Anton’s Hat

This is very funny via TechCrunch created by Crunchgear’s Nicholas Deleon and his brother Gabriel.

Hi there folks. Those of you who know me well will know that my intentions for TechLudd have always been that it should eventually come under the auspices of a larger organisation so that continuation of these types of events would not be solely down to me as I think people enjoy the events and I believe that networking in this space is way too important for events to rely on one individual (however handsome and entertaining he might be… ok kidding!!)

To that end I am delighted to announce, as I am now working with the Digital Media Forum as a project manager to develop an All Island Digital Media Network, that this meetup will find a new home there as part of a wider range of events organised for that network.

These events will be starting very soon and along with other tools to help connect Digital Media companies of various disciplines throughout the island. I will be announcing more details on the Digital Media Island blog over the next few days so please keep an eye there for details.

I’ve just read a superb post by Darragh Doyle about being proud of who you are. I have to say that it’s rare to get such an insight into the context of a person and it’s quite inspiring.

To say that I’ve liked Darragh since I first ran across him only in January this year would be an understatement. His first email to me was a quite long (it was an essay) explanation of why he didn’t blog and what his background in building communities for brands was. Since then I have never failed to be fascinated or stimulated by a meeting with him and he is a truly lovely and extremely genuine guy.

It almost inspired me to share similar experiences of my own but you’re not that interested I wouldn’t say and it would feel a bit like a vanity project as well. I am proud of who I am though even if that is relatively recent. Thanks Darragh for another bit of inspiration though.

Jeremy Omyang wrote a post today about CRM marrying social media and while I don’t often agree with Jeremiahs asssertions about the future of Social Media this is somewhere that can REALLY make sense financially for an organisation. I was responding and it started to get a little long so I decided to do a post instead.

Having worked with and designed standalone CRM systems and supporting office systems while setting up Credit Control functions in various sized firms I think the value here is really obvious.Think about the lfecycle of the customer and all the interactions that customer has with a firm from query to pipeline to purchase to customer service and repeat purchase, interactions about faults or returns, complaints and son on, the whole kit and kaboodle. Jeremiah rightly points out that at the moment

“…we’re just at the early days, as many of these systems are deployed by marketing units with little interaction or support from IT. In many cases users are forced to create a new user ID, as these systems are not tied to existing enterprise software.

Thinking towards the future, I realize how important it will be for IT departments to think holistically about social media, especially large areas of customer and prospect congregation.”

So lets take a slice of this big holistic pie and answer a question. Why would a company do this?

CRMs are used by those in your company who interact with your customers or potential customers. Interactions are largely a stream of comments, details, emails, letters etc, all entered by the agent in time/date order. Obviously taking a holistic approach at this level even and integrating financial and CRM systems allow you to get a snapshot of the customer and his interaction with the company at a given moment. This is socialising your systems internally.
Now imagine your company turning this active profile over to the customer in a social environment and allowing them to co-own the relationship and share as much or as little of it as they want with fellow customers. IM, email, blog comments, and even voice-to-text translation services like dial-to-do mean that users interaction with you can be updated automatically freeing up agents time to concentrate on the customer and their issue. An integrated socialised system would allow that agent to really know the person they’re talking to and also to make the customer feel like they’re really involved. As a customer, imagine never having to worry whether the agent recorded what you said and started an action on it, because you can see it too. Imagine how you’ll feel when the person you speak to recognises your number says they spoke to you before, ages ago and knows every interaction you ever had with the company. Imagine not feeling that the someone has an advantage on you because you have that information too. As a company why NOT share this data it’s the customers data too anyway.

Giving the customers a way of socialising this data would be an invaluable resource for companys and customers as well. Imagine users could share their issues, queries, purchases. Users get to validate their experience as being common or unusual with other users.

The potential for companies is the huge opportunities from tracking these trends. Allowing them to prioritise action and get problems fixed, customers retained and products developed to meet real requirements. At the end of the day customers and companies have the same goal, a good experience for the customer, now and in the future.

Why Marry CRMs and Social Media? Well… you’d be mad not to!

I have to admit I cried a little when I heard this news and I’m still a bit stunned. I first heard of him while visiting relatives in hamilton at the age of 15. He was already bombing up and down between penalty areas then and someone mistook me for him on the street. (Idon’t look like him). I’ve followed his career since then and in a way he lived my footballing dream, playing for Celtic being Captain of his hometown club and respected by his peers and fans alike. It’s Boy’s Own stuff apart the injuries that plagued his career.

So I raise a glass to Phil and his family and outline a bit of his career and why he was loved.

Phil was a free running box-to-box midfield player. He was born in Hamilton up the road from Motherwell where he became much loved player during his two spells there.  I met him once and saw him play many times (although i never played against him) due to my connections with both Motherwell and Glasgow. My favourite moment was  his diving header in the Scottish cup final when he was still a young player. Phil played for his hometown team and then his boyhood heroes (Celtic) winning trophies with both. His career was plagued by injury and at a time when he should have been demonstrating his ability as one of the best midfielders in the UK he was languishing on a treatment table. He left Sheffield Wednesday to go back to his hometown club in 2004 and was made club captain shortly after. He comes from a footballing family and with 3 or 4 nephews playing both at Motherwell and elsewhere in the game in Scotland and lately had become known as “Uncle Phil” a nickname he took in good spirit. He collapsed while being substituted during an SPL match against Dundee Utd at Fir Park last Saturday. He died at 5:15pm that day. He was only 35.

You’ve probably never heard of him, but then all he did that was newsworthy was play football.

In an era when too often footballers are in the headlines for the wrong reasons he was truly one of the good guys. And the world is a little colder for his loss…

(Originally posted at The B-Team Blog)

Hi there Folks! Welcome to my Blog.

 I hope you find entertaining and a little informative. Chat soon!

 Anton