Global Neighbourhoods

Toronto Trip Report

I just loved my 3-night, 2-day whirlwind book-promoting visit to Toronto. I met so many quality people I can't start singling them out for fear of offense through omission. But here are some thoughts and anecdotes that pop into my mind as I fly home.

• The thing you should never leave home without is your passport. I talked my way into Canada with relative ease, but was heavily warned the hard part would be getting back into the country where I was born and reside. If I were an Arab terrorist, my name would have been a clever subliminal message. In any case, my wife must love me, because she sent it by overnight mail. It got int my hands more than four hours after FedEx guaranteed it would.  Does that mean I get a refund? How about an apology or nearly freaking out.
• I spoke at two events sponsored by the Association of Internet Marketing and Sales (AIMS) and batted .500 in terms of audience reception.  I was relatively well-received by about 50 marketing professionals in one talk.  A similar presentation to C-level executives on the prior day was more tepidly received. I could blame them, except Jim Estill, the blogging CEO of Synnex Canada, followed me and was more warmly received. He gave a simple, straight-talking, highly personalized talk.  Even I enjoyed his more than mine.

Personal lesson #1: If I want to have a naked conversation know your audience. Know what they want of you. Sometimes I think, it would be smart to start with a Q&A, then deliver the talk. Personal Lesson #2: If your first joke fails, quit trying to be funny.

Thank god for the paucity of ripe fruit during Canadian Winters.

• Amber Mac is Canada's most popular video and audio podcaster (and TV personality).  She much prettier than Microsoft's most popular video podcaster, and it turns out she used to work for then as well  Amber tried to co-interview me with the venerable podcast giant Leo LaPorte. We should do a sitcom on this one.  Amber and I tried to set up in the stodgy hallway's of some sort of exclusive "club," where we had both just spoken to AIMS marketing folk.  As we tried to get audio connected with Leo, a troupe of white coated staff started moving the furniture around. We couldn't get wifi set up. The Club engineer gave us an antenna.  Every time we tried to get going another parade of people passed by.  Finally we moved into the club's Internet room where two people were checking email and trying desperately to ignore us.  When we finally got Leo plugged in, Amber and I were getting feedback from our microphones, o we had to sit back-to-back.  I would hear her speak about ten seconds after she had spoken. Technically, it was a fiasco and we had to reschedule.

Lesson: Sometimes the technology sucks and you just can't blame it on Microsoft.

• I was interviewed on ROB TV's SqueezePlay, a national TV news segment. It went well, except I kept calling the host, whose name is Amanda--Heather. It was not my first TV appearance for Naked, but it was the first time, I was ever required to wear makeup. It was a trip to watch the right side of my face get younger, followed by my left side. A few dabs of something on my skull and my bald spot covered up nicely. A quick powder on the forehead and poof--that unsightly shine disappears. After my seven minutes of fame, my regained youth washed off rather easily.

Lesson: Plastic Surgery may be longer-lasting, but makeup is cheaper and faster.

• Most Canadians with whom I talked tech, told me two things repeatedly: (1) Canadians are very polite, and (2) Canada lag far behind the US in blogging despite the fact it leads the US in broadband availability. I found the former statement to be entirely true, although I watch part of a hockey game that indicated there were limits to how widespread the courtesy goes.  The latter is also true.  Yet, this object in Silicon Valley's mirror is closer than it realizes.  They have an increasing number of internationally admired bloggers.  They have a growing community and you can see wells of passion for it getting deeper. I am very optimistic about what will happen in the Toronto-Ottawa area over the next year.

It seems to me they are in for a Hell of a ride.

Mercury Spotlights Arrington

Matt Marshall has done a wonderful San Jose Mercury News interview with Michael Arrington of TechCrunch.  Matt is right to identify Michael as an individual of emerging importance in the rapidly emerging Web 2.0 marketplace.

In my view, Web 2.0 is underrated, not over-rated.  As the global tech community finally heals from the scars of dotcom, the ingredients are being mixed together for yet another explosion that changes the world once again. Michael is at the center of all that and I predict that he is going to become a lot more important than he already has become. A lot more.

I do take issue with just one of his comments, but I'm probably in the minority on it.  Michael claims the current explosion is different from the dotcom era because companies this time are getting acquired by the winners of the last explosion such as Google and Yahoo. Personally, I believe that a new period of dotcom IPOs is not that far into the future. Some of the tiny companies now forming are going to become very important and very central to people's lives.

Even better than being acquired by today's Google, is to become the next Google. Why not? Google is becoming the next Microsoft, just like in ts prime, Microsoft became the next IBM.

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.

Calling Tech Support--Help Me!

I thought my tales of computer woes were behind me.  Even I am getting bored with them. But I have two new problems and I can only blame one of them on Dell. Let's start with that one.

Problem #1: My new Thinkpad had no drivers for my old Dell Printer. No problem, I thought, so I put the utilities disk that came with the old Dell into my new Thinkpad, to download the driver.  The result? I got a message that that said something like, "This is not a Dell Computer and therefore we will not let you load the drivers Nyah. Nyah. Nyah."  So I went to the Dell website and tried to download the drivers from there. No dice. There has to be a workaround for this.  There just has to be or I have to buy a new printer, which does not thrill me at all.

Any suggestions?

Problem #2: This one scares me more. You ma recall how I lost my "I" on the Dell and even did a couple of posts using an "8" to replace it. Well the new Thinkpad, seems to be missing key strikes all over the place--although the "I" tends to work fine.  really, really, really don't want to have to send my new notebook back to IBM. Fr one thing, that would put me back on my %$#$#@ Dell. Somewhere n my dusty,aged memory bank I recall having this problem previously with a notebook computer, until one of my good techie friends sat down and did one of those quick, magical things that techies sometimes do.

Does anyone know how to fix this problem? Please help me. I'll be your friend forever. I promise.