Quorum Sense

Quorum Sense: End of Year Resolutions

2009-11-03T07:17:00.000-08:00

End of Year Resolutions

2009-11-03T07:13:00.000-08:00

By Robin Bectel

Why wait until the New Year to make resolutions that will help your business? Washington Business Journal’s Jennifer Nycz-Conner put together a piece on networking tips to do by the end of the year. I made some suggestions on polishing up your LinkedIn profile and others added thoughts on getting more engaged with just one professional group. Take a read.

Jen is right that this is a great time of year to think of what you really should be doing to better market your business. A simple look at how you present yourself online and in meetings is a good place to start. Can you describe your company in a quick sentence? If someone checks out your website on online profile, will it give an accurate portrait of your business?

Some quick modifications to your website or the sending of a direct marketing piece might be all you need to jump start new business leads and client work. For instance, a current client may not even know you offer a particular service, unless they get a newsletter or email from you explaining it. It doesn’t take much effort and it keeps people thinking about what you have to offer.
Twitter: http://twitter.com/rmbectel
Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/robinbectel

104 Days of Summer Vacation

2009-09-16T10:53:00.000-07:00

My kids and I took the summer off. Both by choice and by necessity.

We spent a lot of our summer watching Phineas and Ferb on Disney. It became the theme for our summer vacation and provided much entertainment and more than a few ideas of what we should do today.

This vacation, like all, must come to an end. My son has started kindergarten this past week and now I must start seeking a new job after terminating my last contract due to non-payment by a less than responsible company.

It has been a glorious summer though. I have enjoyed every moment with my kids and have taken more than 1,000 picutres of our escapades. From camping to swimming to painting and playing computer games we had a ball, and I hope they wont soon forget this past summer. During this summer we accomplished a number of big things. Katie and Steven learned how to fish this summer. Steven even caught his first fish. He also learned how to ride a bike. Katie learned how to control her big brother and get him to play makeup. We all learned how to enjoy camping in the Shennendoah Mtns.

Now it is time to find a job and get back into the business world after enjoying the worlds of my 3 and 5 year old.

From Shennendoah Camping Trip

Cheers!
Rob

My answer to a student about to graduate from college, with a CompSci degree: Build your Professional Network.

2009-03-30T10:52:00.000-07:00

This is one of my answers to this young person.

In today’s (right now, this minute, it will change tomorrow) world, you have to have a professional network. While that will include your personal network built while in high school and college, you need to get your personal and business network separated and make sure that you connect with them in appropriate ways.

To quote Dean Wormer from Animal House, “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”

Clean up you Facebook/MySpace pages and make them professional. When you start looking for a job, your prospective employers will look at these pages. Will they see pictures of you drunk at a fraternity party? If your online persona looks like it came from Animal House, then you are going to finish second when trying to get a job in today’s competitive markets.

Get some experience in your field or at least adjacent to your intended field. While flippin’ burgers for a summer will earn you money, it is that internship with an engineering or software firm or with a government office where you spend most of your day bug-tracking or shuffling paper that you will meet people that can help you get a job.

Get out to trade shows, local tech meet-ups and business conferences and start talking to companies. Meet people and get their business cards, link with them on LinkedIn , follow their blog and Twitter feeds.

Interact with your network. Once you connect with people via Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook interact with them online. This is not a game to see who can collect the most friends. Use that network! Ask them questions. Answer their questions. Send them interesting links to content you are reading which they may find useful or interesting. Follow the links they send and read the content. Get them to refer you to other people that you can network with.

In short, Get interactive or get out of the web business.

Why communications & HR should cooperate

2009-02-24T11:24:00.000-08:00

Anytime you do layoffs, you should always have Communications involved with HR to consider the best way to tell employees. This week, we saw letters from Microsoft surface about wanting laid off employees to repay overpaid severance. Microsoft was within its right to ask for the money back, but the request could have been done with a lot more professionalism and courtesy. HP went to the opposite extreme in its letter informing employees of across the board salary cuts. I think they erred on the side of a bit too much information, but I applaud them for helping employees understand the thought process.

How do you use Twitter?

2009-01-14T11:03:00.000-08:00

That is the question that I am seeing more and more every day. While there are those early adopters, like me, that investigate and find a use for new communication technologies, average communicators will stick with the tried and true (email/phone/fax -- and horror of horrors snail mail) until they see a preponderance of their collegues using a new fangled communication technology.

