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Social CRM Power to the People!  Innovative Applications Driven by Social Intelligence. https://blogs.oracle.com/socialcrm/feed/entries/atom 2014-03-03T21:49:19+00:00 Apache Roller https://blogs.oracle.com/socialcrm/entry/esteban_kolsky_asks_what_oracl Esteban Kolsky Asks What Oracle Thinks of Social Business Tara Roberts 2010-11-17T15:00:04+00:00 2010-11-17T15:20:23+00:00
Esteban Kolsky, a CRM thought leader and the founder of ThinkJar, an advisory and research think-thank focused on Customer Strategies, recently asked Oracle for our views on social business.

<big>What Does Oracle Think of Social Business?</big>
 Posted in November 9, 2010 ¬ 00:35h.Esteban Kolsky

I referred last week to the project I started where I asked several vendors for their impressions on Social Business. This is the first delivery of that project, and we are kicking it off with Oracle. Below is the unedited response I received from them.

1) Where is the Social world going to be in 12 months? 24 months?

Social media monitoring will be mainstream

While consumers have increasingly made conversing on social media a norm, a majority of companies are still waiting to see what they should do. This will change in the next 12 months. Companies will recognize that social media is a powerful channel that they need to support. More and more companies will monitor, engage, and measure their participation in social media.

Companies will look for return on their social media investments

In the next 24 months, companies will look for direct correlation between investments in social media and results. Companies will seek beyond knowing who is talking about their brands and what they are saying. They will seek to gain more complete view of their customers. As more search engines integrate with social media, referral based sales will increase. Companies acting on intelligence on social data combined with transactional data will gain competitive advantage.

People will voice privacy concerns

As more people recognize that companies are monitoring their conversations, they will voice their concerns about privacy. Organizations will need to consider privacy concerns in developing their social strategy to ensure that their brand image is preserved.

2) How can businesses not be left behind?

 Companies must accept social media as a major new channel

Organizations will need to have presence on social media. Organizations will need to develop and execute on a comprehensive social strategy that includes proper plans for people, process and technology.

Organizations must recognize the power of social media. With social media, consumers are empowered to share their opinions, experiences, and issues any time of the day. Conversations can be magnified by social media. A negative act or lack of proper response by a company can be viewed again and again.

Companies must embrace social media as a channel and integrate it to their processes to ensure delivery of consistent customer experience.

3) What is going to happen in three years and beyond in the world of social?

Mobile will be a big force

More people will participate in social networks via their mobile devices than from their desktops.

Social network data portability will become a reality

People will be able to port their social network data and control where they make their content available.

Privacy concerns will need to be addressed

Privacy concerns will likely manifest in new legislations and policies that companies need to adhere to when monitoring and utilizing their customers' social data.

Marketing focus will shift to personalized, location -based, and influencer marketing

Companies will be able to leverage intelligence gained from social media data analysis to execute influencer-based marketing campaigns more effectively and to provide more personalized experiences. As a part of personalized campaign strategy, marketers will leverage location-based content to increase response rates.

To read Esteban's blog, click here.

 https://blogs.oracle.com/socialcrm/entry/lets_get_social_at_oracle_open Let's Get Social at Oracle Open World 2010 Tara Roberts 2010-09-07T11:48:26+00:00 2010-09-07T11:57:43+00:00
Come and check out these sessions highlighting innovations in Social CRM at Oracle Open World 2010.

<big>S317661: General Session - CRM: A Year on the Leading Edge </big>
 <big>Monday, September 20th | 3:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. | Moscone West, Room 3002/3004</big>

The companies that attract and keep the most customers most always win the war, but what's less clear is the single most effective path to victory. In the past year, Oracle has conducted extensive research and spent hundreds of hours with organizations spanning 22 industries in order to define the newest CRM best practices. Attend this CRM general session with Anthony Lye to learn about the top five innovations that enable companies of all types and sizes to gain a competitive edge. Lye and his team also demonstrate how Oracle's newest CRM capabilities bring these innovations to life.

 <big>S317687: Social CRM Applications: Strategy Overview and Roadmap </big>
 <big>Monday, September 20th | 2:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. | Moscone West, Room 3006</big>

Changing customer expectations and challenging economic environments mean that it is more important than ever to have insight into what your customers want. Increase customer intelligence in your organization by extending CRM strategies into business communities. This session provides an overview of the overall social strategy for Oracle CRM and highlights the product roadmap for Oracle's Social CRM applications.

 <big>S317688: Deep Dive: Social Capabilities in Oracle CRM</big>
 <big>Thursday, September 23rd | 1:30 p.m. - 2:30 p.m. | Moscone West, Room 3007
 </big>
 To retain customers in this era of the social customer, your organization needs to engage in more-valuable activities to strengthen customer relationships. This session showcases the social capabilities in Oracle CRM that enable your organization to build lasting customer relationships, improve business outcomes, and facilitate secure community collaboration. Learn about exciting new social capabilities, and see demonstrations of social features in Oracle CRM.

 https://blogs.oracle.com/socialcrm/entry/the_cloud_and_crm The Cloud and CRM firstname.lastname@example.com 2009-12-14T03:17:59+00:00 2009-12-14T03:19:34+00:00
I attended a Cloud Business Summit last week in London, UK. It amazes me how Cloud as a generic 'offering' still suffers from the lack of a clear and universal definition. This was something my colleague Anthony Lye covered during his speech at the event. Here is an extract from what Anthony had to say on the topic:

"Cloud Computing has existed, in one guise or another, for almost 10 years. Despite this, there remains significant hype around the cloud as well as confusion as to exactly what it involves. While there isn't a universally agreed definition of Cloud Computing, at its most basic level the cloud simply consists of servers attached to a network, delivering storage, applications and hardware as services over the internet. These servers may sit inside an organization's firewall and operate as a 'private Cloud' or they may run on networks within an external environment, in what's known as a 'public Cloud'.

Do you agree? Is the confusion holding back investments or are the benefits of Cloud clear enough to encourage mass adoption?

Let me know your thoughts. If you want to read the full article you can read it via www.businesscloud9.com/sponsororacle.

 https://blogs.oracle.com/socialcrm/entry/oracle_social_crm_applications Oracle social CRM applications release 3 is now available Tara Roberts 2009-08-22T13:33:18+00:00 2009-08-22T21:20:09+00:00
Oracle social CRM applications release 3 is now available and includes the release of Oracle CRM Sales Campaigns On Demand and enhancements to Oracle CRM Sales Library On Demand and Oracle CRM Sales Prospector On Demand. The newest release of Oracle social CRM applications enables increased collaboration and sales effectiveness, resulting in higher productivity, shorter sales cycle and increased sales. Oracle social CRM applications take advantage of each user's social relationships to build a larger collective community with which to share, learn, and interact. Sales users are able to get a quick view of activities in their social networks such as recently published content and posting from other members.

With Oracle CRM Sales Campaigns On Demand, users can determine the best email templates and images to adopt based on user ratings, reviews and historical response rates. Sales users can create and send professional quality HTML campaigns and track the success of individual campaigns. Sales users can manage their contacts and groups for targeted campaigns. They can also honor customers' preferences to opt-out of receiving emails and comply with the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 and other privacy and marketing laws. Sales users can harness the collective experience of their networks to create effective sales campaigns with Oracle Sales Campaigns On Demand.

Oracle CRM Sales Library On Demand allows users to easily share, search, preview, and select content from a collection of sales assets to build more successful, targeted presentations and messages. In Oracle social CRM release 3, Oracle CRM Sales Library On Demand introduces many exciting capabilities, including integration with Oracle CRM On Demand Release 16. Oracle CRM Sales Library On Demand also extends its support for different document types. This release makes available a powerful new feature that enforces compliance with crucial access policies. Enhancements to tags, filters and upload have also been introduced in this release. Sales users can spend more time in front of their customers and less time looking for content by leveraging winning sales assets that exist in their social networks.

Oracle CRM Sales Campaign On Demand, Oracle CRM Sales Library On Demand and Oracle CRM Sales Prospector On Demand can be accessed at www.sales.com.

 https://blogs.oracle.com/socialcrm/entry/when_you_give_people_easier_wa "When you give people easier ways to share information, more good things will happen." john.vakoc 2009-03-23T07:32:45+00:00 2009-03-23T07:51:20+00:00
I watched a talk given by Seth Godin over the weekend. Seth described the inadequacies of broadcast marketing, specifically as it relates to television. The volume of information that is available and pushed on people everyday means that people have less time per topic to deal with the incoming flood of information. The average person has become very good at ignoring the average subject.

In the end, whether a business or personal conversation, I don't want to broadcast to the average person and risk being ignored. I want to have a discussion with people who share the same interests and passions: friends, innovators, early adopters, hyper-influencers; people who want information and want to participate in the conversation. If I can succeed in establishing a rapport with this group, they will in turn influence their friends, co-workers and their social media followers.

Near the end of Seth's talk, I finally noticed one of the footnotes next to the video: Filmed in 2003. I was shocked – he seems to be describing the role of social media today, yet this was long before Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other players shaped how I get information. The influence of social technologies is not a solution looking for a problem, but they are addressing a real problem with communication today.

Social media has done several things to make it easier to communicate:
 • Enabled individuals to participate in the conversation, not just the marketing machines of television, print, website owners
 • Enabled individuals to subscribe or follow people, groups and topics they are interested in. Contrast this with email where you are deciding what the audience is interested in. With email you can deliver the message to specific people, but there's a good chance it will be ignored.
 • Simplified the means of conversation. The free form nature of blog posts means we don't need to conform to a preset communication format. The 140 character limit on twitter or other micro-blogging forums may seem like a constraint, but it makes it focus in the message and not the format.

