Joshua March

How to present

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:54:00 -0500

I get really bored in most presentations. They’re too salesy, it’s some guy just droning on through a big slide of text, I’m reading the text and stop listening, I lose the point of what they’re telling me etc.

A friend of mine who’d never presented before asked me for some pointers on the fundamentals. I ended up writing quite a bit, so thought I’d re-post it here.

I’ve done a lot of presentations over the years, and watched even more (I was chairman of the Facebook Developer Garage London for 2+ years, meeting monthly often with 6 or more people presenting each night). I’ve also spoken a lot at conferences and for clients. I’m not a pro but do have developed some basic principles for doing a good presentation.

Style

The basic rule is to keep a presentation really simple. You’re there to talk, the slides are just a visual guide. So don’t, whatever you do, put up a slide full of text. Keep each slide to just one point, ideally with a big image and maybe a header. If you don’t have an image that fits, keep it to a simple big one line. Use size 30 font - if you need smaller then you’ve got too much text. Keep it really visually simple and clear, choose a nice font, probably just on a plain white background or similar.

Content

To plan the presentation, I sketch out a mind map plan on paper first, then get this plan into keynote in a very rough way, then start adding images, and gradually refine.

The basic structure should be:

1. Tell them upfront what you’re going to tell them

2. Go into the detail and tell them

3. Summarise by telling them what you’ve just told them.

Whatever your content, don’t do a salespitch. It sucks. Always deliver real value, even if you’re in a sponsored slot or whatever. Give people something interesting they can take away and they’ll remember you, and you’ll get much more value out of it. As long as it’s relevant then they’ll come up and talk to you about your business after, they’ll be warm to follow ups etc.

How to be relevant and non-salesy at a conference = present new research/insights. Props to @conversocial at #CSMCS
— Rohit Bhargava (@rohitbhargava) October 27, 2011

Presentation

When you’re actually doing the presentation, main thing is to talk slowly, and pause between points. It’s really easy to talk very fast, but actually it should feel almost uncomfortably slow to you. Give people time to listen and understand. Pause between points, give it time to sink in. Keep your head up, and after making a point look around the room - make eye contact.

Remember people won’t remember much of what you say, so you need to keep it to key points, strong visuals that will make people remember, and repeat key things you want to get across.

Photo

Sun, 09 Oct 2011 18:23:10 -0400

The rise of social customer service

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 09:06:05 -0400

Back in 2007, when I saw my first Facebook app, I was struck by a strong feeling that these would be an important way for companies to interact with their customers. I went on to help start the Facebook Developer Garage London and co-founded iPlatform, the UK’s first official Preferred Facebook app development company.

In 2009, with fan pages and Twitter on the rise, the feeling struck again - how companies communicate with their customers was changing, permanently. It was two-way, in public, and it was the future. That feeling led us to develop Conversocial, which launched publicly in July 2010.

As Conversocial got into the wild, we discovered that one of the biggest pain points created by this change in communication was in customer service. Big consumer brands who sold directly to customers (retailers, telcos, financial services, travel etc) were getting direct, real customer service complaints and questions on their Facebook pages and Twitter accounts. Not just people complaining in public ABOUT them, but people speaking directly TO them - something they can not ignore. The type of issues that lead people to phone in if their problem isn’t solved.

The only way companies can deal with this at scale is to plug their customer service teams directly into Facebook and Twitter. But the public nature of the complaints and responses, specific norms of social media, and the fact that they are in a combined marketing channel make this a difficult step for most companies.

Next week we are sponsoring a Chinwag event on social customer service where reps from Facebook, Nando’s, Marks & Spencer, Cap Gemini and We Are Social will be discussing the challenges that companies face in reacting to this shift. Early bird tickets are only on sale for a few more days.

Find out more about the event here

And buy tickets directly here

Gay Marriage - Words Matter

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 09:26:00 -0400

The UK government just announced that it plans to consult on legalising gay marriage by 2015, on top of the civil partnerships that have been around for a while. Many religious and conservative commentators are angry at the move, claiming that marriage is defined as a union between man and woman, and that it is somehow anti-religious to allow gay couples to be married; and that anyway, civil partnerships give them all the same rights, so they have no cause to complain.

I completely disagree with their opinion and fully back the move by the government to legalise gay marriage.

First, the argument from religion. There is a lot of difference between the beliefs and practices of all the different major religions. If marriage is at essence a religious activity, then why would Christians accept that a Muslim, or Jewish, or Hindu marriage was valid? They certainly wouldn’t count as a valid ‘Christian marriage’; just as a Muslim marriage wouldn’t be a valid ‘Jewish marriage’; and an atheist marriage in a registry certainly wouldn’t count. You must either accept that different people have different views and beliefs on what marriage is, or claim that only your own version of marriage is correct and that no others are valid.

To be equal, the law should be completely agnostic to religion or opinions. If marriage must be a religious concept, then any legal notions around it should be removed completely. Civil partnerships will be the only legal relationship, equal to all - and you can choose or not choose to call your ceremony a marriage as you want.

