Tis’ the season for summation of the past and prediction of the future.

In the week between Christmas and New Year’s, oodles of articles about what 2010 has been, and what 2011 will be, will litter magazines, twitter streams, and television programs across the nation.  In 2010 experts weighed in on a variety of fascinating possibilities which included: Expanding location based services, user-interface advancements, a world of screens, and my personal favorite, Gink. Spend 2 minutes looking, and you’ll find no shortage of people asking and answering the question, “What’s Next?”.

It makes perfect sense that it’s a common topic of conversation.

Emerging technologies and applications have changed world of marketing, PR and communications for organizations dramatically in the past 5 years, and the next 5 will bring more of the same.   So it is natural and responsible for organizational leaders to strive for understanding of the technologies and trends that will be affecting their world, right?  I propose that there is a better way.

To ask “What’s Next” can be a helpful exercise, but only to a point.

The problem with this question is that even with unlimited research and wealth, the answers are varied, vague, skewed by trends, and are fundamentally reactive in nature.”What’s Next” is tied to the future of the broader marketplace, not to the future of your organization.

Even in perfect execution the answer to this question yields you nothing more than a first mover advantage, which is a good start, but needs competent execution to be tied back to revenue.  There are only a handful of organizations positioned to benefit much by taking this high risk, limited reward approach.

Want better return on your time and energy? Try framing the convergence of technology and your business by asking the following 3 questions:

1. What problem or objective haven’t I been able to solve or achieve?
2. What technologies/communication media (old or new) could I employ in a fresh way that could help me?
3. How can I implement this technology/communication strategy in a way that:

• fits my budget
• works in concert with current efforts
• leverages momentum to amplify results
• can be tested against established objectives

True innovators are those who take a fresh approach and pioneer a unique prescription to fulfill their organizations’ goals.  They set the industry standard instead of following it.  Their initiatives are custom built around their objectives and challenges, and always have clear ties to revenue.

It’s a subtle distinction but can make a big difference.  Will you spend next quarter scouring the business journals and social media looking for articles about the next big thing, or will you enjoy being touted as the subject of that article?

Questions/Comments? Please feel free to email me at brad.bierwagen@mediasauce.com or follow Brad at @bradbierwagen

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I am fan of vegetables…not just the lovable pop culture staples (raw carrots w/ranch,  baked potato), but the hardcore, traditionally scorned, green vegetables.  Although their deliciousness can be a divisive topic,  few deny they are an important part of a balanced diet and essential to a person’s healthy development.

Disagree?…stay with me anyway – relevance to your organization can be found shortly below…

I credit my parents with my personal affinity for the fresh and green.  With my older sister, my parents took the “You can’t leave the table till you’ve eaten all of your peas” route. It turns out Kristin is almost as stubborn as my father, so by the time the vegetables were choked down and everyone had been fighting for a few hours, it left a literal and metaphorical bad taste in her mouth. She’s picky about vegetables to this day.

Mom and Dad tried a different method with me. I never had to stay at the table till my veggies were eaten – but they did ask that once every six months I give the vegetables I thought I didn’t like an honest try. I couldn’t just make a predetermined decision, stick them in my mouth and spit them out quickly. I had to take a few good bites and really give them a chance.  If I did, I was off the hook.

Little by little I came to like the idea of trying new things, and enjoyed the vegetables more and more.  I believe this same technique holds true for new media and organizational leadership.   It’s our job to guide and inform, not to force ourselves into what everyone else is doing.

As a business developer for MediaSauce, I meet with and speak to a variety of groups, in varying industries every week. Between and within vertical markets, there is a wide spectrum of understanding and adoption of online tools. Rapid Change, Industry Regulations, Technology Infrastructure, Liability Issues, Privacy Problems, Leadership that sees little revenue potential in new tools, and budget constraints are all cited as reasons for avoiding commitment to online as a communications strategy.

If your organization or industry requires that you be more cautious, or you are a later adopter, that’s ok! Organizations in every phase of innovation adoption have good reasons for being there, and there are advantages and disadvantages to each phase. However, much like vegetables, a great online presence is a vital part of a balanced communications strategy and is essential to organizational growth. It is good for you to be connected, and it is something any organization can learn to leverage.

Champions of new media sometimes hurt their cause by forcing the issue within the group, especially in organizations that are slower to embrace new technologies. Their reaction is to list others’ success stories, and when challenged with organizational bottlenecks the value prop doesn’t directly translate.  The trick (like with food) is in the context and presentation.

I encourage you to facilitate a high level conversation around the growth of online communication and how it will continue to affect your organization. Every six months (or more often if possible) bring your leaders together with the objective of simply having an open-minded discussion about the implications of an interconnected, online world.

