Breaking Out of The Bubble

What an amazing day I had yesterday! So full of life and learning, every day of work should be this great!
How did it get to be this way? What did I do? Who did I meet? Where was I?

My day started out like any other day, get up, wake up the kids, walk the dog, drop the kids off at school and then head East for about 15 minutes to the nearby city of Modiin. Modiin is about 10 km east of Ben Gurion Airport, 35 km southeast of Tel Aviv and about 30 km west of Jerusalem and 20km from Rehovot where I live.

In Modiin some people I know set up a shared work space called MESH, the Modiin Entrepreneurs Startup Hub. There are hubs like this across the country. If you have never been to one, they are a reasonably inexpensive way to get work done outside your house. You get the basics included like network and wifi, desks, chairs, open spaces and offices, meeting rooms, printers and a fax (don't ask, but many things here need it)and drinks. There is even an onsite chef who makes lunches for those who want to pay for it.

I headed out to MESH for 4 reasons. First, having never been to it I wanted to see what it was like as each of these work spaces are very different form each other. Second, to see and meet my friend Daniel about an idea I had for camp for the kids. Third to catch up and listen to my friend Alan Weinkrantz a fellow technology evangelist who works with RackSpace, that I met early on when we moved here. Alan was having a breakfast discussion on PR for startups, his slides are here, I love slide #6, Above The Code: 10 Principles of Startup Communications. Lastly I wanted to see, and hear, what other people, there are about 30 companies there, are doing and thinking about as ideas work better when you collaborate with others and gain insights form them.

If you read Alan's slides, (you did right?) you would see that PR is a process which can be enhanced by having content accessible for your business. The focus was on blogging which many startups do not get around to doing for many reasons (an upcoming blog post). I volunteered, to those gathered, that this blog is just about to reach 1,000 posts and discussed how it has helped me, and others, in business.Someone asked how often they should be updating their website. I pointed out that if your blog is posted to your homepage, and your website, you are updating the site automatically. SEO problem partially solved. Thanks Alan for reminding me why I blog and to get back on track.

After the discussion, Alan gave out the gapingvoid  t-Shirts which everyone wants to have, and we posed for his scrapbook. 

Me and some of the MESH Startups

Yes, I got the t-shirt but also had some great discussions. While comparing marketing and developers with user specs and needs I suggested CRM apps suck because who wants to fill in dozens of fields when it should be a 2 or 3 field entry and finished. That discussion led to my tweeting another friend, Jon Ferrara of GoldMine fame and now CEO of Nimble. Jon and I occasionally get into deeper CRM discussions and while I really like Nimble, I do not use/need a CRM right now. I really recommend everyone look at what he is building at Nimble. Anyway, Jon agreed that the app should scour the Internet for what you need and not make you do all the work and reminded me that Goldmine was the first to populate fields for you when you entered your zip code.

Note to startups, why could we do this 25 years ago and you can't do it now? A small thing to a user maybe a big thing to a developer but it tells me the UX may not be so great. Hey it's my M&Ms tell.

Looking around the room I could see some business opportunities with everyone that are outside their comfort zones and more in mine and so a side business may get started.

My discussion with my friend Daniel and some others at MESH about camp was interesting and while it may not be feasible for this summer, I think we will do it for next year. More on this at a later time.

MESH is a great place, happy to see it was not as claustrophobic as some of the work spaces in Tel Aviv I have visited. If I had some clients there or in the nearby area, I can see working out of their spaces more regularly. The interaction everyone has makes the 30 companies feel like one big company with many divisions. While many are developers, there are sales and marketing people too and a mix of global, local, profit and non-profit companies. This is probably the one thing I miss working remotely, the open discussions that just happen and people join in. Skype chats and Twitter threads are good, but I don't always get the same excitement feelings.

After MESH I went by to see an old friend of mine from college that I found out moved here 8 years ago and since she is not a tech person basically was out of site for a long time. It was a Facebook post that we were both "Look! It's you!". Since moving here this happens quite a bit, so many people from my ancient history are here and I will get to see you all one of these days.

Went home, picked up the kids from school, they are done at 1:45 and started to catch up on emails and messages. I saw two different emails returned with good news for me. One was to meet with a company that might need my advice and the other a conference owner which I hope to help out with as an IBM Champion effort.

While I had a bunch of work to do in the afternoon and watch over a server migration at night, we had time to get out and party with our friends over bbq and drinks, which is really how every day should end.

How was your day?

Update on Advertising Age and their Lack of IT

I decided to follow up with AdAge by calling the number shown on the cover to renew my subscription.
As previously posted something is very "old school" at Advertising Age or else it is deeper than this.

