Flash is a wonderful and cool programming tool for any cool website. Flash can be used to present dynamic content such as video, other multimedia, and interactive tools. 

The trouble with Flash, despite its flexible and dynamic presentation, is it has until now been unpopular with anyone looking to get indexed by Google, and virtually all search engines. Until now Google and the other search engines didn’t index Flash content. As of this summer Google is now able to index most Flash (.SWF) files. Web developers rejoice!

Though the celebration in the developer community has been forstalled…

Read the full column and the potential impact on your web development plans: Google now indexes Flash; rejoice or refrain?

Aside from an entertaining observation that “French hotel clerks and young American women learn non-verbal communication at the same place,” Mike Schaffner’s recent article in Forbes.com, “Why Companies Need Web 2.0,” provides a brief but helpful overview of Web 2.0 technology and quick thoughts on how to utilize it. Schaffner, who directs IT for the Valve and Measurement Group of Cameron, suggests applications such as:

• Have employees use a MySpace- or Facebook-type site to introduce themselves to the company. These can also be a resource to help employees find a potential car-pool mate, someone with a background in product design or specific experience on a product you are thinking about launching.

·        Mashups can bring together production and operations data from a variety of sources, allowing a production manager to get a good overview of her operations.

·        YouTube-style videos can be used for training or distributing important messages, such as the CEO announcing a new product launch or Joe, the IT help desk guy, receiving an award.

More significant than the “how” of Web 2.0, however, is Schaffner’s observation about the “why”:

The point in all this is that there is a new generation of potential employees and customers that are accustomed to a variety of technologies being available, and they expect to see and use them in the corporate world. Whether and how we deploy these technologies likely will have an impact on our ability to attract new talent to our companies and to find and retain customers.

Give me Facebook or give me a new job

His observation about the expectations of a new generation to have access to this technology is strongly reflected in Prescient Digital Media’s intranet consulting services. Executives, right up the CEO level, are showing increased interest in bringing Web 2.0 technology into their environment in order to meet demands from younger employees.

A recent survey of a 1,000 European office workers reveals that this concern is well founded. Conducted by IT services firm Telindus, the survey found that:

• 39 per cent of 18 to 24 year-olds would consider leaving if they were not allowed to access applications like Facebook and YouTube.
• A further 21 per cent indicated that they would feel ‘annoyed’ by such a ban.
• The problem is less acute with 25 to 65 year-olds, of whom just 16 per cent would consider leaving and 13 per cent would be annoyed

While the varying adoption rate of Web 2.0 technology between consumers and corporations is well documented, the Telindus survey reveals that this delta is becoming a business challenge that organizations must start to take seriously.

“'Time Leadership' is my philosphies and musings on leading SYNNEX Canada, a billion dollar wholesaler of computer equipment,” says SYNNEX Canada CEO Jim Estill when describing his blog. “I call it CEO Blog - Time Leadership because of my keen interest in time.”

Recently the author of a book and audio CD called Time Leadership Audio, Estill writes about many subjects as it relates to his work and days. Personal subjects are not taboo on his blog and he in fact talks very little talking about his company (a home page disclaimer reads: “This blog represents my personal views and not those of SYNNEX or any other company”).

Estill’s most recent postings include:

• Managers and Leaders - Are They Different?
• The Importance of Sleep
• The Perfect Day
• Inventoritis - Don't love your Baby Too Much.
• More on Success Habits
• Lunch with Tony Blair and Time Vs Energy

Though he clearly is not a shy leader and communicator Estill decided he needed to communicate more with his constituency – including staff, customers and vendors. Authoring a blog is but one tool Estill has seized in enhancing these communications. Today, he communicates with all of those constituencies and more through his CEO blog that he’s authored since the Spring of 2005 (he presents this case study at the upcoming 2008 Social Media Summit Canada Conference in Toronto, ON from March 31 - April 2, 2008).

Broken down by percentages, Estill’s CEO blog audience is comprised of:

• 25% staff
• 50% suppliers/customers/industry
• 15% personal development/bloggers
• 10% friends/contacts

Though the blog is an external one on the public Internet (at http://www.jimestill.com), a principal audience of the blog are SYNNEX employees (up to 25% of the readers).  Estill says that the blog is of interest to employees because it “humanizes” him as CEO and provides a forum for 2-way communications (that isn’t always possible given the demands on the time and schedule of a busy CEO).

