Don't Get Jacked Around

I just got a call from "Steve Wilson" from OS Advisor wanting remote access to my computer.  These scams are common, in case you are wondering how to tell, here is the page with tips from Microsoft.  Luckily it is one of the top results when you search for "OS Advisor Scam".

The crazy thing about this is how brazen the attempt was: Steve said his company was authorized my Microsoft and that the "Mother Server" for Windows had received a message from my computer.  Recently, On the Media did a piece on the Nigerian Prince scams -- and why they are still around.  

The design of the scam is to only draw in the most gullible people.  If you are willing to believe that there is a "Mother Server" or a Nigerian Prince -- you will probably be willing to do the other stuff they want -- like send ten thousand dollars or turn over access to your computer and your credit cards.

What a crazy world we live in.  Sure makes getting the real marketing message through the noise a lot harder.

Center of the Ecosystem

Vertically integrated technology companies like Apple and Oracle have established themselves in the center of the the consumer and enterprise ecosystems by building proprietary systems with just about every feature contributing to customer lock in.  The strategy has clearly worked for them, so far.  Getting new customers is going to get more and more difficult for them as the world moves away from lock in and the competition does something other than push customers away by throwing up ill conceived and poorly executed competing products or services.  

In this context a diverse and horizontally oriented technology firm will have a once in a decade opportunity to establish itself in the center of the new world -- not unlike the way IBM did in the ‘90s.  In fact, we can learn a lot from Lou Gerstner's playbook from nearly 20 years ago.  Here are the three partner relationship management things a company could do to establish itself at the center of the technology world of the next decade:

Embrace Open

The difference between open-ness and open source are more nuanced than can be described in this post.  One similaritiy however serves our purposes.  In an open system everyone is welcome.  Everyone.  Some companies can do this and others just cannot get their brains around it.   Companies that are insecure about the value they deliver -- build walls and moats. Companies that are good at what they do are the ones that can let everyone in.  

Love Engineering Great Products

A company with an engineering pedigree and that is full of talented people that love building great products has what it takes to be open.  Such a product focus injects confidence into the decision making about being open.  

Deliver Value Every Day

The irony of the lock-in strategy is that its is a cancer that eats the host from the inside out.  IBM has shown us that the discipline of being open inspires everyone in the company to deliver value every day. 

A company that works to immobilize its customers with contracts and proprietary and non transportable systems sends a message to customers -- but more damaging is the message it sends to the people inside the company.  Soon the company is hiring more lawyers than engineers.  And that cannot end well.

Make it Transparent

This is the third in a series of posts about how big new thinking could transform the way computer hardware, software and services are sold.  Here is the first post that serves as an overview, and here is the second post that dives into the details.

In this post I will outline what the transparency idea, and offer some specific suggestions of action to take.  But first, why transparency is important.  

Partners that are involved in a conversation are engaged and productive.  Transparently exposing some of the machinery inside your partner organization will create that conversation.  Here are three specific things that create transparency:

Share Reporting

Often times the reports exist, but for one reason or another are not shared with partners.  Even my residential power company now shows me how my power consumption compares to my consumption last year and the aggregated consumption data of my peers.  Expectations about better reporting are going up fast due to these consumer experiences -- and a good partner program must keep pace with progress.

Allow Multiple Access Points

Social media has trained everyone to engage in a web of communications.  The tools exist today to employ social media tactics that allow for a criss cross and free flowing exchange with partners -- that still have consistent messages and institutional memory.

Admit Mistakes

Everybody makes them.  Everybody knows it.  Labeling a bug as a feature just drains away credibility too fast.  A simple post that says what the intention was, what was learned, and what is next will go a long way towards long term successful partnerships.

Those against transparency claim it looks unprofessional, or say it is a good thing to start next year after we get our act together.  Transparency starts as a way of thinking and then becomes operational as team members and partners experience the benefits.  Unless it starts today, it will always be something to do another day.

