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Nerd 2 Nerd: Arrington’s Laws of Networking

Michael Arrington‘s tips on how to network are basic, but sorely needed by the nerd community:

1. Never underestimate the power of an introduction. A mutual friend who introduces you by email or in person is far more effective than a cold self-introduction at a crowded event. Approaching someone randomly should be your last option.

2. Don’t approach someone when they are clearly in the middle of something. If I’m throwing a conference, there likely isn’t any time at all that is appropriate to approach me. But there are 2,000 other people there you can hit up who aren’t as busy as I am at that time. Hit me up at the event that I’m attending but not running.

3. Don’t approach someone when they are in the middle of a mob trying to get their attention. This is usually after a speaker has just left a stage, and everyone hits them at once. If you must grab them then because you have no other way of meeting them, make it very, very quick and aim for nothing more than their business card so you can email them later.

4. If you get someone’s business card, never call them. That mobile phone number isn’t for you, the person who just met them. A random call to their cell phone is never welcome. Send an email. (I kinda messed up on this one. Larry Hagman gave me his card once, but it didn’t have his email… so I never called! Ha.)

5. When you approach someone, don’t assume they know you even if they do. You see them across the room, note them, approach them and say hello. You’ve had a few moments to think about it, but all they see is a face in front of them, a thrust out hand and a “hello!” It’s not reasonable for them to decide if they know you, remember your name and where you work in a half-moment.

Instead, say “Hey Bob, It’s Mike from TechCrunch, good to see you again” slowly and clearly. You’ve just told them your name, where you work, and the fact that you’ve previously met. Trust me, they are thankful for all that information, and everything will go smoothly from there.

6. If you forget to tell them who you are, don’t get offended if they don’t know. There will likely be a few sentences of very unspecific conversation as they try to remember any detail about you, or even if they’ve met you before. If they start off with “how are you?” or “what do you think about the event?” then things are going badly. They should be asking “how’d that financing with Sequoia go?” or something much more specific.

7. If you’ve blown it to this point, for the love of God fix it. Drop in something like “yeah, since I met you at the whatever event we’ve been rocking at TechCrunch. We finally launched that new blog on bicycles.” Bam, you’ve saved the situation. Notice how much better the conversation goes from there.

8. Look for body language. If you pay attention you can tell how engaged they are. If they aren’t engaged (looking away, never talking, etc.) don’t try too hard to get them to focus. Instead, move on to what you want. Get their card, see if a meeting or a call is possible and ask for the best way to make that happen. Some people think the more time they spend with a person the more likely they’ll get what they want. In reality, it’s the opposite. Don’t take time just because they are too polite to end the conversation.

By this time, you’re probably asking: am I a geek, dweeb, dork or nerd?

Thanks to John Hagel for clarifying:

nerdvenndiagram.gif

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The kids launch Planet Green

After talking about it for several years, my daughters have finally launched Planet Green. I wonder how long they’ll demonstrate “constancy of purpose”?
Thanks to their activism, we have now been vegetarians for several years, we worry about water, and try to stop wasting natural resources. In many ways they have helped shape my green thinking, by opening my eyes to the news and to our stunning inaction as the planet dies around us. The Silk Milk boycott was their idea, as was their insistence that we should minimize the use of paper towels, etc. etc.
It will be a fun experiment, I believe.

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Communicating Change

It’s not enough to work hard and do your best when the Becks and Limbaughs of the world are doing their best to destroy your arguments with rage, hatred and lies.
What’s needed is a simple framework to communicate what it is you are doing and why.
Vijay Govindarajan‘s post – Obama’s Challenge: Communicating a Framework for Change – shows us what Obama should be doing to communicate more clearly.
And he’s got to find some of that campaign passion as well.

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Here Comes The Big Oil Lobby

It’s nice to see how democracy works, or not.
First the insurance lobby, now Big Oil.
Let’s allow the insurance companies to deny people health care in order to maximize profits.
Let’s look the other way while Oil companies stop alternative energy strategies from taking off…
Is this a last gasp for Capitalism 1.0?
Why is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation silent?
Where’s the Pope? Again, the silence of “the church” is deafening.

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Fact Check on Health Care Reform

The New York Times reports:
A patient in Illinois was charged $12,712 for cataract surgery. Medicare pays $675 for the same procedure. In California, a patient was charged $20,120 for a knee operation that Medicare pays $584 for. And a New Jersey patient was charged $72,000 for a spinal fusion procedure that Medicare covers for $1,629.
Whew.
Wake up everybody!

