Miki Szikszai

Loyalty > Humour

2011-08-17T21:00:00.006+12:00

Today Telecom launched a tongue in cheek campaign advocating national abstinence to support the All Blacks in the World Cup.

Personally, I think its funny in a classic kiwi piss-take way.

It's also clear that I am in the minority, based on the comment thread in Kiwiblog, the NZHerald, the YouTube comments - I could go on.

So is this about the campaign or is it about the campaign backer - Telecom?

Some of the commentary is that the ad isn't funny and it's trying too hard. I don't think that it's trying to be "edgy". It's trying to be like an Australian beer ad - self deprecating. How could you not at least smirk at Sean Fitzpatrick driving a giant fist?

There's no doubt that Kiwis like humour in their ads. The 2 degrees ads with Rhys Darby a clear case. I would say that if a beer company (other than DB), or 2 degrees, ran this campaign it would be well received.

Why does it not with Telecom? Simple. If you break the bonds of trust with kiwis, and fudge it, we simply will not trust you again.

Kiwis give trust very easily (perhaps too easily) and react very negatively when it's broken. Others might say "that's business" - we say "you took me for a ride and you will pay - for a long time".

Three examples in recent times

1. WellyWood sign - another tongue in cheek proposal, (genuinely intended that way) but the public thought they had been duped when the first proposal was taken off the table, only for it to reappear. It's now with an independent panel.

2. Steve Williams and Tiger Woods - Tiger gets caught cheating on his wife, Steve hangs in there during an 18 month lean patch urging him on, Tiger dumps Steve and spins the story, Steve wins next game and makes sure everyone knows the inside story.

3. Adidas - Releases new jersey for RWC2011. Charges more than on-line stores and then tries to shut the stores down. Kiwis burn adidas logos in the street. Bernard Hickey has an excellent post on this.

Of course the thing is, that a genuine apology (with no provisos) and you can actually earn back your position and have a genuine relationship with a kiwi again.

Which leads us to the Telecom campaign. Telecom hasn't made it out of the dog box yet. You'll get plenty of generalities about Telecom's failures but no specifics because it was so long ago. It's a brand that customers don't feel loyal to. It almost needs this kind of moment to create a circuit breaker.

Without that, kiwis won't laugh with Telecom. They'll just laugh at them.

UPDATE: Telecom apologises and pulls the campaign. Within one day - impressively done. Journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.

Back into it

2011-08-17T20:55:00.001+12:00

Every lapsed blogger has a comeback. No promises whether it will last or not. Some things are more important than 140 characters can capture....

I'm thinking that its Option A

2009-05-19T09:13:00.002+12:00

I commented on the appointment process for the Programme Manager for the Government's Broadband programme a month or so ago.

I'm pleased to see Ralph Chivers appointed to the role.

Ralph has huge experience - I hired him into Telecom. TCF has made good progress under his leadership. I hope he can leave some of the bureaucrats behind and really drive a solution forward for NZ.

Why it's hard for governments to execute policy

2009-04-07T23:08:00.006+12:00

This government is taking some bold steps to do the right things for NZ. But I say now that until the fundamental machinery that executes its policies changes dramatically, it's just not going to have a chance of succeeding.

Case in point - the government investment in Broadband.

Great initiative, invest $1.5 B in improving New Zealand's broadband. However the very first step in execution, identifying an appropriate person to run the first stage, is going to an RFP which is open for a week.

Let me repeat that.

The critical success factor for getting you and me a world class broadband service is going to apply and be identified in a week by submitting an RFP.

There are two scenarios here

A. The MED already knows who they want (because Joyce has told them) - which means it is just a waste of time

B. This is the *standard* way of recruiting a project manager for government - the same process is used to determine supply of paper for the government as it is for project managing a mission critical investment.

There will be a number of very interested parties given all the politics over the last few years around Broadband. They are the wrong people for this role.

It's going to take a lot more than an opinion about broadband to deliver what is needed. It needs someone who has been through the fire of billion dollar projects, with a vast range of stakeholders, and delivered. On top of that, they have to be up for doing it all again.

The right person for this role will be a kick-ass programme manager who's only aim in life is to execute programmes brilliantly. That person is not going to be submitting an RFP. You will have to crowbar them out of an existing position. You need to look for these people - they don't come to you.

Why ?

Because someone will have worked out they are a kick-ass individual and will be doing everything they can to keep them doing great work for them. The right person will take time to find and convince that this is not a lemon of a project. The right person will get NZers the maximum value for $1.5 B. The wrong person will blow millions just getting started.

I sure hope that it's Option A...

How Freeview, TiVo, Browning and Telecom fit together

2009-03-31T21:52:00.007+13:00

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/24026191@N02/3353222455/

I've been following the TiVo and Freeview developments with interest.

I always thought that there was a good market for a decent PVR (akin to MySky) for Freeview in NZ.

There are interesting parallels in the UK where BT launched MicrosoftTV (known as MediaRoom) with the UK Freeview service under the banner BTVision.

It's been clear here that there is not enough capital for Freeview to do this on its own in NZ. Just take a look at the MyFreeviewHD link on the site.

It's basically a simple page that says you can buy a Freeview approved PVR that can record 2 channels with a basic 8 page programme guide. It's clear that there is no appetite to release this product.And they have just followed the same branding as MySky HDi without the 'i'. You have to look hard to find one on the site. When you do, you'll find is $1150. Ouch.

What is also clear is that Freeview is reaching a maturity point as a business. The infrastructure is in place and I would be surprised if more than 50% of installed decoders are stand-alone. My pick is that a fair chunk of them are embedded in TV's like Sony Bravia. So not much left to do for a start-up - all the work is being done by the Consumer Electronics companies.

Enter TiVo - I think this will shake up the local marker due to its pure simplicity. The reason TiVo is successful in the US is because it is smart about recording programmes in an Amazon kind of way. MySky is totally driven by the customer - so the ability to 'discover' new programming is down to what other people tell you. TiVo's strength is that it predicts what you might want to watch based on what you have recorded already.

It's a different proposition to MySky.

It's also a different proposition to Freeview - TiVo is about control.

So that is why it's attractive to Mr Browning who announced his resignation today. It's not a defection as opposed to a well managed move given Steve's previous background at TVNZ.

It will be a different business to Freeview - which is about digital quality - and will require more input. Input in terms of cash and product management.

Which brings in Telecom.

Hybrid TV have stated they are looking for a third investor. Telecom has always had an aspiration to get into Internet based TV. There have been multiple attempts - FirstMedia, trials with Sky, investigations with Freeview. But it's never really worked out what its role is - content delivery, content aggregator or owner. This meant it made some pretty poor decisions by trying to play in areas where it had limited skills i.e. trying to own swathes of content.

This is a gift wrapped opportunity to get into TV in NZ in a relatively cheap way without having to deal with content rights. Development risk is low, technology and brand are proven, there are no major content deals to be done (movies are easy for anyone to get). It's the right way to do it.

I would pick them to add this to their refreshed home broadband proposition - home VoIP, broadband and TiVo - which they could bring to market later this year. Only speculation on my part but its what I would do!

As long as Seven, TVNZ and Telecom - should it be them - stay in governance mode as opposed to management mode then Steve will have good support to hit his 120k customers in year 1.

Playing with fire

2008-12-09T22:27:00.003+13:00

It's old news now, but I have been thinking about why Vodafone has been running its high risk campaign about it's 3G network that has led to Telecom launching its Commerce Commission action.

If you've missed it, here's the background...

Vodafone's Christmas campaign is all about coverage this year with a tag line of 'NZ's largest and fastest 3G network*' with the asterisk linking to a disclaimer that this is 3G based on W-CDMA coverage.

Technically this is all true - Vodafone have the only W-CDMA network in NZ.

Of course this would be fine if Telecom NZ didn't have 3G network (it does) nor if it's coverage was greater (it is) nor if the speed comparisons were unequivocal (they are equivocal as Vodafone does not have its top speed rolled out everywhere)

Which is why Telecom has taken its commerce commission action.

One of the sideshows of this has been the pissing contest taking place on Geekzone, which is the wrong place for a PR guy to get cute about what Telecom has said about its current (larger) 3G network which it is about to replace with a newer, faster 3G network. Suggesting that there is a like with like comparison on a network that hasn't been built and ignoring the current network as it is due to be replaced is just madness. Especially since the current network is still being offered to customers.

I've been in a position where I have provided expert evidence at the Advertising Standards Complaints Authority and the Environment Court. These are not places for bluff and bluster. The Commerce Commission is probably worse. A few well chosen questions and your evidence will be treated with contempt. Placing your corporate view on public sites like Geekzone is great when you are talking about your own company, but taking your competitor's statements and using them for your own justification is really unwise with this type of action looming. I hope for Paul's sake it doesn't get used against him as it would undo all the good work he has done to date being Vodafone's online presence - but I digress, that's not the point I am trying to make.

Here are my points

1. Vodafone *must* have known this action was coming - as I have said 3 things matter to customers on mobile. Coverage, Handsets and Price. Telecom will not give up its local coverage advantage easily as it is pretty much all it has to offer right now. The action was inevitable.

2. Vodafone can't possibly think it will win this - all Telecom has to do is prove to the commerce commission that

a. EVDO is 3G; and

b. The majority of customers could be misled by this as they don't know what WCDMA is (especially non Vodafone customers who are clearly the target for this campaign). The only people who know are on Geekzone - that's a few thousand- the rest has no idea whether a 1.25 MHz channel or 5MHz channel matter in this debate.

They would have to seriously under-rate the technical evidence coming from Telecom to take this on. It's a pretty simple case and there are still experienced people at Telecom to take this on.

3. The outcomes for Vodafone aren't pretty

a. The maximum fine is $200 k - they would stand to get whacked with all of this

b. The greater cost is the campaign cost - in the best possible outcome, they would have to modify the campaign (maybe to fastest only, or if they were smart, emphasising global 3G coverage. Worst case they would have to pull the lot - that's millions.

c. Which leads to Brand costs - getting nailed on this would put Vodafone squarely into the camp of other large corporates who are just trying to use confusion to gain marketing advantage. Remember that?

d. Worst of all for Vodafone, Telecom would get some confidence, which it badly needs.

4. At best this was only going to be a short term campaign - Telecom's launch of its WCDMA network will give it a coverage advantage based on exactly this proposition. Until Vodafone launches its 900MHz WCDMA at which point it will all be the same.

5. Vodafone have a handset portfolio which is so large compared to Telecom's currently it is embarrassing. Vodafone have 49 on the books and have a bunch of parallel importers as well. Telecom list 22 - but it doesn't take a lot to realise that these are seriously outmoded. If they were playing football, Telecom would be completely within its rights to ask a few players to swap teams at half time just to make a game of it.

So it seems to be high risk for limited reward. For Vodafone to success against the commerce commission, Telecom would have to end up crying on the stand that they never really had 3G, the ITU got its standards wrong, and it had mis-measured coverage and all it had to offer in mobile for now is legal action. Even then the Commerce Commission might take some pity on them.

So that leaves me with these questions.

Why run a campaign on coverage that is so tenuous and so clearly short-lived?

Are Vodafone that keen to have a marketing advantage on coverage that they would take this sort of risk?

Why not play to your strengths which are handsets and global 3G? This would just ram Telecom as these will continue to be core advantages for sometime after Telecom launches its new network.

Who is giving these guys advice? This took me less than an hour to come up with - and the Geekzoners have been on the money as well. Maybe they are not taking any advice?

Have engineers taken over the marketing team at Vodafone? I thought the industry pretty much agreed years ago after the Qualcomm patent wars that it didn't matter if it was W-CDMA, CDMA2000 or 4G - customers just don't care so long as they are getting the service where they want it.

I think this is similar to the iPhone situation earlier this year - Vodafone are so looking to land a king hit on Telecom that they have lost sight of how to do this without misleading customers. Sticking with their core advantages may not be sexy but it would leave them with a very strong position and no risk.

The only other strategy they could possibly have is force Telecom to launch early with an underbaked network which will take them years to recover from. Given Telecom delayed launch until mid 2009 that isn't going to happen.

My call - Commerce Commission will rule against Vodafone - Vodafone will have to pay the fine and pull the campaign. I'll put a bottle of good quality scotch on that for any takers.

This leaves the door open for Telecom to innovate - ideally on data rates - with their new network. I think Vodafone will find that with all the changes at Telecom at the head of Mobile they are probably safe on that front for a while.

How to spend $1.5 Billion

2008-11-13T20:37:00.004+13:00

Did a brief bit of commentary on TV3 yesterday on what the incoming National Government might do with the $1.5 B they want to invest to deliver super-fast broadband. Apparently I am too serious - I think this might the first time anyone has ever suggested this!

I wrote some notes while I was thinking about this, and am becoming to be more convinced that a quite different approach needs to be taken to work out what to do.

Before you read this you need to know that I have a bunch of interests that may or may not conflict me. But at least you know this now!

1. I am a Director of InternetNZ - a policy and advocacy group with a mission to advance the cause of the Internet in NZ.
2. I worked at Telecom for a while - like 14 years a while
3. I hold Telecom shares still - (ok I missed my window to sell...)
4. I have stakes in, and have worked on a proof of concept for, web based businesses.
5. I support Tottenham Hotspur which makes me something of an optimist.

From what has been said and written to date, the thrust of this investment has been around Fibre to the Home. While this is definitely a good idea, I am not sure if it is the right idea for now.

We have to take a step back and ask ourselves - what is the problem that we are trying to solve here?

In my view the main problem we are trying to solve is to improve the productivity and competitiveness of NZ. Sure there are a bunch of second-order issues (e.g. ameliorating the impact of the financial crisis, keep up with international and technology trends, allowing kids to social network) but the number 1 issue is that NZ's productivity needs to improve.

This is not my idea - Mark Weldon and David Skilling through the NZX blog, and Lloyd Morrison, through the Measureable Goal for New Zealand paper are doing a great job of leading this debate.

What's also clear from the NZX blog is that there are a heap of people who have good skills who are willing to contribute their time and energy to shape this debate. Free resource! Awesome!

It's a selection of people from this group (and others) who should get together real soon to shape this debate. The participation criteria for this is simple - you have to have had experience in lifting productivity in your domain and be a contributor to the debate for the greater good. Selecting it on the basis that every possible interest has to be represented will lead to failure. Furthermore devolving it into interest areas (eg Broadband only) will also mean it diverges from a meaningful goal. That will lead to the phenomenon of 'snouts in the trough' - the people who show are the ones who want to get their mitts on some of the $1.5B, as opposed to driving productivity in NZ. Keeping that off the table for now is a good thing.

Note at this point I still haven't talked about the broadband investment yet - that's because it can only start to be meaningful once the productivity goal is set and all the ways to improve it over the long-term are put forward. Despite my background I am open to the possibility that there are other ways to make this happen - including tax and regulatory structures - that could be more effective. However I would be very surprised if Broadband was not a part of it.

So this gets me to the current issue - should we be spending this $1.5B on Fibre to the Home or on something else?

My view on this is clear

- Fibre to the Home is a great end-game to aim for.

- Good quality ubiquitous broadband access for homes and businesses is an important first step. While good progress is being made here, there are still inequities in the rural access network which impacts one of our most important industries - agriculture.

- The bottlenecks being experienced in our current broadband network are starting to point to transport issues - both domestic (from DSL cabinets to exchanges) and international.

- $1.5 Billion sounds like a lot but it gets gobbled up pretty easily when rolling our nationwide infrastructure - and it isn't enough for a nationwide Fibre to the Home network.

- DSL 2+ and its variants that run on existing copper lines are able to deliver plenty of access bandwidth for the next 5-10 years.

So if it was me, I would be using the money in this way

1. Improve the overall quality and reliability of the access network nationwide. This probably means

- some more cabinetisation of existing exchanges in fringe areas and development of some rural infrastructure (either fixed wireless or wired - not fussed)

2. Improve the regional transport network - provide enough capacity to allow for -say - on average 1Mb/s per line (note this was engineered for about 32 kb/s per line up until recently - maybe it still is)

3. Invest in a more effective international connection - we need better capacity and peering charges to ensure we have the best connection possible to the rest of the world.

4. If there's anything less (I doubt there will be much) put that towards targetted Fibre to the Home.

This approach works because it

1. Delivers a tangible outcome - better transport and more ubiquitous access will lift the overall broadband performance for everyone

2. Does not preclude FTTH investment - in fact it probably makes it more effective. Cabinetisation helps the case for fibre. If you rolled out fibre now with the existing transport infrastructure, you would need to make this investment in addition to get the full benefits

3. It can probably get done in one government term if they got moving in 3-6 months.

What do you think?

Obama, the hype cycle and fish

2008-11-05T22:11:00.007+13:00

Along with a few billion of my fellow earthlings I've been following the election in the US today.

A huge day.

You gotta like the acceptance speech of Obama - hardly referred to himself, but primarily to his call for change. Masterful. This quote is the one I liked most.

This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were.

He gets change - and the fact it's never done in one big moment but lots of little moments. Claiming victory at this point for his position just would lead to failure

I hope his advisors are telling him about the Gartner hype cycle.

My gut tells me that he gets it, but there are going to be *a lot* of people out there who will be going through the trough of disillusionment - probably within the next 6 months - as he tackles some big global issues. As long as he is upfront about what he is doing and why he'll make it. (Note to self - must be careful about the advice I give incoming US presidents as will most likely be fairly opinionated and, while based on good experience, may not scale up so well)

Arlene and I though were lamenting the lack of leadership in NZ. Both McCain and Obama have shown real personal courage and control in their speeches tonight.Best quote of the night from Arlene 'Where is our Obama ?'. Quickly followed by 'All we have to choose between is a wet fish and a fried fish.'

There are a lot of people bagging ACT for having Roger Douglas in the line-up for this election but at least he was an agent of real change - whether you liked it or not. I almost feel like voting no-confidence this time - it's just that isn't even an option.

Christmas comes a year early for Telecom

2008-10-30T19:30:00.004+13:00

Unfortunately it's not good news.Christmas offers for 2008 arrived in 2007...

Handsets offered for this Christmas are pretty much the same as last Christmas.

It really seems as though bridges were burned with CDMA handset suppliers - nothing of note to be offered this year at all.

This will be very easy for Vodafone to trump should they choose to.

Sadly I pick about about 4-5% market share loss between now and T-Day. That is going to take a couple of years to win back.

Only in San Francisco....

2008-10-17T06:02:00.005+13:00

Do you see professional bloggers from NOTCOT on a lawn in the Presidio opening up their new MacBooks, so they can blog about it

Stunning machine - single block of aluminium, backlit LED, and laser cuts for indicator lights.

Filling the leadership vacuum

2008-10-10T14:01:00.003+13:00

A while ago, I posted about the gap in leadership that resulted when Rod moved on from personal blogging.

Yesterday I was very disappointed about the lack of courage from National to respond to the crisis facing NZ and the world with the current financial meltdown. Basically both parties have put their head in the sand because it *seems* like this crisis hasn't had a practical effect yet on NZ'ers. This is simply just a matter of time until it bites.

My view is that in this time of crisis, there is no better mandate to be sought than to fundamentally restructure our economy to make us more competitive. Basically there is a clear requirement that we can't do the same stuff over again and expect to succeed.

National's economic policy stepped away from that challenge. Labour isn't any better.

I think Mark Weldon and David Skilling's effort to post a different way *and* be brave enough to say 'it's draft, how about you shape it with us' is, quite frankly, superb. They are leading a conversation that our politicians don't have the skill or the courage to engage in as they are too worried about their own personal position. Honestly, a vote of no-confidence is the best option at the moment.

I don't agree with all of the solutions but I strongly support the principles of

1. Creating an environment where NZ businesses can initially survive and then be best placed to succeed.
2. Effectively advocating a raid on global talent by making it more attractive to the type of people who can drive productivity for NZ to generate a large proportion of that productivity here in NZ.

I will be adding my 2 cents worth of ideas of how to make these happen - if you care about the productivity and future of NZ Inc I'd encourage you to do the same. Even if you don't agree, be part of the conversation and make a difference.

One down, one to go

2008-10-06T10:57:00.003+13:00

Over the last weekend, TelecomOne took place.