At the ripe age of 19, Estill started a computer distribution company - EMJ Data “from the trunk of his car” in 1979. The company grew to $350,000,000 in sales and then sold to SYNNEX in Sept 2004. Estill remains as CEO of the company that now sells  about a $1 billion in computer products in Canada.

“We sell all the brands you would recognize like HP, Apple, Intel, Lexmark, Acer, Sony, Microsoft etc through computer resellers and retailers from Future shop and Zellers to Bob's computer store.”

Among the reasons Estill cites for starting a blog:

• To keep in touch with:
• Staff
• Vendors
• Customers
• It will get read by your staff
• It helps personalize you
• It adds to your influence
• Good for laying out strategy
• To dispel mystery
• To share opinion

Estill dedicates about 2 hours per week to blogging and admits, “It requires commitment and thought.” Though he points to his own success and recommends blogging to others, he does suggest that blogging is not for everyone and shouldn’t be undertaken “if you do not like to write.”

Estill offers a number of tips for blogging:

• Have a few “in the can”
• Use other people’s material
• Use guest bloggers
• “Not perfect is good”
• “Careful of being too safe, but legal is real”
• Keep a paper archive
• Learn how to write an article in 20 minutes
• Use or cite book reports
• Re-use your past material including your blog material
• Post by email
• Keep posts short (400-500 words) or even a paragraph
• Avoid politics, religion and ghost-written articles

--

Learn more about this case study and other social media / Web 2.0 case studies at the upcoming 2008 Social Media Summit Canada Conference (hosted by the Advanced Learning Institute) in Toronto, ON from March 31 - April 2, 2008). Three days of Web 2.0 best practices, case studies and learnings for which you can Register Online.

It is said that our ability to create Web content vastly outstrips our ability to digest it. Consistency in how content is structured, catalogued and managed is consistently inconsistent, to say the least. The problem also persists in the world of digital signage.

Digital signs are the electronic or digital signs that you find in elevators, in lobby kiosks, or even the billboards in Time Square. It is believed that China already has more than 100,000 of these digital signs.

Cisco® today announced the development of a new qualification program for those creating content for digital signage. The Cisco Academy of Digital Signage (ADS) will offer a specialized curriculum focusing on the three vital areas of digital signage:

• content creation
• content management
• content distribution

Continue reading "Content is the focus of new Academy of Digital Signage" »

“A do-everything site with the potential to devour the whole Internet,” according to Christopher Beam of Slate magazine (see How Facebook could crush MySpace, Yahoo!, and Google).

Facebook started as a college alternative to MySpace, but has exploded in popularity and will soon overtake MySpace as the most visited social networking site. According the ubiquitously accepted Alexa.com website rankings, Facebook is now the 10th most visited site on the Internet – up 6 places since the rankings were last updated (MySpace is unchanged in the 6th spot).

“MySpace, if you ask me, is a spam-infested state of nature,” writes Beam. “The average user page comes with a crapload of embedded music and video players, some seizure-inducing wallpaper, and a bunch of friend requests from "models" who want to "get to know you." Facebook, on the other hand, is much less customizable but also a lot more reassuring. The interface is comfy, sturdy, and attractive without being showy—the kind of social network you'd bring home to Mom.”

Read the complete article The Facebook Revolution (Content Matters).

How pervasive are social media tools (such as blogs and podcasts) becoming? Here are some of the numbers (taken from my CNW seminar series Social media (Web 2.0): are you in?):

·         There are approximately 55 million English language blogs – 45,000 new blogs created every day

·         44% of web users in the U.S. read political blogs

·         20% of Canadians say they read blogs on a regular basis

·         Three of the top 8 most trafficked sites on the Internet are social media sites that didn’t exist a couple of years ago (e.g. YouTube.com)

·         13% use RSS (real simple syndication ) for reading

·         29% of U.S. adults who own MP3 players have downloaded podcasts (The Pew Internet & American Life Project)

Listen to the complete webcast of my and Brent Holliday’s presentation Social media (Web 2.0): are you in?

Also includes a link to the Social media checklist handout and the presentation slides.

Tips for adoption

James Robertson has a number of tips for adoption:

• Create a prototype or pilot.
• Use stories to articulate (and capture) needs.
• Build on existing platforms.
• Use case studies from similar organisations.
• Be passionate about the right things.

See James’s complete list of tips for adopting enterprise 2.0.

