When you think of an organization that is effective at building customer loyalty, you think of companies like Starbucks, USAA, and The Ritz-Carlton, right? Well add a new one to the mix. But this one isn’t a business; it’s singer/songwriter Todd Rundgren, of the song “Bang on the Drum All Day” fame. Mila D'Antonio http://www.1to1media.com

A pair of recent branding campaigns have caught my eye, one based around a TV show that ceased production in 1998 and the other involving beaming an ad into outer space. Both might just be silly enough to work. Kevin Zimmerman www.1to1media.com

Back in 2006, Greg Olsen wrote a post called "Going Bedouin" that made the internet rounds more than a few times.  It was a well thought-out and well-crafted piece that received the attention it deserved.  Flash forward to 2008, and now we see that Dell has taken the idea and run with it, by way of a new initiative called Digital Nomads.

From the Dell side, the main human face behind Digital Nomads is Bruce Eric Anderson (@bruceericatdell).  Anderson is a strong complement to both Richard Binhammer (@richardatdell) and Lionel Menchaca (@lionelatdell), who have, in my opinion, done a really solid job of putting a human face and human voice to Dell through their conversations on Twitter over the last year or so. 

The Digital Nomads effort is an interesting one, and is a step in the right direction.  Right now, the site is set up as a community where said nomads can interact with each other and learn more about the tips and tricks of the bedouin lifestyle.  It's currently a little heavy on the Dell propaganda, but there are assurances that this will lessen over time.  When called on the carpet over the Dell-centricity of the site, Anderson replied:

"I take your comments as healthy dialogue on the whole concept of what makes one a digital nomad. I absolutely consider myself a digital nomad, even though today I don’t fly frequently across the country or around the world. I’ve had more than my fill of traveling in the past and now with a family at home am glad to be more office-bound but still have the flexibility to do what I do from wherever. Perhaps you could call me today more of a ‘corridor nomad’.

My role and presence on digitalnomads.com will become less over time as more of you come on as guest bloggers, add to the whitepaper, contribute thoughts and comments (the latter being a great point made by @MktMan).

@LionelatDell and I, or any other Dell employee, are the only ones who are paid to contribute to this site — though our intent is to make this less about Dell and more about the concept of digital nomads. Thanks for your comments."

So far, the conversation on Twitter is trending in a positive direction as well.

Is Digital Nomads a success?  It's too early to tell.  The site's been up for only a week or so, and it's still certainly got a few rough edges (for example, the "Crowdsource this Whitepaper" section of the site feels a bit half-baked). However, the initiative does seem to indicate an honest commitment on Dell's part to not only try something new, but to do it in a way that brings together its customers and others outside the organization in order to achieve that goal.  From that aspect, they're definitely on the right track.

I've been covering social media a lot lately. July was social media month at 1to1 Media, and we even created a microsite, www.getpastthehype.com, as a resource for our readers. In speaking with social media experts, authors, analysts, and all-around smart people, a few common themes appear when it comes to social media strategy. Elizabeth Glagowski http://www.1to1media.com

He estado probando Diigo - www.diigo.com como herramienta de social bookmarking. Me gusta mas que delicious y digg... ya que realmente es mas social y fomenta la colaboración entre usuarios. Y para las empresas puede ser otra herramienta de marketing...

Demian takes the idea and runs with it.

Seth says that "bringing symmetry to asymmetrical relationships is a huge opportunity for a technology company."  I don't think this statement goes far enough, not by a long shot.

It's not just about technology companies.

When there are significant asymmetries, there are systemic issues, not just technical ones.

This is why efforts like ProjectVRM need to exist.  This is why I'm starting to talk about buyer-driven marketplaces.

The statement above needs to be reiterated: it's not just about technology companies.  It's not even "just" about business.  It's about equilibrium, which just seems to be one of those states that things usually trend toward.  Here are over 50 other examples.

N.B. I recognize the inherent conflict between the statement above vis-à-vis W. Brian Arthur's work on increasing returns (cite).  But there are currently a lot more examples of equilibria versus increasing returns.

  San Diego 
  Originally uploaded by Peter Hutchins.

This week kicks off the annual meeting for ASAE & The Center for Association Leadership in San Diego.  ASAE is doing some really killer stuff in the collaboration / Web 2.0 space, including:

• Blogging at Acronym
• Associapedia
• A Flickr group

You can even follow along by tracking posts tagged with #ASAE on Twitter.

If you're interested in understanding what folks on the front lines of bringing Web 2.0 into associations are doing, here are three people to start with, today:

Maddie Grant from Diary of a Reluctant Blogger

Jeff De Cagna from Principled Innovation

Jamie Notter from Get Me Jamie Notter!

(Other great association bloggers who should be on this list?  Please list them in the comments!)

Additionally, there are a few resources out there that can get you started, such as this Executive Briefing on Social Networking for Businesses and Associations, which has (wow!) been viewed almost 9,000 times.

You can get the presentation here, or download it as a free e-Book here.

Looking forward to seeing some great things out of San Diego this week.

Related:  The Top 10 Ways Businesses, Associations and Organizations can use Social Networking

Encontré este vídeo en el grupo MS Dynamics CRM en Facebook y me llevo a esta pagina. Technorati Tags: CRM, Dynamics CRM, Sharepoint, Unified Communications, Web Services, Windows Live ID

What is it about mobile marketing that’s so attractive? It’s “amazingly trackable” because SMS responses are individual, yet it has mass-market reach, said Michael Becker, executive vice president of business development for iLoop Mobile, during his session at DM Days New York. Becker added that mobile is the most versatile platform out there because it brings elements from other media to the customer experience: timeliness, portability, and location awareness. Ginger Conlon http://www.1to1media.com

La revista ContactCenters de Argentina me entrevisto sobre varios temas de CRM y la certificación de CRM próximamente en Argentina. "Jesús Hoyos es Mananing Partner de Solvis Consulting y será uno de los instructores a cargo de “Professional CRM Certification”,...

