As I mentioned in my last post, I just got back from the Defrag Conference. One of the first day talks was “This. Is. Sparta: Creating a culture of innovators” by Jay Simons, the VP of Marketing for Atlassian. Atlassian makes collaboration tools for software development teams and is apparently well regarded by those who use their products.

Jay talked at length about steps Atlassian had taken to keep the company innovative. I particularly like #3 on their list of core values, not to mention the statement (apparently from their head of HR) that HR policies are largely BS.

Much of his talk was focused on concepts like “20% Time”, which is very similar to Google’s program by the same name i.e. 20% of an employees time can be spent working on whatever they like. He also talked about other initiatives such as “Lab Week”. During a lab week, an entire team comes together in the style of mad scientists to solve a particular problem. During the week, the entire team wears lab coats.

It’s easy to look at these kind of initiatives and make fun of them. At best, they seem like goofy gimmicks that simply aren’t sustainable in a “real” company, especially not if there is actual work to be done.

At lunch, I happened to be sat across from Vivek Wadhwa. I am a huge fan of his work, and usually find myself vigorously nodding in agreement with everything he writes. His studies on the real nature of entrepreneurship, women in tech and emerging markets (three separate areas, not one big paper) are pragmatic, thought provoking and insightful. The subject of Lab Week came up, and Vivek made a comment regarding whether or not Lab Week (and having folks run around in lab coats) was actually useful or just silly.

You might think my curmudgeonly self would be in the “damn young kids and their silliness” camp, but I’m not.

A number of years ago I had the pleasure of working with a highly creative team at Hasbro Toys. We were working on a new project and they invited several of us to join them in their brainstorming session. We camped out in a room full of whiteboards, large paper pads on easels, tape and a secret weapon: an enormous bucket of Hubba Bubba (full sugar, of course).

At first I assumed it was just a toy-company-being-wacky thing. But as the two day brainstorming session progressed, I started to see that it was an act of genius.

Brainstorming is hard to do right. You often need to cover a lot of ground. You need to bravely explore avenues that may seem foolish at first. You need everyone to forget the preconceived ideas and answers they arrived with, and everyone needs to contribute. Successful brainstorming requires a change in attitude.

Enter Hubba Bubba.

1. If you’re used to corporate meetings, it completely throws you off-guard to be presented with a giant bucket of gum.
2. It is really hard to monopolize a conversation when you have a mouthful of gum.
3. It is much harder to remain formal and guarded when everyone else has a mouthful of gum.
4. Chewing gum makes you thirsty. Everyone has to stop to drink water/soda/whatever, and that means everyone also has to hit the bathroom. This provides natural breaks for every participant, no matter how much they want to be heard.

The net result is that nobody monopolizes the conversation. Ideas flow freely and get kicked around until the right answers present themselves.

And from apparent silliness, magic is born.

I’ve repeated the Hubba Bubba process many times and it has always delivered results.

I suspect the same is true of many of the seemingly gimmicky ideas like Lab Week. You wear a lab coat to work and you feel different. Feeling different can change how you think and influence the way you approach a problem. A different approach yields a different answer, and that’s where true innovation often happens.

Categories: All Business, Concepts & Ideas
362No Comments »http://blog.nicholasnapp.com/2010/11/21/hubba-hubba-no-really-this-is-a-practical-business-post/Hubba+Hubba...+No%2C+really%2C+this+is+a+practical+business+post...2010-11-21+19%3A30%3A55NickN

I spent much of the past week at the excellent Defrag Conference. I honestly don’t know another conference where you’ll find meaningful discussion of traveling to space, solving big data problems and why rooms in Vegas have mirrors on the ceiling (Esther Dyson, Jeff Jonas and Jeff Ma respectively).

The conference is attended by some very smart and influential people (present company excluded), from senior execs to talented developers, press and VCs.

Defrag is organized by the talented Eric Norlin and his equally talented wife Kim. Eric gets startups and every year I’ve attended Defrag (3 now) he does one thing that I think is great: he gives a startup a shot at the brass ring.

