ForbesOnTech

Corporate Social Media Mointoring-- Chapter Two from Dave Churbuck

Over at Churbuck.com is an excellent post here on monitoring blogs and how this process need not be based on paid applications that generate maps or Marshal McLuhan like colored Media Hot or Media Cold colored displays. Dave’s riff is suitable classroom material and goes well beyond the intro to corporate social media drek I’ve seen on the web for the last several years.

A statement Dave posted last night grabbed me: ”Sentiment metrics are particularly vexing, volume sentiments are crap. Be wary of tools that purport to deliver metrics. I subscribe to the manual scoring method of sentiment. If it really matters then the only viable way to tell whether a post is positive or negative is to read it and make the call. Doing so will entail enlisting the support of a team of monitors or moderators, or, if you are a sole operator, doing it yourself.

I suspect that very few corporations have “teams” assigned to monitoring blogs or, more importantly, have the bandwidth and authority to take action on problems as they appear in blogs.

In the end when it comes to Social Media and corporations the winners will have teams or one inspired individual that can drive solutions to problems or troublesome perceptions as they appear.

Reading Churbuck’s riff on advanced social media makes me wish I weren’t retired.  Well almost.—Jim Forbes 04/22.2008

{Mandatory Disclosure: Dave Churbuck and I were coworkers in the last century at PCWeek and are  friends.}

TechCrunch50 to Overlap DemoFall 08

Some say, “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” For others, however, imitation is merely a shortcut to a bank’s merchant window without investing first in creativity, original thought, or shouldering the load of those who popularized a category or event.

            All of which brings news that a competitor to Demo has announced its event will overlap DemoFall08, in early September. The competitor is TechCrunch 50, the second incarnation of a show that first appeared on the scene last year after its founders, Jason Calacanis of Tech Crunch and Michael Arrington, used Demo 2007 to announce that they too were hosting a technology showcase. One big difference between the two shows is this: Unlike Demo, Tech Crunch doesn’t charge its featured stage presenters a Demonstrator’s fee..

            Let me digress a moment and make a mandatory disclosure: My name is Jim Forbes and I am a retired Demo producer who developed DemoMobile (now known as DemoFall) and helped Chris Shipley, the executive producer of Demo, select companies for and produce the larger Demo shows. I had a stroke moments before I was to have opened Demo in Phoenix and am now retired. I have no fiduciary relationship with Demo or its direct and indirect parent entities: IDG (which owns Network World) and the GuideWire Group, which Chris Shipley co-founded.

            In a statement posted on the GuideWire Group’s blog Wednesday, here Demo’s Ms. Shipley questioned the timing of Tech Crunch50, suggesting it would force entrepreneurs to chose one event over the other and suggesting that forcing start-ups to make such a choice wasn’t a good decision. Ms. Shipley also posted that Demo08 generated more than 200 million media impressions for its hand-selected spots and explained how Demo supports its companies in preparing for the event. Ms. Shipley also questioned why TechCrunch50 was copying Demo’s “rulebook and other guidelines.”

Michael Arrington says that he and Jason Calacanis “liked the Demo model but don’t like the ‘payola’ idea of demonstrators paying.”

A call to TechCrunch 50 co-sponsor Jason Calacanis was not returned.

In various blog postings on sites such as ValleyWag last year, other writers have come to acknowledge the benefits of Demo’s high production values as well as the effort its support staff take to train demonstrators. Last year a ValleyWag editor suggested Demo’s demonstrator fee showed audiences that its companies had “skin in the game” and were well prepared for the event.

At 18 years, Demo is the oldest technology showcase. TechCrunch isn’t the first competitor that’s tried to unseat Demo.  Three other events have come and gone, and Demo now also faces some competition from the Wall Street Journal’s All ThingsD conference, which is produced by WSJ staffer Walt Mossberg and former WSJ staffer-turned-author Kara Swisher. Another contract staffer involved in AllThingsD previously had been the president of IDG Executive Forums, which produced Demo before it was incorporated into IDG’s Network World business unit.

            Both Demo and TechCrunch appear to have the same format: stage presentations by companies with products grouped by category, and panels of VC or business development executives. In its first five years, Demo had a slightly different format that allowed audience members to ask onstage demonstrators questions (a format borrowed from Agenda, which like Demo was also started by industry pundit Stuart Alsop but was produced through much of its life by IDG Executive Forums).

