Usher Blogs

Career Move

It is with a mix of sadness and excitement that I write this post. It is not my last post, but it is my last post in my current role. Effective at the close of business today (March 23, 2007) the Usher Group will cease normal business operations, and I am taking a one week vacation.

 

Effective April 2, 2007, I am assuming the role of Sr. Manager Corporate Communications at eBay with resposibility for technology PR. I am not yet clear how, if at all, this will affect my personal blogging, though I suspect not much at all.

 

At any rate, I thought it good to inform my 3 or 4 regular lurkers along with the several thousand of you who keep coming back to look for information on the other Usher (how come no one ever finds me looking for Edgar Allen Poe analysis...not that I have too much to add there except that the Fall of the House is like all of Poe's a rather sordid tale.)

 

I am looking forward to my new role and the challenges and adventures ahead. Until my next post, enjoy the moment.

 

In the future, the best way to reach me will be via personal email: usher(DOT)lieberman(AT)gmail(DOT)com.

Beg Forgiveness or Ask Permission?

I like Microsoft's play here as it perhaps offers insight on how Microsoft will poke at Google over the coming years. 

Microsoft will protect you, Google will expose you.  That's today's message from Microsoft to the American Association of Publishers

In the future I expect Microsoft to assert that by buying their software they will protect your privacy, whereas Google gives away its software in exchange for your privacy, which they resell at a tidy profit.

The ultimate question will be whose story is more credible, because I also like Google's message that by exposing more of your content (at least for publishers) you will actually sell many more legal copies of your protected works.  Seems to be a successful model at iTunes anyway.

I Like DRM

I like DRM

 

I do. As a concept, it works. Given the problems I’ve had with iPods (including the one I smashed – on purpose in anger) and iTunes, you might think I hate DRM. I don’t. 

 

I hate hardware. It breaks, gets lost, is stolen, or becomes obsolete. Sure I like shiny new hardware, but that’s not the point. 

 

DRM obsoletes the worry about buying into hardware platforms that suck while making it easier for all of us to buy new hardware (we don’t have to worry about losing our existing investments in software and content). DRM is a mechanism for individually licensing the limited, hardware-independent, private, non-commercial rights to media content. DRM means that your digital rights can live in the cloud, and the content can live anywhere…on the memory-rich devices you regularly access and as identity-specific IP media streams network accessible when you’re away from your primary hardware.

 

Copyright owners of course make a lot of money by reselling the catalog again and again. Fine, but I’d be willing to pay more upfront for a DRM schema that treats me as a customer, not a potential criminal. 

 

DRM also opens up opportunities for things like an aftermarket for private, non-commercial rights. If I purchased some music and don’t want it any more, I should be able to resell my rights, perhaps auction style. I’d gladly pay an automatically withdrawn royalty from the transaction to the copyright owner, and all of my digital copies of the music would be disabled and/or deleted. Well, maybe major record labels would never go for it, but artists that rely on word-of-mouth marketing might find it an attractive model. 

One [potentially] Giant Leap Forward...

For investor and public relations pros, individual and institutional investors, industry watcher, and others...but it could be a leap back for some of us too.

Jonathan Schwartz is the CEO of Sun Microsystems, who along with his general counsel are certainly bloggers of note.

Jonathan's most recent post entitled "One Small Step for the Blogosphere" reveals a formal letter sent to SEC Commissioner Christopher Cox, which requests a clarification RegFD which currently defines the legal ways in which a public company must make material information available for public access (i.e. ensuring everyone in the public has access to material information at the same time.)

Jonathan's request aims to have corporate blogs recognized as a legal mechanism for  providing "non-exclusionary distribution of the information to the public," something they currently are not.  I have no doubt that this will get a fair hearing and that at some point in the future the SEC will recognize that self-publishing Web sites that are well-established as the voice of a corporation can be considered compliant with RegFD for material information.  I think this is generally a good thing, as a blog can better articulate company vision than a press release, and in a voice that is comparable to a conference call but with better accessibility in many ways. 

