RonAmok!

Many years ago, on a sales call to pitch some software, I witnessed something that I’ll never forget. We had arrived at the prospect’s offices, someone had taken us to a conference room, and we were waiting for the rest of the attendees to arrive.

“Are we ready to start?” our sales guy asked.

“We’re just waiting on one more,” came the response.

Not long after that, an engineer arrived and walked to his seat — but not before making a statement. Before he sat in his chair, he slammed his coffee cup right in the middle of the conference table…and left it there for all to see. It bore the logo of our largest competitor.

It’s one of the boldest and brashest statements of customer loyalty that I’ve ever seen in the twenty some odd years in the business.

I’ve thought about that moment many times and keep churning through the same set of questions? How did he become so loyal? What made him such a raving fan? Was it the software? Could he really have loved it that much? Was it the people? The support? What makes someone so loyal, that they’ll throw away all objectivity — not even considering alternatives — even if they those alternatives are demonstrably better?

I’ve come up with a few answers over the years. My firm belief is that it is a combination of a good product, great people, and a community of the like-minded.

If you don’t have a good product, don’t pass “Go,” don’t collect $200 — you are already dead. If you have a great product but your “customer-facing” folks have the personality of Mr. Spock, you’re leaving yourself wide open to competitor who may develop both. And lastly, there has to be a community of like-minded individuals — other people, like our coffee-cup-guy, who love the product, and are willing to go out of their way to gather, whether it be online or off line.

Back in the old days, we used to have “User’s Groups,” corporate sponsored meeting
that brought these “birds-of-a-feather” types together, where they could talk with our technical experts, share their ideas with other like-minded customers, all in an atmosphere that fostered more conversation.

These User Group Meetings were effective, but at the same time, expensive, for both the company and the attendees who traveled.

And that’s where New Media comes in. With the time-shifted nature of internet-based content, there is a way to cater to this audience. Your company has all sorts of tools to engage these customers — audio, video, text, social networks, etc… And even better, by using these technologies, you aren’t limited to one or two days per year to gather your loyal customers. Instead, your efforts will have affect 24 x 7 all over the globe.

So, this New Media Evangelist has to ask. What is your company doing right now to develop your own coffee-cup slamming customers?

Tags: New Media Evangelist Customer Loyalty

So, you are the New Media Evangelist in your company. You are the one who has convinced someone in upper management to try some New Media marketing techniques. Congratulations. You have won your first battle with “The Traditionals.”

But beware. Just because you’ve been successful opening a New Media-driven conversation, it doesn’t mean that you’ve won the hearts and minds of everyone. The Traditionals will be sitting back, waiting for your “new fangled” ideas to fail. Unfortunately for them, they’ll be waiting a long time, because this stuff works. At some point, your success will threaten The Traditionals, who in response will throw speed-bumps in your way. Your job is to be prepared for this resistance — which will come in the most unlikely of forms.

Last week I had an interesting call. “Ron, our bloggers are getting email from readers!”

Thinking that I was responding appropriately, I said, “That’s great! A new line of communications with customers.”

Evidently, my response wasn’t what she wanted to hear.

“We can’t have private conversations happening between bloggers and the readers,” she said.

“Umm, why not?”

“Because we need to know what they are saying. If they want to say something, say it in a comment. We need to put something on the blogs that prohibits readers from contacting a blogger directly.”

I tried explaining that — for a myriad of reasons — a reader may want a particular conversation to remain private. But that’s not the most important part of this story. Readers are reaching out to our bloggers! Our bloggers are becoming influential! That’s the best benchmark for corporate-blogging success!

She didn’t buy it.

The New Media game is all about influence. The Traditionals are all about control.

Just remember this as you are trying to help your company through the transition. As a New Media Evangelist, you are the champion of influence, and by default, you are also the enemy of control.

Tags: RonAmok! RonAmok New Media Evangelist The Traditionals

In 1954, an Industrial Arts teacher from Long Island came to speak at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology about his new invention: a breadboarding system that he proposed could be used to teach electronics. Arthur Jubenville had patented this system and started a company called Science Electronics, Inc. (SEI). During the conference, he was introduced to a Cambridge-based electronics company by the name of General Electronic Labs(GEL), which was developing RADAR countermeasure technologies for the Department of Defense. In this chance meeting, SEI became a wholly-owned subsidiary of GEL and with funding, SEI went began marketing Jubenville’s invention.

