-4 dollars a day, which is a ton for them.

So we took 4 panels, 3 lamps, 2 batteries and a radio connector set (it was all we had). We gave them all to William, one of the villagers the founder knew and explained how everything worked, hoping to have him rent out the products that night.

William and the other ToughStuff employee (who speaks Malagasy) explained the tools to basically the whole village who came to see them. Everyone was pretty excited and seemed to understand it right away. We wanted the villagers to rent the products, so we told them to buy a solar panel and a lamp. Two of the villagers said okay, we'll buy them. We spent the next 30 minutes explaining that they couldn't buy them because we only had a few, lol. We said that they would have to rent from William. That was a good sign.

A few minutes later a villager paid 500 ariary (25 cents) to use the panel each night for the next 5 nights! William's first customer! 100 ariary/night is almost exactly what we've been predicting.

We went on to rent out all the lamps so we had to use this tiny kerosene lamp, which is, ironically, what we're trying to save these people from. And it sucked. After an hour we went back and bought the lamp back from one of the people so we could see if our food was cooked or not (I know, I know).

Also, the founder took me paragliding. The wind wasn't very good so I only got about 10 or 20 feet off the ground - but he jumped off this big hill and landed a few hundred yards down the hill. Bad ass.

Social Media Not just a Marketing Gig

2009-01-12T11:25:00.006-07:00

I pulled together some quick thoughts on how social media programs can become the hubs of information for many parts of the organization - check it out on the com.motion blog. An excerpt:

"if you are a brand manager and sprinkle a little $$$ behind engaging in social media, you need to be prepared to play a new kind of corporate quarterback. You are going to get feedback that is relevant for your brand far beyond the walls of marketing and PR. Your VP of Customer Service, your VP of Product Development, your VP of R&D, your SVP of Investor Relations and your head of Operations are all going to be interested in the nuggets you uncover as you start to talk with and get to know your social media influencers."

I really believe that this is why social media campaigns are starting to emerge as the cornerstones of many marketing campaigns. They are the customer-information glue of the future.

6th Photo on the 6th Page Meme

2008-12-29T16:45:00.005-07:00

Hey kids, time for a meme (thing "chain letter", but you do it using social media and you don't have to spend any money on stamps).

Tara at Lijit has challenged us to take the 6th picture from our 6th page of pictures on Flickr or Photobucket and blog about it. And then tag 6 others to do the same.

Here is mine. This is a picture of my kid Kaden with 2 of his favorite friends. That duck (aptly named "Ducky") used to be white, but now is a scary shade of grey. I fear that one day, that duck will cause an ebola outbreak, despite out efforts to wash it every week. Ducky no longer can go in the dryer, however, for fear of him losing his head.

I now tag Peter, Tim, Brenna, Geoff, Dell's customer service blog (what the heck - let's see if they are listening. perhaps they can put up a new Dell model photo) & Rohit.

Fun Fun Fun

Another Reason to Love the USA: An American Passport in 2 hours

2008-12-29T10:13:00.006-07:00

I'm definitely an idiot because I should have known better. I was travelling back to Canada from the US for Christmas, and I called the US Immigration offices in Sweetgrass, Montana (they always pick up the phone there, not so much in the big city offices) to double check if I needed a US passport for my 3 month old daughter to travel. The guy on the phone was clear that a birth certificate was enough - even if we were travelling by plane. I pointed out that there was a lot of material on the web saying that I needed a passport - but he insisted that it was not required. This leads me to the rule became aware of in 1998 while immigrating to the States: NEVER TRUST A US IMMIGRATION OFFICIAL, BECAUSE THE RULES ARE COMPLETELY RANDOM.

So when we showed up for our United flight and they told us "sorry, no can do", I had visions of spending Christmas Eve here in Boulder with crying children and an extremely grumpy wife.

Happily, the folks at United gave us a tip that there is a secret Denver (Aurora, actually) immigration office that can make a passport in a couple of hours. They had an address and a phone number. The phone number didn't help, as it said only that the next appointment for a passport was Dec 29 (not helpful). But we decided to drive over there and see if a miracle could occur. The building didn't even have an address on the front of it. But if you make it up to the 6th floor there is a magic room with 3 bored security guards, 100 empty chairs and 3 busy passport-makers behind bullet-proof glass. $140 and 2 hours later - wa la! My daughter has a passport - we make the next flight and the family is saved. NOTE TO US IMMIGRATION: IF YOU GO TO THE TROUBLE OF HAVING AN OFFICE THAT DOES SAME DAY PASSPORTS ON CHRISTMAS EVE, YOU MIGHT WANT TO MARKET THAT FACT, ESPECIALLY ON YOUR PHONE GREETING. OR PERHAPS PUT AN ADDRESS ON THE BUILDING.

This is the kind of thing that can only happen in the good old USA. In most other countries, same day government services (whether it be a passport or cardiac resuscitation) is something that is simply not politically correct. If the government provides it, you should expect to wait a few days/months. And it is certainly too capitalist to allow folks to pay extra money to jump to the front of a line - it sounds too much like something that George Bush would come up with.

Hooray for the US. Although with this post I'm probably blacklisted and will never be able to cross a border again...

Chrysler's Travails Trickle down to Agencies - Do they Share the Blame?

2008-12-18T09:42:00.005-07:00

The news is out that the downfall of Chrysler is squeezing the Omnicom agencies that support it - BBDO and phD in particular. This is expected.

But an interesting question is how much are these agencies to blame for their client's travails? Surely the union contracts which hamstring innovation and workrules which prevent tapping the ideas of the front-line folks making the cars are a big problem. Quality is a problem, but I can tell you from personal experience that Audi & BMW models have issues to.

