You’ve seen the preview, now see the actual live and in-person Intelligence Collaborative Call to Action from the inaugural event we held in Washington, DC on October 22. Special thanks to Eric Garland for working his digital video magic and making this video possible.
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Tagged: intelligence collaborative, web 2.0
If you’re going to be in Washington, DC on the evening of Thursday, October 22 please join us for the inaugural event of the Intelligence Collaborative. The title and the topic are “Social Media and Next Generation Intelligence.” You can read more about the event and register here.
The Intelligence Collaborative is a nascent professional collaboration and networking group for intelligence professionals and those in related fields. We are purposefully casting a very wide net in this group’s mission. Our target audience encompasses professionals engaged or interested in commercial intelligence, government intelligence, military intelligence, investigative journalism, strategists of all flavors, fraud investigators and librarians. I’m sure I’m leaving some people out in that summary, and if you feel remotely interested feel free to check things out. The event is free, and you can read more about the concept originally launched by my friend Eric Garland on the Competitive Intelligence Community on Ning. You can also take a view of Eric’s video introduction to the Intelligence Collaborative here:
There will be a brief set of presentations at tomorrow’s event. One of the reasons these events will be brief is because we will be using the Pecha Kucha format: 20 slides that auto-advance every 20 seconds. This has in itself been a great learning experience for me, because 20 seconds is NOT a lot of time. You’ve got to be concise, get your points across very quickly and think very carefully about how you will pull everything together. And you’ve got to practice like nobody’s business. You can see a preview of my presentation here:
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Tagged: competitive intelligence, intelligence, intelligence collaborative, strategy
I blame it on the recession.
In the past six months I’ve noticed an uptick in the number of requests from LinkedIn connections for Recommendations. The more requests I’ve received the clearer it has become to me that there is a right way to go about asking for recommendations. The key, as with so many other things in life, is to think first about what your final goal or intention is (thank you Steven Covey) and work backwards from there.
Without calling out any one person, these requests tend to reflect some of the same half-hearted and haphazard efforts that many people apply to job searches:
Let me address each one of these in turn. I hope that those who read this post will keep these issues in mind when they consider asking their LinkedIn network for recommendations.
What is your end goal of your LinkedIn campaign?
The reasons for having a LinkedIn profile fall into two general categories. There are those consultants, independent contractors and even corporate practitioners that maintain a presence to establish their credentials in a given industry or practice. The other purpose is to find new employment opportunities. These are not mutually exclusive. Where do you fall on this spectrum? From that, what is the target audience for your LinkedIn program– who are the individuals or types of people you want to sit up and pay attention should they come across your profile? What are their needs and hot-button issues likely to be? What is the specific call to action you are trying to construct?
Your target audience is likely to find you through a search of some kind, so you will want to make sure relevant keywords are included in your LinkedIn profile. The Summary and the Interests section of your profile in particular are your opportunity to apply some basic search engine marketing. What are the keywords relevant to the field in which you want to establish your expertise with your target audience? Use synonyms and alternative terminologies that reflect subsegments of your target audience.
For example, my Interests section of my LinkedIn profile basically touches on three themes from a variety of directions and terminology to make sure I show up on any relevant search regardless of the specific keywords someone in my target audience chooses:
Competitive Intelligence, Market Intelligence, Marketing Strategy, Competitive Analysis, Strategic Intelligence, Secondary Research, Internet Exploitation, Primary Research, Intelligence Networks, Trade Show Intelligence, Employee Intelligence, Project Management, Personnel Management, Presentation, Writing, Delivering Actionable Intelligence
Be Specific and Guide Your Recommender on Writing a Good Recommendation
Your recommendations are an opportunity for you to communicate your professional reputation with those who read your profile. Reviewers are going to make conclusions about you based on who is recommending you, what they are saying about you and how well they have written their recommendations of you.
When asking for an endorsement, choose people with whom you have worked on something specific and measurable. Ask them to highlight the results, and align these recommendations with the questions you are likely to be asked in a job interview about past experience, and the SOAR (Situation Obstacle Action Result) narratives you will share during an interview.
What personal and professional skills and attributes do you want to convey to someone looking at your LinkedIn profile? Some in social media reject the notion of the “personal brand” because brands are artificial marketing constructs. Without getting too philosophical there is clearly a constructed component of a good LinkedIn profile.