Lance Wants The Money

Lance knows he did it and so does everyone else.  Nike knows it and they are sticking with Lance, and Oakley and Budweiser too.  Good thing I switched to Coors this summer.

Now I have been known to go over the speed limit.  When my kids say: “Daaad!” I say that it is best not to get caught speeding, but I do it anyway.  When I do get caught however, I pay the ticket.  I don’t put my fingers in my ears and say “LALALALALA”, skip my court date and then say I wasn’t speeding.  It is true that everyone else was doing it too and I was just stupid enough to get caught.  But speeding I was.

Lance Armstrong won 7 Tour de France titles because he was better at doping than everyone else that was doping -- of which there were many people I’m sure.  He is not a great athlete, he is a great doper.  

I would guess that Lance is trying to hang on to prize money and endorsement money that he won by breaking the rules and weaseling out of it better than the other guys.  I hope that in the end the lawyers drain him dry.  Maybe then the sponsors will bail too.   If Lance was really going to LiveStrong - he would give back the titles and the money and do what he can to inspire the next generation to seek victory on the training track instead of in the lab.

Any advertiser that chooses to stand by Lance now should have its head examined.

The NY Times Lays Out the Facts.

Ad Age reporting the Nike, Oakley, and Anheuser-Busch stick with Lance.

The Wall Street Journal wants Lance to get out of the grey.

Best Quote:  

He could have chosen to go to arbitration, which would have meant that witnesses could testify against him in a hearing possibly open to the public. Instead, he chose to bow out of the process.

in the NY Times.

Make it Unbelievably Easy

Many industries are going through revolutions where new entrants are completely changing the market.  What Amazon.com is doing to bookstores and Google is doing to newspapers is just the beginning.  The companies turning markets upside down are do so by not knowing how it has always been or how it is supposed to be.  In our business almost every maker of computer hardware of software makes it stunningly complicated to be a channel partner.  Partners are made to jump through hoops of every conceivable size and shape, achieve certifications, prove sales history, get customer testimonials, maintain a staff of salespeople or engineers, and on and on.  And as soon as a partner has run the gauntlet with one manufacturer, the trials start all over with another one.  Each of these relationships are at least as complicated as that with a bank.  And to be a successful technology service provider and selling partner to the manufacturers of the technology, more than a dozen and sometimes several dozen of these channel partner relationships must be maintained.  There may not be any other industry that makes it this hard to get the parts and pieces it needs to be successful.  Can you imagine if a restaurant had to maintain 20 or 30 complex and fragile business relationships -- just to get the ingredients needed for its recipes?  

All of this market friction points to a big opportunity for a new entrant to really make a big leap forward -- just by making things unbelievably easy.  Here are some ideas that just might achieve that end:

Be One Company

All big companies have quarreling departments and the makers of computer hardware and software are no exception.  Apple Computer presents a single face to its customers and that one thing should not be underestimated.  Lesson number one therefore is to Be One Company.  After all, a new entrant will certainly be one company.

Take Advantage

A great deal of the component parts needed for partner relationship management already exist in the marketplace.  From LinkedIn profile information to already achieved partnerships with other industry participants, partners are forever re-doing work that they have already done.  Most large technology manufacturers force their partners to use their proprietary system when all of the information is already being maintained elsewhere.  To be the unbelievably easy partner program to work with, take full advantage of the other systems available.  It would be a great partner experience to link to profile information and automatically graed access to those that had certifications from the competition.

Ask What You Can Do for Your Partner

Mapping programs offer up more than one route to a desired destination.  Engaging with partners can be achieved by designing a program and getting partners to conform, or alternatively, by asking partners and building to their specification.  Either way the outcome is increased sales, in fact the latter probably delivers better results.  So don’t ask what the partner has done for you, but what you can do for your partner.

The conditions in the technology industry channel partner ecosystem are such that change will come.  The question is, who is going to make it happen?

