commbasics

The Freelancers Union recently published a study on the affect of nonpayment to freelancers on the economy and to business in general. The report concluded:   Jim Carrey as Ebenezer Scrooge. "Late and nonpayment is one of the top challenges facing the independent workforce today. These workers are at greater risk of nonpayment than traditional workers, but the law does not reflect this reality. The current way that independent workers must deal with nonpayment is inequitable, time wasting, damaging to one’s finances and harmful to the economy. Instead of having to deal with nonpaying clients on their own, freelancers should have access to worker protections similar to those extended to traditional employees. These workers comprise one-third of the U.S. Workforce; they deserve protections suitable to such a significant part of the economy."   Having been a freelancer for a couple of decades I can relate, but the report missed one thing. If you wonder why the ...

As a free speech advocate I’m growing increasingly alarmed over the trend among many to limit speech that offends as well as the freedom of the press to report news. It is happening with increasing activity on college campuses and within much of our national dialog. While this is not unusual outside of the US, it’s becoming commonplace in the US. This essay was promoted when I heard Robert Scoble of Rackspace make an endorsement of the idea of filtering content that he disagrees with on his own Facebook feed.  I have a great deal of respect for Scoble. He is a journalist of integrity and an important voice for innovation in technology, but for someone like him to come out and recommend technological advances that stifle free speech by creating a freedom FROM speech was disconcerting.  Scoble’s recommendation came during the last week’s national discussion about whether Syrian refugees should be allowed into the US. The fact that I had not yet made up my own mind as to wha...

Don Tuite formally announced his retirement on April 17 in Electronic Design magazine and it is a bitter sweet moment. Don and I converse regularly on social media and we both live in Redwood City so he's not leaving my life at the moment, but I remember when he first came to Electronic Design after many years as a working engineer.  We had a couple of phone conversations about clients and stories he was working on when we both discovered that we were in the same town. From then on, Don had an open invitation to come down, have coffee, walk in our nearby park, and even take one of our team on a flight in his private plane (which she called the thrill of a lifetime since she had always wanted to become a private pilot). The conversations about technology, politics and social change is what I really enjoyed about Don's visits and calls. We never stayed on the subject very long. Once we got the business done it was on to other topics. It was the discussion of how media was ...

In the past, I’ve advised several business on how to deal with negative reviews on Yelp and the damage can be fixed with proper content and engagement, but based on what I’ve seen, I can’t advise any business to engage with them. Yelp ’s recent court victory is was the worst possible outcome for the company.  I’m not sure it’s going to survive.  (Wait! But they won!  How can that be bad?)  Glad you asked.  There were three potential outcomes for this trial.  The best outcome would be the judges finding that Yelp does not, in fact, alter reviews to favor advertisers.  But that didn’t happen.  The second best would have been a finding that they actually did and were guilty of extortion for advertising.  The worst possible outcome would be what was actually ruled: that there is nothing wrong giving advertisers an edge on the site.  The court said, tacitly, that it was pretty obvious that is what was happening but there is nothing...

The first ever Customer Experience Recognition Awards (CERA) will be part of the Information Development World (#IDW2014) program in October. The first ever Customer Experience Recognition Awards  (CERA) will be part of the Information Development World (#IDW2014 ) program in October.   CERA will recognize outstanding contributions to exceptional customer experiences by information developers in a variety of disciplines including technical communication, marketing, content strategy, customer support, translation, and product management.    Nominations for the awards are being accepted until the September 19th. You can invite folks to nominate themselves or nominate others. You can even nominate companies if you would like.  Submissions can be made to recognize companies, teams, project leaders, and consultants working in content development within any industry. CERA honorees demonstrate how content is integral to exceptional customer experience, and show co...

Been having some interesting discussions with social media marketing/techdev types the past few weeks and I've come to realize that the SM industry is about as inbred as an industry can get.  That's not good.  Here's the background: I am still very tied into the old media world through very deep relationships.  I have good friends that not only work for newspapers, they own them.  5 years ago these friends saw they businesses crumbling but they still thought there was a chance to turn it around and the SM was just a fad.  Today it is quite different.  They understand they were wrong now, but they still don't understand how to put it into the context of their audience... because the SM industry doesn't care about context.  They care about selling stuff... through relationships.  In other words, an industry built on Amway marketing philosophy. But that's not what social media is supposed to be about.  SM is abou...

A few months ago I wrote that life was not all goodness and light in the Cadence marketing world , but that seemed to be a false prophesy with the presence of EDA 360 all over the Design Automation Conference in June.  Today it was announced in EE Times that Cadence marketing wunderkinde John Bruggeman had abruptly left the company , as the company reorganizes its marketing effort once again. Kinda reminds me of what I was saying even earlier about what happens when engineers make marketing decisions. So it seems that Cadence is moving away from the big vision to expand their markets and go back to "the Cadence that wants to keep building increasingly complex tools for a shrinking and unrewarding market," as EE Times editorial director Ron Wilson said. Then again, maybe we are seeing preparation for the sale of Cadence.  Could be...?

