The Long Tail

Followed up on a Wikipedia link from the Web 2.0 discussion. The link lead to the October 2004 article in Wired by Chris Anderson, “The Long Tail.”

A lot to mull over in the article. Most of his examples are from the entertainment industry. But that doesn’t invalidate the observations for other industries. The main argument is that removing the physical shelf space and distribution of physical media opens up the larger audience of “non-hit” customers. Sometimes sales in the non-hit “tail” can equal to or exceed the mass culture hits.

To succeed, however, both the hits and the non-hits need to be available. The popular items become the lure for new customers. Then, making recommendations help move the customer “down the Long Tail.”

This seems to be a double edge sword for the small business person. Hard to compete on the high volume side (direct competition with Wal-Mart for example). But Chris points out that the big retail chains only stock the hits. There is a huge number of products and subgenre that the big stores can’t economically or physically stock. The small business person, however, can attack the niche demands.

But attacking the niche may not work for all products. Chris also points out that many businesses only draw from a limited geographical area. The larger client base of the Long Tail may not be within 3 miles of your retail location.

I’m not sure that says everyone needs to be online, exclusively. It does argue for an online presence and a distribution strategy for non-local customers.

I understand Chris has expanded the article to a book. And he has a blog concerning The Long Tail.

Technorati Tags:The Long Tail, Web 2.0, Social Bookmarks

Web 2.0

I haven't looked into this name too much. Not everyone thinks it is appropriate. I'll do a little further research and figure the nomenclature out.

In the interim, I thought I'd look for more applications, like the Writely app in an earlier post.

I found a blog entry by Christian Mayaud, which referenced an extensive list originally compiled by Bob Stumpal. This has mutated into an Open Directory of Web 2.0 Items. A much better list than I could compile myself.

I'll need to explore the Directory further. A very large mixture of personal oriented sites, but also some business related sites. That's my real interest.

The initial poking around yielded an article by Dion Hinchcliffe, looks like a column/blog associated with ZDNet (an electronics publisher). The article has a list of apps, but more important a graphic that seems to be the continuum from Technology to Social for Web 2.0 applications. Worth the read.

UPDATE: The Wikipedia entry credits O'Reilly Media with coining the phase as currently used. Some of the common characteristics: web as the platform, data driven with the user having control over the data, and networking effects such as social networking.

Collaboration

I need to get out more. I'm getting my high tech news from a site devoted to the SCO & IBM law suit. Groklaw is a fascinating read. So what has that got to do with collaboration?

Getting documents and court filings posted as text is a group effort. In this post they also discuss the tools they used to edit the OCR created text file. They used a Google tool called Writely.

Writely is a free application (in beta test I think) that lets you edit a document via a web browser. It allows you to upload and download documents. And, multiple people can view and/or edit the document simultaneously. (Multiple people editing can work, but you need to coordinate your efforts.)

I can visualize multiple people writing sections of a final report, for example. And, we don't have to send the file around or merge it at the last minute.

This paradigm also means I wouldn't have to carry diskettes or a jump drive. I can reach it from any computer, and download it, if that's what is needed.

I've only begun to play around with an existing document, that I uploaded. The interface is similar to some of the text note capability in MindManager. I can't begin to say how well it would work for a complex document with footnotes and an index.

There is a similar application called Google Spreadsheets that allows a spreadsheet to be shared.

Record Keeping

End of the month, and the records and forms have to be filed for SCORE. The web based system is convenient, I can now work from home. But, it only sweeps in records by entry date.

So, if I wait until Friday it won't count for August totals.

It has been a busy month. In addition to the normal 3 workshops we typically hold, we had 4 orientation workshops. We also put on a workshop for "Capacity Building For Nonprofits."

That means 8 separate Form 888 records.

Process Mapping

I received a comment on a post from last February. In part, Hiram asked an interesting question:

"We want to start process mapping but just don't know where to start. ... Can you recommend any good resources (books, papers, websites, etc) on process mapping that give a good description of the OVERALL process? I'm especially interested in knowing what to do after the process is mapped."

A fair overview can be found in the Wikipedia entry for Business Analysis.