Big Pain Equals Big Gain

Everyone in our solar system knows about the pain going on at HP.  I would not be surprised if even a few extra terrestrials know about HP’s roller coaster ride of CEOs, acquisitions, write downs, re-orgs, lay offs, and other painful stuff.

The tendency of course is to write off a company with this much trouble.  Why work for, work with, sell to, sell with, or even write blog posts about a company that seems to put its business plan in the blender before deciding what to do each morning?  

Well, because with this much pain there is enormous opportunity for gain.  In the fifteen years we have been helping big technology companies market through their partners we have been involved in many conversations with HP.  Most of those conversations have included a significant thread about how HP does things and about how there was no chance the way HP did things was ever going to change.  

Well, things are changing now!

On every measure except market capitalization, where even Facebook has a bigger valuation, HPQ is pretty big.  Seventy three years of history, over one hundred billion dollars in revenue, and 350,000 employees.  Add to this HP’s tens of thousands of business partners that sell their hardware, software, and services all over the world and I would not be surprised if the HP ecosystem was more than a million people strong.

No matter what experts say about the rapid pace of change inside technology companies, every company in every industry avoids change and HP and the technology industry are not immune.  Right now, the move to the cloud and BYOD is moving the pieces around the technology industry chess board and presenting a once in a decade opportunity to companies willing to change big.

So all of the planets are lined up and HP is Jupiter.  

If I were HP, this is what I would want to do with my influence:

• Make it UNBELIEVABLY EASY to work with HP
• Set a new TRANSPARENCY standard
• Establish HP in the CENTER of the ecosystem
• Make each change FOUNDATIONAL

Clearly these measures build on each other.  Each will have an impact on its own.  With a little luck the compound impact could change the whole industry.

Speaker Summary: Camile McDormand

Today at Emerald City Rotary we had a terrific speaker from the Soros Foundation, Camile McDormand.  

The Soros Foundation is the work of George Soros, the legendary immigrant from Hungary that became a titan on Wall Street.  Famous and now rich for his work in currency trading, Soros was blamed in many south east asian nations as the cause of the 1997 currency crash, also known as the 'Asian Contagion'.  

It is particularly ironic therefore that the Soros Foundation has such a soft spot for Burma/Myanmar where Ms. McDormand has been spending the past few years working with refugees on the Burma - Thai border.  These refugees number in the hundreds of thousands, many of which have been living in the confines of camps for decades.  Truly a problem that I am grateful someone with the resources and resolve of the Soros Foundation is worried about.

Camile McDormand gave us a great overview of the history of the problem, with particular attention to the time starting with the attempted revolution in 1988 and the military government's brutal suppression.  Since 1990 Aung San Suu Kyi has been one of world's the most well known political prisoners, under house arrest until earlier this year when she was elected into the lower house of parlament.  We were delighted to learn from Ms. McDormand that more progress has been made in this embattled country in the last year than in the prior 50.

The Soros Foundation has been working hard to bring aid to the refugees, but also to assist in the education of a new generation of leaders for the country.  Recognizing that the local education system was not teaching critical thinking skills, the Soros Foundation is working to provide educational opportunities for Burmese citizens -- outside of the country. 

According to Forbes, Since 1979 the Soros Foundation has contributed 8.5 billion dollars to causes such as this. 

The Value of Self Organizing Strategies

Getting everyone to work together in a large organization is nearly impossible.  I propose it is actually impossible when approached by brute force.  Making employees work together is about as fun as making a two year old eat his Gerber plumbs.  

Self organizing entities do somehow work together with seemingly little effort.  Think of the large flocks of birds or large schools of fish as the fly or swim together.  There is no time for top down orchestration -- it just works.  There is an invisible feedback loop that reinforces certain behavior that causes the actors to act together, all without a single email or meeting.

