KnowNow Deploys Wells Fargo Bank

Client KnowNow, announced the deployment of Wells Fargo today at the Gartner Summit. Wells Fargo’s deployments, one through KnowNow’s hosted service and one through an on-premise installation of KnowNow’s Enterprise 2.0 solution suite, are connecting key business managers with relevant, critical information the instant it is published and enabling those business managers to drive change.

The two deployments are examples of how syndication technologies like RSS can be deployed within an organization to solve different types of business problems. It's a great best practice industry example of how enterprise RSS can syndicate information that originates both inside and outside of an enterprise firewall.

This demonstrates how RSS can be used within the enterprise to mobilize non-RSS enabled information that has traditionally been locked in siloed applications and databases. Using KnowNow, Wells Fargo continuously watches information across multiple data warehouses to ensure that customer data and warehouse schemas are consistent. Whenever inconsistencies are identified, KnowNow automatically notifies the appropriate business analysts and the necessary adjustments are made immediately.

An essential capability that KnowNow uniquely provides is its ability to syndicate RSS data – as well as any enterprise information that is not in the RSS, Atom, or XML formats.

Wells Fargo has also deployed a hosted version of the KnowNow Market Intelligence solution to drive brand awareness. The KnowNow Market Intelligence solution automatically monitors a broad range of public RSS feeds to determine Wells Fargo’s share of voice in the electronic media, as well as customer perceptions of the Wells Fargo brand on the Web and in the blogosphere.

Instead of Wells Fargo employees repeatedly and manually searching the Internet for mentions of the company – and finding many irrelevant results that do not impact those employees’ specific marketing functions – KnowNow Market Intelligence continually and automatically watches the Web for topic-specific information that employees define once. When new information about Wells Fargo is published to the Web that matches employees’ filtered criteria, KnowNow notifies the appropriate employees immediately.

The instant notifications increase Wells Fargo’s responsiveness to critical market information. Marketers are now able to better capitalize on opportunities by adjusting business plans and related marketing decisions.

10th Annual PR Conference

Lawrence Ragan Communication's 10th Annual Strategic Public Relations Conference is coming up on September 20-22 in Chicago, IL. You can register here.

They plan to cover how to:

*Use blogs, podcasts, wikis and other emerging tools to create and enhance relationships with many audiences

*Employ community marketing that helps your executives become message evangelists

*Decide whether blogging is right for your organization and how to get started
Build a podcast that effectively reaches new audiences

*Improve your online pressroom

Robert Scoble will kick off the conference with a keynote session that will focus on how social media are changing the way companies talk to their customers, journalists and key other audiences.

Tag: Lawrence Ragan Communication's 10th Annual Strategic Public Relations Conference

KnowNow to Sponsor Gartner Financial Services Tech Summit

Client KnowNow is sponsoring the Gartner Financial Services Technology Summit 2006 in Boston next week. They will demonstrate how leading banks are improving corporate communications and market intelligence.

During the conference, KnowNow will be presenting a series of financial services-focused capsule presentations, including one that shows how a large US-based bank will distribute branch campaign information, HR policy updates, and messages from key executives to 13,000 distributed branch employees, using their technology.

KnowNow Market Intelligence and the KnowNow Enterprise Syndication Solution (ESS) can instantly connect employees with material market events, such as competitors’ strategic moves and/or viral marketing phenomenon that could have positive or negative impact on a bank’s brand reputation.

Inspiring Women: Just Because.....

If you’re a woman who has come up through a "rank" (or not), whether its this generation or the last, you can’t help but be drawn to pure internal strength: the kind of strength where natural female energy leads to success just because.....its natural and its real.

It exemplifies what each woman was designed to do.........their outward success is but one result.

There are so many inspirational stories and people to honor, that it makes me wonder why ‘we’ spend so much time on people like Paris Hilton. I get ‘media sensationalism: I participate in it professionally, but where and how did we cross such a meaningless line? Callibre of content? C’mon America, can we not do better than that?

While I don’t have ‘extensive data,’ on all of the women who have emerged as favorites over the years, I have ‘some.’ At the end of the day, isn’t it about what people stand for and ‘how they make you feel?’

Enter -- “They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel” Carl W. Buechner. There’s a few that make that list – for me. Sometimes we don't know why they make us feel a particular way – they just do. We feel it, recognize it, celebrate and move on.

While not close to an exhaustive list, those who make the list for me include: Eleanor Roosevelt, Goldie Hawn, Tina Turner, Sandra Bullock, Demi Moore, Jodie Foster, Oprah, Cher, Loretta Lynn, Bette Midler and Audrey Hepburn.

A woman is like a tea bag- you never know how strong she is until she gets in hot water. -- Eleanor Roosevelt (1884 - 1962).

One of my Eleanor favorites worth recalling again and again. "The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams." My great grandmother and grandfather lived their lives this way and dare I not for a moment, I was reminded why I was wasting my time.

