August 2006

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Ode to contract folks

daniela barbosa Wednesday, August 30, 2006 1 comment :

The SalesRoundup Podcast is one of the podcasts that i listen to on my evening walks to the beach. I always learn something from these guys and have blogged about them before. At a minimum i get a good chuckle (which makes me one of those freaks with ipod buds in my ears laughing out loud). More and more i am using podcasts to get my extra-curriculum learning.- yes say it -i am a loser because i am listening to self-help sales training as an extra-curriculum activity instead of something like this, or this, or even this (i do also listen to some other great podcasts which i will post about later).

This week's episode 48 is titled: "It's all in the fine print! Leveraging your contract people to maximize your sales effort" (i would add: "and to keep your sanity!") - Mike and Joe share some tips on using your contract folks effectively.

Bring them in earlier then later
Take them through the solution you are trying to close the contract on- they might think it is standard product but most likely you have tinkered something in the client's expected terms
when you hand them a 36page Services agreement on the client's paper they should have already expected it (ask early on in the closing cycle)- and make sure you have a very nice smile on your face when you do hand it to them!
if you know there are going to be stickler points- have a conversation with your contract team to understand what you can or can not do before getting them in front of the client - you know the customer best
ask all your clients to close deals in early December- holiday's aren't fun when the family is drinking spiked eggnog and you and your legal staff are on the phone trying to close a deal before the end of the year
buy them nice gifts or at least take them out for a drink once in a while

I have to admit that the legal staff i work with are just plain awesome to work with. We have been negotiating some pretty major services agreements lately and they do not miss a beat- never have for the 5+ years i have had to work with them. They have also pushed over the years to make sure that we have a good contract archive management strategy- so i can find what i need quickly. So this is an Ode to our legal team - thanks

Monday, August 21, 2006

Web 2.0 Strategies understanding your customer better

daniela barbosa Monday, August 21, 2006 No comments :

i got pinged by a client to take a close look at this post which i had already read and actually forwarded internally- but on a second look it lead me to Pronet Advertising's Blog. The original post that lead me there has since been threaded- so it went from a top ten list to a discussion- that is the great thing about the blogsphere-even better then a good top ten list by David Letterman that is repeated in conversation throughout the office.

The top ten list is about what every company should be monitoring and listening to in order to manage their brand and keep customers happy- something that our customers are asking us for help with. In addition to the new taxonomy services that i have added to my toolkit, over the last few months i have also become more acquainted with our Media Intelligence solutions- providing some interesting opportunities with overlaying our core products with other monitoring and measuring requirements that might be unique to customers- one of our product development folks also has a blog and he just posted a Read Between the Mines: Cliche Index report report that was produced with the Insight tool covering main stream press (it can cover blogs as well). I am sure you will be glad to hear that 'at the end of the day' cliche rules the US Media.

While browsing the Pronet Advertising's Blog, i found a post titled Understanding your Customers which is about listening to client in a Web 2.0 world- tomorrow i have an internal session with some colleagues where i am going to show them how i personally use certain tools to 'listen' to my clients' utilizing RSS feeds from some of the product alerts feeds but also Web 2.0 applications like Technorati and del.icio.us . Just like brand managers are keeping tabs on clients, shouldn't sales and consulting folks do the same- so they can understand the client better? I recently posted about sales processes that can be greatly enabled through Web 2.0 solutions.

Sunday, August 20, 2006

Enterprise 2.0 who will be creating the enterprise applications of the future?

daniela barbosa Sunday, August 20, 2006 No comments :

I was playing around with Dapper this afternoon again and then went looking for people talking about Enterprise 2.0 applications being 'built' by users and not traditional hard core developers. In this instance i am defining a user as potentially being a web content manager or web designer, a information professional in the 'library' or even early adopters within the enterprise who like to play with technologies (like me). What i think is interesting- and especially because i work for a company that does a lot of custom work around delivering relevant content to end-users- is what is being defined as Web 2.0 Applications the "Users" own the data on the site and can exert control over the data.

