ShaneFreeman.com

So after two round trip drives to the local Charter office in St. Louis (8o minutes on the road), 10 minutes in line at customer server, over an hour on the phone with tech support I’ve finally received a new Motorola PVR from Charter.  About a month ago my Moxi box kept rebooting so I drove to the office and requested a Motorola.  I like the guide better and they have more recording time.  After driving home I came to realize that the new box they gave me didn’t work either so after 45 minutes on the phone I drove back to Charter and received another replacement Motorola.

At this point I was a little upset but never got out of line nor raised my voice to the customer service rep.  I asked if he would offer me a credit and he said sure, $20 for the box.  I didn’t think that equal to the crap I had already put up with and asked if that was all he could do.  He then asked me how much I wanted and I suggested a free month of cable (about $50).  I explained to him that I took the morning off and that my time was valuable and that frankly I was doing a lot of running around dealing with their faulty equipment.  Come to find out he really didn’t care how I answered his question because he was only going to give me the $20 anyway because, “that’s how much the box rents for.”

I asked to speak with his manager and he stated she wasn’t in on Saturday but he’d be happy to take my name and number and have her call me on Monday.  Well, it’s now Wednesday night and I still haven’t gotten a return phone call and I see no sign up getting any additional refund.  So, Tony Dean (customer service rep) and Jill Girard (Tony’s manager) thanks for nothing.  I really appreciate your commitment to helping a faithful 15 year customer.

In the end, I brought the second Motorola box home, plugged it in and for the next 5 hours it rebooted itself at least once an hour and would also not record anything to the DVR.  I called customer service back and they scheduled a tech to come onsite…two days later.  I will say this; Tuesday morning a very friendly tech came to the house, installed a brand new Motorola box, made sure everything worked and even asked me if there was anything else he could do.  I don’t think I’ve ever had a bad experience with Charter’s onsite techs.  They come in, know their sh*t, get the job done and are happy to help in way they can.  So onsite guys, thank you for being exceptional!

Now that the box was working I was trying to program the new remote.  I searched a number of places on Charter’s site and the Internet in general but couldn’t figure out how the program the little colored A, B, C, D buttons.  For lack of other options I tried online support and here is the real genesis of this blog post.

Thank you for choosing Charter Chat Live! A Customer Care representative from Cable TV Support will be with you shortly.
You have been connected to TTD Greville .
TTD Greville : Hi. My name is Greville. Thank you for contacting Charter Communications. How may I assist you today?
Shane Freeman: I have a model UR4U–MDVR–CHD2 remote for my motorola PVR and would like to program the A B C D buttons. Can you provide me with info to do that?
TTD Greville : http://www.charter.com/customers/support.aspx?supportarticleid=26
TTD Greville : Below are the instructions for programming your remote control:
1. Turn on the equipment you would like your remote to operate.
2. Press the corresponding button on the remote. (TV, VCR, Cable, Audio)
3. Press and hold the SETUP button on the remote until the red light blinks twice, then release SETUP.
4. Enter the four-digit code for you brand of television. (See Remote Codes)
5. Aim the remote at the component and press POWER. The equipment should turn off. If it does not, repeat steps 2-4 until the power turns off.
Shane Freeman: first my remote does not have a setup button. Second I want to program a specific button
Shane Freeman: not an entire device
TTD Greville : Please give me one moment.
TTD Greville : Please try to visit this link: http://www.charter.com/Customers/Support.aspx?MenuItem=2&tab=tabeugd#tabContent_EUGD
TTD Greville : You can down load the manual from that link.
Shane Freeman: This tells me how to program an entire component (aux, dvd, tv) but never tells me how the program the A, B, C and D buttons. That’s what I’m trying to do
TTD Greville : Please call 1-888-438-2427 and be routed to our Technical Support. Thank you.
TTD Greville : Thank you for choosing Charter Communications. If you have further questions, please chat with us again. Our chat support is available 24/7. Have a great day!
If you require further assistance, go to www.charter.com/contact
Your session has ended. You may now close this window.

Now granted I wasn’t soft soaping this conversation but I also wasn’t being rude or threatening.  My request was simple, I wanted to program the A, B, C, D buttons…period.  Do customers today not at least deserve the common courtesy of a friendly, “sorry I can’t seem to find any information on how to do this.”  I know damn well that her last two messages are canned responses and she was doing nothing more than dumping me as quickly as she possibly could.

