Wow Touching in The Enterprise IS OK

At last year's Dreamforce the FirstRain team had a blast filming a "Sh**T Dreamforcers Say" video, and my favorite bit was the opening clip that had me asking: "Touch the Enterprise? I thought touching was NOT work appropriate?".  It took me a couple of takes to get that one right because we kept cracking up (watch the video through the end to see some of the out-takes).

We lead with that clip in the video because, not only was it funny, but we knew that salesforce.com was going to be aggressively pushing their Touch Platform at Dreamforce.  After Dreamforce, I diligently read the book they were readily passing out to developers "Salesforce Touch Platform – Mobile Development Guide" (here's the free download). I totally got what they were working on, and since I had been tracking Enterprise Mobile App development in the marketplace for a while—and seeing it myself with our customers—I knew we wanted to package something up alongside their Touch Platform.

In addition to our well-loved, FirstRain enterprise iPad App, FirstRain had already delivered some pretty strategic mobile applications using standard technologies that salesforce.com was smartly pushing within their Touch Platform.

Now fast-forward to today, and we are pleased to announce that we have released FirstRain for Touch, an Enterprise Customer Intelligence Solution for the Salesforce Touch Platform. Go over to our blog MarketMine to read our blog post with the details on why this is so exciting for enterprise customers who want to quickly build and deploy enterprise-grade mobile apps.

Oh yeah, and "touching" in the enterprise—it's obviously not only acceptable, but is now expected from your employees ...

Photo| Flickr | lulutoo

A Drawer Full of Good Fortune and Harmony

Every culture has their own traditions and New Year's (Eve or Day) tends to be one of those celebration days that many of them come out in full force as everyone looks forward to the new year ahead of them.

Me? Well there are many Portuguese New Year's traditions that my family has celebrated all my life. What have I carried on?

Wear brand new blue underwear to attract good fortune and harmony.

Every year, usually on the 31st of December, i run around checking stores for blue underwear for the three of us- not only wearing them on the 1st but shopping for single pairs of blue underwear (not an easy task since many blue ones are typically in packages) the day or two before has become a tradition for me.

And with that i hope for good fortune and harmony for all. 

Girly Geeks in Force at Dreamforce

Note: This post was orginally published on the FirstRain MarketMine Blog 

I can't think of a better way to start a major conference then attending a conference sponsored networking event. From day one you are able to network and make connections with others, who can heavily influence the value you ultimately get from the conference.

On the eve of Dreamforce, Monday September 17th there will be a 'Women in Tech' event hosted by GirlyGeeks and the Salesforce.com's Women's Network (open to all Dreamforce attendees and Salesforce.com employees). This networking event is sure to rally in many passionate, energetic and career driven women and certainly all the Girly Geeks at FirstRain are looking forward to meeting them all, as we kick off Dreamforce 2012. Events like these are great opportunities to come together to network, share your own personal experiences, and hear some of the challenges and experiences women have faced in order to build their careers. In addition to networking and 'cocktailing' time, attendees will hear from:

• Hilarie Koplow-McAdams, President, Commercial/SMB Business Unit, Salesforce.com
• Geraldine Gray, Senior Consultant, Appirio & Founder of the GirlyGeeks

Plus a special panel session moderated by Jill Rowley, Director of Key Accounts, Eloqua. The panelists will share their career stories and take questions from the audience. Panelists include:

• Rachel Thornton, Vice President, Dreamforce, Salesforce.com
• Penny Herscher, CEO, FirstRain
• Sarah Friar, CFO, Square
• Deepa Patel, President, Halak Consulting

We are very happy that Penny was invited to be part of the panel, because as a FirstRain Girly Geek, I know the benefit of her daily dose of inspiration, guidance and fortitude, that I am sure will come across in the panel. As many of you know, Penny is very passionate about the opportunities and challenges that women in technology encounter on a daily basis. She actively shares her thoughts on her personal blog as well as on the Huffington Post. Earlier this year Penny participated on a panel at Yahoo! on the myth of the work-life balance and spoke at TEDx Gunn High School on how coding is the new literacy.

