The Digital Movement Blog

Tertiary Tech Conference - Pre Conference Event!

Chin Su Yuen — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 17:33:44 GMT

Hey guys!

TDM is here to break the silence we've been having for the past few months. This is because were busy making preparations for our upcoming flagship event: Tertiary Tech Conference!

So what exactly is the Tertiary Tech Conference?

Tertiary Tech Conference will be a single-day event featuring talks from corporate giants (such as Microsoft and Singtel) and tertiary student showcases in the areas of Augmented Reality, Mobile and Games. The aim of this conference is to be the one event where it is easiest to discover the brightest minds and best ideas in technology. The event will focus on talks given by prolific speakers which aims to inspire our next generation of innovators and trend-setters, as well as showing the corporate world concrete evidence of our brightest young talents through their project presentations.

Among some of our prominent speakers are:
John Fernandes / Haresh Khoobchandani, COO / Director, Microsoft Singapore
Loo Cheng Chuan, Principal, SingTel Idea Factory
Zaki Mahomed, CEO of Game Ventures

Pre-Conference Event

As a bonus to kick-start the event with a bang, we're proud to bring you our pre-conference event happening this Sat! Head on down and join us for an afternoon of fun and mingling, and enjoy a tantalizing lineup of short talks and presentations that's meant to give everyone present a taste on what's to come during the actual event!

So, in the event where you're currently undecided or unable to make it for the actual conference, you can (and should) grab this opportunity to get a sneak preview way ahead of everyone else. Best of all, this pre-conference event is free for all TDM'ers! What more, Danny from Foound will also be there to talk about his mobile application that is taking the world by storm. In a nutshell, the main details of the pre-conference is as follow:

Date : 28th August 2010 (Saturday)
Venue : Ice Cold Beer (SMU outlet)
Time : 3pm - 6pm
Register online here

See you all this weekend!

The shifting mindset of media monitoring by Benjamin Koe

Chin Su Yuen — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 14:29:51 GMT

Ask anyone in public relations or corporate communications and they'll tell you that monitoring the media is as essential as Vitamin C is to a kid with a running nose. Knowing what's being said publicly about your company's brand, products, services, and even people are of utmost importance to managing the reputation of a business and its communication needs. But with the online and social media now becoming mainstream, our mindset and approach toward monitoring what is being said about our companies in the public space will have to evolve to take advantage of the new opportunities.

We now have Buzz
Once upon a time there were just a few mediums: Print, TV, Radio. The last few years has introduced us to discussion forums, blogs, wikis, comments, social networks, microblogs, and other platforms for information dissemination and conversations turning everyone who cares to offer an opinion online into an influencer. Pitching stories to journalists was mostly predictable for the typical corporate announcement. You hold a press conference, invite a handful of trusted journalists, give and take a few that drop out, and there you have your coverage.

The social media has given us the added ability to track another level: Buzz. The unpredictable, unadulterated, uncontrollable buzz that takes place as anyone and everyone who cares to share something about your new announcement will on one or more social media platforms. This buzz that is created is a perfect way to understand the impact your message is making and the genuine interest of your customers. With the use of the correct tools, buzz can also be quantified and displayed as a timeline where spikes and valleys are easy to identify. This helps companies spot trends, or even catch a serious issue or crisis before it explodes.

The wheat from the chaff

The sheer volume of data created by the social media does present the issue of frivolous chatter. While buzz is a terrific quantitative indicator, the qualitative approach to what's being said can be difficult to digest. Announcements of popular products such as Apple's iPad produced over 1,000 unique opinions an hour. How was Apple's PR team suppose to read all that and make sense of it?

In traditional media, it was a lot easier. For a journalist to sit through your press conference and put in the effort to write columns that actually fill up physical space on a paper or minutes on a news show almost guarantees that it's an important clip to monitor. The same does happen on the social media too. Honest opinions from experts do get shared and published, but companies need to be able to separate the good from the frivolous.

The beauty of the social media is that everything (and dare I say everyone) can be quantified. That means a sense of how influential a blogger/author is online can be determined or guessed to a fair degree of accuracy. This will help companies identify who's really influential and who's just talking to a wall.

Local influencer, global influence

Traditional media made targeting easy. The LA Times was in Los Angeles (duh!) and ComputerWorld Antarctica was published for the researches crazy enough to live there. Today, johnsmith.blogspot.com could be in London or Kuala Lumpur. You wouldn't be able to tell from the URL or title. These individuals have the ability to influence globally, but really they only exist locally. If John was really in Kuala Lumpur and he piqued your interest in the US, it'd be a little difficult to ask John out for a coffee.

But the social media is amazing because more often than not, people leave clues and information about where they are physically. This allows companies to locate these influencers and engage them locally. Increasingly, social networks are beginning to be built around geographical regions and people increasingly share their location, talk about what's happening within their locality, and discover others that are nearby.

As the social media becomes more ubiquitous, companies will increasingly care to monitor both the traditional and social media. As the nature of the media changes, so do our mindsets and approaches. Using the right tools and having a strong understanding of the change that is coming will significantly improve our ability to cope with the evolution.

This article was written by Benjamin Koe, co-founder of multilingual social media monitoring solution provider JamiQ (http://jamiq.com). Benjamin was formally a PR and social media consultant with Hill & Knowlton in Singapore. Benjamin can be contacted at benjamin.koe@jamiq.com.

Local Startup Communities Launch Jobs Listing

Howie Chang — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 07:05:53 GMT

2009 has been an incredible year for the startup scene in Singapore. Despite the challenges of the painful global economic downturn, we’ve witnessed many of you grow from strength to strength and bringing much needed cheer and excitement to our community.

Over the past few years, SGEntrepreneurs, E27, The Digital Movement, MY Entrepreneurs, Hackerspace and Young Upstarts have been actively supporting local and regional startups to grow your exposure and awareness, and even markets for your products and services. We’ve also been supporting your growth, putting up job listings for free to help you find suitable talents for your startups.

Today, we are excited to share with you a part of our plan to take this support to another level. We are glad to announce the introduction of Triple Point Job Board, a job listings service that will be rolled out across all partner sites to help startups find suitable human resource talent.

This application was developed to help facilitate and deal with the increasing demand for job listings across partner sites. In addition, we hope that through this arrangement, we can offer greater value to startups, advertisers and other partners through access to all our sites at the same time.

We would like to state upfront that Triple Point Job Board will not be a free service (click here to see the rates). We recognize that some of you will not be happy to be charged for a service that you previously have gotten free from partner sites. However, we believe that the fees offered for the service are nominal and extremely fair. Any proceeds – which, as you can imagine, is likely to be a pittance anyway – go towards the development and maintenance of the service. Any left over will inherently be ploughed back into supporting the local startup communities. For a start, any existing job listings within the past two months that are currently on the partner sites have been converted for free for a month. You should be able to check out your respective job listings on the site now.

We’re hopeful that you share our vision for a more cooperative, close-knit startup community. We’d love to hear your feedback on Triple Point Job Board. Feel free to contact us for any clarification.

Wishing you greetings for the festive season,

SGEntrepreneurs
E27
The Digital Movement
MY Entrepreneurs,
Hackerspace and
Young Upstarts

----

http://jobs.triplepoint.asia/

“Out Hackin’” Culture and Innovation in the research lab

Chin Su Yuen — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 16:31:09 GMT

Article by Zhiquan Yeo

What do a chisel, a speaker, tons of wire and many, many magnets have in common? Any guesses? No? Well, they all contribute to cutting edge and innovative interaction research. And how do those random pieces of equipment and material contribute to research? Well, read on and you’ll find out.

Now, research may sound dry and boring and completely nerdy, and I used to think that all PhDs were stuffy old gents in labcoats and bowties hunched over a table and muttering to themselves. Then, without warning, I stumbled headfirst into the research culture, and what did I find? These were some of the coolest folk in the world, doing what to me seemed like the best job in the world.

There are lots of different research areas, from the physical sciences, to the social sciences to computer science and all matter of areas in between. My research interests lie in cutting edge Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research, specifically in affective textual animations and novel interaction techniques. I work at 2 research labs, one at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), and the other at Disney Research Pittsburgh (DRP). The 2 labs have similar, yet different cultures, but both produce tremendous amounts of innovation.

The lab at CMU works on projects related to user interfaces and interaction techniques. The lab has an academic slant, and the work primarily goes toward publications in major conferences and/or journals. Since its’ an academic lab, it has a slightly more relaxed culture, since conference deadlines are known well ahead of time (and because graduate students like to goof off). The lab also has a culture of “hacking”, not in the “break into computer systems” sense, but in using the stuff around us and building cool things.

This “hacking” culture leads to some very interesting ways of getting components that we need… You need a wire coil you say? Ok, hand me that chisel and hammer and I’ll break open this speaker and give it to you (See, I told you I’d tell you how we sued the chisel for research purposes). The best part is, everyone accepts that if you leave a tantalizing piece of electronic equipment in the general area, it’s going to get broken into and scavenged for parts. Since funding is tight in these bleak economic times, scavenging for parts makes perfect sense, and the hacker culture in the lab fits in perfectly. We scour surplus stores online to get electronic components, squeeze multiple circuit boards onto a single piece to save on fabrication costs, and build a lot of our own experiments from scratch. What may be surprising to most is that what looks like chaos in the lab is actually a finely tuned, research machine. There is a multitude of innovative research that comes out from the lab, and our faculty advisors are respected members of the HCI community. And yet, they let us grown up kids play with power tools, laser cutters and wreck mayhem in the lab, all in the name of good fun and serious research.

The lab at DRP on the other hand, is geared toward industrial research, and innovations go not only toward producing top-notch papers, but also could potentially make the company a lot of money. Thus, there is slightly more pressure to deliver results, but at the same time, the researchers are given a fairly wide berth in pursuing their own research interests. I’m involved in research on input technologies, and build circuits and sensor systems as part of my work. This is a far cry from my training in college, where I focused on software (I was trained as a computer scientist). But, the lab culture allows me to experiment and play around with new technology and equipment, all with the goal of developing the next generation of input technologies.

While there is less of a hacking culture at the DRP lab, we still cobble together test circuits using whatever we have on hand (less ripping apart of stuff though). The culture at the DRP lab is also one which encourages testing and simulation first before building actual hardware, and encourages best practices in design and analysis of projects. I basically learnt how to use circuit simulators to test sensor systems (coupled with copious amounts of wiring diagrams), and how to best lay out a circuit board to avoid interference. These practices would serve one well when going into industry, where products need to be built to spec and reliably, lest it lead to the failure of a product and economic woe.

The culture in a research lab is very different from that of normal offices. The people in the labs are allowed free reign in deciding what they want to do (well, kind of), and have at their disposal a range of tools, parts and skills to help their innovations come to life. While the CMU and DRP labs may be different, the core values seem the same, which is to encourage an environment where researchers can come up with great ideas, and leave their mark on the world.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, there is some research that needs to be done (actually, more like a speaker that needs to be, uh, “repurposed”).

