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How speed pitching ends up as slow pitch softball

Every so often, an article on “the elevator pitch” comes along where you’re supposed to present your product in 30 seconds or less… five sentences or less… two eye blinks or less….

I don’t want to add specific examples, because I don’t want to single out any one example, but you’ve certainly seen this advice multiple times for multiple scenarios… resumes, product pitches, confessional booths, marriage proposals…

I’m sure when I first heard the suggestion my brain did something like;

Hmm… that’s a neat idea…

Well, yea I can really see the befit to being succinct…. and I know I hate it when people “broadcast only”

I really learn by getting a chance to ask questions…

So, I guess once they’ve gotten a good summary they’re smart enough to see the value on their own..

Then they’re hooked and will want to learn more!!

Although I’m a planner by profession and have a consumer nature, I’m naturally a “less talk more do” kinda person. So this aligns with the “optimization” and slight east coast mentality that I have.

So the faith in this advice has permeated my career for many years now. I’ve practiced giving succinct status statements (I also know rambling can get you in trouble) and I’m usually able to answer technical questions with something succinct and satisfactory like “yes, I’ll make that happen”.

Thus today’s revelation has come as a bit of a shock when I realized the advice I’ve been following all these years is very misleading and often downright wrong!

In such an information dense dialog what should be a rapid give and take has, in retrospect, degenerated into “take and move on” with you losing out. Often I’ve delivered such a fantastically succinct statement that it’s apparently left the exec, customer, or finance speechless.

It’s a clear alternative for you to consider my possible ineptitude and I admit to not being a natural sales man, often expecting facts and my passion to speak for itself. So think back to a time where you’ve epitomized this approach and how often the person on the other end was left speechless, uncertain where to continue.

I’m sure there was one of those pauses where you were expecting them to ask a question or say something. You had the next reply ready, only the chance never came and you were forced to continue as though you’d only meant to take that awkward break.

My experience has shown me that too often the person on the other end is scared looking stupid, and that without something for them to “grasp” in the verbal discourse they resort to Mark Twain’s old advice that keeping silent is the wisest thing to do. As another counter example consider meetings, where it’s often the person who talks the most who’s given credit for being the expert.

I saw this illustrated clearly while working at a tradeshow last week. My instinct was to give a quick pitch and then answer questions to help explore their understanding. However, the recipient of my “wisdom” wasn’t certain how to continue the conversation and had I not continued with “trivialities” they would have left with no continued interest beyond a “thanks”.

I’m certainly not advocating a dialog of dysentery, however I believe there’s a bit of human psychology that’s at play here which people “elevator presenters” overlook;

  • People are far more likely to forgive you for telling them something they know then for making them feel like idiots.
  • There’s also a level of repetition required for people to intuit and internalize information. Repeating information through variation is a powerful tactic shunned in the 60 second pitch.
  • Even if the person on the other end has already been told “this is fast” saying “the obvious” is a chance for them to judge your passion and authenticity.

That’s just a start, but I think there’s many reasons why you should take as long as you’ve got, to say as much as you can. Just as Web 2.0 focuses on being “feature stingy” rather then “feature rich” the new 2.0 way to pitch your plan is in through a conversation, not a soundbight.

You clearly need to think out how to say what you want to say, this is no excuse to not prepare. However, thin-slicing aside, no matter what power tie you’re wearing, there’s too much competition for you to expect people to get hooked by 60 seconds of information.

2008 06 19 jay business
career
marketing Comments (0) Permalink

How traditional IT skills are becoming irrelevant

I hope those who know me wouldn’t peg me as an alarmist. So take my title with a grain of salt but also, because of that same optimism, with a sense of sobriety.

I’ve followed “cloud computing” for a while (before it was called that), most often in the context of Amazon. From my position, it’s been really interesting to see the growth and dead-ends of this shift. And although in some ways it represents an outside disruptive force for my job, in others it’s a technology and mindset I’m trying to drive internally and externally.