It will be interesting to watch how the tool develops at that point and what sort of voice earnings reports end up taking.  It is a looming challenge and terrific opportunity for us corporate communications types.

On Conversations and Molotov Cocktails

I had an interesting exchange - via email - with the nom de plume of Amanda Chapel.  Amanda suggested that my comments on Aedhmar Hynes' blog were to quote Amanda: "a rare synthesis of the current swirl of inane blog blather.  It demonstrates definitively a lack of business and communications sense.  If I were a CEO, and knew you were on the property, I’d call security."

Well, not everyone digs what I have to say.  At any rate, my point - which I sent in a subsequent email was this:

"Blogging, participatory media, whatever you want to call it is another tool for listening.  You may disagree, but I think it is a very powerful and managed correctly, very valuable tool, but it is obviously not the only one.  Any company that listens only to the bloggers does so at their peril.  Still, it holds great potential to do well for companies – when managed appropriately…anarchy is unacceptable, totally agree.  But any company that isn’t listening *at least* for damage control purposes – is being foolish. 

People are talking anyway and whether it is through blogs or something else, once what they say starts moving it can travel really fast.  This means that the bully pulpits of Jarvis (and yes Strumpette) can wreak temporary havoc on your reputation and the case of a stolen phone can capture national attention.  It is also means that you can absorb more rapidly what good customers are saying and convert them into even better ones. 

For example: It is pretty well a given that enterprise software (significant installations that run north of seven figures) will have kinks.  The people buying it don’t necessarily begrudge the vendor that kinks exist they just want to get them worked out quickly.  Collecting and disseminating knowledge related to how and where to apply the iron is of high value to vendors and their customers.  Blogs are a significant tool in this respect.  Some of this customer and vendor knowledge is created and/or resides in the public domain through blogs and elsewhere, some doesn’t.  The point is to collect everything, identify patterns and unique issues, and address both appropriately.  Does this mean a blog post or comments on someone else’s blog?  Maybe, every situation is unique. The point is that how information is disseminated, who gets to consume it, and what it says and to whom still requires a skilled human filter, a role in which good PR people are today adding value. 

We all have our own opinions about who those people are and are not."   

I bring this conversation to light only after reading Jonathan Schwartz' June 2 entry "Sunlight is the Best Informant".  Amanda told me to
"Mark my words, there’s going to be a backlash to all this and the “revolutionaries” will have indelible marks on their heads." 

Jonathan has been CEO for slightly more than 60 days, we've yet to see just what mark his legacy leaves on Sun.  The point in all of this is not that blogs are a holy grail that must be adopted by every company, or that we should head blindly down a path towards "mob rule" as Amanda says.  Rather it is that in the right industries, for the right companies, openness is something customers appreciate and will reward.  Personally, I believe Sun is going to learn an awful lot about their customers and how to build and design better products for them in faster cycles which will return significant shareholder value.

There are Only Two Kinds of People...

that I do business with: those that at least tactically understand presence and use IM regularly, and those that don't.

Those of you I regularly play phone tag with know who you are. Better, faster, more coordinated is the work product produced for your peers when we're regularly sharing presence information.  Qualitative data to be sure, but I'd be willing to bet the cost of quantitative analysis that I'm right.

PR Offensive

We (US) are losing the "war for the hearts and minds" of the Muslim and Arab world for a lot of reasons, but very near the top is terrible PR. 

It always struck me as odd that in Iraq we didn't flood the Arab and Western airwaves with images of Saddam's brutality.  Yes, the American media sucks at reporting and didn't cover it enough, but I don't think our government made a very solid PR push either.  That meant forcing the mass graves in front of the cameras as we did in Europe in 1945. 

Reading Nicolas Kristof's opinion in the NY Times today  on the crisis in Darfur and potential remedies reminded me of this.  Kristof points out that:

A no-fly zone and a U.N. force are among the ways we can apply pressure, but another essential element is public diplomacy. We should respond to Osama by shining a spotlight on the Muslim victims of Darfur (many Arabs have instinctively sided with Sudan's rulers and have no idea that nearly all of the victims of the genocide are Muslim). [emphasis mine.]

