Chinese Delivery as the Canary in the Coal Mine

Working from a home office today, heard those footsteps up the walk and the inevitable clank of the mailbox mid-afternoon. The mail delivery had already happened, so resigned myself to another armload of crap junk mail flyers.

A single flyer, indeed it was. But it was the 1 in a 1000 flyer I actually wanted to read. It was a new Chinese take/out delivery place just a few blocks from my house. And I was actually seeking recommendations not long ago for a decent, reliable delivery place. So that particular mass marketing outreach actually hit the target and found a responsive prospect.

So tonight I phoned, less than 6 hours after the flyer campaign hit the streets. After studying the menu, the prices, the spiciness scale, I circled my choices and phoned. General Tso's Chicken, Singapore Vermicelli, BBQ pork. Looking forward to having it fuel a bit more work this evening and the wonderful prospect of reheated leftovers for lunch tomorrow.

So I phoned. And gave my name. Twice.

And gave my phone number. (Had to explain the area code was a business cell number...)

And then my street number. That one worked the first time.

But the deal fell apart when the person taking the order could not comprehend my 6-letter, single syllable street name. I spelled it out about a half dozen times. If this person works at the take-out shop, it's almost impossible they didn't drive by my street on the way to work.

And then I gave up. And said, never mind. And hung up. Felt terrible for being rude, but frustrated that they got my attention, sold me on the product, and were utterly unable to deal with the most basic transaction. Was there a language barrier? Perhaps, but couldn't possibly be the only issue, I'd worry if it wasn't an authentic Chinese (or Vietnamese, or Indian) culinary experience awaiting me. That was the whole point.

But the simplest question and response part of the transaction fell apart within a minute, didn't even get to the part about what food I wanted. Rookie? lack of training? bad communication equipment on their end? I have no idea. But the deal was lost. In fact I tore up the menu and chucked it in the recycling bin.

And then as a marketer I sat back, and wondered how the flyer success metrics would be evaluated at the end of the month, or quarter. And how mostly likely, it would be considered a marketing #fail.

And how that conclusion would be so very very wrong, but they'd never know it.

No Harm Intended

Of course there wasn't. There never is.

Little did I think 24 hours ago that I'd be sitting in a Paris bistro going to war with the Polkaroo of all things.

It all started last night on Facebook when a friend of mine tipped me off to this bizarre tweet from one of Canada's most beloved kids' TV characters: "Polkaroo! RT @tvo: Should prostitution be legal? Tonight at 9 on TVO a farmer opens a brothel to support his quadriplegic wife in A Good Man".

Wow, I thought. Clearly must be an auto-tweet social media #fail. Why would a big galumphing barely verbal kids TV icon be talking hookers and cat houses? Given that the entire Polkaroo tweet stream is TVO retweet show listings, made a seemingly safe assumption that it was some kind of bot. I wasn't the only one who thought so, and kinda chortled at it last night. It happens, eh? This damn social media. Too many people out there in Twitterland to bother hand crafting 140 characters, FCS.

So I replied "Autotweet #fail. RT @"Polkaroo! RT @tvo: Should prostitution be legal? Tonight at 9 on TVO a farmer opens a brothel to support his quadriplegic wife in A Good Man".

I mean, maybe a helpful wakeup call that a pre-school hero, if one was to think "brand" and "authentic voice", might not really want to be heading down this particular path.

Most companies, products, people and 'brands' make some type of minor misstep in their adoption of social media. In my mind a line had been crossed. A bit funny, but no harm no foul. Maybe a retuning of the bot tweets would be the fall out (and what I thought should happen).

But no, gentle readers. I was wrong. In fact, I was informed today by TVO itself that:

@mi6agency @CherylMcKinnon to clarify: yesterday's tweet was not an autotweet nor did it #fail. Lots of retweets, new followers and viewers

My heart sank a little. And then I got angry. The "my tax dollars at work" head of steam is one thing.... but to take one of Canada's most beloved pre-verbal mutants and whore out its image and voice to ... errr... umm... whores, was a bit beyond the pale.

And so I replied: "@tvo so pimping out a child-centric "brand" for followers and ratings on a clearly not child apprpriate [sic] subject is #goodsocialmedia?"

To which I was assured by the official @tvo account"@CherylMcKinnon @polkaroo RTs to an adult audience to raise awareness of the complex issues in TVO's programs. No harm intended"

When I thought this was a mistake, it was kind of a giggly ... oops! Bet they won't do that again reaction.

When I was told it was on purpose, the bile rose. Because one of the most respected, educational, level-headed television channels in North America chose to pimp out its own.

Just threw up a little inside my mouth.

Those Rose Coloured Glasses Aren't What You Think They Are

One of the best things I've done in my tech career is to respect the importance of 'The Old Girl's Club'. Honestly, it's nice to have a circle of trusted female friends in the tech business who gets the world you live in, and with whom you can share a glass of wine and a laugh on the road as easily as debate an acquisition or analyst report.