So a bit of a light-bulb went off for me when I saw Joe DiBello's comment on Adage. I'll quote him directly here:

"The bulk purchase of media with a "cheaper is better" mindset has resulted in millions being squandered on spots that ran in the wrong place and produced bad or no results. ...... Most agencies still have no innovative knowledge of or plan for effective Internet use, intelligent fulfillment of sports sponsorships, or locally-savvy consumer involvements. If they continue to cleave to the national, generic, institutional, branding tactics instead of an integrated, ground-level plan for connection with the people who buy (or don't buy) the product, the industry is doomed. "

I tend to agree with Joe. While there is clearly a role for national TV spots for major brands, for a product where 90% of potential buyers do their research online and Word-of-mouth is critical, it seems that the media mix should have long ago been skewed away from TV, print & radio and innovative social media relationships with potential customers should have been created.

At least it is not too late for electric car-maker Tesla Motors. They should be creating one-on-one relationships right now with people who have the potential to buy their cars. Heck, I'm one! I'll wait for one of their marketeers to comment on my blog post now and offer me a test drive......

Social Media Spending up, despite Economic Woes in Traditional Media

2008-12-11T10:35:00.004-07:00

What all of us in the social media industry have felt in our gut for the last year has been quantiatively proven - despite the malaise in the economy, brands are going to increase their spending in social media in 2009.

This is the big take-away from a survey compiled by the folks at com.motion, a social media agency based in Toronto.

And the good news is that support from senior management for social media spending is at 78%. When the bosses start putting it on the radar, you know that it is no longer a fad.

Now yes this is a Canadian survey, but having lived 2/3 of my life in Canada and 1/3 in the US, I can say with authority that it is really hard to tell the difference between Johnny Canuck & Johnny Appleseed. Brand managers think alike in both places, although the Canadians think about hockey more.

DirecTV's 24-hour limit on PPV Movies sucks!

2008-08-31T20:37:00.004-06:00

Time to use the power of social media as a test. You probably already know that Comcast has a regualar team of people who follow twitter and other online sources for grumpy Comcast customers and tries to proactively help them out. I want to see if DirecTV is just as savvy. DirecTV has a twitter stream, but you can't respond on it, which goes against every rule of social media. Nice try, DirecTV customer service. Close but no cigar.

I've been a loyal DirecTV customer for years, and have enough Tivo's in my house that I can't even really keep track of them. My bill is some ridiculous amount per month - and all I really watch are Colorado Avalanche hockey games on Fox Sports.

In the good old days, you could purchase a PPV movie, record it on your Tivo, and watch it whenever you wanted. You could even store them for months. Apparently, no longer. I'm not sure if DTV has been forced by movie studios, or it was simply a misplaced idea by a program manager, but they now remove the PPV in roughly 24 hours.

This is simply stupid. Any family with a couple of young kids knows that getting a consecutive 2 hour slot of open time requires an Act of God. You might get an hour here or an hour there, but only every few days. This is one of the rules of toddlers - "Keep Mom & Dad on their toes at all times to maintain the upperhand in all matters".

Anyway, DirecTV should give people a week - 8 days is better (so you can start it on one Friday night, and finish it the next). The current policy is simply not competitive. Video stores give you a few days, and NetFlix all the time you want. I'm pretty sure I can download them off of the Interent legally now - iTunes here we come.

Time to wake up and smell the social media revolt.

A Real Life "Bat in the Office"

2008-07-08T22:50:00.002-06:00

Many of you who share my sense of humor (humour for you Canadians) will know about the television show The Office. What you may not know is that I eerily have real-life similarities to Michael Scott, the head of the Scranton branch of the Dunder Mifflen Paper Co on the show. You know, things like wearing plaid with stripes, making fun of people in the office and generally thinking that people are the most important part of sales.

But the twilight zone crept up a notch today when I walked into our new offices this morning (formerly Google's offices in Boulder) to find a team of Collective Intellect commando's attempting to capture a lost bat in one of our conference rooms. We have video coming.....

I'm happy to report that the raid would have made Columbian anti-FARC agents proud and the the little bugger was safely transported to our outdoor deck without any incidents involving getting the bat stuck in a ladies hair-doo.

Well done Nick & Ricardo!

Why Art School is Waaaaay cooler than Business School

2008-01-21T16:10:00.001-07:00

My nephew Kyler is doing a degree in Art up in Calgary, Canada. Recently he made a bronze statue and check out how frickin' cool the blast furnace is.

When I was doing a finance/accounting degree, the only time I got to do this kind of thing was in the backyard of dear old Delta Kappa Epsilon.

Props to Kyler on this one.
-DK

Holiday Party Season is here

2007-12-07T12:15:00.000-07:00

I found out today that our office holiday party is going to be held here IN OUR OFFICE. I somehow missed this small fact amongst the numerous emails about the topic. Here is a recommendation for future office party planning committees - NEVER HOLD YOUR OFFICE PARTY IN THE FRICKIN' OFFICE. Unless, of course, you take the Michael Scott (of Dunder Mifflin fame) approach to office party management and buy one 'handle of vodka per person. In that case enough booze will be flowing to make sure there are plenty of inappropriate comments and some good old fashion fun.

And if you DO have that much vodka in the office, you'll need an automated Martini Shaker, because, Lord knows, shaking your own martini is just too hard without a machine to help.

And we wonder why Americans are fat....