It’s really too bad that we don’t understand the value of good customer service anymore.  Everyone wants the money before they’ll provide good service rather than the other way around.  It’s also too bad that AT&T has service in St. Louis because I’m finally canceling my service with Charter.  After 15 years of faithful service, paying over $100 per month for the past 10 years for high speed Internet and cable I’ve finally had it.  Greville, Tony Dean and Jill Girard could have done something to stop it but they were all too interested in moving to the next customer.  Maybe Charter should put a field on their customer account screen that says how much money this customer has paid them since the beginning of their contract.  Mine would have said around $16,500.  It’s too bad they won’t get the next $16K.

I’ve had the opportunity to attend three separate conferences this year all will supposed industry experts ranging in skills from user experience, online marketing, web content management, social media, and many more.  It never fails that one of the experts and every conference at some point mentions, “oh, you better get started with video…it’s the next big thing.”

It at that very moment that the presenter looses a great deal of credibility with me.  Granted this happens with every new technology as indicated by Gartner’s Hype Cycle but I think it’s time to at least scratch the surface of this video conundrum.  Not dissimilar to social media I have a lot of people telling me, “we need video on our website” much the same way they were saying, “I need a Twitter account twelve months ago.”  Before you jump in a buy yourself a thousand dollar camera, Final Cut pro and a $5,000 Macbook Pro with 10 GB of RAM let’s discuss this a little bit.

Let’s take this video for example:

Let me start by saying this is one of my favorite videos on the Net.  Maybe because it reminds me of my younger years and the 93 games I owed for Atari but this video has very little, if any, value to the average, everyday business user.  Would you agree?

Next let’s take a look at this video/blog post:

Toni Bowers from Techrepublic happens to be one of my bloggers and helped me out a great deal when I was looking for my new job.  Just read a couple posts from her blog and you’ll see what I mean.

So I would ask, dear readers, which blog holds more value?  Now get past the point of the subject matter and focus just on the nature of content contained in the video.  Here’s your choices:

1. The one that has no intrinsic useful content but shows amazing video editing skills and creativity  or
2. The one that actually has real content

Discuss…

My vote for the video that holds more value, independent of subject matter, is 1.  Why, because they’re using video for the right reason.  They are taking content that cannot be expressed any other way, using the medium in which it was intended for and providing amazing content to boot.  Video B is taking content that is much more suited for blog form and stuffing it into brightly colored wrapping paper in an effort to make sure they’re following the trend of the next big thing.

I wonder how much money they spent producing that video?  How much for the camera, the graphics, the green screen effects, not to mention the time it took for actually shoot the video with multiple takes.  On top of that then they have to have someone transcribe the video to make sure the search engines are able to suck up all that content.  Frankly, I go to a page like this, pause the video and read the transcript anyway.

Getting back to the heart of the matter…do you need video on your site?  That’s a very good questions but I would suggest coming up with answer based on business value rather than desire.  You see I have a lot of “wants” and “needs” in my life and in many cases your website is the same way.  So ask yourself this, “do you want videos on your website or do your users want video on your website?”  If it’s you go get a second opinion, if it’s your users start calculating the business case.

What?  You say you don’t know if your users want video?  Solve that problem and your video question may answer itself.

Let me know what you think.  When is video the right answer?  When is it unnecessary or overkill?  If you’re struggling with coming up with the answer give me a call.  I’d be happy to walk you through the process.  If you’ve already made the decision to put video on your site let’s talk anyway.  There are a number of factors to keep in mind getting into the video arena.  Everything from quality to production to SEO to content management and a hundred more variables you’re not considering today.  I’ll give you an hour of time for free just to make sure you’re headed in the right direction.