Over the last couple of months I've been lucky to connect with a few ex-colleagues, thankful that between family and work and travel pressures we can find an evening to unwind and catch up.

So why have these last few encounters left me feeling so agitated and frustrated over the prospects of these dear friends? It's because some companies are toxic to female ambition. Anecdotes take on the power of reality when pooled. When story after story of stalled promotions and broken career promises all sound exactly the same, there is more than coincidence at play.

From what I hear anecdotally, can it really be true that an enterprise software company has less than 2% female representation at the VP or above layer? I'm curious to find more industry stats on this... so please pass them along. I think we are ripe for a little transparency in this area.

Some info that was shared with me this afternoon:

In Silicon Valley companies, men and women in technical careers are equally likely to hold mid-level jobs, but men are 2.7 times more likely than women to be promoted to a high-ranking tech jobs such as vice president of engineering, or senior engineering manager - from 2009 survey

According to the U.S.-based National Center for Women in Technology, 41 per cent of women leave technology companies after 10 years of experience, compared to only 17 per cent of men; 56 per cent of women leave at the mid-level point. If current trends continue, NCWIT says, by 2016 the information technology industry will be able to fill only half of its available jobs. ITWorldCanada article 2010

Why do I care? Because companies that lip-synch commitment to diversity and innovation need to own up to their lack of execution. Because the women who feel stuck and trapped need to figure out a way out or up and remember that there's a whole other world out there. Because in this world of tech that values communication, new modes of collaboration and an embrace of trusted personal communication via social media, new skills need to rise to the top of the food chain.

After the latest such dinner I tweeted my frustration.... That glass ceiling is pink for a reason. It's stained with the bloody cracked skulls of all the women who have been bashed against it. And then just gave up and left.

The Anthropomorphication of The Brand Must Stop

"Engaging with the brand" "What the brand seeks to accomplish" "The voice of the brand" "What the brand desires" "Creating a personal relationship with the brand"

I've had it. A brand does not have goals, nor desires, nor friends, nor a voice. Marketers and PR people need to stop this crap. In an era where so-called civilized nations are now ascribing elements of citizenry, speech rights and standing in the democratic decision making of our societies to corporations, pretending that a logo, a message, a tag line or a product preference is a person is BS.

Stop it now.

This is an utter waste of the potential of what social media can accomplish. Connect people with people. Help them find their voice online. I have no problem using these platforms for commercial purposes and market education, but the ongoing anthropomorphication of the word Brand has got to end.

Roadkill Marketing

My Twitter and Facebook networks saw me throw a hissy fit this week when I proclaimed a strong negative reaction to a short cartoon marketing video. I'm not reposting a link to it, figuring I've probably already driven more traffic to it than they ever expected.

The final scene showed a little cartoon humanoid hit a brick wall at high speed, shattering the wall, pancaking him/herself and splattering on the ground, only to be gawked at by his fellow humanoids. The point was to explain how to make your digital mailroom more compliant with regulations.

Oh, I get it. Nice little piece of content there... shame if anything were to happen to it.

Now there were a couple of defenders of the piece, appreciating the unique approach, liking the graphics, and in that respect I agree. If nothing else, debate got stirred - not a bad outcome for a marketer.

But it played to the most wretched message of Fear. This is what has disturbed me greatly over the past few years about the evolution of the Compliance message in ECM. It smacks of veiled threat, assuring your personal or professional damage if you don't buy a certain tool. The message encourages rigidity and conformity when what successful businesses need today is agility, critical thinking and the courage to toss out broken stupid processes. It's why the "New ROI = Risk of Incarceration" LOL line wasn't actually funny after 10,000th vendor repeated it.

Seriously, aren't companies sick and tired of the scare tactics yet? Where's a vendor with grace and vision and shares this optimism with their customers and partners?

Compliance is an outcome of doing good business. It's not an objective in itself. It can't be. Other than for vendors and consultants who thrive on selling fear.

Free... As In Beer....

Thanks to the contestmeister Jon Marks (aka @McBoof) over at his Jon on Tech blog. Nothing like some late night wine-fueled giggles amongst some of the sharpest & funniest content management gurus.

Click here for the Grand Champion #cmshaiku

Also thanks to my 'groupies' who made the effort to read & vote. I think all of us are pretty lucky to have found a career path in a part of the tech industry that sometimes seems a bit nerdy, but fundamentally fuels the digital legacy our future generations are going to have to puzzle through.

