Innovations Mean Something - Period!

By  I.J. Hudson

HTC’s slogan is roughly, “innovation doesn’t mean anything unless it means something to you.”

I suppose that’s true in one sense.  If you “get” how a device or product with help you or change your life, it does mean something to you.  If the product could change your life but the company does a poor job of explaining it – it won’t mean anything to you.  I’m not suggesting that HTC is doing a poor job of anything.  I am saying that the phrase, when directed to the right individuals, is very strong; to a larger group of people or researchers, I think it misses the mark.  

Innovation successes can be a matter of timing, teaming with other emerging technologies, changes in society, or a combination of all three.  The highway to acceptance is littered with great ideas that never made it to the forefront.  A lot of these ideas were in an age of slow communications.  Now things can succeed or be labeled a failure very quickly.   

Take the Apple Newton PDA.  Yep, I tried one at a preview.  Its graffiti would not recognize my left-handed writing worth a darn.  Some cited it as a big flop, but others argued the failure prompted researchers to think about what was possible.  Actually, that’s what they’re supposed to be doing anyway.

That’s part of innovation.  Another part is deciding whether to improve the existing device, or making something entirely new that both fixes the original snag, and incorporates other features that address the core problems consumers want solved.   The mix of ideas, technologies and business models that comes together to make a product successful is not linear in nature.  Sometimes they mature together, sometimes they don’t.  When they do, the tech world changes; the combination is disruptive almost overnight.  Everyone sees it, even the trenchers. Wow!  Not only does the “idea” lightbulb come on, (like in the comics) but it’s a CFL bulb.

Trenchers?  I have a trench theory of gadgets:  A lot of tech people are early adopters.  “Yeah, I’ll try that because it’s cool, it’s the newest.  I’m not sure if it works any better than what I have, but it’s new and improved – ergo, what I have is ‘old and unimproved.’”   The trenchers, by contrast, are those who wait until they see real value before exchanging what they have that works for the next new thing.  “I am not willing to give up what I like and know for something just because it is new.”  The new thing may be a year old before they try it; or the trencher may have consulted with friends and seen it in action – finding out for themselves what the true value proposition is for them.  In short, the gadget must let them do something they want and need to do that the old device won’t.   

Unmistakable advantage trumps the trencher’s comfort level with the status quo.  “If I’m going to have to unlearn how to use that stylus on a smartphone and learn how to use my fingers on a touchscreen, it had better be worth it.  That’s pretty basic.  The really smart early adopters will argue that THEY see the value of things earlier than most people.  Maybe so.

The takeway from my ramblings is that innovation can mean a whole lot, even if it does not mean something to you.  As our sharing of ideas gets faster, innovations brewing thousands of miles and years apart can now meet up much more quickly to make the next big thing happen. 

The innovations will be there and either recognized by the marketplace as important now, or mix with other innovations to be important later.  The innovations will keep coming at us faster.  It’s up to us to recognize what’s important.

DDS - Getting the Lawn Ready

By I.J. Hudson

Warning!  Do not read further if you have a weak stomach.

It has become a ritual of very early spring – or late winter, depending on temperatures.

Just as some people await the seasons for picking strawberries, blackberries, peaches and apples, I await the perfect time to pick – wait for it – deer droppings in my front yard.  We have a herd of the creatures that traipses around the neighborhood grazing on plants, shrubs, running in front of cars and trucks and leaving their leavings behind. The crop builds until it can no longer be ignored.  You know you’ve reached that point when you can’t walk a continuous straight line across the yard.

Admittedly, the payoff for picking deer droppings is not quite the same as for fruit, but it is exercise and is a much needed chore.  It is preventive in nature in that it diminishes the chances that the small shoes of grandsons will find those deposits of deer scat and transfer them, in smushed form, to the kitchen tile or other interior surfaces – or to their parents’ SUVs.  

I choose February/March as my DDS (deer droppings season) because it often is warm enough to sustain outside activity, yet cool enough that the mostly pelletized material is still hard enough to make handling easier.  If you wait too late in the year, you have to wear gloves.      (Just kidding, I wear gloves.)

