Thoughts on span of control

Free 3D Business Men Marching Concept by Scott Maxwell (lumaxart) (blog, web) used under a Creative Commons License

I know that a lot of people like to talk about Dunbar's number (and Scoble's number), but in business a much more important number is represented by the concept of span of control. A November 1993 article by George Hattrup defined the concept as follows:

The span of control, or span of management, refers to the number of persons who report to one superior and includes the functions of planning, organizing and leading.

One way to illustrate span of control is by looking at the organization of a football team. For simplicity's sake, let's concentrate on the players and the coaching staff. According to current NFL rules (again, made in 1993), an NFL roster consists of 53 players during the regular season - with fewer on game day, but for most of the week there are 53 players that need to be managed.

These are managed by a coaching staff. As I write this, the head coach of the Washington Redskins is Jim Zorn. But he's not entirely responsible for all 53 players; he has an offensive coordinator (Sherman Smith) and a defensive coordinator (Greg Blache). But that's not the entire coaching staff:

Jim Zorn Head Coach
Greg Blache Defensive Coordinator
Sherman Smith Offensive Coordinator
Joe Bugel Offensive Line
Stump Mitchell Assistant Head Coach / Running Backs
Stan Hixon Wide Receivers
Scott Wachenheim Tight Ends
Chris Meidt Offensive Assistant
John Palermo Defensive Line
Kirk Olivadotti Linebackers
Jerry Gray Secondary-Cornerbacks
Steve Jackson Safeties
Danny Smith Special Teams Coordinator
Bill Khayat Quality Control-Offense
Chip Garber Quality Control-Defense
John Hastings Head Strength/Conditioning
Bobby Crumpler Assistant Strength/Conditioning
Harrison Bernstein Assistant Strength/Conditioning

Now I don't have access to the Redskins' organizational chart, but I'm pretty sure that only some of these people report directly to Zorn - probably the offensive and defensive coordinators, the special teams coordinator, and the head of strength and conditioning. If my assumption is right (and it probably isn't), Zorn directly manages four people. At the same time Smith probably manages Bugel, Mitchell, Hixon, Wachenheim, Meidt, and possibly Khayat.

Is this the right number for a football head coach, or football offensive coordinator, to manage? People have thought about this in the general business environment, according to Hattrup:

Historically, the concern over span of control was based on the idea that some optimal number of manageable subordinates should exist. Researchers in the past, such as Col. Urwick, stated that the optimal span of control was five or six. This as based on the assumption that managers have a limited span of attention, energy and time. If a manager was responsible for more than five or six subordinates, it was felt that the manager would loose track of what was happening. This was illustrated mathematically by A. V. Graicumas, whose work indicated that the number of potential interactions with subordinates will increase geometrically with respect to the manager's increasing span of control. For example, the addition of a fifth subordinate raises potential interactions from 44 to 100. Likewise, the addition of an eighth subordinate moves the potential from 490 to 1,080.

But there have been other studies:

The results of a 1952 study done by the American Management Association indicate that the median span of control for presidents of large companies (over 5,000 employees) is eight to nine with a range of up to 24. Presidents of medium-sized firms (500 to 5,000 employees) were found to have a median span of control of about seven and the range varied from three to 17. However, another recent analysis discloses a much narrower span of control in the middle levels of management than at the top. The president of the United States has more than 100 people who supposedly report directly to him. Since history suggests that he does not always know what White House personnel are doing, this number appears to be too large.

Hattrup ends up questioning the idea of a single number, noting that effective spans of control can vary according to different situations (e.g. stable vs. dynamic environments, issues regarding certain professionals such as doctors and engineers, etc.). In addition, Hattrup noted that span of control choices also affect the overall organization (e.g. small spans of control lead to more management levels between the top and the bottom). And if you believe one study, it may also affect profitability (other than the increased costs from smaller spans of control):

A study done by Sears, Roebuck and Co. provides evidence to support [large spans of control]....At one group of stores, managers were assigned a relatively large number of subordinates by decreasing one level of middle management. Because of the large spans of control, detailed supervision was impossible. Analyses of sales volume, management competence, profit and morale all indicated that the stores with the wide span of control were superior in every way to those stores that were more conventionally organized.

It's clear that Harttrup is a fan of larger spans of control, and from his perspective in 1993, he predicted "[s]pans of control reaching 50 to 70 will not be uncommon." Well, that was 1993. I haven't seen such spans of control in practice (granted, I've worked for somewhat traditional companies), and we've already seen that the Washington Redskins team doesn't have such a span of control. Then again, I'm forced to admit that the Redskins have not ben excelling as of late...

Can certification DECREASE salaries? (part three)

Follow-up.

We've seen that as a certification becomes more common in an industry, hiring managers begin to assume that the certification is present, and the additional value of the certification decreases. Perhaps this can be illustrated by the following timeline:

• Initially, when Joe says, "I have the X Certification!" hiring managers will say "The what?"


• Eventually, the HR magazines or consultants will start talking about the importance of the X Certification, so when Joe says, "I have the X Certification!" hiring managers will say "WOW!" and start to drool.


• Time passes, everyone gets the X Certification, and it becomes commoditized. Now, when Joe says, "I have the X Certification!" hiring managers will simply nod, "That's nice."


• Eventually the X Certification becomes yesterday's news, and is even considered irrelevant by some. Now, when Joe says, "I have the X Certification!" hiring managers will reply, "And I have a quill pen. Why did you waste your time getting the X Certification? You do have the Y Certification, don't you?"

Of course, any commoditization of a certification takes some time, so it's a matter of judging where you are on the timeline. Is certification X a relatively new cert that few people have, or is it a cert that everyone has?

Now regarding product management certifications, one can argue that they're relatively new, and that certification is therefore early on the timeline. However, Marty Cagan claims that it's TOO early to start certifying product managers, at least in technical fields:

I believe it is premature to have certification for our field, and that having a certification at this stage actually hinders the progress that is so critically needed. I have five key reasons for this view:

First, let’s please all admit that as an industry and a profession, product management is nowhere near the science that we wish it was....

Second, internet software product management is not like product management for a new type of laundry soap....Too many people mistakenly believe that they can leverage the same tools and processes from the packaged goods world....

Third, I argue that there is no single product management model that makes sense for all product software companies....A certification that effectively encourages a product manager to try to fit a square peg in a round hole is not helpful to the team or the product manager.

Fourth, mostly these certifications aren’t even covering product management in the sense that tech companies need, which is all about product discovery; instead they’re really much more about what most Internet companies would consider product marketing....

Finally, and most important, I argue that teaching and certification of old and failed techniques simply works to institutionalize the bad practices.

Reasonable people can disagree over whether a product management certification, or any certification, provides true value to an organization.

Can certification DECREASE salaries? (part two)

Follow-up.

In a comment to a prior post on the ROI of certification for product managers, David Locke proceeded through a scenario regarding the ROI. After noting that certification can establish itself in an industry, become a minimum requirement to work in the industry, and prevent otherwise talented people from working in the industry, Locke continued to explore the ramifications of this.

Eventually, the PM job will move overseas.

Well, why not? If product management expertise is captured by a set of quantifiable certification requirements, and if someone in Beijing or Bangalore meets the same requirements as someone in Brea or Beverly Hills, wouldn't it make sense to hire the lower-cost worker who equally satisfies the requirements?

