Sunday, July 30, 2006

consulting under a corporate name that sells a product

2 comments :
i have worked with the Factiva for almost 8 years, about half of them in the Consulting Services group. Over the last 18 months we have been consulting more and more with clients with little or no implication of contractual services around the content Factiva sells as our practice grows by more than 50%. For example we may help them build or manage a corporate or e-commerce website taxonomy, assist them with building a RSS corporate stratedgy, help them build a market research portal, or an information delivery mobile stratedgy- with little touch on the content they get or could get from Factiva.

So in case you don't know, Factiva's main business model is a content aggregator of premium sources. Simply put, Factiva collects over 10,000 sources in multiple languages, normalizes them adds a taxonomy and provides various destination
products as well as XML feeds and Web services. We have some great products- but guess what-- i get paid zero, nilch, nada on content on any of those solutions and when clients ask i certainly tell them that. Our model is a bit different that traditional professional services groups attached to companies like software vendors, our gigs our not dependent on implementing a Factiva product- which i love but with that comes struggles in getting customers to see us as separate.

There has been a parody on Web 2.0 logos going on in the blogworld that people are uploading to flicker with the tag yay2dot0logoparody. I am not a visual graphic artists so i am doing my best to use that idea to conceptualize the conversation a colleague of mind and I recently had after debriefing from a meeting with a company last week that kept going back to Factiva content- honestly the back to content conversation was driven both by the account
executive (who surprise, suprise also gets paid on content) and the customer....

using the logos of some of the biggie consulting firms and having a little fun with the Web 2.0 style logos...i present to you my suggestions for renaming Factiva Consulting Services....leave comments as to which is your favorite!


Saturday, July 29, 2006

Heading to BlogHer today

2 comments :
heading down to San Jose for the BlogHer conference this morning.

Monday, July 24, 2006

Surfing the Web with nothing but brainwaves

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1. i like the new technorati redesign-although it seems to be running slow on firefox- how else would i have found this.

2. Business 2.0 has a piece on Neurodevices -this kind of technology can enable a hooked-up human to write at 15 words a minute - half as fast as the average person writes by hand. I love this futuristic- but folks it is here- stuff since it makes our interaction with information much more interesting.

one minute, in fairly neat handwriting proved that i am average indeed:

i am testing how many words i can write in a whole minute before i go to sleep because obviously i am a geek and have nothing better to do then this stupid exercise to prove to myself that i am not average.

Aggregating yourself

1 comment :

this weekend, i was listening to a podcast in which the phrase 'people aggregator' came up, it was a nonchalant mention like "so and so is working on a people aggregator" and i don't think they were talking about Marc Canter but perhaps someone on the Broadmechanics team. I jotted the phrase down on a scrap of paper and went back to it later. I can't remember which podcast i was listening to and it doesn't really matter because they didn't say much- just got my attention with the phrase 'people aggregator'- hearing the phrase made me think of a service that aggregates people and makes them and their assets findable.

which reminds me, i WOULD LOVE to be able to search the transcripts of every podcast i have on my iPod- Surprisingly for someone that like music quite a bit- most MGs on my device are audio podcasts which i keep but will i ever be able to go back to the right place without much frustration? Lifehacker blog gives us a good review of what is available in the search for the perfect podcast including podcast search tools but i haven't had much success with the podcast search tools.

so back to the phrase people aggregator- working for primarily a content aggregator- customers have always asked us to do people aggregation and discovery and not just executive names for sales but also solutions like those that identify government officials, politicians, and the people connected to them worldwide. Aggregating people is not an easy business but we are doing it more and more- providing added value based on the content (premium, web, blogs, govt info) we are aggregating across various content platforms. People entities and the content around them- can lead to very well defined people databases/dashboards- for example companies that have a rich recruiting process or a executive search firm's value is in the data they collect over time- what they know about their employees, those they are trying to recruit etc. I am speaking to a couple of companies that are exactly looking to do that.

so the term people aggregator was interesting but the short time i spent on their site- i didn't get it- but i am sure with more services integrating into it and perhaps some UI work the tool can be useful and indeed act as a self publishing hub.

lucky for me it looks like Marc Canter will be giving a demo at SF Web Innovators Network event which i will be attending tomorrow- maybe i will understand it a bit more after hearing the demo.

Sunday, July 23, 2006

From Research to Analysis to Leadership

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Note> Blogger over the last 2 days has been up and down......just finally got it to publish!

