The Definitive Hamburger

When McDonald's standardized their menu in the 1950s, they were demonstrating exploitation of a successful formula for the delivery of the definitive hamburger. This exploitation led them into unprecendented growth.

When McDonald's started serving salads in the 1980s, they were demonstrating the kind of exploration necessary when successful formulas no longer support a valid outcome.

In other words, when people wanted hamburgers, McDonalds perfected a method to meet that need better than anyone. And when some of those hamburger-lovers started wanting salad instead, McDonald's found a way to successfully deviate from the formula in order to develop innovations to support continued relevance.

According to LeadershipNow, exploitation and exploration must always occur concurrently; it's what is referred to as design thinking, and it's what helps prepare organizations to meet an unpredictable future.

Read more at LeadingBlog.

What do you consider to be the "definitive hamburger" of your organization? What trends are forcing you to explore new services, products, or methods of engagment?

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DigitalNow 2010 - a res

Let's play 20 questions

Whether you're a software developer working on the next big app, a service provider running a local boutique business, or an association executive providing education and information to a global membership, you are in business - and if you're going to be successful, you need to keep lots of proverbial balls in the air.

Forbes.com offers a review of The 20 Most Important Questions that you should be asking (and hopefully answering) about your business, including:

• What differentiates your product from the competition?
• How committed are you to making this happen?
• How much power do your suppliers have?
• What is your end game?

What business are you in, and what crucial questions you are currently working to answer?

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DigitalNow 2010 - a res

Internet revolution has just begun

Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations and the new book Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age says that we are seeing just the beginning of the cultural and creative opportunities afforded by our use of the Internet. It's key to note that Shirky doesn't credit the Internet; he credits the creativity and innovation of the people who use - the "souls of the machine."

As part of the senior-project presentations at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program, Shirky "encouraged programmers and Web designers to build online systems that will get visitors talking, sharing, and creating, rather than passively reading and watching."

Perhaps his most provocative point was that in his estimation Americans now spend 200 billion hours each year passively watching televsion - "with 100 million hours of that squandered each weekend watching just advertisements."

Just imagine what we could so with all of that "cognitive surplus" if we learned to redirect it into making creative and innovative contributions online.

"What matters most now is our imaginations," he writes at the end of his new book. "The opportunity before us, individually and collectively, is enormous; what we do with it will be determined largely by how well we are able to imagine and reward public creativity, participation, and sharing."

Read Jeffrey R. Young's complete article at The Chronicle.

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Cool new hashtag tool

If you'd like to know who's using a particular hashtag, and even see a chart of its activity, then you'll want to visit http://www.hashtags.org.

For those of you who may not be familiar with proper use of hashtags, here's a quick overview:

A Twitter hashtag is a keyword that is appended to all of the posts or "Tweets" that are related to a common topic. This allows users to follow the posts about a topic, rather then being confined to reading the Tweets of people they are following. If you wanted to see who's talking about the World Cup, for example, you would simply perform a Twitter search for #worldcup. The resulting page would present all of the Tweets that have been tagged that way - even if posted by people you're not following.

Using a hashtag is a great way to ensure that you are an active participant in conversations about a specific topic or event. Searching by hashtag enables you to find others with interests common to yours, to do market research, or find a subject matter expert.

A couple key things to keep in mind:

• Don't use a hashtag unless your post really does relate to the topic at hand. It clutters up the stream for everyone else
• Don't create a new hashtag for a topic or event until you've determined whether one has already been put into practice
• Pick one or two hashtags for each Tweet - don't crowd your post with so many tags that you have no characters left to say anything

For those of you who are want to be part of the MPI WEC 2010 conversation, the official hashtag is #wec10 - pass it on!!

 

 

 

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Show us yours

350 years ago, British scientist Robert Boyle composed a wish list of 25 problems for which he wanted scientists to find solutions. According to NewScientist.com, Boyle's documentation "predicts the inventions of GPS navigation, flight, organ transplants, commercial agriculture and hair dye..."

Boyle's wish list is on display as part of the exhibit The Royal Society: 350 years of science at the Royal Society in London, and has inspired many modern scientists to show their own wish lists for the future. Here's a sampling:

• David Eagleman, neuroscientist and fiction writer: Determine how to get by on zero sleep

• Steve Jones, geneticist: Understand the science of human emotions broadly enough to put an end to war

• Sean Carroll, physicist: Understand consciousness and intelligence, so that we could mimic it in computers

So, show us yours - what issues or problems are on your wish list?

