Fluffy Clouds Of Innovation

Social Sales Cycle - Create or Die!

2009-05-20T00:09:00.001+01:00

So we are in a recession, inevitably the chase is now on for Revenue Protection & Revenue Generation…

According to Heidrick & Struggles, the No. 1 focus for C-level executives in 2009 is the customer—acquiring new ones, increasing retention and improving their lifetime value, in that order.

Eighty-eight percent of the executives surveyed said acquiring new customers was important, and 87% said the same about customer retention. Least important on their list of priorities were improving marketing’s impact on shareholder value, retaining talent and expanding to new geographies.

This makes sense in current economic conditions—if a business is struggling, further development gets pushed to the back burner. Talent is easy to come by when unemployment is high, and if sales increase, shareholder value will naturally follow.

The question is how to increase sales.

Most significant to senior executives was optimizing the efficiency of the marketing mix across the business (including digital marketing), followed by responding more rapidly to growth opportunities and improving the consistency of marketing and sales communications.

The time for the Social Sales Cycle is most definitely here, and it’s likely that in your organisation there isn’t a Social Sales Cycle… or at least not a recognisable one!

If you asked any Sales Person or Account Manager though, they will absolutely agree that sales, relationships and opportunities are best achieved looking at the whites of the clients eyes and breathing the same air…

But this is social, personal, emotional, communicative… this is Social, isn’t it?

Traditional Sales methods around client engagements are certainly the start of the Social Sales Cycle, it’s like the root, but to make it really work, to maximise its effectiveness and to make it really resonate in todays culture and your industry or sector then you need facilitators and that is where social media needs to be embraced to amplify and control the effects of “voice” and “emotion” in business settings.

http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/004900.html

I don’t need to say any more, but you do….

Create Reputation
Create Conversations
Create Stories
Create Connections
Create Brand
Create Opportunities
Create Revenue

Create the companies Social Sales Cycle…or die

Technorati Tags: "Social Sales Cycle" "Create or Die" "Social Media" "Social Networking" Connections Conversations

Social Media in the Sales Cycle or Social Sales Cycle?

2009-05-13T21:23:00.001+01:00

~~Social Media in the Sales Cycle~~

Social Sales Cycle…

I don’t think that this should be as scary a prospect for any corporate organisation as perhaps we all initially perceive.

Chris Brogan wrote a good summary post earlier this week titled Best Fits for Social Media in the Sales Cycle. Chris Brogan advises businesses, organizations, and individuals on how to use social media and social networks to build relationships and deliver value and is well respected in “social circles”…

His key point is that the sales cycle has a number of points, roughly:

Prospects
Awareness
Leads
Customers
Evangelists \ Support

..and that for each of these engagement points between a supplier (just like you) and the client, traditionally differing approaches and tools were used, and that now, in the era of connections, social networks and transparency, a range of Social Media tools are relevant to be used in addition or replacing traditional marketing, sales and engagement methods… some of these tools include:

Email
Blogging
Facebook
Twitter
YouTube
LinkedIn
Forums
Flickr

But these tools are not the focus of this post, more the person wielding the tool and their responsibility within the supplier organisation and the sales cycle.

All organisations have a number of overlapping areas that make up the “Sales Cycle” and a set of tools and techniques..

Sales
- Sales methods
- Relationships
- CRM
Marketing
- Web Site
- Telesales \ Direct Mail
- Campaigns
- Events
Senior Consultants
- Relationships
- Social Media – Blogs, Twitter, forums etc
- Authenticity – Technical Delivery, Events etc
Rest of the organisation
- Relationships
- Social Media – Blogs, Twitter, forums etc
- Authenticity – Technical Delivery, Events etc

As has been discussed at length both personally, within Trinity and across our sectors, the way we do business is changing, the ability to influence clients, drive client satisfaction, raise awareness, revenue generation and revenue protection has absolutely expanded outwards from Sales & Marketing and into the hands of each and every employee, within the organisation and this is especially so for an organisations senior consultants, technologists and strategists..

In Purple Cow, Seth Godin illustrates that point very well.
"Marketing", the word, has become tainted by the apparent lack of interest that most professional marketers pay to their markets. They seem to not be listening to the market...

Guess what, the market stops listening to them...

So we need to be aware, understand our role, power, influence and impact on “sales”… I’ve only been at Trinity for a couple of years, but even in that time I’ve seen a marked shift in the sphere of influence of our Strategic Consultants and certainly in my role and with my skills it’s apparent to me that we are all becoming a powerful mix of Technologist, Strategist, Marketer and Sales Person…

So I ask you all to think about “Social Media in the Sales Cycle”, who should be “selling” and what role do you have in the “Social Sales Cycle”?

Who should be blogging?
Who should be delivering content through our web site?
Who should be “listening” to where our brand is?
Who should be attending events?
Should we Tweet?
Who should be speaking?
Who should update CRM?
Who should have the relationships?

