The effects of a paywall, as seen by @crimelabproject

Now I don't want to be one of those starry-eyed people who shout at traditional media organizations, "Paywall bad! Free good!"

But there clearly are some benefits to making your online content easily accessible.

The whole point of putting your stuff out on the web is for people to see it, and for you to make money off of it. To greatly simplify the economic model, there are two ways to go about this, which I'll call "the cable TV way" and "the dinosaur TV way." The cable TV way is to charge people to access the content - in modern media terms, a paywall. The dinosaur TV way is to put the content out for free, and then charge advertisers for the privilege of showing ads to the people enjoying the content.

Isn't it ironic that the economic model revered by the social media types is, in the world of American television, the older of the two models - one that has been in place since the 1940s? (And if you look at radio, you'll find that same model in existence several decades before Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz posed with their first cigarettes.)

The trick, of course, is to maximize revenue. In certain circumstances, paywalls bring in higher revenue. In other circumstances, free access coupled with advertising brings in higher revenue.

I subscribe to mailings from the Crime Lab Project (visit https://twitter.com/crimelabproject for more information). The mailings are a list of links to various articles about crime lab work. People in the industry can then click on the links and go to the articles themselves for more information.

How do links get into the Crime Lab Project mailings? Obviously the links have to involve some aspect of crime lab work - DNA, fingerprints, coroner issues, and the like. But there's one other condition, noted at the bottom of the mailing:

Some sites may require registration to view articles. We try not to link to sites requiring paid registration or subscriptions.

The reason for this is obvious. The Crime Lab Project newsletter wants to be useful to the people who read it. In the ideal case, the reader simply clicks on the link and immediately reads the article in question. In some cases, perhaps the person might have to obtain a free account to view the article.

But the Crime Lab Project links are not useful if I click on them, and then have to pay an additional $5 a month or whatever just to view the article.

Which is why the Crime Lab Project tries to avoid firewalled articles - basically, they're of no use to me and the other readers.

Which reduces the chance that someone will pay that $5 to access it.

Decoupling data and presentation - government examples

Although it's hard to discern at the present time, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney agree on many things. Their respective partisans may not believe this, but both President Obama and Governor Romney believe that many things can be accomplished through public-private partnerships. Most liberals agree that the private sector obviously play a key role in the economy, and most conservatives acknowledge that government, due to its sheer size, is going to affect the economy in some way.

So how do you get the private and public sectors to work together in the 21st century? President Obama has championed various digital initiatives, and I seriously doubt that Romney will scuttle them if he is elected. The whitehouse.gov website has a Digital Government Strategy page with a slew of recommendations. I'm only going to focus on one of them right now.

The page lists four strategy principles, the first of which is an information-centric approach. This is explained as follows:

Moves us from managing “documents” to managing discrete pieces of open data and content which can be tagged, shared, secured, mashed up and presented in the way that is most useful for the consumer of that information.

Two examples are presented - one from the Federal government, and one from local government. (For those who don't realize this, the Feds are not the sole source of innovation - state governments are making serious advances in providing government services. I can testify to this in my own industry, fingerprint identification systems, in which state and local governments were implementing palmprint identification systems years before the Federal government was able to attack the issue.)

Here's the Federal example:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is liberating web content by decoupling data and presentation. Using a “create once, publish everywhere mindset” and an API-driven syndication service, CDC’s content flows easily into multiple channels and is available for public and private reuse. Within its own channels, content is updated once, and then easily displayed on the main CDC.gov web site, the mobile site at m.cdc.gov, and in the various modules of the CDC mobile app.

In 2011, CDC’s liberated content was syndicated to 700 registered partners in all 50 US states, the District of Columbia and 15 countries and accounted for an additional 1.2 million page views.

And here's a local example from my home state of California:

The City of San Francisco releases its raw public transportation data on train routes, schedules, and to-the-minute location updates directly to the public through web services. This has enabled citizen developers to write over 10 different mobile applications to help the public navigate San Francisco’s public transit systems—more services than the city could provide if it focused on presentation development rather than opening the data publicly through web services.

Now these things swing as a pendulum does, and I'm sure that a few years from now some Federal IT professional will be praising a new strategy in which data and presentation are tightly coupled. But this week's strategy is a good one, since it allows different organizations to concentrate on different strengths.

On lifedamming

I may - or may not - have coined a word. I seriously doubt that I coined a concept, but I'll take credit for coining the word.

I first used the word publicly on Monday in a comment on a Mona Nomura item in Facebook. This is what she said:

Hey people: your Instagram activity shows up in our FB newsfeeds. Some photos you people like are...very telling.

Here is my comment (among several that were offered):

A few years ago, the hot topic was lifestreaming. Now, with apologies to Mark Krynsky, I'm moving more and more toward lifedamming.

Who is Krynsky, you may ask? Krynsky is the author of the Lifestream Blog. Significantly, I met Krynsky at a FriendFeed meetup several years ago - FriendFeed, of course, was (and still is) a model of lifestreaming via content aggregation. Krynsky defines lifestreaming as follows:

What is a Lifestream?

In it’s simplest form it’s a chronological aggregated view of your life activities both online and offline. It is only limited by the content and sources that you use to define it.

Krynsky's last sentence is an important one. Ideally, you are the person who defines what is placed in your lifestream, and you can put as much - or as little - into your lifestream as you want. Two major controls over this are (a) privacy settings, and (b) sharing settings.

Privacy settings determine who can see a particular piece of online content. Take Nomura's Facebook item, for example. This particular item had a "Public" setting, but did Nomura intend for this comment to be public, where anyone could see it? Because of Nomura's technological sophistication, I have assumed that the public setting was intentional. But how many people post Facebook messages along the lines of "My boss is an idiot" or "I got so wasted last night," not realizing that everyone can see them? (And even if such messages are only shared to a limited crowd, any person in that limited crowd can capture a screen shot and share it publicly.)

Sharing settings determine how something shared on one service can be accessed via another service. Of course, that was (initially) FriendFeed's reason for being, and a number of other services capitalize on taking information from other services. In many cases, this sharing is mutually beneficial - when an article from McPaper is shared on ThisWeeksSocialService, then the McPaper people benefit from a larger audience, and ThisWeeksSocialService gets additional content. Everybody wins.

But not always. The aggregation of information about a particular person could yield information that the person doesn't want shared. Let's say that I'm sharing my tweets, my Foursquare checkins, and my last.fm likes to FriendFeed. What would you think if my FriendFeed contained the following items, all posted within a five-minute period?

(from Twitter) My head is spinning

(from last.fm) "Red Solo Cup"

(from Foursquare) Check-in at my place of employment

And there are other potential problems with lifestreaming, which I won't get into here.

So what do you call it when you decide NOT to stream particular aspects of your life - either by not sharing them with other services, or by increasing privacy settings, or even by not putting the particular event online at all?

Well, I call it lifedamming.

At the lifedamming extreme, you keep your cellphone turned off at all times. (I could tell you stories about how leaving a cellphone on can get you into trouble - but I won't.) You pay with cash. You don't buy ANYTHING in England because there are too many cameras around.

In reality, all of us make choices between lifestreaming and lifedamming all the time. And at times we will tweak our lifestreaming/lifedamming balance. While we may know when the Louis Gray family rents a breast milk pump, I seriously doubt that we'll ever see a video of the moment of conception of the fourth Gray child. And I don't think that we'll see a Robert Scoble Foursquare checkin at his physical residence. (If I recall correctly, he checks in at a nearby public location, therefore not revealing his home address.)

How do you choose between lifestreaming and lifedamming? And have you recently changed your balance between the two?

The greatest marketer of all time lived over 1,000 years ago

When we think of great marketers, we think of people like John Sculley, who sold sugared water, and Steve Jobs, who sold hunks of plastic. Or perhaps we think of someone like Barack Obama, who sold "change."

But these people can't hold a candle to the greatest marketer of all time, a European who lived over 1,000 years ago.

I speak of Erik the Red.

What did he do?

According to some (but not all) Icelandic sources, Erik the Red was the person who gave Greenland its name, reputedly in an effort to encourage settlement in the cold climate.

And despite the efforts of the locals to have us call the island Kalaallit Nunaat, most of us still refer to the place as Greenland today.

Let's see if Pepsi or Apple can keep a marketing campaign going for a millennium.

Access Intelligence?

