Muskoka Sunrise

Muskoka Sunrise, originally uploaded by Jim Crocker.

Been spending long weekends in Muskoka. Get to see sky up there. In the the city, not so much. This is early.

IT/System Engineer Search

I'm looking for an IT/Systems Engineer for a Toronto-based company. Here are some of the requirements. Any interest or if you know someone, contact me at crockbiz at cs dot com.

• IIS 5.1 ( Win XP),6.0 (Server 03), 7.0 (Vista & Server 08)
• SOAP
  
• AvWebservices .NET
• Fortigate firewall
• Sharepoint 07
• Exchange 07
• VPN
• Dell hardware support
• ASP.net (a little code experience)
• Linux administration (phone and .NET code source)
• FreePBX (asterisks phone system) VOIP
• Wikis (R&D, Knowledgebase)
• Terminal server, Citrix, VMware (alternative environments)
• Backup software (Vertias, Symantec))
• Antivirus (Trend Micro, McAfee, Symantec)
• SQL 2005, 2008 would be nice

Summer '08

So much for serious blogging. Not a hope. That's the problem with a good summer!

Quick update on stuff.

Been spending Monday - Wednesday in Toronto then heading north to Muskoka for the weekend. Muskoka is Toronto cottage country. It's beautiful. Too bad the season is 8 weeks.

This is a lifestyle I could get used to. About the time something really starts pissing you off, you're sitting on a dock having a beer. Now if I could just get the helicopter to get me here...

It's also been great spending time with the kids. Both are home from school for the summer. One's working up here for the summer. She's getting her first true business insights working for a golf course that's part of a major, respected hotel chain....that seems to have very little idea what they're doing. The hotel they were supposed to open many months ago won't be open for another few months. Good things it's a fractional ownership. Because after Labor Day weekend, Muskoka is pretty dead.

The other just got back from Australia. I had to laugh (...or cry) at a comment he made on the weekend: "I don't think I like working". There's only one response I could think of..."how would you know?!"

Life has definitely changed for kids. Travel is big. Life-style is huge. I see the girls getting reality way more than the guys...and working way harder. It's cool to see their determination and hard work pay off in terms of opportunity and perspective. And they're doing way better as result.

However, I still see that guys are more street/how-low-is-the-bar smart...and that gives them a strong competitive advantage that frequently enables them to sneak in there, regardless of how hard the girls work. Women need to learn this skill.

Business-wise, I'm working with software companies, a software M&A firm...and a hospital. Every one of them a challenge and I learn something from every one of them too.

Over the years, I've become an indadvertent (unplanned) expert in partnerships. It's just something I've worked with almost everywhere I go. I know in a previous post I committed to capturing some of my learning - I still plan to do that. Partnerships are very interesting beasts. Anyone working in a successful, stress-free partnership should consider themselves lucky. I don't care how good you are, partnerships are not easy relationships.

Here's a bizarre one. I'm also inadvertently becoming an expert in coaching determined, strong, female entrepreneurs and managers. Again, it's just something that's developed over time on many different projects. Bottom line. These women are better managers than most men I know. They're great leaders. Solid with details. Masters of execution. No fear.

What they frequently lack is the inside track, networking and relationships that men lever the hell out of to get what they need. And not because these women couldn't do that better than most men too if they wanted to. Unfortunately - and I have no idea how you change this - men are intimidated by successful women. So it's easier to hang with the boys, ignore reality and keep the status quo.

My advice to these women: Get more like guys. Build your networks. Get to know the influencers. Learn to golf. And have options. Never be stymied. Have a plan and keep moving it forward.

Other stuff. Hmmm. Let me see....

I joined Facebook. Jim D Crocker. Have a few friends and still trying to figure what it does for me. More hits on Flickr?

Joined Plaxo. Jim Crocker. Even fewer friends. I haven't tried. But what I notice is that Plaxo seems way more business friendly than Facebook. I see way more business connections on Plaxo than I do on Facebook. My goal in September is to spend more time trying to figure out where both fit from a business, marketing perspective. Interestingly, all of my kids friends have said they'll add me as a friend. That could be interesting...and I guess it shows how they're growing up and Facebook is changing.

I remain a major search marketing evangelist. Being there when someone is looking for what you have is just way more efficient than shot-gunning your marketing budget all over the place hoping you'll be remembered when the time is right.

If you don't believe me check out the power of GPS combined with local search on the new Blackberries (and I presume i-Phones). Find your location. Local search for pizza...or whatever. And...if you're the closest pizza or whatever guy - you just got a new customer. It doesn't get any more efficient.

Anyways, summer's almost over. Hope it's going well for you too. I'll get back to this in September. Really!

Web 2.0 meets Crimson and Clover

Since attending SES Toronto (Search Engine Strategies) last week I've been interested in experimenting with some of the new web 2.0 applications that are both fun and create content and links beyond a website. This site - Emily Chang eHub - is a great place to find the latest in these applications. I went cruising around there today and found this creative picture/music application. Gave it a quick try with some of my Flickr photos (and some not on Flickr) and came up with what's below.

