Categories
Daily Life Productivity Buster

About that TPS Report…

One of the laws of thermodynamics can be summed up as: Entropy Builds.

I realized that today while doing my “short monthly update” that gets forwarded up the org chart. What started as a paragraph now involves about 3 spreadsheets pulling data from 4 sources and takes at least an hour to do. The worst part is that I see no effective way around this and have to give up and call it the price of organizational growth. Every other month there’s another stat worth tracking and that’s another straw to hoist up on to the camel.

I have no conclusion about this.

Categories
Email Marketing

Chris Baggott Starts New Enterprise

Chris Baggott of Exact Target is off to start something new on the blog front. Should be interesting to watch…

Categories
Daily Life Productivity Buster

Busy, so check out Free Hugs

Sorry but today I’m catching up, more tonight. Too keep yourself entertained check out the Free Hugs campaign that I saw this weekend (I know, old news but new to me, and perhaps to you). Chris Brogan had a Free Hugs shirt on at Podcamp and Mitch Joel had the clip in his presentation. Check out the story of Juan Mann

Categories
The Marketeer

Photos not shared in Flickr

A good post from Chris Brogan today – I was not aware that photos in Flickr are not shared by default. I’m sure it was made clear to me on one of those screens where I signed up for my account that I read none of…

Categories
Lead Generation Podcasting Productivity Booster The Marketeer

Return from Podcamp

Too tired… Just posted M Show.

Pictures of Podcamp Toronto

Video of sessions on Getting your company to Podacast Panel

Categories
Podcasting

It’s not in the bag

There’s nothing worse than when you reach into the bag and the stuff that you are digging for is not there. So far I have my wireless transmitter but no receiver (totally worthless). Better yet, my camera charger and the camera is back at the hotel with the laptop charger (just because I scored a seat with an outlet, you know).

The wireless here at Podcamp Toronto is excellent and Leesa Barnes is kicking the show off. Here we go…

Categories
Podcasting Productivity Booster

Unconference!

Podcamp Toronto is right around the corner and I’m very excited to check out another un-conference. The schedule can be a bit frustrating since it’s always in flux (it stinks when somebody you want to see schedules themselves at the same time as one of your own slots CHRIS BROGAN).

I have to say though that I think I’m starting to lose patience with normal conferences. I seem to learn 3x the material at an unconference and don’t have to deal with as much vendor shilling. More to report as it happens!

Categories
Podcasting The Marketeer

I am obsolete

This has been sobering this week. The latest video is done and you can check it out here – Making Playlists and Smart Playlists for Podcasts.

My problem is that the YouTube video is too fuzzy so I decided to try Revver, which looks great. The problem there is that the Revver standard size is too big for this current blog layout. I’m now realizing that basic HTML is dead, if you aren’t a pro with CSS, AJAX and something like PHP that holds wordpress together, you are the latest 1984 K Car.

I threw in the towel and dropped an email to a designer C.C. Chapman recommended.

I hope the video is of some use, but please don’t call me the Johnasaurus.

Categories
Productivity Buster

Webinar Crash

Either a windows update or something in Windows Media Player killed my webinar yesterday. The attendees were able to view my desktop but not the media file as it was playing. GoTo Meeting had the fix – there’s a random setting buried in Windows Media Player where you can set the degree of hardware acceleration. Turn it all the way down and my player crashes, turn it up and attendees can’t see the video. Put it in the middle position (I guess the technical term for that is “Juuuust Right”) and it’s fine.

So we have the makeup session today. I’ve also got a video I’m going to drop in here as soon as YouTube gets done, more later!

Categories
Lead Generation Productivity Booster The Marketeer

Trade Show Wars – Top 10 Survival Tips

March is a busy month for me with back to back trade shows, which I refer to as “The Trade Show Wars”. Trade shows really are blood and guts marketing – do the logistics, execute, get the names, and deliver sales “The Glengarry Leads”. I was horrified to realize today that I’ve been doing shows for over 10 years now.

It’s all about the preparation, I have a bunch of checklists I’ve used for many years, comment or email me if you are interested (I’m not going to bother setting up links if none of you care about this at all).

Here’s some productivity boosters for you:

  1. Shoes – Need to look good, but don’t break them in on the floor. Many hardcore folks like black rockports, I’m an ecco man myself.
  2. Carpet – you don’t need the expensive carpet, but get all the padding you can. It keeps the staff happy and after day 2 people will visit your booth just to give their feet a rest.
  3. Meeting Room – I’ve even done this splitting a 10×20 in half and curtaining off half with a nice table and four chairs. You’ll be surprised, if it’s more than 2 days you’ll have prospects visiting just to sit down and they won’t want to get up once they do.
  4. Water, Mints, First Aid Kit – Everyone’s voice takes a beating, they eat crappy food and get bad breath, and somebody always gets cut handling the booth.
  5. Box Cutters and Extension Cords packed in the booth crate – in the old days I had a toolbag I would bring in myself, these days the absolute last thing you want on your trip home is to get pulled from the airport security line for a box cutter in your bag, but you do need a sharp knife for cutting carpet or boxes excessively taped shut.
  6. Heavy duty tape measure in booth crate – if you need to run an extension cord under the carpet you can pay an hour of labor and wait 3 for it to happen or use your own razor to cut the carpet, slide the tape measure through to the edge and use duct tape to attach the cord and pull it through yourself. This is only for last minute changes dictated by the boss, if possible have this marked on your show diagram and the electricians will do this free if it’s ordered by the deadline.
  7. Spare Bulbs – Pack them with the lights, not the kind of thing you need to look for on site.
  8. GPS – This can save your life, I had a screw up once that I was able to fix b/c I was able to get to the nearest Home Depot, get a hacksaw, pipecutter, and a bunch of plumbing stuff in under an hour.
  9. Ship to the warehouse – Most shows you can ship to the warehouse up to a week ahead, or ship direct to the show floor. Always ship early so you can confirm everything has made it. The bigger the show the greater the probability that boxes will be lost in the two days before the show opens.
  10. Get cell numbers on speed dial for your whole team – Do it before you get there and it will save all kinds of time.

I have a secret 11th that I’m not willing to put in print, if you’re a Ronin drop me a line. Have fun! LOL