A great bunch of people - even the competitors. Who I whomped. Twice. ;-)

Social Networking Strategies for Business - Workshop @ Kitchener-Waterloo Chamber of Commerce

The Kitchener-Waterloo Chamber of Commerce hosted a full morning workshop for its membership on January 26, 2010. Was really honoured to be invited to lead the session and get to meet an incredibly diverse & social-media curious group of local entrepreneurs and managers. From small boutique chocolate makers to global leaders in insurance - and a few dozen others in between... nice cross section of the business leadership in this region.

This workshop will always be a work-in-progress. I love keeping it up to date with new examples, lessons learned, tuning the focus for specific audiences, keeping on top of the cool new tools & platforms that can be helpful for businesses wanting to add social networking into their outreach programs.

For this Chamber of Commerce audience, I focused on four key areas where businesses can benefit from the social media tactics:

• Lead and Demand Generation - how to find prospects and interest for your products or services
• Customer Care and Service - understand the buzz around satisfaction levels, finding new ways to ensure customers are satisfied and feel respected
• Competitive and Market Intelligence - stay ahead of the game on new trends in your market, learn about what your competitors are doing - the good things and the bad things
• Recruiting and Talent Acquisition - how to find and assess great candidates, and build contacts with specialized free-lancers and contractors to fill your skills gap

Using these four themes as organizing principles, we had a great interactive discussion exploring many of the common platforms and channels in the social networking space: Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Slideshare, YouTube, blogs, wikis, and specialty communities.

I hope the participants all walked away with the confidence and ambition to try at least one new thing this week.

And a thank you to my management team at Nuxeo for letting me invest some time in this workshop. It keeps my skills sharp, relevant and proves that we walk the talk when it comes to giving back to the community.

Social Networking for Business

View more presentations from Cheryl McKinnon.

My Favourite Fridge Picture

Inspired by my friend (and former boss) Daniel Kraft and his new venture iFridge, here's my favourite photo of a fridge.

It's my Baba's fridge. She passed away 2 years ago, a very sad time for my family.

My Baba was born in a small town in one of those regions that changed their borders every time the winds of war shifted... Ukraine/Poland/Belarus... a difficult time. She was born the same year as Queen Elizabeth. After she came to Canada - a displaced person and a teenage bride and mother, she developed a real fascination with the Queen. They actually looked like they could be sisters. Same hair, glasses, shape of face.

On one of my first business trips to London, I found that postcard of the Queen. Almost life sized picture of her smiling face. So I sent it to my Baba. She put it up on her fridge when she got it, and never took it down. Over the years I'd go home to visit family for the holidays, and it made me smile that the postcard of the Queen was still there. She looked at it every day, and I hoped she thought of me and was proud.

My aunt told me once that she would even talk to it from time to time.

At the church after her funeral service, the family gathered and I turned to my aunt and asked for one small favour. She granted my request and it put a little smile on my face on a day bereft of smiles.

So that postcard of the Queen is now on my fridge at home. And I see the big smile and remember my Baba, knowing she's watching out for all of us.

On Being a Blogmother

About 20 people came out last Thursday for my spur-of-the-moment social media 101 workshop. Thrilled with attendance given snowy blowy conditions across the Waterloo region. Even had a New Yorker fly up specifically for the networking opportunity and to enjoy a social evening with a group of tremendous people in the local tech/ECM community. So grateful to Kristina of the Laudi Group, a recruiter here in the area for stopping by on short notice - hoping some good connections were made.

About half of the group were newly unemployed - looking for tips on how to start or at least spiff up their online professional profiles.

The other half still employed know that they need to take control of their voice, their web presence and ultimate career path. Because no one can rely on a boss or a company to do that for you.


(yes I used this cartoon - thanks again to the brilliant Hugh MacLeod)

Within 6 hours, one new blog was launched. Welcome Brigid Greenway's The KISS Principle of Lead Generation. Brigid is goddess of the numbers and metrics of all things lead and demand generating and her perspectives are that of a pro. If you are looking for marketing insights earned in the trenches with real blood, sweat and tears, please check her out.

Within 24 hours, I've seen about a dozen LinkedIn profiles updated and refreshed. I've had a couple of newbie Twitter followers. Glad that the workshop inspired action.

I could have talked about this stuff all night, but wanted to make sure there was ample time for networking, hugs and sharing of other success (and #fail) stories.

What we heard:

• Squeals of joy when someone first searched for the hashtag #jobs on Twitter
• Amazement of someone who changed his LinkedIn status to 'no longer employed' and immediately got 6 messages promising to pass along leads
• A great lady who confessed she got her last job because she put up a Facebook status saying she was in the mood for something new
• Confession of an "ah-ha" moment when a tech manager got followed by a major analyst firm after retweeting an article link

Job Hunting 2.0 is a bit of an obsession with me right now. My own recent career change experience solidified a lot of the Enterprise 2.0 evangelism I've done over last 2 years, but with some new perspectives that I really wanted to share with those who need it.

