Evolving Web

Personal Kanban at the World Bank: Modus Cooperandi Info Pak 1

Personal Kanban at the World Bank - Small Team Rapid Development

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This is the first in a series of Modus Cooperandi's Info Paks. They are downloadable, and work like a narrative whitepaper. Think of them like graphic novels for business.

In Info Pak One: Personal Kanban at the World Bank, we discuss the experience we had leading a rapid development project at the World Bank, specifically, how visual controls work with small groups, and why they are preferable to traditional team management. 

This Info Pak is best read by clicking the “Full” button above. It’s also designed to be downloaded to distribute to others. Over the next few weeks, we will post more Info Paks on Personal Kanban. Please feel free to comment and let us know what you think.

Rare Gifts of Design

This is just a short post acknowledging good design.  One of the most overlooked elements of design are error messages.  Acknowledging problems just isn’t a very interesting part of software design.  Consequently, messages tend to be cryptic and more annoying than the actual problem.

I just received the following error message in CoTweet.  It says that there is a stability issue with twitter and they will notify me when service is restored.  That is simple, well worded, helpful and includes reassurance that they’ll be watching out for me so I don’t have to keep checking.

Simply wonderful.

Technorati Tags: CoTweet,design,software design,fail whale

Have My People Tweet Your People

“You don’t give your Twitter duties to an intern” – Morgan Johnston from Jet Blue at #140TC

 

Business is lazy.  If business doesn’t understand something, it quickly assigns it, outsources it or otherwise gets it off the to-do list.  At the Twitter Conference #140TC in Mountain View this wee, Morgan Johnston talked about how important it was to have someone in the company with authority interacting on social media.

He had several stories about directly helping customers because Morgan had full penetration into the organization.  To the extent that he held the door open on a plane for two extra minutes so a family running from one delayed flight (on another airline) to that flight could make it.  The family had a member who was tweeting his pain while they ran.

Outsourcing your social media activities to an intern or a consultant means you stand a pretty good chance of working with someone who may well know how to use Twitter, but knows nothing about your business.  Don’t get me wrong, I know some people who are free lance community managers, have more than one client and do a great job.  But these people make it a priority to know their client’s business and ensure that they can quickly get to people capable of acting on a customer request.

If you must outsource your social media interaction, make sure that the person you are hiring cares, that you take the time to train them in whatever they need, and that you give them access to resources.

If you can’t do this, then don’t outsource.  Do it in-house – which you probably should be doing anyway.

Technorati Tags: social media,twitter,social media outsourcing,outsourcing,lazy,jet blue,morgan johnston

Quietly Letting History Write Itself

From the “while we were sleeping” desk, the Obama administration has been quietly making good on their promises for a more open and transparent government.

Part of this can be seen on the cover of Today’s NY Times.  The press can now cover the return of war dead from the Iraqi and Afghani theatres.  Prior to this, the press was prohibited from directly photographing the return of dead soldiers. 

As we’ve seen, it’s the policy reversal that’s covered more than the caskets themselves.  The actual daylighting of government actions, is the story here.

In the recent stimulus package, projects included needed to meet specific requirements for transparency.  How the stimulus package was being spent was at the top of that agenda.  It was merely philosophically important to the administration that this money be spent properly. It was actually codified into the package that if you received that money, you needed to make the public aware of how much you spent and how you spent it.  And you needed to make that, and other information, available via RSS so that the public had a better chance of collecting and analyzing that information.

The White House has an official photostream which is creative commons licensed.  What does this mean for bloggers and the general population?  We now have a set of constantly updated photos of what’s happening in the White House to use when writing about what’s actually happening in the White House.

We also have an official glimpse into what goes on in the White House and with key cabinet members daily.  Major news sources will still provide us with details, surely, but the stream is simultaneously a good will gesture, an inexpensive resource, and a catalyst for conversation.

There is certainly a long ways to go.  Information sharing in more complicated (and more vital) areas will certainly take time.  The FBI’s Investigative Data Warehouse is taking some time to find its place in the post-transparency world.  And that certainly isn’t the only area needing an overhaul.

But, to a very real extent, the entire labyrinthine world of the government needs this overhaul and that’s going to take more than a couple months of figuring out.

Technorati Tags: transparency,obama,white house,flickr,new york times,electronic frontier foundation,FBI,IDW

Making the Twitter Backbone Usable - CoTweet

People keep talking about making Twitter work for business, but for me it was missing any way to include it into a company’s workflow.  At last, CoTweet allows people to form work groups (centered on a single account) and have permanence for tweets and actions.

Here we see a Tweet where @Sprezzatura has retweeted a question I asked.  I am able to assign that Tweet and annotate it for appropriate action.  This is an instant quantum leap in Twitter usability for business.  Saved Tweets then appear in a personal to-do list.