Ben and Mauricio's posts sum up really well the types of things that were covered over the weekend at TelecomOne. Big cultural shifts. Noticed by externals. All good.

I didn't go. Arlene and I have an understanding that we make enthusiastic mutual agreements for what we both do. We weren't both enthusiastic.

Despite that, or probably even because of my lack of attendance, TelecomOne was a roaring success.

There are a bunch of people within Telecom who have now had a great experience in terms of getting together their ideas to make Telecom work better. Awesome.

I have two requests for Telecom people.

1. If you attended TelecomOne

The most important thing they have the responsibility to do now is to do something very different in their day to day work even though the prevailing culture will not be that supportive.

2. If you didn't attend TelecomOne

Don't write this off via the Telecom clobbering machine - attendees gave of their own free time and energy to make this happen. Take the time to engage with them. Don't engage over a meeting - just get in a big open space and start sharing. TelecomOne isn't just about the content that was developed in terms of ideas and plans. It's about a more collaborative (and fun) style.

TelecomOne was spawned as an idea out of the last KiwiFoo. Gripnostril (when can we tell people who you are?) has been the power behind this and is a great example of how 8 months of tenacity and perserverance will really pay off. Well done - take credit for it - it was your idea. Great leadership. 'If you do something with it, it *is* your idea'.

TelecomOne was one of two ideas that I really got excited about after I attended KiwiFoo earlier this year. The other one is about 3 weeks away from becoming real.

Thanks Nat, Jenine and Mahurangi College for providing the environment where these ideas can flourish.

Pain is (apparently) good for you

2008-09-29T22:40:00.003+13:00

I've been spending a bit more time on the bike these days. Riding up the hill to Bodysnatchers from Radiohead today. Rocking guitar is perfect for inducing hill climbing pain. Especially just before the 3min mark on this track.

This has to be contrasted with a couple of weeks ago where the last song I heard before going outside to shift a cubic metre of dirt was this classic from the Wiggles.

I don't know what hurt more at the end of the day - my arms or my mind. I do believe there is an art to choosing the song you last listen to before you walk out the door.

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself

2008-09-26T21:56:00.003+12:00

I've been closely following the developments in Atawhai and Titahi Bay relating to Telecom's difficulties with the local community following its proposals to install mobile phone sites adjacent / near to local schools.

Some background if you don't know me...

When I joined Telecom I was part of its mobile engineering group. Over my time at Telecom I was involved in probably the most contentious period that the local mobile industry faced. Networks were moving from being carphone based to needing to meet customer requirements for mobile handsets that were used indoors. Network sites were moving from relatively invisible locations to being required to be located in the community.

I personally fronted up to numerous community meetings, resource consent hearings and also gave evidence in the Environment Court. I also spent a lot of time visiting concerned residents in their homes to talk *with* them (as opposed *to* them) about their concerns and options we had to address them.

I was often asked whether I would consider installing a mobile phone site next to my own house. I was (and remain) so confident about their safety that my desk was located about 15 m away from a very busy urban site , on the same level. I ate my own dogfood.

At that time, as of now, the most contentious element of mobile phone sites was the issue of whether they were safe from a health perspective.

It's a totally understandable question - these installations are characterised as being physically out of proportion (15 - 20 m high) with the local environment (especially suburban areas), emitting something you could not see, hear, taste, smell or feel. It's the perfect unknown threat.

Furthermore there is a sense of lack of choice about these types of installations - no-one really wants them around yet they do want the utility that mobile phones provide.

In short I seriously empathise with people who have genuine concerns about mobile phone sites, and moreso if they are concerned about their children. They are feeling a real emotion.

What I take issue with is people who should know better, and who confuse this issue with many others. They stir up the local community and quite often, in my opinion, raise a spectre of concern that causes so much stress for the individuals that is much more damaging to the health than anything a mobile phone site could possible cause. These types of sites are the result.

The two main arguments being used now are the same as 10 years ago

1. Mobile phones are new - not enough time to prove whether there are long term effects.

Some studies are showing health issues related to mobile phone sites - we should be cautious about their implementation.

2. Mobile phone sites are like power lines and there are cancerous effects from power lines so the same must be true.

I have to answer these points

1. This technology is not new. Mobile phone technology has been around for 20 years. Furthermore it's based on radio technology that has been around for over 100 years. If long term safety issues were going to arise they would be found by now.

Furthermore the World Health Organisation has spent $250m on this issue and continues to research it.

2. Mobile phone sites are based on Electromagnetic frequency (EMF) transmission. High Voltage power lines are based on Extra Low Frequency (ELF) electromagnetic frequency (EMF).

The World Health Organisation (WHO) rates ELF as a possibly carcinogenic to humans. This is on a three point scale of carcinogenic, probably carcinogenic and possible carcinogenic. Note that gasoline engine exhaust is in the same category of possibly carcinogenic.

So that's the ELF side (ie high voltage power lines)

WHO has this to say about EMFs specifically from mobile phone sites.

From all evidence accumulated so far, no adverse short- or long-term health effects have been shown to occur from the RF signals produced by base stations

Telecom has clearly made some errors on judgement in how the consultation was (or more importantly wasn't undertaken). This can be resolved by respecting that those who have fears are genuinely concerned, respecting that and trying to find a mutually agreeable solution.

But to see Nick Smith and Sue Kedgeley suggesting that radiations levels are high and that the Crown would be liable for compensation if there are health affects are purely grandstanding and not adding to the debate. Both of these people should know that the Environment Court in NZ has made it clear in its judgement related to the case of Shirley School that other communities should refer to this decision.

What is key for Telecom now is to spend lots of one on one time with this community to rebuild trust and come to an understanding of how to best work together. It will only be through respecting the community's concern will any progress be made.

It doesn't really matter what I say I guess - it's what I do.

Ella has just started at a pre-school two days a week. There are two sites within 100 m of the pre-school. My position on this issue is clear.

Why your CEO needs to support innovation initiatives

2008-09-26T09:17:00.002+12:00

I am on a roll at the moment on innovation in corporations.

There is a universal success factor that applies to all corporates I have talked with who have had some success with corporate innovation programmes.

The CEO has to support it.

The reason is simple.

Any innovation programme that is undertaken within a corporate is disruptive by nature. It usually arrives at products or services that cannibalise existing product and service revenues. By implication it threatens the certainty and security of the remuneration package that people currently enjoy.

Naturally people respond - they try to remove what it is that is threatening their security. Consciously or unconsciously, innovation initiatives are constantly attacked from within. Call it organ rejection if you like.

This is where the CEO comes in.

He or she does not have to 'get' innovation, but they have a role in ensuring it has enough oxygen to survive. That it doesn't get slowly suffocated by the inertia / momentum of the 'here and now' business.

This means setting up a structure where as few as possible senior decision makers are involved in the process of deciding which ideas that are spawned from the innovation programme are taken forward into development.

This is something I found personally very difficult in my role in running Telecom's innovation programme. My preferred approach is to enrol as many people as possible in assessing an idea to get buy-in. That doesn't work when you are asking the turkeys to vote for Christmas (no offence intended by use of the term 'turkey' - honest!). You can (and should) share the ideas around and solicit them from everywhere, but the actual decision making needs to be held very tightly.

The CEO has to support this type of very tight structure. Otherwise it's a worthless investment and just frustrates everyone.

So I was super pleased to see this tweet from @gnat yesterday.

@gripnostril and I met w/ the CEO of Telecom today. He is bigtime clueful, grokked Foo Camp faster than anyone I've ever explained it to.about 12 hours ago from twhirl in reply to Gripnostril

He has been working with @gripnostril to get some time with Paul Reynolds, Telecom CEO, to pitch the idea of a foocamp style event for Telecom NZ.

Paul has supported the concept but they needed to get some facetime with him to see if he *really* supported it.

He does. Bodes well for the long-term survival of the company IMHO.

5 easy questions from Sun

2008-09-25T11:20:00.004+12:00

After writing my post on innovation a couple of days ago, I remembered a conversation I had with some guys at Sun around the same time.

These guys ran Sun's R&D centre in the USA and are tasked with developing new technologies and business ideas for Sun. Sun also had their view on Innovation with a little i or Innovation with a big I. They called it "faster,better, cheaper" or "brave new world".

As part of their role in creating an environment where innovation could flourish, they gave each staff member a day a week to work on anything they liked. The only limits were

1. The project had to be declared (ie you had to say what it was)

2. You couldn't spend more than $500 (i.e. creates scarcity which requires some kind of innovation to overcome it)

3. You have to answer 5 questions to start

They are simple to ask, searching and they work.

The questions are

1. What's the problem you are trying to solve ?
2. Who is it for ?
3. How will you know when you are done ?
4. What's the artefact you are creating ?
5. How would shareholder value be increased through this idea ?

In a corporate world, question 3 can be the hardest to answer as you can often really never know when you are done. Having an honest answer to this upfront makes it easier to weed out the ideas later on when it is clear you'll never be done.

I use these all the time now when I am testing a new business idea for myself or others. They are also really useful when you get too far down the hole and need to remind yourself why you are doing what you are doing.

Paying back in spades

2008-09-24T13:55:00.005+12:00

Since going on sabbatical in July this year, I've had the odd moment where I've been worried. Worried about cashflow (pretty much all out at the moment) and whether I am missing out on career and personal opportunities.

Those are real worries - but they are completely outweighed by the good stuff.

Today was a great example of the good stuff. Decided to get along to the Hutt Valley Gymnastics Centre for their GymPlay session.

It's tucked away in Gracefield - the industrial area of Lower Hutt. You go inside a non-descript warehouse to find a real gym.

Sprung floors, trampolines, beams, crashpads, parallel bars, rings, pommel horses. You name it - they got it.

Kids can do what they want. Ella zoomed around trying everything- I had to show her how to use the equipment. Never used one of those springboards onto a pommel horse before - they are AWESOME!

All for 6 bucks for an hour - I easily got $30 of value myself :)

Eventually I will need to do some kind of full-time work - I am making the most of this time while I can.

Innovation with a big I or a little i?

2008-09-23T15:37:00.003+12:00

I'm mad about the continuing mis-use of the term 'innovation'

By those apparently in the know it is held up as the solution to many business or national productivity woes (we just need an innovation programme), by a lot of people in corporate world there is a cry of 'if only we were more innovative' when getting beaten by the competition. It's a term used by a number of people with their snout in the trough - "if you removed this obstacle or gave me this resource, then I could be more innovative". I am mad because it's never well defined and used so loosely you can't really do anything with it. It's been captured as a 'buzzword' that now makes it less than useless. It's time to change that.

There are a few blogs that I have read recently that start to point to this and what to do about it. Gripnostril in his two blogs (I personally prefer 'Hammer' as the cynical view. Do the opposite of what it suggested here and you'll be on the way) has strong views on how you can make innovation work in a corporate.

SilkCharm also has some views of how it is being addressed by the Australian government. The dissection of the Australian government policy to drive Innovation being published in a document that is DRM locked does remind me that there are good reasons not to move to Australia.

This gets me back to the best conversation I ever had with anyone about Innovation was with a Microsoft SVP in a bar in Seattle about 3 years ago. I always go back to this view when I am being assaulted with 'innovation-speak'.

His view was simple.

There are two types of innovation - innovation with a big I and innovation with a little i. You need to know what it takes to play in each domain, and decide based on your capabilities which one you are going to go after.

Innovation with a little i - this is about doing things differently within the same market. This is about taking stuff that already exists and reconfiguring it in different ways to solve problems customers already know they have.

This fits well under an existing General Management structure and suits large corporates that are fast followers and generally market leaders. They can see what is or isn't working with those who get to market first and apply their organisation's skill and expertise to make it more efficient or tweak it as a result of their scale. He saw Microsoft operating well in this space.

Innovation with a big I - this is about creating new markets. It requires long-sightedness and thinking about the problems customers might have in the future.It requires things that exist and things that don't exist. It requires perserverance and patience and all those things that happen when you start a new venture. It needs investment but not necessarily bucketloads of cash (in fact this kills innovation with a big I). It needs the CEO to drive it. And it needs to recognise when it turns into innovation with a little i (ie get a General Manager to run it then). There are very few innovations with a big i. The iPod only makes it because it created an online music market.

Long story, short - by the time I was being told this MS knew they had been well beaten by Apple on digital music and their initiatives (Windows Media, Plays for Sure, Urge, Zune) were guaranteed losers as they were looking for one hit wonders based on innovation with a little i. They were following, but too late.

MS was in the process of launching Xbox 360 at this stage and realised they were being hammered by Apple in the digital music race it makes me think that perhaps they applied this wisdom to Xbox only.

I have thought about a couple of other conditions that are necessary since this conversation

1. In either case you do need an organisation that is accepting of risk. Risk is lower with innovation with a little i but it's still there. There are no guarantees that you will be a great fast follower (Zune vs iPod a great case study). It's just that the chances are better. If your organisation is risk intolerant it's quite likely that you won't have any innovation - and that's quite ok if that is not important to your business.

2. Innovation only occurs when your customer says it does - that can be when your external customer or external customer. I learned this lesson after spending years driving mobile product 'innovation' that was technology based (mobile video, mobile music etc etc). Customers rated $10 text - a billing plan - as the most innovative thing Telecom had ever done as it solved a problem in a way that worked for them.

3. It's my personal belief that Innovation really flourishes in an environment of scarcity. Really innovative stuff happens when there are resource constraints or desperate market share positions. that's because it requires strong belief and a need to 'lift' Human nature says you don't lift yourself when you're comfortable. Providing a bunch of incentives for innovation is counter-intuitive in my mind. Government and internal corporate programmes have to provide an environment where risks can be taken (and in fact rewarded) and that is much more important than having buckets of cash to throw at a problem.

Next time you are talking about innovation ask yourself this

1. Is this innovation with a little i or a Big I?
2. Have you got the pre-requisites to make it work - how much risk will you really take and what are you prepared to lose, even if it doesn't work?
3. When you are looking at Apple and saying you want to be like them are you thinking about the innovation with a Big I bit (i.e. making the ipod bet with years in gestation and several years to payoff) or the innovation with a little i bit (MacBook) or the design aesthetic. All very different.
4. When you answer Yes to question 3, think about how Microsoft did the same and still couldn't do it and ask yourself why you'd have a better shot ?

5. The next time you want the government / corporation to fund your next innovation programme - are you making your lack of appetite for risk someone else's problem? The first innovation will be getting started when you have nothing apart from your own skills.

You know your blog has made it when...

2008-09-23T15:25:00.004+12:00

You get comment spam ?

Or what about a comment that seems somehow relevant but is basically a poorly disguised link to an ipod battery site?

This comment at least said I have a nice blog...

Save yourself the trouble and don't bother with their site - pic below is all you need.

Feel free to advise on how to stop this type of rubbish...

Add your WiFi hotspot to the iphone / ipod Touch database

2008-09-21T22:38:00.003+12:00

I have been looking around for a way to do this.

Apple don't run this database themselves - it's managed by a company called Skyhook. Given Apple's descent into evil that might provide some comfort to you non-Apple fanboys out there.

It's easy.

Go to this link.

Enter your address and fiddle with the marker to locate it correctly.

Enter the MAC address of your WiFi router - you'll probably need to google the model of your router to do this.

Wait 7 days - when you use the maps application on your iPhone / iPod Touch, hit the center button on the lower left and Boom - there you are.

Will probably help a bunch of other apps that use this data - would love to know what they might be!

Web + Wellington - FTW

2008-09-18T16:58:00.009+12:00

I was lucky enough to catch up with Rick for half an hour or so today.

Great conversation which reminded me why I enjoy working on web stuff in Wellington

1. You get to do everything - Rick was saying how some lawyers specialise (Telco Law, Media Law, Privacy Law) - with Internet Law he gets to do everything, all in the same day for the same client probably. It's the same for me - and I get to work with barely formed organisations (like my own!) all the way through to NZ's largest corporates across a whole range of areas. Brilliant.

2. Wellington is a great place to work - networks are open, people are visible on the street (even though today was a bit drizzly) and if you play your cards right you can bump into Rod as he wears a path between Prada and Xero HQ. Contrast that with Auckland where all the energy is inside the buildings or in cars and Wellington just feels like a good place to do business.

3. Well -informed debate - with the InternetNZ members list you know exactly where a bunch of well-informed people can really debate an issue to determine if its going to make a difference in NZ. Great example of the power of the 'net to facilitate quality people working together to make things happen.

We do miss Rod's blog - gaping hole in raising issues that can be debated in a more open environment. Although reading the blog and the Astoria post made me realise I forgot to pay for Rick's coffee when I left - whoops...

Two diametrically opposite Apple experiences

2008-09-18T16:58:00.006+12:00

Two very different AAPL experiences today

1. The Bad

Graph says it all - stock price is seriously tanking. I am not so much of a fanboy that I will hold onto this forever.

Managed to get out a 'local maximum' but it's still hurt.

According to Valuecruncher, it's still overvalued. I'd say that might be the case but getting in once things settle down could mean some profit.

2. The Good - here's the reason why I would still invest. The Remote app has been updated to allow Genius playlists to be set remotely. I am using Genius a lot since iTunes 8 came out and having to go to my Mac to set it was starting to annoy me. I've become somewhat reliant on the remote app.

Why I like apple stuff is that this stuff just happens - most other companies who deliver media products seem to leave these gaps going on forever. Somehow AAPL seems to work out what's important (to me at least) and makes sure it gets delivered.

Ben blogged about how can Apple get away with being evil. My view on this is clear - it has built a reputation over the last decade of delivering on its promise. It is having some mis-steps of late but it does this more often than not. That's why people cut them slack. In my mind it's a great way of building your brand.

MacBook Pro Hard Drive Upgrade

2008-09-16T14:15:00.004+12:00

My MacBook Pro's 100 GB disk has been sitting around 85% capacity for a while now (mainly as I have a partition running WinXP via Parallels) and I decided it was time to upgrade. Combination of storage and a suspicion that the lack of space was impeding performance. I have been putting this off for a while as it is a tricky procedure.

I sourced a 250GB Seagate Barracuda drive (thanks Philip), took a clone using SuperDuper and performed open heart surgery. Took about an hour but given local prices to do this are about $150 NZD this seemed like the way to go. It is a little bit fiddly but the instructions by Extremetech are really good. If a Klutz like me can do, pretty much anyone can.

The only thing I would add to their notes is to test booting your MBP from the cloned drive (just hold down 'Option' while booting the MBP and select the cloned drive - just to be sure it works before going through the process) and don't slide out the tabs holding in the RAM. Very tricky to get back in.

Don't spend too much time looking at your disembowelled Mac per the pic above - kinda like looking down while walking a tightrope I reckon. I am breathing a lot easier now everything is back together.

Now I have space to burn and startup and responsive of apps is *heaps* better.

How your company's reputation improves speed to market

2008-09-15T19:52:00.005+12:00

I caught up with a couple of ex-Telecom guys on Friday for a beer. They are both at Kiwibank now and we got talking about the differences in both companies.

The most interesting story that came out was about Kiwibank's mobile banking application which was released for iPhone after 4 weeks of development and recently won a TUANZ award. It's now available for most major mobile platforms.

Apart from a number of internal things that Kiwibank do differently (easy access to decision makers and lightweight funding and development processes) the biggest difference in their mind was the impact that having a very positive reputation meant. Effectively they could get 80% of the proposition right and people (market observers and customers) talked primarily about that as opposed to the 20% that they got wrong. In their Telecom experience there was no way that would occur - all you would heard about was the 20% that was wrong.

Practically that meant that Kiwibank could

1. Take 3 weeks to develop a basic iPhone app

2. Take on board customer feedback, promise to change it and update it

3. Extend it to other platforms (Windows Mobile, Symbian and WAP)

instead of having to take a punt and do it all in one go.

Kiwibank's reputation means that they are permitted to get things out there that aren't spot-on *and* are trusted to put it right. My guess is that reputation would probably have saved them $100k on this development alone. Add that up across everything and you can see why they are making big in-roads.

Pretty simple lesson - strive to build a reputation that you can be proud of and the opportunities (and rewards) follow.

O for Oarsome

2008-09-11T23:23:00.002+12:00

Got a heads up on this book a couple of weeks back from this guy.