When Sitecore CEO, Michael Seiffert made his way up to the podium at the beginning of Dreamcore 2010 he set the tone of the entire engagement by focusing conferences-goers attention on the concept of “digital intimacy.”  The term had a great ring to it and I began wondering if this was a Sitecore original or something they had picked up elsewhere.  Doing a quick Google search on my phone I quickly realized that the adult industry had, not surprisingly, already began using this terminology in a much different way that Michael Seiffert was but after a little more digging I also found that Clive Thompson from the New York Times was using it as far back as September 2008 in his article, “Brave New World of Digital Intimacy.”  Here is one one of my favorites paragraphs in the article:

“Young people at college are the ones to experience this most viscerally, because, with more than 90 percent of their peers using Facebook, it is especially difficult for them to opt out. Zeynep Tufekci, a sociologist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, who has closely studied how college-age users are reacting to the world of awareness, told me that athletes used to sneak off to parties illicitly, breaking the no-drinking rule for team members. But then camera phones and Facebook came along, with students posting photos of the drunken carousing during the party; savvy coaches could see which athletes were breaking the rules. First the athletes tried to fight back by waking up early the morning after the party in a hungover daze to detag photos of themselves so they wouldn’t be searchable. But that didn’t work, because the coaches sometimes viewed the pictures live, as they went online at 2 a.m. So parties simply began banning all camera phones in a last-ditch attempt to preserve privacy.”

Now for these imbibing college athletes (customers) this notion of “always on” digital intimacy was becoming a problem.  They were trying to conceal something that would damage their relationship with their coach (supplier).  The coach (salesman) on the other hand was using technology to keep track of his players (customers) to build a better team and make sure the best players were showing up on game day.

Now let’s completely change the setting and look at a car salesman.  When you walk on the lot on Saturday looking for a new Dodge Charger (I so frickin’ want one of these cars!) the salesman is going to start asking some questions about what you’re looking for in a car, how much you’re wanting to spend, what type of driving you do, and so on.  If this salesman is any good they’re going to sell you on the whole package rather than the traditional snake-oil car salesman we think of from the days of yore.  In the end you answer all his questions, do some looking around and say you’ll stop by after you’ve done your due diligence.

Now, seven days later you come back to that same dealership and the same salesperson sees you pull in.  You get out of your beat up ’04 Olds Alero (it could be worse but if you’re buyin’ I’m sellin’), the salesman walks up to you and begins asking the exact same set of introductory questions he asked you a week ago.  If you’re anything like me you get a little impatient, frustrated that you have to go through this whole process again and quickly decide that this is not the guy you want to spend 2 hours filling out complicated, detailed paperwork with.  End of sale, he loses and you walk off the lot in search of a salesperson that can remember what it is you’re looking for.

When you think about it isn’t your website acting exactly like this salesperson?  No matter how many times your customer comes back to your site aren’t they getting the same user experience?  What if you could change that?  What if you could change the contents of your website to match the preferences of each individual user?  Let me offer up a scenario:

1. You’re a car dealership in St. Louis and I, Shane Freeman, visit your site looking for a new Dodge Charger.
2. Seeing that you are a Dodge dealer I spend some time checking out various pages on your site.  Some of those pages may be about the Charger itself, some of them may be about your company.
3. Then I see a banner ad to download a case study on why the Dodge Charger is the best car since sliced bread.  I click the link and am presented with a short form to fill in my name, e-mail address and phone number with the promise upon clicking submit Lou Fusz and his team will send me the goods to my email address.
4. I fill in the form, click submit and in sheer anticipation of this case study leave the dealer’s website and check my email.

At this point in the story Lou Fusz and his team have been pretty good to me.  They’ve given me a little free info and are starting to build up some brand equity.  I appreciate the thought leadership and if I decide that the Charger is still right for me I may drop by their lot.  But then again, if I drive by another Dodge lot on my way to work that has the same Charger I may not.

Back to the story…since Lou now had my name, email address and phone number a few things can now start to happen. A lead record is created in the dealership CRM system that has an activity associated with it.  This activity is going to remind an inside sales rep to give me a call in two days to see what I thought about the case study.