The Ant Clay view of the world is that anyone with a voice, with authenticity, with trust, with brand, with respect, with experience and something positive to offer for your organisation and its clients (new and old) should “be involved”….

Involved doesn't mean leading, owning or solely involved… involvement, many voices, authenticity an employee crowd-sourced sales cycle :-)

If you’re in any doubt that the world is changing have a look at the great presentations out there on marketing, social media, new ways of working etc.. Matt Groves did a great presentation on “Building Trust via the Web” at a team meeting earlier in the week… He gets it, I get it, do you or your organisation or your clients??

And Finally: Doing a Google search for “Social Sales Cycle” brings back zero hits! That phrase is mine :-)
Update: it now brings back one result from a tweet of mine! http://twitter.com/Soulsailor

Written with Windows Live Writer

Technorati Tags: "Social Sales Cycle"

The Digital Nomads - 12*6 Service

2009-03-15T00:53:00.001Z

Looking around at the majority of my peers in the industry, within my organisation and more prevalently in our customers, its blatantly obvious that the 9-5 Monday to Friday working ethos is dissolving far more rapidly than perhaps we would like to admit we are very much into the global warming phase of the work-life balance ecology…

I’m a typical (tell me if I’m wrong) IT Strategist… I have a laptop, I have connectivity at home, work and in between, I have a work phone (Blackberry) and a personal digital device (iPhone), I’m rarely unconnected and I have an absolute bucket-load of things on my mind, such as this lot:

So how does a typical day flow for me and where do the edges of the old, “nice” 9-5 get bled to death?

between 6am – 7am
Wake up slowly
Check email (iPhone maybe Blackberry)
Shower etc
Breakfast with family (unless I’m on the road early, then its just breakfast with the dog!)
iPhone - Scan RSS, Check Twitter… replies, DM’s and scan through a few pages of tweets… Favourite those I think may be worth consuming properly
between 7am – 8:30am
Go to work \ client

Car and usually catch up on phone calls..
Train then its email, calls, tweets, RSS… maybe knock up document skeletons, ideas, brainstorm etc…

Work..laptop\iPhone checking backchannels occasionally when\if appropriate
sometime between 12pm – 2pm
Lunch…iPhone - Scan RSS, Check Twitter… replies, DM’s and scan through a few pages of tweets… look in depth at any Favourite’d items
Work..laptop\iPhone checking backchannels occasionally when\if appropriate
between 5:30pm – 7:00pm
Go to home

Car and usually catch up on phone calls..
Train then its email, calls, tweets, RSS… maybe knock up document skeletons, ideas, brainstorm etc…

between 6:30pm – 9:00pm
Kids & wife… eat, kids to bed, (or eat later)
TV \ Music
Laptop \ iPhone - Scan RSS, Check Twitter… replies, DM’s and scan through a few pages of tweets… look in depth at any Favourite’d items
TV \ Music
between 9:00pm – 10:30pm
Catchup on emails, admin, proposals etc
TV \ Music
between 10pm – 2am
Laptop \ iPhone - Scan RSS, Check Twitter… replies, DM’s and scan through a few pages of tweets… look in depth at any Favourite’d items
between 11pm – 2am
Sleep..

Thats crap isn’t it… I mean I’m productive in the day…and when travelling… but why the uncompromising activities in the evening?? And worse a cut-down version of the above @ weekends too!

I guess the only excuse (and its a poor one) is that I, we, all of us are trying to just cling to the ever-changing digital world that keep incessantly revolving, changing, innovating and leaping ahead across time-zones, technologies, cultures and strategies…

The only way we can stay ahead of the game is to plug in and consume and participate, share, add value and learn…constantly…

There must be a better way to stay ahead of the game without “bleeding eyes” and pissed off families…Isn’t there??

Technorati Tags: work,life,balance,consulting

Does a Pure Architecture Muddy the Business Waters?

2009-03-12T00:34:00.001Z

Recent conversations with a range of clients and peers has led me to some soul-searching and thinking regarding IT Strategy, Business Outcomes, Enterprise Architecture and Technical Implementation.

Specifically I’ve been pondering the relationship, benefits and possible contradictions between a true loosely coupled Service-Focussed Strategy and that of a Strategic Platform (typically single vendor).

From an architecture-purest perspective, a loosely coupled service strategy offers significant benefits both from a business perspective, technology delivery, flexibility, openness and lack of vendor tie-in; however those benefits come with a cost as far as I can see that, unchecked far outweighs the benefits…

Taking the widely adopted scenario whereby you separate out UX, Logic and Data Storage and deliver these using “services”, that works great; I love the fact that I can instigate business processes from a number of end-points, it’s great that I can consume the data through a range of interfaces and I absolutely think it’s the only way forward to enable me as an end-user to remix the data and add my context and expertise to it in an open manner…

But in an organisation this flexibility without constraints will not enable the delivery of business outcomes… rather the flexibility will become anarchy, end users and technology implementors will be confused, it will hinder productivity and the ability for the platform to deliver the users business outcomes!

