David Crow

Connector of dots. Maker of lines. Rider of slopes.

davidcrow

The Evolution of Social CRM

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The team at GetSatisfaction are really nailing the infographics.

They released a great infographic tracking The Evolution of Social CRM. It does a great job explaining how Social CRM should really just be CRM, but isn’t. Social CRM represents a change in attitude and approach that is fundamentally a cultural change for most organizations. This is a challenge for organizations that are silo’d and very transactional in their measurement and engagement. The change to customer-centric processes on the sales, marketing, support tools. The cultural shift from the organization to who the organization enables is big change.

GetSatisfaction: The Evolution of CRM v2

Impact of Social Media on the Sales Funnel

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The team at GetSatisfaction have put together a great overview on the impact of social media on the sales funnel. It’s an interesting evolution  in my understanding of the buying process:

Awareness » Interest » Trial » Evaluation » Decision Attention » Interest » Desire » Action

The simplification of “Decision” to “Action” makes perfect sense. I’m guessing that the goal of the “Evaluation” phase is to drive “Desire”. It’s different than my experience with the Diffusion of Innovation and the 5 step process presented by Everett Rogers. I need to spend some additional time thinking about how this impacts the customer focused sales funnel described by David Skok (@bostonVC).

The rise of social media and the lowered social capital expenditure and effort it has evolved to:

Attention » Interest » Desire » Action » Advocacy

The goal is to build happy customers that want to spread the company’s message (whether you call them brand ambassadors or citizen marketers or just advocates). Great job by the GetSatisfaction team on helping to evolve the understanding of the social involvement in Customer Lifetime Value (CLV).

Infographic from GetSatisfaction: Social Media's Impact on the Sales Funnel

Mesh 2011

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Apparently I’m late to the game with the recognizing that Mesh Conference 2011 has announced a new location and their schedule.

New Location

AllStream Centre at the CNE

The conference moves to the Allstream Centre at the CNE grounds. This is a first year Mesh won’t be at MaRS. I’m hoping the new space allows for new conference experience. MaRS is a fantastic venue, but Mesh has really outgrown the space. It will be interesting to see how Sheri and the team organize lunch, social events, and other interactions to build strong connections between attendees.

Speakers

I’m excited there are a lot of my friends who are speaking at Mesh. These folks are just world class and it will be interesting to hear about their experiences.

I’m also incredibly stoked about Gabe Zichermann (LinkedIn) from GamificationCo. Gabe wrote Game-Based Marketing and hosted The Gamification Summit. Looks like another conference that covers marketing, culture/society, business, and media. It’s a great Canadian take on the web, technology, politics and culture.

I am disappointed that MeshU did not survive the fiscal constraints of running a conference. I know from our past experiences running StartupEmpire the lack of sponsorship and revenue that a smallish conference can generate.  I’m hoping that there will be something for design technologists and entrepreneurial technologists in Toronto in the near future.

 

185 Days Later

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Zombie Walk 2010

It’s been like a great zombie movie. There’s interesting zombies, lots of gore, non-cliche characters, man vs zombie, and at least one human idiot (hello, my name is David).

Actually it’s been an amazing 185 days (just over 6 months) since I announced that I was leaving Microsoft.

MSFT 9-24-2010 thru 3-24-2011

The good news is that as a Microsoft shareholder, my departure did not appear to greatly affect Microsoft’s stock performance (closed Sept 20, 2010 at 25.13 vs Mar 23, 2011 at 25.81). This means technically my leaving added 68 cents a share. While my giant ego would be incredibly bruised being the cause of $5.712B increase in value because of my departure (8.40B shares outstanding *  $0.68/share change). I am pretty sure that most of this change is unrelated to me, and more related to Kinect, Phone 7, and other product sales performance). But as an egomaniac, I’ll claim I’ve added $5.7B of value to the economy ;-). But I digress.

I found a co-founder. We started a company. We’ve hired a team. We’re raising money. We’ve built a product. Talked to potential customers. Threw that product out. Started again. Talked to potential customers.Listened. Formed a hypothesis. Gathered feedback. Iterated. Measured. Tested. Deisgn. Built. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

It is completely different than my experience at Microsoft. And completely worth it.

Don’t get me wrong. It has been difficult. There have been arguments. I’ve been sick as a dog, twice. Payroll is still a bitch. Dealing with government agencies full of red-tape. Trying to write here and at StartupNorth has been difficult.  I’ve been on planes. Trying to build products. Trying to raise my girls. Trying to stay healthy (unsuccessfully – see SxSARS below). I keep helping other startups: here’s looking at you BuzzData, Attachments.me, and TribeHR.

I’ve been heads down for so long that I forget that there are other things going on in Toronto and around the world. I skipped SxSW for the first time in a few years, though I still managed to get the dreaded #SwSARS. It is a very strange experience being sick and not being able to work, even when you want to, versus just taking a sick day when you work for a big company. The fact that I’ve been mostly unavailable because I’ve been stuck in bed and medicated, makes me wonder how long this will continue. I can’t wait to feel human again, and I can’t wait to get back to talking with customers and building. But since the team kicked me out of the office yesterday, I’m home again fighting this zombie virus.

It’s been a fun 185 days. I’m looking forward to the next 185 days and the changes it will bring.