However, given the huge variety in religious wedding practices and the large number of completely un-religious marriages that happen every year, it’s clear that society in general doesn’t regard marriage as a solely religious activity. So that takes us the second argument - if gay people can have civil partnerships, with all the same rights of marriage, why all the fuss? They have what they want, surely?

Let’s try phrasing this another way. What if, instead of gay couples, we were instead talking about black couples? Purely white couples can get married; black or mixed couples can have civil partnerships, which give the same rights; they just can’t call it marriage! Most people would feel a pang of revulsion at such a statement. The idea of discriminating against someone because of their skin colour is anathema to most people in modern society. Well, saying that gay people can have the same rights but only straight people can call it marriage is exactly the same thing. It’s discrimination, and has no place at all in the law or society.

Petition: Teach Our Kids To Code

Sun, 11 Sep 2011 12:15:00 -0400

The future of all industry is in software. Right now the fastest growing products are applications - on a phone, or a website - and are often applications that replace previously physical devices. In the near future, even physical items will be coded, and then simply printed at home using 3D printers. As Marc Andreesen says, Software Is Eating The World.

In the depths of the recession and stale growth of the modern world over the past few years, unemployment is at an all time high. But tech continues to grow, and skilled programmers are in huge demand. Finding them is the biggest gripe of startups and technology companies, whether in San Francisco, New York or London.

For software to eat the world, someone has to write it first.

But the modern education system is completely failing to equip children with the skills they need for the future. Programming is a niche skill, unseen in the classroom. Even in maths and science, where programming is an integral part of their application in real life, it’s nowhere to be seen. These subjects would be more fun for kids and easier to learn if programming was used to teach them; let alone a separate computer science subject.

I wrote in more detail in the Telegraph early this year on why we need to teach our kids to code - you can read it here.

Now Emma Mulqueeny has started a petition to the government to teach our kids to code on direct.gov.uk. I’ve signed it, and if you care about the future, you should too. Do it now here.

Shutting Down Social Media During Times of Emergency Would be a Stupid Act

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 09:15:50 -0400

After David Cameron made a throwaway comment in parliament about the possibility of shutting down social media during a crisis, the internet has been ablaze with back and forth arguments about whether this is a good idea or not.

It’s not.

It’s a naive idea with the potential to cause much more damage than good.

Social media is a powerful communication channel between different people in society. It started in the old tea houses, where people would meet to read and discuss the latest news and opinion pamphlets. It suffered a hiatus with mass media; but social media has brought it back. It allows the free flow of ideas and information to spread quickly. And the net effect of this free flow of information is hugely positive and beneficial for society. The government exists for society’s benefit, and the free flow of information between individuals is what makes them a society. Government has no right to take that away.

It doesn’t take much digging over the past couple of years to see that if people want to communicate, the government can’t do much about it. Repressive regimes do everything they can to block social media channels, but people find a way around them. When people are determined, they will find a way. Even in China (who we should be setting a good example to, not copying), people manage to get around the censors.

So if the government attempted to shut down social media during a national emergency, like the riots, what would happen? Well, one thing is for certain - the rioters would find a way to communicate, and it would have a neglible effect on the riots themselves.

On the other hand, it would be hugely damaging for the rest of society. Social media was an amazing channel during the riots for individuals to share information about what was happening, to find out what travel routes were available, for the media to get on the ground information all over the country as soon as anything happened. It’s an information network the government could never hope to replace. The riots were horrible, but people were relatively calm - because they knew, all the time, what was going on, if their friends were safe. If Facebook and Twitter had been turned off during this time, it would have been chaos. The media wouldn’t know what was going on; they wouldn’t know where riots were happening unless the government told them (unlikely). People wouldn’t know what was happening, where, or when. There would have been more fear, more anger, more confusion.

After the riots, people really pulled together to clean up, with a sense of unity (a lot of this organised over social media). But if the government had shut down one of the most important communication channels for normal people, a lot of the anger that right now has been focused on the rioters would have been deflected on to the government instead.

Before you make your next sweeping statement on controlling how we speak to each other, Mr Cameron, remember: this is our society, and you serve by our grace.

Luke Johnson Doesn't Understand Tech

Thu, 28 Jul 2011 05:47:00 -0400

Luke Johnson, the well known restaurant entrepreneur and investor, wrote a piece in the Financial Times yesterday, ‘Zuckerberg wannabes squander careers’ (free registration needed), essentially saying that Facebook, Amazon and Google are huge exceptions and that no other tech company has grown fast and made profits, and are a complete waste of everyones time and money. What rubbish. He’s right that many fast growth tech companies fail; but a lot go on to become very large, profitable businesses, in a massive variety of fields. Just rattling a load off the top of my head, without much thought: Zynga, Etsy, MindCandy, Palantir, Craigslist, Paypal, Ebay, Gumtree, Lovefilm… a tiny number of companies which prove him wrong.