I am Friends with a Toasted Sandwich

2007-10-30T15:29:00.000-06:00

Sorry for the long delay since my last post. The problem about "doing" social media for your job is that it such a hot area these days you end up not having any time to actually participate in social media day-to-day. So while my MySpace profile, Facebook page, LinkedIn network profile and frequent musings on email (the original social media, IMHO) are update to date, sadly my blog has suffered.However, an epic event happened today that I needed to post. As of today, I am friends with a piece of toast. To be specific, I am friends with the Kraft Cheese Happy Sandwich.

Now some people may not want to be friends with a brand, but I'd argue if done well, a brand can engage with their consumers in a fun way that will overcome the feeling that comes with traditional in-your-face advertising. I actually LIKE the idea of being friends with a piece of toast. Now you can say I am part Idiotic America, but there is something deep within my amygdala that I will probably remember when reaching for cheese at the grocery store and make it OK for me to pay $0.30 more for the branded packet of Kraft cheese vs. the store-brand. Call it the emotive response. My brain will unconciously tell me it is OK to like Kraft-branded products because my brain was engaged the last time it was thinking about Kraft. This is the power of social media as a marketing platform - people are not in couch-potato mode when they consume social media - they are awake and interacting. Thus, the messages recevied from brands at that time are deeply aborbed. And the goal of marketing is not page views, links, hits, leads, or whatever. The goal of marketing is TO SELL MORE OF YOUR PRODUCT. Social Media marketing messages are uniquely equipped to do that.I'm going to go make myself a grilled cheese sandwich....

Let ALL the Immigrants in....Seriously.

2007-05-24T12:13:00.000-06:00

To figure out where you are in the current immigration debate, you only question you need to ask yourself one question: "Do I care about Americans, or do I care about people?". Or put another way, "Does it matter to me when I shake a person's hand (and look them in the eye and see that they - just like me- want a better life for themselves and their family) if that person was born 50 yards north of the border in Arizona or 50 years south in Mexico? I'm betting that most people are compassionate in America, and realize that immigrants are just people trying to work hard and get ahead - which explains why so many Americans knowingly employ "illegal" immigrants and work with them and are friends with them. I put "illegal" in quotes because anyone who has dealt with the US immigration system in the past 20 years realizes it is a total joke, and your status has more to do with whether the border agent was in a good mood than it does with the hodge-podge of conflicting laws that exist.

The fact is that Americans have a moral responsibility to let EVERY immigrant into this country. We are all immigrants, except for the poor First-Nations folks who were trampled and small-pox'ed a couple of hundred years ago. The reason this country is so great is that it contains the genetic pool of people who got off their ass and said "screw it, I'm going to America and I'm going to start a new life in a place where individuals can change their fortunes". These people are EXACTLY the kind of self-starters you want in your country. They make things happen. They take risks. They are driven. They are fun to have around at parties.

It is obnoxious to say "well, I deserve to be here because my Great-grandfather was a do-er" and not offer that same chance to others around the world. What makes us bettter? Nothing. And the good news is that if we let all these other self-starters into the US it will improve our lives - Immigrants don't steal jobs. They create jobs & wealth & consumption & enterpreneurship.

So let's open the gates. Wide open. We'll take all comers. We'll start by filling up Wyoming and go from there. Bring those 20 million long-suffering Iraqies in and give them a good dose of Paris Hilton and Marlborough's - they'll be in the melting pot in no time.

Viagra is back on Television

2007-04-11T15:51:00.000-06:00

I'm a big fan of big pharma. These companies bet billions, that is a ("b" not an "m") on an idea and they are subject to all kinds of intrusive and unneccessary government bureacracy and regulation. In most countries around the world, evil governments (such as Canada) force them to sell their products for prices lower than the market would bear. Apparently, these governments don't realize that if pharma companies can't charge a market price for their product THERE WILL BE NO NEW DRUGS. But hey, that bird flu is probably not that bad anyway....

Even here in beautiful, freedom-loving USA, evilness seeps in and the government tries to regulate what people can read about drugs, what people can say about drugs, and what drugs people can take. Craziness. We libetarians believe in the motto "buyer beware". And in the modern world with easy access to the comments of people out there in the marketplace, consumers today can make their own informed choices about what how they want to manage their health.

Which is the reason it is time to applaud the return of Viagra commercials on television. They started running yesterday, and this is great. Giving people information DIRECTLY is what this world is about.

As PharmaGossip notes, maybe we'll soon be like the UK, where you don't even need a prescription to buy viagra.

Way to go, Pfizer. Welcome back.

Media Intelligence?

2007-03-12T10:44:00.000-06:00

I know, I know, bloggers aren't supposed to shamelessly plug products on their blogs. But hey, this is a blog about business an entrepreneurism and all entrepreneurs know the rule of ABC - "Always Be Closing." Closing deals, that is.

So today Collective Intellect launched their Media Intelligence tracking service. So what? Well, for the first time in history, a trader or PR exec or product manager can go to one place and monitor ALL media that is relevant to them. Not only the usual news, but all the crazy new blogosphere and message board news that has exploded in the last few years.

So get ready everyone - the future of consumer-generated-media is bright. We all know that for things like iPhones and FDA-rulings and union strikes the news breaks first in New Media. The Wall Street Journal has all but conceded that point by changing its format to "mostly features" instead of news. It is only a matter of time before "New Media" IS media.

We need both "Yes" and "No"

2007-01-25T10:29:00.000-07:00

Fred Wilson, a VC at Union Square Ventures, posted an interesting item about how important it is to have a default answer of "No" to new ideas. Fred is being a bit tongue in cheek, but his real point is that Entrepreneurs need to think about the downside of taking on too much. This I totally agree with. However, I was surprised how many people agreed with him and took the advice to "always say no". This got me thinking....