The personal to-do list, combined with annotation, provides both context for the action and the action itself.  Note that the bottom tweet was a DM, so the app shows regular and direct messages in the same UI – understanding that to me they are both information and the delivery mechanism is simply metadata.

Each tweet-task in the to do list can be DM’ed, replied to, Retweeted, reassigned, e-mailed, or marked done.

My longstanding complaint about using Twitter for any business purpose was simply that Tweets were inherently unmanageable. 

The CoTweet interface is very clean and usable.  Unbelievably so, in fact.  It may be one of the more beautiful interfaces I’ve seen.

The only thing that would make it blast into space and win the X Prize would be an AIR app.  They’re going mobile first which is a shame.  An AIR app gives you access to all users immediately.  Mobile, while necessary, is cumbersome for development and likely only going to benefit iPhone users.  I would have prioritized it differently.

In fact, the lack of an app will mean I will use CoTweet for the time being as a management tool and not as a tool to actually participate in Twitter in real-time.

That being said, I’m looking forward to getting my collaborators on CoTweet and using it to move tasks around and work better with the Modus Cooperandi account.

Technorati Tags: cotweet,twitter,microblogging,management

Blogged in the Alaska Air Board Room, Sea-Tac Airport

10 Recommendations for a Better Restaurant Web Site

Over the last two years, I’ve taken a rather keen interest in restaurant management and operations. Restaurants have incredibly thin margins, restaurant owners are generally overworked and, while they may get praised, they also take way more than their share of abuse from customers.

By and large, restaurant web sites are atrocious and restaurateurs have nary a clue how to make their web sites better. Often they punt and hire hacks who have “done restaurant web sites” and buy their way into quick contracts using the cache of previous clients.

But the sites are crap. They are either completely ugly or they have tons of unnecessary music and animation.  A large number are information poor.  A large number are outdated.

How many times have you clicked on a menu and found it to be from the previous summer or older?

So here are 10 quick recommendations to build a better restaurant web site based on mistakes I’ve seen restaurateurs make over and over again:

1. OWN YOUR OWN DOMAIN

If you are just starting, go to godaddy.com and buy your domain name. If you have hired someone to build your site, CHECK NOW. If they own your domain name, ask them to transfer ownership to you. Why is this #1? Because I’ve seen it happen that often. Your domain is your business – you never want anyone else to control it.

2. DON’T GIVE UP CONTROL

No one should ever control your web site but you.  You can outsource the work, but make sure you know where it is hosted.  Make sure you are paying directly for the hosting and giving access to your contractor.  Do not let the contractor control the hosting contract.  If the contract bails on you and you don’t have access to your site – you lose all that work.

3.NO FLASH

Flash animations are pretty, and pictures of yummy food blending into other yummy food is hot.  But Google doesn’t give a rip about your hot blending images. Google wants content. No content, no good indexing on Google.  Further, your customers want to eat food, not to watch animated food on their laptops. They don’t want to click ‘skip intro’ and they don’t want to wait. Customers want to eat your food.

4. NO PDFs

PDFs are used by many restaurant web sites because they can make the PDF directly from the menu. The layout is consistent, the logos are the same. It’s beautiful.  Except that PDFs also make sites less visible by Google.  PDFs also need to be uploaded – which is a pain.  This means that PDF menus are less likely to get updates.  In turn, this means that information is more likely to go stale. And nothing stale is attractive in a restaurant.

5. NO MUSIC!!!

Look, just no music, okay?

6. USE WORDPRESS.COM

$10 a year buys you a web site hosted by wordpress.com. You provide your domain name (e.g. BakersEscargotHaus.com) and Wordpress gives you easy steps to make a site.  The site will be built on a blog platform. Don’t be scared by the word blog – the only thing you need to know is that your site is now really easy to update. If you want, you can hire any number of people to set the site up – but when it’s done, you can update it, you can edit it, and you control it.

7. YES PICTURES AND CURRENT MENU

Why do you have a restaurant?! TO SERVE FOOD!!!! Let people know what you have. Get pictures (lots of them) up there showing the food, showing people eating the food, showing how much everyone loves the food … AND … always have ALL your current menus on the site – INCLUDING DAILY SPECIALS. The daily special should bring people in – not merely be a surprise for those lucky enough to pop by.

8. REWARD GROUPS AND REGULARS

Start a program for customer rewards that you (again) control. There are lots of people out there who want to take your money to set up a rewards program. Make sure the site details how you love your regulars and how you reward groups.  Not just “groups of 10 or more call for special discounts,” but make a hot dinner for 10 people and make it known that if you come with 10 – it will be awesome.  Out of all the restaurants I’ve been to world wide – it seems only high end Chinese restaurants get this right.