In Luke’s area of expertise - hospitality - his assertions I’m sure are completely correct. I wouldn’t know - he’s the expert in that area, not me. He’s *not* an expert in technology businesses. Therefore it makes complete sense for him to say he would never invest in them. But to conclude from that that they’re useless investments for anyone, and that entrepreneurs shouldn’t bother pursuing them, is both wrong and irresponsible.

Even his examples of failures were successes by many counts:

Warp speed businesses that rise in vertiginous fashion usually decline in a similar manner. The web encourages many entrants, but also seemingly unassailable monopolies – until they are not. For online users are fickle: look at the collapse of social networks MySpace and Bebo.

Bebo and MySpace created millions of dollars of wealth for their founders and investors. Not too bad. Every year, there are more and more of his ‘exceptions’. Investors who understand technology and are prepared to invest in start-ups have the potential to make big returns. The fact that the failure vs success rate in tech is different from hospitality just means that different investment criteria and knowledge are needed.

The rise of the web and the decreasing cost of technology means that it *is* possible for entrepreneurs to quickly try out new ideas and businesses at minimal cost and risk, with huge potential net benefit. Start-ups created in the last few years are adding thousands of jobs. The world needs more of this - not less.

Zuckerberg wannabes: I salute you!

No one needs a scanner anymore

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 08:49:50 -0400

I just use a nifty little app on my iPhone, DocScanner. You take pictures of the doc through the app, it recognizes the edges of paper, scans it into high quality black and white or colour, and allows you then email the document as PDFs, JPEG etc. It’s much quicker and easier than using an external scanner, and doesn’t take up any space (other than a few MBs on your phone). Highly recommended.

I’m excited to see what other physical devices will be replaced by software in the coming years - a trend I wrote about at the beginning of the year in the Guardian PDA blog.

Google+ isn't friend lists, Facebookers

Sun, 03 Jul 2011 19:24:00 -0400

Like most geeks, over the past few days I’ve been playing quite a bit with Google+. It’s been an interesting experience - for once, Google have actually built something social that is pretty good. That doesn’t mean it will really catch on, but unlike Buzz and Wave it’s actually been executed well and properly thought through.

I initially wanted to blast out a blog post in response to some of the ‘OMG Google+ has easy data liberation it’s so amazing everyone will love it, Facebook’s gonna die’ type tweets and blog posts going around the tech-sphere. The vast, vast majority of users do not care about data liberation at all. No consumer tech product has ever won by being the best at data liberation. Even if journalists and bloggers write about it more, because they love the data liberation, users won’t really care. Google+ will win or lose by how much value it adds day to day to the most people. And to most people, data liberation adds absolutely no day to day value. So, anyone who thinks Facebook will suddenly die screaming to be replaced by a more data liberal Google+ can forget it.

However since then, I’ve started to see a lot of defensive remarks, mainly from current and former Facebook staffers, who essentially claim that Google+ is stupid because it’s basically just Facebook friend lists, which are better, and either way no-one apart from nerds will use them so just forget it already and go home. Yishan Wong wrote a long post on Quora saying this in great length. He talks about how in Facebook, even stuff you say in public can only be commented on by your friends; and that this is the only sensible way for it to be. He compares saying something in ‘public’ online to talking to your friends privately outside. Other people may overhear you, but they shouldn’t get involved in the conversation. What rubbish. Saying something on Facebook is very much like saying something private to your friends; and if you happen to have a public setting, it is very much like saying something to your friend whilst standing outside. Others butting in would be weird and strange. But on Twitter, if you say something publicly, you *expect* other people who you don’t know to get involved in the conversation. It’s a public conversation, not a private conversation that happens to be taking place in public. It’s a different setting.

Google+ isn’t Twitter. But it’s not Facebook either. It’s something very different. It has an asynchronous follow model like Twitter, but matched with an asynchronous push model (which you can achieve with Facebook, but not quite so simply). The circles of friends and people you want to push to and pull from are centre stage. So saying ‘Facebook tried something like this and it didn’t work’ is pointless - it’s a very different setting. Facebook also had status updates - but this is very different from it being Twitter, despite them technically being pretty much the same thing. Fred Wilson wrote a good argument rooting for Google+ and describing its different use cases here; it’s worth a read.

So will Google+ succeed? No-one can know. I don’t know the exact type of user it might attract. I’m sure Google think they know, but I’m also sure that they’ll be wrong. They’ve created something new and interesting, and executed it well, which is pretty much the best they could have hoped for. The deep integration of Google+ with their email and search products, with the ever present notifications bar, and chance to integrate deeply into Chrome and Android could make this an interesting proposition. I don’t think it poses any real risk to Facebook; it could make more privacy conscious people turn to it rather than Twitter for semi-public, professional focused information sharing though. Once the buzz and hype and blog posts die down, it will be interesting to see what happens with the usage of Google+ over the next 6-12 months. That will give an initial indicator of whether it will stay around or not. If it does, Google may have just got that foot in the door of social they’ve been so desperately clawing for.