1. A session history record is created in the dealership CRM system that shows every single page I looked at on the dealership’s website.
2. After I read the case study that afternoon I decide to go back to Lou’s website and check their prices against some of the other local competitors.
3. This time when I come back to the site, I see an ad on the right-hand side of the page that is stating LOW, LOW, LOW prices for pre-owned Dodge Charges (well, how convenient is that!)
4. I click on the ad and without having to type in any search terms or click on any makes or models a whole list of pre-owned Chargers are presented to me.
5. After browsing around that page I see a small flicker in the top, right-hand corning of the page that says, “Want to know more about the Charger, chat LIVE with one of our specialists.”
6. I click the button, get connected to Click or Clack one of the Tappet brothers, have a conversation about gas mileage and financing options and tell him thank you and I’ll definitely give them a shot when I’m ready to buy.
7. A new session history record has been created in CRM storing all the pages of my second visit to the website.
8. Another new chat history record has been created with my entire conversation with the Tappet brother.
9. After 24 hours I receive an automated e-mail from Lou and the gang thanking me for downloading the case study and encouraging me to give them a call if I have any questions.
10. Two days later the other Tappet brother see a reminder pop up on his Outlook calendar to call Shane Freeman.  Clack logs into CRM to get my phone number and notices that I’ve downloaded a case study, looks at all the pages I’ve been on the website, knows that his brother talked to me about pricing and financing and give me a call.
11. A bit surprised by the strange number I answer the phone and am surprised that this guy whom I’ve never spoke to in my life knows a whole lot about what I’ve done, where I’ve been and who I’ve been talking to.  He invites me down to their weekly reoccurring Friday afternoon club and says he’d be happy to accompany me on a test drive (prior to imbibing of course).
12. I tell him it’s a date, show up on Friday, go for a spin and because these guys have taken care of my every need I sign the paperwork, trade in the Alero and I’m on my way in my new 2010 Charger.

In the tech support industry we refer to this type of engagement as closed loop ticketing.  Any message sent between the customer and support services is all contained in the service ticket.  This allows any support tech to pick up where the last one left off with great notes and a history of my previous interactions.

It seems that Sitecore is calling this digital intimacy.  The next morning after his keynote, I had an opportunity to have breakfast with Michael Seiffert.  When I explained a similar experience I had after downloading a whitepaper from Sitecore’s website I told him it was a bit creepy.  He responded with an half smile and said, “CREEPY COOL.”  That folks is definitely a Sitecore original and I would completely agree.

You may think the story I’ve outlined above is fake, a pipe dream or too complicated for your business.  I would tell you that it’s not.  It’s being done TODAY by smart forward thinking companies across the country.  The amazing thing is that with Sitecore’s Online Marketing Suite, new Email Campaign Manager and all the other features Sitecore brings to the table we can start planning your implementation today.

If you want to engage your customers like never before and sell the right product to the right customer at the right time send me an email at shane@shanefreeman.com or give me a call at (308) 440-5011.  I’d love to work with you to figure out how we can best utilize technology to meet your business needs.  If you’re a technology professional and have an idea that’s not in my 17 steps above please comment and share some expertise.  I’d love to get even more insight to the power of digital intimacy.

Wow, it’s been a crazy last couple months.  I’ve heard that death, changing jobs and moving are the three most stressful things a person can do in their life.  Tacking two a time has been a wonderful and excruciating journey but one that I’m very happy I’ve made.

As I sit here at 11:30 PM on a Saturday night I’m really not all that upset I’m not out and about at the moment.  Now four weeks into my new life in St. Louis it’s kind of nice taking a little time to catch up on e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, etc. For the last four weeks I can barely stay awake past 11:00 because my brain is just so overloaded with new things.  Finding my way to and from new places using new routes, new people, a new process at work, the list goes on and on.  It seems that as I get a little older these major changes do come a little harder than they used to.  When I decided to live in Belgium for a year as a 16 year old and when I left for the cruise ships as a 21 year old it didn’t phase me a bit.  Throw your stuff in storage and worry about the details later.  I guess I may be growing up.

Any how, I’m going to track and get back in the saddle again.  I’ve been collecting up some good ideas and hope to start getting some of those down on paper very soon.  In the meantime I’m cross-posting a entry I wrote for the Roundedcube blog last week.  I’d love to hear some stories of your last move or new job so comment away!

Where’s the bathroom?

How many of you have ever wandered into the back of a strange, new restaurant or brew house, stood in front of those doors with crossed legs and said to yourself, “I have no idea which one’s for me.” Not knowing for sure but with time not on your side you take your shot – enter – then find out you’ve made the wrong choice.

This is a bit how I felt walking into Roundedcube on February 1st. Not knowing who was who, what was what or even where the bathroom was located I wondered if I had made the right decision. Was leaving my last job the right thing to do? Fortunately, now almost three weeks into this, I’ve got a pretty good feeling about the whole thing. I’m starting to get the hang of it around here and even know how to make it to work without using my GPS.