The person on the phone said that my number was a subscriber number but an unverified one. Okay, I asked, how do I verify it since it was moved over from the sister magazine BtoB? She could not tell me. She also could not look me up further to validate any of my information, yet she could see me with my subscriber number.

How many other subscribers have called on them to renew and been sent on this run around? Hopefully AdAge is not paying per call for the person answering, they are paying per call as it is an 877 number.

The person on the phone suggested that I need to fill in all of the "tell us about your job" bits and my email and sign it and mail back the postcard. See the previous post about my thought on that.

So there you have it, one of the leading advertising magazines, not able to advertise for themselves and not able to manage simple CRM or subscription services. However, on the bright side they are keeping the USPS in business and making sure they keep the mail and call centers employed.

Hopefully my postcard arrives at the designated place. I wondered about this stuff 2 decades ago, at least i could fax it then. I guess they gave up on faxes, they are all for saving trees.

SugarCon is Coming to NY and I am Speaking Again

Hard to believe it has been a year since Sugarcon 2012 but here we are and this time we are going to be in Manhattan. Yes, New York City at the Waldorf Astoria.

You can find more information about the event, including the agenda, here.

IBM are the big Diamond sponsors, which means I did not have to do my pitch on IBM integration with SugarCRM like I did last year.

I will be speaking on Wen. the 10th at 3:40-4:15pm slot under Customer Engagement Strategy.

This year's session is an update from last year's successful session,
Business Anti-Social: Why the Boss Doesn't Get It

This year is:

Business Anti-Social: The Boss Needs SugarCRM, Give it To Them!

After the huge success you had following last year's session, your executive now uses SugarCRM right? Probably not all of you won that battle, ready for this year's? You need to be doing more, faster. Did you get messages out before and after the storms hit? What does this have to do with CRM? Everything! You need to help your CEO look good to the outside world, not just help the sales teams with business development. What other ways can you help your company look better to the outside world? Come listen as we revisit the mind of the executive and provide a few options to keep them even happier with your efforts. Leave the session with a new song list and a better understanding of how to help your executives, and yourselves, but most importantly your customers.

See you in New York. If you are coming, let me know, and if you are in town and want to meet up let me know as well.

Fud Buster Friday #58: You want Open CRM?

Which one is your data in?

Ever wonder when a client says they want a CRM application what they really mean?
When you push them, do they really understand what they are after?
Is it really yet another server to store repetitive data or a Cloud based solution to duplicate everything?

Or do they want to replace their existing solution...if they had one?

Some have had IBM Lotus Domino based solutions that were built in-house or from a now defunct consultant or company and want to get away from them because, well they are older solutions, and you want new shiny and exciting CRM applications. Right, because you have a 100% customizable solution and would prefer a 50% one? Sorry did we give you too many choices? Afraid to hire a developer?

Maybe you have a solution from an existing company who has kept updating it perpetually so it is not just web based but mobile as well and for all your devices. Maybe this solution is now part of SugarCRM which is open source and relatively cheap per user at around $30/month. Your Notes license is depending on the license type, renewed at $20-50/yr. So the new solution costs you 7 times as much PER USER as the one you already own.

Sure you can say development will be expensive, let's say your enhancements are $25,000. In a small company this would be overkill, but for your average 500 person company that is $50/user. Still think it is expensive?

But you say the money for an SaaS or Cloud offering comes from a different budget and out of the IT budget. Fine I can't argue with that entirely but what is more important for the data?

Huh? The data? Who cares about data we care about cost! You may say this, and that is okay.

But have you thought about how are you going to get that new solution, SalesForce, Sugar, MS CRM or whatever to connect across all your services, software, devices and secure it in a way that makes the sharing of data easier...not harder?

One client went the MS CRM route and then related to me how painful it was to integrate it into anything because of 3 things. Cost, Resources/time, knowledge. The last one especially was intriguing as they implied the Business Partner they used had no idea what they were doing. It happens. But A second client related similar issues as they dug in deeper to MS CRM. It is a build it to use it solution. Typical of Microsoft to make companies work harder to do the simple thing and leave the really hard stuff for some other time or version.

A new silo has been built and you paid for it, congratulations.

You were expecting the opportunity to merge various databases and depositories into one nice place. You still get all of that from Domino, it will connect to your MS CRM as well. One storage for all. No mess, no years of consultants.

You want a truly open solution and they are out there. IBM has worked out deals with SalesForce and SugarCRM for Lotuslive. They are partially integrated right now so calendar invites etc.. get fed through and some other points of integration. These may now start looking better to you.

In soem cases it is easier to get information into Domino, then push it out to whatever end source. No matter which way you choose, you have an open solution but that MS CRM hard to say the same.