News of the plummeting value of Chinese net company stocks  are throwing potential US IPOs into the "toilet of FUD" this morning, but the reality of the situation is probably good news for US companies without strong ties to China. Case in point is the tenuous, though deep investment of Yahoo into Alibaba (the Chinese Google).  Yahoo owns 43 percent of Alibaba and there was joy in Yahoo land over the success of AliPay (the Chinese PayPal), until the service was sold outright to the Alibaba CEO giving Yahoo 0 percent investment in AliPay. Seems the Chinese government, heavily invested in almost all Chinese corporations, are happy to sell shares of worthless companies to outside investors, but not so much when those companies actually make money.  The problem is that unless a Chinese company start making money pretty quick, the government pipeline gets cut off.  Hence the dropping value of a lot of internet companies in China. Since US companies get somet...

It’s not often that a legislator introduces a bill to not only deal with a current problem but could forestall a potential economic disaster, but I have to give props to California State Senator Ellen Corbett (D-San Leandro), the current majority leader and author of SB 242.  She’s really on to something, S B242, The Social Networking Privacy Act , does three things: Stop the publication on a networking Internet Web site of registered users’ home addresses or telephone numbers without consent Require sites to establish a process for new users to set their privacy settings as part of the registration process that explains privacy options in plain language, and to make privacy settings available in an easy-to-use format Require a site to remove the personal identifying information on request, including the information of their under-18, 96 hours  Naturally the big gorillas in the market are opposing this with phrases like "inhibition of free speech ," but they bury t...

Last week a blog post popped up last week on the Ad Contrarian  about the "massive failure" of the Pepsi "Refresh" campaign.  The author, Bob Hoffman of the redoubtable Hoffman/Lewis add agency, was claiming this proved that social media didn't  work. Let's not point out that the advertising effort Pepsi was putting out before they tried social media wasn't helping them gain market share, which is the reason they went to a social media effort.  Because that would just prove that advertising doesn't work, using Bob's logic. Instead, let's take a page out of Bob's own book. Bob says:  1. Advertising is most productive when it is focused on changing behavior, not attitudes. 2. Advertising messages should be created for, and directed at, the heavy-using, high- yield customers in your category. 3. We don’t get them to try our product by convincing them to love our brand; we get them to love our brand by convincing ...

The tragedy hitting Japan is recovering from right now cannot be fathomed in its affect on the Japanese people.  It underscores the importance of being prepared for these kind of disasters, and for knowing how to cope in the middle of it.  That's why I support emergency preparedness training in local communities and am particularly proud of my own church that is conducting classes this month in how to help people cope with these kind of disasters. In the context of this blog, however, I would like to point out how important social media can be, in conjunction with mobile technology and I bring it up today in the interest of being prepared.   In this CNN video I was watching this morning, one of the points brought up was how people should stay off the telephone lines to allow first responders and government workers to deal with the problems.  You know this is the right thing to do but when you are in the midst of the crisis it is hard for those affected to res...

The announcement of Steve Jobs taking another medical leave is an unfortunate but timely bit of news to put this series wrap up in perspective.  Jobs has established Apple as the leading consumer electronics company in the world.  For all intents and purposes, what Apple does drives the rest of the industry. Apple did not introduce the media player, it just made one that most people could use.  Apple did not introduce music sharing, it just made it legally acceptable.   Apple did not introduce the smart phone, it just made the smart phone practical for the mass market.  Apple did not introduce the tablet computer, it just reintroduced it when the public actually wanted one.  Jobs was at the center of all these decisions.  Important to note: Jobs is not an engineer.  He has some technical experience but he has stated the college course that was most responsible for the creation of the Mac was a calligraphy class he audited at Reed College,...

Last week I started a series on the importance and future of geolocal (also called geosocial) apps and outlined a few of the roadblocks to success including the lack of widespread adoption of the underlying technology (smart phones), holding the interest of the audience, and the lack of community building inherent in the current options.  Today I want to look more into that last problem and how some players are overcoming it. As I said last week, the big benefit of social media is its ability to build communities through the web.  But those communities are, for the most part, virtual.  If you are in Facebook or any other platform, you have a large group of people in your network that you have never actually met face to face.  Yet, you are in contact with them regularly no matter where they are in the world.  you know a lot about them and you have several common interests.  However, try to do that on a local level with social media and you run into a p...

   So I just got back from a 2 hour meeting with a handful of on-fire entrepreneurs from Europe who want to shake up the establishment and start building relationships, companies and jobs on both sides of the Atlantic.  "The 12 Entrepreneurs," as the group calls themselves (12 stars in the EU logo... get it?), come from all over Europe ( Austria, France, Spain, Germany, United Kingdom, Romania, Poland, Portugal, Norway, Italy, Czech Republic, Netherlands and Centrope Region (encompassing Austria, Slovakia, Czech Republic and Hungary)  and h ave launched multiple successful companies, but they have grown frustrated with Euro-reticence and Silicon Valley no-it-all-sim (yes I spelled it that way on purpose). They want to get our respective economic engines humming again. I like these guys so I have volunteered my time to get it started. The kickoff event will be a small gathering of no more than 50 invitees at the Plug-and-Play Center in Sunnyvale on Septe...