"When you give people easier ways to share information, more good things will happen. This quote, and the title of this post, is from Evan Williams, CEO and Founder of Twitter. Social media enables a conversation with an engaged audience; this is a good thing for your business.

 https://blogs.oracle.com/socialcrm/entry/tweeting_for_a_kogi_truck Tweeting for a Kogi truck J. John Kim 2009-03-20T18:09:45+00:00 2009-03-20T19:02:24+00:00
Long time, no write. Last time I wrote, in "Following the Footsteps of the Top Sales Reps" I wrote about the use of social input in prospecting leads in sales. That use case involved analyzing structured data for socially-tuned sales recommendations. Outside the sales domain, social applications are making increasingly significant impact in how we live, connect with one another, make decisions, and solve problems. People, or at least my peers, have become much more trusting and reliant on social input available on the internet.

For example, I am listening to Pandora on my Blackberry as I write. Pandora on Blackberry rocks. It is an innovation that clearly disrupts iTunes and iPod. With Pandora, I am letting people like me to refine and play the songs that I might like. Does this mean I trust my peers more than myself? Perhaps. By partaking in the voting process, I can also give back to the community as well as to myself. It is a good thing Apple has added a recommendation feature.

In another example, in the customer support arena, when getting answers to everyday issues, Yahoo Answers is a great way to zero in on the best solutions. Yahoo Answers is a fantastic site that motivates community members to
 provide answers to one another by awarding points and reputation levels for activities.

Companies are starting to take note and have introduced similar capabilities to engage their customers. In the customer support arena, Samsung has such an example. I have actually "enjoyed" debugging issues with Samsung technicians and other Samsung owners on CNET's Samsung forum. I enjoyed being in the virtual company of the people who have run into similar issues. More often a lurker than an active poster, I benefited from referencing solutions eventually arrived at by the original posters.

In addition to purpose-built web 2.0-inspired enterprise sites, micro-blogging sites like Twitter also provide opportunities for companies can listen to, and possibly, have conversations with, their current and target customer segments.

Speaking of listening to the crowd, I found this New York Times piece on Twitter words used during this year's Super Bowl very interesting. As people use their favorite channels to express themselves and converse with others, companies can set up listening posts to discern changes in sentiments, and shifts in perceptions and preferences in their target demographic segments.

It is almost dinner time. I wonder where that Kogi truck is headed. Ah, 4100 in Silverlake. Too bad I am more than 300 miles away. I will plant some key words in my tweets. Maybe the Kogi truck guys will hear me. My geotag should say NorCal.

 https://blogs.oracle.com/socialcrm/entry/joining_the_team Joining the Social Team eric.ho 2009-01-23T09:23:47+00:00 2009-01-23T11:01:20+00:00
I started work as part of the Oracle Social CRM applications PM team immediately after OOW 2008. Prior to joining, I discussed the opportunity with a few non-Oracle folks:

Here are a few snippets:
 - "Sounds innovative…this doesn't sound like Oracle..." - a friend who founded a B-B start-up (that failed)
 - "Social apps...like Facebook for Oracle?!...crazy..." - my niece who is an IT consultant for one of those Firms
 - "Invite me when you get the application going...I'll be your friend…MySpace-like, right?" - an ex-consultant co-worker

Anyway, I further described the applications' intention of leveraging social information (e.g. blogs, wikis, ratings) to create more engaging and meaningful relationships between customers and a companies/products. I mentioned that the applications are envisioned to: require no training, be innovative and functional, and be sexy in appearance. I left out "sexy" when I was discussing this with my niece though. In the end, the folks above, as well as others, seemed genuinely excited about the idea/opportunity and for me!

From an application vision perspective, believe Oracle's Social CRM vision epitomizes hockey legend, Wayne Gretzy's quote: "Skate to where the puck is going, not to where it is."

A coworker also asked, "Do you really believe in this Social CRM thing?". I said, "I do...". I didn't tell my wife I said that though...

 https://blogs.oracle.com/socialcrm/entry/i_didnt_have_time_to_make_a_si I didn't have time to make a simple program, so I made a complicated one instead Richard Sands 2009-01-14T07:13:48+00:00 2009-01-16T08:30:36+00:00
I've always like the quote from Mark Twain "I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead". At first it didn't seem to make sense. Then I realised it's an observation that the better you understand something, the more succinctly you can express it. So unless you take the time to think about the contents before you write a letter it's liable to be a long meandering letter. It also implies that the short letter is superior to the long one. Except of course he said it much more concisely than I have.

This applies to software too, possibly even more so, there's a great article by Andriy Solovey applying it to software development. I believe it applies just as much to software's functionality.

I've spent years working on traditional Enterprise CRM & ERP packages, huge, immensely powerful software suites with a staggering range of functionality. But their very size and complexity is also their biggest hurdle to adoption in that they're difficult to implement and maintain, and their flexibility makes it hard to realise their potential benefits. This syndrome doesn't only apply to big business software, I've recently given rein to my inner geek and replaced my PVR, DVD, CD et al with an HTPC where I run some wonderful software called Media Portal to drive all my TV and audio. This should be digital nirvana, and to me it is as it keeps me entertained for hours. But this is because I'm busy tweaking it, installing plugins, and otherwise trying to get it to work as I think it should, and for some reason the rest of my family don't find this entertaining at all, they don't want all the bells and whistles they just want to watch the telly.

What's this got to do with Social CRM? Well I think it offers an interesting perspective when applied to sucessful social networking sites. The sucessful ones aren't normally the biggest most feature-rich web sites around, they're more focussed on doing a smaller number of things but doing them well. When they do seem to offer wide functionality it's normally though some form of add-in such as the plethora of facebook apps rather then core functionality (and it's interesting to see how facebook's recent redesign put the core social functions to the fore at the expense of those other apps). The most extreme example must be Twitter which does nothing more than allow users to post 140 character updates to anyone interested, yet seems to be taking over the world.

Socialising is part of our everyday existance. Social networking software needs to make it easier for us to do this if it's to have any value. Complex processes don't help this they hinder it. It's always tempting to add new functionality, and techies always like more options to play with. But with software, and perhaps especiallty with Web 2.0 software,we always need to keep focussed on making the core functionality just right. For me this means not being afraid to stop doing and spend more time thinking.

But this blog's probably far too long already, so there's just room to mention a delicious update to Mark Twain's message you can find at XKCD which says it better than I ever could - and with much fewer words ;)

 https://blogs.oracle.com/socialcrm/entry/not_just_the_software Not just the software Rob Knight 2008-12-02T12:51:13+00:00 2008-12-02T12:55:17+00:00
As many of you have no doubt realised by now, we moderate any comments we receive on the Social CRM blog. After my last blog entry I received a number of comments, some genuine and some not. One of those false comments did however make me think, so I reproduce it below. I have to say that the following is a fake, it is not a genuine comment attributable to the claimed source, which I have removed:

"We have a managerial retention problem and low customer satisfaction. I can see Social CRM playing a big part in my organisation to turn things. How would you start deploying Social CRM in a large, disillusioned and potentially dangerous organisation?
 Thanks, Mike"

 Now, this comment in itself is not a serious question, but I can use it to illustrate a point: just "getting social" will not fix problems in itself. Like any software, it is another tool that can be used to address problems or capitalise on an opportunity.

Simply knowing that your customers (or, supporters) are unhappy does not address the reason why. The attitude of the company (or club) and its officials must be oriented toward dealing with the feedback, both positive and negative. This of course is not a new problem, but the increasing take-up of social networking actually means that these issues can be made far more public than before. An advantage of the social network in the above case would have been to bring the knowledge to the organisation faster. This is only an advantage if the organisation is prepared to deal with the information, of course.

I am currently in the market for a new bathroom after a weekend of serious demolition (I can wholeheartedly recommend Makita power tools & the Red Hot Chili Peppers for your demolition needs). Many of those that know me will understand I just can't help myself – if it's there, then it's there to be knocked down and reduced to so much dust and rubble. Anyway, prior to the destruction phase, I was doing a little research into the sort of bathroom I wanted and found a range I thought would suit.

Now, this may be old-fashioned, but I like to see what I'm buying, so I found this manufacturer has a web site upon which was a link for stockists; but it was "coming soon". The warning should have been there, any company who ultimately sells products to the public and has a web site, needs to get the basics right. Frankly, being able to see and touch the product is pretty basic, hence a principle requirement should be to have a working stockist list, integrated preferably to be kept up to date.

Not to be deterred, I pinged off an email to the "contact us" link and carried on thinking about important things like pipe sizes, software and integration technologies. After a few days, I realised there had not been a reply to my enquiry – another one of the basics that really does need to work. At this stage, my thinking was more along the lines of "this manufacturer really should not have a web site at all", rather than "where can I buy this stuff". Anyway, I called the phone number on the same "contact us" page and actually got to speak to a real person and very nice she was too. So I came away from the phone with a list of local places that I could go to and see the product. It wasn't even that hard for her, there was a list of postal codes and associated resellers. I should have taken the opportunity to see why it was I had to phone for this basic information, but at the time there were too many other distractions to get into a protracted conversation about email and web sites. At this point, we are still talking Web 1.0 and have not even gotten into social and other Web 2.0 aspects.

So, the important thing here is that the company needs to service the communication channels on offer. The thing with email is that it is easily ignored, it's not like the customer or prospect is stood there in the shop after all. By introducing social networking into this means a public discussion can be had and that in itself means there should be more motivation on the part of the supplier. Of course, without the will to address it, where is the point?