Locke continues:

So goes commoditization, which certification is a sure sign of. "Hey, I passed the test, so I'm a PM," NOT.

Locke then states:

Looking at the PMI cert, it certainly commoditized project managers.

A lot of this depends upon supply and demand, but this 2007 item from Monster indicates that project management certifications may be a commodity:

According to a survey by Foote Partners, a management consultancy and IT workforce research firm, pay for 143 IT certifications continued a downward slide, falling an average of 2 percent in the six months ending December 31, 2006. That was compared to pay for 127 noncertified IT skills, which increased 2.3 percent over the same period.

“Pay for certifications has been on the decline for some time,” says David Foote, CEO and chief research officer for Foote Partners. “It’s not that employers aren’t willing to pay a premium for them, but instead, the prices they are willing to pay versus noncertified skills is nowhere near the levels of one to two years ago, or even six months ago for that matter.”...

For 2006, the survey found pay premiums increasing for certifications in Web development (up 3.6 percent), but declining for certifications in databases (down 4.6 percent), project management (down 2.7 percent), system administration and engineering/network operating systems (down 1.9 percent), and applications and programming languages (down 3.6 percent)....

Supply and demand may also play a role in determining what a certification is worth on the job market. Jim Henderson, who writes a blog on certification and serves as the global manager of instructor programs at Novell, says that if too many people hold a certification, that certification may become a commodity and lose value. “Being one of a million is a way of getting your foot in the door,” he says. “Being one in a million is a way to actually get the job.” Noting that his views are his own and do not reflect Novell’s official position, he adds, “If a certification sets a high bar, then it helps you stand out from the pack.”

Dice records the results of a subsequent Foote survey:

On average, premium pay for more than160 types of IT certification skills declined for the seventh straight period in the first quarter of 2008, according to David Foote, chief research officer for Foote Partners LLC. The Vero Beach, Fla., research firm's quarterly IT Skills and Certifications Pay Index examines compensation for individual IT skills and certifications earned by about 22,000 professionals in the U.S. and Canada.

The company found the average premium for certifications showed an overall decline of 1.6 percent during the six months ending March 2008, and a 2.9 percent year-on-year decrease.

And Dice noted that one hiring manager was moving away from certifications, and toward the old minimum requirement - a college education:

Linda Carey Johnson, CIO for Sacramento's Municipal Utility District, says some workers entered the technology industry during the dot-com boom without college degrees, using certifications as a counterbalance. "I just had someone with a ton of certifications and we said, 'You have to earn a degree,'" she says. "We focus more on degrees than certifications."

So what does this mean?

Continued.

Can certification DECREASE salaries? (part one)

This is a follow-up to a post that I wrote following a webinar that examined product management. The webinar, delivered by Therese Padilla of the Association of International Product Marketing & Management (AIPMM), covered a lot of territory, but briefly touched on the issue of product management certification. As I noted in the earlier post, Trevor Rotzein asked if there was any statistical evidence supporting a positive return on investment (ROI) for product management certification.

When discussing the topic, I noted that it's important to distinguish the ROI that you're examining. There is the ROI for a product manager that pays for certification, and there's the ROI for an organization that pays to get its product managers certified. At the time, I assumed (based upon personal experience) that certification provides a positive ROI for a product manager, but that it was unclear whether an organization could realize (or even identify) benefits from certified product managers.

David Locke (@davidwlocke) provided a comment that got my mental wheels turning. Here are portions of Locke's comment:

A PM certification will be the keyword that HR latches on to. So eventually, all PMs will be certified.

This type of behavior is not surprising. The main job of HR is to whittle down a stack of hundreds or thousands of applications to something more reasonable, and the best way to do that is to set minimum criteria for the job. Don't have a college degree? Don't have five years' experience? Don't have a PM certification? Well, that narrows down the pile of resumes.

Ideally, one could argue that the minimum job criteria are critical to the job, and that it makes sense to disqualify people who don't meet the minimum criteria.

Back to Locke.

In the meantime, some very good PMs will not find work absent the keyword.

The hope, of course, is that you've chosen the right minimum job criteria. And an argument can be made that a "very good PM" who isn't certified may not be so good after all. One of Padilla's four points about certification is that certification indicates proof of commitment - if I don't bother to get certified, does that indicate that I don't really care about my job? That I don't adapt to changing circumstances?

So, eventually certification takes hold and becomes a minimum requirement for a product management job. Locke then made a statement that threw me...

Continued.

Nothing is real? Behind the reality show business, and revisiting a reality show pioneer

View behind the Camera by Tahmid Munaz (~{Imaginative Dreamer™}~) used under a Creative Commons License

As television networks have encountering mounting production costs, one of the programming alternatives which has been attractive has been reality shows. But in France, the costs of the reality shows, both from a monetary and a perception point of view, have just gotten higher:

The highest court in France ruled last week that contestants on the French version of the reality television show “Temptation Island” were entitled to employment contracts and financial compensation — just as professional actors would be....

[T]he decision prompted laments from French broadcasters, worried that it might put a damper on reality television and other programs that rely on amateurs, like talent shows or game shows, by making them more costly and cumbersome to produce.

The producer of the show in question (which ended in 2008) had a solution for the cost issue:

Edouard Boccon-Gibod, president of the production arm of TF1, the channel that produced and broadcast “L’Isle de la Tentation,” said that paying performers would not be a big problem for producers, because they could be given the minimum wage.

Now if I recall correctly, contestants on American reality shows ARE paid some type of minimal stipend. But there's a bit of a wrinkle in French employment law that not only causes trouble for French reality show producers, but also exposes a bit about so-called reality shows:

A bigger problem may be abiding by strict French work rules. Reality-show participants, he said, will now be limited to 48 hours of work a week. The country’s 35-hour workweek can be exceeded for short periods.

During the 12 days in which “L’Isle de la Tentation” took place, participants supposedly were being monitored by cameras nonstop, though Mr. Boccon-Gibod said that in fact they were expected to be available for only four to seven hours a day.

“Nobody worked 24 hours a day,” he said. “They were resting and having fun on the beach.”

So something that is presented as continuous gamesmanship is anything but. However, Big Brother USA live feed purchasers, and those who read the transcripts of live feeds, know that the same thing happens here. For example, here are some jokersupdates.com comments about something said by one of the house guests on August 21, 2002:

Aug 21 2002 18:22, Wed Lola Forum: 082102 Post: 55849

M just said address www.arlenewilson.com, FOH for sec, then it comes back and hd says I need bookings NT

For those who have never read Big Brother live feeds, I should explain that "FOH" means "front of house." Basically, if you paid the money to get the Big Brother live feeds, that didn't guarantee that you'd get every single thing that went on in the house. Big Brother producers would occasionally cut the feed, switching to a view of the front of the Big Brother house. So why did this particular conversation get edited?

Aug 21 2002 19:28, Wed ballistic Forum: 082102 Post: 56004

Arlene Wilson's is a modeling/talent agency based in the midwest. They book throughout Wisconsin and Illinois. More.

A little showbiz tidbit about Ms. Wilson and her family. She is(was)Kiefer Sutherland's mother-in-law. I believe Kiefer divorced Ms. Stoddardt(daughter of Milwaukee T.V. personality Hank Stoddard and Arlene Wilson.

