60% of Big Data project will fail

Source: http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-joys-and-hype-of-software-called-hadoop-1418777627

“The dirty secret is that a significant majority of big-data projects aren’t producing any valuable, actionable results,” said Michael Walker, a partner at Rose Business Technologies, which helps enterprises build big-data systems. According to a recent report from the research firm Gartner Inc., “through 2017, 60% of big-data projects will fail to go beyond piloting and experimentation and will be abandoned.”

Google descriptions

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35624?rd=1

Prevent search engines from displaying DMOZ data in search results for your site

One source Google uses to generate snippets is the Open Directory Project. You can direct us not to use this as a source by adding a meta tag to your pages.

Create good meta descriptions

The description attribute within the <meta> tag is a good way to provide a concise, human-readable summary of each page’s content. Google will sometimes use the meta description of a page in search results snippets, if we think it gives users a more accurate description than would be possible purely from the on-page content. Accurate meta descriptions can help improve your clickthrough; here are some guidelines for properly using the meta description.

• Make sure that every page on your site has a meta description. The HTML suggestions page in Webmaster Tools lists pages where Google has detected missing or problematic meta descriptions.


• Differentiate the descriptions for different pages. Identical or similar descriptions on every page of a site aren't helpful when individual pages appear in the web results. In these cases we're less likely to display the boilerplate text. Wherever possible, create descriptions that accurately describe the specific page. Use site-level descriptions on the main home page or other aggregation pages, and use page-level descriptions everywhere else. If you don't have time to create a description for every single page, try to prioritize your content: At the very least, create a description for the critical URLs like your home page and popular pages.


• Include clearly tagged facts in the description. The meta description doesn't just have to be in sentence format; it's also a great place to include structured data about the page. For example, news or blog postings can list the author, date of publication, or byline information. This can give potential visitors very relevant information that might not be displayed in the snippet otherwise. Similarly, product pages might have the key bits of information—price, age, manufacturer—scattered throughout a page. A good meta description can bring all this data together. For example, the following meta description provides detailed information about a book.

  <meta name="Description" content="Author: A.N. Author, 
  Illustrator: P. Picture, Category: Books, Price: $17.99, 
  Length: 784 pages">

  In this example, information is clearly tagged and separated.


• Programmatically generate descriptions. For some sites, like news media sources, generating an accurate and unique description for each page is easy: since each article is hand-written, it takes minimal effort to also add a one-sentence description. For larger database-driven sites, like product aggregators, hand-written descriptions can be impossible. In the latter case, however, programmatic generation of the descriptions can be appropriate and are encouraged. Good descriptions are human-readable and diverse, as we talked about in the first point above. The page-specific data we mentioned in the second point is a good candidate for programmatic generation. Keep in mind that meta descriptions comprised of long strings of keywords don't give users a clear idea of the page's content, and are less likely to be displayed in place of a regular snippet.


• Use quality descriptions. Finally, make sure your descriptions are truly descriptive. Because the meta descriptions aren't displayed in the pages the user sees, it's easy to let this content slide. But high-quality descriptions can be displayed in Google's search results, and can go a long way to improving the quality and quantity of your search tr

13th year of High School

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2014/10/high_schools_offer_a_fifth_year_of_high_school_13th_grade_is_a_great_idea.html

Actually, using state high school funding for a 5th year of high school at a community college and receive their high school diploma after the community college and get collage credit

Grit

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/10/141015-angela-duckworth-success-grit-psychology-self-control-science-nginnovators/

Grit scales:

https://sites.sas.upenn.edu/duckworth/pages/research

"We validated it," Angela says. "We showed it predicted objective measures like graduating West Point's first summer [cadet basic training] and winning the National Spelling Bee. And then in all the studies we measured IQ and consistently found that IQ really is something else." Being a hardworking or self-controlled kid is not the same as being a smart kid. Angela and her team had parents rate their kids, had teachers rate their kids, and had kids take two different questionnaires and a delayed-gratification test ("Do you want a dollar today or two dollars in a week?"). They had them do a hypothetical delayed-gratification test with a large number of choices (two dollars today, seven in three months).