 

Building a mystery aka my Hackintosh project

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My television watching and content acquisition saga continues. Since cancelling my Rogers Cable TV subscription, I’ve found myself consuming content using:

I haven’t had to worry about TUF, Formula 1 and I’ve taken multiple strategies for shows like TopGear (think TV Shows, BBC iPlayer, and other mechanisms). I have bought more DVDs (Shrek4Ever, Toy Story 3, Megamind, Penguins of Madagascar: Operation DVD, I was a Penguin Zombie, and others) for the kids. And I have watched 5 movies on iTunes (Cargo, Predators, The Kids are Alright, How to Train Your Dragon, Top Gear Season 15). And I watched the Superbowl in HD on CTV using an antenna. It has been a really good experience. Though Kristin describes our TV as “the most complicated TV ever, but it works”. I think the Harmony 880 remote makes the experience tolerable, without it I don’t think I could have done this.

One of my thoughts has been about reducing the number of devices (Boxee Box + AppleTV + XBox 360 + Wii). Currently the Boxee Box, the AppleTV and the XBox are all connected to the main TV. I was thinking about getting a Mac Mini and running Boxee, iTunes and Front Row and eliminating the XBox, Boxee Box and Wii (well I’d move the AppleTV upstairs to use in place of the Wii). But why would I buy a Mac Mini for Cdn$1145.82($749 Base Configuration +$165  Core 2 Duo upgrade to 2.66GHz + $100 4Gb of RAM = $1014 + tax). Sure, it’s small, it’s sexy, it would fit right near my Airport Base Station Extreme. But approximately $1100, I should be able to do this for less.

I run a HP MediaSmart EX490 for our internal home network backup device. I figured I’d either upgrade the processor & RAM, buy an inexpensive barebones PC to run Windows with Media Centre or Linux with Plex. But we are an almost all Apple house and I really wanted a machine running Mac OS X. Then Adam (@AdamMeghji) told me about his Hackintosh. And I figured I could build my own.

Lian-Li V351

My Hackintosh Build

I decided to budget the price of the Mac Mini. And see what I could accomplish. Here are details and specs.

Silverstone Fortress FT03I followed Adam’s advice and used the tonymacx86 CustomMac. The builds looked great. It allowed me to customize the case, power supply, CD/DVD drive to my specifications. My fight was mostly with the case (this had implications for the motherboard, the CPU cooler, the video card, the power supply). I was really hoping to build a Home Theatre PC (HTPC) or something that was as small and eloquent as the Mac Mini, but the desire to build a more powerful machine drove me to a bigger case. I looked at HTPC cases but I had a few concerns including heat dissipation, size to fit video card (to fit the proposed video card I needed minimum of 228.6 mm) and cost. I did not want to sink $700+ as some HTPC cases apparently cost. My three leading contenders were:

  • Silverstone Fortress FT03
  • Lian-Li V351 or Lian-Li V352 (Mini ATX vs Micro ITX)
  • Antec P183 V3

I really liked the Silverstone Fortress FT03 and the reviews almost convinced me to purchase it, but as my price was creeping upwards I decided on the slightly less expensive V351 based on the reviews of custom builders. The Antec got great reviews about being silent, but it’s huge. It wasn’t going to fit in the spot in my media cabinent (aka the shelf). The Silverstone Fortress FT03 got great reviews about flexibility, configuration and use. Again it was a space constraint coupled with the price ($70 more).

What doesn’t work, yet

Infrared
I bought a USB IR dongle knowing full well that this wouldn’t work. I have ordered a Twisted Melon Manta TR-1 USB IR solution. This includes the IR receiver and logic board. Coupled with Mira I’m hoping this will let me configure Boxee and/or Plex to work with my Harmony 880.
HDMI + HDMI Sound
I followed the instructions in tonymacx86 iBoot and Multi-Beast installation guide using the Kabyl Chameleon2.0 r748 build. I have DVI video working but I’m still trying to get HDMI and HDMI sound up and running. This is a very frustrating experience.
Bluetooth
This one is totally my fault. I did not buy a Bluetooth dongle.

Thoughts on the process

This has been a fun project. I have probably spent about 10 hours researching, purchasing, and building the Hackintosh. If I were monetizing that time, it would be a complete waste. However, this is a hobby decision. I wanted to build a Hackintosh. The worst case outcome is that I install Ubuntu or Windows and I have a solid PC to use in the office. And technically I have a smoking hot Macintosh that doesn’t support HDMI. This thing runs Photoshop and X Code unlike any other machine in my arsenal.

I plan on spending my free time after 9pm for the next 7 days trying to overcome the challenges with this box.

Anyone interested in building a Hackintosh? I was thinking about doing another big build.

Inside the Lean Startup

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Very late notice, but I have been busy running a startup. I’m joining my friends Leila Boujnane (@leilaboujnane) and Satish Kanwar (@skanwar) tonight at the Inside the Lean Startup event at MaRS. We’ll be chatting about our startups. The customer development process. And some of the tools we use. If you’re not in Austin for SxSW, and you need to get out of the garage/basement/office and chat with others that are struggling/succeeding/striving/doing it to. Come out tonight.

You might also consider checking out the AppSumo Lean #SxSW Bundle which includes access to a set of tools I use including:

Plus there are some new tools that I’m excited to try:

The 2 books that are not included in the Lean SxSW Bundle that are must reads: