Saturday, March 31, 2012

LGBT Internet is here!

I am so excited!

For years the international science community has been working together to create Lunar Guide Bounce Technology Internet (LGBTI) and the wait is finally over. Starting tomorrow, Internet users world wide will have an opportunity to upgrade their internet connections to this new technology and I can hardly wait to be one of the first to take advantage.

Mark your calendars because 01 April 2012 will go down in history as the day Internet access changed for the global masses. LGBTI promises to unite the world through ultra high speed network connections no matter where you live or even if you have an existing Internet service. The promise of near instantaneous communication speed has been lauded as a "game changer" by Internet service providers, mobile carriers, and social network engineers.

This amazing technology is possible through an array of highly reflective light guide tubes strategically placed on the Lunar surface during several secret missions to the Moon over the past decade. These tubes capture neutrinos cast off the Sun, convert them into tachyons and take advantage of the time bending properties of these amazing particles to speed up Internet access here on Earth. Your Internet connection is routed through a satellite array to the Lunar tachyon factory where it is passed back in time to a mere instant after it was generated. The effect is almost instantaneous communication anywhere on the planet.


Several major Internet providers have shown an interest in relocating to the Moon in light of the recent unveiling of the LGBTI station. Lunar real estate prices are expected to rise dramatically in the wake of the announcement.


Have a glorious day netizens.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

What is your service attitude?

The choices we make in business affect customer service even when the actions are seemingly removed from the customer's immediate knowledge. Too often companies make the mistake of believing that customer service is the job of the Sales department or Marketing team, but that could not be farther from the truth. In reality, sincere customer service needs to permeate an organization at all levels and should be part of every decision every employee makes.

As a Sales Engineer, I fly to remote locations almost constantly to present our product offering. When you travel to a customer location, do you book a hotel close to the customer's office so that you can be early to the meeting, or do you book close to the airport for your travel convenience? This may seem like a small thing and the customer will likely never know, but it is a decision that affects how well you are prepared for a presentation. Being close to the customer relieves the pressure of travel before the meeting. It allows you to be more focused and the customer will notice.

A less obvious place for customer service attention is in product engineering. A common misconception is that product development and software engineering are too removed from the customer to really be concerned about it, but in the most successful companies, every engineer is acutely aware of the end user experience. Understanding how the end user actually uses the product gives the developers a deeper understanding of the real customer needs and the developers tend to see solutions as opposed to code.

If you know me, you know I am a Disney nut and a lot of that is about their business attitude. Every Disney employee understands that the goal is exceptional customer experience. Whether it is Cinderella or a popcorn vender, a street cleaner or the shuttle driver, every employee is focused on the end result of providing an exceptional customer service experience. Why should any other organization be any different?

Can you honestly say that every person in your company puts customer service first? If not, maybe it is time to take a closer look at what really matters and how the little things like service attitude mean big things to the bottom line.

Be Awesome. Change the world.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Ideas of March

Fellow blogger Chris Shifflet recently blogged Ideas of March as a call to revive the art of blogging, and I think for good reason. The immense success of Twitter combined with a 140 character limit has created a situation where more people are communicating than ever before, but they are doing it in short, disjointed and poorly spelled blurts.

The internet has done amazing things to expand the ability for people who would not have normally ever been connected to each other to have a conversation about critical subjects. Tools like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and the myriad assorted blogs now allow people to communicate on a global scale without having to invest in travel or take valuable time from work, family or school. Even just ten years ago, it would have been difficult to place 100 like minded people from 100 countries in a room together to discuss an important issue. This has changed dramatically in the last few years and we saw the evidence of this in North Africa where protesters literally tweeted a revolution. The recent Occupy Wallstreet protest would likely not have been possible without the massively interconnected society we have today using the vehicles of Twitter and Facebook. However, the short burst nature of tweeted communication creates immediate but disjointed conversation. Having 100 people in a room all talking at once is still conversation, but it is difficult to pull constructive conclusions from.

This disjointed conversation is why I like blogs. A blogger has the ability to form a statement, create an argument for an idea, and share it as a complete thought. Readers have an opportunity to digest the thought and provide counterpoints or questions in an equally thoughtful manner. An intelligent dialog ensues. This is more like having that same 100 people in a room, but moderated with one person having the microphone at a time. Much more civilized.

Blogs also have the added benefit natural archiving. Since the communication is all in one place, on a single page, each blog post adds to a catalogued archive of conversations. A reader can go back months or years in historical blogs to follow a theme or collection of posts to get a full understanding of the conversation.

One of the concerns with 140 character text blob updates is that brevity leads to a perversion of the language (any language). A whole generation is communicating in acronyms, emoticons and abbreviations. They post their statement and watch for replies, but parts of the conversation may be hours or days apart and parts of the conversation get lost. Bloggers have the privilege of using full sentences and real words to express ideas.