Implementing socially orientated software is a strategy and not software alone. Like pretty much any other software tool, the hearts and minds of its users must be on-board with the idea. But in the case of "social" software, even the hearts and minds of those that do not use the software can be necessary for success:
 - whose job is it to "monitor" the conversations
 - what action should be taken, if any and by whom (they may not be a user)
 - how should the social metadata be interpreted

The list could go on and on. The point is, don't ignore the non-software aspect because ultimately the software is a tool and the people do the business.

As a footnote to this, I actually prefer dealing directly with people as opposed to email, forums, etc. I appear to be one of the few that laments the passing of the human travel agent to be replaced with a travel portal. But then that's me and at this point I really should say that these are my opinions and not necessarily those of Oracle Corporation.

 https://blogs.oracle.com/socialcrm/entry/how_saasy_are_you How SaaS-y are you ? manoj.kashiramka 2008-10-31T20:09:47+00:00 2008-10-31T20:12:11+00:00
There are different schools of thought on what makes a true SaaS provider. Some believe that the first level of multi-tenancy where all the customers reside on a single instance down to the database schema level is the real SaaS provider. Others believe in a more hybrid approach that allows the customer to choose whether they want to reside in the same instance as other customers or prefer to have their own instance. At the end of the day, if I am a customer do I really care which SaaS model is implemented by the provider as long as the provider secures my data and ensures system uptime and performance that my business demands. Of course, there might be exceptions where for privacy reasons a customer might want his own instance.

This leads to the other point, which is if I am starting a SaaS company, what would be my strategy. Should I take a top down approach and build the applications to SaaS standards or should I take a bottoms-up approach and design my SaaS foundation/infrastructure first and then design my apps to run on this foundation. I would think the latter would be more beneficial since once you lay your foundation, it's more difficult to change. The level of abstraction as one move up the stack to the applications makes it easier to change.

So, then the real debate about who is a true SaaS provider should not be about the level of multi-tenancy but more about which provider can give me the uptime, performance, security and application functionality . Not that the multi-tenancy debate is less interesting or compelling but all it does is make for a good discussion.

That brings us to the core of SaaS which is the foundation as I call it. The foundation constitutes not just the infrastructure but also the shared components that are built on top of the infrastructure which the applications can consume. I will delve on the layers of SaaS foundation in my next blog. Until then, be safe, be SaaS-y.
 https://blogs.oracle.com/socialcrm/entry/finding_value_in_social_networ Finding value in Social Networks danny.lui 2008-10-26T21:26:11+00:00 2008-10-26T21:27:12+00:00
This is my first blog, and I had a hard time thinking of what I should write about. I have never blogged before because I am not sure what is there I can bring value to. At the same time, I'm looking at the social networking sites that I participate in, and what value do I get out of it. I do not have time to search for what I need or read a lot of information. So what value does social networks bring?

Obviously, social networking have different values to different people. So how can a social network bring value to the masses so that more people will join and participate.

I look at how I use social networks. I think the key is to not target the masses but to target only those that brings value to them. I look at how I use LinkedIn. It is a great network but what do I do after adding these contacts to my contact list and joining social groups. For me, I didn't find much use for it as an engineer. After awhile, I have stopped checking it or updating it. But for another friend who's business is in consulting and trying to grow his business, it became a valuable tool for him to try to network his way into a company. He has gotten some business from networking with different people.

For me, a social network will bring value when it can aggregate all the information to me and forecast what I will like to know based upon my interests. Bringing attention to news or information that I would be interested in learning. Show me all the topics, blogs and etc that most interest me daily and refresh it based upon my participation during the previous week. In other words, push the data to me so I don't have to mine it in the networks. I would like a social network that will help me find connections, interests, information that is relevant for me instead of me having to mine that data.

The value of social networking is to help find data that interest me the most and constantly keep me up to date on the latest changes that is of value to me. Social networks should be able to adopt to different ways that the users uses the network. It should provide multi-dimensional interaction instead of a contact list. I want to be able to network with people outside of my network, outside the country that I live in and speaking a language that I can't understand.

What else do I look for in a social network? I look for the one that is easy to use. That provide good search capability so I can easily find information that I need. I am not interested in contact networking, but more of mining data from the network. I look for the ones with cool interface that keeps me intrigued and a mobile application is a plus.

So how does it keep me in and not lose me? Continuous innovation with new capabilities, more topics, integration to other networks. Find it all in one place so I keep coming back to it as a starting point.

At the end of the day, it is the people and content that makes a social network successful. So an innovative network that provides tools to help bring knowledgeable experts to the network and retain them to actively participate in the network.
 https://blogs.oracle.com/socialcrm/entry/the_value_of_social_metadata_1 The Value of Social Metadata marta.studinger 2008-10-15T07:34:59+00:00 2008-10-15T07:52:24+00:00
Web 2.0 has made content easily available via wikis, blogs, RSS, podcasts, social networks and more. While it's great to have so much content easily available it can be overwhelming. How can I get to relevant content without wasting hours looking for it?

While its only part of the solution, social metadata can help organize and navigate to relevant content. In this context, social metadata is data added to content by people other than the content creator, such as tags, ratings, votes, comments, etc. Examples can be found everywhere on the web; ratings and comments on amazon.com, tagging in digg.com.

In the past accessing data in an enterprise application was controlled by an engineer who developed a predefined path through the application. An example I remember using was to display a list of available content or links to the user. The list could be narrowed by selecting one keyword from a drop down box. Keywords were typically created by the team implementing the system and didn't always represent the way the users would describe the content.

Now, our social applications are taking advantage of social metadata so that a user can dynamically create a navigational link to content. For example, I can tag a presentation that is relevant to me and choose the tags I believe best describe that presentation. The keywords I choose help organize and categorize the content in a way that's meaningful to me. Later I or my colleagues can use those tags to locate data using meaningful keywords.

Using social metadata in a social network with a focused purpose (be it a product, team or region) can help users navigate to relevent content even quicker because members can use social metadata to provide context and relevant description to the content.
 https://blogs.oracle.com/socialcrm/entry/global_class_computing Global Class Computing Richard Sands 2008-09-17T12:35:02+00:00 2008-09-21T18:58:38+00:00
I attended Gartner's Web Innovation Summit in LA last week. Like most such events I found I spent some of the time wondering what it all had to do with me, some of the time wondering what on earth they guy on stage was talking about, but thankfully spending quite a lot of the time thinking "hey, now that's an interesting idea".

One of the ideas that resonated with me was the concept of Global Class computing, much of which came from a conversation with Dave Cearly of Gartner. Global Class computing is another categorization of computing service just as Departmental and Enterprise class computing were before. I've spent most of my career in Enterprise class computing and I'm convinced of it's benefits. It offers (or should offer) a robust platform for computing services together with a stringent set of practices for managing that platform. Done correctly it should offer world class standards of performance and availability. So what do we need Global Class computing for?

First we need to look at what Global Class computing is intended for, which is Cloud Computing and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). At least according to Gartner these constitute a revolution in computing, and there's a lot of people lining up to agree with them. The fundamental difference being that you do not own, install and manage your IT resources yourself, instead someone else does this for you, and you subscribe to services to access these resources. The examples closest to my heart right now are the Social CRM products I'm working on. These are typical SaaS products, to use them you just sign up, point your browser at them, and go. No need to install anything.

But SaaS and cloud computing still need to have all the traditional IT resources somewhere, there still needs to be a data center with fans whirring and racks of faceless servers running databases and applications. There also still needs to be the processes and people to look after these. However there are also new challenges placed on those IT resources. To run hosted services you need to work on the basis that:
 • Your users could be anywhere, anytime
 There are no barriers to use of the service
 • You have no control over your users or how they access your service
 You can't rely on your IT department to provide a standard PC that you run on.
 • Everything is delivered over the internet
 You can't guarantee network performance
 • You should assume you're operating in a hostile environment
 Your users' systems could host viruses.
 Any system exposed over the internet is subject to attack
 • Your delivery must be massively elastic and scalable.
 If you're successful then you're liable to experience rapid growth,
 which you must immediately be able to accommodate.

And these factors make up the core components of Global Class computing. For me they encompass many of the issues I've been facing as a SaaS supplier. It's really about providing a quality service without control. You're no longer in control of who uses your services, where they do it from, and how they do it.

One thing it took me a while to recognize is that Global Class computing is not a level "above" Enterprise class the way Enterprise class is "above" Departmental class. Indeed in some ways Global class is below Enterprise class. For example an Enterprise class deployment will typically aim for "Four nines" (99.99%) or "Five nines" (99.999%) availability, whereas cloud vendors often only offer "Two nines" (99%) availability. This is probably because they have usually come from companies such as Amazon & Google which have been focused on providing services to consumers. It seems the rules learned for Enterprise Computing in terms of the value of process and procedures, rules which came out of the mainframe world, need to be re-learned by each IT generation. I remember the client-server wave going through the same learning curve.

