Terra3.0 - The New World of Independent Thinkers

How to produce a great webinar - lessons from Dan Zarella

2012-04-18T10:44:00Z

I watch today one of Dan Zarella' of Hub HubSpotSpot's Science of... webinars. Actually, it was Science of Webinars webinar.

Here some key takeaways:
- be more excited than you are in real life (people can't see you, but can hear your enthusiasm through your tone of voice).
- present either something new or something old in a new way (you want people to remain interested in what you have to say).
- make sure your topic is relevant to your audience
- create sound bites that can stand out of context
- don't be bad. Just don't.
- keep one thought per slide and don't use bullet points (OK. I am guilty as they come for using bullet points to say "don't use bullet points").
- Share your presentation on SlideShare. It turns out the more slides the deck has, the more viewers it gets.

Oh, yes. Tweet. A lot.

Enchant your audience

2012-04-17T10:59:00Z

Here is an interesting interview with Guy Kawasaki about enchanting your audience, customers.

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Create a mobile Facebook app for $5

2012-04-16T10:54:00Z

Cabana's Fan Page Mobilizer allows you to turn your Facebook fan page into a mobile app for only $5. However, it uses HTML 5 and it doesn't have an iOS or Android support - yet.

Check it out.

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Measuring happiness

2012-04-10T11:43:00Z

The first ever World Happiness Report was published recently by Columbia University’s Earth Institute. The researchers found that what we say makes us happy is not always what really makes us happy. Check out the summary of findings (published in FastCompany's Co.Exist site )

Richer people are happier than poorer people on average, but wealth is only one factor in overall happiness. The same goes for countries, where factors like personal freedom, lack of corruption, and social support are more important.
Unemployment obviously reduces happiness, but not because of what you may think. It’s not the loss of income, but the loss of things like self-esteem and workplace social life that lead to a drop in happiness. High unemployment rates can trigger unhappiness even in the employed, who suddenly become fearful of losing their jobs. According to the study, even low-quality jobs yield more satisfaction than being unemployed.
In some countries, the self-employed report higher levels of job satisfaction than the employed. The study found a positive correlation between happiness and self-employment in both American and European data, but not in Latin America. The possible reason: Self-employment may be a necessity in developing countries where formal employment is not as readily available. When it’s not a choice, it doesn’t lead to happiness.
Higher living standards correspond with increased happiness in some countries, but not all. In the U.S., for example, happiness levels have remained stagnant while living standards have risen over the past 50 years or so.
Levels of trust (i.e. whether you think someone would return a cash-stuffed wallet) have fallen dramatically over time in certain countries--including the U.S. and U.K.--but risen in others, like Denmark and Italy. One explanation may be that overall life satisfaction has dropped in the former countries, but has risen in many continental European countries.
Lack of perceived equality can reduce happiness. The report explains: "The most positive results are in an interesting time-series study using both the U.S. General Social Survey and Eurobarometer. This finds that in both the U.S. and Europe increases in inequality have (other things equal) produced reductions in happiness. The effect has been stronger in Europe than in the U.S. This difference probably reflects ideological differences: Some 70% of Americans believe that the poor have a chance of escaping poverty, compared with only 40% of Europeans."
Mental health is the biggest contributing factor to happiness in all countries, but only a quarter of mentally ill people get sufficient treatment in the most developed nations.
Married people across the world (studies have been done in the U.S., EU countries, Switzerland, Latin America, Russia, Eastern Europe, and Asia) claim that they’re happier than single counterparts. A stable family life also contributes to happiness.

Beginner's mind or Zen and the Valley

2012-04-09T18:36:34Z

FastCompany had an interesting article about the connection between Zen and Silicon Valley. It turns out that Steve Jobs was not the only one influenced by the eastern philosophy. According to the article, many entrepreneurs in the Valley have adopted the "question everything" and "beginner's mind".

Steve Jobs was known to strip out the unessential features and functions, buttons and dials from all Apple products. He was the opposite of most technology developers, who believe that more features and functions improve a product.

At the end, Apple won and all the others are catching up, but not catching a lot of users for their features-heavy products.

Simple is better, indeed.

Invasive marketing

2012-04-02T06:55:04Z

8 PM on Friday night I got an out-of-town call. The person at the other line wanted to talk to me - she asked for me by my full name. She identified herself as a representative of the company that provides the medication portion of my medical insurance (the name was correct). She wanted to go over my medications with me. (I only have 2 that are more mundane than aspirins).

I snapped and asked if she wants to do this on a late Friday night. She offered to call back in the morning. I hung up.

Apparently, nobody at that company heard of invasive marketing.

Do you have other examples of invasive marketing? Please use the comment box to respond.

Imitation to extreme or bio as a bible

2012-03-31T08:40:15Z

Yesterday, I wrote about Steve Jobs's best leadership lessons selected from the recent biography.

It turns out that this book has become a bible to a lot of CEO's. According to the Wall Street Journal, CEO's of small companies and start-ups are imitating Jobs to the littlest details. Not only the famous black turtleneck but behaving like him. Some are even using the book as an excuses for their own mistreating of people - "I'm not as bad as he was", they claim, like this would absolve them from such behavior. Others bought copies of the bio to all their employees and had discussions around the various issues at company meetings.

No one can really judge a person fairly. But one thing is for sure: this man had more influence in reshaping our business AND professional lives more than anybody in history. Some people impacted our business lives and our personal ones. But none - as far as I can see - impacted both.

Can you think of any other example? If so, please write it in the comment box.

Link to article http://tinyurl.com/7zhzpvm.

The real leadership lessons of Steve Jobs

2012-03-30T22:48:34Z

This month's issue of Harvard Business Review has an interesting article about Steve Jobs's real leadership lessons. The article is written by the author of Steve Jobs's bio, Walter Issacson. Here are the 14 lessons:

1. Focus
2. Simplicity
3. Take responsibility end to end
4. When behind, leapfrog
5. Put products before profits
6. Don't be a slave of focus groups
7. Bend reality
8. Impute
9. Push for perfection
10. Tolerate only "A" players
11. Engage face-to-face
12. Know both the big picture and the details
13. Combine the humanities with the sciences
14. Stay hungry, stay foolish

What really amazed me looking at the list is the fact ALL were attributed to a single person; a person who mastered ALL of them.

No mater what people say about Jobs's personal style and his way of treating people, his brilliance should not be discounted. It should be studied and embraced.

If the other companies and their leaders would apply only 20% of these lessons, the business world would be a much more fun to be, and the world at large would benefit from much better, more creative and fun products.

How do you define success?

2012-03-30T03:29:13Z

Build communities. Spread the word. Freedom of expression. Fun. Engaging.
Energizing. Experiment. Trial and adaptation. Build. Do good. Give back.
Receive. Say "Thank you". Accept the gift you've been offered - material or
talents or feelings. Be happy. Smile - without a reason. Say something nice
to a stranger. Play. Exercise your creative powers. Ignore nay-Sayers.
Embrace yay-Sayers. Shine. Reach your potential - good enough is not good
enough. Mentor others. Find a mentor.

Are you still enjoying your life's amazing ride? Take pictures. Share your
stories and adventures. We are eager to listen to them. When can you start?

Decapitating the internet

2012-03-28T11:30:00Z

So, the end of the world as we know it might come to an end on the 31st. The internet world, that is. And that is courtesy of Anonymous who claims its members will take down the ENTIRE internet on the 31st.

Although BBC's article looks into how this might be accomplished, I pose a different question: WHY? Why would you take down the entire internet? The only logical answer is: Power. Absolute power to be exact. Which, is kinda ironic since their entire philosophy is based on going AGAINST those who have absolute power. BBC article

Who is suing who?

2012-03-28T11:19:00Z

I am having hard time keeping up with who is suing who nowadays. Samsung and Nokia suing Apple. Apple suing Google. Google suing Apple. Yahoo! suing Facebook. Random guy suing Facebook for half of the company. 85 year old woman suing Apple for $1 million for having front glass doors (she didn't see them and smashed her nose on them). And, Paul Allen suing everybody.