I received an interesting snail mail solicitation this afternoon.

You know how there are some solicitations that make a point of emphasizing who is doing the soliciting? You know that if Donald Trump wants you to buy something, his name and his image are going to be all over the solicitation.

Well, this solicitation wasn't like that. The company sending the solicitation wasn't identified - other than noting that its address was "1500 Wilson Blvd. Suite 515, Arlington, VA 22209." Wow, a company in Arlington - THAT'S real specific.

And there was one other thing on the envelope:

SECOND ATTEMPT
This indicates that these people sent me a solicitation in the past, and that I obviously didn't care for whatever was being sold, but that they're trying again anyway.

Why didn't I care for their previous solicitation? I found a hint in the way that the letter was addressed.

JOHN BREDEHOFT
PRODUCT MANAGER
MOTOROLA

That's funny - I haven't been a Product Manager at Motorola since March 2009.

I opened the letter anyway. And it was from Defense Daily, who was selling me their daily newsletter for the low price of $2,397, plus an additional $300 discount, plus a $25 Starbucks card.

Wow - they didn't throw the Starbucks card into the offer when they sent me a similar offer in March 2009 (when I still did work for Motorola, but not on defense).

Back then, Defense Daily's list price was $2,297, which they offered to reduce by $200 to $2,097.

Today, Defense Daily's list price is $2,397, which they offered to reduce by $300 to $2,097. And they'd throw in a $25 Starbucks card.

(Oddly enough, I saw another source that stated that annual subscriptions were $2,197. Go figure.)

Perhaps I should go ahead and draft my blog post for 2015, by which time Defense Daily will cost $2,497. But I'll qualify for a $400 reduction to $2,097, and Defense Daily will throw in a $75 Amazon gift card (provided that Amazon still exists in 2015.)

Of course, the mail will still be addressed to a Motorola Product Manager.

When I looked at the reply envelope (with the words "PROCESS IMMEDIATELY!"), I noticed that the name of the company that publishes Defense Daily is a company called Access Intelligence.

My experience does not support this.

@nateritter from #sandiegofire to #occupy

It's hard to believe that almost five years have gone by since I first heard Nate Ritter's name.

And it just goes to show you how much things can change in five years.

Today it seems that just about everyone knows what hashtags are, and some people go out of their way to #overuse hashtags until their #tweets become an #unreadable #mess. This results in negative reactions.

But five years ago, hardly any of us knew what hashtags were. Sure Stowe Boy and Chris Messina were talking about the concept, but most of us weren't paying attention.

Nate Ritter helped to change that.

If you look at Ritter's resume, you'll see this one item in his list of accomplishments:

Helped popularize the #hashtag via Twitter during wildfires in Southern California, October 2007

Yeah, that Nate Ritter. The #sandiegofire guy. If you're not familiar with the story, read what Chris Messina wrote about it at the time. (I wrote about it also, but Messina's comments on hashtags obviously carry a lot more weight.)

I was in a "where are they now?" mood, and I found out that Ritter is doing the same thing that he was doing back in October 2007 - namely, running his business Perfect Space, Inc.

But he still comments on things from time to time, and he recently offered some comments on a very popular recent hashtag, #occupy.

This is (part of) what he said:

owning your own business is truly the only way to have any possible control over your own financial security.

Screw the banks.

Screw the bailouts.

Obviously there are macro-economics in play here which matter also in the long run. But, from the standpoint of the individual, voting with your jobs – perhaps by not having one – seems to continue to be the epicenter of change.

Read the rest here.

And if you want to see Ritter's micro-thoughts, go to https://twitter.com/nateritter.

Will Rafael Correa affect ths US elections?

While some news outlets are concentrating on Miley Cyrus' hair, others are focusing on Ecuador's recent action granting political asylum to Julian Assange.

Assange is currently in Ecuador's embassy in the United Kingdom, trying to evade an extradition order to Sweden to face sex crime charges. (Does anyone else have the Eurythmics song in their head right now?) Assange's fear is that Sweden will then extradite him to the United States to face charges related to revealing secret U.S. government information.

This has now escalated into a squabble between four countries - Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Ecuador - with the possibility of other countries weighing in on the dispute.

And it also means that Rafael Correa's name is appearing in the news more often.

Correa is the President of Ecuador. Reuters has provided information on Correa's background. While he has had disputes with the press in his own country, Correa clearly positions himself as an opponent of the special interests - something that has resonated with Assange.

In terms of U.S. politics, the following observations stand out:

Correa is part of a bloc of leftist presidents in Latin America that includes Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Evo Morales in Bolivia. They are fervent critics of U.S. "imperialism" and have put in place policies to boost state revenue from their countries' natural resources.

Correa's relationship with Washington has been stormy. He expelled the U.S. ambassador in 2011 after U.S. diplomatic cables disclosed by WikiLeaks alleged that his government turned a blind eye on police corruption. In 2007, he refused to extend a lease letting the U.S. military use the Manta airbase for counter-narcotics flights, and in 2009 he expelled two U.S. Embassy officials in another case involving the police.

Correa is reportedly popular in Ecuador, and is expected to run for re-election in February 2013.

But what of the election in the United States?

It's quite possible that this may not become an issue at all, since both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney oppose the disclosure of government secrets. (It's Obama, after all, who has imprisoned Bradley Manning.)

But it's possible that Romney could accuse Obama of causing the stalemate, or that Obama could accuse Bush of causing the stalemate, or that Biden will say something stupid (actually, that's not possible - that's probable).

And this could backfire for Correa. While Correa is obviously taking actions that are popular with his electorate, he has now given the United States one more reason to be displeased with him - and when the United States looks at another country, it looks at it with its own interests in mind. I can cite myself as an example - of all of the ramifications of the Assange standoff, I immediately focused on the "what does this mean for the U.S.?" angle.

Well, let's give the Tea Party and the Occupy folks something to talk about.

Madrid, Madrid, and the London Olympics

There is a Harvard Business Review post with an interesting introductory paragraph.

Part of the paragraph reads as follows:

There were five finalists in the race to host the 2012 Olympic Games. Were the mayors of London, Madrid, Moscow, Madrid, and Paris all certifiably mad when deciding to bid for the most important and complex sports event on the face of the planet?

Well, it's obvious that at least one of these mayors was certifiably mad. Apparently the mayor of Madrid suffered from multiple personality disorder.

The fifth finalist, by the way, was New York City. In case you can't tell the difference between Madrid and New York, I should note that one of the two cities has a thriving Spanish artistic community. The other city is in Spain.

As for the HBR thesis - namely, that many recent Olympics have brought long-term benefits to the host cities that long outlast the games themselves - we're seeing some evidence of that in London, as Jill Lawless has noted:

Now that the games are over, [Olympic Park] is eerily deserted....Small groups of construction workers are working to transform the venues for use in the Paralympic Games, which begin Aug. 29....It will be closed to the public until the Paralympics - and for almost a year afterwards, while some venues are torn down and others are modified. It will open in stages from next summer as the 560-acre (227-hectare) Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

When candy manufacturers talk about healthy living

Sometimes you can't win.

No matter what product you sell, there is someone in the world who regards your product as pure, utter evil. Not just bad, but evil. Whether you sell tobacco, or Bibles, or steak, or baby formula, or fingerprint identification systems, or tennis shoes, your opponents will argue that your product is evil for some reason or another. And if you try to address the negative reactions to your product, even the way in which you address them will be characterized as evil.

I'm as guilty of this as anyone. I normally keep a large container of cashews at my desk at work, but when I ran out of cashews one day, I went to the machines in the cafeteria and bought a package of peanut M&Ms. I was looking at the back of the package, and saw that it promoted a website called www.marshealthyliving.com.

My first reaction was to roll my eyes and say to myself, "Yeah, right."

But I figured that I should give the website a try.

I followed the "Staying Healthy" link, and was presented with a number of links to information about exercise, calorie consumption vs. activity, and other topics. I was disappointed, however, to find that the information was surprisingly generic; it could have come from my own health insurance company instead of Mars. I wanted to see a video of the M&Ms leading me in jumping jacks.

I got the same feeling at the "Feeling Good" link, which was populated by material from Dr. Dean Ornish. In case you haven't heard, Dr. Ornish did not receive his PhD in chocolates from Ghiradelli University. Dr. Ornish is a medical doctor that Mars hired for its web page.

