Be Remarkable, Focus on the Innovators and Early Adopters

Having read Tribes from Seth Godin and enjoyed it I decided to give Purple Cow a go. Written in a very similar, easy-reading style, I took away two key messages from Purple Cow:

1. Be Remarkable
2. Focus on the Innovators and Early Adopters

Every day, consumers come face to face with a lot of boring stuff, a lot of brown cows, but you can bet they won’t forget a Purple Cow. By building remarkable features into products (as opposed to thinking of marketing as just slapping some paint on top of the product or service) the idea is that the Innovators and Early Adopters (aka the “Sneezers”) will essentially sell the product or service for you. It is therefore important to ensure that it is an easy sell for them.

I found many of the examples to be a bit too US centric but the key points were still easy to comprehend. Whilst the message is very simple, this book provides some great motivational passion for creating products that stand out and make a difference. A recommended read.

Web hosting providers impact language usage: Understand the constraints

There are a significant number of web hosting providers that support PHP or .NET, but I am continually surprised at how few support Java EE, or even basic JSPs.

Some providers also then offer a shared tomcat version which is then only reloaded once a day for changes to deployed apps, which is definitely not ideal if you want to rapidly release a new application.

There are definitely valid reasons for why some languages are supported and others aren’t. In the case of Java it is probably due to the fact there is no safe way (as far as I know) to deploy code into a share VM and it is probably significantly more resource intensive (particularly with what remains in memory). This then drives a higher price point which is often not appropriate for the hobbyist just tinkering with a site.

Google App Engine’s support for Java is definitely a welcome addition, although therefore are many other languages out there that are likely to more commonly used if a significant number of bulk web hosting providers supported them.

I know that I have decided what to develop in based on what the web hosting providers offer at a competitive price. It is worth considering where you are planning to host your site, whether you intend to use a slice of a machine up front, and understanding the constraints before you go too far down a particular path.

Moving Firefox Profile to another drive or directory: How-to

In many organisations a user's Profile size is restricted to a certain size and there is a constant juggling act to try and keep under your Profile quota.

Firefox is an example of one application that was taking up lots of space in my quota, but I found that there is a nice and easy way to relocate the Firefox Profile to another drive or directory.

Check out Mozilla's Step-by-step instructions for how to do this. This worked fine for me using Firefox v3.0.8 on Windows XP.

Make it easy for your product to be evaluated

I often evaluate products to determine their fit to the requirements I am trying to address.  I do find however that I am often disappointed at how hard it is to find the information I am looking for.

I tend to have lists of functional, technical, operational, commercial and financial criteria I am trying to assess against and the first step is to identity a list of Solution Option candidates upon which I will then rapidly do an initial assessment and triage.

My ideal is to be able to easily find one or two pages that contain the majority of the information I am looking for.  Some sites however make it a very painful process.  Having to watch a video or look through piles of documentation is not desirable.  http://drupal.org/features is a great example of what is good; this is a simple page that contains lots of useful information, and links to further detail. 

I was using a major Software vendors site recently and knew they had a product covering what I was looking for, but couldn't find it by browsing.  The Search Engine on many sites is often the only way to really find content, which is not ideal.

Sometimes companies actually have too many products that only slightly differ, and whilst there may be valid reasons for this, it should be very easy for somebody not familiar with the intricate details of each product (or the desire to evaluate each separately) to determine what it best placed to address their needs. 

If it’s too hard to find relevant information quickly this is a deterrent.  Consider who your audience is and what they are looking for and make their experience enjoyable.  It may be the difference between somebody choosing your product over your competitors.

Keeping Informed: Will Facebook and Twitter bring RSS mainstream?

At the end of January this year there was a poll in LinkedIn asking people how they wanted to be informed about LinkedIn's new features and I was surprised to see how low RSS rated in terms of a preference, particularly when compared with Email Alerts.

Source: http://polls.linkedin.com/poll-results/18536/aihrw (as at 22 March 2009)

This reminded me that despite the fact that I have been using RSS for many years, it just hasn't become mainstream. I moved to using RSS when I found myself going to the same web sites every day to see what was new and that they were commonly starting to have a RSS logo. The beauty of RSS is that the information comes to you in one place rather than you needing to go to each site individually. For more information about how I keep up to date with what's going on in the world, check out "Keeping up with what's happening in the world".

I wonder whether the terms "RSS" and "feed" are just too geeky and this is enough to scare off lots of people. Whilst the RSS readers available today such as Google Reader and Bloglines are quite easy to use and the major Portals (e.g. iGoogle and My Yahoo!) and Web browsers have RSS support, usage of information via RSS is still low. With Facebook and Twitter now being huge aggregators of information for millions of people, maybe the funneling of information from other sites into these platforms and other applications is where the value of RSS will be (and it will be even more transparent than it is today).