Yup, the contestants on reality shows - you know, Bill the ex-Marine from Tampa or whatever - actually spend some of their time talking about agents, their next gig, or whatever. Let's face it, the only people who are going to put themselves through a reality show experience are those who want to make a career out of it. For example, here are excerpts from a where are they now page regarding several of the Big Brother USA Season 2 houseguests:

Sheryl Braxton battled her cancer and won, and is now looking to pursue a career in entertainment, in front or behind the camera....

Mike Malin (Carri)...recently appeared on Battle of the Network Reality Stars and lost. He appeared on Big Brother All-Stars and won.

Krista Stegall...moved to Beverly Hills for a year. She landed a commercial with Nextel, so she stayed for a while. Next, she moved to Lafayette, LA to do a morning show at KSMB...."I will also be in Nashville and Coco Beach and then in Canada, then I'm going to be in a reality horror film."

Hardy-Ames Hill recently appeared in "Cross Bones", a movie populated by reality TV stars, and was previously in "Summer Desire" (porn). He also has been acting on TV shows in smaller parts....He was seen on "South Beach" on January 11th, 2006.

Monica Bailey is still pursuing an acting career in N.Y. and L.A. and has been seen "behind the scenes" doing other work as well. She was co-host of Rent Wars, a TV show. She left to "go back to Hollywood".

Nicole Nilson-Schaffrich...was working on...a cooking show with Jason Guy named "Reality Dish", which I don't think it ever made it to air, and she was working as a disc jockey at Q100 in Atlanta, but apparently isn't any longer.

But the one who really used his fame was Big Brother 2's winner, Dr. Will Kirby. He's certainly done his reality bit:

[Kirby] has been pitching reality show ideas, appeared on Battle of the Network Reality Stars, hosted a reality show originally named "Love Shack" but later renamed "Perfect Partners" (which never aired in the US), was a medical correspondent for eXTRA, appeared on lots of reality TV "expose" shows, appeared as himself on "Cold Turkey"....He recently appeared on Battle of the Network Reality Stars and lost.

But Kirby, who of course had a career as a doctor, has continued to pursue that line of work.

[He] is still a doctor in California and Florida (in fact he's Chief Resident in CA and a AOCD Koprince Award Winner and has been writing articles for dermatalogical publications).

I assume that it's common knowledge that a good portion of reality show contestants had entertainment careers before joining reality shows, and that many more of them pursued entertainment careers after leaving reality shows. As you can see above, some of them end up having a reality show career for a while.

But most of the original reality show family, the Loud family, took a different route - at least as of 1990, seventeen years after "An American Family" originaly aired in 1973. Current.org:

"I'm amused,'' said Lance Loud, who now lives in Los Angeles. "It's no big deal. We have nothing to sell or promote because of it,'' he said, adding that he has not seen the 12-hour documentary since its original broadcast on public television....

The members of the Loud family reacted differently to the pending re-broadcast, Raymond said. Pat and younger sons Grant and Kevin are "very distraught,'' he said. Lance is pleased, while Bill and daughters Michelle and Delilah "don't care one way or another,'' he added.

The series "seems to have had a traumatic effect'' on Pat Loud, Raymond said. "If she had the chance to do it again, she would not do it,'' he said.

Now it should be noted that the Loud family were pioneers in this sort of thing, and hardly anybody realized exactly what could happen. Certainly someone in 1973 wouldn't think about making a career out of reality shows, because you couldn't make a career out of reality shows. Well, one person did sort of pursue an entertainment career: Lance Loud, the eldest son who came out during filming. PBS:

Having his life scrutinized on television had its benefits and it burdens. Loud, emerging as a gay icon overnight, became a television star simply by being himself, and for a time he reaped the benefits of fame, becoming a rock and roll performer and, later, a writer and columnist for Interview, American Film, Details and The Advocate. On the other hand, Loud's most famous quote was "Television ate my family," referring to scars left on the Louds after having their lives laid bare before a national audience. In the end, Loud reportedly found that celebrity was hollow. Nothing could ever measure up to that initial burst of notoriety and he spent years trying to find himself again, struggling through substance abuse and other dark episodes.

Fast-forward to the 21st century, when Lance Loud contracted both hepatitis and HIV. It was a different world, and Lance decided to go before the cameras again with a different message.

Several months before his death, Loud asked Alan and Susan Raymond, the Academy Award-winning filmmakers of the original An American Family series, to film a final episode in the Loud story. The Raymonds had remained friends with the Loud family after the 1973 series and a 1983 follow-up, American Family Revisited. The Raymonds' new film, Lance Loud! A Death In An American Family, both commemorates the 30th anniversary of the original series broadcast and explores Loud's legacy by looking back at scenes from the original documentary, examining the intervening years of Loud's life and spending time with him in his final months.

So why did Lance Loud, and (with one exception) the rest of his family appear before the cameras one more time?

Near the end of his life he wrote, "Make no mistake. This is not to emphasize the sadness of my demise but rather emphasize the love of my family and friends. When my time comes up, I want to be filmed because life this past year has taught me so much. I also stand as a role model as to what not to do in one's life."

Sometimes reality television can be real.

Sweet! (CHAD Sweet.) Revisiting the Chertoff Group

Homeland Security by Derek Purdy used under a Creative Commons License

My analytics show a spike in hits related to Chad Sweet, who is an associate of former U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. I blogged about Sweet and Chertoff's new venture on March 30, but at the time the Chertoff Group's website was not ready for prime time (or, for security folks, "3 am"). It is now.

Interestingly enough, the contents of the website are very compartmentalized. Rather than getting one view of the services they provide, you need to go to separate pages for risk management, crisis management, and merger and acquisition advice. Similarly, there are separate biographies for each of the principals. I wonder if this website organization is a holdover from the principals' security experience, in which people are only told what they need to know and operations are kept separate to prevent leaks and contamination.

So anyways, since my readers seem to be interested in Chad C. Sweet, I took a peek at his biography. Excerpts:

At the Department of Homeland Security, Chad Sweet worked directly with Secretary Michael Chertoff to restructure and optimize the flow of information between the CIA, FBI and other members of the national security community and DHS. Mr. Sweet also supported the Secretary during numerous operations to detect, disrupt and respond to terrorist plots both in the United States and overseas, including the August 2006 US/UK liquid explosives plot, the March 2007 Fort Dix Six plot, the June 2007 JFK Aiport plot and other incidents that remain classified.

No mention of the Madrid train bombing, but that investigation was not primarily a DHS one, but one from another agency. But his earlier resume is interesting. Check this:

After having helped to fight the threat of Communism during his tenure at the CIA, Mr. Sweet left the Agency in the early 90s and began a career in finance.

I'll grant that Sweet left finance several years ago, but there's a bit of irony inasmuch as the finance sector is becoming significantly dependent on government handouts. For purist capitalists, that sounds like Communism invading the country from within.

Back to today. I never did figure out why there was a sudden surge of interest in Chad Sweet, but I did find this April interview with Michael Chertoff in which he discussed the Chertoff Group.