• LinkedIn *is* your resume now. And your Google juice is your reference check. To this day I've never sent Eric a resume or a reference - and never will. But I fear that increasingly in tech marketing having no presence means not being qualified.
  
• Quit worrying about how you're going to accommodate the Gen Y'ers in the workplace - and worry more about why they will want to hire you. There is a new generation of entrepreneurial talent that is skipping the usual management bureaucracy path and just building their own company.
  
• If you bitch and moan about not having time to build an online professional profile - stop doing something in your life that is useless. For most it means turning off the fucking TV. Get off the couch. Stop consuming passive media: Read. Write. Engage. No one knows how brilliant you are unless you prove it. Show your work.
  

Being connected professionally means you have people who know and trust you watching your back. Can't think of anything more important in times of instability and uncertainty. Don't ignore the people around you who walk the talk.

Social Media 101 - Building a Better Professional Profile Online

Been a tough week hearing about more layoffs in the Waterloo / Toronto tech community. Some fantastic and talented people out there right now.

So... If you are newly unemployed, and worried that you need a better online professional presence, I'm inviting you to come out on Thursday December 10.

Or... if you are still gainfully employed, but concerned that your lack of web presence is holding you back from new opportunities... I'm inviting you to come out on Thursday December 10.

Bring enthusiasm, a couple of concrete goals, be prepared to chat about what has/has not worked for you so far.

And if there's any local recruiters listening in... please pop in to meet some top notch talent.

Location: Huether Hotel - Third Floor Boardroom
Time: 7-8pm workshop - informal networking after 8pm
No charge - but please RSVP directly to me at cherylmckinnon@hotmail.com

See you there.

Dropping Your Pants on the Second Date

I heard the expression "you sell like you buy" from my first ECM mentor back in the mid/late 1990s. Glad to see it still has relevance with the cool kids more than a decade later.

As I enter week #7 as Chief Marketing officer for Nuxeo (Open Source Enterprise Content Management), I am pleased to report tremendous progress on plan approvals, prioritization of marketing activities, even a budget that got all the right heads nodding on version 2. Yay team.

In the last 72 hours I made 4 important decisions on 2010 marketing spend.

2 were YES decisions
2 were NO decisions

Actually - that's not quite right. All 4 proposals were requested by me. Because I know what I want and need. The NOs were not meant to be "NO", more "can you go back to the drawing board".

The 2 yes decisions were made because the vendors listened to exactly what I had to say, wrote down what I asked for, repeated it back to me on the phone or in email, and when the contract was shipped over, I reviewed it, and yelled down the hallway for a PO number.

The 2 no decisions were for vendors who sent proposals that were ever so slightly off - but ultimately very salvageable. I asked them to go back and revise because in one case, the geographical focus was wrong. Right thing, right time, wrong place. In the other case the timing was wrong. Right thing, right place, wrong time.

But in both cases, when the first "No, but ..." came out of my mouth, the guy on the phone immediately dropped the price. As though a discount was going to change something important. I actually thought in both cases that the original price was entirely fair. What I wanted was a re-focus and alternative time-line, not a blue plate special.

Making the service cheaper doesn't make it more attractive. It makes it cheaper. And now I question whether it's worth anything at all.

#MeshMarketing

Disclaimer: I rant because I care

This week I attended quite possibly the meatiest, most useful marketing conference of my career. Massive and unequivocal kudos to the event organizers, presenters, sponsors and volunteers. I will tell everyone I know to go next year.

Every session was delivered by a kick ass, energetic expert with real street cred behind him/her. I walked out with pages of typed notes of things I can actually apply to my business – today. Chatted with some cool and utterly charming new acquaintances many of whom I've gotten to know via online social networks. Such fun to put real live faces and smiles to the twitter Ids.

But. As PeeWee Herman said, “there's always a big but”.

Leaving the venue after a Molson 67 (thanks guys for being great supporters) and moseyed towards the train station, I started getting a little annoyed. And then a bit more annoyed, and I could not figure out why my day of awesomeness had actually kind of pissed me off.

And then it hit me on the train. I didn't get one of my major needs met.

I went to the event with my newbie CMO hat on. Not as one of the wannabe cool kids, but as a willing prospect.

And I wanted to be marketed to.

And only 1 person actually did.

The session themes were all consistent – this is the era of word of mouth, word of click, permission-based marketing, using social networks to know your prospects, being clueful about who's around you. We all sat there in the same room, nodding in unison, tweeting the highlights together. We were all on the same page, weren't we?

Ugh. Painful to realize that no, we weren't.

In July I worked on a pretty cool project helping build out persona research for technology buyers and influencers. I even wrote a sales training storyboard with a CMO character who talked about pain points and priorities and what haunts at night. And wow, now I get to live that character.