Want to learn more or attend the Women In Tech Event? If you are a Dreamforce attendee or Salesforce.com employee, visit the Girly Geeks Dreamforce Chatter Group and then RSVP here (email me if you need a code: dbarbosa@firstrain.com).

And don't forget, Dreamforce is only 10 days away and all of FirstRain is working hard to get #DF12ready! Most of the team will be present, whether they are at our booth (#1626!), wandering the expo and hosting meetups (interested in meeting up with us? Email us at DF@firstrain.com) or checking out the GE Capital Session--we are gearing up for a fun week!

Image|Flickr| Elizabeth Thomsen

You Had Me At Hello. Smiling That Is.

Note: This post was orginally posted on the FirstRain MarketMine Blog.

Dreamforce season is upon us! Attendees and Salesforce.com employees are talking about what they are wearing and not wearing (I really hope not!) to the event, the Dreamforce party app is hopping, SaaSy videos are going viral, animated gifs are turning up everywhere,  sessions are filling up fast and rumors are flying around. So what are we doing in preparation? Well, some hard work of course as we coordinate our booth (#1626), our customer session [360° of Excellence: How GE Capital Drives ROI Through Customer Intelligence], our team schedules and our client appointments---but also some fun, because that is how we roll here @FirstRain ... If you've been following @FirstRain or Penny, Ryan or myself on Twitter, you may have noticed we've been tweeting out about our new customer intelligence Tumblr:  "You Had Me At Hello, Letters to Marc Benioff", with a couple new posts a day. So what exactly is it? You Had Me At Hello are letters directly from Penny to Marc Benioff, Salesforce.com's CEO. They are 'penned' in Penny's own voice—no marketing content editor behind the scenes—and are what our COO, YY Lee, recently called "like passing hallway notes between two CEOs". We have had a lot of positive feedback from our customers (including many who are mutual customers with Salesforce.com), along with many "thanks for making me smile." This ticks off our #1 objective as we all continue to be manically busy trying to prep for Dreamforce, deliver our updated AppExchange offering, work on a couple of new client SFDC implementations and continue to drive value to our customers rolling out tools like Sales Cloud. Here are some highlighted posts from the Tumblr in the last week that might also make you smile:

• Why Crash Diets Don't Work: Diets don't work for losing weight, and they don't work for making sales quota.
• Collaboration is the mot du jour and without it, you won't be successful. We like “speed and agility” without the artificial steroids.
• FedEx, flexibility and yoga: this one got a lot of play, I think the sexy photo of the tattoo guy stirred up some interest. I wonder if people thought it was a buff Marc?
• Coach Needs you and we all need new hand bags (yes they have man purses for the savy dressed Salesforce.com male staff)
• Shout Outs to Salesforce.com: we work, we play but we all must give back and Salesforce.com leads the way with its non-profit work, Penny's talking about young girls and STEM
• Awkward, Choke, China and Will.I.Am and how SFDC can help them react, stay on top of the brand and coke drinkers everywhere.

To read the rest of the posts go to  #UHadMeAtHello! Read it, Tweet it, and Submit Your own Letter to Marc if you are so inclined. View the full archive here.

Harvesting Big Data for Social Business

Note: This post was orginally posted on the FirstRain MarketMine Blog. 

Have you ever thought about how, when you are in a specific situation or have something very important on your mind, you begin to see it all around you? For example if you have ever been pregnant—ALL you see around you are other pregnant women, as if it were a global pregnancy epidemic! Last week Steven Feinberg visited our office and I learned about our brain's reticular activating system (RAS), the part of the brain that recognizes patterns and "makes sense" of your experience. Your brain does this by looking for evidence to prove your beliefs—yes, the part of your brain that spots all those other pregnant women, or all the Mini Coopers on the road! 

