down the avenue

GasPedal Event: Corporate Social Media Success Stories

I attended the Gadspedal BlogWell event yesterday in San Francisco, which covered 8 case studies in four hours about how corporations are using social media in innovative ways.

I was interested in listening to all of them however due to time constraints, they divided the floor so you had to choose which one was more relevant for you. Unfortunately, on nearly every occasion, both choices were relevant so I missed half the stack.

They didn't have the Twitter protocol posted where it was easy to find, so sadly, none of my tweets made the pool, but there's a bunch of two liners from various speakers out there in Twitterspace somewhere.

The line-up was top notch and included the likes of enterprise players like Cisco and SAP, as well as consumer and SOHO-facing offerings from PepsiCo and Intuit.

Cisco's key takeaways:

*Listen to the conversation

*Include blogs as part of your communications strategy

*Spread workload amongst team

*Be ready to address risks – have your policy at hand

*Inform and involve your executive team

*Incorporate video and audio

*Optimize your content for search

*Issue a social media release

*Stay focused on your business goals – customer successes

A lot of these points are pretty basic and are not new tricks we haven't already heard. The thing that really hit home was the importance of integrating them with a strategy in place. I say this to clients all the time - what's the point of using social media tools unless it's helping us meet our overall business objectives?

That leads to measurement which came up in the Q&A of every session. People want to know how these big players are measuring the ROI of these campaigns and in some cases, how and if they're planning to generate revenue as a result.

The less complex the corporate structure, the less complex the story, which leads us to the SAP presentation. There was likely a ton of really great content and examples they could share, but sadly they tried to pack "it all" into PowerPoints that were rich with jargon, heavy text and graphics.

SAP's Mark Yolton

He also flew through the text-heavy slides so I missed more than half the content and because the volume of content overtook the value of it, I didn't leave with a sense of what was relevant to any market.

Then again, I'm not a big PowerPoint fan. Pictures and "painting stories" through powerful words, demonstrations and examples go such a long way.

So, in a long ramble, I got that they do a ton of events, build communities, core contributors power their communities, their reputation management system rewards members for behavior and contributions, they offer exclusive content like how-to guides, white papers and newsletters and that there's 70 SAP mentors they tap into for advice about their policies and procedures.

SAP communities deliver customer value, customers benefit from participating and partners get insight from what is going on inside the SAP marketplace. And so, their social media strategy is what exactly?

Intuit's talk hit home for me largely because they used tons of examples of what tools they used, when and why. Through reaching out to small businesses asking for their own core stories, they generated evangelists without asking for them.

Intuit's Christine Morrison

They are integrated social media tools into their products, such as QuickBooks. Imagine that you're a small business owner and have an issue or problem - QuickBooks finds like-problems to help you solve your own more easily.

Dell too has successfully jumped on the social media bandwagon. Dell is reaching their customers on social media platforms like YouTube, flickr, Facebook, Delicious, and Twitter.

"Change starts with content and that content needs to be flexible and modular - shareable, embeddable, and syndicatible," said Dell's Lionel Menchaca.

They are modularizing content through tags, widgets and RSS feeds and using it to populate topic-based Activity Streams.

Adds Lionel: “People actively re-tweet our tweets as well as RSS feeds. If the customer has comments, questions and ideas for new content, they’ll tweet it.”

Their real time activity streams come from blog posts, ideas, Twitterstream, comment information stream, forum threads flickr images, YouTube videos, Delicious and podcasts. They're focused on producing content and moving content out to where it’s relevant.

I wish I could have attended more sessions as there's always so much to learn from what companies with larger budgets and resources have tried and tested and what has worked and failed. David Spark also has a great write-up of the event.

GasPedal holds a number of interesting events on this topic if you want to learn more.

Breast Cancer Early Detection with SureTouch

I had the opportunity to chat with SureTouch founder and board member Jae Son in Los Angeles recently.

SureTouch is an inexpensive, frequent and safe way for women to detect early signs of breast cancer, apparently more accurate in younger women. More from Jae Son on video below, which is also uploaded to YouTube as well.

Rashtchy on Boomer Trends: Simplicity is Key

I took some video footage of Safa Rashtchy's talk at the Boomer Venture Summit's dinner sponsored by client Gilbert Guide in Santa Clara this week. Note that the quality isn't as clean as I had hoped since it was taken on a flip but you'll get the jist of his message.