The answer is a bit more complex for entrepreneurial companies. For those of us that are part of a senior management team, we each have to play a role. We each have to represent our constituencies to the fullest, so that as a group we come up with the right answer. This prevents the "Groupthink", mediocrity and lack of creativity that pervades many group decisions. For example, the VP Engineering should play the conservative role ("sober second thought", as it is called in Canada) about the coding & resource implications of a newly proposed project. Their job is to put a heavy dose of reality on the level of risk a project could become a quagmire. On the other hand, the VP Sales/Biz Dev/Marketing should be pushing the opportunity and ensuring the team has thought about all the potential benefits (revenue, operational learning, the potential for lucrative off-shoot ideas, how it might facilitate Corp Dev discussions with potential acquirers, etc, etc.).

My point is - if EVERYONE on the team defaults to "No", you dramatically increase the chance the team will overlook the full potential of a new idea.

So, on behalf of all of us out there trying to dream up the next big thing that customers will find valuable, I say "YES!".
-DK

Love My Blackberry Pearl, But....

2007-01-22T15:42:00.000-07:00

So I finally got around to moving all my contacts, etc to the new Blackberry Pearl 8100 that I bought as a Christmas gift to myself (chalk one up for taking care of Numero-Uno). This thing seriously rocks. I especially LOVE the voice-dialing. You don't actually have to pre-train or pre-program the voice dialer. Just push the button, say the name, and the thing plucks it out of your contacts. Amazing.

However, I have complaints. I trust my Canadian friends at RIMM are monitoring all blogs and will get this feedback (if they aren't, they need to call Collective Intellect.)
1) The back battery cover seems to easily unclick and slide up. This is annoying, and I get the feeling it will get worse over time.
2) It is really hard to play the "brickbreaker" game with the Pearl. My hi-scores are dropping. Minor problem, but I want to prove that I am a legitimate geek here.

This would be a good time to add that my wife's new 7250t (Cingular) sync's pretty well with the bluetooth on her BMW 330xi, but when using the car to talk through the phone you can't leave a voicemail. It always drops the car. Very, very annoying.

Anyway, I promise to post more in 2007.
-DK

What the Hell is Web 3.0 anyway?

2006-11-29T13:34:00.000-07:00

As part of my continuing effort to educate my mother about the blogosphere, it occured to me that the "Web 3.0" buzzword has now gained enough traction that non-bloggers should probably be aware of it. So if you are over 50 years old, not working in a software startup or live outside of the Bay area, feel free to use this simple glossary:

- Web 1.0: Formerly known as "The dot.bomb" period, 1996-2002. The Web is mostly a bunch of marketing pages that aren't updated very often. Some stuff being bought & sold via eBay and a handful of other sites. Search results generally stink outside of those things Yahoo could categorize with its army of humans.

- "The Dark Time": 2002-2005. Nobody talks about this time on the web. All the wanna-bes moved back to the East Coast from San Fran and the true entrepreneurs enjoyed less traffic on the 101. Quietly, real buiness models began to be developed. Shhhhh.

- Web 2.0: 2004-2006. Blogs start to replace hosted "home pages" for consumers. People find talking back and forth with each is MUCH more fun that looking at static web pages. Teenagers realize flirting with members of the opposite sex online is MUCH easier than doing it in person. Geeks around the world fantisize about getting to getting to 3rd base with that girl who lives 2000 miles away they met in MySpace. Search results are better because of Google, but an entire industry of search optimizers ensure that of the top 10 results you get, 8 are actually not what you are looking for.

- Web 3.0: 2006-????. A small group of companies are working to filter out all the crap so people see only the things they care about. From search results to news alerts, users are seeing services that use fancy technology (such as AI, profiles and persistant search queries) to actively filter a comprehensive set of sources (web, blog, podcast, news feed, whatever) and be presented with the 3 things they actually care about. Cory Treffiletti's OnlineSpin blog does a nice job of summarizing it.

So in the months ahead, every time you search for "pet care" on Google and you get nothing but pet food suppliers, think about how cool the world will be when you can type in (or speak via voice recognition) "I have a cat with diabetes and herpes and want to keep him but not spend more than $5/week so let me know what I should feed the little bugger so he doesn't croak or pee on the carpet" and get a meaningful result.

Web 3.0 - you heard it here first.

Measuring Interactive Media at Coke & Neilsen

2006-11-08T21:33:00.000-07:00

A fellow marketing guru forwarded me the comments of John Stichweh, Director of Global Interactive Marketing for Coca-Cola at Ad:Tech in New York last week. Basically, he questioned whether engaging with customers in interactive media was worth it because it was hard to measure the returns of such activity. I guess for the Marketing department at Coke, it is better to blow a few million on a Superbowl ad then to actually have meaningful 2-way relationships with customers, which is what interactive media offers. Sure this stuff is hard to manage, but there are a few companies offering tools to do it.

The irony here is writ large, because the campaign Mr. Stichwich was talking about was the fantastic "put a Mentos in a Diet Coke bottle and watch it explode" word of mouth campaign. The start-up PR agency eepybird made a hilarious video which garnered world-wide attention via the typical Revver/YouTube/Myspace channels. Neilson's Chief Marketing Officer dryly noted that it is OK that Coke should work with a small PR firm on such an effort as a proving ground before a "professional" PR firm was brought in to run things right. Huh? Excuse me? EepyBird.com totally kicked ass and created HUGE PR value for both Coke and Mentos by leveraging interactive media. And how is 6 million frickin' video downloads in the first 6 months for a measurable statistic?