The breadboarding system was unique because it allowed students to assemble electronic circuits without the use of solder. The kit came with various electrical components, such as resistors, capacitors, diodes, vacuum tubes, loudspeakers, transformers, each mounted onto a module. The bottom of these modules contained evenly spaced “pegs” that fit nicely onto a supplied pegboard. After the student had placed the components onto the pegboard, the next part was to hook them up, with these clever little “Jiffy Clips,” wires with simple clips on either end that snapped onto module posts.

Not only was SEI looking to get this system into schools, but it also felt that there was a home market for it. “We all grew up on Erector Sets,” Arthur Nelson, co-founder of GEL said, “so we decided to set up a meeting with the AC Gilbert company.” A contingent from SEI went to “Erector Square” and left with an agreement. SEI licensed the system to AC Gilbert for marketing to the home user, and the “Erectronic” (Sometimes called “Erec-tronic”) was born.

Since that time, many companies have built upon the original idea of the Erectronic. I remember getting my Radio Shack Electronic Lab, where I built crystal radios, motor control circuits, and sound effects generators that chirped with the sounds of phasors, machine guns, and explosions. I’d follow instructions to build circuits that came with the set, or try to invent new ones myself — with most of those experiments leading to smoke.

Although I never bought anything from it, I’d spend hours looking over the HeathKit catalog, filled with all sorts of projects to build using nothing but patience and a soldering iron. I played around with the Basic Stamp microcontroller and then in 1998, another toy manufacturer jumped into the game. Lego released its Mindstorms product, where not only did they place a microcontroller into a Lego Brick, but they packaged it with other special bricks that contained sensors, motors, and stuff. During the past fifty years, there have been leaps and bounds in the sophistication of Mr. Jubenville’s idea. And they are just about to take a quantum leap again.

As a hardware guy, I’ve always been a little jealous of the software guys. I mean, all software folks need is computer, a compiler and a six pack of Red Bull to start creating stuff. Hardware guys on the other hand? We have to set aside a space for test equipment and power supplies and all sorts of components to build anything beyond the toy-level stuff. Don’t get me wrong, I love Lego Mindstorms, but if I have an idea that’s worthy of investment, I don’t want to go traipsing into a VC’s office with an assortment of interconnected red, blue and yellow plastic bricks.

But what if I offered you a breadboarding system like the Erec-tronic, but instead of a just a pegboard, we embedded an ARM11 processor into it? Heck, since we’re just dreaming, what if instead of a pegboard with an ARM11 processor, the pegboard was transformed into a palm-sized breadboarding system that contained a Linux-based computer, complete with WiFi, Ethernet, USB, USB-OTG, and a slew of others? And imagine that instead of simple components like a resistor or diode mounted onto a little module, we add some pizazz — like a GPS module, a touchscreen module, a 3G module or a digital camera module? What if the platform was totally open, such that users around the world are not only free to hack it, but they are encouraged to do so through open APIs. And lastly, imagine that through the use of New Media tools, a community could be built around it, to collaborate with one another, to share ideas, to invent new things? How cool would THAT be?

Well, I need to tell you that this isn’t a dream. It is a reality and the company, Bug Labs is about to release pricing on its Bug Product Line [consisting of it's Bug Base (Linux Computer/Breadboard) and its Bug Modules] before the end of the year. I’m going to be watching this release very closely because it has the potential to change hardware design as we know it, through the combinatorial use of New Media and Open Source.

This product has the potential to drop the barrier of entry for hardware development to that which is closer to software development. Imagine if a Venture Capitalist walked into a struggling startup with ten Bug Bases, dumped them and a plethora of modules onto the table, and told them to start developing? Imagine the devices that’ll emerge.

I love this idea, and I’m really hoping that it works as well as advertised.

If you wanna see the Bug in action, checkout the following video interviews by Robert Scoble, where the BugLabs CEO, Peter Semmelhack, demonstrates the device and a few modules.

Erectronic Photos courtesy of Allan Jayne Jr.
Bug photos courtesy of Bug Labs.

Tags:

Erectronic Science Electronics Robert Scoble Peter Semmelhack Bug Labs buglabs.net