We’re in New Orleans this weekend for the third annual Mom 2.0 Summit. There are many, many exciting things happening over here – but the one you absolutely can’t miss is this wonderful video premiering today at the conference from our clients at the MD Anderson Proton Therapy Center:
What an amazing mission, what an amazing group of people. Find out a little more about what they’re doing at the Summit this weekend here and here.
(We just had to do our small part to spread the word)
I had the pleasure of talking with Natasha Wyatt from Google at their booth at the Gov 2.0 conference about some of the exciting tools that Google has developed specifically for the Government.
I learned that in 2009 the City of Los Angeles decided to switch their email to Google, and today have 16,000 employees using Google Apps. Google Apps is the first multi-tenant cloud application certified at the FISMA-Moderate level by the US federal government. What does that really mean? Google Apps has enough security built into its Apps to comply with the Federal Government standard. I also thought it was interesting to learn that the City of LA expects to save $5.5M in IT costs over 5 years by making the switch. Given the financial crisis California is in, every $5.5m counts!
It is nice to see the Government step outside of their comfort level, and work with a company like Google to provide the technology they need, and save the tax payers a little dough to boot.
What if the government put together a team of top notch cyber security people and collaborated with companies like Google on ways that deal with sensitive information? I know firsthand that agencies build their own Mail, YouTube, and Wiki because of their need for maximum security. How much money could these agencies save by partnering with a Google, or a YouTube to customize their technology to meet the added security needs? What if?
MMIers have descended upon Washington DC for the Gov 2.0 Summit, to discuss the latest technology and how it affects policy, the design of government programs and strategy. To learn more about our background in Gov 2.0, click the “Frontlines Social Media” tab to the right and stay tuned for updates live from the conference.
You can tell a lot about a conference just by who is sponsoring it. In a sense, the collective brands of the sponsors are the first impression – they end up branding the conference itself.
So what do the Gov 2.0 Summit sponsors say about the conference this week? Continue reading
Every March, geeks around the world converge upon Austin, Texas for the annual SXSW Interactive Festival. It is a celebration of innovation, technology and new ideas. This year, I’m excited to have made the first cut as a panelist.
The working title for our panel is, “Cheerleader vs. Geeks. How Interactive Teams Can Bring Marketing and IT Together.” We’ll talk about how to foster collaborative relationships between Venus and Mars and provide an IT-to-Marketing language glossary.
To make the final cut, we need your votes to demonstrate interest in our topic – so click the graphic to read the full description and cast your vote. We also love feedback and want to see your comments!
Interested in attending SXSW Interactive Festival? Check out their helpful website. Early registration ends September 24th. Hope to see you there!
. . . the seminars, product demonstrations, the Resource Center and Book Store of all the seminars and resources we enjoyed at the conference. I am still, after a month and a half, amazed and inspired.
Just a couple of sessions that were particularly memorable:
First, Adobe’s demonstration on the latest version of Creative Suite CS5; Photoshop’s content-aware fill, Illustrator’s perfect perspective and InDesign’s new capability to add animations and Flash video to InDesign documents to name a few. For a designer, that’s magic at your fingertips. Many oohs and ahhs from the audience and much applause. Can’t wait to start using it. Really amazing!
Design is in the details: Angel Moroni spire atop Cameron Moll's typographic illustration of Salt Lake Temple, via CameronMoll.com
Second, Cameron Moll’s presentation Good vs. Great Design included various quotations and phrases to inspire and provoke thinking about your motives, processes and performance as a designer; examples of good and great design; and most stirringly, the things and places he gets his inspiration from. But the single item that most moved me was his rendering typographically (only fonts and glyphs!) of the historic Mormon temple in Salt Lake City. His choice of characters to render the details especially the Angel Moroni which sits atop the tallest spire is just incredibly intuitive, sensitive and beautiful. And this particular designer/artist/lecturer/writer/businessman/professional seems to have mastered a work/life balance as well, as a husband and father of four sons. Again, really, really amazing. Very motivational, inspirational.