Twitter burns bridges with #devnest organisers

Sat, 18 Jun 2011 17:08:00 -0400

Twitter burns bridges with #devnest organisers:

It’s a shame to see Twitter acting like this. They’ve always had a slightly difficult relationship with their developers; primarily because they made a mistake early on of encouraging developers to build their own end-user clients, which really made no sense in the long run. This caused a very large percentage of Twitter developers to essentially end up in competition with Twitter, and seemingly made Twitter hesitant of giving any real developer support. Devnest was created and ran by the Twitter developer community in the UK, and has been hugely successful in creating a thriving developer community that backs up Twitter - even through the recent painful clarifications by Twitter of what they want their platform to be.

I believe that the clarifications Twitter made are the right ones - developers should be value add in ways that Twitter isn’t, and not try to replicate their core functionality. Now that they are comfortable with their plans for their platform, they are obviously trying to re-connect properly with the developer community. But chucking out local organisers in this way is completely the wrong strategy, creates ill-feeling and just makes it harder and more expensive for Twitter to run their own events.

It’s a sad comparison with the Facebook Developer Garage. Facebook initially suggested for local developers to run garages in 2007. In London, Toby Beresford took up the call to organise the very first, which became popular, and a number of us joined him to form a committee to start running the events every month. We ran the events completely by ourselves, with support from Facebook in terms of promotion, badges, and stash. We found outside sponsors to cover all our costs. Facebook began to help more in 2008 by covering some of our costs. I took over as Chairman and host in mid 2008, a position I held until the end of last year. During that time, Facebook continued to increase their support for their garage, greatly increasing their sponsorship when we needed - after we lost our free venue at Sun, for example - but always giving us full leeway in terms of how we ran the event.

This was despite the garage morphing into something quite different than they had planned - whereas other garages were more ‘officially organised’ by Facebook every 6 months or so, we were running packed events ten times a year. Attendeeship continued to grow, until now almost 200 people are turning up every month. Facebook now have developer support engineers on the ground in London, and this year they are more involved in helping to support the events, but it is still run independently by the committee.

Facebook now have a big and supportive developer community in London with events running every month, at tiny cost or management overhead. They don’t even have the same level of events in Palo Alto or San Francisco.

Hopefully, Twitter will realise that the way to achieve a similar success will be to really support current communities like #devnest, and not to try and usurp them.

Welcome to Tumblr...

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 13:04:46 -0400

I decided to move my blog across from Blogger to Tumblr. It’s prettier, and seems to do what I want more easily. The UI for blogger is old and a bit crappy, and I like the follower/re-posting ease of Tumblr, better connections with Twitter, simple Disqus integration etc.

Main bummer was that the import was unofficial (there’s no official way of doing it) - I used this tool:

http://terrymhung.com/jtran/tumblr/import-blogger-to-tumblr.php

Which means that none of my comments have moved over.

The old blog (with comments) is still accessible at:

http://joshuamarch.blogspot.com/

Onwards and up!

Emotions as pattern matching

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 13:07:17 -0400

I had an interesting discussion with a friend recently on whether robots will have emotions. He thought not - as why would we programme them in?

This got me thinking - what are emotions? What emotions really are programmed in? I asked some friends with babies… and the answers suggested that newborn babies have a very limited set of emotions, mainly based around survival needs (hungry, tired etc); and that more complex emotions develop over time.

What if our complex emotions are just a result of advanced pattern recognition, built over time, from our core survival needs? As a baby and child, you learn that certain patterns of behaviour by other people lead to certain results, for example getting fed, or having the toy you want to play with. As you get older, if your brain notices a pattern of behaviour that’s been associated with positive outcomes in the past, you’d feel happy about the situation - and if it recognised patterns of activity that has been associated with negative outcomes, you could get unhappy and defensive (without necessarily realising why).

I think that when the first true AI wakes up, it will probably be just as complicated as the rest of us.

Speed reading on iPad.

Sun, 20 Mar 2011 07:44:00 -0400

A major element to fast reading is using a pointer (such as your
finger or a pen) to track the text as you read. I don’t want to press
a pen against my iPad; but sliding your finger along in most reading
devices turns a page. I wish these apps (kindle etc) would allow me to
select swipe vertical or swipe horizontal to read, so I could do this;
similarly with Instapaper - if you swipe sideways it repeatedly asks
you if you want to turn on pagination, even if you’ve told it no
repeatedly 100 times. Should be a relatively simple fix.

Why Asana will win

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 13:35:00 -0500

Over the weekend, Conversocial got access to the Asana beta, and I’ve been playing with it for the last few days. We’ve generally found that most project management / task management tools get used excitedly at first, then tend to tail off, or end up being half used along with multiple other systems. Asana is the first tool I’ve seen that has the chance to become our 100% tool. Why? It covers all of my task management needs - personally, as well as collaboratively. They straight away split the tool into personal and work projects, allowing you to use it as your private to-do list manager, as well as for work to-dos, assigning to-dos for team members etc. It all happens in a single screen that never needs re-loading, with super fast javascript and ajax allowing it to run almost as a desktop app. When a colleague adds items or comments, they show up instantly on your screen.