My analogy for my job is that I help design, edit and publish “books” but never write one of my own, so some of my perspectives are gleaned second hand without the heat and intensity of battle. Yet, I’m also keen to learn from other’s failures (and successes) so I do my best to leverage the examples others provide.

SmugMug is a photo sharing site that’s been a big champion (and occasional critic) of Amazon’s services and despite seeing their use of them as a competitive advantage they’ve been very open about their practices. Recently they described how they’ve built a very successful workflow around these concepts and I think you should give it a read.

There’s a tangible shift in computing that I don’t think has been felt in more traditional environments. Certainly enterprise IT is used to hearing fads fall to the floor, anyone remember “The Mainframe is dead”? But it’s also very easy to point to successful companies like SmugMug and claim they’re not enterprise players.

However, consider Amazon (or Google) and remember they don’t just provide this stuff for fun. It’s what they themselves use internally for their “day jobs” and that it’s because of these same services and not in spite of them, that they’ve reached their current heights.

Time will only tell if they can hold these lofty positions, but my belief is that the future’s in the clouds.

2008 06 04 jay Amazon
enterprise
innovation
technology Comments (3) Permalink

My how long it’s been…

6 weeks! Wow, yes it’s really been that long since I started reading Programming Collective Intelligence and last posted here.

A lot has happened during that time, my wife got a new job and because of that we moved. We’re both happy about the chance to “evolve” and I think it’s going to enable a lot of opportunities. But clearly there’s been many things going on as a result. I’ve been lucky in being able to continue in my current job and am “just” transitioning to a remote employee working full time out of a home office.

I really like having a traditional office with people to “work with” (whether it’s directly or indirectly) but I’m actually enjoying the work at home (WAH) aspect too. Long term I want to manage IT professionals and I believe that will inherently entail remote employees, so I think the chance to be one for a while will garner me a lot of experience and understanding.

I’m also excited about being nearby some fantastic friends, whom I’ve known for a very long time, although it means “trading” the fantastic “local” friends. I don’t ever believe you have to “play favorites” with friends, I’ve certainly got enough love to go around, and it’s exciting to be “forced” to use social technologies to keep up with the ones I’m leaving behind and also to also use those tools in my new location as well.

This should also signal a return to “projecting” for me, which is another event I’m particularly excited about. It’s not all roses though, I can’t remember the PW on my wireless router, my office is still a mess with boxes everywhere and my home server was DoA.So it’s going to mean a technology upgrade (and I need to buy my wife a new computer too) and a lot of threads to tidy up but in the end I really feel positive about the shift.

Hopefully you’ve not all forgotten about me and you’ll forgive my absence. I hope I perhaps just sat idle in your RSS feeds and you didn’t feel the need to purge me because of the silence.

j

2008 05 30 jay career
frustration
inspiration Comments (0) Permalink

Fun with twitter

Lauren shares two fun twitter tools, which I don’t want to re-describe here but I thought I’d share since visualizations are so much fun!

2008 04 17 jay twitter
visualization Comments (0) Permalink

O’Reilly Make me an Offer!

I’m a big fan of O’Reilly books, as I’m sure most of you are. They’re great technical resources for me and have cute animals my wife can really enjoy!

A friend of mine got Programming Collective Intelligence and recomended it to me, so my mother-in-law gave it to me for my birthday (yay, I’m old!). I’m stoked to see O’Reilly focused on moving “up the stack” of technology in such an approachable way.

I finally got a chance to start last night and reading the preface it was immediately apparent this was going to challenge my newly developed python skills.

e.g.

{xvii} //That’s the page #

string_list = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']

string_list[2] # returns ‘b’ #wrong it should be ‘c’

You know when they’re teaching you incorrect python that it’s going to be a fun way to learn. I worked my way up to page 11 lastnight and found about ~8+ errata. This is the first time I’ve felt completely comfortable marking up a book (oh the sacrilege!) but I do focus better when I can’t simply skim…

I expressed my recent activities on twitter, and another friend asked if I was keeping a list. So, FJ, this post’s for you and for everyone else who doesn’t want to scratch the same grove in their head that I did.