I worked with Kevin at Telecom and was stunned at his story then - rowing across the Atlantic after living the corporate lifestyle. This book was actually stolen from his car (on his laptop) while at Telecom so I guess he wrote it all again. He left Telecom and went to the South Pole unaided and now does public speaking gigs - also impressive considering the speech impediment. Sometimes when he was sitting in the office in Auckland blocking out the world with blu-tack in his ears you could see how someone could be focussed enough to make it happen.

I love this 150 word summary of the book

“I have a traumatic pizza ordering experience and stop being immortal. I quit my job, leave my girlfriend, sell my house and go live with Mum. I watch a lot of daytime TV. The ‘How's Life' show decides that I row the Atlantic. I team up with the original Naked Rower, we struggle to raise money and start building the boat, I start training insanely and nearly lose the plot. Find another rower, lose another rower, get another rower. Start the race (badly). Row into storm. Take the lead. Row. Lose the lead. Row. Row harder. Nothing happens. Row until we hallucinate. We start to close in! Seats break. Rudder breaks. Another storm. Neck and neck as we sprint to the finish. Capsize and thrown out of the boat. Get back in. Get to Barbados first! Yay! Get protested a gainst. Boo! Win at the protest hearing. Still living with Mum.”

There are quite a few extracts from the book on the site - the section about how he decides to row the TransAtlantic race as a result of his concerned Mum's question to How's Life is too funny.

Make a great gift for someone going through a mid-life crisis.

Black & White - a customer-centred mobile operator in NZ?

2008-09-09T12:30:00.004+12:00

It was good to see some broad coverage of Black and White's Mobile offering - currently under Beta launch in NZ in Computerworld, Stuff and Geekzone. I worked with Johnathan during his time at Telecom and hope he and the team at B&W do well.

Most of the basics have come out so far.

B&W are re-selling Vodafone's existing offerings (including plans according to Computerworld) and providing their own branded handsets. They are solid mid-range handsets including a decent enough Nokia 6225c.

Feature-wise this looks like it will be targetted at the SME professional - a good niche with basic voice, text and email capability.

There are a few things that particularly interest me.

1. The launch approach - a slow trickle to get this right is a great contrast to Telstra Clear's launch last week which went above the line with no real behind the scenes leg-work. I think this 'slow' approach will give them a heap of speed - just by being so in touch with customer wants.Assuming that B&W will actually make changes based on Beta feedback, this will mean that B&W have a chance of surviving - more so that TC's proposition. Add to that the fact they are planning to add 1000 customers after the Beta, if things go really well for them they have constrained supply to the point where there will be value in just being one of the first 1000 customers.

2. Customer approach - it appears that B&W are looking at a proposition where business customers are not locked in on contract. This is very new in the NZ market and is a hard one to follow for Telecom and Vodafone as their accountants really won't like the idea of revenue uncertainty. But it's a massive value proposition for customers that will probably engender strong loyalty to B&W until the others follow. It's the approach of 'We are honoured to have you as a customer' as opposed to 'We are so scared of losing your money we will lock it in'.

3. Despite the comments on geekzone, the margins for a mobile reseller are pretty slim. The costs to acquire and service a customer are significant so you can't just look at the retail price for a mobile minute vs. wholesale. The Retailer has to cover service costs, handset subsidies etc etc. If you can get 10% margin out of that you are doing extremely well. B&W will only survive if they are able to reduce the costs to service and acquire customers and still provide better than the current standards of service. That means on-line, customer collaborative channels.

4. Value exchange within the Beta - this is brilliant. Sign-up your first 100 customers via Geekzone. Give them free service. Get them to test your products. Take on board their comments. Boom - there's your first 100 sales people, and free testing. Pretty good for a company of 10 people.

5. Break-even point - B&W are playing in the SME space, traditionally the highest ARPU mobile customers. That is not necessarily the highest margin but it's an area that cellco's fight for pretty agressively. My guess is that if B&W were able to gain 10% of this market (say 50,000 SME's) that would put them in a good place. That might be enough to make Telecom and Vodafone start to follow suit on no contracts.

I think based on this approach and without bundling this will stand up pretty well against the other Tier 2 providers. It will be interesting to see whether NZ Communications takes a similar approach, and just compete in the market, or whether they will continue to blame the big guys for their lack of progress.

My guess is that the bulk of the B&W customers will probably be Vodafone to start with - they are the customers who probably see less value in a bundled offer. This is not at all bad for Vodafone - they get the wholesale revenues and reduce the costs of servicing these customers.

Where it will get interesting is when B&W start offering their own plans, and maybe providing some more utility with customer call data to improve the service offering. In the meantime, don't expect this to change the market for mobile data plans.

Abel Tasman Coastal Classic: The Good, The Ugly and A Laugh

2008-09-08T23:10:00.008+12:00

Sometime in January this year (I remember the night well - I announced my resignation from Telecom the next day) I was out with some of my colleagues and a couple of beers in, Dale and Kirsten said they were thinking of doing the Abel Tasman Coastal Classic in September.

Given it was

1. A few beers into the evening

2. 8 months out

3. I knew I'd have training time

it seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

The event is pitched as a 33km run along some of NZ's most beautiful scenery. Train for it like it's a marathon. Fast forward to last weekend, I thought I was in reasonable shape. I had managed a few 3 hour runs and was feeling pretty good.

The event kicks off with a boat ride to the start - worth the price of admission alone - it was stunning. Clear morning, dead calm - beautiful.

To make a long story short, I was trucking along well - got to the 21 k mark in a very comfortable 2 hours and thought that I should be able finish in 3 and a half hours. Genuinely enjoying the scenery and the track. I had been warned that you feel like you start going backwards around this point so I was keeping some in reserve. Around 2hr 40, I felt the first sign of cramp in my quads. No problem, I think, I'll take some water in and just throttle back a bit. No improvement. Still, no worries, I seem to be running ahead of the few people in front of me and they are not showing any inclination to pass. Km's seem to be clicking past more slowly now - I start wondering if I calibrated my footpod on my Polar correctly. Cramp definitely not improving. Couple of people pass me that I thought I passed 30 minutes ago - I am slowing up. Uphills I am catching people - can't keep up downhill or on the flat. Around the 30km mark, I think 'only 3km to go' but I can't see the end. Drinking like crazy, quads on fire. Remind myself not to stop and stretch - did this once before for sore quads in a half ironman which kicked off a cycle of paralysing quad and hamstring cramps. At least I can still move my legs. Scenery has turned into haze as I concentrate on running. I have to go under a fallen tree (translate: stoop slightly) - I stop to do it. 2 guys who had been running with me vanish instantly into the distance as I try to walk. Stop to shake my quads next to a guy who is carrying his kid on a daypack. I walk to get moving. He puts 20 meters on me while I am walking. I have to run to catch him. I say 'I am back on the wagon' - feeling like crap. 3hr 30 min pass - I am a long way from the end. At the 33km mark on my watch I know the end is still at least 2 km away - seems like forever. At this point I cannot run downhill - my quads can't control the descent. I am bitching out loud about the organisers inability to measure the course. Start to sense I am near the end - more walkers. I pick up the pace to run past a picnic site - I hear the picnicers talking about how crap I am looking as I *try* to run down the very slight incline with all the finesse of a man with two club feet. 2 guys roar past me yelling 'only 5 minutes to beat 4 hours!' I mumble something about them leaving the iron on at home, what's the rush. I see the end! Stumble across the boardwalks and cross the finish line in 3:58. I look like this...

I tell Arlene it's the worst thing I've ever done and have never been in so much pain - she is stoked, she ran her 12 km supporters run in an hour and 40 min. I think I acknowledge it. Longest run she has done by far. I eat pineapple and try and find a spot to sit while we wait for Dale and Kirsten. Kirst comes in first, looking fresh but worried "I think Dale died at Torrent Bay!". Apparently she prodded him all the way there and at that point he decided to take out a Muesli Bar and have a break from the prodding. She is worried that his flu has caught up with him and we need to send out a search party. While discussing this Dale crosses the line - he was sick of the prodding and told Kirst to p!$$ off or words to that effect.

Kirst says 'I thought you were dead'

Dale replies 'Sure didn't end up in heaven'

I question whether he deserved to be in heaven or not - this photo happens.

Probably do it all again next year. Officials have confirmed the race distance as 36 km - I feel a bit better.

Today I see that I could have won the Women's 50-59 division with my time - there is hope for me yet.

Delay to Telecom NZ WCDMA launch is good for shareprice

2008-09-01T22:35:00.003+12:00

Stuff reported today that ABN Amro analyst Geoff Zame suggested that if Telecom did not complete a marketing launch of its WCDMA network this year that it would be detrimental for the share price. The reported reason is that Telecom would be on the sidelines when the rush for Christmas connections comes through.

I disagree.

Everything that I have read suggests that the network is currently not fit for launch. That is not surprising. I know that there are a lot of people in Telecom who are working damned hard on getting this network up and running. I don't think this is an execution issue -its a reality issue.

Telecom announced that it was going WCDMA in June 2007, suggesting that build would not commence until late that year that it would be in market by Christmas this year.

That's 12 months - gutsy stuff.

By comparison, the deployment of CDMA in 2001 / 02 took 15 months (that was an extremely aggressive and well managed deployment) and was voted telecommunications project of the year by TUANZ. That was on existing sites.

Vodafone's 3G deployment was of the order of 15 months after signing Nokia up - and they were hit pretty hard by customers reacting to coverage issues.

In Telecom's case they are rolling out 2 networks

1. 2100 MHz WCDMA

2. 850 MHz (either GSM/EDGE or WDCMA)

The 2100 MHz network in particular requires new sites and resource consents. To go from 'hmm I think I'd like a new site in this area' to having property and resource consent in the bank takes about a year. A year was always going to be too short.

You would have to be doing well to do both of these in 15 months - not forgetting Telecom have operational separation, Next Gen broadband and all the rest happening.

If Telecom were beholden to a pre-Xmas date, this network would look more like MobileMe.

It will be much better for the long-term shareprice for Telecom to get coverage right for this new network as opposed to try and bank a short-term win, and then brand damage based on a sub-standard network. And to think that there would be significant uptake on the new network before it was bedded in pre-Xmas is optimistic to say the least. One can only hope Telecom has some CDMA offers to go out that are sharp enough to stay competitive this Xmas.

Reynolds has already announced in last week's result that there will be no EBITDA growth until 2010. Good to see him stick to the long-term plan - this approach will start to turn Telecom around from a dividend stock to a growth stock. That's the real issue for the analysts - the dividend payout made Telecom a very attractive part of their portfolios in the past. Now that Telecom are focussing on longer term bets this stock is no longer easy money. There is the possibility of still quite good dividend payouts and (if you are risk embracing) the possibility of longer term share price growth.

Key issue now is when to get in.

Celebrating Che

2008-08-29T22:18:00.012+12:00

Che in his kingdom

This time last week we had to put our cat Che down - only 3 and a half years old and he was debilitated with cancer of the colon and lower intestine. Couldn't hold down food and was slowly starving - we had little choice.

We were fortunate enough to have him around at home for a couple of days in front of the fire after the exploratory surgery confirmed the worst. Thanks to everyone for their sympathy and kind thoughts and deeds. It's meant a lot.

Ella knows her buddy has gone away but keeps asking when we can pick him up - breaks our hearts.

We chose the name Che as Arlene and I had recently seen Motorcycle Diaries when we were looking for a cat. We went to a crazy cat breeder who bred Abyssinians. This little guy caught our eye when only a few weeks old - playing with a scrap of paper and growling at his litter mates when they got too close. Sounded just like a little motorbike - hence the name Che. I guess he could have been called Ernesto.

That growl was always around - especially when he heard strange noises (he would growl like a dog), if you tried to take one of his victims from him (rats, birds, mice, lizards) or if Ella pulled his tail too hard.

He also met everyone in our neighbourhood well before we had - we were invited around for Christmas drinks and pretty much everyone in our street had visits from Che where he would just jump on the bench and take over and it still amazes me that he never caught a Tui or Wood Pigeon even though he spent the hours longingly staring at them.

He was a little cat with a big personality - Abysinnians are described as 'Attention Seeking Athletes' and I don't think I have seen a cat try to be the centre of *everything* as much as Che. To the point where he would jump in the parcel tray of Ella's buggy when we would go out for a walk. Or just follow me down the street like a little dog (except he was smarter!).

We miss him heaps - he leaves a big hole.

Che as a kitten - first week at home

Standard Saturday morning (I wish)

Cleaning up the local vermin

Che giving Ella some love

Che and Ella getting a bed-time story from Arlene

Standard position

Telecom, Kevin Roberts and Brand

2008-08-29T13:44:00.003+12:00

I noticed with interest the appointment of Kevin Roberts to the Board of Telecom. Looks like I am not the only one as well.

I have had some limited contact with Kevin during my time at Telecom - the most interesting being a 2 day workshop where we tried to discover the key purpose of Telecom. Fascinating and inspirational. I've also worked with a lot of Saatchi's people, most recently Saatchi X who are (in my opinion) world-class Retail designers - they get the whole notion of designing Retail for customers. This is to the extent where they went around a bunch on NZ stores and just watched what customers did before leaping into any design work. Much better than what you would expect from a normal ad agency. So I have a lot of respect for the work that Saatchi can do to communicate a brand.

A few things I noted from yesterday

1. Governance - Kevin says that he is privileged to contribute to the governance of Telecom. I was very pleased to see this. Kevin has spent a lot of time through Saatchi and Saatchi advising Telecom directly on Brand Communications. Saatchi's has been Telecom's key agency as long as I was there (15 years). This Board role has to be separate from that - good to see he gets that. I do wonder how Telecom can get the full benefit of his brand expertise as both a director and its number 1 supplier , surely this starts to become a conflict of interest? Will be interesting to see how it is managed.

2. Comments about the lack of marketing and brand expertise on the Telecom Board. Wayne Boyd himself says that Kevin will bring Brand and Marketing expertise, as well as customer satisfaction skills. There is already significant brand and marketing expertise on the Telecom board with Rod McGeogh (anyone who can lead a successful bid for the Sydney Olympics knows how to execute a marketing strategy) and Ron Spithill (global marketing manager Alcatel). This may signal even more of a marketing focus for Telecom. However, given Kevin (through Saatchi and Saatchi) is already providing Telecom's brand execution, how much more can he offer than this? And is this really the problem?

3. The Telecom brand - the Radio NZ interview with Wayne Boyd yesterday included some commentary along the lines of 'if Telecom got its Brand and Marketing right then shareholder benefits will follow'. This is not a Wayne Boyd quote but a reporter's quote. This is mostly right but not completely.

In my opinion, Brand is the promise that you make explicitly and implicitly to your customers. Everything they see, touch, hear and feel when they interact with you defines the Brand. It's not that complex a concept (although it is difficult to tell a good story in a short period of time and keep your business in sync with it) and Telecom has been really good at making these promises and communicating them through its marketing and PR efforts supported by Saatchi. It invests a lot into this, wins global awards and therefore this is not where it falls over.

Where it needs the most effort is in the delivery of the promise. In my mind this is where Telecom really needs to look in terms of its leadership. Telecom needs to make promises that it keeps - its recent brand damage has been caused by saying one thing and doing another. This is the long hard road to rebuilding brand equity. Where is that leadership coming from?

I have been thinking about brand, marketing and customers for a while now and have a small series of posts that I think will help explain this further. Kevin talks about the whole notion of Lovemarks superceding brands - my view is that is a bit glib. Love is damned easy to talk about but really hard to build. 30 second ads and stories don't cut it in my mind - but more for a later post.

There - I've made a promise, time to deliver on it.

Disclaimer: I hold Telecom shares and have spent a lot of time trying to build a view and product set in Telecom that says if you do right by customers, then you'll get great results. I really want to see Telecom become a loved brand in NZ again.

Vodafone offers 'cheaper' iPhone data plans

2008-08-21T14:53:00.004+12:00

After significantly reducing the trust of its customers, Vodafone has offered new data plans for the iPhone in NZ.

The Good

- Customers who bought iPhones under old plans can change

- Vodafone appears to have listened to customers when shaping these plans

The Bad

- It's a small incremental change at the margin - monthly fee reductions with corresponding voice minutes and txt quota reductions.

- Customers remain disappointed from the early promise and there is no apology for that disappointment. Possible that Vodafone think they have got away with this. Especially since plan changes can incur a penalty.

- There is no high end plan that offers good value. In fact no high-end plan at all above 1GB.

My thoughts

- My pick is that Apple have forced this change - this is only incremental and comments on stuff and Geekzone seem to represent the tone.

- Vodafone NZ is in the dogbox with Apple - supply is being drip-fed to them (confirmed from two separate sources)

- It is going to require a lot more changes along these lines to regain customer trust for Vodafone. Expect to see more incremental changes.

- An opportunity still exists for Telecom to shake up the mobile data market and take some seriously high ground.

iPod Touch + Remote + Airport Express = WIN

2008-08-19T14:16:00.004+12:00

I posted a while back on how I thought the combination of iPod Touch, the Remote app and an Airport Express could end serve as a poor man's Sonos.

Finally got myself an Airport Express last week - and it is as good as I thought.

We have 2 macs at home - I can select either Mac as the source and can select a number of outputs to stream the song to.

How does it compete with the Sonos?

Cost - this is a hands down winner - $700 for a 32 G ipod Touch (you could pay less), $80 for a second hand 802.11 G airport express. Compared to $1500 + for a Sonos, this rocks. And you get an iPod.

Usability - Equivalent - compared to the Soundbridge I had earlier, Arlene can use this happily. That's a serious win.

Functionality - Sonos still on top with its ability to select different output zones, cue up songs (a very social feature) and a single database of tracks. Having said that, the volume control for the Remote app is a useful bonus.

It was the world's easiest sell to go in for another couple of Airport Express units. Next will be to file all the CDs away.

Funniest thing, Arlene spotting the flaw with not having a server capability in iTunes 'Even I think that's dumb'. Apple have to fix this soon. I'd probably pay for a version of the remote app that allowed streaming to different zones and the ability to cue up songs, even the Soundbridge had that.

And a nice touch - you can use the Remote app to enter in WiFi keys on Apple TV.

Start Up lessons and Agile Development

2008-08-15T15:49:00.003+12:00

Really enjoying the DogMog blog at the moment - another thoughtful post today from Sarah on the process of selecting a developer, designer, methodology and requirements.

I posted about Agile Development a while back. Agile didn't work for that project IMHO- the lesson I learned from that is that both the business owner and the developer have to agree to and then commit to using Agile. From a business owners perspective that means ideally sitting with (if not working with) the actual developer (not their representative) daily. Without that its just waterfall under a different name. Enough said.

Media is a long-game - Apple shows the way

2008-08-14T18:35:00.006+12:00

Great to see movies available on iTunes in NZ today. I have a US account that I have been using for buying movies, music, TV shows and apps but have used it sporadically based on the hassle of getting credit into my account as I don't have a US credit card.

Today's announcement has reminded me of how important it is to have a long-term view if you are going to enter the media market.

I've been lucky enough to be involved in the majority of Telecom NZ's media offerings over the last 7 years. There will be a bunch of you who are disparaging about Telecom's efforts here - fair enough.

The one thing that frustrated me the most was the lack of a commitment to a long-term plan by Telecom to its media strategy. Basically, depending on the exec involved, it veered from one play to the next, driven by short term objectives. This is not just true of Telecom - other telcos and ISPs locally have had the same approach, and Vodafone globally and locally has been schizophrenic about its approach.

Apple's approach is driven by an appreciation about the fundamentals of the media industry.

1. It is not possible to make money in media over the short-term or even the medium-term. The margins are too slim - less than 10%. Over a long term - say 5 years - with a consistent approach, all those individual sales of low margin items add up, you build an audience and then you can monetise that in other ways (including advertising). Apple is starting to look more and more like a pay TV play the way it is going with apps and media sales. Check the graph - 5 billion songs in 5 years!

2. The media business is built on relationships - no relationships, no trust, no deal. I like dealing with media people if only for the fact you can legitimately talk for hours with them trying to find common ground and that is a legitimate business reason.

