Monday 29 April 2013

Manchester must look to the east.


Many moons ago I came to Manchester, home of both red and blue teams, home of innovation, industry and the industrial revolution, home of the very first computer, and home or maybe the birth place to many many globally important cultural cultures, I came here because I believed that Manchester could be the start of something once again.

Some ten years on.... I am I so sure?

Well, Chancellor George Osborne has called on Manchester to lead the UK in what he has termed the "second industrial revolution". A term I am sure someone has used before... but anyway.

Speaking at the launch of the Manchester-China Forum on Friday (26 April 2013), he said the city had a real opportunity to "do something strategic for our economy for decades to come" as it seeks to build closer links with the Far East.

"I am absolutely passionate about trying to improve and increase the economic links between our country and China," he said.
"Manchester was the first industrial city in the world; it led an economic revolution that transformed our entire planet.
"We are now in the midst of a second industrial revolution; a shift in economic power to the East and South, and I want Manchester to lead, for our country. "The British government will be 100 per cent behind this."

Now for whatever reasons I am not always 100% behind what the government says - but this is something I can very much get behind.

As myself I went to study the South East Asian region last year for several months last year. And I have also been to Hong Kong and China with the UKti.

So the new Manchester-China Forum is an interesting proposal for me to be potentially involved in - as it is a business-led initiative aimed at increasing Greater Manchester's commercial connectivity, including trade and investment with China.

It follows a report by Lord Nat Wei in 2012 which identified China as a strategic priority for the city.

Lord Wei said at the event: "This country needs growth and cities have traditionally been the major way in which we grow.
"While Germany has made a living over the past 30 years by providing tools for China's manufacturing development, so we can now help to unlock the country's services and consumption sector, city by city.

"This forum recognises Manchester as the original industrial city which can be a source of growth in an advanced manufacturing age."

Lord Wei cited examples of the forum model in the US, which had helped cities to establish links in China over the past 20 years.
"If the city thrives and trades with China then businesses will thrive as well," he added.

The Manchester-China Forum is being chaired by Charlie Cornish, chief executive at Manchester Airports Group, and includes a raft of private and public sector partners across the city region.

It sounds like something everyone from Manchester should be involved in whether you are part of the digital mobile creative scene (what I like to call the advanced manufacturing sector) or part of the new Graphene and what everyone else calls the advanced manufacturing sector ;)

Either way - perhaps sticking around Manchester is no bad thing for a few more years yet.

Wednesday 24 April 2013

I gotta stop doing this - I Gotta Stop Trying to Catch Lightning in a Bottle


A couple of points so wise from Mark Sustner that I pop them here to remember them. So I will TAKE ACTION at my new start up company.

Today I get my developers to launch the game - hopefully with my client at Justaxi - on my final day - NO matter what..............

I also went to the Lean Start Up Manchester event last night - which inspired me. This is a great blog from Mark as well.

"I’m sure you’ve all heard the saying derived from Voltaire - “don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good” which in a way is encapsulated in the lean startup movement and the ideology of shipping a “minimum viable product” (MVP) and then learning from your customer base.

Or to borrow a simple life lesson from Gretchen Rubin,

“The 20-minute walk I take is better than the 3-mile run I never start. Having people over for take-out is better than never having people to an elegant dinner party.”

I think about this topic of perfection being the enemy of the good often. Because I live in startup land where everybody is a perfectionist. I think this is particularly true because every startup entrepreneur is trying to catch lightning in a bottle.

I hear about it in every first product release. You can see it in the founders’ eyes. They want the perfect feature set, the PR company lined up to do the perfect press release, they want maximum coverage, rave reviews, viral adoption and they want to sit back and then wait for the signups to come roaring in.

Life doesn’t work like that. And gearing yourself up for a lighting-in-a-bottle moment leads to bad company decisions.

Even in the age of MVP worship I see founders who want to bundle too many features into a release because they’re worried that customers will be unhappy if they don’t.

I see teams holding back on product releases even when the product is complete because they’re nervous it’s not yet good enough to get positive journalist reviews.

They hold back on announcing their funding because they want to be sure they have 3 other important announcements to bundle – I often counsel against this.

Stop trying to catch lighting in a bottle.


Your announcement will lead to more traffic than you’ve had in the past. But it’s highly unlikely to have that aha moment that Apple gets when it announces new products.

The much more likely result is that you get some positive feedback from the community, you get some strong users who like your product, you get some people telling you your product isn’t as good as the competitors or isn’t as good as your marketing hype.

That’s ok.

Launch and learn.

JFDI.

No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.

So the sooner you’re live the sooner you’ll be able to separate your own internal BS from what the market really wants and thinks.

The other reason I counsel so much on this topic is confidence.

You gear your team up for your TC Disrupt presentation, your interview with Kara Swisher, your graduation day from YC and waiting for the product success.

And when it doesn’t come in droves it feels like defeat. And the whole company feels it because you set expectations too high.

The golden rule of management is to set low expectations and beat them. Lightning in a bottle breaks the cardinal rule.

So be prepared for the marathon. Expects a long, slow linear climb.

After all – some people win the lottery. And that’s who you read about in the papers. And it feels nice to think that $285 million is just one Lotto ticket away.

But you’re a pragmatist. And you know that your success will come from the hard work and refinement of 20 different product releases each that incrementally made you the great company that you are.

And by being in the game long enough – if you’re lucky, smart & tenacious – you might just see that traffic & revenue arc up.

p.s. no – I’m not talking about your specific company. I know I gave you this advice so you think I’m picking on you. I give this advice to every young startup. Promise."

Do you know how old Meetup is? It's another overnight success isnt it? Hmmm.... quite a few nights ;)

This morning - I woke at 500am - all excited about gamifaction and how this concept, along with my usual toolkit of cutting edge digital marketing could and will help this particular client. But then I realized something - not only had I woke up my wife by not turning down the ipad backlight (school boy error) but also that I had been doing this for around a decade. If not more...

This waking up excited by new marketing projects with new ideas for clients for 10 years.


Doing greatmarketing talks and trainings for organizations and companies for at least 7 years.


Working in marketing and events promotion before that for Spearfish for at least another 3.

And in guerrilla marketing for eco fashion label THTC before that for more years than I care to remember.

The point is that - success - doesn't seem to come over night.

So I read with interest something from Fred Wilson, who is a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures.

Who invested in Meetup. That great idea which I thought was new. As an app and all that.

But do you know how old meetup is? As Fred writes:

"Meetup is in its second decade as a company and growing rapidly. Last night Meetup booked its hundred millionth RSVP. You can see the counter at the top of this page. That is one hundred million people who used the Internet to get off the Internet and go out and meet other people and talk about things they are passionate about. Now I realize that some of these hundred million people are the same people doing this again and again. But even so, a hundred million RSVPs is a big deal for a company that has been plugging away on this mission for more than a decade.

When you are at something for a decade or more, it can become a slog. It requires tenacity and persistence to keep pushing and innovating. In the past year Meetup has started growing faster than it has in quite a while. The chart below shows that:


Scott and his team are as passionate about the Meetup mission as they were when they started the company. They have a very long timeframe in their minds and they are executing against it. And they are winning with tenacity and persistence. Which is why we backed Meetup in the first place."

I love that - an investor with a vision more than 10 years ahead of its time. Now that's what I need :)

Or is it - should I stop this path of helping companies succeed and succeed myself? For this I might well need a little "seed" capital. Pun horribly intended.

Thursday 18 April 2013

Defeat Distraction: Refocusing with Purpose By Leo Babauta: Some great tips...

So relevant for me today - that I had to blog it down. This afternoon will be a very different few hours of working.

Here’s a scenario: you jump into email or [insert preferred social network here] and start doing a few tasks, reading a few things, taking care of business … but soon get lost in the swarm of distractions of little things, and two hours have gone by without getting anything important or meaningful done.

Ever happened to you?

Sometimes a big task will sit there on your todo list or email inbox, but you keep putting it off because you’re in the quick-task mode. It’s hard to do slower, more thoughtful tasks when you’re in quick-task mode.

This happens to me all the time. I will breeze through 10-15 emails because they require 1-2 sentence replies or a 2-minute task each, which means I can knock them off. But a larger task sits there in my inbox, waiting for action, and can sit there for an entire day or two.

Why? Because it requires a different mode of thinking.

And so we put it off, and let the distractions of the Internet carry us away instead.

What’s a better method? Refocus yourself. Change modes. Have a purpose for each thing you set out to do. This works for me every time.

Here’s how:

Catch yourself getting lost.

When you see yourself putting off a bigger email or task, and getting lost in little tasks or distractions, notice this. Watch yourself. Then pause.

Pull back.

Take just 10-20 seconds to stop what you’re doing, and take a step back. Look at the bigger picture of what you’re doing. What’s the most important thing you could be doing right now? A bunch of little tasks? Or is there something with more meaning on your list?

Change your mode of thinking.

When you’re in quick-task mode, you’re not going to be able to handle something that requires more focus and thought. Writing a longer piece is impossible when your brain is in quick-task mode. So, as you’re paused, refocus and change your mode. Prepare yourself for something with less switching and more staying.

Know your intention.

Taking a few seconds to remind yourself of your intention as you start a task is a good idea. If you’re going to write something, what’s the purpose of the writing? Who is it helping? How is it changing the world?

Taking just a few moments to see the bigger picture, change your mode of thinking, and set your intention for your new task is an important investment. It’s an easy thing to do, but it can change your work completely.

Tuesday 16 April 2013

How good content helps the sales team sell - especially when you have long sales cycles i.e. in B2B :)

An excellent blog about the long sales cycle by Darren Bond, Head of Strategy at Coast Digital, in this he explains the role of content at different stages in the sales cycle

Only five per cent of leads that come into a business are ready to make a buying decision right now – sound familiar?