Then I went to "Our Commitment." This can be a fearful exercise, because whenever you go to a web page in which a company spouts off platitudes, you know that it was created by a committee, advised by a Senior Platitude Conceptualist. But I did find some content here that was unique to Mars:

We know that our marketing practices need to support our customers' health and nutrition goals. In fact, Mars was the first food company to announce that we would stop advertising to children under 12 in every market where we operate.

I clicked through to the Responsibility page, and read some additional information that wasn't written by a generic Senior Platitude Conceptualist:

To encourage the responsible consumption of Mars products, we have been working to provide versions of our products that provide smaller portions, or allow the products to be shared or consumer over time, rather than in one sitting. We’ve stopped marketing King Size portions of our candy, and now, our larger-portion products are available in Sharing Sizes, multiple pieces or twist-wrap packaging.

Of course, the naysayers can criticize this also. Take a look at this quote from an NPR article on the change:

The 2-ounce Snickers currently sold in our NPR vending machine has 280 calories, and with the downsize it will lose about 11 percent of its size.

Even if Mars lowers the price of the downsized bars by 11 percent (or the appropriate percentage), it still stands to gain, since people wanting their usual candy fix will buy more of the smaller candy bars. And since the smaller products usually have higher unit pricing, this will result in higher profits for Mars.

New York City should remember this as it works to ban the evil large sized soft drinks. Can you imagine how much money a fast food place will make from the teenage guy who buys three 16 oz sodas?

Or perhaps large sodas will exist in the black market. As Phil Hickey put it, If they outlaw big sodas only outlaws will drink big sodas!

The power of social media improves customer service! Yeah, right.

Back in October 2008, when I was blogging as Ontario Emperor, I wrote about my stay at the Days Inn on Rosecrans in San Diego. I also submitted a review on Yelp for the motel, giving it one star.

One would think that negative reviews on a service such as Yelp would inspire a business to improve its practices.

One would think wrong.

While there are a few positive reviews of the motel, primarily because of price, most reviews are in the 1-2 star category.

Here's part of a review from April 2009:

The room smelled weird when we first arrived. We had a standard 2-bed free breakfast suite for 4 nights. There is one TV in the living room, and one TV in the bedroom. The TV in the bedroom did not work. The bathroom was clean ... but the toilet did not work that well. Everything else was okay. The furniture definitely needs some upgrading!

August 2010:

First off, the [toilets] did not flush, So I looked at it and found the water supply line turned off, no big deal... I tried to turn it on.. Knob was broken.. uhh ok, called for maintainance.. waited 20 minutes, guy came up and looked at it.. told me it was fine.. haha.. I went back to check on his work.. he turned the supply line off again.. OK, no big deal, I was able to turn it back on with my own tools. - fine it works good enough. Later, I tried to turn on the rooms AC, got it to work for 10 seconds and all this crud blew out of it. (this tells me it has not works awhile).

Later in August 2010:

I made it to the "seedy" room only to find that it was moldy and musty! Yuck! It was one of the most disgusting rooms I've ever seen!

June 2011:

[W]e inquired about the airport pick up at least 3 times and confirmed that it was at noon. However, the shuttle didn't come until after 12:30, and the girl at the front desk could not care less. First she said it'll be there in 5 minutes, and when we asked again, she said 10.

August 2011:

[W]hen we got in there, one of the rooms had that stench of smoke. We booked non-smoking rooms weeks ago. A crib, which was also requested when we booked the rooms was not there. We complained at the front desk, and after a long time of shuffling around rooms we finally got one that did not smell. They had to separate the two room, but luckily we were able to swap with our friends, so at least two of those rooms were together. It then went downhill from there: the AC was not working, and neither was the TV.

Average review is 2 1/2 stars. As I said, there are some positive reviews.

One could reason that (a) you get what you pay for, and therefore there is no expectation to get good rooms at this location, and (b) the motel's proximity to Seaworld, Old Town, and the Marine Corps boot camp ensure that the motel will get customers no matter how bad it is.

But I'm still surprised to see that certain problems such as reservation issues (in our case, there were ashtrays in our non-smoking room), non-functional TVs and toilets, and staff issues still persist at this location for years, despite several complaints and at least two parties (myself and one other) canceling our reservations within a few minutes of arriving at the place.

The reason for this? It's because even in these days in which we imagine that everyone is cyber-connected, the majority of people apparently go to sites such as Days Inn's own site instead of going to Yelp or TripAdvisor (which rates this motel as the 175th best hotel out of 247 in the area).

(empo-tuulwey) An additional observation about proposal physical war rooms #apmp

See my previous post here.

I only have one thing to add to it.

Even the best corkboard in a proposal war room is useless if you don't have any push pins to attach the paper to the corkboard.

Management is not mathematics

It was my understanding that there would be no math... during the debates. (Chevy Chase as Gerald Ford)

I recently received a communication from a management organization. The organization is obviously not a mathematical organization.

There are more than 4,200 members in 26 chapters worldwide. Slightly more than 3,200 members are in the United States, and more than 1,200 are in international chapters. Close to 70 percent of the membership is from the United States, and nearly 30 percent is international.

While I can deduce that 200 people are members of both domestic and international chapters - jet-setters, you know - I'm at a loss to explain the 1-2% of members who are neither from the United States or international. Are they stateless? Are they illegal/undocumented? Are they from other planets?

Perhaps I'm being too picky. Another professional who saw the message remarked that it is accurate to say that there are more than 4,200 members. The professional also noted that "close to" could technically mean "more than."

Unfortunately, I can't really criticize here. Several years ago, I wrote some release notes for a process improvement that spoke about "qualtiy."

Kevin Closson's neat acronym

Acronyms are fun.

Kevin Closson had a problem to solve:

You’re facing the need to assess Oracle random physical I/O capability on a given platform in preparation for OLTP/ERP style workloads. Perhaps the storage team has assured you of ample bandwidth for both high-throughput and high I/O operations per second (IOPS). But you want to be sure and measure for yourself so off you go looking for the right test kit.

Closson ended up developing his own solution to the problem.

The solution has the acronym SLOB.

This acronym stands for Silly Little Oracle Benchmark.

Oh, but one thing:

SLOB, however, is neither a benchmark nor silly.

Oh well. People like it.

(empo-tuulwey) No, the Obama "Democrat app" is not an invasion of privacy

People are jumping up and down over the latest supposed invasion of privacy. Here's how the Inquisitr reports the story:

The new app unveiled by the Obama campaign rubs elbows with Google maps, displaying a map with blue flags on it, each representing the closest registered Democrat households to your standing location....

At first glance it sounds creepy. Stand on a street corner, take out your iPhone...and FIND THE DEMOCRATS. You'd almost think that the Republicans, rather than the Obama campaign, were behind the app.

But I have news for everyone. I have been able to FIND THE DEMOCRATS for years - long before the iPhone was even invented.

And now I will tell you how to find the Democrats...and the Republicans...and the Greens - at least in California. Or at least one way to do it - there are probably others.

First, go to your local precinct - or someone else's local precinct - on Election Day.

Second, find the printed list of registered voters that is (at least in California) publicly posted at the precinct.

Third, read it. It has names and addresses, and is sorted in both name order and street order.

It's that simple.

Don't blame Barack Obama or Tim Cook for this. If you think that this information should be private, then you have to make the information non-public.

Some thoughts about Justin Kestelyn and the Oracle Technology Network

I guess this information is now public, so I can comment on it.

Today is Justin Kestelyn's last day at Oracle.

Kestelyn headed an organization within Oracle known as the Oracle Technology Network (OTN). While I haven't interacted much with Kestelyn since my 2009 job change, I was certainly interacting with him in my years as a product manager at Motorola, when I would attend Oracle OpenWorld frequently. In addition to my professional duties on behalf of Motorola, I have also blogged about Oracle upon occasion - in fact, one of the last substantial posts in which I mentioned Kestelyn was a post about the 2009 Oracle blogger meetup at Oracle OpenWorld. (That's the one with the t-shirts and the markers.)

But Kestelyn did more than fund beer for bloggers (although this is a Very Important Task). The purpose of the Oracle Technology Network was to provide a way for Oracle customers to obtain technical information about Oracle's ever-expanding line of products. This information was conveyed in a variety of ways, including live (and pre-recorded) videos and a variety of digital and printed publications. For example, see what CIO wrote back in 2008, and also look at this case study.