Zhiquan “ZQ” Yeo is a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute. He also does work with Disney Research Pittsburgh as a Research Associate. When not thinking about world domination with tiny robots, or designing new electronic projects, or doing some seriously bleeding edge research, ZQ can be found 3000 feet in the air, in a tiny airplane, bouncing through turbulence. He also has a not-updated-as-often-as-he-would-like blog/website at www.zhiquanyeo.com

Questions, comments and complaints (and offers of money) can be directed to zhiquan.yeo@gmail.com. Please direct all spam to /dev/null, or he will unleash an army of tiny robots :)

The Tang Dynasty: An Age of Innovation

Chin Su Yuen — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 16:24:15 GMT

Article by Daniel Goh

The Tang Dynasty era (618-907 AD) was a period of unprecedented peace and stability in China. Chinese arts and culture flourished, and the Tang era is generally considered the greatest age for Chinese poetry.

It was also a period of notable Chinese technological progress and innovation. The development of woodblock printing facilitated the rapid spread of written works and, hence, spreading knowledge and improving literacy rates. Advancements were made in cartography, timekeeping and astronomy, such as the invention of the world's first clockwork escapement mechanism by an innovative Tang engineer, monk and astronomer named Yi Xing (surely a curious career combination!). Porcelain was invented, and the study of medicine was advanced.

During the time of Emperor Xuanzong, there were some 35,000 Tang craftsmen - many of them structural and mechanical engineers - serving the state. They were keen experimenters. Imperial engineers built a "cool" innovation for the emperor, an Imperial hall that employed water-powered fan wheels and rising jet streams from water fountains for air-conditioning! There was also fun innovation, of course. There were records of an ingenious and intricately designed mechanical device, which used a hydraulic pump to siphon wine into serving bowls - the Tang emperor must have thrown some really eye-opening parties for guests. It was truly a time of great innovation and invention during the Tang era.

Fast forward to present times, and we find that cities and entire nations - Singapore, Israel, Stockholm, amongst many others - are today rushing to be the next big innovation capital of the world. Are there any lessons we can learn from the Tang Dynasty?

An Open Connectedness
The Silk Road was the most important pre-modern trade route that linked East and West. It allowed the Tang Chinese ready access to markets in the Middle East, Persia and Central Asia. There was active maritime trade as well, with Chinese junks plying the South China Sea, the Indian Ocean and all the way to the Horn of Africa, the Persian Gulf and even the Red Sea. Chinese goods such as silk, ceramics and lacquerware flowed into these markets, and Tang porcelain was even highly prized in Egypt.

The Tang empire's reach to the rest of the world, coupled with its open trade policy, greatly facilitated the flow of people and ideas. This not only brought prosperity, but also gave Chinese new ways of thinking and doing things. They embraced new ways of smithing and making ceramics. Religions flourished. They incorporated new concepts on fashion. The Tang even adopted the practice of sitting on stools and chairs, where previously they only sat on mats on the floor.

These days, such connectedness is afforded by the digital Silk Road known as the Internet. Search engines, social networking sites like Facebook or micro-blogging platforms like Twitter is all about being connected, facilitating the exchange of ideas and - driving innovation.

Idea Capital
It is interesting to note that the Tang capital of Chang'an was the largest city in the world during its time. At its peak the Chang'an supported upwards of two million inhabitants, an impressive number in ancient times. According to Imperial census, many thousands of foreigners from over 70 countries worked, lived and traded within its city wards - merchants from Persia, Central Asia and the Middle East, skilled tradesmen from Vietnam and Korea, and even religious missionaries from India and Japan.

The reason that Chang'an was so cosmopolitan, was that the Tang - unlike most other Chinese dynastic eras - were incredibly open to, and tolerant of, foreign cultures. Although the Tang did employ border laws and manned checkpoints, people could move relatively freely within the empire. Its prosperity was a magnet. With such an incredible concentration of people and ideas, innovation abounded.

In modern economies, however, managing population movements - and culture - will be an increasingly fine line for governments to tread. There is always the fear of a threat to national identity, yet a talent deficit can adversely impact innovation, growth and prosperity.

Stability Drives Innovation
The Tang eventually entered into decline and collapse, more of a result of rebellions and natural calamities like famine and floods rather than poor economic management that finally shattered its prosperity.
Technological progress and innovation is intrinsically tied to a whole host of macro-economic factors. Entities that are financially, socially and politically stable are best placed to reap the rewards of innovation.

Daniel Goh is a gadget geek who is constantly amazed at how technology has changed his life over the years. He’s always interested in business and technology issues, and blogs at youngupstarts.com where he champions new ideas, innovation and entrepreneurship. He works at Samsung Asia as a public relations manager

Clash of the Tech Titans by Jonathan Wong

Administrator (TDM) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 11:05:11 GMT

Microsoft. Google. Apple.
Whenever someone starts a conversation about Silicon Valley, computers or even technology in general, you likely won’t get very deep in the conversation until someone mentions one of these three companies.

And that’s expected. Just like Exxon Mobil is the flag bearer for the energy industry (remember, I said energy, not clean energy) when one thinks about the poster child of the technology industry, most people will think no further than one of this triumvirate of companies. (Perhaps a certain bookseller will join the three in the near future, but for now, it’s only these three.)

Collectively, Microsoft, Google and Apple made over USD 28.7 billion in revenues this past quarter (12.9, 5.9 and 9.9 billion respectively). More impressively though, all three companies managed to handily beat earnings expectations in a down economy, and managed to turn in a healthy 24% net profit margin on average between them (28%, 28% and 17%).

For the average consumer or business user, there is not a single day that goes by where one doesn’t use at least one product from any of these three companies. In fact, there are more and more people like me nowadays, who actually use and rely on multiple products from all three companies every single day without exception.

We’ve rarely seen this level of dependence on technology before. Even during the monopoly heydays of AT&T and Standard Oil, there would be days that gone by where you didn’t make a phone call or needed to use oil.

Fierce Competitors or Strange Bedfellows?

As a non-biased observer in the tech industry (okay, maybe a teeny bit biased), it is always amusing for me to see these three companies compete and clash with each other in virtually every segment of the tech industry. However – entertainment value aside – many observers will certainly question why these three companies try to do everything and compete with each other everywhere. Does Microsoft really need to go into the portable music player or search business? Does Google really need to build mobile operating systems or be in the business of selling books? What the heck is Apple anyway? Is it a computer maker, a software company, a mobile platform or a music store? To really understand the dynamics between these three companies and why they compete (or partner) with each other the way they do, one has to look a bit deeper and really try to understand their motivations and long-term strategies. Here is just one person’s interpretation based on his own opinions and observations. Let’s start with Apple.

Just Apple Please; Drop the Computer

Apple doesn’t think of itself as a computer company anymore. Nothing illustrates this as well as the fact that Apple changed its name from “Apple Computer, Inc.” to “Apple Inc.” in 2007. And why should it be a computer company and compete with the many other computer companies in the industry like Dell, HP, Lenovo and so forth? Does it even make sense to compete as an OS company? Steve Jobs certainly didn’t think so, as he famously declared in 1996, “The PC wars are over. Done. Microsoft won a long time ago.”

And while most people know Apple as the bright and shining Silicon Valley star it is today, Apple actually had to weather some tough times. Things were so bleak in 1997, that Apple received a $150 million dollar investment from Microsoft, of all companies. Steve Jobs returned for a second go as Apple CEO in 1997, and led one of the most remarkable turnarounds that the tech industry has ever seen. And I believe the reason why Apple is successful today is because of a few important principles that they believed in.

First of all, even though the PC wars may technically be over, Apple sensed that there are still new markets to be tapped. For the lack of a better term, I’m going to call it Luxury Computing. Just like in a commoditized automobile market there exists a highly profitable market for high-end luxury sports cars, Apple felt that it can create such a market out of the computing industry as well. Apple believed that if you can create something so cool and so out-of-this-world that it immediately differentiates you from your competitors while not sacrificing on any functionality, then people will buy it. And that was how Apple started rolling out its tremendously successful line of aesthetically-pleasing Macs starting with the first “iMac” in 1998. Even the new name had some flair in it.

Beautiful aesthetics, excellent industrial design and perfect execution certainly helps differentiate one computer from the rest, but to Apple, that is not sufficient. In order to completely ensure differentiation, Apple felt that they needed to control every aspect of the user experience and ecosystem. This is the biggest difference between the PC world and the Mac world – in Apple’s view, there is too much risk in letting the ecosystem have a say in how happy your users are with your product.

Which is why Apple felt like beyond their own hardware, they needed to create their own operating system (OS X), web browser (Safari), media player (iTunes), portable music player (iPod), mobile phone (iPhone), video codecs (Quicktime), online store (iTunes Store), retail store (Apple Store), backup device (Time Capsule), TV set top box (Apple TV), lifestyle software (iLife) and productivity software (iWork). And the list just goes on and on.

Looking at the list above, I believe Apple’s ultimate goal is for average consumers to be perfectly content and productive using 100% Apple for all their computing and entertainment needs. And if the users are happy and feel that they are using a luxury product, they are willing to pay more and contribute to higher margins.

And this is also why Apple is seemingly trying to reach out in so many different directions at once. It simply cannot afford to trust any aspect of the computing experience to other parties and must always look to build and innovate something from within. Even the ecosystems that Apple does allow to flourish – like the iTunes App Store – are frustratingly regulated and controlled. This explains why Apple competes with Google and Microsoft on so many different vectors – web browser, mobile phones, operating system, software, etc. In its never-ending quest to provide users with the best differentiation possible, it has no choice but to compete in all these areas with the “Apple experience”.

If you look at how Apple has successfully transformed itself from a computer company to an all-encompassing consumer experience company, it really shows how Apple has a knack of creating new and profitable markets where it didn’t exist before. In Steve Jobs own words in 1996, “If I were running Apple, I would milk the Macintosh for all it's worth -- and get busy on the next great thing.” With Jobs as the CEO, Apple is good at finding the next big thing. And finding the next big thing is important, because for every next big thing that you can find, you can further increase your profits and reduce your risk by diversifying your business.

Want to bet against the Apple Tablet? I certainly won’t.
And to achieve that goal, Apple is willing to be an early adopter in technology. The iPhone is the world’s first fully touch screen-enabled mobile phone. And the new 27” iMacs are something that has never been seen before. Even if it means Apple stuff needs to be more expensive, so be it. You execute it perfectly, people will buy it.

One last interesting observation about Apple: Sometime around the mid-2000s, Apple forged a deep, yet unofficial partnership with Google, in a bid to – in my opinion – compete with Microsoft. It made perfect sense at the time. Apple provides the hardware, and Google provides the cloud services that add value to the hardware – particularly for devices like the iPhone. However, Apple subsequently realized that Google was more of a competitor than a friend, and that partnership rapidly dissolved earlier this year. We shall see why next.