Here are a few basic principals to try when thinking about using self organization to your advantage: 

1. Keep it Simple - and reinforce:  Yes, one of the oldest maxims when it comes to marketing and advertising.  A simple clearly communicated message is essential.  All messages must reinforce a theme.
2. Listen hard for feedback:  Feedback is everywhere and to be effective leading a fragmented organization listening is tied for first as the most important part of the formula.  This means not over-reacting to outliers too.
3. Many small adjustments:  The theme here is constancy; constant communication, contstant feedback, and constant adjustments.  These are not gigantic launches with canyons of silence between them.  
4. Let the "stick" take care of itself:  So many programs are tied down by rules and their enforcement.  Not only do these establish barriers between top performers and their goals, but they take valuable resources away from communicating, listening, and adjusting.  Left alone, the outliers will take care of themselves.

When coordinating marketing activities across large organizations, particularly those like our clients that also involve tens of thousands of partners that are in fact outside of the company, some of this self organizing stuff is helpful to think about. 

Big Data in Big Companies

We work with big technology companies.  If there is anyone that is really doing Big Data, I would think it would be big technology companies.  After all, they believe in technology, have plenty of computing horsepower, and have people that have the necessary skills to do it.  

The reality is quite the opposite however.  Most of the time we are working to overcome very simple problems like duplicates or obviously incorrect entries.  The real data industry came up with ways to deal with these problems decades ago.  Nevertheless, our clients have such low confidence in their data that they often retain us to start over.

Here are a few of the things we see preventing big companies from truly using Big Data:

1. Legal Departments:  The legal department does not play to win, they play to not lose.  They would much rather prevent the collection of data than otherwise.  After all, a company that has not collected any data does not have to worry about losing data in a breach and then getting sued. 
2. Poor Planning:  Good data handling takes time and effort.  Data initiatives invariably take longer than a quarter to implement, and longer than that to produce returns.  Almost all companies are looking to hit the number this quarter.  
3. Internal Competition:  Competition between departments can cause them to hoard data (at best) or go underground with their data (at worst), creating silos of data that is riddled with duplicates and innacuracies.
4. Turnover:  The people in charge of these data initiatives have their eyes on bigger and more important (more visible) jobs -- so they change often.  The person taking over the job is just as uninterested in long term data health, so the problems go unaddressed.

As with many promising technologies, Big Data's biggest challenge is not in the technology but in the way people work together inside companies.  There are enormous gains to be made by the companies that realize what can be done with these new tools and organize themselves in such a way to take advantage of it.

My Version of Big Data

There is an article in the NY Times today about big data by Steve Lohr.  It has all of the parts of a newspaper article including a headline, quotes from experts, references to other articles... butI have read it twice and I can't find any actual description of what big data is.  And the headline says it is "How Big Data Became So Big".

Yes, everyone is into Big Data these days and it is getting bigger every day -- but what is it?

Wikipedia says:  "a collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes awkward to work with using on-hand database management tools. Difficulties include capture, storage,[4] search, sharing, analysis,[5] and visualization."

No so very helpful.  Aren't definitions not supposed to reference themselves? Yes indeed, big data is, well big data.

Network World quotes AWS:  "Any amount of data that's too big to be handled by one computer."

...Brother!

Here is my definition: Big Data is the complete set of all information associated with a topic or subject.

Here is why I think this is interesting:  the data world is a completely different place when you have all of the information.  When I say ALL I mean every single thing you have ever purchased at a grocery store, every single trade on the stock market, every single temperature reading at a weather station... you know:  ALL.

Until very recently, it has not been possible to put all of the data into one database and analyze it, so we have always sampled data.  Sampled is like polling.  A small amount of data is captured and then broad generalizations are made.  In some cases the broad generalizations turn out to be somewhat accurate.  People who buy butter also buy bread.  

People buying butter is completely different than when you are going to next buy butter.  And that is why big data is a big deal.

We know that 100,000 cars per day drive over the HWY 520 bridge, but that does not say when you are going to drive over it next.