While some will assert that Oracle did not do as much as it could have in the social media arena, it at least made the effort in various areas, including unconferences. And when you talk about a large organization such as Oracle, it's understandable that some organizations are ahead of others in social media adoption.

Kestlyn and OTN have accomplished a lot, and it sounds like OTN will continue to excel in the future. As Justin departs, I wish the Clash City Rocker well in his future endeavors.

P.S. See this post from Hector Madrid.

Theater Security Theater revisited

In my July 23 post about the Aurora shootings, I noted that security specialist Bruce Schneier refrained from immediately blogging about Aurora - an attitude that I found refreshing.

Well, Schneier has now written about Aurora. The title - Overreaction and Overly Specific Reactions to Rare Risks - says it all. I'll confine myself to one quote:

Because people overreact to rare events, they're useful catalysts for social introspection and policy change. The key here is to focus not on the details of the particular event but on the broader issues common to all similar events.

Again, I urge you to read the entire article.

(empo-tuulwey) Social Strategy Part 4 - Do You Like Your Customers?

Go to Part 3

I hope you see what I did. First I talked about the word "You." Then I talked about the word "Do." Next, I talked about the word "Like." Finally, I've put them all together and added two more words.

So, do you like your customers?

That is a critical question when working on a social media strategy.

If you like your customers, then you will be more inclined to interact with them and listen to them and engage with them and do all those wonderful things that social media experts tell you that you're supposed to do. More importantly, they'll be believable, and you'll have a community that likes you as much as you like them, and will be loyal to your brand.

If you don't like your customers, then any effort at engagement is doomed to failure, because you won't want to engage with your customers, and you won't want to build a vibrant community.

Does that mean that you shouldn't use social media if you hate your customers? No, it means that you may use social media in a different way - specifically, as a one-way avenue to push stuff out to your customers without expecting, or acknowledging, anything in return.

Um, excuse me - it looks like I just received an urgent tweet from an SEO guru. Let me share this tweet with you.

ur doing it wrong

If you ask any self-appointed SEO expert, he or she will tell you that using Twitter or Facebook to push out information without listening to the customer is very, very bad. You, the expert will state, are locked in twentieth century business models that are inappropriate for the new age of wonderment and magic, when loyal communities form around brands and their Twitter feeds and Facebook pages and Foursquare checkins.

With all due respect, anyone who loudly proclaims "You're doing it wrong" is...well, they're doing it wrong.

While I happen to believe that two-way engagement is better than one-way pushing of data, I am not you. There is no Federal law that mandates that you have to respond to every tweet that mentions your organization, nor will any religious organization disfellowship with someone who turns off comments on their blogs.

If you want to use Twitter as a one-way method of communication, then by all means do so.

If you want to delete every negative Facebook comment after a scandal, then by all means do so.

You need to choose a communication style that is comfortable for you. If you do not like your customers, then it's worthless to pretend that you do.

Hmm...I'm half tempted to close comments on this post. But I won't.

Money talks - why rainwater collection is illegal in some jurisdictions

Hey, kids, let's do our part to save the environment and be green! And it's really really easy! All that you have to do is set up some type of water collection system at your house. When it rains, you collect the water, and then you can use that water for drinking and bathing and other stuff!

Isn't that neat?

Oh, and one other thing - depending upon where you live, you might have to dodge the police.

You see, kids, diverting rainwater can be illegal:

It’s illegal in Utah to divert rainwater without a valid water right, and Mark Miller of Mark Miller Toyota, found this out the hard way.

After constructing a large rainwater collection system at his new dealership to use for washing new cars, Miller found out that the project was actually an “unlawful diversion of rainwater.” Even though it makes logical conservation sense to collect rainwater for this type of use since rain is scarce in Utah, it’s still considered a violation of water rights which apparently belong exclusively to Utah’s various government bodies....

Salt Lake City officials worked out a compromise with Miller and are now permitting him to use “their” rainwater....

To understand why various government bodies are opposed to this, you only need to look at this quote elsewhere in the Health Freedom Alliance post:

Douglas County, Colorado, conducted a study on how rainwater collection affects aquifer and groundwater supplies. The study revealed that letting people collect rainwater on their properties actually reduces demand from water facilities and improves conservation.

Now all you have to do is to follow the money. Reduced demand from water facilities means reduced revenue for your local water agency, which could result in reductions in jobs, threats to pensions, and so forth. So guess what? Government water agencies are naturally inclined to oppose conservation measures such as rainwater collection.

Now one could argue that we could incentivize governemnt water agencies to encourage reductions in demand...but as any analysis of the U.S. agricultural system will note, such restrictions can cause immense problems of their own. Mark Bittman:

Agricultural subsidies have helped bring us high-fructose corn syrup, factory farming, fast food, a two-soda-a-day habit and its accompanying obesity, the near-demise of family farms, monoculture and a host of other ills.

And despite Bittman's agrument that agricultural subsidies must be fixed rather than scrapped, I suspect that any "fix" will introduce problems of its own.

And I suspect that any government program to encourage rainwater collection will introduce problems too.

And that, kids, is how economics works.

H/T George Station.

Using Quora as an extremely transparent promotional tool

I don't know why I didn't think of this before.

As FedScoop notes, U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park has answered a Quora question about the Obama Administration's efforts to encourage entrepreneurship and innovation.

The original question was asked by...the Obama Administration.

As I write this, the Romney campaign has not taken advantage of this opportunity. I'm certain that the campaign would love to provide its answer to the question...and that its answer may somewhat differ from CTO Park's response.

As FedScoop noted, this is not the first time that the Obama Administration's CTO has taken to Quora. Previous CTO Aneesh Chopra was active on Quora last year.

Now I just have to compose a Quora question "Which Ontario, California-based blog is the best business blog out there?" However, I'm not sure how many desirable responses I would get...

(empo-tuulwey) Social Strategy Part 3 - Like

Go to Part 2, Part 4

While the ultimate goal of a social media strategy should be an increase in revenue, there are various subsidiary goals that contribute to this overall goal. One of those goals is the establishment of an identifiable presence - either via your name, your brand, or your name for someone else (hear that, Rita Moreno of Arte)?

Because social media is (supposed to be) social, it is preferable that social media practitioners engage in a dialogue with their customers. While I'll speak more on that later, I'll note right now that it's hard to create a truly meaningful and deep dialogue on the philosophical merits of a particular toothpaste or word processing application.

But there's an easier way to promote interaction. This interaction method, pioneered by FriendFeed, was adopted by Facebook (several months before Facebook acquired FriendFeed itself) - the like. Back in February 2009, Adam Ostrow wrote:

Facebook seems to get more similar to FriendFeed every day. The latest, the addition of an “I like this” link on News Feed items, is one of the more significant challenges to the lifestreaming service yet, as it essentially duplicates a major component of what makes FriendFeed tick – a simple, one-click display of indicating your liking of a specific item in a stream of activities and a view of all of the other people that have also liked it.

From Facebook, the feature spread all over the place, sometimes under different names (Google calls its similar feature "+1").

In addition to being simple, the like feature is a powerful one to demonstrate (or fake) devotion to your persona or brand or whatever. If I can con a few hundred people into liking this post on Google+ or Facebook or Twitter (via number of retweets) or wherever, then I'll have a pretty powerful set of statistics that will attract attention.

And when likes are combined with a friend list, they become even more powerful. It's one thing to know that a hundred people like a particular dishwashing detergent, but it's another thing altogether to know that my friend Peter, my friend Susie, and 98 other people like that detergent. Peter's and Susie's recommendations are more powerful than the recommendations of hundreds of people that I don't know.

In social media sales, as in all other sales, the goal is to be liked.

Klout and Lircles - Bieber's super-secret private messages

While I may have quibbles with some of the mechanics of how Klout works, I mostly cannot argue with the basic premise of Klout.

Mostly.

Klout measures influence on a scale with a maximum value of 100, and one thing that strikes some as funny is the fact that Justin Bieber has a perfect Klout score, which is much higher than Tim Berners-Lee's Klout score. This causes a lot of upturned noses, but not from me. For example, if I were to tweet some support for my country's Olympic team, hardly anyone would take notice. When Bieber tweets support for Team Canada, the results are slightly different.

Yes, that's right. Over 5,000 people favorited this tweet, and over 12,000 people retweeted it.

That's clout, regardless of how you spell it.