[R]ight now it’s myself as chairman and founding principal, Mike Hayden, Paul Schneider who was, as you know, my deputy before that was head of acquisition for NSA and the Navy in the Clinton administration, Admiral Jay Cohen, who was head of technology and before that head of technology for the Navy, and Charlie Allen, of course, who was our head of intelligence and before that was pretty much head of everything you could be for the CIA and was head of national collections. Finally, Chad Sweet, who was my chief of staff, a former Goldman Sachs banker and before that a government person, is our chief operating officer. A person who is hands-on and chief of operations.

The idea is that we wanted to bring together a really unparalleled team of experienced homeland security architects and people who could look at the issue of homeland security as broadly as possible, including the intelligence side, the acquisition side, the technology side, the policy side and the operations side. And among the six of us we pretty much have all of those things in DHS, in DoD, and the Department of Justice, law enforcement and finally, in the intelligence community. So we have pretty much every element of homeland security covered.

Well, every element of homeland security except for private sector experience - it appears that Sweet is the only one with significant private sector knowledge, and even that was only gained in a decade between two government stints. Let's face it - it sounds like I have more homeland security private sector experience than any one principal in the Chertoff Group. (Not that I'm submitting my resume to them or anything.)

But then again, that's how the government game is played these days - when dealing with the government, experience in working with the government is much more important than experience in working with the private sector.

Again, for purist capitalists, that sounds like Communism invading the country from within.

From #pmv #prodmgmt seminar, preliminary thoughts on the returns on investment on certification

Jotting down quick thoughts, will probably assemble into something more coherent later -

I attended a webinar by Therese Padilla of the Association of International Product Marketing & Management (AIPMM) which discussed, among other things, the benefits of certification for product managers. While Padilla was not solely speaking about AIPMM certification, it's obvious that Padilla would be positively inclined toward a certification process, in the same way that Jack Welch (we'll see him later) would be positively inclined toward light bulbs.

However, on Twitter, Trevor Rotzien raised a question regarding certification:

#pmv However, I've not seen statistical evidence for the ROI of certification in #prodmgmt. Anyone out there who has?

Here's Val Workman's reply:

@trevorrotzien I have never read a book that I didn't get an ROI from #pmv #prodmgmt

And Matt Shandera also weighed in:

@trevorrotzien Great question. I have seen several job posts requesting #prodmgmt certs and the value personally for me #pmv

But these examples talk about personal ROI. I tweeted about another aspect of ROI that should be considered:

@trevorrotzien re roi of certification, i assume you're talking about roi to organization. roi to person is positive. #pmv #prodmgmt

And perhaps I'm assuming too much about a positive personal ROI of certification, but I've experienced this in my own life - the first example that comes to mind was the job interview (and job) that I got because of my MBA.

But does an ORGANIZATION benefit from having a certified product manager? And if it does, how do you quantify this for the organization's benefit? (Remember that these are the same organizations that are cutting travel, something that some product managers feel is cutting them off from vital information from their customers.)

But back to the ROI of product management certification. Mack McCoy linked to a discussion of this topic. I'll follow up on this when I get a chance.

To be continued...

P.S. As long as I'm mentioning Mack McCoy, I want to think him for sending me the link to a Jack Welch quote that was briefly referenced by Therese Padilla in her webinar. The quote:

Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.

P.P.S. Here is the text that I submitted in the post-webinar evaluation:

The webinar worked well. My only problems were problems that were inherent in Twitter itself. However, while other applications (e.g. FriendFeed) are better suited to conversations, one can't argue against Twitter's popularity.

[8:15 PM - I DELVED INTO THIS A LITTLE MORE. PARTS ONE, TWO, AND THREE.]

Big companies have a lot of stuff - more details about Oracle and Sun

Proving again how little I know, this Oracle-Sun deal continues to turn up potential issues.

When I first blogged about this on April 20, I noted:

Perhaps Oracle has acquired a hardware vendor before and I've missed it, but this is still unusual. More importantly than hardware, however, Oracle now owns Java.

A little later, someone mentioned that Oracle would now potentially own MySQL. Now this got interesting.

Fast-forward to June 9, and Brian "Bex" Huff pointed out another ramification:

Oracle -- as you know -- plans on purchasing Sun and all their Java-licious technology. This includes the open source Glassfish application server, which is a free competitor to Weblogic, which Oracle obtained in the Sun acquisition... and they both competed with OC4J, which was Oracle's application server prior to 2008.

Huff then made the understatement of the year - well, the understatement of the moment, until Oracle acquires Microsoft or Canada or something:

I -- along with everybody else -- am very curious to see how all this plays out...

Indeed.

This is a truism whenever a large company acquires another large company - or, for that matter, even when a small company acquires another small company. The acquiring entity is interested in the acquisition for reason X, but also knows, even before the acquisition, that there are some side effects to the acquisition. And AFTER the acquisition, when the two entities are free to talk to each other, is when you REALLY learn all sorts of stuff.

Perhaps Charles Phillips and Safra Katz didn't realize that Glassfish would be part of the deal. Perhaps they didn't care and figured they'd work it out later. Or perhaps they have a super-secret plan to rebrand MySQL and Glassfish as some type of entry-level suite.

So what's a lower grade of oracle - a soothsayer?

Why blogging when you know nothing is good

John Banner as Schultz via Wikipedia

If you haven't figured it out already, a lot of my blogging concerns things that I know nothing, or hardly anything, about. As I learn a little bit about the stuff, I write about it and share it with you. For example, I have written about the mechanics of podcasting, content filtering software, Better Business Bureau accreditation, and Rajeev Motwani, all within the last few days. But I learned through the act of writing, and hopefully some of my readers did also.

It's good to know that I'm not the only person using a blog as an exploratory vehicle. Dave Winer recently announced that he was co-founding a blog entitled In Berkeley. When Winer described the new venture in a post in his blog, he said something that I found interesting:

To me, having lived here only three years, most of what I know about Berkeley is how much I don't know about Berkeley. But having a blank page to fill in is one of my favorite things.

When someone approaches the situation with a fresh set of eyes, the reader gets to share in the joy (or sorrow) that the writer is experiencing. As long as the writer doesn't try to claim expertise that he/she doesn't have, everyone can benefit from the writing/reading experience.

So don't wait until you're an expert before you write something. Trust me, if people waited to acquire expertise, our libraries would mostly be empty.

Rob Salkowitz and FriendFeed's "sketchy" future - is the sky falling?

If you want to get someone's attention, tell them something that affects them deeply. Tell an Apple lover that the iPhone will have new features when/if AT&T gets around to allowing them. Tell a Dodgers fan that Manny Ramirez is on maternity leave. Tell me that FriendFeed's future is "sketchy."

That word was used in an email that I received from Internet Evolution.

Social aggregators like Friendfeed offer unprecedented convenience, but their future in the social media ecosystem is sketchy

The email linked to the June 3 post Social Aggregators: Web 2.0's New Trick. The series examines not only FriendFeed, but also Ping.fm, MyBlogLog, and Plaxo. Concentrating on the aggregation facilities (rather than the community facilities) and also throwing Google Wave into the mix, the post concentrates on the ease of creating an aggregation facility:

Technologically, many aggregator sites are little more than glorified RSS feedreaders, cobbling together a bunch of APIs to push and pull content from the underlying services inside a configurable Web interface. This simplicity means that the opportunity to compete on unique features for more than an instant is practically nil, and there is no ability to lock users into the platform in any meaningful way.