Office processes can be mapped and improved just like the manufacturing flow can be mapped (the later being called a Value Stream Map in many cases).

There are actually a number of techniques and graphic conventions for doing a process map. I used to consult and employ IBM's DesignFlow conventions. LEAN manufacturing advocates use mapping symbols similar to those in Gary Conner's book Lean Manufacturing for the Small Shop. Some advocate using industrial engineering standards, like ASME Standard 101 Operation and Flow Process Charts.

A common characteristic in these techniques is the identification of transportation of work, delays, and queues (or storage). If you have a "lean" orientation, transportation and waiting represent prime targets for elimination (just a few of the wastes to be reduced).

As this paper points out, there are a handful of reengineering methodologies, all have a similar framework. In Short; Plan, As-IS, To-Be, Implement, Measure Results, and Repeat. The charting techniques usually play a major role in the As-Is phase.

Just mapping the process tends, in practice, to be a flowcharting exercise. It isn't always done to a very great depth but it should be as deep as possible. One trick is to use swim lanes for each actor or role. Then display the process steps in the respective swim lanes. One lane might be the receptionist opening the mail and sorting it into stacks (probably at her/his) desk. Then a clerk (another lane) picks up the stacks and delivers the mail to various inboxes. The inboxes each have their own process lane.

It doesn't take long to have a complicated diagram, but that's OK. It forces you to ask the question, why is the invoice bouncing around between these various departments?

Identifying the problem is only half the journey. Creative solutions and getting at the root cause of some procedures (we've always filed the fly-paper report etc) takes team work and brainstorming. But if you don't take the time to do the As-Is you'll miss a lot, and probably doom your new system or procedure because you've left something out.

Case in point: streamlining the process by having the receptionist do data entry, but forgetting that John in distribution adds a tracking number that is the database "key" for the (separate) distribution system. The receptionist may need to have access to the distribution system.

Ran across this bibliography, fairly impressive list. Some have links to other sites. It is part of the National Archives Site (NARA ALIC). Plenty of literature on Business Process Reengineering / Change Management in the bibliography.

My temptation is to say start with a process you can change, i.e. you have the signature power to make it happen. Decide what metric will define success (time, quality, waste etc). Don't leave the key measure of success to a vague "improve the process."

Then work it as a team. Everyone knows a secret part of the process that some people don't know. Your getting close to success when someone says "I didn't know that happened in xxxx, I thought yyy did it."

The more people know the whole picture, the better the redesign/improvement will be.

There are sites and then there are sites

Continuing my browsing of sites "Powered by Mindjet."

Some are full sites, where the person has tried to make a web site for their business/club/church. These usually have the defaults replaced with real addresses. One wonders how much spam "info@company.com" gets. That's the default webmaster.

I've found some interesting course outlines. In this case the map was used to organize the syllabus and then produce a web-based "lecture." It shows, I think, how the MindManager tool can be used for organizing your thoughts.

There is a final category of sites that contain little to no actual data. Possible just posted as an example or test case, but never removed.

Finding The Right Search Term

Started playing around, looking for sites created from MindManager software. Turned out to be a little trickier than I thought. The internal page verbiage doesn't always have the phase I'm looking for.

But, I stumbled on a site the had been created with Ver6. There is a tag line at the bottom, "Powered by Mindjet ..." That turns out to be the magic phrase. Google yielded about 295 hits in English.

So I'm going to work my way through them, a few at a time, and see what variety is there. Then build the booklist in del.icio.us to get a feeling for that tool.

Learning New Tricks

It's pretty clear I'm not up on all the latest web techniques and tricks. Since I'm not into cell phones, IM'ing, and retired ... I don't have a lot of reasons to keep up.

I occasionally use Technorati tags, just to see how they would work. But haven't been a regular user.

One of the blogs I scan, almost daily, Outside The Beltway, began using this string of little icons at the end of each post. Don't know when he started. I just decided to investigate what these things were all about.

The icons are connected to Social Bookmarking sites. Similar to Technorati, but with a twist. The idea is to have your bookmarks on the web, so you don't always have to be at your home computer.