However, I noted that I have one quibble with the basic premise of Klout the service. In an official blog post that discusses how Klout works, this important caveat is offered:

We are only able to give you credit for the influence we can see, so if you have a private network that isn’t connected to Klout it will not be counted in your Score.

This is an understandable limitation. For Klout to be able to measure private lircles (lists and circles), Klout would have to have extensive access to your data, and the data of the other people in the lircle. And that just isn't going to happen.

But how much influence is exerted publicly?

A lot of influence is exerted privately, and while public influence is certainly powerful, in some cases privately-exerted influence is even more powerful.

Take Tim Berners-Lee, for example. There is a very good possibility that Berners-Lee, during his next visit to New York City, may spend a little bit of time in the offices of the National Broadcasting Company. And perhaps while he's there, he may take time to introduce himself to an NBC employee named Meredith Vieira.

The conversation will probably be a pleasant conversation, perhaps even with a chuckle or two.

And I'll bet that conversation will influence Vieira, who will better understand the power of the World Wide Web.

And I'll also bet that conversation will influence Berners-Lee, who will better understand the power of the media. (Remember that some of us live in a bubble, and that 90% of the people listening to Vieira's comment probably agreed with her.)

And you know what? That conversation will be a private conversation, well beyond the measurement capabilities of Klout or any external service.

A number of people - your boss, the boss of your boss, and Justin Bieber - wield great private influence which is similarly beyond the measure of external services. Your boss tells you what to do. The boss of your boss tells her what to do. And Justin Bieber tells record company executives, magazines, and other artists exactly what to do.

And the critics of Klout do have one thing right. Just because Bieber has great influence on the general population doesn't necessarily mean that Bieber influences you.

(empo-tuulwey) Social Strategy Part 2 - Do

Go to Part 1, Part 3

I've already talked about the word "you." Now I'm going to talk about the word "do." (This will all fit together in the end - trust me.)

Not too long ago, Jonathan Hardesty shared this:

Tips and tricks to being a better writer:

Write.

The end. Don't EVER pay money for that kind of advice.

He's correct.

I have literally written thousands of blog posts over the last nine years - over 3,000 posts in the five Empoprises blogs, and thousands more in other blogs. Is this blog post better than my very first blog post? Perhaps, perhaps not. But I've certainly learned a lot along the way. A lot.

And if someone is going to be involved in social media they...well, they need to be involved in social media. Don't be like the person with the Twitter name seoexpert who has a Klout score that is below 20. Regardless of the criticisms of Klout, a score below 20 certainly compares poorly with a score above 50.

Are you out there in the virtual world?

Whatever happened to Pia Beate Pedersen?

Nearly two years ago, I wrote a blog post about Pia Beate Pedersen, the contractor for Norwegian broadcaster NRK who quit on-air and wrote about her working conditions.

Apparently Pedersen is now working for Mediaplanet, and wrote several articles in a March 2012 periodical (PDF). It's all in Norwegian, but it appears that she's writing about topics such as baby and child issues.

Hopefully she's happy.

(empo-tuulwey) Social Strategy Part 1 - You

Go to Part 0, Part 2

When your organization mounts a social media campaign or launches a social media strategy, who should care about it?

It depends.

Think of the terms "important," "very important," and "extremely important." You could say that something is "important" to you, but at the end of the day, that something becomes meaningless. Perhaps a CEO says that "social media is important to our company," and then five minutes later the CEO is on a conference call about something else.

"Very important" things obviously take more of your time; when I was a product manager, I ignored all of the "important" feature requests and tried to see how many "very important" feature requests could be accommodated.

Unless you are absolutely without a life, the term "extremely important" never enters into a discussion of social media, or any business endeavor. One day I was in a meeting at work - I think it was a "very important" one. During the meeting, I received a phone call and immediately left the meeting and left the office. My brother in law had just died. That's "extremely important."

If you are charged with day-to-day responsibilities for a social media campaign or strategy, then it's very important to you. This is true even if your CEO has declared the importance of social media to the company; the CEO's not going to spend 3, or 6, or 10 hours a day working in social media. This is true even if your organization has a seven-step approval process before something can be tweeted; again, the approvers aren't going to invest the time in it.

You are.

Enterprise vs. non-enterprise - giving equal time to the other side (sort of)

At times, the Empoprise-BI business blog has been a small champion of enterprise computing. Now one would think that enterprise computing has a lot of supporters, but sometimes it's seemed a little lonely over here. Perhaps it's just because of the crowd that I run in, but sometimes it seems that some technologists have forgotten that enterprises exist.

There have been many times where I've run across technologist comments that run along the lines of "You should use this app" or "You should stop using this OS" or "Just reconfigure your computer." While people often have the ability to do these things on your personal computers, they do not have the power to do this on large enterprise computers. Depending upon the enterprise, users may be discouraged from installing other apps on their computers, or may be prohibited entirely from making any types of administrator changes to their computers. While that means that an enterprise user may not be able to run the latest version of Spotify, it does mean that the chance of conflicts with critical enterprise applications is significantly diminished, ensuring higher productivity of enterprise computing and human resources.

For me, the ultimate were the websites that displayed messages that said "You should not be using Internet Explorer 6." As I noted at the time, I'd be happy to do so, provided that the IE 6 opponents were willing to pay my salary - IE6 was the standard at the enterprise that employed me at the time, and if I was going to violate the enterprise's computer use policies, I'd need an income from somewhere else.

So this blog (and my predecessor blogs, such as the one that ran my 2008 IE6 rant) has been pro-enterprise. But because I want to be fair and balanced, I want to share an issue that was previously shared by Jeremy Chone with the comment:

Web People should not listen to Enterprise People Enterprise people will follow anyway when they understand the simpler way of doing things.

Chone shared this CNET piece, which began as follows:

OAuth 2.0 promised to improve authentication on the Net, but its author has resigned from the project after concluding the standard "is a bad protocol."

So what prompted Eran Hammer-Lahav's resignation?

"At the core of the problem is the strong and unbridgeable conflict between the Web and the enterprise worlds. The OAuth working group at the IETF started with strong web presence. But as the work dragged on (and on) past its first year, those Web folks left along with every member of the original 1.0 community. The group that was left was largely all enterprise... and me," he said. "The resulting specification is a designed-by-committee patchwork of compromises that serves mostly the enterprise."

There is a valid point here, if you buy the notion that "web people" are solely dedicated to finding the best technology, and "enterprise people" are primarily dedicated to advancing their own enterprises.

I certainly buy the latter part of the notion. If WidgetCo appoints me to a standards committee, then I have a duty (for public companies, a fiduciary/legal duty) to ensure that the standards committee does not do things that harm my enterprise. Therefore, if I as a standards committee voter must choose between option A which is good for everybody, and option B which is only good for WidgetCo, then I am going to choose option B.

Standards committees can sometimes resist this. At one point, I knew of a particular standards committee which banned enterprise representatives from membership on the committee. At the same time, enterprise people were strongly encouraged to attend the standards committee meetings, and were strongly encouraged to cooperate with the committee's requests. Sometimes the enterprise people would cooperate, because it was important to keep the committee happy. Sometimes, however, the enterprise people would not cooperate.

And therein lies the danger of adopting a "web people should not listen to enterprise people" attitude. Let's say that OAuth 3.0 overcomes all of the issues with OAuth 2.0, and is a wonderfully clean standard that makes the web people absolutely giddy and ecstatic.

But what happens if the enterprises decline to implement the standard?

(empo-tuulwey) Social Strategy Part 0

Go to Part 1

I recently had occasion to re-read something that I wrote back in September 2008, which said (in part):

[O]ne of [my co-workers] suggested to me, "Hey, while we're at the IAI [conference], why don't you Twitter it?" The idea was that this would be a good way to get some publicity out of our efforts there.

Unfortunately, this would only make sense if anyone were listening. I performed a search of both Twitter and FriendFeed, and I was unable to discover anyone other than myself who even had a passing interest in the IAI. If an IAI tweet lands in the Twitter forest, it won't make a sound.

Several years later, there's still a perception that the tools of social media (Twitter, Facebook, whatever) have magical properties that will automatically increase your sales. Or that you can hire a "social media expert" to work the magic with no effort on your part.

Bull.

Having been around online communications for over thirty years - yes, I was communicating online in the early 1980s - I've acquired a few thoughts on the philosophy behind online communications. Over the next few days, I'm going to share those thoughts here.