"When you average across all of those things, we found you can predict things like their grade point average startlingly well—much better, in fact, than IQ does—as well as changes in grades," Angela says, a finding described by like-minded Stanford colleague Carol Dweck, whom Angela thinks of as a role model, as "a landmark piece of work."

Decision Fatigue

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/productivity/2014/10/decision_fatigue_ego_depletion_how_to_make_better_decisions.2.html

Next, decrease your range of options. This may seem counterintuitive, since it requires making even more decisions. For instance, if you’re picking a restaurant for an important lunch meeting, first deciding on a certain part of town or type of cuisine can narrow your options. Like the participants in the jams study, you’re less likely to be paralyzed by choice if you have few options instead of dozens.

Once you’ve arrived at a decision, stick with it. Ignore the naysaying voice in your head asking if this is the mutual fund that will make you the most money in 15 years or if the route your GPS gave you is the most gas-efficient. Just accept that no decision is ever completely perfect, and remind yourself that it is the best you can do with the tools you have in the moment. Second-guessing yourself only requires making more decisions, which further depletes your cognitive resources. You might also end up happier; researchers have found that people who “satisfice, “or pick an option that meets requirements, are more content with their choices than people who try to pick the best option.

Changing your beliefs may actually make you more productive, too. Someresearchers believe that the notion of ego depletion is all in your head, and that rejecting the idea of self-control as a muscle can combat its effects. People who instead believe that self-control is an infinite resource are less likely to show effects of ego depletion—they actually show increased performance on self-control tests after completing boring, ego-draining tasks like crossing out e’s from a document. Even weirder, how you feel about free will also affects your productivity: The more strongly you believe in it, the more likely you are to enjoy making decisions and to be happy with your choices. My apologies, readers, but your best bet at boosting your productivity may actually be to disregard what you’ve learned in this article.

Source: http://www.computerworld.com/article/2691607/one-in-three-jobs-will-be-taken-by-software-or-robots-by-2025.html?google_editors_picks=true

 Gartner sees things like robots and drones replacing a third of all workers by 2025, and whether you want to believe it or not, is entirely your business.

Smart machines are an emerging "super class" of technologies that perform a wide variety of work, both the physical and the intellectual kind, said Sondergaard. Machines, for instance, have been grading multiple choice for years, but now they are grading essays and unstructured text.

This cognitive capability in software will extend to other areas, including financial analysis, medical diagnostics and data analytic jobs of all sorts, says Gartner.

Following the Process

Following the process can be perceived as a negative phrase - more red tape.  Without well defined processes, a company will loose value through duplication of efforts (two similar processes that were created to achieve the same goal, duplicating the same power point presentation, etc), low quality (high variability), and wasted efforts (efforts which are considered waste in lean methodologies).  The Art is knowing when the situation does not fit the process.

Future of enterprise search

Rebecca Hawkes posted a link to Stephen E. Arnold's summery of "Enterprise Search: 14 Industry Experts Predict the Future of Search" by Cóbhan Phillipson


A few of the quotes
"Effective enterprise search represents one of the most challenging areas in business today"

"In my opinion the enterprise search market today has little appetite for more sophisticated products the likes of which we have seen come and go in recent years."

"Why should you have to ask first?: Search has been traditionally driven by the searcher (duh), but interesting projects that allow for integrated understanding of where/what the user is doing allows for proactive intervention."

"Buzzwords like “federated search” and “enterprise search” place too much focus on “search”, and not enough on getting the right information, transparently and rapidly to the consumer."

"Search will continue to become more implicit, connecting users to knowledge transparently. Users do not want to “search”, they want to get information. We are trying to collapse the “time to information”, and this is not just about extremely fast search of vast amounts of data. It is also about not wasting time searching and presenting irrelevant information, and about creating results that are fine-grained. People are accustomed to doing a search and getting say 10 best results, each one a document, and then sifting through the documents. We are trying to improve that by returning finer grained results that are not documents, but the exact sentence, the exact spreadsheet cell, or exact information the user is looking for."

