Red Stone Flower
2009, Glass, Stone and Metal
Never needs watering.
One of my favorite organizations is Pratt Fine Art Center, a nonprofit arts center offering arts education to everyone. Pratt specializes in the fire arts, stone, painting and printmaking. Fire arts is everything from hot glass to blacksmithing and from jewelery to bronze casting.
Pratt has teamed with Swanson’s Nursery in Seattle to support Pratt’s classes and programs with Gallery in the Garden. It is worth checking out if you are in the area. If you are lucky you can buy my piece, Red Stone Flower and support Pratt!
Map to Swanson’s Nursery.
Enjoy the excellent weather.
So I just received another upgraded shipment from Zappos. These guys are great. I order a shoe and it is delivered within 48 hours. Cannot be more satisfied.
Then I read about this “calamituous RFP” (links: below) and think what kind of agencies would publicly complain? Don’t they know that it is bad, very bad, for business. It is literally a cardinal sin.
How Zappos.com’s Calamitous RFP Went Down
Zappos Review Ignites Agency Ire
I have lost my share of deals. It is never easy. It always makes me very upset. You have to learn to pick yourself up and move on. Never complain about it to anyone ever. If you do, it is a great way to get fired from existing accounts too. Think about it.
The lesson here is show the love. Zappos has done so for me and turned me into an advocate. The complaining agencies are shoing anti-love. The only thing your complaints have accomplished zero future work from Zappos and potentially other clients. Your complaints are now part of the web and only a Google (or Bing) search away. Nicely done.
There is another lesson here in analytics for marketing and sales collateral, but that will be in a future CRM post.
Remember kids, if you cannot say anything nice, do not say anything at all.
Buy your shoes @ Zappos!
So I know that one of my two readers uses Siebel for CRM. I had a very interesting and refreshing conversation today with Meetul Shah, CEO of Knouen (pronounced know-n’). You shold check Knouen OfficeSync for Siebel, an interesting sales productivity application for Siebel shops. If this is you (ahem), get to know Knouen.
Link: Knouen Technologies
A follow up from last month’s post: Cloudy in Seattle. Azure has released their business model, pricing and official release date. Mid-November is still the official word for the commercial release.
Check: Azure Services Overview Pricing & Licensing Overview
Official Press Release: Microsoft Unveils Windows Azure Platform Business Model, Bringing New Revenue Opportunities to Partners Worldwide
TechCrunch: Microsoft’s Azure Gets A Business Model And An Official Release Date
Additional Azure Resources:
Steve Marx on Azure for Developers: Windows Azure: Cloud Computing in Application Services
Microsoft Channel 9 from pdc2008: pdc2008 Azure posts
A key to get the job is to ask great questions. Check this well written article: Seven Great Questions to Ask at a Job Interview.
Have questions. Get answers.
Older, but relevant post: 50 Common Interview Questions. The salary questions/answers are only half correct.
Being prepared is the best luck.
Came across Bantam Live: The Ultimate Social, Real-Time CRM @ TechCrunch this morning and have been thinking on it all day. My take is that it offers watered down features of Gist with the workflow features of most CRM tools.
Is Social CRM important to the enterprise? Depends. If the customers are there, it is. Most enterprise customers are not there and likely will not be there ever. When I compare 90 second video of Bantam to a tool like Gist, it falls short. Gist offers a comprehensive, implicit way to track and monitor contacts and companies. This is important for Sales. All sales. Bantam falls into the enforcing rules and “sales accounting” dark side of CRM. User adoption does not occur in those scenarios. Be social all you want, but if Sales can avoid using you to fill the pipeline, sales will.
An early weekend type post.
For the 2 readers outside of Seattle, Sounders FC is our new MLS team. They are playing well and captured a local buzz. Games are packed. Nice traditions are being established. Great for the team and Seattle. I was even fortunate enough to attend the inaugural game. The team has a couple of friendly matches with Barcelona PC and Chelsea and has teamed with glass artist Dale Chihuly and his team for commemorative artwork. Very cool.
I have been blowing glass as a hobby for just over 3 years. The glass community is fairly tight and close knit. I know a few people on Chihuly’s team and they are a very talented bunch. I am a neophyte in comparison.
Check Jose Romero’s Sounders FC blog @ The Seattle Times: An afternoon at Dale Chihuly’s sweet boathouse/glass art studio
GK Kasey Keller, Dale Chihuly and GM/owner Adrian Hanauer
via TechCrunch: Why Chrome OS Now? Because Microsoft Office In The Cloud Comes Monday.
I have played around with the limited functionality of Office Live. It is good, not great, and about what I would expect from a beta. I had some formatting issues with some documents. Nothing major. Hopefully these quirks have been ironed out.
Supposedly, Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans will announce full Office in the Cloud on Monday. The enterprise/desktop application cloud space is getting interesting. Microsoft’s huge install base will be a tremendous advantage. Redmond needs to leverage that to the full. Yes, this development does make the Google OS interesting. If Microsoft leverages their huge install base well (i.e. Not pull another Vista), Google OS will likely not be much of a factor. Microsoft will have to spend some PR cycles on Google OS though. The word Monday puts the Mamas and Papas hit “Monday Monday” in to my head.
Monday Monday, so good to me,
Monday Monday, Office in the cloud was all I hoped it would be
Oh Monday morning, Monday morning couldn’t guarantee
That Monday evening you would have to still email that PowerPoint to me.
Most mobile applications are content based. Personally, I would like to see less content specific applications and more applications that solve existing problems (i.e. cross-platform, carrier) with mobile devices. Having researched the space, I understand why most developers choose to go with a content based application. Application development is not easy to begin with and the phone technology will change. Now it appears that a king of content, Amazon (Disclosure: The wife is an employee) is blocking mobile applications from using their content, or rather more actively enforcing its own existing rules. Amazon is defending its turf. Expect no less from any content provider.
Expect to see more of this strategy from large content owners. Seriously think about any type of content dependencies before you build that next, great mobile application. Check TechCrunch: Amazon Killing Mobile Apps That Use Its Data for more details.
Happy Tuesday.
