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Pat Phelan captured my dog Brewster in action and spirit today as we bopped around at Bean Hollow Beach south of Half Moon Bay. This was Pat's first visit to Silicon Valley and I wanted to see why some of us feel this area is among the most beautiful in the world.
Thanks for a great day, and a remarkable photo, Pat.
Pat Phelan is in from Ireland for a couple of days to meet some people and talk about business strategy for his Roam4Free, next generation strategy. He has retty much figured out his company's strategy. Allow anyone, anywhere to call anyone else in another country, anywhere on earth at a fraction of current costs.
He's another player in a new generation of technology companies starting to get tons of attention for good reason. Pat had dinner in our home tonight with Paula and her mom and we had an absolute ball. The reason he's such a great blogger is he has no problem sharing his personal life along with his business in an almost effortless way.
Tomorrow Pat and I are going to meet some fol for breakfast then take my dog out to Mavericks Beach in Half moon Bay, then drive down the coast. He desreves to see some of California, considering how far he's come for the visit.
Pat is a dog person. He and his wife Carol serve as a foster home for guide dogs in training. Carol has an extraordinary record of success training these pups to serve blind people and autistic children.
The guy sitting next to me on the flight from Toronto to SFO and I got into gabbing while gulping down our carry-on lunches. It turned out that he’s in the business of producing franchise expositions all over North America and Canada.
I have about as much interest in the corporate franchise recruiting industry as I do in memorizing a Cleveland bus schedule. I imagine my companion in Row 22 feels the same way about blogging. But it’s a long flight so we chat to pass the time and, as is often the case, we both find ourselves surprised that the conversation actually turned interesting.
I tell him I’m coming back from a wonderfully successful trip. He tells me he is heading to San Mateo for his first money-loosing exposition since 1999. I remember 1999 as financially my best ever. His best years were 2001-3. I refer to those as my “should-I-sell-shoes-at-Nordstrom” era. It turns out that over the past 20 years, each time his business was booming, mine sucked.
We both stop and puzzle this. It's an unlikely connection. Is it pure coincidence or is there some relevant connectivity between our respective trades? We return to our respective reading material, but it’s a long flight and I am fascinated by unlikely marketing connections. I buy fresh fish at a little market in Half Moon Bay after walking my dog on the beach in the early morning. The owner always asks me if the surf’s up. It turns out that more surfers means late afternoon business and he calls in extra help.
I ask my travel companion if things are bad for him all over. Nope, last month Detroit was just about the best ever. A whole bunch of midlevel people got laid off Ford workers with large severance checks were eager to find a franchise in something that would give them a second start.
And then it hits me. Every time a regional economy implodes, midlevel people with some money, but not enough money, people who often counted on an employer who let them down, say “screw this. I’m going to work for myself. I’m going to find something completely new.” Come to think of it a franchise might have been more for me the the Nordstrom shoe job.
We exchange cards and promise to ping each other every six months or so to discuss how business is doing. We may have found a pretty decent way to predict how our respective businesses are doing.
Dell Computer, in my opinion is doing a good job of turning around public perceptions essentially by turning around its own behavior with real actions, rather than multi-million dollar ad campaigns. I think their blog http://www.direct2dell.com/default.aspx is an essential component of it. But the commitment to repair their oxymoronic support with a $100 million commitment and their recent handling of the battery crisis are also parts.
But where the Hell is Sony (no link available)?
The behemoth consumer electronics company has yet to step forward and say that they are sorry the batteries they sell to other computer companies occasionally and abruptly became consumed in flames.
Why have they not stepped up to say they regret that one of their products when used as directed can result in the death or partially singed appendages? They have not publicly owned up to the fact that their business partners have suffered a costly embarrassment because of their trusted relationship.
Since they have been very close to mute on this subject, I can only speculate, which is precisely what I’ll do here. Please keep in mind that the following scenario is solely a product of my imagination. It could be almost as wrong as when I wrote in my former other blog that George Bush had zero chance to be reelected.
Sony, like a great many in the computer industry got surprised a couple of years back when sales of notebook computers began to exceed expectations. Like most global manufacturers, they produce product based on projections. They suddenly were blessed with the problem of having to ramp up fast.
We’ve all been there. There’s a business opportunity. You weren’t ready, but you shake it out and you get ready. In the case of mass production that means you cut corners. Frequently the easiest corner to round out just a tad is quality control. It was not oversight. It was a calculation done by a risk analyst who looked at the situation and determined that so many hours could be saved and so much more product could be delivered and so much revenue could be realized if we just allowed the probability of a battery exploding to rise b maybe 2-3 percentage points.
Some executive decision maker at Sony weighed the pros and cons and went with the pros. This was not evil or terribly callous. It was calculated and the decision put people at risk.
My guess is that the decision maker in one way or another has realized a downturn in his career path. In fact if Sony announced that the guy has decided to leave the company to dedicate more time to gardening, I would think more highly of the company. I imagine other employees in this classically top-down enterprise would get a message that lowering the cost of goods sold by raising the threat to human safety is just not the Sony way.