I was just reading the Webvisions notes,videos and reviews that are coming in. Jeremiah Owyang, as usual is doing a great job at aggregating.

in my browsing travels, I ran into the following from Dave Johnson's - The Ajax User Experience presentation at Webvisions:

Librarian analogy - Web 1.0 - having access to one librarian getting you information / Web 2.0 (Ajax) - having a stream of librarians available to you to run back and forth to the book shelves as you need information.


good to confirm that in a Web 2.0 world the librarian is still as valuable and even more of them! Sure he doesn't mean the physical librarian but definitely the concept of the expertise that a librarian brings to the table around information delivery and finding.

Kevin Manion, President, New York Chapter, Special Libraries Association (SAL) writes an Opinion column titled: From Research to Analysis to Leadership in this month's SAL (Special Libraries Association) Connections e-mail newsletter. I also did a quick search and found out that Kevin has a book and published his career story last year.

Maybe it is because this weekend I was reading "Ambient Findability" by Peter Morville, an admitted "librarian", but I have been thinking about librarians quite a bit, mostly because when I first meet people I am more then proud to tell them that I have a Masters of Library and Information Service (MILS from Rutgers). I run into folks that have library and information science all the time in my day job, and many of them are at a place to make a definite impact on the organization. Kevin Manion writes about librarians taking on leadership roles in the Enterprise, I agree- when information finding and delivery become main objectives to drive revenue- the people with the knowledge to help fix, maintain and grow the information stratedgy will be looked upon as leaders.

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Marketing goes web 2.0 - why don't i just show you?

2 comments :
Jeremiah dropped me a note (yes via my blog as a comment because how else will you get my attention!) that he was heading to the Webvisions conference in Portland - he mentioned that he might use my video response to his comments on one of my posts a couple week back while he is on a panel presenting on social media in business. cool thanks Jeremiah!

So it got me once again thinking about how social video site like YouTube and Google Video could obviously create a whole new personal marketing avenue that could be very useful for the enterprise.

On Eric Kintz's, VP of Global Marketing Strategy Excellence for HP blog he shares a conversation with Tracey Trachta, Director WW & US Consumer Advertising, who manages HPs new online campaigns which includes videos that are being posted on services like YouTube. They talk about different types of viral marketing including the ability for users to create their own 'commercials' which in turn they share with their community of friends. I cruised around Eric's blog last night and found some definitely interesting posts worth taking a look at.

I have been cruising around YouTube for a while and have seen more and more 'commercials' popping up. Here is my question however, it seems that YouTube terms (Section 5 C iv) of use do not allow for users to post advertisements or solicitations of business. Ok so i understand if the posts are user created and submitted- like this Nokia 7380 Review and so because a JayZ fan uploaded the JayZ Ad and not HP themselves it is ok?

Factiva, the company i currently work at recently has a marketing video campaign- mostly driven by e-mail to our existing customers- these are supposed to be funny videos about how Factiva gives back time and what people are doing with that free time. i guess it is supposed to be viral marketing. Now- i am NOT a fan at all of what they did - they claim to have a good open rate so good for them- i still don't appreciate the videos at all and just don't get it- maybe it is my dry sense of humor (doubt it)...anyway to get to my point...i was listening to a podcast with Jackie Huba that said that if you are involved with products in the marketplace you should go to YouTube and type in the name of your product to see if anyone as created a consumer review video- so i did and what did i find? the viral marketing videos that factiva put out were posted- i do not know who posted them.

I recently used YouTube to provide an answer to someone that asked me a question about RSS delivery in one of the products we had been talking about and just did the same with some cool functionality that i thought would be best seen 'live'. It was my official non-company the opinions expressed on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employer because this is a personal blog post- so i am OK or do i need to go back to posting on my webserver?

sometimes a sleep through things which means i get to get more excited when i notice something i missed that was pretty cool

No comments :
Factiva had a product enhancement build at the end of June, i don't really sell these products (i work mostly on custom solutions and consulting engagements) but i always sign up for any training information out of the product group and since i use these products in my day to day job i get to get the goods first.

last month- i must have been asleep...we had a enhancement training back in early June that only provided screen shots-so somehow i missed some of the awesome new functionality. So last night i logged into my newspage and i started playing around and discovered that our News Pages have been enhanced with some great functionality. There is a quick way to build a 2.0 NewsPage by selecting, publications and dragging and dropping. We have never had drag and drop functionality like this so i am very impressed with the product design group. So impressed that as i was setting up my personal page, i recorded this little video.

