While I Was Surfing…

Found on some of my favorite blogs tonite:

Ryan at 37 Signals has an interesting take on design.

Forrester Research’s Bruce Temkin wants you to get Emotional about your Customer Experience

Tom Peters has got 5 things to say about the current state of the economy

Tara Hunt muses on being 36 and feeling “middle-aged” (Really, middle age?  I hope not, cuz that means I’m a senior citizen)

Design blog The Dieline features a fascinating new packaging product that’s eco- and design- friendly  (Warning:  Hardcore design freaks only)

And while we’re on the subject of design, former Bostonian turned San Franscisco PR diva Renee Blodgett talks to a number of local artists inspired by color

That’s it for tonite, folks!!  Friday next and the weekend to follow!!!

 

Surprised by the Yankees?

So the New York Yankees have won theirr 27th World Series title. Good for them…but is anyone really surprised? After all, they had the biggest payroll in baseball, and they’ve played like champions all year long.

Maybe it was fitting that they brought it back to the new Yankee Stadium to close it out, and give the House that Jeter built a proper housewarming. I’m sure there are plenty of NYY fans with smiles on their faces and a spring in their step this morning.

The Yankee organization shelled out an incredible amount of money this year on player salaries, and it (finally) paid off. Pay for Play does work, and maybe President Obama should take note when he hosts the Yankees at the White House for their traditional World Series champion photo-op. The Yankees wanted the best talent, they paid for it and got it, and are now reaping the results. Wall Street, take note!

But back to my original point – it all just seems so….predictable. The only thing that shocked me, frankly, was that the Phillies actually won two games. The way the Yankees were playing for the last month, I wouldn’t have been shocked if they ran through the entire playoff series without losing a game. Does that take away from their victory? Probably not. But doesn’t it just seem like we were watching a movie that we’ve already seen before? We knew how it was going to end long before the credits rolled.

TMI!!!

As I sat down at the computer tonight, I thought that I had a reasonable plan for making some measurable progress on my little “side project”, that for now, will remain “eyes only – top secret”.  And, I suppose the night is still young, but already I feel it slipping away from me.  The reason?  An absolute fire hose of information, courtesy of just a few Tweets.  In rapid succession, I clicked through three Guy Kawasaki Tweets that linked to stories on his Alltop site that I found fascinating:

Five megatrends that you can’t ignore http://om.ly/axEk

Ten things social media can’t do http://om.ly/axVr

13 small-business social networking sites you probably never heard of http://om.ly/azai

The first two articles led me to subscribe to the RSS feeds for both of the originators of the content.  The third article prompted me to actually sign up for one of the small business social networking sites (check it out:  http://sta.rtup.biz/profile/JeffGraves ).

After absorbing all that great content, I spent 20 minutes searching for other interesting posts and people to follow on Twitter on my “secret project” account.  About 19 minutes into that exercise, I realized that there is just an endless supply of good, relevant, interesting content to consume, and if I were home 7 days a week with nothing else to do, I STILL wouldn’t make a dent in it.

Back when I was in school at WPI, I remember reading an article about the worker of the future, a classification that the writer called the “gold collar worker”.  The key to being a “gold collar worker”, as I recall the article saying, was not necessarily knowing things, but knowing how to FIND things – sort of a 21st century Radar O’Reilly, or in today’s terms, a human Google.  Speaking of Google, I just Googled “gold collar worker”, and have discovered that someone was kind enough to put an entry into Wikipedia regarding our friend the Gold Collar Worker!  According to Wikipedia, Robert Earl Kelley coined the phrase in his 1985 book The Gold-Collar Worker: Harnessing the Brainpower of the New Work Force, although I have no idea if the article that I read (it was probably circa 1986) was written by Kelley or someone else.

After all that, I decided I just HAD to write a post about all of this…and here I am, nearly 2 hours into tonight’s work session, and not one of the tasks I had intended to chip away at complete.  However, I do feel better educated, I’ve identified some new resources that I’m pretty sure might come in handy on my project, and I even managed to submit this post.

