Business Development Ideas

DrupalCampNYC8

jim wilde — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 12:55:43 +0000

I love Drupal camps!

I know - it sounds crazy talking about technology. But really, it's all about the community of people supporting Drupal - 375 of them this past weekend (DrupalCampNYC -- July 24th - 25th, 2010) at NYU PolyTech in Brooklyn, NY. From professional developers, designers, implementers and CIO's to geek hobbyists and the curious - we had a blast learning cool stuff about Drupal and exchanging how-to's.

The entire weekend was almost all free - $10 to get in. Back in the day, software company's used to charge $1000's of bucks to see and learn about their products and services. Man, have things changed. Open source software and the communities that developed around them have created a new type of software paradigm. One that makes it easy to get engaged, motivated, and where ideas are openly and freely exchanged. This sparks innovation and creativity.

If you never heard of Drupal, well, it is a web application framework with a kick ass content management system attached to it. Go get some!

If you're a Drupalist and missed the camp, some of the cool stuff I attended was about the rules.module and features.module as well as a couple of sessions that helped developers understand business requirements and how-to implement Drupal applications that solve real world business problems.

The way I see it, there are three types of Drupal people - developers or back-end guys (writes code), themers or front-end guys(designs interfaces), and implementers (module selection and theme selection, business logic, configuration, some coding, some design). The implementer helps figure the right modules to use, when to write new ones, how to configure them, what goes in the theme as opposed to a module or a view, figures out roles and permissions, and workflows. An implementers role does not get enough credit, especially since Drupal is geting implemented across a wider section of web apps and industries.

My qualifications: I've been doing Drupal for six years. I've been in IT (development to manager) and business development for many more years so I cover both developer and implementer pretty well and I do a pretty decent job as a themer. Without a decent business understanding, it is hard to build and implement a site or application that serves a purpose. This applies to any organization, including non-profits.

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Online Marketing - Search and Email Work Best

jim wilde — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 13:19:07 +0000

Survey results also show a definitive move toward leveraging online audience marketing measurement tools, and a focus on emerging digital and social channels for reaching target audiences.

"Each year, Datatran Media conducts its annual survey to capture insights from marketers around the globe. This year, Datran Media asked marketers to address their toughest challenges in this increasingly difficult economy. The results of the survey reveal significant optimism towards 2010 marketing and advertising spending, after a decline in 2009. "

Online Audience Analytics Marketers are focused on quantifying ROI this year:

72.8% say they now use audience measurement and analytics to assess the success of their digital campaigns, while just 21.6% do not.
Over one-half (54.4%) of marketers say they have optimized campaigns based on audience measurement analytics, while 29.6% have not done so as yet, but plan to in 2010 or beyond.
Most marketers cite clicks (72%), conversions (59.2%), and impressions (58.4%) as the three most important metrics:

Driving Brand Awareness and Revenue with Analytics

Nearly one-half 46.4%) of marketers say accurate online audience measurement is very important for driving increased brand awareness, revenue, and better campaign performance, while another 40.8% say it is somewhat important.

Among the greatest challenges to conducting online audience measurement, marketers cite the following:

Accuracy: 29.5%
Lack of ability to take action on data: 23.2%
Wasted impressions: 9.6%
Standards: 8.0% Some 26.4% of marketers say they do not conduct online audience measurement.

Check out Avinash Kaushik's blog about web analytics and website optimization. His ideas on web analytics data helps marketers and web analysts (like us) get actionable insights from their data.

Read more about the marketing survey over on Marketing Profs, Marketers: Shifting to Digital; Email, Search Perform Best.

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B2B Marketers Up Spending on Social Media

jim wilde — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 13:21:37 +0000

Interactive marketing spending will climb 9.2%, to $51.5 billion.

I hope all of you small to medium size business managers are using web analytics to track your ad roi?

From emarketer, B2B Marketers Up Social Spend

Facebook rated most effective

According to research from Duke University's Fuqua School of Business and the American Marketing Association (AMA), B2B product marketers were spending an average of 3.4% of their marketing budgets on social media in February 2010, and B2B services marketers were spending 6.5%. Respondents expected those proportions to reach 7.4% and 11%, respectively, over the next year.