Google Wants to Help You Use the Internet

Google – one of the most profitable and powerful tech companies in Silicon Valley today – has an extremely simple business model:
Basically, the more you use the Internet, the more money they make. And how do they make that money? Well, the more you use the Internet, the more likely that you will use their market-dominant Google Search. And the more you use Google Search, the more likely that you will have AdWords-driven advertisements thrown your way, which makes money for Google. Also, the more you use the Internet (particularly Google’s free services like Gmail), the more comfortable you will be in trusting your data and transacting in the cloud. And the more comfortable you are with the cloud, the more likely you are willing to pay to put your data in the cloud (Google Apps) or buy stuff from Google on the cloud (Google Bookstore), which also makes money for Google.

In fact, someone told me before that if you look at Google’s revenue over the years and plot that against global Internet usage over the years, it is almost a linear relationship. Simple, right?
This principle alone explains virtually every single product or service that Google comes up with. They either promote Internet use, or they act as a hedge to prevent other companies from disrupting the use of the Google-controlled Internet. And this is also why Google gives away virtually everything for free. They never intend to make money from these products and services – they will make back their investments from the increased revenue from increased Internet usage.
Gears? It makes web applications more powerful, which will entice users to use the Internet more.
App Engine? It promotes the rapid development of new Web 2.0-ish services, which will entice users to use the Internet more.
OpenSocial? It promotes the rapid development of social networking-enabled services, which will entice users to use the Internet more.
Chrome? What if one day Internet Explorer comes with a built-in ad-blocker? Chrome is a hedge against that.
Android? What is one day the iPhone or Opera Mobile comes with a built-in ad-blocker? Android is a hedge against that.
Chrome OS? What if one day Windows comes with a built-in ad-blocker? Chrome OS is a hedge against that.
Vehement support for HTML 5? What if the de-facto standard for Internet video and rich Internet applications continues to be plug-in based technologies like Flash and Silverlight? Google can’t possibly have the keys of their kingdom under the control of a couple of gatekeepers like Adobe and Microsoft! HTML 5 is a hedge against that.
This explains why Google competes with Apple and Microsoft on so many different vectors – web browser, online services, mobile phones, operating system, etc. In its never-ending quest to ensure that global Internet usage grows unfettered at a steady rate, it has no choice but to compete in all these areas.
This gets pretty annoying and disruptive for Google’s competitors, since Google loves to give stuff away for free when their competitors are charging for it.
And Google also tried to invade Apple’s turf earlier this year with the whole Google Voice incident, which explains why their partnership fizzled shortly after the incident came to light.
To Google’s credit, it does recognize that it’s risky to only look at consumer Internet use as your primary revenue source, and has been diligently trying to diversify into the enterprise space with Google Apps. However, although Google is not established in the enterprise space yet, this is a shot across the bow to Microsoft, which lives and dies by the enterprise.
Speaking of Microsoft…

You Mess with Microsoft, They Mess You Back

When most people think about Microsoft, they think of a two-trick pony that survives only on its dominant Windows and Office franchises. The reality though, is that the Microsoft of today is an incredibly diverse company; in fact, based on Microsoft’s latest financial results, Windows and Office only contribute about 54% of Microsoft’s total revenues. Segments like the Xbox business and enterprise server business surprisingly contribute to a large part of Microsoft’s revenues nowadays.

However, having said all of that, Windows is still Microsoft’s bread and butter. If Microsoft loses the operating system, it’s game over for the Redmond giant. And if competitors are making it difficult for you to do your business, make sure you make things difficult for them to do theirs also.

This alone explains why Microsoft feels the need to diversify and compete in certain areas that may not be perceived as traditional Microsoft competencies. And none of this is as evident as Microsoft’s investment in the online business – particularly in search – despite losing money quarter after quarter. Microsoft sees Google as a disruptive competitor, with free or cheap offerings looking to displace Microsoft offerings in both the consumer and enterprise space. Chrome OS is free, Windows is not. Android is free, Windows Mobile is not. Google Apps are cheap, Office is… well, perceived as more expensive than Google Apps.

Google can afford to be disruptive, because it has a massive cash cow called AdWords that can fund virtually everything they do. So if you are Microsoft, you have to force them to play defense as well, and you attack Google’s Internet empire with an Internet empire of your own. Thus is why despite hemorrhaging billions of dollars every year, Microsoft needed to put in the investment to commit to the success of Bing, Windows Live, MSN and the rest of Microsoft’s online properties.

It’s still early days – especially for Bing – but Microsoft needs to strategically be in the online game for the long haul. And if past history is any indication, Microsoft prevails more often than not whenever it consciously picks a battle it wants to win and commits serious resources to it.

As for competing with Apple… Well, there isn’t as much to say here.
As far as PCs are concerned, both sides seem to have carved out their respective niches, and it looks to be status quo for a while. Despite Microsoft’s gift to Apple called “Windows Vista”, Apple made no attempt to enter the enterprise space. Microsoft followed Apple’s lead and realized that people not only liked functional PCs, but also aesthetically-pleasing PCs. Thus Microsoft worked very hard with its ecosystem of partners to make sure Windows 7 (as well as the plethora of new PC hardware hitting the market now) are both functional and aesthetically-pleasing.

Microsoft also realized that Apple’s practice of offering an end-to-end consumer experience for the user is what users wanted, which is why Microsoft diversified into consumer electronics like the Xbox and the Zune. The future Microsoft will likely be an all-encompassing consumer-oriented company that brings a consistent computing experience across all of the devices that consumer will use during a day. Steve Ballmer alluded to it many times before, in terms of Microsoft’s “three screens and the cloud” strategy. Now if only Microsoft can fix Windows Mobile…

A Classroom Analogy

So 2500 words later, what can we conclude or predict about the future?
Frankly speaking, in this volatile tech industry where a content management system for 140-character messages can get a USD 1 billion valuation, we really can’t conclude or predict anything.
However, if I was a betting man, I would bet that all three tech giants will be around for a long while to come. I believe there may be a redistribution of market share for certain products and services, but all three companies will stake out their sweet spots and remain incredibly profitable while keeping each other in check. And ultimately, the big winners in that scenario are us, the consumers.
Try this analogy: If you were in a classroom and there were three girls you liked in your class, who would you rather date?
Would you date the girl who is always gorgeous with her expensive designer clothing and perfectly-manicured nails who desires to bring you all over town to all of her favorite nightspots to make sure you always have a good time? (Apple)
Or would you date the cute and confident girl who always volunteers to help you with all your home work and keeps you company whenever you need it because she thinks that it’s mutually beneficial for the both of you to be hanging out together all the time? (Google)
Or perhaps you prefer the pretty and tough girl who despite her previous, colorful life experiences making her more mature and worldly than the rest, she doesn’t like to brag about herself and whenever you need anything, you know you can always depend on her? (Microsoft)
IMO, the only acceptable solution (for this make-believe world at least, but perhaps not for the real world) would be to accept polyamory and to date all three at the same time.

.......................................................................................

Jonathan Wong has over 8 years of experience in the IT industry, and he has experienced first hand the evolution of the web from its infancy in the mid-90s to the world of Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing which we are in today. In his current role as a Technology Evangelist at Microsoft, Jonathan works with customers and partners to help them execute their online business vision using the latest in digital marketing, social media, cloud services and Microsoft web platform technologies. You can follow him on Twitter or read his other ramblings at http://armchairtheorist.com.

Chinese Digital & Social Media Space

Adam J. Schokora — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 19:43:11 GMT

There are a wealth of other respectable online sources focused on social media, online marketing, and digital trends in China. The selection below represents English language content of such sources, ranging from websites put out by ad / marketing / communications agencies and consultancies, to personal blogs by individuals and groups captivated by China’s Internet culture.

personal ::
In2Marcom describes itself as “a weblog all about INnovative and INsightful marketing communication, around Digital and Social Media in China.” It’s run by Jason Zhan Jia (ZJ), who started it up just this past March after working in digital and social media for several years. One interesting recent post looked at the development of a “test paper” meme, in which netizens repost exam questions answered with sarcasm, dirty jokes, or non-sequiturs, and its use as a marketing tool by Peugeot, Cadillac, and finally BYD. Dutch entrepreneur and social media practitioner Marc van der Chijs is an online personality based in Shanghai. The co-founder of Tudou.com and CEO of The Netherlands Spil Games Asia (”the world’s ultimate online game destination”), he keeps an English-language blog with a pretty good following. He’s an enthusiastic Twitterer, and many of his posts are about Twitter, for example, when his “Tweet” appeared in a Dutch newspaper from June 2009, which was about a frustrated attempt to book a flight on KLM, the Royal Dutch Airlines. Another notable post was “Talking and Talking”, from July, in which he spoke about Spil Games in Holland and Internet entrepreneurship in China. Included at the end of the blog post is an embedded video interview with an online TV station.

group ::
88 Bar (八八吧) is maintained by Jason Li and Lyn Jeffery and is the successor to Virtual China, the blog they ran for the Institute for the Future. They launched 88 Bar when their focus on Virtual China expanded from purely virtual culture to include offline culture and interactions between the two. They still blog regularly about Chinese social media, trends, and viral memes, although more as pointers to in-depth treatments on other sites. Recent posts include a look at steampunk animations and coverage of the World of Warcraft protests at this year’s China Joy. Danwei, a group blog that covers Chinese media as a whole, also dips into social media from time to time. It recently interviewed Dan Brody of 360quan and covered the shakeup of China’s microblogging platforms in the wake of the Urumqi riots.

tech ::
TechBlog86 (the number refers to China’s IDD prefix) is kept by David Feng, whose gossipy, insiderish writing style assumes that readers are familiar with the larger context behind the latest developments in China’s digital sector. The blog, which relaunched in May following an unfortunate hiatus, covers a wide and (sometimes random) variety of topics, from the most interesting MSN signatures to conference writeups (CHINICT 2009) to speculation about impeding changes in the local Web 2.0 industry: will Xiaonei get shut down? No, it’s just changing its name to RenRen. MOBINODE (动点博客) is a group blog focused on the Asia tech industry, with an emphasis on China. It’s maintained by Gang Lu (see this interview on 56minus1). Recent notable posts include advice to Facebook to forget about its prospects in the China market, and a look at Tencent’s rebate program. MOBINODE is associated with Mobinode.tv (动点博视), a series of Chinese-language interviews with Asia tech professionals. It has plans to develop an English-language counterpart, but has only done one subtitled interview, with Yeeyan co-founder Jiamin zhao, so far.