I can understand the problem. With two computers, the back room desktop and my business laptop, I occasionally find that the favorites lists aren't the same. Ditto when I'm on a computer at SCORE, none of my bookmarks are on those computers.

I picked one of the services, del.icio.us, to start experimenting. OTBeltway has about 16 different sites in his string. All the links do is supply all the information that you would have to type to bookmark the blog item.

Playing around with my new account, I found some additional MindManager(c) sites. This one is interesting because it lists sites that were built using the Mindjet MindManager product. (Mindjet has the copyright for MindManager.)

This might become a new project for me. Finding sites built with various versions of MindManager. MM has an export to web function. In fact, that is how I built the basic navigation graphics for Piquero Insights, Inc., my own site.

Technorati Tags:MindManager, Consulting, Social Bookmarks

Six Degrees and Aisin

In an earlier post, I mentioned I was reading Duncan J. Watts' book Six Degrees.

That was before I reached Chapter Nine. Turned out to be about my favorite topic, "Manufacturing." In particular, lean networks and the Toyota Production System (TPS). There was a story I hadn't heard about, the Aisin fire and the rapid recovery of the entire supply chain. Particularly interesting when I contrast my experiences at Big Blue to various production challenges.

I've only recently, last year or so, been actively studying lean theory. That's probably why I hadn't heard of it. There are case studies as well as technical papers discussing the incident.

Road Warrior

Not really. Though I have been traveling a lot over the past seven weeks. Drove from Texas to Milwaukee and back. And, flew out to Washington DC for a family reunion, wife's side.

Picked up a book at the library for reading on the plane. Duncan J. Watts has written a book on the math behind social network analysis. Six Degrees was published in 2003. It is interesting, though a little more math oriented than something like Gladwell's Tipping Point. Many of the same themes.

I picked it up because of the metrics phone call. We are trying to account for the number of "connections" at a large conference. Rather than just count attendees at a large conference, there should be a multiplier. Something like, the typical attendee has a network quality conversation with at least 10 other people. Something beyond, hello & how are you.

We theorize that a small group meeting would see everyone interact. But in a large group, like a conference, the number of interactions would be more than one but not with everyone.

Chugging Along

It's that time again. The workshops are out of the way for another month. Had one all day Saturday, 2 hours on Tuesday, and then the all day Wednesday workshop.

The metrics discussion is going nicely. We've had three calls. The team has been contributing and the discussion is generating results I hadn't expected.

Instead of just trying to use web visits as a metric, the team is looking at behaviors and how we can measure them. We seem to be looking at web visits as a proxy for counting people looking for information.

With luck we can couple that with a connected click that assumes they found something. That's a big assumption, but it fits well with an additional metric of asking if they are satisfied with the information.

Degrees of Separation

Blogging has been light, between workshops and outside efforts it has been easy to let the blogs slide.

One of my distractions has been preparing for the metrics discussion that we kicked off in LAX. The first conference call was held today.

I went surfing tonight for “Degrees of Separation” which is a way to look at connections. I found this article by Neal Leavitt. The article concerns the Tide Coldwater viral marketing campaign.

The campaign, which incuded free samples of the product, also tracked the way the referrals spread by providing an interactive map. The interesting part, predictable I suppose, the word of mouth or email was very narrow in a demographic they wanted. So targeted message and increase of web traffic.

The article doesn’t really talk about increased sales. Advertising, after all, is primarily concerned with making people aware. The lesson for small businesses is you need to focus on sales impact, not just awareness.

Back In Texas

Just spent most of the week in Los Angeles. Had a couple of back to back SME functions. One was a leadership conference, the other was a workshop on Lean tool and die making. Both were taking place with Westec as a backdrop.

The workshop turned out to be a dud. No one attended.

The leadership meeting was a follow-on to one we held in Oconomowoc last fall. There were about 60 people in attendance. Last year we had brainstormed "vision." This year the topic was metrics.

I got some favorable comments on a technique I used to collect ideas. The technique is called "brain writing." Mostly, I think it was because they hadn't seen the technique before. The technique generated about 200 ideas, which is modest with 60 people. But we only ran it about 10 minutes.