O’Reilly’s great about leveraging the collective intelligence [pun intended] and you can Submit and Find errata (perhaps I should order by frequency and say “Find and Submit”) a O’Reilly’s website for the book.

    Unfortunately, the official list only has two and hasn’t been updated since the 18th of Feb!!!

I submitted mine there and there’s a ton more (but the user format is a little hard to scroll through).

So here’s my quick list till now (p11) [I'll try to add new ones as comments so you can track this post] and if anyone from O’Reilly’s reading I think I’d make a great editor, if only to actually update the official list with the good community feedback and help others out!

{xvii} string_list[2] = ‘c’

{xviii} /* first list compression should change v1>4 to v>4 */

{xix} // Chapter 2, 2nd to last line “move” should be “movie”

{9} critics['Toby'] #output is missing ‘Superman Returns’: 4.0

{10} //The results of both math functions are wrong as they use the wrong datapoints (5,4) & (4,1) which should be (1,4.5) and (2,4)

{11} //sim_distance() - the return function should be; return 1/(1+sqrt(sum_of_squares))

{11} from recommendations import critics, sim_distance #reload(recommendations) didn’t work for me. You’ll have to change the subsequent function call as well and because of the previous errata the returned # should be 0.2942 (approximately) and not 0.1481

{11} This wasn’t my find, I learned it from the user submitted errata, but someone mentioned using “si = set()” and then “si.add(item)” instead of “si[item]=1″ … Both make sense, but the set seems cleaner and was a new semantic for me.

2008 04 17 jay books
code
frustration
technology Comments (6) Permalink

Making it big time… !

Every athlete dreams of two things… (1) making it to “the big dance” and (2) having that magical moment forever immortalized… with an advertising contract.

Admit it, it’s true. Tiger has his own Gatorade now and Anna Kournikova, who apparently needs no subtitle (watch the commercial) is back in a K-Swiss campaign (which I won’t dignify with a link).

Well now it’s my turn! OK, so I admit it’s not some multi-billion dollar contract… actually it’s just one post. But it’s beyond the trite look of striped shoes, or the bitter taste of electrolytes … it’s coffee!

I’d stumbled across a coffee “beta test” sponsored by Joffrey’s and decided that if Amazon had my home address what’s the harm of one more company? The deal was they’d sent you a packet of “Jamaican Me Crazy” in return for a tasting and a post.

Now for those of you who may not know, I have a bit of a sordid history with the magic bean. My wife was a Starbucks barista (and Coffee Master) for more than two years, so I have a bit of an honorary coffee master’s “black apron” myself. Hot chocolates with a shot of espresso were my gateway but now I drink Americanos, black.

I still frequent the local ‘Bux from time to time, to get my daily dose and flirt with the Barristas (for old times sake, I promise). I have my own collection of coffee making implements now; from a thermal insulated 12 cup Capresso drip to a stove-top perk-pot for special occasions.

However, my absolute favorite is my “Aeropress” which I use daily and am still required to explain that it’s not tea.

If you’re visual and want some photos for the narrative then check out my tumblr page for photos.

I got my package in the mail and was excited to take it to work the next day. I’d idly dreamed of trying the roast in each of my brewing devices and holding coffee tastings, with chocolate, raspberries and lemon biscotte. However, the package contained about 4 - 2oz scoops (in my world that’s enough for 2 cups of coffee) so I decided to just use the Aeropress which is ideal for smaller batches.

When you open the packet, the smell hits you like a spring day after a hard rain. To me, it was buckwheat pancakes with a hint of maple syrup. Not a heavily sweetened by any means just that organic nuttiness with an ephemeral touch of grandma’s caramel apples. The grounds actually looked like they had some dehydrated crystals, but a quick test disproved that assumption (yes I did eat them). I could have left the bag open on my desk for a week and considered it a successful sponsorship.