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GOP Gone Wild


What happens when the right-wing runs out of ideas. They turn to stupidity, lies, fear, hate, and hypocrisy – the five cardinal virtues of the Republican right.

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Health Care Reform: Is Bill Moyers the Last Journalist?


Nice quote from Dante.
This is what we’re up against. Is this the America we want? Bad news: we already have it. Well done, CIGNA. Thank you, Blue-Dog Dems. And of course, this edition of American Reality is brought to you by the Republican party, or as they call it now, the GOP.

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Health Care: Who do you Trust?

Do you trust your doctor or the paper pushers at your insurance company?

Another way to look at the issue: is it bribing or lobbying?
When the Republicans and the blue dog Democrats are both in the pockets of the drug and insurance companies, what do you expect? This is why we have lost our way, and why specifically, we need campaign finance reform.
Here’s some background reading:
– Health Care Realities
– Gang of Sickos: Six US Senators Sell Out Constituents for $11 Million from Health Industry
– How Pharma and Insurance Intend to Kill the Public Option, And What Obama and the Rest of Us Must Do
– Sicko by Michael Moore (watch the whole thing)
– Industry Cash Flowed To Drafters of Reform
– Obamacare Is At War With Itself Over Future Costs
– The cost of no public option
– Crazy Wingnut Healthcare Attacks Exposed
– Nearly 2,000 Americans Seek Treatment in Fairgrounds Barn
– My Car Has Better Insurance Than I Have
– Firefighting in the 1800’s: A Corrupt, Bloated, Private For-Profit Industry
Time to throw these money-lenders out of the temple! Call and write your reps on Capitol Hill – daily! It’s your health, after all.
P.S. – Democrats, dump Baucus, now.

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The Rise of Intuitive Intelligence: An Interview with Francis Cholle

Here’s my intuitive intelligence interview with Francis Cholle at Emory Marketing Institute >>
Cholle’s main point is that businesses have lost track of how to manage holistically. They are too focused on counting beans to create sustainable business value.
He’s not saying analytics are useless. He’s just saying that Mark Hurd at HP isn’t going to come up with the products HP needs for the future by using analytical processes (that’s not in the published interview – but we did discuss it!).
Read the interview here>>

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Silk Soy Milk Loses its Way: Adventures in Corporate Unsustainability

My family has been a customer of Silk Soy for well over seven years. As of today, we quit. Why? Two reasons:
1) the soy beans aren’t organic anymore
2) they’re from China
Anyone who trusts food from China is being foolish. Remember this? Not to mention the carbon costs of transporting food all that way…
Read all about how Dean Foods destroyed its brand and beat up on American organic farmers at the same time. I thought about writing them or calling them, but it’s less work to just switch. They’re obviously not going to listen to their customers anyway.
Just another example of the short-term, unsustainable mindset of the multinational company.

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Jack and Suzy Welch’s Reality Advertising

Jack and Suzy Welch star in a Microsoft-sponsored, web-based, business reality show. The site is here, but it’s too cluttered (I think they were trying to be cool).
I do think this is a great advertising campaign, if the branding fools don’t destroy it (by placing too many Microsoft (yawn) pitches in the margins, for example).
Watch the first show below. Jack jumps in and “surfaces” a few issues at Connect by Hertz – a new car-sharing venture. In a way, the fact that Jack pulls these issues out in 5 minutes sorta tells us how out of it Hertz is.
Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

After watching this I get the feeling they don’t understand VG’s Box1-2-3 strategy for innovation. In fact, they are most likely going to fail. After 30 days, the CEO has still NOT created a global business unit for Griff. Not good. No follow through on commitments.
One more thing. Why doesn’t Microsoft bring Jack and Suzy into Microsoft for a few days? They could wake the sleepyheads real fast. Stop one: The Automotive group!
Also, I’d like to see Obama send Jack and Suzy into GM for six weeks. That would sure be a reality show worth watching.
BTW: A quick ecosystem analysis shows that Zipcar is beating them hands down. Rankings: almost 600,000 for Connect by Hertz and 22,000 by Zipcar.