Our role as IT leaders, strategists and pragmatists is IMHO to to take the architectural vision and deliver those principles in an appropriate manner, this means making sure we don’t facilitate:

Multiple User Experiences
Multiple Dev languages & tools
Loss or confusion of context
Increase in complexity

Architecture validity is a key concept, but delivering business outcomes and supporting business strategy must come first and to do this, Architecture and Strategic Platforms need to have a more mature relationship between themselves.

What rules the roost in your organisation?

Does Architecture drive and shape the business solution?

Does the Strategic Platform cut the corners off the Architecture?

…or does the Strategic Platform deliver direction and pragmatism to the Architectural vision?

Technorati Tags: strategy,architecture,enterprise,"business outcomes"

What’s in a colour – Azure?

2008-10-27T23:35:00.001Z

So today the Wikipedia entry for Azure got changed..Why? Because Microsoft just changed the game..again…Today, Microsoft has announced Windows Azure, the Microsoft new cloud computing platform; it’s been a long-time coming, some thought it was too late, but by the sound of the info that’s streaming out of PDC today, it’s here and packing a huge punch.

Before I get into some vague details (I’m on leave this week and I’ve got a porch to build!) I have a new definition that’s relevant to this post…bare with me! A lot of people that are talking about the anti-cloud, traditional services use the term on-premise, but to me that conjures up the feeling of a system and a person tied to the Enterprise…

Shore-Side Computing - software deployed @ home, on the desktop, laptop, set-top etc but served through traditional means… Shore being a safe place to seek, a harbour, a sanctuary… the Cloud is more adventurous less predictable, less defined…

Anyway, the potential power of harnessing cloud computing, Microsoft’s cloud services, Microsoft’s data-centres and then creating business apps based initially upon a combination (shore-side or cloud-side) of:

Windows Azure for service hosting and management, low-level scalable storage, computation and networking
Microsoft SQL Services for a wide range of database services and reporting
Microsoft .NET Services which are service-based implementations of familiar .NET Framework concepts such as workflow and access control
Live Services for a consistent way for users to store, share and synchronize documents, photos, files and information across their PCs, phones, PC applications and Web sites
Microsoft SharePoint Services and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Services for business content, collaboration and rapid solution development in the cloud

Is surely gonna allow those companies that invest, have vision and a Tribe-like mentality (such as Trinity) to go out and create some extremely valuable business outcome-orientated applications that reside in “the cloud”, on-shore or a combination of both…Wow!

..but once the mist & fog lift, leaving only the Azure, the people will start drawing comparisons… what about Salesforce.com’s application platform, core CRM + a range of application services?

I guess the reality is that Microsoft has leverage, it has momentum and adoption… switching consumer and valued business and “developer” services through to the Azure will drag attention to the sky’s, away from Google, Amazon, Salesforce and the like… Microsoft has the ability to deliver.

A lot more on this once I’ve built the porch!

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Windows Azure,Cloud

Personally, Technically, Legally & Eventually….

2008-10-27T22:37:00.001Z

Man this has been way too long. My blogging sprint over the past four or five years came to a crashing halt with the advent of our third child… time just seemed to disappear!

Anyway… I’m kinda back, we’ll have to see how much time passes by and how much blogging actually gets done but here goes….

So Trinity has been throwing down some pretty interesting challenges and experiences over the last 12 months and especially, it feel over the last couple of months… maybe it’s the financial climate or just coincidence but opportunities just seem more interesting currently!

So what’s been happening, well lots of engagements around Public Sector and a bit in Legal mostly, and with me having some very interesting “early-sniffs” in telecomms as well.. one of the most interesting things I’ve done for a while was collaborate with my colleague Matt Groves on a pretty awesome (well he says, and I think so it must be!) presentation on the use of Web 2.0 technologies in the legal sector delivered at Legal Insight to an audience of mainly Midlands-based top legal IT directors and IT professionals.

It was a great event, and the first one that Trinity have presented at despite organizing and hosting them regularly… it was also my first “public outing” of my Presentation Zen stylee of presenting rather than death by bullet-points!..here’s a random sample of what you missed:

The presentation was well received by the majority of the audience and our “Pro Bono” of a bottle of wine to those that engaged in the conversation went down well (four times)! It certainly stimulated a some really interesting discussions on a breadth of web2.0 related topics such as adoption, Social Objects, Second Life, governance and management etc and having the pleasure of engaging in conversation with such a great set of like-minded people including the renowned blogger Peter Birley made the whole event come alive.