agencies / consultancies / professional entities ::
CNReviews, which hosts active discussions on hot-button issues in Chinese politics and culture, also features content from Blogger Insight that looks at the Chinese SNS / social media scene. Recent highlights include a look at the four distinguishing characteristics of Chinese SNS websites and a hilarious examination of opaque 3G advertisements. One of the things that makes CNReviews such a fun read is that it stakes out a firm position on issues – no wishy-washiness here – which generates energetic comment threads. Little Red Book looks at advertising and marketing in China, with a particular focus on the Internet and social media. It’s run by BA360, a “boutique marketing firm” (from its about page), and the major contributors to the site are strategy director Rand Han and media director Sherry Xie. Posts introduce viral marketing campaigns, quirky print ads, and SNS strategy as well as general Chinese Internet and youth culture issues. Little Red Book also provides a forum for further discussion of ad and marketing issues that haven’t made it to the front page yet. Many of the social media marketing / SNS case studies excerpted on Little Red Book come from ZeroDegrees, a project launched by BA360 in association with postcard design firm Mailman. ZeroDegrees has a fairly active comments section, and it also features discussions of more abstract issues, such as this recent post on the actual significance of Shanghai’s Expo 2010. Recent highlights include a look at micropayments in QQ, an unimpressed examination of Pepsi’s SNS campaign, and a look at how L’oreal celebrated its centenary on Chinese SNS. Ogilvy Digital Watch, although gathering dust now, has an great archive of posts about social media in China and the local tech / web industry. It unfortunately has not been updated since December 2008, about the time the agency’s key digital ninja Kaiser Kuo departed. The China IWOM Blog at CIC Data should already be on your RSS reader. The blog covers IWOM trends / culture, social media marketing case studies, and strategies for monitoring / measuring online public opinion and Internet word of mouth conversation. Mostly teasers for the company’s full-length reports and white papers, but even the excerpts are fairly interesting, and the linked PDFs invite careful perusal. An archive of past CIC slideshow presentations is available even if the latest installments, such as “Social Media Getting Closer to Real Life”, are unavailable to the casual user. Similarly, for the non-subscriber, Ad Age China has promising headlines (”Watch Out Ebay! Here Comes Alibaba” and “Can Baidu Keep its Crown as King of China’s Search Market?”) that tantalize from behind a pay-wall.

updates ::
Two other notable sites that look regularly at Chinese SNS and local social media in general are China Web2.0 Review and China Youth Watch, which were covered in a previous Friday 5 brief on Chinese bridge bloggers. China Youth Watch recently featured an article titled SNS and the Changing Chinese Youth, as well as an interview with 360quan.com editor Hui Wang. 56minus1 interviewed CYW co-founder Zafka Zhang back in November of last year. China Web2.0 Review recently covered the Xiaonei / RenRen changeover. (Incidentally, if you’re a fan of cheesy soaps and boom-era product placement, check out the TV show Heart-Net (心网), the story of a group of friends who start an Internet cafe in Shanghai. The old RenRen.com, which was huge back in 2000, is all over the show). Also mentioned in the Friday 5 brief linked above were ChinaSMACK and Youku Buzz, two blogs that regularly feature the latest hot memes and viral videos to hit the Chinese Internet.

// AjS

..........................................................................................

Adam J. Schokora blogs at Fifty5 and his professional work includes responsibility for leading Edelman Digital in the China market. At Edelman Digital, I provide strategic counsel and insight to staff and clients on Chinese social media, digital communications and marketing campaigns, Internet word of mouth, local Internet trends / culture, and “digital lifestyles” in China.

..........................................................................................

This post was first posted over at fifty5 on August 14th, 2009.

Post Digital Marketing 2009

Howie Chang — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 16:55:10 GMT

An absolute must-read for anyone with an interest in the future (and now) of human behavior or anything digital, particularly marketing, communications, and media.

This last year has seen logarithmic changes in marketing, fueled by different concepts like Utilities, AR, The Collective Exchange of Ideas, Transmedia, Digital becoming ubiquitous, Mobility and more. Summarizing all the major thoughts finding its way to my “ideas”-folder this last year. - Helge Tennø

Post Digital Marketing 2009

View more documents from Helge Tennø.

Tech in Africa

Preetam Rai — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 11:44:25 GMT

Last couple of years I am trying to learn more about the tech-scene in Africa. Asian press tends to ignore the development in this vast and fast changing continent and we see very few events that facilitate Asia-Africa information exchange.

I feel we need to pay more attention to the stuff happening in Africa as there are ample learning opportunities and scope for collaboration. For example, mobile payment is a reality in Kenya while most of South East Asia we are still struggling to find a good mobile payment mechanism.

Interesting projects in Africa

Africa wide blog aggregation – Afrigator | http://afrigator.com/

Want to know what is the most popular online content in Africa at the moment,? Go to Afrigator.com. This was one of the first social media aggregator for content published in Africa and still remains the most popular.
Afrigator also provides a javascript badge that you can embed in your blog. You can then monitor visitor stats and link love via rich graphs.
In 2008 a South African publishing firm acquired a stake in Afrigator.
Here is an early review of Afrigator.

http://www.bandwidthblog.com/2007/11/28/afrigator-beta-launched/

Ushahidi :: Crowdsourcing Crisis Information (FOSS) | http://www.ushahidi.com/

Ushahidi (testimony in Swahili) started as a citizen reporting tool where Kenyans could inform each other of the violence after the post-election chaos in early 2008. Crisis information is collected via SMS, MMS, email or web and mapped in real time. The developers of the platform are based in Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, Ghana, Canada, the Netherlands and the US.

Appfrica Labs | http://appfrica.net/blog/labs/

Appfrica Labs is an incubator active in Uganda. Appfrica labs enables student, young entrepreneurs and developers to build produces by supporting with tech infrastructure and mentoring. I am very interested in this model as for a while I have been looking at ideas for seeding local tech projects in South East Asia.

A good example of a locally relevant project is OhmSMS developed by Appfrica Labs mobile developer Dennis Senyonjo. Kampala, not unlike many cities in the developing world suffers from irregular power supply. Getting instant information on when you have power at your home or business is important as you can get back and finish chores that need power supply.

This is Dennis Senyonjo, the developer of OhmSMS (image from Appfrica.net). Dennis developed that Symbian app that could be installed on an inexpensive mobile phone. The mobile phone is plugged to its charger and connected to the mains. The app will monitor the charging and alert another phone on the current power situation if the power goes off or comes back on.

See Appfrica for more information on OhmSMS:
http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/1815

Also check out Appfrica lab's other project that tries to bring internet to communities that do not have access to the internet. http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/56

MXit | http://www.mxitlifestyle.com/

MXit (pronounced "mix it") is a mobile application that provides connection to IM services such as MSN, ICW and Google Talk. It also provides chat rooms and other social networking features on a mobile phone. As of earlier this year MXit had 11 million subscribers and most of them are based in South Africa.

The application runs over mobile data network and sending a message over MXit costs less than SMS. MXit has its own currency "Moola" and moolas can be used to purchase music tracks and other services.

MXit's wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MXit

Upcoming Events

Accra will be hosting the first ever Maker Faire in Africa. (Maker Faire are events where people gather to show technology and arts projects and share ideas). According to their website, Maker Faire Africa is a celebration of African ingenuity, innovation and invention, and will take place August 14-16 at the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT in Ghana's capital, Accra. This event is free to the general public

Barcamps were also held in Madagascar, Ghana, Nigeria and Swaziland in the last one year.

Where to learn more about African tech scene

The White African blog lists 30 Great African Tech Blogs
http://whiteafrican.com/2009/02/09/30-great-african-tech-blogs/

I have added some more to this list and created a Netvibes page at
http://www.netvibes.com/preetamrai#Africa_Tech

Jon Gossier from Appfrica Labs runs a podcast featuring tech pioneers in the region.
http://appfrica.net/blog/appfricast

Wrapping up Blogout! 2009

Claudia Lim — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 18:41:24 GMT

After three months of planning and two weeks of craziness getting the final touches firmed, Blogout! 2009 ended with quite a bang! Over 70 pages of twitter updates for #blogout09, hitting #2 trend on twitter on Day 1 and #1 trend on Day 2!! Although partly due to the time difference with the other part of tweeters, still quite an achievement for a Singapore event which got the attention almost globally. All thanks to the hardworking tweeters at Blogout! 2009. *salutes*

Total of over 180 people attended Blogout! 2009 and these are a mix of friends and folks from marketing and communications, PR industry, brand managers, entrepreneurs, students, people from the media, bloggers, thought leaders, community players and even a significant from the governments! Who says they aren't active in the social media or new media arena? We believe they're learning hard just like all of us.

From the survey, which we're still collating, so if you haven't done it, you can still do it, most of you enjoyed the sessions you attended and both days were rated 4 out of 5 (so far). Thanks very much for your support! We will be sharing more about the survey findings once we get more replies. So please do help with the survey so that we can improve and work on even better Blogout! or similar events for the community.

Reflecting back on the two days event, here are some of the things which we regret not having:

Internet connection! Some of us did tweet about the lack of wireless connection at 8Q SAM. The Wireless@SG connection keeps dropping but there's nothing we could do. Thanks to U-zyn, who shared out his connection on the later part of day 1 and Claudia who shared his connection on day 2, than there was "free" wifi within the vacinity. We will surely look into this in future events. We know how important wifi is! Especially for the tweet team and live bloggers!
Platform for speakers and panels. This we had wanted to put it in, but because of the limited space and the oversubscription online, we couldn't fit the platform in. We sure will look into this, or even a stage (if necessary) for future events.
Handouts and notes. To be honest, this only came to our mind on the morning of Day 1! As Blogout! 2009 was our first almost-conference style Blogout, we didn't factor the notes in. But thanks again to the wonderful attendees and tweeters, we've got them digitally shared somewhere, somehow. Links to notes and slides can be found below.

After the first day of Blogout!, there was also a small gathering of startups and our speakers, Jon Yongfook and Joel Postman, at Secret Garden. It was an intimate session with local startups who shared about their projects and passions. Our guest speakers also shared their valuable experiences and provided useful guidance to those who were there.

Finally, we would like to thank all our partners (iDA and NHB) and sponsors (8Q SAM, Samsung, Singtel, Microsoft and Nuffnang) that made Blogout! 2009 happen! Also thanks to the volunteers and helpers and supporters who came and made it all happen!

What some others said about Blogout! 2009:
"By the way, I really liked the content of the #blogout09 conference today. Great panelists and topics." by Markusng

"It was well-run and well-coordinated, so kudos to the TDM folks for organizing a great event from a bottom-up grassroots effort." - by Chi-Loong at Techgoondu

"congrats to @digitalmovement team for a great two days at #blogout09" by Kelvin Lim

"A well-done the @digitalmovement team for a great #blogout09!" by Daniel Goh

Slides and notes for Blogout! 2009:

From Day 1

Yongfook's slides on Social Media ROI and his very detail recap of his sharing
Notes on Melvin Yuan's sharing by Kelvin Lim
Thoughts after the panel sharing by Daniel Goh
Tania's slides on 10 Social Media FAQs

From Day 2

Preetam's slides and sharing on Adventures of a blogging traveler
Lester's slides and thoughts on Wordpress
Yongfook's slides on how to Fire Your Boss!!!
Howie's slides on Thoughtful Experiences
Claudia's slides on Improving Blogging Experience with Tools & Participation and her after thoughts
Live blogging by Tech65

Summary

After Blogout 2009 by SGentrepreneurs
What happened at Blogout 2009 at Ping.sg blog

Links to blog posts by attendees:

Yongfook's thoughts and reflection of his trip to Singapore
QQ Sandbox share her first Blogout experience
Firestarter, the event company hired, shared their thoughts
Sarah shared her experience
Ian on the red dot shared his sentiments after attending the startup dinner
Claudia shared her mixed of emotions
Singapore To Get New Posterboy For Entrepreneurial Success? by YoungUpStarts (Daniel Goh)
Compilation of videos and posts on Blogout! 2009 by Tech65 crew
Mentioned on Morning Jam debut podcast by Joe Augustin
Thoughts after Blogout by Daniel Vaughan

Links to photos of Blogout! 2009:

Day 1 Live photo stream by Claudia
Day 2 Live photo stream by Claudia
Photos by SGentrepreneurs
Blogout! 2009 photos on flickr by volunteers and crew

Links to discussions/ pages about Blogout! 2009/ TDM:
The Digital Movement is on facebook and twitter

And finally, thanks to the plug from all of the following to spread the love for Blogout! 2009:

On SocializedPR by Joel Postman, On Yongfook.com by Yongfook, Yongfook's message to Singapore Blogout on Youtube, Make friends, make money on Today Online by Hedirman Supian, On eOK .network by Benjamin Koe, 10 reasons why you should attend Blogout! on Bloggers' Noticeboard, On theory is the reason by Kevin Lim, On Ping.sg Blog, On APLINK its Real, On Newasia Singapore, On Malaysia Entrepreneurs, On Bits & Bytes, On Digital Media in Singapore

Our Membership Benefits Just Got Even Better

Howie Chang — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 05:12:31 GMT

TDM just signed on as a Network Partner in an exciting new program called Microsoft® BizSpark™. It’s specifically designed to help us put promising technology startups like yours on an even faster track to success.