            Under Ms. Shipley, Demo has become a “community” with a high number of returning attendees and serial entrepreneurs who have used the show to launch multiple companies. One of the major changes Ms. Shipley has made to increase Demo’s presence and sense of community has been the addition of a video library of Demo presentations that can be viewed at www.Demo.com.

            Competition makes for better products. While Demo may be the oldest show, there’s still enough room in the technology industry for new blood. I have no problem with competition, the real issue here is when competition is based on cookie cutter marketing plans that don’t give credit where its due. —Jim Forbes 04/02/2008

Advanced Social Media and How to Do It-- a Real World Decision Tree Explained

Preparing to talk to students about going beyond the basics of social media in a corporate setting, you quickly discover there are almost not only are specifics about social media programs hard to find, but getting working pros to talk about what they’re actually doing can be like pulling abscessed teeth in a Great White Shark.

            I understand the reason for this: Individual social media programs are most often tightly linked to strategic marketing efforts and few companies really want to share inside information.

Or,so I thought until this morning when I read Dave Churbuck’s blog here and stumbled on a social media plan tailored for the ThinkPad maker Lenovo and its pavilion at the forthcoming Olympic games in Beijing.

Churbuck’s post  is the best example I’ve ever seen on planning and initially executing social media programs. Mr. Churbuck knows of what he speaks. He's Lenovo's vicce president of global web marketing. He patiently takes the reader through a specific campaign's decision tree, quickly stating why he chose one path or tactic over another. I’m sure Churbuck read his post very carefully before putting it up. It doesn’t contain proprietary information; it’s just the sort of thing a working professional thinks about when they get beyond basics. What I also liked about this particulr post was its presentation, which is like a well thought out text book chapter.

I’m a big believer in the “learn by doing” education model and this post is good enough for two days worth of lectures at any college teaching osocial media and contemporary or future marketing.—Jim Forbes 03/19/2008

{Mandatory disclosure: Dave Churbuck and I were coworkers at PCWeek in the Eighties and remain friends}

MacBook Air and A Rising Tide-- Waiting for a Flood of New Features

Reports last week of higher than expected demand for Apple’s MacBook Air thin and light portable here could be great news for all notebook makers with products based on similar form factors.

            The reports, which originated in a New York regional business magazine, indicate that Apple retailers are struggling to stay abreast of the demand curve (which has also had an impact on systems purchased through Apple.com,, which now carry a waittime of up to seven days).

            So far there’s been no break down in sales figures detailing which configurations are Apple’s top sellers.

            Apple’s success with the MacBook Air could become a tale of a rising tide raising all boats in the remerging thin and light notebook market. Thus far, only two other mainstream notebook makers—Toshiba and Lenovo, have joined Apple, but most of the major players in the portable market will launch “competitive” products by year’s end, I believe.

            Thin and light notebook makers won’t be the only companies benefiting by sales of this class of machine. Some of the other technologies that will be boosted by the MacBook Air include:

The 802.11 n wireless specification. The MacBook Air’s use and reliance of the “n” specification is likely to make it “official” in less time than its taken the IEEE standards committee to sanctify it.

Wireless router makers haven’t wasted much time in getting 802.11 n products  to market and there are enough on the shelves now to make 802.11 n technology price sensitive. 

Keyboard and screen back lighting two of the technologies in the MacBook Air technologies I like a lot and which go a long ways to make any portable computer more useable in low light situations like conference rooms and classrooms. Portable computing component technologies have come a long way since the first thin and light notebooks were introduced about ten years ago. Plagued by short battery life, backlighting doesn’t significantly take away from the amount of time a notebook can be used on its batteries.

But one of the greatest technologies found in the MacBook Air is it’s use of gesture-based controls. Apple isn’t the only company to support gestures,  HP also supports rudimentary gesture based computing does it on its IQ755 Touch Screen all in one desktop. Palm Inc. is another company with a long history of using gestures as part of its interface technologies and there’s no reason not to believe that it isn’t enhancing its technologies for release with a new version of its operating system, which is expected this Fall. The 900-pound lurking gorilla of this technological segment is Microsoft, which has privately shown advances it has made in gesture-based technologies such as facial recognition, since the late 1990’s.

            Whether or not Microsoft will release gesture-based enhancements to forthcoming versions of its Windows operating systems isn’t clear.

