Managing Information and There Really are Stupid Questions

This week I continued to try to de-clutter and improve my online life.

I decided it was pointless to receive email newsletters and announcements. The simple fact is that I don’t read any of the emails from retailers, so why keep getting them? Further, newsletters were nearly 100% redundant with my Google Reader feeds, so again redundant content.

I cut my incoming personal email by about 80% – awesome.

I also took advantage of Gmail’s attempt to determine which of my emails are important and which are not and began starring those to follow-up. Most of this was driven by the fact that I’m no longer using Outlook on my personal email and am more reliant on my phone.

To not miss alerts that I was receiving by email, though rarely ever reading, I set up feeds in Reader for LinkedIn.

I also decided I’d try to answer a question a day on LinkedIn. I think over the course of the week I found two worthy of actually being answered.

I was subscribed to Answers in Marketing, Digital, and Technology (7 categories altogether).

One I answered was, “What is your policy on following someone on Twitter once they follow you?” Fair enough and I got a nice response from the person who posted it. In the Internet Marketing Group I answered, “What tools are you using for social media monitoring and would you recommend them?” On that one I got a “Best Answer” designation, which was a nice pat on the back.

Despite the fact that I wanted to post an answer a day, though, I found the questions were mostly rubbish, considering many of these people were asking based on needs for their clients or their own business.

Here are a few:

Branding, “Need thoughts on a website. I swear this isn’t an ad! I just need opinions and thoughts on a website for a client.

Internet Marketing: “We have a social network website where people connect and socialize. We think that our strategy is not good enough and we need to do strategy/scope change or close the project. Could you please share some information like books / other resources that can help us to get correct approach to the issue.”

Market Research: “Do you own or operate an Advertising Agency, Network, or work in any aspect of Performance Based Marketing?I need to know what is out there.”

Mobile Marketing: “How do QR Codes work? Do they need some sort of hosting? Can I generate my own custom QR codes? How? Hi guys, I am looking to create mobile websites for my clients and would like to generate QR codes. However, how do QR codes work? When you scan a QR code, do you get taken to a server where the URL is interpreted? If so, how can I host that part myself? Or can I? And finally, can I generate my own custom QR codes?

Project Management: “Business has been great the last few months. The only problem is I find myself getting complacent. Does anyone have any tips to quickly pull out of such a state-of-mind?”

I’ll continue this for a few weeks to see how it goes, but week one sure was disappointing.

What’s in My Bag

On the Verge they regularly run a post about what people carry with them, “What’s in your bag, Thomas Houston?” Recently, my company rolled out iPhone and iPads to employees and my old Blackberry Curve, which served me well for years, was having a problem with the charger, so due for an upgrade I decided to go with an Android based phone. I didn’t properly save my contacts, so I’m manually updating the new phone as needed from the Blackberry. All of this means I’m carrying a lot of stuff and thought why not jump in the game.

I’ve mentioned the Blackberry is temporary, the iPhone 4 is work, and I selected a Samsung Infuse 4G as my personal device. I would say that the Infuse pushes the boundary of size for an average sized person. If the screen were any bigger I wouldn’t be able to use it well. I’d suggest for those looking to see a lot on the screen, this is as big as you can go. I was able to upgrade to Gingerbread with no problem, and so far the phone has been great. I’ve had the iPhone a bit longer, and loaded some apps, but mostly as a work device, I haven’t ‘played’ too much with it. So yes, of late I’ve been toting three phones in my bag.

I also am carrying an iPad 2 and HP Elitebook 8440p laptop, both work issued. Due to the extent that I use Excel and Access, plus the typing, I can’t rely solely on touch tablets to get my work done efficiently.

To keep us online at all times, I was also provided a Verizon MiFi device.

I carry an iPod Nano for music so I don’t waste battery life on other devices and I keep several sets of ear buds as I like to be sure both iPad and laptop have them plugged in when working, so I don’t have odd sound being shared across the room I’m in.

