Intrinsic Strategy

I’m doing something I don’t normally do — giving a talk about marketing strategy. Specifically, about marketing myths in a down economy. I’ve seen a number of companies do things in a downturn that might make sense on the short-term surface, but which can undermine their long-term prospects.

I’ll outline five of these myths, highlight reality and offer some practical tips in a talk at the Bellevue Chamber of Commerce Business Lunch on Wednesday, August 19. If you’re in the area of Puget Sound’s Eastside, you can find out more in the events section of the Bellevue Chamber of Commerce site.

Washington’s Innovation Summit 2009 hosted a Who’s Who of leaders across various industries and government discussing the importance of innovation — and how to spur, nurture and maintain it.

Now, videos of the plenary sessions are available online, from “intrapreneur” coiner Gifford Pinchot’s fascinating discourse to McKinstry CEO Dean Allen’s conversation with Puget Sound Business Journal’s George Erb. And many sessions in between, including my own brief interview with Rogers Weed (former Microsoft VP and new director of the State of Washington Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development) and Mike Schwenk (VP and director of technology deployment at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory).

Find the program and video links here (look for the phrase “watch video”), or directly go to the Weed/Schwenk “Reflections on Innovation” video here.

Incidentally, all the lame moderator jokes have survived the transition to video. Unfortunately.

Interested in what Amazon.com, Google and Rochester Institute of Technology’s Open Publishing Lab think about the future of learning platforms for students and teachers? The Association of Educational Publishers has posted a podcast (or an “audiocast,” since there’s no subscription) to the AEP Summit general session I moderated in June, “Learning Platforms for the 21st Century and Beyond.”

In it, Jeff Keltner of Google (responsible for Google Apps in the education market), Laura Porco of Amazon.com (director of Kindle Books), and Michael Riordin of the Rochester Institute of Technology (co-director of the Open Publishing Lab) discuss and debate what technologies and platforms education companies need to consider now.

After all, anyone who is 32 years old or younger — student, teacher, or administrator — has never known life without the relatively inexpensive, mass-produced personal computer.  The Apple II was released in 1977, and the original IBM PC in 1981. Even the Web browser is Sweet Sixteen.

This panel was PowerPoint-free, so it’s 1:16 of pure discussion. Download the audiocast as an MP3 file, and check out a session description and bios of the panelists. An official summary was added later at the AEP blog. You’ll also find audiocasts and presentation files for other sessions of interest at what was, overall, a great AEP Summit. A once-live Twitter stream @FrankCatalano (#AEP09 or #AEP) is here.

The Software and Information Industry Association has posted a summary of the Ed Tech Industry Summit session on embedded assessment in digital learning products. You can find it, as a PDF, here.

The panelists kindly put up with my PowerPoint-free moderating approach and turned in a lively and frequently illuminating discussion. Thanks to Bob Ginn, Century Consultants; Sue Koch, AutoSkill; and Mike Patterson, Curriculum Advantage.

Those interested in notes from other ETIS sessions can find them posted on the SIIA ETIS Web site. A Twitter stream @FrankCatalano (#ETIS or #SIIA) is here.

Pop quiz: Blogs. Kindles. Smartphones. Hardbound paper textbooks. Pick the one traditional educational publishers fear the least.

At next month’s Association of Educational Publishers Summit in Washington, D.C., I’ll be calling on my tech background to moderate the closing keynote session, “Learning Platforms for the 21st Century and Beyond.” This PowerPoint-free 90 minutes will include Laura Porco of Amazon’s Kindle book division, Jeff Keltner of Google’s application division and Michael Riordan of the Open Publishing Lab at Rochester Institute of Technology.

The panelists will address, at the outset, why learners need new platforms, and there will likely also be brief demos. The objective? Helping education publishers understand the landscape of technology-based learning platforms and how to successfully make the transition in terms of tools, content, business models and even the approach to how what they create is used.