So what’s next, well more of the same really, strategising, demoing technology, articulating business benefits and presentations… including a local Warwickshire Local Government presentation next month…see you there!

Technorati Tags: Presentation,Trinity,Legal,Web2.0

Perfect Social Storm...

2008-02-26T23:52:00.001Z

I heard on one of the "Gang" podcasts this week, Steve Gillmor pontificating about "cloud services" and how there would be, looming over the horizon in the not too distant future two major clouds that everyone would be using, they, of course Google and Microsoft, and although he is probably right, that these two clouds will dominate and that this two cloud domination and a move to openness will evoke a new breed of evolving services, I think that there are other factors that need to be taken into consideration.

1. Openness is nothing without transparency - Open Social Networks + User Control + Trust

2. Two Clouds do not create a "Perfect Storm", you need three - Google and Microsoft, despite their innovation and re-invention have been around for too long and have way too much baggage, a third newly formed cloud provider is required in our new sky, could be already here (Facebook, Ask, Twitter even?), whatever or whoever, there needs to be a third factor to generate the game/life-changing services we are all envisioning...

3. Read the history books - How many new start-up's and services are delivering new services that fail because of the same old crap? We need to learn from what went before, in nature (these service have a social bent so nature has an impact) and in recent services, Googles reverse-entry social-graph :-( Twitter as a platform with innovation expanding :-) Learn my "friends"....

I think it is all these factors that will combine to create the Perfect "Social" Storm and the natural elements that will combine together to support our social-centric vision of the future, both consumer and enterprise driven....

After all people is just people and we're all nature-born...

...Discuss...Twitter...Blog...

Technorati Tags: "Cloud Services",Transparency,Attention,Trust,Google,Microsoft,"Ant Clay",Soulsailor

NewsGang Live Cameo!

2008-02-19T11:02:00.001Z

I got a cameo last night on the NewsGang Live PodCast..

Cool, sorta!

The "appearance is about 48 mins into the podcast..

It was cool because, I (as Soulsailor) got mentioned a couple of times, it was cool because my questions, submitted through Twitter (actually using Twirl which is a cool Adobe AIR interface) to Steve Gillmor, were mentioned as the only tech stuff in a US politics focused session,,,

The questions were:

Part 1- Shouldn't Social Graphs ALL be based upon an agreed minimum "Social-Graph-Base-Data-Set"?

Part 2 - Shouldn't providers (Plaxo,Facebook,Google,LinkedIn etc) add their layer of value on top of the "Basic -Social-Graph"?

Part3 - Then we can have balanced-Portability of Name,Contact Details-the basic Social-Graph & walled-garden for value add stuff?

..the problem being in my attempt to squash the questions into the 140 character Twitter limit, I kinda screwed up the semantics...hence, my inaugural appearance on the NewsGang was less than eloquent!

But I was there, I was mentioned and I stimulated conversation :-)

Good Times..

Technorati Tags: Soulsailor,"Ant Clay",Twitter,NewsGang

...I need to talk more here but I'm talking lots there:

2008-02-16T23:59:00.001Z

Follow me on Twitter!

"...Connect Local as well as Global..." I like that, think that might be my philosophical statement of the day :-)

Question: Could the Twitter Platform replace email? I mean if you need to say so much then surely you should collaborate or talk?

According to Biz Stone Im in the Twitter-minority http://snurl.com/1z7nn apparently following & followed by over about 70 people=top 10% !?

stop all this Social-Media confusion and crap...Shouldn't Social Graphs ALL be based upon an agreed minimum "Social-Graph-Base-Data-Set"? Shouldn't the "providers" (Plaxo, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn etc) add their layer of value on top of the "Social-Graph-Base-Data-Set"?? Then we can have balance-Portability of Name,Contact Details etc ("Social-Graph-Base-Data-Set") & a walled-garden for the added value stuff?

Is "Twitter Village" too big a scope? Would "Twitter Pub" be more appropriate pistachioconsulting.com/blog/?p=172#comment-645

Twitter is my pub... best place for creative thinking, socialising & there arelots of people there who know something U need..

Wondering whether to manual transfer my social graph from Facebook to my Google, Plaxo "networks".. What does anyone think...am I mad???

Technorati Tags: Twitter,Soulsailor,Conversations

I'm Thinking...

2007-11-07T18:26:00.001Z

...It's been a while since I said anything... normal fluffy cloud thinking "service" will resume very shortly...

One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy...

2007-08-28T10:06:00.000+01:00

Saw three magpies this morning, is that an omen?

Dunno, but we did announce to the world yesterday that we are embarking on a new leg of our life-journey...

Yep, we are expanding the family to the size of a small Web2.0 start-up, we are expecting our 3rd little-geek, February 2008...

