Live from BlogOrlando - Community Blogs

The Media Track got moved to an entirely different building and walked into highly relevant discussion about community blogs and blogger/editor etiquette.

Much of the discussion is about moderation. Looks like the Orlando Sentinel, a newspaper that has been offering community blogs for nine months, has not run into having to moderate entries that contain inappropriate content or content that contains affords commercial content.

Best Practices:
Establish a Vetting Process - Before allowing an individual to contribute to the community blog, ensure that the individual has been vetted. (criminal check, phone interview were some checks recommended)
Do Not Allow Use of Fake Names - This seems obvious but in general, we are more likely to post higher quality content when anonymous posting is not allowed.

Live from BlogOrlando - Adapt or Die

Media Track - First Session "All About Journalists Starting to Blog"

Key Take-Aways
1. Journalists have a difficult time getting readers too.
2. Post multiple times a day. Be consistent with your frequency of posts.
3. Every once in a while, write a "power graph" or something that you know will stir your audience to take a position.
4.To increase readership:
a. Find similar blogs, ask them to list on their blogroll.
b. Volunteer to do guest blog posts.
c. Do a Google blog search and contact those with similar topics and have them link to you.

Live from BlogOrlando

Made it here to Rollins College where the 2nd annual BlogOrlando is being held. This one day event has truly grown and tripled in the number of attendees to 280 this year.

Keynote Shel Israel's discussion on how social media is being used by others around the world particularly China makes our country's obsession with blogging, bloggers, etc seem terribly superficial. His tale about the harassment of Isaac Mao, a social media technology entrepreneur and somewhat of the dissident in China, by his government makes the pursuit of social media in that country seem that much purer.

All Ye Over Scheduled..TimeBridge is Here

Recently, I traded about 10 emails over 5 minutes with just two other people trying to schedule a luncheon that we can all agree to. If you've ever been in this situation, and have an already over-burdened email inbox, you'll like what TimeBridge has to offer. It's a scheduling tool that has just become available in public beta. Rafe Needleman does a great job describing its features. So I won't go into detail here. What I really want to talk (rant) about is how we've become the conversation-adverse generation.

How many times have you emailed someone or IM'd a colleague in the next cube? How many emails have you thumbed on your blackberry that a 2 minute phone conversation could have resolved? It is ironic that the more connected we are, the less conversational (i.e. the art of listening and responding interspersed with the addition of new information or insight to the subject at hand) we've become. The next time you start an email to a colleague, ask yourself if a phone call or hell, a stroll to the person's desk 3 cubes away will get the issue resolved more effectively.

Start-Ups: Dangers of "Bifurcated Vision"

In case you are wondering where the word. "bifurcated" came from. I checked the good folks at www.thefreedictionary.com and it means, "to divide into two branches."

So just what am I going on about? Well, in the context of a technology start-up, it usually means that the company's founders do not share a common vision. In a society where the individual is celebrated, what's so bad about that? Unfortunately for technology start-ups operating in fast-moving industries and competing against well- or better funded start-ups, the bifurcated vision can be a fatal diagnosis. Here's why.

In highly competitive industries, companies that rise to the top are those who possess a single-minded focus on executing upon their vision but have the flexibility to adapt operationally to accommodate market adjustments. A company suffering from bifurcated vision will not be able to put their full arsenal of development, sales and operational resources toward shared goals and the execution against one vision.

For instance, engineering may be focused on developing product suites that do not help the company win deals because the cto has a very different vision from the ceo. Sales winds up having to sell products that prospects don't want to buy. In the worse case scenario, engineering may tell the business functions that features are not ready due to stretched resources when in actuality, resources are being allocated to the founder's pet code projects that may not have any relevance to sales efforts in the 12-18 month term. Does this sound familiar?

Here's another example of fall-out from a company suffering from bifurcated vision. A start-up "promotes" its cto-founder to the role of evangelist. But his/her vision is not aligned with the company and the executive(s) who have been brought in, usually by the investors, to "take the company to the next level." There is a good likelihood that this newly minted evangelist will be promoting his/her version of the vision. While this may seem innocuous enough, it can create confusion in the market place about the company's direction and value proposition causing unnecessary FUD among customers and other stakeholders.

The fix for the first scenario would be to introduce transparency into resource allocation processes across the company ASAP. This will have the effect of identifying inefficiencies and gaps very quickly. Secondly, it is the CEO's responsibility to have a closed-door discussion with the founder about the situation and put a stop to the practice asap. The absence of both these measures can be disastrous to the company's long term viability.

The second scenario is less complicated and dire. It too requires the CEO or senior board member to have a private conversation with the founder addressing the situation. Companies that can afford this may want to assign an R&D project to the cto for whom the company has outgrown.

Share your anecdotes of bifurcated vision...