Joe Bartmann, Online Tools, CafePress, and ImageKind

Thanks to Joe Bartmann for providing a really good list of online tools that could be useful to any entrepreneur, in business or the non-profit world. The slideshow (with links!) is available at Slideshare, one of the tools Joe highlighted. (Alas, WordPress seems disinclined to let us embed. Bad WordPress! Good Joe! He shows me the WordPress embed code button! Yahoo!)

We also mentioned CafePress and ImageKind at the beginning of class as examples of entrepreneurs using IT to shake up the value chain. Both services free up idea people to be creative and maybe make some money off their ideas and images while leaving the work of production, logistics, and marketing to other professionals. Pretty cool!

And I forgot to mention: CafePress is a lot more than t-shirts. You can produce mugs, aprons, doggie bowls, even books and CDs! The power of mass production — and just-in-time production! — placed in the hands of the masses. I wonder what Smith and Marx would think of that. I also wonder what you think of that!

Dreamweaver? FrontPage? Why Bother?

Deane Barker at Gadgetopia takes the position that client-side WYSIWYG Web editing—building your website on Dreamweaver, FrontPage, etc.—is dead. Barker says serious developers will work with raw code in text editors, while the folks focusing on content will turn to content management systems (CMS).

Facebook Gets Office Worker Fired

…so reads a headline at CNet News that gets my attention:

Helpful Hints for Internet Forums

Dan Cypra “How to Succeed with Internet Forums”

http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=711&doc_id=172644&

Forums are much more than just flame wars and spammers; they are an important factor in today’s websites. Forums allow customers to interact with management and give significant feedback. In other words, successful websites need to have a forum to improve customer support.

Dan Cypra gives several helpful hints about creating and building a successful Internet Forum. The first suggestion is to narrow your topic, keeping the discussing limited to the websites content. Second, choose a pertinent name, making sure the customer knows what information to expect in each thread. The third suggestion is moderate effectively, keep threads on topic and watch out for malicious participants. The last suggestion is setting the rules. Take time to create a set of rules outlining the moderator’s abilities and post them at the top of the list of discussions. Dan also points out that you should take control of your forum and not allow disrespectful individuals to ruin the atmosphere of the forum.

Dan makes good points about improving a websites forum. Forums are a valuable addition to any website and should be monitored carefully.

Websites becoming more mobile user friendly

PC World highlights Yahoo! and MySpace efforts to to make their sites more user friendly for mobile users.

wikiHow

wikiHow is a website with the highest quality of how-to-manuals. The webiste is a free resource that helps millions of people by offering solutions to everyday life problems. The site can easily be read in different languages depending on the user.

I researched SQL on the wikiHow site and got a how-to-manual on it. It explained what SQL is and gave the basic steps of how to get data out or how to filter data. For someone who needs a reminder of how to use SQL, this would be a good resource for them. For someone who has never used it before, this how-to-manual may still be over the top.

SQL isn’t an everyday task but balancing a checkbook is a task that some people were never taught how to do. There is a very descriptive how-to-manual on balancing a checkbook. It shows images that explain what needs to be written where on the check register.

I believe the website overall is a useful tool for someone who wants to learn how to do an everyday task.

www.wikihow.com

Bob Evans: Talk to Your Customers!

Bob Evans offers another fine (and punchily written) reminder that you can’t plan and manage information systems without looking outside your business’s walls.

Planning based on what’s going on in your business is hard enough: as Evans notes, plans are based on a “snapshot” of the company as it existed when the plan started, not as the company is now. You can’t have “500 straight days filled with change orders,” but you also have to find ways to make what made sense yesterday make sense today.

At least as much change is happening in your customer base, your market. To grasp and react to that change, IT folks can’t be “internally focused bit-twiddlers;” Instead, they must embrace customers (sounds yucky, but you gotta do it!):

Companies and CIOs that can do this will gain significant competitive advantage by knowing immediately not just when but also why customer preferences are shifting; by knowing what types of questions, complaints, and suggestions customers are raising; by establishing a sense of trust via a two-way dialogue predicated on customer preferences; and by giving the entire organization hugely valuable feedback that can be used to refine business processes, communications, product sets, and even high-level strategy [Bob Evans, "Global CIO: Align IT with Customers, Not Business," InformationWeek.com, 2009.01.17].