My own tips for adopting social media tools:

• Social media is reinventing the Internet, creating a space where your audience can talk about you in a whole new way. On a regular basis, monitor the social web to see what is being said about you.
• Ensure you’re aware of which community websites (e.g. YouTube) are growing in popularity and evaluate how they might change the way people talk about your organization.
• Planning is an essential requisite for success. Develop a plan that is based on a thorough assessment and contains measurable success indicators.
• Leadership must set the tone. Your executives must be leading the dialogue and controlling the message.
• Relevant, up-to-date and valued content that supports, promotes and details your products, services and competitive advantages.
• Know the link between your website, sales and customer service. What is your website worth?
• Understand the ingredients of a good blog. Benchmark and cherry-pick from the leaders (e.g. Boing Boing, IntranetBlog.com, etc.)
• Keep pace with the trends and best practices, technological advancements and latest developments. Subscribe to newsletters from leaders such as CNET, eMarketer and Prescient Digital Media.

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A 3,600% surge in page views on the day a new website debuts would certainly qualify as a success, and validate a decision to perform a comprehensive revamp of the site. That success is what the Town of Banff and its partners enjoyed last Thursday when it unveiled its new website.

As anyone who has even a passing familiarity with websites knows, a comprehensive site redesign is a process not an event. They also know that visits, while critical, are only one success indicator for a site.

In Banff’s case, the process that culminated in its successful launch began a number of months ago when it set out to improve a site it knew was not working. In tackling this project, Banff had to achieve a goal that few other municipalities with under 10,000 residents would require: bringing a unique experience online.

Prescient was fortunate to be chosen as the partner to collaborate with Town and its partners on this project, which let me experience first-hand the qualities that had to be captured on the site.

That experience can best be summarized by the first day of one trip. Walking down Banff Avenue, I had a 360-degree view of the spectacular Canadian Rockies which, because the town sits in a national park, were unobstructed by commercial development. I paused to watch some kids from the local school playing soccer on a pitch by the school before bumping into several people I’d met on previous visits. And at the end of a meeting, I was invited to go canoeing, rock climbing and running. I opted for the run, after which I dined on Buffalo cheeks in a terrific restaurant.

Banff, in other words, provides unmediated access to one of the world’s most spectacular environments, which makes it an exciting place to visit. It also attracts residents who have a passion for enjoying that environment. They have a deep-rooted respect for the values of the national park, and are happy to disclose their knowledge of how to enjoy the Rockies. They also appreciate that sharing the town and park with visitors is a reality of living in one of the world’s premier tourist destinations.

Research on the old website resulted in a number of key findings, with one emerging strongly: visitors wanted to understand what made Banff special, and residents wanted to see their experience of the town and park reflected on the site.

This research played a vital role in driving the process that resulted in last week’s launch. In addition to the spike in visits, Banff’s webmaster Kevin Elliott cites a number of features that have resulted in the site’s positive reception by town residents:

• There’s a lot of information on the site, and it’s easy to find thanks to an intuitive Information Architecture and other navigation aids.
• The look-and-feel incorporates many images of Banff and conveys the Banff experience online.
• The acquisition of a Content Management System (CMS) means town staff can up-date information in minutes instead of hours.
• There’s good information for visitors, but residents can still find the information they need easily.
• The weather appears prominently on the home page.

Another excellent feature, one that enables the residents to share their passion for enjoying the Rockies, is “what the locals do”. It means one doesn’t have to step into a Banff watering hole to learn the best way to experience the town and park from the people who know it most intimately.

There was no missing the unveiling of Apple's iPhone last week. It electrified the media and had the audience at Macworld whooping. Almost eclipsing the phone itself was Steve Jobs, and his vision for applying ease-of-use and aesthetic design principles to every device his company produces.

A cult of personality was not evident in the presentation by Bill Gates in the same week at the Consumer Electronics Show, however, and the media reaction to Microsoft’s flagship announcement, Vista, had little of the delight that greeted the iPhone.

Microsoft’s new operating system has generated interest, but not enthusiasm. While there are passionate exchanges among a certain set whenever Microsoft does anything, the mainstream emotion has been one of resignation about the software giant’s ability to brute force its OS into the market.

The contrasting appearances by two giants of the technology world provides an excellent opportunity to think about the role that vision plays in a company’s strategy, and a leader’s responsibility to establish and maintain that vision.