So if you were an up and coming PR or creative agency, or a software company building cool shit to optimize web business, or had a new brilliant angle on web marketing, wouldn't you kill to talk to a CMO who is 30 days into a new gig, is doing a thorough review of the entire company go-to-market strategy and has tweeted about working on her 2010 marketing plans? Someone heads down figuring out how take the North American market by storm? Who's working with a team of brilliant developers and business managers focused on growth? Who wants to use digital marketing techniques because they want to be lean, mean and innovative? Someone who came out and spent a full day of her time specifically to find you?

By attending the conference I gave permission to be pitched. By attending the sessions I did I gave permission to hear how you can help me next year. If during the break I asked who your company was and who your audience is, I did because I'm planning a budget, not because you were cute. And in a few cases I did actually say “your company” because what was written on the badge was unpronounceable. Might wanna rethink that part.

I'm a walk the talk kind of person. That's why I loved Barry Quinn's quote during the agency panel discussion. Thanks guys @Mondoville for also finding it entertaining. And to the one person who gave me a card and offered to show me something I've never seen before, I'll ping you next week.

Do Labels Matter? Some Thoughts from a Shiny New Marketing Exec

Yesterday more industry buzz about some of the shifts and disruption in the ranks of the ECM/CMS world - including a couple of comments about my new role as CMO at Nuxeo.

First some good questions posed by Ron Miller, in an editorial for FierceContentManagement: "Does the Open Source Label Still Matter?"

...and then some thought-provoking comments from Tony Byrne in his Trendwatch blog for CMSWatch, "Software Empires Striking Back".

After thinking to myself, "Whoa, like, no pressure, eh?" and crawling out from under the covers, I sat down and really thought about what kind of shift is going on out there.

• Ron is right - the product is the product is the product. Peel back the layer of 'brand' and 'voice' and 'label' and ultimately the issue is that business people are choking on content overload and want things to get better. Good product has to find the audience who needs it. Good product should not have any hidden surprises or catches when someone wants to use it. Good product deserves to be used without the hoops and loops and nightmarish license negotiation and oh-so-predictable quarterly discounting charades that is pervasive across most segments of the enterprise software business. If you like what Nuxeo produces, you just go get it. Here, in fact: http://www.nuxeo.com/en/downloads . Tell them I sent you..because like Ron says, this is how I'll be judged ;-)
  

• Tony is right - Better story-telling doth not make for better software. But good software that doesn't have a good story is a tree falling in the forest. Nuxeo has invested in an ECM foundation that was built for this century - not the last one. Yeah, yeah, we scale big for lots of content and lots of users... but guess what? we scale really lean and small and skinny too. We've entered the world of mobile, social, decentralized enterprises. And their needs are new. This is the part that made me go "hmm" when I started learning about the Nuxeo offering. And beyond story-telling, I'm heads down figuring out the priorities for lead gen, analyst relations, product branding, launch checklists, learning a new WCM application and helping expand the North American team.
  

So do does the label "open source" matter? Well, yes, but not for the usual reasons. Ultimately feature for feature Nuxeo needs to compete on how good it is, not because it has open source as its development and licensing model. Companies in the information economy have specific ECM needs - we have to meet those requirements to do our job.

Where it *does* matter, however, is the inherent flexibility the open source model gives, because Nuxeo is committed to innovation. Our own core development is augmented by partners and customers - it is the living breathing example of the social marketplace in action. The barriers to customer engagement and evolving requirements disappear. Cost and time to market become an advantage as we keep up with the shift in how content is created and consumed across enterprise.

I really recommend you read some of our CEO's thoughts on why this business model works - here's Eric's blog: http://blogs.nuxeo.com/ebarroca/ or follow him on twitter @ebarroca.

A Comfort Zone is Just a Rut with Padding

Wished a friend good luck with her new job earlier this morning and that phrase just popped out of no-where. Now I've been thinking about it all day. She works for the government, and wants to be a writer. She should be: she's clever, insightful, and she wants to be read. So she puts effort into finding an audience. After a few years of mid level clerical jobs, she's finally found a position where she can use her analytical and research skills. We wondered (through our primary communication method - discussion forum private messages) why it took so long.

It's easy to recognize when one is in a rut - crabbiness, impatience, frustration, sensing something is wrong but not sure how to fix it. And then there's the comfort zone - it's the safe, warm place that's a little dull and routine but ultimately good enough.

So when does the comfort zone become the rut?

It's when the fluffy cozy bits start to wear thin and the stubbly edges of the previously unseen rut start to scratch and scuff. It's when a favourite project ends and there's nothing interesting ahead, or a colleague throws you under the bus, or a manager ignores your contribution. Figuring out that you've failed to progress because you've been protected or lied to about what's going on outside. It's when you realize that the form-fitted mattress was filled with air and not substance. It's when you are shocked to realize the cushy title and corner office was just a padded cell.