OK, off to work…unless that post by Tara Hunt that’s calling my name in Google Reader distracts me…

What I Learned from Billy Mays

With the recent passing of ubiquitous TV pitchman Billy Mays, I got to thinking a little about how much I actually enjoy informercials and those “But wait, there’s more” TV ads that have been on the air for years.  Mays and a lot of his peers got their start working country fairs and trade shows, demonstrating products in front of passing crowds, and needed to learn ways to quickly get their audiences attention and hold it.  Once they attracted an audience, they needed to turn those passersby into paying customers.  While you might not be in the business of selling household gadgets, I think there’s a lot that a pitchman like Mays can teach anyone who’s in sales, particularly those of us who do product demos for prospective clients.

Now, I’m not a professional sales person, let me get that out of the way right up front.  However, I do conduct software product demos in sales situations on a regular basis, and quickly came to the realization that it’s not as easy as just trotting the product out and putting it through its paces.  Pitchmen like Billy Mays have a very specific approach to selling and demoing, whether it’s for a kitchen gadget, or a miracle cleaner, and that approach might help you improve your next product demo as well.  So here, in no particular order, are 4 things I learned from Billy Mays and his peers…

Get to the Point! A typical TV spot is 60-90 seconds, and most people use a commercial break to get a refill on their drink, take a bathroom break, or (perish the thought!) have a conversation with the other people in the room.  As a result, a TV commercial needs to get to the point fast, and capture the audience before they get busy doing something else.  You need to do the same thing in your product demo.  Just because you’ve got 30 minutes allocated in your meeting agenda for a product demo does NOT mean you should spend the first 15 minutes talking about the history of your product, or about your own resume.  Your audience will start counting ceiling tiles after about two minutes if you bore them, and I don’t care how interesting a speaker you are – they’re here to see a demo of your amazing product, not to hear you TALK about it.  So show them something, PRONTO!

What’s in it for ME? The next time one of those gadget commercials is on, pay attention to how it begins.  Almost invariably, the very first thing the pitchman does is ask the audience if they suffer with some kind of problem, be it torn clothing, the challenge of making dinner, or hard water stains on the shower.   And guess what?  The pitchman has got the solution, and here it is!  If you’re sitting in front of your TV and you’ve got a shower covered in soap scum, you’re probably going to at least pay some attention to the rest of this commercial, even if you think that it’s all a load of hooey.  You need to start your product demo the same way – by identifying your product with some challenge or problem that your audience needs to solve.  Then it’s time to wow them by showing them how your product helps them solve the problem.

Practice, Practice, Practice! Let’s face it – it’s a good bet that most of the kitchen gadgets we see on TV commercials aren’t quite as easy to use as they seem on TV.  And even if they are, you’re probably not going to take the thing out of the box when it arrives, and make it do what the pitchman did on TV the very first time you use it.  The truth is, even the pros make mistakes. But when you’ve only got 60 seconds (or 10 minutes) to convince your audience of the merits of your product, you need to make damn sure that you don’t fumble, or stumble, or click the wrong button and derail your entire demo.  Remember, those ceiling tiles are just calling out for your audience to start counting them.  Don’t give them the opportunity to lose interest – make sure you know EXACTLY how your product works, and make sure you have your entire demo down pat long before you step into the room with your prospective audience.

Be Memorable!! Part of the fun for me in watching a Billy Mays commercial is Billy himself.  He was loud, he moved his hands a lot, and he seemed to bring real passion for whatever product he was hawking, whether it was a laundry detergent or a kitchen gadget.  Now, I’m not proposing that you stand in front of your customers and yell like Billy Mays, but don’t be afraid to put some oompf into your delivery.  I firmly believe it’s better to be a little like Billy Mays, then to be like Ben Stein.  And part of the experience is the message.  You don’t have to include hokey sales rhymes or catch phrases (but wait, there’s still more!), but make sure you get your key messages across with a few memorable lines, and make sure that there’s at least one thing in your demo that you KNOW your audience is going to remember a month from now.