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Intel and Wind River: Shaping Strategy for the Future of the Consumer Experience

The acquisition of Wind River by Intel should not come as a surprise for anyone who has been paying attention to the rapid evolution of the online experience. We know for example that the future of electronics is collaboration, sharing, and access – anytime, anywhere, on any device..
Companies that build a vision around the future and then work to make that future a reality using their business ecosystems will win the next round of competition after we emerge from the recession. Intel’s shaping strategy, as my friend John Hagel would call it, is nothing short of brilliant.
Let’s see why.
In the automobile “infotainment” world, Intel has been quietly working with Wind River and BMW (and others) to build a shared platform for devices based on open source standards. The ecosystem partners comprise the Genivi Alliance and are in competition with another, smaller ecosystem of partners driven by Microsoft. The difference is that Microsoft’s infotainment stack is not open. Ford’s Sync and Fiat’s Blue & Me products are based on this competing platform. (How long before they switch?)
The ultimate irony – both platforms are built on Intel. And in this case, Intel knows something that Microsoft doesn’t – that open systems are the future.
The Wind River platform is not limited to automobiles. They’re doing the same across a variety of marketspaces, like the Open Handset Alliance Android – another open source platform.
The Wind River acquisition also helps include “Intel Inside” on all the devices which cloud computing will bring. Intel is making sure that the Telcos, IT hosting providers, hardware and software vendors – everyone gets to use Intel as the foundation of their future business.
Shaping Strategy 101: Intel gets it.

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Burger King: “Global Warming is Baloney”

Business stupidity is always a sign of something else more worrisome. Several Burger King franchises in Tennessee have been displaying “Global Warming is Baloney” signs outside their restaurants.
Now that they’ve decided to speak their minds, how about we speak ours with signs like these:
– “Try our Massive-Coronary-Failure Burger – Buy 1 get 2 Free”
– “No Mad Cows Allowed on Premises”
– “Our Burgers are E-Coli free, or Your Money Back”
– “Our Rats are Sanitized for Your Protection”
– “Our Employees Wash Their Hands after Using the Restroom”
See what I’m getting at?
The franchises are all owned by a company called the Mirabile Investment Corporation (MIC) that owns more than 40 Burger Kings across Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi.
Nice going, guys. What next? A “whites-only” sign?
Burger King should yank their licenses. I’m sure they can get some other, more responsible, business owners to take over.

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Customer-Driven Innovation: Interview with Gaurav Bhalla

Here’s my “Customer-Driven Innovation interview” with Gaurav Bhalla for the Emory Marketing Institute.
According to Bhalla, the key building blocks of value co-creation are:
Listening: learning about consumers’ experiences; their angst, frustrations, desires, and aspirations

Sustaining value co-creation conversations: meaningful conversations that yield the raw material for co-creation
Experimenting and rapid prototyping: to manage risk, improvise, and enable speedy value co-creation
Execution: only when co-created value is delivered can the next round of value co-creation be initiated
Read all about it >>

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Byron Katie: Challenging Your Assumptions

The Work of Byron Katie can be used as a tool to challenge business assumptions.
Here, on Byron Katie’s blog we find the following business inquiry: “Having More Customers Means Having More Profits” in which a biz-dev manager starts questioning his team’s belief that “more customers equals more profit.”
The process is described as business inquiry.
Here are the manager’s conclusions:
“Having fewer customers means having more profit.”
“One, we could focus on the customers that have the strongest cash positions, the ones who are most likely to weather the recession.
“Two, we could stop wasting time on difficult customers, the ones that keep changing their orders. They’re very high maintenance, but we keep them because we think we need them to meet our numbers.
“And three, we could stop serving customers that don’t pay in a timely manner, the ones with poor payment history.”
More at Byron Katie’s blog >>

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Backlash: How Early Adopters React When the Mass Market Embraces a New Brand