In my role I get to speak to a lot of marketers, from a lot of different businesses and I hear this (or something similar) a lot. When I ask what the number one challenge is in terms of marketing to a pipeline, it’s content. Not because they can’t get enough content resource from the business to do any marketing at all (most marketing teams have access to someone who can write copy), but because they don’t really know how to plan content, or put it to effective use online. Here are some useful tips to get your content planning started.

Map your pipeline

What you’re trying to do is work out the process a typical lead would go through when engaging with your business. Align your marketing and sales teams to make sure you can take a lead from one end (prospect) to the other (paying customer) without changing the experience they’ve received. From a recent survey of B2B buyers, 53 per cent said buying experience was the main driver for decision-making, not brand, not the service offering, not even (believe it or not) the price! Making sure the experience is smooth and consistent is vital to success. Look at your pipeline and consider what kind of content a user at each stage is likely to be interested in.

Early

The prospect knows they have a challenge and is researching potential solutions. At this stage, they’re likely to be interested in informational content.

Middle

The prospect knows their challenge well enough to start creating a business case to solve it. At this stage they’ll be looking for buyer’s guides, and be more open to products and brands – ready to become a lead.

Late

Now the prospect has got budget approval and is looking for a brand, solution or product that can meet their need – essentially they have a quotable opportunity. When it comes to planning, you need to think about what content can be produced to support each aspect of this decision-making process.

Work out who your prospects are and what information they’re looking for. The easy way to do this is to take a sample, and give them a call. Ask them about the challenge they’re trying to solve. This will give you a great starting point for what content to produce.

For a more quantitative view, if you’ve got email data, use a drip campaign (send automated emails) to test different subject matters. Send email messages focused on a single service offering or product. If the user opens and clicks, they’re interested. If not, send them the next email about a different service. Repeat this process. If you’ve got lots of data, this will help you quickly segment it into silos of interest.

Plan your content creation

You know what the decision-making process looks like. You also know who your prospects are, and their potential challenges. So when it comes to planning, think of it like this: you’re aiming to give the right person, the right content, at the right time in the buying process.

From a text content perspective, you need to consider where you’re going to get your content from, especially in technical industries. Often there’s lots of great product and solution-based knowledge in a business, but getting it out of people can be like getting blood from the proverbial stone. Remember these guys all have full time jobs and marketing isn’t in their remit. A 10 minute chat can often give you more than enough information to deliver high quality web content.

It’s easy to think about content in the form of words, but don’t limit yourself to that. Think whitepapers, guides and blogs, sure, but think outside that too. Think video, webinars, social media. All of these are great ways to deliver content to your target audience.

Delivering to your pipeline

The important thing to note is that at this stage it’s not just a hit and hope content delivery. By now you know who’s receiving it, what their challenge is and what content you have got to address said challenge.

You can monitor the response to this content, learn more and start mapping prospects to parts of the pipeline.

If someone responds to an education piece, you can assume they’re early in the buying cycle, so you can try calls to action to introduce them to a potential solution. If they don’t respond, they probably aren’t ready to take the next step through the pipeline. What more value can you add with content? Do they need more informational/educational content?

If they’re receptive to solution-based content (and therefore in the middle of pipeline) will they respond to a specific product-based message? If so, they’re taking the step into the last section of the pipeline, and should be passed to sales.

It’s simple to apply a ‘snakes and ladders’ analogy to describe the nurturing process. You’re looking to get someone to the end of the board as effectively as possible. Delivering the right content at the right time will help push the prospect one square along, but what you really want is for the prospect to hit a ladder (ie accelerating them through the pipeline), so you offer them messaging to encourage them into the next stage of the pipeline. If they don’t respond, consider it a snake, and put them back where they were. If they’ve engaged with educational content, promote your solution-based content to them. If they’ve engaged with solution-based content already, try a harder product or brand-based message.

This can feel like a hefty process, and it can be, so it’s worth starting small. Break these steps down and prove the value along the way. Take the simplest aspect of your business, and test it. If you get it right the results will speak for themselves. If it doesn’t work out first time, don’t quit. Let’s not forget the advice from the nineteenth century German Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke the Elder: “No plan survives first contact with the enemy”.

I think that’s the first time I’ve referred to prospects as ‘the enemy’ but the point stands true. Don’t get too attached to your plan. You need to be pragmatic, developing your plan to maintain effectiveness. If you can get in the cycle of delivering content against an ever-changing plan then you’re on to a winner!

Sunday 14 April 2013

The Zen of Habit Forming – Take Control of Your Life and Business Forever

This blog post is not written by me - but the rather wonderfully titled - Laptop Zentrepreneur (Andrew Spence)

I liked it - apart from the first quote - where I would think it is "your network which is your net worth" - but hey ho - still a cool blog idea.