The thing that I find so amazing about the article in today's paper is that the reference to artificial intelligence really waters down the whole movement.  It sounds like these awesome computer scientists have figure out how to take data sets that used to be too big to analyze and have figured out how to generalize things about them.  Why would you ever want to do that?  The benefit in building a space ship is in the going to space, not in building a better space ride at the park!  We already generalize -- by polling.

Here are a few cool things I think could happen with big data:

1. My personal dataset:  An ever growing database of everything I do, that I can analyze however I want.  All of my friends, activities, purchases, pictures, work output, healthcare, even my emotions... all in a format that I can use to figure things out.  I could figure out what activities lead me to do healthy things.  Sounds goofy I know, but my happiness could be mapped against the things I did or the stuff I bought.  Who knows what I could learn.
2. My next hire:  What if LinkedIn could give me a list of the top 10 people I should hire.  Not people that matched job descriptions I posted, but analyze all of my employees, my competition, and all of the millions of people in LinkedIn -- and help me target the people that will change my business the most.
3. My next vacation:  Take all of my travel history, every book I have read, my business travel schedule, my kids interests (their books and experiences), and put that all together and give me a top ten list of places to go and maybe even which of my friends to invite.

Here are a few not so cool things that could happen with big data:

1. My insurance gets cancelled right before I get diagnosed with something terrible.
2. I get audited every year by a fully automated IRS.
3. Telemarketers figure out what to say to keep me on the phone longer.

All up, I am a believer in big data -- no matter how everyone else defines it --  and I think it is going to be a great next ten years.  

Some Things Never Change (NBC for example)

The 1976 Olympics was my first.  in ’72 we lived overseas and did not have a TV, and ’68 -- I just don’t remember.  But ’76, that was awesome.  I watched everything I could and found it absolutely mesmerizing.

This year, I have watched a few hours.  Mostly with the sound off and while reading something else.  If a cool looking event, swimming has the highest cool factor for me, happened to be on when I looked up, I would turn on the sound and watch.  I don’t think I watched a single commercial.  I am not sure if this makes me one of the 20 to 35 million nightly viewers on NBC or not.  

I was busy during the NBC’s airing of the opening ceremony, so I missed it.  I spend half an hour or so looking for video of the opening ceremony and could not find it.  I suspect that just like the movie people, NBC wanted to make sure it was not available for some reason.  I did hear about Tunnel Bear, a web site that would enable me to watch the coverage by the BBC, or any other country.  It went on my list of things to check out, but now the Olympics is almost over and I have not done it and probably wont.

Recently a friend said that she just did not find it all that compelling to watch NBC’s coverage either.  She was also not interested enough in the games to find other ways to watch it.  She just opted out of the olympics this year.

Two individual opinions does not a survey make, but I suspect that there are some other people that have also drifted away from the Olympics.  Our media consumption habits ave changed and NBC has not changed much.

In fact, it seems that one of the things that has not changed since 1972 -- or even before that -- is the way that NBC thinks about its audience.  If you are interested in this kind of thing, check out Jeff Jarvis’ Buzz Machine.  He is on a crusade to change NBC -- good luck with that Jeff.

Still No Reason for Wall Street to Change

I suppose I should not be surprised that five years into the financial crisis that nothing has really changed in the way that the financial markets work.  Either way it is disappointing that our economic system, arguably the most adaptable, has not adapted.  The explanation: no change will come until it is really needed (forced on us).

Yesterday, Andrew Ross Sorkin posted this piece on why individual investors are fleeing equities.  I should say still fleeing, because individual investors have been leaving the market this entire time.  Here is a post I wrote on the subject in May 2010.

My thought then was that Goldman Sachs and the other market manipulators would eventually want real regulation because they would need it to get customers to come back.  Imagine if we had as little confidence in the FAA as we do in the SEC -- Amtrack might have a viable business!