It is probably just a bad quote, but it seems like Coke & Neilsen are playing catch up to reality here. An entire generation of young consumers under the age of 17 have been trained to accept their media and advertising from their peer group on interactive online forum. Most teenagers won't even accept a traditional brand as cool unless it has been introduced to them via an interactive medium such as Myspace or YouTube. The classic 30-second TV spot or billboard with "Coke is It" on it is going to be seen as quaint throwback advertising - as laughable to them as the cheesy-old black & white "double toasted corn flakes" TV spots are to us now.

Branding is going through the same disruptive technology as traditional news creation & delivery - interactive media (blogs, boards, social networking sites, etc.) is rapidly improving and is replacing the traditional "hire journalists to write and editors to decide" model of generating content. A new system based on user-generated content (or "citizen journalists" for you PC-types on the East Coast) and the collective group opinion of the content's worthiness (Digg votes) has emerged. Very distinct groups of users - teenagers, political haks, patients seeking healthcare info, techies - have embraced this new way of gathering information and are funding its continued improvement. Eventually, they will take over the mainstream consumers (see Clay Christian's Innovators Dilemma) for more.

Move over CBS. Move over Chicago Tribune. You won't exist in 2025. And the brands that have relied on your relic information-delivery technology are going to disappear with you unless they start waking up to the new interactive media world.

You can count, and measure, on it.

Trying to be a MySpace Friend When you are over 35

2006-10-11T17:59:00.000-06:00

In the spirit of being a "New Media Guy" I have my own Myspace Profile. When I started it a few months ago I felt a bit weird because I thought the average age of a MySpace user was about 16, but with the recent news that half of users are over the age of 35 I now feel a lot better. However, I quickly discovered that the problem with being an over-35 MySpace user is that it is really, really hard to get friends.

You see, when you are over 35, I think you tend to only want to connect to people you actually KNOW. Mostly because if you accept the random "be my friend" invitations that tend to happen on MySpace, you fear that you'll pull a Foley and end up linked to some underage Congressional Page and you'll be taking the 5th at some upcoming Congressional committee investigation.

This is a major problem. Because, you see, I don't think I have many real friends who have MySpace profiles. In fact, after 4 months I have only 4 friends, and 2 of them are the nannies who look after my kid (picture above)

Even worse, even when I tried to become a friend of an animal character, in this case GE's Excellent Elli the Eco-Friendly Elephant I was turned down. Perhaps there is some sort of automated rule that prevents the over 35-year-old MySpace user from being friends with animals? That actually might be a good idea.

The other thing that is interesting is that every MySpace page served to me includes an advertisement for some hot dating service with a picture of young scantily clad woman/girl on it. My profile is definitely set to "Married" (yes I double-checked) but then I thought about it and perhaps "married-guys-looking-for-girls" is an important market segment for MySpace advertisers.

I'd appreciate any advice from over-35 MySpace users.....

Healthcare Communists!

2006-09-20T17:11:00.000-06:00

Wow. I actually laughed out loud when I saw this blog posting on healthcare "Maggie Mahar looks at the nitty-gritty reality of corporate medicine and how focus on shareholder returns distorts and worsens medical care and medical practice, to the frustration of worker-bee physicians and other medical professionals."

Wow, Maggie must have missed the Econ 101 class. It gets better: "Mahar reminds us that financial rewards for excellence indicators can undermine the genuine motivation most workers intrinsically have – when not driven and thwarted – to provide good care."

I'd point out that there is another system that relies on worker's intrisic motivation to do good - it is called "Communism" and as the Soviet Union found out it tends to break down rather quickly as an efficient model to deliver goods & services.

Let's face it, if you want to deliver ANY good or service (pet food, laptops, healthcare, whatever) it has been proven again and again in every corner of the world in every society that markets with price transparency work exceeding well. Yes there are warts and bad apples, but the point Maggie is missing is that EVERY system of health care delivery will have problems (even systems based on intrinsic do-gooding) - there is no Utopian health care.

Sane people will choose to have cheap healthcare that gets better every year, and the ability to change providers if they don't like what they are getting. Just like they've been able to do with laptops for the last 15 years. Markets provide this. Is this not clear?

I'd invite Maggie to live in Canada for a few years to see what non-market-based health care is like. She can enjoy a 2 year wait for a heart by-pass surgery. She'll be begging for a little corporate nitty-gritty in a heartbeat.

Support Those Budding Entrepreneurs

2006-09-06T16:42:00.000-06:00

You can file this one under "Good Deed of the Day". If you are reading this blog, you are probably a supporter of the entreprenuerual ethic in one way or another. So here is an oath you need to live by - ALWAYS STOP AT LEMONADE STANDS. Today's fat-kid-on-the-corner-schlepping-25-cent-lemonade could be tomorrow's Jay Adelson. Think about it. If a kid has the gusto to spend their summer afternoons manning the booth instead of sitting around playing Grand Theft Auto, you have to reward that behavior and take the 30 seconds to stop and buy a cup or two. I've stopped at about 10 over the summer, and I've learned you can tell the type of executive the kid will grow into based on the lemonade stand:

- Gets Mom to make the lemonade: VP Product Management
- Makes the lemonade herself/himself: COO
- Gets Mom to pay for all the ingredients so margins are 100%: CFO
- Offers cookies: VP Marketing
- Offers cookies + drink with as a bundle with discount: VP Sales
- Takes the time to talk about the neighborhood and school: VP Customer Service
- Serves via auto-loading, hand-made, bong-like dispenser: CTO
- Gets younger brother to do it while sitting behind him eating the cookies: CEO

All VC's should probably profile their potential management teams based on this type of analysis.