In a recent EarlyStageVC post, Peter Rip comments on Gartner's acknowledgement of Web 2.0 as a real IT trend and he goes on to write about Web 2.0 in the Enterprise-his blog always has interesting posts about Web 2.0 in the enterprise which i have pointed to before and this includes the comments his readers make on his posts. Peter writes:

So Enterprise 2.0 as a platform shift is mostly about the enabling technologies. Web 2.0 rode the back of Open Source and Moore's Law to crack the economic barrier in building web based services. What followed were technologies for making applications richer (AJAX), easier to build (Ruby on Rails), and easier to integrate (REST and RSS).

Another interesting post on the same subject just posted this evening by Dion Hinchcliffe titled "Enterprise 2.0" as the example that proves the rule.

Dion writes:
And let's not forget that the real trend in all of this is likely an larger one that is represented by the move from push-based systems of control to pull-based systems of control. One implication of this is that the freedom and potential of these new models for business and IT is a real threat to those in charge of the old models. And while neither model in its pure form will likely provide the ideal results, a workable hybrid that delivers the goods is the likely outcome.

Rob Boothly of Innovation Creators who has been blogging about Web 2.0 in the Enterprise for a while also posted on the end user push to create "Who Killed the Corporate IT Department" In an Enterprise Web 2.0 world, companies selling web based business management and business productivity tools can and will circumvent Enterprise IT departments, and start selling directly to the end user.

I am starting to run into these 'Web 2.0' application creators and it certainly is going to make my day job interesting in the following months- as a company i think we are prepared to meet the needs of this new 'user-base' and i look forward to engaging my clients as they figure out how Enterprise 2.0 is going to impact them.

No Pictures Please

daniela barbosa Sunday, August 20, 2006 No comments :

From my ACM TechNews email dated- Monday, June 26, 2006 - i got this interesting story-with the proliferation of cameras in all types of devices and video as well- aside from the items they mention like filming videos in movie theators, and security concerns at airports and such- it would probably be ideal for famous events etc where the paparazzi could be kept afar with system like this.

Researchers Develop System to Thwart Unwanted Video and Still Photography at the Georgia Institute of Technology
A team of Georgia Tech researchers has developed a technology that can block the operation of video and still digital cameras using off-the-shelf sensors, lighting equipment, a projector, and a computer. The system detects digital cameras by scanning for the reflectivity and shape of their image-producing sensors. Principal commercial applications include the prevention of illegal video copying in theaters or other venues and protecting against surreptitious photography in small, restricted areas, such as government buildings or industrial environments. The image sensors in cameras are retroreflective, meaning that they direct light back to its origin instead of scattering it, which could make them easy to detect in a darkened theater. The researchers' prototype locates a camera's image sensors, known as CCDs, using visible light and two cameras, though a commercial application could employ invisible infrared lasers and photo-detecting transistors, transmitting information about a suspicious reflection's properties to a computer to determine if it is, in fact, a camera. "The biggest problem is making sure we don't get false positives from, say, a large shiny earring," said Jay Summet, a Georgia Tech research assistant. "We need to make our system work well enough so that it can find a dot, then test to see if it's reflective, then see if it's retroreflective, and then test to see if it's the right shape." Upon detecting a video camera, the system would overwhelm its CCD with a thin beam of white light that would render any video recorded unusable. Neutralizing still images in settings with higher levels of ambient light also shows commercial promise, because the image sensors in most digital cameras and cell phones are placed closer to the lens than in video cameras, making them easier to detect. Most of the remaining obstacles to commercialization involve developing better algorithms to eliminate false positives.Click Here to View Full Article

Thursday, August 17, 2006

Dapper adj : marked by smartness in dress and manners

daniela barbosa Thursday, August 17, 2006 No comments :

oh boy is this is an exciting end to another successful day- the Dapper part of the post (although Blotter is as well).
Back in February i got excited about ning and still use my ning bookshelf (as well as my video ipod that i won for making a ning!). For me the most exciting part was because it was a consumer based tool that allowed for simple 'programming' - you can easily create applications on the fly without any coding.