I’ve ended up transferring all my to-dos, otherwise stored in Things on my desktop, into Asana; and quickly started using it for managing our marketing, admin, and management projects. The project and tagging system is simple but highly effective, allowing easy management of large lists distributed across teams and projects; and keyboard shortcuts, like gmail, make it extremely fast for power users with minimal learning required. It may even become our dev PM tool. Oh - and it lets me add tasks by email, super useful for my personal to-dos (before, I would email myself then manually add it to Things).

Unlike any other tools we’ve used, Asana now remains permanently open on one of my screens, with pretty much constant use throughout the day - just like my gmail window. It’s the first task/project management tool to do that for me. It’s still in Beta, and certainly needs a lot more work; but I see this as a tool that will gain a permanent place on our desktops.

Forecasts for 2011

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 18:26:00 -0500

At the beginning of this month, Jemima Kiss at the Guardian asked me what my forecasts were for 2011. My answers (below) were originally published on the PDA blog on the 1st of January here.

What will 2010 be remembered for?

“2010 is the year that tablet computing has really taken hold, from iPhone and Android to iPads and all the other upcoming tablets - along with the creation of a number of significant businesses building touch software, from games to utility applications. Tablets allow a multitude of devices and items that formerly required their own specialised, physical objects, to be built entirely in software - so the iPhone and iPad are now music players, cameras, alarm clocks, newspapers, books, movie players, document scanners, gaming devices, email devices, tube maps, tv remotes… a few years ago all of these were individual items. The fact that my iPhone can scan documents better than my scanner can is pretty amazing, and this is primarily allowed because of the fully flexible nature of touch screen tablets, as their controls and features have almost no physical limitation.

“In terms of what we’ve learnt, this year there has been a real acceptance of the dominance and importance of Facebook (and Twitter, so some extent) - especially for businesses, which are not just shifting marketing budget into social platforms in huge amounts, but also have really learnt that to be in these channels properly, they have to dedicate real resource, across departments - especially customer support. They can’t just throw money at it - too many companies have been burnt by poor social media management.

What was your best and worst moment?

“The best was definitely launching Conversocial to the public in July, a social media management system that we had been working on since late 2009, and which has had a great reception. We’re seeing more and more companies set up dedicated resource to manage communications and marketing through social platforms, and they need tools to help them manage that.

“My worst was just before Christmas - waiting for three hours in a horde of angry passengers for the Eurostar, which we didn’t manage to get on. There was an absolute lack of communication from Eurostar about what was going on, and although they’ve got their act together slightly more, simply tweeting to people that they’re doing their best doesn’t help if they don’t give out any actual info. Being on Twitter, even responding to people, doesn’t make a difference if your staff don’t have the information or ability to actually help people.”

What’s your hot tip for 2011?

“It’s been a massively exciting year in the tech startup world in London. There are a number of companies that have been steadily developing over the past couple of years that are showing real growth in terms of users, customers, and importantly revenue. In 2011 a lot of these are going to break out as major international companies, which will encourage more venture investment into UK companies, at earlier stages. There have been a lot of wannabes in the start up world in London in the past couple of years, next year I think we’re going to be seeing some real, serious business coming out of it.”

Follow me on Twitter here.

We'll See

Sat, 03 Jul 2010 19:28:00 -0400

Just came across this great fable, courtesy of Derek Sivers:

A farmer had only one horse. One day, his horse ran away.

All the neighbors came by saying, “I’m so sorry. This is such bad news. You must be so upset.” The man just said, “We’ll see.”

A few days later, his horse came back with twenty wild horses. The man and his son corraled all 21 horses.

All the neighbors came by saying, “Congratulations! This is such good news. You must be so happy!” The man just said, “We’ll see.”

One of the wild horses kicked the man’s only son, breaking both his legs.

All the neighbors came by saying, “I’m so sorry. This is such bad news. You must be so upset.” The man just said, “We’ll see.”

The country went to war, and every able-bodied young man was drafted to fight. The war was terrible and killed every young man, but the farmer’s son was spared, since his broken legs prevented him from being drafted.

All the neighbors came by saying, “Congratulations! This is such good news. You must be so happy!” The man just said, “We’ll see.”

Worth remembering.

Social is conversation.

Thu, 27 May 2010 10:49:00 -0400

This post was originally posted on iPlatform’s company blog, but it’s a project that I’m spending a lot of time on - and one that I believe is very important, which is why I’m also cross posting to my personal blog here.

Over the past two years, we’ve worked with a huge range of companies to help them market themselves effectively inside Facebook. We’ve built dozens and dozens of interactive applications and campaigns, and throughout this we have learned that the most important aspect of a company’s presence in Facebook is the ability to speak directly to their customers. All of the advertising to push people to your fan page, and getting them to press that ‘like’ button, is money well spent - because once they’ve liked you, you can speak to them directly, through their newsfeed, every single day. 80-90% of all engagement with fan pages happens through the newsfeed - which is also where users spend most of their time. The interactive applications and competitions we build are always most effective when they are promoted to highly engaged fans - which only comes when companies have learned how to communicate with their customers properly through the feed.