David Reibstein‘s theory holds true online as well. Let’s look at an example of how this works with online communities, knowledge – based communities in particular. Let’s say we build an online community around a specific topic. When the site starts up, we attract the early adopters – some of them thought leaders in their fields. The posts, articles, and debates are generally led by a handful of these thinkers, and they attract a following. The newbies, as they engage with the community start off by learning, asking questions, sometimes just lurking. The quality of these early debates is typically high and participation intense and invigorating.
So what happens when the community suddenly experiences growth – massive numbers of the hoi-pollloi descend on the site and suddenly the quality of discussions takes on a Twitter-like feel – stupid and stupider. The old school rebels, first through silence, and second by disengaging. This takeover by the wisdom of the masses can be avoided, through ruthless editorial direction and skilled moderators. And every once in while, the new participants challenge assumptions that deserve to be challenged, and are given their space in the sun.
So how do we manage this growth and stay true to the community’s intent?
Three options come to my mind:
1) Manage membership – simply keep the community at growing in a measured way – firing the “bottom” 10% each year, and bringing in a fresh crop of participants at 20%… This is the surest way to sustainable growth.
2) Create a merit-based aristocacy – with tiered membership based on the value of the participant’s contributions.
3) Create a feeder community which is built for the masses and an elite community for the thought leaders and their followers. Moderate the interaction between these groups with the possibility of upward migration based on peer-based invitations.
You’ll notice I am not advocating open communities where everyone has an equal voice. That’s because I’m not talking about social communities, but communities of practice where respect is reserved for the competent.

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Axel Springer: Thriving in a Dying Industry – Newspapers!

While newspapers and print outfits are losing their shirts all around us, the German company Axel Springer recently reported its “highest net income since the company was founded” 62 years ago.
How is this possible?
What are they doing that our friends at the NY Times aren’t?
From the NYTimes:
Axel Springer generates 14 percent of its revenue online, more than most American newspapers, even though the markets in which it operates — primarily Germany and Eastern Europe — are less digitally developed than the United States.
One reason, Mr. Döpfner said, is that Axel Springer has dared to compete with itself. Instead of trying to protect existing publications, it acquired or created new ones, some of which distribute the same content to different audiences.
At one newsroom in Berlin, for example, journalists produce content for six publications: the national newspaper Die Welt, its Sunday edition and a tabloid version aimed at younger readers; a local paper called Berliner Morgenpost, and two Web sites.
Though advertising has slumped in Germany, Axel Springer has been able to offset the shortfall by raising the price of publications like Bild, which sells more than three million copies. Now Axel Springer is looking for “undervalued assets” to buy.
Mr. Döpfner said the company would even have a look in the United States “if a meaningful position arises in a significant market.”
OK. So what are newspapers in this country going to do? Stay tuned.

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How to Use YouTube for Market Research

Have you ever used YouTube‘s “Insights: Statistics and Data” feature?
It’s a remarkable tool for effective market research in real time.
Let me walk you through how I use it to:
– test new product ideas
– learn what customers like right now
– deduce where events should be held
– learn exactly which portion of a video clip grabs audience attention
– see which topics get customers engaged and why
– learn the exact demographic profile for each product
The first thing to do is create a separate video for each product or idea you are interested in selling. If you’re selling an information product – like a video or an audio, simply use a short excerpt. Keep it under five minutes. Three minutes is optimal. Upload your clips, make them visible to the public, and watch the fun begin.
In a few days or when you get to over a thousand views, it’s time to check your YouTube Insights.
Here’s what YouTube gives you:
stats
This summary of your results:
(1) Tells you how many views your videos are getting. This will tell you if you’re getting any attention at all.
(2) Shows you which video is getting the most attention. Now you know what your prospects like – and the margin between what’s getting attention and what’s not.
(3) Expose your real demographics. Not too fancy, but you get to see the age range your product resonates with. Every now and then I’m surprised.
(4) Identifies the regions where you are getting traction. Again, results do vary by geographic location, so you can decide if you want to spend some money to gain exposure in a particular country or state, for that matter, or if you want to focus on your natural geography – the places in which you’re getting organic attention.
Now let’s go further:
stats
(1) View your traffic over time – days, months, a year.
(2) Sort video popularity by region – again, a handy guide to what the reaction is to your message… country by country.
(3) Details on which videos are winners and which are not. Based on this you can decide which product merits backing, and which ones need more work.
stats
(1), (2) and (3) Which videos are getting the most traffic and from where…
stats
(1), (2) and (3) Which countries (or states) are most receptive to your work!
stats
(1) gives you the age breakdown for your products. Is it senior women or adolescent boys?
stast
(1), (2) and (3) tell you which products get the most response from your prospects – positive or negative. Let’s you know early on if you need to go back to the drawing board. A quick measure of engagement.
stat
Probably the most powerful piece of information, this tells you the level of attention – the peaks and valleys – for your work. Use it to optimize your messaging. Now you too can be a Frank Luntz (just don’t go over to the dark side).
All of this information costs nothing. And from my experience, the quality of results can’t be matched easily, not even by expensive focus groups!