            If Notebook makers hope to stay in synch with Post MacBook Air and Lenovo ThinkPad X800 they’ll need to lengthen their mooring lines to stay afloat in a portable market where the tide of features and user expectations are neck and neck on a flooding tide.—Jim Forbes 03/10/2008

Those Who Can, Do...Those Who Can Not, Sell Basics; Social Media Today

There’s something of a disconnect in corporate social media between experienced practitioners and consultants hoping to sell their expertise to potential clients. Working practitioners are critical of some because the latter still emphasizing basics while the pros are searching for help in untying some of the knots that bind the adoption and implementation of corporate social media programs.

I understand the positions of both groups: those who are implementing social media programs don’t want to pay for knowledge and services that they have outgrown or developed originally themselves; and consultants make money by selling basic knowledge and capitalizing on subsequent expertise.

The pros know about word press and are looking for insight into some very complex organizational issues: How does n organization Measuring the effectiveness of corporate social media; How do you decide who’s allowed to become the voice of a company; what internal organization do they come from and what department and to whom do they report?

I have immense respect for the tiny group of working executives who have found ways to incorporate social media as a public corporate face. Today, every member of this new category of communicator is hard at work trying to make social media an effective corporate tool. What most of the pros don’t have time for are consultants with old, basic “how-to“, information.

I don’t have a lot of sympathy for third-party consultants trying to peddle social media technology that never gets much deeper than an overview book that incorporates the word “Dummies” in its title.

The chasm between those who have “done it” and those who want to sell or promote services that tell corporations “where to, and how to” begin is immense. The bridges that cross the unconnected walls appear to be being built by early corporate implementers, not many of today’s consultants.

While social media is important, some of the companies that could benefit the most from it are also the least likely to implement it. Take for example the pharmaceutical and medical device industries, each of which have multiple layers of hyper protective managers whose job is to make sure that a public comment doesn’t incur the formidable wrath of a governmental agency, citizen watchdog group, medical professional association or “college.”

Having worked for one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the US as a communicator, I vividly remember writing as many as 15 drafts of a statement about how a new drug could benefit certain types of patients ands having to justify every implied statement in a press release to a very senior executive whose job was to shepherd the new drug through a large national clinical trial. But looking back across th e years I believe that the pharmaceutical and related industries may be the best example of a category that needs to jump into social media.

While most competent third-party marketing consultancies are capable of launching social media campaigns there are a handful that may be much more capable than run of the mill agencies. The ones that stand out away above the crowd are those who specialize in “public affairs.” and which have the requisite experience in identifying, motivating and assisting internal corporate “champions,” and not just middle of the litter VPs or directors of marketing.

In the Darwinist world of husbandry, “champions” often go on to become very profitable “sires.” I believe this will carry through into social media, where senior and vetted managers who have established social media campaigns and who understand how to thread their way through the sometimes Byzantine world of corporate politics will go on to run successful consultancy practices and head new corporate departments that ease access to customer and the providers of goods and services. Whatever their path, they will most likely be able to write their own compensation packages, and be able to work where they want.

And that’s my screed for this week.--Jim Forbes 03/05/2008.

Follow Up on Demo 2008 Now!--Getting a Bigger Bang For Your Buck

The absolute best way to get the most out of your Demo 08 experience is to take the time to review the people your company met with at Demo and systematically begin follow-up conversations.

Here are some tips that can help you get the biggest bang for your Demo 2008 buck.

1.   Organize the business cards and contact information you gathered at Demo.

a.   Do not limit your contact lists to reporters, editors, bloggers, and venture capitalists.

b.  Wherever possible make sure the member of your company that met with someone initiates follow-up contact.

2.   Designate one person to monitor and track conversations with people you met at Demo.

a.  Make sure you monitor blogs for mentions of your company or its technologies.

1. Treat bloggers the same as reporters. Make contact with them and stay in touch after the show.

2.     Don’t be afraid to offer press and bloggers additional information on your company or its technologies.

3.     Bloggers are more apt to focus on single companies or technologies, than print reporters.

4.     Reporters, editors and bloggers who attend Demo write “trend” stories that may include your and other company’s products that serve a common market or need. Make sure you can differentiate your product when it’s part of a larger crop of products.

a.     Trend stories often appear weeks and months after the end of Demo.

b.     Be prepared to provide writers with information about your technologies or news about your company that occurred after the show.