Ros Jay discusses the tool in her book "The Ultimate Book of Business Creativity." She attribute the creation to the Batelle Institute in Frankfurt, Germany.

I've found some references on the web, for example here and here. I use the technique as one of my examples in the brainstorming class. I use a sheet of paper rather than index cards.

Public Relations

I've been searching the net for small business topics, in particular, the various forms of financing. I'm helping one of the SCORE volunteers develop a workshop on Alternative Sources of Capital.

My search led me to an Inc. Magazine article on borrowing from friends and family. But that's not what this post is about.

The sidebar had a number of related article links. Three of them were about blogs and blogging.

When Blogs Go Bad, by Jory Des Jardins, ran in the November 2005 issue of Inc. Magazine. In a nutshell, some marketing ideas can be misunderstood. How do you do damage control in the blogosphere?

Blogs have attracted a lot of attention in the marketing community. It is another channel for building relationships and brand loyalty. Not all the blogosphere is political commentary. But once again it is the two-way nature of the technology that gives it an appeal.

Multitasking or lack there of

Well, I've been posting on blogs, just not here. I am informally supporting three technical groups in the SME organization.

One group, The Human Side of LEAN, has a weekly phone call on Tuesday nights. I've been posting my meeting minutes there. I use Mind Manager to take notes while I have the conference call on the speaker-phone. Keeps me engaged.

The second group is a task force. The blog portion is some discussion and a repository for public whitepapers. We didn't make it "visible" on Blogger. The team is using a combination of email, word documents, and some blog activity. We are considering going to a secured bulletin board.

The third group isn't very active, yet. We have a monthly call concerning LEAN Tool & Die Making. We have a conference coming up at the end of the month, so a lot of time being spent getting ready for that.

One thing I've found is engineers aren't always aware of newer technology outside their field. A lot of folks use the web but haven't every read or used blogs.

Process Reengineering

Old habits die hard. I've always been interested in system analysis and in particular, business process mapping. This isn't the same as mind mapping.

I was looking for a reference to IDEF design methodology. The topic had come up in a meeting last week. In the process I found a good site that had some basic descriptions of LEAN and Six Sigma. The description of IDEF wasn't that great but the LEAN discussion was.

I did find some IDEF descriptions in a paper. Figure 3 is a nice view of the basic IDEF0 diagram.

Linking and Permalinking

I'm helping some of my SME contacts work through some of the blogging processes. That was part of the reason for this blog, so long post about to begin about linking.

This example will be a "live" link to Juergen's blog to show how the post would look. I hope he doesn't mind if we send a little traffic his way.

There are two parts to the process. (1) Creating a hyperlink and (2) Knowing the address to hyperlink.

Here is how the sequence would work. I'm going to use one of Juergen's blog entries as an example.

On January 24th Juergen posted some thoughts to his blog. The post was at 9:02pm. Suppose that entry was a longer article. How do we find the "address" of that article?

[A] If you look at the timestamp, you'll notice it is blue, and in reality it is a hypelink. Just point to it with your mouse. Depending on your browser, the http string probably shows at the bottom of your screen. In this case, the "address" is
"http://juergenboenisch.blogspot.com/2006/01/
    i-had-interesting-discussion-about-how.html"    (single line)

In blog parlence this is called the permalink address. It is the address in Blogger's database, and will always be available. Hence "perma"-link.

[B] Now rather than retyping all that, "Right Click" on the timestamp. The options dialog/tool that pops up allows you to "Copy Link Location"
which puts the whole thing on the clipboard. (I'll assume you've used cut and paste before.) I would copy it into notepad as temporary storage, or Word, or Wordpad, because it is likely you will be arranging and copying something else before you need the address.

[C] Open a second browser window and log into Blogger.

[D] You want to create a new post, let's say in Human Side of Lean. You might cut and paste text from your longer post, or type your own summary/opinion.

[E] Crucial step. Highlight (left click and drag) the word or phrase you want to serve as the link. Now look up on the tool bar of the edit for posting dialog. There is a little globe with a infinity sign on top (it is actually two links of a chain but my resolution isn't too good). Click on the globe (with text highlighted in the body) and it brings up a dialog asking for the URL.