Update - lent my copy of Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers to another friend last night. Handing it over, realized I had dog-eared a page. Looked at what I had flagged. It was the section on the Korean Airline pilots and how cultural norms needed to be recognized and addressed before behaviours could be changed in the interest of air safety.

Now I remember. I read that chapter nibbling on some lovely charcuterie and sipping a rosé, sitting by myself one night in Paris. Just like the chief engineer quoted in the anecdote, many of us get squeamish when it comes to calling out corporate culture as a root cause of fear and failure.

The attitudes, assumptions and ingrained behaviour adopted by the pilots had now become a contributing factor to serial disaster. Even though this very behaviour was expected by peers to fit in and get along in the workplace.

"We took them out of their culture and re-normed them".

Taking individuals out of the comfort zone of a world-view shaped by bullying...exposing them to new ideas and methodologies...breaking stereotypes and dispensing with de-humanizing hierarchy...building an environment where it is safe to speak truth to power.

Implications for the Next Generation Office - A Day with InfoTrends

On Wednesday, I delivered a session at the Office Document Strategy & Solutions Summit - hosted by InfoTrends, a leading worldwide market research and strategic consulting firm for the digital imaging and document solutions industry.

A big thanks to InfoTrends Omri Duek and Anne Valaitis who invited me to participate and served as impeccable hosts, introducing me to a great group of like-minded digital content professionals.

Titled "Generation Gap: Implications for the Next Generation Office", (abbreviated version of the slide deck here on SlideShare), I was asked to design a session to spur some debate and discussion, to get the attendees to think about their own changing business models and the disruptive forces that are compelling their customers to think differently.

The Disruptive Forces on my radar...

• Economic uncertainty and how businesses are questioning traditional assumptions in an effort to stay lean and competitive
• Loss of Corporate Memory - the ultimate irony of the information age... poor record-keeping and content sharing practices means we risk losing decades of intellectual property and mentorship potential as experienced workers leave the organization
• Businesses - even small ones - become global. Use of the web means bigger audience to reach, companies need to create content to be consumed by all the senses in order to get around language barriers
• Greening of the Enterprise - where can costs be cut - both $$ and reduction of carbon footprint
• Gen Y Enters the Management Ranks and brings with them differently wired work habits
• We enter the Era of Peak E-Mail - no longer a productivity enabler but has evolved into a productivity inhibitor
• The Mobile Era Emerges - content is created and consumed on a whole new category of communication devices
• Rise of Open Source, Cloud Computing, SaaS - erosion of traditional IT practices and business models of software companies
• Web 2.0 - Adoption of new collaborative content creation tools becomes mainstream, increasingly recognized as electronically stored information by regulatory and legal authorities

Expect to hear more from me on many of these topics over the next few months... new approaches to Enterprise Content Management demands a recognition of the changed business environment affecting customers and prospects.

My session was followed by a fantastic presentation from Sun's Gary Lombardo. His content provided a natural continuation and deeper dive into the themes I introduced. Particularly valuable was his practical and proven methodology for how to start, maintain and grow a community initiative for business (internal or external audience).

What did I learn at the event? The most intriguing discussion I had was over lunch, with a couple of very sharp and funny ladies from Taylor Business Equipment (a certified Women's Business Enterprise) in Chicago. They educated me on the environmental and preservation issues as the printer industry evolves into adoption of solid ink devices. What does that mean for our next generation of physical content artifacts? My nerdy historian spider-sense starting tingling at this one.

Maybe that will be a topic for next year's event...

The Next Adventure in ECM Begins...

The press release makes it official, I've joined Nuxeo – the Open Source ECM company as their first ever Chief Marketing Officer. I am absolutely thrilled to take this next step and explore a new angle on content management. Nuxeo is a small company but they are racking up some pretty impressive customer names, showing solid growth, and investing in some strategic hires over the coming months to expand their development, sales and marketing organization.

My path to Nuxeo was fun. Call it Recruiting 2.0 if you must, but it all happened through the online social marketplace of ideas. A few months ago, Nuxeo CEO Eric Barroca set out to find an ECM marketing professional who could help take them to the next level as a company and brand. Eric himself is an active blogger and twitter user, so he looked around the ECM community networks and well, he found me. He looked at the companies and individuals who were doing the things that he liked and took the effort to personally reach out and extend an invitation to chat.

Honestly, I had no plans to leave my last job. 10 years with an ECM powerhouse and I was pretty happy and busy. But the personal outreach by Eric compelled me to return the call, even after years of ignoring head hunters and recruiters. I called because HE reached out personally – a respected veteran of ECM in a very senior role in a small but growing company. I've been in this biz long enough to know that relationships matter. During our first meeting I mentioned this to him. Had a third party recruiter contacted me instead, I never would have returned the call. He said “I know”.