It's basically a long tail with people relationships. Today's announcement by Apple is about adding some more to that long tail.

This appreciation has meant that Apple has been able to work through the Universal issues, release DRM-free music and, its my pick, will be the first store to launch Beatles tracks - the Holy Grail for some at least.

Planning on a media play for your business ? Don't go there unless you have a 5 year plan and the support to go with it.

DogMog - coming soon

2008-08-14T08:40:00.003+12:00

Sarah has been working hard on getting DogMog up and running. It's a Wellington based start-up, driven by Sarah who is a vet-nurse by training but also has a strong background in product development for Telecom. Did I mention she's engaged to my brother too? With that combination it should go well!

As Sarah says in her blog, this what DogMog is about...

DogMog gives members the ability to rate and review the products, services and parks they use, on a site dedicated to helping you make informed decisions about your pets care.

Site is up and running soon - looks like there have been some teething troubles with Silverstripe based on the last post on the blog - so in the meantime subscribe to the blog and check the site out when it goes live.

Telecom 850 WCDMA - more developments?

2008-08-13T20:06:00.005+12:00

Juha posted on the rumours of a delay to the launch to Telecom's WCDMA network. I have no further detail but it's got me thinking some more.

I've been doing a lot more sniffing around on the handset situation for Telecom should they decide to move to 850 WCDMA as part of their UMTS roll-out.

Based on my last post suggesting it needs to be driven by coverage, handsets and pricing for customers, it's clear that there is a potential long-term coverage play for Telecom in all of this. However handsets are the key.

It's my opinion that, should Telecom go down this path, they should only look at one radio spec for their handsets. That is quad-band GSM and a least dual band WCDMA (850 / 2100). Throw in 1900 WCDMA if you can get it, but given that is primarily a US driven requirement and they have rolled 850 WCDMA there 1900 is not a mandatory requirement.

The reason behind choosing a single spec handset is that Telecom can then run a very simple and effective long-run campaign for its customers :

Buy any Next Gen Mobile Telecom handset and you can roam anywhere around the world and have the best coverage for voice and data here or overseas. Period.

Very strong coverage position to take and one that could put Vodafone on the backfoot for quite a period of time.

My reasoning for this spec, as opposed to a local spec for 850 only devices and 850 /2100 devices for 'Worldmode' is simple.

1. Remove a confusing choice for customers about whether they might or might not want to travel somewhere in the world with their mobile. With this spec they can travel anywhere. The last thing you want a customer to have to check is what band their mobile is before they travel - there is usually too much to do anyway!

2. Take a position on coverage that Vodafone can't match - Fastest data here and around the world, where-ever you go.

Key driver for this is handsets. A couple of days of searching the 'net and this is a mixed picture.

On the positive side there is the number 1 handset vendor globally, Nokia, who have a range of 13 devices that meet this criteria. Not bad until you see that their overall range for GSM 900 / UMTS 2100 stands at 58. Still, much better than the days of TDMA and CDMA where the Nokia devices available were around 3-4 vs. 50 -60. The other positive is around iPhone. Will provide great coverage for the 3G iPhone. However this will probably neutralise Vodafone locally at best as they will have mopped up most of the early adopters, notwithstanding supply chain issues from Apple.

On the negative side - there just aren't very many other providers of this spec. A look at GSMArena shows Sony Ericsson has 6, Samsung has 1 and these are out of ranges of around 40 for Sony Ericsson and 70 for Samsung. HTC also has a few and then the numbers dwindle after that.

Overall the answer is that the range is good enough, however there is very little negotiating leverage for Telecom with such a small range of providers. That will probably drive up cost of sale temporarily. The temptation for Telecom will be to buy a cheap handset that reduces cost of sale. That is a short term game.

Do. Not. Do. That.

If there is one thing that I have learned from 15 years of deploying AMPS, D-AMPS, CDPD and CDMA it's that as soon as you bow to this short-term demand then you are forever trying to paper over the cracks.

Thinking long-term would mean the following

1. Build strong and deep relationships with 4-5 handset vendors. Don't nickle and dime them.

2. Don't launch until you have a nationwide NZ 850 WCDMA network - start with a superior local coverage position and hold it all the way through.

3. Buy a handset spec that gives best global roaming. And only one spec please!

4. Price data on a 10 year return on infrastructure, not 3.

The pain will be taking a hit on Mobile market share until this launches. Given how low the share-price is now, I think this is probably priced in already according to Valuecruncher.

I flew a 737 for the first time today

2008-08-11T22:42:00.004+12:00

Well it felt that way.

I visited a good friend of mine, Bill Highet, who is the CEO of Pacific Simulators. Pacific Simulators make flight simulators based on Boeing 737s. You sit inside a completely authentic cabin with the results of your skill (or lack thereof) projected in front of you. I had a quick 20 min tour and took off from Christchurch airport, did a lap around Lyttleton Harbour and managed to land it (mostly on my own) back at Christchurch.

I was buzzing - the experience is very realistic, control response is immediate and I felt like I wanted to be a pilot all over again.

It's more amazing when you think that this company is completely NZ based - from the hardware to the software side (although it leans heavily on MS Flight Simulator for the visuals). Production line looked pretty busy - 3 sims currently in production for destinations such as Dubai and Hong Kong. Lots of other orders lined up as well.

Like most fledgling businesses, they are tight on cashflow - expect to see some capital raising later this year. They have great opportunities to execute on in terms of both Entertainment and Pilot Training. Their Entertainment offering is marketed by Flight Experience. Looks like the Wellington Franchise is up for sale if anyone is into this. Drop Bill a line at Pacific Simulators and he will sort you out!

Why would Telecom NZ launch an 850 MHz UMTS network?

2008-08-07T18:22:00.004+12:00

Mauricio posted this rumour earlier today that Telecom is looking at UMTS at 850 MHz on a nationwide basis. I have no idea if this is true or not but I thought I'd assess it in advance on the off-chance it is true.

In my experience over the last 15 years with Mobile network deployments there have been a bunch of hypotheses about what you can do to attract customers to your network. These have included products and services, video, social networking - all the 'next big things'.

In the end, it does not matter about differentiating on features and services if you haven't got three basics at the same level as the rest of the market. In order, they are

1. Coverage (Where can I use it?)

2. Handsets / Devices (What devices are available?)

3. Price (How much does it cost? Can I afford it?)

This is what customers repeatedly have told me when I have asked them what is important. In fact, given the benefits of mobility customers surprisingly rate Price significantly lower than coverage or handsets.

Most of Telecom's strategic errors around mobile have been when they have forgotten about these 3 fundamental truths - in particular the first. I consider roaming as part of coverage - and Telecom has been on the back-foot here for about a decade. In particular, apart from a period recently when these elements were equal, most of Telecom's major losses in market share have occured when the people involved in setting strategy have been too worried about the economics and trying to engineer a short-term position. But I am off topic now.

Back to the rumour - Why would Telecom look at this particular path?

Marketing wise, they have been saying that they have the best nationwide data network (true - CDMA in NZ is still the best natiowide mobile data networ) and a global roaming proposition (true). The issue is that it's a very limited range of devices that can handle this and when it comes to data, a key part of mobile now, the global proposition is non-existent for UMTS. Worldmode phones, while great, only operate on GPRS as far as I know. And there is a very small selection - 3 at my count out of the portfolio of 24.

This position gets even worse with the current stated proposition for WCDMA. 3 urban cities at launch and nationwide EDGE network. Not good enough. It reminds me of BellSouth's entry into the NZ market. Lots of marketing and a very inferior coverage proposition. Many years after Vodafone bought BellSouth and had pretty much equalised on coverage , I still had Telecom customers tell me they were still with Telecom because of the vastly superior coverage. Power of brand...

So a quick assessment of the speculated 850MHz nationwide network. Why would Telecom do this?

1. Coverage - given the current plan this would provide a massive boost for local data coverage, allowing Telecom to switch off its CDMA network earlier. It doesn't add anything significant for global roaming. The global roaming game is at 2100 MHz for WCDMA - end of story. Anyone trying to convince you of anything else is dreaming.

2. Handsets - This is the tough one to swallow. This strategy does not help the handset situation at all. It means a more specific spec for handsets which means less range to select from. My guess is that Telecom will be forced to run a reduced portfolio compared to Vodafone locally. All they can do is ensure they have a set of choices for each price-point . Shouldn't be an issue at the mid-range but I would anticipate issues at the low-end and the high-end. Telecom may try and offer low-end at CDMA. This would follow the same path tried for trying to maximise the value of the TDMA network. That didn't work. This won't either. Don't do it!!!

3. Price - Telecom will have a relatively empty WCDMA network. Where they could really do well is if they do what Vodafone didn't do when they launched their 3G network. Offer a really sharp data plan.

So, if you are an investor in Telecom stocks consider the following

1. If Telecom announce an 850 MHz network AND can talk to a reasonable set of handsets tomorrow then this is very good news. Especially if the focus is coverage and handsets as opposed to video services etc. If CDMA closure is announced, even better. Means that the long-term picture for Telecom's mobile business is built on a reasonable foundation.

2. If there is no word on 850 MHz network then it is too late for this to be available for launch - doesn't rule it out but means another year of pain in Mobile. Whether you hold or sell will depend on the commentary around mobile.

3. If the rumour is squashed and the focus is all on ecosytems of products and services then be very very worried. Those don't matter if you don't have coverage and handsets sorted. Value down the mobile component of the business and cash-out while you can.

If it was me, I'd do the following

1. Roll out 2100 UMTS as far as you can - aim to make this the core of the network. take the capital hit now and a long-term view on return

2. Backfill with 850 UMTS - necessary evil and provides a short-term coverage advantage if you go full nationwide. Or worst case equalises this position.

3. Aim to close down CDMA in 3 years. Most customers will swap out their handsets in this period anyway. Find ways to make this work without blowing cost of sale.

4. Introduce an all you can eat data plan that goes where Vodafone can't easily follow - look for their profit pool and nuke it. Great for customers and great for the revenue line.

InternetNZ Directorship

2008-07-31T08:59:00.003+12:00

Very pleased to announce that I have been appointed to the Executive Board of Internet NZ.

There is a great mix of board members for this Board - we met for the first time last week and I can say for sure that I am going to have a great opportunity to learn a lot from my Board colleagues. I continue to remind Paul Swain that he was a teacher at my Intermediate School which dates both of us....

Most of all I am excited about being able to do my bit to advance the mission of InternetNZ - to protect and promote the internet in NZ. It's something I am passionate about, and with the broadband access debate starting to reach a level of maturity it's time to look to the next set of issues to address to ensure that the Internet is a key part of NZ's economic and creative engine.

InternetNZ has done a great job of advancing this debate and I look forward to being able to serve its well-informed and passionate members.

Why Vodafone introduced the NZ iPhone plans

2008-07-30T21:01:00.004+12:00

There is a very clear reason why Vodafone introduced the initial contract plans for the iPhone - reducing ARPU for postpaid customers.

This article suggests postpaid ARPU fell around 10% in the quarter. Ugly. Driven by the current economic situation as opposed to the competitive situation, in my opinion.

That being the case, iPhone presented an opportunity for Vodafone to increase ARPU through higher rate plans with a lower initial hurdle. All very sensible but as we know the marketing execution did not have the intended result.

I had a look at the Vodafone site today to check my facts on the iPhone plans - being offline for a couple of weeks I missed that the high end plan that caused all the angst seems to have been removed and it is much clearer that you can use other existing Vodafone plans. I was going to say that Vodafone had introduced these plans purely for raising ARPU but it appears that they listened (to some extent) to their customers post-launch and at least tightened up the information.

Related I heard a rumour (unsubstantiated) that they are in the dog-box with Apple as a result of the negative publicity around the iPhone release. Probably opens up another window for Telecom as I assume being in the Apple dog-box means that iPhone stock allocation from Steve Jobs is not forthcoming...

Rod's refocussed - who to follow now?

2008-07-30T19:03:00.004+12:00

So the circle is now complete - Rod comments on his valedictory blog, an ironic end....

For those who want to know who else to keep tabs on with Rod's move to xero focussed blogging, here are a set of blogs to keep an eye on. This is made up of commentators to this 'last' post as well as others who are pushing the conversation along.

http://diversity.net.nz
http://rowansimpson.com
http://iyeyl.blogspot.com/
http://techsploder.com
http://amplify.co.nz/
http://work.miramarmike.co.nz/
http://pellacor.com/
http://blog.synapses.co.nz/
http://www.petergriffin.co.nz/blog/
http://www.makeithappenhq.com/
http://lancewiggs.com/
http://www.wine.geek.nz/
http://scio-sphere.blogspot.com/
http://simonyoung.co.nz/
http://asiapacificheadhunter.com/
http://ceej75.wordpress.com/
http://poneke.wordpress.com/
http://www.supervery.com/
http://www.stuff.co.nz/blogs/showmethemoney
http://www.saintzeno.com/blog/

http://domaneschi.blogspot.com

http://poneke.wordpress.com/

For completeness throw some traffic my way - I hope to be able to progress along certain aspects of the work Rod has started in my own way

http://szikszai.blogspot.com/

With these blogs you'll get a mix of technology, start-up entrepreneurs,wellington issues, insightful comment, humour and the rest. Still a gap here for some leadership on the big issues like Broadband Trade Routes though. It is really interesting to me that there is a very deep need for a lot of people who are blazing their own trails to have someone to follow, who can be a collection point for the issues and debates. Rod's blog really hit the spot.

Add any others that you follow in the comments. Self-promotion welcome!

MySky HDi - first impressions

2008-07-29T11:45:00.006+12:00

Just had MySky HDi installed.

First impressions are really good

1. Everything upscales to 1080i

2. NASCAR on SKYSport HD looked much better, although not as good as some HD sport I saw in the US a couple of years ago

3. EPG is much faster but still pretty clunky for functions like search

4. HD programmes take up a lot of space on the hard drive - apparently up to 10% of the drive for one movie. Just as well the drive is double in size.

5. Supplied with HDMI cable - nice

Primary downside is that everything that I recorded on the old box has gone south (no point having 2 x MySky in our house). Would be nice if it was transferred especially since there are USB ports on both boxes.

The real test will be the rugby this week - watching last week's game from Oz was a nightmare - far too much blurring...

UPDATE: Watched the AB's test last night - SOOOOO much better than non-HD. It's easier on the eye, detail is sharper and would probably look even better if it wasn't on my small 32" LCD.

iPod Touch Remote + Airport Express = Poor Man's Sonos

2008-07-11T22:10:00.005+12:00

I've been playing around with various 'cheap' versions of ways to get my iTunes library playing through my stereo.

I could not justify a Sonos based on the price tag but it would be fair to say that all other versions have met with frustration with the household around ease of use. The proof being that we still have 100's of CDs near the stereo - much to my chagrin.

The four methods I have used to date have been

1. iPod in cradle - not useful for those who haven't used one before and locks your ipod in one place

2. Roku Soundbridge - good size and price, cumbersome UI

3. Squeezebox - bit big, remote better but still lacking in intuition.

4. Airport Express - easy to install - you just have to keep walking to the other room to control the music.

Options 2 & 3 also fail with playing protected tracks from iTunes, which is the stuff I have bought most recently so that is a pain.

The Sonos is the ultimate device - easy remote and amps with selectable speakers. Main issue is its price tag of close to $2k. I tried to purchase the one at the office that wasn't being used but no joy.

So the Remote application seems to be a great solution - all I need to do is get another airport express (previous was on loan) and I can control the remote speakers from the iPod Touch. I would take an old 802.11 g version if someone has one lying around (ok, I am cheap!). Probably doesn't have the killer feature of cueing up your next song, but on balance (and the fact you can use multiple Airport Express devices) then I'd go for that.

Unfortunately does not solve the iTunes server issue - papers over the cracks really as you can see all the servers but still means song replication on multiple servers which must be a relatively easy problem to solve.

Any other ways that people are using that could work better ? Especially for the non-technically oriented family members ?

Vodafone NZ, iPhone and a marketing step too far

2008-07-09T09:48:00.002+12:00

There's been an outrage on Vodafone NZ's iPhone plans. I've been commenting on Rod Drury's blog on Mark Rushworth's performance on Campbell Live.

I've known Mark for a good while now and thought he did well given the approach that John Campbell took. Unfortunately for him he couldn't get the really good news out there.

There is a lot of emotion in the NZ market about Vodafone 'ripping people off' and its easy to see how that could happen. The fact is, with the exact same information and a different approach this could be significantly different - and it all comes back to wanting to take the marketing a step further than they needed to.

My hypothesis is pretty simple - Vodafone have Telecom on the ropes at the moment and want to make a killer blow. iPhone is pretty close to that. However instead of landing one massive punch, they have only ended up with a relatively weak hit. And that is as a result of trying to overplay their hand.

The overplaying of the hand was by a two stage release of handset prices and plans.

The announcement of $199 sticker price for the iPhone on Monday was designed to maximise the hype around the iPhone. That price all of a sudden meant that someone on Sunday who thought iPhone was unobtainable found that they could afford the entry ticket. That would have got a lot of people very excited (hey - we were talking about 2 of them at home!). An implied promise was made - you could afford the iPhone.

The release of the plans the next day broke the promise - it wasn't affordable.

That is the root of this issue - an implied promise was made and then broken.

When you look at it in more detail, its a like a fighter who has swung to land the killer blow and then ended up hitting himself in the back of the head. Here's why.

1. There was no benefit in splitting the plans and the headline price - the people who are most upset now are the people who would have ruled themselves out of buying an iPhone already based on their expectation of the price. Vodafone have upset their next tier of customers down. By launching the sticker price and the plans on the same day these customers would not have even been in the conversation.

2.These upset customers are looking very deeply into Vodafone plans - the issues around prepaid, $1 a day data and lack of total customer choice means that Vodafone is getting more scrutiny that it would have expected and is having to defend this.

3. What has been missed is that the $250 plan, when compared to existing Vodafone plans is actually very sharp. It's a 10% saving on an equivalent plan for the same bundle - it costs less. No-one has picked that up. In fact most people seem to think this is somehow a rort. So Vodafone has actually cut some prices but is not getting any credit for it.

4. Instead of basking in the glow of iPhone solely, it opens up an opportunity for Telecom to do something different with mobile data pricing. Whether it takes this opportunity is a moot point - this is an opportunity that simply was not there at the start of the week.

My view - launching these plans in one hit at an event would have given Vodafone a pretty strong position. Trying to milk it has led to an instant loss of trust.

Will be interesting to see how Vodafone learn from this - that is the next challenge - my guess is that they are locked into an Apple contract that gives them limited flexibility at this point and will just have to tough it out.

Disclaimer - I am working for Telecom Wholesale today, 9th July 2008 (and for the next two days). These opinions remain my own and do not represent any company position.

Supporting the truckies

2008-07-04T12:59:00.003+12:00

Ella chose this from the toy library today. Coincidence - I think not based on today's big news

The most important factor in building community

2008-06-25T08:54:00.002+12:00

Ben posted some analysis yesterday on The Ruby Connection, an initiative from Westpac in Australia. He quite rightly points out a number of issues with the initiative while still contending that this is a pretty good first foray for Westpac.

I have to disagree. I think it misses the mark. Here's why I think that.

In my experience there is one factor above all others that is critical in establishing community. It's dialogue.

If you look at etymology for the word community, it is sugggests it is from the Latin communis -meaning shared with many. I'd take it further and say you can break it down into two words

cum: meaning with

mundus: meaning world

To have community means that you are 'with the world'. Communities are 'worlds' that gather together around a shared purpose.

Communities do not exist without dialogue. Dialogue is what makes sharing happen. Westpac have identified a shared purpose - helping women succeed in business. What they haven't done is created a dialogue. Their proposition does not have this at its heart. Rather it seeks to tell rather than encourage members to share.

The site is essentially a monologue, with the exception of some capability in the Forums to reply. There is no engagement with the key content contributors, who I am sure have been well paid for their well-written thoughts (which is fine by the way). They set the purpose but it is broadcast. The investment in their writing is not going to have a long-life.

Sustainable communities very rarely form around monologues - there is no way to engage with the message which means the message fades.Looking back at Roman history, you can see why the Forum was so important. It was the place that the community came together to engage without any barriers to dialogue.

My recommendation for anyone building community is to over-invest in the capability, processes and functionality that facilitates and encourages dialogue. Make it the heart of the community. It's what the community reverts to in the absence of anything else. The investment doesn't have to be all about 'online'. Geekgirl's suggestions on getting your community together in person is a great example of the investment that is required to encourage that dialogue and make it more meaningful.

Ben's recommendations can follow as second order priorities, making the community more vibrant.

Theophany Loudspeaker Demonstration in Wellington

2008-06-17T12:01:00.005+12:00

I've been looking around for some new Hi Fi gear - talking with the resident experts in the office I've been pointed towards Theophany Speakers. They are apparently amazing. The story behind them even more so.

I contacted Garth from Theophany a few weeks ago to see if they had an outlet here where I could try some - the Epiphany M3e look like they would suit. Sad to say that there are no outlets here - these guys are pretty new and just in the process of setting up distribution.

So I was very excited to get this email from Garth yesterday (reproduced by permission)

Hello, in the last year you have contacted us and asked about Demonstrations of our loudspeakers in Wellington.

Due to the demand we have decided to come to Wellington for a four day period from the 7th to the 10th of July. At this time we will demonstrate both HiFi and Home
Theatre speakers, amplifiers and source components as well as 1080p screen and
projector options currently available on the New Zealand market.

What ever part of the market you consider yourself to be in we would be very happy to offer our time to show you what we have available, especially in our range of world class loud speakers.

We have a suite booked at the Duxton Hotel where all of the gear will be set up. If you would like to make a time to come and have a listen and coffee with us, without any obligation to purchase please either email or call me back to arrange a time. We like to set aside specific time for clients so if you have a particular time that you think you would be available I would appreciate it if you could let me know as soon as possible as we already have quite a few people that want to hear our gear in action. We are happy to take appointments right into the evening if that is better for you.

I look forward to meeting you in July.

Regards

Garth Murray
Director

Theophany Loudspeakers Ltd.
Cnr Weedons
Ross & McClelland Road
R.D.5 Christchurch
7675
P +64 3 347 7232
F +64 3 347 7532
M +64 27 567 7335

garth@theophanyloudspeakers.com

If you are introduced in hearing and seeing the best of NZ's HiFi equipment, book some time with Garth now as slots are filling up fast, although he is suggesting there might be an opportunity to do some combined evening demos.

Kiwi capability gaps

2008-06-11T22:03:00.003+12:00

Over the last few weeks I have been observing the people and behaviour around me and have been noticing some things - I call them Kiwi capability gaps. These are the things which in our traditional culture we might have considered to be positive aspects of our culture but they are, I believe, elements which are holding us back from performing to our potential.

There are three of them that are top of the list

1. At heart, we are not engaging people

This is something which I picked up on as part of a presentation made by Thomas Scovell at the recent Interactive Marketing Conference in Auckland. Thomas' presentation was about using the analogy of a Farmer's Market and the experience of 'tasting the fruit' to build a relationship with your customer. It made me reflect on the different market experiences I have had. I love going to markets in Europe - there is engagement. There's chatter, tasting, arguments - in fact the sale is almost incidental. My observation of NZers is that - broadly generalising to the Anglo Saxon background - we are not comfortable engaging in the physical market conversation either as buyers or sellers. Thomas put it well - the typical Kiwi response is 'I'm just browsing' - it's code for 'Leave me alone - I don't want to engage'.

This goes back to the archetype of the stoic Kiwi - they can do it all on their own. This attitude means we don't try stuff nearly as much as we like. Because we don't engage, the market seller is unlikely to hear directly how to improve their service - the lose the gift of feedback. And since they don't get feedback, when they receive it they don't know how to react - so they don't listen.

In the end - it means no-one improves as fast as they might normally.

It also means we don't engage in the broader community with more serious consequences.

This conversation on Rod's blog is instructive - there are 40+ comments on the recent acquittal of Chris Kahui. Only one comment asks the question that is the most important - what are you going to DO about it. We've settled - this is someone else's fault. Either the govenment or the police or the tight 12 or a racially defined part of our community (i.e. not us). The fact is, this is in our community and can only be resolved by community action. The action required is to engage with the broader community. More on that in another post.

2. We have low degrees of financial literacy in the part of the market we need it most

This one sits right with the above average income earners. If you ask anyone who has aper annum household income over $150k what their cashflow position is, their current target to pay off debt and their investment positions are my guess is that only 3/10 people know this information.

When I ask what the rationale behind this is, I hear that they don't need to know - they are doing well enough and you only need to worry about this if you are on a budget. I classify this group of people as those who have had it too good for too long. They (We!) have high lifestyle costs and don't worry much about tomorrow. Because of the age at which people are having kids is moving later and later this constitutes a huge spending bubble which just feeds on itself but does not produce anything. This is a fundamental issue - if you are not worried about where your next dollar is coming from, or where it is going, you end up with waste. Lots of it. Note that these people are probably deciding what to spend in private and public companies.

Dan, Ben and Rowan have picked up this issue too. My view is that this is NOT about the lack of tools - its about a lack of discipline.

3. We settle - it's good enough

This might be the underpinning factor behind Item number 2. As NZer's we settle for 'good enough'. This post from Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson, is fascinating.

While he talks about the How of WOW its interesting to note the graphic

As he points out Good is actually not Good enough - as NZers we frequently sit in Yellow and Red. It means we stand still.

So those are the three observations. You combine them and you get a culture that is standing still and is ok with it. I am not ok with it.

I am not going to tell anyone what to do - here is what I am going to do. You tell me if you see a difference.

1. Take every opportunity I can to engage with your community in any way I can. Give and receive feedback. Learn.

2. Build my own personal cashflow - start running my personal finances like a company.

3. Use the traffic light - know the expectations and always strive to exceed them Don't stop until you have - and then once I've learned that, keep on going...

Magnum Mac After Sales Service

2008-06-05T22:47:00.003+12:00

As a bit of an Apple fanboy I am usually reminded that while Apple's products are great, their after sales service is usually pretty poor.

I've been dealing with Magnum Mac , the local Apple reseller in Wellington on a couple of issues

1. A noisy fan on an imac purchased from the refurbished Mac site - great deals on that site

2. A battery on my MacBook Pro that would discharge to 50% and then completely switch off - no sleep, just off.

In both cases they've done a really good job.

For the iMac they changed out all the fans, realised it wasn't those so then got a logic board in. It took a while to get to the bottom of this and I had to ask them what was going on but they nailed the fan noise. Looks like they disconnected the RHS speaker so iMac will be going back in.

As an aside the one piece design of the iMac makes it very easy to transport into Magnum Mac - just keep your original box!

For the MBP battery , they went one better. After pointing me to the apple site on battery recalls, (check the site out - extends warranty on your MBP battery to 2 years) I took the battery in. It got sent to apple and they claimed it was outside their policy. I asked Magnum Mac to check again and today I got a new battery. And it goes - even better.

I would highly recommend Lester and the crew at Magnum Mac with any repairs - they definitely look after you.

At least he doesn't expect much

2008-06-04T18:40:00.006+12:00

If you subscribe to Seth Godin's marketing philosophy, marketing is about telling stories with customers. Ideally it is about creating stories with customers. Its a philosophy that is really powerful and emotive - and links to but is not driven by analytics. I was involved in a conversation with a marketing professional today who really wants to engage with his customers more. He is really keen and wants to make a difference and he knows a lot.

1. He knows who he wants to tell his story too
2. He knows, to a broad extent, what his story is - but I am not sure if he believes it. He knows he has to tell this story but that's not the same as believing the story
3. He knows where he wants to shift his customer's perception to and where his customers perception was - in an analytical and emotional sense
4. He knows when he wants to tell his story
5. He knows how he wants his story told

The things I don't get are this
- he wants someone else to tell his story for him to his customers
- he doesn't have time to share his stories with his customers himself-
- he is happy to invest in a heap of market research to tell him months after the fact what his customers think and feel about his story, rather than hearing it from him direct
- he wants to tell his story the same way his competitor tells his story rather than telling his story in a more personal and powerful way

When I asked him how successful he expected to be in shifting customer perception he saide doesn't really expect his customer to change his mind much in the next year - at least he has realistic expectations.

How do I help him understand the power of sharing directly with his customers?

Using technology for social change

2008-05-28T13:17:00.003+12:00

I posted recently on my experience with face to face fundraisers and have been casting around for ways in which organisations such as Red Cross could be more engaging and effective.

I found this post on ReadWriteWeb today which started pointing towards some possible solutions which include a Facebook application for causes which uses the FB community to donate. It is still totally un-engaging. I checked the FB application out, some basic stuff is being missed - not even a link to the app from the American Red Cross site. Having said that it may be a reason to join Facebook finally. The other examples are all about using technology as a basic communication method - whereas the power of this medium is its ability to engage supporters to the cause of their choice

There really is a space here where these cash strapped organisations could go more open source and start collaborating on these initiatives.

There are a lot of threads to tie together where some people with some Interactive Marketing experience could really make a difference in quick time.

What level of engagement would it take for you to support an organisation online?

Fighting to be the feedback tool of your choice

2008-05-26T22:12:00.005+12:00

I've recently been using Uservoice to collect feedback from visitors to this blog on what you would like to hear about.

I've been seriously impressed by the marketing efforts made by Uservoice and their competition as a result of my use of Uservoice.

Interesting to note the story to date...

1. Gripnostril sent me a link to a site talking about corporates talking with their customers.
2. There was a link in there to Uservoice.
3. I set up a site, added a feedback tab to this blog and blogged about it

The subsequent activities have been interesting

4. I found thatan expat Kiwi called Marcus Nelson who works at uservoice was following me on Twitter - he pinged me a question making sure that everything was ok with my experience.
5. Independently, I received an email from the CMO of a competitor company to Uservoice, called SuggestionBox asking what I thought the differences were and offering me a 2 month free trial of their product.

I haven't tried SuggestionBox yet, but have added their Twitter feed so I can keep an eye out on it.

A couple of insights

1. It feels great to have a couple of companies contact me directly wanting to either make sure that everything was going great and actively (and personally) wanting my feedback.

2. It reinforces what I have been thinking about web marketing - there are no silver bullets - you have to get in there and just start talking with your customers.

3. It's a street fight out there for customers when you are starting out and these guys know it.

And I was just going to start to update where I was at in the list of feedback from readers and I notice that all the votes were re-set to zero. We'll see how Uservoice cope with that, otherwise that SuggestionBox trial is looking like a good idea.

Pressure selling techniques and charities

2008-05-23T21:22:00.004+12:00

I've posted before about the sales-people on the streets trying to hit you up to make monthly contributions to various charities.

This morning I was approached again by a young woman who was collecting for the Red Cross.

I like the Red Cross and have a good friend who has spent significant time in war zones in the Baltics and more recently the Sudan. They do fabulous work and deserve support - like most charities. This post is not about whether you should support a charity, its more a question of how is this money raised.

I can't help but think that this style of recruitment is not really the way to go.

I decided to ask a few questions of my fundraiser today to get a handle on how this works.

She is employed by Cornucopia, a fundraising organisation in Australia and NZ that targets young travellers on their OE as casual fundraisers. It seems they receive a minimum payment per day as well as a payment per person signed up.

I don't like this - in effect the first donation that I make to these organisations goes to pay the person who is collecting on the street. The second one probably goes to Cornucopia. If I decide to pull the pin on my donation after a couple of months, the charity of my choice probably doesn't get the money. It explains a few things

- why you are encouraged to donate for a year 'to make a real difference'

- there is no option for me to take away information to review in my own time (surely this is bordering on breaking the Door to Door Sales Act, although I do note that there is a cooling off period)

If I can summarise the disadvantages, it goes like this

1. The person representing the Brand for the charity is not aligned to the charity - they are doing it for personal gain. Hard to build a connection with this.

2. It is a high pressure sell which does not connect the donator to the charity

3. My estimate is that at roughly 15% of the first year's donation is considered 'Cost of Sale' and does not go to the Charity. Hopefully there aren't residual payments.

So its downside for the charity and downside for the donator. Upside for Cornucopia and the collector (although my guess is that they spend a lot of time for what money they do get).

There has got to be a better way.

The charity needs to look at the connection it is making with its supporters and try and connect them together in a way that makes sense. If you support a particular charity then chances are you have a shared set of values with others who do that - that is something that is pretty powerful.

They also need to make the money that comes from their supporters stretch as far as possible. That means not using professional fund raising organisations. What it will mean is leveraging their network of supporters much more for fundraising - effectively part of the support for the charity is to encourage others to be supporters.

While we think about how to do this, I would encourage you to use the direct methods of donation available to most charities and avoid the fresh faced sales people in the street.

How would you encourage supporters to donate to your charity and keep them connected?

Voice Interfaces have a long way to go to be useful

2008-05-22T11:53:00.004+12:00

At a demo last week, I was reminded how far Voice Interfaces have to go to be genuinely useful.

Quite apart from wondering whether voice interfaces are a solution looking for a problem, it made me think about my own experience with these technologies since I've been involved in a number of Telecom projects using Voice Interfaces.

The first one was VoiceDial - a network hosted voice recognition service that you could use to dial numbers by either saying the number or by saving a name. About 12 years ago when phones couldn't do this type of stuff. Had a great ad with a guy picking up his mother in law from the airport and having to dial her by his tag for her- 'The Old Trout'. Can't find it anywhere on YouTube. Let me know if you can find it!

Next one was a Voice Portal called WordUp- basically a Voice recognition system that allowed you to access audio content (primarily news, sport and weather, as well as reading your email to you).

Both of these had major performance issues under noisy conditions (pretty normal for mobile) which meant that the best you ever did was about 70% success rates. Pretty poor.

Having said that the primary customers who were interested were the Blind and there should have been a way to keep this service on - but I digress.

More recently we've had a voice interface as part of 123. The main aim was to direct customers to the most appropriate help as quickly as possible. This has recently gone through a dramatic simplification as again it wasn't able to achieve this - it pretty much just annoyed customers. Instead of asking you heaps of questions now, it asks one or two. Performance around complex answers was just not good enough for customers.

The demo I saw was for an integration between Microsoft Exchange and a softswitch. It produces some great benefits for customers in terms of managing fixed and mobile calling. One of the not so great benefits is the ability to manage your email using a voice interface. About 80% success rate from a fixed line phone! Fortunately the marketing person responsible for the product made the wisest statement I have heard in a demo like this for some time - "If it doesn't work, don't launch it".

So it seems that in over a decade not that much tangible progress has been made - from 70% success rate on Mobile to 80% success rate on fixed. You'd never tolerate that type of performance from a GUI so why do people think that it is tolerable on a mobile?

Until its possible to deal with all the variation in the human voice in an intelligent way this is one technology that I would stay well clear of for mass market use.

Have you seen it genuinely work in a mass market environment?

Valuecruncher

2008-05-16T10:25:00.006+12:00

Mark from our football team has been notably absent for most of the season. We might be second on the table (Uni Raiders) but the lack of goals is pretty much directly related to Mark's absence.
Turns out he has been working like a dog the next phase of his company Valuecruncher.

The guys there have been creating a super simple tool for predicting company valuations for listed companies. Jim has picked it up as well.

The football team used to be mightly impressed that in its previous incarnation Mark and co had found a way to monetise the NPV function in Excel. This new version seriously takes it up a level with the ability to adjust company valuations in real time plus a community function so you can see what other people are valuing the same company at. You can follow their progress on their blog.

Of course I had to have a look at the spread on AAPL - as it would be one of the ones to polarise people the most. Naturally I am not disappointed (apart from the potential upside!).

Great work getting Valuecruncher 2 out the door guys - awesome to see another Wellington crowd getting in amongst it.

And Mark - if you don't get out on a Saturday soon we may just ask Whispering Death to put your subs on the bar...

Disclaimer: I occasionally pass Mark the ball so he can score goals

Power of reputation

2008-05-15T22:46:00.003+12:00

It was interesting to read Rod's post today about the first year of being listed with Xero, in particular the hard work that it takes to build compelling word of mouth. It helps with his pedigree that he had a good reputation to start with. Nevertheless it still required 'phone dogging'.

It got me thinking about a conversation I have been having with a mate of mine who is convinced that you can monetise reputation. I've been thinking about when that might be useful and have started coming up with some ideas about when.

While I have been thinking about it, Michele has been starting a conversation on it. His jist is that there is enough action happening in the digital identity space that you must be able to find away to port your existing online reputation to help you with other transactions. The trademe idea is a winner. Take a look and start contributing.

iTunes server?

2008-05-14T21:44:00.004+12:00

Rod has been continuously amazed about the lack of a home iTunes and iPhoto server set-up. To be honest I agree - with a macbook and an iMac at home I don't like the mucking around we have to go through to sync up music and photo collections. Gets even worse when you store your photos on the imac, yet take the macbook on holiday and put pics on it.

This code might be starting to point to whether Apple are finally onto it. WWDC will no doubt tell. Hopefully it is not just another bonjour implementation.

Hat-tip to Philip for the code link.

Tell me what you want

2008-05-14T12:07:00.005+12:00

As a proponent of customer-centred design I am always interested in ways for customers / audiences to get closer to the developer of the product, service or content.

Gripnostril pointed me to this today which talks about how some large corporates are finding ways to more directly engage with their customers. Dell and Starbucks are held up as the examples of how this is done well.

What I really liked about this was that it linked to a nice site called uservoice. It's a site where users can add and vote on suggestions. Naturally they use it themselves - instant engagement.

I want to know what you want to hear about in this blog. I've added a feedback tab on the left hand side of the template - suggest away!

Any suggestions for lightweight tools other than paint for adding red ovals to jpgs gratefully received.

TIP: if you are using blogger the script doesn't quite work - replace the '=' sign in the the 'color' reference with a ':' and it should be all good.

Old Dogs and New Tricks

2008-05-12T19:54:00.004+12:00

I was really stoked to see this post from Ben this morning.

The post is primarily about Victoria Crone who has been driving Telecom's marketing push for SaaS in the Business Marketing team.

Vic has been around Telecom for a long time - probably about as long as I have - but that doesn't mean she doesn't listen to customers nor does it mean she can't embrace a new way of communicating. And that was her - no ghost-writing there. She is also present on Plaxo and LinkedIn and pretty easy to find on email or phone in Telecom

This follows on from a very informal session with Paul Reynolds last week where he popped up on the floor in Auckland and talked about his very straight forward view about what we need to do to make our customers happy. In a sentence - work out what they want and deliver it, don't be a slave to self imposed heirarchy and siloes. Pretty simple and very effective.

Goes to show that you can't take Telecom for granted in its behaviour - things are changing and people like Vic are getting amongst it.

Welcome to the blogosphere Vic - hopefully you'll be up for posting a blog of your own. I've got some experience if you need a hand to set it up.

Freeview HD on a Mac

2008-05-11T19:44:00.003+12:00

With Freeview launching their HD box a few weeks ago, and not having taken advantage of HD goodness I 've been wrestling with whether I can justify another box in the lounge alongside MySky, Xbox and a Media Centre.

I am planning to ditch the Media Centre for an Apple TV based on UI alone - it's just too complicated for anyone who doesn't know the set-up.

I've been talking to Philip about this who is *the* man to talk to about all things apple.

He has put me onto Eye TV which he has been testing for a while now.

Philip confirmed yesterday that Eye TV v3 can happily record Freeview HD locally with readily available EPG feeds.

I am planning to hooking that up to a simple antenna, recording shows on the mac and pitching them to Apple TV. More work for me but one less box in the house.

And if enough people ask, Philip can start his own blog so I don't claim his ideas without attributing his input :)

Rugby 2.0

2008-05-08T18:46:00.005+12:00

I've been spending some time with the team at Telecom who are hooked into Yahoo!. A few of them have come back from a trip recently where they went to Web2.0 and also spent some time with Yahoo! discussing strategy.

