New Blog Location: www.digitalindustrialpark.com

The Digital Industrial Park blog has moved to a nice, comfy hosted location:

—–>> http://www.digitalindustrialpark.com/

Still a WordPress blog, though. We love ya, WordPress.

Happy New Year to all!

Perfect Timing: A Marketplace for Illiquid Assets.

Talk about perfect timing. New York-based SecondMarket has created a virtual marketplace for illiquid assets. Things like, say, those trillions of dollars worth of real estate loans that everyone on the planet is wondering what to do with.

http://www.secondmarket.com/

In the U.S., either the banks are going to have to figure out what to do with their debt or the government is going to set up a Resolution Trust Corporation-style sort of solution. Either way, SecondMarket looks like a very, very good idea.

Jeffrey Cole of the State (and Future) of Media.

If you’re an advertiser/marketer and you’ve got questions about the opportunities ahead of us in digital, you’ll want to spend 31:24 listening to what Jeffrey Cole has to say. Television moves out of the home and becomes pervasive and mobile will be at the center of everything digital…but that synopsis doesn’t begin to do it justice.

On the past:
“In 1946 4.3 billion movie tickets were sold. By last year the population doubled so we would have needed to sell 9 billion tickets. Instead we sold. 1.4 billion. The movies are a shell of what they used to be but the theatrical film business is a thriving, high-profile business and it is not a coincidence that it reached its peak in 1946 on the eve of the introduction of television.”

Even more interesting than the history lesson is his view of the digital future and the ensuing discussion.

Hint: John Wanamaker’s conundrum will be answered, “I know that half of my advertising budget is wasted, but I’m not sure which half.”

Using Tools As Thought Starters: The Art of the Possible.

With every announcement of corporate layoffs, there has been an increased interest in building small businesses as “displaced” workers look for new ways of making a living. This just may be a very good thing. Without minimizing the pain that accompanies losing a job (it can be traumatic), a world that is connected digitally presents numerous exciting opportunities.

Since no one can be an expert in everything that is out there, I am going to explore some of the tools in my consideration set as we build a business.

It all starts with a business plan and I will get to that next but, first, let’s look at some of the tools that Intridea offers to get the ideas flowing. This is a bit bassackwards but it is a good thought-starter exercise if you are considering a digitally-enabled business. We need new ways to work together and communicate with the marketplace. We’re not going to throw everything old out…but we are going to look new tools and new media consumption patterns. As you look at these tools, think about how they might be used to leverage your business. Think big.

Present.ly: Private Micro-Blogging for Your Business.

Crowdsource: Customer Feedback Widget.

SocialSpring: White-Label Social Networking Platform.

MediaPlug: Media Transcoding Appliance (whew, that’s a mouthful).

Scarlr: Cloud Computing, Minus the Sky High Prices.

Intridea offers a program that I think is brilliant. It is called Live In Five and what they will do is implement your business concept in five days. Devloping a proof-of-concept is always critical and frequently problematic. The Live In Five program is very powerful because there is a big difference between talking about a business and actually building one.

In Paul Gillin’s book, The New Influencers, he desrcibes “The Marketer’s Dilemma”. “The shift to small markets served and influenced by an entirely new breed of opinion-leaders is a sea change for markters. Most marketers still have no idea what to do about it.”

And therein lies our opportunity, doesn’t it?

16 Things to Do While You’re Waiting for the Future.

The economy is bad. Certainly more dramatically so than any of us have seen in our lifetimes. So, what to do? What to do?

A recruiter that I have known for a very long time told me, “Bill, 2009 is going to have two polar-opposite types of positions: Positions with companies that are trying to do more with less and sole proprietors”.

Even if you are in a large corporation, it will be helpful to think like an entrepreneur. And if you happen to be amongst the staggering number of newly unemployed, here are some places to think about starting some revenue-generating opportunities from Rajil Kapoor, Managing Director at Mayfield Fund.

Mechanical Turk – this cool marketplace from our friends at Amazon enable anyone to do human tasks and make some cash.  Several of my startups are using this for simple yet fundamentally human tasks such as image classification, reviewing content, etc.

Etsy - online bazaar for individuals that create handcrafted goods.  This is as much about community as it is about shopping for hard to find goods.  The community shares tips with each other on how to market themselves best online.  Etsy organizes it all in one place and provides all the tools.

Fixya (note: Rajil is an investor) – the Q&A marketplace for tech support for any consumer product.  If you can’t wait, you can get live support for a fee which we share with the experts. About half of our experts do it for the money vs just the glory.

Edufire. Wiziq - marketplaces out of the US and India connecting tutors anywhere in the world to students – focused initially on test prep and language instruction.  Not only do they help you connect with students but they also provide the tools for delivering online lessons – a full interactive chat with blackboard and even video.