Dapper provides a UI (that needs some Usability looking at) that extracts data from any web site and provides click design functions ( yep, click and code gets written in some far distant space were little programming elves are writing thousand lines of code ;-) . The user can then choose to displayed via XML, HTML, RSS, email alerts, Google Maps, Google Gadgets, a javascript image loop or JSON. Today without enhancing usability it is not a tool a general user could use but for some like me who has limited programming skills, isn't afraid to give things a try and has big dreams this could be great.

TechCrunch calls Dapper pretty awesome but with some copyright issues to deal with, i agree. I just spent some time playing around this evening and will post what i come up with soon!

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Qualities to be a winner

daniela barbosa Wednesday, August 16, 2006 No comments :

In the last 7 days I have gotten pinged by a couple of folks about why no posting- well there are various reasons- i took a couple of days off and went to Yosemite, my in-laws came to town which means that evenings/weekends when I do my blog reading and writing were spent entertaining- and as usual I have been busy with delivering some big projects- great for me bad for my legions of millions of blog readers-ha not really millions.....

So why am I so busy at work that I don't have time to blog about something that I have been enjoying? Probably because I am competitive- just need to put blogging on my competitive edge to-do list.

One thing that i have managed to do is listen to some of my weekly podcasts- one which i always enjoy is Business Week's Cover stories podcast. It complements the new issue's cover story with an extensive interview with its writers and editors which i find to be a great format.

This week's "What Makes a Winner-The Competition" issue includes some interesting items and the podcast focused on a poll of over 2500 U.S. Managers.

So what are the top qualities that are most likely to help people win in the business world?
1. Self confidence
2.Integrity
3.Self discipline

Thursday, August 03, 2006

eight seconds looking at the front cover and 15 seconds looking at the back cover

daniela barbosa Thursday, August 03, 2006 "Sun Microsystems" 1 comment :

Rich Burridge, Sun Microsystems second most popular blogger (unfair to say because Rich was consistently #1 until Jonathan Schwartz became CEO and the media went blog wild) is a Bookoholic.

In his post about some book statistics from ParaPublishing.com he highlights some pretty scary statistics but on the site there are also some interesting ones about publishing publishing itself. Here are the scary ones:

58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school.
42% of college graduates never read another book.
80% of US families did not buy or read a book last year.

i am doing my part to encourage book reading:

i like to send customers books that i think they would find interesting or have come up in our conversation. i take the time to personalize them by using these book labels i made a while ago that i sign and stick on the inside of the bookcover. Many times i also bookmark sections....yes with 'old' fashion post-its...with notes about why i think they should read those sections. This is what the labels look like (let me know if you want the template):

lately i have also been thinking about using applications like Google Notebook and del.icio.us to record items of interest and send them to clients. Social booking could be a great way to personalize and share with clients on a one to one basis.

i read a lot of books as many as i can fit in between, work and reading my blogs! Recently i began keeping a bookshelve on ning . I like the concept of a virtual bookshelve so people can see what i am reading but didn't want to put it as a banner type thing on my site so i keep in on my ning. In a recent mid year performance management review i pointed to my ning so that my manager and others may review what i am reading.

i am splitting for the weekend and i won't be back online until monday in my bag for my trip is this book , i am taking time off from business related books.

on a side note- check out the sun blogger rolls posts mostly from today- you will see that sun bloggers are being extremely transparent about the changes and the layoffs that are effecting themselves as well as their colleagues-straight from the top they take directions.

500 takes on Web 2.0 and buying Startups on eBay

daniela barbosa Thursday, August 03, 2006 No comments :

looks like this list is making the rounds.
The question was "have you ever heard the term 'Web 2.0'? If 'yes'” what do they think it means?

interesting browsing- of course some jokester answers and some ones that hit it right on- but i liked #61- simplifying the web (and life), by solving common problems in the simplest fashion possible.

BUT wait- do you want to get into the Web 2.0 market?- well you can now buy a Web2.0 Startup on Ebay. Hurry current bid is $760 and bidding ends Aug 11th. Hey.... my birthday is next week if anyone is interested in buying me a present this might be nice.

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