2. Meet with all of your Demo 08 attendees as a group to discuss follow-up conversations and activities.
3. Make sure third-party marketing agencies that may have supported your Demo08 presence are included in follow-up activities

4.           Stay in touch with the producers of Demo. Let them know of funding events, product updates or licensing agreements.  This information is published regularly in the electronic version of DemoLetter.

Now that you’re home from Demo, breathe deep and get back to work on your products and technologies. --Jim Forbes 02/07/2008

*Becky Sniffen of MCPR2.net contributed to the original version of this post.

(Mandatory disclosure: I was a Demo producer and editor of DemoLetter and DemoMobile Letter before I retired several years ago. I am not now affiliated with Demo. See you at DemoFall 2008.—jmf)

Demo 2008--More Favorites: Aternity, FlyPaper and SpeakLike

Some of the technologies at Demo 2008 made an impression on me when  they were on stage but their real impact hit home when I spent five or ten minutes with them in the demonstrator pavilion.  One such product was Aternity Inc.’s Frontline Performance Intelligence Platform.

            What I really liked about this IT tool is its interface and the fact that it’s a tool that lets corporate IT professionals quickly see what programs users are running and how they’re using enterprise information and how individual or groups of users are consuming IT resources. I like that this set of IT resource monitoring tools combine to give IT decision makers a birds eye view correlating both current and historical data; proving management with emerging user trends as it relates to mission critical tasks and corporate goals.

            When I looked at Aternity I was impressed by the fact that the company has already received two rounds of financing which includes money from Genesis Capital, Intel Capital, and Vertex Ventures. With the current trend in corporate IT having to justify expenditures against return on investment projections, I think Aternity is a great example of the right company with the right technology at the right place and time.

            Flypaper Studio was another Demo 08 company whose technology caused me to visit their Pavilion station not once, but twice. What captivated me about Flypaper are tools that let its users create quality rich media, web-based, presentations without having to take the time or effort to learn a graphics design program.

            Flypaper is the sort of program and technology that stands out Demo. It simplifies what until now has been a complex process and provides its users with new capabilities. Funded under the name Interactive Alchemy two years ago, Flypaper has enormous potential and is the type of product that fits nicely in the emerging cloud computing model—which I think makes this company and its technology a strong candidate for acquisition by any of the titans now committed to web-based applications.

            English may be the lingua franca of the international aviation community, but it still has a way to go when it comes to the business world. And SpeakLike, at Demo 08 pioneered a new category, web-based translation services, that fills an important need. SpeakLike has an instant message like front end. It’s users type in an English phrase or question and recipients see the text in their native languages. The new service combines automated and human translation and is less costly than existing translation services.  SpeakLike archives translations in case the information can be used for subsequent sessions involving the same languages.  At the end of the session, SpeakLike users are provided with transcriptions of the conversations.

            The service can support simultaneous translations into multiple languages.

            I like SpeakLike’s translation speed and it’s use of an instant message format, something that’s familiar to most business computer users. Furthermore, SpeakLike should be appealing and useful  to the thousands pf global companies who do business everyday in countries where languages other than English are spoken.

            I made a quick stop at this company’s booth and experimented with its English to Spanish translation capabilities.  I intentionally used an example that the company was very unlikely to have a canned version of and which could cause the translator at the other end of the IM session to think hard about.  I was surprised at how the translator avoided using a Spanish word that if spoken in the presence of my mamacita, would have guaranteed my mouth being washed out with Lava Soap. Instead the translator came back with a completely sanitized phrase that left me laughing. He ended the session however by messaging me back ”pleas tell me there’s no one behind you watching this?”

            I chuckled and typed, “Just your CEO, but he’s not a gabacho like I am.”

            SpeakLike can redefine Internet translation services. It’s relatively inexpensive ($US.10) for each translated message and its fast and accurate.

            I probably will have one more post on some other companies at Demo 08 but I want to think some more about that category before I post anything. Jim Forbes, 02/03/2008.

            

My List of Great Demo 2008 Companies Continues to Grow

I came home from Demo 2008, took two Tylenol for a blown out left knee and promptly went to bed; for almost a full day. Now that I can hobble around ising my trusty five year old shillelagh It’s time to finish my thoughts on a couple of the companies I saw at Demo this week.