Through BizSpark, we can now offer you fast, easy access to current, full-featured Microsoft development tools and platform technologies, as well as production licenses to develop and bring innovative and interoperable solutions to market. The program can also provide you with global visibility to potential clients, investors, and partners. All you need to do is join. It only takes a few minutes, you get almost instant access to the software, and your only obligation is to pay Microsoft a small fee (USD$100) due at the end of the three years (or end of participation in the program). It’s a fantastic deal that we’re very excited to offer.

To join BizSpark you’ll need sponsorship from a Network Partner such as TDM. We’d be delighted to sponsor you and help accelerate your success.

An eligible Startup must have the following characteristics at the time of joining:

Actively engaged in development of a software-based product or service that will form a core piece of its current or intended business,
Privately held,
In business for less than 3 years,
Less than US $1 million in annual revenue.

If you fulfill the above requirements, fill out the form below and we will be in touch with you:

&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://tdm.wufoo.com/forms/m7x2x3/" title="Microsoft Bizspark Sponsorship"&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Fill out my Wufoo form!&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

Live with Dan on Seven Keys to Being a Successful Serial Entrepreneur

Howie Chang — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 03:49:49 GMT

Hello everyone! I’m now blogging live from DXO at Infocomm LIVE! brought to you by iDA Singapore.

Just in case, some of you don’t know where DXO is at, here’s the building. Its just next to Esplanade.

Tonight, we have here with us Dan Lejerskar, Co-Founder, Chairman and Executive Vice President of EON Reality Inc, sharing in-depth with his very own “Seven Keys to Being a Successful Serial Entrepreneur”.

Short introduction of the speaker...

Dan is a serial entrepreneur with more than 19 years of experience in Virtual Reality and Simulation. Prior to co-founding EON Reality, Dan also started several successful companies. These include PFAB, a real-estate development company, Prosolvia AB, a publicly traded simulation company, and RealityBUY Inc, an e-commerce company focused on interactive 3D.

Follow me as we uncover the keys to being a successful serial entrepreneur with Dan Lejerskar.

--------------------------

Time now is 6.20pm, and everyone’s doing the final checks and setting up. If you’re still not here yet, you might want to make your way down soon. Light dinner will be served at 6.50pm with informal meeting with Dan. Actual event will commence at around 7.30pm.

Crowd is starting to grow and DXO is slowly but surely filling up! Nice music playing in the background with drinks and food for all guests. Dan and his guests are also moving around chatting with guests.

If you’re online now with us, you can also chat and share your thoughts in our floating room. You can send messages via a few ways.

on http://www.floatingroom.com/ with Widgeous Device
on Windows Live Messenger: send to w@widgeo.us
from Text messaging: send to 92721192 with “room say your message”
or via twitter: send it via direct message to wdg - “d wdg your message”

Light dinner served was pretty good. And everyone’s getting cosy and relaxing around. If you’re alone, don’t be sad, join us for a chat at our floating room!

7.38pm: We’re all ready to go!! Mike going up on stage now… “Hello! Hello! Hello DXO!”

Opening address for the night… today’s programme is brought to you by iDA and supported by TDM and E27! Woohoo! Show some love!! *clap! clap! clap!*

On stage now, Radm Ronnie Tay, CEO of IDA, with his opening speech.

He encourages everyone to leverage the tech initiative and take a go at being an entrepreneur.

On stage now, Dan Lejerskar…

Touching on what is an entrepreneur… from wikipedia.

And next he covers who are the history’s 10 greatest entrepreneurs. With a nice photo of Steve Jobs. He’s one of Dan’s absolute idol!

The seven keys to being a successful serial entrepreneur…

Think Big, start small and scale profitability
Clear pain killer
Pick the one thing that is of burning importance to the customer then delight them with a compelling idea.
Keep it simple. Stupid
Customer driven development
Rich custmers! Target those who will move fast and pay a premium for a uniqueoffering. Get key customers buy-in early. Think differently and constantly challenge.
Giving some ideas and examples of customer driven development. As basic as things your see and do daily. So think differently and you’ll never know what you’ll get!

The examples Dan’s showing now is beyond description! You’ve got to see it yourself! So sorry… no updates here.
Bring the A-team with you
Speed. Agility. Drive & Frugality
This will help beat-out the competition! Stealth and speed will usually help beat-out large companies.
Be aware of the weakest link
Always balance the key business elements: Product development (stay at the drawing board till you get it right), sales/marketing, finance (you don’t need a lot but you need to have enough!), organisation and company culture (this is essential).

Happy people have happy thoughts! Loving people have loving thoughts! Successful people people have successful thoughts! So now I know why wealthy people are always wealthy! Because they’ve wealthy thoughts! So start thinking positive!

Making friends is important too!

The primary emotion for success is enthusiasm!

Company culture has to be united. When one is not with the culture, that person should leave.

Dan urges everyone to make a decision to become one of the very best entrepreneurs in your industry. Dedicate yourself to lifelong learning! Live a full life!

If any of you are looking for a job, contact Dan! His company’s hiring! Contact him!

Q&A/ dialogue session hosted by Justin Lee, Co-Founder of E27. And we have on stage with Dan and Peter Christiansen, CEO GreenWave Reality.

If someone says your idea is crazy, than you’re on the right track! Continue building and improving, even when you’re successful! Keep aside one day a week for brainstorming and create new innovations.

Don’t be too hard on yourself. One can never keep things on top all the time. Just ensure that they’re above the line. Trust your gut.

You got to push your staff hard. But still build up the spirit in everyone and keep them motivated. You need to find competition within the guys and make them continue to drive the company and with you.

If you’re comfortable with your idea, and if your friends are telling you that they’re willing to buy your idea, than you have it! Start your business. There’s never the right time to start. Anytime is a good time. Yes, even at this recession period.

The first company you start, may not be the one that’s bringing in the money. Its through the years and experience and the relationship you have built that will help create better and bigger companies.

Thank you all for the session and thanks for coming and spending the evening with us.

______________________________________________________________________________
This post is originally written by Claudia.

Interview with Singapore’s Silicon Valley success story - Ong Peng Tsin (Part I)

Howie Chang — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 07:26:31 GMT

This interview is conducted by Nicholas, a TDM member himself as well as a CNET blogger. This article can also be found at Geekonomics.

--------------------------

Recently, this geek managed to catch hold of one of Singapore’s most successful but low profile technopreneur Ong Peng Tsin, 45, serial entrepreneur who founded Match.com and Interwoven (which he listed on NASDAQ). He sold his last startup Encentuate to IBM and also convinced IBM to setup a software lab in Singapore. Now, he is not only a board member of Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) of Singapore, but also the Chairman of Infocomm Investments, an IDA subsidiary.

How he started

After finishing his national service, Mr. Ong left to study electrical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. Then he moved to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he earned a master’s in computer science. Trained in double ECS and a programmer, Mr Ong joined a startup right out of school.

“When you join a business that’s 20 people, which is the first company I joined, there isn’t a clear marker when you started doing startups.”Mr. Ong said when asked about his first startup.

He subsequently joined Sybase which was also a startup then and went on to start his first business in the States which became the successful company we now know as Match.com.

Working for others versus working for yourself

Having both worked for others (Sybase, IBM, Singapore Government, etc) and being a serial entrepreneur himself, I asked Mr Ong what he felt was the fundamental difference between the two experiences, which he described very neatly in one statement, “In startups, things get done instantly. But in bureaucracy it takes time to get things moving. The reward is when it moves it can move in very big ways.”

Advice for the young

I asked Mr Ong what words of wisdom he had for our young aspiring technopreneurs today,

“It’s all about people. All the failures and successes are about people.”

“Our kids today don’t develop deep passions in areas. (They) don’t know what to do in schools.”

Which he went on to elaborate that they are seen as simply follow the trends for their career choices. First it was the dot com boom, then it bio-tech. Now it’s finance and that’s not looking too good at the moment. So, what will be next?

He feels strongly that young people today should not just watch which industry is hot, makes money and try to jump on the bandwagon. When Mr Ong started out in this industry, he didn’t think so much about the money but he was in it because of his passion for it.

“Nothing beats being clear on your passion… today, kids don’t figure out their passions. The world doesn’t reward people that get along. It rewards people who bash a new path.”

Obviously, I agree with Mr Ong because I risked the wrath of my parents to switch from a top Junior College to register in a local polytechnic IT course. You know I was a geek at heart even then :p

“A lot of times you’ve got to make the mistakes and learn from that.” is Mr Ong’s response on having been asked for advice so many times and sometimes, he is “tired of giving advice” because “the entrepreneurs don’t listen”.

“Biggest problem I’ve seen (in Web startups), people are not clear how they are gonna make money… you’re a business, think about how you’re gonna make money” else you “can’t talk to investors. If you can’t figure out how you’re gonna make money, don’t start a business, have a hobby instead.”

On Mentorship

Interestingly, while Mr Ong felt that mentorship is important, he also feels that we do not have enough qualified mentors here i.e. not enough people who have exited software IT companies in a significant way. Only a very small handful.

“Do(ing) it here (starting out) is different from when you do it in China, India, and US. Trying to get a mentor here is next to impossible.”

He went on to explain that as part of his work with the IDA, they are trying to develop quality mentors as well.

“Bootstrapping part is the hardest”. Mr. Ong talked about bootstrapping in context of having a mentor to help you in starting up and again, I totally agree with this. In fact, I think over here not many people have realized the importance of good bootstrapping and these days I personally try to focus more of my time helping companies to bootstrap because not many know how to do it right.

Conclusion of Part I

Coming back to advice for aspiring technopreneurs, Mr Ong feels that everyone who wants to start a business should ask themselves this important question,

“What do you want to do with your life in the next 5-10 years and why?”