And if you follow Rob Salkowitz's argument that the real value in aggregators is in data mining, then it makes sense to go to the biggest data mine - in this case, Facebook. Or the most-connected one:

[I]f the aggregator landscape sorts itself out and Google doesn't crush everything in its path, the winning aggregator will probably enter into agreements with the underlying providers that protect its dominant position in exchange for revenue sharing. The dominant aggregator will probably also be a prime target for acquisition by Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) or a big media company -- assuming it is not owned by one of them already.

Now my initial reaction as a FriendFeed fanboy is to stand on my soapbox and scream, "FRIENDFEED IS NOT AN AGGREGATOR! FRIENDFEED IS A HOST OF COMMUNITIES! FRIENDFEED SUPPORTS DISCUSSION!" And, if I were honest with myself, most if not all of the other services are also more than simple aggregators, allowing different types of user interaction with the material from the feeds. But can you make money off of interaction and discussion? Perhaps you can if the eyeballs somehow fit into your monetization plan.

Ah, FriendFeed's monetization plan. I addressed that in my contrarian post of May 26:

Many people, myself included, have been critical of Twitter's delay in announcing its monetization strategy. I have maintained that a monetization strategy needs to be addressed quickly, since monetization affects many other issues. A Twitter subscription service, for example, would dictate lower traffic than a free-to-use Twitter service funded by advertisements. Yet while people have been complaining up and down about Twitter's failure to monetize itself, there has been a strange silence about FriendFeed's monetization plans, if any. Are they going to wait a few years before they hire a product manager to figure a monetization strategy out?

I should note the reply from Rob Nelson (guruvan):

monetization - it has been a long standing tradition in the internet industry to wait to announce a monetization strategy until a dedicated userbase has been established. Why should FriendFeed be any different than, say, Google? (from which the founders come!)

If Nelson is correct, then FriendFeed (and, for that matter, the other services) still have some time to announce their monetization strategies. But if Salkowitz is correct, then the "aggregation" service that jumps out ahead with a working monetization strategy will leave the others in the dust.

So...who's right?

Listener, you need to turn down your radio! Observing the mechanics of podcasting

I have reached new heights of wishi-washiness, as it were. I won't get into the details now, but one of the themes that has been emphasized in MANY of my blogs is that it's best not to make a definitive statement, because a few minutes after you make that definitive statement, it will immediately become invalid. But now I've reached new heights - a statement has become invalid before I technically made it in the first place.

As I've mentioned previously, I often write posts in advance and schedule them for later posting. In one of these future posts, I originally wrote:

I listen to a few podcasts here and there, but (with one exception) the podcasts that I listen to are usually less than five minutes long.

By the time you actually see the post, that "one exception" will become "two exceptions." (Of course, by the time you see the post, it may have become three....)

Late Sunday night/Monday morning, Jesse Stay shared this post at his Stay N' Alive blog:

I’ve finally decided to bite the bullet and go forward with a dream I’ve had for awhile. Monday (today), June 8, 2009 at 8:30PM [MDT] I’ll be recording my first, yet-to-be-named podcast under the Stay N’ Alive Productions umbrella. We’ll broadcast the recording live on Ustream on my SocialGeek channel at http://ustream.tv/channel/thesocialgeek.

I'm not going to discuss the content of the podcast here (which was good - Jesse had some good guests, including Louis Gray and Kirk Yuhnke, Tech Junkie). I'm going to talk about the mechanics of a live podcast. Because, while I've been known to opine about podcast playback software, I don't know anything about actually PRODUCING a podcast. Live. And in that respect, Stay's experience was educational for me.

First off, this was (to my recollection) the first time that I had ever watched a live podcast, with the exception of those that are produced by people who do this for a living. (Because Ffundercats' live show occurs while I am commuting, I listen to it after the fact.) While Stay is a respected technologist, he is not a podcaster by trade. And he bit off a lot in his first podcast, when you think about it:

• First off, you need the local setup so that the viewers can see and hear you. Stay had a camera and a microphone. Check.


• Next, you need the software that captures your image and voice. I'm not sure what Stay ended up using, but he obviously had that.


• Third, you need a service that will allow the rest of us to see and hear what's going on. Stay uses Ustream, as he noted in his blog post.

Sounds easy, huh? Well, let's throw something else into the equation.

• Kirk Yuhnke was also involved in the podcast, and he was at another location in the Salt Lake City area. So he had to have the audio and video setup, and he and Jesse needed a service that would allow Kirk's audio and video to be accessible to Stay.


• Stay then needed to bring Yuhnke's audio into the podcast.


• Plus, at selected times, Stay needed to insert Yuhnke's video - for example, when Kirk was holding his new Palm Pre.

Oh, and as they DIDN'T say at the Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, "one more thing":

• Louis Gray was also involved in the podcast, and he was way over here California way. Audio video, share with Jesse, bla bla bla.


• Bring the Gray audio in, bla bla bla.


• So now that you have three people in the podcast, it would be great if you could integrate video from all three of them into the podcast at the same time.

Again, all of this is no sweat if you do this for a living. When Yuhnke goes to work, they do this all the time. When Leo LaPorte wants to do this, he's had a ton of experience in it.

Well, as it turns out, the audience for Stay's podcast consisted of technologists and semi-technologists, people who realized all the work that goes into this. And some of them sympathized - nay, emphasized - with Stay as it took him a few minutes to get everything up and running. (jeff)isageek, for one, realized that the mechanics of a podcast are not a trivial matter:

we are bearing - (jeff)isageek

it happens to everyone jesse - (jeff)isageek

skype decides to always mess up when you really need it to work :) i have learned doing the social geeks podcast - (jeff)isageek

must feel good to hang up on louis gray :) - (jeff)isageek

everyone knows what louis gray looks like we dont need to see his face :) - (jeff)isageek

But after a few minutes everything was set, all were on audio, Stay was fading in images of Gray and Yuhnke as needed, and he even showed a video during the podcast (the Palm Pre Part 2 video that you can see here).

Now a confession of my own - I couldn't figure out how to link directly to that video. But Stay was linked to it during the podcast (he brought it up to show it). But I think this is it.



If this is the wrong video, then I guess I'll have to edit this post again.

Now I've spent a lot of time discussing the mechanics of the podcast, but the most important part of any podcast is the content. In this case, Stay, Yuhnke, and Gray discussed the launch of the Palm Pre, as well as Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference. Stay tuned to http://staynalive.com/ to find out when the edited version of the podcast is available. The unedited version is available here.

P.S. The phrase "Listener, you need to turn down your radio!" has nothing to do with Jesse Stay, Kirk Yuhnke, or Louis Gray. It was taken from another podcast.

An afterthought on transferability of expertise

After I conceived my post on expertise vs. crowdsourcing, but before I finalized and posted it, I ran across a blog post from Louis Gray about how he used social media to buy a car. Now it got me to thinking about a particular use case - the use case doesn't fit the facts of Gray's story (I'll explain why below), but I'm not going to let the actual facts get in the way of a blog post. First, here's a bit of Gray's story:

Upon hearing I needed to pay upwards of $4,000 to fix my broken Tracer, my tendency would be to walk down the street to the nearest dealer and find something, anything to replace it. But instead, this time, I posted a note to FriendFeed, explaining the situation, and asking the vibrant community for feedback. In the discussion, seeing more than 80 comments, I explained I wanted to be more like my peers in Silicon Valley, but honestly didn't want to go in debt for the privilege.

