Visit the Prezi web site for more details.
Prezi: Changing the future of presentations
Reply
Tag Archives: business
The 3/50 Project (or how to save local economies)
This morning, as part of my morning stroll on the way to the office, I ran into an unusual sign: one that asked me expressly to commit to spend at least $50 each month in independently owned stores to help save my local economy. It turns out this poster was not a stand-alone thing: it was part of a bigger movement, the 3/50 Project!
To support your local economy, visit the350project.net and learn more.
An Amazon vs. Netflix world? I am fine with that…
This week, Jeff Bezos broke the news about Amazon taking on Netflix openly on the giant online retailer’s home page:
As a subscriber of Netflix and a long-time user of Amazon, I think this will good foe everyone. I hadn’t written about this since BEFORE streaming became common (at least before Netflix started the service that it now dominates by a lot!) But I had talked about Amazon being a player to keep your eye on in this space.
I am glad that Amazon is becoming a force to be reckoned with in the streaming video space. Not because I have anything against Netflix, but because I would rather see Amazon be Netflix’s nemesis than Apple, charging a premium to customers and giving smaller percentages to publishers on their store…
What is your take on this move by Amazon?
Wells Fargo ATMs: an example of usability
It’s not only that they speak many languages. Or that you can make envelope-free deposits in them now. The single most impressive feature I’ve found on Wells Fargo ATMs recently was that they are sensitive to your most recent (or common) transactions.
Say you normally go to the ATM to withdraw $80 for weekly meals or to deposit a check. Now, on the screen where you are prompted for your PIN, instead of only letting you enter the 4-digit number (as shown above), you are presented with that VERY option directly, so you can skip the selection process altogether which typically followed once you hit the green OK button.
Not only that, it remembers preferences such as whether you wanted or not a receipt, or whether you wanted the scanned version of any deposited checks or not… THIS is an amazing example of usability! Plus it shaves about 20-30 seconds of time at the ATM for each customer that uses this convenient feature.
Update (Jan. 31, 2011): thanks to Wells Fargo for sending a screenshot showing the above capabilities. I am even more impressed with you guys having spotted the blog post AND taken action about it!
Re: Ning: Phoenix or Fizzle?
Earlier today, my friend Amy Sample Ward wrote an amazing follow-up post to the changes announced by Ning back in April that led to the elimination of their free option.
It is always good to go back and assess the impact changes have had on us. In the case of social networking platforms, the change in business model Ning announced certainly sent shock waves through the nonprofit and education world. Since then, a few things have happened and I thought I’d take a moment to share in this post what I’ve taken away from it:
- In May, Ning announced the details around pricing levels for their new model. As I mentioned to Ning back then, I was glad to learn the details about the new price options. They do cover a broad range of Network Creator needs, including an option running at $2.95/month for networks up to 150 members.
A similar path has been followed by Grou.ps, as Amy pointed out in her post. They had been following the footsteps of Ning to give users tools to create their own social network. The cost of running the service appears to be too much to sustain free networks indefinitely at the expense of networks paying for premium services/features, so the freemium model doesn’t seem to work in cases of large scale/data intensive platforms that help users run entire social networks, as opposed to “simply” hosting photos (Flickr) or managing their social network updates/tweets (HootSuite). - As self-evident as it may be, it’s worth remembering once more that technology is not free. The change announced by Grou.ps shortly after Ning, eliminating their free service is a testament to this:
“The big lesson for nonprofits and education technologists alike would be to keep in mind that if you want absolute control over the way a certain platform or solution works, the only way that can be accomplished is by housing it yourself,” he said. “Unfortunately that comes at an additional cost, and that cost has to be taken by someone.”
This has not changed: the nonprofit and education sectors continue to be at the expense of changes in business models and will have to remain agile and flexible, ready to adapt on a moments notice (if possible) when/if the company hosting/running the service they offer changes or (even) goes out of business. The alternative is to run and host your own service with the additional IT costs this entails. So, as my friend Luis would say “there’s no free lunch!”
- In July, Ning and WEGO Health announced a partnership through which WEGO started sponsoring qualifying health-centric networks. Seeing up-and-coming Health Networks benefit from a program such as this and Education networks on Ning made possible by Pearson feels great. But there are still far too many sectors that make social good possible that are waiting for their WEGO or their Pearson.