Monday, July 17, 2006

Another FACTIVITE in the Blogsphere- Welcome Glad to have you!

2 comments :
A couple of my Factiva colleagues are bloggers who blog mostly with an emphasis on their day job- but none until now have been part of the Consulting Services group that i belong to. We have employee bloggers from the Product, Marketing, HR and Customer Services groups- non are corporate sponsored blogs- but as i have posted before we have had a blogging policy for a while.

A couple days ago i received a note from one of my favorite and smartest people at Factiva that he was starting a work related blog- Exploring Information Strategies -i knew i was going to love it because Jason is on top of his game and recently took over my old territory in New York- which means huge opportunities to work on some very innovative projects. Right off the gate he has two great posts about real life information delivery strategies that we are working on text to audio for news delivery into podcasts and some ideas on delivering information in the Competitive Intelligence space. Right on- keeping them coming!

Jason Malatesta has been with Factiva for a long time- i remember when he started as an intern- and is a product of learning the Factiva 'machine' through its guts like i did- spending time in the trenches of non-glamour in customer service, working closely with product and technology and direct sales back in the days when we began getting heavy into integration of content into enterprise applications and workflows. He has spent the last 2 years delivering engagements as an information consultant for the corporate and government sector- happily for me on some of my projects out West as well (if you read his personal blog- you can see he eats very well when he is on the West coast!)

Welcome Jason-you have been added to my "FACTIVITES- n. one who works at Factiva" RSS folder. I really look forward to reading more and sharing some of your ideas with my own clients.

Account Planning in a Web 2.0 world

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i met with a company today that i think is at the point where enterprise Web 2.0 could have a dramatic impact on the sales and services organization. actually- i know it will-i monitor some of their employees' blogs- i just hope i get invited to play along.

i have posted about Web 2.0 in the enterprise before and many of my posts revolve around things like OS from everywhere and social bookmarking in the enterprise space. During my day job, i typically look at the external information as used across a variety of different groups in the enterprise. Basically my elevator 5 second pitch is delivering the right information to the right person at the right time- when and how they want it- how? with an information delivery strategy into the users' everyday tools.

In the last year i have spent a lot of time with sale operations folks who are tasked with making sales people smarter, better and faster....so they can make...yes you guess it...more money. They might give them
different titles like Account Managers at banks or Account Executives at a high tech firms or even consultants, but they all are looking for the same thing- how do we help our sales team know their customers, industries, triggers, competitors etc. and facilitate decisions and action based on that information?

One of the integration points that i think is extremely important and where the power of web 2.0 application will be felt, is in the Account Planning process. Account Plans are typically part of enterprise sales processes, most of the companies i run into have them- some implemented successfully (the sales teams benefit from the creation of them) and others not so successfully-(management makes it another administrative duty with little to no value for the sales staff). i believe that with web 2.0 - the notion of account planning- or strategically thinking about your sale can change and the account plan will become a 'living document' that travels with the sales team wherever they go- not owned by one but shaped by many.


In today's meeting we had a discussion that i have been having over and over again about automating the account planning process. Something i have delivered before- identifying the external data fields that apply to a specific section of the Account Plan(AP)- and facilitating the input of that data into the AP- which can be in a Word document, a CRM system etc. With Web 2.0 features, an account plan can even grow beyond that and follow the user as they journey across resources available to them to build a strategic winning plan:
  • internal marketing sites } reviewing product specs that marketing have posted- and adding it as a 'note in reference' in your AP
  • internal competitive intelligence web sites } reviewing your competitors offerings as related to that account - and adding it as a 'note in reference' in your AP
  • internet websites } searching and browsing for information about the client, their products their customers -- and adding it as a 'note in reference' in your AP
  • blogs } reading client's corporate and employee blogs - and adding it as a 'note' in your AP
  • e-mails } receiving, sending , deleting- - and adding it as a 'note in reference' in your AP
  • internal documents } finding other proposals for clients in the same industry with similar issues-- and adding it as a 'note in reference' in your AP

A couple weeks back i did a presentation for a client, where i discussed using web 2.0 functionality to do exactly what i outline above. I mocked up a quick page for that discussion modeled after services like Kaboodle-(see below) essentially a Sales Account planning 'cart' if i may call it- that quickly allows the user to add it to a specific section of the AP (a structure sales process needs a structure format), allows for user notes and even tags and is easily shared with other team members (and management) on demand from wherever they may be.