So why Nuxeo, why now? The Open Source angle fascinated me. Could something really be Free? And Good? And have a nice UI? Maybe I really have drunk the Kool-Aid on the concepts of transparency, openness, flatness, simplification. Over the last 18 months I've been living and breathing the world of Enterprise 2.0 and what it means to be 'Social' inside business and strive for collaboration with customers and partners. It just all makes more sense now.



I started to imagine a world where companies could just get on with it. Get ECM tools that meet their needs. Implement on their terms. Stop playing sales-cycle theatre. Ignore the middle men. No more shameful ROI spreadsheet gymnastics pleading for permission to do the right thing.

Nuxeo has created a gift to the community of people and companies who care about our digital legacy. It is a gift that they've offered freely and openly to companies who are ready to just get on with it. My job – the way I see it – is to be Chief Educator. Tell as many people as we can about possibilities, potential and new ways of working. Companies who survive the uncertainties of today's business environment will do so because they've been creative, they've innovated and they've paid attention to the bottom line.

Still have lots to learn, and weeks ahead will be busy. Check out the Nuxeo site, follow us on Twitter... more to come.

In Defense of the Whitepaper

Some interesting debate on twitter yesterday, provoked by @GeorgeDearing who challenged:

when's the last time you read a whitepaper? That's my #dinosauroftheday

Now I fully admit to being a 'digital immigrant', but not only do I *read* white papers, I like to write them too.

Why not just blog the key points? Does anybody really want to download, print and read a 10-20 page sales pitch? Isn't there a better way to articulate non-sucky vendor messaging? The criticism is fair - but let's try to get to the root of the problem: most technology white papers are now salesy schlock. It's not the container, it's the content.

Here's where I see the value of a good white paper...

• Complex ideas require more than 500 words. Product strategy, new approaches, shifts in market conditions that compel a rethink or addition to a vendor roadmap deserve full articulation.
  
• A white paper is the vendor equivalent of showing their work - it can be the public explanation and rationale behind specific product capabilities, target markets, platform/architectural decisions.
• Somebody needs to be able to tell a cohesive end to end story - if the big picture story (the "why") can be clearly articulated, odds are the vendor really gets what they're doing. Piecemeal topics scattered across a few blogs that have no apparent common theme, clarity of cohesion don't give me the confidence that there is a common shared purpose behind the roadmap.
• Good white papers feed the content machine for weeks / months to come. Specific sections CAN be chopped up and tailored for a variety of other consumptions channels - blogs, tweets, short articles for online or print, bullet points for an in person or web-based seminar. So when an analyst, customer, or prospect thinks to themselves, wow, these guys really get it because the message all makes sense, you can thank the white paper that spawned the little content artifacts.

Showing mastery of some concepts *is* in fact an essay question. While readership may be lower for the 15 pg PDF compared to the 500 word blog post, let's not forget the value that compounds from having a rich extended understanding of a key theme.

If white papers are dinosaurs, it's because they've been hijacked by lame marketing hacks, not because our audience is too stupid to read past page 3. Blame the content, not the container.

Skipping the Middle Man

Spent a lot of time over the last two weeks saying good bye & best wishes to many long time colleagues as I get ready for the next adventure in ECM. One common pattern that's emerged from these chats? Inevitably I ended up telling my favourite people: "Skip the Middle Men. They Don't Get It. Talk Directly to Your Audience Because They Do".

Product marketing, product management and consulting professionals in the enterprise software business write a lot. So why do so few of the really good ones blog? Technology companies inevitably spend precious marketing dollars on PR agencies, media and analyst relations, and rightfully celebrate each hard-earned opportunity to submit an article, get interviewed, talk about their product.

But why wait? Why not just write? Umm...for free?

This fear is not limited to software marketers. Was a bit shocked to spend time this week with some friends in the arts - writers, journalists, broadcast specialists. They don't do it either. They rely on agencies, publishers, middle men to find them work. Of course they need to be paid for their work - it's their profession, but how is anyone going to find them? The middle men have all the evidence of their skills but the buying audience can't find it. Talent hidden is talent useless. Tree falls in the forest....etc etc etc.

But who are these middle men in the enterprise software world? It's anyone who is not a potential buyer or user. It's sales, corporate marketing, brand police, R&D who think they know best because they supervise that guy who wrote the code.

It took me a while to put my finger on it, and after talking to people in several other companies, realize it's not a situation unique to any particular part of the technology world. But I see the pattern consistently now - the subject matter experts don't write for their customer audience, they feel obligated to write for the middle men.

Training materials for people who don't want to be trained. Inane verbal gymnastics to satisfy the chieftains wanting to protect their turf brand. High paid executives and flown-in consultants who hide away in conferences rooms squeezing the lifeblood out of any original thought leadership.