But since I have not heard Sony speak on this subject, then I have to wonder if maybe it is indeed the Sony way.
Anyone who has ever dabbled in the communications industry knows the scenario. Something awful happens, a drunken sea captain ground an oil tanker that should have had a double hull and causes an environmental disaster. Some nutcase puts poison into a Tylenol bottle. An organic farmer grows spinach that is somehow infected with sometimes deadly Ecolli bacteria.
The lawyers sit on one side of the table the marketing folk on the other. At the head of the table is the CEO and at the foot the CFO. The communications folk say you have to apologize. You have to tell people you’re sorry they almost got killed or in some cases actually did. You have to send the entire executive team up to Alaska to have the CEO video-taped in rubber boots helping to clean off the oil soaked birds amid the dying fish
The lawyers stare at the marketing people as if they were addressing a toddler with a learning disability. If you say you’re sorry, you are implying culpability. To do so would increase the possibility of lawsuits.
The discussion goes on for a while. Tempers flare. The conversation starts getting circular. At some point, all eyes turn to the CEO, who is looking at the CFO.
What happens next can go either way. The decision will paint or taint the brand for years to come. I buy Tylenol. I don’t buy Exxon gas, even though the company seems to do just fine without my support. I never eat at Jack in the Box, which isn’t a big deal because I rarely ever have.
But I imagine there are lots of people like me and I would guess that blog conversations may increase this sort of buyer decision making.
I think I know which side of the table the Sony decision maker listened to. Maybe the marketing folk never even got a hearing. I wouldn’t know. Sony is a very private company.
The funny thing for me is that our next big household expense will probably be an HDTV, once I figure out the LCD v Plasma issues. There is a very nice Sony store in the Stanford Mall where I sometimes shop. I jus spent an hour getting educated by a very nice Sony sales guy.
But all things considered, I think I’ll go with another brand.
Joe Thornley and Terry Fallis are two guys with a PR agency, mostly serving Toronto and Ottawa. They have personal roots in government communications and big agencies and it seems like most of the technology, business and political communities of Ottawa connect with them one way or another. They are smart, friendly, visionary and transparent by nature.
I was thrilled when Joe and Terry made their Thornley Fallis agency the first to sponsor me on a speaking tour. It was a flat rate so they crammed it into sort of an all-you-can eat deal. They worked me hard for two and half days, through six events and a few traditional media interviews and a couple of TV appearances. A couple of their staff became my handlers, pushing me away from people, in front of microphones, cameras and taxicabs. I used to be the handler, not the handlee and I enjoyed the irony of it all.
Now, I'm as much of a shameless self promoter as the next guy, with a genuine evangelical streak when it comes to social media. Plus, my new book is very much about the impact of social media on otherwise diverse cultures, so when they extended their invitation, accepting was a no brainer.
But I have to admit that I was left scratching my head as to what was in it for them. Why would they spend perfectly good money, time and human resources to schlep me around Canada? They are in the business of PR and Naked Conversations stated that the PR agency was in a change or die situation because of blogging and social media. I often joke about being a recovering publicist and all this is hardly a ringing endorsement for the existing PR industry. reporters and cameras, parade me in front of their clients and prospects most of whom do not blog? Why pay me to stand in front of the PR communities of Ottawa and Toronto, where most of their most vigorous competitors sat and listened on the Thornley Fallis dime?
The answer evolved over the three days we were together having conversations nearly nonstop naked conversations.
Joe and Terry revealed a healthy blend of altruism and business acumen, They are both filled with an authentic enthusiasm for social media. They see opportunities for them in the connectivity of a smaller flatter world. They believe the communications mechanisms of social media are better for them, better for their clients and simultaneously inevitable.
So, with that part being said, they understood that the best way to be influential in this new emerging community is to be generous to it and that was part of why they invested in my coming. Like me, they do not really know what the PR agency of the future looks like as corporate communications move from from monologue to dialog. But they do understand that it is much smarter to discover the answer from the front of the pack than from the rear. Like me, they are not absolutely sure that there will actually be PR agencies in the future. But there will always be a need for business communications experts and the greatest need for that expertise these days is in the social media.
In retrospect, Joe and Terry are two lovable, but shrewd cookies. They get that in the PR business, doing what you've always done may result in a new career in the restaurant service industry. They understand that disruption happens and as professional communicators they get that what they have always done is not what they will be doing tomorrow and the day after. And by immersing themselves in social media, rather than resisting, disdaining, denying or despising these changes they are embracing and loving it.
That makes them thought leaders, and by bringing me up they connect with me and the people I connect with, which on a good day,will give them and their clients greater access to American and even European markets, which is a good thing for business people in a small country that borders with a larger country.
In short, I was a nice step in helping Thornley-Fallis become the go-to guys in their corner of this small, flat world and I am very happy to be so warmly connected with them
I will be in the air between Ottawa and Toronto this afternoon during a segment at the DEMO conference where my two clients, CUTS and Scrapblog will be presenting about six minutes apart from each other. I will be on the edge of my Air Canada seat.