UPDATE: There has been a lot of discussion (off-line, unfortunately) about whether it is appropriate to tip when paying. I am in the camp that says the entire point of the of the lemonade stand is to help kids understand COGS, pricing, etc, and that they should count their profits on the basis of a business model they determine beforehand. However, there is a persuasive counter-argument that by tipping (one lemonade entrepreneur told me someone had given her FIVE DOLLARS for a cup) you teach additional business lessons, such as "price discrimination" (some people will pay more than others for the same thing). I'd add that it could also teach a lesson I learned working the gate at my fraternity's house parties (yo DKE) - "Charge what the market will bear". (It was $20 to get in, or free, depending on the negotiating tactics of the girls trying to get in.). I'm on the fence still on this issue. Please comment. We need to come to a decision.

The other thing we need to figure out is if negotiating is appropriate. That could be a good lesson for the kids, but it seems a bit hard-core to start haggling with a 9 year old over a 25 cent cup. ("I'll give you 15 cents!" "How about 20 cents?" "OK, but I get to try your skateboard."). Comments on this appreciated also.

NPR Pi**ed Me Off Yesterday

2006-08-16T16:33:00.000-06:00

I'm usually a pretty big fan of NPR. I actually think the way they have to grovel for $$$ from listeners every once in a while is an interesting replacement to classic advertising or the paid-subscription business model. The fact they accept government funding irks me, but that fact also irks me with regard to American corn farmers, and I still eat corn. If the government is going to hand out money, it is every business person (or farmer's) responsibility to play by the rules and make sure they get their fair share of the government dole. But I ramble....

Yesterday, NPR Radio had a commentator opine about the reasons why WalMart is a monopoly and should be broken up under our Anti-Trust laws. He reasoned that Walmart is so big that it can dictate how products are distributed, which new products are accepted, and set the terms for delivery.

He even used statistics to back up his claim - "Walmart controls 20% of the market".

This was the biggest load of crap I have ever heard. Since when is 20% market share a "monopoly"? I can think of about 100 other ways an asipiring entrepreneur could bring a product to market these days without interference from Walmart (Target, Sears, Amazon, Ebay, build your own stores, set up a table on a street corner, etc, etc.). Retail is one of the most competitive areas you can find. And Walmart does a remarkable job in providing low-cost, convenient access to a wide array of products used by hundreds of millions of consumers. Walmart needs to be applauded, not scorned.

In fact, it is pretty easy to argue that there are NO "natural monopolies" left in our modern economy. Even the old economic stand-by examples of telephone networks and electricity distribution grids have gone away. Even the venerable "windows monopoly" sees cracks as an entire generation switchs to Firefox browsers and Linux. (I'd argue that there is no such thing as a "natural monopoly", only the time frame underwhich you let the competitive dynamic unfold. Over 10 years, NO monopoly exists, but we can save this for a differnet blog posting.)

My point is that this commentator is so out of touch with economic reality that it was physically painful to listen to. I'd believe in NPR's right to air any opinion - even lunatic lefties - but if they want to be a respected news organization they should at least have a point/counterpoint approach that allows opinion from both sides of an issue to be expressed.

In fact, perhaps the FCC should realize that children might be listening to NPR and they need to be protected from the spread of misinformation-masquarading-as-news. (Just as the FCC believes children need to be protected from Janet Jackson's malfuntioning wadrobe.) NPR has over 20% of drivers between the ages of 35 and 65 listening on any given weekday at 5pm. Thus, NPR is a monopoly and they should be broken up under our Anti-trust laws, nationalized and funded with a new 3% sales tax on Walmart purchases.

If You Can Make a $1000 in a Day....

2006-08-14T13:24:00.000-06:00

My father-in-law Ed lives up in Canada, grew up on a farm and is an electrician. He is not exactly the fancy "Wall Street Investor" type of guy, if you know what I mean. However, he once gave me some advice advice on the stock market which is going to be critical in the next couple of years.

I was telling him that a stock I bought had gone up enough to generate an aggregate gain of over $1000 in just one day. His reply: "If you can make a thousand dollars in a day, MAKE a thousand dollars in a day". His point is that you should lock in the gain, and move on. This advice goes against the classic long term, buy & hold investment philosophy that most financial planners advocate (and was clearly part of the curriculuum when I took the CFA in the mid-nineties, pre-bubble). Having spent a lot of time with the the elite Wall Street traders recently, I've seen how these guys generate returns, and I think Ed is on to something.

The key here is volatility. If you haven't heard, the stock market has been very quiet (relatively) in the past 3-5 years. A little up here, a little down there. However, it recently has started to pick up in volatility. Volatility measures such as the VIX Index have been climbing. Geopolitics is getting more interesting with every bomb and rocket, and in a VERY interconnected global economy these disturbances can impact US stocks dramatically (think of the impact on Coke sales in Syria, or on flights to Pakistan from Washington DC).

If you believe the market is going to be more volatile, the number of days in a year where you are up (or down) $1000 will increase. You'll have more opportunities for short term gains (or losses). Many Wall Street pros seek out volatile situations, because it condenses the amount of time required for each of their investment hypothesis to play out - thus juicing their annualized returns (either positively or negatively). Since most Wall Street guys are paid a portion of the upside they generate (either in % carry or a big bonus) but are NOT on the hook for any losses (except for getting fired, and simply moving to a different firm), generating a big hit in one year is the strategy.