Oprah, a flower among weeds, was sued in 1998 by cattle farmers in Texas who claimed their loss in revenues as a direct result of her negative comments about eating meat on her show. Now the only African-American woman to ever be included on Forbes' billionaire list, Winfrey has perhaps run out of incredible "firsts" to call her own.

One of my favorite Sandra quotes was from a 2005 Vanity Fair article about finding 'raw talent,' where she talks about wanting to "take them to the moon." I 'get that' over and over again.

Ike Turner and Sonny Bono were crutches early on their careers, yet they never needed anything other than confidence to be who they truly were/are. Their natural beauty and feminity speak for itself.....at the start of their careers and today.

Tina Turner

Cher in all her Glory

Jodie Foster has that natural Je Ne Sais Pas Quoi - need I say more?

Goldie does too..........

Go

Demi Moore in one of her rare 'natural' moments. She needs more of these....Demi clearly does not need nude frontals or any other Madonna-like publicity stunt.

Audrey Hepburn and Loretta Lynn don't need explanation or intros. They don't really need anything. Classics in every way, their work and beauty stand solo in too many ways to mention...........

Blues & Blacks: Wired Up But Melting Down

Blues and blacks: symbols of inspiration for writing, creating, dreaming. I probably dream in blue, and most certainly think in blue. Sometimes yellow enters in the distance; it softly blends with the soft blue haze and quietly mutes the image. Then, serenity enters.

In this serene holodeck world, creativity also begins to enter. I create (or is is the holodeck on automatic pilot?) a vividly lush green background with bright colorful flowers blossoming in the foreground. They symbolize life and energy.

"Oh, we are us, sir. They are also us. So, indeed, we are both us." -Data in "We'll Always Have Paris."

While other colors enter images and then leave, I often go back to blues and blacks for intense sources of inspiration. Despite their lack of ‘high energy,’ these colors remain a constant for many artists and creators.

I think of the writings of some of my earlier favorite authors like Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson, Hemingway, Andre Brink, and Doris Lessing. Inspirational but at times, very dark. The emotional and physical battles they lost and of course, so many that they proudly won.

Black often brings on inspiration (writings of Israel, Palestine, Ireland, South Africa, Tibet). It’s no grave surprise that I couldn’t stop writing when I lived in South Africa and spent time along China's borders back in the late eighties. Blue is often the same way. (Picasso)

Have you ever noticed that when true inspiration comes to you, its often not convenient? You scramble to find something to write with or on -- a paper napkin or scrap paper by candlelight. When I was last in South Africa, it was an antiquated typewriter with sticky keys which I gave a beating to while watching smoke bombs from Soweto in the near distance.

I wonder: did the recent Code Red provoke me to write this? Perhaps at a subconscious level. Or perhaps it is the trip to Central America. It's hard to tell with these kinds of things, isn't it? (don't think too hard or long about this......the mind can be stifling).

In worlds accustomed to ongoing deprivation, capital punishment, gas masks, home destruction, discrimination and religious wars, there’s always something to ignite fire in your belly. And somehow along the way, you move to blues and blacks.

Yet, at home, in the melting pot that has plenty of deprivation and discrimination, we often take a stand back. We feel that perhaps there's nothing to lose on foreign soil by stepping up or moving forward. Yet, I can’t help but wonder what a united states of states we would be if the courage 'outside of ourselves' that is always accessible to us 'inside ourselves,' could be replicated at home - everyday.

The wonderful thing about exploration away from our home environment, is that we’re forced to slow down and reflect. We start saying to ourselves, “how glorious, why don’t we remain in this place -- reflection on the things that matter the most -- all the time?“

And then we return home and begin to slowly suffocate again in a nation that pats itself on the back for its internal trimmings: Starbuck coffee shops, strip malls, fast food chains, a so-called democratic government, sitcoms that make my stomach churn and endless commercials that tout the latest pharmaceutical drug to cure stress, anxiety, acid reflux, ADD, ADHD, depression………Sound familiar? It is where you may in fact be living.

---Enough, Ruling Your World, Fast Food Nation, In Praise of Slow, The Death of Television, WalMart: The High Cost of Low Price---

We live in a society that takes pride on less sleep, working more hours, having more gadgets and widgets and participating in as many social online forums as we can – all in lieu of real human interaction and simplicity.

An illusion that we have to live like this – most of the time? An illusion, just like your favorite painting in all your favorite colors, the one with the blue and black shadow, the shadow that gives you clarity, inspiration and energy to refocus on things that matter most.

When we start to not just dream of a simpler life, but live in one, all of the shades begin to melt and fuse together. The clutter becomes softer, the noise diffuse, and those fabulous mellow blues bring you to the most serene holodeck you can possibly imagine.

Says Loehr and Schwartz in The Power of Full Engagement, “We celebrate breadth rather than depth, quick reaction more than considered reflection. We’re wired up but we’re melting down.”

and

“At the heart of the problem is a fundamental conflict between the demands of our man-made civilization and the very design of our human brain and body……we are machine-centered in our thinking—focused on the optimization of technology and equipment—rather than human-centered—focused on the optimization of human alertness and performance.”