I am interested to see whether Guy Kawasaki's MyAlltop will lure across the masses, but suspect that User Experience and transparency via the likes of Facebook and Twitter is where RSS will come to the masses.

Values & Your Personal Brand

Two months ago I read a blog post from Tony Hsieh (the CEO at Zappos.com) titled "How Twitter Can Make You A Better (and Happier) Person" about values that has shaped the way I communicate.

Zappos came up with 10 core values to define their company culture, and Tony has then used these same values as his own personal values as well:

1. Deliver WOW Through Service
2. Embrace and Drive Change
3. Create Fun and A Little Weirdness
4. Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded
5. Pursue Growth and Learning
6. Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication
7. Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit
8. Do More With Less
9. Be Passionate and Determined
10. Be Humble

By embracing these values as his personal values, this has meant that Tony is less likely to complain or vent in his communications (be that Twitter or in face-to-face communications), because it is not in line with the Zappos core values. He instead will step back and try and find humour in a "bad" situation and re-frame the experience in a more positive light.

I think this is a great approach in terms of ensuring your communication is portraying you in a positive light and aiding in building up a personal brand you are proud of. By adopting this approach, I have found that I feel happier and am more inclined to not let a "bad" situation get me down but to instead focus on what can be learned or gained from it. Thanks Tony for some great inspiration.

The buzz of KiwiFoo: some of my takeaways

I had the privilege of spending the weekend with lots of great energising, exciting people doing great stuff in New Zealand at KiwiFoo 2009 (aka Baa Camp).

Run in an unconference style, the topics were wide and varied and included a variety of topics such as the opportunities of Real-time data, the Economy, Section 92A, Cloud Computing, Sustainability, Broadband, Building Communities, Working globally from New Zealand, OpenID, Utility 2.0 and the list goes on.

There were so many exciting sessions that one of the biggest challenges was working out what to go to. The conversations during, in-between and after the sessions went early into the morning on both Friday and Saturday nights and were packed with great intellectual discussion and debate.

Some of my takeaways (respecting the FrieNDA rules i.e."what goes on tour, stays on tour") included:

Working globally from New Zealand

• If we can work out how to work well remotely then this can help to keep smart young people in New Zealand.
• Different people have different work preferences.
• Working in a distributed environment does not suit everybody, some people prefer to work on their own, some can't work on their own.
• Face-to-face relationships are great and being able to have a beer with somebody should not be underestimated in terms of building up relationships.
• Low office politics is a huge help if working remotely and/or having somebody on the inside to represent your views and keep you informed what's going on.
  
• Regular interactions (e.g. via voice conference, weekly updates of what's happened / what's next) are good.
• Trust and Reputation are key to having good working relationships.
  
• The Opensource community is an example of distributed working that has worked many times, and there are lessons that can be learnt from this.
  

Building communities

• "Crossing the Chasm" by Geofferey Moore was recommended as an excellent read.
• The team building the community should have people of different people types (i.e. Big thinkers, Detail people etc.)
• A Newcomers forum is good to give people comfort in how to interact and not feel that they may be breaking rules and regulations.
• Dunbar's Number and Maslow's hierarchy of needs are worth checking out.
• Experience points / Karma systems can be good for allowing people to have extra privileges (such as kicking people off communities)
• Measurement of community success should including looking from the outside in and from people within.

Utility 2.0

• Check out Powershop for an example of Utility 2.0 in action for Electricity in New Zealand.
• Enables consumers to have choice, swap easily between providers, potentially use multiple, flexible payments such as buying in advance etc.
• Putting consumers at the heart of the business.

Real-time data

• XMPP is a great protocol for this space.
• Customers need to be able to determine what level of granularity of information they want to share with people/applications.
• User overload of data and being able to set thresholds needs to be addressed. i.e. when is it okay to be notified and how?
• A key question to think about is "What would real-time versions of existing products look like?"
• An example of a good use of real-time data is that if it is raining 15km away and then starts 10km away, it might be a good idea to inform you to bring the washing in. (Hattip to Rob)
  
• Pachube is like YouTube for data and worth checking out.
  

4 million leaders

• New Zealand has an opportunity to be the beacon of light for a powerful small country.
• thinksmall.co.nz is a great place to find solutions to issues facing New Zealanders.
  

Sustainability

• Consider the impact of what you are doing to the environment. Is what you are doing sustainable to our planet if everybody was to do it forever?
• Check out http://lifeboat.co.nz
• Grow More - this is something anybody can do and very easily.
  
• Buy Less - do you really need a new cellphone or ipod? consider the impact to the environment of the waste.
  
• Food miles.
  
• Tele-commuting.
  
• Open source design could be good for products that last.

New Zealand has a huge opportunity on the world stage and KiwiFoo has renewed my confidence that every one in New Zealand can make a difference.