Did you catch that part about “two-way dialogue”? Yup. Think blog, think wiki, think conversation.

Assigned Reading: WikiWork

Ellen Perlman and Melissa Maynard, “Working in Wiki,” Governing.com, 2008.05.

Think about the following questions and be prepared to discuss them in class Tuesday 1/20. You can address these questions or others that occur to you in your one-page reaction paper, due Thursday 1/22 (see D2L for detailed instructions).

1. Mark Forman says wiki-wise workers “will be hailed as the next great visionaries.” Is that hyperbole? If not, what can you do to join that group (assuming you want the boss to think of you as a visionary…)?
2. “It takes a certain mindset to be a first adapter of the Web 2.0 tools.” Do you have that mindset? Do you need that mindset? What stands in the way of getting that mindset?
3. The Montgomery County police chief used the bug-tracking wiki to put pressure on vendors (”the best way not to have technical problems posted was to fix them right away”). Could using that kind of leverage backfire? What content wouldn’t you put on a public company/organization wiki?
4. For what businesses might a facility simulation like the hospital model be worth the expence?
5. Could you put something like Transit Camp to work in your workplace? Could you expand it to include (gasp!) customers and other non-employees?
6. The Washtenaw County example referred to social workers having lots of tech tools, but still not getting the job done. What was missing?
7. How could apps like these be applied to the DSU environment (either classroom or administrative)?

In-Class Reading 1/15: Recruiting in Second Life

Mark Stencel, “The Reality of Virtual Reality,” Governing: The Managing Technology Letter, 2008.09.

1. How will you make use of virtual worlds and online communities when you look for work? How will you use them when you look for workers?
2. Using Second Life and other online communities for recruiting: fad or fantastic?
3. How would you design your Second Life avatar? If you were using Second Life for recruiting, what consideration, if any, would you give to the appearance of job candidates’ avatars?

Can You Manage a Corporate Blog?

…and would you want to?

Heather Green of Business Week‘s Blogspotting cites a Forrester Research report that finds corporate blogs have the lowest trust rating of any content surveyed. Green’s question: Are corporate blogs worth doing?

Harvey Schwadron, 2004.05.18, © Tribune Media Services

If your corporate blog is nothing but an extension of your marketing department, then probably not. Online readers aren’t going to come to your site to read rehashings of press releases and ads that already show up in other websites and media. Web readers (like your instructors!) want fresh, useful, authentic content.

Still, corporate blogs can build connections internally and externally. Employees from the shop floor to the board room can share ideas, frustrations, and plain old happy thoughts that spread knowledge and esprit de corps. Firms can reach out to customers and the general public to build trust and even (if you’re ready to take a big bite of the Web 2.0 enchilada) seek feedback on how to be a better company.

General Motors posts GM FastLane, which features some relatively straight talk from GM execs about what’s happening in the company, plus some even straighter talk from employees and others in the comments sections. Some particularly good posts come from GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz, who seems to understand how to speak authentically in the modern Web. Southwest Airlines takes a looser approach to the corporate blog with Nuts about Southwest, a blog that is open to all employees and even customers to say whatever they want about the company (almost).

Some firms create multiple blogs for different audiences. General Electric posts GE Reports to put out positive marketing stories about the company in general. GE Global Research produces From Edison’s Desk, a tech-nut’s dream, as GE researchers talk about the inventions they’re working on. (Where some blogs’ tag lists read like People headlines, the tags on From Edison’s Desk include Batteries, Ecoassessment, Holographic Data Storage, Pulsed Detonation Engine, and Superhydrophobicity. Put that in your Scrabble pipe and smoke it!) GE also dedicates a blog to its Information Management Leadership Program, “a 2-year rotational training program that allows recent college graduates to gain valuable experience in the field of information technology” (hint, undergrads!).

GE Reports catches some grief for sounding like a product of the company’s PR team, but it gets credit for opening comments to the public. GM and Southwest get kudos for similar openness. Done right—i.e., with content readers will find engaging, useful, and (the key word) authentic—a corporate blog can add value for you, your employees, and current and potential customers.

Learn more: see Josh Catone’s list of “15 Companies That Really Get Corporate Blogging.”