The Globe & Mail’s Simon Avery picked up on this opportunity to offer a useful discussion on the styles of Jobs and Gates. In the article, he quotes Roger Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies Associates Inc., a research firm in Wayland, Mass. who observes that: “Microsoft has a certain cult of personality. Gates is thought of as a special guru, and people sit at his feet trying to understand what he’s thinking. That’s totally different from Steve Jobs. He’s an autocrat. He’s a sun king. He’s very capricious, autocratic, and creative and charismatic. He’s all kinds of good things, mixed with some pretty strange things. It’s a totally unique formula.”

Where Jobs sets a strategy based on a vision of innovation and elegance, Gates has positioned Microsoft to be a “fast follower,” letting Netscape or Google develop a market and then moving in to dominate it.

Famously, before it followed Netscape, Microsoft pursued and then overtook Apple. This story is told in the remarkable PBS documentary “Triumph of the Nerds.” The series not only documents the birth of the rivalry between Jobs and Gates, it also reminds us that the vision on display from both men was present when they conceived their companies decades ago.

Consider this statement from Jobs: “The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste, they have absolutely no taste…I don’t mean that in a small way I mean that in a big way. In the sense that they don’t think of original ideas and they don’t bring much culture into their product… if it weren’t for the Mac they would never have that in their products and so I guess I am saddened, not by Microsoft’s success - I have no problem with their success, they’ve earned their success for the most part. I have a problem with the fact that they just make really third rate products.”

According to Apple’s ex-CEO, John Sculley, Microsoft succeeded because, “The problem was the industry wasn’t measured by who has the best selling personal computer or who has the most innovative technology. The industry was measured by who had the most open system that was adopted by the most other companies and the Microsoft strategy ultimately turned out to be the better business strategy.”

The unique qualities of Jobs and Gates could foster admiration more than emulation. But while few of us possess the intelligence, ego, insight, charisma, and drive required to transform industries, the success of both men teach valuable lessons about vision and strategy that we can all apply:

• First, a strategy requires a vision, and it’s the leader’s responsibility to ensure it exists, whether she creates it or facilitates her team to do so.
• Second, it requires a commitment to sustain the vision even when the external environment changes. The same focus on design principles that drove the Mac is guiding the iPhone today, just as Gates is promoting a world of networked entertainment.
• Third, the leader can’t allow the organization to deviate from the vision, especially by trying to emulate a competitor’s strategy. Jobs may begrudge Microsoft its success, but stays focused on inventing products with culture. Gates may admire the elegance of the iPhone, but he’s not going to be first to market with one.

RELATED ITEMS

Respect the competition

Most business people understand that they can never stop learning and seeking new ideas for their business. And the most successful ones grasp the need to seek those learning opportunities from expected sources—such as conferences and business journals—as well as from unexpected ones, such as other industries. They also know that in today’s economy, the Internet will play a vital role in that learning process.

I was reminded of this lesson while preparing my presentation for last weeks’ International Prepress Association’s Technical Conference in Chicago. In a session called “Leveraging Technology to Grow Your Business,” I’d been asked to provide business owners and senior technical managers with ideas on how to do exactly what the title suggested. That could sound like a challenge, if one’s understanding of the growth opportunities for output service providers stops at the headline: “Print is Dead! Long Live the Internet!”

To help prepare for the session, I dusted off the March, 2005 copy of Harvard Business Review, which contained an article called “MarketBusting: Strategies for Exceptional Growth.” The article featured a small case study on a printer called Madden Communications. That company had pursued one of the article’s suggested strategies—changing its unit of business from selling a product to selling a product-service mix—and had achieved great success.

The magazine described how Madden used a combination of customer insight, strategic planning and operational execution to make the transition and achieve impressive business results: “Madden’s revenues grew from $10 million in 1990 to $133 million in 2004, in an industry thought by many to be hopelessly mature.”

The last line, of course, is an elegant way of saying “Print is dead.” But HBR was able to look past that simple statement and see a company that had a lesson to offer for any businessperson willing to learn.

And anyone who wants to learn more about Madden can check out their website, which offers a strong example in how to connect a company’s online presence to their business strategy, notably the core competencies page which states: “Madden has transformed what were transactionally siloed steps into an integrated retail solution that we manage better than anybody else. This integrated solution process is our service.”

(Washington, DC) The inaugural Transformation + Innovation finished here yesterday. The event, organized by Nathaniel Palmer, promised that “participants will learn the most up-to-date strategies, techniques, and technologies for SOA, Leveraging Open Source, Enterprise Architecture Modeling and Modernization as well as Best Practices for BPM and Process Optimization.”