How to connect with people at a conference when you don’t know them but have common interests is a poorly solved problem. This year, Eric gave Zerista a shot at solving it.

And boy, did they suck. There’s a big suck and then a bunch of smaller quibbly sucks that you could argue may just be me. But the big one is a doozy.

I arrived in Denver on Tuesday night (November 16th) and got an email asking me to sign up for Zerista:

So I signed up and started creating my profile. When I tried to add a photo, the system belched. I tried a few more times and got nowhere. I’m running a Mac and Chrome browser. Its not exactly an unusual combination but I have seen problems on some sites, so I fired up Firefox. Different error message but the same end result: no ability to upload a photo. On a scale of 1 to 10, being able to have an easy way to recognize someone you’ve never met (like a photo) ranks at least a 12, so I was keen to solve this.

Investigative hat on, I took a look at the Zerista site and they mention that “Zerista Pro is a Mobile and Desktop Event Planner that turns your event into an interactive mobile experience for all stakeholders”.

Aha! Perhaps I can use their mobile app.

Err no. Neither my Nexus One nor my Galaxy tablet can see anything other than a hobbled mobile UI that doesn’t let you edit information at all.

But it’s not as though attendees at Defrag would have smartphones and want to edit things from them

<sigh>

But then another idea hits me. This is a startup. This conference is a big deal for them. They are probably all working 24/7. Yes, it’s 11pm at night (Colorado time) but why not send an email to their support team! I’d never bother with a mainstream product because we all know how that works out, but good startups (and Eric knows what those look like) are all over customer support.

So I did. Short and simple as you see below. I used to run a Customer Support department, so I tried to provide at least a minimum amount of useful information and a clear subject.

After sending that, I went to bed. Defrag started at 8am on the 17th and I was on East Coast time, so I was up early.

I checked my email, but there was no response. Not even an autoresponder saying “We got your email”.

Hmm.

The 17th came and went. I checked the mobile app a few times, but it seemed no one was really using it and the vast majority of attendees didn’t have a completed profile or profile picture. The 18th came and went too. Defrag is only a two day conference, so by 5pm or so on the 18th it was over.

Still no email.

I got up early on Friday, 11/19, to take my flight home. Still no email.

Caught up with my email late last night when I finally got home.

Still nothing.

This morning (Saturday) I got up late to see not one but two emails:

Uhhh, what? I already registered. I logged in several times during the conference. Why are you sending me this now? As I look at this more closely, it seems Redmine is perhaps their support ticket system, so this is perhaps a login for problem tracking, not my account login?

Way to go, clarity.

This email was followed by an even more splendid one:

So yes, I got a message that simply regurgitated the email I had sent 3+ days earlier. You’ll also see the heartwarming “NON BILLABLE” notice in the subject line.

Now I already had the impression that they didn’t give a shit about my business, but at least now I know it’s because I’ve been identified as some kind of freeloader by their system.

You’ll also see that it shows the issue as “New”, which after 3+ days I would argue with, and the priority as “Normal”. Since the conference ended two days ago, I’d recommend they change that to “Low”, or “Ooops”, or “My Bad”.

Seriously? WTF! I couldn’t help but respond, since no-one else seems to be updating my case:

Let me be clear: this is in no way a criticism of Eric. This is 100% a criticism of Zerista and their management team.

If you can’t handle simple tasks like responding to urgent support emails, you don’t deserve anyone’s business, let alone mine.

Categories: All Business, Rants 'n' Raves
3613 Comments »http://blog.nicholasnapp.com/2010/11/20/hi-my-name-is-zerista-and-id-like-to-blow-a-golden-opportunity/%22Hi%2C+My+Name+is+Zerista+and+I%27d+like+to+blow+a+golden+opportunity%222010-11-20+13%3A26%3A51NickN

I’ve spent the past couple of days with a T-Mobile variant of the new Samsung Galaxy Tablet. To cut right to it, I’m pretty impressed.