"The global enterprise search market reaped revenues of more than $1.47 billion in 2012. That figure is forecast to be $4.68 billion by 2019."

"In the future enterprise search will become more personal. With users being able to add and delete their own search sources. True federation will come in to play, and the ‘super index’ will start to take a back seat to ‘Click-Time’ information access. This change will mean that users gain power to control their own results, Bringing in cloud stores, internal applications, such as CRM and Doc management, as well as pulling in external non-corporate content from web sites, such as Linked-In, Facebook and other social networks. This will then give the user a 100% view of their data and information points."

Stephen Arnold's summary:
Several observations occurred to me as I worked through the compilation of expert opinions in “Enterprise Search: 14 Industry Experts Predict the Future of Search”.

First, the confusion about what enterprise search is characterizes the experts’ approach to findability. A knowledge management professional would set about gathering other writings by these individuals and attempting to provide a context for their “information” and opinions. Without a knowledge framework, the collection of opinions is confusing.

Second, the selection of companies represented provides a wide spectrum of starting points. The inclusion of search engine optimization experts mixed with vendors of primary systems and component vendors provides a surprising consensus. Automation is likely to be more important with each passing day. Also, users want to be relieved of the burden of formulating a query or will be given systems that reduce the user’s dependence on keywords and formal queries. The approach is likely to be given considerable attention because automation reduces some of the costs associated with finding information. Will automated search provide knowledge management systems with appropriate inputs? If not, perhaps the discontinuity between enterprise search and knowledge management becomes another challenge for both disciplines to resolve.

Third, the vendors, with the sole exception of LTU in Paris, focus on text. The data about the volume of content by file type is not definitive. The need to be able to search audio, images and video within an organization is increasing. Videos posted on YouTube, Vimeo or other file sharing systems are proliferating. IBM creates big data podcasts each week, distributing them via Apple iTunes. Videos about search, content processing and analytics systems are key parts of the marketing efforts of Attensity, MarkLogic, Oracle and other firms. The future of enterprise search is more than text. The Docurated analysis makes clear that enterprise search vendors and experts may be their own worst enemy.

There may be some challenges for enterprise search in the organizations of tomorrow. Without innovation, enterprise search is likely to find itself marginalized as enterprise knowledge management solutions proliferate. Search without search may be shorthand for who needs old-fashioned search?

Engagement and Tests in Education

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between student 
engagement (behavioral, cognitive, and emotional) and the standardized test scores of 
eighth grade students in three Wakta middle schools. A quantitative survey was used to 
access 8th graders‘ perception of their behavioral, cognitive, and emotional engagement. 
The engagement data was correlated to standardized test scores and demographic data for 
each student.  Further analysis revealed increased engagement has a direct correlation to 

increased academic achievement.

In Wakta, emotional engagement and behavioral engagement were shown to have a mitigating impact on the predictability of ethnicity on student achievement scores.

Source: http://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/143657/1/Scheidler_umn_0130E_13207.pdf

Research shows that student engagement is highly predictive of student outcomes, including higher test scores, lower dropout rates, and increased likelihood of pursuing a higher education.
Source: http://www.naviance.com/blog/measure-what-matters-why-student-engagement-matters-as-much-as-grades-and-test-scores#.U-u82PldUTA

The results suggest that the lowest-ability students benefit more from engagement than classmates, first-year students and seniors convert different forms of engagement into academic achievement, and certain institutions more effectively convert student engagement into higher performance on critical thinking tests. College Students, although most of the 
relationships were weak in strength
Source: http://nsse.iub.edu/pdf/research_papers/testing_linkages.pdf


The Elements of Discord: 

The Sine Qua Non of Education 
Gregory Kerr
Source: http://maritain.nd.edu/ama/McInerny/McInerny07.pdf

How Silos in the Marketing Organization Thwart Alignment with IT

According to a global survey of marketing professionals by Teradata, 74 percent of the respondents said that marketing and IT are not strategic partners in their companies

Data is an asset that should be shared across the organization to discover patterns of behavior and pinpoint areas of opportunity to be leveraged by sales, marketing and customer service. While data collection has historically occurred most often within the IT organization, the analysis of that data is often the responsibility of customer insights managers or data scientists, who must work cross-functionally with both marketing and IT. Greater collaboration and partnership between the worlds of marketing and IT power deep, actionable understanding of the customer—and companies who drive their businesses with customer data are best positioned to win.