In the middle of our back and forth, Robert Scoble swooped in with an offer I had to pay attention to. He posted, "Louis: we are selling our 2006 BMW 325i with 56,000 miles. Make me an offer. Well maintained and fun to drive."

Now here's where the facts of the story don't fit the point I want to make. Most people, including myself, look at Robert Scoble as "a recognized expert in business and personal use of social media tools" (recognizing, of course, that a tool is not a way of life). However, in Louis Gray's case, Robert Scoble is a personal friend. They've probably dealt with spit-up from each other's young kids, which is the true mark of a personal friend.

But let's change the facts for the moment and pretend that Gray and Scoble were not personal friends. Assume that Louis Gray had posted his question on FriendFeed, and this social media person named Robert Scoble, a person that Gray knew by reputation but did not know personally, had offered his 2006 BMW for sale.

In the words of 20th century political commentators, would Gray buy a used car from this man?

To me, my fictional version of the episode suggested an interesting question. Let's say that a person has some sort of certification in a particular area - David Risley with a Better Business Bureau certification, Robert Hilburn as someone who was employed as a music critic, etc. Would we be more likely to use that certification to trust this person in a completely different area? For example, if Risley released a disco CD, would I be more willing to buy it because his online business is BBB-approved?

In truth, there ARE many cases in which we believe that certification is transferable. One of the most popular cases, often cited by baby seal clubbers and other conservatives, is when we pay attention to the political views of Hollywood stars. But this is used for much more than politics. Turn on the radio and listen to any public service announcement. Let's say for the moment that the PSA features a celebrity talking about some medical condition. Chances are that the celebrity who is talking, even if he/she suffers from the medical condition in question, does NOT have a medical degree and is not truly qualified to authoritatively speak about the medical condition. Yet because of the celebrity's credibility, gained from making us laugh in a top 10 show in the 2003-2004 season or whatever, we transfer that certification and trust the celebrity's words about Muscular Dystrophy or myopia or whatever.

Another example was a favorite of Howard Cosell's during his lifetime (and, knowing his persistence, perhaps beyond it). Cosell was fond of speaking of the jockocracy, or the practice of television networks of hiring retired sports figures to offer commentary on sporting events. In Cosell's view, the mere fact that you once played a sport does not necessarily qualify you to effectively communicate about the sport to others, or to effectively function as a professional television or a radio broadcaster. Frankly, he's right - years later, I still recall the scintillating observation of one of these ex-jock broadcasters: "He's an athlete." That's deep. Of course, the argument can be turned on its head, and one can claim that mere skills in radio or television broadcasting in one area (say, law) do NOT qualify you to broadcast about sports. And if you think otherwise, perhaps you'd like to discuss this on Pat Sajak's talk show - or even Chevy Chase's talk show.

Despite Cosell's misgivings, however, we often ARE willing to transfer prowess from the field into the broadcast booth. And despite the misgivings of certain broadcasters, we are willing to listen to broadcasters who have never played the game.

There are countless other examples, but you can easily find them yourself. The next time you hear a well-known person pontificating on something, ask yourself - does thi person have expertise in this particular area, or in another area? And if the expertise is in another area, do I believe what the person is saying now?

We'll see if FamilyMember's tool becomes a way of life

As I mentioned in the newsletter for another blog, a family member (whom I will refer to as FamilyMember) obtained a MacBook over the weekend. FamilyMember likes this, and appreciates the thought that went into the design of the MacBook, its software, and its support, but FamilyMember isn't about to quit her church and give thank offerings to the Mac six times a day. In this regard, FamilyMember is similar to Notcot, who dares to declare:

For me, a mac is *just* a tool, not a way of life.

Note that this is NOT identical to the phrase I used previously, "a tool is not a way of life." But obviously it conveys the same sentiment.

But perhaps I'm wrong on my assumptions. Notcot links to Engadget, who links to a PR Newswire release from Mindset Media which includes the following statement:

According to Mindset Media...people who are highly open-minded or, in Mindset Media parlance, "Openness 5's", are 60 percent more likely than people in the general population to have purchased a Mac. These purchasers are also more liberal, less modest, and more assured of their own superiority than the population at large.

Really? I'm shocked.

Worldwide prospects for Green Dam Youth Escort software - will your government promote it?

Follow-up to my Friday post Perhaps Chinese censorship IS bad for Chinese business. But what about Singapore?

You've probably heard by now that China is requiring companies who sell computers in China to install "Green Dam Youth Escort" software on the computers sold in China. Rebecca McKinnon discusses this further and links to the Green Dam web site (in Chinese). But the New York Times has the interesting story:

Green Dam’s own website offered a hint of discontent over the filtering software. On the bulletin board section of the site, several users complained that pornographic images slipped through or that their computers had become painfully slow. “It seems pretty lousy so far,” read one posting. “It’s not very powerful, I can’t surf the Internet normally and it’s affecting the operation of other software.”

By Monday night, however, most of the comments had been deleted.

Now these comments were probably not deleted by a Communist Party official; they were probably deleted by Green Dam itself. Because, you see, the Chinese government isn't the only entity that blocks access to information.

And it isn't the only entity that would like to do so.

Now one would expect that at this latest example of evil commie doings, the good governments of the free world would rise up in unison and say how evil China is and how terrible the idea is. Only problem is, many of the "good governments of the free world" would love to do the same thing. As would many private entities.

Who knows, maybe Stephen Conroy might want to contact Green Dam to get a sitewide license for Australia.

And if the American Family Association runs into budget issues, perhaps they'll dump their support for bsecure and opt for Green Dam instead. However, the Chinese product would obviously have to be renamed to Green Darn - don't want to get blocked by a profanity filter...

OK, perhaps it's wild thinking that the American Family Association would promote a commie software product. Which raises the question - as bsecure and Green Dam and other companies battle for worldwide control, who will win? Which firm will have access to the information that it needs to vanquish its competitors? Which firm will emerge from its protective cocoon (PRC sponsorship, AFA sponsorship) and demonstrate an ability to fully respond to customer needs, adapt to changing circumstances, and function effectively in a market economy - remembering that one of the key assumptions of a market economy is a free flow of information?

Synthesizing seeming contradictions - a tool is not a way of life, but it is

Baptism tools by Lars Plougmann used under a Creative Commons License

I'm working on something behind the scenes (which is why my weekly Empoprise-BI News has a "behind the scenes" section, by the way) which includes the possible use of the phrase "a tool is not a way of life." I'm trying to distill something that I've effectively said in previous posts in this blog and elsewhere. For example, here's how I said it on June 3 (even if I spelled it incorrectly):

I can cite all sorts of software industry examples in which software was robust enough to handle a new use case that the software developers never envisioned. In some cases, the software developers reacted negatively, stating that "our software was not intended for that [purpose]." In other cases, the software developers reacted positively, and their software reached dizzying heights of success that they never envisioned.

