Archive for the ‘Education’ Category

Today’s a quick post sharing some of my first impressions after having picked up a new Kodak Zi8 camcorder.  A number of you are in marketing, use Flip cameras already, or are just considering one of these new devices.

Chris Brogan, over at www.chrisbrogan.com, was one of the first folks to create any sort of ‘spark’ for me with this new class of device.  Sure, by now we’ve probably all been to events with Flip cams.

They’re neat, cool, but the ‘value’ wasn’t quite there.  Part of that I attribute to having a ‘good’ digital tape camcorder and being put off by the overall process hassles (record an hour, take an hour to download, then process, then encode, then…).  Odds are, if you’re not a video aficionado you’ve had the same dying desire to repeat the experience. Not.

It wasn’t until I started paying attention to Chris’ vlogs and some of his various experiences (Flip, Zx1, Zx6…) that I really appreciated their value.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ann Arbor SPARK hosts a monthly series, Starting Your Own New Business. The day-long seminar includes presenters on finance, accounting, marketing, product development, and other topics related to launching one’s own business. Below, is the high-level presentation delivered Friday, February 19, 2010.

This high-level presentation discusses what are perhaps the most key topics important for successfully moving the Idea for a product, through development, and ensuring it survives to reach fruition.  The target audience is new entrepreneurs considering business for themselves.

I’m pleased to let everyone know, March 17, I will be speaking at the It’s a Duesy II Manufacturing Revival Conference.  You’re encouraged to come.

Dennis Jeffrey of Tekni Consulting is the event’s organizer.  Heading into 2010, we begin to catch our breaths, having simply survived 2009.

Now, is the time for revival!  But, not revival just as a dictionary would describe it.  One definition is, ‘…restoration to use…’  We need not to simply revive, restore, or return to pre-‘09 conditions, we need to find ways to thrive, to strengthen ourselves and move forward positively.  With this in mind, I was happy to accept Dennis’ invitation to speak.

My discussion is part of the event’s Management track, focusing on Change.

The world around us continues to evolve; nothing new there.  But many organizations, even as they change what they look like, have largely stayed the same inside.  Social, technical, global evolution has now come so far organizations simply have no choice but to finally begin changing who they are inside.

Register Now! Early Bird Pricing until February 15th! Price is only $89/ person, group rates available.

For those of you who have followed my blog, you understand that my focus is on providing thoughtful business leadership.  Come listen as I discuss areas often neglected by leaders, allowed to fall by the wayside, which are increasingly important in today’s world—areas that need to change.

In preparation for this event, I am actively interviewing business leaders and soliciting input—including yours, dear reader.  I encourage you to provide your input regarding how businesses need to change in order to thrive, moving forward.  Feel free to Comment, or send me an email (results@jtpedersen.net).

One can argue whether economists are cheapskates, or not. The debate can certainly be entertaining, such as in this Wall Street Journal article.  There’s even an old economics joke tied to their, umm, stereotypical tendencies.

It goes something like this, “…an economist is walking down the street with a friend when they happen upon a $100 bill laying on the ground.  As the companion reaches down to pick it up, the economist says, ‘Don’t bother—if it were a real $100 bill, someone would have already picked it up.’” (Andrew McAfee and Andrew Lo.)

Andrew wrote an article comparing companies’ use of IT with that $100 bill.  The notion is that ‘everyone’ has the same technology.  We all have, or have access to, tools like email, internet, smart phones, computers, and the like.  So, technology itself should be a non-competitive tool. Right?

While Andrew continues to discuss inconsistent use of these tools—fewer than 5% of all firms do the job well—I’d like to briefly look beyond just ‘IT’ per se.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ann Arbor SPARK hosts a monthly series,  Starting Your Own New Business.  The day-long seminar includes presenters on finance, accounting, marketing, product development, and other topics related to launching one’s own business.

Below, is the high-level presentation I’m giving today.  The focus is on moving the Idea for a product, through development, and ensuring it survives to reach fruition.

Earlier this week, Israel García wrote an engaging post, Social Media With Ease.  He also reframed the title as a question, which I found particularly intriguing.

It is an interesting question and something I have previously thought about as well.  Why is it, so many people feel uncomfortable discussing social media?

Discomfort discussing Social Media stems from two basic issues.

First, most folks still do not have even a rudimentary grasp as to what ’social media’ is. Gaining an understanding is made more difficult by those ‘in the know’ professing ‘everyone is using’ a particular item.  For instance, I’ve been to a number of social media presentations, or presentations having a related segment, where the presenter boldly states, ‘Everyone’s using Twitter…’ or the like. Fast Company’s November ‘09 issue Read the rest of this entry »

In the first part of this series, I discussed listening
to your market and understanding, ‘what keeps your customers up at night.’ The second part, discussed understanding who your customers are, as well as who they are not. For this last part of a high-level discussion, let’s look at why a plan is important.

Build a Plan

Do only a little digging, and you will find oceans of content (books, articles, courses, webinars, etc.) on why you need to develop a plan. The topic itself may make you want to simply hit the Back button in your browser.

To keep it simple, there are two real values to creating a plan. Understanding and keeping on track. Here’s what I mean…

The plan underlying your product should seek to answer some basic questions Read the rest of this entry »

Know Who Your Customers Are…Not

(see pt 1 here.)

For some reason, it always seems easier, working for Big Corp, to understand who your customers are. Product management, or product marketing depending on your organization, might describe your target customers like this: Product X’s typical customer makes $250M/yr in gross revenue, has 1,200 employees, and at least 5 different facilities, in one of these ‘three’ industries.

Seems simple. And, by default, since you know who your customers are it stands to reason that you know who your customers are not. We’ll come back to this.

As a small business or entrepreneur things do not seem quite so clear. You don’t have access to the latest market segmentation data; today’s primary focus is paying today’s bills so tomorrow the lights turn on; and, anything walking in the door (and can fog a mirror) is a target. Read the rest of this entry »

This past week I had the pleasure speaking with a group of (mostly) new entrepreneurs at an Ann Arbor SPARK event. The focus was to discuss, at a high level, those key things important when creating a new product. My comments apply whether the product in question is a tangible widget or an intangible service. In this post, I want to talk about the first segment of the discussion: Listening.

If I had but one over-arching suggestion to make, it would be to listen to your market. Odds are, listening to people describe their problems is how your first came up with your ‘idea.’ Listening cannot stop there though.

Only through listening can you uncover your customers’ problems. You should be asking yourself which ones you can help with. Can you do it well? Who else is doing what you might want to do? Read the rest of this entry »

Now that Windows 7 is available to the general public I decided it was time to introduce it to my environment. In years past, I was typically eager to live on the bleeding edge. Now, I’m a little more relaxed, willing to learn from other’s teething pains, and avoid adopting features that might significantly change or be dropped by the time the final version popped out. Even so, adopting Windows 7 the week it came out might still cause others to feel I’m on the bleeding edge. Let’s just say I’ve allowed the edge to dull…a tad.

If you want an in-depth review of every Windows component, along with myriad opinions, I’d encourage you to check out someplace like TechRepublic. My following observations are directed toward those of you with a more casual affair with your PC. Read the rest of this entry »