When I decided to make the move to St. Louis (originally hailing from the Cornhuskers state) I knew there was going to be some uncertainty, discomfort and change. In fact a friend of mine told me that the reason you feel like the stupidest person at your new job is likely because you are the stupidest person at your new job. For a good couple days that was undoubtedly the case and now I’m regretting the name calling he endured.

In my previous position it was my responsibility to invent the vocabulary, the definitions, the processes, and the templates. Now, even though I’m in the exact same business, a lot of those things have changed. Development…implementation; scope of work…statement of work; tomato…tomato. The map is still the same, we’re all heading in the same direction but the legend is just a little different.

The more I thought about these differences the more I was reminded of Patrick Lencioni’s book, “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable.” One of my main take-aways from the book was that constructive conflict is a good and necessary thing. If used and managed correctly it keeps us from trudging down the road of “artificial harmony” because, in the end, the real magic, the stuff that separates good from great, really comes from our differences not our similarities.

Now, to be totally fair some things didn’t really change at all. Prior to coming to Roundedcube I spent the last 10 years in the IT/Web world so this definitely wasn’t my first rodeo. That being said here are a few things that made me feel right at home:

• By 10:00 AM more than half the staff is hopped up on coffee, Mountain Dew or some other high glucose or caffeine rich substance
• An almost diabolical sense of competition whether that be in web strategy or ping-pong
• One-half out of their mind in search of an iPad – the other half snickering at the first half because they’ve yet to receive their much anticipated, gold embossed invitation to the “Cult of Mac”
• 50% in favor of the waterfall method, 50% in favor of agile and 0% of customers who really care as long as their projects get done on time and under budget
• Four words…scope creep, change request!
• But most importantly; an amazingly talented group of people that spend their days pouring their creativity into strategy, work items, code and comps then leaving the office to make time with their family, playing music or cheating death on a high speed crotch-rocket

In the end, figuring out that my definition of the word “creative” was different than Roundedcube’s really didn’t amount to a hill of beans. What is most impressive and important is that no matter what words we were using we were still talking about the right process, the right projects and making sure we’re delivering the right solution to each and every one of our clients.

As the new Manager of Client Engagements for Roundedcube I’m really looking forward to meeting with all of you…that is existing and future clients, vendors and partners. My long-time philosophy for every project is that we should be able to (A) decrease costs or (B) increase revenue. If we can’t do either then we’re not doing our job but if we can do both then you’ll want to work with us again in the future. Please let me know if there’s anything I can do to help your business. You can e-mail me at shane.freeman@roundedcube.com or give me a call at (866) 692-2823 x 102. I look forward to hearing from you!

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I was having a conversation with my boss a couple days ago and he mentioned that a few people had commented on some of my posts regarding my job search and moving.  Since Intellicom has known all along that I was leaving he was easily able to respond and went on his merry way.

That led us into a brief conversation on the content people post and how careful we have to be when we put all this information out there for the world to see.  You’ve all heard the horror stories of people posting inappropriate content on their personal pages then getting fired from their job because of it.  I can’t say that’s 100% fair but it’s reality and that’s what’s important.  Unfortunately we don’t get to choose what’s personal or professional anymore.  My best advice to clients is if you don’t want your mother/grandmother/boss to see it you had better not post it.

As the conversation was wrapping up he made a comment about being lucky that he doesn’t have to worry about any of these issues because he doesn’t participate in social networking sites.  Personally (opposed to professionally) I think anyone can make that choice.  Unless you see benefit in creating a personal online network there’s no sense wasting your time.

After our conversation I started to wonder how I might convince him that while personally he doesn’t need to be involved his business really does need a digital footprint that goes beyond the traditional website.  We could have had a lengthy discussion on the merits and pitfalls of social media that would have likely ended up in a stalemate.  My lack of hard data would have been my downfall.  Fortunately, Eric Qualman (@equalman) has released another video on the ROI of social media and it popped into my inbox today.  I felt obliged to pass it along for any doubters out there.

As a side note Eric has a great book out there called Socialnomics that is definitely worth a read.  Ideal for the beginning it does have a few great concepts and examples for the seasoned professional as well.  The one thing I would recommend is buying the book and not getting the audio version.  I was tempted to stop listening on more than one occasion because the narrator was annoying.

In the end here’s some good advice for anyone.

When I was developing the navigation for CareerCode, a product we’re currently redeveloping and getting ready to take to market, I wanted to find a way to make the site as sticky as possible.  At some point I knew that advertising was going to be a factor in the monetization of the site and therefore wanted to keep as many eyeballs on as many ads as possible.

When I started to think of the sites I waste the most time on YouTube was the first one that came to mind.  Have you ever received a link to a YouTube video in your e-mail then an hour later wondered how you went from watching a rerun of Who’s the Boss to Mexican midget wrestling.  That is marketing magic of the long and winding rabbit hole of content they provide.  This is, in part, based on the long tail marketing concepts they use by showing “related videos”  and “More From: insert username here” but more basic than that is never giving the viewer a reason to leave.

A little over a month ago I had the pleasure of attending a great webcast from Jeremy Epstein entitled “Marketing Survival Strategies for the Attention Economy.”  Not only was the presentation awesome but it also turned me on to Jeremy’s company Never Stop Marketing.  Jeremy’s got a lot of great things to say and I would highly recommend subscribing to his blog but it was his company name, more than anything, that inspired this post.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve met with a company that is trying to use their digital marketing collateral like they use their print material.  They create a page on their website (a brochure) and believe that if people just get to that one page that’s all that’s necessary to sell their product or service.  This is like trying to squeeze a relational database inside of an Excel worksheet.  It can probably be done but it’s definitely not the right tool for the job.

Every page on your site, every e-mail you send, every confirmation page you display needs to offer (and even better motivate) the user to click on another link or take another step to learn about your products and services.  Here’s a very simple example.

1. Salesperson sends an e-mail to Customer with a link to their website in the signature
2. Customer views the website and sees an action item to “Sign-Up for Our Newsletter”
3. Customer clicks the link and fills in a form to receive the company newsletter
4. Customer is then directed to a confirmation page that say’s Thanks for subscribing

Here is an alternate example that I would recommend:

1. Salesperson sends an e-mail to Customer with a link to their website in the signature
2. Customer views the website and sees an action item to “Sign-Up for Our Newsletter”
3. Customer clicks the link and fills in a form to receive the company newsletter
   1. Customer receives an HTML e-mail asking to confirm their subscription that also contains links to current monthly specials, a recent press release and the most current company blog release
   2. Customer is directed to a confirmation page on the company’s website that shows a video tutorial to use a new product or service that Customer didn’t know company provided and a link to learn more information about that product.
4. Customer clicks the confirmation link in the e-mail they received to confirm they want to be subscribed to the newsletter
   1. Customer is taken to the company’s website and offered a message of thanks for subscribing to the newsletter and a link to download a whitepaper on the glorious benefits of using Product X.
   2. Customer is sent an HTML e-mail confirming their subscription with a link to  Company’s user community offering blogs, forums.
5. Customer click the Link to download the whitepaper and is now required to fill in a simple form with demographic data and the services they are interested in.
   1. Customer fills in the form, an e-mail is sent to the user with a link to the download the whitepaper
6. Customer downloads the whitepaper and is then taken to another page on the site allowing them to download a 25% off coupon if they’re interested in buying Product Y.
7. 2 days later an e-mail is automatically sent to Customer asking how they liked the whitepaper with a link to a survey and the most recent company blog post.

This example could go on and on and on and on and on and make this more and more and more and more interactive.  In fact if you’re doing it right you would need some type of flowchart to really begin to see the complexity.  Too often traditional marketers look at e-marketing as a workflow rather than the spider web that is digital media.  Every single step in this process needs to motivate the user to take another step…thus, never stop marketing.

Too many companies are satisfied with getting another e-mail address and making another phone call.  I say build your own YouTube spider web that sucks your users in and never lets them go.   Give your users every opportunity to learn more about your company.  Don’t ask them to complete a task then say, “thanks, I’ll chat with you in a couple weeks when we send out our next newsletter.”

One of the ways we used to pitch website back in the 90′s was telling people that their site could sell their product even when you were sleeping.  That may still be the case but is your website actively marketing your site while you are sleeping or is it still passively sitting there waiting for people to read it.  There are so many strategies and low cost automation tools out there right now that if you’re not using them you’re crazy.  If you’d like some help evaluating how you can build your YouTube spider web please send me an e-mail or give me a call.  I’d love to help you out.