As Andrew quotes Benjamin Franklin who says:

“Your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones”

But this was before the world of the internet and Linkedin - and perhaps he was thinking about something else :)

Habit forming

Waking up early, eating healthy, exercising, meditating, working hard; these are all habits that most of us crave for. Most successful people are good at habit forming and most of those who struggle to form them, struggle to be successful. Being positive and staying successful is in itself a habit. Learning the process of habit forming is one tool that will help you for the rest of your life and this is what has worked for me personally.


Habit Forming Tips to Help You Form Any Habit Quickly


Tip 1 – Start ridiculously small.

This is the most important thing to remember with habit forming. When you are trying to form any habit, you are also trying to quit the habit of not doing that thing. Interesting perspective right? For example, If you are a network marketer and want to start calling ten people a day, you should keep it in mind that you are already in the bad habit of not calling ten people a day. So its sometimes hard for you to break that habit and form the exact opposite of it. That’s why its often the case that if you try to go to the gym daily, you might do it once or twice but then find some excuse not to go. In the beginning all that matters is to be consistent even if it’s so small that it doesn’t provide you any benefit at first. But, this is how habit forming develops. When I say a ridiculously small step I mean like starting with just one phone call the first day for a few days. How ridiculous is that! Just 1 phone call! You can have absolutely no excuse for not making one phone call in one day. The point is to repeat the activity daily for at least a month for maximum habit forming effect. That will ingrain it as a habit. So don’t make it too difficult to ensure that you maintain that consistency of calling people every day.

Tip 2 – Increase intensity in baby steps.

Once you start with very small steps, slowly you’ll start feeling more confident about it and that is when you will notice habit forming is working. That’s the time to increase the amount and that should be done in little baby steps. You don’t want to put too much pressure on your newly formed habit as that might lead you to crash and burn. If you’ve been gradually habit forming by building up the number of phone calls you make on a daily basis you’ll start feeling better about yourself so you can start doing a little more. Do 5-6 phone calls per day. But don’t try to increase too much. This is still early days for your habit and it’s more important to take things slow so as to make sure that you do it consistently.

Tip 3 – Never miss 3 days in a row.

Once you start habit forming consistently make sure that you never miss 3 days in a row. It’s okay to miss one day here and there. Sometimes laziness catches us unaware and a day is missed even though its still only a ridiculously small amount of activity being undertaken. You find that illusive excuse for not making that call. That’s okay. Don’t fret too much about it. 2 days in a row should sound the alarm in your head. If you miss 2 days in a row, your most important task for the next day should be to make that call.

Tip 4 – Reward yourself for reaching milestones.

Habit forming is hard work and if you don’t reward yourself for hard work, after a while your brain is going to refuse to do any sort of hard work. So it’s important to set up milestones and goals and reward yourself with a treat whenever you reach those habit forming goals. For example you can set a milestone at calling your leads everyday for a week. When you reach that goal, give yourself a day off where you sleep in late and relax (or whatever you consider to be a reward) This will let your brain make the connection between working through pain and getting a pleasurable reward.
Habit Forming Will Change Your Life

If you apply these habit forming tips you can start to apply these tips to all areas of your life and business. Instead of going head on against old habits and failing again and again it’s much better to be smart about the whole process and learn these simple steps to forming habits. Once you understand and start applying this process in your life, no habit will be too hard to form and you’ll be that much closer to success. This is a great quote which sums up the power of forming habits:

Successful people are simply those with successful habits – Brian Tracy

Friday 12 April 2013

Is the world stupidly brilliant or brilliantly stupid - answers in a bacterial code on a 3D printed hologram please.

Last night watching TV was an interesting dichotomy on one channel.

You had the quite brilliant Horizon programme about the future of invention Tomorrow's World: A Horizon Special

Where the rather lovely looking Liz Bonnin delved in to the world of invention, revealing the people and technologies set to transform all our lives. She examined the conditions that are promising to make the 21st century a golden age of innovation and met some of the world's foremost visionaries, mavericks and dreamers.

There really were some amazing things and some worrying too like reprogramming nature and bacteria to create fuel for us from sunlight - a brilliant idea but just imagine if it went wrong and this super bacteria did something else instead. And then there was crowd funding of new ideas, and even crowd sourcing and open data and big data - and all the things I love to think about.

Then after this programme was the equally brilliant (but not as nice looking) Charlie Brookers How TV Ruined Your Life: all about progress. Where from the moon landings to Blake's 7 to CSI: Miami, Charlie Brooker argues that television has warped our relationship with technology in his usual harpooning sardonic style - Warning: this episode contains a computerized Simon Cowell and a lady in a silver catsuit.

The two where placed together, right net to each other, one following another on the schedule - so if you watched TV continually and chronologically on one channel (who does that now a days) you had a wonderful juxtaposition of views about the future.

Which kinda got me thinking about it all and worrying a bit - as I can see myself on both sides of the equation.

On one side I see the future as an amazing thing - where the best is ahead of us - and there is almost countless opportunities and on the other I am a little gutted we are not all on hover boards as the Back to the future films said we would be by now.

