David Smalley-Tech Genius

My deep and heartfelt thanks to David Smalley, an advanced course student at the University of Leeds, who has run an IT department with employees in three countries. David had two suggestion for the tech anomaly headaches I was facing yesterday.

You may recall that my new X40 keyboard was skipping letters and that my Dell utility disk would not let me load my print drivers onto a non-Dell computer. David sent two tips and both worked. The driver one s a bit complicated, but he devised a way to work around the problem.  To solve my mystifying keyboard problems, he advised me to go to the Accessibility section of my Windows Control panel and turn all option on then off.

Both of these suggestions have worked.  I'm amazed and  am thankful.

I am also very impressed with what happened after I posted yesterday regarding IBM/Lenovo.  Within minutes, Todd Watson, who got me this Thinkpad, saw my posting and called from his mother's house where he is on Christmas Holiday.  he voiced a very high level of concern and said he would get some tech people on the case.  Two hours later another IBM representative called, getting my voicemail and leaving a message that e would put a tech support person on the case. Still later in the day Christne Freel, who handles executive relations for the president of Lenova in the US (I may have the titles botched a bit), called to talk with me about the problem.  We ended up chatting for a half hour and it became very human discussing the banana slug mascot at her alma mater college--UC Santa Cruz and what it's like to culturally transition from IBM to Lenova.

My month-long tech problems appear to be solved, but that's personal.  The bigger issue is just look at the role blogging has had in all this. I asked the blogosphere to solve two really odd problems, and within 24 hours David Smalley located in a school 5000 miles from where I sit gave me the answers. We don't know each other in real life and until he reached out, I had never heard of David, and didn't know he visited my blog.

As for the Thinkpad people at IBM & Lenova Three people called me within six hours, all f them in management level positions. That is just dazzling if you ask me. Compare that with what experiences I--and so many other people--have had with Dell and other companies, who block communications with unhappy customers, by websites, voice processing and now blogs.  I know where my loyalties lie and will remain for a very long time.

A few days ago Andrew Denny, very sincerely challenged whether it was appropriate for me to keep writing about this tech saga, particularly ranting about Dell, on this site. It made me think twice about what  have been doing. But my conclusion is that this sage has been entirely on spot.

Naked Conversations is about companies and customers getting closer together. It's about companies listening to unhappy customers and responding. It's also about the wisdom of crowds and David Smalley just showed how the combined wisdom of the blogosphere solves problems and finds answers with extreme efficiency.

Now, I have nothing more to say about tech problems. I just want to see the tools without hardly thinking about them, just like most people.

Comments

[Kami Huyse]

First of all, I have enjoyed reading about your saga, especially since I am considering buying a laptop myself sometime later this year.

One thing makes me wonder though, you are an "A-list" blogger with much WOM influence. Maybe smaller fry won't get the same action when they experience a "problem."

However, I am glad to see that IBM/Levano takes the blogosphere seriously. It is a good case study in customer service.

[shel israel]

As usual, Kami, you raise a good point. But when a company starts understanding how the social network works, they quickly understand that someone with "low ratings" has the same power as a so-called A-Lister, because we are all connected, because we read each other. Look what happened when EA Spouse, a blogger with near-zero readership complained about her husbands working conditions at Electronic Arts. The company has settled the first of two employee abuse suits for $15.4 million. I'll also bet the "A-List" game developers will go anywhere before they join EA. All because the company discounted a blogger who the considered to be a "smaller fry."

BTW, because the company as been so good to me, it's "Lenovo," not Levano.

[Tom Raftery]

"someone with "low ratings" has the same power as a so-called A-Lister, because we are all connected"

I don't completely agree Shel - for instance, in my own, very modestly linked blog, I broke the story of Yahoo! buying Del.icio.us 24 hours before the announcement was made and around 12 hours before anyone else published anything.

I emailed Mike Arrington and he left a comment on Steve Rubel's site an hour or more after I emailed him.

Nobody noticed.

Or, not until Mike published the story along with others the following day.

Had Mike, or another hyper-connected blogger published when I did, everyone would have known about it in no time.

[David Smalley]

Hey Shel,

Thanks for your kind words. Your blog has been in my aggregator for a while after picking up your work on Naked Conversations (your personal blog as well :-)

It's a strange web of connections really, in fact I am also connected to you through LinkedIn (Follow Tom Raftery's connections on linkedin!). I'm linked from his blog and also host my on the same shared hosting server as Tom!

Stange world really...glad I could help you fix your problems :)

[Kami Huyse]

I am back to eat crow. I was having a heck of a time claiming my blog on Technorati so I complained on it in another comment yesteday at the Media Orchard, with this dicussion fully in mind.

Today, David Sifry himself fixed my problem. Of course, I complained about it in another highly-rated blog. Still, I have to bend to the idea that we all have a voice.

[sare mortazavi]

i want to register my invention. can you help me? what am i doing?