In longhand form, I'm trying to say that something like Twitter is not a solution, but is a tool that helps you reach some other solution (increasing brand awareness, selling fluffy bunnies, what have you). And if you are a tool developer who believes that your tool can only be used in one way, you're wrong. I will use your tool as I please; don't tell me how I can or cannot use it.

Or, a tool is not a way of life.

Now whenever I want to formally adopt a word or phrase for some purpose, I always conduct a web search first to make sure that I'm not stepping on someone else's toes. And therefore I have determined that, according to Google, I am the first person to use the quoted phrase "a tool is not a way of life."

But someone has used a similar phrase. In my search, I found a FastCompany article with the title Social Media is Not a Marketing Tool; It Is a Way of Life.

Are Jacob Morgan and I in complete disagreement? Not necessarily. Here's a bit of the background behind his statement.

Marketers are getting so excited over the emergence of this new marketing tool (or medium) known as social media. All marketers have to do is join Youtube, Digg, and Twitter; add a bunch of friends, and start shoveling content at them…right?

Morgan then goes on to say:

Wrong, on several accounts; first, social media is not a marketing “tool” at all; it is a way of life.

What does he mean by this?

So what is all this mumbo jumbo about social media being a way of life? Well social media profiles are extensions of physical people. Profiles are designed so that you can learn about a person based on the information they have filled out. When people are not out and about, they are online interacting with one another through Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc. Your social media profile IS YOU.

In essence, Morgan is trumpeting the virtues of relationship marketing, and stating that you can't really market to someone unless you know the person. Now this is not universally true; if I'm at the Epicenter and want to get a hot dog, I don't necessarily need to know who the woman at the grill has befriended, or what she had for breakfast (although if she had her hot dog for breakfast, I'd take it as a good sign). But for more substantial purchases, you're either going to want to establish a relationship with the seller, or you're going to want to get guidance from either experts or the crowd.

So with some little exceptions, Jacob Morgan is right. Social media will often yield better results if you use it to build relationships than if you use it as a megaphone.

However, there are again exceptions to this rule - spam is an ugly thing and people hate it and decry it, but you have to admit that spam is a cost-effective way to do business. If it weren't a cost-effective way to do business, there would be no spammers. SOMEONE is buying this stuff, so even though spamming is the "wrong" way to do it...it works!

And it should also be noted that Morgan's article only addresses a limited topic. He addresses how to use social media effectively, and how to build relationships, but he doesn't address WHY you want to market and build relationships. What do you want to sell? Those questions need to be answered long BEFORE you set up your Corporate Rules of Twitter Engagement, because it may turn out that building relationships via social media is the exact wrong way to market whatever it is you want to market.

Take my Epicenter example; if the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes hired someone from Zappos, and the ex-Zappos person declared, "Social media is a way of life, and therefore all food service personnel need to get Twitter accounts," the new hire would probably get hit over the head with a baseball bat.

So, while social media is a way of life (sometimes), a tool is not a way of life (ever).

Hope this helps.

Postscript regarding religious issues - depending on how you're reading this post, you may have seen the Lars Plougmann picture with which I started the post, a picture entitled "Baptism tools." Theologically, it should be noted that in most if not all traditions, the only material item that makes any difference in a Christian baptism is the water. Perhaps the SIZE of the item containing the water may matter, but in effect that is only a commentary on the amount of water that is used. You can make your baptism goblet/pool out of metal, wood, plastic, or whatever. If you are a swimming pool manufacturer, you cannot attach a prohibition to your pool warranty explicitly saying that your pool cannot be used for baptisms. (Well, you could try, but you usually won't succeed.)

Expertise or crowdsourcing? David Risley practices good housekeeping

What is expertise? by Alan Levine (cogdog) used under a Creative Commons License

Online and in the real world, there's a continuing debate regarding whether we should turn to so-called experts to provide analysis, or if we should instead trust the wisdom of the crowds.

On June 3, David Risley wrote a post entitled Just Got BBB Accreditation. But, Does It Matter Anymore? While some of his comments were specific to his online business, and how people feel about online businesses, Risley also addressed more general issues.

We most definitely live in a world of information now. Chances are, if you want to find out if a business is reputable, a quick Google search will tell you all you need.

The BBB was formed with the mission of advancing “marketplace trust”. They do this by holding their members accountable to trustworthy business practices, encouraging best practices, and speaking out against bad market behavior. I think it is a worthy mission. However, the questions remains: Does anybody really bother checking the BBB anymore?

The answer to that question needs to be provided by each individual business. Risley noted the following in his case:

[T]he normal “joe blow” on the street who doesn’t live their life on the Internet is probably not accustomed to long form sales letters. Internet businesses are unproven territory to these people. They look for signs that the business is legit and that they’re not going to take your money and run.

This is why I bothered with the BBB.

On the same day (June 3), I wrote a post in my Empoprise-MU music blog entitled Rolling Who? What about 131901319013190's opinion of the Spencer Pratt song?. In the post, I compared the immediate song reviews that you can get from a crowd to the reviews, possibly delayed, that you can get from music experts (e.g. Robert Hilburn).

And there are countless other examples of this. If you have a Ford car, do you dare to go anywhere other than a Ford dealer to get an oil change? Can a company run its business on open source software? Does the state of California have too many ballot propositions?

In these and many other cases, we can't decide whether we should trust the wisdom of the crowds, or the wisdom of a selection process. Those who argue for the latter would say that I should check with an authoritative source before doing business with David Risley, I should seek someone employed as a music journalist to evaluate music, I'd better take my car to the dealer that's certified to maintain it, I'd better buy software from a company that screens its employees, and I should trust the elected legislature to make decisions on my behalf.

In short, there are times that we seek something like the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. And yes, the Good Housekeeping Seal still exists. But even the Good Housekeeping Seal has limits:

EXCLUSIONS This policy does not extend to the following products and services, even if advertised in the magazine: insurance; financial/investment services and products; realty (including housing of any kind); franchise operations; automotive and camping vehicles; public transportation; travel facilities and hotels; catalogs and merchandise portfolios; "Shopping by Mail" items; premiums and prizes; schools, summer camps, and similar organizations; contraceptives, prescribed drugs, and medical procedures, facilities, and some devices (including cosmetic ones); alcoholic beverages; services (such as cleaning and repair services and Internet access providers); unbranded food products and branded deli foods not sold in individual packages; products sold only to the trade; self-diagnostic devices; diet plans; contact lenses; fire alarms and suppressants; carbon monoxide detectors; home security systems and devices; infant/toddler car seats and restraints; swim aids, flotation devices, and pool toys; and institutional advertisements.

Which is why David Risley didn't get the Good Housekeeping Seal. But I would gladly have given him the Empoprises Non-Slimy Internet Entrepreneur Award.

But I don't think he'd want it.

Empoprise-BI News - 7 June 2009

Empoprise-BI News

The news letter for Empoprise-BI - An Empoprises vertical information service for business news.

Welcome to Empoprise-BI News

Hello again! We're still making news, or at least reporting it. Hope you're enjoying the read, and if you have any ideas or suggestions, contact me via the Disqus comments or email my Gmail account ("empoprises").