Global Class computing is focused on a different objective to Enterprise Class. It focuses on more flexible services as opposed to the rigor that is required for Enterprise Class. And this is what leaped out at me. I believe in the value of SaaS and cloud computing, and that it offers great potential to Enterprise IT. I believe that Global Class computing exists and is necessary for this to be successful. But if a company is going to trust the provision of their IT services to a cloud or other SaaS platform they're not going to give up on the benefits of Enterprise Class computing that they're used to. They need that sweet spot where they get the flexibility of Global Class with the rigor of Enterprise Class. This is where anyone hoping to sell SaaS or cloud computing to the Enterprise need to be.
 https://blogs.oracle.com/socialcrm/entry/by_way_of_introduction By way of introduction... Rob Knight 2008-08-22T06:51:33+00:00 2008-08-27T06:30:25+00:00
My name's Rob Knight and I join the Social CRM product management team from the Application Expert Services (formerly Siebel Expert Services) team here at Oracle. For the best part of a decade, I have been involved with many different aspects of the Siebel CRM application, including integration on both a transactional and a bulk level. So I have seen deployments using batch and messaging solutions including middleware such as IBM WebSphere MQ.

Being a Siebel Technical Architect has meant working on wide ranging issues, including the performance challenges of high volume and high population environments. In these situations, rich features or complex processes sometimes have to give way to efficiency and simplicity - not always an easy message to get across.

So, I am onto my new role with the Social CRM applications. I am looking at how the new Social CRM applications can be integrated with a myriad of different data and functional sources spanning internal business information sources and external ones. Internal sources of information would be your existing sales and provisioning systems to capture data, such as closed opportunities and shipped orders, either on-premise or not.

 These new ways of visualizing and working with sales information will need mechanisms to keep them fresh. Poor or inaccurate data will lead to all sorts of potential problems and not just for the users of these applications, but their customers and prospects as well. I certainly form a low opinion of someone who tries to sell me something I already have or they have already told me I do not qualify for.

Effective data integration is required to prevent these potential issues as well as ensuring the collection of this information is completed timely. My goal is to address just that using a combination of Oracle technology and the support of our partners, both new and old.

 https://blogs.oracle.com/socialcrm/entry/too_social_1 Too Social? Richard Sands 2008-08-15T02:59:35+00:00 2008-08-15T06:39:14+00:00
Like most things in life, success in social networking usually depends on what you put into it. If you keep your updates frequent and relevant then they'll be more interesting to others. But putting your life out there can have risks too.

I found out about some of these while talking to a colleague from an IT security consultancy (we use them to independently assess our security practices). However as he explained the security risks with social networking sites are not necessarily technical. Indeed the rapid uptake of social networking applications has led to the biggest current growth in security attacks.

The problem isn't necessarily that social apps themselves are full of security flaws, it's just that the sort of information that social networking encourages you to share can also be used to access more than you expected. As the David Porter stated in a BBC article on these dangers entitled: Cyber thieves target social sites:
 "It is remarkable that people use social networking websites to publish details about their lives, loves, jobs and hobbies to the entire world that they would not dream of sharing with a stranger in a bar, such data is invaluable to identity fraudsters."

A simple example is your personal history. Most social networking sites want to know something about your past (schools, jobs, etc), and by sharing these you make it easier for friends and colleagues to find you. However harmless looking items such as your first school or the town where you were born are also often used as security questions by other sites. At one point I found that of the four security questions I was asked by my online bank, the answers to three of them could be found out from my public profile on one social networking site.

There can be other social engineering vulnerabilities too. For example after landing that job you've been after for ages it's natural to put the news out there. but knowing your name, title, and that you're a new starter at BleedingEdgeInc is enough information for some effective identity theft scams. New starters often need to ask for help and no-one knows them enough to verify whether a caller is who they say they are. So a call to the HR or IT help line of your new company pretending to be you could get access to all sorts of info about the company's systems.

None of these risks are reasons against using social networking apps (and as Brian Krebs warns by not using social networks you can be at risk by letting someone impersonate you!). They are reasons for putting some good basic practices in place. There are many sites out there with sound advice, for example security company Sophos say this about Facebook settings. I find four simple rules help me:

• Don't publish anything you wouldn't be happy to tell a stranger. Assume everything you publish will be public.
 • Don't put information on social networking sites which is also used to identify you on other sites such as security questions. Either give different answers to security questions (when asked for your first school''s name give your first pet's name, or something like that), or just don't publish the information in your profile.
 • Don't accept friend requests from anyone you don't know.
 • Limit the visibility of your personal information so it's only available to people you know. Don't just accept the default privacy settings.

I think it's nicely summed up by Paul King in the BBC article I referenced earlier: "There were a lot of benefits to using social networking sites ... and the downsides should not put people off using them...It's about trying to manage risk rather than avoid risk", and managing risk is what what we do all the time. There was a talk at the recent Black Hat security conference with the great title Satan is on my Friends List, so just be sure it's the devil you know.

 https://blogs.oracle.com/socialcrm/entry/knowledgeable_sales_people_produce_happy_customers Knowledgeable Sales People Produce Happy Customers! Tara Roberts 2008-08-14T23:15:15+00:00 2008-08-14T23:19:29+00:00
I would like to introduce you to our guest blogger, Charlie Berger, Sr. Director of Product Management for Oracle Data Mining Technologies. The predictive analytics capabilities of Oracle Data Mining power Oracle Sales Prospector. Charlie will be providing insights on predictive analytics as a guest blogger for Oracle Social CRM blog so please come back to check out what he has to say.

Oracle Data Mining's Predictive Analytics Power Next-Generation CRM Applications

As a consumer, I'm sure that you have all received telemarketing calls. They usually arrive during dinner. "Hello, I'm calling from … I'd like to make you aware of our new program. By accepting our special offer, you can take advantage of all of the benefits….". The script generally continues to point out the many rewards and conveniences that will be yours if you accept the special offer.

The problem with this approach is that 99% of the time, you are not at all interested nor have any need for the product or the service being offered. Sadly, your name appeared on a "list". You were selected to receive the phone call and "offer" because you probably bought a product somewhere else and now someone in marketing thinks that you might be a candidate for their product and offer. Often, very little else is known about you. Traditional mass selling involves many calls being made with the hope that pitching a generic "offer" will generate a sufficient number of positive responses. This broad mass marketing approach requires a large number of suspects to yield positive net results. In truth, it only makes the majority of customers who are not interested in your "offer" (99%) very unhappy.

On the other hand, if the "offer" happens to be for the right product or service, come at the right time and is accompanied with the right supporting information, then it is an entirely different scenario. You might actually take the time to listen and consider the proposal. You might even thank your sales person for helping to anticipate and satisfy your needs.

The key to this presenting the appropriate offer, to the right person, at the right time is predictive analytics. Oracle Social CRM's Sales Prospector is an example of the emerging next-generation of intelligent applications that embed data mining and predictive analytics. Sales Prospector automatically mines past customer demographic and purchase data, find patterns and relationships that it captures as a "predictive model", and then applies that model to suggest next-likely products, associated probabilities, expected sales cycles to close, and references that are most likely to be of interest to the prospective customer.

Businesses already possess volumes of data about their customers. However, without predictive analytics, this data is left underutilized. Predictive analytic models capture the many relationships among numerous pieces of information and, based on previous purchases and activities and can find patterns, relationships and probabilities. Predictive analytics can provide sales people with candidate offers, the likelihood that a prospect will accept the offer, expected purchase amount, time frame to close and customer references that would most likely resonate for the prospective customer. A sales person informed with what a customer has purchased previously and recommended "best offers" of what they are most likely to want to buy makes shorter sales cycles, happier customers and ultimately greater profits.

Oracle Data Mining provides the "analytics inside" Oracle's Social CRM Application and are integrated into a next-generation application that automatically unlocks this customer intelligence. Oracle Data Mining (ODM), an option to Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition, provides twelve in-database machine learning algorithms that enable automated harvesting of "new information, predictions and insights" from CRM data. Sales Prospector leverages this analytical horsepower to deliver predictive analytics and new insights to sales people. Because the data, models and results remain in the Oracle Database, data movement is eliminated, security is maximized and information latency is minimized.

Oracle Data Mining provides in-database predictive analytics that support strategies described in the Harvard Business Review (HBR) article Competing on Analytics [http://www.revenueanalytics.com/pdf/CompetingOnAnalyticsHBR2006.pdf].

Oracle Data Mining is also the analytical engine behind Oracle Open World's Schedule Builder that provides recommendations to Oracle Open World Attendees. More on that and the analytics that power Oracle Social CRM in future blogs.

Charlie Berger

 https://blogs.oracle.com/socialcrm/entry/social_intelligence_part_2 Social Intelligence – Part 2 francisco.casas 2008-08-12T22:37:22+00:00 2009-01-30T14:36:14+00:00
So we continue on the theme of Social Intelligence (SI) with the basic premise that its primary purpose is to add personal value to the elective user such as a sales rep. For a definition of Social Intelligence see http://blogs.oracle.com/socialcrm/2008/07/social_intelligence.html

In this post, let us address a few simple questions: 1) How do you keep that elective sales rep coming back; 2) make them feel that they have some control and; 3) adjust the application to their knowledge of the industry, territory or present events.

Why is control important? I have never met a sales rep that likes being out of control of their destiny. As much as sales reps are naturally social, they are natural control freaks. At least the ones that consistently make their numbers are.

Sales reps cannot control the past; they live in the present and they would really like to control the future so they can take home bigger commission checks. As far as SI is concerned, they can and should control the levers that predict their future.

Let us say that a loan officer at Bank of Sky believes that a customer's "net asset value" is more important in recommending certain loans to customers than the loan officers at Bank of SubPrime. The executive team at Bank of Sky may have an importance of "high" to "net asset value," while Bank of SubPrime may have an importance of "medium". That in itself gives the each bank the ability to add value to their loan agents (sales reps). What about if the loan agents of Bank of Sky believe the importance of "net asset value" should really be "very high". The loan officers of Bank of Sky should be able to override their executives with their anecdotal knowledge by changing the value from "high" to "very high"; over time the "hidden" predictive model will move to "very high", as more and more sales reps express their anecdotal knowledge through their control.

