Working Anywhere

Living Virtually, Working Virtually In A Time Of Crisis

The fires in San Diego have created some panic and pandemonium with friends and colleagues. I awoke to many emails, all expressing concern. I am thankful that so many people care and are expressing their concerns. It's touching and heartfelt.

Let me set everyone at ease who cares. I'm safe. Danielle and Michelle who assist me in the home office are safe, and the only thing to worry about is the wine, but even that is safe as I've spread the collection across the county and none of the places seem to be in the path of the fire (yet!) Many of you also know I also am living a nomadic life. The house is under renovation as is my entire development so while I have a house in the Del Mar/Solana Beach area of San Diego County, my wife also has a home and medical practice in Sacramento, and with this being conference season, my road warrior like life predominates so hotels are more like home these days.

When I launched my company, an Asymmetrical Marketing Communications agency, Comunicano in 1993, it was built around the model of working anywhere, at anytime. For years my motto has been, "all I need is an American Express card, FedEx and an Internet Connection, and I am in business." It has never been more true and really hit home more than today with the fires that are raging in San Diego and Los Angeles County. Something we're very much prepared for.

While I'm genuinely concerned about friends and neighbors, I'm also comforted by the fact that my team whom I consider like family is geographically spread out across the nation and we are able to keep things running to benefit our clients from around the globe we serve and service. Those on our team in the San Diego area are thankfully either not residing in the projected path of the fire or are now on the road. One member who is based in Los Angeles is keeping a close eye on things and can leave on a moments notice to higher and safer ground if needed.

As professionals in the PR industry we preach crisis management, so when put into a state of emergency like this is when all the planning ahead of time really comes in to play.

First all my team is on the Internet and can be on the Net almost anywhere at anytime. They are spread out in every continental United States time zone. I call that human redundancy.

Second, those that are in San Diego have Sprint or Verizon wireless data cards to use as needed if they have to hit the road. They have broadband in their homes and apartments as well at the homes of their families. We have multiple Boingo and T-Mobile accounts and I can easily add other T-Mobile accounts so using WiFi Hotspots (no pun intended) is also easy in case they have to leave the area so they can stay connected on the go.

Third-We're all on Gizmo Project, Skype and SightSpeed so we can stay in contact with clients and each other without touching a cell phone. Just this morning, client and friend Peter Csathy, CEO of SightSpeed agreed to make SightSpeed Pro free to business users affected by the fire at our suggestion. This is very important as people want to see their families and friend and also still need to stay in touch with their customers and colleagues. With the local governments discouraging the use of cell phones during this state of emergency this is where the Net plays the starring role and services like SightSpeed come to the forefront to keep things up and running, and making business stay "business as usual".

Anyone with a broadband connection, a webcam and a PC or Mac can talk and see one another. What's more since business needs to continue, the multi-party video conferencing feature can play a pivotal role in keeping things going face to face over the Internet, in case cell service becomes even more difficult to use. With many people evacuating for shelter, heading to hotels, houses of friends and elsewhere, as long as they have access to the 'Net, like my business, they can keep up and running. During the 911 crisis in 2001 the Metricom Ricochet network was turned back on in New York City. It helped work around the crisis and enabled communication to flow over the Net, when the cellular services got bogged down. I'm sensing the same thinking can apply here.

We're following the preachings of Michael Robertson and keeping things cloud based. We also use Basecamp from 37Signals. That allows us all to see and work on documents, track projects. It keeps me sane and our clients up to date that we've migrated over. In addition there is JungleDisk and Microsoft Exchange. Lose a laptop or crash a desktop's hard drive and most people panic. By using services like those, and having everything backed up, we're working and storing everything virtually and having it there when we need it again.

In times of emergencies, using the Internet for public safety is crucial. For business, staying connected is what the 'Net provides. Smart companies are already online, but having the tools on your tool belt and being ready to go is the key.

Like the Boy Scout's motto "be prepared" was never better echoed, and never more in practice. This is an example of "drinking my own wine" or "eating our own dog food."

Pay As You Go Data Plans Is The Way To Go

Having spent almost ten days in London this month and experimented with Pay as You Go Data plans from T-Mobile and Hutchison 3, I have to say the USA carriers are missing the mark big time.

Forget the fact that to use them you need a SIM card capable PC like the Flybook or Sony Vaios, or an unlocked USB Broadband modem like what I'm using from Sierra Wireless. That's the price to come to the party. But at a pound a day, and with unlimited data use, I'm finding that staying connected is a whole lot easier.

Here's how it works. You buy a SIM. Depending on the carrier you have to notify them via their web site or by calling up that you want their data plan, otherwise you get charged against your minutes on the pre-paid SIM. For five pounds a month you get unlimited Data from 3. For a pound a day you get Web N Walk from T-Mobile UK. For me, with a schedule that takes me to or through London every two months or so these days, its a great deal.