Whether it is on LinkedIn, Facebook, via email, on the telephone, around the water cooler, during lunch or at happy hour, the question: How do you use Twitter?, occurs almost every day.

People want to understand how to build a useful Twitter network, manage the banality and minutia which can and does flow through Twitter and integrate useful business level communications as well as chatter from friends and family. For those of us that have used Twitter for a while, we all have our answer to the question. Some people have HUGE followings and in turn follow a tremendous number of Twitterers. Other people follow specific experts, thought leaders, prolific writers, corporate contacts, team members and family members, with the goal of improving our professional and personal lives in mind.

The importance of the increasing interest in how to best use Twitter is that our networks will gain value through the addition of people that really want to communicate and interact via the Twitterverse. We will add smart contributors to the Twitterverse and conversely they will improve the flow of intelligent persistent messaging that Twitter enables.

I welcome the question, and work to answer it every time I see it. Let's educate people on how to best use Twitter and welcome them to the Twitterverse.

So join us won't you? It's warm and cozy here, in a 140 character sort of way.

See my answer to this question at: http://quorumsense.blogspot.com/2008/11/art-of-brevity-returns-thanks-to.html

Cheers!
Rob

New Vertical Network? Learn from Twitter

2009-01-08T07:16:00.001-08:00

I am working with a client to build new e-Health networks for employees from many of the client's customers. For those of us that have embraced micro blogging and the utility of Twitter, there are many lessons which should be applied.

#1 Less is more -- Building big is not the way to go when you are starting. Costs to build big are high and there aren't limitless budget dollars with which to build a monster community with all the bells and whistles. Focusing on the core products needed to bring value to the network should be your focus.

#2 Give and Receive -- Remember that when you build a social/professional network you must give utility to the users as well as get them to contribute utility to the growing network. A network of 50000 users of which 95% are ghosting, reading and never posting or interacting is a not a social network. It is a newspaper. Networks need activity and participation. Get 5000 people to participate in a network, get them to post, to comment, to answer surveys, polls, read emails, forward emails, read blogs or Twitters. Get them to engage!

#3 Open source, Open source, Open source -- When I meet with new and old clients they are always talking about building using someone else's super software solution for building online social networks. They are also concerned about the cost of licensing the solution and how they will monetize the network to pay for the software. My response is always the same. Look at open source solutions. Don't pay big bucks for someone else's proprietary crap.

#4 Engage, Don't Spam -- Anyone that talks to me about monetizing a network (professional or consumer) always starts off with a discussion about advertising and using that as a primary means to generate revenue. The lesson I bring to them is that quantity does NOT equal quality. While lots of advertising is useful and has its place, I recommend building collaborative programs with companies that want to connect and interact with the building network.

Get a sponsor to pay to place high quality, in-depth content within the network for people (note: they are people not users, and we know a lot about them) to interact with. This also means that sponsors (not advertisers) often have to be educated as to why they should forget about the banner advertising models of the last decade and look to build high value content engaging the smart people using the network. The value of 500 engaged people from the community participating in a survey is infinitely higher than the value of 50000 assumed impressions on a banner in an email or on a website.

#5 Build Personality Into the Network -- When people build communities or networks online they often get a list of names and emails -- from their gaming guild, from their class, from their employer, from a client or from someone selling a list. They take that list, build a community then direct email everyone on the list to join. When people join they provide an email, first and last name and that is usually all. They join, read the homepage, maybe an article or two and then never return.

When building a network, enroll new people that add value to your endeavor. Don't go after everyone. Engage people that have a need to engage in the network. Have them build a profile and create an identity on the network. Get them to put some skin in the game. Get a profile picture, an introductory line or two about them and get them to post in an introductory discussion. Have an already engaged member or team member interact with all new people joining the network and make sure that everyone has a personality in the network.

A good example is a gaming community in which I participate. We all post on a discussion board and receive posting ranks depending on the number of posts we have posted to the forum. While that automated "title" is useful, it is the titles which people have received from the Admins which are the most rewarding and in return, those entitled people post to the forum more often. My title is "A man of many words, often too many."

Cheers!
Rob

New Year! New Business!