Mr. Ong’s advice is to answer this question before you work on any startup.

If there’s anything that an entrepreneur need above the common traits like perseverance, endurance, energy, etc, it is clarity.

Having enough clarity to be able to answer, “Why you are doing what you are doing?”

Live from Social Media Strategies 2008 - Day 2

Howie Chang — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 07:40:26 GMT

Thanks to Wayne, covering live for TDM.

--------------------------

Good morning guys, we’re back “Live” on Social Media Strategies 2008. We’re on the 2nd and last day of the conference down at Stanford Court, San Francisco. Did you have a good rest last night? Just a quick reminder, for some live clips, please check out the “Live” Qik events page here. Photos are uploaded hourly here.

Times are in PST.

One-on-One Session with a Social Media Leader

0913 - Reshma is opening the second day by giving a brief outlook of what’s happening today.

0916 - Starting off in the morning, we have Paula Dum, VP Marketing, Digital Tax Solutions, H&R Block and Francois Gossieaux, Partner at Beeline Labs on the One-On-One Session with a Social Media Leader.

0922 - Paula: We launched a broad social media campaign by reaching out to users through a number of social networking sites, and by leveraging on the specific personality of each site and each community on these sites, we tweak our strategies to match the profiles of users on each of these sites. By using this campaign, we’re able to scale and in the process, we find the need to manage each community. Some widgets that we built didn’t relate well with some of the users on some sites (which we thought it would), so we have to move fast and respond to feedback. We are building on top of what we’ve learnt and applying it in future projects.

0929 - Paula: eHarmony - Measurements that we use - using brand tracking studies to study awareness, but social media alone did not drive that. It’s a combination of different strategies, but to actually measure engagement from the social media sites. We’re definitely driving more traffic, conversion rate and retention rate.

0931 - Professional content vs general content - Paula: Showing that we provide tax expertise in terms of tax professionals and advice increases credibility. So we started the conversation and for the users to continue those. After that we end of by fitting the professionals into the conversations again.

0937 - Have you run into scalability issues? - Paula: Twitter is a bit difficult because the questions that are coming in are very diverse, and we need different expertise to answer those questions, so that to me is a question of scale to address when we have more than we can handle. We try to engage external parties to help us to handle these extra issues which we can’t handle and for them to advise us on other relevant tools which we can use to manage.

0943 - How do you manage legal on twitter? Paula: Information on our site has already gone through the legal process. We’re not as legally concerning as we’re filtering it back to our legal team.

0953 - How is the balance between social media and traditional media in such an economic downturn? Paula: Social media is part of human capital. People are communicating more because they’re scared or frustrated. Now the companies are cutting media budget, not staff, so now is the time to focus on the social aspect, the human capital side. Creating a blog or responding to a comment doesn’t really cost a lot of money. The more people you can retain, the more money you save on retraining the staff and readjusting to the social media strategy.

0958 - Paula: It’s been a two year journey in the social media practices. Get it going, start small with some success stories, we started with Youtube user-generated content and SecondLife. Then we went ahead with MySpace, Facebook, eHarmony and creating other community sites. Get some learning, if you want to do something successful, you have to be an active participant.

1002 - Networking Break

Creating Your Social Media

1020 - We’re back from our break right into the session on Creating Your Social Media with Colin Brown, DIrector of Business Development at Mzinga.

1025 - Colin: Dimensions of Online Strategy is all about conversations, content and the influencers. And these dimensions help to solidify the goals. Content strategies - Editorial calendar for the next quarter, half year, one year etc, SEO, Newletter integration, rich media experience, “Live”events and blogs. Make sure newsletter contents are different to that from what users can get from blogs so that they can reinforce each other, rather than create duplicate spam. “Live” event, if done properly, there’s a huge PR aftershock to drive users back to the site, given that both the traditional press and bloggers get to know about it. Any marketer should be looking at the wealth of information that any social media is receiving. It’s the people, not the companies that blog. and focus is on having a true voice.

1035 - Conversation strategies - Get support and develop a moderation policy. We would love to have a “Live” response/update going out, so companies really need to revise their policies in getting the word out quick. Different audiences interact differently to different conversations, so companies will have to align the approach with the audience and the different goals that your company has. Start small with things such as responding to comments and then slowly grow big.

1040 - Influencer strategies - Working on engagement policies and plans on how to engage (listen first, Promotions vs Relevant Contributions), who to engage (Find the influencers in your industry) and where to engage (commenting on external blogs).

1050 - Colin is going to split us into 4 groups - B2B, B2C, Non-profit and Internal and for the next 20 minutes, we’ll be working on the 3 different strategies.

1120 - Groups are still engaged in pretty interesting discussions. Just returned from the group that was discussing internal strategies and they were talking about the challenges of balancing internal and external social media platforms. One huge challenge is getting people to adopt social media on a large scale in MNCs. The common consensus was that ti achieve a high rate of adoption, companies have to create dependencies on social media tools. For example, one organisation started a “no-attachments on email” rule to drive people to wikis in order to get the information and files that they need. This creates a habit that will allow social media tools to be self-sustaining.

1130 - Overheard from B2C conversation: Go to interest groups that are already existing. No point building something from scratch if there are tools available out there. For example, Facebook fan pages are a good place to start to get interested customers who know about your product. Blogs are also a good resource to get customer feedback. Search for yourself to see what people are saying and keep on top of the data that you pull up. It is also a good source to check out the competition. Using personas can be effective, but you will have to know how to manage them well.

1134 - Colin is asking the presenters to report back and regroup. We will be sharing the key learning points of the discussion in a little while.

1138 - Connie is presenting on B2C: How do we create a strategy to encourage user generated content? Put some parameters in company’s product forum. Necessary to have human interaction and engagement. Listening in the product forums and internet to understand customers better. The company needs to be open to the feedback. Incentivise customer participation - feature “experts” on certain subject matters. It’s easier for customer relations too as there is less of a company interest. On negative UGC: realize that negative comments are more managable when they are in your backyard and you can respond to them quickly and effectively. Long term commitment is necessary to sustain continued interaction.

1145 - JJ on Non-Profits: Action plan that non-profits can take. Goals include engagement and fund raising. Start with what you know about your organisation and your community. Learn about their online social behaviour with Forrester. Build a moderating tool to aggregate content and understand where participation lies. Content strategy include starting a blog (which also provides SEO value) where you craft compelling stories, publicize your cause and rallying people around them. For fund raising, ideas include banners, widgets and display ads. Read up on Beth Cantor, domain expert on Non-profits in the online space.

1148 - Internal: How do we connect people within the organization? Challenges include aligning nonmenclature that will aid search of profiles in the database. Tagging as a possible solution. At first, people use tags that are different, so to eliminate confusion, create tag groups. Community buzz on LinkedIn, using groups. Create value for using social media by addressing people’s business interest with it. Appeal to personal interest first before company interest - get people excited to get on the platforms first before asking them to think about how they can benefit the company from it. Content: start off with weekly features (YouTube, Podcast, presentation) to get traffic to the site

1152 - Ryan on B2B: Goals: 1) Inject yourself in conversations outside the site? Realise that the community on your site is your “love group”, those outside are the neutral “swing group”. 2) Measure ROI and maintaining exec support? Key sales metrics need to be identified and continuously improved. Set up your rules on how to measure something and stick to it. 3) How to involve the community in company discussions? Eg Threadless allows consumers to choose which ones they want to order. How do you adopt that model to the commercial area? Need to tell the customer what you want to know instead of opening it up wide and boundless, as they will be confused.

1156 - Connie Bensen and using Twitter for Business. Check out www.conniebensen.com for her blog posts and notes.

1213 - We’re going for our lunch break now, but before that, let me put up some links that was mentioned during the session.

Slides from the session will be up at www.constructingsocial.com.
Alternative to Tweet Scan - Tweetbeep
Business Case on Twitter at Connie Bensen’s blog
Twitter Search - Do a search on #SMS08 will bring up all the tweets on the event

Measuring the Effectiveness of Your Strategy

1313 - We’re back with Measuring the Effectiveness of Your Strategy, the Tribulations Business Study with Francois Gossieaux of Beeline Labs, replacing Edward Moran from Deloitte Services who could not make it today because of some emergency.

1315 - Francois: Factors making communities work - people do want to talk to people, not to companies and people want to help other people, which is unbelievably powerful. Last thing that we found was that the commnunities that work the best, were communities that companies could tap into their social framework, rather than their market framework. Social framework is about the feeling when you help someone, market framework is more about relationship on business dealings. An evaluation was done on social framework by varying incentives that were given for help. People don’t understand the forces that are creating positive return on communities.

1322 - Francois: What a lot of companies is focusing on is the tools which is not the point. If your community cannot exist in a yahoo or google group, it’s not gonna exist anywhere. The fundamentals have to be something else other than the technology. In most companies, marketing are the starting point or core of the organization. Page views and time spent on the site are not a good way of measuring community involvement, example is that groups exists on yahoo or google groups who have never been to the group page to have good communication and conversations going on with the community. We’re not measuring metrics for advertising! Main things that company are concerned with qualititative data are measuring Sentiments, Activity Levels, Growth and Impact on sales.

1337 - Francois: 3 takeaways,

1. communities can increase revenue of up to 50% than a company which doesn’t leverage on communities. Communities can increase product success ratio because of the feedback loop that they can make use and improve on.
2. The rise of the CMO 2.0. What happens here is that, leveraging communities enables the CMO to regain the strategic seat at the executive table, representing the customers at the table.
3. To be successful, companies have to think different. There’s a mismatch of goals and actionable plan, mismatch between measuring metrics and goals of the company. Communities will transfer most business processes.
3.5 To build them, they will only come once. 99.9% of people in a community will never go back if you just build it without talking to customers. It’s all about content, moderation and ambassadors. Usually pilot projects are different from the actual situations that the company is trying to address. Communities of different size and goals require very different ways to building them.

1355 - Francois: Thinking out of the box. TiVo engaged users that weren’t in their primary community to provide them with insights on innovation

1402 - Measuring impact where there’re a lot of mentions going on, not just the community. How do you isolate from the noise? Companies that were measuring the impact exactly the way you would want to measure the customer support. Those companies who were successful those who with departments reporting back to their group using their own metrics, and also asking for funding from each department.

How to Implement Social Media Strategies for Big Businesses

1407 - Next up we have the panel talking about How to Implement Social Media Strategies for Big Businesses. We have the moderator Matt Warburton, Director of community Management at Yahoo, and the panelists, LaSandra Brill, Manager of Web & Social Media Marketing Team, Cisco, Michael Brito, Social Media Strategist, Intel and Connie Bensen, Community Manager, Network Solutions.

1410 - How do you define social media? Connie: It’s simply a set of tools that require human interaction, definitely a person needs to interact with the people. LaSandra: Agree on Human Interaction, 2-way communication and also different tools that can become conversation starters and facilitate conversations. Michael: Social media is about relationships across different channel, and there’re a lot of tools to foster relationships. Relationships and conversations.

