The Pains of a Matrixed Business

Most of the time, this is not true. Sometimes, though, we all think this:

Formula 1: Technology + cars = fun

This morning we watched the European Grand Prix F1 race, which was held at a new street course in Valencia, Spain. Because these races are aired *early* in the morning, we record them on TiVo and then watch them at our leisure.

One of the reasons I enjoy F1 is the mix of technology and personality in this sport. And, Speed TV, which broadcasts the races here in the U.S. has a former F1 mechanic, Steve Matchett, who does a great job covering the technology involved.

Here's an example of typical F1 technology, an improvement to the traditional Hans device invented by a Michigan State University professor.

Tanya's Summer Activity Log

It's hard to believe that we're into July and running quickly through the second half of summer now. In some respects, the time has gone by quickly, even though I've had a relatively boring summer. My thoughts on the summer of 2008 so far:

Restrictive weight loss programs really cut down on social opportunities. In May, I signed up for the HMR program associated with Camino Medical Group. The version I'm doing is low-calorie and restricted to only program "foods" (shakes and prepared entrees). This makes restaurants completely tortuous, as I order sparkling water, diet coke or iced tea and watch/smell the food of my companions. As you can imagine, I pretty much avoid this type of social situation, because it's NO FUN.

I've lost 20 lbs so far. Yay! To reward myself, I go shopping when I can fit it in. If I keep walking through the mall, it will count toward "physical activity," which is an added benefit.

You have to convince yourself that physical activity (aka exercise) is fun, because it sucks up what little time you have left, after work and household maintenance. I've been trying to add as much variety as possible into my activities, realizing that I'll have to continue to increase the precious hours for this as I lose more weight in order to get the same benefits. After six weeks of working out 6 to 7 days a week, I am getting to the point where I don't dread it as much. The supposed "endorphin" effect is all mental though... you have to fool yourself into believing it happens, so that all the work is bearable.

I've saved more money than the program costs, because I'm not going out for lunch every day. Yay!

I've also seen a lot of movies in the theatre this summer. In fact, I've seen more movies in the last 2 months than I've seen in the previous 5 years. Three key reasons: (1) Movies are an acceptable social activity that minimizes food temptation/torture. (2) Dave will go with me to the movies (sometimes) and (3) I can combine it with a little physical activity when we walk to the Cupertino AMC which is about a mile from our house. :-)

Up ahead for the summer? Ummmm, not so much. But we will join some friends for a little wine tasting excursion at summer's end. Though, I guess I won't be tasting any wine because of the weight-loss program. LOL. I'll just hang out in the jacuzzi and work-out room at the hotel during dinner, and watch everyone act silly as they get tipsy during the tastings.

American Idol and David Cook

So, as TiVo enthusiasts, Dave and I don't often watch the "live" reality programming shows.... We've just not gotten into them. But, we have friends who gush about American Idol and we thought we'd record an episode. We finally got around to watching the episode from earlier this week.

Most of the performances were OK. Some painful. It was a little interesting since all the singers were singing songs from our high school years, as that week's theme was to sing a song from the year they were born. (!)

Only one performance really stood out to us and amazed us, the performance of "Billy Jean" by David Cook.

If you're like us and are living under a rock, you don't have to miss out any more. Here's a video of that performance.

Five questions for the author of Personality Not Included

One of my favorite marketing bloggers, Rohit Barghava, has a new book called Personality Not Included. As part of his book launch he offered to answer 50 five-question interviews from people with blogs. I could not resist the opportunity, so I submitted my top five questions, and here are his answers!

1. Do B-to-B companies need to have personalities?
   This is a really important question - they definitely do need to have a personality because so much of BtoB sales are relationship based. When you look at the long lead times for sales and the fact that word of mouth is so important, it becomes clear that personality applies to BtoB businesses at least as much as BtoC brands.
   
   
2. How do you make sure your newfound company/brand personality doesn't bite you in the butt?
   The best way to do this is to make sure that you are claiming an "ownable space" as I called it in the book that is appropriate. For example, focusing on the professionalism of your employees won' t work if you cannot live up to this promise.
   
   
3. How do you measure the effectiveness of building authenticity back into the company brand?
   One of the key measures that works for this is the power of your word of mouth and referral business. This is the area where authenticity can make the biggest impact because essentially what you are focusing on is getting your customers to tell your story for you.
   
   
4. Often passionate customers are also passionate detractors. How do you harness their energy in a positive way?
   This is a relatively easy question to answer, but not as easy to actually do. The best way to harness their energy is by LISTENING to them and actually acting on the points that they are frustrated about. Your passionate customers may absolutely be the most demanding, but wouldn't you far rather have them interacting with you and asking for more than defecting or not communicating with you? This dialogue is vital and the best way to take advantage of it is by having a good system to react to what you hear.
   
   
5. Will taking an authentic approach to marketing (one with personality) win the support and or admiration of our critics in sales? :-)
   Taking an authentic approach absolutely has the power to win over a critic and turn them into a customer. There is a technique I share in the book called "Fallibility Marketing," which is all about how to use the moments when you screw up as opportunities to win over new customers and keep existing ones. Based on some of your questions, I think it's a section you'll find particularly interesting.

PC to Mac Adventure... learning process still :-)

This past week was crazy and hectic, so I didn't spend as much time as I would have liked getting to know my new MacBook Pro.

So far, here are my observations:

The hardware is great -- very sturdy and the key action is very nice.

However, I've struggled to get used to the touchpad. I even played with a few external mice to get the right feel. I wish there were more settings in the System Preferences area for adjusting speed and responsiveness of the touchpad and mice. The two available adjustments don't quite get the right feel, and in Windows, I could select from many different options to adjust mouse properties in the control panel.

The startup and shutdown speed on the Mac is impressive. If any version of Windows could get these two processes set up similarly, they would find user satisfaction to get very high. After all, we all experience this process nearly on a daily basis.

I've struggled with the application installation process on a Mac a little, especially when downloading and installing an application for the first time. On my first night, I installed Firefox and set up a bunch of bookmarks to sites with info on switching from a PC to a Mac. Then I started cleaning up my desktop from the extraneous icons on the hard drive and in the process deleted the application (whoops!) there went my application and all those useful bookmarks from an hours' worth of browsing and research. Since then, I've found instructions on this process, but I guess I expected the OS to install the application file to the application folder automatically. (Cause it's so easy, right? LOL.)

The OS interface is very attractive and easy to use, as long as you don't want to try to figure out how to customize settings. I'm still learning and researching here, so eventually I'll figure it out. In the mean time, can anyone tell me how to change the default location of my downloads? :-)

Thanks everyone for the support. This will be an interesting learning process, and since I love to learn new things, I'm sure it will be very rewarding.

Wild Cherry M&M's

Lisa ran an errand today and found something new at the Rite-Aid check-out counter: Wild Cherry M&M's. She shared the pieces, and they're surprisingly yummy. It's probably a limited market test, but makes for a nice variety to enjoy (while they're around).