InformationWeek on Gartner
InfoWeek has a piece on Gartner’s commentary on it’s piece on Gartner. If you get what I mean. The media comments on what the pundits have to say about the media commenting on the pundits. And around and around we go on the old issue of bias, transparency and pay-to-play.
Not alot of new ground in the original InfoWeek story, but they are right – these issues warrant discussion. This is even more the case considering Gartner’s power to influence decisions. All of my recent exchanges with Gartner reinforce my view that the analysts are very ethical and bound by some pretty rigid rules of engagement designed to enforce their independence.
What still doesn’t make sense to me are many of their models (such as scoring relevance and momentum based on inbound inquiries from clients) and the precious magic quadrant. And, what really doesn’t make sense are buyers that make decisions based on where a company is on a magic quadrant. I’ve bumped into a few CIOs who are doing this inside F100 companies – something that Gartner discourages. The misuse of the research is often as nonsensical and the confines in which the research is created.
What is really good news is that Gartner seems up for the conversation. And I agree, the more teeth they get, the more relevant they become.
Great quotes…
Richard Edelman has posted a terrific series of quotes from Davos. Well worth a scan. Here are some of my faves.
"The future is in our hands as journalists. We are in the business
of making something special out of a commodity. We are not in the
distribution business. We create a beautiful product which consumers
are willing to pay for."
— Mike Oreskes, editor, International Herald Tribune"The future of news is shifting online. The crowd has come on the
field and is trying to get into the game. We need to be open about our
news judgment. Our tone must be real, as too much of what we do feels
fake."
— Richard Sambrook, editor, BBC"The value of news is based on trust. What you produce must be
respected. Journalists are in the securities business where success is
based on innovation, while aggregators are in the derivatives business.
We have a civic and business role."
— Lionel Barber, editor, Financial Times"User generated content is the killer application. This new form of
editorial is as authoritative as traditional media because of its
authenticity and creativity. The definition of trusted content is
changing based on consumer preference."
— Brandon Burgess, CEO of Paxson Media
Are You Generation C? Are we masters of the Youniverse….?
… or are you a HEDI? Entertaining read…
GENERATION C
Aka Masters of the Youniverse. The C stands for content, but it may as well stand for control freak. Rarely satisfied with their lot, this tribe (mostly male, mostly 25-40) “create their own content”. It’s also C for conceited, as they all think they’re hot enough to write a novel, make an iMovie, be a garage-band star, become a citizen journalist (blogger). In fact, they’re the personification of gravanity (graffiti meets vanity) – the arrogant desire to make your mark in the public domain. Some fancy themselves as minipreneurs and indulge in eBay trading. Others settle for insperience – bringing luxury experiences into their homes via cineplexes, boom-boom rooms and spa-ties.
Olympics Blogs…
With the Olympics a day or so away, take a look at these two blogs. Both are excellent implementations from different directions.
The first, Visa’s Journey to Torino blog engages Visa Olympians in the run-up. Rather than purely a branding event, Visa is showing the depth of its work and relationship with the athletes.The other, Coke’s, is from the perspective of people attending the games. It’s great to see blogs being used by such large marketers as an integral part of their communications efforts.
Southwest also made it’s first forray into the blogosphere today – their “Adopt A Pilot” blog supports a great community effort they have underway in which pilots engage actively with students in classrooms. It shows lots of promise.
disclosure: The Lark Group provided counsel to Southwest on this blog at its early stages and we work closely with RD2 – a terrific brand and design agency based in Dallas. And, per my previous posts, The Lark Group worked closely with Visa and their agency, Fleishman-Hillard on The Journey blog.
Feed Overload
How to handle all those feeds? Rubel suggests deleting them all when it becomes too much and starting again. Even Scoble’s. What you miss most is what you’ll hunt out and reload.
While this is an interesting idea (and mirrors some of the new thinking in time management – don’t archive, just delete what you don’t need), I actually value my feeds more than that. All of them. Some were hard to find. Some I share by exchanging files with freinds and colleagues. Others I just enjoy. My approach is to keep them filed. I have a must read folder and then the rest are categorized by my bizzare collection of interests. I only open the folders and look at the feeds when I have time or my interest is sparked. I’m also a fan of Dave Winer’s River of News philosophy.
To do this I’m using NetNewsWire on my Mac and NewzCrawler on my PC. I also use FireFox (who BTW released a really anoying upgrade then other day – it wipes your themes and other extensions) – there I have a folder nestled in my toolbar with 20 of the feeds I follow most. I can then do a quick scan without opening any windows. I’ve yet to sort out the mobile thing – my damn Balckberry is already intrusive enough.
So, all of this enables me to avoid the extreme measure of deleting them at the point of maximum frustration. It’s interesting that I have more tools for reading feeds than I do for reading email. It would be easier if Exchange/Outlook emails were just feeds.