Brian Fuller announced yesterday that he is back under the employ of United Business Media and working at EE Times, although not under the position he was before (editor in chief) but as the  Products Content Strategist of EE Times Products section. From the press release; " Fuller will drive product news, information and community and also provide engineers and their marketing teams with the assistance they need to bring products to market more effectively, leveraging the breadth of EE Times' capabilities -- from products to e-learning, news, events, courses, webinars and video." This is ridiculously good news for the semiconductor industry's marketing wonks, especially those who have come to appreciate and implement social media strategies within their ranks (and there are still damn few of those).  Brian has been on a personal journey into the social world that began at EE Times and their convulsions over whether to stay as a traditional media house or...

My last minute prep is complete and a full calendar of live video interviews at the Design Automation Conference in Anaheim... There's a good list of people signed up to talk from Magma, ARM, Accellera and a couple of companies in the wireless space making their debut.  We'll also be meeting up with some social media entrepreneurs The interviews will be on Footwasher Media's Vpype channel  live at 5 minutes after each hour starting at 9:05 Monday and continuing to our last broadcast at 12:05 Tuesday.  You can catch the archived versions from the channel, but I'll be posting some of them on New Tech Press as well. I'm not going to spend much time on the corporate news but am looking into the viability of the industry in the current economic market, what companies are doing to make the SoC industry profitable again and what technologies have the potential of breaking free in the next couple of years.  There will be an opportunity to ask questions via chat on the Vpype...

Big news all around today.   Denali and Cadence merge and New Tech Press will go to DAC this year with live video broadcasts on line. Yep, today we reached agreement with Vpype , the social video startup for partial sponsorship of live (and later archived) interviews with technologists and industry leaders at the Design Automation Conference in Anaheim, beginning June 14. Here's the catch: You won't be able to see the live broadcasts unless you have a Facebook account.  You'll have to wait until the archived interviews go up on the Vpype site, New Tech Press, and the NTP network partners, like Electronic Products , as well.   The offer of sponsorship came after I started a series on the Use of Social Video  a couple of weeks ago on Facebook that will be continuing indefinitely and will probably be expanding to multiple weekly events on other subjects. So this is a heads up on both of those opportunities.  We had about 10 people in the audienc...

The hot news today is that the EE Times Group of United Business Media (UBM) has purchased the DesignCon conference for a bargain price of $1.4 million.  Yikes.   I've always enjoyed DesignCon because it's technical content is just outstanding and very diverse... and I know I'm not alone in that belief.  Most editors I talk to prefer going to DesignCon than DAC for that reason.  (That's not to say DAC doesn't have good content so put your pitchforks down.)  The big difference between the two conferences is that the former is targeted toward what is going on inside the industry and the latter to what is going on in academia.  Plus dealing with the constantly moving circus that is DAC compared to the consistent location of the Santa Clara Convention Center makes planning and costs a lot easier to control. But I've also felt that DesignCon's marketing has been about at par with what DAC has always done and as a result, the emphasis never changes: DesignCon is...

I'm going to be a panelist at the IMTC 2025 virtual conference  next week talking about the future of marketing.  This is a new organization launching new conferencing technology that is pretty interesting.  Not all the bugs are worked out (like getting stuff to work on Macs correctly but I think it has a future for many applications.  All the speakers and panelists will be broadcast, live, from multiple remote locations.  Those with the proper tools can jump in to ask questions, even on camera, or at minimum can comment and ask questions on the chat screen. My panel is at the end of the first day (Wednesday, April 7) at 12:40 EASTERN Time (9:40 PDT) For my part, I'm talking specifically about the future of media and will probably take some contrarian positions in conventional wisdom (now that's a surprise).  I look forward to "seeing" many of you there.  Let's make it lively.

It's time to fess up.  All the problems with the Toyota Prius brake and acceleration systems are my fault.  Let me explain. A few years ago I was a PR consultant to VaST Systems who made virtualization technology allowing engineers to simultaneously test and modify hardware and software designs prior to prototyping and manufacture.  Shortly before I came on board, EE Times did a teardown of the Prius at the 2007 Embedded Systems Conference and one of the small bits of the discussion was how VaST Systems tools were used to build the engine control systems of the 2006 models.  VaST was very proud of this fact and as a result, they turned a lion's share of their concerns to automotive systems development.  Toyota was a marquee customer that th mentioned in all their presentations. Through most of my tenure with the company I regularly but softly recommended that improved safety and reliability should be front and foremost in their presentations, but th...