Since I wear glasses and have many screens, I keep an Olympus lens wipe with me, and since I’m a Steelers and Hitchhikers fan I carry a Terrible Towel.

I’m planning on getting protective jackets for the Infuse and iPad, and in addition to the Bullet Space Pen (which I got as a stylus/pen combo for my Palm Pilot and absolutely love), I want to get an AluPen stylus for these devices (see the Verge’s Stylus review here).

I typically have a legal pad, a couple pens, some spare change, a couple tissues, hand gel, and Carmex not to mention power chords and adapters as necessary depending on where I’m going and what I’ll be doing. I also carry two sets of business cards, personal and work. It isn’t that I’m planning on leaving, only that while I was between jobs I got involved in a range of activities and like having the personal ones available for non-employment interactions.

The bag is Reaction by Kenneth Cole, which I like, but would like it even more if it had a latch for me to hang my keys from. When traveling and leaving my car behind I loved having this feature on a former bag as I knew they would never go missing.

So, ridiculously large amount of stuff in my bag! Good thing most days I’m driving myself in to the office and only occasionally adding the extra chargers for off-sites.

Tweets from first three weeks in April

Going to post on what mobile has done to my personal online habits and why it differs from business for me, but first the first three weeks of April, Twitter recap!

Strategy/Thinking

Kence Anderson shared a great article on The Science of Genius which spoke to being creative. Big topic during April was employers accessing social accounts, Harvard Business Review had a good article on future employers and what you post. Also noted a post on a father/son team publishing a book on teaching kids to code. Harvard Business Review also had a post on the “Everyday Expert”, which I found to be very interesting. It addressed people declaring themselves experts based on follower count etc, instead of actual experience.

A post on the number of touchpoints exploding with new services and devices arriving daily was of interest. Harvard Business Review also had a good post on how leaders use dreams to inspire. A great article on the limitations of computer’s knowledge from Scientific America. Valdis Krebs had a great article titled the Next Big Thing, about networks. John Battelle on what Silicon Valley doesn’t understand about DC.

Found a ‘no duh’ post on open source essentially saying just because its open source doesn’t mean its better than proprietary. Mostly interested in thoughts on open source products and community versus proprietary. ZDNet had a good post on why the enterprise should embrace LAMP. Good article on DAM in the enterprise.

Analytics

Avinash had a great post on MultiChannel Attribution.  The Google blog also had  an article on marketing attribution in a complex digital world.

APIs

Public data boom and role in business was a good post by Mashery. CMS Wire made a case for monetizing APIs and value of platforms. TechStars Cloud demo day dominated by big data and APIs. And Apigee had a good post on the Facade Pattern (part of a series). Found a good article emphasizing the need of companies to let developers know their roadmap related to APIs.

CRM

Good article on SugarCRM, which I’m looking at using for a project.

Data

Lots of articles coming out on data and I thought Gerry McGovern had a good one on the Web & data.  Also one about who is going to do the work to take advantage of big data was so true in my world.

Google

Lots of Google bashing by tech bloggers, yet found a post noting that its popularity is soaring among the public. The redesign also had people talking and one article on the app platform caught my eye. Great article featuring 10 Google products you might not know about. Post on new benchmarks and site speed per Google. The new Gmail Meter is out and there was a post that provided good info on it.

iPad

I got my company issued iPad 2 and found acouple of how-to’s I liked, one on taking a screen shot and another on fancy gestures and other tips.

Sharing/Communications

Post on sharing by age group and type of technology found email remains most shared type of content.

Twitter

Flowtown had an infograph and article on scheduling apps, but didn’t mention BufferApp, couldn’t believe it!