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Location is where it's at

A couple months ago, we posted an article that discussed foursquare -what it is, what it does, and why you want it (or not). But foursquare is just one application of its kind. In addition to applications that are dedicated to providing location-based services, applications such as Twitter and Facebook are adding in location-based features that provide the same functionality.

So why would you want everyone you know to know where you are at every moment of every day? (For most of us, where we are is simply just not that interesting, after all. "I'm at work. I'm home. I'm at the grocery store." Riveting stuff.) However, there is an entire generation for whom their friends and connections are among their greatest assets. They think of life in terms of networks and communities, and as they move through their days, they are ever aware of who is around them and how they can use those connections in work and play. For this group, staying on the grid is worth the breach in privacy.

But even beyond the personal and professional value, location-based applications present profound implications, according to David Carr of The New York Times. "Logic suggests that the advertising possibilities enabled by knowing where someone is or what they have been watching at a given moment are profound," writes Carr. "If the first movers gain users and the big boys come off the sidelines, what looks like a fetish object could end up being one more important tool in navigating physical and digital space."

Do you use location-based applications in your personal life or your work? If so, leave a comment and let us know how you're using it and what the benefits have been.

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What's your (timeline) pleasure?

Whether you're a project manager, a teacher, or leading a member value team or focus group, chances are that you have the opportunity to create timelines in your work. Even if you never use timelines, they can be valuable tools for a variety of planning activities. 

At Techlearning.com, you can see a list of the Top 10 Sites for Creating Timelines. Some - like Time Rime and xTimeLine provide options for adding in audio and video, turning your timeline into a multimedia presentation. Others such as Read Write Think are text-only. No matter what your timeline pleasure, you'll find a tool that meets your specific needs.

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Get more from your marketing in 2010

If you want to soup up your marketing efforts this year, there are five key things you can and should be doing this year, according to Marketing Profs.

1. Invest in digital media that optimizes customer engagement. This includes experimenting with key words and phrases to boost SEO, designing a web site that is useful and engaging, and creating a "triangle offense" that includes email, mobile, and social media.
2. Adopt service as your main strategic objective. Understand your customers' needs, treat them with respect at every point of engagement, and provide them with tools and information that show you know what they need and you care about their success. 
3. Explore ways to take social media communications and engagement to the next level, but do so intelligently. Give your customers easy and integrated ways to connect to your services and to each other. There is strength in community.
4. Protect your email reputation. Understand that your reputation suffers whenever you send out a boring or useless communication. And don't forget about spam compliance. Reacquaint yourself with your obligations.
5. Increase email performance by becoming a relentless tester. Compare messages through split testing. Look at everything you do though every possible browser and device. Slip into your cutomers' shoes and walk a mile.

From an article by Joel Book, director of eMarketing Education at ExactTarget (www.exacttarget.com) a global provider of on-demand email-marketing and one-to-one marketing solutions.

Save the date! DigitalNow 2011 is scheduled for April 6 - 9 at Disney's Grand Floridian Resort and Spa.

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10 Web Content Myths

How do you get your video content to go viral?

How can you ensure that anyone will watch your online video?

Does the Internet actually provide a level playing field?

How can you build personality into your web presence?

How many seconds you have to get their attention before they stop watching?

 

The Internet is full of opportunities - and of myths about the viability of those opportunities. At the recent Mashable Media Summit, College Humor’s CEO Ricky Van Veen shared his 10 Web Content Urban Legends. The list contains some surprising facts  - such as videos that go viral present a hook within the first 20 seconds, as well as insights into the video strategies that College Humor employs.

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Get ready for what's next in mobile

Yes, mobile is hot, and no, it's not going to go away.

If you're not actively participating in mobile technology as part of the way you do business, now is the time to start paying serious attention.

Nick Jones, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner offers a list of 10 mobile technologies to watch in 2010 and 2011, including:

• Bluetooth (3 and 4)
• The Mobile Web
• Mobile Widgets
• Platform-Independent Mobile AD Tools
• App Stores
• Enhanced Location Awareness
• Cellular Broadband
• Touchscreens
• M2M (Machine-to-Machine)
• Device-Independent Security

For details on these technologies or to access the full report by Gartner, click here.