My hope is that we will see more companies and social entrepreneurial spirits step up to the plate and help cover the cost of running these services to make them possible for groups that cannot still afford them. - Last, one area that I have seen Ning make some strides in is helping Network Creators (nonprofit and for-profit alike) is helping generate revenue through your network. I highly recommend anyone running a network on Ning to check out the detailed resource page they put together on this topic, stemming from collecting donations, to running your merchandise storefront or serving your own ads (leaving Google Ads by the side) within your own network.
From our experience running TuDiabetes and EsTuDiabetes, I can tell you that even running Google Ads (which I am personally not a fan of, I admit) in a network of more than 100 members with a moderate activity level will help you generate enough revenue to easily pay for the lowest level on Ning, most likely helping you get the nearly $20/month plan so you don’t have to be limited by the 150-member ceiling.
So, are we out of the woods yet? Far from it… as Joan Manuel Serrat sings, “Caminante, no hay camino: se hace camino al andar” (Walker, there’s no road: you make your own road when you walk… -or something like that).
Bay Area Women Entrepreneurs: Make YOURS a Million $ Business
This is not SPAM! If you are a woman entrepreneur (or know one) in the Bay Area, read about a great cause and an even better opportunity for you!
In recent weeks, I have been working with my friends at the Madera Group to support Make Mine a Million $ Business, a program of the non-profit Count Me In for Women’s Economic Independence.
I am taking the liberty to share below a post from the Madera Group blog, so you may get a feel as to WHY this is such an important cause and all women entrepreneurs in the Bay Area should be apply to make theirs a million dollar business!
Are you a female entrepreneur struggling to find innovative ideas to market your business? Or perhaps you are in search of some extra finances to take your business to the next level. Then look no further than Make Mine A Million $ Business Award! This competition, a program of Count Me In for Women’s Economic Independence, is geared towards woman business owners who dream of expanding their revenues to $1 million. Winners of the award will receive specialized business coaching to make their business successful, as well as increases visibility to potential customers. 20 finalists will be selected to present their business model at The Make Mine A Million $ Business San Francisco Event from November 7-9, 2010. The deadline to apply is October 15th, 2010.
Don’t wait, apply today at http://application.makemineamillion.org!
Nell Merlino, founder and CEO of Count Me In for Women’s Economic Independence
Count Me In for Women’s Economic Independence is a non-profit company that strives propel economic growth by giving female entrepreneurs the resources and capital necessary to achieve success. Nell Merlino, the founder and CEO of Count Me In, seeks to empower women so they “realize that there is a path for business growth.”
She points out in an article in Icosa Magazine, “that women tend to be less aggressive than their male counterparts when it comes to networking, and sometimes they don’t believe in their power as the majority in the business world.” By giving women the tools and knowledge that they can, in fact, succeed, Merlino hopes to increase the percentage of female entrepreneurs who earn over $1 million in revenue, thus increasing the number of jobs in the economy and boosting the overall community development.
Whole Foods Market Missions app: a HealthSeeker ripoff?
Aug. 18, 2010 Whole Foods Market launched the new Whole Foods Market Missions iPhone app. Read the app description below, taken from the iTunes Preview page (the bolded words are mine, to point out the coincidences between this app and another app we launched on Facebook two months ago):
Get on a mission to better health! The Whole Foods Market Missions (WFMissions) app will help you broaden your palate by introducing you to a range of delicious, nutrient dense foods. Learn more about healthy eating and start a conversation with your social networks about the road to good health.
************************************************************************
Missions — Complete steps of varying difficulty and earn badges through fun and healthy Missions.
Tips – Get simple, practical advice on cooking, nutrition, green living, food storage and more. Save your favorites for easy reference.
Profile – Keep track of your accomplishments and brag about them via email, Facebook, and Twitter
More than two months before, the Diabetes Hands Foundation launched HealthSeeker™, a new Facebook® game, with the goal of helping players make specific lifestyle changes that focus on healthy eating. While the benefits of the game are available to anyone, HealthSeeker™ specifically helps people with diabetes make more informed lifestyle decisions in an innovative way that complements their daily use of social media.