Should be a fun June 12th, town-hall style discussion. I plan a no-nonsense, no-more-tears approach.

It’s a curious side effect of the combination of digital learning products and No Child Left Behind accountability demands: It seems nearly every new or revised digital K-12 education product has embedded assessment.

Whether that’s a good thing — for students, teachers, parents or the industry — is the subject of a panel session I’m moderating next week at the Software and Information Industry Ed Tech Industry Summit in San Francisco. Panelists Bob Ginn of Century Consultants/ASM Research, Sue Koch of AutoSkill International and Mike Patterson of Curriculum Advantage will tackle the issue in a PowerPoint-free zone. And we’ll start right off focusing on the benefits and risks of an “assessment everywhere” approach.

If you’ve never been, SIIA’s Ed Tech Industry Summit is the primary annual event for companies and executives who work in education technology. This year’s theme is “Building Toward the Vision K-20.” Perhaps the most fun? The CODiE Awards bash Tuesday night, when the ed tech professionals mix with their peers in the software and digital content industries. Look for the tall guy with dark hair, glasses, and tux.

In the interests of irritating those on all sides of an issue, I’ve posted a guest commentary on TechFlash calling for the optional, voluntary professional certification of journalists.

Why would I do something others in my former profession might think, well, is stupid?

After all, I spent more than a decade as a full-time news broadcaster (radio and TV), and then — after I moved to marketing consulting — still worked on the side as a columnist for Eastsideweek/Seattle Weekly (for four years) and KCPQ-TV Seattle as a commentator (for another four years). I should be one of the last people to call for journalist “certification.”

Years ago, when I read Algis Budrys’ 1977 novel Michaelmas, I wasn’t just struck by its prescient vision of a distributed, networked computer intelligence. I was struck by its vision of the profession of its protagonist: as a highly respected, freelance journalist, handling his own research, video and reporting — and selling his reporting services to the highest bidder.

More than 30 years later, Budrys (who died last year) may have hit upon the journalistic future I think we’re about to embark upon: that of free-agent professionals who are medium agnostic and can produce text, audio and video for just about any kind of media outlet, including one they individually control.  Think of it as blended reporting. Read the rest of this entry »

Over at TechFlash, I’ve contributed a commentary on the potential value – even for pure Internet companies which produce only digital products – in having a physical world presence.

For more than 15 years, brick-and-mortar businesses have been creating Internet presences for both marketing and e-commerce. But there seems to have been an unspoken hesitancy to promote moves in the other direction, from Web-only to Web-plus-cinder block.

Underlying the hesitancy may be a false assumption that the Internet is the ultimate destination for all business, and that a physical presence is a sign of the past. No company, it’s implied, should go out of its way to create a real-world presence if the business was spawned and is doing fine on the Web.

Yet it does pay off.  Read the rest of this entry »

I’ll be emceeing and interviewing at Washington’s Innovation Summit on April 9 in Bellevue, WA. While I’m more of a ringleader than a highlight of the day-long event, the Summit presents a wide variety of business, research and government leaders in a rather jam-packed schedule.

The annual event used to be known as the Washington State Technology Summit, but has broadened its agenda in 2009 to include technology and sustainability topics such as energy, materials & manufacturing, urban landscapes and ecosystems.

Maria Cantwell, Gifford Pinchot, Lee Cheatham, Linden Rhoads and Bill Crounse are some of the recognizable names gathered by the Washington Technology Center to speak at this event at Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue. It should be a fascinating day.

You might also title this, “How bad customer service kills good newspapers.” For while newspapers across the country are in the fight of their lives to attract advertisers and subscribers, they have frequently been their own worst enemies when it comes to keeping the very customers they’ve worked hard to obtain.

Admittedly, I’m a focus group of one. But I also am predisposed to like newspapers (as a former alternative weekly newspaper columnist), which apparently puts me in the minority. Yet, despite my high newsprint-stupidity threshold, these customer prevention policies stun even me:

Read the rest of this entry »