Tag: technology

Standards for High Speed WiFi

Jeff Jarvis raised an issue last week that was one I had blogged about at the ALI Social Media Summit, when as part of my presentation I showed the group how easy it is to start a blog. We created a blog in just a few seconds based on the premise that “high speed” is seriously false advertising for the Chicago Hyatt’s wireless internet.

I don’t know whether Jeff’s call for legislation is the answer, but I’m happy to report that based on my experience so far at the Omni Orlando at Championsgate, I’m going to have high-speed wireless worthy of the name for the next couple of days. What’s more, it’s free.

That’s an interesting difference you see among hotels. The lower-priced hotels and motels put up banners advertising their free wireless internet, because they know it’s a differentiation that could get them extra business. The higher-priced ones that are frequented by business travelers with advance reservations must think most of their customers are getting reimbursed for wireless, so they just add it as a separate charge.

Maybe instead of legislation someone should start a social media site that would let travelers rate the wireless service at hotels, so we could know in advance whether it’s worth the $11.95 or so…or whether the hotel is among the enlightened ones who provide truly high-speed wireless as an amenity for customers.
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Electronic Disruption Not Just for Media

Whatever you think of global warming as a scientific phenomenon, from the perspective of John Kotter’s penguin fable it is undeniable that economic icebergs are melting from underneath all sorts of businesses and their employees.

Time magazine announced some huge changes this week, and Jeff Jarvis, as usual, has a spot-on commentary. I found this statement particularly compelling:

I think that general-interest magazines may well be fated to fade away. General-interest anything is probably cursed. For the truth is that interest never was as general editors and publishers thought it was, back in the mass-media age. Old media just assumed we were interested in what they told us to be interested in. But we weren’t. We’re proving that with every new choice the internet enables.

Yet special-interest magazines — community magazines, to put it another way — have a brighter prospect — if they understand how to enable that community.

Time‘s travails, the ouster of the LA Times‘ editor for refusing to adapt to economic realities, the continued decline of newspaper readership, and Gannett’s more realistic approach to the kinds of changes needed for long-term success in the news business highlight the pace and extent of change we all face.

Large, established news media organizations probably feel this most acutely, because they have seen their core business as creating, editing and distributing content to mass audiences. Too often they also have tacked “on paper” to the end of that sentence (or some other specific medium that reflects the way they have always done it.) As technology drives the costs of developing and distributing content toward zero and choices multiply, the erosion of mindshare for the old-media oligopoly is inevitable.

But although those working in media may feel the changes most acutely (or at least have a bigger megaphone, even in a fragmented media landscape, to talk about it), icebergs are melting in all sorts of industries.

The New York Stock Exchange announced this week that it would cut employment by 17 percent, or 500 jobs, largely through and because of more electronic trading.

Amazon’s S3 service (I need to look into this) offers unlimited data storage and transfer at low flat rates, enabling start-ups or more established companies to focus on building their business and traffic, instead of how to scale their server space. Don MacAskill, CEO of SmugMug, details how S3 has saved his company well over $500,000 in the last seven months, and how he expects savings of well over $1M in 2007. He was spending that money somewhere else before he made the change to S3, so for whoever those vendors were, some warm water is coming under their iceberg.

Congratulations to those organizations that are keeping their eye on meeting needs and serving customers, and finding ways to meaningfully contribute. Not all will be successful. But it’s great to see organizations like CBS sending out “scout penguins” by launching a service like this, to see if this is a way to provide information people want.

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Thoughts from the Bulldog Online Measurement Teleconference

In the Bulldog teleconference today I came away with some helpful insights about how to use online monitoring. My earlier post has more of the points I made.

Evan made a really good point that you need to measure things that are in keeping with your goal, and what the desired user response is. For example, if your goal is to influence opinion through an initiative as opposed to selling something, focusing on click-throughs is short-sighted; it gives you numbers that are relatively meaningless.

Angie Jeffrey walked us through a measurement matrix she has developed. You can reach her for a copy of this by email at (I think she will be willing to share this if you ask. Please let her know Lee sent you her way…which would be one way of getting some anecdotal measurement of how many people are taking action based on this post.)