It’s fairly easy to pick up, but you do have to use your fingers like a small rake to bring up some of the lower lying “fruit” between the blades of grass.   And I stress some, because you can’t get it all.  Spring rains and grass cuttings assist in reducing the quantity of the morsels you miss.  

I’m sure some of you can/will suggest good uses for the deer droppings.  It may make excellent fertilizer, or a wonderful threaded necklace if properly glazed.  I suspect the latter may already be available online, but I’m thinking that artisan may already have an abundant supply of raw material. 

I do know picking up deer droppings is good exercise that I can recommend to friends who would like to stop by next season.  There is no question the deer will do their part to ensure there is another bumper crop. 

 

Actually, they’re working on it now.

Paper Address Book - Still Useful

By I.J. Hudson

What can an old address book tell you?  A lot.

I’m talking about a paper address book, the kind you used to buy at a card store – you know, with tabs along the side to separate names beginning with A from those beginning with B, etc.

Many of those books disappeared with the Palm Pilot era, then Smart Phones.  Address books became the digital “contacts” and sync-able between desktop and mobile device. Of course, a lot of people neglected to keep that sync going and when the mobile device died, found themselves losing contacts.  Remember when “backup” used to mean pretty much one thing - move backwards, not copy for safekeeping?

The paper version is always there, if you keep in the same place, like a desk drawer in the kitchen.  It’s safely tucked away next to the dish full of change and paper clips, rubber bands and papers you’ve been meaning to file.

The analog book also provides a history of sorts.  As people move or remarry, the address book gathers line-throughs, additions and maybe an occasional “white-out.”  It’s a record of change.  It may be the source of a Christmas card list, a book to consult when you’ve been out of touch with old friends, who have moved, picked up a retirement home, or shucked it all for an RV and added a post office box somewhere.

The handwritten changes are a running history of lives. The old friends, their addresses are phone numbers are tied to us – when we lived somewhere else at a different point in our lives. Some early entries didn’t have/didn’t need an area code; others had an area code change even though they didn’t move. Now an area code doesn’t necessarily denote where someone lives.  It’s just an identification number for someone to dial to reach that phone.

We kept our old paper address book so long that the pages kept coming out.  So we put rubber bands around it, and tried to keep it together.  But, alas, the day finally came when we had to put it aside (not throw it away) and make a new contacts list gleaned from the old.  It is much shorter, but it’s still in a decorative address book, kept in a kitchen drawer.

 Yes, I do have two BlackBerries, and the contacts and appointments in each are backed up.  But there’s something about pulling out the address book when I want to send an old-fashioned card (handmade using software) to someone for their birthday.  The new book does the job nicely, but it was always interesting to look folks up in the old book, note the changes over the years – and reminisce.

 

Commute from Hell - with Compassion on the Side

By I.J. Hudson

I apologize for being away from the keyboard for a few weeks.  I guess it’s just laziness and/or lack of discipline.

I’m back to catch up.  I’m going to bury the lead to this story by providing a little background before making a point.

Most of you read something about the “commute from Hell” in the Washington, DC area when a few inches of snow combined with some bone-headed decisions about releasing workers early so plows couldn’t reach the snow.  Result:  commutes than ranged from a few to more than 12 hours.  Unbelievable.   Power outages were in the hundreds of thousands.  Very few traffic lights, everything shut down.

I personally saw dozens of accidents, a car fire, dozens of abandoned cars, people stranded, confused, out of gas and generally wondering when they would ever get home.

The good old GPS with Bluetooth enabled me to bring up the local hotels and their phone numbers, dial with a quick touch so I could find out that they were all full.  Technology saved me the time of wasting hours, yes hours, driving to hotels to check to see if they had any rooms, a couch in the lobby, a parking lot I could just park in.

I made it through several hours of unbelievable backups and finally found a little driving room up Rockville Pike.  Power was out everywhere, but I noticed the lights were still on at a TGI Friday’s at the Pike Center (12147 Rockville Pike).  As I reached the door, I saw a sign that read, “Because of the weather, we’re closing at 10pm.”  The time:  10pm.  The door was locked!  Sigh…I had just made it through 5 1/2 hours of constant tension, near accidents, and a bit of anxiety - only to come up a couple of minutes short!  Argghhh!