            First up is Education.com’s School Finder. A product I wish I had access to in 2002 when my beautiful daughter, the lovely Miss Amanda, was getting ready to go away to college.  School Finder is a parent’s dream: it lets you match your kids’ needs to college offerings and the local environment. When School Finder goes live in about two months, it will have information on about 100,000 public and private schools. I was impressed by this start-up’s deep well of information on various colleges and their locations.  I quickly realized how valuable this site and tool would have been back in 2002, when (based on bad advice) she chose a Boston area women’s university whose classes were seldom transferable. School Finder is just one of Education.com’s offerings. It also offers modest on-line tutoring, and electronic learning. This site already has great traffic numbers. The addition of School Finder to its offerings will bolster both its position and usefulness, creating even more unique visitors. I think Education.com and School Finder may be one of the jewels of Demo 2008.  I really wish it had been around five years ago, when I was a parent trying to help my soon to fledge daughter pick a college that met her needs and expectations.  Oh, prior to moving to go to school in Boston, my daughter had never experienced a real snowstorm.

            I’m a sucker for mobile applications and Ribbit’s Amphibian, a web telephony application made me realized just how important the personal information provided in our profile information files have become when we connect with friends or potential business associates on the phone. Imagine getting a phone call from a potential client and suddenly being presented with personal information from their FaceBook page. I understand the need to connect with people in order to sell or convince someone of a value proposition, and Ribbit’s Amphibian is the first example I’ve seen of an application that gives me access to someone’s web presence, while I’m talking with them on my mobile phone.

            It’s this type of application that highlights the need for new mobile phone plans that offer affordable internet access as part of business or high-minute plans. I believe that platforms like Ribbit and apps like Amphibian also work best with cell phones with large screens, which facilitate more complete information displays.

            CellSpin is another mobile-based application I liked at Demo 08. This startup is one of the several companies that have been in development for almost two years. What CellSpin does that’s unique is it allows you to post and synchronize you posts to multiple outlets with an absolute minimum of user intervention. For example, if you wanted to post something to Blogger, eBay, FaceBook, Flickr, Live Journal, Picassa or YouTube, you could do so with a minimum of clicks and all your files would be automatically synchronized. Of all the products at Demo 08, I had the most experience with CellSpin. I like its ultra clean interface, and its promise of simultaneously posting virtually all media types (including video and audio) to multiple sites with one or two clicks.

            I love great mobile technology and Skyfire, a downloadable browser for mobile phones just knocked my socks off. My ongoing complaint with the Internet experience on so-called phones is that it just plain sucks. I’ve sat by and waited, and waited for freaking ever for some pages to load on various smart phones and in many cases just walked away from the experience rather than endure the tedious experience of taking advantage of the web on cell phone. Skyfire changes that. I was blown away by this company’s pavilion-demonstration that after only two minutes left me wishing that my antique cell phone would support the Skyfire browser.

            Unlike other browsers for mobile phones, Skyfire supports dynamic Flash, Ajax and Java technologies, which allows smart phones running this new browser to deliver a desktop-like computing experience.

            If there was one technology and company from Demo 08 that is worth watching, it’s Skyfire.

            A quick note pertaining to CellSpin and Skyfire.  Both of these companies are tying their success to third-party cellular networks and smart phone manufacturers. It’s one thing to develop and introduce a product with obvious advantages and little cost adders and an altogether different thing to score a huge win with that product.

            The problem here is that start-ups are ill equipped to navigate the treacherous rocks and shoals that provide safe harbor for key decision makers that can guarantee and provide a safe birth in this industry segment.

            What I’ve seen over the years is a long line of entrepreneurs network with B-School buddies who work for telcos, thinking such people will become their allies in driving adoption.  The problem with this thinking is the ultra conservative nature of telco management.  That B-school chum who is your champion may have a sexy title, but the  reality is not very promising: the champion’s name on an org chart is five cells off center and at least as many levels down from the decision makers and check signers.

            There are at least three domestic cellular network companies that appear to be aggressively courting new technologies: AT&T, Sprint and Verizon immediately come to mind. I rank Sprint at the top of this list followed by Verizon and AT&T.

            Well, I’ve run out of time for this post, so up on ForbesonTech it goes.—Jim Forbes, recovering from my favorite technology show, Demo on 1/31/2008.

{ mandatory disclosure, I am a retired producer of Demo shows as well as the editor of the printed and electronic versions of DemoLetter. I have no fiduciary or other ties with Demo, or any of its parent organizations. But I am one of the few people who has run a Demo show and sat through thousands of meetings with companies during the selection process of the show.  There, I’ve said it. I’m still proud of it—jmf}

Demo08, Technology Redefines and Reshapes Categories Yet Again

Palm Desert, CA--Demo08 kicked off today here with nearly 80 companies vying for the attention of technologies best and brightest minds. Although the show just opened the morning buzz is centered on which of the companies showing their products had the best on-stage and Pavilion demonstrations.