However, using all the data together is what drives a great customer experience, and according to a McKinsey study, 70 percent of customers buy based on how they are treated. As for how IT can assist, it is truly about collaboration between marketing and IT, or between CMO and CIO, and the broader strategy of the company being driven by the C-suite. You might point readers to a post written earlier this year by our company president about why this need is so critical.

http://www.itbusinessedge.com/blogs/from-under-the-rug/how-silos-in-the-marketing-organization-thwart-alignment-with-it.html

Doherty Threshold

Update: The original version of this post incorrectly stated that the Doherty Threshold was not a real thing. That was incorrect. Here's the Doherty Threshold, listed on the IBM website, as described by author Walter J. Doherty in 1982. As shown in this episode of Halt and Catch Fire, it is when a computer has a response time of less than half a second:

When a computer and its users interact at a pace that ensures that neither has to wait on the other, productivity soars, the cost of the work done on the computer tumbles, employees get more satisfaction from their work, and its quality tends to improve. Few online computer systems are this well balanced; few executives are aware that such a balance is economically and technically feasible. In fact, at one time it was thought that a relatively slow response, up to two seconds, was acceptable because the person was thinking about the next task. Research on rapid response time now indicates that this earlier theory is not borne out by the facts: productivity increases in more than direct proportion to a decrease in response time.

Source: http://gizmodo.com/halt-and-catch-fire-episode-four-donna-is-here-to-solv-1594879529


The Economic Value of Rapid Response Time

A transaction consists of a user command from a terminal and the system's reply. It is the fundamental unit of work for online system users. It can be divided into two time sequences (Figure 1):
User Response Time. This is the time span between the moment a user receives a complete reply to one command and enters the next command. People often refer to this as think time.
System Response Time. This is the time span between the moment the user enters a command and the moment a complete response is displayed on the terminal. System response time can be further divided into:

• Computer response time, the time the computer actually spends processing and servicing the user's command
• Communication time, the transit time for a command to go to the computer and the time for the reply to come back

...
He and Richard P. Kelisky, Director of Computing Systems for IBM's Research Division, wrote about their observations in 1979, "...each second of system response degradation leads to a similar degradation added to the user's time for the following [command]. This phenomenon seems to be related to an individual's attention span. The traditional model of a person thinking after each system response appears to be inaccurate. Instead, people seem to have a sequence of actions in mind, contained in a short-term mental memory buffer. Increases in SRT [system response time] seem to disrupt the thought processes, and this may result in having to rethink the sequence of actions to be continued." 
...

But, bring system response time down to 0.3 seconds and the number of transactions the programmer can execute in an hour jumps to 371, an increase of 106 percent. Put another way, a reduction of 2.7 seconds in system response saves 10.3 seconds of the user's time (Figure 3). This seemingly insignificant time saving is the springboard for sizable increases in productivity.
...

Cost/Benefit Illustration

To bring the potential benefits of rapid system response into perspective, consider an illustration. Based on the data Thadhani published (Figure 2), the average user can complete 180 transactions per hour at three second response time (Figure 9). For simplicity, then, assume a task that involves 180 transactions and takes an hour to complete. Any one user can complete eight such tasks in a day. Further, assume the burdened value of the user's time is $35 per hour. These numbers will be held constant for the purposes of this illustration.
 

*  Based on Thadani's data (Figure 3) 

Figure 9. Computation of the Time a User Saves in a Day as System Response Time Improved from 3.0 Seconds to 0.3 Seconds

System Response Time (Seconds)	Transactions per Hour*	Task Time (Minutes)	Time Saved per Task (Minutes)	Time Saved per Day (Minutes)
3.0	180	60.0	-	-
2.0	208	51.9	8.1	64.8
1.0	252	42.9	17.1	136.8
0.6	279	37.7	22.3	178.4
0.3	371	29.1	30.9	247.2

As system response time improves, the time required to complete a task drops from the original 60 minutes to only 29.1 minutes. Since the average user completes eight such tasks in a day, the maximum amount of time that can be saved is 247.2 minutes, or 4.1 hours. In a month of 21 work days, the value of these saved minutes is $3,028. 