9. BLOG OR BE BLOGGED

This is the toughest one. I think every restaurant should have a blog because every restaurant has formed for a reason.  And those reasons, and the restaurateurs, are individualistic and fascinating.  Blogging doesn’t have to be hard. I could go on about this for hours, so I’ll leave it with this:  Blogging is the best way I know to make Google and other search engines love your site.  Why?  Because I provides constantly updated, new and unique content. Search engines love that.

10. UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE

This may seem like I’m perseverating, here, but web sites must be routinely updated for both customers and search engines to stay interested.  Your web site is now your maître’d.  That site isn’t a brochure, it’s your entry hall.  If it isn’t updated, it is shabby.

So these 10 recommendations for a better restaurant web site should be helpful, if only judging by most of the sites I’ve seen.  I fully understand that most restaurateurs are not web site designers and many wish the whole thing would go away.  But it isn’t, and with a 3% margin – you can’t afford to let any customers get away.

Blogged at the Metropolitan Hotel in Vancouver, BC

Technorati Tags: restaurants,restaurateurs,web site design,social media,flash,pdf,horrific mistakes

Voting With Our Feet – The Ethics of Sponsored Conversations

Today, Jeremiah Owyang posted “A running list of sponsored conversations”.  He has a laundry list of sites and products that engage in various forms of advertising and paid content. 

The article and its comments bring up the ethics of paying for supposed user-generated content.  With user-generated content, the assumption is that objectivity comes from personal experience unhindered by conflicts of interest.  If someone pays for a post, there is an immediate and obvious conflict of interest.  As a reader, you start to lose trust in the blogger and her content.

This ethical question isn't a new one, to blogging or any other form of communication.  All writers and all media have found themselves dealing with this.

Pick up any magazine and there's a good chance you'll find an article that turns out to be an advertisement about half way through.  Other publications run press releases, slightly edited, as stories.

Watch the morning “news” and you’ll find your NBC news staff telling you about new NBC programming.

I agree, Jeremiah, this is growing - it is an obvious win for both marketers and bloggers.  The bloggers are the ones who have the questions to ask of themselves.  How far along the shill-line are you willing to walk?

This is a personal question. 

As readers ... do we wish to read these? If not, we'll vote with our links and our attention.

Update: Read Write Web has an excellent response to all this.

Marshall says:

We respectfully disagree with Forrester's recommendations on this topic. In fact, we think that paying bloggers to write about your company is a dangerous and unsavory path for new media and advertisers to go down. We recognize that it's a complicated question, but we don't feel convinced by Forrester's conclusions regarding those complications.

Defenders of the tactic argue that it doesn't differ substantially from traditional advertising, that it's effective for advertisers, that bloggers want to profit from their writing and that with proper disclosure there's no loss of credibility for either party.

Technorati Tags: Jeremiah Owyang,conflicts of interest,blogging,shilling,shills,spam,splogs

Blogged at Modus Cooperandi, in Seattle

Findability is Power II – Social Media Principle #10

In the first attempt to describe Findability is Power, I defined the principle thusly:

10. Findability is power – Unfindable information or people are irrelevant.

Ed Vielmetti left this comment:

I'll have to disagree, Jim.

There's lots of unfindable information that's terribly relevant - information (or at least data) that's available only if you know precisely how to ask for it of precisely the right human being with precisely the right words and maybe the right tone of voice or the right letterhead.

If an organization can tax your patience by making it difficult for you to figure something out, it can destroy your desire for it.

Ed is right.  And I’m somewhat annoyed at myself for misstating my intentions.

This would be better stated as:

10. Findability is power – Unfindable assets are waste.

The previous post showed how context and other factors change how we relate to information.  But I was remiss in not making the whole point.

For business: information, people, and objects are all assets.  In order for assets to be worth holding, they need to be usable in some way that creates more value than their cost of storage, management and maintenance.

Jen Zug shows us through her (very timely) tweet that we as consumers now expect findability.  We expect to go to KUOW and intuitively find assets.

When the customer does not find what she wants, she gets annoyed.

Annoy me once, shame on you.  Annoy me twice, I’m tweeting about it!

Ed’s comment speaks to waste from information not being immediately findable.  Whether I’m looking for something at KUOW or within my own company – if I have to fight to find relevant information my patience will wear thin.  My push to find the important and relevant information will end when my internal opportunity cost calculator in my brain says, “This is now too  much trouble.”

On the flip side, when information is readily accessible, its value is astronomically higher.  When I Google something and get the answer in less than a second, the cost of acquisition of the information is monstrously lower than its potential value when I use it for something or even if I discard it.

The required end-value of a use of data needs to be very measurable to obtain it in a person-to-person system.  If I need something, it needs to be worth my time, the person I’m bothering, and the annoyance penalty for taking us both away from other things.  In a computerized, rapid access world – that same information takes less than a second to obtain and inconveniences no one.