By engaging properly with your fans in the feed, you build up their trust and interest in what you have to say - so when you have an application, or a video, or a new product you want to promote, they’ll listen; and if it’s good, they’ll share it with their friends. Without this trust, it doesn’t matter how many fans you have - they’re not listening.

Twitter has taken the lead in companies’ minds when it comes to having conversations with followers. It’s a great platform - and because conversation is the only thing you can do there, it’s easy to understand why companies have jumped into it. But, the great mass of your customers are on Facebook. The availability of the Facebook platform and engagement ads has meant that a lot of companies have focused purely on its potential as a broadcast medium - but the newsfeed and status updates were invented in Facebook first, and the amount of comments and engagement can dwarf what you get in other platforms. We believe that it’s time for companies to start really engaging and having conversations with their customers in Facebook. This is especially important for companies who have already invested in large pages with lots of fans (it’s likely that you have customers asking you questions right now, and you’re just ignoring them) but it’s also a powerful medium for all companies, big or small, to interact with their customers.

We want to help companies have these conversations, and manage them in an effective way. It can be difficult for companies to keep track of all the comments they are getting, especially if more than one person has responsibility for responding and engaging back. To help address these problems, we’ve been working on a new software as a service product, Conversocial. Conversocial pulls in every user interaction on your fan page or pages, and makes it easy to manage your responses and actions, individually or as a team, with tools to make your day to day management more efficient - including keyword tracking and email alerts for flagged content.

You can read more on what Conversocial can do here.

Conversocial is already being used, by numerous customers, to manage fan pages with almost 10 million fans between them. Over the past couple of months our early customers have been helping us test and scale. We have bold plans for where we want to take Conversocial, but we also believe in following an agile process - we release basic features early, and focus on learning what you actually find useful and use, and then use that knowledge to improve.

If you are managing your company’s fan page, and struggling to keep on top of what comments you’ve already read or responded to, Conversocial can help you right now. And if you’re not managing your page yet - you should be! Get in touch now.

Why I don't read articles about the election

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 07:50:00 -0400

There’s so much information out there in the world. What’s worth reading?

Information translates into knowledge, and I give information a weight based on how valuable the knowledge will be to me. Knowledge can be built on other knowledge; so information which adds and builds up knowledge is more valuable to me than information which gives me a distinct bit of knowledge; especially if that knowledge has a short timeframe for being useful.

Some types of knowledge which are pretty much permanent, and can be constantly built upon:

Intellectual - Philosophy, spiritual, things that add to my thinking processes.

Scientific - how things work, physical, chemical, biological knowledge that adds to my understanding of the universe and the world.

Practical - programming skills, learning to use a technology, how to manage people, how to cook, etc. Adds to skill base; can be constantly refined and improved over time, but each step adds value and experience.

On the other hand, news information about politics, economics, and general goings-on are generally either snapshots, or historical analysis. Historical analysis can be extremely interesting, and adds to understanding about human nature and many other things. On the other hand, snapshots of information, which almost all daily news falls into, often present incomplete pictures of what’s going on, so are unreliable, and usually have a very short timeframe of valuable knowledge.

For example - let’s say you read 10 articles before the election about the latest poll or political activity. How does this information translate to valuable knowledge in 3-6 months time from now? Probably no value at all. In a few weeks we’ll know the actual results and what people actually did, and 90% of the ‘forecasts’ and extensives articles about how people think will be proven incorrect.

Compare that to reading a single article (or even book) after the election analysing the ups and downs and relating that to actually what happened. It will give you an overall picture and show how individual events fitted into the wider scheme of things. It doesn’t really matter about the length of the respective articles - just that the latter would add to your permanent knowledge base, and so have a high value, whereas the 10 snap shots would be almost meaningless, probably wrong (we’ll find out soon anyway) and most likely forgotten six months out (unless you work in politics and care about the minutae, or are the journalist writing the analysis).

There’s so much information in the world, I think it’s useful to think about how much time you spend studying information that in the scheme of things doesn’t add any value to your life. That’s why I refuse to read any daily newspapers, I just selectively read articles from The Economist each week, which at least picks out only the most important news and gives an objective analysis, often dipping into history to give a background. Even then, I only read articles that I find particularly interesting or I think add value.

Just my thoughts.

The Zuck on having a successful life

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 19:03:00 -0500

Alex Tew found a visible conversation thread on Facebook earlier about what it means to you to have a successful life, with a comment from Mark Zuckerberg (as well as several other Facebook luminaries). His comment is below, and sheds light on the decision not to sell Facebook, and also the mission they’re following. The constant desire, from the top of Facebook, to make an amazing product and really change how people interact is, I think, the reason for their phenomenal success:

Mark Zuckerberg:

This is a great thread. I think it’s good for the world that people have all these different ways of thinking about what they want to do with their lives. That kind of diversity is probably what allows the richness of experiences we have today. If we all optimized for the same thing, that probably wouldn’t be possible.

For me personally, I focus my life around doing what I think will create the best possible impact for the world — which is making the world more open/transparent. I just feel like we’re all very fortunate to have the lives we do and the tools to really improve the world, and I/we owe it to everyone else to put those tools which have been given to me/us to good use.

My theory on this is somewhat similar to what Stuart describes above — focusing on meaning rather than happiness or pleasure. One defining moment for me was a few years back when we had to decide whether to sell the company. Many people made the argument that if we sold then we would be set for life and would be able to just have fun and do whatever they wanted. Ultimately we decided it was more important to us to spend our lives working hard and making our mission a reality than just focusing on our own happiness.

I’m definitely not saying this is the only way or even the best way to be. This is how I think about my life, but as I said above I think it’s good for all of us that there’s diversity in how people think about theirs.

I do think though that you can’t optimize for everything though. That is, if you choose to focus primarily on impact, I don’t think it’s possible to fully optimize for happiness. And if your primary goal is happiness, then in general I don’t think you’ll have the biggest impact you’re capable of. The two are often aligned (working with great people on challenging problems is very rewarding) but ultimately there are tradeoffs that each person must resolve for themselves.

Interesting thread though :)

Read the full thread for the rest of the conversation.

You can't train an entrepreneur

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 03:28:00 -0500

There’s was a lot of buzz last night around Sir Alan Sugar’s talk at the British Library, where one of his comments was “You can’t train entrepreneurs, you either have the spirit or you don’t.” (I wasn’t there, however this was tweeted by Techcrunch UK editor Mike Butcher who’s a reliable journalist). Almost all of the buzz is aghast at the comment, and equivocates it to such things as racism or in-born stupidity (both of which, I’ll make clear, I don’t agree with - as principles, or as similar to Sugar’s remark).

Spirit is a trait that’s different from intelligence, or skills. It’s not something that comes from outside. Although it can certainly be affected by outside events, it’s *not* something you can teach someone. Saying you need the spirit to be an entrepreneur is not saying you’re a ‘born entrepreneur’ or not; it’s something else, a willingness to put ourselves on the line and keep going. Let me share a bit of my own story, in the hope that it can explain my viewpoint.

I’m not a born entrepreneur, by any shot. My only money making activities as a teenager was some short stints as a bookshop assistant and as a waiter in the local hotel. No selling sweets to kids in the playground or lemonade stalls. I didn’t even think about the possibility of business. I went to study Law at university, with the hope of heading to the bar afterwards. Some of the aspects of the bar that interested me are similar to being an entrepreneur - you work for yourself, make your own name, and there’s a chance to make some serious cash if you prove yourself (after years of slogging it out for a pittance, with a tiny chance of actually getting into a chambers). It requires a lot of spirit, and most aspiring lawyers make the sensible choice of becoming solicitors in a big company instead. All successful barristers have that spirit that’s driven them to the top.

After spending all my savings, loans, and more in my first year (showing off my great money management there) I needed to make some money, fast - and more than some minimum wage bar job. I got a job with a local company, charging pubs and restaurants to convert their licenses - a new system had come in place, and everyone *had* to change their license before the end of the summer. After a few weeks, I realised it was pretty easy, and I didn’t see why some old guys were getting the money when I was doing the work. I opened an account for ‘March Enterprises’, printed some leaflets and went on a letter drop and went out on my own. A prospective client once asked for a business card, so I promptly went to a printers and had some printed for me (crappy flimsy black and white things); and I jotted down some basic accounts in a notebook.

By the end of the summer I’d made quite a bit of cash, and although I went back to the degree, I’d decided that I wanted to be an entrepreneur - the best in the world. I was reading Trump and every business book I could lay my hands on, and started getting involved with every business related activity I could find. After doing some evenings with the entrepreneur society attached to Durham business school I managed to hook into the business networking events in Newcastle and was soon flashing some newly printed, shiny business cards all over the place. I had a business idea, wrote a 60 page business plan (based on Business Plans for Dummies), and then somehow managed to get a business manager from a local bank branch who I met at an event to give me almost £100k in SFLG and overdraft, to a new limited company, with no personal guarantee, and no investors or mentors.

In preparation, I did a few Business Link training sessions (not much help for aspiring entrepreneurs - learning about cashflow is pointless when you don’t have any), then quickly did what I thought I should do as a businessman - got offices, a team, an agency to build a website etc. I quickly burned through my cash, made a whole host of mistakes (don’t need to go through all of them here…) and before I’d graduated had managed to lose it all. I’m not sure what the bank was thinking in giving a big pile of cash to a 20 year old, full time law student with no real business experience.

Although I avoided any personal bankruptcy, I had taken a large personal loan out to put into the business near the end, and graduated with a much bigger pile of debt than the average student - having had to fire my first employees, and with angry creditors threatening to sue, not nice student loan letters turning up once you get a proper job. The stress was pretty wrenching, and I even ended up getting a bad case of appendicitis as it happened, needing an operation and recuperation back home.