So maybe it is my reticular activating system acting up because it was another BIG Monday morning for Social Business Big Data in my content streams. Here are some highlights: 

"Why Big Data Will Deliver ROI For Social Business" If you are at all interested or affected by social business, then you have probably heard of Dion Hinchcliffe, whose focus has been social business and next-gen enterprises working with some of the biggest companies out there. In this post in InformationWeek, he talks about driving forward very real business outcomes by harvesting the missing social business intelligence capability within most organizations. You can follow @dhinchcliffe for daily knowledge of social business.

"Business Intelligence (BI) Trends Go Beyond Analytics" on Forbes.com by SiliconANGLE’s Editor Kristen Nicole. This popped up on my radar because it mentioned what we are doing at FirstRain, by adding context to the data FirstRain finds and packaging it up for business use so a sales professional can immediately understand their customers.

"Why Context Matters—Forget Real-Time, Achieve  Right-Time" this one goes back a couple of weeks but I just found it and, although it is B2C focused, had a key point that addresses the B2B Social Business harvesting of Big Data:

"Customers and employees only want engagement aligned with self interest. Relevancy of information is required for customers and employees to respond. Real-time interactions quickly evolve into noise. Signal to noise ratios must be improved as garbage in will lead to massive garbage out. In some cases, customers don’t want engagement. They just want the experience."

"Can Data Science Save the US Economy?" Saroj Kar, takes a slightly different take on the importance of Big Data by focusing in on the data scientists:

"In recent months in the U.S. alone, large organizations, from staffing companies to universities, have seen a growing interest in a new professional class around data. A curious mix of business expertise, analysis and information technology, this new title is underway in various vertical markets such as energy, commerce, healthcare and financial services. And if experts are right, this is just the beginning."

I found this article because it mentioned our CEO Penny Herscher's recent TEDx talk on how "Coding is the New Literacy ". It not only highlights what we see in the marketplace as a real need for business skills but how FirstRain delivers (in doing the  'heavy-lifting' of data analysis for business users) such value to our customers—of course we have a team full of data scientists ourselves! 

Have you seen more articles on the subject that we should highlight? Tweet them to me @danielabarbosa 

Image| Flickr| adopted raebrune

Only the Strongest Professions have the Strongest Associations

"Only the strongest professions have the strongest associations" - 2012 SLA Hall of Fame inductee Susan Fifer Canby

Chicago in July is hot, even with the lake breeze you can't escape the concrete jungle heat. So the key to my personal success in attending the annual SLA (Special Library Asociation) conference was:

• #1 was keep hydrated 
• #2 pick the right sessions to go to (hard when so many are going on at the same time!) 
• #3 when taking a break from sessions and sitting down with other attendees, choose a shady cool spot (learned that the hard way!)

This year, I attended SLA 2012 (Special Library Association) #SLAChicago conference as an attendee, not as a vendor staff person as I have for many many years. Although in the past I was always able to get to some sessions that I really wanted to go to- often negotiating booth time slots with my coworkers!- This year, my focus was on attending as many sessions I could that interested me and to meet as many information professionals  as i could that had similar interests. 


Here are some high level themes i came back with:


- Throughout 2011 I kept an eye on the SLA Future Ready Project, a project that Cindy Romaine, SLA President 2011 had lead with the goal of finding and sharing information about how information professionals where or had to get 'Future Ready'- many of the sessions and conversations I was in where focused on what and where the profession of 'Special Librarians' was going. Many conversations on value (perceived and measurable), extension of roles (where else in the organization to embed oneself) and identity (what is a special librarian, what is the role of information in the enterprise, etc.). The general consensus i heard was that as a profession, information professionals feel that they are or are on the way to being 'Future Ready'.


- I attended a session on Collaborative Insights that highlighted some new information professional roles to embrace that i thought were great role descriptions for the skils and experiences that come with being an information professional in an enterprise including:

• Cross-Pollinators
• Connectors at Critical Intersections 
• Innovation Facilitators

- In more then one session and conversation, the topic of 'delivering information to users where they are' came up. Mobile and etablet delivery of content and what Mary Ellen Bates in one panel, made the association that it is not only about giving users the ability to 'Search' but being able to proactively 'alert' within context of what they are doing, regardless of what device they are in.