A few years back Intellicom made the investment to move to ConnectWise as our practice management software. What a great product and one that has done wonders for our business.

This year ConnectWise had the opportunity to have Verne Harnish speak at their summit. Unfortunately I couldn’t embed the video but if you have a little time check out his presentation here:

http://hosted.mediasite.com/mediasite/Viewer/?peid=01697059654243c69306b517fe958cc8

Thanks to Joel Spolsky for sharing this video from the Business of Software 2008.  If I had to pick one professional to spend a day with it would be Seth Godin.  What an amazing individual.  If you build things for a living (software or otherwise) you need to watch this video.

I just read a great blog post by Kayla Knight called “Understanding Your Brain for Better Design: Left vs. Right” on Webdesginer Depot.  In addition to it being a great article she also provided two links to online surveys that can help you determine your dominant side.

Personally, I’ve always struggled with determining whether I’m more creative or more analytical.  Over the past couple years (and with the help of a great friend who’s done a tremendous amount of research with the Holland Theory) I’ve come to realize that I’m a lot more creative than I thought I was.  Not artsy creative (I’m not a graphic designer, I don’t draw, I don’t paint, I don’t do photography) but more of a performer and visionary type of creative (I love great design, do have a great eye for form and space and am pretty crafty at layout).

This realization tells a lot about why I work in an analytical field during the week (doing web application development and troubleshooting DNS and e-mail issues) but still enjoy being a DJ on the weekends (staying in touch with my musical soul and performing for a crowd).  That combination of jobs allows me to feed both sides of my personality and without it I become of very grumpy bear.  The best situation, and where I’m the most lethal, is when I’m given a set of tools and objectives and asked to create something new to fulfill those objectives.  I just have this knack for being able to distill a huge amount of abstract data into a clear and concise plan to accomplish a desired outcome.  I would be a great object-oriented programmer if I never had to code anything.

Unfortunately this skill set is a really hard thing to demonstrate in a job interview.  Artists can bring a portfolio, programmers can say, “I built this” but sometimes it sounds like hogwash when you say, “I envisioned this solution.”  I wish companies were more creative during their interview process and asked questions like, “How could you help us solve this problem?”  That’s really what I do every day for my clients.  Give me an opportunity like that and a whiteboard and I’m off to the races.

But I digress.  Getting back to the point I took both “brain tests” Kayla offered up and got some very unsurprising results.

From the first test I took, offered by the Art Institute of Vancouver, I came up with these results:

Left Brain 59% – Right Brain 41%

After reading the detailed results of this test it had me pegged almost perfectly!

From the second test I took, offered by About.Com and adapted the best I could, I came up with these results:

Left Brain 45% – Right Brain 55%

Here’s more of what the Art Institute test had to say:

You are more left-brained than right-brained. Your left brain controls the right side of your body. In addition to being known as left-brained, you are also known as a critical thinker who uses logic and sense to collect information. You are able to retain this information through the use of numbers, words, and symbols. You usually only see parts of the “whole” picture, but this is what guides you step-by-step in a logical manner to your conclusion. Concise words, numerical and written formulas and technological systems are often forms of expression for you. Some occupations usually held by a left-brained person include a lab scientist, banker, judge, lawyer, mathematician, librarian, and skating judge.

Your Left Brain Percentages

57%	Sequential (Your most dominant characteristic)
47%	Verbal
40%	Reality-based
27%	Linear
25%	Logical
0%	Symbolic (Your least dominant characteristic)

Your Right Brain Percentages

42%	Holistic (Your most dominant characteristic)
32%	Nonverbal
24%	Intuitive
24%	Fantasy-oriented
17%	Random
0%	Concrete (Your least dominant characteristic)

So here’s what I’m asking you to do.

Take a test and post your name and results in the comments:

• Art Institute of Vancouver
• About.Com

The Art Institute test takes no more than 5 minutes so no excuses.  I’d love to see a little informal survey of my friends and colleagues and know how your results turn out.  I know absolutely nothing about psychology but it just seems like this right brain vs. left brain stuff may be more nature and personality may be more nurture but what the hell do I know.  Honestly, I’m just trying to figure out why I hang out with some of you crazy people!

I look forward to your comments…

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If information is power and if great power requires great responsibility then having lots of information requires great responsibility. Remember that next time you blast out an e-mail to 100,000 people (or 100 for that matter).