I still want to own a rocket car!

Anyhoo, my other problem with it all, is focus and my lack of it. Programmes like Tomorrow's World: A Horizon Special just make me want to do something new and amazing with all the opportunities out there.

But then I have to think about where the money is for today - how are the bills going to be paid if I donate half of my working life to pie in the sky projects which might not do anything !

It also worries be that when I look at what interests me and gaze at the Hype Cycle - the two always seem in sync.





Every time I am into something or have a high tech start up client that is it's got 3 - 5 years to come to fruition!

Two years ago it was the power of tablets and mobiles in the marketing place and the potential for geo location and social analysis, last year it was mobile and augmented reality, this year it's gamifaction, HTML5 and mobile development.

All I have to do is throw in crowdsourcing and I have the full house on the rise of the hype hype hype of inflated expectations!

I suppose what I am trying to think about is - is it better to be a front runner - or do you need to be sponsored to succeed?

Research in Universities starts this off i.e. with graphene, then government does a little, then venture capitalists and then at the end private business becomes an established reality in the field - with all the money shared!

As Arthur Schopenhauer points out "All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."

Perhaps this is another way of looking at tech development - as I am sure Google Glasses is about to find out - as it gets ridiculed more and more :)

Does this indicate I should start crowdfunding to develop on it?

Answers in a bacterial code on a 3D printed hologram please.





Thursday 11 April 2013

Big Data really can make a difference - but it depends how we use it...

A couple of days ago I went to a workshop on BIG data. And got a little inspired but also a little confused by it all and the potential of it.

However, after reading this piece by Derrick Harris - it all starts to make sense.

John Taysom was right after all - we could help the world be a better place with BIG data.

After hearing about the applications of big data for better ads, song recommendations and social media analysis, nothing makes me happier than hearing about technologists coming together with non-profits to use data to fight human trafficking.

Sometimes, when I find myself reading about new ways to serve better ads or recommendations, or to analyze who likes what on Twitter, and I find myself asking who the hell cares. That’s because, sometimes, it all seems beyond trivial. When I imagine myself in the shoes of a modern-day slave being forced to work grueling hours under grueling conditions in a developing country, or a child whose parents are pimping her out to pedophiles, I can’t seem to figure out why it matters that my Starbucks coupon is delivered at the ideal time when I’m approaching the store.

So when I wrote on Monday about the work of the SumAll Foundation to bring the world of business and next-generation data analytics to non-profits, I was genuinely excited about what they were doing. The foundation’s first effort was around quantifying human trafficking and raising awareness of the problem. One of its next projects has to do with analyzing the online behavior of pedophiles. And the SumAll Foundation isn’t just gathering data and making infographics, but rather sharing deeper data with the relevant organizations and teaching them how to do some of this work themselves.

I was even happier on Tuesday when I began going through my Google Reader feeds to read about two other efforts dedicated to using data fighting human trafficking and sexual exploitation. One is from Microsoft researcher and Ivy League academician danah boyd. The other is from Google.

Tech can help when it understands human nature

Boyd’s work isn’t so much a project as it is a framework for helping the growing number of technologists she sees working with non-profit organizations and government institutions to fight the exploitation of children. On her blog, boyd notes that technology certainly can help combat human trafficking, but that there are very human and complex factors that need to be considered before just building a system like, presumably, one would for serving targeted ads.

“On too many occasions, I’ve watched well-intentioned technologists approach the space with a naiveté that comes from only knowing about human trafficking through media portrayals. While the portraits that receive widespread attention are important for motivating people to act, understanding the nuance and pitfalls of the space are critical for building interventions that will actually make a difference.”
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You can read the full four-page primer on her site, but here are the 10 points she addresses. She learned these lessons in part from discussions with leading scholars – some of whom Microsoft funded — researching the role that technology plays in facilitating human trafficking:

Youth often do not self-identify themselves as victims.

“Survival sex” is one aspect of CSEC.

Previous sexual abuse, homelessness, family violence, and foster care may influence youth’s risk of exploitation.

Arresting victims undermines efforts to combat CSEC.

Technologies should help disrupt criminal networks.

Post-identification support should be in place before identification interventions are implemented.

Evaluation, assessment, and accountability are critical for any intervention.

Efforts need to be evidence-based.

The cleanliness of data matters.

Civil liberties are important considerations.


A global network, backed by some data heavyweights

Then there’s Google, which awarded $3 million to three anti-trafficking organizations based in the United States, Asia and Europe in order to establish a Global Human Trafficking Hotline Network. The goal of the network, Google’s blog post explains, is to “collect data from local hotline efforts, share promising practices and create anti-trafficking strategies that build on common patterns and focus on eradication, prevention and victim protection.” This is critical: As the team at SumAll pointed out, one of the hardest things to do is facilitate effective data sharing across organizations so everyone has a clearer picture of what’s actually happening.

