David Dalka attends and reports business events and conferences to discover the future of business where technology, organizations and customer exeperience meet. Also serves as emcee, moderator and motivational business keynote speaker.
Argh, I’m so behind on indexing my business cards!!! It’s terrible and I must catch up. I also have tons of correspondance and phone messages to reply to. I need help! At the moment I can’t offer you cash, only still hypothetical options of some soon to launch companies and the ability to interact with some amazing people. You must enjoy and thrive on meeting the most interesting and creative people in the world. In fact you should aspire to be on of them that is my only requirement.
After over half a month, Google finally put up a site on the URL in the September United Airlines Magazine.
It’s interesting that this took over half a month for Google to properly coordinate this simple media campaign between a magazine and a micro site. It certainly shows all is not well within Google’s recruiting department.
Simply Shocking!!! The Wall Street Journal is reporting that a British Airways jet lost an engine due to fire on takeoff from LAX and decided to continue onward with the flight to London!!!
“The Los Angeles air-traffic-control tapes, obtained by The Wall Street Journal under the Freedom of Information Act, show that controllers who saw the fiery engine failure with the jet just 296 feet in the air were immediately concerned about the flight and ready to guide it back to the airport. But the decision to return or keep flying rested with the captain and the airline. Ever since, pilots and aviation regulators have debated the decision of the pilots and British Airways. Their questions: Even if the plane was capable of reaching its destination, and perhaps legal to fly, was it smart to try? And was it safe?”
The incident raises extremely serious questions about British Airways choosing economics over safety of human life due to the reduced margin for error. The LAX tower deleted flight 268’s flight plan beceause they were certain that they would return to the airport.
“Flight 268’s decision clearly surprised Los Angeles air-traffic controllers. The flight took off at about 9:24 p.m. on Feb. 20, 2005. Trouble was soon visible, as evident in radio discussions of “Speedbird 268 heavy.” (“Speedbird” is aviation’s call sign for British Airways; 268 was the flight number; “heavy” refers to jumbo jets.)
“Remember that Speedbird I told you about?” the controller asked a colleague.
“Yeah.”
“He’s engine-out — No. 2 engine out. He’s going to continue to his destination or as far as he can get,” the departure controller said.
“OK. I have no flight plan on him.” The tapes show the controllers had assumed the pilot wasn’t going to London, so they deleted the flight plan from the computer. To reconstruct it, the departure controller called the tower.
“Is he going?” the tower controller who had seen the engine flames asked.
“He’s going,” was the answer.
“If you would have saw what we saw out the window, you’d be amazed at that,” said the tower controller.”
This decision (An emergency landing would have required dumping $30,000 of fuel, and the airline might have owed $275,000 in compensation to passengers under European Union rules if the flight was more than five hours late) wasn’t customer focused and creates serious questions about the difference between US and UK law on the issues involved.
I mean could you imagine being a passenger on that flight, seeing flames in an engine and then continue onward for a transatlantic flight of several hours? I have trouble grasping it.
British Airways should be transparant here, admit this was not wise and communicate exactly how they will act differently in the future instead of quietly communicating with the FAA.
SJSU + Skype, give Steve his Skype back. Read his original post here.
Good luck! In fact this should be a bigger issue than SJSU, there are many places where this should be reversed, I hope Steve succeeds and starts a trend – please support Steve by linking to his post.
I arrived to the session late….
Corporate bloggers must have thick skin.
Community Manager – gather sources and send them away…they will come back.
How do I get all employees involved?
Community marketing allows engagement.
Responding to complaints:
– Engage the blogger – “we hear you”
Blogger relationships – treat them with respect and analyst.
Bloggers are egotistical.
I’m not in PR.
Prospects trust other customers than anything else. Embrace and use your current customers.
Let go, to gain more.
Do not over structure corporate blogs for product announcements.
Blogoshpere conversation benchmark tools are important.
Rift between corporate communications and web – often exists.
You should educate people to overcome that rift. Social Media consultant.
Just do it . The tools will evolve.
Give to the community and they will give back.
You need to trust and love your employers. IBM built it’s blogging policy with a Wiki.
Vivid examples given about how to use Myspace.
Wells Fargo has a blog, teaching credit. Useful content build trust.