Comments, criticisms, and alternative thoughts are welcome.

The non-science behind Bluefin Labs' Opening Ceremony social media analysis #nbcfail

There are many social media studies that are conducted that can tell you all sorts of wonderful things. But before you trust any study, you should take a careful look at the methodology behind the study.

Case in point - Bluefin Labs has posted an item entitled How Social Was the Olympics Opening Ceremony? It quotes an impressive-sounding number, but there is a very large flaw in their methodology. See if you can spot it.

As expected, the Opening Ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics was huge in social TV. How huge?

94.2% of all social TV comments in primetime (7pm to 12midnight ET) last night were about the Olympics Opening Ceremony.

The Bluefin post then displays a really impressive graphic that states that this social media spike occurred when Queen Elizabeth parachuted out of the helicopter, this spike occurred when Team USA entered, and so forth.

There are two problems with this analysis.

If you've been around me for any length of time, you already know what one of them is. Bluefin defined prime time as occurring between 7:00 pm and 12:00 midnight Eastern time. Perhaps that was true for some people, but it wasn't true for the western part of the United States. In California, NBC didn't begin showing its Olympic coverage until 7:30 pm Pacific time - or 10:30 pm Eastern time. NBC showed Paul McCartney's rendition of "Hey Jude" at about 3:00 am Eastern time.

This causes a methodology problem. If you look at Bluefin's chart, you'll see several blips between 11:00 pm and 12:00 midnight Eastern time. Which of those blips were due to the televised image of David Beckham that was being shown on the East Coast? Alternatively, which of those blips were due to the televised image of Parachuting Lizzy being shown on the West Coast? Unless Bluefin has a methodology to exclude West Coast tweets from its analysis, we'll never know.

But there's a bigger problem - and again, if you've been around me for any length of time, you know what the second problem is. Bluefin was measuring public comments on Twitter and Facebook. But Twitter and Facebook are available in countries outside of the United States. And despite NBC's successful efforts in preventing many people in the United States from watching the Opening Ceremonies at 4:00 pm Eastern time, WHEN THEY ACTUALLY HAPPENED, people - including Americans - were using Facebook, Twitter, and other services to monitor the Opening Ceremony long before Bluefin's study kicked in. For example, I wrote this at 2:19 pm Pacific time, well before NBC Chicago encouraged viewers to "[w]atch NBC's coverage of the Opening Ceremony beginning at 6:30 p.m. CT."

OK, you might say, but Bluefin is concentrating on televised coverage of the event. Well, in most of the world the event WAS televised at 4:00 pm Eastern. Even Canada was showing the event at 4:00 pm Eastern, as I discovered via Google+.

This, of course, makes it even more difficult to say that this blip in Twitter resulted from this event being televised at the time.

Back on January 1, 2008, when hashtags were still relatively new (at least on Twitter), I wrote a post entitled Hashtagging Challenges When Events Occur at Different Times in Different Locations. It described what happened when I was tweeting about KTLA's Rose Parade coverage from a vantage point near the beginning of the parade, while Phil Hodgen was tweeting from a vantage point near the end of the parade. The result was a jumble.

philiphodgen : #roseparade marines get heartfelt applause << (2008-01-01 12:22:58)

philiphodgen : #roseparade boy and girl scouts with state flags << (2008-01-01 12:22:40)

oemperor : #roseparade usc trojans. i only hear this song every week (my alumna coworker has it in her cube). actually i heard it less this year << (2008-01-01 12:22:26)

So were the USC Trojans marching with the Marines and the Scouts? Not exactly.

Now try to cover the tweets, Facebook posts, and other items from the Olympics Opening Ceremony coverage, where you may see the same event seven HOURS earlier or later than someone else. An Englishperson or Canadian might see something at 1:00 pm Pacific time which I wouldn't see until 8:00 pm Pacific time.

How are you going to analyze THOSE tweets? Especially this live tweet from Tim Berners-Lee? (Well, live for those on Twitter; not live for those watching NBC.)

About Authentec

While many people are concentrating on other ramifications of the Apple-Authentec deal (the Times of India entitled its piece Apple buys Samsung's mobile security supplier AuthenTec for $356m), I am more interested in the biometric portion of the deal.

Authentec has been around since 1998 and has been a public company since 2007. It is best known for its fingerprint sensors for personal computers and mobile devices, which provide a level of fingerprint biometric security to those devices. It's not necessarily to the level used by the FBI and other large-scale organizations, but you usually don't need that level of biometric quality on your computer or phone.

Before the Apple deal was revealed, Authentec talk was centered around this recent deal:

Alcatel-Lucent (euronext paris and nyse:ALU), and AuthenTec are jointly supporting Portugal Telecom (PT) in the launch of 'Meo Go!'. The new Meo Go! service enables subscribers of Portugal Telecom - the largest communications service provider in Portugal - to use their smartphones and tablets to access content that was previously confined to their TVs and PCs, including 60 live TV channels and video-on-demand.

The Meo Go! service is available to subscribers using Android, Apple iOS and Windows-based smartphones and other mobile devices, and includes features to ensure secure delivery and smooth playback of a variety of different video content formats.

As you can see from the press release excerpt, Authentec works with a variety of technology players, including Apple and its competitors (fierce competitors in some cases).

If the deal is approved, Apple can do one of two things. It can either treat Authentec as a semi-separate entity that provides its products to all vendors, or it can concentrate on integrating the Authentec product line into Apple products only. The SEC filing, written from the perspective of Authentec, doesn't say what will happen, since Authentec does not know what Apple will do with the company once it owns it. And Apple isn't telling.

PROJECT BRYCE INVESTOR Q&A

1. What was announced today?

Apple and AuthenTec have entered into a definitive merger agreement under which Apple will acquire AuthenTec for $8.00 per share. Certain information regarding the transaction can be found in the Form 8-K filed by AuthenTec with the Securities and Exchange Commission on July 27 and additional details will be provided in the proxy statement AuthenTec will file with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

2. Why is Apple buying AuthenTec?

AuthenTec cannot comment on Apple’s intentions.

3. As a shareholder of AuthenTec, what will I receive?

Each shareholder of AuthenTec will receive $8.00 for each share of AuthenTec stock that they own, which represents a 56.9% premium to AuthenTec’s closing share price on the day prior to the announcement of the acquisition.

4. What will happen to AuthenTec’s existing businesses?

Apple will implement its plans for AuthenTec’s businesses after the transaction closes.

5. What will happen to AuthenTec’s employees?

AuthenTec cannot speak to Apple’s intentions. In any event, we do not expect any public comment on future plans with respect to employees.

6. When do you expect the acquisition to close?

The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approval and AuthenTec shareholder approval. Subject to satisfaction of those conditions, we expect the merger to close in the third calendar quarter of this year.

7. Are there any closing conditions?

The deal includes customary closing conditions, including regulatory approval and AuthenTec shareholder approval. Please refer to the merger agreement attached as an exhibit to the Form 8-K filed by AuthenTec with the Securities and Exchange Commission on July 27.

8. What regulatory approvals are needed?

The acquisition is subject to review under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act and certain foreign antitrust laws. Additional details will be provided in the proxy statement AuthenTec will file with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

9. What does this acquisition mean for existing AuthenTec customers?

AuthenTec’s current customers are encouraged to reach out to their sales representative at AuthenTec. We cannot comment on Apple’s future plans for AuthenTec’s business.

10. Did AuthenTec hire an investment banker? If so who?

AuthenTec engaged Piper Jaffray & Company.

11. Will management be hired by Apple?

AuthenTec cannot speak to Apple’s intentions. In any event, we do not expect any public comment on future plans with respect to employees.

Universities are businesses too

I stand before the graduatating class of Nonexistent University. As you leave these hallowed halls, I trust that you will remember the valuable lessons that you learned here. I could speak of the love of learning that you have received at this institution, or I could speak of the value of the pursuit of knowledge. But I will not speak about that.

I could speak about the non-academic aspects of your time at this university. The long talks at two in the morning. The wild parties. That night in that co-ed's room that you thought that no one knew about. But I will not speak about that.

Because, as you leave these hallowed halls, you will learn what is important. And it's not knowledge that's important, and it's not the college experience that's important.

What's important is that this university has to make money, however it can.