Here’s how Google explains the role of data sharing:

“Appropriate data can tell the anti-trafficking community which campaigns are most effective at reducing slavery, what sectors are undergoing global spikes in slavery, or if the reduction of slavery in one country coincides with an increase right across the border.”

This isn’t Google’s first foray into funding anti-trafficking efforts. In 2011, the company donated $11.5 million to the cause. This time, though it’s joined by the intelligence sector’s favorite data-analysis startup, Palantir, as well as Salesforce.com, which is helping to scale the call-tracking infrastructure.

And of course I understand that advertising and other commercial efforts are a necessary part of the economy, but watching data-analysis technology do little else but line the pockets of already rich individuals and corporations does get a bit old. However, when the money these efforts generate and the technologies they inspire help fund and fight some of the most egregious abuses on the planet — abuses that affect individuals from demographics no advertiser really cares about, and abuses that sometimes help corporations drive larger profits — the whole discussion around the importance of data starts to seem a lot more meaningful.

NOW that's what I call something positive coming out of open and BIG data. Perhaps this is worth thinking about more?

Wednesday 10 April 2013

BIG Data, data, everywhere.... far too much... to think........ about

Big Data (which open data adds to, to make it even bigger) is something which has the potential to change the world forever.

Not just in scientific reasoning and mathematical equations (if you can say "just" around such a point) but as John Taysom (Harvard fellow and main speaker at the Technology Strategy Board sponsored event I went to) rightly pointed out - something that if we get it wrong, people will die.

Getting it wrong with big data has already caused a couple of financial crashes already which probably affected the real world somewhat.

So here I can see some MAJOR moments for business opportunity. As now companies can / do keep ALL your data, all your tweets, all your digital and social footprint, everything that is happening that you digitally interact with, and so they can predict things from this.

Mainly in marketing about your intentions and what you might do next. But we can get so much more from this. The other week, from only a couple of data points, researchers found they could predict, your sex and race and a host of other characteristics. http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/03/12/facebook-likes-can-predict-personality_n_2858150.html

And then taking this to logical extensions, if governments open up their own huge data back log, we could find out much much more about people. Almost to the extent of civil liberties being taken. Or intrusion by companies - which I would partly help through great marketing.

So going to the BIG data day held by Tecelerate in Manchester was eye opening mainly because of the wisdom and future thinking of it's main speaker- Havard fellow John Taysom - who has invested in many of these BIG data specialist companies.

Companies like Grapeshot - which help real time buyers of digital marketing ensure that they have safe keyword allocation and websites which they really want to be on (something I love as work in digital and mobile marketing... where RTB is all over.)

And companies like Feature Space - who's predictive modelling technology is about to move into mobile gaming. Which is going to be a little scary for a new client of mine - dojit games - who has a similar plan.

And my personal favourite from a pure making money now, b2c, social marketing perspective client perspective - was - Duo Fertility who's clever sensor and data from 30,000 moments of taking a woman's temperature ensures she knows her most fertile time. I would love to be a reseller for this technology!

John's wisdom is not just in investing in the right technologies, he also spoke about the concept which I found fascinating about 'just in time competence', about how companies like Google could create cultural blindness unintentionally with algorithms (which can not be seen due to them being trade secrets and not legally protect able under current IP law) and how important it was for non linear and non casual relationships to be really understood.

As for me, working in marketing, all this was far to much to think about - let alone understand. But I do get that if you are today that if you are not paying for the product - you are the product. And that with this BIG data you can predict and also get some much wrong - not only for businesses but for society as a whole.

Google glasses anyone ;)

Opening up to open data. But my mind seems closed to the idea.

Big data and open data. Concepts everyone is talking about it would seem.

Both are very interesting topics, with a potential of big data to change the very way we see the world.

And with open data, a potential for business opportunities often with some large caveats around privacy etc.

However, as TechCruch reports, today another step along the road to liberating government data across the region so that startups can get their hands on it: as an EU committee made up of member states’ representatives has endorsed plans to modernise the 2003 public information directive to make all non-personal public sector info available for reuse.

Opening up public sector data is something the EC believes will help European startups and businesses by providing access to valuable data at “zero or very low cost”:

Following today’s committee endorsement, the next stage in the process will be for the European Parliament to approve the new rules.

Back in 2011 when it proposed to revise the public data directive, the EC projected that its Open Data Strategy will end up injecting €40 billion annually to the EU’s economy, driving growth and jobs.

The revised directive will include a right to reuse public information; expand the remit to include libraries, museums and archives; create a transparent pricing framework for reproduction, provision and dissemination of the information which also aims to keep costs to a marginal minimum; and encourage data to be made available in open machine-readable formats.

This only happened today (10 April 2013) so yesterday's event with the Technology Strategy Board event held by Techcelrate was rather well timed.

However, for me I realised that being a creative type, working in mobile marketing, that I simply wouldn't get some of the language used or terminology or even the concepts. And I didn't understand the business case.