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b2b marketing

marketing spending

ad roi

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social media

The Silver Lining in Layoffs and Job Losses

jim wilde — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 13:55:35 +0000

Being unemployed is painful.

If there is a silver lining, the large-scale downsizing from major companies will release a lot of new entrepreneurial talent and ideas — scientists, engineers, business folks will be looking to do other things. There will be a lot of forced entrepreneurship that will lead to innovations and new markets.

What's your idea? We're interested in partnering with individuals or groups on projects that require internet applications.

A crisis, like losing your job, changes the dynamics of things. It’s an opportunity to do things you could not do before.

I personally just finished up a project using Drupal at Sony Music in NJ and NYC.

From NYTIMES, "Smoothing the Way to Self-Employment" and "Why Bad Times Nurture New Inventions".

Alson from the Times, "Weary of Looking for Work, Some Create Their Own". "Economists say there are some peculiarities to this wave of downturn start-ups. Chiefly, the Internet has given people an extraordinary tool not just to market their ideas but also to find business partners and suppliers, and to do all kinds of functions on the cheap: keeping the books, interacting with customers, even turning a small idea into a big idea.

The goal for many entrepreneurs nowadays is not to create a company that will someday make billions but to come up with an idea that will produce revenue quickly, said Jerome S. Engel, director for the center for entrepreneurship at the Berkeley Haas School of Business. Mr. Engel said many people will focus on serving immediate needs for individuals and businesses.

"It's a very painful thing," he said of the pressure people feel to find new ways to make money. "But it's a healthy thing.""

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Social Media:

Tools For Crowdsourcing, Consumer Recommendations and Predictions

jim wilde — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 09:52:02 +0000

We use Drupal, an open-source web application framework, to build out socially interactive sites.

"The best recommendation tools perform a balancing act: They connect to consumers' sense of individuality as well as their group identification. Similarly, the tools must come up with recommendations that stretch horizons with suggestions that are new and a bit surprising, yet not off-putting. Recommendation approaches vary in how much access to the "long tail" of niche or obscure products they provide. Most recommendation engines offer a balance of the familiar and the unexplored."

The above quote is from MIT Solan, "What People Want (and How to Predict It", By Thomas H. Davenport and Jeanne G. Harris. "Companies now have unprecedented access to data and sophisticated technology that can inform decisions as never before. How successful are they at helping forecast what customers want to watch, listen to and buy?"

Hey, we provide open-source social software, which is rich in recommnedations, voting, feedback, collaborative filtering, forcasting and many other ways to interact with consumers and businesses.

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collaborative filtering

Social Media:

Endless possibilities

jim wilde — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 13:22:52 +0000

To get ideas - engage the wisdom of crowds, in ways you've never imagined possible. You can see this idea in action on del.icio.us and technorati.com.

Kathy Sierra from creating passionate users blog remarks on "The wisdom of crowds" ..."the wisdom comes not from the consensus decision of the group, but from the aggregation of the ideas/thoughts/decisions of each individual in the group."

Assigning order to a chaotic process. People in businesses and corporations are starting to use social software, virtual communities, and rich learning environments to relate ideas, stories and information to each other. These virtual communities help employees spot new business opportunities before the competition does, create a meeting place, be open to radical opportunities, break down silos, support experimentation, enable managers to represent the customer vis-Ã -vis their own organizations, and help everyone move forward.

The problem used to be that information was a scarce resource. On the flip side, most employees did not need to know much about the organization to do their job.

Keeping up with rapidly changing times. In the new millennium, yesterday's Employees have been replaced with today's Professionals - they need uncluttered information, both internal â€“ regarding the company, and external - regarding the competition, trends in the industry, etc - to solve problems, meet challenges, and do their jobs. The conundrum is that today's Professional needs help with ideas and information yet has no mindspace (time and attention) to sift though the clutter.

On a counter intuitive note, everybody needs a good heap of CLUTTERED INFORMATION to tinker with in order to invent new ideas.

With external information, the central challenge of intelligence gathering has always been the problem of "noise": the fact that useless information is vastly more plentiful than useful information. With more information available, it is harder to discern what information really matters.