:-)

software strategy strategy applications strategy innovation software innovation

Blue Monster Coffee Morning (1)

2007-08-20T13:27:00.001+01:00

L1010017
Originally uploaded by stevecla

So, this is a little on the late side, but who cares.. a couple of weeks ago I got on the 6:20am train to Euston and joined about 10 other people at Cafe Nero for the innaugral Blue Monster coffee morning, Steve Clayton organised it, there was a few Microsofties, Hugh Macleod and a gaggle of other random, but very interesting folks...

The coffee was good, Hugh was in fine "style" and it was good to witness..live, the actual pen-movements that created this gapingvoid cartoon... what was even better was the explanation from Hugh of the stream of consciousness that tipped him from re-hydrating to scribbling... Basically he see's the quadrants as connectivity/presence for applications that, through the day move from requiring services, access mto the "cloud", software in the browser or software on the desktop... he doesn't (i don't) and most other people didn't feel that one of the quadrants was the answer... software needs to be agile, take into consideration the where we are and what we are doing and offer the appropriate medium for us to connect or to be productive...

The morning lasted about 3 hours, the coffee was good, the conversations interesting (social media, networking, Microsoft, applications, brand, Twitter, Facebook etc) and the contacts profitable... a good morning...

See you at the next one...

software strategy strategy applications strategy innovation Blue Monster

I'm virtually working...

2007-07-12T22:58:00.000+01:00

So, I posted about this ages ago, but time, technology, services and thinking have moved on...

So now I have a job again, and a vaguely normal life (lacking in time and boat but thats another story for another blog!) I thought it would be good to reflect on my virtual office set-up now it's matured and services have come, gone or settled in my browser...

Email
I use Gmail @ home, I've got my "broadband attached email account" picked up in there and the email from my domains and my gmail account all splatted into one simple, but functional light email client in Gmail....

Calendar
So, I use Google Calendar... it's simple, effective and accessible.. I get daily agenda emails telling my what I'm meant to do etc.

I use Plaxo to synchronise my Google Calendar to my Outlook 2007 Calendar at work so I know what the hell I'm meant to be doing work and socially...

Tasks
At work I use Outlook, at Home I use Remember The Milk, Google Calendar puts the time based tasks into it and therefore Plaxo replicates them to the on-line Plaxo Task list and Synchs them into my Google Calendar.

Contacts
From Outlook 2007 to Plaxo, autosynched oh yeh and I use LinkedIn and that gets synched into Outlook (and hence to my work Blackberry) etc so thats covered

Docs / Spreadsheets
Work it's Office 2007 - favourite functionality so far is Smart Art (or Smart Arse Art as I call it) and saving as a PDF... at home I use Google Docs/Spread, again functional and the integration is good...

Messaging
Eek, this is where it gets messy:

@Work - MS Office Communicator + GTalk (embedded in my iGoogle page) + Skype
@Home - GTalk + Skype + Live Messenger (a lot less now)

@Everywhere - Jaiku + Twitter + Facebook for random adhoc messaging, presence and personal insights

Music
iTunes to manage the music on my ipod video 30gb
Last.FM for my music exploration and

News / RSS

Google reader is packed with 162 subscriptions, iGoogle for summary stuff and I use FaceBook for those personal "news"

And well a lot of this is crosspopulated so Jaiku aggregates blog posts, flickr uploads, twitter and music from last.fm and then this gets pushed to Facebook which also has some google reader shared items (also on my blog), I can twitter a task to Remmeber The Milk and it appears there and then gets synched into Plaxo..

Wow, it seems messy but the number of "things" is reducing and I'm settling into a rhythm and a subset of tools that give me what I want twith the flexibility to add more..

let me know what you do...?

software strategy strategy applications strategy innovation software innovation

Green Consulting

2007-07-02T11:25:00.000+01:00

I noticed over the weekend that my laptop case isn't really that full of paper... I have two folders one for each of the clients I'm currently focussed on and my notepad for general stuff.

The two folders mainly have documents that we don't have the electronic versions of or that have been "hand-annotated" with useful stuff...

Basically, at my last place I was printing a lot, white-papers, customer docs, project plans, presentation slides etc... and now a couple of months later I'm killing a whole lot less trees...

So what's really apparent is that I'm on the road a lot more, working at customer sites a lot more (which is great for the customer intimacy thing that I used to say was soo important but nnever really got a chance to exercise) and basically I don't have acces to printers while I'm out...

Also, being part of a team of Strategic Consultants that are spread across the four winds, reviewing docs, commenting and collaborating always happens electronically (as it should) as i don't get to see the people to pass hand-written comments too. So, what I say is chuck most of the printers in your organisation a way, we don't need them:

Don't print emails... they're on your laptop and/or mobile device anyway
Most customer docs get emailed, the really important ones "packaged" by Marketing so let them have one printer
Electronic collboration is far more prevalent than locking-people-in-a-meeting room now
Customer info should be available electronically, if its "too sensitive" to give you an electronic copy then why give us a paper one, we could scan a paper doc if we so desired and distribute it to our collegaues anyway..