I've had a decent track record during the years I've been coaching startups in preparation for the semi-annual festival of entrepreneurialism and I think both of these companies are among the most promising I've worked with in this light.
CUTS lets you do what you want with your copyrighted digital video materials. It does it in a way that seems to make it legal. Scrapblog name gives it away, as did today's glorious Techcrunch article. But it also introduces a whole new form of social media that has a great deal of promise moving forward.
I am having a ball in Ottawa. Last night, I felt I was very well-received at the very first "Third Monday," a spinoff of the Silicon Valley Third Thursday, Both of which are by and for communications industry professionals. Tonight, I help kickoff Third Tuesday. These events are going to have to soon spill over into a new week.
I'm getting to love and understand Canada and its interdependence on American business and politics. I hope to get to spend more time here. But to be absolutely honest, I wish Scotty good beam me over to San Diego just for tonight. It will be after midnight when the DEMO Gods get announced and I am fearful I will have insomnia, wondering about the results.
(Major's Park, Ottawa. Photo by Shel Israel)
I am currently in Ottawa, a wonderful city, where I am doing a series of talks, under the sponsorship of Thornley-Fallis Communications. There are so many things to blog about, but all my spare time is being spent with trying to figure out why my email has melted down, both in Outlook and in my cellphone client.
Until the mystery gets solved, please email me at shelisrael1@yahoo.com. If you have emailed me in the last 72 hours please assume I have NOT seen your message.
I have spent the last three days mostly sequestered at the Redwood City Hotel Sofitel with Carlos Garcia, the CEO of Scrapblog. I think the technology is going to be kick-ass at DEMO when he launches next week [more about my DEMO thoughts in an upcoming blog].
What he just did took me by surprise. He just started the Scrapblog Blog and he begins with a very nice post about the journey he is on. If you get a chance, check it out and leave him a welcome comment.
I have a very good feeling about this little company, so it's nice to know Carlos and his group when they are so small and just coming out of the delivery room and into the wonderful and burgeoning world of social media companies
My friend Michael Arrington has written a moderate broadside toward a few next generation startups offering cheap-to-free telephony services. He rightfully observes that each of them remain difficult to use. But he misses a very key point. In fact, it seems to me, he misses several. Let me explain.
Jajah, Rebtel and other players have really only just begun. He mentions that Rebtel just landed a whopping $20 million in investment. What does he think those guys are going to do with the money stuff under a mattress? Does he really think that the people behind the company d not have plans to make the new VOIP service easier to use?
He also complains that no one is going to use the services because they have to be tethered to their computers. Well, it's a good thing the founders of Skype had not listened to Michael with that advice.
Jajah has only been live for a few weeks and rumors are rampant that they already have over a million users, so Michael's claim that no one's going to use the stuff may be more tan slightly overstating the case. Further, he plays coy about Jajah's announcement next week. Both Michael and I are under NDA and we know a fair amount about what will be announced and Michaels has to know that it takes a significant step away from being tethered to a computer.
Michael also observes that incumbents are already lowering their long-distance rates. But in no way, does he connect dots that incumbents can afford to lower rates because they have been bilking customers with long distance overcharges for years. Does it occur to Michael, that maybe, just maybe the new competition is driving prices down, and that the new competition above everything else is good for phone users everywhere.
These new companies have just started. Yeah, the stuff so far is kludgey and clunky. But they will get better. before long some solution will emerge that are dial tone easy to use. That's what always happens with disruptive technology.
Allan Jenkins has also been bitten by the Bitacle [no link intended] by Jesus Angelo Gletz, the Bitacle thief and has relegated him to Dante's 8th circle of Hell along with spammers and scrapers and I assume pickpockets. Thanks, Allan. I liked your piece and it's simultaneously nice to know I'm not alone and disturbing.
Pat Phelan found Jesus Angelo Glez in Spain +34628644317 I just phoned Jesus. I wanted to engage him in a naked conversation, but there was no answer. If, Jesus had answered, I don't think he'd be transparent with me anyway. He just does not seem to me to be a very transparent, bloggy kind of guy.
Maybe you could call him and try. Call day or night from any time zone. Use either the new Rebtel or Jajah services, to make your call nearly free.
Sometimes, the blogosphere reminds me of the Cold War days. The bad guys keep coming up with new ways to be bad. The good guys keep finding tools to beat them, blog them and discourage them. each side is always escalating all the time.
I would hate to know how much time I have spent weeding spam from my comments, blocking trackbacks, telling Typepad which URLs to block since I started blogging. Then add that up for all the bloggers everywhere. This is not small potatoes.
What must be small potatoes is how much money Jesus and his slimeball cohorts is making off of me, and Aan and all the other people from whom Binacle is stealing. I guess sooner or later it adds up.
I'm not the guy whose going to haul in the lawyers. It's just not my style. But when it does happen, I will shed no tears for the Binacle pirates of Spain.