Yet there was tasting to be done and java calling, so I loaded up my Aero and made the brew!

The first thing I noticed was the lack of oils. Oily behavior is highlighted in most ‘Bux blends and contributes to their “robust” profiles. And initially I did feel the overall blend lacked the “robusto” of what I was used to drinking, as thought it had a sweet start and a nutty finish but lacked in the middle. The flavoring is not strong to taste but has an aromatic quality that leaves a solid impression.

However, each sip had a consistent flavor even as it cooled and I decided to fine tune my second brew.

Working with a new coffee is a little tricky and I believe I made two mistakes. The first is that I was in such a hurry to taste test (and get to my meeting) that I neglected to let the grounds steep for ~30 seconds (can you sense the anticipation). Secondly, I put about 2 oz too much of hot water in my cup (a trusty metal camping mug).

I actually saved the packet for the next day (I’ve been trying to cut back… honest…) and simply folded the top over until morning. When I got to my desk the first thing I did was smell the grounds, what a way to start your day!

I could tell they had lost just a bit of their initial aroma but it really let me smell the quality of the beans beneath.

Back to the kitchenette I counted a full 35 seconds before I started pressing, and did a 3:1 ratio of hot water to concentrate (as opposed to 4:1). This time, the lack of oils was still visible but I could tell I’d hit a sweeter brew because of the “thicker” coloring of the distilled coffee as it poured.

This second cup was actually really fantastic, as the additional steep time had given it the chance to round out the body of the brew. I also think the overnight aeration had allowed the flavoring a chance to level off and permit the beans their chance to shine.

So how was my moment of glory? Well first let me say I’m not a flavored coffee person and forgo milk and sugar too. Thus the overall brew wasn’t my particular pleasure but I know a lot of people who “Dr.” their coffee and would have loved it. It was a really smooth cup of coffee that most people search for.

Although I was surprised at the lack of oils, the quality of the beans will definitely get me to investigate Joffrey’s other roasts. Now that my wife’s not at ‘Bux anymore we’ve tried a lot of alternate roasts including Green Mountain, Pete’s, and even Dunkin Donuts which would previously have been sacrilege (and now that I’ve tried it has been excommunicated indefinitely).

Don’t just take my word for it though, check our their beta test and see if you can get a packet of your own!

Just remember, if we meet on any sports commercials; “my better is better then your better“.

2008 04 08 jay marketing Comments (1) Permalink

Life, Love and Personal Fulfillment in the Amazon

No, this has nothing to do with strange anthropological experiences it’s even more fascinating…

I watched a great video from iTunes U (my new favorite pastime) and it made two (of many) interesting points;

  1. Wal*Mart, which would be China’s 8th largest trading partner if it were a country and is the United State’s largest business, doesn’t make a single thing. Instead, their success is due to their logistical knowledge and expertise.
  2. UPS doesn’t just “deliver things” they’re also “in-sourced” to perform operations for companies, for example Toshiba. When you mail a laptop out for service, it gets picked up by UPS, taken to one of their facilities, repaired by UPS and mailed back to, all without ever touching Toshiba’s hands.

In that many ways the world wide economy is turning into a “knowledge based economy”where the ability to conceive of an idea dictates success, not specifically the ability to build or deploy that idea, those proficiencies can be contracted.

There is certainly value for operational excellence a la Wal*Mart, Starbucks, UPS and today I think we get to add one more to that list, Amazon.

They’ve announced a “Fulfillment Web service (FWS)” which allows you to leverage Amazon’s existing distribution network to store and ship your products.

In addition to offering warehousing and shipping, in true Amazon tradition, they’ve coupled this capability with a programmatic webservices interface. I think this may be a pretty key differentiator. It’s not that Wal*Mart doesn’t have a business to business (B2B) interface, but EDI can be complex and costly to implement.

Wal*Mart attempts to server “the common man” but it seems clear that Amazon’s focused on “the common business”.