So the professional investor's version of Ed's wisdom is "Seek out volatility, and if you can make a few million dollars in a day, MAKE a few million dollars in a day, and juice that bonus in December!"

Moving from Wordpress to Blogger

2006-08-02T16:01:00.000-06:00

Here is some advice for all you aspiring bloggers out there - use www.blogger.com, not www.wordpress.com.

I've made the move to blogger.com as of today (which is why some of my favorite posts have been brought along with me, but show "August 2" as the posting date). I found wordpress to be stiffling, lacking of features and hard to use. It also doesn't allow Ads or other "commercial use" for its blogs.

Hmmmmm, maybe someone should tell the good folks at wordpress that blogs are just a variation of what people used to call a "homepage". And "homepages" have become just a tad commercialized in the past few years. And guess what? It has been wildly sucessful. Good homepages have flourished. Crappy ones tend to die out. Advertising lubed the television value-chain for 50 years, and it is doing the same for the web.

The beautiful thing about commercialization of blogging is that it will facilitate market forces to kill bad things and reward good things. This is what capitalism does best - money flows to areas that are successful and evaporates quickly on stupid ideas (although in the case of pet food on the web and other late 1990's dot.com's, the stupid ideas did get more $$ allocated to them than usual - I blame people's fascination with Bill & Monica at the time causing some sort of weird, 4 year detachment from reality).

You heard it hear first. Wordpress will lose marketshare because it has a culture that adheres to the rules of the former Soviet Union and Fidel Castro. Not allowing profit-motives to "taint" decisions is a sure-fire way to cripple any organization.

Enron - Shoot the CEOs!!

2006-08-02T14:16:00.000-06:00

So Jeffrey & Ken are going to jail, joining Andrew, Bernie and few others. While I have no doubt these guys either pushed the envelope a bit, or were down-right crooked, it still smells bad that they will sit and rot while the really outrageous corporate crook - Richard Scrushy of Healthsouth continues to preach on his "made-to-influence-the-jury" tevelanglist show.
Scrushy "got religion" just in time to use his community program to ensure his jury of peers was full of brainwashed Birmingham automotants sympathetic to his cause.
I believe in the rule of law, but America has a long way to go when dealing with corporate malfeasance in a consistent way. The rules are too loosy-goosy and hard to understand, resulting in prosecutorial "Hail Mary's" that depend entirely on getting a jury with enough personal anger to vote in favor of a conviction - regardless of the law.
Until the rules are understandable and consistently applied, I suggest we just randomly shoot 2 or 3 of the Fortune 1000 CEO's each year on Labor Day. We'd accomplish the same thing we achieve today and save taxpayers the bundle in court room costs. Plus, we could sell tickets and donate the proceeds to the former Enron 401K stockholders.

Crowdsourcing - the Strategy Consultant’s Next Big Thing?

2006-08-02T14:13:00.000-06:00

In olden days, strategy consultants from Bain, McKinsey & BCG would show up at the door of a Fortune 500 company with a small army of Harvard, Yale & Princeton undergrads & MBAs who would sift through mountains of internal data to answer lofty strategic questions such as "Will we make better margins with product A or product B?" and "Should we expand into Uruguay or Ecuador?". After 4 months and thousands of brilliant man-hours (woman-hours?, person-hours? FTE-hours? what is the politically correct term these days), a hypothesis would emerge, powerpoint slides would be prepared, a senior partner from the partnership would come down from the mountain and present "the answer" to a delighted CEO.

Now, in newer times, perhaps Bain & McKinsey should save their money and forget about hiring all those smart Harvard grads and "Crowdsource" the answer. Instead of paying a team of big brains with a total of 100 years of business experience, McKinsey can simply post the question to the universe of New Media readers - bloggers, chat-room pundits, web-surfers, etc. - and get their collective opinion. In this way, McKinsey accesses thousands of years of experience. An interesting effect we see in natural statistics is that even the dumb-ass opinions collected along the way tend to cancel each other out, leaving a collective 'average' answer which tends to be correct, because it reflects the real information provided by each opinion. It gets better - if you can weight the opinions (such as people putting $$ bets behind their answers), you start getting a VERY accurate answer - just like the stock market.
You heard it here first - crowdsourcing will be the next big business tool preached by business guru's.

Move over 2×2 SWOT analysis, here comes the crowd.