- The Rise of Internal Enterprise App stores and the opportunity for Information Resource Centers/Corporate Libraries to become front and center to that new enterprise ecosystem. Being first in line to delivering valuable enterprise applications within these new platforms would raise awareness of the services provided and direct value to the enterprise.


- Types of collaboration skills to develop as an Information Professional includes 'Horizontal Collaboration' within organization - IT, HR, and very importantly Rainmaking with C level executives.


- In regards to Collaboration, I really liked this reminder from Mary Talley  : "Collaboration Requires Intimacy"


- The shift to Self Service and Self Curation and the changes in how end-users use and consume information was another topic heard in the sessions in discussions with attendees- unlike the 'clients' of the past the skills AND the tools available to end-users enable self access (and success with it). Information Professionals MUST understand and become champions of these tools 


- Very Popular sessions - Like 60 Apps in 60 minutes conducted by Scott Brown of the Social Information Group and Joe Murphy highlighted the need for Information Professionals to have a good grasp of tools that are out there so that they can make recommendations, compete effectively and become part of the App culture that the corporate enterprise is embracing.


- Guy Kawasaki- gave the keynote, focused on Enchantment (that is the name of his newest book). Although I wish Guy has focused a bit more on addressing the actual audience of information professionals (something he talks about being a requirement to enchant!)- his core message can be applied to pretty much any profession that is responsible for providing services and products: Enchant people and build something DICEE - Deep, Intelligent, Complete, Empowering & Elegant


- Last but not least on my list, Lee Ann Benkert (pictured above)- @LRBenkert spontaneously organized an 'un-conference' session during lunch, asking people to join in the social media lounge and self-organize into small groups to talk about topics that were top of mind to them. It was a new thing for many of the attendees and it was great to see their excitement. I have been to many unconference events, and honestly the group session i was in was just ok (about identity as a special librarian- what should the title really be, etc.)- but the classy part was that Lee Ann managed to include the expo vendors who might have complained that this was taking people away from the expo floor booths during the time when attendees had free time to visit- by coordinating a 'flash-mob' visit to the vendor that best included themselves in the process of the unconference organization- well done!


There were many other sessions which you can view here, many have slide-decks as well (click through the session title) and there is also an Eventifier conference overview that has aggregated images, tweets, slides etc.


Thank you SLA for another excellent conference and thank you to all my old and new friends that i got to spend time with- see you next year in San Diego! 

Heading to SLA in Chicago- Let's Brainstorm about Info Pros and Enterprise Social Business Projects

Next week SLA (Special Library Association) is hosting their annual conference in Chicago and i look forward to meeting up with many of my old friends and clients in the library world!

SLA is always a great conference-unfortunately i missed the last two years, so i am really looking forward to attending this year- as an attendee because there are some great sounding sessions.

One of the core purposes of SLA is for attendees to learn about new trends and how information professionals are ensuring that they are “'future ready' by exchanging ideas and connecting with thousands of fellow information professionals". In addition to the sessions and general networking, I am also looking to meet up with information professionals who are currently working or are trying to get involved in Enterprise Social Business projects incorporating social enterprise software like Salesforce.com/Chatter, Yammer, SharePoint, Jive, IBM Connections, Tibco, Cisco Webex Social and others.

If you know me, you know i have been advocating this for years: The role of the information professional is a very important one that should be leveraged in enterprise social projects projects- in today's Social Portals, ESNs (Enterprise Social Networks), Collaboration chat platforms, SCRM,. etc. The core skills that Info Pros have can lead to greater adoption and ultimately  greator ROI.

In my new role at FirstRain as Director of Business Development i have a chance to spread the word that Info Pros- should and NEED to be brought into these projects- so if you going to SLA and feel the same (or perhaps you disagree)- i would love to talk to you!

Oh Yeah- here is what i look like now a days (hair is a bit longer but dimpled smile is the same :-)

If you are interested in touching base with me here is my email dbarbosa@firstrain.com or via twitter @danielabarbosa.

See you in Chicago!