      Looking at my notes, scribbled frantically yesterday and this morning  as I met with entrepreneurs, a couple of interesting trends pop to the surface: First, there are several technologists lanching products for the third and fourth time at Demo08. The second thing that came to mind as I made my way back to my room tonight is that the companies launching their products this week have been working on them for a long time. Several of the new product have been under development for more than a year, and in two cases, the products and their underlying technologies are the result of almost two years of work.

     This is much different than in years past when technologists sometimes showed products that were  sometimes little more than technology demonstrations. And yet, a surprising number of such products went on to redefine various aspects and categories of corporate and personal computing. The sheer number of DEMO 08 products that have been under development for the last year speaks very loudly about the changing nature of today's computing environment and how PCs are used.

     iVideosongs is one such product. Aimed at serious musicians who want to play like professionals, iVideosongs provides music charts and multi-camera video views as well as interviews detailing how musicians created their sounds. Although it's long been possible to buy and down load sheet music on the web, ivideosongs.com is the first service that goes the extra mile and shows serious amateurs how proessionals developed and executed their music. thew unique value of this service to serious musicians can be seen in a download featuring Crosby, Stills and Nash band member Graham Nash, demonstrating how he taught the unique drop G, thumb-over chord marking band mate's Steven Stills guitar sound on the song, "Teach Your  Children Well."

     iVideotunes founder, Atlanta musician and a one time Grammy nominated-artistr, Timothy Huffman notes that his company spent more than a year negotiating the rights to the music and performances for the songs offered on the new serice. IVideosongss has had one round of private equity funding and is now online here.  The new service should be a hit among the millions of Americans who own Les Paul, up-market Fenders, or other professional quality guitars or other musical instruments. I'm waiting for the day when Greg Allman signs on with iViedotunes so that piitful whiteguys such as myself can feel more at ease playing a 700-pound hammond B3 with twirling Leslie speakers.

    The other product that rocked my boat at Demo 2008, it was Live Scribe's Pulse digital pen. Over the last 15 years I've watched at least four other companies fail at this technology.  Live Scribe's Pulse pen (which will cost $149 for a 1GB version when it begins shipping in March, or $199 for a 2GB version) uses small infrared cameras mounted in the tip of the pen to record a users pen strokes. A miniature microphone built into the top of the pen as well as on the ends of a pair of earbuds can be used to record audio in notetaking environments such as classroomse  Pulse also suports simple commands for navigatiug through documents and audio files. Audio can be inserted into wirtten notes when they are loaded into documents. A small screen in the upper part of the pen displays text as it's captured by the user. One of bonuses of Pulse's technology is that the pen can be used to teach foreigners the basics of writing Asian character-based laguages on a stroke-by-stroke basis.

     LiveScribe's Pulse digital pen is much different than any of the many devices I've seen in this category. Pulse is untethered, and incorporates all of the technologies that are important to anyone who depends on written notes for their livelihood or grades. Also, it's much less expnsive than previous offerings in this category and appears to be much more reliable. Moreover, Live Scribe is also launching a development platform that will allow Pulse users to gain access to third-party productivity and entertainment applications.

     At DEMO 08,Live Scribe showed applications from WinScribe, Living Paper and Stiletto Ventures.

     Like other digital pens, Pulse uses dot positioning technology to record writing or drawing.  However Live Scribe's management decided early on that the company did not want to rely on hard to find paper supplies, so it offers a downloadable template on its web site that allows users to print thier own supplies on common Laser printers complete with Live Scribe's embedded commands at the bottom of each page.

LiveScribe offered Demo08 atendees a $50 coupon that can be applied will allow attendees to purchase a 2GB Pulse smart pen for the same price as the 1GB model. For more information on LiveScribe click here 

     LiveScribe is a Demo08 company I want to watch closely. To succeed, it needs to evangelize in academia, private industry and in some public sectors, notably law enforcement, public health,and building trades. The LiveScribe platform offers plenty of free storage, the ability to turn hand written notes into .PDF and other files. More importantly, i believe it's a technology that's at the right place at the right time.