Now these are just a few points around printers and paper etc.. but seriously we all need to think more about the environment, we dont need to print most things (we have multiple copies on our, we need to travel appropriately (mileage vs home vs office), car-share (discuss the meeting, get ideas, innovate) and of course collaborate electronically. Now, what I don't mean is that we shouldn't interact with each other, face-to-face meetings, discussions, white-board sessions etc are all very valuable, but get those notes up onto the collaboration platform quickly and appropriately...

Right, I'm gonna get on with what I'm doing and find the "don't print me" email footer strap-line..

BTW - Don't ever print my blog(s) 'cus they really ain't worth killing trees over :-)

software strategy strategy applications strategy innovation Green Consulting
Green Consulting

What happens when clouds and sail clash?

2007-06-25T23:23:00.001+01:00

Ok, this isn't a beautiful picture or an interesting meteorological piece I'm afraid...

MY brain's busy with keeping money flowing into the house, serious lack of time for bloggin currently, but, I do get time occasionaly and then I have to decide which "thought" is stroingest or most appropriate... a post to Soulsailor about sailing or a post to Fluffy Clouds of Innovation about some geeky or strategy based random thought...

What would happen to my readership if I merged Soulsailor and FluffyCloudsofInnovation into one blog?

For a start it would give me a reason to move off Blogger and onto WordPress, start kinda afresh (but migrate all the content from both too)...

Would the yachty sea-dogs get fed up with geek posts and would the geeks get fed up with sailing posts?

I'd still keep the two seperate domain names cus i really like them... but would a mixed content blog do the trick for you??

For once I really do need your advice etc... will you still love me will you still read me when I'm a split-topic blog?
software strategy strategy applications strategy innovation software innovation

Powerpoint Presentations are Dead...

2007-06-05T22:21:00.000+01:00

I justed posted a comment to my "conversation inducing post" on Martyn Proctor's blog... it basically goes like this:

This is a good conversation, I'm going to attempt to start moving my current company away from powerpoints with bullets to graphics that evoke emotions.. what you need when presenting to a client is to get the message across, invoke good emotions, convey knowledge and expertise and very importantly give the customer a reason to trust you...

Here's a new definition for you all, just thought it up and as I trust you all you can have it for free..

This is what PowerPoint should stand for:

.PPT = Passion, People & Technology

A presentation should demonstrate and invoke Passion, tell a storyt about how it benefits People and simplify Technology concepts..

The whole conversation is very interesting... The kiss of life maybe here @ SlideShare

software strategy strategy applications strategy innovation software innovation

Oh Crap I'm Offline

2007-06-04T11:14:00.000+01:00

Oh no I'm not.... the disruptive technology has hit, it's not earth shattering but its here and its going to be a wake-up call for MS... Google Gears off-line fiunctionality has now been rolled-out for Google Reader enabling off-line reading. I love technology...

Information Week discuss it here..

software strategy strategy applications strategy innovation software innovation

Collaboration

2007-05-30T23:25:00.000+01:00

My view is that collaboration is the killer application currently... I hear you cry that theres a stack of collab apps out there, both in the web 2.0++ space and the enterprise and traditional...but, the killer application will be the one thats implemented with the special-sauce...

What the hell am I talking about? Well as I said when I spoke recently to some central gov agencies at the IoD, data is crap, limited, knowledge is power and to eek every last millimetre of knowledge from your data you have to fundamentaly change...

Knowledge = Data + Smart People + Insight + Collaboration + Culture Change

Culture change is the tricky one, I see collaboration being embraced everywhere...in departmental silo's, and to truly gain the advantage and benefits of collaboration you need to engage the whole organisation..and your customers...and your partners... BIG thinking and BIG change management needed their...

software strategy strategy applications strategy innovation software innovation

Kool Surface!

2007-05-30T21:47:00.000+01:00

Microsoft's Surface is innovation... it took a few years in the MS Research Labs to appear, but I'm bloody glad its arrived!

It appeared on the news tonight, very freaky, I happened to be on the website watching one of the video's when the same video was played on the news, 10 secs behind....!

So why is this good, well ignoring the fact that I want it in my house.. from a business perspective it will be great for a number of key areas:

Collaboration - you have a meeting room table where you can "drop" ideas, share them, pass them around, annotate them (adding your value to the thought)
Reception Areas - I can't wait to walk into a reception area where I can "thumb" through a telephone directory and interactively call up the person I'm meeting or IM them that I'm here, maybe sign-in electronically, maybe thumb through case studies, customer lists etc
Teaching - limitless opportunities...

The collaboration piece for me is the most exciting, let me know if anyone out there is putting this into practice yet?

software strategy strategy applications strategy innovation software innovation

LA Blogging

2007-05-18T12:15:00.000+01:00

Not Los Angeles, but Local Authority...