Their overall summary was that Y! have got a very solid strategy around Web 2.0 to the point where they are coming up with tools that will make Y! services better but also will work well with other Web 2.0 services. A case in point is the feed on this blog from Plaxo Pulse, a 'social network' tool I am using. It is a feed from Plaxo in Blogger using a third party widget. That widget relies on using pipes from Y! to work. Doesn't drive any traffic as such to Y! (well not yet) but I now know how to use it and can use it with other Y! services. They are embracing OpenID. They open applications like Flickr up to work with other apps. This all ties to Y! understanding that their purpose is all about advertising. They don't have to be number 1 in all the verticals as long as they embrace the fact that they operate within a broader ecosystem, and they use the elements within that to drive a strong position in their focal point - advertising. Sure they are not perfect - however they are better positioned than most.

They get they are part of bigger picture that inevitably they won’t control
They know what their key assets are (traffic).
They know what their revenue model is (advertising)
They open up to drive more traffic.

It’s pretty simple.

I'm on a plane writing this and have just read a number of articles from the Herald about the state of rugby in NZ. They are individual opinions that state amongst other things

- Convening players for AB camp early doesn't make sense as they are our number 1 asset and need rest so we can keep on winning
- Springboks are having to choose between Euro contracts and playing for their country - this is generally portrayed as the players are greedy so let’s stick it to them (rapacious is the word used to describe them)
- The sabbatical idea for Dan Carter is silly and we should just open the gates to picking players wherever they are playing and be commercially smart to make $
- NZRU have failed and are too arrogant to admit it.

So putting the Kiwi knocking machine to one side (I mean, who is arrogant - the NZRU or the reporter for saying they are?), I was thinking about a remodelling of NZ Rugby based on web 2.0 principles. Let’s call it NZ Rugby 2.0

It would start with a few principles

1. Rugby is a global, and professional game that provides unprecedented choice for players, administrators and audiences.
2. There are local, regional and global competitions where Rugby is available for audiences
3. It is open - there is no one authority that controls it apart from setting basic standards (i.e. IRB is about setting rules for playing the game and maybe the global competition - the rest is devolved)
4. NZ Rugby cannot survive on its own – it has to contribute to and operate within the global ecosystem.

Under this NZ Rugby would need to be very clear about what its purpose is. At the moment it is trying to be too many things

1. The global leader in playing rugby
2. Sustaining the amateur game
3. Controlling player movement
4. A successful business.

Under NZ Rugby 2.0, I would propose that it has a single purpose

- Become the number 1 brand in rugby entertainment with audiences, broadcasters and players.

It would also recognise that the two key assets it has are

1. The All Blacks Brand
2. The systems that produce professional players and coaches.
3. The AB’s coach

In a radical view I would say that the actual players are not key assets - sure they are assets but in general they have limited life and are subject to high maintenance costs. The system that produces them is definitely the key asset.

The revenue model is simple

1. Broadcast and internet rights – AB matches and other professional games
2. Merchandising – AB merchandising needs to get to the same scale as professional football. New kits every year.
3. Gate sales – these will have to go up – this is the ultimate supply / demand constraint (only so many seats in a stadium). Can be justified if the A team is on the park.
4. Transfer fees – if Northern Hemisphere clubs are going to continue to pay huge $ for players then take a slice.

The key implications on the existing organisation are

1. This organisation cannot be the same organisation that manages the amateur game. It would have to support it (with funding and players) but the purposes are just two different to manage.
2. Forget about trying to control player drain – instead embrace it and use these players as a way to influence the broader ecosystem. In particular re-jigging the global competition structures. Retain the right to call on players to play for the All Blacks to develop that brand. Global player movement builds that brand. Don’t just limit that to the Dan Carters of the game. That is anti-competitive and short sighted (imagine – DC gets injured while on ‘sabbatical’ and now Nick Evans can’t be called up – doh!).
3. Coach becomes really important – he is the guy that pulls a team together from a bunch of guys spread around the world and substantiates the AB’s brand.
4. Communicate like hell with stakeholders – ask them what they really want and rapidly adapt to suit.
5. Governance needs to change – the NZRU model of the provincial unions deciding the make-up of the Board is totally out of date.
6. NZ Rugby is an exporter to a global market – big shift in perspective.

If you think this is without evidence have a look at Argentina. Most of their players are playing the Northern Hemisphere. They were 3rd in the last world Cup beating France to get there.

If the best players were on the park I might start turning up or tuning in to watch again.

Clarification of status

2008-05-08T16:55:00.004+12:00

A couple of questions - one on my blog and one on a comment I posted to another blog - as well as some surprised looks from people in the business have led me to believe I need to clarify my employment status.

1. I have resigned from Telecom - my last day is June 30th. There's a strong financial incentive linked to this date.

2. Until recently I was working on Telecom's Next Generation Telecom (or NGT) programme. I am no longer working on that programme.

3. I am working in the Broadband part of Telecom on what could only be described as special projects, supporting the widely held view that there is only one place you can go after Special Projects. Its pretty busy and a good way to finish my time here.

4. I don't have a job lined up for when I finish - I am planning on spending a lot of time enjoying being a Dad, I have a couple of ideas which I will talk about soon enough, and I am unashamedly looking for one or two days a week work to help keep the bank manager happy. Any offers considered :)

Naturally the posts and comments that I make are my own opinion (unless I state otherwise). And they will be flavoured by my experience at Telecom as well as other perspectives that I hold.

That should make it clear.

Small Business hosting in NZ

2008-05-07T14:24:00.004+12:00

I saw Swizzle via Rod Drury today.

I had wondered with the decrease in cost of servers whether there was an opportunity to get into this - especially with small businesses who don't need all the bells and whistles, just secure and reliable hosting.

The process looks super easy, but to be honest it wasn't that cheap ($1200 per annum for a linux server?) but I may be out of touch with pricing - I hope they do well.

Blast from the past

2008-05-06T11:46:00.003+12:00

I saw this article this morning about a proposal from Telecom to install 6 new cellphone antenna the Foxton water tower.

Brought back a lot of memories - my first role at Telecom was running around the country side picking locations for cell-sites. Invariably we got a lot of resistance from people with genuine concerns about the health issues that might be associated with these installations. While people were genuinely freaked out (the unknown does affect people pretty deeply), when you think that these installations put out about as much power as a 1 bar heater, mounted at 20m (or more) above ground, there really isn't much ground for concern.

We did meet some extremely cool people as well. I recall talking to a farmer in Eketahuna about using his hilltop - he was very cagey until we said we would pay a rental and put in place a road up to the site. We got invited in for the best farm lunch ever :)

I remember this site in particular - was a great place to use existing infrastructure (my personal opinion was that the visual effects of sites was much more of an issue than health effects) and had great height for coverage. The primary concern from residents was that the local chicken farm would be somehow affected causing mutations, which would eventually poison the entire community. Council decided to take the offer on and also ended up doing a deal with Vodafone as well. Telecom antennas are on the top.

The reporter is probably the same one - persisted in thinking they were intelligent by using antennae as the plural of antenna. Antennae are on insects. Antennas are used for cellsites.

Playing with Yahoo!

2008-04-30T22:33:00.004+12:00

I've been spending a bit of time playing around with the Yahoo! products available through Yahoo!Xtra.

I generally use this at home on my mac and was kind of disappointed that Pro Mail was not officially compatible with either Safari or Firefox. It seems there have been some upgrades recently which means that this compatibility now exists - works much faster on both browsers making it a much more useful service.

I was talking to the team at Telecom about the roadmap for more improvements - can't say anything too specific about them, but from the screenshots I saw, the evolution of this product is simply stunning. Expect to see more this year with a more social networking orientation and a better calendar product as well. The speed they are moving at is phenomenal. They are embracing OpenId very enthusiastically so expect to see more of an ecosystem approach from the team at Y!. Interesting observation from our team - our use of webmail in NZ is really low compared to the US - wonder why that is?

There is a blog from their developers if you want to know more about what they are doing with the mail product.

The other piece of capability I have been playing with is Yahoo! pipes.

I found this while trying to get comments from Plaxo Pulse integrated into my blog (more on that later - it isn't quite working yet). Its a great piece of capability - allows me to build, manipulate and output feeds by dragging modules around, applying filters and connecting them up. Brilliant - even I can (kinda) make it work.

There are some real benefits to this relationship in terms of open-ness that we didn't see with our previous partner.

Broadband Speed Increase

2008-04-28T21:40:00.004+12:00

Living in Lowry Bay, we've been accustomed to relatively low broadband speeds of not much more than 1Mbps. This despite having a cabinet less than a km away. A couple of years ago while trialling IPTV services this annoyed not just myself but also my family as I was trying to get them to watch Video on Demand services with frequent buffering.

Up until now, I was of the opinion that this was a 'laws of physics' issue - copper wasn't in good enough condition to carry the bits fast enough. This was also because the modem I had was a Cisco unit which I considered to be state of the art - I mean if Cisco couldn't make it work, who could?

Until last week that is - I have been doing some work sourcing new modems for Telecom and thought I would try one out at home. Primary reason was that I had a separate Cisco WiFi point and modem and this was causing some clutter in the home office, so I thought an integrated device would make some sense.

I connected one up (brand yet to be disclosed - we haven't finalised commercials yet) and I was stunned to find I was operating at better than 4 Mbps. And I know we haven't been upgraded to DSL2+ yet.

Research indicates that the primary reason for the speed increase is that the modem is using a Broadcom chipset which matches what we use in the DSL cabinet down the road.

I have a few thoughts on this

1. I wanted to fix one problem and got a significant extra benefit for *free* - my clutter is seriously reduced and I have at least 3 times the broadband speed from previous. If that isn't keeping a customer happy then what is?

2. My experience in mobile is strangely much more robust - devices pretty much operate at maximum bandwidth. This is because they all have the same Qualcomm chipset (small exception where Nokia was operating their chipset for a while for CDMA 1x). While the Qualcomm model is more monopolistic it does ensure standardisation - which means things work better and more consistently. We all fear this from time to time, but the downside of choice is that you have to integrate more and more things go wrong. Having one supplier at either end of an important link makes things work better.

3. Taking the mobile argument on another step, I used to think that CDMA was a fragmented standard (it is - trust me), however broadband is much more so. It has not matured yet to the state where it is like GSM - hard to know whether what you have bought (or what your Telco has recommended) will work that well.

4. The speed makes a difference - streaming video from local sites is snappier, sites load faster, and I can even stream sport in watchable quality. Might even consider getting a faster upload plan now.

Overall lesson - check your modem has a Broadcom chipset. If not consider upgrading to one that does - you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Farewell NGT

2008-04-11T09:41:00.004+12:00

Today is my last day at Next Generation Telecom.

I've been working on this programme for the last 18 months or so and we've been able to get it from the feasibility work completed by Group Strategy, through a very rigorous design phase now going into Build.

It's been a hard road - we had quite a frustrating period as we went through the change in leadership at Telecom. It was necessary - we weren't really ready to move forward.
I am personally very pleased at where we've ended up.

NGT was described in the investor briefing session yesterday. There is a lot sitting behind this slide which comes from the Retail Briefing.

We started this phase with 3 of us in a room having 2 'AHA' moments.

1. We will not be able to compete as a Retailer in the market on product differentiation based on Network. Everyone can pretty much have the same stuff. What we can differentiate on is service.

2. We don't know how to design 'properly' for the customer - we have to learn.

We now have a team of close to 100 including our partners at Tech Mahindra, we have a brand promise that we are designing for that will be a game changer in NZ. The people building NGT are now first and foremost advocates for the customer and have the skills and capability to make that work for NZ. We have personas we are designing to, we are directly validating our design with customers, we are constantly challenging what we are doing to deliver to the customer. This is a very different Telecom.

It's been a privilege for me to be part of this team - I have learned a lot and worked with some amazing people. Thank you.

I'll be taking some time out from today and working with the Retail Broadband business at Telecom until the end of June. The rest of the year I will have my hands full with 2 year old Ella and trying to turn a couple of good ideas into good businesses.

Ella turns 2

2008-04-10T20:25:00.004+12:00

Cracker day today - Ella's 2 year old birthday. Highlight was cruising around Oriental Bay with her older cousin Kaspar. This photo taken after they had pretty much outstayed their welcome at the local F n C shop....

Identity Conference in Wellington

2008-03-07T09:45:00.004+13:00

Just saw this Identity Conference is coming to town.

This international conference on “Managing Identity in New Zealand: Identity
Conference 2008" is a forum for presenting and discussing state of the art
thinking, research and practice around managing identity in the 21st Century.
The conference will focus on the development and future directions of identity
management (IdM) in New Zealand, and its wider implications for users, with
particular reference to the introduction and use of new digitised forms of IdM.
A major issue for future IdM will be establishing user-centric IdM: individuals’
ability to control the (digital) representation of their identity and its
potential uses.

There are some stellar speakers here - Dick Hardt has one of the best identity primers of all time that I blogged about in 2006.

Miss it at your peril.

Corporate Blog Lessons

2008-03-07T08:58:00.004+13:00

I got a question from Gabor the other day about my experiences in using blogs as part of a communications strategy. Here is my response. Looking forward to G kicking off his own blog now...

Blogs as a communication tool – the key thing is that they are a direct two-way conversation between you and your audience. You have no control over who will read or over who will interact with you but you can influence it.

1. Have a clear purpose – my purpose when I initially kicked this off was to find a way to reach a broad range of internal Telecom people and get them excited about the possibility of new ways of working that had the customer at their heart. When I've moved from this, I haven't had much traffic.

2. Make it personal – this is not about the company line. It is about the individual engaging in a direct conversation with an audience. So have some emotion, make it personal to you.

3. Invite comments – encourage it. The best blogs I read always end with an open question. It’s a skill I am still developing. Listen to the comments and respond. Interestingly most of my feedback is to my face rather than comments published. I think there is a culture where it’s not ok to say you read this stuff. Frankly I’d rather know that people think I am full of sh*t rather than just assume it.

4. Be genuine – no spin, no edits, no censorship. The person whose name it’s under should be the author. Don’t have it ghost-written. Only moderate spam and abuse.

5. It’s not all lollipops – having an open public conversation means that there are going to be some unhappy people. So to that end
a. Be selective about what you talk about – some stuff just isn’t cool – and you have to be use your judgement. Remember what you post is there forever. So no trade secrets or personal attacks. Keep other people’s identities anonymous unless they are ok with it. I think it’s ok to reflect on your part in a difficult work relationship – that’s not a widely held view.
b. Be prepared for negative responses – best case they are posted and you can engage in a conversation, worst case they are behind your back and you find out you’ve been reviewed without your knowledge as part of your performance.
c. Ideally have the concept signed off by your internal comms people – and make them aware that there will be negative reactions and that is totally ok. I didn't do this which caused some angst.

7. Build a rhythm – publish frequently and invest the time to do this. The best publish daily. Some political bloggers are on every hour. Frequency builds repeat visits and encourages people to comment as well.

8. Check your analytics – I use google analytics – I can see which stories get hit, from which networks and can tailor what I am talking about to suit. I can also see the dross stories so I know never to comment on Australian / NZ political stories with links to genetic engineering because even though I thought it was funny no-one who reads the blog does. And had nothing to do with my purpose but that leads to…

9. Experiment ! It’s ok to throw some variation in there – you can see if there are broader areas you can expand talking with your audience about.

10. Participate in the broader conversation – read other blogs, link to your sources, comment on other blogs. Paul Brislen at Vodafone does this really well – he promotes what Vodafone is up to, writes his personal blog and actively engages in conversations where people are complaining about Vodafone. It means customers are being heard and they like it – first step to a long lasting relationship.

So – blogs are for talking with your audience, not talking to your audience. If you want to control what your customers think and publish only good news stories it’s not for you. Do not do this if you think it’s cool or a new way to influence people and you’re not going to genuinely engage with them.

If you want to genuinely engage and take negative as well as positive feedback, then it’s a great tool.

Lance also has some great thoughts on this subject which I wrote about earlier.

Really Effective Viral Campaign

2008-03-04T21:37:00.007+13:00

I drown in email everyday - I use it as a source for information and to tell me what to do - and I hoard it.

Clearly I need Merlin Mann's Inbox Zero or Bit Literacy - bought on amazon a few weeks ago but not read yet.

Along comes a tool today via a great viral campaign that might help- Xobni.

Xobni purports to help arrange your inbox through instant search, context creation and display of contact information.

I say 'purports' because I can't download the beta yet. I have signed up through reading this on Lance Wiggs blog. With a bit of luck Lance has moved up the beta priority list as a result of my clicking on his badge.

If you click on the badge below I'll move up the list.

I am interested in how well this viral works - it creates instant scarcity of the download even though it probably isn't really that scarce. Its a bit like gmail invites but Xobni get to control the load and who they release their product too. Gotta love a bunch of guys who are that confident....

The viral potential is great - Xobni gets to see whose blogs are the most effective for delivering traffic and people like me hang out on the off chance someone will click the badge.

Oh - and I love the fact that one of the examples on their video is a guy called Gabor - I thought only I had relatives with those sort of names!

You are the brand

2008-02-18T16:24:00.003+13:00

Picked this up of Seth Godin's blog the other day where he talks about the posture of a communicator.

What's helpful is to realize that you have a choice when you communicate.
You can design your products to be easy to use. You can write so your audience
hears you. You can present in a place and in a way that guarantees that the
people you want to listen will hear you. Most of all, you get to choose who will
understand (and who won't).

And I've tied it to another quote that I really like

“A customer-aware company gets bonus points for its intentions and rhetoric, but
negative points for doing little or nothing to build processes and structures
that allow the organization to deliver consistently and transparently for the
customer.

A customer-centric company matches intention and attention. It
does the hard work of threading enterprise-wide customer experience initiatives
across the silos and specialized functions, through the processes, and down to
and through the technologies and human factors in order to deliver for the
customer and the organization.” (Kevin Hoffberg)

Whether you know it or not, you have a brand promise that you make your customers. And everything you do during your day will impact on how your customers perceive you delivering to that promise. Even more, things you don't do will all impact customer perception.You need to know what your brand promise is and how what you do impacts on that.

Just today I have

- designed some identity frameworks

- completed a weekly report

- reviewed my planning structure

- had team meeting

- completed my expenses

- had a conversation about how we could collaborate better

- had 4 conversations about how we can improve delivering a new business

-overheard 3 people discuss how they feel we are heading for a bad result and don't know what to do about it

-debated whether we are a process centric or customer centric organisation (they are the same !)

-met my family for coffee

- Written this entry

Based on delivering the brand promise, I've hit about 40 - 50% of things that are important to deliver on the brand promise and 50 - 60% of things that are necessary (but not important). I think it should be more like 80/20.

What's your day been like?

Necessity is the mother of invention

2008-02-13T21:23:00.004+13:00

Or maybe it's this

"Financial security is the greatest inhibitor of creativity that mankind has ever known"

I'm not sure if its the 'greatest inhibitor of creativity' but I'd have to say that it's up there. In previous conversations with HP and Sun on how they manage innovation, their biggest barriers have been internal - people with existing revenue streams who see a new product as a threat to that security.

I've got about 9 weeks left of employment left at Telecom. I can calculate with some degree of accuracy what I will be paid in that period. After that it is, at this point, wide open. I can say, without doubt, that I have had the biggest run of ideas so far in my life. Not all of them are my own - it would be fair to say that I am listening much closer to what people say for triggers for ideas. Not many of them have got to the point where I could say that they are a viable business. I am getting closer though.

Makes me think there are a bunch of people out there who are financially secure who have a bucket of ideas everyday and just keep going. What do you think they are thinking ? It's not how to get the next buck - it must be some kind of internal drive that keeps generating ideas independent of their needs for food and shelter. Maybe its what Maslow meant by self-actualisation ?

Thanks to Simon for the lead to the quote and the audio clip it comes from.

I gave at the Office 2

2008-02-12T22:37:00.001+13:00

I started writing this a week or so ago - when I published today it got lost in my previous published stuff.

Any idea how to change this in Blogger?

Unusual pop culture / nature reserve mash-up

2008-02-05T21:56:00.002+13:00

You probably have to be over 30 for this to have any relevance at all. No idea where it even is...

Plugged In

2008-02-03T19:13:00.000+13:00

I just got back from Baa Camp in Auckland and now feel very plugged into New Zealand's web and entrepreneurial communities.