Open up to the possibilities with Fusion!
http://www.Big-Blue-Umbrella.com

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Demystifying Cloud Computing

Cloud computing. It sounds ethereal and a bit mystical, but what is it, exactly?

If you've heard this term batted around recently, but haven't yet wrapped your mind around it, here's a quick overview that we hope will clear up the, well, the cloud around it.

The traditional model for web site hosting requires that your web site and server-side applications be hosted on a physical server that sits at a physical location – either rented or at your offices. If your web site goes down or experiences slow-downs or outages, you or your service provider are responsible for tending to your server and getting things up and running as quickly as possible.

In this scenario, you are still responsible for making sure that you are aware of and able to report performance issues as they arise. You are also responsible for initiating and paying for the latest versions of any server-side applications you use such as Windows Server, Linux/UNIX, etc. 

In a cloud infrastructure (also know as cloud computing), you don't actually own a physical server. Rather, you purchase an allocation of resources from a huge conglomeration of servers that are spread out all over the country and even around the world. This resource allocation is referred to as an "instance." If you require an instance that provides 3 gigabytes of storage, for example, then you would pay not for a server or part of a server that provides that, but rather for the resource itself. And because that service isn't tied directly to a single machine, but is shared by a powerful system of machines from a variety of geographical locations, you enjoy the benefits of universal physical redundancy, optimum performance, and inherent disaster recovery.

Additionally, your cloud provider is responsible for keeping your server-side applications up to date. That means you no longer have to keep track of or pay for the latest upgrades to your operating systems – as they are often included in the price of your instance.

To learn more about cloud computing (which we hope is not such a mystery anymore), read this article at Cnet News.

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Social Media Mantra

We've said it over and over again: It's not about the tools. And that applies whether you're talking about hammers and nails, scalpels and sutures, or Twitter and Facebook.

So, repeat after us: It's not about the tools. It's about the people who use them, what they use them for, and how successful those efforts actually are.

At www.relationship-economy.com you can find a series titled Social Pyramid which provides a comprehensive, strategic analysis of the value of social media tools within the broader context of content and communications. As the authors say, "You can not improve that which you do not understand." This series - which is also available as a white paper - will support your understanding of the relationship economy in general, and the role of communications and the tools that support it.

Author Jay Deragon states, "Social media cannot be efficiently used unless a strategy is aligned with intent. Intent are strategic issues that must be thought out thoroughly because strategy drives tactics, initiatives and ultimately results." (Thank you for saying that so clearly and succinctly, Jay!)

According to the authors, there are five strategic social media considerations that apply to any organization:

1. Cultural Strategy


2. Relationship Strategy


3. Content strategy


4. Distribution Strategy


5. Actions

Of course, we are struck by the alignment of these messages to the DigitalNow commitment to value, strategy, and structure. Learn more about how issues like social media, communications, and the relationship economy are affecting your association. Join us at DigitalNow 2011: April 6 - 9 at Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa: Save the Date!

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DigitalNow 2010 - a resounding success! Watch videos and download session content from DigitalNow 2010 at http://www.digitalnowlive.comFollow DigitalNow on Twitter.Contribute to the DigitalNow blog. Suggest a blog topic, or reference an article or other item you think would be of interest to the DigitalNow community. Drop us a line at DigitalNow@fusionproductions.com

Fail to prepare or prepare to fail

Analytics. The mere mention of the word sends some people heading for cover. Numbers, charts, trends, hits, KPIs... it all seems so clinical. But according to Robert F. Hogeboom, principal and owner of BBP Marketing Group, you can't afford to hide your head in the sand when it comes to web analytics. You essentially have one of two choices, says Hogeboom: You can plan, or you can fail.

But take heart - in a recent article, Hogeboom recommends four key steps that will help you prepare your organization to take advantage of all that web analytics have to offer. They include:

1. Approach web analytics as an insight and optimization solution, not as a reporting solution


2. Develop a Web-measurement strategy


3. Develop a phased Web-analytics implementation approach


4. Be prepared for Web-analytics data not to be 100% accurate

If you missed DigitalNow 2010, you'll want to check out the presentation given by keynote Ian Ayres, author of SuperCrunchers: Why Thinking by the Numbers is the New Way to be Smart. Ian discusses the topic of statistical analysis with clarity and wit. Get ready to change your mind about the role of analytics in your organization. Watch Ian's session here, or simply click on the play window below. And don't miss DigitalNow 2011, April 6-9 at Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa.