And from the life of Ross, mostly daily Gracian quotes, Plinky prompt responses, tweets during the Indy Car race at Long Beach, a few mentions of music I was listening to on Pandora, release of the 1940 census, a cold war relic – a Soviet secret submarine base now open to the public, some local music mentions, a massive dolphin die-off in Peru, Audi’s electric car that is so quiet they are adding sound, a great photo of the new Corvette that makes it look like the car is moving, DARPA’s robotic challenge, the Giant Radio Telescope race, obesity, design of a motorcycle on OCC, military using Android, a physicist who mathematical proof got him off a ticket for running a stop sign, space shuttle Discovery lands in DC,  a book review, info on ticks, a $1M electric car, a check in at our favorite Asian take out spot, and those were all the off-topic posts for the month to date.

If you like the topics, follow me on Twitter and save yourself the time of finding info! @rossnunamaker

Work Together

This principle is one of 200 from The Tao of Chess by Peter Kurzdorfer. I realized while reading it, that these principles also applied to my approach to digital strategy and analytics. Since these are the things I am most often thinking about, I thought I’d share them here. If you’d like to learn Kurzdorfer’s take on chess and life, you’ll have to read his book.

Principle 3: Place pawns opposite bishop

In short, this principle is reminding you to have your pieces compliment one another. Bishops cover one half the board on a diagonal, either white or black, pawns move forward but can only attack diagonally,  so you need to have them work with your bishops to secure the most board space.

Similarly, you must build your teams and select your systems so they compliment one another.  I’ve noticed in the enterprise especially, it is a big challenge to achieve this. To begin, because the scale is so large individuals don’t always know what others are working on. They don’t/can’t be aware of how others may need to leverage data or content from their system. And they may not be viewing their fellow employees as end using customers who are using more than one system during a work day.

Instead they are focused on the successful completion of their singular task.

A digital strategist must gain a broad understanding of systems, needs, challenges, and people in order to be successful.

The strategist must work across a range of departments and owners to make over-arching sense of a myriad of systems and then convince these diverse individuals to work toward a common goal. This is aligning your pawns with your bishop.

Tweets from the Weeks 3-18 and 3-25

I guess I got so excited doing my taxes last week that I forgot to post a summary of my Tweets, so this week I’ll be posting for two. In addition to these I mostly kept up with my Baltasar Gracian quote at mid-day and evening writing prompt courtesy of Plinky, plus some off-topic but interesting posts I found online, and of course with the start of IndyCar and the open-wheel season, on raceweekends you’ll get some commentary! Thanks to BufferApp for helping me manage this!

Strategy/Self-Improvement

If you are in the digital space, you’ll want to be aware of the FTC Final Commission Report on Protecting Consumer Privacy. I began a series on my WordPress blog regarding “Principles to Transform Digital Strategy” based on the book the Tao of Chess. I reposted a Tweet by Avinash Kaushik regarding how to build a message map. Found a scary report that showed less than half of a web site’s traffic is by humans. I downloaded and linked to “The Rise of Digital Influence” (and planned to read it, but haven’t yet). I also shared “The CMO Guide to the Social Landscape” which is an interactive infograph.

There was a good post on the merits of an open vs. closed Internet on GigaOM and one on apps vs. WWW from Pew. Tweeted a case example from the patent wars.

Several Harvard Business Review posts including how to improve on ones creativity, tips and lessons on being more creative, American competitiveness and the slidedeck showed some real deficiencies, the trauma of unemployment.

Google announced a Picnik replacement, PicMonkey, developed by the Picnik team (I’ve already bookmarked and used it, good tool).

API

Apigee had a pair of posts on API Facade Design, which was something new to me. More on the data side of the equation O’Reilly had a post on open data being key to breakthroughs in healthcare. ProgrammableWeb with more good info including a tool to test RESTful APIs. An automated documentation tool for RESTful APIs caught my attention as well. Found a post on government data and a call to use APIs over bulk data files. I also found what looks like it could be a good visualization tool for Google Analytics, which uses its API to connect the dashboard with your analytics account.