Over 20 years ago, there was a commercial on the air here in Boston featuring a Saladmaster salesman named Chris Nahatis, who I believe still sells for them.  I can’t locate the commercial on YouTube, but at one point in the commercial, Nahatis demonstrated the durability of the Saladmaster skillet he was pitching by banging the skillet against an inferior skillet repeatedly until the cheap skillet dented and nearly folded in half.  He then held the Saladmaster skillet, still in excellent shape, up to the camera, exclaiming “Look at this for abuse!”.  I wasn’t in the market for kitchenware 20 years ago, but that ad held my attention everytime it was on, and I still remember it like it was yesterday.  That’s the kind of product demo I want to give everytime I stand up in front of a prospective client, and I wish the same for everyone out there who gives demos.

Looking ahead to 2008

It’s hard to believe another year has come and gone, but such is life.  Although I’ve never been a big believer in resolutions per se, I do try to take a few moments and try to reassess where things are, and where I’d like them to go in the New Year.  The combination of the New Year, and my rapidly approaching birthday (42 this year), make it as good a time as any to figure out where I want to focus for the next year or so.  I’m thinking about general themes and areas to be aware of and focus on, rather than specific targets, so here we go….

Social Interactions

I’ve never been really good at staying in touch with people, or expanding my circle of friends, colleagues, etc.  Part of it is probably due to some innate shyness, but I think it’s mostly due just to my really not bothering to spend a lot of time on socializing.  This year, I need to spend more time staying connected to my existing friends and family, via emails, and more regular phone calls.  I also need to get out and visit family more, including some of my extended family who I really only see at funerals, it seems.  I also need to expand my circle of professional contacts, in the finance, technology and fire service circles.

Health

I’ve made some good strides over the past year in managing my Crohn’s, though better diet, particularly by focusing on ensuring that I drink at least 60 ounces of water a day.  However, I’m still woefully out of shape, something I’m reminded of everytime I go out on a call with the Fire Dept and actually have to do physical work.  Right now, walking a mile and a half each day to the office and back is about all the exercise I get, and that needs to change, starting this month.

Knowledge and Skills

Discovering blogs and Google Reader has been invaluable as a way to get exposed to new technology, news and ideas.  However, I have done little to build actual skills, like creating Web software, creating a marketing plan, or establish a new business.  To start, I need to define a couple of specific skills to work on this year, and then get working on them.

Career

For the last 15 years, I’ve pretty much relied on opportunities to come to me, and for some reason, they actually have.  Every couple of years, as I start to feel a little stale, something new has come up and taken my career in a new direction.  This year, after 2 years in the same role, I need to be more proactive in figuring out what’s next, and then taking specific steps to get there.  For the 1st quarter, I need to identify a few potential roles I could play next, and identify a plan to evaluate and move in that direction.

Family

After spending the last week and a half with the family for the holidays, I’m really struck about how quickly the kids are growing up.  I really need to make sure that we don’t squander these years.  We’ve done a good job over the last several months, I think, by taking the kids to movies more regularly, and finding new fun things to do as a family as well as “one-off” times like lunch out somewhere.  However, there’s always room for improvement.  In particular, I want to get them a laptop…it’s really amazing to see even 4 year old Billy play games on mine, and I really think they need the exposure.  Our trip to Disney World in April is also going to be a big event, because it will be the first real trip that we’ve all taken together.  I want to be sure that we spend some time in the next few months spending time as a family to figure out what we want to do on the trip, so that everyone has something to look forward to.

Social

Here’s another area that we’ve made some strides in over the last year, but have room for improvement.  We spent New Year’s Eve with a couple of families in the neighborhood, which was a ton of fun.  We need to find more opportunities to hang out with families around town, as well as time out with more couples.  We’ve done sporadic dinners with some of the guys at the Fire Dept and their wives, but we need to try to make those happen more often, as well as dinners with some of “the gang”. 

Well, that’s a start anyhow…what gets written down gets measured, what gets measured gets done. 

Happy 2008, all!!!!

(Price) Tag Memories

The title of this post doesn’t actually refer to metadata tags, but to good old-fashioned pricetags.  My wife gave me a nice new sport coat for Christmas, and I decided to wear it today.  Naturally, before I could wear it, I had to remove no fewer than 4 tags that were attached to the coat, in a variety of obscure locations.  I’m pretty anal about removing tags, mainly because of something that happened over 30 years ago…to someone I don’t really even know…

One Christmas, when I was about 10, my family and I went to Christmas Eve services at our church.  One of the gentlemen at the service obviously had just bought a new suit for the holiday.  How was it so obvious?  Well, under his arm, there still dangled a pricetag, a nice white one that stood out against the dark blue of his suit.  Thirty years later, my mother still recalls that story every Christmas, and as a result, every time I buy a new article of clothing, I spend a ton of time making sure that I’ve removed every tag from the article, because I don’t want to be remembered 30 years from now for having missed a tag.