I was determined to get back in the game, and I was determined not to ever get a job or be an employee to anyone, ever, whatever it took. Examining my failure, I realised that I just knew *nothing* about marketing. I’m not just talking about advertising; I mean everything about markets outside of pure economics. What makes a customer? Why do people buy from companies? How do they hear about products and companies? I dedicated my time to learning about it, and decided that I wouldn’t be taking any more capital or investment before I really knew what I was doing. I devoted my life to marketing, which lead to online marketing, and then eventually social media marketing. I was pushing myself out there to everyone who would give me an audience (something I do seem to be good at).

Consultancy jobs started to come in, although for a long time pretty much every penny went to paying off my debt. London was becoming a more regular haunt, as it seemed to be where *everyone* I was talking to was. I was starting to get more jobs there, and although I was still penniless and putting all the money I made into keeping the hounds at bay, I decided to move down to London - moving in with a friendly (and very accommodating) family member who gave me a roof and food. MySpace was still big and Facebook was coming on the radar, but social media marketing was low budget, and still pretty rare. I was still paying off my debt.

My insistence on doing my own thing despite having no money, at all, and working all the time, was making maintaining friendships with the guys I was with at uni (all now with city jobs) difficult. At one time, all my credit cards were over, my accounts were over the overdrafts, I still had a pile of angry creditors, and just £10 cash in my wallet. I shared a lift into central London for my meetings and spent that week walking rather than getting the bus or tube. There was a moment that week when I almost gave up. I remember it clearly. The pain of the failure and the debt and the ongoing, tedious plough of meetings, and the absolute lack of any money (even for the bus) was taking its toll. I went to the brink, but decided then and there that I wouldn’t stop, even if they dragged me through the bankruptcy courts, and even if I had to walk all the way into central London everyday (from Zone 3, I should add). I’d made my choice, and I was going to stick with it.

Eventually, my work started to pay off. I was whittling down my debt, customers were increasing, and in early 2008 I teamed up with a brilliant business partner, Dan Lester. I had a million ideas and could talk the talk - Dan had a cooler head, and the technical skills to allow us to really walk the walk. We knew we wanted to build a technology company focusing on the new social networking platforms. We didn’t have any cash or investment, but my previous consultancy was at least allowing me not to starve, and Dan had savings, so we were able to get our company off the ground without taking a salary all that year. Our first product, which we devoted most of 2008 to, never really took off; by the beginning of 2009 the landscape had changed significantly making it partly redundant, and we realised the fundamental model wasn’t quite right. However, by then we were getting more well known, and had a rare skill - the ability and knowledge to build proper Facebook applications and campaigns. Companies started to turn more and more to Facebook for marketing, and we managed to pick up some great clients early on. Budgets were still experimental, but were growing. As the year went on, social marketing began the shift from being a side project to being the crux of online campaigns, and we were getting calls left right and centre from big London agencies to help them deliver Facebook campaigns for their clients. Budgets and ambitions were growing - and us with it.

Now we’ve built up a great team, a great client list, and healthy revenues. We’re investing in our own products to help agencies and brands manage their social media campaigns, and are excited about the prospects for 2010. I’ve paid off all my debt, moved into my own place, and even bumped into a former employee in a coffee shop (and they didn’t thump me). I even think I’ve learnt a lot along the way (including most of the things that I read or was told by other entrepreneurs before I started at the beginning - but nothing really sinks in until you’ve experienced doing it badly).

I wasn’t born with the skills of an entrepreneur. I wasn’t even born with some special spirit unique to entrepreneurs. I’ve got over myself a lot, and realised that the choice to be an entrepreneur (and it is a choice) isn’t about whether you can or you can’t - *anyone* can, if they really want to - it’s just about whether you’re willing to make the sacrifices, keep your head up despite failure, despite anguish, despite ridicule, despite lost friendships, despite all that time you lose ploughing into it, and keep striving to learn from your mistakes. Even if you’re successful first time, you always know that if things go badly and the company fails, employees can just walk away - you’ve got to stay, clean up the mess and deal with consequences. That’s what the ‘entrepreneurial spirit’ means. And sometimes I envy people who don’t make that choice - who instead clock off at half five, and have more time for friends, for hobbies, for enjoying the small amount of time we have here. If anything, that choice is a better one. For whatever the reason, it’s just not a choice I can make.

So - what I’m trying to say is that being an entrepreneur is a choice that has to be constantly made. You can’t train that, any more than you could expect someone with a GCSE in woodwork to become a carpenter; it’s something that you carve out through years of hard work and persistence.

That’s not to say you can’t keep encouraging kids to think about the possibilities though - I wish I’d realised the them earlier. I’m sure there are thousands of kids out there who would make the choice, if only they knew about it. But Sugar is right in that if you don’t have the spirit, the ambition, the determination, then no amount of training in the world will make a jot of difference. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.