I was speaking at the Greater Manchester IT Managers Group forum yesterday (About MOSS and local gov experiences), what struck me as being very significant, was that two out of three of the sessions delivered by authorities gave examples of senior members of their authority using MOSS for blogging.

Now the fact they are using MOSS isn't really the issue at all, whats key is that these leading figures of their locale are putting themselves into the light and engaging with open conversations with the council, ok its internal, but I think its a great step...

What are they talking about, well there's a pattern, they had both committed and signed "internal agreements" to blog once a week minimum and they posted about:

What meetings they had attended and why
What they were going to do next week, meetings, out-and-about, focus
Some occasional personal-time comments
Council Issues and their views
Improvement ideas

Both were allowing and encouraging comments and both seemed to be receiving great feedback from their avid readers...

So why is this important...? Its all about Visibility, Corporate Traction, Perception of Worth, Presence and Insight.

Story-Time: I had a boss, in a very senior position, I didn't see him much (as expected in this role), every monthly meeting we would tell him what we were doing, meetings, relationships, projects etc... every month for my first quarter reporting to him I asked him to shed some light on what he was doing...every month he stumbled over this, I gave up on him completely...

I've left now, I had no Visibility, Corporate Traction, Perception of Worth, Presence or Insight to what the division was doing, where it was going, how my boss was driving things forwards, the shape and purpose of the division was lost....
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I wasn't bought in to what we were doing because it wasn't visible to me... At these two councils the employees get an insight into the direction of the council, what matters to it and to their leader, they can easily buy into that direction and ethos... and importantly they can comment, add value, support, shape, disagree and gain a perception of worth, they matter, the council matters, their leader has a vision and purpose... Insight is a beautiful thing!

What is the Brand Power of the head of a council?

software strategy strategy applications strategy innovation software innovation

Stream of Consciousness

2007-05-14T23:17:00.000+01:00

Ok, I'm not sure where this "quick post before bathtime" is going but I LOVE what Dave Troy is doing in bending, distorting and basically freakin' with our consciousness and our need for information...

Twittervision was great, seeing the stream of "twits" on a Google Map was oinnovative, fun and actually interesting when "crowdstorm" conversations happened in a oparticular geographic or on a specific conversational theme...

Now Dave has gone further and introduced FlickrVision so now you can sit mesmerised to your screem watching the ultimate in consumer-generated picture heaven flash in-front of you...WoW...

So whats next, merging them both.. is there value in that...? Using the last played tag of songs from Last.FM lets see what the world is listening too?

Not sure what the next "Vision" will be, but I'm sure there'll be a number 3...

I think there's some killer distortions in the business world possible around filtering these streams of consciousness and combining them... "twits" of a conference merged with flickr pics tagged with a conference name... that would be cool... think its been done, but can't remember where..damn...

Night..

software strategy strategy applications strategy innovation software innovation

Ctrl-Alt-Del - New Career Start

2007-05-07T21:48:00.000+01:00

So, tomorrow, Tuesday 8th May I start a new direction in my professional career...

Yep 5 weeks bumming around at home, annoying the wife, kids and dog is enough...

I didn't get enough jobs done round the house, but I did more than I thought I might; I didn't do enough sailing as I'd planned, but my family loved the extra time I spent with them and now my friends it's time I stepped back into the working world and do some proper hard graft!

So I am now officially a Strategic Consultant working for a company down the road in Coventry (Trinity Expert Systems).

It'll be a bit different to what I've been doing over the last 3 years, but I'm welcoming the fresh challenges and alternative perspectives on my career...

Here goes, wish me luck!

software strategy strategy applications strategy innovation software innovation

Twitter vs Jaiku - Platform vs Product

2007-04-25T23:46:00.000+01:00

Ok, so this may not be a true contest and may not even be in context but I think its a good illustrator of what I see happening in the web2.0 / web n.0 space..

Using Twitter and Jaiku as examples...

Twitter was first, it stormed onto the horizon, broke some barriers, it was a "quick knock-up" but it delivered value, it had that certain zing and everyone was talking about it..but its rough round the edges, its not a polished product but its established itself very quickly as the basis of some call mash-ups that deliver more...

Jaiku is new, its following in the footsteps but has nicely popped out from the shadows... it delivers the same kinda benefits as Twitter, but its a better "product", more shiny, more consumer (less geek?)

I might be wrong and will probably be proved so within a matter of weeks, but it seems that predominantly Twitter will be a great geek platform and Jaiku will be a great consumer product... already Jaiku is lending itself to the Nokia mobile market, whereas Twitter is the basis of Twittervision and other cool mash-ups/disruptors like Twitterment::What ...