1414 - LaSandra: There’re lots of red tape in big companies. There’re lots of risks and one of them is about the unknowns, which scares a lot of people. You should maybe do it before asking anyone about it - most effective :P. Mark: Getting stuff done with 3rd party vendors difficult. Michael: Just finding an ROI for social engagement is still blurry for Intel. Challenge is to convincing the traditional marketeers.

1439 - Do you write blogs for your companies? Connie: I’m writing. LaSandra: No. Michael: We want to make the blog less corporate. We want to make it conversational, so when we write, we would encourage people to respond.

1449 - LaSandra: I think the phase we’re at is being able to tie things together, tying the communities together. We want to really take that to the next level, really bringing the communities together, because there’re really some crossovers in these communities. Michael: Aggregate everything externally into one place, so that you don’t have to go everywhere to grab. Connie: We really need to listen and knowing about the customers. (Talks about some websites which are good tools.) Focus of connecting tools to others, something like subcontracting.

1455 - LaSandra: Using blog for getting community feedback. We’re driving topic conversations and listening. The challenge is not getting the feedback, but what to do with it and what processes are in place to manage the feedback. Michael: Not touching on consumer feedback yet. But on Intel Software Network, the businesses are giving the feedback in that thriving community.

1457 - Last comments. Connie: People and human interaction, it takes a number of people to be interacting. LaSandra: Go out there start small, and experiment and then add on to it. Don’t try to tackle everything. Michael: Forrester!

1500 - Networking Break

Overcoming Objections to Social Media

1522 - Overcoming Objections to Social Media with Gary Stein, Director of Strategy at Ammo Marketing and Peter Guagenti, VP Client Partner of Razorfish and Chris Carfi , co-Founder of Cerado, is the moderator for this event.

1525 - Peter: The number 1 objection, what do we need to do and what does that do to our bottom line. I don’t want anything negative to appear about my company.

1540 - Gary: There will be a few 5 star relationships, a few 1 star relationships and a lot of 3 star relationships. You don’t want to spend too much time on the 1 star relationships.

1546 - Gary: Biggest objection I’ve ever received comes from the legal department. Peter: You want whatever you want correct to be in place. The key is measurement and improve the value of it. Optimisation is always a spiral. Social media is the new thinking, you don’t have a little bit of room to experiment.

1554 - Gary: Social media is the tool to build relationships. It’s is best suited to do it rather than other forms of advertising such as doing it at SuperBowl.

1618 - Anything that is done has the opportunity to show up on YouTube

The Future of Social Media and Business

1620 - Closing Discussion: The Future of Social Media and Business. Panel members are Mike Walsh, CEO, Leverage Software and Shel Holtz, President of Holtz Communication. Darius Miranda, Customer Content & B2B Social Media Manager at Wells Fargo moderates

1624 - What will Web3.0 look like? Mike: From the perspective of communities, there are two stakeholders, the end user and the brand. End user - what you want, when you want it, how you want it. Host - evaluate and analyse information. This will come in the form of improved dashboards and analytics. Web 3.0 will see a maturing of technologies.

1626 - Shel: PR is about building relationships, not dumping press releases.

1631 - Shel: High level execs need to learn about Social Media and understand that it is not just what their kids are using and as a medium to spread bad news. Education is needed to change these wrong perspectives. Mike: VPs of Marketing and CMOs greatest concerns are on security and privacy. There is a need to balance the use of social media on internal platforms

1635 - Tip for success: try not to build your strategy in a bubble

1637 - Mike: Biggest mistake is not understanding how to get technology to advance in tandem with marketing programs. Shel: Biggest challenge: legal issues. CEOs need to balance legal risks with all other risks. Another big challenges include the team, budget and communication. Learnings: Engagement and social media happen on two levels - organic (both inside and out of the organisation) and campaign. Campaigns are a short term strategy and most companies focus on campaign. They need to invest time into both levels in order to fully leverage social media.

1641 - Mike: In the future, the different platforms will be more integrated so management of communities will be more convenient. Shel: Integration will happen on a variety of levels. Engaging people in conversation on your homepage will be a feature of the future. When you are passionate about something, you want to have a dedicated place to talk about your interests. For example, groups on Ning, Facebook and MySpace should be aggregated to create a larger and richer community.

1645 - Shel: Mobile strategy for employee communication is not really in place yet. Mike: It’s industry specific. Realtors and sales people will probably have a higher rate of using mobile devices. Also, it is more prominent in Asia Pacific. America lacks the infrastructure for the growth that mobile has experienced in Asia Pac. Culture shift to use of mobile is also holding the US back.

1653 - How far out should you plan your strategy for? Shel: One of the risks of planning far out is that you lock yourself into tactics within a changing environment. Tools, supply and demand can change. You have to be aware of the situation, and keep the conversation going. Mike: Planning ahead to about a year is the furthest you should go because of constantly changing situations.

1656 - Social media for recruitment? Concerns with legal issues: how do you use the information that is available positively? It is a double edged sword for applicants, so how should employers deal with social media on potential employees? Mike: Take a look at the info that applicants send you. Facebook is the tool for communication in Gen Y coming out of universities. Shel: Limits are set by the industry. The same level of trust should be placed on online conversations. Behave ethically and legally, and you’ll be ok

1702 - Closing statement by Reshma. It has been a great 2 days and thanks for reading!

Live from Social Media Strategies 2008 - Day 1

Howie Chang — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 07:37:59 GMT

Thanks to Wayne, covering live for TDM.

--------------------------

We’re live here from Social Media Strategies, organized by the WebGuild in Stanford Court, San Francisco. For some live clips, please check out the “Live” Qik events page here. Photos are uploaded hourly here. Times are in PST.

Keynote

0910 - Introduction by Daya from WebGuild. Francois is up talking about why he’s here and he’s introducing the keynote, David Carter, Founder & CTO of Awareness.

0918 - David is introducing what Awareness is doing.

0922 - How is the economic situation affecting the social media industry. It’s not as bad as during the dot com bubble burst where money is being thrown blindly into the industry.

0930 - Is Social Media a fad? David says it has really evolved. It’s all about information and relationships management on the net now. It’s a tool that has evolved to solve a certain problem. People want more depth on the internet, and they expect to find it, such as searching for a product info on a site. Enterprises social communities using social media. People will actuallly be vocal about something they really care about, and they want to know about the companies they’re engaging with. Given Forrester’s research, marketing budget spent

Is Social Media a commodity? NO! That would mean we have all the tools we need and innovation can stop. There’re still a lot of improvements that we can make about the social media environment, so we are not able to get the same common experience across different social sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn. Profile portabiliy, contact list management etc. needs to be improved.

0943 - With the economic situation, there’re more eyes on where the money goes. Therefore social media strategies have to be spot on the first time. So how can we execute better? Identify and leverage on points on enthusiasm (press releases, conference events etc.) and make them part of your community. Identify watering holes for customers and pick the project that has the most obvious ROI. It doesn’t have to be about money, it can be about trust scores, community stocks, and in this case to gather the required information needed to measure and analyse this event.

Social Media in the Economic Downturn

0947 - Shel Israel, Social Media Strategist of Global Neighbourhoods and Mark Yolton, SVP Community Network of SAP are up on stage now talking about Social Media in the Economic Downturn. Shel: “This may be our time!! What can we scale back and cut back on in the downturn. We really need to talk to our customers.” Traditional advertising and PR has remained expensive in the last decade or so. Social Media is an answer to the problem of lean marketing and addressing the problem of how to stay close to the customers.

0952 - Mark on stage. Introduction to social media in SAP. Social media being used in SAP for about 5 years now. It’s core to what SAP does today. Given today’s economy, need to focus on cost efficiency.

0956 - David still on stage talking about his 8 best practices in social media.

0957 - Shel opening it up to the floor, but no one has any questions. So he continues, how do you measure effectiveness and efficiencies of social media practices. Mark: Basic stuff is definitely measured, from traffic, engagement and stickiness metrics. About cost, whether the questions from supporter organisations channel into the user community without the need for SAP to do it. SAP still provides customer support, but they have crowdsourced support from the community that comes in and defers cost. How many sales leads are being driven for the specific subscriptions is being measured. Community ecosystem serves to facilitate customer engagement for other departments within SAP. It actually functions differently about the other areas of SAP.

1007 - Mark: If you drive from one part/organization, be it engineering, marketing etc., it’s gonna be hard to bring change. So the philosphy at SAP now, by creating a separate cross group organization to facilitate all the organizations to make contributions. SAP is really close to its customers, by knowing who the bloggers in each country are, engaging in conversations with them, reaching out to a mailing list quickly, getting out to blog readers who are accessing the SAP blog. Reducing cost, agility and reaching out to customers are the focus points of community network at SAP.

1015 - David: What do you have to cut that you now can’t live without? Mark: As budgets get cut, be it training budget, marketing budget, traveling budget etc., social media is the thing to turn to. The same how PR is being done by providing daily news summaries which includes blogger comments. Serious discussions going on blogs and inviting bloggers to product launches, company events etc. Giving them the privilege because they’re the one who are asking the best questions.

1021 - Shel: Blogging gives someone a lot of power (based on experience). What’s your vision of the role that social media plays going into good times. Mark: Focused on engaging customers in other ways than sending someone out to fix something. Getting constant feedback from the consumers, getting product documentation from users, crowdsourcing data for the company. David: An entire circle of development in the company rather fixed product launches in the company.

1025 - Networking Break

Leveraging Social Media for Business

1040 - Up next is the panel on Leveraging Social Media for Business. We have Liz Miller, VP Programs & Operations, CMO Council, Lauren Coberly, Director Worldwide Marketing, Kodak Direct, Kim Johnson, VP of Sales and Marketing at Symantec and Naomi Cooper, VP Marketing, 1-800-DENTIST.

1042 - Liz: 3% of America use some form of social media at least twice a week and 25% of Americans are engaging with companies at least once a week. Introduction about what CMO Council is all about and what the marketing agenda for Marketing leads are and what the new challenges are now. Why does experience matter: A single bad experience will prevent the users from going back to the companies. Social media is a channel for customers to voice out as and when they have bad experience, and marketers are now listening more attentively to these channels. More numbers and stats.

1049 - Lauren: We now have 3 company blogs and chief blogger in Kodak. 1000 Words, PluggedIn and Grow Your Biz are the 3 blogs. Explaining how Kodak is engaging social media, Facebook Fanpage, Flickr integration tools, twitter, podcasts, Kodak Gallery featuring Slide.com integration etc. Traditional marketing complements social media marketing in an integrated marketing plan. Social media industry changing very quickly, that’s no way to create a 10 year goal plan for social media marketing as tools and trends are rapidly evolving.

1059 - Naomi: B2C and B2B in 1-800-DENTIST. Focus a lot on industry partner relations. Strategy that the company is embarking on - how to position themselves as a neutral third party expert, battling huge stigma for mass marketing in the dentistry industry by creating a video site with webinars and forum about how to do marketing for dentists, and also for people in the industry to use this site for lead generation and by giving dentists awareness of the need for marketing and to help them by giving them the information and advice, and even outsourcing opportunities to do marketing for their businesses. This is a positioned neutral site, appears to be sponsored by 1-800-DENTIST as opposed to being run by the company.