2008-12-22T11:02:00.001-08:00

With the launch of a new year, my wife and I are launching a new business. Appropriately enough, called Quorum Sense. The purpose of this company is to build vertical professional networks focusing on interactive solutions for business seeking to reach professionals in the e-health space as well as other verticals. Long story short...we are using our wisdom to help others build solutions online, that drive interaction and community, where appropriate.

Want to learn more about Quorum sensing? Go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quorum_sensing

No - I haven't built a website for this company yet. Right now, I am focusing on completing my current position with NCPA and leaving on a high note. Many folks have asked me , ARE YOU NUTS!? The answer is always the same. No...I am 40 years old, and it is time for a midlife crisis. However, I can't have a girlfriend and I can't buy a sports car (two car seats wont fit in a Porsche). So I am building a company, one client at a time.

I look forward to the immense amount of work ahead of me. I am an entrepreneur at heart, and it is time to start breaking the internet.

Cheers!
Rob

The Art of Brevity Returns -- thanks to Twitter

2008-11-19T13:59:00.000-08:00

I recently commented on a LinkedIn question regarding how people use Twitter. In my office at a professional association, my use of Twitter is often considered far to edgy or too geeky to warrant anyone else in the office adopting it as an effective mode of communication. Here is how I responded to the LinkedIn question.

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I use twitter for a variety of reasons. Most importantly, I use it as persistant messaging between myself and my distributed development team when I need to interact with them between live/virtual meetings. I prefer it over email and IM for short discussions and quick thoughts.

Additionally, I use it to follow the findings of a select few innovative people/groups that provide links to interesting solutions as well as articles and traditional blogs. By following smart folks, I have access to an intelligent filter for marketing and interactive content.

Finally, I use it to communicate with my wife. Our tweets move quickly to email and mobile devices which we both have, and guarantee that we arent missing important messages such as "Honey, get the kids from school. My meeting is running long."

Twitter enforces the "Art of Brevity" -- which all to often is lost in today's business world. It forces people to get to the point and get back to work.

Cheers!
Rob

Spamming Via Blogs - PR firms or SEO firms

2008-11-18T07:12:00.000-08:00

So I'm seeing this trend toward blaming PR firms for spamming via blogs. I agree, this is totally bad form - out of line, inappropriate, yada yada. The thing is - I don't think PR firms are necessarily the ones doing it. I have seen several times now where SEO firms consider this standard practice to go to a series of blogs and post a pitch or a news release about their client. PR firms, at least in the high tech space I play in, treat bloggers like media (sorry bloggers but when you put out information to the general public and position yourself as an expert or a commentator, you are in fact acting as media). We pitch them, but we do so via email or phone or we try to meet up with them at conferences. I would never pitch via blog comments. That is the space for sharing unbiased information and perspective on the posting - not a place to plug a product. When a client of mine comments on a blog posting, we may discuss the approach or tone, but its always around furthering the discussion and not pushing the company's products or services. I dont want to disparage the whole SEO industry. I could have just run into a few SEO firms with a bad approach. Take another tact guys. This dog don't hunt.

Obama and the Groundswell

2008-11-07T13:40:00.001-08:00

Most of my friends know that I am a true believer in the Groundswell. But what I find very interesting is/was the extra-ordinary use of interactive social communities, instant and persistant messaging technologies and a very foward looking website destination, by the Barack Obama election machine.

Now that he is the President Elect, I am looking forward to learning how his administration will use the best of the new internet to provide regular Joe's (plumber or not) with access and engage them in the business of helping to repair what is broken in our country. If he can build an engaged online community as part of his administration, just like he did with his election, this could be a very reolutionary President indeed.

Check out www.change.gov. This is where the President Obama Groundswell may begin.

Cheers!
Rob

New Video site for High Level Discourse

2008-11-07T10:45:00.000-08:00

I stumbled across Fora.tv http://fora.tv/. It's a video site that provides unedited video content from major think tanks, business etc. all drawn from the live-event speeches, discussions, interviews and debates going on everywhere all the time at the world’s leading conferences, ideas festivals, think tanks and other major centers of thought and discourse. The object is to open the world of ideas and knowledge to a broader community. Of course they've added feedback, ratings and comments. Very cool. There is an amazing wealth of great content out there looking for a home. This site also allows you to create your own channel of content and share with others. Well thought out.

Are we on the air yet?

2008-11-07T07:35:00.001-08:00

Robin and I are happy to launch this blog. We look forward to building an interactive discussion for all our friends and partners.