Another example are insurance agents. An agent that sells insurance in New Orleans may decide that a "flood area" designation is more important to their colleagues in Los Angeles. However, the Los Angeles agents feel that "earthquakes" are very important. The agents in each of the Enterprise Social Networks could decide the importance of each attribute, or they should be able to add new attributes to be considered. In this way, not only are they exercising more control, but they are also adjusting the industry model defined by their employer.

What the examples above have shown is the ability of the sales rep to have significant control of how their company does business and how the predictive engine will behave towards them. Indeed, the individual sales reps, can in effect, override their executive team who set guidelines that are often too generic for business or worse, out of touch with reality. The knowledge of the crowd is very powerful, more than that of any executive.

What keeps sales reps coming back? Social Intelligence that learns from them and adjusts to them thereby, providing continuous personal value in changing markets.

I hope you found this useful.

Regards,

Francisco
 https://blogs.oracle.com/socialcrm/entry/introducing_rob Introducing Rob Tara Roberts 2008-08-12T17:35:40+00:00 2008-08-12T17:38:56+00:00
We are pleased to announce our newest team member, Rob Knight. Rob will be responsible for integrations for Social CRM Applications. We are fortunate to have Rob join our team as he brings deep technical knowledge and extensive experience with customer implementations. Please welcome Rob to the Oracle Social CRM team.
 https://blogs.oracle.com/socialcrm/entry/oracle_open_world_2008_1 Oracle Open World 2008 Tara Roberts 2008-08-12T17:05:41+00:00 2008-08-12T17:23:36+00:00
We will be having sessions at Oracle Open World about Social CRM Applications. We would like to discuss what you are interested in hearing versus us coming up with topics that may win your hearts or bore you to death. It would be great if you could leave a comment to let us know what you would like to hear.

Oracle Open World
 September 21 – 25, 2008
 Moscone Center, San Francisco
 http://www.oracle.com/openworld/2008/index.html

Regards,

Tara

 https://blogs.oracle.com/socialcrm/entry/enterprise_20_key_lessons_lear Enterprise 2.0: Key Lessons Learned ching.lee 2008-08-01T08:36:04+00:00 2008-08-01T08:48:46+00:00
According to Forrest research, global spending on Enterprise Web 2.0 will be 4,646 million dollars by year 2013 (Global Enterprise Web 2.0 Spending Forecast by G. Oliver Young, June 23, 2008). Many companies are jumping on the Enterprise 2.0 bandwagon and hoping to become the next MySpace or Facebook in the enterprise space. Buzzes about Enterprise 2.0 have been around since the introduction of Web 2.0. However, according to McKinsey surveys on the business use of Web 2.0 technologies, only 21% of respondents are satisfied with the Enterprise Web 2.0 tools.

How can you make sure your Enterprise 2.0 application or tools will be well accepted and adopted by your end users? By looking at some successful Enterprise 2.0 applications now in the market, I think there are three things they do really well:

1. Focus on what values your product can bring to its target customers.
 This is the rule of thumb for any product to be successful in the market. If we look at some of the Web 2.0 tools, such as Blogs, RSS and Wikis, they are becoming very popular in the enterprise space because companies have a good understanding of their values for business. In the enterprise space, users care more about collaboration and improving productivity. If your products or applications can clearly articulate and deliver its value to an enterprise, from running Email campaigns, to collaborating on a presentation, it will have its place in the market.

2. Foster viral adoption.
 We cannot overlook the social aspect of Enterprise 2.0. Therefore, enabling viral adoption in an Enterprise 2.0 product/application will play a big role in the success of the product/application. This is a lesson that we can learn from Facebook, MySpace and Linkedin in the consumer space. How many times did each of us receive invitations to join someone's social networks, to become someone's friends, or to be added as a connection? Let the informal network within the company work its magic. Coworkers and colleagues will be connected because they choose to be part of the social network, not because their bosses ask them to do so. Take IBM BeeHive as an example, the 'Hive5s" are branded as the "key viral ingredient" by Toby Ward in his blog. (You can find more information about the Hiv5s on his blog). According to Toby, since Beehive's launch last August, more than 35,000 IBMers are registered users of Beehive.

3. Make sure you can impress your early adopters.
 Your early adopters will be the one who give the product a life. They will be creating contents for the followers, sending out invitations to their coworkers and making sure that their social networks are the most active ones. They are intelligent and proactive. Once they see the value in your product, they will be your champions. In addition, the quality of the content they create is indicative of what kind of following they will have. It is important that their voice is heard and their needs are met; so take advantage of their enthusiasm, allow them to leverage the viral aspect of the product to attract new users.

Above are my observations and suggestions. Let me know if you have any feedback.

Ching

 https://blogs.oracle.com/socialcrm/entry/not_just_for_kids_1 Not just for kids Richard Sands 2008-07-26T00:57:54+00:00 2008-07-29T14:58:52+00:00
Hi,
 I'm Richard, I'm the Product Owner for the infrastructure behind the Social CRM products. Working in IT I'm used to people's faces glazing over after they ask what I do, but I hoped working on social networking products might change this. It did, just not as I expected, the reaction I get most now is "isn't that for kids?".

I suppose I should have expected this, the biggest user of social networking in my household is my young daughter. For her these sites are just a natural part of her daily life. My generation's more used to performing it's social networking without the aid of computers. I've been using social networking sites of some form or another since 2001 when I joined friendsreunited. However I don't use them to anything like the extent my daughter does. Of my friends that have tried out social networking sites most seem to have followed the same experience:
 1. Initial interest as they register and explore the site's capabilities.
 2. Find a few friends and link up with them.
 3. Don't find enough friends for the site to work as a social hub, so the account becomes dormant.

This is confirmed by some research by Ofcom in the UK which showed that 78% of adults interviewed didn't use Social Network sites.

So if the majority your friends aren't active users of social networks this raises the question: How can I get my friends active in my social network? And this often changes to whether there's any point to social network sites if can't?

One approach to getting your friends active in your social network is discussed by Ed Yourdon in his blog. Ed suggests that in the future social networks will be as ubiquitous as mobile phones are today. Although I agree with Ed that we should be evangelising social networks and encouraging their use, I'm not agreed with Ed's conclusion that right now there's no hope for persistent non-adopters or his suggestion of leaving them out of his social circle. This is too extreme for me, I'd prefer my social life to be driven by my personal bonds rather than software adoption.

Despite my best attempts I still can't get all my techno-phobe friends to jump on the social networking bandwagon, but I want to keep then part of my life, so what can social networking sites offer me. Well I've found three options that have helped, admittedly with varying degrees of success.

Social Aggregators
 One problem is that there's multiple separate social networking sites, and you'll probably have different friends on different sites. Right now different social networking sites are largely run as separate islands. So if you have some friends hooked on Facebook, and others addicted to MySpace then what can you do? Well, until the walls between the sites come down aggregators such as spokeo and friendfeed can let you track friends across multiple social networking sites, and also to update multiple sites in one action.
 If you're interested Stan Schroder has published a list of aggregators, but it is a bit out of date now.

Specialist Groups
 Although I can't run my social life on the web, I have been running aspects of it on the web for a while now. I'm a keen mountain biker and I go online to keep in touch with an open group of like-minded souls in my local area. This way I can always find someone to go out for a ride with. It's much easier to get a small group of friends with a shared interest to link up online. And I've found that this can lead on to wider things, the small mountain biking site I use now has some facebook integration so I can link it into wider social networks.

So if you have a pastime you share with friends encourage them to join a social networking site. It will only take a few to get that critical mass. If you're really keen then Ning  is an amazing site that will let you easily create you own social networking site dedicated to whatever you want, but that's worth a post of it's own.

Business
 Like many these days my business contacts are global. Most of them are also very computer literate. My business network is also more extended than my immediate friends and family. All of which are factors which encourage social networking.

I've found business networks like LinkedIn and Plaxo to be more than just job-hunting tools (although they can be very good for this). I use them for finding ex-colleagues I've lost touch with, and for keeping track of what ex-colleagues are doing. It gives me an easy way to link up with people when I find I'm in their area. It also gives me an extensive network of resources to draw upon when I need help. I don't need a social network site to do all of these things, but it makes it much easier.

If you're unconvinced then LinkedIntelligence maintains a list of 100+ Smart Ways to Use LinkedIn.

So even if your friends view their cellphones as new-fangled, and computers as a fad, there is still hope. The social networking sites available today have enough to offer to provide real benefit for most of us. And if you're still not convinced then the social networking sites of tomorrow look set to convince you.
 https://blogs.oracle.com/socialcrm/entry/content_in_the_social_web Content in the Social Web alicia.wu 2008-07-24T23:05:35+00:00 2008-07-29T13:55:44+00:00
How many times did we hear in the late 1990's and the early part of this decade the term "content is king?" Back then, it was about content for portals. Today, it is about the Social Web.

There are many sites managing different types of content: YouTube for video, Slideshare.net for presentations, and several hundreds, if not thousands more.

In the enterprise some of those sites matter. YouTube allows people to post useful materials like training videos, marketing videos for external viral consumption. Slideshare.net allows people to virally distribute presentations from conferences, other events, and even ideas.

In the enterprise, there is a plethora of content management systems. However, what is missing from the web and content management tools is the marrying of content assembly that leverages the collective intelligence of social networks.