Donna added that setting measurable objectives means we need to define the target audience, what we want them to do, and in what time frame. For example, we want 75 percent of articles in electronics trade publications that mention our company to include at least half of our key brand messages. She also showed her dashboard of key measures, which she uses to share information with TI management.

I would welcome any comments or questions from people who want to have a discussion about this.

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Bulldog Reporter Online Measurement Teleseminar

At noon CST today I’m going to be participating as a panelist in a Bulldog Reporter teleseminar entitled Online Measurement: Proven Tools and Affordable Techniques for Tracking Brand and Reputation on the Internet.

Among the sites I use for tracking mentions of Mayo Clinic in the blogosphere (and in other on-line sources such as news sites) are

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Ice Rocket
Google News
BlogPulse (can track trends of blog mentions vs. a competitor, or look for a spike in your own mentions, which may indicate an issue that needs attention.)

I use the same tools to track some other issues I care about, and set up searches that are connected to RSS feeds that automatically send updates to my RSS aggregator. I use NetNewswire for Macintosh because I like being able to take my feeds with me on my laptop when I ride the bus. There are other software packages available for this, or you can use My Yahoo!, Google Reader, My AOL, Newsgator or other on-line services so you can read your feeds from any computer. The only downside is you need to be connected to the internet.

In addition to potentially giving an early warning about issues that may be brewing, I also find these services (which are all FREE) helpful in identifying potential story ideas. Frankly, most of our mentions in the blogosphere are positive, although we do see posts falsely claiming Mayo Clinic support or validation for a product. We follow up on those, involving the Legal department if necessary. But we have lots of patients who have blogs, or people blogging about the experience of a family member at Mayo Clinic, and we have had some occasions in which we see a compelling patient story in a blog, and have followed up to see if the patient would be open to having a story on the Mayo Clinic site for patients.

And, of course, now that I’ve done this post I will see it show up in those monitoring sources I’ve mentioned above.

We also use some flat-rate paid service for more comprehensive on-line monitoring, primarily of news sites. That’s what is really nice about the web and automated on-line services: instead of a per-clip fee, you get everything for a flat rate. We still use a clipping service for the print clips because the on-line versions of major newspapers differ from their web sites, but particularly for major stories we can use free and flat-rate online monitoring services to get quick feedback and pass it along to the patients involved, to caregivers and to leaders of the organization.

I look forward to hearing my fellow panelists’ contributions.

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Getting Real: Toxic Meetings

The 37Signals gang has now made its magnum opus (or whatever the minimalist programming equivalent would be) available on-line for free on the web. If you want to take it with you, you have the $29 hardcopy option or $19 for a PDF.

The basic thesis of Getting Real is that for software, fewer features executed well beats the jack-of-all-trades approach. But as the authors say, their working philosophy has applications even when you’re not building an application:

Note: While this book’s emphasis is on building a web app, a lot of these ideas are applicable to non-software activities too. The suggestions about small teams, rapid prototyping, expecting iterations, and many others presented here can serve as a guide whether you’re starting a business, writing a book, designing a web site, recording an album, or doing a variety of other endeavors. Once you start Getting Real in one area of your life, you’ll see how these concepts can apply to a wide range of activities.

Here’s a sampling of this broadly applicable wisdom, from the essay entitled Meetings are Toxic:

Don’t have meetings

Do you really need a meeting? Meetings usually arise when a concept isn’t clear enough. Instead of resorting to a meeting, try to simplify the concept so you can discuss it quickly via email or im or Campfire. The goal is to avoid meetings. Every minute you avoid spending in a meeting is a minute you can get real work done instead.

There’s nothing more toxic to productivity than a meeting. Here’s a few reasons why:

They break your work day into small, incoherent pieces that disrupt your natural workflow
They’re usually about words and abstract concepts, not real things (like a piece of code or some interface design)
They usually convey an abysmally small amount of information per minute
They often contain at least one moron that inevitably gets his turn to waste everyone’s time with nonsense
They drift off-subject easier than a Chicago cab in heavy snow
They frequently have agendas so vague nobody is really sure what they are about
They require thorough preparation that people rarely do anyway
For those times when you absolutely must have a meeting (this should be a rare event), stick to these simple rules:

Set a 30 minute timer. When it rings, meeting’s over. Period.
Invite as few people as possible.
Never have a meeting without a clear agenda.

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