Category Archives: What’s Going On

October 14, 2013 · 9:29 am

Columbus

It’s Columbus Day here in the US.  While in many places (generally those with large Italian populations) the day is celebrated in a larger public way, it goes unnoticed in many communities.  Too bad since I think we need to pay a lot more attention to the things Columbus teaches us about business.  First, a little history.

Christopher Columbus, the subject of the book,...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Cristoforo Colombo was born in Genoa and is generally credited as having “discovered” America.  We know, of course, that he wasn’t the first European to set foot on this continent (that would have been Leif Ericson) though he certainly did it more publicly and more often than anyone else and he succeeded in bringing the Americas to the attention of the European powers.  He’d been a sailor nearly his entire life.  Though he lacked much formal education he read a great deal including some very sophisticated (for the time) books about astronomy, geography, and history written in multiple languages.  Through them and his world experience at sea, he came up with the notion that the distance between Europe and Japan would be considerably shorter if one went West rather than East.  The Americas were a kind of happy accident that turned up en route.

To be able to make that voyage, Columbus had to raise a great deal of money and spent almost a decade after he developed his theory finding investors.  That was made difficult because many of those advising the investors were dead certain Columbus was wrong and passed on the opportunity.  Any of this sound familiar?

A curious mind hungers for information and actively seeks it out.  That leads to innovative thinking that’s years ahead of anyone else’s.  From that thinking a business plan is developed and it takes a long time to get others to believe in the notion (and to put their money where their belief is).  The plan, once it moves forward, encounters an unplanned opportunity (he wasn’t looking for natives in the various Caribbean islands when he started!) and pivots to take advantage of it.   I suspect you could use those few sentences to describe any number of successful businesses or products.  That would make them all pretty good things for us to celebrate this Columbus Day as business folks, wouldn’t you agree?

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October 7, 2013 · 10:23 am

My Reunion – Part One

Over the weekend I attended the 40th reunion of my high school class.  There were about 100 of us which represented about a quarter of the graduates.  A few folks came from very far away – Australia being the longest distance – although many of us still live within an hour’s drive to the town where we went to school.  We’ve had these before but this one was very different.  Over the course of today and tomorrow’s TunesDay post I’d like to point out a few things I noticed and which might be helpful to you from a business – and personal – perspective.

The biggest difference seemed to be Facebook.  10 years ago when we did this Facebook had not yet started.  There was social networking but it wasn’t really widespread and my generation is generally late to the tech game anyway.  Communication of the event came via email (to some) and snail mail (to most) and by word of mouth from classmate to classmate.  The planning wasn’t very collaborative – a committee did the planning with very little guidance from the rest of the class.

The event itself was fun.  While many people took photos, I’ve seen only a few of them over the years.  After all, they had to be developed and printed and either mailed or scanned for me to have seen them.  I spent much of the evening catching up – finding out about families and careers and sharing what I’d been doing.  It truly was a reunion – a reuniting of a group that had been separated.

Fast forward to last weekend.  Much of the planning was done via Facebook.  A small group began as invitation only and we all added classmates it grew rapidly.  Decisions were taken with input from the group.  Moreover, there was already a Class of ’73 group that was non-reunion specific (we’ve all had reminders to find people we went to school with on Facebook, I’m sure).  We could “friend” the group as well as the individuals within it.  What that meant was a few things.  First and foremost, the physical transformations most of us have gone through were less jarring since we’d seen them already.  It also took far less time to figure out who was whom (the trick by the way is to look into people’s eyes – they really don’t change that much and it call comes back to you).

I had the experience of shaking the hand of a guy I had not seen in person in 40 years – literally since graduation.  That said, we picked right up as if I’d just seen him last week – and I had.  We’ve been Facebook buddies for a couple of years.  I know about him, his family, and his business and I had that experience many times over the course of the evening.  Given the limited time of the evening, it was possible to speak with far more people in-depth since we didn’t need to spend time on catching up and making small talk.  I probably spent more time with the folks NOT on Facebook or who aren’t my “friends”.  Many people came up to me unsolicited to talk about what I’d been up to – they already knew quite a bit from the screed and LinkedIn and elsewhere.  It was very different!

Tomorrow I’ll talk about what this all means as well as add a few more thoughts.  Feel free to weigh in during the interim!

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September 25, 2013 · 10:44 am

Evil?

I’ll admit that today’s screed is a bit more narrowly focused than it is on some days. That said, it’s about a business that touches us all and a business practice that might serve as an example.

English: Google Logo officially released on Ma...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You might know that one of Google’s informal mottos is “don’t be evil.” More formally stated (as it is in their business code) it’s:

Do the right thing: don’t be evil. Honesty and Integrity in all we do. Our business practices are beyond reproach. We make money by doing good things

It also made their IPO documents:

Don’t be evil. We believe strongly that in the long-term, we will be better served — as shareholders and in all other ways — by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short-term gains.

So far, so good.  What’s bugging me and many others today is Google’s announcement that they’re going to be encrypting all search data.  They started doing that on a smaller scale almost two years ago (you can read my post on it here).  For those of us who are in the business of helping companies understand how and why people come to their digital businesses, it made life difficult.  If you’re engaged in search engine optimization, it put a dent in your abilities as well.  However, at the time, Google said it was a measure taken to protect user privacy (for users signed into a Google account) and it wouldn’t affect much of the data.

Fast forward.  It HAS affected a lot of the data and yesterday’s announcement means ALL the data about how people were searching and found your site is gone.  Some are calling it the day SEO died.  I think it’s evil.  Why?  Because you CAN get the data – you just need to pay Google for it.  Their idea of privacy is bullcrap. You can’t offer privacy, but still SELL the data to AdWords advertisers.   There’s also some rumblings that they’re doing this to protect against the NSA program but if the data is still available I can’t see how that would work.  Business practices beyond reproach?  I think a neutral party might say not so fast.

I respect that Google offers a lot of free services, most of which are among the best offered anywhere.  But dumbing down how businesses can make the web a better, more usable place hurts everyone.  Part of why Google and other search engines work is that many of us work hard to be sure our content is discoverable by and clear to the search engines.  This could make search results less accurate.  It also means the ads Google serves will be less well-targeted.  It also means that while big companies will continue to pay for expensive services that offer workarounds, start-ups and smaller businesses will suffer.

I come down on the side of this being evil.  You?

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