The end result- if that is what the company is looking for is a well defined document- probably in Word or in a PDF format- but the act of creating that document is from a contextual bookmarklet type of application that follows the user- storing the knowledge that the sale person gained in 'real time' during their journey and straight into the corporate memory.

Sunday, July 16, 2006

Wikis and vlogs and more oh my

1 comment :
1. rant- i am a simple girl with simple needs- i work from everywhere and for years after touching multiple networks on any rocking pc it stars running turtle juice- urgh, if i calculated the amount of time wasted trying to connect to networks in the last 18 months a great ROI story can be made for those that can fix it- outside network T-access is frustrating...to do one thing can take me foreeeever - i had a fairy tale dream i would move to Silicon Valley and i would be forever connected instead it takes me hours to get on the network or even find a WIFI access point.

2. i love the fact that i am hearing the words- web 2.0, wikis, rss, blogs, vlogs, podcasts, social bookmarking- from my customers and definitely internally at my company. why? cause if you have spent years looking at usability from the end-user perspective when things to talk about are user empowered like these tools, it just makes us happy- just like driving a hybrid-

Here is a good find in case Wiki is still strange to you: O'Reilly - What is a Wiki (and how to use it for your projects) coming to you from Librarian in Black.

3. tie in # 1 with #2 and the power of Web 2.0 can have a huge impact on remote and field enterprise users that work from various locations. so because of #1 i have been cruising on the internet off my home PC quite a bit in the last few weeks. even if i am not doing 'work' i ALWAYS run into things that i might want to reference later on related to projects i am working on or should be. I can log into the network via a web VPN solution, but i still need to authenticate etc. and i tend not to be very creative and efficient when i need to jump through hoops to record a reference for future thought. I recently started using Google labs notebook, it is still in the lab which means it needs some work but i like where it is going and see how Google can deliver an enterprise version tied to their search appliances. In the lab version you can set your notebooks to private or public- in an enterprise version they can essentially use network access controls to govern who gets to see what and also allow the user to choose who to share with. I have seen a couple of applications out there that are using Google APIs to create shared 'notebooks' as well.

I have used Microsoft OneNote 2003 before- useful but since it is a local client app- i can't flip from one computer to another outside of the corporate network-also had a quick look at 2007 and it looks like it is staying only behind the firewall-not sure. As i was looking for OneNote2007 blog posts i ran into Microsoft Knowledge Network for Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007, which includes an Outlook plug-in that scans for expertise and social connections in email and a server component that displays the information in a discoverable and searchable manner -i must have missed the announcement on this one, the product team a la Microsoft style has a blog, with an interesting post on Knowledge Network vs. "Expert " location Systems. A couple of reviews and announcement posts including Ross Dawson but not much else past the June timeframe. Email-knowledge which equals all the stuff sitting in our inbox or archive folders- helping to find someone that knows something about whatever is needed. I still have an email on how to hook up to the network printer at my desk in Princeton which is probably over 3 yrs old (and i have been in SF for 1yr1/2- and i recently sent it to someone who was having problems that i was IM'ing with. Interesting, I wonder if Scoble's email was being beta tested with this new tool.

Long stairs leads to no Long Tail

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i am kinda pissy with my post man today. i love spending sunday afternoons on the deck with a beer and a book- and he has denied me that simple pleasure just because he won't climb up the long stairs which you see to the right here (yes can't blame him!). i bounced down the stairs yesterday to see that i had a little slip that on monday after 9am i can go get my package- guess it was to big to leave in the box.

I recently order some books from Amazon, see my Ning bookshelf for some new additions. One that i was looking forward to digging in today is Chris Anderson's The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More guess i will have to save it for next week.

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Always on camera- does my hair look ok?

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Smartmobs blog pointed me to a USA today article about the growing population's acceptance of always being on camera.