Your target audience is looking for specific skills and has an idea of what the attributes, attitudes and behaviors are for an ideal consultant or job candidate. Anticipate what these are and make a realistic assessment of which of those attributes you have clearly demonstrated. A clearly demonstrated differentiating capability that delivers value for your target audience or customer is a strength,
Ask your recommenders to specifically highlight those strengths in their recommendation. When you make your request for a recommendation remind your colleague of the specific instances when you demonstrated these strengths when you worked together on the project in question. Ask your recommender to highlight these details.
Be Considerate of your Recommender
The best networkers give before and more than they get. I am not a fan of the quid pro quo endorsement. These are very transparent and damage both parties’ reputation if all of your recommendations are reciprocated like-for-like. However, establish a track record of generosity by taking part in LinkedIn group discussions, answering questions and reaching out to your prospective recommenders through other venues well in advance of asking for a Recommendation.
It’s likely that your colleagues are busy and have their own challenges and issues themselves going on in their lives. When you make a request of a LinkedIn connection for a recommendation you should expect that they will need some time to get around to this. The easier you can make it for them (without writing it FOR them) the better. Be patient and don’t expect them to get to it right away.
I am pretty promiscuous with my LinkedIn connections. I don’t accept all connection invites, but I do have a pretty low bar for connections. There is a considerable proportion of my LinkedIn connections I have never met in person and with whom I have never worked. I am in no position whatsoever to recommend these people. A connection, to me, is a means to communicate and share. You should know that most people aren’t going to recommend somebody with whom they have not worked closely. Their own reputation is at stake.
In Conclusion
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Tagged: LinkedIn, professional networking
I had a great time delivering my guest lecture to the Competitive Intelligence class at Johns Hopkins University tonight. My slides on my favorite competitive analysis frameworks are here.
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Tagged: competitive intelligence
Since I had posted previously that I was considering running for the SCIP Board of Directors I should provide a short update that I’ve decided not to stand for election. As you’ve no doubt noticed my writing for the blog has slowed significantly as of late, and that’s a consequence of my workload and other activities. With everything that’s going on professionally I don’t believe I have the cycles needed to give a SCIP Board position the attention the role and the organization deserves.
On the plus side… I am podcasting again. Hopefully I will be able to keep the new episodes of the Competitive Intelligence Podcast coming. In addition to my recent interview with Aric Johnson I have another interview recorded with a CI thought leader waiting to be edited and published.
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Tagged: SCIP
The call for nominations has gone out for the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP) Board of Directors. I’ve been asked if I would be willing to accept a nomination for the board. Were I to decide to accept the nomination the election committee will approve a bevy of candidates on which the general membership will vote. My inclination is to accept the nomination and make a run for the board. For the readers of this blog familiar with SCIP, what do you believe are the most important issues to address in a campaign? What do you think the boards’ top priorities should be?
Earlier this summer I wrote a letter to the current SCIP Board on the issues that I felt are the top priorities of the moment. The main driver of this letter was to comment specifically on priorities for SCIP in the context of the pending investment by the Frost & Sullivan Institute.
To the Board of Directors and the professional staff of the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals:
I am writing to you in response to board member Eric Glitman’s invitation to reach out to the SCIP board following the recent membership vote to support the SCIP – Frost & Sullivan Institute merger. While I do not claim to speak for any others, I do know that in sentiment if not in detail I am of the same opinion of many other members of the society. I welcome a frank and open discussion with the staff, board and membership at this time of challenge and opportunity.
Through the past five years I have been an active volunteer for SCIP, including as chapter chair, author, presenter, program committee member and conference vice-chair. I hope that these activities have sufficiently established my “pro-SCIP” bona fides. I have also spoken publicly in support of the SCIP – FSI merger in multiple venues public and private, voted in favor of the merger and am genuinely glad that the membership voted to support the merger.
Today I want to articulate the specific steps, strategies and options that I hope the board and staff will take at this time of opportunity.
I will be brief in this letter, and I am happy to discuss these ideas in detail with any member of the board or staff. I welcome your response.
1. In-depth analysis for all SCIP stakeholders and a clear articulation of the relevant value SCIP intends to deliver to each of these groups. Practitioners, vendors and academics receive different value from membership and participation in the society, and SCIP’s strategic plan must recognize these distinct communities.