With internal information or the lack thereof, the main challenge for today's professionals is trying to figure out how their daily work activities fit with what the organization is trying to achieve. Most employees do not read 10-K's, annul reports, or much about business objectives, goals, etc. This causes a disconnection on what needs to be done. What's more, plans change faster than people are able to grasp them.

Serendipity anyone?

With employees using socail networking software and virtual communities, they have a better opportunity for chance encounter and better cooperation across departments.

Since most companies struggle with the "silo syndrome" employees from different departments tend to keep to themselves, leading to inefficiencies and missed opportunities. A social network or virtual community lends itself to chance encounters among people who don't, but should, know each other.

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Death Sells

jim wilde — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 11:49:57 +0000

That's right. Death sells.

There is a definitive link between death and consumer behavior according to a study by Professor Naomi Mandel and co-author, Dirk Smeesters of the Rotterdam School of Management.

"Eat, Drink and Go Shopping: Why Thoughts of Death Whet Consumers' Appetite for Stuff", from knowledge at Wharton.

"The paper explores several aspects of human psychology, but its principal finding is simple enough: When humans think about death, they tend to binge.

Mandel is an expert in how non-conscious influences -- the fear of death among them -- can influence consumer behavior. In her most recent paper, "The Sweet Escape: Effects of Mortality Salience on Consumption Quantities for High- and Low-Self-Esteem Consumers," Mandel and co-author Dirk Smeesters of the Rotterdam School of Management explain how "mortality salience" -- that is, the awareness that one will die -- can directly impact the way we eat, drink and shop.

The study has implications for both marketers and consumers, and is among the first to prove a definitive link between mortality salience and consumer behavior."

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Web 3.0, RDF, and the Semantic Web

jim wilde — Sat, 10 May 2008 12:00:53 +0000

Search for answers and concepts using RDF - the semantic web.

RDF is a W3C standard for modeling and sharing distributed knowledge based on a decentralized open-world assumption. Any knowledge about anything can be decomposed into triples (3-tuples) consisting of subject, predicate, and object; essentially, RDF is the lowest common denominator for exchanging data between systems.

Users will navigate in search of answers, not web pages, and users will be able to ask real questions, rather than perform searches for certain phrases.

Here are some introductory materials that will help you get up to speed on RDF (and related technologies such as SPARQL):

The Semantic Web for noobs (video; running time 6 minutes)
RDFa tutorial video (video; running time 9 minutes)
RDF Quick Intro (article; reading time ~10 minutes)
RDF in Depth (article; reading time ~1 hour)
RDF Introduction (slideshow)
The Semantic Web by Tim Berners-Lee et al. (article; reading time ~20 minutes)
How to Tell Stuff to a Computer (set of articles)

The essential background for being able to work with RDF is in the RDF in Depth article, above; if you have time to read only one of these links, read that one.

For more tutorials, please refer to the comprehensive lists maintained by the W3C's Semantic Web Education and Outreach (SWEO) group:

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Social shopping sites ringing up sales

jim wilde — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 14:39:34 +0000

With social shopping sites, product blogs and online ratings and reviews consumers have the means to communicate their opinions about products and companies to tens of thousands of other consumers like themselves at a critical point in the sales cycle - the beginning.

Amazon figured out social shopping and e-comm - social e-commerce - a long time ago. They made it easy for consumers (aka prosumers) to make recommendations, write reviews and then share the information with other users. Although, I am not surprised that these ideas failed to catch on with most businesses. Interestingly, most businesses today are missing out on web 2.0 too.

Take a look around the net. Most business and e-comm sites fail on customer experience. They have old, static, out-dated product information with few methods of finding what you want or sharing what you find.

Anyway, below is a link to updated information about social shopping consumers and social software tools. "The Growing Influence of Online Social Shoppers" is from eMarketer.

"Now with social shopping sites, product blogs and online ratings and reviews consumers have the means to communicate their opinions about products and companies to tens of thousands of other consumers like themselves at a critical point in the sales cycle - the beginning.

While blogs and customer ratings and reviews have long been a familiar part of the Internet commercial landscape, says Jeff Grau, eMarketer Senior Analyst and author of the new report, Consumer Interactions: Social Shopping, Blogs and Reviews, over the past two years social shopping sites have emerged as another way for customers to share product experiences and opinions."