Need to add more to your balance? No worries. You just go into almost any supermarket or news agency, and buy a Top Up from a the pay point.

One more benefit. With T-Mobile, I can make calls back to the USA for 4p a minute. That's 8 cents and that means when I'm not using VoIP, I'm really saving money. 3 has similar plans.

The bottom line here is voice and data on the pre-paid front makes working anywhere in the UK an interestingly different proposition now for me.

Thanks, Stuart for the Kind Word

Stuart Henshall had some kind words about me, my company and our clients last week.

Over the weekend we chatted about the state of marketing communications, and specifically, the concept of blogger relations. He went on to write another very insightful post yesterday, again drawing attention to how we at Comunicano tend to approach the needs of companies seeking to work with bloggers and social media types.

Sitting on all sides of the equation-blogger, agency and media member (or having sat as a client in the past) it is sometimes easier for me to draw the distinctions than those who only share one perspective. Stuart is clearly seeing all sides.

1-Blogger relations is not about generating PR by the pound

2-Blogger relations is not about giving away free stuff (products, services, accounts, etc.)

3-Blogger relations is not about mass. It is about those that matter, in essence it is not how many, but who

4-Blogger relations is about conveying a message to the customer and enabling additional commentary beyond what the official company line is that provides insight and even unpaid endorsement

Let me now address the value of bloggers

1-Media are paid to cover stories that meets the interest of their readers; they are filters and gatekeepers. They keep companies honest in the court of public opinion

2-Analysts are paid by their clients to provide insight and opinion. Their first responsibility is to their employer, then to their clients. They take briefings to be better informed and to provide informed opinions

3-Bloggers for the most part are not paid to blog, but blog to be both better informed and to inform others. Like reporters they bring a degree of filtering, but compared to consumer media, tend to be more granular in expertise, similar to trade reporters or industry analysts, and by nature cover a subject more deeply, but have a narrower audience of loyal and regular readers

4-Media Bloggers-These are bloggers who are usually paid by a publisher. They report to an editor, fall within guidelines set. They are the new breed of journalist, and blend the best of the traditional media, analyst and blogger mentality

Each of the above plays a key roll in positioning, messaging and story telling.

The Blogger is the Tastemaker, relying on their own intuition and knowledge base and then sharing their opinions.

The Media Blogger is the Trendsetter, they pick up on the buzz or help shape it.

The Opinion or Thought Leader is usually an analyst or a mass media type. They rely in part on Tastemakers and Trendsetters to help understand and sometimes to explain what is important and why. They bring it to a wider audience, help to humanize the story and usually carry respect by a large number of people based on the universe of potential interested parties.

The Followers--these are people who tend to ask others for opinions, or seek out opinion, on things before they act. Mass Market consumers are one example. If its at retail, they figure it has to be ok for them to buy. They are different than the early adopter who finds out from the Tastemaker or Trendsetter what's new and take risk. In some cases a Tastemaker or Trendsetter will be considered an early adopter.

Fundamentally at the heart of all of these segments are two key groups. The "Free It's Me Crowd" and the "I'll Pay For It And Take My Chances" bunch. The Free It's Me crowd jumps on and off the free ride as soon as something new comes along and while experimental, and helpful at making something better, they are not the ultimate customer. The Pay For It and Take My Chances is the real consumer (even in a business to business sense.) The distinction is very wide and very deep and helps shape the target audience's opinions.

In establishing Blogger Relations programs it is very, very important not to just be talking to the "Free Its Me Crowd." For consumers or buyers at the business level, it is very important to discern the reviewers with the "free its me" mentality versus those who "would pay" for something.

When we establish programs we work towards a happy blend of both, as that creates a fair and balanced program and reporting, which is far more valuable to clients, than just being all about only generating ink and web pages of coverage.

That's why receiving the "I would pay for this" or "this is something I would keep using" type of endorsement is step one, of thinking about blogger relations, but steps two through xxx has to be supportive of the concept of telling the story right, having it retold and then told by others to others in the same way over and over again.

WiFi @ Amtrak Stations In Northeast Corridor, On Board In Seattle

Hat tip to Matt Miller for this one.

As someone who grew up in Philadelphia and remembers 30th Street Station very well (have you seen Witness with Harrison Ford?) having WiFi in there and elsewhere is a big plus. Adding it in three other stations including New York City's Penn Station is a really good step in the right direction, and AMTRAK's selection of T-Mobile is the right choice. I'll be in Philadelphia in the next month and will stop by the train station just to see how well its working.

Matt's comment about WiFi on board the train in Seattle is also encouraging. After my more than positive experience on the Heathrow Express in London I wish all trains had WiFi on board. Yesterday I ended up using my HSDPA connection via 3 here in the UK. With all the tunnels and underpasses on the route the Gatwick Express takes, the connection dropped regularly, and speeds went from 3G down to GPRS. Boy, did I miss that WiFi.