The number of simultaneous users an online system supports varies from organization to organization as does the amount of improvement in response time which is needed. But, in all cases in this illustration (Figure 10), the financial incentive for bringing system response time from three seconds into the subsecond range is substantial, ranging from $150,000 per month when only 50 people use a system at any one time to $908,000 when 300 people use the system simultaneously.

Source: http://www.vm.ibm.com/devpages/jelliott/evrrt.html

Architecture sketching

Three types of Architecture:

Application Architecture: Th internal structure of an application (classes, components, design patters)
System Architecture: High-level structure of a software components/services)
Enterprise Architecture: Structure and strategy across people, process and technology

Simon Brown considers software architecture as both Application and System Architecture

Architecture represents the significant decisions, where significance is measured by cost of change.

The C4 model (static structure):
System Context: The system plus users and system dependencies

Containers: the overall shape of the architecture and technology choices

Components: Logical components and their interactions within a container

Classes: component or pattern implementation details

A common set of abstractions is more important than a common notation

Tips:

Keep audience in mind when developing diagrams: non-technical, semi-technical, technical


Checklist for an effective sketch (diagram):

1. I can see the solution from multiple levels of abstraction
2. I understand teh big picture (context)
3. I understand the logical containers
4. I understand the major cmponents used to satisfy the important user stories/features
5. I understand the notation, colour coding, etc used on the diagrams
6. I can see the traceability between diagrams
7. I understand the major technology decisions
8. I understand the implementations strategy (frameworks, libaries, API's, etc)

"Sketches are Maps"

Just enough up front design to create firm foundations for the software product and its delivery:

From: https://skillsmatter.com/skillscasts/5109-simple-sketches-for-diagramming-your-software-architecture

Recruiting goes High School

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-08/silicon-valley-s-talent-grab-spawns-high-school-interns.html

QRA

QRA - Quantified Risk Appetite

QRA of most corporations is 10-25% of Market Cap - important to note that QRA is a parameter in calculating risk adjusted value - not the most amount of money a company is willing to risk.  spreadsheet: http://www.sdg.com/ebriefings/on-demand/risk-tool
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orAyEtsfb3k&feature=youtu.be)

QRA is 10% of of market cap and small risks are 10% of QRA - e.g. 1% of market cap.  In this case, any decision that is less than that, then Expected Value is a very close equivalent to risk adjusted value.

All divisions of a company should use the same QRA to prevent value destroying opportunities - big bet decisions.  This pooling of risk gives large corporations an advantage over smaller corporations - giving up this advantage allows smaller companies to have an advantage if they are using appropriate risk.

WACC Definition

A calculation of a firm's cost of capital in which each category of capital is proportionately weighted. All capital sources - common stock, preferred stock, bonds and any other long-term debt - are included in a WACC calculation. All else equal, the WACC of a firm increases as the beta and rate of return on equity increases, as an increase in WACC notes a decrease in valuation and a higher risk.

The WACC equation is the cost of each capital component multiplied by its proportional weight and then summing:




Where:
Re = cost of equity
Rd = cost of debt
E = market value of the firm's equity
D = market value of the firm's debt
V = E + D
E/V = percentage of financing that is equity
D/V = percentage of financing that is debt
Tc = corporate tax rate

Businesses often discount cash flows at WACC to determine the Net Present Value (NPV) of a project, using the formula:

NPV = Present Value (PV) of the Cash Flows discounted at WACC.

(source: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/w/wacc.asp)

Definition of 'Cost Of Equity'

In financial theory, the return that stockholders require for a company. The traditional formula for cost of equity (COE) is the dividend capitalization model:



A firm's cost of equity represents the compensation that the market demands in exchange for owning the asset and bearing the risk of ownership.