Behind the Scenes

In the last newsletter I talked about a couple of the interesting FriendFeed groups that I've created, but I haven't talked about the cool one yet - my Natural User Interface FriendFeed group at the http://friendfeed.com/natural-user-interface URL. I started it for selfish reasons - a co-worker happened to mention some of the new user interface work that was going on, and I created the group to track some of this stuff. But there have been some interesting things going on as of late, including Project Natal and Windows 7 Touch, so I'm glad that it's there. Like most of my groups, the Natural User Interface group includes some auto-populating feeds, plus whatever stuff I (and you) choose to share in there).

Special Features

You'll notice that I like to write about small businesses. That's because I've worked for a few of them. Fresh out of college, I spent several years working for Logic eXtension Resources, which was then located in Rancho Cucamonga, California. The business has changed significantly since I initially joined, and the firm itself (and its employees) have moved across the country to South Carolina, but they remain one of the leading providers of educational testing software.

Upcoming

I'm excited about something that you'll see on the Empoprise-BI blog very soon. In a number of areas there's an ongoing debate about whether we should rely on experts, or whether we should rely on the wisdom of the crowdsourced masses. I'm exploring this topic in a forthcoming post, and I've already written a follow-up post on the topic that asks whether expertise in one area makes you trust a person in another area.

Rajeev Motwani was a famous mentor, but there are many mentors

All of us have had people who have positively influenced our lives - perhaps a teacher, perhaps a boss, perhaps someone else. Most of these positive influences remain unknown to the world at large, but a few of them become very well known, such as Rajeev Motwani, who passed away on June 5.

Om Malik talked about Motwani in a blog post. But before addressing why the world at large knew him, Malik address why Motwani was important to him:

Rajeev Motwani, one of the savviest angel investors in Silicon Valley, a Stanford professor and most importantly a close and personal friend passed away earlier today....Rajeev and I had been swapping emails, hoping to get together for a cup of coffee and discussions about technology. Alas, that shall never be....

I have known Rajeev, his wife Asha and their family for a long time. Rajeev, like me, was from New Delhi. In my professional career (and personal moments of crisis) Rajeev was only a phone call away, sharing his vast rolodex. Just like a true friend. Only a few weeks back, I had a simple Indian lunch in his house with his family. I am sure, I am not the only one who has benefited from his generosity of time and knowledge and his ability to create connections and help others.

If you want to know more about Rajeev Motwani, just Google his name.

Siriusly good times?

A BusinessWeek post ponders a hypothesis:

Satellite broadcaster Sirius XM Radio (SIRI) is highly dependent on GM and other carmakers for new subscribers, so is it in big trouble now, too?

Aaron Pressman of BusinessWeek references the opinion of Tyler Savery at SiriusBuzz.com (disclosure: Savery owns shares of Sirius XM), who doesn't necessarily see it that way. Excerpts:

Yes, GM is Sirius biggest supplier of subscribers, but they are also a huge expense to the company. Each subscriber requires an investment by Sirius XM radio. This investment, referred to as Subscriber Acquisition Cost, is an expense to the company in the short term, in hopes that that investment will pay for itself in the long term....So while a slowdown in sales will hurt the sub number, a slow down in production will mean less costs....

[D]ealerships have been on news cast after news cast stating that the deals on GM brand cars will be attractive. This could actually serve to boost GM sales in the short term, and thus the impact to sub numbers (from a GM standpoint) may not be as bleak as it would have been....

Now, more than ever before, the bottom line is what everyone is looking at. Fewer installations will help the bottom line because those 1 to 3 year SAC investments will be fewer. This keeps cash in the coffers of Sirius XM, and that, in this economy, is a good thing.

Not sure if the market agrees. In the last month, SIRI's high was $0.53 on May 6. The June 5 price was $0.34, down from $0.35 on June 1.

Read the whole Sirius Buzz piece here.

Perhaps Chinese censorship IS bad for Chinese business. But what about Singapore?

On Tuesday I wrote a post entitled Why the Chinese aren't tweeting about the Hummer purchase, which observed that ironically, Chinese people were unable to tweet about a Chinese firm's purchase of Hummer. Why not? Because Twitter was blocked in China in an effort to minimize in-country disruptions as the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre approached. In a subsequent comment to the post, I observed:

[T]here's the starry-eyed idealist in me that believes that business benefits when there is a free flow of communication between businesspeople, but the fact that some businesses have done well in totalitarian governments indicates to me that my idealism may be misplaced.

Perhaps not. BusinessWeek links to a telecomasia.net post by Robert Clark that states that China may have harmed its business prospects:

All of this matters to the telecom and internet industries – not just because they are central to the whole system of censorship. They are – and direct control over them is crucial to the survival of one-party rule.

But it also means that China cannot permit the growth of an open and competitive telecom industry. It refuses to allow private or – in breach of its WTO commitments - foreign players into the market.

But Clark observes that these artifical controls on China's telecom industry also affect China's participation in the world market:

China Mobile’s sole foray abroad has been to buy the smallest and weakest player in Pakistan. Its political stunt in trying to buy into Taiwan is now an embarrassment.

Seven years after 3G was launched worldwide, Chinese consumers are today only just getting access to high-speed mobile services, while their government has spent billions on the TD-SCDMA boondoggle.

Read the rest of Clark's thoughts here. And BusinessWeek's Bruce Einhorn goes further:

And what’s true for the telecom industry is true for other Chinese industries deemed too sensitive for foreigners to touch. Compare China’s entertainment industry, for instance, to Bollywood to see another example of the government dooming its own companies to second-rate status by refusing to loosen its grip.

Are Clark and Einhorn right? Because if they are, then one would expect that Chinese business problems resulting from Chinese censorship would be paralleled by similar Singapore business problems resulting from Singapore censorship. In a 2007 post, I linked to a Reuters article on the Singapore Media Development Authority rap video:

It hopes the rap video will showcase its potential to be "a vibrant media city".

But critics say this ambition does not rhyme with Singapore's regular censorship of films and theatre and the many defamation lawsuits its government have launched against foreign media.

Well, if Bollywood is better than China, then maybe Indian rappers are better than Singapore rappers.



More to the point of social media, I linked to this Cherian George post:

More intriguing is whether social networking platforms would get around the PER's current restrictions on using e-mail to spread campaign messages. The regulations allow parties to mail to their own mailing lists, but parties can't encourage chain letters: an e-mail is not supposed to invite readers to pass it on to all their friends. This prohibition limits the powerful viral potential of e-mail communication.

And as for Singapore in 2009, this March 20 story is amusing:

It’s amusing to see the Singapore newspapers have not run the complete BBC interview with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. The broadsheet Straits Times and the freesheet Today have not published the last question asked in the interview, which can be heard in a five-and-a-half-minute audio clip on the BBC World Service website.

The interviewer said: “Finally, Prime Minister, I read that you are apparently the highest paid head of government in the world. Your salary is about four or five times what President Obama gets. Are you worth all that money?”

PM Lee laughed and said: “I am not comparing myself and I don’t look at these rankings.We go on a system which is open, honest, transparent...."

Transparent. Yet the Singapore publications wouldn't print this question and this answer. So in the future, which publication will you reference? I don't have access to a printed coyp [5:22 PM - OR, FOR THAT MATTER, A PRINTED COPY] of the Straits Times, but the truncated online version certainly doesn't discuss salary. But it does include this statement in the comments:

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The title of the Straits Times online article? "Govt will buffer impact."

Indeed they will.