2. Active engagement of the Competitive Intelligence and related communities through new media, including outreach to members via LinkedIn, Facebook, Ning and other social media. All organizations that intend to engage communities today need to go to where those communities are. The vast majority of the community WILL be understanding, forgive you if you make mistakes and admire thoughtful attempts to evolve.
3. A coherent information technology (IT) infrastructure and governance strategy. The potential from shared services and IT insight from FSI was the main reason I voted for this merger, and my expectations are very high here. For starters SCIP’s board should develop an IT strategy in collaboration with the staff and qualified volunteer members (I humbly volunteer). Some of my suggestions for consideration include preference for hosted solutions that avoid up-front capital investment, open data formats, open source and low-cost software, application programming interfaces (APIs) and solutions that offer clear migration frameworks and technology roadmaps. The purpose of an IT strategy is to ensure the ability to deliver cost-effective flexibility for innovative revenue-generating offerings to members.
4. Diversification of SCIP’s revenue model. I am excited to hear about the possibility of a conference in Asia-Pacific. This is a great first step to move the society away from reliance on the annual conference. I strongly encourage SCIP’s board and members to lay out a diverse set of options to deliver member value and generate revenue for the society. One option that leaps immediately to mind is certification, which is something I believe our profession sorely needs.
5. Transparent governance, including publishing of minutes from Board of Directors meetings, open meetings that coincide with national conferences and regular participation by board members and senior SCIP staff in a variety of social networks and the SCIP blog.
I welcome any comments or questions in response to these suggestions.
Any member of the board or staff should feel free to e-mail or call me.
Sincerely,
August Jackson
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Tagged: SCIP
I am going to be a lazy blogger today and cross-post a forum discussion topic that I posted in the Competitive Intelligence community on Ning that explores the concept of Apple’s strategic secrecy. My hypothesis is that Apple and other companies earn the privilege to be strategically secret (note: not completely opaque) by delivering customer value and excellent products or services. Some executives may begin to look at Apple’s secrecy and conclude post hoc ergo proctor hoc that strategic secrecy alone will bring them success. On the contrary, I argue, secrecy without excellence is a sign of either corporate egotism or incompetence.
Feel free to comment here or head over to the Ning discussion to share your thoughts.
I always look forward to Ken Sawka and company’s “Looking Out” newsletter in my e-mail in-box. The articles are usually very challenging and expand my own understanding of the relevance of curren business and political happenings to competitive intelligence. In this morning’s newsletter Ken poses a question about one of my favorite companies, Apple. Speaking of Apple’s track record for secrecy when the cultural trend is pulling in the direction of openness and transparency: Is Apple’s obsession with secrecy good business?
This article resonates with me because very recently I finished reading the Jeff Jarvis book What Would Google Do. This book touches on themes of openness and transparency and lays out a set of rules for how to be Googley and succeed in our modern business environment that favors “ecosystems” and “platforms” over stand-alone companies. A great video summary of the book is at readitfor.me.
In WWGD Jarvis puts Apple forward as the unGoogle and asks how it is Apple can break all of the rules of being a modern technology company and still be as successful as they are. It is clear that Apple are playing a clever game of chess about when to be transparent and when to be completely opaque. A few examples of Apple’s openness: adoption of the USB port for peripheral connectivity, support for the MP3 file format on the iPod (Sony chose to support only proprietary music formats and effectively ceded the portable music market they had owned for nearly two decades) and what I consider to be deliberate “mistakes” in updating the code of Apple web pages to pique interest in pending product releases.
Jarvis makes the case that Apple get away with this because their products and services are truly excellent. Early this week Jarvis posted an entry to his blog that named The Economist as the Apple of the news media industry. The Economist is able to break almost all of the rules of modern news business (charging for on-line content, no writer bylines) and is much better positioned than most other news media properties to innovate into the new age that is clearly upon us. Apple and The Economist can be rule breakers because, Jarvis posits, the products they deliver are so clearly excellent and in-line with what customers really want.
Part of the key to effective strategic secrecy and overall success in the marketplace is excellence in the eyes of your customers. While this seems self-evident, how many companies and governments have we seen that don’t deliver quality products or services yet remain opaque? How do we regard their secrecy? I tend to regard it as a sign of poor processes and a clear misunderstanding or disregard for the needs of their customers or constituents, indications of either laziness or self-interest.