It now seems like such a polylanna-ish thought that we would ever be able to overcome the influence of Goldman Sachs and the other insiders.  

Our real "problem" is that the rest of the world is in worse shape than we are, and everyone wants to park their cash in the US.  So in the end we only have to be less corrupt than the alternatives to avoid making changes.

Speaker Summary: Edie Harding

Today at Emerald City Rotary, Edie Harding from The Gates Foundation gave an overview of the work she is doing in Education Pathways and her focus on cradle to college educational initiatives.  First some numbers though.

Since 1994 the Gates Foundation has contributed $3 Billion in Washington state.  Half of that has gone for health initiatives, half for education with the aim of reducing intergenerational poverty.  Through their Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) study the Gates Foundation has established that teachers make the biggest difference in educational outcomes, and are investing most heavily in initiatives focused on teachers.  They have quantified that a good teacher has 14 times the impact of reducing class size by 5 students.

The Gates Foundation hands out 170 grants, the average of which is $760,000.  Those of you with good math skills or a calculator on your phone realize that this is a funding pace of $130 Million - per year.  All in Washington state.   They are focusing on college ready, but mostly community college ready, and early learning.  

Their goals are not for the feint of heart:

1. Increase college readiness to 75%
2. Double the number of students ready for college in the hardest hit areas
3. Eliminate the performance disparity found in low income students

It is safe to say that we are all very fortunate to have The Gates Foundation in our back yard.

Here is the link to the MET Study page on The Gates Foundation website.

Here is a link to Edie Harding's public Linked In page.

The New World of Film Making

Here is more from my effort to learn as much as possible about where the documentary film business is going.  The following seven observations may be obvious to people in the business, but hey, I am not in the business.  

Pick the Right Topic and No Polarization

Projects must tend more towards journalism and less towards propaganda.

Audience Comes First

From a proof of concept by raising seed funding, to keeping the project alive until it is fully designed, the audience comes first and tracks the project all of the way.

The Roadmap - Finish the Movie Before...

Since the audience funded production, the big money can wait until the film is done, and it is time for P & A.  The film maker can now avoid dead end funding sources or giving up control.

Big Money Relationships

With the film complete (paid for by the audience) and the audience following verifiable, P & A money can be raised without giving away the farm.

2 Way Conversations 

The relationship between the film maker and the audience involves a conversation.  The audience can be a source of inspiration without letting the crowd pick the ending.

Free Generates More Revenue

The film can build audience, interest and momentum by offering any combination of free and paid content.  Err on the side of wider distribution and the money will come from everything ranging from companion products to events. Build a Brand and Connect the Lists Always keep an eye on the next project and employ tactics to connect one following to the next.  This is brand building at its most fundamental.  

The Sum of the Parts

The week is only half over and I can already say it has been one of the best weeks of the year for me.  I had the chance to spend the last two days with a small group of very smart and motivated people talking about how the documentary film business is evolving and to think out loud about how films could be used to change the world.  

As we wrapped up yesterday afternoon, many of the participants somewhat sheepishly mentioned to me that they didn’t feel like they contributed as much as they got back.  I say sheepishly because the people involved are not ones to shy away from contributing. This leads me to think about how collective impact (outside of the not for profit world this is sometimes called collective action) works and how systems can be created where each participant does not feel overwhelmed or over taxed, but everyone together accomplishes great things.

Fortunate people have been on small teams that work together well and make great things happen with a level of effort that may be great but never seems painful.  In my experience, those groups have been small.  What would happen if that same ease of working together, trendier people would use the word “synergy” here, could be expanded to thousands or even millions of people? If this could happen, we just might be able to change the world.  

We have some pretty big problems to face and it is going to take something like this to stare them down.  No matter your political stripes, pollution, population, healthcare and wealth distribution are some big issues that are influenced by extremely complex systems.  What if each of us only needs to do one little thing, but by working together could change things dramatically?  

