Techno//Marketer

Nokia's Jan Chipchase on the evolution of mobile

I am a huge fan of the TED Conference's video library. If you're not familiar head over there and poke around (be warned, you will spend a lot of time there).

This video of Nokia's Jan Chipchase is one of those videos that I come back to over and over again. It truly changed the way I look at technology's implications on the global community.

Jan spends his time traveling the world and doing ethnographic research to figure out how the mobile phone fits (and will fit in the future) into our culture. This local, first-person research is so valuable and has very wide-reaching implications.

The coolest part is when Jan goes into the way that phones are used in Uganda as ATMs. People basically exchange airtime minutes as currency. There is a central point person in the local village who has a phone and who exchanges minutes into cash. In other parts of the world there is a whole industry created around supporting and repairing devices where those services do not exist. Other countries are using mobile phone numbers above the entrance to houses instead of house numbers. That's their identity.

Check it out:

Technorati Tags:
communications, Matt Dickman, social media, social networks, Techno//Marketer, technology, TED, mobile

Speaking at Sun Microsystems Startup Camp

On May 4th and 5th I'll be attending, and speaking at, Sun Microsystem's Startup Camp 5 in San Francisco. The event is about 1/3 panels and 2/3 unconference (where the agenda is set on that day). I am really honored to be sitting on the "Notes From Mission Control: Rules For a Successful Media Launch" panel alongside S. Neil Vineberg, Jyri Engestrom (co-founder of Jaiku), Christina (CK) Kerley and Mark Modzelewski (CEO of Stealth Startup).

Other panels on the 4th include the likes of Matt Marshall, Stowe Boyd, Pete Cashmore, Brian Solis and Sun's CEO Jonathan Schwartz. You can check out the full schedule here and see the impressive attendee list here.

I'm really excited to go to the startup capital of the world and learn from some of the best minds in marketing technology. I plan on shooting lots of interviews, meeting people that I've admired from afar and sharing my expertise (and midwestern perspective) with an audience who is willing to be bold with their marketing and use of technology.

If you're going to be there or would like to try to meet up while I am there (I'll be there through the 6th) drop me an email or leave a comment!

Technorati Tags:
marketing, Matt Dickman, Techno//Marketer, technology, Startup Camp, Sun Microsystems

Voiceless, spoken communication

Now this is pretty cool and I just have to share. I found the following video on Marc Andreesson's blog and it blew my mind (as it did his). These guys have developed a way to intercept and translate speech before it gets to your vocal chords so you don't need to say what you are thinking, you just have to think it. Check out the video below.

This is very cool technology and may well shape the way we engage with technology in the future. You could be sitting at your desk and just think things like "open Microsoft Word" and it would open. You could create thought to text software that would actually work because the words are pre-digitized. This could possibly enable speech impaired individuals to communicate "vocally".

What other implications will technology like this have on our day-to-day lives?

Kelly Goto on user experience design basics

I had the pleasure of meeting Kelly Goto when she came in to do a presentation the Fleishman-Hillard office in Washington, D.C. yesterday. I've heard Kelly's name before from her myriad speaking engagements and I know her design consulting firm, but I had no idea that she was the person who wrote THE web design bible. (I highly encourage you to check out her book.)
 

Her presentations were full of very helpful tips and it was great to see a strategic, manageable approach to user experience design (UXD as it's called in the trade). There is a trend out there to make UXD so complicated and labor intensive that it becomes overwhelming and slows down the process. Her advice was to stay agile.

She talked at length about becoming an experience ethnographer and how she accomplishes what she does on a scale from Fortune 100 companies down to small projects. Her main point was finding the difference between what people say (in a focus group or interview) and what they do (either by following them or through photo diaries). That is where the valuable insights come into play.

Kelly asked us to find a balance between practical and emotional design. Making sure that the user accomplishes what they need to, but also that the experience is as good as it can be. She urged us to look at simplified applications like Twitter that really work to accomplish one task really well as a basis. Feature creep is a killer in web-based environments.

She and I talked about the constant "battle" inside agencies between technology and design and how the real opportunity for growth is to blend the two areas. CSS, for example, has given non-technical designers a way to use technology to impact the user experience in a positive way and from device to device.

We also spoke about how Flash development provides companies the ultimate opportunity to bring technology and design together, to have this conversation and move toward better experiences. The use of creative and ActionScript (the language that makes Flash move and interact with elements and data) provide a powerful tool for creating rich, immersive experiences.