The White House can invite survivors for a photo-op so they themselves can recount, in Arabic, how their children were beheaded and their mosques destroyed. We can release atrocity photos, like one I have from an African Union archive of the body of a 2-year-old boy whose face was beaten into mush. President Bush can make a major speech about Darfur, while sending Condi Rice and a planeload of television journalists to a refugee camp in Chad to meet orphans.

We absolutely should do this in Darfur. We must also refresh our PR strategy in the whole Middle East to focus on only three things.  1) The death that muslims are bringing to other muslims in Iraq and elsewhere.  2) Our desire to champion the rights of ordinary people and leave them *soon* to a better future of their own determination.  3) That the other side offers only death.

Right now I'm guessing too many people believe both sides only offer death, and that has to change.

Insulting

Hu Jintao was roundly insulted today.  Dana Milbank is more thorough than I can be.  This was done for a reason and I don't think it was just payback for President Bush's inability to find the door. 

No, there's more and it seems an odd strategy when you need China as a diplomatic partner with the geo-strategic and -economic interests in North Korea and Iran to help us peacefully resolve those Nuclear tensions.   

Treating the Chinese with respect when they are our guests does not remove any options from the table.  It does not tie our hands with North Korea, or Iran, or anyone else, least of all the Chinese.  Slapping them publicly probably removes options, I think this was a mistake. 

Such Arrogance!

Themediaslut points to reason N to the nth power why I hate Apple. Actually, THIS STORY - which you need to check out and watch the video just validates what I've known for a long time - APPLE IS ARROGANT to the point of alienating customers. 

Are you kidding me, how do you screw this one up?  A little girl tosses a softball, a letter as part of a homework assignment, addressed to Steve Jobs on how to improve the iPod.  You've got a probable customer for life who loves her iPod and makes suggestions on how to improve it and she gets back a letter from the office of Apple's General Counsel that the company doesn't accept unsolicited ideas.  Quite.

Well, they should be listening but the fact is that they're clearly too smart to take someone else's suggestions.

Of course, any company that "gets it" - as we hear so often - listens to customer feedback.  Takes the dings along with the praise and figures out how to make customers feel involved in product development, and highlights the successes, including the mitigation of bad customer experiences. 

Again, if I were Sony and I were trying to knock Apple off the throne it used to hold (I had a Walkman way back when) I would open up my product development to customers, and I would implicitly solicit iPod customers to give us your feedback so we can design the iPod killer. 

I'm blown away.  Even if this letter wasn't from a 9 year old - and was say from me - the point is to thank someone for the unsolicited advice and let them know it is certainly something they will consider.  You don't tell a customer to get stuffed when they're offering ideas.

What's Going on Here?

From the AP:

"The [Homeland Security] department's inspector general also is investigating the allegations, which say Doyle revealed his name and his employer and offered the numbers of his Homeland Security-issued office and cell phones during the sexual online conversations. Officials were also examining Doyle's office computer for any evidence."

As Krempasky notes "Usher - in my experience, people really ARE that sloppy."  If true (and there's apparently a mountain of evidence) this guy is sick, he is a maximum-security-prison-type of felon, he's stupid (and/or desperate to get caught), he was a fairly high-ranking political appointee of the Bush Administration in an apparently sensitive position, and he's stupid. Did I say stupid twice? 

It is disturbing on so many levels and I'm glad he was caught.  But it raises troubling questions, like how could someone at that level of public information management - when we are fighting a war of ideas - be so careless with information? Could he really have been that stupid, and if so, what does it say about the digital literacy of the team we elected to win the war of ideas?  I have a ton of confidence in the career professionals in the military and homeland defense to execute, but their elected and appointed leaders (all of them, Congress and the Administration) are completely incompetent, appear to be serving self-interest over the state of the union, and should be relieved at the end of their respective terms...except in the cases of many appointees and conferees who should be summarily fired.