Some InSightful Thinking About Video Conferencing for Business

I woke up this morning in Madrid, feeling wonderful after another great night of sleep, following another amazing meal, this time at a fantastic Galician inspired seafood restaurant.

As I was going through the inbox of topical Google hits, I sat back and read this story in the Newark Star- Ledger, a paper whose hockey reporter of days gone by I used to read regularly, Walk McPeek. The Star Ledger always has had reporters and writers who put personality into what they wrote, and at the same time made the story so relevant to their audiences. The story followed a SightSpeed video mail from my wife that also was in my in box and he segue actually got me thinking.

The piece in the Star-Ledger by Steve Adubato is a must read for anyone in the video conferencing industry. The column sums up, in a very persuasive manner, what's wrong with video conference platforms from Polycom, Tandberg, H-P's Halo, Cisco's Telepresnece, Life SIze and the other "facilities" focused and "on premise based" video conferencing solutions that hat is as akin to be using a landline in todays world versus a cell phone. Who wants to be in the office? Not anyone making money for their company. And who wants to put people in places where rents are high and quality of life is low? Not this CEO.

As a road warrior, running a growing virtual agency, with a client base spanning the Middle East to the South Pacific and everything in between, it is easy to relate to Adubato's remarks. The only people who would want to invest in a system that is "based" in a "fixed" location would be the status seeking, sedentary executive who wants to "show off" what they have. But for the members of the team that needs it most, the sales force in the field, who are always either the first to adopt-can you spell pagers and RIM Messengers--or the most resistive to change because anything that takes them away from selling is something to get around to later--no one is thinking of them. What good does it do to invest the kind of money these "business communications solutions" offer, when only those who are in a "studio" can use it.

Let me compare it to an industry we all know and see daily. The world of television news gathering and broadcasting.

In the 50's there was a newsreader. Now we call them the anchorman. In the 60's news was (and still is) studio based. In the 60s it was either live or film that was converted to a transmittable form, but for the most part most "news interviews" were done in the studio. The cameramen and reporters had to come back to the station's studios and broadcast. So did the guests. In the late 70's Electronic News Gathering (ENG) started. Microwave signals made it possible via line of sight to transmit stories from remote locations. Now news sources didn't have to come to the studio, the studio went to them. In the 80's these ENG based crews became the rage of the television news-reporting world. Finally TV news had its equalizer to radio for instant journalism. TV stations added more cameramen and hired more reporters, and by doing so they were able to create more "local" community news bureaus and became more responsive to the FCC's requirements to provide more local news in the areas their licenses covered. In the late 90's and now in the 21st century we're seeing TV stations and Networks make use of webcams to provide field level reporting.

To draw the comparison, the current telepresence products being peddled by the "big boys" are a throwback to the way news was gathered and presented to our parents in the 60's. Is that where business is today? I think not. For the video conferencing industry, Adubato's story is a stake right through the heart of the "big and heavy" offerings that are getting the attention of the media. His criticisms are also more than likely music to the ears of Peter Csathy and Aron Rosenberg at SightSpeed, as their new Small Business release that's due out any day now is exactly the antidote to the ills that Adubato has gone to great lengths to point out. The big boy's (spelled Cisco and HP, etc.) idea of video conferencing is still a take the king to the mountain, not bring the mountain to the king. In reality their thinking is more along the lines of the story behind the "King and I" and the Emperor's new clothes where all but one young boy dared to say what he really saw.

Well, I'm being that young boy today and I'm calling it as I see it.

Knowledge workers are no longer toiling in the ivory tower. Decisions get made in the field. Executives come and go to and from hotel like desk arrangements in offices. They make use of shared temporary office spaces in places like Regus Group's HQ locations. They hold meetings in airline club conference facilities with fly-ins and outs being the biggest expense and more and more are scheduling their face-to-face partner meetings around key industry events. They do very little in the office. Back at the ranch are the worker bees. The support teams. But even the engineering team is usually far from the "head office." So while the "big guys" are selling the Street that this all means the need for more installations of the "big guys" technology, it really means the ROI on the installs is perverted. High cost. Low utility. Lost time. Usable by only a few and not by the many. It is a preservation of the power elite, and a perk for upper management, and a treat when a staff member is allowed to use it. Does that sound like a "club membership" to you? From a cost efficiency perspective, its not very (efficient) which unfortunately is the critical claim that the "big guys" are all making wen they start selling the features and benefits. How can a single system be efficient until you add more locations and endpoints. And based upon the prices I'm seeing, we're not even close to there yet from the "big boys" which play in the same club.