Given the event’s strong attendance, that promise resonated with its audience, and more importantly, it was delivered according to the attendees with whom I spoke. They also credited Nathaniel for ensuring that the senior IT staff attending the event had the opportunity to understand the management implications created by collaborative technology like blogs, wikis and RSS.

Attendees could learn about these issues in my presentation, “Leveraging Social Software and the Technologies of Web 2.0.” We enjoyed lively interaction in the session, especially around the generation gap relating to the usage of social software.

A number of heads nodded when I put up the famous quotation by Max Planck, father of quantum physics: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

Planck’s observation is relevant to social software, because as Prescient’s President, Toby Ward, has blogged: CIOs don’t respect social media. Their adoption rate and, more significantly, personal usage of these tools trails that of the MySpace generation, who now spend an average of 1 hour and 22 minutes a day using their computer for social networking. This usage contrasts to the 51% of CIOs for whom social networking has “no interest/not on radar screen,” according to the CIO Magazine study that Toby references.

A participant in the session provided an excellent reason for why this generation gap must be taken very seriously by the senior IT people who decide what technology an organization’s employees can use within its environment. Not only was she a senior manager in a large high tech firm, she also lectures at an engineering college. Each year, she hands the graduating students a form they can use to evaluate prospective employers, with a key criteria being the technology they make available for online learning and social networking.

Every manager is, or should be, aware that winning the competition for talent is a critical success factor today. It would be a shame for an organization to lose this battle because its CIO is ignoring the world outside her server room.

Credit goes to Nathaniel for keeping social networking on the radar screen for attendees at his conference, and to the participants in my session who are deploying the technology to good use in their companies, but always looking for ways to do it better.

The NY Times has redesigned their website to make it more like the paper version (credit to Tom Marciniak ).

Famed Canadian media guru Marshall McLuhan, called the "Oracle of the Electronic Age", coined the phrase and book title, The Medium is the Massage (not ‘message’ but massage… though it’s assumed that this was a carefully crafted pun). While this quote has largely been bastardized and misinterpreted, McLuhan espoused that the medium or channel that conveyed the message shapes the message (or alters it). In other words, the complete message or meaning of a story on TV could be different than the same story communicated in, for example, a newspaper.

The NY Times is attempting to make the website look and feel more like the newspaper with a five column layout, less color, etc. However, a website is not a newspaper and shouldn’t be mistaken for a newspaper. People read very differently online than they do when actually holding a physical newspaper. When reading a newspaper you can be sitting in almost any position with no screen glare, no animation, no up-to-the-minute stock quotes, etc.

However, I must admit, there are things that I really do like about the new site… and the more I look at it the more I like perhaps better than any other newspaper site.

The home page is rather busy with its five columns – I don’t know quite where to start reading. But I like the white space. It looks clean. I very much like the three column layout they use under the Today’s Paper tab which includes an enlargeable JPEG of the actual paper version.

When reading an article, the page offers the reader a number of interactive options including E-mail, Print, Reprints, Save This and Single Page (though I’m not sure what this option actually does except strip out one or two ads). Also presented a tabbed box called Most Popular. It lists the top 10 most e-mailed articles, the top 10 most blogged articles, and the top 10 most searched terms (top searches were ‘immigration’ and ‘Colbert’ (as in the very funny current affairs comedian and talk show host).

I like the new site; it works for me. What is agreeable to me though is not necessarily agreeable to the masses. (In fact, I guarantee you the NY Times get a handful of both complaints and kudos.) Users generally like a far more simple layout and less cluttered look. In addition to it hugely effective search engine, there’s a reason why Google is so popular. The Google home page is simple to digest and fast to load. The trend to simplicity is more than just a trend – users demand simplicity.

Should you consider a five column layout or try to emulate a hard copy publication? I certainly wouldn’t do it. The medium is the message. However, more important than media theory, is an intimate understanding of the needs and expectations of your users and delivering flawlessly.

Content should be at the core of your internet strategy. Yes, think about balancing sales channels, connecting the site’s goals to your organizational objectives and getting your look and feel right. But content remains king, so knowing how to effectively deploy and manage it will be critical to your online success.

Before presenting at the Gilbane San Francisco conference, I was able to take in a few of the sessions, and two in particular provided excellent insight into the role that content can play in achieving business objectives and the business considerations that must go into being able to manage content.

Actionable content