Most of these web 2.0 and social software applications are becoming critical to businesses.

What's your experience? Who do you pay attention to for purchasing information? How do you find stuff on the long-tail? What other social commerce applications or sites are you familiar with?

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Improving customer services with social networking software.

jim wilde — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 12:05:22 +0000

Customer facing employees using social networking software are improving customer services.

Employees are able to collaborate and share what they know with other employees and learn what they don't know about customers. To go further, these social applications can be opened up so parts of the them (idea management) can help customers provide feedback, make reviews, or share ideas on how to improve products and services. This works. Take a look at Amazon.

Social networking, social applications, web 2.0, collaboration tools have become powerful influencers on and off the web. People are sharing information (text, images, videos) about everything - including your products and services.

"Don't be scared or rattled by this development. Survey after survey has established that buyers trust each other more than any other source in helping them make informed buying decisions. MediaPost noted that in 1977, 67 percent of people polled in a research study said they were moved to take some sort of action by word-of-mouth influence. In 2003, that number had risen to 92 percent. Pollsters and magazines like Consumer Reports have for many years taken on the dirty work of telling us what customers think. The social internet has simply stripped out the
middleman, making it possible for people to converse directly with each other quickly and in their own words." From My Custome, "Customers control your message (and why that's a good thing)", by Phil Gillin.

Businesses and corporations are using these new technologies to improve customer services, work flow, idea management, information sharing, information flow, project management, education, and training.

So, stop reading about social software applications and collaboration tools. Unleash your imagination and start experimenting with them. The real value and power of social software can only be appreciated with hands-on experience. Try this, a short-term, pilot project to discover and evaluate solutions based on results.

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Social Media:

collaborative software

Important technologies for 2008 - Collaboration Tools - Social Networks

jim wilde — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 10:17:07 +0000

Web applications and tools to help people connect and share ideas and information.

CIO Insight, "Collaboration tools which allow employees to brainstorm, plan, analyze, share work and make decisions together are among the most important technologies of 2008.

"Collaboration: Unlocking the Power of Teams" from CIO Insight, By Allan Alter

Mr. Alter, "...collaboration and work-flow moved up to second place in our Top Trends Survey list of the most strategic technologies late last year, it confirmed what CIOs and other IT executives had been telling us about the field's growing importance to their businesses.

...the line between collaboration and communication is ultra-thin, and we included nearly 30 items under the collaboration umbrella from telephony and e-mail to prediction markets and social networks.

We discovered that about 80 percent of IT executives believe collaboration and workflow technologies deliver on their promise to boost productivity and decision-making, and half say they enable and even inspire strategies that were previously unattainable or unimaginable."

At the end of the day, you need to solve a problem. So, stop reading about social software applications. Unleash your imagination and start experimenting with them. The real value and power of social network software can only be appreciated with hands-on experience. Consider this, a short-term, pilot project to discover and evaluate solutions based on results. We're easy to work with and provide application audit trails as well as productivity metrics.

Productivity gains that impact business - Forward thinkers and project teams will quickly gain experience with online communities, social networking applications, and new information flows as they apply to how people learn, collaborate and innovate. The results are a rich learning environment that supports better decision making and work-flow management.

Leveraging resources to create custom solutions. We take a hybrid approach between open source, closed source, functionality, risk and support to deliver simple or advanced, custom solutions. Ones that are stable with superior performance and maximum uptime.

A small investment for big returns. We listen to your problems and offer solutions. From practical ones to crazy ones, we'll help you unlock the benefits of social software and Web 2.0 ideas. Call us now at 973.433.4007.

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internal social software

orchestrating resources

work-flow

teams

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web design website development

rich learning environments

Keeping up with rapidly changing times.

jim wilde — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 13:07:34 +0000

Applying open source ideas to business.

The open-source software movement developed because people had an "itch to scratch". One that "off-the-shelf" software did not support or was too costly to use. In the open source community people want to contribute, learn and share their knowledge and experience. They want to participate in a rich learning environment. They want to be able to get their work done and make a difference. We know from experience that these ideas work in a business environment.

With many open-source communities having thousands of developers and users - it is a mistake to believe that these ideas would not apply in business.

"Did You Know; Shift Happens - Globalization; Information Age" video by Karl Fisch.