There are MISSIONS and ACTION STEPS to help players achieve LIFESTYLE GOALS and create an opportunity to advance in the game. These LIFESTYLE GOALS include eating more healthfully, achieving or maintaining a healthy weight, improving one’s diabetes control and lowering cardiovascular risk factors. As ACTION STEPS are completed and players return to report their progress, they receive experience points and other awards for their achievements.
HealthSeeker™ combines a supportive social networking environment with important information on managing diabetes. The game utilizes the player’s own Facebook® friends as sources of inspiration and support on the road to better health.
On HealthSeeker game, missions are made up of action steps as shown:
This is how a comparable screen looks on the Whole Foods App:
When you complete a mission on HealthSeeker, it appears as follows:
This is how it looks on the Whole Foods App:
This is how my achievements page looks on HealthSeeker:
This is how the badges tab looks on the Whole Foods app:
Has Whole Foods Market been patterned off HealthSeeker™? Is it a ripoff? I would like to hear your thoughts…
All I can say is: there seem to be a LOT of similarities. Considering how broad this space is and how much resources Whole Foods should be able to put behind developing a truly innovative and groundbreaking app, I would have imagined that they’d try to avoid repeating the same thing that others are already doing out there… but I digress. What do YOU guys think?
Rework: Book review
Reading “Rework” is a lot like the experience you get from 37Signals (the company behind Basecamp and many other web-based productivity tools, whose founders wrote the book).
37Signals sticks to their philosophy and they don’t care too much if you don’t like what they stand for: they believe in it and stick their product development efforts to it. This is highly commendable: sticking to your guns in the face of criticism (which will always be there) is tough. But it can come across as arrogant at times.
When/if you get past the discomfort some of the controversial positions from Fried and Heinemeier may generate, you start to see why these guys have been so successful at what they do. They have a firm stand against some wide-prevailing practices: workaholism, growth for the sake of growth, meetings (they call them toxic) and letting your customers outgrow you, to name a few.
At face value, many of these propositions may sound outrageous to most, but give yourself a chance to read through “Rework“: you will not only find yourself questioning some of the things you do in your organization… I bet you will find yourself reading it again and circulating it within your team!
Become A Partner With The Patient Blogger
Last week I did a presentation alongside Kerri Morrone in a conference aimed at people from the pharmaceutical industry. We tried to get three main points in the presentation:
1) We’re people first: not far from the concept of “Call Me Patient, Not Consumer” I wrote about a few months ago.
2) Trust is key in this space (arguably in all spaces) and it works both ways. An important step to build trust is to start humanizing pharma more. Pharma can humanize itself more in many ways: starting with putting a name and a face to the building, the company name and the stock; thinking of the patient as people (as just mentioned).
We may not be getting hit by a hurricane every day but the cost of health care and the barriers to access to care make it harder and harder for people with chronic conditions to get the care they need. Pharma should find creative ways to emulate efforts like P&G’s “Loads of Hope” initiative to help Katrina victims with their laundry after the hurricane – so many people need help today.
Can you make patient assistance programs easier to find? Easier to enter? Broader? Things like these could go a long way to help build up trust from people towards pharma. A place to start may be to mine your organization for stories of people working in pharma because they were driven from within by a personal connection to a particular condition.
3) Adverse Event data is a good thing: Adverse events (AE) seem to be the elephant in the room most pharmaceutical companies are running away from when it comes down to working with online communities and patient blogs. Not engaging patients may save pharma the “trouble” of dealing with AE but it also results in missing opportunities for dialog.
Here is the presentation:
Become A Partner With The Patient Blogger
View more documents from Manny Hernandez.
Goodbye, Last.FM!
In late December 2005, I wrote about Last.FM on this blog. Ever since, I have been using it, building up my listening profile (you can see a screenshot of the top 20 most listened to artists in the past four years above) and discovering new music as a result.
Today, I learned that CBS, Last.FM’s parent company, handed over user listening data to the RIAA. I felt insulted by this move. I pay for the music I listen to (actually, I am finding myself using LaLa more and more, so I am gradually worrying less and less about having MP3 files sitting on my hard drive, since I can stream them through LaLa). But I personally have an issue with RIAA and their scare tactics.
Therefore, as of today, I removed the Last.FM application from my computers and deleted my Last.FM account for good. It was a good service. It’s so sad that they decided to become a part of RIAA’s game…