Some will argue with me that this is overly stereotypical of American and western societies and that many people do in fact live their lives in harmony and balance; and often have examples to prove it, i.e., yoga, buying organic, banning television, spending time with their kids in nature.

Sadly, it is not the norm in most of the circles I witness. The pace continues to accelerate and everyone struggles to keep up, buying more technology that we hope will increase our productivity and free up our time to do the things that make us feel truly alive. I’m not anti-technology -- as long as it serves us.

See the world as a clean white canvas that has more possible outcomes than you have ever imagined. Indulge in blues and blacks for renewed inspiration or whatever that ‘blue and black’ is for you. And just when you think you’re about done, start over. Each outcome will bring more clarity than before you started. And most certainly, more joy.

Don't Search for the Answers: Live Them

.........I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language.

Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.......Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903 in Letters to a Young Poet

Sharpcast Review on MobileCrunch

Client Sharpcast is reviewed today on MobileCrunch.

Oliver Starr refers to Sharpcast Photos as the “ultimate mobilizer of any kind of data.” He says, "In some ways, Sharpcast is a little bit difficult to appreciate until you’ve used it; kind of like TIVO - people that don’t have it wonder what all the fuss is about while people that own one can hardly imagine watching “old-skool” TV at all.

Not only does Sharpcast mobilize data effectively, it does so automatically. If you’ve ever used a “crack”berry you understand what this means. For those of you that haven’t, the reason for the addictive behavior of Blackberry owners (and for the desultory nickname) is the way in which the device simply acquires all new messages without the user having to do anything. You don’t even have to hit “send/receive” your new mail just…arrives. Sharpcast does this too; only with everything."

More fabulous descriptive phrases from Oliver: "Sharpcast’s team has built a “Universal Push Synchronization Engine” that allows you to select whatever data you want synched across multiple devices and have that data pushed to the web and to whatever other locations you specify."

It's so refreshing when someone uses a product in the way its designed for, 'gets it,' appreciates it in all its glory, and then can turn around and articulate it. Bravo!!

Another HP Disaster Recovery

When your hard drive crashed, what did you do? For a small business, the experience can be crippling, which was where I was at over the past several days.

Despite the fact that I've been through this three times in the past four years, you would think I'd have a better back-up system in place. Yet, a really easy and reliable back-up solution that is sustainable still doesn't exist. There are always too many variables.

I used to have a love-hate feeling about HP, the former is largely a result of their cool design, weight, features and decent battery life. Now that I've gone through one too many HP disaster, it's now hard to remember anything I loved about them.

It's almost too painful to recap the entire last week's phone calls with HP Tech Support, since it was so draining and awful, I wouldn't even know where to begin. Perhaps I could write a play that recounted the dialogue between me (the victim) and them (customer service???) How about the "customer deep dark hole" -- you know, the maze that the mouse runs around in and when he is finally so exhausted, he crawls into a corner and dies. I felt that way over and over again.

Promises, promises, promises. But what about the delivery? It finally escalated to a local on-site group who sent a technician to my house. They never sent me a recovery CD, so we had to rebuild Windows from scratch. That essentially meant that HP-Man and I spent hours downloading drivers over a slow wireless connection.

After getting the green light on a 'new drive,' I then learn that a reburbished one had been ordered, not that it mattered, because they then 'couldn't find it.' Did I mention that I have a 10-font single spaced three page document listing the countless number of people who ran me in circles for hours complete with responses that were void of solutions.

For serious problems (ya know, when your drive is grinding and there's no turning back), DriveSavers in Marin (north of San Francisco) is exceptional, however the cost of exceptional may be more than double than other services in the area.

BestBuy and CompUSA have fairly decent recovery service centers and the former now has a group called GeekSquad who will send someone to your location to 'rebuild' with you.

There I stood at the top of the stairs - stressed, in angst, with tired eyes and a sad face, when Ashe walked in with a white shirt, a GeekSquad tie and a warm smile on his face. So relaxed, I thought. I wonder if he's gone through other psychological 'customer' training - you know, as a bartender, hair stylist or mechanic. They all qualify.

One of these days, I need to write an article -- a long article, about my numerous HP disasters, but I'll need time to rebuild my strength first.

Ashe at the keyboard 'repairing' my business life:

Last night at a client launch party, I talked with PC World's Harry McCracken about this experience and asked him to call me before their next laptop review. :-) I feel like I'm becoming an expert.

OneWebDay

OneWebDay is coming soon in San Francisco: September 22.

The mission of OneWebDay is to create, maintain, advance, and promote a global day to celebrate online life. They're looking for volunteers and you can find out more on how to participate and get involved here.

They would like to make it easy for a large number of people to post to a blog, or put up a picture, or be part of an online collage on that day, as well as talk about how the web has changed their lives. OneWebDay has a substantial offline component, so they're also encouraging events in public squares around the world.

Tag: OneWebDay

Doors of Happiness

When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we don't see the one opening before us. -Helen Keller