But one of the managers, Chris, let me in to use the bathroom and told me we’re sending our folks home fairly soon and we’re not cooking anything else.  BUT, we’ve got some soup and coffee, and you’re welcome to come in for a quick bite.

YES!  I savored that soup for 25 minutes, letting my stressed out head and muscles unwind from a nasty experience on the road.  Wonderful.  An oasis.  I just sat and enjoyed.

There was no check.  But I left a tip anyway and walked out of TGI Friday’s with a strong desire to come back with a crowd and run up a big check.

Some social media gurus would characterize Friday’s effort as being “remarkable.”  It was.  But was it a culture that the Friday’s manager picked up through the organization, or was it just the way Chris personally treated customers and handled people? 

I don’t know.  I just hope that Friday’s recognizes that it has some good people and pushes their extraordinary customer service under extraordinary conditions throughout all of Friday’s.

What Chris showed customers that night was human compassion.  It’s an example of a social media building block at a very human level - before we called things social media.  A small courtesy by Chris to one customer that really costs nothing, but has the potential to touch a lot of people, who will think about Friday’s in a whole new way.  The social media part is how word of good deeds, good service gets spread.

Thanks Chris.  You’ll see me soon.

Improve Editing Skills - Read your Copy Out Loud.

By I.J. Hudson

I apologize in advance and hope the whipping won’t last long.

I admit I made many mistakes during my 30+ years as a reporter, and more than a few mistakes got by my mind and the keyboard - and were caught by a producer, the executive producer, or an anchor.

Usually I spotted the major mistakes – generally by doing one simple thing – reading the copy out loud.  It’s definitely worthy saying/writing again - reading the copy out loud!

The written word is passive (not in tense) for the most part.  It just lays around on the paper, or on the screen, and waits for someone to come along and read it.  The people who write those words often just do the same – just read them, (lips silent or moving) to get to the end of those words quickly.  That passes for "editing." They have other things to do. The problem is that the mind tends to fill in omissions and correct mistakes.  We know what we meant, so when we read it to ourselves, it sounds okay.

But this approach can mean a loss in accuracy.

Case in point:  I looked at a tweet that linked to a story on a neighborhood news website.  The tweet had an accurate date for the end of a project; the larger story it linked to did not.  The story listed a completion date that was already four months in the past.   Ironically, both the tweet and the story were written by the same person.   Either the project was way overdue and the reporter didn’t ask why, or there was a basic mistake in the story.

Is this a big deal?  Or is it just a mistake that should be expected with high throughput?  Mistakes in basic facts are certainly a big deal if the reporter wants to be taken seriously by the readership and those in the journalism community.   What will they think of a reporter that uses a date (already past) for a new project?  What about the rest of the facts?  Can they be trusted?

The core of journalism is facts – the basics.  You must get them right, whether writing for the New York Times or the neighborhood blog.

I do empathize with upcoming journalists.  The big difference these days is that the number of “fresh eyes” looking at your copy/script is a lot lower than a few years ago.  I hate to use the analogy, “it takes a village...”  But help is help, especially when you’re in a hurry.  Thank goodness for the folks who caught my mistakes or spotted phrases that could be misunderstood.

IMHO, journalism is most successful when it’s a team sport.   That’s when you have a better chance of your words saying what you mean.  And if you don’t have a team to back you up --- at minimum, please read the copy out LOUD!  Does it sound right?  Does it make sense?  Did you just read a date of August 2010 for an upcoming project and we just passed New Year’s and are in 2011?   I’m thinking that shouldn’t sound right.

This is not criticism, just simple advice.  Today’s reporter must write quickly, and rewrite and rewrite and read every word out loud to be sure the correct meaning is conveyed. 

I was fortunate to have a lot of help.  Your best help may be YOU, reading out loud.

This TV Special - Only $19.95: True Value?

I was decent with numbers in high school.  That's primarily because there were a lot fewer numbers back then.

Today, I get easily confused by numbers, especially those that come with "only on TV" offers.  I patiently sit through them while waiting for the really good stuff to come on the SyFy Channel.  (The Twilight Zone Marathon is always one of my favorites. The alien "eye" on one episode looks like a lot of Facebook profiles.)