Down the road, you may have heard that there's a little bit of controversy over at Penn State University. Many are claiming that Penn State abrogated its educational responsibility by covering up a child abuse scandal. But I have to tell you, there's no money to be made from a child abuse scandal. And even today, the threat to Penn State isn't from the loss of $60 million in fines. The threat to Penn State is that alumni may quit donating to the university. And that would be more damaging than anything the NCAA could ever do.

But you tell me that Penn State doesn't have any standards. You tell me that Nonexistent University doesn't have any standards. Turn to the Ivy League, you say. OK, I will:

Brown University, eager to shed its label as one of the weakest schools in the Ivy League, bolstered its reputation by recruiting kids with famous parents. While celebrities don't often contribute financially, they generate invaluable publicity....

Brown raised its profile by enrolling children or stepchildren of politicians and celebrities, including two presidents, three Democratic presidential nominees, two Beatles and seven Academy Award winners. A particularly controversial case was the son of Hollywood superagent Michael Ovitz, whose application sparked a debate within Brown.

Celebrity students generally lag behind their classmates in academic honors. But their prominence -- and that of their parents -- helped transform Brown into a top destination for students with a creative or artistic bent. Brown accepted just 13.8% of applicants for this year's freshman class, the lowest percentage in its history, as the number of applications rose sharply. Its endowment has risen from 29th nationwide in 1980 ($123 million) to 26th in 2005 ($1.6 billion), although it remains the lowest in the Ivy League.

Now some may argue that a school should be measured by the number of Rhodes Scholars, but we all know that a school should be measured by something far more important - its endowment. And in that regard, Brown University is a smashing success.

Now that my speech is over, please line up to receive your diplomas, along with the first of many letters that you will receive from the alumni organization. I would stay with you, but I have to leave - I have a lunch with Christopher Ovitz and his father Michael.

Theater Security Theater

After reading my post about post-mortems, James Ulvog offered a comment on the security/terror aspects of the post. Ulvog began as follows:

Bruce Schneier calls this security theater. It feels good but is worthless for risk reduction.

Since the shootings in Aurora occurred in a theater, I guess it's appropriate to say that we're engaging in theater security theater now.

In Washington, the Homeland Security Department held a conference call with officials from the commercial, entertainment and shopping mall industries to discuss what security measures they could take to prevent something like this from happening again.

Think about it. It sounds nice, but how can you prevent something like this from happening again? You can - but at a tremendous cost.

But don't worry - actions are being taken.

AMC Theatres, the nation's second-largest theater chain, with more than 300 movie houses, said it will not allow people to wear costumes or face-covering masks into its theaters.

Well, AMC just killed its "Rocky Horror" showings.

And those who are honest admit that these are not necessarily security measures per se.

The New York Police Department said was posting officers at about 40 theaters around the city that were showing the film. The increased security was a precaution against potential copycat shooters, and also meant to reassure moviegoers.

"We're doing this to raise the comfort level," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said. "We'd certainly encourage everybody to go about their business."

Frankly, the posting of a police officer outside a movie theater is more effective than a costume ban, but Commissioner Kelly even admits that this is just a reassurance.

And what did Bruce Schneier himself post in the aftermath of the shootings? Nothing. (Frankly, restraint is refreshing, as opposed to those who are posting multiple stories from every angle, to the revulsion of Loren Feldman.) Schneier has, of course, written about security theater in the past. I encourage you to read this article on the topic. I'll confine myself to quoting one excerpt which relates to the post-mortem topic that I raised earlier:

Security is both a feeling and a reality. The propensity for security theater comes from the interplay between the public and its leaders. When people are scared, they need something done that will make them feel safe, even if it doesn't truly make them safer. Politicians naturally want to do something in response to crisis, even if that something doesn't make any sense.

Often, this "something" is directly related to the details of a recent event: we confiscate liquids, screen shoes, and ban box cutters on aeroplanes. But it's not the target and tactics of the last attack that are important, but the next attack. These measures are only effective if we happen to guess what the next terrorists are planning. If we spend billions defending our rail systems, and the terrorists bomb a shopping mall instead, we've wasted our money. If we concentrate airport security on screening shoes and confiscating liquids, and the terrorists hide explosives in their brassieres and use solids, we've wasted our money. Terrorists don't care what they blow up and it shouldn't be our goal merely to force the terrorists to make a minor change in their tactics or targets.

Our penchant for movie plots blinds us to the broader threats. And security theater consumes resources that could better be spent elsewhere.

I encourage you, however, to read the entire article.

What's wrong with post-mortems

Several weeks ago, three of us engaged in an informal post-mortem on a recent proposal. One of the participants, who has extensive experience with our company but is relatively new to the bid process, questioned why we were referring to this as a post-mortem. To him, that implied that our proposal to the customer was dead on arrival.

Whether you refer to it as a post-mortem or a post-partum, there is usually some type of "lessons learned" exercise after a project completes.

Or after an event occurs.

I turned on my car radio late Friday morning. About eleven hours had elapsed since the tragic shootings in Aurora, Colorado, and a so-called security expert was talking about the lessons learned from the tragedy. To him, the chief lesson learned was that we need more security at movie theaters.

I switched the station in disgust.

Why? Because a "lessons learned" exercise often takes incidents from an individual project or event and blows them up out of proportion.

Thousands upon thousands of movies are viewed in theaters every day. Heck, there were probably thousands of theater showings of the new Batman movie on Friday, July 20. Of all of those thousands upon thousands of movie presentations, how many resulted in multiple deaths? Exactly one. So does that mean that we MUST suddenly increase security at all movie theaters?

Now I don't discount the fact that theaters can be crowded areas and could be targets for someone intent on doing harm. But movie theaters are clearly not the only crowded areas.

Of course, this isn't the first time that a single isolated event has resulted in a "lessons learned" exercise with far-reaching consequences. One guy (Richard Reid) unsuccessfully tries to down a plane with shoes, and all of a sudden, millions of plane travelers are taking off their shoes while going through airport security.

Looking at the business world, how many times have you had a particular "once in a lifetime" issue with a particular project, and all of a sudden you find that all future projects require a check to make sure that "once in a lifetime" issue never happens again?

John, before you can ship this proposal, you need to go through this 115 item checklist to make sure that we can ship it. First, have you ensured that the customer is not on a U.S. State Department blacklist?

THE CUSTOMER IS A CALIFORNIA COUNTY. IT IS NOT ON A STATE DEPARTMENT BLACKLIST.

Fine, let's move to item 2. Have you ensured that all export licenses have been obtained?

THE CUSTOMER IS A CALIFORNIA COUNTY. AN EXPORT LICENSE IS NOT REQUIRED. HEY, CAN WE SKIP OVER THESE FOREIGN ENTITY QUESTIONS? THEY DON'T APPLY HERE.

I'm sorry, we can't waive these questions. They're mandatory because of the problem with the foreign shipment several years ago.

YOU REALIZE THAT MOST OF OUR BUSINESS TODAY IS IN THE UNITED STATES, AND NOT TO FOREIGN COUNTRIES?

Let's continue. Has the proposal been translated into the customer's native language?

Yes, I believe that a "lessons learned" exercise can be valuable. But when deriving lessons learned, you have to consider the probability of that particular item occurring in the future. There is a cost associated with every action, and if we suddenly go through great effort to put metal detectors at every movie theater...the criminals will simply go to the smoothie shop next door.

But if you insist that no cost is too great to protect people from harm...then you'd better ban songs about roller coasters. Just to be safe, you know.

Will Al Franken's next television gig be on the Food Network?

In the process of researching some items regarding Minnesota Senator Al Franken (his subcommittee recently held a hearing on facial recognition), I noticed a "Breakfast with Al" link on his Senate website. I was curious about this, since it is regrettably risky for any member of Congress to meet with his or her constituents. However, these breakfasts are held in Franken's Senate office, which means that you have to go through a lot of security to get there.

On the Breakfast with Al page, the Senator spends a lot of time talking about...breakfast:

We serve real Mahnomin porridge made with wild rice that we bring in from White Earth Reservation. It's a native Minnesota dish that was first created by the voyageurs. The wild rice is cooked with cream, berries, and nuts. It's become a big hit here in the office; our guests like it so much they keep asking for the recipe. I would like to add a special thank you to Mitch Omer and his staff at Hell's Kitchen in Minneapolis for allowing us to use their Mahnomin Porridge recipe, which you can find below.