1115 - Kim: Uncomfortable for company working on security to create a blog initially, but now it has been experimented and tried to be quite a good way to reach out to consumers and businesses. Social media in the company on the consumer side - web game show at CES, RSS feeds etc. Moving forward, having experimental organization that doesn’t have any stigma, trying out new things. Ability to tie new technologies and new ways of catching customers to the ways of getting revenue.

1125 - Liz: Remember the Symantec campaign with Da Vinci theme? (The Da Vinci Code Anagram Game)

1128 - Lauren: How do we measure and determine whether its successful? Reaching out to other mediums that engages more consumers and through measuring RSS feeds, advertising numbers, Flickr numbers. Moving focus into search to make sure that the presence and visibility isn’t lost. That’s how we’re looking into determining success. We’re rather you be out there to talk about Kodak, saying something bad is preferred to saying nothing at all.

1133 - Naomi: Different from Kodak. People don’t like going to dentist, so people saying something bad is a lot worse than saying nothing :). Social economic bias of going to a dentist, eg pain, negativity, as comments can go really bad. Interesting challenge for conversations with consumers in dentist industry. Moving ahead with neutrality to evangelize about oral health. Just appointed a new chief blogger, usage of tools such as Tweet Scan. We don’t have PR or Social Media department, so you can actually do this yourself, and there’re a lot of great tools out there for you to make use on.

1141 - Kim: Using external agencies to do social media, PR if don’t have time internally to do it. Daily updates on social media ongoings about the company.

1150 - What tools do you use to check business intelligence on social media? (Do give comments! :D) Liz: Marketing now is a core data point for information coming into the company. From there, information is being permeated through to other departments via a collective CMS environment where a single question or problem can be accessed and retrieved by all the departments in a company.

1154 - % of marketing dollars spent on SEO and % of time spent on organic space? Anyone used interactive news release? Liz: CMO Council is partnering a company to do it, creating a compelling a news story. Bloggers are now utilising these news releases more and it’s actually achieving more from a PR perspective, creating an increase in awareness throughout the blogosphere. Lauren: Time and focus spent a lot on organic space. Naomi: We run every news release by SEO person, best way to help results. A lot of organic and paid search.

1159 - Lunch Break in Forneau’s Oven!!

Tapping into the Power of Employees Through Social Media

1310 - Now we’re back from a sumptuous lunch, straight into the first track after lunch, which is Tapping into the Power of Employees Through Social Media. We have Dr. Jim McGee, Director of New Shoreham Consulting.

1313 - Jim: Stories on Xerox, Accenture - knowledge management station, talking about social media usage in accenture. Jim is getting some feedback and input from the audience in talking about what social media tools and practices that are being used in the company. These are examples of inexpensive ways to get starting in solving problems, not economic for big consulting firms to use it. The idea is also to find the difference in working with knowledge workers as opposed to the engineers and features makers. It’s now we, as knowledge workers, have the discretion to use tools, and from there influence the rest of the companies to use it. You cannot force the management people to actually use these tools. By starting to use the tool in your company, it could potentially be a good gauge for how consumers will pick up this tool and give feedback on your company.

1343 - Jim: “Community trumps content”. Knowledge management systems are build by people who are more technically savvy who doesn’t really know about the expertise and environment they’re building for. Should we build social media tools that should be fun so that the pick up rate is fast and creates a perceived low barrier entry? Debate going on about this. It just needs to be relevant to the work. Don’t use “fun” to sell to senior management :P. Perceived fun is making some people think that productivity is being sacrificed because they’re having “fun”.

1352 - Jim: There’re 3 ways where employees in an organization to relate to each other. Will try to get the model up later. AI - wonderful debate in the early days between needs and scruffies, kind of like the knowledge management and social media.

The Importance of Content in Social Media

1357 - Next up is the session on The Importance of Content in Social Media with Robin Carey, CEO of Social Media Today, Scott Wilder, GM of Online Communities Division at Inuit and Sylvia Marino, Executive Director of Community Operations at Edmunds.com Inc.

1405 - Is content an important issue in social media? Sylvia: Content is extremely important. Different communities all have a lot in common - a lot of people have questions, some others have answers, and many people have opinions. Content is important because it is relevant to consumers and consumers really need it. Scott: At the end of the day, it’s all about the conversations that’s going on. It’s not about the numbers, it’s all about the verbatim and what people are saying, the sentiment that is being conveyed that’s teaching companies a lot. Content is to be developed by our users. Is plumbing a good analogy to refer to a tool facilitating 2-way communication? (Would you want your plumbing to flow back?)

1410 - What kind of content are important? Sylvia: Content MUST be AUTHENTIC!! Readers and minders can smell it a mile away. Dialog has to be not me but you. Making the commitment in learning about consumers through 2-way engagement with them and listening to them. Scott: Community is not the place to market, but it’s the place to build a relationship. Authenticity and transparency is important.

1417 - Good quality content vs High SEO (Quantity)? Scott: Am I doing this to make me feel good (more traffic), or am I really solving for making it easy for user to contribute? Think about the technology that we use these days, there are a lot of people who are lagging behind and it’s harder for them to pick it up. So it’s all about who are you solving for and about making User Experience good and easy to pick up. Sylvia: It’s all about solving problems and needs, instead of blindly going out for the sake of creating something social. And it’s all about the correct and most relevant tools to use for the job to meet customers needs.

1425 - Systematic way of determining ROI - Omniture, Google analytics, look at consumer response, did they have a positive experience with the brands?

1458 - Afternoon Networking Break

Thinking Vertically Across Social Media

1525 - We’re back from the Break with the panel on Thinking Vertically Across Social Media with Rajiv Parikh, CEO of Position2, Chris Carfi, Co-Founder of Cerado and Darius Miranda, Customer Content & B2B Social Media Manager at Wells Fargo.

1535 - Darius: Ghost-writing?? Never!! The need for bloggers to have certain expert knowledge. For banks, how relaxed can they be? It’s all about people to people and how to be sticky. Chris: A lot of old media push tactics are not working effectively any more as users move online. Darius: We’re going to run a pilot to measure sentiment online. Because of our expertise, we should be able to influence our customers, and with our customers’ influence, they are able to influence other people.

1548 - Chris: Whoever fills that gap that questions that customers have and information that they need will actually come up high in Google organic search because it’s what they’re looking for. It can vary from the main website of the company or product to 3rd party sites that are able to provide the most relevant and most sought after information. Darius: Example is Oracle Openworld where there’s a monthly meeting all the way up to the event and during the event, people will look for each other. Dialogue will also carry on after that. Chris: Having a balance with offline and online flow is really great. Communication spikes usually happen before and after a physical offline event.

1604 - Darius: On blog, it’s real time, as compared to a few weeks to get some words on to your website in a major company. All blogs on Wells Fargo are legally compliant. We won’t change anything on a post or comments, unless it has some security and privacy issues, because all blog posts adhere to blog policies. Chris: As long as the blog posts are within legal means, get all the information and transparency out there, because it really helps the trust and authenticity.

1610 - Darius: If someone requests something about a product that requires an answer that is off topic, we tell them that we are working on it at the moment, but not actually revealing what’s in the works. Bringing the relevant person to give a reply usually works, and always end the answer or response with a question. Talk to them like he’s your best friend. Talk to people from other departments and find out what actually works, and if there’s a need to, split the cost. That will help large companies.

1612 - Question from audience: any crisis issues and how did you manage it? Chris: If the organization is okay with bringing internal discussions out in the open, the organization can already tackle these crisis by allowing the customers to know what goes on internally and to let them know that the organization admits or agrees that it is an issue that they have to solve. Being honest and humble helps. Rajiv: By engaging the community, we can really avert the crisis. Darius: For B2B, practise social media strategies inside out, so that the pick up rate for external customers will be smoother.

The Best and Worst Social Media Marketing

1620 - And here we have the last session of the day: The Best and Worst of Social Media Marketing with Sean O`Driscoll, Ex GM MVP Program, Microsoft, David Needle, West Coast Bureau Chief, Internetnews.com and Francois Gossieaux, Partner at Beeline Labs.

1625 - Sean: The day I left Microsoft, I got a question asking me whether Microsoft now won’t get social media.

1628 - Francois: We’re in the first stage of making social media work for enterprises, although we’re in the stage of transition from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0. If you’re thinking about social media as part of your business, it’s not about using social media for your business, it’s all about putting social into your business. They need to develop initiatives that are social media based, such as social communities.

1630 - Sean: People always want to go for the shine and dime of tech. I learnt quickly as a consultant, it’s not my core competencies to be at the fore-front about knowing what’s the latest technologies and tools, it’s about finding out which tools are more relevant to the companies. The most important issue is how to measure the effectiveness of these tools, instead just about using them.

1636 - Francois: You can’t shut down a social community, otherwise there will be a revolt by the people who will still strive to carry on, which might turn its back against the company. Sean: The community brought back the MVP program when users sent thousands of mail to Steve Ballmer when they decided to close it down. Robert Scoble really became a big part of the MVP face, engaging the community for Microsoft. Top-down didn’t really drive things, so people will just go off and do stuff, eg the launch of Channel 9 - people at the top didn’t even know what was going on!

1642 - Sean: Expectations of companies - ROI is my favourite red herring. On one side, you need to have a business case to articulate that it benefits the company. Community meetings are useless as the people you are talking to are not as passionate about technology and social media as you are. But you’re working on the product quality line, so communities are not exactly inline with the business process goals. The dark side of ROI is realising that there are people who keeps bringing up ROI, because they don’t buy it. They are looking for a level of granularity in ROI that doesn’t really apply in a lot of the ROI analysis.

1645 - Sean: Engagement model: communities are not channels, not partner organizations - they do what they do not to help the company, but to help other users. Transparency is not a value proposition, but a tactic. Joining conversation is an importance piece of advice, but for a big company, there’re probably tonnes of conversations out there. So take 6 months off to listen to those conversations.

1649 - Francois: Build it and they will come concept is a sure-fire failure model. First mover advantage is only true if you can engage the 4 pillars of social media such as content and more importantly, transactions as part of the community.

1651 - Sean: Community is still all about content especially in B2B. Effort put into seeding content is especially valuable, possibly inducing a hockey stick growth.

1653 - David: any tip on social media? Sean: The magic of idea storm is not the site, but is the business process behind the scene to close the loop on the feedback. What can we learn from Microsoft? Red ring of death for Xbox is a significant PR disaster 2 years ago. Xbox froze up on Christmas Day, after lots of parents bought it as christmas presents for their kids. There was a lack of acknowledgement about the problem. A year later, Microsoft gave a radical 3 year warranty for the Xbox to correct the problem. It could have been done earlier to save a lot of money.

1659 - Francois: TiVo. What they did that they realise that their users were hanging out some where that they didn’t know. Hanging out on a 3rd party site that TiVo users created. So you don’t need everyone to come up to your site to engage the community.

1700 - End of day and Cocktail Reception!!!