Click the speaker button to hear the sound.

SES Toronto Day 2

Couldn't attend all the sessions but got to a couple of good ones.

From the session on B2B, learned the following:

• 80% of buyers say they found their vendors - not the other way round - 45% say they found their vendors on-line
  
• Google - no surprise - is their dominant starting point
• vertical search engines like business.com are huge - with 70% of B2B buyers surveyed saying they go there for insight and info
• word of mouth - via the internet - and reputation management must be key marketing considerations for B2B vendors
• when buyers go looking on-line, the three biggest things they're looking for are products, pricing and features
• content on B2b websites must reflect the roles in the purchasers organization during the buying cycle

Interesting stuff. Almost every client I've worked for has had a reason for not wanting to put their pricing, or some form of 'starts at...' pricing on-line. Feedback from the conference is that this is a BIG mistake.

From the session on Web 2.0 and search engines, learned about new ways to add 'context' to web content - making it easier for the search engines to distinguish between Paris Hilton and the Paris Hilton.

Also heard the term SEO 2.0 for the first time. This makes sense to me. Search is evolving significantly as the web and 2.0 type applications like Flickr become main-stream. Learning how to integrate these into search marketing strategies will be fundamental - just as text, tagging and keywords are now.

SES Toronto Day 1

Took a break from reality yesterday - and today - to attend the Search Engine Strategies Conference in Toronto. Not a subject I've spent a lot of time on lately but it is something I have an interest in through my role at Longtail Publishing - a partnership I'm involved that owns about 150 domain names and websites - everything from torontoplumber.com through applestorelocations.com and museumhours.com - practical, local, directory-based listings.

SES isn't necessarily of greatest benefit to publishers, like Longtail. But it's of great interest to traditional brand marketers and company owners who want/need their brands in front of potential customers.

Get this - 80% of all first interactions with a brand occur on-line now. If you don't show up on-line, you don't show up.

Search engine marketing - getting ranked high enough for customers to find you on the key search engines - is a relatively new art/science that is evolving at the speed of the web. Two years ago, SES was all about getting ranked first page on Google. Everything was text based.

That's changing. Fast. Thanks to 'expert' sites like Flickr (photos), YouTube (videos) and hundreds/thousands of others (press releases, customer reviews, social sites like Facebook), getting your brand noticed and ranking highly on Google and other searches can start anywhere.

Some key, simple learning for me as I advise my clients on basic marketing - make a video, take some screen shots, do some press releases - and load them on the web. Tag them with the appropriate keywords and cover your bases to get noticed.

As a result, the key theme from Day 1 of SES was not 'search engine optimization' but 'digital asset management' - going beyond web-site based approaches and branching out to the other 'filters' on the net that get your brand ranked and noticed. Put another way - getting your content - text, pictures, videos, reviews - out beyond your website.

Other practical learning - how to appropriately 'tag' your content to match what potential customers are looking for - not 'shampoo', but 'shiny hair'; not 'lending', but 'borrowing'; not 'document destruction', but 'shredding'. Speaking simple, customer-centric language, not marketese.

For expert advice on doing this and marketing your company on the web I can highly recommend my partner in Longtail, John Robb. His site and contact info is here.

Overall a good day at SES Toronto. Looking forward to today.

That Work Thing

Hey. It's been a while. That work thing keeps getting in the way!

Since last blog I've been doing more traveling, some interesting client stuff and more photography.

On the travel side I've spent the last 4 weeks visiting US cities in the midwest and east coast. Not so pretty cities like Philadelphia and Baltimore.

One of the things I've looking for is visible signs of that recession I keep thinking is out there.

Those signs aren't obvious. All the flights are full. In every case except one, my first choice of hotels was fully booked. In Philadelphia and Baltimore, my first choice of rental car companies was sold out.

Some of the business owners I met with told me they think they might be seeing a premature summer slowdown, but nobody seems sure. So there I go - wrong again?

Also since my last post, my friend Martyn Bassett of Martyn Bassett and Associates sent along a few questions and published some of my not-so-brilliant thoughts in his monthly newsletter. One of Martyn's questions caught my attention because I've heard it a few times from managers in companies of different sizes.

Martyn Bassett Associates: Some might challenge this view and say it (good governance) clashes with and interferes with the entrepreneurial spirit. What are your thoughts?

Jim Crocker: I think that way more businesses have been killed by unskilled entrepreneurs than by good governance. Having your own business doesn’t make you an entrepreneur. Take all the help you can get.

One final thought, I'm continuing to do a lot of work with businesses that are partner-owned. The issues that these businesses face are fascinating, sometimes scary, often destructive. Getting and keeping two partners, never mind more on the same page, with the same vision and the same business approach is a monumental challenge. Having now consulted for a large number of these organizations, I plan to start exploring some of the issues and ideas/solutions I've seen for dealing with them in upcoming posts.