Thanks for looking up the Beagle Blog. We recently moved the blog to Wordpress. The new address is
www.denispombriant.wordpress.com

There is still some work to be done in setting up the RSS feeds please bear with us.

Thanks,

Denis

Thanks for looking up the Beagle Blog. We recently moved the blog to Wordpress. The new address is www.denispombriant.wordpress.com There is still some work to be done in setting up the RSS feeds please bear with us. Thanks, Denis denden

  Web 2.0 for Good - alcove conversation 
  Originally uploaded by rob.purdie.

There is great risk of shark-jumping on the whole "...are conversations" concept, but there just might be something here worth exploring. 

I have been thinking a lot about how projects get done (and a "project" could be a software development project, or a product launch, or an office move, or an org-wide deployment of Vista, or what have you.  Ok, maybe not an org-wide deployment of Vista, but you get my drift.)  The context might also not just span a single project, but perhaps an entire portfolio of projects that are competing for an organization's (or individual's) scarce resources.

One thing that struck me during a conversation I had recently...the whole buzz around Cluetrain's first thesis,"markets are conversations," is really, really relevant in this context.  Because, when you get down to it, projects are conversations as well.  The tasks, and milestones, and artifacts are all part of the infrastructure, but can one posit that the thing that really matters (and is currently completely, 100% ephemeral) is the conversations and collaboration between the project team members? 

Perhaps the traditional project management trappings are really simply low-level artifacts and surrogates that management twiddles in order to try to get to some sort of measurement...but perhaps the real value is in the conversation.

I bounced this idea off Demian Entrekin (disclosure: Innotas, where Demian is CTO, is a Cerado customer), and he pointed me to a piece he'd written back in 2006(!) that touched on this as well.  Demian:

"Is the WBS [Work Breakdown Structure, a tool that shows all the tasks related to a project - ed.]  a decomposition tool for understanding the ideal structure for a project, or is it a communication vehicle for teams to work together toward common goals? Sure, it can be both, but the question should not be too quickly answered and dispensed with. If it becomes more of a communication tool, as I would argue it is, then how must its behavior change?" (emphasis added)

Here's Demian's more exhaustive thinking on the subject.

So, what do you think?  Are projects where stuff gets done a collection of artifacts?  Or, perhaps, instead, are they instead a collection of collaborative acts based in conversation, out of which artifacts are produced?

Man goes in the cage. Cage goes in the water.  Shark's in the water.

The most popular application on Facebook isn’t surveys, “pieces of flair,” or bumper stickers, although they all have tens of thousands of users. Until recently, the biggest source of wasted time on the social network was an application called Scrabulous, which has been getting a lot of press lately. It was invented by two brothers in India, but was so much like Scrabble that Hasbro sued to have the game shut down. Now Hasbro probably wishes it had never found out about Scrabulous. Jeremy Nedelka www.1to1media.com

Hace par de meses en el blog los referí a Apestan.com, pagina web 100% viral y de marketing boca-a-boca, pero para consumidores que tienen problemas con empresas y quieren manifestar sus quejas al respecto. La pagina tiene un "ranking" de...

I can't say that I've ever been completely convinced of the ultimate value of any analyst firms' geometric ranking systems, such as Gartner's Magic Quadrants or of Forrester's Waves or any of the...

The award winning, edgiest CRM blog on the planet. The industry, the concepts, the news from CRM at the Speed of Light author Paul Greenberg

I can't say that I've ever been completely convinced of the ultimate value of any analyst firms' geometric ranking systems, such as Gartner's Magic Quadrants or of Forrester's Waves or any of the lesser prominent hexagons or sine functions except... Paul Greenberg

Today customers have higher expectations and greater choices. It’s no surprise that they expect business with your company to be seamless, tailored, and hassle free. To remind us of why delivering a superior customer experience is urgent, Greg Gianforte, CEO of RightNow Technologies, has authored a new book “Eight to Great: Eight Steps to Delivering an Exceptional Customer Experience.” In the book he lists the eight steps required to deliver a great customer experience. Mila D'Antonio http://www.1to1media.com

In Wired 16.03, Chris Anderson penned an insightful article entitled "Free! Why $0.00 is the Future of Business."  In it, Anderson outlined six different ways that things can be "free" yet still create a viable business model.

Download this slide from Slideshare.

These six kinds of free are:

Freemium - Offer a limited-functionality free version of a product to encourage trial, and have a purchasable premium version available for power users, a term coined by Fred Wilson

Advertising - Offer a free service to end users, and sell advertising to advertisers

Cross subsidies - Give the razor away free, and charge for the razor blades

Zero marginal cost - Products such as podcasts and digital music effectively incur a zero marginal cost to "ship" each unit

Labor exchange - Access to the information on a site is free as long as individuals contribute to the content of the site, like Yahoo Answers or Digg

Gift economy - Items are given away at zero cost, Freecycle is a good example

Related:  Doc Searls is putting together a panel on free at SXSW09 entitled "Rebuilding the World with Free Everything."  Check it out.

Data credit: Wired Magazine
Razor:  derek
Gift: grobleto