[F] Paste that address, the permalink, there. (Remember the dialog starts with http, and so does your address. Make sure you don't have http://http://xxxxx.) Hit OK. This wraps the html anchor code around the link.

[G] Post it. Your done !

More Metrics

I had a phone call to discuss the new blog for LEAN Tool & Die Making. Many of the members are "new" to blogging, so this discussion covered a lot of how-to-do things.

One of the discussions/demos involved the statistice provided by Site Meter.

It occured to me that there is another free service provided in the blogosphere. N.Z. Bear has an application called the TTLB Ecosystem. This application looks at traffic (via Site Meter) and links within registered (in the Ecosystem) sites.

The SME blogs will probably be less than "Insignificant Microbes" for awhile, but this will provide another measuring stick for connections.

Horse Of A Different Color

I have started to pull together a blog for another SME group. There isn't any content yet, so I won't post the address until later. I think I found a template that I like, but the color scheme is a bit odd, mostly rose and pink variants on the links.

Most of my HTML knowledge is a little old. So are my books (dated 1996). I probably need to get a newer reference. The colors weren't set in the "body" tag, or at least I couldn't find a "link=" or "vlink=" tag. On the other hand they had "a" , "a:visited" , and "a:hover" color definitions. That looks like the ones.

But what to set the colors to? What are the hexidecimal definitions? Nothing in my old reference book, and the web address they showed didn't seem to work anymore.

Google and the web to the rescue. Found a site by VisiBone that displays the color and the hex code for that color. Just what I needed to change the template colors.

Of course, my color sense is like my taste in food, pretty poor. At least if anyone complains I know how to change them to something else.

UPDATE: The team liked the idea so the LEAN Tool & Die Making blog is up.

Connected World

In yet another example of our connected world, I've been adding items to the Human Side of Lean Blog. In the process, learning new things. That, of course, is what I wanted to document here.

My latest adventure has been to add images to the post. This was particularly important because I wanted to add a Mind Manager map. I thought I had to have the image on a separate server, like my web site host. Or, sign up for one of those on line photo share sites.

Nope. You can upload as part of the post. Blogger stores it.

The trick it seems is that the HTML code is placed at the top of the post. The code and "span" handles the alignment, i.e. Left-Center-Right. Then what you do is cut and past into the section you want the picture to appear in. Like so:

The connection part is not just playing with another blog. In the process I realized I have three or four web pages on the Piquero site that needed updating. Particularly the ones that have sample maps.

And, I updated my home page to point out this blog is up and active.

LEAN Enterprises

Just got off a weekly phone call that is run by an SME Tech Group. The discussion centers around the people aspects of LEAN implementation. I discovered that they have established a blog for discussion. The conference calls and the blog are called "The Human Side of LEAN."

Information about the conference calls, held each week, can be found on the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) Site.

Hit The Refresh

I've noted that my browser effects my ability to "see" changes. It is probably some default setting I need to fix. The browser wants to save time (my slow analog line) so it retrieves pages from the cache. In order to "see" my new posts, I usually have to hit the refresh buttom to get the latest blog entry.

We used to classify this as an operator defect, not a defect with the browser.

Consulting Tools

I had a bit of luck during the holidays. A book I’d wanted was checked back in, just before New Years.

Elaine Biech has written a number of books on marketing and consulting. This one, “The Business of Consulting,” was written in 1999. [ISBN 0-7879-4021-6] What I didn’t realize is that all the tables and checklists were on a diskette.

I got the wild idea of turning a few of the checklists into MindManager maps. This should be easier since most of the text is already typed into the Word documents on the diskette.

The conversion isn’t direct. Just importing the document into the map will give marginal results. The fun is looking at the chart and deciding how I can effectively use it as a MindMap.

My first run at it is a type of SWOT analysis for consultants/entrepreneurs. By changing the columns to branches, the checklist becomes interactive. As you decide whether a trait is adequate or needs improvement, you move the trait to the appropriate branch. Here’s the first pass at ordering my traits as a consultant.

The images are "jpg" versions of the map. As a map they can be edited and enhanced with text notes and links.

Technorati Tags:MindManager, Consulting