As I mentioned in a post last week, the best technology around is invisible to the user. Design can act as a shield for technological complexity when done correctly, but can make simple technology overly complex if done poorly.

I absolutely loved her company moto which is "Exceed expectations, take vacations". I highly encourage you to seek out Kelly and her advice as it's truly valuable and practical for any organization.

Photo courtesy of petele on Flick.

Quote of the day

If you've seen any of my presentations, either in-person or on SlideShare, you may recognize this quote. I think it perfectly and succinctly sums up the position of marketers who find themselves at the crossroads of emerging media. I originally saw this quote in a Tom Peters (one of my heros) presentation and fell in love with it.

If you don't like change,
you're going to like irrelevance
even less.

~ General Eric Shineski, retired Chief of Staff, U.S. Army

Marketers who continue to do the same old thing month after month, year after year are going to find their messages falling flat. It's important to set clear and measurable goals for engaging in new media and look at emerging media to see what fits with your customers.

Technorati Tags:
marketing, Matt Dickman, Techno//Marketer, Tom Peters, quote, emerging media

Best practices vs. right practices

How many times have you, in your current or past jobs, been tasked to find best practices? Your boss probably said to you "Hey, we're doing a new X for client Z. I need you to find best practices on that". If you're like most people, you immediately go to Google and search for "best practices for X". Sound familiar?

In a world where new innovations are only a mouse click away, why do we place so much value on best practices. Shouldn't we look at best practices as a starting point instead of the ending point? Do you think Google looked at online search best practices and said "Hey look, let's just do what Yahoo is doing"? Not at all. They took Yahoo, used it as a foundation, build stronger algorithms and fought for white space. The result is a superior product that allowed them to expand into unforeseeable new territory.

Wikipedia defines a best practice as "a management idea which asserts that there is a technique, method, process, activity, incentive or reward that is more effective at delivering a particular outcome than any other technique, method, process, etc."

The problem with the definition, and my overall contention with the idea, is that these are only the best known practices. The real potential is in the unknown. That is where market leaders are born and exponential growth is realized. When companies look at so-called best practices, what are they looking for? I think a lot of companies just want to be average. They want to be on par, but not put in the work to push the envelope.

At the end of the day, the RIGHT practices are what matter. The right practices are tailored to the needs of the company and the realities of the market in which they compete. Best practices should only be a starting point. They should be a map of the known that makes expanding into the unknown possible.

Have you ever relied on best practice information only to find that you could have done better? How have you used that information as a baseline for innovation? What steps should companies take to great their own right practices?

Technorati Tags:
Google, innovation, marketing, Matt Dickman, Techno//Marketer, Yahoo

First//Look: Seesmic (pre-alpha)

What do you get when you combine video, social networking, micromedia and a very savvy French entrepreneur? You get Seesmic. Seesmic is the brainchild of French blog-star Loïc LeMeur and aims to do to video conversations what Twitter did to text-based conversations. The site is a social network where the primary content is video. Users record video, post it to the site and other users reply in video.

The site is in pre-alpha (only about 300 users testing right now) and a lot will change over the course of the next couple of months and I'll re-post when it goes into beta. Enjoy the video:

[Feed readers please click through to the post if you cannot see the video.]

Here is an example of the user-side of the video experience from Seesmic:

Key takeaways for marketers:

• The move toward video as an intimate, personal form of communicating is here
  
• Technology has caught up to consumers and video is easy to record on Seesmic right through the browser
  
• Conversations will be mobile on this site down the road so you can create, send and reply to videos from a mobile device
  
• Content created by the users is re-mixed into a daily video best-of video that is then shared with everyone
  
• Hooks into YouTube, Twitter and Skype help auto-promote content to larger, external networks
  
• The company is asking for suggestions and proactive responding to them in video
  
• The openness that the company is providing as they share how they are growing is a model more companies should follow
  

Through the videos they've created I have found myself becoming attached to the company and the model they are using to build a company. I will keep an eye on this in the future and let you know when more invites become available.

If you have a site that you would like me to look at and possibly do a post like this on, drop me an email or leave a comment on the post.