I primarily blog about business, technology and customer service with the odd sprinkling of robotics and electronics. Sounds a little spread out, I know, but… oh look a bunny! … yes, I am a little A.D.D. I have been trying to keep to a once a month schedule, but have plans to increase that frequency to help improve the quality of conversation through blogging. As always I am open to sharing ideas and expanding the conversation

Be Awesome. Change the world.

Thursday, March 1, 2012

My Week at Disney


I recently spent a week at Disneyland California with my family and many readers will know that my wife an I are Disney freaks - possibly for slightly different reasons, but fanatics all the same. I have taken some sideways glances for my love of Disney and even left my last job primarily because the leadership did not "get it". I have a Disney watch that I used to wear to work all the time (I don't wear watches anymore) and have taken criticism that wearing a "cartoon" watch makes you look unprofessional. When I left that employer, I made a point of explaining that he was the fool for not understanding what that cartoon mouse actually represents.

So here is the deal - and this will not be news to anyone who does in fact get it - Disney is more than amusement parks or animation studios or a legacy of great movies. Disney is about the experience. It is a philosophy that says "do it right and the money will happen. Give people value and they will pay for it." This is diametrically opposed to conventional business thinking that is geared to extracting the highest profit from the least expense. Running a business that way is like managing a stock portfolio with a "buy-low, sell-high" mentality - it only works in theory.

Good evidence of this is seen every time I visit Disneyland in Anaheim, CA. We usually also visit Universal Studios because we also enjoy that place, but to a much lesser extent and here is why. If you visit both places in short succession, you will likely also notice that Universal is a profit center and Disneyland is an experience. At Universal, it is obvious that they have taken shortcuts with things they think are minor like food, lines, bathroom locations, site maps and the main gate entry process. When you enter Universal for the first time, you say "OK, now what? Lets look at the map to see where we should go first". When you enter Disneyland for the first time you say "WOW" and you migrate to the first (of many) cool things that slowly transport you down main street. You may be halfway across the park before you open the map to figure out what to do next.

Disney spares no expense to create an illusion that completely envelopes you. They do this in their parks, movies, games, and is core to their business philosophy. This comes from a deeply ingrained understanding that if you really understand a person and involve them in a story, they become part of it - there is personal investment and when people feel they are part of something, it is no longer about "product" but "experience". Disney sells the experience and they do it very well.

As a coincidence, I just finished reading "The Pixar Way" which is similar to "The Disney Way" by no accident. These two companies were made for each other (and now are all one family). The top brass at Pixar share the same ideals as Walt Disney did when he was running Disney Corp and these ideals are shared by some of the most successful business enterprises in the world. Pixar's attention to the philosophy is evidenced in their string of extremely successful movies. In each one, the characters are exceptionally endearing because the creators draw them the way they "feel", not the way an opinion panel or marketing report dictates what they should look like. The whole concept breaks down to a simple phrase that I keep churning in my head - "forget the money, just do it right." It is a simple thing, but so often ignored by mainstream business management who are too focused on profit and sales targets to see a much easier path - just do it right.

Doing it "right" means paying attention to details and understanding real customer needs. It means ignoring the cost/profit analysis while you are designing. It means remembering that people are all children inside who forgot how to play and creating experiences to cater to that hidden child.

My favourite Walt Disney quote is "Too many people grow up. That's the real trouble with the world. They forget. They don't remember what it's like to be twelve years old." When I visit Disneyland, I am suddenly 12 years old as soon as I walk through the main gate - it really is a magical place, but they don't force feed you pixie dust, so everyone experiences it in a different way.

One day at Universal is enough for me. After you have been on all the rides and taken the backlot tour, it is just concrete and street vendors. Disney is different in a way that is hard to explain, but easy to experience. I can spend a day in Disneyland park just wandering the grounds and looking for all the small but important details - like the tiny functional vegetable gardens between the attractions, or the live orange groves spread throughout the park. Each attraction spills out into the queue so that you start to experience the ride while standing in line, long before you have to keep your hands and feet inside that car at all times. There is a story behind every rock and tree, each pathway is designed with the surrounding experience in mind. The walkway leading to the new "Ariel's Undersea Adventure" attraction in California Park was torn up and re-poured with seashells at the surface to enhance the experience for people standing in line for the ride. Universal would not have considered such an expense. In New Orleans Square, the pathways are made so that you actually believe you are walking on cobblestone streets in the French Quarter. I barely noticed the ground at Universal because it is all the same bland concrete.

I know it sounds like I am on the Disney payroll, but that is just the side effect of pure awesomeness. Disney does not just want to sell you a park admission or a Mickey Mouse hoodie - they want to turn you into ambassadors AND IT WORKS. To put an extremely fine point on this for you, I was the Los Angeles area for 7 days with my family and in total we spent approximately 8 TIMES as much cash with Disney than we did at Universal Studios. Does the Disney philosophy really need more evidence than that?


Be Awesome - Change the World.