Investopedia explains 'Cost Of Equity'

Let's look at a very simple example: let's say you require a rate of return of 10% on an investment in TSJ Sports. The stock is currently trading at $10 and will pay a dividend of $0.30. Through a combination of dividends and share appreciation you require a $1.00 return on your $10.00 investment. Therefore the stock will have to appreciate by $0.70, which, combined with the $0.30 from dividends, gives you your 10% cost of equity.

The capital asset pricing model (CAPM) is another method used to determine cost of equity.

GRPI

GRPI Pyramid

Robin, Plovnick, and Fry, Task-Oriented Project Development

Source: http://www.create-learning.com/docs/GRPI/GRPI-TeamDevelopment.pdf

What Is GRPI?

GRPI is used to ensure practitioners gauge the factors critical to team development in a structured way – and act on these factors throughout the project. Teams and organizations can be viewed through GRPI based on four fundamental dimensions:

• Goals: Are the mission and goals of the team clear and accepted by all members? Are they in tune with the team’s environment?
• Roles and responsibilities: Are the roles and responsibilities clearly described and understood? Do the defined roles fully support the team goals?
• Process and procedures: Are there processes and procedures operating in the group (such as problem-solving methods, communication procedures, decision-making processes, etc.) that are 1) understood and acceptable and 2) supportive to the group’s goals and roles?
• Interpersonal relationships: Are the relationships among team members healthy and supportive of good team work? Is there an appropriate level of trust, openness and acceptance in the group? The I of GRPI is a function of the G, R and P. In order to achieve the I, there are two important items to keep in mind: 1) effective communication and 2) conflict avoidance and resolution.

Source: http://www.isixsigma.com/implementation/teams/grabbing-hold-of-the-grpi-model/


The GRPI model was first introduced by Richard Beckhard (1972) and highlights the different
aspects of team cooperation by identify goals, clarifying roles, responsibilities and processes and
the interpersonal relationships of team members.
Source: http://www.systemic-excellence-group.com/sites/default/files/raue_tang_weiland_wenzlik_2013_the_grpi_model_an_approach_for_team_development.pdf

During his work as a organisational development and transformation consultant, Noel Tichy
analysed team conflicts based on the GRPI framework, underlining the cascading character (cp.
Pritchett, Tichy, & Cohen, 1998; Tichy, 2002). He observed a ratio of 80:20 per cent of conflicts
accumulating at each level:

• 80% of conflicts in teams are attributed to unclear goals.
• From the remaining 20%, 80% are assigned to unclear roles.
• From the remainder there is again 80% to be found in the field of unclear processes.
• Finally, only 1% of the conflicts in teams can be attributed to interpersonal relationships.
Ambiguity at one level has an impact on the ensuing levels and problems at a lower level are often
symptoms of conflicts at a higher level.

• If goals are not clear, uncertainties in the individual roles will arise.
• If roles are unclear, this will result in cumulative conflict within the processes.
• If processes are unclear, accumulated conflicts at higher levels will appear at people level.
Therefore, it is crucial to establish absolute clarity at each level and to put in place a foundation of
shared commitment by installing ownership of and commitment to those goals across the team
and by identifying and addressing any issues which restrict the team from reaching their goals.
Source: http://www.systemic-excellence-group.com/sites/default/files/raue_tang_weiland_wenzlik_2013_the_grpi_model_an_approach_for_team_development.pdf

Futsal, basketball and ... padded parkour? Sounds like a strange three-sport athlete, and a perfect model for kids.

From: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/11/opinion/sports-should-be-childs-play.html

We should urge kids to avoid hyperspecialization and instead sample a variety of sports through at least age 12.

Nearly a third of youth athletes in a three-year longitudinal study led by Neeru Jayanthi, director of primary care sports medicine at Loyola University in Chicago, were highly specialized — they had quit multiple sports in order to focus on one for more than eight months a year — and another third weren’t far behind. Even controlling for age and the total number of weekly hours in sports, kids in the study who were highly specialized had a 36 percent increased risk of suffering a serious overuse injury. Dr. Jayanthi saw kids with stress fractures in their backs, arms or legs; damage to elbow ligaments; and cracks in the cartilage in their joints.