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DigitalNow 2011: April 6 - 9 at Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa: Save the Date!

DigitalNow 2010 - a resounding success! Watch videos and download session content from DigitalNow 2010 at http://www.digitalnowlive.comFollow DigitalNow on Twitter.Contribute to the DigitalNow blog. Suggest a blog topic, or reference an article or other item you think would be of interest to the DigitalNow community. Drop us a line at DigitalNow@fusionproductions.com

Is travel in your future? Then mobile apps should be, too

The New York Times recently listed a slew of smart phone apps that can help make your next trip smoother. From booking tickets, to getting directions, to receiving alerts on flight delays and finding the best restaurants, mobile apps are revolutionizing the way we travel. (Now if we can just find that app that gets us through airport security without stripping down to our socks...)

Read the article and then try out some of the apps mentioned on your next trip. Don't forget to come back and let us know how you fared.

And speaking of mobile apps, if you're not using them in your organization yet, now is the time to start thinking about how and when. Join us at DigitalNow 2011 where the strategic application of mobile apps is just one of topics we'll cover as we provide you with tools and information you need to lead in a digital age.

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DigitalNow 2011: April 6 - 9 at Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa: Save the Date!

DigitalNow 2010 - a resounding success! Watch videos and download session content from DigitalNow 2010 at http://www.digitalnowlive.comFollow DigitalNow on Twitter.Contribute to the DigitalNow blog. Suggest a blog topic, or reference an article or other item you think would be of interest to the DigitalNow community. Drop us a line at DigitalNow@fusionproductions.com

Whose game is it, anyway?

In the early days of the Internet, small businesses were energized and excited at the prospect of participating on a level playing field. The Internet promised global reach and a low cost of entry. However, it wasn't long before the "big guys" learned how to gain an advantage through slick and expensive user interface designs and applications. Small businesses were relegated to the bleachers.

According to Judy Shapiro, chief brand strategist at CloudLinux, small businesses are now getting their chance to get back in the game, thanks to a "... blossoming of new technology platforms and services that give smaller e-merchants many of the tools heretofore only available to big guys." Read all about them at Advertising Age.

Finding new tools is half the battle; understanding how to get value out of them is the other half. DigitalNow is dedicated to helping association executives understand the application of new tools to enable more robust member engagement, value, and loyalty.

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DigitalNow 2011: April 6 - 9 at Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa: Save the Date!

DigitalNow 2010 - a resounding success! Watch videos and download session content from DigitalNow 2010 at http://www.digitalnowlive.comFollow DigitalNow on Twitter.Contribute to the DigitalNow blog. Suggest a blog topic, or reference an article or other item you think would be of interest to the DigitalNow community. Drop us a line at DigitalNow@fusionproductions.com

What's that buzzing sound?

The sheer volume, speed, and types of data being uploaded to the Internet every day continues to grow exponentially. You can't hear it, but if you could, the sound might well be deafening.

According to The New York Times, Melissa Mayer, Google VP said, "... there were 5 exabytes of data online in 2002, which had risen to 281 exabytes in 2009. That's a growth rate of 56x over 7 years. Partly, she said, this has been the result of people uploading more data. Mayer said that the average person uploads 15 times more data today (in 2009) than they did just 3 years ago."

Author Richard MacManus writes of the coming data explosion, "We don't know yet which computing or Internet companies will be most successful over the next 5-10 years, but one thing is for sure. They'll have to know how to process and make sense of massive quantities of data flowing through the Web - and do it in real-time." Read the article.

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DigitalNow 2011: April 6 - 9 at Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa: Save the Date!

DigitalNow 2010 - a resounding success! Watch videos and download session content from DigitalNow 2010 at http://www.digitalnowlive.comFollow DigitalNow on Twitter.Contribute to the DigitalNow blog. Suggest a blog topic, or reference an article or other item you think would be of interest to the DigitalNow community. Drop us a line at DigitalNow@fusionproductions.com