With Open data, the public sector giving business access to all the data it has in many areas, makes sense for start ups to use it to make money for themselves. Got it - there are a number who have already like... Numberhood.

My issue I suppose is the second part of the equation - that the public sector will swap data with the private sector hoping that private sector cash will recycle it and add value to it and then it back to them mixed with their own data as well.

I just don't GET why a private sector organisation would do this?

On the one hand it might be very commercially sensitive and on the other hand it might be illegal!

I understand how the private sector (which I am part of with Great Marketing Works and mobile app development) has it's own BIG data opportunity. As over the years, even though the backlash has been said to have been coming, the world has given data to private companies freely and easily. Either with intent i.e. swapping almost meaningless things like points and discounts for their buying habits data or unintentionally by going to websites with cookies in them and being followed around the internet.

This has changed whole industries and created new winners in landscapes are varied as in retail grocery shopping i.e. with Tesco's rise to the top due to loyalty cards and subsequent business intelligence of their demographics to Facebook PPC advertising mechanisms and the intention economy.

Both for the record, I am a great believer of. In part as the knowledge of the cutting edge marketing of them has given me a living :)

The next level I suppose would be open data mixing with such private data to give use multiple data sets from several sources to find gold in them there hills (or perhaps another metaphor would be data being the new oil - which seems to be said a lot.)

It is simply that I do not get if the private sector has all the cards - why would it want to play with the public?

Friday 5 April 2013

Four simple principles for highly effective teams from

Bruce Kasanoff is a writer and speaker.You can find many more of his highly positive business ideas at Now Possible. This great point about agile development in teams - so here are his points. Some good ones...




Value the value:

Too many teams operate without clear metrics, and thus they end up making fuzzy decisions. This is a slippery slope to disappointing results. Instead, teams should assign a tangible value to every deliverable, and – this is the important part – teams should track and validate these projections as work goes on. In this manner, team members can’t game the system, inflating values to give their pet projects priority treatment.

The philosophy underlying this principle is simple: businesses exist to make money, and if a project doesn’t support that goal in a tangible way, the team shouldn’t be doing it.

State the value of each project.
Create metrics that quantify the stated value.
Validate the value actually delivered, and reward team members for it.

Be open and honest:

Keep all team communications, facts and status reports in the open and highly visible.

Look at the way your team currently operates. Is the purpose of every action crystal clear? Do you know why Lisa has been locked in her office for three days, or why John is conducting 32 interviews this week?

Clear and open communications have immense benefits. It should be obvious to everyone who is doing what, and why. When team members get stuck, they get help faster. When they succeed, others follow faster.

Avoid private communications.
Conduct disciplined weekly progress report sessions.
Hold daily “stand-up” sessions (you stand to keep them short).
Use images, mockups, etc. to make things clearer.
Make it easy to understand the purpose of every work product.

Shorten workplans:

Break deliverables into smaller pieces that can be finished in shorter time periods.

The longer a team works before delivering a tangible result, the more likely the deliverable is to fall short of expectations. A far better approach is to break large projects down into smaller pieces, and to regularly complete deliverables.

By shortening workplans, teams also make it easier for team members to explore new strategies and take risks. This is because the cost of taking a risk and failing is minimized; you lose a week instead of six months. This tactic also maximizes flexibility, because at the end of each project the team can decide what to do next.

Shorten the length of time between deliverables.

Try to make every deliverable useable and functioning, rather than just a description of something that still needs to be done.

Whenever possible, make processes and deliverables reusable and adaptable for other purposes

Create interdependence:

No one wins unless everyone wins. Period.

This is the best way to get a team to function like, well, a team. It also fosters insights, flexibility, and resilience.

Create shared metrics.
Partner team members from different disciplines.
Have members with similar skills swap tasks often, even in the middle of working on a deliverable.
Share responsibilities, ideas, concerns and alternatives.

If these principles make sense to you, you might want to give them a try. But I'd like to suggest you do so only on one condition: that all team members voluntarily want to adopt these principles.

I hope I can bring them all into action at dojit - a new mobile games development house I am joining.

The challenge of focus and a lovely idea from Saleforce's Marc B

Taken from a slightly bigger article about greatmarketing (not from great marketing works) but from a chap called Danny who I rather like the sound of. Link here.

Seth Godin recently wrote about FOMO (fear of missing out) and it really resonated from a marketing perspective. Passionate marketers often run themselves and each other ragged, worrying if we’re all missing out on the latest insight, learning, app, model, idea, case study or news piece. I do it all the time.

Just spent a week on my back due to working too hard and doing to much client side computer work - and spent it learning about gamification (which is really rather interesting in itself)

And it underlies Danny point here... as....

There’s always something stopping us from focusing – that we feel we’re missing out somehow. So the hours worked add up and the days get longer......So how do you do it? How do we focus?