This means that casual queries based on conversations that could prove fruitful in the future are possible.  Multiple avenues of inquiry can quickly be attempted, analyzed and discarded with minimal impact on corporate resources.  Discovery of unexpected and highly useful information is now much more likely.

I’ll finish up by bringing up Jen Zug again … she expects the information to be findable.  So should she.  Now, the organization of KUOW has gained her ire.  What would Jen have done if she found that content?  More than likely she would have tweeted it.  She would have said, “Incredible story today on KUOW about Vegemite Soup” (or something) and given a link. 

KUOW’s poor findability turned a viral promoter into a viral complainer.

Within a business, poor findability turns innovation into frustration.

Technorati Tags: Jen Zug,Ed Vielmetti,KUOW,twitter,10 social media principles,social media principles,social media,findability

Blogged in the Sai Oak in Ocean Shores, Washington

Immediacy in all Things – Social Media Principle #8

This post is eighth in a series of my Social Media Principles.  The base post is 10 Social Media Principles.

“There is more to life than simply increasing its speed.”

Mahatma Gandhi

Principle #8. Immediacy in all things – Strike while the iron is hot.  Eat when the food is fresh.

 

We’ve discussed in previous principles how information wants to be free, information should be findable and searchable and that people want to be good community members.

Have you ever been on a mission?

We consider ourselves on a mission when we have clear goals, we have an idea of how to satisfy those goals, and we are somewhat excited about achieving them.  A mission differs from a task by our emotional investment.

Previous chapters have also discussed how people’s emotional investment in an activity or organization relies heavily on transparency and the availability of information.

Delays are insults to missions.

Any delay in a mission belies the importance of the mission.  Delays say to the missionary: your important task is far less important to me than it is to you. This is invalidating and demotivating.

Immediacy therefore becomes crucial to maintaining motivation. 

If people within an organization remain motivated, they work faster, they are more creative, and frankly, they give a damn.  Demotivated team members simply do not perform as well.

When devising rules around information provision and flow in an organization, principle #8 should be kept in mind at all times.  How important is this information when compared to slowing down the company?  Is it more important to hide this information than to allow people the opportunity to use it for inspiration? 

Note that here immediacy doesn’t necessarily mean speed – it means respect.

Technorati Tags: 10 social media principles,social media,information policy,collaboration

Photo via Morguefile and Shelly Kiser

Written at Modus Cooperandi in Seattle, WA

Context is Fluid – Social Media Principle #7

This post is seventh in a series of my Social Media Principles.  The base post is 10 Social Media Principles.

Principle #7 - Context is Fluid – How you view an object today will be different tomorrow.  Don’t destroy tomorrow’s value.

 

In my humble opinion, most of the business failures we’ve seen in the tech sector are due to an utter disregard for this principle.

Context is fluid. The tech you are in love with that your company is building is certainly cool.  In fact, it’s cooler than you think.

The Peril of Focus

I have seen several sites, applications and ideas become stifled because they limit their own market.  A singular focus to specific use cases has been lauded as good management. 

The reasons for this are legendary: Focusing on specific use cases avoids scope creep.  Focusing on specific use cases increases predictability and ensures a logical development cycle.

The problem here isn’t necessarily the use cases themselves, it’s the focus on a specific static context or set of contexts.

To be sure, everyone needs a plan.  Your trip home needs a route.  But you should have the flexibility to re-evaluate that route based on context. 

If your route included what used to be this bridge, would you be taking it now?

No.  Context has changed.

Your product’s context changes all the time.  People find new uses for it.  People eliminate old uses for it.  Your intended use may bore the hell out of people, but they might find another use that works great for them and could still make you rich.

Despite this, business often limits its own products’ contexts. 

How Context Works

In my 2007 post on the Seven Contexts of Human Understanding, I discuss how context radically changes based on perspective.   Geographic, political, organizational, team, personal, religious, time, etc.  Each perspective changes the context of what you might encounter. 

And context changes based on the situation, and quickly.  A baseball player at bat does very different things with 2 strikes against him than he does with none.

(See the seven contexts post for more on the workings of context.)

The Warning from Principle #7

When we create a product – any product – and narrowly define its use, we practically limit its use.  No, every product shouldn’t be able to do every thing.  But when creating your design, ask yourself “Are my assumptions limiting this product’s potential?”

Social media has been great for taking an idea devised for one purpose and re-purposing it.  Social media and Web 2.0 has also been great for building in repurposing.  The API is now mandatory – no API and you are dead.

Why?  Because everyone knows they have their own context and they don’t want to wait for you to enable it.

So, no API or a self-limiting feature set is a rocket sled ride to liquidation sale.

Technorati Tags: context,social media principles,10 social media principles,social media

Blogged at the Modus Cooperandi offices in Seattle, WA