Enterprise Social Network vendors are starting to crop up. A number of them focus on Web 2.0 characteristics of content as the key element of their Enterprise Social Network strategy. This is important, but surely not the sole driver of social networks for the enterprise. Content in the Social Web isn't just about collecting content with Web 2.0 characteristics; it's about adding social intelligence to that content. The market as a whole is not there yet.

Corporate workers, like sales reps, want to be able to leverage the best content to assemble that winning presentation or proposal. By leveraging the collective intelligence of your peers you can infer their knowledge into your winning presentations. We all do that today, but looking for the high quality material is a time consuming manual task.

Tools for corporate users must allow them to find the best and most frequently content like slides, and then to assemble those slides into that winning presentation with minimal effort on their part. Searches for the slides need to result in content that is time bound for relevance, of high quality, contextual for the situation and highly focused for the targeted customer. For example, I may want to find presentations on Green Tech that where published in the last 6 months, has a rating of 4 out of 5 stars or better and that my target audience has expressed interest in.

Once those winning presentations are put together people will want to share them with their corporate colleagues, partners and best of all, their customers.

Content is indeed king, but it has to be easy for high value users to leverage that content, not just find it and sift through it for hours on end.

Alicia
 https://blogs.oracle.com/socialcrm/entry/social_intelligence Social Intelligence francisco.casas 2008-07-14T22:22:38+00:00 2008-07-18T23:05:13+00:00
The first generation CRM applications suffer from three fundamental flaws, which have resulted in much lower user acceptance of CRM than projected by their vendors.

 First, the consideration that sales reps are elective users of CRM applications is generally completely missing. Sales reps made their quotas before the CRM term even existed and have continued to make their numbers while CRM applications continue to provide little "personal value" to the sales rep.

 Second, the assumption that reps would be willing to enter volumes of data without penalties from their management and get little in return from the system is mostly off the mark.

 Third, dealmakers, like sales reps, are the most social of people. Yet, although some CRM implementations acknowledge that sales reps work in teams, the vendors completely missed implementing extensive social, collaborative mechanisms that allow for the best skilled people and most useful content to emerge.

 Some CRM applications tack on business intelligence (BI) to show pretty dashboards of how things are. This is very valuable for sales managers, but typical BI implementations do not add value to the individual sales rep trying to make their quota.

 Social Intelligence (SI) is the notion of analyzing data collected from a group of people allowing visibility into past and future behaviors in a social group, but adjusted with the anecdotal knowledge of the individual sales reps. This allows the social network to adjust the behavior of the application itself while users of the social network benefit from the members. To sales reps, this means that they benefit from the collective intelligence of their peers, while at the same time reducing the burden of heavy data entry by high value people like sales reps. This has the significant potential to personal value to the next generation of CRM consumers.

How can social networks help sales reps? Social networks do not have a rigid form of any kind. So, social networks can be created to mimic sales territories, or sales reps can choose to form their own social networks of the top sales reps, or their peers that sell similar products. The social groupings can be endless. Reps can belong to any number of social networks and should be able to leverage multiple social networks to achieve their objectives.

Social intelligence can help individual sales reps identify prospects. How can this be? Social intelligence allows predictive analytics to propose new prospects to the sales reps. These techniques can be as simple as what shopping sites do when they propose items to purchase or as sophisticated as understanding the customer well. Social intelligence then takes things further by allowing the predictive engine to adapt to the behavior of the social network by capturing the anecdotal knowledge and behavior of the sales reps to improve the proposed products. Moreover, social intelligence should be able to account for current events such as social movements within a company like when a sponsor leaves the company or catastrophic events such as Katrina occur.

The promise of social intelligence is significant. It allows sales reps to leverage each other to achieve their numbers. It treats sales reps as elective users by providing them personal value. It allows the most successful sales reps to identify hidden prospects quicker. It allows less successful sales reps the ability to leverage the expertise of overachievers.

The timing for Social Intelligence is almost at the perfect storm pitch: Business Intelligence is well developed, social networking is taking off for enterprise use, Web 2.0 techniques are getting more advanced, and companies are realizing that sales reps are indeed, social and elective users of computing.

In future posts, I'll drill down on other use cases for social intelligence.

Regards,

Francisco

 https://blogs.oracle.com/socialcrm/entry/benefits_of_social_email_marketing Benefits of Social Email Marketing arnie.espos 2008-07-14T20:55:39+00:00 2008-07-14T21:14:18+00:00
Hello everyone, I am Arnie Espos and I am the product manager for Oracle Sales Campaigns. Thank you for taking the time to visit this blog and I will endeavor to bring insightful commentary that is worth your valuable time.

Now most of us understand the benefits of email marketing. A good email marketing campaign can help you:

- Generate Repeat Sales
 - Up-sell and Cross-sell Products and Services
 - Drive Users to Make Purchases
 - Increase Sales Velocity

I am not going to bore you with the benefits of email marketing since this has been discussed countless times over many years that email marketing has been with us. In fact email marketing is so ubiquitous that it has penetrated our pop culture. Who can forget Homer Simpson's line,

"mmmmm spaaam." - Homer Simpson

Yes, this gives you an indication of my television viewing habits. I like animation. But that is another subject.....Of course he was referrring to the the pork by-product, but SPAM is also email. So how do you elevate your email campaign above the other spam and noise?

An email campaign with a social network can enhance the benefits of email marketing by:

- Connecting people and building relationships across boundaries
 - Provide an ongoing venue for knowledge exchange

Connecting people and building relationships across boundaries
 For many organizations establishing ways to collaborate is an essential strategy. There are many tools we can use to collaborate or build a social business network, such as online/web meetings, phone calls, face-to-face meetings, conference calls. However these tools have boundaries that are not that obvious. Using email marketing in a social context allows users and their community to connect not necessarily in traditional ways at a meeting, conference call, etc. but in an unbounded manner. For example, I often find that someone who is shy in face-to-face meetings often comes out or is more expressive through asynchronous communications like email. The shy person, who normally would not connect in a real-time meeting is comes up with insight now expressed in a real-time meeting. The shy person is now a vibrant contributor and contributor to your network. Why? When people can connect asynchronously this gives them time to digest material and form a well thought out response.

 Providing an ongoing venue for knowledge exchange
 This benefit is obvious to many marketers. Email marketers have many tools to manage the effectiveness of their campaigns. However, what many lack are tools for continuous improvement. Yes, you receive feedback from recipients, but what about peers? A peer often gives feedback and insight that in a vacuum you would not have considered. A peer can review your campaign, rate it, comment on it, offer suggestions, and potentially offer or share their version of the same campaign. Now multiply this exchange over many users within your network, over many campaigns, and you have an ongoing venue to share knowledge, experience, insight, to evolve the effectiveness of your campaigns.

So consider what an email marketing campaign along with a social network can do for you. This much we know, that within a company a well-tuned online social network can enhance a company's collective knowledge and sharpen its ability to act on what people know in time to be effective. We have long recognized that that networking is critical to an organization. How many problems have been resolved, products designed, status reports were done in a meeting around the proverbial water cooler? Creating these opportunities to connect is often the stated or unstated purpose of facilitated off-site meetings, and other communication initiatives. However, the half-life of connections made at these off-site or water-cooler meetings is often very short until social applications provided us with a means to support the network over time and make us more effective.

There must be more benefits and insights than what I have offered here. Let this be a start to evolving our conversation.
 https://blogs.oracle.com/socialcrm/entry/why_sales_reps_are_social Following the Footsteps of Top Sales Reps J. John Kim 2008-07-08T08:51:37+00:00 2008-07-11T12:08:27+00:00
Hi, my name is John Kim. I am the product manager for Oracle Sales Prospector. I have been working very hard here in Redwood City to ship my product. Yes, I am almost at the finish line now. I am pleased to announce that we shipped Oracle Sales Prospector on June 30th.

 In my spare(?) time between reviewing test results, and finalizing the training materials, time to time, I browse the web and look at press and blog articles on Oracle Sales Prospector that turn up on Google Alert. One article that caught my eyes was an article titled, "Problem with 'Social' CRM: Salespeople Want Commissions, not 'Community' It suggests that the competitive nature of salespersons may hinder the adoption of social networks in the enterprise setting, making it difficult to sustain themselves in the long run. Having read the article, I hoed and hummed, came to understand why this issue was raised, and want to share some of my thoughts on that.

 Even if some sales reps keep information close to their vest, a lot of information does get entered, either by them or by others, as a result of normal course of business in the enterprise. Sales reps do want to get paid and customers want to receive what they bought from those reps, so orders get created on the enterprise system for fulfillment. In addition, most companies keep information on their customers, and products. Furthermore, the company can set up the initial layer of enterprise social networks, based on the company formal work groups. They can be something like North American Sales, Oil and Gas Accounts Reps, etc. By knitting order, customer, and product information within these groups, the enterprise can assemble a large amount of information as a starting point for collaboration for its reps.

Yes, I see that salespersons may not actively seek out or offer help with one another. They may be the life of the party in real life, but the perfect wall flowers online. This is where the power of data mining by Oracle Data Mining comes in. The top salespersons leave their fingerprints all over the enterprise system in the form of closed orders. Similar to how Amazon.com makes recommends shoppers what they might like based on what products customers like them have purchased, Oracle Sales Prospector makes prospecting recommendations based on what the salesperson's peers sold to customers similar to the ones he/she is going after. Here, as the similar shoppers would stay anonymous, so would the peer salespersons. By mimicking targeting moves by the top salespersons, an average salesperson can increase his/her own effectiveness. This enterprise-sponsored social learning network can accelerate the diffusion of best sales targeting practices within the enterprise.