He addressed the boomer and senior market and trends around investing, designing and marketing to this segment moving forward. He says we're moving into the "revolution of simplicity." He points out that while he feels the generation gap is in fact shrinking, part of this trend is because of improvements in design and productivity online. The simplicity factor, i.e, the iPhone.

It's easier than it was to navigate a mobile phone today. "Why would you do something on a mobile device or even on the web in 15 steps if you can do it in two?"

It's much more sensible to get from A to B today, hence the closing the gap between the generations. The video is in three parts: Part I, II and III (Q&A).

Part I

Part II

Part III (Q&A)

Boomer Venture's Movers-and-Shakers

This year's Silicon Valley Boomer Venture Summit held a Business Plan Competition where entrepreneurs and leading venture capitalists met with one thing in common: they invest in or serve the 45 year-old boomer consumer.

The Summit is a good place to learn where and why VCs are investing heavily in the boomer market and to learn from key analysts about how they segment the market and evaluate opportunities.

Client Gilbert Guide sponsored the sponsor and speaker dinner last night at Santa Clara University in Silicon Valley.

Below a sample of shots I took at the gathering, which brought together vendors, VCs and service providers for all things related to the aging market.

Leading authority on the Baby Boom generation Mary Furlong speaks to the crowd

Aging in Place Laurie Orlov, SilverRide's Jeff Maltz, Gilbert Guide's Jill Gilbert and Renee Blodgett

Caring.com's Andy Cohen, Elisa Camahort, Jill Gilbert, Laurie Orlov, Jeff Maltz, Mary Furlong, Safa Rashtchy and AARP's Jody Holtzman

Foodie Mollie Katzen, AARP's Jody Holtzman and Mary Furlong

Jill Gilbert and Elisa Camahort

Dinner keynote speaker Safa Rashtchy

firstStreet's Bud Myers

Jill Gilbert and Andy Cohen

In addition, I connected with SilversSummit's Susan Ayers Walker and Michael Sarfatti - they run the SilversSummit at CES every year.

I also had a chance to see a demo of MyGait's new GO, senior computing made easy and chat with Christopher Carbajal about the market.

Others in the mix included speakers and finalists Karen Routt of Magnolia Prime, HeartMath's Catherine Calarco, TravelingHealth's Deanna Burnett-Keeper, and MarchFriday's Marfrisa Geronimo Gipner, to name a few.

Every Israeli Has a Pitch

We interviewed multiple entrepeneurs and movers and shakers at the inaugural Israel Conference in LA a couple of weeks ago. The result? A four part video series which you can tune into below.

Part I:

Part II:

Part III:

Part IV:

Also on YouTube although the full content is included here. Links: Part I, Part II, Part III and Part IV.

Startups Need Stories

The final panel at The Israel Conference crowded themselves onto the stage, three judges and five digital entertainment start-ups in a simulated Hollywood pitch meeting.

The most valuable lesson was the insight into how ideas are sold in the entertainment industry.  Apparently, the people who write the checks have attention spans that make Twitter seem like Tolstoy.   Or perhaps it's just that in Hollywood pitching stories is the norm, so people need a narrative.

Like the rest of us, really.  When the judges looked bored their expressions were matched by the members of the audience.  One of the threads woven through the day's panels was that we need to tell good stories.   The themes of Israeli character were brought up again and again, usually in the context of a story.  The conference included a surprise visit (and story) from Lou Lenart, one of the heroes of Israel's war of independence.

Perhaps the most illustrative example on the panel was when Yosi Glick pitched Jinni, a movie search engine that helps you choose films based on search terms that have meaning and texture rather than flat keywords with no emotional content. Think - "I'm in the mood for..." instead of "Where are your action movies?"

Here's how Glick, the company's president, started: "I don't know what movies my wife likes and I've been married to her for 24 years.  Plus I have no idea what her mood is.  So I have a challenge, because I want to save my marriage."   His business idea was going to be the cavalry in his life's own romantic comedy, and we were ready to buy tickets.

Shortly after he went to the slide presentation we started to get lost.  Most demos can't avoid the PowerPointed details, but it all should feed the story - one of the judges, David Wertenheimer of USC's Entertainment Technology Center, even suggested that he have some slides at the front and back of the presentation, at first fighting over a movie choice and at the end watching happily into the sunset. 

The other presentations are in streaming video available at the conference link above.  It's worth a look, both for the content of the pitches and for the process itself.