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Technorati Tags:
First//Look, marketing, Matt Dickman, social media, social networks, Techno//Marketer, technology, trends, video, Seesmic, Loic LeMeur

Virtual worlds colliding with traditional ones

I was watching a little primetime TV last night and saw a spot by Toyota for their Tundra line of trucks. The 30 second spot features the virtual world/video game World of Warcraft (WoW), but even if you're not familiar with the WoW you can pretty easily follow along. I think it's very progressive of them to use this concept and I'm sure it's reaching the younger male audience that they're targeting. Here it is if you have not seen it.

Another example of virtual worlds coming to mainstream is the October 24 episode of CSI: NY. In the episode a parallel Second Life experience will allow users to interact in a whodunit of unprecedented proportions. Users will be able to log in to SL and walk through the crime lab, process evidence and try to catch the killer.

Both of these endeavors by such large companies show me that they believe virtual worlds are at a tipping point for their target audiences. I imagine this type of integration will become more common in certain audience demographics as the technology gets easier to use and the experience becomes more easily accessible.

This definitely appeals to a pretty narrow audience, but it's a very hip, young, connected, tech-savvy one. Have you seen any other examples of this type of virtual world integration? What other brands lend themselves to this type of hook given the audience?

Technorati Tags:
innovation, interactive marketing, marketing, Matt Dickman, second life, Techno//Marketer, technology, trends, world of warcraft, Toyota

The future of social, mobile networks

Greg Verdino is away on vacation, but he asked me to guest blog on a topic of my choosing while he was gone. On top of being honored to be included with other great bloggers, like Doug Meacham, Ryan Karpeles and Jonathan Baskin, I knew I had to push myself to keep up with Greg's high standards.

The post that I wrote is a press release from the future (2009 to be exact) where Facebook releases a mobile operating system. It's where I think that the mobile, social web could go to truly bring value to the users and leverage mobile technology.

So, if you get a chance, head on over to the post on Greg's blog and check it out. Would love to know what you think.

Technorati Tags:
Greg Verdino, marketing, Matt Dickman, mobile, mobile devices, social networks, Techno//Marketer, technology

Photography 2.0

I saw this video on the Strobist blog. It's a great speech by commercial photographer Chase Jarvis at a NYC Photoshelter meeting. (I am an amateur photographer always looking to learn more.) His talk about the world of photography 2.0 echoes what is happening in the marketing industry. In fact, it shows the breadth of how these tools and networks we're creating to connect individuals are impacting the world at large.

Here is Chase's video (this is 55 minutes long, but worth the view):

Chase outlines some "universals" in his presentation. Here they are and how I think they apply to marketers around the world:

1. Hard work: This is a given. Hard work and experimentation is the only way to get ahead. Some parts of Web2.0 enable laziness, but the people who put there head down and work hard will leap ahead.
   
2. Passion: This is the crucial ingredient for me. If you work hard for something you're not passionate about, you're not getting ahead you're losing. Find your passion and use the technology to convey and leverage it.
   
3. Personal style: This does apply to marketers. It's called branding. For marketers, this is the personal interaction, the support, the design, the UI, the logo, etc. It all comes together into a personal style.
   
4. People: The core of business and certainly of Web2.0. The community, the U in UGC and the social networks are all made up of people. Take this away and there is no 2.0.
   
5. Business: To me this gets to the business models. You have to have a knowledge of what makes business work. It's the only way you can turn that on its head, re-invent everything and change the world.
   
6. Unconventional: Another tenet of Web2.0. Things that were unconventional a couple of years ago are mainstream. It's all about looking for the next unconventional thing to think about.
   
7. Give Back: I love this. Giving back is something I practice on and off line. There are lots of ways to give back. Join an organization, donate money, donate time, become a mentor or use a forum like blogging to share what you know to make the whole community smarter.
   

Besides the DJ he has live mixing during his speech (phenomenally cool), I think Chase really gets the 2.0 movement. He's all about sharing what's made him a success and in turn is helping the next generation. He's not afraid of sabotaging his business, because he's using pieces of Web2.0 to be seen as a thought leader and visionary. Once somebody reaches that level, people turn to them and engage them MUCH more often than another person who holds their information tight to their vest.

Share, learn, grow. That's Web2.0. (And photography 2.0 too.)

Technorati Tags:
marketing, Matt Dickman, photography, social media, Techno//Marketer, user generated content, video, Web2.0, Chase Jarvisp, Photography2.0