What the GMAT & LSAT Really Test

2006-08-02T14:11:00.000-06:00

At the Denver Entrepreneur of the Year Award dinner (actually, 8 “Entrepreneurs of the Year” in 8 categories, with 3 companies in each, proving that the sponsor, Ernst & Young, really knows how to make all potential clients feel loved), I learned something from Brent, an attorney law firm Cooley Godward.
He used to work for Princeton Review, the group that sells books and (now) courses on how to do well on the GMAT. I did pretty well on the GMAT, so I felt comfortably smug sharing my honest belief that the only reason I did well is that as a kid I used to do lots of puzzles from “Games Magazine”, and many of the stupid GMAT questions required the same sort of canned rules & tricks to quickly answer them - much like the video games of today which require players to learn the “secrets” of unlocking the next level. I thought this was a truly idiotic way of assessing intelligence, and that doing well on the GMAT or LSAT only proved that you knew that there was a system of rules, and if you figured out the secrets, you could win.
Brent pointed out that THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE EXAMS ARE ATTEMPTING TO REWARD - people who figure out “the game” and “the secrets” to winning.
This is a stunning insight that every college-bound high-school student, and frankly, most participants in the overall corporate Rat-Race should memorize. GMATs, and much of corporate life, IS A GAME. Figure out the rules, and you win. I always felt this way about most college courses (it isn’t what you learn, but the fact you figured out the way to get good grades with each professor) but the larger lesson is smack-down, in-your-face life-changing. The same rule applies to almost every part of life. Since I’m mostly familiar with how economic incentives rule behavior (the only other one is sex, which I’m pretty sure is the main reason people want to do well economically, but that is a topic for another posting later), here are my best guesses at the “secrets” of winning the economic game:
- You have to be lucky to win
- You have to put yourself in a position that increases your odds of being lucky.
That is it. Talent, effort, etc. are important, but those are a given. Lots of people are smart. Lots of people work hard. Everyone knows some jerk who made a fortune, despite obvious character flaws that should have prevented he/she from ever being promoted from assistant hamburger flipper. But if you apply this test, I bet you 10 out of 10 will be people who took a chance to put themselves in a position for the big win. Whether it be entrepreneurs in a start-up eating cans of corn and sharing a house with their fellow employees, or mega-million atheletes who achieve the pinacle of success in their field, or traders on Wall Street, the big winners hold a ticket in a lottery where the probablity-weighted odds are a lot better than the ol’ powerball draw.
So there you have it. I passed the GMAT in 1991, and just now figured out how it was truly relevant.

Doggie Piggy Bunny Presentations for Senior Management

2006-08-02T14:10:00.000-06:00

It never ceases to amaze me how many business peeople don’t know how to present their analysis and data. Even the best analysis falls down if it can’t be quickly consumed by the people around you, especially senior managers. In the spirit of public service, I thought I’d send out this helpful primer on how to do it. Straight from Bain training. Here goes:
When presenting information to sr. managers, you have to “dumb it down” to child-like simplicity. Doggie. Piggy. Bunny.
1) If it is more than 5 slides, and a table of contents that re-appears with scrolling square box around the section you are about to begin2) Each slide should have a heading, a “tagline” and a chart or bullet points.3) Aim to have many more chart slides than bullet point slides. CEO’s like charts, and it ensures your analysis is data-driven, not opinion based.4) Each chart page should have a “so what”. What is the one (maybe two) takeaway(s) from this chart? What is the most important point about this data.5) Have a conclusions slide. Either put first or last, depending on whether you think you have to prove it to your audience. If they are skeptical, show the charts first, THEN the conclusion. Otherwise lead with the conclusions. If your boss learns to trust you, he/she may not ever look beyond it.6) Try to use a mostly white background in PowerPoint so it is easy to see.7) Have consistent font sizes page to page. Never use more than 3 font sizes, if you can. Believe it or not, changing font sizes is the biggest reason people don’t take a presentation seriously. There are studies on this. No funky fonts either. Arial, Times New Roman or maybe something that looks like one of those.
8) No cartoons. Ever.
9) If you are making a logical argument, Remember MECE. Are the outcomes you’ve evaluated both Mutually Exclusive and Cumulatively Exhaustive? If so, and you’ve proved which is correct with your great data slides, start looking for a car to match your big promotion!

Corporate Bloggers - Evil or The Next Generation Loyalty Tool?

2006-08-02T14:06:00.000-06:00

Dell launched a blog on July, joining the ranks of Earthlink and other leading-edge companies who have decided to interact with their customers in a new way. After a few harsh words from a couple of bloggers, it seems the vast majority of the blogging community is willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and see how they do. The bigger question is whether “corporate blogs” are merely another marketing channel for companies, or is there something more here? I’d argue there is MUCH more here. In fact, this is a glimpse of the future of customer loyalty management.
Marketing 101: 1975 - 2005
I recently sat in a lecture at Harvard Business School by one of the “old school” marketing strategy pundits of the last 30 years - Ben Shapiro. Shapiro dutifully put up slides showing how companies should understand their customer base by slicing & dicing data about how much profit potential each group of customers represents today, and their growth prospects in the future. As usual, he is the king of the one-liner - ”The problem with older customers is that they tend to die more often.” The presentation reminded me of Bain’s Fred “Customer Loyalty” Reicheld approach - use lots of data to make decisions about which customers are the good ones. This has been a powerful way for a generation of marketing strategy MBA’s to analyze what makes their customer’s tick. However, it is an approach that was built in the pre-wired world. Even the emergence of the Internet only prompted companies to create smaller segments of customers (direct marketing to a “segment of one”) and improve customer service.
Marketing 101: 2006 - ???
The blogosphere changes everything. Now, as Dell has already proven 24 hours into its launch, companies can create A DIALOG with customers. Not feedback from surveys. Not customized marketing campaigns. Not automated email responses or “press #2 to reach a Spanish-speaking salesperson”. We are talking about creating respectful relationships - heck even friendships - between employees and customer “mavens”. Already you can see bloggers willing to provide frank and helpful feedback to Dell’s IR & PR people about site design, product improvements, and they’ve cleared up a hoax about Dell’s keyboard loggers. These types of feedback are a marketers dream, because not only does the company get good, honest feedback, the feedback is coming from influential customers who themselves are connected to thousands of other customers and potential customers. The impact of one friendly interaction between Dell and a blogger is amplied exponentially, in near real time, and without advertising expense.
Just when you thought productivity couldn’t improve any more (after email, the web & Blackberries have driven dramatic gains for the past 10 years), here is a development that will allow companies to quickly react to customer concerns and diseminate their responses instantly to vast interconnected groups of their customers and prospects. Marketeers rejoice - a world of real-time feedback is here and you no longer have to make product decisions in a vacuum.
Poor Ben Shapiro.