Cafepress, Minted, Threadless - online storefronts and communities for designers to sell their wares – in t-shirt, printed form, or any object you can put a design or photo on (reminds me of my snapfish days!)

elance, odesk - connecting programmers, designers, and other professionals with jobs online.  I’ve heard many stories of entrepreneurs finding great worker bees on these services.

ustream, mogulus, qik - It doesn’t all have to be about learning and coding.  These platforms enable consumers to have fun and become video hosts or programmers to broadcast live video and generate a following (and hopefully advertising revenue!)

reverbnation - sites like this help you manage the un-business of playing music in a band.

about.com, mahalo - these seem like great reference sites on the outside but they are really a super-powered community of writers that are doing it for a living – and thriving!

30 important usability issues, terms, rules and principles which are usually forgotten, ignored or misunderstood.

That is probably the best long title ever. But usability is critical to success and smashingmagazine.com has put together one of the best one (scrolling) page overview of usability.

If you are new to usability, this is a great resource. If you are a practitioner, then it’s a fine reference page.

“In this article we present 30 important usability issues, terms, rules and principles which are usually forgotten, ignored or misunderstood. What is the difference between readability and legibility? What exactly does 80/20 or Pareto principle mean? What is meant with minesweeping and satisficing? And what is Progressive Enhancement and Graceful Degradation? OK, it’s time to dive in.”

>>Here’s the highly-usable link<<

Gary Vaynerchuk » My Web 2.0 Keynote in NYC

Sure, it’s some potty mouth stuff but I’m from New York and, besides, the message is superb! Not your standard motivational speech. Much, much, mucho better.

more about “gary vaynerchuk » My Web 2.0 Keynote …“, posted with vodpod

David Parrish: T-Shirts + Suits/Part 2

Want to start a creative business? Best to know who you are first.

In his richly informative and enlightening book, T-Shirts + Suits: A Guide to the Business of Creativity, David Parrish gives us a checklist for self-evaluation. Like many of these sorts of evaluations, the primary value comes from forcing you to answer questions that you need to answer…but frequently avoid doing.

If you are thinking of starting a creative business, or have already done so, you will want to spend some time seeking the answers to these questions. Remember, if you don’t stand for something, you fall for everything.

The PRIMEFACT Checklist (Page 22)

People
What are the strengths and weaknesses of our people?
Employees, directors, members, associates, advisers and
other stakeholders.

Reputation (or Brand)
What is our reputation with our target customers? What are
the strengths – or weaknesses – of our brand or brands?

Intellectual Property
What intellectual property do we have? How is it protected?
How easily can it be turned into income streams?

Market Research / Market Information
What information do we have about market segments and market trends? What do we know about individual clients and their specific needs?

Ethos (or Values or Culture)
What is our ethos, our values and our organisational culture?
Do all stakeholders subscribe to this same ethos?

Finances (ie Money)
What is the current state of profitability, cashflow and assets?
How much money do we have to invest or can we borrow?

Agility (or Nimbleness or Change­ability)
Are we agile enough to seize new opportunities?
Are people prepared to change and ready for change?
Are there barriers to change?

Collaborators (Alliances, Partnerships and Networks)

What are the strengths and weaknesses of our associations with other businesses and organisations (including government)?

Talents (Competencies and Skills)
What are our core competencies?
What skills do we have available and what gaps are there?
How will we learn new skills?

Current Reading List for Digital Businesses

21 October 2008: If you have, or are starting, a digital business you’ll want to read these. (A special thanks to Tom Illmensee)…

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions
Dan Ariely
A challenging mate to Freakonomics, Predictably Irrational examines how the world often works according to principles of irrationality in the places where we least expect it. Do you know why you still have a headache after taking a one-cent aspirin, but why that same headache disappears if the aspirin costs fifty cents? Do you know why recalling the Ten Commandments reduces people’s tendency to lie, or why honor codes are actually effective in reducing dishonesty at the workplace? Do you know why, after doing careful and extensive research on which car to buy, a random meeting with someone who had an awful experience with that car changes your decision? Why do we make decisions contrary to our better judgment? What is “better judgment?” Predictably Irrational challenges us to ponder these questions and demonstrates how irrationality manifests itself in situations (often very peculiar and hilarious situations) where rational thought is expected.

Upgrade Your Life: The Lifehacker Guide to Working Smarter, Faster, Better
Gina Trapani
This book isn’t a computer user manual, and it isn’t a productivity system. It’s a mashup of both. It’s where you learn to practice big-picture productivity methods on your very own computer desktop. Whether you’re a Mac or Windows user, know only enough to get by or are the family tech support geek, there are tricks here for you. Whether or not you’ve been turbocharging your day with the tips from Gina’s first Lifehacker book, you’ll feast on this buffet of new shortcuts to make technology your ally instead of your adversary.