Here are several more ideas that fit any size project. They are centered around using social software and virtual communities to help employees, stakeholders, partners, deal with rapidly changing times.

internal communications, how people work together - collaborate,
amplify talent development through rich learning environments,
social web and rich internet and intranet applications to meet ever changing market demands,
innovation around networks of people,
idea and resource exchanges across the organization,

"Ketchum report: Media Myths and realities and Gary Hamel" by Alan Moore on Communities Dominate Brands.

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open source

business

internal communications

contributing

filtering ideas

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private social network applications

Social Networks, Communities, & Rich Learning Environments

jim wilde — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 15:46:28 +0000

How to create a rich online learning environment.

The following two posts are about advertising and new business models. My interests in them is about how we learn new things, share ideas, social information management (SIM) and flow in a workplace social network or community. In other words, how do we create a rich learning environment? One that helps employees and stakeholders sort through the clutter?

Note: I'm grateful for smart people like Mr. Hagel and Ms. Dyson. They help me clarify ideas that I simply don't have the time or skill to write about.

edge perspectives, John Hagel, "Shift Happens â€“ The Future of Advertising...social network sites provide increasingly robust platforms for us to learn about what our friends are interested in and purchasing (although in many cases still trying to figure out the appropriate balance between privacy and attention).

"Release 0.9: Don't Cry For Me, MicroHoogle!,"Esther Dyson

"User-managed metadata

...the new world of social networks, user-generated content and metadata. These aren't the "walled gardens" of yore, controlled spaces offered by outfits such as AOL. These are walled gardens custom-made by users for themselves.

Facebook, unwittingly or on purpose, has been teaching people to manage their own data about themselves. While Facebook's launch of the Beacon user-as-product-shill service was a PR fiasco, it familiarized millions of users with the notion that they can control information about themselves online and determine to whom it is visible. What might seem a horribly complex and tedious task to their elders - categorizing "friends," managing newsfeeds, handling intersecting communities of contacts - feels natural to the Facebook users of today. They want more granularity of control, not less."

I'm practicing what we've been trying to pass on to clients about social software - learn new things. I picked up on Mr. Hagel's post from two sources. One was here, and the other was on a private social bookmarking site.

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sponsorship fee

diminishing-returns efficient

SIM

choke-points

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community software management

social informatin management

Enterprise COBOL Applications Meet Web 2.0 - Social Software

jim wilde — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 16:37:35 +0000

Some 75% of the world's businesses data is still processed in Cobol.

JP Rangaswami, on his blog, confused of calcutta, has an insightful discussion, "Musing about enterprise information and flow. ...doesn't everyone in the blogosphere know about ping servers, search engines, aggregators, ad servers, data miners, ad servers and text scrapers? What's so instructive about spam blogs? And surely everybody knows about social bookmarking, about linking, and about making comments?

The instructiveness for me comes in the word I left out. Corporations. Enterprises.

In the 21st Century, the web is two-way; as Doc Searls often says, it's writeable. So, if we take these ideas into the enterprise, build enterprise applications around the web, what are the analogies? Should there be any analogies? Should enterprises be using exactly the same tools as their customers? Why not?"

Here's one idea.

COBOL Meets Web 2.0?

From CW (Computer World), "Confessions of a Cobol programmer".

Some 75% of the world's businesses data is still processed in Cobol, and about 90% of all financial transactions are in Cobol, according to Arunn Ramadoss, head of the academic connections program at Micro Focus International PLC, which provides software to help modernize Cobol applications.

Because of the massive installed base, it would be too expensive to try to replace all that code, he says. Instead, many companies are looking for ways to integrate Cobol with newer applications."

Don't laugh. I cut my teeth on COBOL at a time when IT was DP. I designed and wrote cics/cobol/IMS/DB2 code for dozens of mainframe applications. I even used Micro Focus with both, Telon and APS/PC - code generators. I'd love to have an opportunity to mashup a web 2.0 - social application with a COBOL one.

Any takers? What would the app do? Any ideas on consumer IT mixing it up with corporate IT? I have a couple of ideas around to-do lists with task, calendar, and event management.

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COBOL

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Social Bookmarking

web design website development

Open Source CMS