So if I didn't get a chance to say it in person, I'm saying it now. Skip the middle men. They don't get it. Write for the audience who wants to hear you. Start a blog, engage in expert communities, go to local association meetings, take off the gag of fear, take pride in your work, feel proud to put your name on something meaningful, put some skin in the game, live in the market, not in a spreadsheet, channel energy externally not internally, share your knowledge, target people who will read you, don't waste time on those who won't.

Related posts: Make Your Content a Social Object / ROI in Age of Narcissism

Inspired by @Piewords

Was great fun to see Laurence Hart of Word of Pie blog fame recounting our thoroughly enjoyable evening of doc-man nostalgia. Always such a treat to find another closet ERD nerd. Pretty shocking to think that we worked for the same Director at PC DOCS/Fulcrum for a few months in 1999-2000 -- yet we never met in person until this year, despite an incredibly tangled and overlapping professional social graph.

So in response to his query to the ECM community, "What made you commit to the content space", here's mine:

Spring 1990 and I had just finished my first year of History MA classes at Carleton U in Ottawa. The previous fall I had purchased a one-way Greyhound bus ticket, packed up my worldly possessions and left my hometown, despite not knowing a soul in Ottawa or having more than a month's rent in my pocket.

Scraped through that first year working as a Teaching Assistant and evening/weekend coffee pourer (the term 'barista' did not exist in those days). As spring neared, I blitzed the temp staffing agencies with a resume that had pretty solid secretarial & bookkeeping experience, since I'd worked all the way through my undergrad degree.

Lucked into a short-term gig being Girl Friday for a small software/hardware integrator - answered phones, helped coordinate training courses, filed, stapled, licked envelopes. Fast forward 6 months: the office manager had quit, I took the full time job, finished my classes at night.

But along the way, started to hang around the technicians, trainers, consultants. I built a PC with my own hands, mastered DOS 3.3 and WordPerfect 5.1 and learned enough AutoCAD to draw smiley faces with digitizer boards.

But what rocked my world? First exposure to text retrieval technology. The integrator was an Inmagic dealer working with a few Federal departments. I was hooked. The historian in me saw the potential of categorizing, querying, sorting and indexing all of the stacks of paper records, books, manuals, even my own copious research notes. I volunteered to learn the system to help with a time-sensitive project and made extra money working long evenings & weekends cataloging, designing reports, sorting & searching.

After the integrator shut down, I incorporated, picked up that government contract myself, and it funded me as I finished my MA research.

There was no turning back. My academic ambitions went on back-burner, and I let myself get wholly and completely sucked into the world of information management.

It dawned on me one night, waking up in a cold sweat, that if I retired at the age of 60, and decided to go back into the archives and write a history book on the 1980s or 1990s, there would probably be nothing to work with. Those dusty archive boxes would be empty. PCs were showing up every government worker's desk, all the admin clerks were being fired, and no one remembered record-keeping basic principles.

So I knew what I needed to do.

Thanks Laurence, fun to remember where it started.

What Do Law Firms Need to Know About Web 2.0?

It's ILTA week!

Have had some interesting conversations with my colleagues in the Legal Solutions group over the last few months, as we explore the unique requirements of law firms in this new world of 2.0 and Social Media.

In July, we co-hosted a webinar with our ILTA peer group and explored some of these issues and use cases. We'll be building on that session this week at the conference...

Some of the key themes we'll discuss:

• Next Generation Content Explosion Will Come from Web 2.0 & Social Media: the content forms emerging from the "Web 2.0" world will increasingly supplement (or supplant) more traditional electronic document forms... how will this impact your firm's document management strategy?

• Social Workplace and Social Marketplace: the core Use Cases for "2.0" fall into 2 high level categories - a firm adopts new technologies to build out a more Social Workplace or a more Social Marketplace. Is the conversation and collaboration requirements focused on better connecting and communicating with colleagues (internal/workplace)? or with contractors, clients or prospects (external/marketplace)?

• Risk vs. Reward: all new forms of online communication and collaboration have inherent risk AND reward - figuring out the right balance for your firm is the real challenge - so look at a refresh to your overall information governance and appropriate use policies to make sure a useful set of boundaries are set and clearly communicated to users.

If you can't make it to ILTA in person, here are links to the content we'll be discussing:

Slideshare PowerPoint link: http://www.slideshare.net/CherylMcKinnon/what-do-law-firms-need-to-know-about-web-20

Open Text calendar highlights for ILTA event here: ILTA - Events Page (Come see me present the "What Do Law Firms Need to Know About Web 2.0" session at 10:30am on Wednesday August 26!)

Sign up for the Open Text Legal Community of Practice - get the full recorded webinar from July 15, along with a host of other rich resources in our online customer forum here: Open Text Online (Request an account if you're not already a member)

Whitepapers from Open Text - Enterprise 2.0, Building the Social Workplace, Building the Social Marketplace

See you at the Gaylord!