Web Accessibility: Web Standards and Regulatory Compliance
Jim Thatcher, Christian Heilmann, Michael R. Burks
This book gives you all you need to know about web accessibility, whether you are a web designer or developer who wants your sites to be accessible, or a business manager who wants to learn what impact the web accessibility laws have on your websites. After an overview of the accessibility law and guidelines, and a discussion about accessibility and its implementation in the enterprise, the book goes on to show how to implement accessible websites using a combination of concise references and easy-to-follow examples.

Make It Bigger
Paula Scher
“Make it bigger”-a familiar refrain to any graphic designer accustomed to presenting layouts to clients-is an apt title for a book that examines the graphic design profession primarily through the lens of the business community it serves. Veteran designer Scher draws from over three decades of design experience to provide readers with a firsthand account of the creative process, that is, advancing good ideas and personal vision within the corporate cultures and organizational dynamics that are predisposed to resist them.

Access 2003 All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies
Alan Simpson, Margaret Levine Young, Alison Barrows
One-stop guide to building databases and managing information with Access 2003

Access 2007: The Missing Manual
Kate J. Chase, Scott Palmer
Demystifies databases and explains how to design and create them with ease.

Why Software Sucks: …and What You Can Do About It
David S. Platt
It’s no secret that software sucks. You know that from personal experience, whether you use computers for work or for personal tasks. In this book, programming insider David Platt explains why that’s the case and, more importantly, why it doesn’t have to be that way. And he explains it in plain, jargon-free English that’s a joy to read, using real-world examples with which you’re already familiar. In the end, he suggests what you, as a typical user, without a technical background, can do about this sad state of our software – how you, as an informed consumer, don’t have to take the abuse that bad software dishes out.

Metaphors We Live By
George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, Mark Johnson
The now-classic Metaphors We Live By changed our understanding of metaphor and its role in language and the mind. Metaphor, the authors explain, is a fundamental mechanism of mind, one that allows us to use what we know about our physical and social experience to provide understanding of countless other subjects. Because such metaphors structure our most basic understandings of our experience, they are “metaphors we live by”—metaphors that can shape our perceptions and actions without our ever noticing them.

Adapting to Web Standards: CSS and Ajax for Big Sites
Christopher Schmitt, Mark Trammell, Meryl K. Evans, Kevin Lawver, Kimberly Blessing
Gives developers a peek into the process of the best designers in the world through the work of high profile, real-world Web sites that made them famous. The book focuses on deconstructing these top-tier large-scale sites with particular attention given to deconstructing CSS.

The difference between shouting to a group and speaking intimately with an individual.

During this tumultuous 2008 election year here in the States one hears the cry, “Drill, baby, drill!” with increasing frequency. And while this cry is about drilling for oil, there is another type of drilling that is changing everything from how elections are run to how soap is marketed. Let’s call it digital drilling.

In the article entitled, “It Worked For Bush“, the story is told of how traditional campaigning was turned upside down by what might be called database marketing…but that term seems inadequately quaint within this context. It’s more than database marketing, it is more accurately digital drilling because it drills down from a huge data cloud right to your doorstep.

“The pollsters also looked in the wrong places. On election day, every exit poll showed a clear Kerry lead. Yet the polls were wrong, because they were wrong in the weightings they gave to different socioeconomic groups and in the assumptions they made about who would turn out to vote. The Bush team had, in effect, destroyed all the methodology on which polling and electoral analysis had been based for the past 50 years.”

Let’s take a look at how this was done,
STAGE ONE:
The ability to digitally store and archive massive amounts of raw data.
STAGE TWO:
The growth in the quantity and quality of multi-sourced consumer information.
STAGE THREE:
The ability to link multiple data islands.
STAGE FOUR:
The analytical power to search and discover new, meaningful patterns and relationships of strategic and tactical value.

This begs the question who did this and how did they do it? TargetPoint Consulting was the company that did this work for the Bush campaign and they describe how, what they call MicroTargeting, completely changes the game:

Why Now?
“In a word: technology. Campaigns have always collected data on their voters, and there have always been mounds of census data, polling crosstabs and voter registration files. Unfortunately, that data was in most cases wholly insufficient to get the job done, or too large and complex for anything more than rough approximations, oversimplified target lists, and statistically insignificant intuition. Technological developments have brought desperately needed depth and clarity to our formerly flat and hazy perception of individual voters.

By using hundreds of data points, comprised of voter information, life cycle information, life style information, financial data, consumer behavior, geographic data, and political attitudes and preferences, MicroTargeting can be used to segment each of your voters into one of a number of mutually exclusive groups, each defined by a unique combination of a host of data points.”

Irrespective of your political inclinations, the issue of digital drilling is an interesting one. And if you are a marketer, the interest is more than a passing one because in a post-broadcast world there is a difference between shouting to a group and speaking intimately with an individual. And motivating them to action.

Digital drilling may help you do that.