If you can mimic dance on Dance Dance Revolution, play Aerosmith on Guitar Hero or follow Tiger's moves on Golf Channel, you will see how an average sales rep can increase his/her win rate by mimicking the targeting techniques of the top salespersons. For an average person, this is much better than creating his own dance moves, would-be hit songs, and a first-tried golf stance. You can unleash your inner salesperson with Oracle Sales Prospector.

 Oh, one more thing. Happy Canada Day to my friends up north, and Happy Fourth of July for us in the States! Later.
 https://blogs.oracle.com/socialcrm/entry/welcome_to_the_social_crm_blog_1 Welcome to the Social CRM Blog! Tara Roberts 2008-07-02T22:18:30+00:00 2008-07-07T15:01:13+00:00
Welcome to our blog! We are the Social CRM team. We are responsible for delivering user-focused productivity applications that leverage the collective intelligence of the broader user community. These loosely coupled, SaaS enabled, social applications are designed to work the way people naturally do their work.

Through this blog we'll discuss things that we know and feel passionately about like sales, end user experience, social networking, technology, web 2.0/enterprise 2.0, and CRM. The mission for our blog is to share information that will help make everyone (especially our target users like sales people) more productive. We hope to get your thoughts on what is important to you, what you like about our blog and products, and where we need to improve. And through our discussions, we hope to deliver with you products that meet your needs.

Let me tell you a little bit about how we got started. It was March 22, 2007 when I sat down with Anthony Lye for lunch to discuss his vision for a new kind of enterprise application. I had just returned to work from maternity leave and heard that Anthony had rejoined Oracle only a couple of days earlier. Immediately after we sat down in the Oracle 300 cafeteria, Anthony began to describe his vision to develop and deliver consumable social applications. Anthony explained that these applications will be driven by users, chosen by users, collaborative and social by design, built on standards, enable collaboration of relevant services, and promote user driven innovation. His vision was to deliver loosely coupled applications that do not require expensive upgrades and serve a specific need to help increase user productivity. What he said made so much sense. So when he asked if I wanted to build these applications at the end of our lunch conversation, little did I know what a wonderful and demanding ride this would be.

I have the good fortune of working with people who are committed to our mission – developing applications that really matter to the users and that help them be more productive. Here is a brief introduction to our product management team:

 Tara Roberts leads the product management team for Social CRM
  John Kim manages Oracle Sales Prospector
  Arnie Espos manages Oracle Sales Campaigns
  Alicia Wu manages Oracle Sales Library
   Francisco Casas leads cross application functions like social networking, integrations, etc.
  Richard Sands manages Sales.com development and other cross application functions
  Bob Taylor is responsible for end user experience
  Ching Lee assists with critical areas and facilitates cross team communications

 We hope that this blog will introduce us to many of you…and give us a chance to meet via this blog and in person. This blog will serve as a way to share what we find interesting that hopefully you will find relevant. The opinions that are expressed on this blog are of the individuals expressing them and not necessarily of the broader Oracle community.

We are a small team dedicated to making a difference by developing applications that really matter to the users who are using them. Let us know what matters to you.


text:
May 12, 2005
ML Game 32
Moppert 4
Baker Printing 3
Moppert struck first with 3 runs in the 1st inning powered by extra base hits from Conner McCarren and Adam Junkin. Baker closed the gap with a run in the 2nd inning and another in the 3rd inning.
The game would remain this way until the 6th inning when Baker plated the tying run after Jake Myers reached on an error and Ian Campbell singled.
Baker might have gone ahead if not for a great 6 - 4 putout by Kyle Longacre and Jack Donoghue. Then in the bottom of the 6th inning Moppert's Conner McCarren came up big with a 1 out double followed by a fast ball / overthrow of 3rd base to score and end the game.
Bakers Jeremy Davis went the distance giving up just 4 hits and 1 BB and recording 5 K's. Moppert received solid pitching from Brian Vendetta (3 innings) and Brian Bosco (3 innings).
Offensive star of the game was Conner McCarren going 3 for 3.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Lost Remote: New journalism programme to mix digital storytelling and business
"Even with the state of journalism today," claims Lost Remote's Cory Bergman, "most university professors would be loath to meld a curriculum of storytelling with the business side of the equation". This is not the case at the University of Washington digital media programme though, which aims to become the 'Columbia Journalism School of digital media and communication', and teach "a unique blend of digital storytelling, social media and the business of digital media".
"The three go together," says Hanson Hosein, the director of the Masters of Communication in Digital Media program and a former NBC News correspondent who covered the Iraq war as a one-man band. "We're hearing from our applicants that there's nothing else like our program."
Similar posts:
- University of Florida sets up new digital media centre
- Wired.com: Columbia to offer joint computer science and journalism degree
- Telegraph.co.uk: BBC to apologise to Band Aid and Geldof over funding slurs
- CUNY New Business Models for News, as seen in Aspen
- Facebook and Google to be quizzed on whether the internet is safe for free speech


text:
world news
- European foreign ministers meet Middle-Eastern counterparts
In Brussels, European foreign ministers are meeting their counterparts from Turkey, Egypt, Jordan… 25/01/09 20:53 CET
- European foreign ministers meet Middle-Eastern counterparts
In Brussels, European foreign ministers are meeting their counterparts from Turkey, Egypt, Jordan… 25/01/09 20:01 CET
- Moderniser leads contest to head Russian church
And then there were three… Senior clergy have drawn up a shortlist of nominees to become… 25/01/09 19:23 CET
- Bolivia votes on new constitution
In what is being hailed an "historic day for democracy" by Bolivia's President Evo Morales, people… 25/01/09 19:23 CET
- Fires burn in wake of storms in Spain
Parts of Spain that spent the start of the weekend in the grip of violent storms now face the… 25/01/09 19:23 CET
- France was 'better prepared' for devastating storms
In terms of sheer power, the latest storms were even more violent than those that devastated much… 25/01/09 19:23 CET
- Iceland's commerce minister quits
The pressure is starting to show in Iceland's government as protests continue over its handling of… 25/01/09 19:23 CET
- Brussels meets Mid East for Gaza talks
European and Middle Eastern foreign ministers are meeting in Brussels this evening to assess the… 25/01/09 15:49 CET
- Russian Orthodox Church chooses new leader
Senior figures within the Russian Orthodox Church have gathered to pick a new leader for the first… 25/01/09 13:34 CET
- Europe's worst storms for decades kill 15
At least 15 people are known to have died as a result of the hurricane-strength winds that have… 25/01/09 13:34 CET
- Belgium prepares for creche killing march
Still in shock after Friday's killings at a creche, Belgians will today march in solidarity with… 25/01/09 13:34 CET
- Strong feelings on abortion in San Francisco rallies
Activists on both sides of America's highly-charged abortion debate have been making their voices… 25/01/09 13:34 CET
- Chinese celebrate Year of the Ox
Chinese New Year celebrations have got underway in Beijing and across the world. Hundreds of… 25/01/09 13:34 CET
- Belgium searches for answers behind creche attack
Belgium continues to take in the shocking knife attack at a nursery, in which two babies and a… 25/01/09 09:07 CET
- Fierce European storms leave wave of devastation
At least 15 people have been killed in storms hitting Spain and France. At a sports centre… 25/01/09 09:07 CET
- Three die in Highland avalanche
Three climbers have been killed in an avalanche in the Highlands of Scotland. Police say, in… 25/01/09 09:07 CET
- Bolivians get ready to vote on constitution
Bolivians vote on a new constitution on Sunday, which leftist President Evo Morales is hoping will… 25/01/09 09:07 CET


text:
Zynga has lost a new bunch of executives this month, according to GamesBeat. Words With Friends lead Travis Boatman, head of acquisitions Terence Fung, and former head of the company's Ville franchise Steve Chiang, have all left Zynga. Unlike previous departures, these latest ones seem to be part of CEO Don Mattrick's plan to tighten up Zynga at its top-level. The company said in April that CFO Mark Vranesh was also leaving.
A Zynga spokesperson declined to comment on the departures, but one person close to the company said that the changes reflect Mattrick's ambition to remake the company and its strategy so it can be successful in the transition to mobile games. Some of the executives who left did so on their own, according to GamesBeat, but further details on that were not available as of this writing. Mattrick asked others to leave, and still others were reassigned to some completely different roles, according to GamesBeat.
Source: GamesBeat


text:
Town Cemetery
Murray Bridge
South Australia.
IN LOVING MEMORY OF OUR DEAR LOVING DAUGHTER SYLVIA DORA WIERBRECHT WHO DIED JULY 15TH 1921. AGED 6 YEARS AND 10 MONTHS. (The rest is undecipherable).
Any problems with this page, please contact the Churchmouse Website webmaster.
This site is a work in progress.
Main Page