Drupal

Drupalcom took place and I shared a link to the Drupal plan for the future. Drupalopolis is posting some great content and I really enjoyed a piece on preparing your site for the tablet.

Keyword

Learned about a new keyword tool, which I found to be intriguing called Ubersuggest.

Mobile

A pair of posts, one on what tablets mean to healthcare and the other addressing mobile as a potential distraction to HCP’s. Found Mobitest, by Akamai, which is an open source mobile page load tester. Another post on FDA’s potential regulation of health related apps. A post regarding an app to restrict messaging to underage followers (ie alcohol or tobacco ads).

If these topics are of interest, follow me on Twitter and save time by letting me find the great content for you! @rossnunamaker

Being Mobile

This principle is one of 200 from The Tao of Chess by Peter Kurzdorfer. I realized while reading it, that these principles also applied to my approach to digital strategy and analytics. Since these are the things I am most often thinking about, I thought I’d share them here. If you’d like to learn Kurzdorfer’s take on chess and life, you’ll have to read his book.

Principle 2: A knight on the rim is grim.

This principle is about mobility and positioning. The critical question to ask is are you using your assets to the best of their ability or are you making them do things they were not designed to do?

If you have a problem and find a tool to get the job done, ask yourself what else can this tool do for me? In some cases it could do a lot, but you simply don’t have the resources to employ them now. In that case set it up properly in the beginning and make it a part of your road map.

A  knight on the rim is limited because you restrict its mobility. Position your systems to get the most out of them even if you can’t do it right now. Think long term, even if you can only act for the short term.

Control More than Half the Board

This principle is one of 200 from The Tao of Chess by Peter Kurzdorfer. I realized while reading it, that these principles also applied to my approach to digital strategy and analytics. Since these are the things I am most often thinking about, I thought I’d share them here. If you’d like to learn Kurzdorfer’s take on chess and life, you’ll have to read his book.

Principle 1: If you control more than half of the squares on the board, you have an advantage.

Business is competition, and without question digital is a big part of doing business today, but I’m looking at this first principle from an internal perspective. In the enterprise there are many different departments involved in any given system or process and to be both effective and efficient, you must have your systems (and people) working with one another.

The board is the playing field. This includes all of the systems you are reliant on to implement your digital strategy whether they are your direct responsibility or not. If you can’t control them, your potential for success is severely limited.

I work in our marketing services department and I’m working with at least our IT group and our internal agency on most every project. I may also be working with product teams, sales operations, sales, HR, finance, and RA/QA. Depending on the project, it could be with 3rd party vendors/agencies as well.

The more departments involved in any given project, the more complex it becomes as it must meet more needs.

The question for me then, becomes who is the owner? Who makes decisions regarding the system, or system selection? If I’m not the owner, how do I ensure the system works as it relates to my needs and requirements.

This is where strategy comes into play. I need to know if there is another strategy in another department at play, or if they are simply trying to solve one problem in isolation.

Recently, we were looking at adopting a new Web CMS. In the beginning only SaaS solutions were being considered, but I was able to get Drupal into the conversation. The more I thought about our needs in the future, the more I felt Drupal was the right solution.

The choice came down to some SaaS solutions and Drupal. The deciding factor turned out to be our IT department indicating that while they could support either option, their approach was to adopt LAMP based software when possible.

At that point I controlled the board, Drupal was selected, and we are now positioned to build upon it with other LAMP software. As more of these pieces come together it will become more difficult to adopt non-LAMP, unless it simply is not possible/practical.

In a constantly changing environment, it is important to know what systems are in place and critical to learn what are being considered. If you wind up with multiple closed systems as opposed to multiple compatible ones, you’ll find it impossible to properly do your job.

So how much of the board do you control now, and how much will you control in 18 months?

Strategy is about long-term, have a plan, know what other’s plans are, and work toward implementing, measuring, reviewing, and revising. In time you’ll get the pieces in the positions you need to control the board and achieve your vision.