Links, activity, forum and stickyness.
C-level blogs can save time as the future meetings are framed.
Sun, says C-level leader is to communicate.
“Social media is gray.”
Shel Holtz is the second Shel in my life who studies social media. The other is Shel Israel. Shel Holtz refers to Shel Isreal as “Shel #1” due to his superior age characteristics.
“Podcasting is Tivo for audio.”
Podshow is a network of shows. Yahoo!, iTunes, Podcast Alley are other alternatves.
There are a lot of people out there who aren’t technically savvy. 11% of adults have downloaded a podcast. 35-44 is 45% of penetration area – dismisses the myth that podcasting is only for Generation Y.
Podcast listeners are:
– Educated
– Affluent
– Trend Leaders
Niche focused – listen to relevant content
Podcasts are detachable from your computer – iPod, etc. I listen to podcasts when I’m walking my dog, sitting in airport tool. Audio is the only communication channel that you can do while listening to something else.
Allows you to listen while doing something else.
Podcasting has low barriers to entry. I learned how to do it in under and hour.
Podcasting facts:
– 20,000 independent podcasts
– Podcasting community is supportive
– Has it’s own conference
– Spawned the “podsafe music” field (Pod Safe Music Network – let people know you use it and they are happy)
– Support services emerging
Lybsyn.com only charges you for file storage (monthly fee)
IBM Podcast – Investment Relations Department – talks with different thought leaders around the company.
Ipressroom.com – talks about the future of press
Nearly all podcasts are free.
Producing a podcast is about setting a consistent format.
– One host or co-hosts
– Interviews
– Segments?
– In the field
Mix/minus – gets rid of latency.
Eliminate glitches
Secrets of Successful Podcasting:
– Unscripted and natural
– Regular
– No overt selling
– Housed on a blog
– Listener feedback encouraged and incorporated
– Employ other forms of engagement
Hobson & Holtz
Robert Scoble: Keynote Speech: Naked Conversations
Talks about history, blogs are best way to get stuff indexed in Google.
There is an informal conversation network. Tells the story about how a few people he told that he was leaving Microsoft. How that spread and then a largely unread blog was the one that first posted it is why you need to pay attention to *ALL* bloggers, not just him.
Talking to bloggers is more important than covering Walt Mossberg.
People who read blogs are far more likely to click and take action.
The auto blog reader is more likely to click through to other auto sites.
Most people understand search engines. Talks about google.com and how people search “Yahoo” and vice versa. It demonstrates that it’s a Google world.
If you pipes are leaking, you need a plumber. So you type in “Chicago plumber leak” and you need to be on the top of the organic search results. Links are important and so are other things. Changing the content every day helps the algorithms. Blogs, due to the frequency of content update are excellent tools to do this.
He talks about the plumber blog that gets link due to the knowledge. Also talks about how he got a ripped off once with a carpet and is blog entry ranked higher than the company.
A dirty secret about Google is that the ad click through rate is lower there du to the higher educational level of a typical Google user.
People will link to audio and video more than they will text. Suggested video press releases. Be different. Hugh’s cartoon’s are different. Video and Flickr and other sites can create buzz.
Talked about the “Dell Hell” issue. (strangely few in the room had heard of it – shows how far we have to go) Tells the well known Jeff Jarvis story.
Talks about how to listen. (I would say this is Robert’s biggest gift)
Then gave examples of how he linked to complaints directly when he joined Microsoft, fascinating!
Currently, HP story is a great example. They have not listened to the blogosphere. It is making the ethics crisis there worse.
Every project should have a story behind it. Talked about channel 9 naming story and how Microsoft built transparency. The PR folks didn’t pay attention to our blogs and Channel 9 until we were in the New York Times. It’s so funny how that works. Tells more about telling good stories and how important that it. It’s all about story telling process.
If you post something it shows up in my RSS aggregator. Using RSS is far more productive!
How do I get my content viewed in new places…talked about second life.
Valleywag recently wrote about a bad pitch. Democracy Now, Z Fank, Ipod can aggregate. Steve Jobs used Rocketboom to do the recent Apple launch.
Again, HP – where is the engagement in the ethical issues?
Ragan PR conferece 2006