The link to the site doesn't do this gathering justice, but that is because it is a private gathering - but what is clear is that this is *the* place to trade ideas and learn from a fantastic cross-section of NZ's thought and business leaders. People who think nothing is impossible.

A major characteristic of the Baa Camp is that the entire agenda is user created - at the start everyone lists out topics that they want to talk about and see how those develop over the weekend. Hardly any power point in sight - only used to help illustrate the conversations.

Apparently last year's Baa Camp delivered a lot of the industry input into shaping the thinking of David Cunliffe in his regulatory approach for broadband. I'd expect to start seeing some coherent industry activity on

1. Independent web advertising networks

2. Policy input for Fair Use of Digital Content

Personally, I got a heap out of it

- Met some fantastic people with the most diverse range of backgrounds, skills and thinking

- Got majorly inspired about the prospect of setting up my own business in this space

- Participated in a very impromptu (and high quality) single malt sharing session

- had some great conversations about the power of brand promise and customer experience and how to get that to stick

- Played my first game of werewolf and got nailed completely - but dead keen to have another go

- Uncovered a few business opportunities that I'm keen to have a good look at.

Next step for me is to have a crack at setting one of these up in Telecom before I disappear in mid- April. It is by far the most effective way that I have seen to get up to speed with a number of different topic areas and the best networking event I have had the privilege of attending.

Big thanks to Nat for the invite and making it happen. Tips to to Rod, Mauricio and Russell who made the recommendations for me to attend.

Mobile Commerce replacing bank branches in Australia?

2008-02-01T07:33:00.001+13:00

I read this article from stuff this morning. The implication in the lead-in was stunning...

"Australians are fast deserting bank branches and soon won't even need a computer to transact, now that the country's major banks are rolling out mobile phone banking services."

It's stunning because it's wrong. You'd think that you'd soon be able to walk down the main streets of Sydney and not see any bank branches and that we'll all be using our mobiles to transact.

A visit to Australia recently demonstrated that banks are re-opening branches in suburban areas, and are extending opening hours for existing branches into the weekend and after 'normal' working hours. The same trend has been occurring in NZ.

Leads to to 2 questions - one on this topic and one broader.

1. Why are branches important for banks ?

Branches are important for banks as they provide a direct and personal link to their customer. When it comes to high complexity and high value transactions, customers will want to understand the impacts - they won't get this on their mobile, they'll get this by talking to a knowledgable bank employee. Sure banks will continually look for more efficient and more convenient ways to manage high volume, low complexity transactions. That becomes part of the portfolio of choices they offer to customers. It makes sense for banks to offer a multitude of ways - not just one way - to serve their customers. ANZ's Brian Hartzer makes this point in the article. That is the real headline.

2. Why does a belief exist that a new type of technology will totally supercede any existing means?

Maybe it generates headlines - I'd love to know from anyone who has been in the journalist or social marketing fields why it is necessary to be so black and white about this type of thing. Experience says that these changes are slow in coming and you never really know where they land - it is very rare to have one mode totally replaced by another. In this particular case there is no further detail in any of the article that Australians are fast deserting branches - yet the journalist or editor in question seems to think that it's important to know in this article. It isn't and it just seems naive.

Finally, it is good to see that something which has been around for around 5 years in New Zealand is seen to be a big thing about to happen in Australia . A great example of using NZ as a test market before moving to larger markets - best of luck to the M-Com team as they break into a larger population base. They've done a lot of hard work here building a business model and ecosystem - maybe payoff for the hard work is just around the corner....

I gave at the office

2008-01-29T08:34:00.001+13:00

I had two very different donation experiences last week that made me think a little

Experience 1: Giving blood at the NZ Blood Service

Experience 2: Being approached in the street to donate to Barnados.

Both of these are causes that I support, however the contrast of my reaction to each of them couldn't be more marked.

When you think about it, giving blood is a pretty abnormal experience. Stuff that directly contributes to how you live is taken out of your body. You are not paid a cent for it. You are asked a bunch of personal questions concerning your sexual activity amongst other things. You're expected to eat and drink properly to replenish your blood supply which you are called up to give in a few weeks time. You really have no idea what happens to your blood or who it goes to.It is literally a donation.

On the other hand, giving money to Barnados is a low impact donation - a few dollars a week that goes directly into a local organisation which looks after local kids that you are informed about through glossy leaflets. There are also subsidised childcare opportunities should you need them. In my position as a parent I could easily directly benefit from this.

My reaction however was totally inverse to what you would 'rationally' expect.

Giving blood is a pleasurable experience - your feet are up, you can read the paper, the nurses at NZBS are genuinely welcoming and treat you like a hero in a genuine and appreciative way. They generate trust and totally value your donation - you know that it's not being mis-used. Ontop of that, donating blood is seen by most organisations as a valuable community use of time - to the point of being supported through time off and transport costs

Being approached on the street by what I can only describe as commission salesperson with a pressure sell has meant that I am now seriously considered whether the donations I give to Barnados are money well spent. I had to basically be rude to this person just to disengage from the sales process (which was un-necessary since I already donate).

The emotional response to these experiences is extremely re-inforcing for giving blood but trust eroding for Barnardos. I feel like its a pressure sell. Building a marketing model that generates the level of trust that you experience giving blood is a killer application if you are looking for marketing grunt.

I know that it's hard being a not for profit organisation - its hard enough being a profit driven organisation. I think the use of commercial tactics (I can only assume these people are from a door to door sales organisation or the like) is not going to cut it. I am instantly mis-trustful now of how much of my money goes to kids that need it. I don't have that issue with my blood.

So I think it's time to turn this model around. How do you effectively 'market' a charitable organisation? Using traditional marketing methods (mail-outs, glossy leaflets and pressure selling on the main street of the CBD) doesn't work.

How about a conversational approach - Barnardos is probably chock full of volunteers who get paid minimal amounts for looking after needy kids. Their stories need to come out in way that is genuine and builds trust. Currently they have a semi-annual newletter - not good enough. Barnardos has some cool programmes - kids helping kids. You wouldn't know about it. Why isn't their site full of stories about how they are working behind the scenes making a difference. Donators need to know that their contributions are directly linked to these positive outcomes. Some trust needs to be generated and a connection made between the donators and the kids who get the benefit. Right now, with the approach they are taking to raising funds I want to see an annual report with disclosure so I know someone isn't creaming my donation to make money employing enthusiastic teenagers on a low commission to make themselves a tidy little profit. There is no trust. A little bit of effort by their marketing department would make a huge difference.

As an aside, does anyone know how these fundraisers are paid ?

Hard Handoff

2008-01-25T08:11:00.001+13:00

14 years ago last week I started a new job at Telecom Mobile as a Cellular Engineer back in the days when that meant running around the country installing new cellsites. These days with that kind of title I'd be splicing genes...

One of the things I learned in the first week (other than sneezing next to one of my new colleagues got me banished to the other end of the floor) was the concept of handoff.

Handoff is part of the magic that makes mobile telephony work. It is the mechanism that allows a mobile to move from cell to cell while maintaining the call. Its what makes it 'mobile'. The only hitch was that 'maintaining the call' was a bit of a euphemism. The way it worked was that the system would detect that call quality was declining (or in the digital systems the mobile would detect that an adjacent cell had better quality characteristics), work out where the the best cell for the call might be, prepare a spare channel on the new cell and tell the mobile to tune to that channel.The mobile tunes to the new channel (leaving the call on the old one behind) and all things going well(there is NO such thing as perfect engineering) the call would be resumed on the new cell on the new channel.There was a noticeable break in the conversation while this process occurred - I used to think of it as a hopeful period where you'd hope that the system and the mobile had all got their act together.

I learned that belief was quite important in this process and spent a lot of time driving around testing the network, listening for breaks in calls and hoping that the calls would stay up. I guess that would be why I wasn't the best engineer - too much hope and belief!

That type of handoff is a hard handoff - breaks the connection before it makes the new one. The CDMA systems these days have a much more reliable and secure way of making handoffs work - the mobile stays in contact with a number of cells so never breaks the conversation until it gets to the edge of the system. That's a soft handoff - much better for customers but not so much fun for engineers. No so much hope and belief required.

I've initiated my own hard handoff this week and resigned from Telecom. The reason its a hard handoff is that I haven't got a new role to move to. I know what I want to do - which is to lead a company that makes a real difference for customers - and once I decided that, it would have been mercenary to look for that while I was here. Hence the resignation.

Mobile phones don't have their own emotions - but if they did they'd feel a mixture of uncertainty every time they went through a handoff. But over-riding all of that they'd be hopeful and optimistic. They'd believe that they could do it. And they'd just let go of what had been good for them and trust that they'd find something better.

The power of Free

2007-12-17T21:04:00.001+13:00

This video is great - it's a talk by Chris Anderson the editor-in-chief of Wired. He is the author of the much loved 'The Long Tail'. I found it the video on one of Guy Kawasaki's blogs.

His basic premise is this - there is a part of your business now which is a constraint that you have to pay for. What if that constraint wasn't there? What if you treated it as Free? What would that do to your market and your overall proposition?

It's a great talk given at NokiaWorld 2007 very well illustrated with lots of real examples from the Internet and telecommunications world (webmail and mobile in particular) and economics that anyone can understand.

There are a couple of conflicts in what he says (eg artists like Prince giving away music for free to create premium pricing for concerts - Chris hasn't commented on Prince taking legal action against his fans for the use of his likeness on fansites - maybe its another revenue model) and an unfortunate part of his talk where his PC SNAFUs without a graceful recovery.

Those are minor though - the premise is really powerful. Something that you think is a scarce resource, your competitor might be thinking is heading towards free. They act like it's free, you act like its a constraint. When that happens your world is going to get shaken up.

Of course you have to make the right part of your model free - sellmefree for example. There is no constraint for the audience on their primary competitor trademe. Sellmefree have made the wrong part of their model free as Lance and AirNZ have noted. It's free for anyone to browse and buy on trademe so the audience is there, which drives people to sell there. Virtuous cycle - boom.

It would be a bit different if there was no constraint for customers on the amount of a certain product to buy on trademe -and you could buy it at the price it just sold for on auction instantly - no such thing as missing out again. That would make it a meta-retailer (Sam Morgan's words - not mine) as opposed to community marketplace. Maybe the Ferrit model is not so bad after all? Especially when you look at the great deals they have on ipods now.

What would you want to see removed as a constraint now? How would you act if it was free?

Take 45 mins out to watch the video and have a think.

Agile Development

2007-12-16T21:28:00.001+13:00

We've been working with a major international Systems Integrator and have been exploring the use of Agile Programming methods for a major (ie 12 month+) project.

While Agile has been well covered in other forums, one of the areas that I note is significantly underplayed is the amount of cultural change required moving from Waterfall techniques to Agile. In particular, I note that people from a Waterfall background *still* want to complete full requirements before moving into the Agile phase - it takes a lot of effort to let go of that security blanket. And on top of that, integrating Agile based deliverables into Waterfall deliverables seems to be left for others to discuss- maybe it's best not to consider that right now but seems like a recipe for failure.

So I was really pleased to see the Agile Barcamp wiki set-up from the session here in Wellington two weeks ago. I was disappointed I couldn't make that session as I was in Auckland that day (story of my life!) - however I have had the benefit of seeing the presentations uploaded now and can contact the people who wrote them and ask them how to integrate Agile and Waterfall. Fabulous.

Ironically (or otherwise) I've noted that a couple of Dilbert cartoons have focussed on Agile recently.

http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20071126.html

Being in the camp of the business owner, I personally like this one.

I found this here http://cns2.uni.edu/~wallingf/teaching/agile/resources/dilbert-xp/

The end of the traditional kiwi closedown?

2007-12-16T21:17:00.001+13:00

Like others in NZ I've been acutely aware of the skills shortage that we are facing - and I'm impressed that a number of employers are using what would be typically called the 'deadzone' to recruit new people to their team. This time of the year would normally be viewed as a waste of money to recruit talent as Kiwis have pretty much clocked off and wont be back en masse until late January.

Phil and Teds have bucked this trend with a major campaign to recruit what looks to be a wide range of talent for their team. This could be, of course brilliant timing and great execution - timing from the perspective of being able to run full page ads in what should be a cheaper window for traditional media without a lot of other clutter and execution in terms of the language and style of the campaign.

My only misgiving would be whether they hit the whole market (full page ad should sort that) and whether people have the headspace to dust off their CV a week before Xmas. My guess is, given how successful P&T have been this year that this is a well considered marketing campaign - hope they can turn interviews around this week for the sake of a couple of people who I know are applying.

Did this make the weekend agenda?

2007-12-10T22:06:00.002+13:00

I am not a big fan of commenting on politics - I have better things to do.

It would be fair to say though that I am unhappy about the electoral finance bill and have been actively following David Farrar and Whaleoil for their views on this. They make me look like a fencesitter and certainly attract some criticism but I digress...

Another blog I have been following has been Dilbert - ironically it's been very active since Scott Adams announced he was going to blog less. He brought to my attention his own conspiracy theory based on a news item that Kangaroos fart less and this discovery will lead to some genetic modification of cows, reducing the methane being added to the environment.

Now given Kevin Rudd's first agenda item will be signing Kyoto, which Helen Clark and NZ have been a supporter of in recent times, I do wonder if this subject made the agenda over the weekend when the two leaders met informally - what an icebreaker!.

And being a guy I can't help but think there could have been hours rolling around laughing about the benefits (or lack thereof) of farting animals.

However I now realise that this would have been embarrassing all round once I reflect on the stereotypes. For one, no guy is going to be genuinely proud of not farting, hence Kevin Rudd would not bring up the point of his non-farting national icon. And no woman (well none that I know) would be genuinely proud of the animal which is creating her largest cash income having the socially (and politically) embarrassing habit of letting rip and hence making the world a more unstable place. So an opportunity to reduce greenhouse gases in the region is blown off as a result of gender stereotypes.

However the solution is clear - Helen and Kev have to swap countries - it's for the good of the planet dammit.

It's not supposed to do that

2007-12-10T21:41:00.001+13:00

My mum still tells me that bad things run in threes - must be an Eastern European thing, as my Yugoslavian (is there still such a place?) godmother said the same.

This morning I got a run of three in about 4 minutes. Started off innocuously enough - riding my bike in on a beautiful warm and calm morning after a 5:20 am start to do some stretches. I was just coming off the Wellington motorway onto the Hutt Road when I hit some debris - back wheel kicked out a bit and a noticed that it had lost a bit of air.

I pulled over - back tyre definitely soft. Number 1. Take my pump off my bike to put some air in the tyre, hoping against hope that it was a slow leak and I could get into the office without changing the tube. I undo the valve on the tyre, clip the pump on and realise it's set-up for an MTB valve and can't put any air into the tyre. Off course, pressing the pump onto the valve meant all the air came out of the tyre. I turn to flip the fitting over on the pump. The lock nut is basically seized onto the pump due to excessive sweat corroding the aluminium so I can't change it over and the tyre is definitely flat. Number 2. So I decide to take the wheel off, change the tube and flag down a cyclist to use their pump. I release the wheel, and start to pull it off and notice there is a bit of resistance. I jiggle it around and give it a yank. The wheel is off - I look down and the derailleur looks like this picture. Number 3.

I think I have sheared the bolts off with brute strength - guy in the bike shop tells me the bolts are ok - just too short. Pretty sure I have been riding like this for about a year since i replaced the rear derailleur - fortunately I haven't been mashing the pedals :)

The bright side to this is at least 25 people stopped this morning to see if I was ok on their way riding into work. Nice one - thanks!

Corporate Blog Guidelines

2007-12-03T23:12:00.001+13:00

I like this sensible advice from Lance Wiggs.

Keeps it simple, and has two basic themes

1. Blogging is a conversation - it's happening whether you are there or not. If you want to be part of that conversation then make an effort and be part of it!

2. If you're going to be part of it, be genuine. And you don't have to give your company secrets away to participate.

I know its common sense but sometimes that is a rare commodity in corporate land.

I've been interested in Paul Brislen's presence in various forums, in particular geekzone. I am sure that it makes those forums richer for the fact that Paul is out there with Vodafone's view on a regular basis. I do note that Paul doesn't have his own blog - any idea why that is?

Do what I say or what I do?

2007-12-03T22:49:00.001+13:00

Had a funny experience today - was looking after Ella this afternoon. I changed her nappy and she was playing around in her room. I told her not to touch her nappy cream and less than a minute later this was the result - her lion Frankie had his rear end covered in aforementioned nappy cream....

So after I stopped laughing (ok it took a while...) I had a change to reflect on a couple of things.

1. I've been telling people for ages to keep their presentations short and to the point, and tailored to their audience. Yet on Friday I was involved in a team presentation that could be best be described as a powerpoint-a-rama that lasted 2 hours. Broke all the rules that I hold dear - pretty clear what the message is there to people who were unfortunate enough to be on the other end of that. Garr Reynolds would have had a field day.

2. Later on that day we had an activity that was designed specifically to relieve some frustration that is evident in the same team. We did not say what the purpose was - we just acted in a way that gave people the opportunity to genuinely express their concerns in an environment that was safe to do so. Much more effective that point 1 - no fanfare but the result has been enduring.

3. David Beckham - say what you like about him (and I'm a Spurs supporter - damn you Ricky Villa) but this weekend in Wellington he showed what a professional he is. Put himself out for his fans and made every post a winner. Even with bronchitis. Can't wait for the next Phoenix game already.

It didn't matter what I said to Ella - Frankie got his tail covered 'cos that is what happens to her and why should she act any different. No different in the other world.

Where there's a will, there's a way

2007-11-30T23:05:00.001+13:00

I used to think that line was a pretty trite comment, but I had cause to reflect on a couple of very different experiences of late that show the power of personal will, and the need to take personal risk to make change happen. It's really important if you want to create powerful customer experiences.

1. I went to our call centres the other day to listen to why customers are calling us (as opposed to contacting us in any other way - btw the reason they do is they want trusted advice from human beings. I'm sure there are other ways to do this that have the human touch but I digress). We had a customer call who wanted to cancel broadband - he wasn't using it. Craig (the rep) could have just gone through the motions and cancelled it but decided to drop his success rate on call metrics and take 10 seconds to look at the customer's overall bill. This guy was spending $350 a month - mainly on domestic and Australian calls. So Craig asks if he wants to look at other options and ends up selling a plan which will probably cut $150 a month off his bill. Customer is stoked and casually asks about mobile - Craig ends up selling him a phone sight unseen which will completely suit his needs. Customer is still paying less per month and now has a great mobile - all because Craig took the personal risk to engage in a conversation that the customer hadn't initiated.

2. I've been shopping around our user-centred design methods internally and talked to a number of senior General Managers. The value of what I was talking about was recognised immediately - however there was no will to implement. I can understand resources are tight, deadlines are near - we've all been there. A will to implement would find a way to get around that.

I had to reflect on the second experience - a normal uncontrolled reaction would be to say 'pack of muppets - they don't get it' but I've realised that I've got to have the will to back up what I believe in and find a way to make it stick. Which means persistence and probably an alternative approach. Thanks Craig from the Helpdesk in Hamilton - you've taught me a great lesson.

Science backs up beliefs

2007-11-23T21:58:00.001+13:00

I've been involved in an ongoing conversation for years now.

I believe that if you treat customers well, put yourself out for them even, your business will be more successful. Customers will come back. You'll make more money. Everyone will be happy.

Problem with this is that is a belief based statement. Pretty hard to run analysis other than belief based churn reduction. Numbers guys don't like that kind of thing.

The good news for people like me is that Telecom's new CEO is very clear that putting customers first is very clearly our number 1 objective. Made life a whole lot easier.

Ironically - after a day listening to Paul Reynolds and being dead impressed by his commitment to this approach, I found this piece of research entitled Happy customers provide higher returns and are lower risk.Who would have thought, huh? Will be one for the back pocket when the accountants come around.

I blinked

2007-11-23T21:00:00.000+13:00

It's been 7 months since I last posted here.

It would be easy for me to say that I had got too busy to post anything and this whole blogging thing is just a fad, so why bother.

But that isn't the truth. The truth is that I blinked. In the face of some feedback I literally stood still and didn't move. I won't share that feedback with you - maybe you'll notice a change, maybe you won't. It's also critical to note that it was feedback - not an instruction. And my reaction was to treat it as an instruction.