In the Loyola study, sport diversification had a protective effect. But in case health risks alone aren’t reason enough for parents to ignore the siren call of specialization, diversification also provides performance benefits.

Kids who play multiple “attacking” sports, like basketball or field hockey, transfer learned motor and anticipatory skills — the unconscious ability to read bodies and game situations — to other sports. They take less time to master the sport they ultimately choose.

A Swedish study of sub-elite and elite tennis players — including five who ranked among the top 15 in the world — found that those who topped out at as sub-elites dropped all other sports by age 11. Eventual elites developed in a “harmonious club environment without greater demands for success,” and played multiple sports until age 14.

USA Hockey (which has barred checking in youth games) recently invited adults to play on a 310-by-130-foot ice rink to show them what it’s like for an 8-year-old to play on a regulation rink. The grown-ups’ assessments: “too much time between the action”; “it’s hard to communicate because everyone is spread out so far”; “you end up spending a lot of time in open space.”

Google Tips

Google Keep
ALAN HENRY on LIFEHACKER explains the difference between Google Keep (screwdriver) and Evernote (cordless drill)

Kristin Burnham posted 10 Great Google Apps Tips and I found a few to be useful:

Mute email conversations
"Mute conversations" is a feature that prevents email threads from reappearing in your inbox.


Add events to your calendar from Gmail
If you use Gmail to make plans or schedule meetings, you can quickly add them to your Google Calendar.

Enable text (SMS) appointment reminders
Plug in your details -- such as phone number and wireless carrier -- and Google will text you a reminder before your meeting.

Difference between man and machine?

I think, the only difference between man and machine is that machine is quiet when well-lubricated. - Eugene Goostman

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/humanity-good-run-article-1.1823072#ixzz34FDnMrDU

http://www.princetonai.com/bot/

What is search? SEO vs SEM

Long conversions on what search means when people talk about search can lead to missed opportunity (waste in lean speak) if the folks have different definitions of search.

What?  Don't think this happens?  Just start with asking what SEO, Search Engine Optimization, and SEM, Search Engine Marketing, means to the next person, but be warned, it may be a long conversation if you haven't agreed on the definitions. Generally (defined as a Google search for SEO vs SEM), most sites in the field of search have agreed that SEO is the activities an organization performs on its' web presence to enhance the ranking on one or more search engine. SEM tends to be a bit more contentious about the 'real' definition and a reference to 'paid search' is usually present with the debate about if not paid activities should be included in the definition.

My favorite definitions are:
SEO=Organic Search Efforts
SEM=Paid Search Efforts

Using Google as an example, if you have paid for an ad or keyword, you have used SEM; if you have adjusted content, meta data, or links, you have used SEO.

Why is this important?

~500 algorithm changes every year by Google (Source: Google post, Search Engine Watch, Moz)
SEO is big (Search Engine Journal, Positionly)
SEM is big $18.4B in 2013 (IAB)

How much are you spending for #1?  How much is #1 worth? (Previous Post, Marketing Ninja's research).

Time to gear up for change (or is it change of the change?).

Customer Loyalty – What is it? How Can You Measure and Manage It?

Loyalty Research Center has a good definition of customer loyalty on their website:

Loyalty can be defined as customers continuing to believe that one organization’s products/services offer remains their best option. It meets their value proposition whatever that may be. They take that offer whenever faced with that purchasing decision.

Moreover, loyalty means hanging in there even when there may be a problem because the organization has been good to them in the past and addresses issues when they arise. It means that they do not seek out competitors and, when approached by competitors, are not interested. It also means being willing to spend the time and effort to communicate with the organization so as to build on past successes and overcome any weaknesses.

In a nutshell, loyalty means a customer wants to do business with you and does.

Source: http://www.loyaltyresearch.com/insights/thought-perspectives/customer-loyalty-what-is-it-how-can-you-measure-and-manage-it/