 Which brings me to the real intent of this post – the design process behind collateral material like tags and packaging.  Why, for example, do companies need to put so many tags on a piece of clothing, and make them so hard to find sometimes?  Why do toy companies have to encase toys in so much plastic, and wrap them in wire ties that have to but unraveled or cut before the toy can be used?  I know there are “reasons” for all of this, but are they really friendly to the consumer, or are they in place for some assumed benefit to the manufacturer, or the retailer?

Having just survived another Christmas with 3 kids, I have to say that my least favorite part of the day is trying to remove all the unnecessary tags and wraps from items.  None of that does anything for me, except waste my time, and detract from the enjoyment of the item in question.  I just wonder when retailers and manufacturers are going to recognize that and do something about it.

Resolutions 2007

OK, maybe not a lot of people want to read about someone else’s resolutions, but this post is probably going to be more of a placeholder for me to look back on in 6 or 8 or 10 months to see if I’ve actually kept true to myself.  I don’t want to make real specific statements, because I’m not a fortune teller, and I don’t know exactly how this year is going to unfold.  But, I do want to try and make 2007 a year of change, of intentional growth, and of conscious focus on LIVING life.  So here goes…

*  I resolve to push myself into being more bold and fearless at work, by taking on at least one action every week that I would have shied away from or procrastinated in the past.

*  I resolve to find ways to be a better dad to my kids, and a better husband to my wife, by spending less time on “time wasters” and devoting a specific period on them every day, whether it’s for 10 minutes or 4 hours.

*  I resolve to do a better job keeping up with our family finances, both in terms of managing the day to day expenses, as well as focusing on the long term, and our investment picture.

*  I resolve to do a better job taking care of myself, from working on getting myself into better shape, to eating better, to managing my mental fitness.

*  I resolve to focus on DESIGNING the life I really want, deep down, from a family perspective, as well as a professional perspective. 

*  And then, I resolve to make it all happen.

New Year, New ???

It’s been a long, long time since I’ve posted, and I thought that perhaps a new year might be a good time to start again.  It’s interesting that the title of my last post was “Blogging is Hard”, since it just seems like one of my problems has been that I just haven’t wanted to take the time to create the kind of posts that I’d like, and so therefore, I simply haven’t posted.  But, I still WANT to blog, I still WANT to learn about how this whole thing works, and I still WANT to use this medium as a sounding board for a lot of day to day thoughts and ideas. 

 So, here I am, ready to try again.  One of the most fascinating things that I discovered as I refamiliarized myself with my WordPress account was that I’ve actually gotten a few pageviews over the last month, even though I haven’t posted anything.  Now, it’s entirely possible that the views were from bots, but it’s kind of nice to think that at least a few people may have stumbled across my ramblings recently. 

 Let’s see what the New Year brings…

The ScobleShow Finally Arrives

OK, I’m WAY late to the party here, but congrats to Robert Scoble on the launch earlier this week of his Podcast show, The ScobleShow, highlighting all kinds of cool geek sh*t, and a lot more.  It amazes me how powerful the skill of listening can be…I mean, Scoble’s clearly a pretty damn smart guy, but his greatest strength (IMHO) is his ability to listen to and connect with amazingly brilliant, driven people, and get them to tell him their stories.  He’s truly a grassroots journalist, and I don’t even think he ever went to J-school. 

Loooonnngg Week

Well, another week slips away, and it seems like I’ve got next to nothing accomplished.  In particular, I didn’t post a whole lot this week, which makes me feel a little guilty, since part of the deal I made with myself when I started this blog was that I would be disciplined enough to post regularly.  But, a busy work/family week, combined with some health issues, have kept me away from the computer most nights.  I guess I should go easy on myself, since sometimes, “stuff just comes up”, but I’ll have to recommit myself to doing a better job next week.