The Experts

Zig Ziglar, to my mind, pioneered this in the 1980s with his Goals methodology. He approaches it from a personal perspective of course, so it’s important you realise that as a perspective and translate it to apply at work…

Write your goals down

Date them

Identify obstacles

Identify the people/organisation that you need to work with to accomplish the goals

Find out what you need to know, if anything, to achieve them

Develop a plan of action, a list, with time limits

Identify “What’s in it for me?” – what rewards and benefits will I get?

As a more commercial alternative, though very familiar when you’ve read Zig’s earlier approach, also consider Marc Benioff’s system. I recently read about his V2MOM system here, he gives a lot of advice in that interview and one of his keys to success is “you should not allow yourself to get disfocused… An entrepreneur can have a sort of ADD type of thing (Attention Deficit Disorder)… and you have to build the tools to help you refocus yourself and channel that energy”.

“[At Salesforce.com] We have an internal tool that I use and a communications cadence to help me to stay focused – I can be the kind of person that needs help staying focused. That tool is called a V2MOM (an acronym that stands for Vision, Values, Methods, Obstacles, and Measures). These are five questions that I’m constantly asking of myself. I do that basically every six months for the company…”

I can paraphrase his advice for you:

Vision: What do you want? Write it down in 10 to 15 words

Values: What is most important about that vision? What are the values of the vision? Is it growth, is it quality, is it excellence? Write those things down and prioritize them.

Methods: How are you going to achieve it? What are the actions that you’re going to specifically take? In priority, write them down.

Obstacles: What is preventing you from achieving that outcome – right now? Write it down. What other obstacles may occur?

Measures: How will you know if you’re successful? What are the measurements of success? Write it down.

Benioff suggests that we recreate this on a continual basis, and get others in the team to do the same. It’s a focusing exercise, I like how he appreciates the value of others in your team and organisation seeing what you’re doing, what you’re focussing on, as much as you or I knowing what we’re focussing on.

It creates trust and alignment Of course, you’ve got to walk your talk… “If you’re gonna write it down and say you’re gonna do it, you better do it”, he says.

Which is great timing as on Monday I start work for my new company / client / big thing dojit enterprizes: makers of high quality mobile games.

Danny learnt, and I can second this that. if you don’t have alignment it can be a real battle, for everyone, especially those not in the management team. Which is what happened at Blippar and goAugmented.

But — if you can get everybody on the same page, it’s a “super-charger”, as Benioff suggests.

So Danny suggests that we create a process to align marketing

This is the really important bit – actually applying this stuff at work and with a marketing team (or wider ideally!).

Some time ago I read a book called the Toilet Paper Entrepreneur and loved it. Mike Michalowicz, the author, probably gave me the best, most obvious, advice on applying the ‘systems’ in a marketing or commercial environment where it’s about more than just you.

With your vision piece in place you know your top level focus, it’s simple to turn this into more detailed, collaborative and focussed action:

Design the daily and weekly measures:

Michalowicz advises only a handful, the really important drivers. This in itself is a powerful concept, of course the ’5′ may vary according to your role or function, I’ve found. In order to focus, tighten your attention to the measures that matter. This is going to enable to you to know if you need to dig deeper when any of those measures change negatively, and not lose focus when they’re positive by drifting into ‘nice to know’ information. Save that for specific reports on a monthly or quarterly basis if you can.

Align the whole marketing team with a ’90 day plan’.

This is the powerful bit. I always struggled with annual goals, they seem so far off that I could lose focus, whereas 90 days is long enough to impact, it’s exciting to see positive change, to deliver, yet not so long as to feel distant. Of course a 90 day (or quarterly plan) can easily cascade from an annual marketing or commercial plan once that’s created.

We set something around 5-7 SMART objectives, and then ensure all key milestones or deliverables are working towards making one or more of those goals realised, each millstone or deliverable is owned by somebody and it has a date next to it.

Using this, a whole team will know what they’re doing without having to get into each others specific task-lists – it avoids micro managing, it gives alignment and focus to the manager and the person doing it, it also enables management of expectation at the senior level of the business, total transparency as to what marketing is doing to help the business. I always found that pretty liberating!

Thanks Danny - this article was perfectly timed and the rest can be found here: Link here.

The glass of water .... a wonderful story.


A psychologist walked around a room while teaching stress management to an audience. As she raised a glass of water, everyone expected they'd be asked the "half empty or half full" question.

Instead, with a smile on her face, she inquired: "How heavy is this glass of water?"

Answers called out ranged from 8 oz. to 20 oz.

She replied, "The absolute weight doesn't matter. It depends on how long I hold it. If I hold it for a minute, it's not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I'll have an ache in my arm. If I hold it for a day, my arm will feel numb and paralyzed. In each case, the weight of the glass doesn't change, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes."

She continued, "The stresses and worries in life are like that glass of water. Think about them for a while and nothing happens. Think about them a bit longer and they begin to hurt. And if you think about them all day long, you will feel paralyzed – incapable of doing anything."

It’s important to remember to let go of your stresses. As early in the evening as you can, put all your burdens down. Don't carry them through the evening and into the night. Remember to put the glass down! -author unknown