Just today at dinner, a couple of us were talking about how people are more and more just accepting surveillance as a way of life. The fact that people are using social media tools to quickly publish very personal information could be flipped to say that those same people are more comfortable with surveillance for the sake of preserving whatever it is that needs preserving. Someone at the table told us a story about how he was at a Dunkin Donuts (East Coast style!) recently and was talking to the young man behind he counter, after a couple minutes of conversation the employee gets a call and takes it. He comes back to the counter and tells him that he has to go because his boss told him to stop talking to the customers and to tuck in his shirt. The store manager was sitting at home or perhaps in a central location if he managed multiple stores and monitoring and addressing his employees. It just seemed second nature to the kid behind the counter and he wasn't bothered by it at all.

So we continued talking about how 30 -40 years ago society would never put up with all this surveillance (phone taps!) all the time and we fantasized about a revolution in the streets while we ate our crispy tofu. i sat there at points quietly cause just this week i turned the cameras on myself and i have to admit i liked it. it was fun-real and for a purpose. Where are the Amanda Congdon Rocketboom replacement try-outs?

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

Blogging to Recruit

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There have been a lot of recent posts in the blogs about blogs being used as 'live resumes'- Charlene Li turns it the other way and blogged about recruitment blogs being a no brainer last week- which i agree would be a great way to recruit people, especially when talent is being heavily recruited and "word of mouth" may help prospects decide on working for that company. She points out some companies that are already do this- especially in the tech world.

Recruiting is a topic that has certainly being coming up more and more with customers i work with- more and more are using non-traditional HR recruitment processes and they are looking at some of the external content sets we provide to monitor executive moves, industry innovations, profiles from potential employee's companies, and core competitor practices. The are also starting to talk about web content (blogs) as a source of recruitment information.

We have worked with recruitment firms in the past (for example building predicative news modeling on when key executives are more likely to move on etc.)- that look at the external world and how their recruiters look for business.

To the right you see a sample mock screen of an recruiting dashboard that is populating with both internal data (job postings, salaries, empployee history etc) that the recruitor may have and external information about companies, industries and people. Click on the image to get a bigger view on how external news content along with company and industry information could deliver a very imformative dashboard to HR recruitors- mesh in web content and blogs and bingo-.

GBLOG: News related to blogging

No comments :

last week my bag of goodies to engage with customers directly on expanded, not that we haven't had these services for a while- and i have certainly worked on many a project that leveraged these services for a complete enterprise information delivery solution (factiva and nonfactiva content) with the excellent folks that work in that group- it is just that they have finally decided to compensate me for selling them. a good deal all around i say. you will hear more about this very shortly (i am in study mode as there are some newer services that i am getting up to speed on- like the Factiva Synaptica Knowledge Management System (KMS) .

While cruising around this evening on the corporate portal i found lists of newly added codes that we use to tag all the content we provide (Company, Industry, News Subject, and Region). These codes are called Factiva Intelligent Indexing and we were issued United States Patent number 6,938,046 this year.

Four times a year after careful review we add, expand, update etc. these codes. There are various ways to 'discover' new terms including QA systems that alert our editorial specialist of recurring terms that pop up in the news. The way we apply taxonomy and categorize our content is way more complicated then that- if you are interested drop me a line and we can chat off line.

Anyway....addition #1 that was new to me and looked interesting (but was added Aug 2005) was News Subject: Blogging (click on the image above to get the definition- note it is indexed under "Living/Lifestyles" i am sure that it will also be applied to corporate news subject soon enough. (our taxonomies are 'polyhierarchical' and would allow that)

Here are some additional changes that i pulled out to highlight- these are interesting because they tells us a bit about the times we live in:

An August Addition:

News Subject: "Cholera" covers all news on cholera, an acute intestinal infection caused by ingestion of contaminated water or food.
[scary uh- that cholera is in the news enough to start a new code and not under general diseases]

Some May Additions:


News Subject: "Cultural Heritage" Cultural Heritage is an expression of the ways of living developed by a community and passed on from generation to generation, including customs, practices, places, objects, artistic expressions and values.

News Subject: "Sustainable Development" covers development that ensures that the use of resources and the environment today does not damage prospects for use by future generations.

News Subject: "Skeleton" covers Skeleton articles is an individual, sledding, winter sport where competitors drive the sled in a prone, head-first position down an ice track on a sled or 'sleigh'. This differs from luge, where the rider drives the sled from a supine, feet-first orientation. This Olympic sport is also known as tobogganing. [trust me i had no idea either but it looks like it is making a
come back)

Industry Subject: "Traditional Chinese Medicine" covers the ancient Chinese system of medicine, that includes meditation, herbal and nutritional therapy, restorative physical exercises, acupuncture, oriental massage, qigong and acupressure.