I'm spending the rest of the day looking at more companies, paryticularly those that offer radical improvements in integrating and kaing better use of rich media typrs.  From Demo08--Jim Forbes 01/29/2008.

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A Professional's Observation on Social Media Marketing--And Some Student's Observations

Dave Churbuck on the state of Social Media Marketing here

If one were to chart the arc of corporate blogging – aka Social Media Marketing, aka SMM – overthe past three years, I suppose some consistent milestones could be identified, something like Erikson’s Eight Stages of PsychoSocial Development. Right now I’d say SMM has reached its majority among technology companies within the early adopters like Microsoft, Sun, IBM, Dell and Lenovo. And elsewhere, probably is entering puberty, cracked voice and zits included.

When Lenovo's master of Web marketing and social media riffs on interactive media marketing (SMM) I listen.  In this case Dave's message is particularly relevant to me as I go over my notes from college student plans for web-based businesses. Churbuck is dead on when he says that technology companies are right at the forefront of SMM. The reason they are leading the parade, however , is because they are letting pros do the baking with fresh ingredients and not relying on Johnny Come Lately third-party marketing consultancies to provide canned solutions derived from fetid smoke stack marketing/technological buzzword casseroles.

Over the last year It's been my good luck to watch a couple of groups of college students grapple with the concepts of Social Media Marketing. Mostly, I think they're on track, they fundamentally understand several key concepts: Interactive marketing is by definition a multi-path communications channel; It can't be adopted or used effectively when management insulates itself from consumers; Best practices in this emerging category are emerging but require two-key traits--ideological flexibility and the ability of an SMM-oriented organization to bind consumers to a brand.

After discussing the student business plans with teams of authors, a couple of SMM issues quickly surfaced:  What internal organization would drive the adoption of SMM; And, what metrics can be used to measure the ROI.

Complex questions indeed. They are also some of the key issues Churbuck identifies in his post over the weekend.

My first reaction to reading several student business plans was their instinctive ability to pick up on the potential success for products aimed at enthusiasts.  One of the ones that stood out was for a SMM attempt aimed at owners of a brand of decades out of cars that can still be found in large numbers putting about Southern California's labyrinth freeway system. The assumptions for this business plan were so well grounded that I believe it to be on a par with the best of companies ever picked for shows such as Demo. First and foremost, the team assumed that its audience wanted information on life-extending and performance enhancing technologies and parts that would help an investment that sometimes verge on  lifestyle choices. In case you haven't figured out what the student business plan was about, I'll open the kimono a bit: it was aimed at the large community of 60's Volkswagen owner/drivers residing in California. What made this plan unique was it's point of view-- that of an parts supplier and manufacturer, not that of a user club.

Another stand out idea I saw approached from two different angles was an advertising driven site for retiring boomers listing events, classes, volunteer opportunities and other activities for people who suddenly find themselves with time on their hands. Again, the intended audience is bound by affinity and enthusiasm.

I was also particularly intrigued by a  SMM pitch aimed at ag-businesses. Among real life business professionals it's difficult to imagine a group of people with deeper roots in their chosen business than farmers and ranchers.  And the information they need to make educated decisions about crops, transportation and weather is pretty complex. Moreover. within each of those categories are big pools of potential advertisers and sponsors. Again, when  I read the plan I thought "students get your degress and get an appointment with Sunkist, Calavo, John Deere, or Archer Daniel Midlands now" If I were still working as a producer of Demo events this is exactly the sort of business technology I'd chose, providing they were able to show me partial commitment of a sponsor, a deep understanding of the demographics of the market and how such an operation could be integrated within the existing or chart of a company, trade group or other entity.

This brings me to a couple of other observations relative to finding SMM savvy future employees:

1.    SMM professionals need to recruit beyond brand name universities, some of the best talent I've seen is at the State College Level, where the emphasis is on learning by doing, not on learning old dusty theories from the previous eras.

2.     Students may need to be convinced that SMM-based programs have the full endorsement of senior management.

3.    Companies that are serious about recruiting SMM employees may want to provide appropriate executives for advisory panels.  Furthermore, why aren't nascent SMM trade groups boot strapping day pass scholarships for events like Demo or other shows so that students can have first hand experiences with the executives and entrepreneurs in this growing category?

Finally under the category of "out of the mouth of babes" this query about SMM: "If Apple is so close to its users Why isn't it active in social media marketing?" Dudette, like totally on track question!--Jim Forbes m01/20/2008