text:
Free Crochet Pattern from Lion Brand Yarn, formatted for input to refreshable Braille displays or Braille software
Cape With Tassel
Lion Brand® Wool-Ease
Pattern Number: 70552AD
SKILL LEVEL: Easy (Level 2)
SIZE: One Size
Finished Chest 43 in. (109 cm) Finished Length 22 in. (56 cm)
CORRECTIONS: None
620-188 Wool-Ease Yarn: Paprika
Bright red-orange
Quantity needed: 3 Skeins
Estimated Price: $ 14.07
Note: (A)
620-122 Wool-Ease Yarn: Sienna
Rich pumpkin orange
Quantity needed: 1 Skeins
Estimated Price: $ 3.75
Note: (B)
620-177 Wool-Ease Yarn: Loden
Dark pine green
Quantity needed: 1 Skeins
Estimated Price: $ 3.75
Note: (C)
620-172 Wool-Ease Yarn: Lemongrass
Light pea green
Quantity needed: 1 Skeins
Estimated Price: $ 4.69
Note: (D)
620-174 Wool-Ease Yarn: Avocado
Cool medium green
Quantity needed: 1 Skeins
Estimated Price: $ 4.69
Note: (E)
Lion Brand Crochet Hook - Size J-10 (6 mm)
Quantity needed: 1
Estimated Price: $ 2.45
Lion Brand Large-Eye Blunt Needles (Set of 6)
Quantity needed: 1
Estimated Price: $ 3.59
Additional Materials
7 1/2 in. (19 cm) square of cardboard
14 sts + 8 rows = 4 in. (10 cm) in dc. When you match the gauge in a pattern, your project will be the size specified in the pattern and the materials specified in the pattern will be sufficient. The needle or hook size called for in the pattern is based on what the designer used, but it is not unusual for gauge to vary from person to person. If it takes you fewer stitches and rows to make your swatch, try using a smaller size hook or needles; if more stitches and rows, try a larger size hook or needles. Making a Gauge Swatch
Exact gauges is not imporant to this project.
With A, ch 153.
Row 1: Dc in 4th ch from hook and in each ch across - 150 dc.
Rows 2-4: Ch 3 (counts as dc), turn, dc in each st across.
Rows 5-6: With B, rep Row 2.
Row 7: With C, rep Row 2.
Row 8: Ch 1, turn, sc in each st across.
Row 9: With D, rep Row 2.
Row 10: With E, rep Row 8.
Rows 11-16: With B, rep Row 2.
Rows 17-43: With A, rep Row 2.
Do not fasten off.
Pivot to work along side edge of Cape.
With A, sc evenly along side edge of Cape.
Fasten off.
Join A with sl st on opposite side edge of Cape and sc evenly along this edge.
Fasten off.
Join A with sl st at top edge, and slip st evenly across.
Fasten off.
Place markers along top edge of Cape 14 in.
(35.5 cm) in from each side edge.
Tassel (make 2)
Holding 1 strand of each color together, wrap yarn around cardboard 5 times.
Cut a 15 in.
(38 cm) length of yarn and thread into large-eyed blunt needle.
Insert needle under all strands at upper edge of cardboard.
Pull tightly and knot securely near strands.
Cut yarn loops at opposite edge.
Cut a 20 in.
(51 cm) length of yarn and wrap tightly around loops 1 1/2 in.
(4 cm) below top to form Tassel neck.
Knot securely; thread ends onto needle and weave ends to center of Tassel.
Trim Tassel ends evenly.
Tassel Chain
Join D to top of Tassel with sl st and ch 25.
Join ch to Cape with sl st at marker.
Fasten off.
Rep for second Tassel.
Weave in ends.
ch(s) = chain(s)
dc = double crochet
rep = repeat(s)(ing)
sc = single crochet
st(s) = stitch(es)
Every effort has been made to have the knitting and crochet instructions accurate and complete. We cannot be responsible for variance of individual knitters and crocheters, human errors, or typographical mistakes.
We want your project to be a success! If you need help with this or any other Lion Brand pattern, e-mail support is available 7 days per week by mailing email@example.com.
For over a thousand free patterns available in versions for the vision-impaired, visit our website http://www.LionBrand.com
To order, visit our website http://www.e-yarn.com or call: (800) 258-9276 any time!
Copyright ©1998-2011 Lion Brand Yarn Company, all rights reserved. No pattern or other material may be reproduced -- mechanically, electronically, or by any other means, including photocopying -- without written permission of Lion Brand Yarn Company.
Click here for Non-Braille display:
View With Images


text:
Friday, 12 February 2010
News Bar »
News: IMF predicts 5.5 percent economic growth ...
Political: President at Tangalle: Don't use politics of violence ...
Business: To set up specialized unit: BoC enters investment banking ...
Sports: India get Laxman boost ahead of decisive Test ...
dailynews ONLINE
are passionate affairs in Sri Lanka. Given that the ordinary citizen
gets a few weeks to feel like king/queen-maker this is not surprising.
Sometimes, however, people go overboard and there is nothing as
grotesque and ugly as when those who are supposed to be informed, sober
and even dispassionate let their emotions mess with reason.
It is natural to be upset when the candidate or party that one
supported gets defeated. It can even be a tad embarrassing when you've
predicted a rousing win for the eventual loser. A loss by a huge margin
when you've said it was 'too close to call' also makes for blushing. By
and large, people get caught up with their fantasies and invest the
world of propaganda with so much passion that they often start believing
their own lies. I am thinking of all those people who were in the
unenviable position of having to support Sarath Fonseka.
These were people who were quite keen on giving legitimacy even
parity of status vis-a-vis the Government to the LTTE, operating on the
principle 'my enemy's enemy is my friend'. That was quintessential 'self
before country' (ratata pera mata). In treating Prabhakaran as pal they
had to, therefore, call Mahinda Rajapaksa's key men in the battle,
Fonseka included, 'enemy'. They had a lot of pride to swallow in coming
forward to support Fonseka, naturally, and this explains the
argumentative contortionism they demonstrated in the initial stages of
the campaign. I am thinking of people who claiming they are renaissance
creatures, or seek 'commonality' by saying they are nobodies or try to
cover up blandness by taking spicy names, and the familiar gang of
ENJOYISTS who talk of human rights, democracy, good governance and what
not even as they beef up terrorism ideologically and otherwise.
Intelligent voters have cast their vote for peace and freedom.
File Photo
They couldn't exactly come out in support of the ex Army Commander,
so they framed it in different terms and tried to give Fonseka's
campaign a boost by saying 'it is going to be touch and go', or, like
the renaissance guy, calling Fonseka a last-straw option and gently
urging people to clutch at him (after trying to make people believe that
the entire nation was about to drown). They must be all quite
disappointed and I don't blame them. While I am amused by their
contortionism I saw nothing wrong in them supporting Fonseka. They all
had legitimate reasons for preferring Fonseka over Mahinda Rajapaksa;
they've been quite open in their objections to the regime and have been
calling for regime-change frequently. Sure, they frilled it all with
allegations of corruption and nepotism and sauced it with epithets such
as 'hawk', 'war-monger', 'chauvinist' etc etc., but the bottom line was
always apparent: they preferred a UNP or UNPish regime and 'Fonseka' was
the closest to that particular Utopia they could imagine.
It's when those who try to give 'objectivity' to preference by waving
academic qualification slip up that it all goes beyond 'amusing'. We had
Jayadeva Uyangoda, widely quoted 'expert', 'analyst' and 'political
scientist', coming up with this amazing sour-loser's
explanation/prognosis: 'It is ironic that minorities favoured a military
leader who led the ethnic war'. That's just the first part.
'Ethnic war' is it? Not a struggle against terrorism? And these
minorities, did they 'reject' only Mahinda Rajapaksa? It is not as
thought the majority voted for Fonseka. Uyangoda forgets that more than
half the voters opted not to choose either. Why is it that he doesn't
notice that those who did vote voted against Douglas Devananda, Karuna,
Pilliyan and yes, even the TNA? What happens to the 'ethnic' in the
equation when you throw in these salient factors? One can almost here
Uyangoda mumbling soberly, 'Rajapaksa's victory is a deep blow to the
minorities, for their hope for change has been rejected; for them the
future is clear - they will be second-class citizens from now on!'
I wonder what would have given Uyangoda an electoral orgasm. Does
nothing excite him this side of the Sinhala voter embracing a 'change'
defined in Eelamist terms? Does everything this side of Eelam amount to
a rejection of 'change' and therefore a condemning of minorities to
'second class citizenship'? If this is nuanced analysis then I pity the
undergraduates and graduates who are taught and whose research is
supervised by this man.
Then there was Deepika Udugama, another Colombo University Professor.
She's 'noted', we are told, 'how national apathy and populism have taken
over the electorate after the decades-old war'. Here's the punch line:
'The lack of political maturity in Sri Lanka is obvious. The voter
cannot go beyond the rhetoric of the politicians. As long as the
economic needs of the individual are looked after, there is no attempt
by the voters to insist on addressing minority grievances, which is what
should have been seen in this elections by voting for change'.
She could have qualified each little wish in this wish list as being
her personal preference. For example, she could have put it this way:
'Sri Lankans are not as politically mature as I am. Unlike me, the
rest of the voters cannot go beyond the rhetoric of the politician; I am
smart they are stupid. I am smart and sensitive and I addressed minority
grievances by voting for change because that is what this election was
about; whereas the stupid majority chose to think about their economic
needs. I observe, therefore, that all those who voted for Sarath Fonseka
were concerned only about one thing: addressing minority grievances.'
Had she put it that way she would have appeared honest. Nauseating
and elitist, yes, but still honest. As it is, it's just nauseating and
elitist. And she has the gumption to say that minorities are now
condemned to suffering Rajapaksa's paternalism!
Considering Uyangoda's disappointment and Udugama's
'minoritarianization' of voter-mind, I think I have more respect now for
the renaissance guy, the 'nobody' and the coriander-baby.
[email protected]
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Posts Tagged 'photography'
Photography is a crime.
Nothing the guy can do now, hes already admitted a crime to the courts, under the advice of his attorney.
Brian McCarty's book of art toy photos
We've featured Brian McCarty's terrific toy photography many times here. He's a master at setting a perfect scene and using just the right perspective to trick me into thinking that the strange vinyl characters on my shelf come alive when I'm not looking. Brian's photos are now collected in a wonderful hardcover book appropriately titled [...]