Many executives, I am afraid, will take the wrong lesson away from Apple’s strategic secrecy and put the cart before the horse. “Now we’re going to be cagey about our widgets and then the cash will just come rolling in!” The freedom to be opaque must be earned.
As always, I am interested in the thoughts of the community here assembled. How do you perceive strategic secrecy and excellence as competitive differentiators? What criteria do you believe (if any) are required before a company gets to break the rules in its industry? What are other companies that are delivering excellence or applying strategic secrecy? Can you have the latter without the former?
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Tagged: apple, strategy, transparency
John Hodgman is one of my favorite nerd comedians. I really enjoyed his exploration of the nerd aesthetic (uncertain, questioning) versus jock aesthetic (certainty, confidence) and ribbing of Barack Obama to determine whether or not he is truly the first nerd president of the modern age. Hodgman reminds us that some have even gone so far as to suggest that Obama is the Kwisatz Haderach.
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Tagged: hodgman, obama
In an effort to establish professionalism, I do try to not pimp my employer’s products or services. I’m an unabashed user of a product on a competitor’s network (iPhone) and try to make it clear that the content here represents my own opinions and not those of my employer. So I hope that you will maintain a level of respect for me and give me some objectivity points when I say that I have a new love: my Verizon Wireless MiFi. It’s a pocket-sized wifi hotspot for up to 5 devices that connects to the Verizon Wireless EV-DO 3G wireless broadband network. The device is manufactured by Novatel Wireless and is also sold by Sprint.
My Verizon Wireless MiFi, next to standard business card for size comparison.
If you’ve been reading this blog for any period of time you have no doubt concluded that I am a gadget hound and tech nerd. Would it surprise you to learn that when I travel for business I usually travel with two laptops? It’s a sickness, I know. I’m a firm believer in keeping my work work on my work PC (an HP) and my personal material and projects on my MacBook Pro. In most hotels this has resulted in a life-or-death decision of which computer will be registered for the (usually expensive and slow) hotel broadband connection. In a few instances in the past I was able to use my Apple Airport Express to connect multiple devices to the hotel broadband. In those instances the connection is generally very slow, and often I find myself unable to use my VPN to connect to my work e-mail and other intranet resources. Bummer.
Even when I bite the bullet and decide that my work PC will be the sole digital link to the outside world performance is inconsistent. In my years of travel I have found it amazing how many times my VPN did not work. It still also amazes me how many hotels still treat broadband as an optional amenity. It’s not– a hotel room might as well not have electricity or running water. The net is central to how I and many others live our lives today and is non-negotiable if I am going to remain a productive employee while on the road. It also still amazed me the rates hotels charge for Internet connectivity: $12.95/day seems to be the standard. You don’t learn the VPN won’t function until after you’ve connected the work laptop and tried to connect. Want to cut bait and just use the personal machine? That’s another $12.50, please. Don’t even THINK of connecting your iPhone or other wifi-enabled smart phone (you can generally fall back on your usable if somewhat slow 3G connection there). Coffee shops and other hotspots also have spotty, inconsistent support for VPN connectivity. A lot of productivity has been lost struggling to get a VPN connection only to give up and just resign myself to days of catching up on e-mail and other tasks when next I am at home or in the office. To put it mildly, connectivity when traveling sucks.
I don’t have to worry about that anymore. Since I bought my MiFi I’ve had one day of meetings outside of the office and one business trip. On my day running around the Washington metro area I was able to use my down time to great productive effect The VPN works flawlessly every time. I can connect my PC, Macintosh and iPhone all to a blazing fast (in wireless terms) network with great coverage. On my recent business trip I did a speed check to find that I was getting 1097 Kbps down and 652 Kbps up. While it’s not as fast as my FiOS connection at home (I will limit myself to pimping one Verizon product in this post) it’s faster than most hotel broadband connections.