The key with this device, like the iPad and the super-sized Smartphones that are coming out now, is what you intend to use it for. And for me, it has a lot of promise. The phrase “for me” occurs a lot in this post because that really is the critical point. The Galaxy has had some very mixed reviews, and frankly it reminds me of the negative reviews many netbooks get. This is not a desktop/laptop replacement, but for certain use cases, it works very very well.

My primary phone is trusty Nexus One. I’m all-cloud these days, so Google has my contacts, email etc, and Google Maps has replaced whatever little sense of direction I had. As a phone, it’s great. As a “mobile companion” to keep me organized, also great. I don’t play much music on it, but it’s an okay media player (although better at photos and video). And yes, it’s nice to have a pocket device that runs flash.

But there are some issues. Battery life is a constant concern. Emails are generally kept short and I don’t author documents. Just too much like hard work.

And for me, that’s where the Samsung shines. As a portable “more than a phone, less than a laptop” device. Yes, I know that’s what the iPad is supposed to be. But for me, the iPad is a little on the large size. The Samsung isn’t pocket sized (unless you have ungodly big pockets), but it is pretty light and small compared to the iPad. I wouldn’t leave the iPad in the car unless I put it in the trunk, but the Galaxy is small enough to fit in a glove compartment or side pocket. It also weighs less than a pound, so it is much more like carrying a notepad (yes, a paper one).

Aesthetically there’s not much to say. It’s a black rectangle with rounded corners. Yay. 7” screen, front and rear facing cameras (but no Skype support for video calls yet), stupid Apple-esque connector, and volume/power buttons. It’s also running Samsung’s Android UI, which is a bit of a mixed bag, but overall has some nice touches. The device runs Android 2.2, supports Flash out of the box and has built in 3G.

The Android status tray has been modified to include easy switches for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, Silent mode and Orientation lock. The latter is especially handy as you don’t need to fumble around for a physical switch to lock the device in portrait or landscape. There’s also a brightness control, although the auto mode does a decent job.

The screen is very bright and clear. Good color and decent readability under most lighting conditions.

But back to what I use it for… Yesterday I was on a 4 hour flight that happened to have in-flight wi-fi. I was able to take care of a bunch of emails, send some urgent SMSs via Google Voice, author a couple of Word docs, sketch out a Powerpoint, remote log in to my webhosting company and set up a test Drupal server (not a fan, but that’s another post), all while listening to music.

The flight was packed full and the guy next to me was trying to do the duck-typing thing on his laptop (elbows in, repetitive strain injury at the ready). Before his Thinkpad had even finished booting, I was already finishing some tasks. When we had to put our toys away, I still had 60%+ of battery left.

Apps are generally responsive. I haven’t had many issues with the browser. My only app-related issue is how much pre-installed junk is on the device. I really wish manufacturers wouldn’t do this. Or at least let me uninstall the cr*p I really don’t want. It seems the good old days of Desktop Bloatware are back with a vengeance.

There are some rough edges. The auto-correct doesn’t always recognize password fields, which can make typing in passwords a nightmare. Not to mention that your password appears big and bold in the suggested word panel as you type. There aren’t many good tablet apps yet, although some apps already look good (like Angry Birds). We really need an equivalent of Mujinote for this device. Also, with such a big screen, the text size is simply way too big in many apps. For example, in Gmail, you can shrink the size of the message text, but not the list of messages in your inbox. You could fit a lot more readable stuff on the screen if the font size was smaller.

I also really wish Samsung hadn’t gone the Apple route of proprietary flimsy connector and sealed battery. I don’t care about replacing the battery, but I do care about recovering from a completely locked up device. The latter hasn’t happened yet, but I’m not sure how you recover if it does.

But all in all, for me, it’s a handy device that means I take my laptop to even fewer places, and that’s a win in my book.

Categories: General
355No Comments »http://blog.nicholasnapp.com/2010/11/17/a-galaxy-far-far-away-first-few-days-with-a-samsung-tablet/A+Galaxy+Far%2C+Far+Away+--+first+few+days+with+a+Samsung+Tablet2010-11-17+14%3A55%3A33NickN