The goal is to honestly consider costs and risks of pursuing something new, AND weigh them against the opportunities for success and potential for revenue growth. Think about some of the ways that you can use new tools to create relevance and value in everything you do. Consider the costs of maintaining status-quo. These are the conversations that connect and resonate with executives, board members, and organizational leaders.

What will be the outcome of these conversations? I can’t say. The reality is some of the available tools still will not taste right to your organization and that is ok. But, if you are approaching the conversation around costs and benefits, and making an effort to do so regularly, great steps forward will be a natural outcome.

Be careful though, or you may find yourself pleasantly surprised as a new fan of asparagus, organizational transparency, or Foursquare.

Questions/Comments? Please feel free to email me at brad.bierwagen@mediasauce.com or follow Brad at @bbierwag

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The USPS is has been in the news quite a bit lately as it battles plummeting volume, high fixed costs and massive losses.

Proposing no Saturday deliveries and raising stamp prices merely strikes at the branches and does not deal with the root issue of whether our beloved USPS is still relevant.

The truth is – Saturday deliveries or not – this downward spiral will continue to occur.  When the USPS has to keep increasing fees to continue covering losses, it drives more and more communication on-line.  With such a high fixed cost structure, the Post Office will be forced to continue drive prices higher and send their customer base scrambling to consider more economical modes of communication.

The heart of the issue here is our Postal Service is no longer relevant.

A few years ago I was asked to keynote a national panel of CD and DVD duplicators/replicators about the future of their industry.  Guess what, it didn’t go over too well…

As a tool to measure relevancy, I presented a concept of the “recovery time.” I simply asked the audience to consider the ramifications of eliminating their products and services from the marketplace.   The “recovery time” is the degree of pain the market would endure before the product’s replacement leaves us no longer wanting what we once had.

In addition to its application for the CD/DVD industry, I asked the audience to consider the “recovery time” of the newspaper industry, the corner video store, and the Postal Service.  Think of the long-term disruption if each of these were yanked away never to return.

Think about your own business and more specifically, how relevant are you to your clients and prospects?  If you’re feeling the world would have a short recovery time in your absence, it’s critically important start defining your real value by asking a few questions:

1. What would your 10 best customers say they value most about you, beyond your product and service?
2. What root issue, pain, or gap does your organization’s product or service solve/fill?  (Think transportation not wagon wheels, think editorial content not a physical newspaper)
3. What are your organizations unique talents?
4. What are there things you ask your customers and clients to pay a premium for, because you do them better than anyone else?

By asking yourself these sometimes uncomfortable questions and framing your discussions around them, you are addressing your business challenges at the root, and you may just find the additional relevancy and margin you’ve been seeking.

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Baby Boomers Kill TV for Internet

Baby Boomers are looking to kill TV subscriptions.  Now this is big news.  Granted it’s only a survey but to see people (Baby Boomers at that) start to shift their viewing habits away from TV and to computers should give advertisers a pause when it comes to the high rates of TV advertising.

“Among traditional TV viewers, an astonishing one-in-five (20%) say they’re likely to downgrade or cancel their current TV service package in the next 6 months. The likelihood of canceling is highest among Cable (22%) and Satellite subscribers (22%), and lowest among fiber-optic TV subscribers (7%).” – ChangeWave

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This post was published simultaneously on http://rallythecause.com. To view the discussion it generated there, feel free to jump over there after you finish reading the post.

Two Things You Need to Learn from this Post:

1. Character is at your core, image & brand are what you project to others, and reputation is how others perceive you. While you can control the first two, you cannot control the third.
2. The human mind is continually seeking to identify discrepancies between what others say they are and what they actually are. If the image you project is different than your character, the gap between the two will buckle and collapse under scrutiny.

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I recently spoke at Indiana Construction Roundtable and SMPS – Society for Marketing Professionals first joint seminar on “Social Media are Internet tools used for sharing and discussing information. Sites such as Facebook and Twitter help connect like-minded people, companies, and associations.”  They did a fairly quick interview with me that I would like to share with you.

I used a lot of my recent ISBDC conference information and you can check all those facts over here – stuff like Facebook being up 700% and how communication has risen 18% in overall time online.  Those are big numbers. more

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The anonymous Twitter account @amandachapel takes great joy in critiquing social media luminaries and serving as a contrarian voice in the echo chamber of social media. While this person can be caustic and take personal shots at people, I find the industry commentary and most of her questions to be of value.

Just this morning she posed four questions on Twitter that I think are worth exploring in greater detail.  Since @amandachapel doesn’t maintain an active blog, I’ll take the initiative to host the discussion here. I just ask that everyone maintains a civil discourse here. If you violate that tenet, I’ll remove your comments.