A recently study reported that 75% of people that watched the movie “Food Inc.” changed their eating behavior. Films just might be a big part of building a system that would reverse some of the unbelievably bad trends we see today.

The dark side of collective action is already at work ensuring that our appetite for fuel and french fries always increases.  We live in a system -- and I think we can change it.  We can be part of a world where the result of our collective action is greater than the sum of our individual contributions.

Stay tuned for more of this thinking.  Until then, check out these films:  

The Midway Film by Chris Jordan

Chasing Ice by Jeff Orlowski

Book Review: Kill Decision by Daniel Suarez

I had the good fortune to drive back and forth across the state last weekend and while doing so I finished the audiobook version of Kill Decision.  As with his first two books, Daemon and Freedom, Kill Decision is one of those books you want to race through, but also that you don’t want to end.  It is not so much that Suarez is a great writer - but he sure invents great plot lines and does great research.  

Here are the things I want to remember from the book:

1. We should pay more attention to the ongoing debate about drones
2. We are our own worst enemy, and going forward it will be harder and harder to figure out who to point our military at
3. Animals, in this case ants and ravens, are much smarter than we think
4. Collective Impact is something I want to think about more.

On that last point.  Collective Impact is a way to think about large and fragmented participants working in a semi-coordinated way to accomplish big things.  That is my definition, I am sure there are better ones.  The Weaver Ants in the book are capable of amazing things, unfortunately mostly destructive but nevermind that.  While these ants and the drones in the book seem quite evil, it is not hard to think about how a properly designed and implemented system could bring about incredible social change -- for good.

Other reviews. (you may recall that my “book reviews” are really my notes about the book.  I know there are much better reviewers out there).  In this case I only found one good one.  Not sure why the regular papers have not discovered Daniel Suarez.  Maybe when he gets called to testify in DC about how he knew drones were a bad thing...

James Floyd Kelly in Wired: This is a very good review with a conversation with the author at the end.  I guess that is the good thing about not quite being discovered yet.

Speaker Summary: David Engle

Today at Emerald City Rotary, David Engle, the new Superintendent of the Port Townsend School District spoke about the lessons he has learned during his long and distinguished career as an innovator in education.  We all know that schools are even more resistant to change that most people and organizations, but David showed that with the will to make a difference and a bit of disregard for the rules -- all kinds of amazing things can be accomplished.  

He cleverly tied the whole thing together with five words that end in "ity".

Necessity:  He was given the job of changing a middle school in Nebraska from its last place ranking or else it would be taken over by the state.  He leapfrogged the other schools by jumping to a model of 1:1 computing -- where every student got a laptop.  Within three years, kids from more affluent neighborhoods were trying to get into this school from the wrong side of the tracks.  Last place to first place.

Opportunity:  As principal of Ballard High School, he turned the good fortune of a brand new building into a brand new Maritime Academy.  Out with the auto shop and in with a curriculum that took advantage of local expertise and that has since become established as a cornerstone of the community.

Impunity:  At Squalicum High School he turned an underused library into a library that took advantage of new tools and technology.  Changing the attitude of the entire school.

Futurity:  Possibly a new word that captures his vision for the Port Townsend school district.  A community that will benefit from his energy and experience.  Even if it shakes things up a bit!

Capacity:  While principal of Interlake High School he partnered with Microsoft to create a world class IT curriculum with cast of computers from a local business.  All while building an IB program.

He concluded by pointing out that we know how to create great schools, but we don't know how to make change sustainable, and then he challenged everyone to do something for our local schools.  Take risks -- break rules.

Here is David Engle's Biography.

Speaker Summary: Jen Mueller

Jen Mueller,  Roots Sports Reporter spoke to Emerald City Rotary yesterday on "Overcoming Communication Obstacles".  What does one do when women expect conversations to be 2 hours and men expect 10 minutes?  Talk in 15 second pieces.  Mueller's presentation was full of practical advice that anyone could put into practice right away.  Clearly she knows how to communicate effectively and she made it look easy to keep the audience engaged.