My purpose with this blog is to share my opinions and positions on things that matter to me, that I care about. Note the use of the word 'my'. It's not Telecom's position, it may not be my colleagues position - it's my position. And its for you to comment on and contribute to. I don't really mind if you flame me either - the point of this is to open up the debate on issues, provoke some discussion, and learn something that we didn't know before.

My view on this is simple - I am brave enough to share my opinion here. If you disagree with it, I'd ask you to be brave enough to tell me your counter opinion. Even better, do it as a comment here so we can do something positive with it.

Sprung on the 'net

2007-04-16T21:31:00.000+12:00

So I've been 'found' on the 'net. Juha Saarinen - a regular contributor to the media landscape in NZ on all things telco and internet based has tracked down my very poorly updated blog and made some very pertinent comments about a couple of things in the piece.

1. Why does Telecom not have a Corporate Blog?

This is a funny one as last year Theresa got a few random people together to get their opinions on how we could get our people better engaged with the direction that we are taking. I was pretty adamant (in a 2006 kinda way) that a blog that was written by TG (ie NOT ghost written) would be a great way to go. It would take some investment and discipline but would be a great way for Theresa to get her message out. Her biggest issue was the supposed lack of authenticity of this medium. I have to say, based on a couple of comments I have received on this blog, that a direct way of commenting with her people (and I use that word in the broadest sense to include her staff, customers and broader stakeholders in NZ) would be a great way to gauge public sentiment and to explain why we do some of the stuff we do. Doesn't make it right or wrong but it most certainly means that you get your message out.

2. Juha thinks I should relax a bit

I must ask him about this as it could mean a couple of things

a. I am being too earnest in what i talk about (very possible)
b. I need to be more overt about my real opinion

This second bit is a little more problematic - and cuts to the core of this media - how do I express my opinion about something that pays for my family to eat (without being too dramatic). I guess the only way to do it, is to do it - so I'll be testing this boundary and seeing how my buddies react. A few of my posts have been too veiled which leads to the next point...

3. A commentor on Juha's blog, Michael, posts that I am a representative of another type of employee

The new generation of institutionalisation is the opposite - excited, passionate believers but so deep in their own corporate culture ("drinking the Kool-Aid") they can't see outside the walls or can't truly empathise with customers.

This had me more concerned that anything else as the thing I truly believe in is that for Telecom to survive (let alone succeed) that empathy with what customers really want is needed. I have an opinion that lots of people join Telecom for a whole lot of good reasons about how they can improve the lot of Telecom and its customers. But when they get in there, the path of least resistance kicks in and they find it easier to ensure customers don't leave us as opposed to make things so good that customers want to stay. You might think that is a subtle distinction but it's massive. And its time that it stopped. My response to Michael's comment is what I am doing to make that change stick.

Which leads me to the proposal on Friday for structural separation. There are lots of good reasons why you might want, as a shareholder, to keep Telecom in one piece. But there are a hell of lot more for splitting it off. Over and above the cost of making it happen (just think number portability x 10 - and its interesting to see that only one party has got that deployment right). One of the most important is that it would completely remove the temptation to try and 'game' the system. And I think that it would completely drive the right market behaviours like the following

A. The Network business would be solely responsible for building and maintaining bandwidth. Nothing more, nothing less. Its a big enough job that is fairly capital and resource intensive and if you got the right structure in place (ie must only ever be a wholesaler, never retailer ; ideally separate ownership) then you'd have some pretty good conditions that would work for the whole industry. And don't underestimate the issue about being able to make a reasonable rate of return - that would have to be directly linked to re-investment.

B. It would remove a huge constraint from the Retail side of the business. It's funny - you look around the 'net and see all the suggestions that people make for what Telecom could do and you realise being inside the business that if you didn't have to spend all your time lining people up to get commonsense stuff done that there are huge gains to be made in terms of innovation and Innovation (purposefully distinguishing between the 2). My own personal preference is for Retail units not much more than 100 people in size with truckloads of non-core services outsourced, running on a very lean internet based model with the same flexibility of our competitors. Would probably make some of them who used to work here a little uneasy if they knew we had the same nimbleness that they enjoy.

Looking forward to seeing how the market reacts but TUANZ's reaction was a very pleasant surprise. Some leadership here is great to see, especially when you wouldn't pick many bold moves with only 2 months and a bit to go until Theresa moves on...

Claim this place

2007-03-08T09:18:00.000+13:00

We've just opened up a new project office in Auckland for the work we are doing - I think this is an incredibly symbolic time for us. Here are some thoughts that I sent to Pawel to show what this means to me

This is a landmark time and place for us.

This is where we start to design the future. If we use the metaphor of the Kiwi Explorer this is our shed, our garage, our kitchen table. This is where we pore over our plans, covering off every uncertainty and trying to find the best way to make our quest happen.

If we were Edmund Hillary this maybe where he kept his bees, thinking about the mountains he might climb before he attempted Mount Everest. If we were Sir Peter Blake, this is the boat building yard where we tested ideas about new boat shapes, sail types and nutrition plans before we set off to San Diego to win the America’s Cup. Closer to home, if we were Kevin Biggar, this is where we would weigh every item we had and decide we really only need half a toothbrush while we were rowing across the Atlantic. Further away, this is the garage in Palo Alto where Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak designed their first apple computer. This is our beginning.

This is a place about ideas and debate – where we are safe and free to challenge each other about whether what we are doing will really deliver on our dreams of running a lean business that will deliver product innovation in the eyes of our customers and a service experience that is unparalleled in the NZ business.

This is a place where we find out about what is inside us – for it is only by unleashing the capability that is inside us that will deliver on this dream.

It is a place where we will stand strong and united – for it is only as a team that we can achieve what we set out to achieve.

And it is a place about hard work – this is place where we do the preparation – the training, the theory, the mini expeditions to prepare us. This hard work is in the pursuit of an audacious dream that perhaps no-one thinks is possible other than us – and those are the best type aren’t they?

We will have our first reward in June when we will have completed our design for this new business. Until then I encourage you to ‘claim this place’ as ours. It is the place where we design our dreams – where we design a business that will be the future of Telecom, the future of its customers, and it will be a defining point in all of our careers. Our first challenge is to make this place tangibly different from what we have come from. I encourage you to do that – make it special. See it as our first test of doing things that are leaner, innovative and customer focussed.

Building a new business is hard work...

2007-02-26T16:15:00.000+13:00

And that's not exactly a surprise is it. Thinking about where we are now in our project to build a new retail business vs. where I thought we could be by now, it's a hell of a lot harder than I thought.

So even if you are well funded (which we are) this building new business thing is not a walk in the park. In fact I think there would be some serious side benefits to not being well-funded - for one the fear that every EFTPOS transaction might be your last would certainly provide some more fundamental motivation to get stuff done faster.

Here's a top 5 list of why it's harder than you think.

1. You only know where you're going when you get there

Things change so much that you can only really ever have a general idea of where you might end up. Sure it's exciting - trying to keep people rolling with it is not that easier. How Columbus did it I have no idea.

2. You need to know everything

You might be able to delegate stuff to experts but really it all falls on you - especially if your business is about delivering roughly the same stuff in a different way, you HAVE to know if the different way is going to work. For someone who doesn't do a lot of detail, this means a lot of learning

3. No-one from the normal world gets it

People want to know why you're working insane hours, are always pre-occupied and telling them 'I'm coming up with a new business model that customers will love' will at best get you a quizzical eyebrow raise

4. Always challenging can turn into self-doubt

Building something new, you have to continually challenge what you're doing before you burn a lot of cash - people in your team who aren't used to this will turn this into self-doubt. Not a good thing.

5. Some days you're just surviving

I'll use an ocean-going analogy again. You get hit with 40 ft waves in your wooden ship sailing to the other side of the world you don't really care if you're still heading in the right direction - you just want to be alive. Sometimes you have do stuff for survival that won't take you in the right direction - not much you can do about it.

There's a heap of good things as well - they're well documented - it's how you get through the tough stuff that determines whether you'll be successful. Everytime I think about those pioneers who set out with literally nothing (Shackleton, Cook, Columbus, Erik the Red) combatting the best that Nature could throw at them, and generally heading in a direction where they didn't know exactly what they would find- sheesh, they did it tough. We've got it easy....

Great article on customer immersion

2007-01-29T12:16:00.000+13:00

Excellent follow-on article from previous post about the need to talk to customers. This is the next step in our customer experience work. Thanks to Lynsey for the pointer

Resumption of service

2007-01-29T11:58:00.000+13:00

And we're back for 2007 - been a long break between posts. And a chance to think about what I'll be doing for the coming year.

Only made one New Year's resolution - to start a revolution that will create a truly customer focussed business here at Telecom . Arlene thinks I am crazy but it's the one thing I really care about from a work perspective. I have lots of theories about why it isn't customer focussed currently- most are best left for a beer conversation as they tend to focus on what's wrong as opposed to how do you design a new future.

I've been working on this 'revolution' for a while now and thought that last year it had come to a grinding halt. We had an opportunity to pitch some of the work we have been doing around customer experience design to the Exec via a couple of GM's - in short I screwed up. Tried to make it too much about 'hey- this is cool. We're designing stuff. We never design stuff.' It came across as self-serving and I really thought I'd blown the chance for the team to get the right skills and resources on board to make sure we really design from the customer in. Spent a couple of weeks beating myself up about it as well.

The good news is that we had an opportunity for another part of the team to pitch this direct to the Exec and we reframed the story completely. Al and Dale took the exec through customer personas, showed how we use these to create options to meet customer needs and then tied this together in a way that hit what the Exec want to see - by designing from the customer in you can create a lean, low-cost organisation as you design out all the un-necessary contact customers have with you when things don't work. Exec love it, and we now have the resource we need to really design a world class experience. And to top it off, I've learned my lesson (again?) about the need to pitch it to the audience in a way that works for them.

revolution started.....

Why being there makes the difference

2006-11-27T21:49:00.000+13:00

Couple of great little lessons in the last week about the power of being there in front of an audience, and telling them stories about how you see your business unfolding.

1. I got invited by the Business Roundtable to talk to a class of 15 year olds about a month ago about what I do at Telecom, what's important to us and the future opportunities that might exist.Given most of them have been alive just barely longer than I've been working here I told a story of how technology has changed so much in the last 12 years I've been here and how I've been able to do my little bit to make a difference. I got this letter from one of the students.
There are so many lessons in here, especially when you think of the context of this

Megan is not an existing customer - but I reckon there is every chance she might be one day
As part of this chat I got asked a very direct question of when we're going to roll out broadband to more rural areas and gave a very clear 'not for a very long time!' as an answer
I gave this talk to 45 people (30 kids and associated parents and teachers) - it probably cost me 3 hours of time (2 hours of prep and 1 hour of delivery) which, if I was being generous, probably cost Telecom $600. That is about $7 per person in terms of marketing cost and I reckon I got better cut through from this than any of our ads. This includes any in-direct benefit I would have got from these people talking to their friends and family.

I'm not saying we should ditch the TV commercials - clearly they work - but any chance to get in front of your customers in person (current ex- and future) has to be the best way to give your business personality and let your customers know you have a vision for THEM (not for you) and how you can 'make things better for average New Zealanders' - if it's not about that, then why are you here?

2. As one of my final acts in my old role, I gave a presentation on Thursday to the TUANZ business internet conference. It was all about how we research Emerging Technologies - which of course is actually all about understanding what are the problems that people will face in the future and how we can use technology to solve them. The guys put together a great demo of this based on streamlining the order and payment process for the local cafe based on the use of RFID. Worked really well and stimulated alot of discussion. Must say that the thing that really blew me away was Ernie Newman saying, in introducing the next speaker, that he was genuinely impressed that Telecom had a team of people who were so focussed on the customer and their problems, and that he held high hope for Telecom to execute its transition to a more holistic player in the NZ market - Paul Stoddart, Neil Forster, and all of the team at the old ETS (the new R&V) take a bow - you are actively changing the perception of Telecom for the better. One small team can make a big difference...

Usability Testing

2006-11-13T08:49:00.000+13:00

Spent all of Friday doing usability testing on Residential Gateways.

Our technical team have shortlisted a number of models for us to look at as part of our Next Generation product set. Out of the 3 models that we looked at, and the 3 people we tested on, only one of them was able to get one model successfully working. Not a good look. There were a heap of issues. This includes

1. Having instructions printed in 10 point font that outline the need to run the CD before connecting any kit up.

2. Lots of device conflicts - we are going to have to get into some software development to resolve this

3. Some terrible language used in setting up the devices - the best example was a critical setting choice which had two options (World or Any)

4. The need for the customer to know ADSL log-in names and VCI/VPI settings

5. A device with no way to set it up other than to know the local IP address. Great.

So we learned heaps! For a start

1. We picked the right people to test on - non-techo people who got really frustrated when it wasn't simple. These are our target market. This is really important as I managed to get the device to work the night before but underestimated the pain that some people would go through. The video we have captured of the process is pure gold...

2. We have learned which information customers know off the top of their head vs having to have prepared

3. We have some really good insights into the look of the device - I don't think there is a way to make this device look acceptable in a home environment so we might as well just hide it.

4. We also have a great strawman for a proposed install process - to get to this in a day is a great result. This is the speed we need to work at...

Movember

2006-11-09T22:46:00.000+13:00

The last 2 out of 3 years I've been involved in a work fund-raiser to grow moustaches with the noble aim of raising money for Women's Refuge (all based on the loose premise that guys with mo's get a bad rep for violence towards women that's not justified).

This year I'm taking part in Movember - a fundraiser for men's health (focussed on Men's prostrate problems). It would be fair to say that a week in I'm feeling very rough around the edges and not having nearly as much fun as we did doing this as a more localised activity. I think the cause doesn't resonate with me that much (I mean - doesn't matter how much you advertise no fella is that excited about a protrate check) but I'm hanging in there.

Pic is a doctored view of how we're coming along - if you're up for a sponsorship, Please go to Movember , enter my Rego number which is 46881 and your credit card details. All donations over $5 are tax deductible.

Coming up for air...

2006-11-03T12:46:00.000+13:00

The last month has been pretty crazy - we've been taking a good hard look at the strategy work required to deliver our new business and how we use products and services to do this. That's driven a whole lot of design activity that we are right in the middle of. There are some really good things that we've done and some things that we've learned that will be critical for making a new business come to life. Here they are in no particular order

1. The importance of the design process

OK - This seems like a really obvious comment. Everyone these days is talking about design - as a bit of an apple fanboy (sad but true) I've been going on about how we need to design things better for customers so that they work together. By taking a good two months to design what we want from both a customer perspective and a business perspective we are having the hard conversations now as opposed to starting down a path we might not be able to get out of later. This is helping us get senior engagement early and I am certain will mean that the actual build process is shorter and tighter - we won't be holding many options open at that stage for sure.

2. External skills and diversity are critical when you are looking at a transformation project

After 3 days into this process we had an 'aha' moment. While the 4 of us were all really focussed on executing our strategy and turning ourselves into something very different to what we are at the moment (think lean, fast and delivering services that customers love and contrast to what you think of Telecom today) there is no doubt that you gradually drift back to what you are comfortable with and what you know - this is exacerbated by the fact that we're all male, middle-aged (shock!) and well above the average age. Hardly our target market. We've brought in a number of people to help us through this - some internal (mainly female and with varying backgrounds) and a Design coach from Optimal Usability - Michael Andrews. He's been superb - not only is he a very experienced design professional, he's brough a level of customer focus to what we are doing that has meant that we just don't talk about things relative to how we operate today - really refreshing!

3. Turning yourself into a design-led, customer-focussed organisation is hard

As someone who has talked about being customer focussed and got frustrated about that, I have been surprised at the extent of the change I've had to make to be able to design products, services and a business from a customer perspective. Thinking about every decision in a customer oriented way takes a level of change that our current organisation is probably not able to achieve.I say this based on the following evidence

I'm open to customer oriented thinking - but doing this on a decision by decision basis means putting aside your entire decision making framework based on business outcomes, technology etc. That is a massive change - I suggest you try it to see how different it is!
We are only just learning the way to ask questions from a customer perspective - Michael has been awesome in getting us to frame up the initial questions of how a customer would want to experience the service in language they would understand. This a new skill for us.
While we touch customers every day our actual interaction with them and experience of how they understand our products and services is really limited - we don't feel their pain enough. Tomorrow we're going to get some people to do some usability testing on existing products so we can see where we are starting from - I expect to take some grief...

4. Our new business model is the problem to solve - not the product set

We started off looking at this from the perspective of designing new products and services and the processes that sit around them. Seemed reasonably straight forward - the fact is the change is so big that you have to design what your new business looks like from top to bottom so you know what you're delivering to. This has been controversial - we're getting a lot of push-back on this along the lines of 'trust us - we have this under control'. The fact is - if we are finding it hard to turn ourselves into more customer oriented people and design that way in, how can we possibly trust people to design a business model who don't have that world view. Still employed this week so hoping that some of what we are saying is resonating...

5. This is not delegatable

Well - I certainly couldn't delegate it and I won't be. It's pretty easy to delegate stuff you know that's incremental or relatively low risk. This is complex, requires new skills to be learned and we're banking the business on it. Seems like something too big to be delegated 3 levels down but what do I know.

Huge month - and i reckon the next 2 will be even bigger - must do some daily updates for a change.

New Job

2006-09-25T09:23:00.000+12:00

It's been a while between posts - since then I've decided to take on a new role within Telecom heading up its Next Generation Product Management group. This role is part of the Consumer Business Unit and is primarily focussed on developing the product set that will be at the core of our next few decades. It will mean moving the entire residential set of products (and some wireless) onto new product platforms that are all IP based. This will transform the product set, and if done well, transform our business.

A few people have asked why I have decided to take on this role, which will be challenging (in the least!), as opposed to keeping on going with the role that I've had in researching customer behaviour and new technology.

For me, it's come down to a few things

1. Delivery - I really enjoy picking trends, but I found it very frustrating seeing these ideas incubate without getting to market. This role provides the opportunity to still use those skills and also combine them with getting stuff to market.

2. The Everest effect - this is a huge challenge - delivering a product set that is so compelling that all our existing customers choose to take it over all other alternatives by 2010. And the future of the business rests of achieving this successfully. I love the scale of this challenge and the possibilities that it creates!

3. My career - self-centred I know.... But I need to lead something of this nature to take my career to the next stage. This will make or break me. Everyone needs a little adrenaline in their life - this is mine!

It took me a good week of soul-searching and talking with key people inside and outside Telecom for me to feel confident enough that enough of the environment is in place for this to have a chance of success. Not all the pieces are there though - in particular a really clear view of what needs to be done by when, and described in such a way as to make everyone excited and motivated about getting in behind this. But I guess I have to do some of the hard work, don't I?

So the tone of this blog (when I write it of course!) will change and be more about the how we start building a team, some vision and then start executing. Next posts will be about describing the problem a more and how we're going about building a team.

Get your head around Identity 2.0

2006-09-04T11:32:00.000+12:00

Tom Glover has been doing a LOT of work on identity - including building some core identity infrastructure (purely for prototypes of course!) as we speak. On top of that Tom is presenting at the invitation of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner on a "Day in the (digital) life" on 21st September in Wellington. Post a comment and I'll get you the details to get along - it's private up until then :)

I have to admit that while I get the need and opportunity for Telecom in the Identity space, I've never been able to articulate it clearly. I found the following links which have pointed me in the right direction.

Firstly a 15 minute primer on identity by Dick Hardt (anyone who has a tagline "who's the dick on my site" is worth a look). Not only does it get you up to speed with identity, its a great presentation from a style perspective. It was found on a list of Top 10 presentations in a review by Guy Kawasaki.

Secondly - add this site to your RSS feed reader.

Between these two links there is all you need to know about Identity 2.0

So the next thought has to be - where could Telecom be in all of this ? The answer most certainly isn't 'in the middle of it'. That's the customer's place. But we have a role to play - we just have to make sure that we aim to participate as opposed to control. Otherwise we will end up like Microsoft's Passport - REJECTED!