Here goes:

QUESTION: 1. What is the basis of the belief that indiscriminate empowerment is a good thing?

QUESTION: 2. What is the basis of the belief that indiscriminate communications is a good thing?

QUESTION: 3. What’s the basis for the belief that the unleashed unfettered unencumbered social groupings that form online are a good thing?

QUESTION: 4. What are the economic consequences of a society devoid of the ability to produce scale?

Feel free to answer any or all of these.

Find me on Twitter: @scottyhendo

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#1 You Need to Learn from This Post:
Like many human gatherings, Twitter has moved past the novelty stage and into a new, uncertain period.

A More Detailed Exploration:
Twitter has changed dramatically in the past six months. Not only has the number of registered users skyrocketed, but the nature of interactions have changed, too.  I’ve been around Twitter for a year now (it’s my paper anniversary, so please send paper my way – preferably something from the US Treasury) and have had a few conversations with others of similar, if not longer, tenures.

The unanimous consensus is that Twitter is a different creature now.  In the “early days” of Twitter, it felt like we had all just arrived for the start of a great party or conference. We were eager to find out as much as we could about each other, freely sharing, and eager for new connections. Now, we’ve found our circles of people we like hanging out with and eagerly seek them out from the crowd.  

To me, Twitter has become like the party or conference that’s gone on too long.  The excitement of meeting new people has given way to a growing weariness of seeing the same bunch of people everywhere. The panels and speakers are beginning to say pretty much the same thing as the previous ones. I’m getting tired of my hotel room, going out on the town, and eating out at restaurants all the time.

Yes, I’m aware it’s mostly my perception, but I know I’m not alone. This doesn’t mean I’m leaving Twitter. It means my frequency of using Twitter will go down and I’ll maintain the relationships with those I find to have enduring value to me.

What do you think? Has Twitter become like the party or conference that’s lost its novelty? How will this impact Twitter? Will Twitter become as irrelevant as the telegraph? Or as critical as the telephone?

 
Find me on Twitter (just less often):
@scottyhendo

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I am in Ottawa, Ontario, this week working with the Canadian War Museum. It’s been an interesting first twelve hours, as I have been engaged non-stop since my arrival.

After leading a workshop with the staff from the War Museum, I caught a taxi to my hotel down from Parliament Hill. Blocking my path was a large protest of Tamil Canadians who have converged to demand action by the Canadian government to establish a cease-fire in the war between the Sri Lankan army and the Tamil Tigers.

Between checking into my hotel and meeting friends for dinner, I walked up the hill and mingled with the protesters. It’s a peaceful demonstration with police redirecting traffic around the melange of ages, gender, and economic standing. With my iPhone camera and my Flip MinoHD, I captured sights and sounds of the daytime activities. After dinner, I returned for more and this time interviewed one of the student leaders involved.

Using the footage I took, I’ve pulled together this video to approximate my experience inside the protest:

In talking with the protesters, I was given the following website addresses. I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information contained on them. In fact, I cannot even vouch for the facts and events the protesters shared with me about the current situation inside Sri Lanka.  I can just share what was shared with me, including these websites they wanted the world to visit:

www.tamilsagainstgenocide.com
www.tamilnation.org
www.tamilnet.com
UK Guardian News Article

As I burn the midnight oil to write this post, I am preparing my final thoughts for the lunch keynote I’m presenting in about 11 hours. It’s entitled “The Battle for the Human Mind: Hosting the Great Debates of History Online” and will be part of a day long historical conference. As the only non-professional historian presenting, I get to explore digital and social media’s role in historical understanding.

A major issue I will be exploring is the tension between Experts and Amateurs. Now that we walk around with mobile devices, cameras, and video cameras in our pocket, we all can become citizen journalists and can use the bright, shiny light of the Internet to bring awareness to specific events and causes.

This has great implications. As I prepare for the historical conference, I wonder about many things. Specifically, I wonder where is the line between reporting on news events and interpreting that news as history? How will this affect our perceptions of history? Can everyone become historians?

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Two Things You Need to Know from This Post:

1. Social media helps people live, work, and play with each other (no matter the distance) by combining age-old ways of social interaction and the capabilities of mass media.
2. You can create transformational change when you use the antennas on the mountaintop to provide a common message and inspire the people in the valleys to interact, spread, customize, and amplify your message.

A More Detailed Exploration:
We have always lived, worked, and played with each other. For most of our history, we did all this in small groups. These groups grew, spreading out across great distances and having great obstacles between us. As our technology has advanced, so has our ability to live, work, and play with others – both near and far away.

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