Now back in Houston, we’re excited about finding ways to integrate – into our own work methods and processes – the many things we learned.
Time for some more MMI live from SXSW Coverage! And it’s time to talk Twitter (and a few other things).
Let’s face it. Traditional customer support is out the window with the advent of sites like Twitter, Facebook and GetSatisfaction. Customers can hop online from anywhere and vent about products or services in real time. Since we encourage our clients to engage with their customers via these platforms, I jumped at the chance to attend Customer Service in a 140 Character World!
The panel was made up of Twitter customer service experts Frank Eliason with Comcast (@comcastcares), Lois Townsend (@ltownsend) with HP, Toby Richards (@TobyRichards) with General Motors and Jeremiah Owyang (@jowyang) with the Altimeter. The panel was moderated by Caroline McCarthy.
What I liked most about the panel was that there were differing opinions about Twitter. There was a lot to take in! For example, Lois said that HP considers Twitter a way to connect but not converse. If someone complains about your product on Twitter, reach out to them and tell them where to go and be their virtual concierge. As soon as she was done with her explanation, Frank jumped in to totally disagree. If you follow @comcastcares, you know they definitely treat Twitter as a dialogue.
There was also great debate about who handles online customer service… Is it your customer service team or your PR team? There was a consensus among the panelists that BOTH teams need to be involved. Your customer service team needs to be reaching out to those customers that need help while your PR team can monitor the conversation going on about your product and offer relevant information to followers.
The question was asked; what happens when you get someone with a huge Twitter following and a vast number of fans tweeting super negative things about your brand?
The response from the panel was pretty clear. Eventually this is going to happen to your brand and it actually doesn’t take someone with a million followers to effect your brand. In social media, anything can go viral. Always treat people with complaints well. When something bad happens, leverage that by showing people you are responsive and open about the problem and willing to help get their issues resolved. This approach goes a long way to helping turn that unhappy customer into a super fan.
Frank did make one really great point during this part of the conversation. He said “transparency doesn’t always mean say yes to the customer.” He goes on and says that “transparency means that you are listening, responding and being open with your customers. You can’t give everyone free cable just because they complain about it online.”
Here are the biggest takeaways I got from the panel:
Tomorrow is the last day of SXSW so expect another post then. I’m going to be sad to say goodbye to Austin but I’m ready to be home in Houston soon.
I’m in Austin for the SXSW Interactive Festival and I’ll be blogging here live when I finish an interesting panel. Don’t know what SXSW is? Don’t worry. I’m pretty new to the festival too. Last year was actually my first conference.
SXSW Interactive is a technology conference in Austin that features some of the brightest minds in the industry. The keynote speakers include Jack Dorsey, the founder of twitter, and Valerie Casey, the Executive Director of the Designers Accord.
I just finished a session called “Beyond Barbecue: The Future of Corporate Culture” with Mallory Messina, one of the culture reps from Southwest Airlines and it was awesome. The fact she opened by singing a song about the power of love definitely helped.
So what is corporate culture, according to Southwest Air? Your corporate culture is what you sell to the people inside of your organization while your product is what you sell to your public. Your company culture is about how you and your employees live everyday and how you run your business.
At Southwest, the culture was designed with the number one customer in mind–the employee.
Yes. You read that right. At Southwest they consider their employees number one. The customer is always right and that customer is their team. All 35,000 employees are responsible for the company culture. Southwest believes if their employees are happy, they will treat customers well and by extension, their customers will be happy.
Southwest has some really great tenants for maintaining their corporate culture.
Hire on attitude, not on skill. The three most important attributes Southwest looks for are a servants heart, a warrior spirit and a fun-loving attitude.
They communicate openly and transparently. Every single employee knows what is going on with the company.
Everyone wants to be recognized. Southwest has several recognition programs in place and they think saying THANK YOU to their team is number one.
At MMI we think company culture is really important too, so we love what Southwest is doing!