Now I ask you - did Senator Humphrey or Senator Mondale ever serve porridge to their constituents?

To get the recipe, go to Senator Franken's website. The Senator also provides this "fun fact":

While the great city and county of Mahnomen, Minnesota are spelled with an "e," the Mahnomin porridge we serve at breakfast is traditionally spelled with an "i".

P.S. I guess that Senators Feinstein and Boxer can hawk this stuff. Recipe not provided. Remember, this is California - we don't want Apple or Google to say that someone stole the recipe.

You can look at anything in our store...just don't look with your camera

If you believe the more starry-eyed soldiers in the Revolution of Social Media, any visit to any business should be a social experience. New, modern 21st century businesses want to communicate with their customers via all existing social channels, according to the starry-eyed. Check in with Foursquare or other services! Review on Yelp or other services! Tweet about your experiences! Take pictures via Marissa's new favorite image website, Flickr, or her old favorite image website, Picasa! And -

Uh, what's that?

Put the camera down?

What sign on the front door?

You see, your typical meat loaf store will do anything for social media love, but it won't do that picture thing. And sometimes, they really mean it. Penny Shelton:

My husband and I were visiting Paris last spring. We saw a McDonald’s and wanted to take a picture of the menu board to show my six-year-old grandson. I knew he’d get a kick out of seeing how different it appeared from a McDonald’s in the United States....

She grabbed me by my arm and jacket and threw my back against the open door, all the while grabbing at different parts of my coat with one hand and pinning me there with another. Within seconds another woman appeared at the scene and put her arm across my chest.

Now this is not unique to McDonald's, or to France. (DISCLOSURE: I am employed by a company that is owned by a French firm.) If you scroll through the comments, you'll see mentions of India, Greece, Latvia, Portugal, Spain, and Hungary, as well as Burger King and Starbucks. And I'm sure that Thomas Hawk can tell you some stories about places here in the United States that frown on picture-taking.

But here the starry-eyed will say that McDonald's, Burger King, et al are DOING IT WRONG and DON'T GET IT. Then the starry-eyed will claim that real 21st century companies understand transparency and publicity and all of that.

If you believe this is true, I suggest that you perform this simple test.

First, find a store (grocery or retail) that is demonstrably social media aware - one that demands that you check in before they'll even let you in the door.

Second, walk into that store with your favorite cool smartphone.

Third, proceed to take a picture of every single item that is for sale - and be sure to prominently feature the price tags in every picture that you take.

After about 10-15 minutes of this, even the most "aware" company will politely ask you to leave - if you're lucky. If you're not so lucky, they'll grab your arms and jacket and throw you out, possibly damaging your preciously cool smartphone in the process.

Why? Because, as Paul Brocklehurst noted in this Google+ thread, it is legally permissible for a business to set reasonable rules on its own property. If a business says "no photography," then no photography.

Of course, there's a potential difference between what is legally binding and what is good business. One could argue that while a private business has the legal right to restrict photography, it is not necessarily a good business practice. Customers would never patronize (or matronize) such an "old school" business.

But does any business - or any person - behave as transparently as we picture-takers would like? Take Jennifer Ringley. Even before she disappeared from the Internet, did the JenniCam woman ever post her tax returns? And don't forget how Julian Assange reacted when Swedish police reports about his alleged crimes were...um...leaked.

So next time you're taking pictures in a WalMart or Whole Foods, don't be surprised if the store manager follows you home...and starts taking pictures in your house. Your Facebook friends will love to see all the McDonald's wrappers...

Credit cards, light bulbs, and vending machine availability

When Brock Hatfield shared my earlier tymshft post on the reasons for the Netflix/Pinterest/Instagram/etc. outage, Hatfield (who, coincidentally, works at IBM, one of the companies that I've referenced regarding causes of disasters) commented on the nature of decision-making. Specifically, Hatfield noted that there have been instances in which IT has recommended a particular course of action, but management has rejected the recommendation for cost reasons.

I'm not claiming that IT is always right - there are cases in which business rationale outweighs a technical recommendation - but there are certainly times when penny-pinching is not advised.

Hatfield shared a link to a Tumblr blog that documents such failures. One case stood out in my mind. At an (unnamed) remote IT support facility employing 1,300 people, the facility itself - presumably providing critical IT services - was down.

But the credit card-equipped vending machines were still running.

Why were the (presumably) non-critical vending machines up while the (presumably) critical IT facility itself was down? Perhaps it had to do with the credit cards. Credit card providers want to make sure that transactions can be accepted all the time, so maybe the vending machine was engineered in such a way to meet the credit card company's high availability requirements.

Regardless of the reason, it's obviously a troubling sign when an IT support facility offers worse availability than a vending machine.

But while I was trying to locate the facility where this occurred, I happened to run across another vending machine story that is troubling in its own way. FacilitiesNet shared this wonderfully inspiring success story from Grubb & Ellis:

Remove light bulbs from all vending machines as an energy-savings initiative. Each machine with the lighting removed was posted with a notice that the machine was in operating condition and the light bulbs had been removed to reduce electric energy consumption.

Removing the lights reduces electric usage that is non-essential to facility operations and ensures that the facility is not paying for a portion of the electricity provided to a vending service to operate privately owned equipment.

Finally, it aligns the facility department with broader efforts to be environmentally conscious.

— James Vetter, vice president, accountÊmanager for Grubb & Ellis Management Services

But before Grubb & Ellis Management Services pats itself on the back for being green, let's look at what just happened.

First, you had to pay people to go to every vending machine and remove the light bulbs.

Second, you had to pay people to post the sign on every vending machine.

Even if you still have cost savings after doing all that, there are two other factors to consider.

First off, how do the people in the facility feel when they come up on a blacked-out vending machine? Does this inspire them to do their best work?

Second off, how do the people associated with the vending machine feel? Take Coca-Cola, for example. Coca-Cola takes great pride in its branding, from the shape of the bottle to the colors in its logo. How would Coca-Cola feel if you dimmed that bright red color?

And however much you saved pennies by removing those light bulbs, it might not make a lot of difference in the end. James Vetter's cost-saving tip was published in October 2009. As noted above, Vetter was working for Grubb & Ellis in 2009. Guess which facility Vetter was supporting?

According to his public LinkedIn profile, Vetter was at General Motors during this period. You'd have to have pulled a lot of lightbulbs to keep General Motors from sliding into bankruptcy court. And Vetter's activities weren't the only nickel and dime efforts by General Motors during this period:

The drive to pinch pennies came two weeks ago, says David Green, president of United Auto Workers Local 1714 in Lordstown, Ohio, when the plant there was told workers could no longer work overtime. Workers decided to cancel a bake sale they hold each year for the Toys For Tots program because GM wouldn't let some line workers earn pay while working at the sale as it has done in the past.

Robert Lutz has been very critical of General Motors' past efficiency drives - but ironically, he thinks that things were fine in 2008:

When Bob Lutz got into the auto business in the early 1960s, CEOs knew that if you captured the public’s imagination with innovative car design and top quality craftsmanship, the money would follow. The “car guys” held sway, and GM dominated with bold, creative leadership and iconic brands like Cadillac, Buick, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, GMC, and Chevrolet.

But then GM’s leadership began to put their faith in numbers and spreadsheets. Determined to eliminate the “waste” and “personality worship” of the bygone creative leaders, and maximize profitability, management got too smart for its own good. With the bean counters firmly in charge, carmakers, and much of American industry, lost their single-minded focus on product excellence and their competitive advantage. Decline soon followed.

In 2001, General Motors hired Lutz out of retirement with a mandate to save the company by making great cars again. As vice chairman, he launched a war against the penny-pinching number-crunchers who ran the company by the bottom line, and reinstated a focus on creativity, design, and cars and trucks that would satisfy GM customers.

After emerging from bankruptcy in 2009, GM is finally back on track thanks in part to its embrace of Lutz’s philosophy, with acclaimed new models like the Chevrolet Volt, Cadillac CTS, Chevrolet Equinox, and Buick LaCrosse.

Regardless of what actually happened in the months before bankruptcy, by 2011, efficiency expert James Vetter was managing facilities at Walgreens. I don't know why Vetter left GM. Perhaps Lutz chased him away. Perhaps Vetter saw a lightbulb in a Walgreens aisle and...um...got an idea.

Sometimes we get so distracted by trivial matters that we ignore more important issues.