Here are a few other pieces of sound advice:

When doing anything make sure to:

• Have a specific strategy
• Exploit your opponent's weakness
• Develop a specific plan of attack

Leave nothing to chance. 

The length of the perfect conversation: 2 hours or 10 mins?

• Break your comments into 15 second increments - about 3 sentences
• Men want information 
• Women want connection

Conversations need to be productive:

• Have connection points
• Build rapport 
• Create an opportunity for follow up

All together Jen Mueller was a terrific presenter.  You can learn more about her here. 

Meaningful Marketing: 3 Must Haves

To some people the words "meaningful" and "marketing" just should not be found together.  I prefer to think of this as an opportunity instead of an oxymoron.  Rarely does a day go by without hearing someone discard ideas, thoughts, or proposals as worthless with a dismissive comment like "oh, that's just marketing".

Despite this flood of popular sentiment against the value of marketing, it is possible for marketing departments to do something meaningful.  Take Google Fiber for example.  Later this month, Google will go live with its fiber network in Kansas City.  This initiative to bring super high speed internet connections to an entire community will have some engineering value, but really it is brilliant marketing.  Meaningful Marketing in fact.

Here is where I set the bar on achieving meaning in marketing:

New Revenue:  No way around it, Marketing must create new revenue.  This is the same measure everyone else uses, so I thought I would put it first.  Don't roll your eyes yet, the next two do propose less traditional measures of meaning.  And after this item I am not going to include "building the brand", "supporting the key messaging" or any other marketing mumbo jumbo.  In the case of Google Fiber, the 25% of the population in the Kansas City community that do not now use the Internet -- will clearly be a new revenue opportunity for Google.

Bi-Directional:  Just like the Cluetrain Manifesto said over a decade ago.  Marketing should be a conversation.  A full page advertisement is a megaphone blasting away at customers - not bi-directional at all.  The Google Fiber idea is bi-directional because Google will see what the customers decide to do with their connection.  Even if they do nothing, that in itself is a communication to Google.  Some people will say that a company like Google is not good at meaningful marketing because they have no phone number on their web site and no call center to call.  I disagree.  Google watches every communication customers send -- as they use Google's search engine -- and make daily improvements to the algorithm in response.

Intrinsic Value:  Finally, and very few people do this today, marketing should have some intrinsic value of its own - and that is value to the customer.  Marketers often think that even if their campaign does not drive revenue, it does support the brand, or generates goodwill.  This is not of value to the customer.  Google Fiber does have intrinsic value because a free fiber connection to the internet does benefit those that are connected.   

I am on the hunt for other examples of Meaningful Marketing initiatives.  Feel free to send them my way.

Speaker Summary: Judge Bruce Hilyer

Washington State Superior Court Judge, Bruce Hilyer, spoke to Emerald City Rotary this morning about judicial independence.  If you are like me, you probably have not thought that much about judicial independence.  

Clearly we should think about it more because without it our Washington judges would be for sale.  And in the wake of Citizens United, it may be on the way.  Sound crazy?  Judge Hilyer pointed out today that in some states the Super Pacs are already buying judges.  In a state where it takes millions to get elected to the bench, instead of the mere hundreds of thousands as it does in Washington, Judges are very likely to be in the debt of big donors.  

The tale only gets worse as the Super Pacs are raising money from trial lawyers.  I have to say that the thought of a lawyer getting the shake down from a lobbyest does have its appeal.  They do deserve each other.  But even lawyers are people.

The Judge went on to discuss how he thought the Supreme Court's recent decision about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) was well crafted by Chief Justice Roberts because it walked the Supreme Court back from politics.  No matter your political affiliation, we should all agree that anything to help the Supreme Court recover from Chief Justice Rehnquist's involving the highest court in the 2000 presidential election is a good thing.

More about Washington State judicial elections here.

More about Judge Hilyer here.