The point is when you get an idea, when innovation sparks you into creating something and bringing it to life, or building a product based on someone elses stream of consciousness, you need to decide whether to be platform or product...The web this year will spark both this year and our problem as users, technologists etc is which do we want to use, where is our affinity...product or platform?

[Bonus Link - Stowe Boyd is also in the conversation]

software strategy strategy applications strategy innovation software innovation

Great Day Great Guy...

2007-04-25T22:24:00.000+01:00

So I had a great day today, things started real hectic, but the afternoon was filled with in trepidation and interest...

After seeing some random posts on a couple of Feeds I was watching, namely Hugh Macleod's and Doc Searles' I learnt that Gary Turner is about to leave his current Pegasus MD gig and look for something else... I was kinda interested in how his search, openly being discussed on some influential blogs was being articulated as I am currently redundant (although not searching anymore)... so I had a look on his blog and found that this influential software guy had a similar outlook on the software industry and lived 1/2 an hour from me!

So, on the off-chance that their may be some mutual benefit/interest I pinged him an email and a week later I'm sat in a meeting room at Pegasus chatting to the man himself!

We had a good discussion, the guy is indeed a great bloke, very knowledgeable and articulated his thoughts really well... I think I learnt some valuable stuff from him, not sure I added a massive amount of value to his day, but in the future I will be sure to reciprocate...

We chatted for over an hour which was cool as I expected to be in and out within the hour and we touched on a whole range of topics such as what we were doing (present companies), aspirations, recruitment, state of the software industry in the UK (now and in the 90's), Start-ups, Web2.0, outsourcing, blogging, Networking (social and otherwise) and Mobile Phones.

It was a refreshing discussion, I enjoyed the opportunity to engage with Gary and I think his value proposition to those potential new employers is quite simply Gary Turner...

As Hugh, Doc and a whole load of other people are saying... Gary Turner needs a freakin' good job.. your company may well need him so check him out!

Thanks for the time (and the crap coffee) Gary, very much appreciated...!

software strategy strategy applications strategy innovation software innovation Gary Turner

The Innovation Hose (Part 1)

2007-04-23T21:44:00.000+01:00

So this is an "apps strategy" piece of thinking that came to me at the point of being unteathered from Serco last month.

The concept is simple, the "application" of the concept probably less so. This is for those people in the world that crave for their existance to make a little difference to their world, the company they work for and its customers, innovation is key and innovation is integral to any organisation that is delivering applications, whatever the platform and whatever the sector.

Innovation is mostly driven from the "core" outwards to its intended recipients, so if you are an innovator its your job to give that innovative concept a shove upwards through the organisation and out to the customer(s), trouble is I, you, we are usually just one person or at best a small minority so its often bleedin' hard to get those ideas "out there".

So to keep our karma balanced and in good order we need to be working in scenarios that enable us to to be innovators, make a difference and excel... we need to be working in an environment that has an "Innovation Hose" embedded in it.

So what do you need to look for and what attributes does an organisation have to exhibit for you to stay clear....

The initial thing to start looking for is the gut feeling that innovation is part of the fabric, thats certainly a good start but not the whole thing, there's a lot that can affect the flow of your innovation...

The prime thing to do is to ascertain what "accelerators" and "blockers" exist from your position in the company right up to the customers and then weigh up whether the organisation will support your natural enthusiasm and passion for innovating and basically doing good for the organisation and its customers...

Accelerators - these need to include supporters who will either push or push-and-add-value to your ideas within the next two layers of management, they must definately include sales teams that are passionate and can articulate your visions and lastly the board, you need substantial backing to either your specific idea or to the concepts of innovation.

Blockers - these are any one or anything that will slow, confuse, detract or divery your innovation from flowing through the organisation; examples include lack of focussed sales resources, lack of management backing and Senior or board level opposition or lack of interest.

So you need to let innovation through, the organisation needs to allow ideas, thoughts and innovations to move through the organisation, not necessarily straight up an' out but always upwards, not loosing momentum and ideally gaining in strength and value... These kinds of organisations will be easy to spot, it should be obvious that they have the right teams, the right attitude and the right ethos to enable innovation to flow.

In the applications worlld this is especially key, the apps world is moving at such a pace that not having an Innovation Hose will ultimately bring about failures. The right organisation for you is one that has a clear Applications Strategy that instantly demonstrates that they have a hose and they're not afraid to use it for the combined benefit of the customer and the organisation; if its not obvious, if the waters murky, drying up or non-existant then get the hell out...

I'll leave you with the title of the second in this series... The Innovation Hose with Customer Sprinkler Attachment!

[Bonus Link] Martyn Proctor was my Innovation Hose (and still is just in a different context), sometimes when the guy who squeezes the hose to get more power or more spray leaves, you need to start thinking about where you really belong if noone else picks up the hose or kills the blockers!

software strategy strategy applications strategy innovation software innovation innovation hose