I loved the original Michael Caine movie, The Italian Job. I grew up watching it over and over again. Today, banks are taking from each other, but they are stealing people. They don’t have the skills so they poach people back and forth. Organisations are sometimes frightened to upskill their people in case they leave for another job and for more money. Well they don’t. Staff are more loyal to an employer who takes care of them. And what if you don’t train and certify them at all and they stay with you – how competitive will you be in the future? Case solved.
The future and convenience
How we consume is changing very quickly. In our non-stop world, with barely time to think, let alone face-to-face interaction, there is an opportunity. Digital content is expected for free in the modern internet era, and yet there is a lot of cash in the consumer pocket up for grabs – how, by enhancing our personal convenience. Save us time, make difficult choices easy, give us what we want, when and where we want it, and fast – make our lives easy and you could reap some real rewards.
Did You Know?
A study by Gartner revealed that in the next 3 years, more than 50 million IP addresses will come from automobiles. One day, there will only be one network, one global wireless network which everybody, and every device, will be permanently connected to; and we may not need gadgets, as our skin, our clothing and our glasses carry enough technology to keep us in touch.
Chicago Week
Facilitated the global sales meeting in Chicago this week. Lots of creative ideas, dialogue and exchange by a team of people who flew in from 10 regions around the world to strategise and focus activities for the rest of the year. Marketing, events for our members, product strategies and social media were the highlight of the week. Pictures above contrast a team concentrating on the sessions during the day and a night out at the United Centre seeing the Chicago Bulls play Utah Jazz one evening. A very satisfying week.
Reseller Forum
William Linard from my UK team and I hosted the quarterly CompTIA UK Reseller Forum at the Leicester City Walker Stadium. Great turnout of small business owners focusing on vendor relationships, being better at becoming a trusted advisor and setting high standards of quality for IT service and support to UK businesses. It’s not about fixing customer machines, it’s about setting them up so they don’t fail in the first place. It was a very interactive session, with some very good best practice ideas shared around the table. Once we provided a platform for these guys to meet and talk, the ideas flowed for 3 hours. Together, we are raising the bar. http://www.flickr.com/photos/comptiauk
As simple as it gets
This quote came from Business Week in 1953, from the Tupperware company, and it still rings true today, as it will 100 years from now. This is as simple as it gets for me:
“If we build the people, they will build the business.”
Superbowl ads go online for maximum impact
I was fortunate enough to be in the US last weekend, and really enjoyed Super Bowl XLIV.
There was as much buzz around the half-time commercials as the game itself. Some 100 million people saw the game (and the ads), but 40 million or so also watched the ads online. With so much creativity at play, led by Bud Light, GoDaddy and E-trade, the ads have been circulating the social networking sites all week. Domain name business GoDaddy have attributed most of their growth to the Super Bowl and many of the advertisers have been relying on their Facebook and Twitter fans to spread the message. It’s all about impact and the key is getting consumers creating the buzz through social media – it spreads so quickly and of course it’s free. But ads aside, well done to Drew Brees and the Saints on their first Super Bowl.
Small but mighty
Spent a few days in Tokyo last week, in a hotel overlooking the Tokyo Dome, home of the Yomiuri Giants baseball team. Aside from shocking jetlag, I discovered the next generation of pocket-sized computers, the mini netbook. These are pocket-sized, have a 5-inch screen, 10-hour battery and boot-up time of 3-seconds (sounds very close to a mobile phone). The Fujitsu U series of their Loox notebook is one such example. These should help address the first fall in sales in 20 months of the first round of netbooks, often seen in Starbucks coffee shops.
Babies & Beer
Research was carried out by a leading supermarket to establish connections between products. It was discovered that beer is often purchased at the same time as baby products, in the early evening. This tells me that guys are sent out to buy necessities for a newborn baby and pick up a six-pack preparing for the long night ahead. What it really tells me is that we must use technology to slice and dice the customer database and data at our disposal in ways that are not obvious, to find new connections and alternative collabrations.
Taking your tablet
I was early in saying that Netbooks would be a Christmas bestseller in 2008, and I make another bold statement in saying that the tablet (sample idea above) will be all the rage, especially if Apple announce one at the end of this month. A single device that does everything you could possible want online, and where you pay for access to music, movies and memory space in the cloud, is where we are heading. PDAs outsold laptops last year, and this one-device-for-all technology will be the next big thing, or at least one of them. 3D-TV for my home, not convinced, don’t like the glasses.