Back to the numbers.  I'm always intrigued by the quantity and diversity of new products that are sold only on TV.  The knife that cuts through a nail, then slices a tomato - never needs sharpening.  They had me sold at $19.95, but wait -- if you order now, we'll send you two knives - a 40-dollar value for just $19.95, and as a special gift, we'll throw in....yadda yadda yadda - all for only $19.95.  The special chef basket that does shrimp and so many great foods for $14.99. And it folds flat for easy storage.  Order now and you receive a second chef basket for free.  Wait, it comes with an chef knife - a $20-dollar value.  If you round up a dime that gives us a $60-dollar value for $20.

How do they do that?  How do they come up with these great products?  And how can they keep the price at $19.95 as we add more to the check out cart (so to speak)?  I've seen the announced value go over $100, and still - it's only $19.95 plus shipping and handling. 

I'm assuming the folks behind these products are making a profit. What is the true value of the product? How much does the product cost the people selling it?  I don't know.  I suppose in tremendous quantities the cost of manufacturing really, really dips.

And I really love the ads that have a countdown clock.  If you call within the next 15-minutes, we'll throw in a second steam cleaner, absolutely free.  And then the ad runs again 30-minutes later.  Hmmmmm.  Operators are standing by.

Experts-of-the-Moment

 By I.J. Hudson

Social Media experts are always facing a moving target in a few areas of their expertise.  Historians get a break by looking backward and trying to fill in blanks.  But in terms of technology, forward looking means trying to beat a ticking (analog) clock. You’re right, but something changes a week later and you’re wrong.

Take Facebook.  Do a search to figure out how to do a business page.  You’ll read about the differences between profiles and pages, then read advice from another expert who confuses the two.  You’ll find all kinds of advice by really smart people, but that great advice is undermined by comments that say Facebook’s policies have changed and the expert advice no longer applies.

I’m not trying to be critical, but I do suggest that we are moving in the direction of “change before publishing.”  Heck, it could be change before “hitting enter.”  I suggest that almost anything we write about “how to” may become outdated way quicker than we expected, and obviously that happens beyond our control.

Okay, how to sharpen a knife hasn’t changed much; neither has “speeding up your computer.”  When you go searching for solutions, the articles seem to hold up.

In the case of Facebook, I found comments that totally contradicted what the authors were saying – that Facebook policy toward “whatever” had changed in the last couple of weeks.  Let’s see, creating a business “page” is different from a personal profile, and you need to lie to Facebook about having a personal profile to protect that profile and be able to change it when the client leaves for someone else.  

It seems the way some of the major players  change the rules make experts look like, well, experts-of-the-moment.  What you wrote was useful - when you wrote it.   A week later, it was really out of date but still available online when I went looking for information. 

Perhaps that’s a great reason for twitter and links to the very latest thinking and strategies.  That why I follow people like @shashib and a few others.  If we don’t use advanced search properly we get wrong information from people who knew what they were talking about – when they wrote it.   Is coffee good or bad for you?  The answer is yes!

I sometimes wonder about conferences.  By the time the much-publicized conference rolls around, the major speakers have revised their remarks seven times and still may not be current.  How long does “current thinking” last?  People “tweeting” along may offer contradictory information they read just last night from another expert.

What do I know?   Only a little.  I’m the guy who keeps saying about Twitter, “it’s not the number of characters, but the character of the words.”  Just a few well-chosen words can lead to some great information.  Sometimes a lot of words if they aren’t really, really fresh and they leave room for a lot of guessing,  lead to frustration and disappointment.

So what do we need?  I think we need to be diligent in figuring out how to be sure we’re looking at “useful” information, whether written by an expert, or a guy like me.  And I think we need real some hand-holding articles that answer basic questions people have.  Not the questions that the gurus think beginners want answered.  I mean questions that not only take you step by step, but discuss each step.  What happens if I choose this?  What do I really have to know or have answers to BEFORE I start.  What traps await me if I fill out the form this way or that?  Many of us don't know what we don't know, and really need a patient guide.

Finally, we need the experts to revisit their suggestions to be sure what they said last month still holds true.  Social Media is about "is" -- not "was."