One last question and thought; Why has this taken so long? We can be pedantic about definitions or dissect the statement that innovation can truly not exist without invention. Semantics aside, I believe Amazon’s practice and “inventions” in the webservices technologies has afforded them the “innovation” required to bridge this gap.

PS, if you have the opportunity check out iTunes U, specifically the presentations by Thomas L. Friedman at MIT; “The World is Flat” and “The World is Flat 3.0″.

2008 03 20 jay Amazon
business
innovation Comments (0) Permalink

Amazon Overview

If you’ve read my earlier posts you know I spend a bit of time following Amazon, both from a business perspective as well as my interest in the energy they’ve invested in webservice (SaaS) technologies.

I recently gave a presentation to discuss their offerings and wanted to make that available to anyone interested.

I build presentations that can also act as “guidebooks” once the discussion is over, i.e. the presentation interests someone in the topic, but the charts should also be useful as a starting point for their own experience. Thus I’ve included links and citations for the various sections. It may seem a little overwhelming when you’re just paging through but it seems to work well for my presentation style and my typical audience.

I always find it interesting to compare and contrast my experience with a presentation given verbally vs. paging through the deck later. In an engaging conversation, some of the more interesting and thought provoking dialogs revolve around a single bullet point. However, when paging through a deck you’re often drawn to “examples” which are really for a reference or to substantiate a divergent discussion.

I’m most interested in the “implications and extrapolation” phase of a presentation as opposed to ones that review the “what and why” of an activity.

I hope you’ll find this interesting and helpful and if there’s any parts I can help elaborate on please let me know.

2008 03 18 jay Amazon
business
enterprise
saas
technology Comments (0) Permalink

Go to the Head of the class!

Yay, I made it to Highschool!

No, I’m not really headed back to school, just enjoying a moment of brevity with the “Blog Readability Test”

I wouldn’t take it too seriously as I’m not sure how a “determination” is made, but that’s kind of the point sometimes.

Make sure to stay light and enjoy what you can!

2008 03 12 jay uncategorized Comments (1) Permalink

Web 3.0 - Where Stuff actually works the way you want!

I haven’t waded through all the implications of Apple’s event today but this in particular caught my eye;

“He’s picked up an iPhone. He’s going into contacts, calendar and
e-mail, and it’s all empty. Now he’s looking at settings, goes into
mail settings, and looks at an Exchange account that’s already set up.
He turns on ActiveSync for contacts, mail and everything, and now he
goes in and everything from the server has been pushed down to the
phone.”

Couple it with Google’s announcement today that they’ve opened their Contacts API and I expect that soon we’ll see Google contacts syncing with the iPhone. I’ve already started standardizing on Google as my “information backup” and think this would be great!

One of the critiques on the iPhone was that since Steve loves music, it’s great for music. However, Steve doesn’t get “social applications” so it’s lacking in those capacities (e.g. no GPS and “buddy locator”). Personally, I’ve seen how painful iTunes can be syncing video and podcasts, especially when managing multiple phones from one iTunes, so I imagine Steve isn’t watching too many TED talks or iTunes U!

I believe linking Facebook & Twitter status with my iPhone would start a killer level of integration. Imaging scrolling through your contacts list to see what they’re doing. While we’re at it, why not fade out those people I don’t call frequently (or who aren’t “socially” active) as much, i.e. Vinny’s Pizza joint doesn’t need to weigh in my attention at the same level as my wife! Why is alphabetical the only visualization option. If we can get picture flow for music albums, why not for my closest friends!

Picture being bored and wanting to find someone to connect with and scrolling through your list and knowing; “Chris is heading to the gym” … don’t call him. “Kyle is cooking…” ok, he’s out. Then finally seeing “Peter is watching the rain come down” … *ring ring*.

It speaks to the growing level of integration I hope we’ll start to see from our products. The O’Reilly Radar has introduced software above the level of a single device, and this is my interpretation of that reality! I believe Web 3.0 is the social side of all this technology and it sounds like here we come!

2008 03 06 jay uncategorized Comments (0) Permalink