I’m not the only one who loves this devices and have made productive use of the MiFi. Andy Abramson of VoIP Watch and Bob Gourley of CTOVision have both sung the praises of their MiFis. Guy Kawasaki made a great post to the American Express OPEN for Small Business blog highlighting some valuable use cases for his Sprint MiFi, and some relevant to people who are not afflicted with my tech nerdery:
One challenge I have had with the MiFi is maintaining a charge on the device. On my recent business trip I learned that my MiFi as well as a few other devices that charge via USB do not like my Belkin travel surge suppressor. This is a handy three-outlet surge suppressor that also has two USB ports to charge devices without the need for additional power adapters. This I think is a problem more of the Belkin than the MiFi, because my iPhone also would not take a charge from this device. So the one cautionary advice I would offer is that travelers should take the MiFi’s power adapter on the road with them just to be safe. The MiFi can be charged via USB from your computer, and I found this to be somewhat idiosyncratic and felt that the MiFI didn’t get the full charge it does when plugged in directly to an outlet.
Overall this is a device I strongly recommend. The retail price is competitive with standard 3G adapters for laptops (that only support connectivity for that single device). You barely have to travel more than once a month to make the $60 monthly price (5 Gigabytes cap) more cost-effective than paying for daily connectivity at hotels, in airports or coffee shops. The MiFi has already paid for itself this month and kept me happier and more productive in the bargain.
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Tagged: broadband, hospitality, mifi, telecom, wireless
Back in January 2007 I wrote a blog entry trying to explain the basics of network neutrality one more time. This was in response to a Forbes column by Peter Huber that claimed Content Delivery Networks such as those from Akami, were violations of network neutrality. On the contrary, I argued, CDNs were examples of well-designed solutions to deliver a great customer experience while also maintaining the basic tenants of network neutrality. At the time I speculated that the claim that CDNs violated network neutrality was an attempt to confuse the policy debate on the issue.
A recent Forbes article suggests that efforts to confuse the debate are continuing anew. The article March of the SkypeTube from the June 08 edition of Forbes leads me to wonder if there is not still a movement to confuse the debate around network neutrality (especially wireless network neutrality) with a specific bit of misinformation. From the article:
Creating stable economic value in these markets depends on creating stable service-content-bandwidth bundles. Amazon’s Kindle is a good example. The elegant tablet runs on bandwidth that Amazon purchases wholesale from Sprint; Amazon then embeds the cost in the price of the books, magazines and such that it sells and delivers. Everyone prospers–publishers of books and magazines, middlemen like Amazon, manufacturers of the hardware that handles the delivery at the customer’s end and secures copyrights at the same time, and customers, who seem to be delighted with the whole package. Maybe that’s why nobody has dared point out that the whole setup is a grave affront to “network neutrality”–Amazon’s bits get preferential carriage on Sprint’s bandwidth, until Google or Ebay strike their own deals.
I added the emphasis to the claim that Amazon receives preferential treatment for Kindle traffic that moves across Sprin’t network. I have looked and looked for evidence of an arrangement between Sprint and Amazon to give priority to Kindle data packets over other data packets. I have found no such mentions of data prioritization being an element of Amazon’s contract with Sprint for wireless connectivity for Kindle e-book readers. I do not believe that any such arrangement exists, I do acknowledge that details of the contract between Sprint and Amazon are by nature proprietary, and so it is conceivable that Mr. Huber has access to legitimate information that I do not. However, I am fairly certain that this is not the case. Such an arrangement would no doubt cost Amazon a premium, and the latency-tolerant nature of Kindle data does not mandate data prioritization.
Generally when there is a discussion of providing priority to specific types of traffic on an Internet backbone or wireless data network the application being discussed is a latency intolerant application or medium. Real-time media such as voice over Internet, video and high-transaction business applications are put forward as the examples of applications backbone providers would want to prioritize. End users will see a real difference in the experience or the performance of prioritized traffic: the applications will perform noticeably better in most cases where their packets are given higher priority and therefor greater effective throughput from point of original to point of destination.
The electronic books, publications and blog entries on the Kindle are not consumed in real time the same way an on-line video or Internet phone call is. In other words, giving the data priority over other data on Sprint’s wireless network would not make any difference to how the end user experience. The difference in performance would be a matter of seconds for a piece of information that the suer consumes over the course of hours, days or weeks. There is zero reason to give such latency-tolerant data priority.
The fact that electronic books are latency-tolerant, combined with the lack of any mention of priority treatment for Amazon’s data on Sprint’s wireless network, leads me to conclude that indeed no such arrangement exists. As the Obama administration, Congress and the still forming FCC re-examine the debate over network neutrality, I believe this is an attempt to subtly introduce additional confusion into that debate.
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Tagged: amazon, forbes, kindle, net neutrality, sprint
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