The Israeli Faces of Innovation

A collection of social and panel shots from the first Israel Conference in the states, held all day Thursday in Los Angeles at the Luxe Hotel.

Session topics included high technology, clean tech, medical solutions and entertainment media technology. I was pleasantly surprised by the diversity of the crowd and the fact that they sold out in their first year, just surpassing 500 registered attendees.

From retail, sustainability, biotech and new media to venture capital, film producers, attorneys and serial entrepeneurs, they all showed up to participate in the discussion on and off the stage.

Sharona Justman is the force behind this new event, designed to be an interactive forum to bring Israel-facing companies together to increase business and investment opportunities between Israel and California. Below is Sharona with Israeli visionary Yossi Vardi following his keynote.

Lou Lenart

Ron Hadar of Tigo Energy

Shahar Azani

Answers.com Bob Rosenschein

MySpace's Allen Hurff, Renee Blodgett, Yossi Vardi

Isabel Maxwell

Yossi brings us his wit

Guy Hoffman

Isabel Maxwell and Isaac Applbaum on the Green Technology panel

Additional photos can be found here.

Sharona Justman Recaps Israel Conference on Camera

Israel Conference's Sharona Justman on camera tells us how the conference started, her role and her thoughts about this year's event last week in LA.

Israelis Talk Green Tech

The Israel Conference had a 'green tech' discussion in LA this past week. Isaac Applebaum who is a partner at at clean-tech VC fund Westly Group was on the panel with Ron Hadar of Tigo Energy, who raised a $10 million round. Think efficiencies in solar installation.

Also on the panel was Assaf Barnea, the CEO of Kinrut Ventures which is an incubator for projects of all aspects of water technologies, and David Nahai, CEO & GM of LA Department of water and power. Isabel Maxwell moderated.

Isaac thinks where technology was roughly ten years ago is where clean tech is now. They discussed alternatives, such as geothermal, solar, aggressive water recycling, which is now at 1%. Compare to coal at 46%, gas at 30%, and hydro, renewable and nuclear which are all at 8%.

On direct comparisons, David reminds us that we need to take into account future "taxes" on carbon fuels and the cost of 'not doing business.'

Takeaways for the audience:

Ron: "do better for the community and make good personal choices."

David: "crisis and opportunity are two sides of one coin."

Assaf: "don't try to duplicate whatever you got used to in the high-tech industries. This is a totally different market and with different models."

Isaac: "find exciting companies run by passionate people and make money."

Start-ups: From Formation to Exit

The first panel at The Israel Conference in Los Angeles on Thursday was a discussion about the journey from formation to exit for start-ups. Moderated by Randy Ditzler, partner at Sequoia Capital Israel, the panel consisted of three CEOs who have also created successful exits for prior companies.

The common thread in their presentations was the need to look towards the future and the ability to make changes, whether or not they are foreseen.

Trevor Healy, CEO of Jajah, which provides unified communications solutions for large companies such as Yahoo and Comcast, said that they had to convince their VC firm three times that a fundamental change in direction was required. Their competitors failed to make those changes and failed.

Yoram Novick, CEO of Topio, a data replication and recovery company purchased by Network Appliances for $160 million, said that you can't plan for change, but you must be prepared for it, and seconded Trevor's experience. He also said that the odds can look long when you are playing against the big players in your space but that creativity and persistence, combined with a strong value proposition, can fortify you.

Yoav Izhar-Prato of Kenshoo, a company in the search engine marketing and affiliate marketing space, explained how they worked out an initial strategy that involved working around the big players, but when they successfully won a customer from them, they went back and decided to take them head on. "Differentiate yourself and take on the big guys."

A side question was asked about President Obama's speech to the Muslim world today, and whether this signaled a change towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and what that could mean for Israeli companies and investment. Randy said he thought it would have no impact. In other words, "the innovation and the value of the technology exported from Israel will trump political shifts."

Most of the questions from the audience focused on the early stages of business growth, particularly funding, including one amusing observation that VC firms "never say no. They just ask for more information."

Trevor favored angel investing as a first resource for entrepreneurs to avoid the friends-and-family or self-funding route and the attendant personal pressures on the CEO.

Yoav seconded the importance of external funding as early as possible because of the networking and support system that VC firms provide.

Randy said they've done more deals in the first half of this year than all of last year, so don't believe what the papers say. Investments are being made.