That's why Peter and Aron have to be dancing in the aisles of the Southwest flights they take so often, just like I do. They've built the Southwest Airlines equivalent to H-P's Halo or Cisco's Telepresence platform and taken it much further, stretching the limits to anywhere there is real broadband, but at peanut prices that are like Southwest tickets, with very few user friendly strings attached. The difference. You can get SightSpeed's soon to be released new Southwest priced like product for "peanuts" (i.e. its cheaper and does the same thing) and keep your costs down. Or you can go with the big boys just like you would fly American or United or US Air, and pay more, and not even get the peanuts, but have the "points" that you bought an expensive system that puts you back in the 60's approach to how things were done.

As often as I'm flying I know first hand that the "smart companies" are putting their executives on Southwest now to fly, which is why Southwest is focusing on the business traveler more and more with new boarding gate areas, new boarding procedures, more at gate power for laptops and cell phone charging stations, etc. You don't see the old "big guy" airlines moving that way that fast. Smart types who want to be ahead of the game have been flying Southwest. So if video conferencing is supposed to reduce travel and stimulate the concept of collaboration, and bring people together face to face more often, then saving money using a Southwest Airlines like approach would make more sense. I mean isn't Southwest more profitable than their fat cat "big guy" competition? Yup. Isn't Southwest the airline that gets blamed for so much that has hurt the other airlines long term plans? Yup. And now with an ever increasing number of more "big guy" type company executives flying Southwest, isn't time those same big guys took the Southwest approach to their video-conferencing technology too before making the investment in what already can be looked at as "dinosaur" technology?

As a member of the SightSpeed Advisory Board, I know the story by Adubato sure made my morning.

Hotel Report-Madrid, Spain

I'm in Madrid Spain at the Hotel de la Letras, one of the hip and cool places one finds on Tablet Hotels.

They have WiFi and wired options available. My WiFi connection yielded me over 2.5 megs down and just under 512 up, consistently.

The broadband connection is so good that VoIP really works well, amazingly well. This is the same experience that I had a year or so ago here when I stayed at the Hotel Urban and in Lisboa when I stayed at the Sofitel.

The key to the connectivity isn't so much the speeds alone. It's the low latency and very fast return path from speed test sites. What I'm finding is fewer hops, and better connectivity to the net is what matters for voice, video and streaming and when I'm in Europe those things are a given.

The TechTraveler

I'm a big fan of blogs that make the traveler's life easier so when I spotted the TechTraveler I had to start reading. Now I see the author has taken a liking to a client of my agency (smile), Mobivox.

Mobivox is a unique new calling service that uses the power of voice to make calls easier. It lets you call your Skype buddies from a regular phone, and it also provides a combination of free calls to other Mobivox members, as well as very, very low priced calling to others.

Mobivox is a cross generational. Given how it works on a regular phone or mobile phone, without the need for expensive data plans or special attachments to computers Mobivox is to this era what call back systems and calling cards were in the 80's and 90s. That being a great way to call for less, but with one major difference. Mobivox has made it simple.

Southwest Airlines Getting Business!

I just received an email about the improvements SouthWest is making to their boarding process. Okay, for some of us that's old news. It will sure give business travelers another reason to LUV Southwest. I know I sure do. Living in SoCal and being a regular flier to Silicon Valley, Phoenix and elsewhere they fly, I've learned to really enjoy the attitude and approach they have over the older and perceptually more established airlines.

Now in the email they sent out they have given me even more reasons to LUV them. It seems they are going "extreme" and in doing so, really want more business travelers as well as families.

In early November, we will start the new boarding systemwide (view new boarding demo). And at the same time, you’ll start seeing these updated gate areas pop up in airports across our system, with a complete makeover of all 64 cities in early 2008.

This “extreme gate makeover” is designed to improve the airport experience for each and every one of our Customers, including: a business focused area with padded seats, tables with power outlets, power stations with stools, and a flat screen television for news programming; a family area with smaller tables and chairs, “kid friendly” programming on a flat screen television, and power stations for charging electrical devices (such as portable DVD players, etc.). Check out the new gate design.

Charging stations are essential. In my book they rank up there with really good WiFi.

Mobile Broadband Operators-EVDO and HSDPA Now Bundling In WiFi

The nations number five mobile operator, Alltel, will begin bundling in WiFi with their EVDO service packs. This is a step in the right direction.

What I liked about this story is it told me that AT&T has made WiFi free with mobile data plans, with a catch. I didn't know that, and candidly, as someone with three AT&T data plans on various cards and phones, nowhere have they pushed that message so its easily known.

Add in Truphone or GizmoProject and they would have both have a rival to the easy to use T-Mobile UMA product offering.

FightStats.com Considered Best For The Road Warrior

I've been using FlightStats for over a year now and am elated to see that my judgement was confirmed by the Wall Street Journal. With all the travel I've been doing, this is one service that really helps keep me well informed about my own travel and that of colleagues.