Who's next? And for how much? Can I get a free mocha?

New toy...

2012-03-27T10:09:00Z

Here is a new toy that will make videoconfering "a snap". At least, according to USA Today. The videocamera is only about $200. ...

HTML 5 sites for newbies

2012-03-27T03:08:25Z

If you always craved a cool html 5 website but couldn't afford one, I have good news for you. Wix.com is your answer. They offer a series of designed templates you can addapt for your type of business. wix and it's all free. Can't beat that! So, what are you waiting for?

Should he give up or keep trying?

2012-03-23T03:58:25Z

This is an entrepreneur's worst nightmare: your vision is not working and you have to lay off half of your staff.

The VentureBeat announced today that Seesmic's founder is laying off half his staff. Loic Le Meur, the founder, is blaming the situation on himself. They tried few things that didn't work as expected, he said. Now they are focusing on the latest new product: a cross-posting tool. One might say that going from a video commenting system, to a Tweeter client, to any everything client, to a CRM, and now to a corss-posting tool is a lot of hopping around. I remember my brother, @dragosaxinte, commenting some time ago about another company's similar strategy change: "They don't give one thing enough time to materialize and provide enough data to make a logical decision. At the first time of failure, they change strategy to something else that looks like it is going to solve all their problems and make them rich overnight".

The VentureBeat was asking the question if Le Meur should quit or keep going. (He is pushing forward, by the way). What do you think?

Think of artists as brands

2011-09-22T17:55:19Z

Troy Carter, Lady Gaga's business manager, mixes old fashion marketing techniques with new media to create a mega brand. His first order of business: think of artists as brands. His relationship with Lady Gaga: 95/5. She makes 95% of the creative decisions, he only 5%. He makes 95% of the business decisions, she only 5%.

Watch this quick interview at the Ad Age's Digital West Conference here.

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$85 designer T-shirt by Starbucks

2011-09-21T17:59:00Z

To celebrate its 40th anniversary, Starbucks released a limited edition designer t-shirts that look like a spilled coffee. Price tag: $85.

For $25 I will create one-of-a-kind, real coffee spilled t-shirt. And, I will even autograph it.

Who is watching when

2011-09-19T14:31:40Z

Check out this interesting study published in Ad Age and visualized by MBAonline.com. Notice the choice of the icons to represent each generation's activity. Quite telling... ...

Costs: $0. Renues: $$$$$

2011-09-15T10:45:00Z

Remember when this was happening on a daily basis and was considered OK? Since then many advocates of child labor have worked hard to put a stop of this practice around the world. It embarrassed a lot of people and companies.

According to Ad Age's Simon Dumenco and Forrbes' Jeff Bercovici, Huffington Post and Patch are seeking 13-year olds and younger to be editors for a new vertical called HuffPost High School. All good, you'd say. Except that these editors are not paid. And the companies will collect ad revenue from advertisers, but will not share the revenue with the editors. One can only wonder: how is this different from child labor?

Read the Ad Age article here and Forbes' here.

Only Low Klout Score Gets you in

2011-09-14T16:32:17Z

At a Florida fashion show, only people with a Klout score of 40 or below could get it. Klout, scores your social influence based on a variety of factors by scouting all social media sits and collecting data about your social presence. In a nutshell, the lower your Klout score is the more influential you are in the social world. (Click here to see the criteria for Klout scoring).

Freedom vs. Power

2011-09-13T23:22:28Z

I was reading an interesting post by Brian Tracy. He talked about why people want to make more money. Most of them answered: because they wanted more freedom in their lives. Yet, a lot of people want more money because more money makes them more powerful and more power positions them on the top of society's echelon.

If you want more money to gain more power, you are most likely to compromise your values, run over people, put profits before people, and become a not-so-pleasant-person-to-be-around.

If you want more money to gain more freedom (financial, time) you will make decisions that have a long-term focus and you will build long-lasting relationships.

It's your choice.