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Saturday, January 24, 2009 |
I'm in the magazine business, which is a subset of the media business, which has been an obsessive subject of said media about its supposed general demise. This week two pieces of information came my way. Mathew Wingram has some insight about the role debt plays in media ownership. Maybe it's debt that is driving newspaper business down. I belong to an association of business press editors. It's monthly newsletter contained an article by a consultant with some similar insight predicting that B2B magazines owned by smaller companies with little or no debt should survive this downturn while those companies who followed the Wall Street mantra of continual growth and borrowed to do so might be in trouble. Hope he's right. I work for the former type.
Just goes to show--don't take every scary story in the popular press at face value. Now, as for what I write ...
11:00:35 AM 
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I just saw that the OPC Foundation has a new blog designed to get you up to speed on OPC-UA. This new technology will be a significant upgrade to your data communications. Congratulations, Randy Armstrong, welcome to the blogosphere.
The results of a comprehensive survey about OPC have been shared with me. More later, but the first glance showed that many people don't even know about UA and others are unsure about what it means. Checking out this blog regularly will help.
10:47:11 AM
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OK, by the time it hits The New York Times it's probably old news, but here's an article about how companies don't connect with their customers. This thought has been hammered home so many times, I can't believe that there still exist marketers and executives who don't get it. But then I remember in the late 70s when the company where I worked was taken over by beancounters (disclaimer, I was in product development and was and remain a product person). Customers were numbers on a spreadsheet to them. But surely they've learned? I guess not according to this author.
Recently I was scanning Twitter updates on a talk given to marketing types. I thought "geez, there's nothing new here" only to find out it was revolutionary to them. Where have they been living? Mars?
Marketing is a conversation you have with your customers and prospects. It's based upon trust--they've got to trust you and your message. There is a reason for print advertising; and a reason for online advertising; and there is a difference and don't mix them up; and a reason for live events, direct marketing and everything else in the portfolio of marketing tools. But if you don't have a consistent message that evokes trust from your audience, then it will fail.
10:42:14 AM
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I have been thoroughly swamped this week--trying to finish the February Automation World issue, interviewing for my March article on green automation and scheduling appointments for the upcoming ARC Forum. I never got around to updating my last post on the White House blog site. My thanks to Gregg Le Blanc for doing it for me. As he said, he'd have posted as a comment but received an error. Don't you just love technology?
Here's his comments with updated links. Seems that the incoming geeks discovered that the outgoing group wasn't so geeky. I hope we see better technology policies along with better Web sites.
Hey Gary, One thing I think of when people are talking about the new web site, itâo[dot accent]s up sides and down sides, is that things change a bit once youâo[dot accent]re actually holding executive power. Many things that we take for granted out here might not be possible or comprehended by a large fraction of the population. We talk in tweets, texts, and status updates. A majority of America does not. I read about 100 blogs per day. In my travels through the blogosphere this week, I saw a few things of interestâo[oe] such as 2/3rds of Americans who do not have broadband connections, donâo[dot accent]t want them. But I donâo[dot accent]t think my habits, or yours, or Scobles, Winerâo[dot accent]s etc. are all that representative of the rest of the population. I techno-utopian criticisms of the new Whitehouse site a little hollow. One thing we learned during the campaign is that Obamaâo[dot accent]s team knows how to use media in all its forms. I think itâo[dot accent]s important to look at some of the things that are changes in the Whitehouse.gov site: Greater transparencyâo[oe] Note the comments about them using ASP and not ASP.NET. Why? Letâo[dot accent]s review this article. No Facebook. 6 year old Office apps. No private email. No Blackberry for Obamaâo[oe] and then, yes, he does get a Blackberry with strings. So, itâo[dot accent]s a different world in there. I think weâo[dot accent]ll see these things evolve as his technology agenda (link in here http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/01/20/obama-administration.html) takes hold. But heâo[dot accent]s got 8 years of technical stagnation and 20th century policy to get through. Technology and policy are mortal enemies because of their time constants. I guess my point is that, it seems unlikely that Obamaâo[dot accent]s team forgot all their tricks once the election was over. And while I consider myself to be pretty plugged in, I think many technophiles overestimate the relevancy of our lifestyle and habits in getting a job done effectively. I predict we will see changes in the Whitehouse Web site. Even the TSA has a blog now (with comments). Comparing the change.gov web site and whitehouse.gov Web site, you can see that compromises have been made. Take care and keep blogging! Oh, and this would have been a comment on your blog, except that when I posted it, I got a 403 Error (Access Forbidden). Oh wellâo[oe] thatâo[dot accent]s technology for you!
Thanks a bunch, Gregg.
10:33:20 AM
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© Copyright 2009 Gary Mintchell.
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