Some January Additions:

News Subject: "Corruption"All news on corruption. Includes official corruption, the misuse of an official position for private advantage and political corruption, corruption of the political system through bribery, intimidation, extortion, vote buying, destabilization, or influence peddling.

Industry: "Security Systems" covers articles that include security scanners, metal detectors, x-ray equipment, screening equipment, baggage screeners, iris identification systems, digital fingerprints or sonar fingerprints systems and detection technology.

News Subject: "Internal Control" articles about Internal Control which is a process within an organization designed to provide reasonable assurance regarding the achievement of the following: reliability and integrity of information; compliance with policies, plans, procedures, laws, and regulations; safeguarding of assets; economical and efficient use of resources; accomplishment of established objectives and goals for operations or programs.



If you have read my LinkedIn Profile then you can bet that i am rooting for Portugal tomorrow and that i have a Master in Information and Library Science- so taxonomies and classification are just up my alley- hence my interest with social bookmarking or tagging in the enterprise -great stuff all around.

Monday, July 03, 2006

Video messages - broadcast yourself

3 comments :
it isn't the first time that i do little videos to share exactly what i am talking about- mostly i host them on my web server but today i was yet again inspired by Jeremiah and his starting YouTube post. YouTube is a personal video sharing Web 2.0 site- one that can lead to some time lost in cyber space . In his post, he says that services like YouTube are really going to take off and quickly. Why? because there is no hosting required, a simple login and upload and that most digital cameras can do the job (i have a Kodak Z740 with 10x zoom that i really like)- i tend to agree- and there is a definite space in the enterprise web 2.0 world.

so Jermiah posted a comment the other day on my blog and asked me about the RSS alerting capabilities that he and i had talked about a couple months back. they were put into production last week along with some nifty new features that i will be sure to post soon about.

so here is my official non-company the opinions expressed on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employer- response to Jeremiah-


just in case you think that all i do is work, read blogs, work read blogs- here is a piece recorded this evening from my 'backyard'- and some nice sunset pics at on flickr

and then because i am obsessive (and had taken the time to hook up the flat panel to my laptop and figured i would do version two this evening)- i was inspired to continue and did this piece about some pretty cool functionality that i have already taken advantage of in finding companies who are interested in talking to me. enjoy-




Sunday, July 02, 2006

Openly known user of Blogs- to understand myself and you better

6 comments :
i am an openly known user of blogs to understand my customers and find new opportunities. If it sounds more like a confession then a statement- it probably is because you don't understand that bloggers want to be heard and our jobs as consultants and sales people are to listen.

blog reading has treated me very well in the last 2 years+ and over the last few months i have been trying to share some of that knowledge with my fellow co-workers as well as customers who are starting to see blog content as another powerful external content source to be added to their sales processes.

now- i realize i have an unique territory (south to San Jose and all the way up to Seattle)- where many of my clients and prospects have employee blogging policies and allow their employees to Blog it UP! - but with blogging becoming more prevalent across industries and with the 'MySpace' generation coming into the workforce- using employee blogs to understand our customers, industries and competitors may keep us ahead- or at least more interesting to speak to!

some customers even have said that as a company "we get it"(ok it was mostly me at that point ;-)- here is a quote from Jeremiah Owyang's recent podcast on business blogging:

there is one company in particular called Factiva and they have been approaching us and talking to us about our offerings as far as information supply, and there sales team was reading my blog to understand what are my needs because I would be one of the primary decision makers.

in prepping for a meeting i found the dirtydogstink blog that is authored by an employee- one that happens to be in a group that i was scheduled to have a conversation with- so in the middle of the conversation- me being me- i mentioned dirtydogstink-

(i think it was at an appropriate point- we were having a conversation with someone else who was on the phone and who is our main day to day contact at this company- and the two from one group were talking about the recent change from MSN Operations to Windows Live Operations but during our conversation MSN kept coming up and corrections from the Live Operations team that it was Windows Live Operation not MSN - yeah could have been confusing but as an outsider, i wasn't confused because i had already read dirtysogstink's view on the whole thing the day before)

so to get to the point- it lead to this conversation which is pretty funny- maybe it is because of the blog's name- and the fact that a vendor (me) actually said dirtydogstink during a call ;-) and everyone did go and read it- but we did get our main objectives accomplished and i look forward to the follow-up next week-